I am loving… Spanish stew

There’s a little Spanish deli around the corner from my office which serves the best lunchtime treat: a cup of chickpea and chorizo stew.

Brindisa also sells salad boxes, sandwiches and meats, but it’s the stew that really marks this place out. I’ve tried to replicate it myself, with limited success. Nigel Slater’s recipe in The Observer looks pretty good but I made the error of not leaving it to cook for long enough and using tinned over soaked chickpeas. Take note.

There are more Spanish recipes in 1080 Recipes, which includes contributions from Brindisa’s head chef. I’ve been meaning to buy a copy.

On the list: Unpackaged

Don’t need three layers of packaging around your apples? Think you can cope without a couple of bags to protect your bananas? Then you might be interested in Unpackaged (walkable from Farringdon or Angel tube). Opened last year, it appears to be a bit of a ‘back to basics’ idea – bring your tupperware containers and fill them up… with rice, seeds, flour, muesli, toilet cleaner..

It reminds me of those discount shops that used to exist where you scooped up all your shopping into plastic bags, though I reckon the goods there were anything but organic and wholesome. In any case, we tended to scoop up our family shopping from Tesco.

I’ve been meaning to pop along to Unpackaged for a while now. I’ll report back if/when I make it.

> The Camden New Journal covered the opening last November

> Monocle has a picture