A trip to the wonderful Sipsmith distillery in West London has left me wanting to make cocktails every chance I can get. Making a really good cocktail is so much like crafting a perfect cake, so I am naturally drawn to the task. The subtle but true and beautiful flavours of the Sipsmith London Dry Gin is a wonderful backdrop for some very exciting cocktails. Jared Brown, the master distiller, gave us this recipe which we went straight home and tried. It is my new holiday drink (sharing a place next to last year’s egg nog). It is a purply pink and lovely and frothy.
Sloe Gin Fizz (makes 2)
100ml Sipsmith Sloe Gin
25ml fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 egg white
ice cubes
Champagne to finish
Add the sloe gin, lemon juice and egg white to a cocktail shaker and shake well to get a nice froth. Add the ice cubes and give it a few more shakes. Divide into two white wine glasses and top with Champagne.
We just think we have THE coolest customers. All the Violet girls are always saying what a pleasure it is to serve people that are so friendly, appreciative, interesting and, of course, have such great taste in cakes. One of our fav customers, and the girl responsible for my favourite sneakers (as seen below and on me whilst walking Shuggie in London Fields), has put a lovely little mention of us on the Top Shop website (click the London link) 
We love her and the awesome Twin magazine she is the fashion director of. We have a copy of the latest issue upstairs at Violet so have a look with a coffee and a mince pie if you don’t already own it.
The lovely John and Julie have arrived in London with their adorable vintage wear for kids up to age 10.
All day Saturday and Sunday upstairs at Violet. Hope to see you there.
Come along tomorrow for W+K cupcakes and egg sandwiches and live music by Dakota Jim!
We are putting some tables in the streets but bring more down if you can x
Join us and The Other Side of the Pillow and Wilton’s and the Spurstowe and all the other shops and residents. x
from my garden
Things are going very well with the new hours and with the addition of our espresso machine. Thanks to all of you who have been coming to the shop. I have just finished writing another cookbook and a huge weight has been lifted. I have some seeds that I am going to plant in the garden and finally have the time to do it!
These violets grow along one of the beds and I am planning to put in some rocket leaves and echinacea. I also have my eye on some hazel that I am going to use as bean poles. A little early yet, but I am really looking forward to getting them into the ground.
Any tips welcome x
I was given dozens of roses by a photographer friend recently after he had completed a Valentine’s Day shoot.
The buckets of them filled the back of my old Mercedes estate and when a friend walked me to my car, she proclaimed, Mrs. Dalloway! I laughed and nodded. It reminded me how much I love that book. Worth a re-read.
What are you reading at the moment?
Also, have you seen that we extended our hours of operation?
Here is my friend Stevie’s column in The Telegraph about our trip to Morocco. xx
Moroccan recipes: Sweet meats of Marrakesh
Our new cookery writer Stevie Parle goes to pot for a taste of the Maghreb
A few weeks ago I went to Morocco with my family. We stayed in a beautiful house in a quiet neighbourhood in Marrakesh, north of the Medina and close to the extraordinary Jardin Majorelle. The days were warm, the nights were cool, and the food was delicious. I spent much of my time poking around the local food markets and peering into the shops and stalls near our house, then rushing back to try things out.
It’s great to have the use of a kitchen on holiday; I would have hated to miss the chance to buy delicious bunches of wild asparagus or big bulbs of fennel because I had nowhere to cook them
Each neighbourhood of Marrakesh has a hammam or bath house, and the one closest to our house was particularly charming. What I loved was not the massage or mud scrub; not the steam or the beautifully tiled interior; but the huge wood-burning oven used to heat the water for the baths.
This oven also doubled as a community bakery. All morning a steady stream of people of all ages, from young children to grandmothers, brought wooden trays with flat loaves of bread covered with personalised tea towels. The loaves were baked by the hammam oven operator, left on racks with the tea towels on top and retrieved later by their owners.
French colonialism has left Morocco with a surprising number of bakeries, but one I was most fascinated by made warka pastry. It is an amazing feat of patience, not so much a pastry as a wet-yeasted dough, dubbed and spread onto a hotplate very thinly, and cooked briefly. It is then whipped off, creating a thinner-than-paper pastry, a little like filo, that forms the basis for the classic pastilla: pigeon and almond pie. In this bakery they used warka to make delicious baklava-like pastries, stuffed with mixtures of nuts, honey and orange flower water – they are really sweet but tasty with a bittersweet Moroccan tea.
In fact, Moroccan cooking is often on the sweet side. Meat is frequently cooked with dried fruit or preserved lemons, and the meze, such as Moroccan salads, are often seasoned with sugar and orange flower water. Pigeon pastilla is dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar. Main courses are generally slow-cooked meat and vegetables, usually in the famous conical tagine. It took time to get used to, but I soon started to love this delicate, fragrant, savoury-sweet cuisine.
our holiday is almost over but prepare for new beginnings
Back from Morocco and ready to roll!
We are opening Wednesday the 12th January with our new espresso machine and new counter! Whoop whoop!
Couldn’t hold out any longer.
Too many bewildered looks when we try to extoll the virtues of filter coffee to a groggy mum in search of a latte have propelled us into the world of Italian-style coffee.
We will still feature Coleman Roasters and Square Mile’s single origin beans for our filter coffee (which I gotta say are SO good) but we are now adding espresso drinks to the mix as well. We are also opening at 8am!! (7:45 if you ask nicely) so you can grab a coffee and one of our fruity muffins on your way to work.
Will you come will you come???
x claire
New hours of operation:
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 8-6
Saturdays 10-6 and 9-4 at Broadway Market and 9-2 at Maltby Street Market
Sundays 11-5
VIOLET WILL BE CLOSED FROM 24 DECEMBER – 12 JANUARY
Thanks so much to my lovely customers for a fab 7 months
a poem by charles bukowski
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?