Best Eats This Week - Buttermilk Pudding with Plum Compote & Ginger Biscuit (London)

There's such an art to perfecting simplicity.  We can get so caught up with out-of-the-box ideas of flavor combinations and presentation that we get these overwhelming plates of a dozen different components and colors and textures.  At the end it's more about showcasing the technical skills of the chef rather than the actual consumption and enjoyment of the dish. 

Don't get me wrong, I love an art-gallery-fit plate of food that's more complex than I could ever comprehend, but sometimes something like this, a simple buttermilk pudding with plum compote and a ginger biscuit, cooked perfectly, is better.  It's difficult though, because like I said, it needs to be perfect when you don't have much going on.  That's what 40 Maltby Street is good for - faultless, unfussy, simple food, and this dessert was the best thing I ate this week.
You can see the love and care put into every detail of this - the buttermilk pudding, not a gelatinous blob but rather soft, delicate and tender, midway between a panna cotta and a mousse.  The plum compote, sharp and sweet, consists of both a puree and actual chunks of plums.  And the ginger biscuit, strong, like eating stem gingers out of a jar, crisp and still warm.  Meticulous.  After just coming back from a rather disappointing dinner, going to 40 Maltby Street for this dessert made my evening.

Their menu changes daily, so you may not have the luck of having this dessert but everything I've had from 40 Maltby Street has been excellent, so check them out.