jamfaced

Milk in your coffee?

2009-10-08T19:16:00.001+01:00

In Markman Ellis' excellent history of the way we drink coffee, The Coffee House: A Cultural History, there is a chapter called something like The Lactification of Coffee. I forget the exact title and I haven't drunk enough espresso to get out of my chair and go and find my copy. You'll just have to trust me. Anyway, the premise is a simple one. The way coffee is drunk has changed out of all recognition from the black, hot and bitter to the smooth, milky and sweet. Starbucks is to blame, probably.

He's right of course. The average coffee shop serves variations on large milky drinks that taste vaguely of coffee. The current trend in London for flat whites et al have upped the ante a little, in that at least the coffee is well made and not drowning in milk but there's a vaguely dunderhead trendoid factor involved in getting decent coffee from the likes of Flat White and Fernandez and Wells. You tend to have to wrestle past fixed wheel bikes and iphones or baby strollers made by F1 racing teams. The other curious thing is that they've done away with froth. I remember the days, not so long ago, that the true sign of a well made cappucino was a mountain of chocolate flecked foam you could snowboard down. It would take a foot long biscotti to find the coffee, long since transformed into a molten hot nuclear plasma under the intense pressure. Now, to the new cofferati it's anathema. It's all about silky milk. A merest hint of bubble and the barista gets his head broiled under his very own steam wand. Oddly, the ancient Mayan thought the foam the best bit. They were keen on human sacrifice too. I doubt the two are connected.

We drink a great deal of coffee in the UK but we aren't coffee lovers. We are a nation of tea drinkers really. Like the Japanese. Tea requires ceremony, patience and inspires a certain rectitude. If you look at how coffee has grown up in this country it's always in contrast to tea. Coffee is always more at home alongside debate, sedition and mischief making than tea which hangs around providing succour, comfort and familiarity. True coffee loving nations are chaotic, noisy places usually with a hint of corruption crinkling the edges. We are probably well on our way but we're not quite there yet.

Sherry/Xeres/Jerez

2009-09-17T23:14:00.003+01:00

Jerez is Spain proper. It’s the Spain that big city sophisticates in Madrid and Barcelona say isn’t really Spain, it’s something that doesn’t really exist they’ll tell you, but here it is nevertheless. Jerez is sherry, flamenco and the blistering sun. It’s dusty, gypsy haunted and poor. The sherry business ain’t what it used to be, us Brits don’t drink it that much anymore, and consequently Jerez has some of the highest levels of unemployment in the country. Yet, everywhere you look is sherry. It’s in the street signage and furniture and town clocks paid for by the bodegas in happier times. Tio Pepe, Domencq and the slightly jarring British names; Sandemans, Williams and Humbert, Harveys, testament to the importance of “sack” in the British imagination in years gone by. The high walled compounds of the bodegas themselves are like white washed fortresses with impossible visiting hours. Well, nine till six during the week, anyway. Unless it's a fiesta. Which seems to be quite often. There’s a faded grandeur to the town, and the people, as well turned out as anywhere else in Spain (they are a dressy lot on the whole) have a provincial air. Noble, haughty and brassy.

Sherry is the perfect drink for the climate. It’s fair to say it’s a reflection of the place itself. A glass of chilled fino is the colour of the local chalky Albariza soil and dry as a bone, like sipping on a refrigerated glass of midday sun. Not the jolly yellow midday sun of an English summer. This is a searing white light that feels like an x-ray. At five in the afternoon, the temperature sits at an egg frying 45 degrees Celsius (Fahrenheit junkies can work this out for themselves using the gizzards of a chicken of whatever it is you guys use) and the only people on the streets are heat addled Northern Europeans grinding their way through the tourist spots like World Of War craft players hoping to level up. It’s too hot to sweat; the moisture just evaporates immediately leaving you slowly desiccating, like a leg of jamon iberico.

We’d just finished lunch and poked our noses out of the air conditioning. It was a meal spiked with sherry and we were ready for bed, ready to wait out the remaining heat of the day and reclaim the streets for dinner at around midnight. Kidneys in sherry, bulls tail in sherry, a semifreddo of Pedro Ximenez with raisins, pistachios and cinnamon, glasses of ice cold fino and the pruney sweetness of a dessert PX. Every dish jagged with complex citrus and herby medicinal flavours, every dish simply bloody amazing. Oddly, a trip back to the same restaurant a couple of days later was utter crap. I guess the planets had lined up for us. Walking back through the afternoon heat little white tents were being set up in the main square ready for sherry tastings. Another fiesta, commented a woman from Madrid, “...they never do any work down here”, she said poking her Andalucian husband in the ribs with a smirk.

Jerez is celebrating its harvest festival at the moment. La Fiesta de la Vendimia. It runs for three weeks and it kicked off with a concert in the bullring. It seemed the whole town had turned out to see the Bulerias performed. The Buleria is one of the mainstays of flamenco. A fast paced melange of guitars, hand claps and song. A pure stripped down slice of lost loves and land, pain and solace. The voice of muezzin calling the faithful to prayer is in its DNA. They take their flamenco very seriously here, almost as seriously as their wine and it comes as no surprise that Jerez is home to the largest extant Gypsy quarter in Spain and it’s here that the Buleria was born. Where the fashion for prodigious mullets that the young chaps were sporting comes from, however, is anyone’s guess. Luckily for us they take their food just as seriously. One stall was selling huge piles of fried baby squid, chunks of cuttlefish and whole anchovies. Another freshly made potato chips, paper cones of tiny dried shrimp and enormous sandwiches of fried pork and green padron peppers. No one is the mixed crowd of young and old, locals and tourists was going hungry.

A tour round a bodega seemed churlish to refuse, especially one with it’s own collection of Old Masters. Bodegas Tradicion specialise in VOS (vinum optimum signatum or happily Very Old Sherry) and VORS (vinum optimum rare signatum or with even greater luck Very Old Rare Sherry) which are the oldest and rarest appellations allowed by the sherry police. These wines are aged in solera (the fiendishly labyrinthine system in which sherry is made) for up to 30 years and they have a bizarre complexity from the tar like sweet PX to the apothecary aromas of the Amontillados and Olorosos. Tradicion do not grow their own grapes, instead they pick and choose from the best and blend these wines, which are like Jerez itself, are complex and something of an acquired taste, but one worth pursuing.

A double dose of Jamie

2009-09-02T14:52:00.014+01:00

I spent a slightly bemused hour in front of my telly last night watching Jamie Oliver's new show, Jamie's American Road Trip. Now, I'm not one to bash the guy simply because he's on TV. He's inoffensive enough most of the time, I quite enjoyed the school dinner thing and I even rate some of the cookbooks. The issue I have is that there's just too much of him, he occupies too much space. Yes, he's been piling on the pounds but this is something else. Everything Jamie Oliver does is packed to the gills with, well, Jamie Oliver. His cookbooks are so full of pictures of him that Jamie's Italy resembles some horrid niche gay porn mag for people who like tubby cockneys and tomato sauce. The food is always second billing to Jamie's thick tongued grimace.

Take last nights programme; Jamie hangs out in the "Mexican enclave" of San Pedro in Los Angeles He's in search of Mexican food. Given that the border isn't that far you'd figure he could catch a flight, but he's after the authentic foods of the whole of Mexico so maybe we can cut him some slack as there's less ground to cover. Maybe.

So, what does Jamie do, given he has unfettered access to the best Mexican cuisine has to offer? He hangs out with and patronises some former gangsters, who have a glassy eyed "I'm on TV, but I don't understand a word this maricon is saying" expression throughout most of the show. I felt for them, there's probably nothing in their former lives of crime; not the drugs, the violence, the deaths of family and friends that prepared them for this lisping cockney caricature intruding on their grief and their kitchens. It's like he'd seen a few Louis Theroux documentaries and decided "I'll do that and cadge a few recipes at the same time". Unfortunately, Jamie lacks Louis's empathy and curiosity and his own gargantuan self regard gets in the way. Virtually every recipe is Jamie's take on something. He's surrounded by people who know this food and culture intimately but decides, fuck it, I'll have a bash and then spout off about how he's just like them because he loves his family too.

Two comedy moments stood out. Jamie speaking Italian to a group of confused Hispanic ladies at a cactus farm because I can only guess he figures, "well, it's all the same innit!?" and the scene of him being fed mescal and getting a bit trippy. It was obviously a set up and I doubt he got more than a mild buzz but I'd have actually loved to see him totally lose it and go on a drug fuelled cockney rampage.

As for the double dose, I ended up in Jamie's Italian in Canary Wharf on Sunday for reasons that I won't go into. It's the third time I've been to one, having visited the Bath and Brighton branches and I have to say I actually quite enjoyed those two visits. There were nice enough spaces, the food was okay and the bill a fair reflection on the whole experience. It was pleasantly, "...meh".

However, there's something rotten in the state of Jamie. The one defining characteristic of all three restaurants, the one thing they all shared was anger. There's no way to reserve a table, so the front desk is a scrum of people trying to cajole, bully or insinuate their way in. They get angry. Really angry. Way angrier than I've seen at any other restaurant with a similar system for getting a table. The line at Wahaca is a jolly affair by comparison and people seem genuinely content to get a few mojitos down before the little buzzy thing vibrates and they can sit down. People at Jamie's Italian are pissed. In Brighton, a very large Scandanavian woman sick of standing for all of about ten minutes loudly proclaimed she would write to the man himself to complain and I think that's the crux of it. They want the man himself to show them to their table. Despite themselves, they figure Jamie owes them one for turning up. It's too personal, too much identified with him, people reckon this is a fine dining experience when it's just really a Frankie and Benny's franchise with better parmesan. Expectations are too high and so people just seem to lose it. Much how they would in Italy, I imagine, if they were ever confronted with such a restaurant. Authenticity, see?

By the way, avoid the Canary Wharf branch. It feels like a motorway service station canteen and take a deep breath before reading the menu. It makes me want to punch someone.

Forager

2009-08-31T16:59:00.001+01:00

Steely green-grey leaves of Sea Purslane, delicate cotton like Rose Bay Willow Herb flowers, fiery Arsesmart, Catsear and Mugwort daisies, Ribwort Plantain and the bright yellow flowers of Ladies Bedstraw are all in the process of being pressed and dried by a couple of kilos worth of cookbooks on my kitchen table. Evocative, mysterious and downright silly names of ingredients I can pretty much guarantee do not appear in any of recipe books applying the pressure. They are all wild growing herbs and edible plants we foraged this weekend guided by the expert hand of Miles Irving in the woods and along the coast near his home in Kent.

Miles runs Forager, a supplier of wild food to restaurants including St John Bread and Wine, Paternoster Chop House and the Rivington Grill and has recently published a book on the edible plants of the British Isles (take a look here), so it's fair to say we were in good hands picking through vast array of edible plants and berries around us. "Peckham's good for wild rocket, especially along the old canal path", he confided, "and you'll get wild garlic in Sydenham Woods", assuring us that you don't need to stray too far from Zone 1 to forage for wild food. In fact, Miles regularly does well attended foraging walks in London parks and along the Thames, educating "switched on foodies" where to find interesting wild plants and how to avoid poisoning themselves. "You can make a beeline for wild rocket when it flowers because of the distinctive yellow petals, but Greater Celandine looks very similar and it's deadly poisonous...", he pauses, " ...I'd really like to see you write that down.," he says with a rye smile.

Later at Miles house, I was picking elderberries from the stalks to go with lunch, work that stained my fingers purple for the rest of the day. However, the combination of venison with the berries in a red wine reduction was stunning and worth the odd looks in the newsagents on the way home. The other revelation from Miles's kitchen was Sea Aster, a succulent shoreline wild plant that is my new favourite vegetable. It's like a cross between samphire, asparagus and spinach with a lovely silky texture.

That afternoon, walking along the Kent coast we found super food Goji berries, Samphire, salty sweet Sea Purslane and wrestled with tart Sea Buckthorn berries which are notoriously hard to get off the shrubs. We picked dark green Seebeet, from which all beets have been bred, including chard and beetroots. The challenge for Miles, it seems, is making sure that he doesn't over use each foraging spot. He visits scores of sites throughout the year and whilst some are regular as clockwork, others are fleeting and only a deep understanding of his quarry keep the whole enterprise going. That and some luck. Driving past a stream, he goes to point out one of places he gathers watercress. A bright yellow JCB is tearing the plants out, freeing the clogged stream, "That one's gone for a couple of years then", he says, with the smallest of sighs. Walking back up to the car laden with foraged goodies, Miles eyed the myriad swaying yellow heads of wild fennel flowers with a knowing eye. I guess he'll be back to this spot pretty soon.

Bubbling Under

2009-08-27T14:05:00.004+01:00

Scuba diving off the UK coast is, on the whole, an exercise in masochism. The water is cold and green, the visibility tends to be negligible and getting kitted up in a dry suit, with thermal undersuit, when there's even a hint of sun is akin to feeling like a boil in the bag fish supper. Add a dive boat rocking on a big swell and vomiting dive buddies are never far behind. British recreational divers can be a rum lot; foul mouthed, fond of bizarre, potentially dangerous practical jokes, nudity and hard drinking. Given that it takes a special kind of idiot to want to get into 5 degree water to see a wreck a murky meter at a time that's probably no surprise. Having tarred the dive community with a stereotype it both loathes and somewhat cherishes I have to say I love it. I love it because every so often you do a dive that blows your socks off, a dive of unrivalled beauty, where you realise the seas off our coast are teeming with life and history.

One of the fascinations for me is seeing the stuff you normally see on ice at the fishmongers actually doing what it does in life. A monkfish, as you can see from the excellent picture at the top of this post that my friend Dan Charity took in Portland, Dorset, is seriously ugly. Ugly, but a beautifully adapted hunter, patiently waiting for prey to be attracted to the fake bait suspended from the spine between it's eyes. John Dory are slow ethereal looking animals with diaphanous trailing fins. Spider crabs can be so big that I've often mistaken them for rocks until they've moved. Pollock are streamlined silvery torpedoes and scallops feed through a fine lace like filigree that protrudes delicately from their shells. Lay one in your hand and once they sense that danger has passed they pump like muscular butterflies and swim off into the blue.

This being a food blog, it was my intention to post on diving for scallops off Swanage and dissecting one aboard the dive boat afterwards for your edification and my lunch. It's a semi regular occurrence on chartered dive boats that the skipper suggests a local drift dive (letting the current carry you along) over some scallop beds as the last dive on the Sunday. Most people see this as the skipper trying to get out of going too far off shore so he can get the boat back and cleaned up and have his tea at a reasonable hour. Personally, I'm usually in favour, as the chance to eat freshly caught raw scallops overrides any desire to see more twisted metal (though I do love a bit of twisted metal). Eating one that you've caught yourself, fresh from the sea, prised open with a dive knife, is a revelation. The main white meat is sweet and vibrant, the coral, creamy and delicately textured, like foie gras. Unfortunately, circumstances transpired against us with time and tide hampering the trip, as well as a misbehaving Tom-tom. We managed a dive under the pier in Swanage where this rather cheery Tompot Blenny posed for me. Luckily for him, he's not edible and we had to settle for mussels with chips and a few beers by the beach. Well worth the trip.

Goodman Restaurant, 26 Maddox Street

2009-08-24T20:48:00.010+01:00

So, it’s sort of inevitable that I’ll make some sort of comparison with Hawksmoor when talking about Goodman. As far as I am concerned Hawksmoor has been the best steak house in London for such a long time that any pretender to that crown is always going to have to go into a head to head, pound for pound steak based slug-fest with the champ. Now, to put this into perspective, I love Hawksmoor, I’ve celebrated a couple of birthdays there and had my stag do there and even been treated to dinner by Dos Hermanos, so it’s pretty entrenched in my affections.

So, when Goodman opened as a pretender, I was intrigued but felt like I was cheating on a long serving and much loved girlfriend with a flashier, ritzier, younger model. You know, I needn’t have worried. Goodman reminded me of Morton’s, the chain of steak houses in the US with the hilarious table service. The waiter approaches the table with the meat board, which is fine, but then proceeds to show what’s going to be in your salad, vegetable by vegetable, “Tonight, we have onion”, he then shows table an onion with a gesture akin to a magician revealing a chosen card. OK, they didn’t do that at Goodman, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had.

The place has Peter Luger aspirations, and that’s all good as far as I am concerned. Having their own aging room and imported USDA grain fed beef as well as UK and Australian grass fed beef is a good thing too. The staff are lovely, cheery sorts, so no complaints there and my baked New York cheesecake was delicious, as good as any I’d had in the US.

Three black marks against Goodman. When being told about the specials the waiter didn’t specify any prices and there wasn’t a specials board in eyeshot, so I assumed that the price of the steak I ordered would be something akin to the highest price quoted on the menu. It was an amazing piece of meat I was buying and I knew it wouldn’t come cheap. When the bill came and the steak was £50, I was annoyed. I probably would have still ordered it, but at least I would have been warned and accepted the consequences of my actions. It was a serious Porterhouse, beautifully cooked.

Second black mark, no macaroni cheese on the menu. A small thing I know, but, in the pound for pound battle of the steak houses important.

Three. The bar at Hawksmoor pounds the one at Goodman, like Ali demolishing Liston.

So, no, sorry, I don’t think it’s as good as Hawksmoor. It’s a slicker, more polished product and I really wanted to love it, but you know, in this case, I’ll be sticking with the old girl for a bit longer.

Postscript: It appears I wasn't the only one to hit up Goodman for meaty treats this weekend: Other write ups here at LondonEater and Bellaphon.

Ginger and White, Perrin's Court, Hamstead

2009-08-23T16:40:00.002+01:00

The lovely thing about Ginger and White is the sense that you've stumbled on to a hidden gem. Tucked away from the traffic on Hampstead High Street, Perrin's Court is a quiet pedestrianised parade of shops, galleries and cafes. Sitting at the top of the street are the chocolate brown awnings of G&W, self styled British Coffee Shop and brain child of Tonia George, food writer and stylist turned proprietor, and her Kiwi business partners, Emma and Nick Scott.

The label of British Coffee shop might remind older readers of Lyon's Tea rooms and coffee shops, however, whilst that might be in G&W's DNA, it's evolved the notion out of all recognition. The coffee is cutting edge, sourced from boutique roasters Square Mile and the food simple, showcasing great British ingredients with a home cooked, ever-so slightly-rough-edged feel. Weekends bring slow roasted pork sarnies and the salt beef is top notch. The cakes are some of the best I've had in a coffee shop.

You can tell I fell in love with the place, huh? Can't recommend it enough, just the sort of honest, considered and relaxed place I do love hanging out in and now that the weeks have ironed out the opening day kinks, this little oasis is destined to be a favourite.

Ultimate Barista Fighter!

2009-08-21T15:51:00.001+01:00

Nick, one of the co-owners at Hamstead's brand spanking new coffee shop, Ginger and White (which I'll be posting about later) shared this video of Square Mile Coffee Roasters after hours barista fight club. That's El Grifo in the mask....You can find the results from the night here at Ultimate Barista Fighter's website.

Borough lunchtime

2009-08-19T17:47:00.009+01:00

I've been working about ten minutes from Borough Market for six months now and despite the fact I've gained a pound for every month, I've become something of an old hand at nimbly navigating the lunchtime crowds. Despite the advertised opening times, you can actually eat in the Market everyday if you are so inclined. Noobs at lunchtime eating at Borough are often blinded by the MIAB offerings (Meat In A Bap) so here's a list of the finest weekday fare:

Monday: Tricky day Monday. There are a few MIAB offerings, the new sausage guys with the grill next to the now derelict Wheatsheaf pub on Stoney Street are open as is the chicken burger place on the east side of the market near the barber shop. Gastronomica, bang smack in the middle of the main market is worth a look. The parma ham and goats cheese piadini are stunning, as are the excellent panini or the kick ass lasagna which moves quick and isn't always available. Otherwise, the Roast takeaway is an option, though it can be cripplingly expensive and a bit unenthusiastic. Hobbs, the roast meat place on Bedale Street is open, but I'm not a fan. Top it off with a flat white at Monmouth and maybe share one of the massive brownies from the Flour Power City Bakery, who run a skeleton crew.

Tuesday: Things pick up a bit on a Tuesday. Furness Fish start up their massive pans of Thai and Caribbean curry, though oddly they don't give you any bread on a Tuesday. Go figure. There are plenty of MIAB options, with MIAB royalty Brindisa firing up the grill for their long serving chorizo and rocket sandwiches.

Wednesday: Things start gearing up for the full market days and I always stroll though hoping a few more people will open up. I'm always hopeful that I'll be able to grab a few empanadas from Portena or some fresh gnocchi from La Tua Pasta and I'm always slightly shocked that they aren't open. A colleague insists on fish and chips from fish! but it's all a bit much for a weekday lunchtime. I'd had high hopes for the rather unfortunately named Best Italian on Park Street, but it seems to be some sort of wooden spoon emporium. Weird. Usually it's a cheeky pint in the Rake and then MIAB.

Thursday: The first full market day of the week and probably the best day of the week to go down there. Everyone is open but the crowds don't really appear. If you've got time to kill then there's a veggie spot that's very popular over by the barber shop but the queue is a killer and they take their own sweet time making everything. La Tua Pasta and Portena are finally open in the southern section of the market, as is another MIAB favourite, the Boston Sausage Company. El Gustubis have started knocking out enormous salt beef sandwiches, however, the queue is something to behold.

Friday: Get down there early if you want to stand any chance of surviving the lunch time crush. The overspill is open under the arches and it's the first stall on the left that should be your first stop. The Damascean Falafel Company. The queue builds up quick but get there around 12.30 and you can tuck into a outstanding number 3 with relative ease. The one with pickles, as pictured. King of the MIAB on a Friday is the German bratwurst place one stall on from the falafel stand. Get ready to wait and be berated by the guy selling mushroom pate next door for blocking his stall in. Worth the wait though and you need the sauerkraut. The raclette dude is outside Brindisa if your heart needs stopping or suck down a couple of Colchester Natives at Richard Haward's Oyster stall.

Saturday: Do not go. It's hellish. If you do, approach from the London Bridge side, go down those stairs past that cafe with the dodgy paella outside and the stall on the corner, before you are sucked into maelstrom under the railway, is a Jamaican pattie stand. Grab a few and scurry off back the way you came.

Slow Ludlow

2009-08-17T21:57:00.004+01:00

Ludlow Castle is famous for two things to my mind. Firstly, that Henry VIII's older brother Arthur and his bride, a certain Catherine of Aragon, spent their honeymoon there. Arthur would scurry along the icy battlements to her chambers for mead and tiddlywinks. Unfortunately, it seems the cold proved too much for Arthur and he caught the medieval version of swine flu and checked out. The second thing it is famous for, by rights, is the orange curd they sell in the tea shop there. It's the crack of curds. Unbelievable. Oh yeah, there's the small matter of the Ludlow Food and Drink Festival which is held in the grounds of the castle, you might have heard of that, but that wasn't on.

So given the chance to spend a few nights in the grounds of the castle itself, in what's called the Catherine of Aragon apartment no less (thought I don't think it had a DVD player when she was there) we jumped at the chance. That and the fact it was within striking distance of a few Michelin stars and some country walks added to the appeal.

Given Ludlow's status as England's only Citta Slow and it being something of a draw for food loving sorts, expectations were probably a bit high. Had its star waned, I thought, picking through the very ordinary local farmers market in the main square. This wasn't quite the fabled market town I'd imagined. Yes, there were a fair few butcher's shop, a pretty good deli and some very good pubs but it seems the recession had bitten hard and there was a slight air of melancholy. Still, a few rather good lamb kebabs, wrapped in greasy brown paper, bought from a stall holder were the centre piece of a picnic eaten in the earthwork fortifications of an Iron Age fort some hours later, so I shouldn't have been too harsh.

My faith was restored by two things. Firstly, the Ludlow Food Centre. It's a purpose build farm shop a little way out of town stocking as much local produce as they can, with the farm estate butchers at the heart of the operation. A bakery using locally sourced organic flours makes some cracking sourdough and the jams, oh man, the jams. Every cheese sandwich I make is haunted by the lack of the onion jam I bought from there.

The other was the Michelin starred Mr Underhills. In the cold light of day, it's not the sort of thing I'd normally wax lyrical about. From the outside the cooking looks a bit frilly, a bit chichi, there's a custard and a foam and even a veloute or two, but, you know what? You just have to relax. Don't get ansy about it. It's in a beautiful setting, the staff are attentive, relaxed and the food, well, the food is great. The fillet of venison from the Mortimer forest, where we'd been walking earlier in the day was a local treat and the pre dessert of iced rhubarb sponge stopped me in my tracks; delicate, explosive flavours with a sense of humour. Also, I've never seen that many petit fours on one table. I liked it. A lot.

Anyway, that orange curd. Magic. Pure sugary magic.

A little favour...

2009-08-16T21:27:00.002+01:00

It appears my blog roll is hopelessly out of date. Any suggestions of things I should be reading would be gratefully received.

Recipes

2009-08-16T17:55:00.008+01:00

The recipe was from Nigel Slater's Real Food, a battered copy of which has been on my shelf for as long as I can remember (it came out in 2000, so I obviously have dementia). Mushroom and Spinach Lasagne. It's a good recipe. An old friend, if you will. A dish that made sense even when you read it on the page. Solid.

I'm no particular fan of Nigel, the cookbooks pretty good. Out of interest I've just spent an amusing five minutes reading the amazon.co.uk reviews of it, which range from gushing to accusations of impropriety and one poor chap getting quite annoyed about the quality of the binding. The only reason I mention it is that some books just seem to stay with you, they aren't that exciting, they are just part of your kitchen landscape splattered with ingredients from the recipes they contain. A map of failed attempts and successes smeared across the pages like very haphazard medieval illuminations.

One of those what I had for lunch posts...

2009-08-12T19:12:00.008+01:00

Sweden in the winter, before the snow... is what it feels like here in London. It hasn't helped that I've been reading Nordic horror all afternoon, slumped in a favourite reading chair, armed with a cup of tea. Assisting the mood is the rain that has been falling in gray and silver sheets for most of that time. Actually, tell a lie, there was a moment of blue sky when I popped into the garden and saw my first red tomato of the year. A little "ripe tomato" dance ensued.

So, my mood lifted by the cheery red new arrival, I set off into the kitchen for lunch. I was going to repeat the sunny little number I conjured at the weekend, a happy little salad, doing what every good salad should; sparkle and crunch whilst hinting at bitterness deep down. Slivers of grapefruit, pine nuts and a little cumin, tahini and lemon to jack the whole thing up, give it a sense of place, a little history, perhaps conjure some shisha smoke.

Oddly, I was distracted by buckwheat soba noodles with smoked mackerel and spinach, which took me somewhere else entirely. A long way from a rainy, green gray London anyway.

Lessons from our sci-fi past...

2009-08-10T12:36:00.006+01:00

You may have seen that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs released a discussion document today, excitingly called Food 2030. Like Space 1999 but more futuristic and more easily digested. It's basically a call for comments on what Britain's food infrastructure will look like in 2030 given climate change, food security and self-sufficiency and the inexorable rise of the global population.

Personally, I don't know what the answers are. I'm guessing something to do with allotments, sell by dates and some semblance of a return to seasonality. You know, not expecting to able to eat asparagus in November. Frankly, I'm not going to enter into the debate because it strikes me that enough nutters are clamouring for a thirty meter fence round the entire country, a return to rationing and hanging Jamie Oliver from a lamppost for making us eat foreign muck, for me to sensibly comment. It's somehow all a bit futile, I thought. Then, no actually, there is something I can bring to this debate, I thought. An in depth knowledge of 70's and 80's sci-fi. What better way to look into future than by looking at the way we used to look at the future, in the past!

So, here are my five solutions to averting the coming food crisis as inspired by Charton Heston et al.

1) Bit of giveaway there. So, yes, first up is the inevitable 1973 classic Soylent Green. Instead of worrying about growing food for people, simply feed people from assisted suicide clinics to other people in the form of nutritious wafers. Simple.

2) Instead of an exponentially growing population, we could take a leaf out of Logan's Run and just not let anyone live beyond the age of 30. They'd be plenty of food for everyone, but Saga magazine might take a hit in its readership.

3) When ever you order something from a restaurant you should only get half of what you asked for. Like Deckard in Blade Runner when he tries to order his dinner before being rudely interrupted and getting arrested. We all stay thin and only use half as much food.

4) Split the population in two. Have one half become brutalised and warlike, have the other half become immortal and bored. Have one half grow food for the other by scaring them with giant floating heads. Who says, films like Zardoz have nothing to offer in terms of practical solutions.

5) Get an Imperial Battlecuiser and halt the flow of time. Don't know how this will help, but Christopher Plummer and David Hasselhoff seemed to think it would in 1978 Italian sci-fi, so-bad-it's-good classic Starcrash.

A cup of tea at East Croydon Station

2009-08-08T00:20:00.002+01:00

The train is 6 minutes late and I'm sat at East Croydon Station armed solely with my Ipod and a cup of tea with all the charm of wet cardboard soaked in dishwater. Given that there are six or seven competing coffee stands on the station platforms, you'd have thought someone could get this right, if only by a slow evolutionary crawl towards something more like tea. This is akin to the fabled "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea" that Arthur Dent had to contend with. But, there's power in a cup of tea, even one entirely unlike tea. It's a power drawn from the endless repetition of tea making. From my frankly heathen brewing habits to those of a friend of a friend who tastes tea for a living (the company pays her dental hygienist bills) and whose tea making skills are so rarefied no one can actually make her a cup. The endless cycle of tea making has forged my cup of tea into a weapon with mystical qualities. Cup Of Tea of Warding Evil ,+4 Endurance.

What's it protecting me from? Well, East Croydon to be frank; sunburnt tourists shivering in ill thought through last-day-of-the-holiday clothing choices disgorged from Gatwick, gangs of kids in sportswear, gangs of kids in emo wear, gangs of blokes in bad shirts, plain old fashioned nutters and, oddly, Mormons. One on an earlier train derisively asked a perfectly innocent elderly Hindu lady if she found it difficult to keep track of all those gods. I have no idea why there are so many Mormons in East Croydon, they just seem to be something of a permanent fixture.

Two girls sit next to me on the bench, both sporting slightly fading '80's revival neon clutching a can of Stella each. One talks about her boyfriend with such a forceful passion that I'm convinced Mark Antony (the Roman general not the Rn B singer) is going to clatter onto the station in full armour and whisk her away. He doesn't. Pity.

That's not to say sitting here, as I have done a fair bit, doesn't have its fair share of little epiphanies. Very late one bitterly cold night I sat bewildered as a shiny Horwart's Express style steam engine flew through the station. The only other person on the platform was asleep so I can't verify that it wasn't an acid flashback. During a period where I had to use the station a great deal there was a moment each day that I looked forward to. A gentleman in full business suit, bowler, briefcase and umbrella would get off a train neatly holding a Selfridges' Food Hall bag and glide through the throng like the ghost of some pre-war commuter.

Back to my desperate cup of tea. It's cooling now and my train is even later. Guess, I'll need a refill, I want it piping hot when somebody tries to mug me.

My Red Cookbook

2009-08-07T00:21:00.008+01:00

There are too many cookbooks and they all look suspiciously similar. There's some bloke gurning on the front and looking like he'll explode from how nice his life is and if you'd only heave your corpulence from the sofa for five minutes and cooked something from his book you might get a tiny tiny glimmer of his fantastic life in your own miserable stuttering, laughable excuse of an existence.

Whoh, there MG. You're losing them.

Here's an idea. Buy a blank book, one of those nice Moleskine ones Bruce Chatwin used and go to a mates house and cook something with them. Have a chat, reminisce, see what's going on their lives, take a few photos, or draw a picture, write down the recipe. In a few years, you'll have something special. Something rich and beautiful, heavy with the smell of time spent with friends old and new, good food and bad, laughter and probably a bit of smudged mascara. I'm going to do it. I bought mine today. It's red. I'll let you know how it goes.

M&S I hate you.

2009-08-06T22:03:00.004+01:00

There‘s part of an old stand up routine by Alexei Sayle that goes like this. Alexei tells us that he would invite friends round for dinner, spend several days preparing the meal and then claim that he had bought everything from Marks and Spencers, at which point everyone round the table would exclaim, “Oooh, what would we do without Marks & Spencers...” in a high pitched middle class squeak. A typical slightly surreal moment from my doppelganger Mr Sayle, but, given the ubiquity of M&S Food Halls on motorways, high streets on the southern section of the Northern Line and refurbished railway stations he’s still got a point. I trust Alexei, he once wrote a song about the Revolutionary Biscuits of Italy.

My point, then. Dear old Marks and Sparks. I hate you. Hate is a strong word but dislike doesn’t cut it in this instance. Simple pure malice against a supermarket isn’t generally a good idea, there’s just too much to hate. Also, what are you going to do when you need loo paper and milk at 11.30pm and the Tescos Express round the corner has sucked the life from every convenience store in a half mile radius? The stark realisation of my absolute hatred of that middle class bastion of carrot batons and pre-prepared ham sandwiches only happened about an hour ago. I was eating the pictured pesto chicken and bacon salad thingy and it slowly dawned on me. EVERYTHING TASTES THE SAME. It had never really occurred to me. Everything I’ve bought in the damnable place tastes exactly the same. The desserts included. Everything tastes smug. And self satisfied. And mostly of mayonnaise. Even something that's meant to be spicy is primly hot, nothing too offensive, it's not bland, it's limp and well meaning. Like the Church of England.

So Mark's and Spencers, I hate you. I hate you for all the meals I've eaten on trains and in cars where I've thought, "Ah, I'll get something nice from M&S" and have been fooled into thinking that eight pieces of pineapple and a ham and cheese sarnie should cost eight quid only to find no discernible difference between the two in terms of the way the food makes me feel. Fuck you, M&S and your flat food.

Swimming with Tuna

2009-08-05T20:47:00.010+01:00

I've always thought of myself as the total omnivore. The very notion that there was something that I wouldn't eat was dismissed with a casual wave of a roast swan's leg. The very idea that I would stop eating something because I believed it was wrong to eat them, well, I'd have spat out my badger's noses. I think if you go back and read a lot of this blog, it's obvious that's where I was coming from. No, before you drop your bacon sarnies, I'm not about to admit that I've become a vegan, nor even a vegetarian. You see, I've been around cows, seen them mooch about chewing the cud in that mellow sort of way cows do and I have to say that I have no problem eating one. As long as they've spent their time gently plodding around in a contented sort of way, I'd say that being on my plate is a fitting end. See, now the thing is I've seen tuna hunt and there's no way I'm ever eating one again.

It's rare that you get to see fish doing fish stuff. For an hour here or there with scuba gear you might catch a glimpse of what the average fish gets up of an afternoon, but, on the whole, you just don't get to see them living out their lives, so they appear distant, alien and cold. Dead, to be frank, is what they mostly do. You just don't really get an emotional attachment. Even fish in captivity seem robotic. Exciting fish, like sharks, rays and moray eels populate wild dreams of Captain Nemo and Jacques Cousteau, but on the whole, for most people it's hard to get emotional about something that comes in small round tins.

As a kid, I remember quite clearly, being struck by the fact that a tuna fish was large. I'd imagined them small, like whitebait. What I didn't really know then and what I've seen is that they are big. Big, ferocious and fast as quicksilver. A tuna fish in full flight in as awe inspiring as a lioness bringing down prey. It's like a streak of lightning spinning through bait fish. I watched a small school of twelve of fifteen fish spiraling through the water and catching fish, avoiding the lumbering bulk of a cruising reef shark like racing cars navigating a chicane. Like so many silver torpedoes they flew past me in the water, again and again, going from near standstill to ferocious attack with a virtually imperceptible flick of the tail. This was magical, exciting, not something to be mixed with mayo and stuck in between wholemeal bread.

So, I have no idea if this ban will last. Probably not, but I hope so.

The Ivy: an experiment in recession psychology

2009-03-19T18:45:00.005Z

In these dark financial times there's a whiff of revolution in the air. Not a beard wearing, cigar smoking, army surplus whiff of revolution. A more considered, more hand wringing sort of feeling. A new conservatism? A new puritanism? Nothing that severe. More a sense of propriety. Yes, that's it, a sense of things being a touch more, proper. People thinking about having not such a flashy car, people considering how they consume, trying to offload some of that vulgar bling baggage we've been carting about for the last few years. Feeling good about recycling, about composting, about cycling to work, about getting rid of piles of crap on ebay.

By way of testing this theory we went to the Ivy for brunch on Sunday. That home of vulgar celebrity with paparrazo haunted entrance and Micheal Winner's baritone forever reverberating around the place like some dark ancient Lovecraftian Old One.

Nope, no sense of it here. No sense of a new anything. The menu which has been described to me as comforting British cuisine with French brasserie classics is actually boring, unimaginative and the cooking barely competent. I mean it's not bad, it's credible, at least, just really, really dull. Canteen does this way better, with a much nicer vibe and at a quarter of the price, with a St John inspired austerity.

The staff at the Ivy are pretty much what you'd expect. Nice. Slightly disinterested. Again, bit dull. The clientele? Slightly desperate, neck craning buffoons? Russian oligarchs and their obese children stuffing lobster and french fries into disinterested maws, eyes searching for the vaguest glint of celebrity to justify, well, justify everything? Maybe. Normal people eating overpriced mediocre food? Probably.

We were very excited to see Jonathan Rhys Myers, the "sexy" Henry VIII from the TV show The Tudors looking very dapper in a creme coloured suit. That seemed to make the whole place relax a bit when he turned up and the apple crumble and custard dessert was something I enjoyed a lot more, so thanks Hugo Boss advert man. You saved my brunch/lunch fusion if not my faith in a new world order.

A 3 star allergy

2009-02-23T15:28:00.000Z

Earlier this year I threw up for about 4 hours after leaving Nobu Toyko. This time last year I found myself throwing up into Thomas Keller's herb garden outside The French Laundry. On my 30th birthday a few years back I was so sick after a meal at Gordon Ramsey in Claridges that ended up being taken to casualty. Several years before that, Nobu London was the start of a rather prodigious all night vomiting session. I'm allergic to Michelin stars in would appear. The more an establishment has, the more likely I am going to end up throwing up a couple of hundreds quid worth of haute cuisine. L'Atlier de Joel Rubuchon didn't illicit a response, more for the fact you get so little food when you eat there, any allergic reaction is bound to be small.

I figure there's three possible causes to this Anaphalasis Michelinus. One, that despite my dire prognostications to the wait staff about what will happen if I so much as sniff a crustacean, the chefs are out to test if my allergy is real and load me up with as much secretly deposited crab meat as they can. After that Jeffery Stiengarten piece about food allergies everyone looks at me like I'm just a big girl and what harm could a prawn possibly do? Well, vomiting blood is what harm a prawn can do. To be honest, this all seems very unlikely, fine restaurants are probably not in the habit of trying to kill patrons (I've been to a few not so fine restaurants where this is more than likely the case), so I figure I should move on to my next theory.

The next possible cause is that my wife is trying to kill me. She's the only common denominator in all these dining experiences and I suppose I have to entertain the notion that she takes these opportunities to try and off me. At various times, I would say this is the most likely explanation, though I'm sure she's imaginative enough to come up with something a little more interesting if she where aiming to shove me off this mortal coil. No, at the end of the day, I have to say that she'd probably come up with a far tidier and economical way of wacking me that watching me eat foie gras. That, you see, probably hits the nail on the head. I think it's over excitement. I end up eating too much, too quickly and my body just decides that 12 courses is too much and goes into purge mode.

Nintendo Food Thingy

2008-06-24T23:08:00.002+01:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2157587/Nintendo's-talking-cookery-guide-could-threaten-traditional-recipe-books.html

Any link between my loves of food and games consoles is one worth re-iterating here. No, Nintendo do not pay me anything to promote thier food related games (er, though if you're looking for anyone Mr Miyamoto...) I just love a bit of convergence. So here you have it Nintendo's talking Cooking Guide: Can't decide what to eat? Basically, a talking cookbook. You shout at it to tell you the next bit of the recipe. Brilliant. The recipe's do a look a bit shit at the moment, but I'm holding out for the Mario and Yoshi do Ferran Adria sequel. On Karts.

Taste of London

2008-06-24T22:42:00.004+01:00

I’m feeling slightly aggrieved at this weekend’s Taste of London. Whilst I think the idea is a good one; many of the city’s best restaurants pitching up in Regents Parks and serving up 3 dishes which us poor huddled masses can then buy for a few quid, it does feel like a victim of its own success. For one thing it was really, really, really expensive, I mean eye wateringly wallet shatteringly expensive. OK, I might be overstating the expense but I did feel seriously ripped off by the end of the day. 25 quid to get in and then you had to buy paper tokens, “charmingly" named crowns to exchange for food at 50p a shot. The average dish was about 8 crowns. OK, only 4 quid, but given I paid to get in, the entire event was sponsored by British Airways and the place was littered with exhibitors touting muesli and fruit juice (who’d I’d assumed paid to be there) I did get the distinct sense I was getting mugged.

There’s a middle class Glastonbury feel to the proceedings, an actually very pleasant mix of ages; a sort of country fair crossed with a music festival sort of vibe, which once you get over the shock of the place being absolutely rammed was actually pretty chilled out. Having said that I did almost get into a fight queuing up at L’Atelier de Joel Rubuchon.

Despite the fact that they were serving hamburgers (admittedly beef and foie gras burgers with caramelised bell peppers) they hadn’t quite grasped the logistics of fast food production. They had some very smart waiters basically having to throw burgers at rabid self confessed foodies and then had to halt production every hour or so to smooth their perfectly coiffed hair and fry up some more. So, whilst waiting patiently in line for my burgers, I ended up in an altercation with a very nice Frenchman. To give him his due I was the one who told him to fuck off first. Luckily, we ended up the best of mates, extolling the virtues of the various Rubuchon outposts we had both tried and sharing a slightly gangster handshake as he pottered off with his langoustine fritters with basil pistou (typically obtuse Frenchman!).

So, despite all this we did eat some pretty special food. I’m told the burgers were good (irony was I don’t eat foie gras anymore , nothing ethical, it just makes me ill) and the massive Chocolate Sensation (Creamy Araguani chocolate, bitter chocolate sorbet and Oreo cookie cruimbs) that the L’Atelier were knocking out were probably the best thing I ate all day. The guys at Nahm, David Thompson’s Thai place were making some pretty special treats, Pomelo dressed with caramel and roasted coconut served on betel leaves and probably the best green curry I’ve eaten. The Gavroche and Artubus were too rammed to consider going anywhere near despite the promise of a smoked chicken and foie gras terrine with lentils and truffle vinaigrette and braised pigs head respectively, fearing another fight I opted for the rather simple zucchini fritti at Theo Randall and the naverin of summer lamb and cous cous at Skylon both which had survived the vicissitudes of mass production to be pretty damn good.

Other bit and pieces worthy of note were the pork belly at the Le Café Anglais , though the lentils were a bit worse for wear by the time I got them. One disappointment were the Cripsy puffed poories and the Spring roll stuffed with masala omelette at Café Spice Namaste, which like a friend of mine said you’d think were really good if they came from your local Indian but not at a restaurant you’d gone out of your way to eat in. Before I knew it I’d blown my stash of crowns and we left, not before jeering at Jamie Cullum who was playing in one of British Airways executive tents and regretting having missed out on some of the good stuff at Rhodes Twenty Four, Launceston Place and Canteen.

All in all it was quite fun, my gripes aside, though I have to say if we hadn’t been to the Royal China Club before hand for some of the best dim sum you’ll get in this city – steamed pork buns to cry into, I’d have been heading to Burger King on Baker Street straight afterwards.

Save our Bacon

2008-02-22T15:05:00.000Z

A subject dear to my heart. Pigs. Given the bad press they’ve been lumbered with by several of the world's major religions and virtually every European language I can think of, it’s heartening to know that at least one British supermarket is doing a little to give them a PR boost. Actually, not so much the pigs themselves, I don’t suppose they care very much about not getting into the papers, but a more endangered breed altogether, the British Pig Farmer. They are having a tough old time and I was invited to Roast in Borough Market for the launch of Save Our Bacon by the folk at Waitrose Food Illustrated to hear all about it. A press launch! The very idea that Jamfaced would be there seemed bizarre, but I guess I’ve been put on the mailing list by mistake. There was going to be free sausage, so who was I to refuse the invitation?

This is where I do my best Micheal Winner impersonation, just try to imagine the rest of the post as spoken by a man with a great deal of mash potato in his mouth.

I was actually invited by Tonia George, food editor at the magazine, who’ve I known for a very long time and knows of my penchant for bacon. This is name dropping of the most horrific nature and I apologize, I’ll use some swear words in a bit so keep reading. Guessing that she needed someone to act as a pork based waste disposal unit, I tripped along and the first thing I was greeted by was a hog on a spit. An auspicious start, for me anyway. The poor bugger tending the animal had been at it since two in the morning all so I and a horde of journalists could have crackling at 9 in the morning. Good man.

So, here’s the deal. Some 95% of British Pig Farmers are thinking of quitting the business. Despite the fact we are more conscious than ever before about where our food comes from and how it’s produced, according to the British Pig Executive; the average pork farmer loses 26 quid per animal. The supermarkets are screwing them all for cheaper meat, feed prices have soared due to the demand for grain and all in all, if we aren’t careful the British Pig Farmer will be no more and we’ll have to eat other pigs, that don’t speak English and don’t willingly go into proper sausages. It’s all pretty damning actually and I’d advise you all (even you yanks, do you even have pigs anymore? You’ve probably bred missile shaped pig bacon tubes or something, as I’ve never had good bacon nor sausages on either coast –yes, I expect howls of derision) to sign up.

I’m so proud. I copied some of that out of a press release. I didn’t know there was such a thing as the British Pig Executive. I love the fact there is, a fine porker in a pin stripe comes to mind. So, clutching my press pack I watched the proceedings, whilst stuffing my face with pork. This I believe is how the best journalism is conducted, so I felt quite the professional. I saw the Hairy Bikers giving endless interviews. I saw Krishnan Guru-Murthy eating sausages. Eric, who was giving a sausage making demonstration, had a stash of British Army Sausage seasoning, the recipe of which is covered by the Official Secrets Act. He’d seen it stuck to the wall in a kitchen in Aldershot and taken a sneaky photo. I took a photo of him and his seasoning. Feeling quite good about my scoop I headed off into Borough Market and bought some hot cross buns. Food journalism is a doddle!

Sign the Save Our Bacon petition at www.waitrose.com/saveourbacon

Save the oatcakes!

2008-02-18T14:13:00.003Z

Going north of Watford but all in a good cause. The Hole in Wall on Waterloo Street in Bucknall, Stoke-on-Trent has been serving up traditional oakcakes (pancakes made from oatmeal) for over a hundred years and is now threatened with demolition. Sign the petition going to 10 Downing Street and help save this fine old culinary institution....

Read all about the The Hole in the Wall here.

Sign the petition here.

Things you only cook once a year.

2008-02-06T00:01:00.000Z

Turkey. Toffee Apples. Anything to do with Pumpkins. My bi-annual attempts to make jam, mayonnaise and veal stock (actually that's probably once a decade). Lentils. Pancakes. Ok, I made up the bit about lentils. I never cook them, the vicious little buggers, but tonight was my yearly pitch battle to make pancakes. An ongoing struggle of good versus evil, an eternal battle to get the batter right, get them to cook evenly and yes, I'm ashamed to say flip the little fuckers. I just told the girlfriend on the phone that I was cooking them. There was a pause. "How's it going?" was the tentative reply. Forefront in her mind was the year I exploded into an apoplectic rage when my pancakes were all lumpy and tasted like cardboard. Years of therapy and a much better frying pan later, this year's effort was well, pretty effortless.

Of course, I doubt anyone actually remembers the recipe for pancakes; I got mine from the rather unwieldy "How to cook bloody everything" (or something along those lines) by a committee of home economists (You know the kind of thing, basically every recipe you could conceivably want described in the same dry tone I imagine a surgeons instruction manual might describe a vasectomy) and it worked a treat. I was a touch suspicious at first but it proceeded along uneventful lines until I had a stack of steaming golden brown discs sat upon a plate. Here's hoping next year is as easy. Happy Fat Tuesday everyone.