Bitchin' in the kitchen

Mashed potato pie

2008-03-01T09:15:00.011Z

Thursday night's dinner left (surprisingly!) some left over smoked cheese mashed potato. Friday I intended to make some leek, potato and cheese pasties for lunch, a small portion of the filling already being ready in the freezer. So I thought to myself, why not combine the smoked cheese mash in to the pasties, the frozen filling being a little on the mean side.

Combining the two made a soft squidgy cheesey mess that was really too soft to make pasties with - I feel pasties should have a reasonable bite to the chunks of potato inside. So instead, pastry already made, I decided to make small individual open tarts and boy, did these work!

The mashed potato provided a creamy base to the leeks and potato chunks, thereby elimating the need for any sort of cream or egg base to the tart and the cheese melted into the filling to prevent the filling becoming too dry.

This is too simple a dish to provide a full recipe for, but as a guide, try this:

Leek, potato and smoked cheese tarts

Pastry, enough to line four small tart tins
Potatoes, a few, cut into smallish cubes and boiled
Smoked cheese, enough, cut into small cubes
Leeks, a couple
Cheese, non-smoked, a good basic Cheddar

Line four small tart tins with the pastry, prick the bases and chill for 10 minutes or more.

Mash about 3/4 of the potato, add the smoked cheese cubes, season and stir together.

Chop and soften leeks in olive oil without colouring them. Stir these through the now cooled mash.

Spoon the mixture into the pastry bases and top with the remaining potato and the Cheddar cheese.

Bake until the pastry is cooked, the top is browned and you can smell the smoked cheese.

Soup 3 - aka the best soup ever (this week)

2007-11-22T09:45:00.000Z

I'm not sure if it was the flavour of the pumpkin or some other factor that made this soup the best ever soup ever (this week). It wasn't the usual gargantuan halloween pumpkin that makes as good eating as it does a handbag, but a small orange pumpkin, about the size of a childs head. The recipe had been hanging around for a few weeks and has been adapted from one by Shona Crawford Poole in Country Living Magazine, November 2007. Despite the whole head of garlic, this recipe isn't dominated by any one ingredient and has a great balance of flavours.

Roasted pumpkin and garlic soup

1kg pumpkin, cut into chunks
olive oil
head of garlic
curry paste, 1tsp good stuff - I used a new coriander & cumin paste I found at The Asian Spice shop
1l stock - I used that Swiss bouillion stuff
small tub (250g?) creme fraiche

Toss the pumpkin chunks in the olive oil and place in a roasting pan. Slice the top of the head of garlic, drizzle with some olive oil and wrap it loosely in foil and stuff it in amongst the pumpkin. Put it all in a pre-heated oven at 180C and roast for 30 minutes until its lightly caramelized.

Blend the pumpkin with the pulp of the garlic squeezed out. Add the curry paste, enough of the stock to get the consistency you like and the creme fraiche and blend well. Return to a pan and heat.

An artificial barm

2007-11-11T20:01:00.000Z

In breadmaking, there is a historic tradition that runs parallel to brewing of using a barm for fermenting dough. The baker took the foaming froth from the top of the brewing beer, rich in yeast and malt, and used this to start a bread dough on its path to becoming a loaf.

Nowadays, the act of brewing is far removed from every day life and getting hold of some barm is near impossible. Modern alternatives have been suggested, such as Dan Lepard's in "The Handmade Loaf" where a good ale is heated to around 70C before whisking in some flour. When cool, some leavening agent such as sourdough starter is added.

I was surprise to learn that preparation of an alternative barm has been around for a long time. On Google books (again) I found a mention of Artifical Barm in "Martin Doyle's Common things of every-day life" (1857) where chapter 5 is given over to all things bread.

Page 25 lists:

Recipe by Professor Donovan for making Artificial Barm

Boil some sound potatoes until they are perfectly soft and just beginning to break into meal; reduce them to a thin paste with boiling water, add of molasses an eighth of the weight of the potatoes, and about the same bulk as the molasses, of good yeast; all to be well mixed and placed before a fire, if in winter. The mixture soon begins to ferment: when the fermentation is at its height, this yeast is fit for use.

Whilst I might try this one day out of curiosity, I think I'll stick to Dan's version in general - if nothing else, there's usually some left over beer.

Soup 2

2007-10-17T12:48:00.000Z

Another soup in this occasional autumnal series of soup and today it is pumpkin and mascarpone soup from 'The River Cafe Easy Two' by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers. The ingredients just shout "AUTUMN!":

800g pumpkin, cut into 2cm chunks
3 medium potatoes, cut the same
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 tsp fennel seeds
250g plum tomatoes (I used a tin of plum tomatoes)
500ml stock
salt, pepper
150g Mascarpone
Olive oil to finish
50g Parmesan

Using a heavy bottomed saucepan, put the pumpkin, potato, tomato and garlic in and cover with the stock, seasoning with salt, pepper and the fennel seeds. Simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Mash with a potato masher and serve with spoonfuls of mascarpone, drizzles of olive oil and shavings of Parmesan.

Soup 1

2007-10-17T12:40:00.000Z

Inspired by lunch at the Griffin Inn and the onset of Autumn, the time seems right for soup. For tonight, as a starting point, we thought we'd revisit the French classic soup a'l'oignon. There are possibly as many recipes for this soup as there are onions in France, but we used one of several from the brilliant soup book, A celebration of soup by Lindsey Bareham. This is a pretty definitive book to turn to when you want a soup recipe. There have been others since but to me, this is the best soup book you can buy.

1 tbsp olive oil
40g butter
700g onions, thinly sliced
1 tsp salt
pepper
pinch of sugar
40g flour
150ml white wine
2l stock
3 tbsp brandy
slices of toasted bread
100-200g cheese (e.g. Gruyere, Emmental or Parmesan)

Heat oil and butter in a heavy pan with a lid. Add onions and cook very gently for 15-20 minutes. Remove lid, add salt and sugar and cook for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want the onions a deep golden caramelised colour but not burnt. Stir in the flour and cook for a few minutes before adding the white wine and stirring through. Add the stock and bring back to the boil before simmering for a further 30 to 45 minutes. When ready, place the slices of toast in the bottom of soup bowls and top with the cheese. Add the brandy to the soup and serve over the toast slice in the soup bowls.

A recipe for onion soup from 1802 is relatively terse in its instruction as recipes of this period tend to be, unlike the title of the book; The art of cookery made easy comprising, ample directions for preparing every article requisite for furnishing the tahles of nobleman, gentleman and tradesman (second edition) by John Mollard:

Onion Soup.
TAKE eight middling-sized peeled onions, cut them into very thin slices, pass them with a quarter of a pound of fresh butter and flour till tender; then add three quarts of veal stock; make it boil twenty minutes; skim it, season it with salt, and add a leason; mix it well with a whisk, make it simmer, and serve it up.

Griffin Inn, Fletching

2007-10-15T15:27:00.000Z

Faced with a sunny, autumnal October Monday, we decided to have a day off and go out for a spot of lunch followed by a stroll. Luckily Penjamin remembered a recommendation from friends for the Griffin Inn in Fletching, Sussex. I'd passed through Fletching previously and had eaten in another pub there but had not yet tried the Griffin, despite the high praise that is heaped upon it (Sussex dining pub of the year, The Telegraph, etc.)

As the weather was so clement, we got a table out in the garden, looking out over the supposed 10-miles of views. I tried the draft beer from Harvey's, which was as good as it should be, whilst Penjamin had the house Chardonnay, of which she ventured no opinion as she necked it.

For the food, I tried the "Bruschetta of wild mushrooms with some sort of cheese that I forgot", not an inconsiderable £8.50 for a single slice of mushrooms on toast. Penjamin had a soup of lentils with cabbage, somewhere around a fiver.

Whilst these are "gastropub" prices, the food was certainly a notch above the norm, probably on a par with the George and Dragon at Speldhurst. The bruschetta was a slice of good sourdough, grilled and toasted and piled with a heap of real wild mushrooms, rather than a handful of cultivated mushrooms bulked out with a few soaked dried mushrooms. The soup was a tomatoey broth with lentils and some strips of shredded cabbage. I feared the lentils might have leant it towards a thick stodge or the cabbage towards Eastern European peasant gruel, but it was an almost Italian light soup with the lentils and cabbage providing flavour rather than body. Still my bruschetta was better.

Lacking imagination of choice, for mains we chose the same, "Samosa of butternet squash with some sort of cheese that I forgot but different to the mushrooms on a bed of chard with some roast potato disks". This came as two large triangular pillows of filo pastry straining to contain volcanic pureed squash with some wonderful spicing. These sat atop the chard and the disappointingly overcooked and chewy potatoes. The samosas were fantastic and the chard faired well as a supporting pile of greenery. At £12-ish they had to earn there price which I think they did, leaving us both sated and the plates emptied.

It's not the sort of everyday pub (and these dishes were from the bar menu, not the a la carte which pushes the prices up another notch) unless you're a retired city gent with a penchant for large lunches and cricket, the ranks of which seemed to be filling the interior of the pub. Service was very good and the kitchens, visible as you passed from inside to the garden, were running full tilt with a large team of staff that goes someway to show that good food and service can be a fairly staff-heavy operation.

They also have an outdoor wood fired oven that sadly wasn't in operation on the day of our visit where they prepare roasts and, I hope, pizzas and breads.

Radio 4, The food programme

2007-10-14T21:23:00.000Z

This Sunday's Food Programme on Radio 4 was a corker. Penjamin and myself were listening and as the guests, Henry Dimbleby and Anissa Helou, talked about mezze we just sat drooling and getting hungrier and hungrier by the minute. Henry Dimbleby, of the Leon restaurant chain was visiting a mezze festival in Lebanon. It sounded to me like he was visiting a place I've heard of before, somewhere up in the mountains where over the years a collection of mezze restaurants has grown up, centred around the Bardouni river in the Bekaa or Beqaa valley as it is variously known.

The other guest was a cookery writer who I'd vaguely heard of but not followed up on her writing until know. Anissa Helou is a writer and broadcasting regular on Radio 4 (Woman's hour, Veg talk, Food programme) originally from Beiruit but now based in London. Some of the recipes from her books are on the Radio 4 Food Programme website.

We weren't alone in the rumbling of our stomachs threatening to drown out the radio as when we visited friends that evening, they didn't require much effort to force us to join them in a dish of tabbuleh, the creation of which had been inspired by the same programme.

Tunbridge Wells biscuits

2007-08-02T15:01:00.000Z

After I stumbled across this post about the Tunbridge Wells biscuits made by Romary's, I thought I'd do a bit more digging myself. Anne and her commentators, mention several references to them, namely:

Tunbridge Wells Cakes, in 'From an English Oven' by Dorothy Gladys Spicer (1948).
'Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy' by Andre Simon (1945), the recipe is ascribed to Doris Lytton Toye.
'Cook and Housewife’s Manual' by Margaret Dods (1826).

Well, I've found another reference that could be added to this list at Google books. It's the first time I've tried using Google books and I'm very impressed with being able to dig out a mid-19th Century baking book held at the Bodliean library from my desktop.

Anyway, in 'The complete biscuit and gingerbread baker's assistant' by George Read (1854) there is a raft of references to Tunbridge biscuits and cakes. As in Anna's references, there are mentions or comparisons to Shrewsbury biscuits.

Page 44 lists:

Tunbridge Water Cakes.—3 lbs. of flour, 1 1/2 lb. of loaf sugar, 1/4 lb. of butter, and 10 eggs.

1 1/4 lb. of flour, 1/2 lb. of sugar, 6 oz. of butter; mix with milk or water, and a little orange-flower water.

Rub the butter in with the flour, add the sugar, and make the whole into a paste; roll it out very thin, cut it out with a plain round or scolloped cutter, about the same size as for Shrewsburies; place them on clean tins or buttered paper, and bake them of a pale delicate colour, in a cool oven.

Wafer Biscuits are similar to the water biscuits, and are derived from them; they have been introduced since the first publication of this work¹.

Ginger Wafer Biscuits.—3 lbs. of flour, 1 1/2 lb. of very finely powdered loaf sugar, 1 1/2 oz. of ginger. Mix into a dough with water.

4 lbs. of flour, 4 oz. of iceing sugar, 1/2 pint of milk, 8 eggs, 3 oz. of ginger. Mix.

8 lbs. of flour, 2 1/2 pints of cream, 4 eggs, 2 lbs. of very fine loaf sugar, 4 oz. of ginger. Mix in the usual way; roll the dough very thin on an even board or marble slab; dock the surface over with a captains' biscuit docker; cut them into round cakes about the size of Shrewsburies; put them on very clean dry tins slightly dusted with flour, and bake them in a moderately cold oven. When baked, they may be put in piles whilst hot, and pressed to make them flat and even.

Lemon Wafers—as ginger, substituting essence of lemon for the ginger.

Seed Wafers—the same, using caraway seeds instead of ginger.

Ginger Wafer Biscuits.—2 lbs. of flour, 12 oz. of sugar, 3 oz of butter, 3 eggs, and sufficient milk to make a dough. If very fine powdered sugar cannot be conveniently obtained, it should be soaked in the milk. The dough should be worked quite clear, and be of a moderate consistence. The addition of a small quantity of carbonate of soda, as much as can be put on a sixpence, will prevent their blistering during baking, but the biscuits will then require to be cut thinner. They require a great deal of attention in assorting them during the baking, and to be "double-tinned."

The book goes on to mention more recipes on page 48. These include currants and might be more like some of the other references to Tunbridge biscuits being like tea-cakes.

Currant Tunbridge Biscuits.—8 lbs. of flour, 2 lbs. of butter, 3 lbs. of sugar, 1 1/2 lb. of currants. 1 1/2 lb. of ground almonds, 8 eggs, 1/2 pint of milk, 1/4 oz. of volatile salt. Mix.

Roll the dough into sheets nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness, dust with loaf sugar, pass the rolling-pin over the surface again, and cut it into biscuits with an oval cutter, the same size as for lemon biscuits. Place on buttered tins about half an inch asunder, and bake in a moderately quick heat. The following mixture may be used instead:

6 lbs. of flour, 2 lbs. of butter, 2 1/2 lbs. of sugar, 1 1/2 lb. of currants, 6 eggs, 1/4 oz. of volatile salt, and sufficient milk to mix the whole of a moderate consistence.

Lemon Tunbridge Biscuits.—As the last; or use 8 lbs. of flour, 1 1/2 lb. of butter, 1 1/2 lb. of sugar, 6 eggs, 1 pint of milk, 1/4 oz. of volatile salt.

Proceed as for the last; or they may be made into small round biscuits instead of oval ones.

Ginger Tunbridge.—As the last, using 2 1/2 lbs. of sugar, 4 oz. of gound ginger, and 10 eggs, with sufficient milk to make a dough.

Seed Tunbridge.—6 lbs. of flour, 2 1/4 lbs. of powdered sugar, 1 1/4 lb. of butter, 6 eggs, a dram of volatile salt, and sufficient milk to make the whole into a dough about the consistence of walnut dough, with a few caraway seeds.
Roll the dough into sheets about a quarter of an inch in thickness, dust the surface with finely powdered loaf sugar during the rolling; cut into cakes with an eighth cake cutter, and dock them with a diamond carved docker. Place on buttered tins about a quarter of an inch asunder, and bake in a moderately heated oven ; let them be of light brown on the surface and bottom when done.

Given the quantities involved, I think they liked their biscuits. No wonder Mackie chose to settle in Tunbridge Wells.

1. The first edition was printed eleven years earlier in 1843.

You can never go back...

2007-02-12T15:33:00.000Z

Recently trudging the streets of Paris again, looking for a bistro where a vegetarian might get something to pass as food for anight, we found oursleves back near a restaurant we went to the same time last year, Sabraj.

I should have realised my mistake, when we found the place. Remembering a restaurant for its decor and not its food and service should have told me something. Maybe times change or maybe I was a fool for not realising that copper and tin plate do not a restaurant make. That requires food cooked well, attentive service and atmosphere.

You could say they had some sort of atmosphere, four or five men stood mysteriously at the back while one waiter tried to do everything himself. The owner helped a little but seemed more keen to talk to the shady guys. While taking our order after a half hour wait, he yawned and looked elsewhere.

Food eventually arrived and I remembered why I hadn't remembered it before. Unfortunately the only sight of the wine we ordered was on the bill, but nobody seemed to be interested in taking any money or discussing it, so we left less money than the bill and walked out, never to return.

Roast potatoes

2006-12-28T10:55:00.000Z

I've recently (over the last several months) been reading Harold McGee's McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture, one of the benchmark books for "molecular gastronomy" and fortunately I'd reached the section on potatoes a few days before Christmas. Armed with some new science I attempted Christmas day's roast potatoes a new way.

McGee mentions that cooking the potatoes in water at less than 100 degrees C, around 70C, allows the potato to retain its shape whilst cooking to a more even texture. It takes longer, but you don't risk potatoes that are falling apart on the outside when the middle is cooked. So instead of the normal par boiling of the roasties, I held them at 70C for around 20 minutes and then transferred them to the oven.

The result? At first taste, they almost tasted like canteen, mass cooked roast potatoes, but after a few seconds they seemed to taste vastly better. A consistent creaminess to the texture, lacking in the slight graininess that potatoes can sometimes have. Perhaps the main disappointment was that the outer crispy roast layer wasn't quite right. This is probably due to the very thing this method avoids, i.e. the breaking up of the outside of the potato, which gives a fluffy surface for the roasting.

So an interesting experiment that has some use. It might need some adaptation to improve the outer crispiness, but it's definitely worth following up. Only trouble is, now I want a temperature controlled water bath to experiment with...

A Toby carvery?

2006-12-21T11:29:00.000Z

Don't.

152

2006-12-03T22:01:00.000Z

Suffolk, Aldeburgh, where else for lunch but 152? - again.

Puff pastry basket stuffed with wild mushrooms and cream followed by Butternut squash and haloumi risotto with parsnip crisps. Couple of glasses of a Spanish white, finished with cheeses including my favourite, quince cheese. Can't go wrong really.

A jolly nice lunch it was too...

2006-11-29T12:18:00.000Z

Sunday we went to lunch with Penjamin's uncle David and his partner, Dan, and a jolly nice time we had there. Dan is a world famed cookery writer specialising in baking, so expectations were high and exceeded.

The conversation ran over a whole era of family history (or gossip as David put it), but more importantly our imaginary readers will want to know what we ate.

We had a Turkish lentil soup to start that David made , followed by a huge array of mezze, including (and forgive me if I miss anything) falafel, cauliflower fritters, fantastic flat breads, roasted peppers, aubergine (baba ganoush?), rice and chickpeas and some fantastic dips. One of the dips was a garlic and mashed potato combination that was like some garlic magic mayonnaise, which I am going to have to get the recipe for.

For dessert we took a Tunisian almond and orange cake, the recipe for which I have put on Dan's website, which we had with David's rum and raisin ice cream.

There was so much food we were given a takeaway which we failed to finish on Sunday night, with the soup being polished off for lunch on Tuesday.

A great time and we hope to return the compliment soon in the new year.

A new farmers' market

2006-10-29T11:37:00.000Z

Despite the local councils lack of coverage (no mention of it here) , Tunbridge Wells now has a new farmers' market. The current one mentioned on the council web site is on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month, outside the Town Hall and library, whilst the new one is the first and third Saturdays (I think - information is scarce) in the Pantiles.
They had a few teething problems; initially they were working with borrowed tables and couldn't always get them on the days they wanted, so the dates slipped and slithered to start with but they seem to have stabilised now. Also the first few weeks were a bit thin as suppliers weren't able to switch as quickly as they might have liked. The last time I went, a week ago, it was looking a lot better.
Correction: the local council do mention it on their website here. It's just not linked to the rest of the sites information about the market.

A market in Paris

2006-09-29T14:06:00.000Z

Another post that's been hanging around since January 2006.

A crisp Sunday morning in Paris, sun shining low in the January sky, a market in Rue Mouffetard, buying pommes "La Ratte en Le Touquet" for 3.95€/kg (supposedly the best salad potatoes available according to Joel Robuchon) artichokes 5€, olives with pigeons pooing on them from the telephone wires above. This is the location in the film "Amelie" where the toy box with the tin car is found in the telephone box. The telephone box isn't really there. A few yards away lies Le Boulanger de Monge selling some of the best bread in Paris (Boule Bio 500Gr for €2.30), the baker's mobile phone white with flour as he worked in view of the window.

A Conran in Paris

2006-09-29T13:50:00.000Z

For a long time now (since Jan 2006), this post has sat around waiting for some attention. Ealier this year, we were on one of our twice yearly trips to Paris and it happened to conincide with the birthday of a friend who just happened to be in Paris at the same time - not surprising really as the friends were there for the same reason, Maison et Objet.

Being a vegetarian with an appetite in France can be quite difficult, so other than special occasions, it's usually pizza or staying in. However as this was a special occasion, namely Richard's birthday, pizza was not an option. Penjamin's advance reading and work had turned up a restaurant from the Conran group, called Alcazar, which she attempted to book in advance via toptable. Now maybe toptable were having a bad day, but their service was to not put it too mildly, shambolic. They couldn't confirm a booking before we left, several days before we wanted the booking and they were supposed to by phone. After calling them several times, they said they couldn't get a reply from the restaurant - this just sounds absurd for a major restaurant! Especially when Penjamin called the restaurant directly some thirty seconds later and booked the table straight away. Make of it what you will and I'll make a pile of doodoo.

So what was the menu at Alcazar like? Can't remember, it was 8 months ago and if you can remember what you ate out that long ago then you should get out more, prefereably to a nice restaurant. Decoration, service, setting, etc. were all swish and well up to scratch. They even treated vegetarians as if they were part of the human population and offered a choice of several dishes, incorporated within the menu as if they were perfectly normal (instead of the seperate, small menu for example at Thackeray's).

Would I go back? Well if the occasion merited the budget, yes. But then there are so many more restaurants to try, I'm not sure I will.

Snacking in Portugal...

2006-04-08T22:17:00.000Z

Just got back from a week in the Algarve, near Faro. Had a fantastic villa, and great weather. The food was good too: we had some delicious sea bass on the one occasion we dined out properly. Other than that we just ate at the villa or went to local cafes. Favourite staples were their version of a caffè latte, which always came in a glass (they call it a Galão), and a Pastei de nata, which is a sort of custard tart with flaky pastry. See below...

Long time, no post

2006-04-02T20:19:00.000Z

Just a quickie just in case our dear reader was beginning to wonder if I'd been on a diet due to the lack of postings here. 'Twas not the case. I've still got a couple of draft postings from January I might yet finish off but in the mean time, an update.

So what has been happening in the kitchen of late? Besides a regular trip to The Place at Camber Sands (I fear that's something like 4 times now), yesterday was a mammoth bread session; seven loaves of bread from five different recipes: 3 loaves of ciabatta, 1 each of pain de campagne with a rye starter and then a plain flour starter, and 1 each of sourdough, again one made from rye starter and one from a plain starter. I did the last four loaves as a comparison to see the effect of different starters. Can't say I saw much difference in the liveliness of the starters in the preceeding 24 hours. Now I've got to eat the bread to compare them.

The ciabatta loaves were an attempt at a new recipe from Peter Reindhert's Breadmaker's Apprentice book. For a first try at ciabatta I was impressed. Looked the part and tasted it too. Might post pictures here if I get chance.

We also got a few days away on the north Norfolk coast and managed to pick up some flour from Letheringset mill. Not quite enough to last until our next visit, but enough to surprise the woman serving. 12kgs of strong flour, similar of French T55 and some rye. Good stuff.

A Curiously English Repast

2006-02-06T10:47:00.000Z

In search of sustenance on Saturday evening last, my dining companions and I chanced upon a small hostelry in the Essex town of Billericay, known as "Chez Roberts". On learning that their capacity extended to only one table for eight, we anticipated disappointment, but were heartened to secure a reservation for seven that evening. On arrival we were met by the Maître d', who escorted us to our table, which was so situated as to afford us an excellent view of the entire kitchen area. The table was set with functional tableware in the English style, and soon the initial course was presented.
It was indeed illuminating, if a little unusual, to have such a detailed insight into the functioning of this small restaurant. There was a single member of the équipe de cuisine who appeared to be handling all the preparation and plating. Slices of lamb roasted with rosemary, and a selection of vegetables were soon efficiently delivered to the table, prompting expressions of enjoyment from my dining partner Helenjamin, although a certain reticence as to the provenance of the broccoli was vouchsafed by my other dining partners Sophiejamin and Judyjamin, who were clearly reluctant to sample the relevant vegetables given their disturbingly close proximity to the other comestibles on the plate. Their hesitation finally overcome through repeated assertions by Helenjamin that no dessert course would be available to them should they not at least sample all the vegetables, we were able then to turn our attention to the house wine. The sommelier had selected a recent Shiraz imported by Roberts frères of Romford, which complemented the roast lamb admirably. We limited ourselves to a single bottle.
The dessert course was then presented, an apple pie with friable pastry and a Bramley interior at a considerable temperature, which prompted muffled gasps and repeated gesticulations for a jug of cold water to be provided. The pie was accompanied by a simple cream-based sauce presented, with a humorous nod toward the provisions department in which it originated, in its original five fluid ounce carton.
Coffee was taken at table. I suspect it to be a preparation based on the Ikea £1.29 for 500g range of bespoke coffees. Chocolate Mints were also provided and more heartily consumed by my younger dining companions than had been the earlier vegetable ragoût. The total cost amounted to a very reasonable £0.00 and we left the establishment some three hours later with not only our dinner taken care of but also 20kg of potatoes, some jam, 10kg of apples and a second-hand bicycle. If "Chez Roberts" treats all its clientele in this way, it is assured of a special place in the annals of English cuisine.

An Indian in Paris

2006-01-29T23:56:00.000Z

Sunday night in Paris. Vegetarian food? Ha! No point in even trying a smart French restaurant for that sort of thing. The best thing to do if you want cheap and veggie in Paris is go ethnic. Moroccan or cous-cous, Indian, Chinese, whatever.
Close to our hotel we found Restaurant Sabraj (175, rue Saint Jacques, 75005 Paris, tel: 01 43 26 70 03). Our main criteria for choosing it? It was covered in hammered and punched tin and copper sheet. The door, the windows, the whole frontage was done in an Indian styled metal makeover. Inside was the same. The tables were old doors covered in glass and filled behind the glass with spices and herbs.
And one thing you see in France that you just don't get in the UK is people dining alone and reading, looking perfectly happy and pretentiously intellectual, as they do so well in France.
What did we eat? Can't remember specifics, but it was creamy soft curries with good spicing, naan breads, etc. It was supposed to be a northern Indian, Kashmiri driven menu, but I don't know enough to judge its authenticity. But it was good.

Jojo's restaurant in Tankerton

2006-01-15T22:21:00.001Z

Today we had a late lazy lunch in lieu of decorating the bathroom or spare bedroom and chose to spend it at Jojo's in Tankerton. Where you all cry? I heard about this place six months or so ago when it was reviewed in The Observer. Sounded like a nice place and I saw on their website that they were soon to be closing for renovations so we got in quick before they shut for a while.
Phoning up to book a table, it must be a testament to their popularity that over a week in advance, they had one table for two left at 2:30, and on a cold Saturday at the end of January. In a very drab street back from the sea front.
They don't have a license so it's a BYO for £1 corkage. Allegedly The Threshers down the road does a roaring trade off the back of the place. It felt really weird walking up to a restauarant clutching a bottle of wine, like you're arriving at someone's place for a party. But once inside, bottle on table, the waiter/husband/Paul plonked a corkscrew down on the table, leaving us to do the business. The menu (as you can see on the web site) is quite heavily based on Mediterranean small dishes; tapas, mezze sort of thing. Paul suggested the number of dishes to order which we followed and then promptly felt stuffed with. Dolmadas, stuffed risotto balls, patatas bravas, manchego cheese (with some mind-blowingly potent candied pear slices), hummus, breads, olives, etc. The food is cooked in the kitchen right there in the restaurant (it doubles up as the family kitchen outside of opening hours) and arrived in waves. Paul's wife, Nicki, does most of the cooking with an assistant and Paul dishes out the food from the counter to the tables hardly any distance away. It's all one light airy room, decorated with local photographer's prints, wood flooring, etc. The food isn't the best I've ever had, but it is damn good and it's the whole package that makes the place work; the kitchen, the atmosphere, the service, the regulars fetching their drinks from the fridge. Very informal and friendly; they call you by name if they can. When booking they only wanted a first name, couldn't be bothered with the rest.
They're closing very shortly (February 12th) so they can expand downstairs through to the back. But before you think that this is going to ruin the atmosphere of the place, they're going to keep the same number of covers per day. Whereas currently they sit a mere 14 people in two sittings, the plan is to sit the same number but without having to usher the first sitting out to make way for the seconds. So a few more tables (with some more elbow room they say) but the table will be yours for the day.
Worth a visit, definitely. I hope to go back when they re-open and see what the changes have done for it.

Brighton

2006-01-02T20:14:00.000Z

Went to Food for friends in Brighton today. Haven't been there for years, so it was quite fun to see how much the place has changed. If I recall correctly, it claims to be the oldest veggie place in Brighton and I remember it (from probably ten years back) as being quite a virtuous sort of veggie place, all soya beans and fresh juice drinks sort of thing. In the mean time, Brighton has acquired the fantastic Terre a terre, which has really pushed the envelope in terms of veggie food. So I was curious to see if Food for friends has responded to the challenge in anyway.
Being a a cold New Years Day bank holiday thing, everywhere was busy and buzzing, but luckily we got a table for two whilst other larger parties seemed to suffer a much longer wait. The short menu with about 8 mains seemed at first appearance suggested that vast steps had been taken towards modernising the menu. Closer inspection though reveled layers of tofu buried in some dishes and an alarming preponderance for brown rice. It's all nicely done and listed with fashionably long titles for the dishes but there still lurks the heart of an 80s wholefood cafe inside.
For instance, my "crispy feta cutlet in spiky japanese breadcrumbs, served with a brandy apple sauce and silky caper and white pepper mash" (£9.45) was machine cut square with perfectly applied and even breadcrumbs. I sort of expected something a bit more casual and less converyor belt, a rough lump of feta half oozing out of its coating.
Ah well, not bad, especially for vegetarian food. Maybe I'm being too fussy, but the prices are not cafe style, and the food didn't quite meet expectations. Shame.

A curious little local restaurant

2005-12-18T12:45:00.000Z

Thursday just past, we went for a Christmas meal with some of the other shop owners in Chapel Place, to a curious little local restaurant that I was completly unaware of. Morello in Matfield is located in the village post office. During the day it undertakes the usual post office activities but is transformed on Wednesday to Saturday nights into a restaurant. Our group of eight were in the slightly draughty small rear room, but the main area was packed and buzzing.

The menu is a set one, changing daily, but they accomodate other diets given sufficient warning. There are small tasting dishes between courses, the first of which was a pototo and cabbage soup. Copious quantities of walnut bread kept arriving to be followed by a poached, breadcrumbed and deep fired egg, the timing of which must have been a tactical masterpiece to have pulled off. Our main was a cheese souffle served with puy lentils, dessert a creme brulee with berries, again interspersed with little tastings such as a spiced orange sorbet and rounded off by coffee and petit fours. Being a set menu, the charge is set at a not too unreasonable £27.50 for four courses. I didn't get to see the wine list as far more experience others chose and chose well.

They post the menu in advance on their web site, so you can get a feel for what is coming up and jump in and make a booking if you feel tempted, something I think we'll be doing again.

Paul Milner is a tart

2005-11-15T22:07:00.000Z

...maker extraordinaire. That is, he rather makes one mean tartes aux pommes.

Whilst tidying up some pictures for that last post on bread, I found one of the tart he cooked for my birthday back in the summer and I so very rudely forgot to mention it here. So here, in all it's glory, I give you, dear reader, le tart...

It was apples were blessed by the summer sun and cooled by the beating of little birds wings. The pastry was fit for wiping the bottoms of angels, the glaze reflected the summer rays back to the heavens from surely where this tart had been baked in God's own oven. Or something like that. It was very nice. And thank you.

And so to bread...

2005-11-13T21:15:00.000Z

A bit of a mixed weekend on the bread baking front. Started Friday night with "Flaky butter buns" (top picture) as featured on Woman's Hour on Radio 4 on Tuesday. Finished them off on Saturday morning and the less said about them the better.

This was followed by a variation on an ale loaf (middle picture) from The Handmade Loaf. Instead of wheat grains, I used barley grains for a change and because I'd drunk all the ale, I had to soak the cooked grains in water overnight. Very good loaf but the grains looked a little odd as they stood out quite white against the crumb, even after toasting. I guess if I hadn't drunk all the ale then they would have been a browner hue.

Finally Sunday was my usual Pain de Campagne (bottom picture, rear) and a lemon barley cob (bottom picture, front), again from The Handmade Loaf.
I should have checked the website for the lemon and barley cob as I recalled corrections had been posted and sure enough, they had been. Doh! (If you can pardon the pun.) So I kneaded in a little more flour. At my guestimate, the recipe only needed another 25g or so of flour to stiffen it up a little. I should amend my cookbooks more often and not try to keep them in a pristine, unused condition. Can't remember where I read it now but I recall a quote something like "a book should be like a piece of furniture - you know you're going to use it and it's going to get worn but you want to look after it the best you can."
The Pain de Campagne is basically the baguette recipe from here in tinkered form and shape.

As the knitting monk said, "This is becoming a habit"

2005-10-31T19:38:00.000Z

Today is Monday. And Monday means lunch. Preferably by the seaside and in a nice restaurant.
And so it is. This time in The Place, Camber Sands. Again. This is becoming a bit predicatable. Anyway through November they have a two-for-one offer on week-day lunchtime dining, two courses minimum, and I can resist anything except temptation, especially when on special offer.
To summarise what we ate, we started with "Red chicory, pear, rocket, and kentish cob nut salad with crumbled stilton" and "Baked ‘stonegate’ goat’s cheese served on sourdough with tomato, rocket & pumpkin seed salad". Despite living in Kent, to my shame I'd never eaten cobnuts. In fact I've never been much a nut eater at all, but recently, what with the walnuts and now this, I can feel a change in the air - maybe it's the season.
For mains we both went for the "‘Olde sussex’ cheddar rarebit on a root vegetable rosti served with red onion marmalade & a mixed leaf salad" which had a well balanced mustard flavour to the rarebit on a soft creamy rosti of carrot, parsnip and potato.
Pushing the 2-for-1 offer to it's maximum advantage, we went for dessert. By now we could see the sunlight breaking through the dark clouds to the west, opening up a possiblity of walk on the beach after lunch to counteract the effects of dessert. "Baked pumpkin cheesecake served with thick local cream" for me, "Bramley apple and cinnamon crumble tart with blackberry ice cream" for Penjamin. Maybe it was the surfit of pumpkins at the previous days pumpkin fair that had weighted my expectation, but the cheescake was a pleasantly suprisingly light concoction.
With water, wine, bread, olives, coffee; £40. Utter bargain. Just trying to work out how we can get back there again before the end of November. Just hope the weather and light can work the same magic turnaround as it did today. By 4pm we were walking over sand dunes freshly cleared by the ealier rain, the pink sunlight coming in at a low angle under the breaking clouds to the west, thrown up against the still black wall of cloud to the east. The beach featured few people and as a many dogs. What little evidence of human presence had been there earlier was washed out on the rain-dappled sand and the light. The previous days turning back of the clocks may have marked a transition from the end of summer into deep autumn, and the turning had cut the time available to us here by an hour, but with days like this, you don't begrudge the slide into winter.

Restauranting yet again...

2005-10-30T17:48:00.000Z

Today is Sunday. And Sunday means lunch, preferably by the seaside in a nice restaurant.
And so it is. This time in 152 in Aldeburgh. We were visiting friends who have recently re-located to rural Suffolk, the lucky sods. Last time we visited we went for lunch here and it seemed too good a chance to not repeat it.
It's the sort of up-market eatery that could become formulaic if you eat out too much. Wooden floorboards, Farrow & Ball colours, white linen - sound familiar? Still being by the sea side you get a different feel and smell for the place, the latter being of the fish and chip shops up and down the street that pollute the air.
We hadn't booked but it didn't matter as they were full. Bugger. But a table was available in 15 minutes and they had free tables outside with a sea view (but a chippy odour) where menus could be perused and wine drank. Ian suggested a bottle of Rosé, which given the unseasonably warm October weather was a brillianty unseasonable idea I wouldn't have considered. This one was pretty darn good. It was called La Serre Rose de Syrah Vin de Pays d'Oc 2004, imported by Bibendum Wines. (It's interesting to see the mark up restaurants make on wine - £3.78 at Bibendum to £12+ on the wine list.)
Our table eventually became available as our food was waiting (we'd ordered while enjoying the sun outside). The choices were typical of this sort of place; a soup, goats cheese salad, etc. all served with rocket salad and balsamic dressing. Penjamin had a leek tart to start and I had the goats cheese, a good rindless cheese with not too much acidity; I'd guess quite a young cheese. I had a "red wine risotto with tarragon crème fraiche and root vegetable crisps" as a main and I think Penjamin did too. The food fitted it's description, it was tasty where tasty was expected, warming where warming was needed, etc. where etc. was needed. The root vegetable crisps were good. Occasionally I've had a bag of these from the not-so-supermarket in place of crisps as a nod to healthy virtue, but they always taste like cardboard. But these, freshly fried strips of carrot, parnsip and something else were light, crispy and er... vegetably.
Skipping puds (we'd attacked Ella's chips as she showed little interest in them), the bill was £70 -something including wine and water. Service was slick but not oily. Recommended but then I knew that as we'd been before.

Restauranting again...

2005-10-25T12:00:00.000Z

Tunbridge Wells has a limited number of restaurants that can be regarded as top tier, namely three. One of them, Hotel du Vin, I've been to 2 or 3 times. Another, Signor Franco's (they don't appear to have a website), I've visited once. I won't pass comment on either here as I haven't eaten in them for over a year. The third is Thackeray's and until now I'd never visited it. But tonight that changed.
One of our supplier's was visiting T/Wells and offered to take us out to dinner along with some mutual friends. Now we didn't suggest Thackeray's - the mutual friend did, honest. I wouldn't dare presume to suggest the most expensive restaurant in town as a destination.
So what was it like? In a word; sumptuous. In two words; very sumptuous. In three... oh you get the idea. We met initially in the small upstairs bar area. Lit by huge church candles in storm lanterns and decorated with gold leaf (there are pictures on the web site) it had a dark, almost gothic feel. And served a good G&T as well, though not as good as one I recall from Hotel du Vin, but that might have been the occasion more than anything.
They've got a separate, short, small (A5 format) vegetarian menu that you have to ask for. This struck me as odd - why not include it in the larger (A4) main menu? It left the vegetarians feeling like poor relations and a "special" case. At least they catered for vegetarians, not something you'd get from a French restaurant on it's home turf, certainly one of this calibre.
"So what was the food like?" I hear you cry. It was good. Pricey, but not much by modern standards. Starters around £5, mains £10-15. Some great tasting little between-course tasting dishes. The dining room is the current en-vogue simple design of floorboards, Farrow & Ball colours, white linen, etc. The tableware looked like something from the 1980's though; very large square plates, drizzles of this and sprigs of that. Tasted good though. Penjamin had a tomato rissoto which was very well balanced and I had something else. House wine was good and plentiful, thanks to our hosts repeated ordering. Service was slick, even if the poor girl couldn't quite remember what the tasting dishes were.
So would I go back, especially if paying myself? A tentative "yes". I would go for the atmosphere and the presentation and the whole experience. I wouldn't go purely for the food, but then eating out isn't just about the food, is it?

The vegetarian travellers guide to France

2005-10-08T20:17:00.000Z

The vegetarian travelling in France is well advised to return across the border by whichever means they entered France as soon as possible, or be prepared to face long distances of many hundreds of kilometres between cold plates of tofu and beansprouts, broken only by the holy trinity of French rural vegetarian fare, this being the pizza, the crepe and the salad chevre chaud (which Penjamin ordered several times, as when done well she argued, can be the best meal in the world).
Vegetarian fare in France can sometimes be found in the larger cities and is still resolutely stuck in the 1970s where one can enjoy raw grated sandals served on hand crotched plates dyed with the owners own urine. A country that has more cheeses than ladies razors seems completly unable to do anything with them beyond the aforementioned trinity of dishes.
Outside of the cities in the provinical areas, the French have managed to discover a form of ham that would appear to be vegetarian by the way it is included in salads as speck. The bountiful range of produce available in the country is only to be used as a supporting dish for the local delicacy of meat based products.
Much is made of the regional specialities of the regions, the produit de terroir. This is why if one place serves a local delicacy, they all do. And they don't serve anything else. In Sarlat for instance, they specialise in stuffing geese until their livers explode into the ready waiting canning factories, a technique for creating food that could only have come about in some unfathomable way. And so every shop and every restaurant serves foie gras. Cold, hot, fired, battered and topped with a whelk, it's all you can find there. And hardly any of the restaurants looked that busy. If someone had a good idea to try something different, I'd guess they'd all be doing it inside twelve months, following each other like lemmings - though don't mention that to them, they'll put them on the menu.

Lunch, the river, the walnuts...

2005-10-07T20:49:00.000Z

Having exhausted the vegetarian options in the surrounding area, Penjamin suggested a picnic as a way of avoiding starvation. So a spot by the Dordogne, some cheese and bread, some wine, the October sunshine and we were as happy as a duck in a puddle.
Afterwards we stopped to buy walnuts from a farm on the side of the road. 7kgs later we left, pondering what to do with so many walnuts. I think I'll be looking up recipes for walnut breads and would warmly welcome suggestions from our loyal reader, assuming she's (a) not on holiday and (b) not allergic to walnuts.

Monpazier

2005-10-06T18:08:00.000Z

Today was market day in another bastide town, Monpazier. Market day here is held in the town square with its galleried walks around all four sides, like most villages in the area. Every day of the week there is a market to be found within a few miles radius.
Deciding to eat out for lunch, we'd spotted a restaurant earlier that had a vegetarian menu. Grasping this rare chance in France, we sat down for lunch and after the customary long wait, the waiter approached our table. (Maybe that's why they're called waiters?) Penjamin, excersing her grasp of the language enquired after the vegetarian menu displayed on the board the waiter had earlier placed in the street. "Non." The menu was for the evening only, and the lunch time menu was none of the options on the board he'd placed out, they were held on a small blackboard propped against a table leg. Behind a dog. Why-oh-why-oh-why?! (Pourquoi-oh-pourquoi....) Don't vegetarians eat lunch? Do they only come out at night like some tofu-fuelled vampires? The place had recognised the existence of vegetarians, in itself a rairty in France, but then dismissed them as quickly as a farmer downs his breakfast pastis. Je désespère.

Déjeuner

2005-10-02T23:02:00.000Z

Chevre, olives, fried potatoes, green lentils braised in red wine, bread, salad. Hmmm....

Sunday morning, brings the dawn in....

2005-10-02T22:34:00.000Z

Like the Velvet Underground in the 1960s, my Sunday mornings are fuelled by freaky mushrooms, although these are the ceps I mentioned yesterday rather than Psilocybin, served with scrambled eggs (with some chopped dried chilli added), on toasted sourdough.
Then to Issegeac for the Sunday morning market. An old bastide town, it's centre would be difficult to walk through on an empty day, given the narrow streets, but on a Sunday, the town is given over to a market, a real market. With vegetables. And fruit. And bread. Not for this place a market selling out-of-date alcopops to underage chavs and mirrors with pictures of Elvis printed on them. It was heaving, much like any sane persons response to the Elvis mirror. And overrun with British. In the car parks around the town, UK plated BMWs mingled with rusty 2CVs and the voices ordering the market goods were as often Henry's as Henri's. Still you can't blame them. If you're in the area, what else are you going to do on a Sunday morning in the Dordogne?

En Français...

2005-10-01T19:19:00.000Z

I'm in France for a weeks holiday and market chasing. I'm going to try and blog as much as I can here.
First up, a quick stop at a small supermarket to get some basics. It's late on a Saturday after a 600 mile drive through rain so heavy that you needed full speed wipers and a prayer to get past the HGV's on the autoroute, so I make no excuse for using a supermarket. Somehow the smaller supermarkets here don't leave you with the same feelings of dirt that they do in the UK, or the sense of being ripped off that you get in small convenience stores. When was the last time you saw fresh cep mushrooms in a Spar or Londis?!
A quick trip round the aisles and we've got some beer, salad, tomatoes and a couple of passable loaves of bread. And the aforementioned ceps. Why can't we get these in the UK? They're native to most of northern Europe; in Italy they're porcini or "little pigs" and in Britain they're known as "Penny Buns" - it's not often you get those words together is it? Anyway they're for breakfast tomorrow.
Tonight it's a quick pasta dish. Diced aubergine, onion and peppers, fried, thrown into some cooked pasta with some homemade pesto we'd brought, made from some surplus basil.

A good start to the day...

2005-09-24T10:16:00.000Z

Managed to start making bread earlier than usual this morning, around 7:30. Followed by a quick hair cut in the garden - you don't get to watch frogs hop by and in turn be watched by an unrecognised cat, sat a safe distance away at the edge of the vegetable patch when you go to a hairdressers.

Caught the farmers' market early and came away loaded¹ with chillies, aubergines, some plum tomatoes all hues, salads, some rather rugged peppers, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks and more than I can think of right now. Followed this up with a visit to the Italian market at the other end of town; I hadn't even realised it was on this weekend. Amongst the usual over priced mixture was a good bread stand. Two ciabattas as big as your forearm for £2 and a darker, granary loaf and some deep-fried porcini-filled risotto balls.

Then back home to quickly attack one of the ciabattas, my own bread not being ready for many hours yet. Sat on the patio, the bread, some olive oil and balsamic vinegar forming breakfast beneath the grapevine, whose fruit needs picking soon before the birds get to it.

1. It wasn't so much "me" loaded as Penjamin. She made me add this bit.

And now another cook book!

2005-09-21T19:17:00.000Z

Dough just arrived from Amazon today. Looks like I've got some holiday reading stacking up nicely.

A cookbook preview

2005-09-20T20:46:00.000Z

I didn't think Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries was due to be published until October 3rd, the date given by most on-line retailers. Yet I managed to pick up a copy yesterday, some two weeks early, though not as early as a friend, Sara, who knows Nigel¹. She got her copy personally sent several weeks ago. And I had to pay for my copy.

Some intial thoughts on it; very nicely presented, beautifully laid out, great photography, even nice paper and one of those little strips to mark your page, all very old-fashioned in some respects. The writing is it's usual chatty, informal style, filled with asides and comments. Whilst touting some 300 new recipes, it is not a cookbook as a collection of recipes, but more of a journal of buying, growing, sourcing, preparing, eating and enjoying food in all it's stages and all it's forms. From cheese on toast to slow cooked pot meals (and that's just January), it is about real food as made in the home. No allusions to restaurant food, no showy dinner party stuff, just everyday food.

1. The sounds of names dropping...

Cookbook review #1

2005-09-19T19:44:00.000Z

My bookshelves groan when I come back from a bookshop, as it usually means a new addition to the already stuffed bookcase of cookery books (and yes, I am that sad that I have a separate bookcase just for cookery books). Recent additions have included the latest River Cafe, Two Easy. I must confess to some disappointment with earlier River Cafe books, but with the latest two (Easy and this one) Rose and Ruth seem to have hit their stride, or at least matched pace with mine. It's not that I shy away from non-easy recipes but in these two they seem to hit a better balance of ingredients in the dishes; maybe the focusing in on simplicity forces one to work harder at what remains, somewhat like a short story. There is the usual emphasis on using top quality ingredients, and when there are so few, they need to work that much harder. I feel though that the dishes go further than that - I especially like the starters and simple small dishes (broad bean, pecorino and mint bruschetta from the first easy book is a favourite) that work well as both appetisers and simple suppers.

So this will do to bide my time until the next expedition reaps more weight for the bookcase. Imminent books to look forward to are Dough: Simple contemporary bread by Richard Bertinet and Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries.

Bread and sweetbread

2005-09-14T19:31:00.000Z

As our regular reader will know, I like bread almost as much as beer (maybe it's because they both use yeast and grains?).

Anyway, my sister recently sent me a book for my birthday, namely "The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Making Classic Breads with the Cutting-edge Techniques of a Bread Master" by Peter Reinhart. It's a good book (but not as good as Dan Lepard's "The Handmade Loaf" - buy it now!!).

What amazed me though was how many of the recipes are sweetened, Something as simple as a wholemeal loaf had sugar, powdered milk, honey, cans of coca-cola (actually not true that last one). Peter classifies loves into enriched, naturally leavened, etc. groupings and a rough scan suggests that half the loaves are enriched rather than un-enriched (nonriched? enpoored?). Can't say I've spent that much time in the US but when I mentioned this to my parents, recently returned from the Big Poo, they agreed. Ordinary supermarket cut-loaf (yuck) made into a savoury sandwich tasted like it was spread with jam, or honey or sugar syrup.

There appears to be a movement to artisan, traditional breads in the US but it would appear from Peter Reinhart's book that even this isn't immune to the US mentatilty of sugar-in-everything.

Food en Francais... (or something in bad Franglish...)

2005-08-03T16:13:00.000Z

I've been meaning to post this for a while. I was amused to read Jacques Chirac's comments on English food recently (see Guardian Unlimited "Chirac's reheated food jokes bring Blair to the boil" for a report on it) as I visit France probably 5 or 6 times a year and as a vegetarian, how I enjoy eating out in France!

I think Jacques is very much of the old school of dining, where France still holds some premier position in the gastrnomic world and England is a country of over-boiled vegetables and ros-bif. I don't eat in enough Michelin starred restaurants to compare the countries offerings at that level, but further down the scale at the more modest establishments I can afford, I think he is talking out of his derriere. In provincial France, the small towns at best offer a generic pizza place. Now whilst this is admittedly not usually part of a chain, such as the dreaded Pizza Hut and they remain small, independent places, they're hardly even approaching the boundaries of cooking, let alone trying to push them forward. I think the UK has achieved a respectable array of places to eat in most towns I know. The chains can offer some good stuff, places like Carluccio's and Le Petit Blanc in this town for instance. I can't say I've ever stumbled across anything like it in France, and that's before you even look for a vegetarian option.

One time many years ago in France, we were on holiday with Les Milners and went to a restaurant in on the fortified island in Concarneau. Upons asking the Maitre'd what they could do for vegetarians, he looked down his nose and spat out the word "Vegetables!" I know the customer isn't always right, but hey, try and meet us halfway here Jacques.

In a large place you might find vegetarian restaurants but they're all (I've found) to be so holier -than-thou. Nice enough but vegetarian food has so moved on from brown rice stuffed Birkenstock burgers. Compare Au Grain du Folie in Montmatre, Paris with Terre a Terre in Brighton? No brainer. Sorry France, you ain't what you used to be in the culinary world anymore. You've got great quality ingredients (and so you bloody well should with all the EU agricultural hand-outs), great markets but you just haven't moved on in what you do with them. Many years ago in Aix-en-Provence I remember having a bowl of marinated chick peas on a bar as an appetiser. Tasted great but did the restaurant do anything with them? Maybe some hummus as a starter or felafel as a veggie main? Quel surprise mais non. The same old hackneyed standards. Whilst France's standards were better than ours, we've developed and refined them and moved on. Maybe it's insularity, or lack of cultural diversity or maybe our food used to be so bad we had to do something about it, but today, I'd far rather eat out in the UK than in France. Sorry Jacques, tough frites.

Vegetarians, be proud of what you eat

2005-08-03T16:12:00.000Z

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Vegetarians, be proud of what you eat
Couldn't agree more and another mention for the brilliant Dennis Cotter of Cafe Paraidso, Cork. One day I'm going to go there and it better be as good as I hope or I'm going to cry.

YARR (Yet Another restaurant Recommendation)

2005-07-05T14:02:00.000Z

Sunday found myself and my dining partner, Penjamin¹, (like I have different partners for different occurrences) in Camber Sands, a location not exactly overflowing with choice eateries. Oh, there's plenty of fish, chip and heart-attack places and a Pontins holiday camp that no doubt has a fine menu on offer.

There is however one good reason for anyone with taste buds higher than a bottom feeder to go to Camber to eat and that is The Place. I must confess we had been before, some time in the spring but I hadn't written about it here as I was still in a sulk with Blogger for swallowing my earlier posts. Anyway, now that I've ~~grown up~~ come to terms with that, I know feel inclined to write it up.

The Place has got some great reviews, from amongst others, Waitrose magazine, The Observer (several times), The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The New York Post, The Margate WI's Knitting for Fethishists, etc. You can see a whole load of them here (despite the fact that they use spaces in the URL!!! Who designed this website?!).

Generally, anywhere that hyped, I run a mile from². We did however have a personal recommendation this time, from my dining partners Uncle. So that's alright then.

The Place is in essence an updated motel with restaurant, and architecturally still displays some if its former ingloriousness in its outward appearance. Inside though the makeover has been somewhat more successful, if a little formulaic. Simple bleached wood? Tick. Whitewashed walls? Tick again. Contemporary artwork? Tick again again. Chrome bar work with halogen lighting and natural wood tones? Tick, tick, tick. Simple white tableware? Tick... you get the idea, preferably before I get hit for impersonating a clock.

So anyway: the food. Or at least it's philosophy. The Place hits all the right markers for current thinking on food; locally sourced, organic but not to the extreme, sustainable farming and fishing. A menu based on the best seasonal produce and sourced from small, local suppliers. It's how eating should be and a flag with which it is becoming aggressively marketed.

The menu (current one here) changes monthly and though we caught the end of the June menu, the current July menu doesn't look that different, at least from the parts of it I remember. Appetisers of bread and olives (£2) were very good. The selection of breads were in particular good, especially the sourdough, a particular high hobby horse of mine which I must talk about some time. My partner had the soup (£3.95), a pea and mint affair with suitably springy flavours whilst I had a goats cheese souffle with chilli jam on some sort of bruschetta (£5-ish).

We both went for vegetarian mains, of which there are usually two on offer. It is reassuring that the vegetarian options appear to be part of the whole menu and not just an afterthought. They certainly stand up to the rest of the menu and are part of the whole ethos of The Place.

Penjamin had the "poached organic egg on a potato rosti served with nutmeg spinach, hollandaise sauce and a summer leaf salad" (£9.25) whilst I had the "organic Sussex haloumi cheese, red onion, & tomato brochette with spicy cous cous & a summer leaf salad" (£10.75). You can probably see that this is one of those restaurants that wears the names of it's dishes on it's sleeve (or in this case, menu). No beating around the bush with some sort of off-hand description like "stuff on a plate", this is the real McCoy (not to imply that they serve frozen chips).

The egg dish was brought to the table at the perfect point in its cooking as it would have been an easy dish for it to go off the boil and start sliding towards cold clamminess. The haloumi was again well timed. A cheese that can go off to rubberiness once cooked was served with a crisp burnt edge to a soft chewy centre, a feature it held for the duration. The accompanying cous -cous could have coped on it's own almost but certainly held the brochette (a posh kebab) up to standard.

But the real treat (and if fact one of the factors that pushed us into going there) was the side dish of marsh samphire. We'd already spotted it on their seasonable menu on the web site and sure enough, it was still on. No surprise as the season runs from June through September. As you may already know of my thoughts on samphire, I won't wax on again about it here, suffice to say it was cooked well and in such an ample portion, we ended up taking half of it home, something the waitress was happy to sort out. Penjamin even went so far as to ask the kitchen where they obtained it from, which after some confusion about sourcing it from France, resulted in the almost answer of somewhere around the River Rother (don't try saying that too quickly). So, it can be found closer to home than Norfolk...

This was washed down with an Argentinean Libertad Pinot Bianco (£14.95) from the lower reaches of a short but complete wine list. I don't know why wine lists have upper reaches as I can never get that far up them.

We'd gone for a late sitting (2pm is the last for lunch, 9pm for dinner) and consequently didn't slowly rise from the table until almost 4pm, a most civilised time to be finishing lunch I feel as the gap to dinner is now small enough to not be scared of. A bill for some £65 or so including water, coffee and 10% service charge was quite within expectations and certainly good value for the quality of food and atmosphere, the only downside of which, besides the Frank Sinatra CD sticking, was the heat at times. Apparently, opening the windows turns the place into a wind tunnel and the air-conditioning maybe wasn't up to the job (if they had any - it certainly wasn't noticeable in auditory terms). That said, maybe we should have opted for eating on the covered terrace outside, something Penjamin wished for but that I chose unwisely to ignore.

Leaving the car in the car park, it's a short stroll across to the dunes of Camber Sands to walk off the pleasant effects of lunch and admire the kites flying and dogs ear-streaming across the sand.

1. For some reason, restaurant reviewers like to give their dining companions stupid names. I'm sure it's something to do with fiddling accounts and tax returns.

2. Figuratively speaking.

RAID

2005-07-05T13:56:00.000Z

This post will only make sense if you're reading the syndicated version on the Jeannotland blog, as it refers to an article there.

So Paul, what about some of the hybrid RAID arrangements. I believe that RAID 0+1 exists and seems moderately popular for small scale (e.g. home-use). RAID 0 is popular with bedroom musicians for audio use because of it's data throughput and the fact that it's becoming quite common on motherboards these days. You're right about the backing up though - I know several people who have lost audio projects to disk failures in RAID systems. The failure rate is actually increased in RAID 0 when compared to a single drive.

Blogger sucks!

2004-12-07T16:13:00.000Z

Damn this blogger service! It's just swallowed several of my recent posts!

There was a "What I cooked for our friends" numbers 1 and 2 before number 3. It had deleted a lot more and a republish-entire-blog managed to get something back but this still sucks donkey big time. I think I might have to move this woefully under-attended blog elsewhere. Maybe I can find some small corner to put it on le petit jardin, using Mambo.

What I cooked for our friends #3

2004-12-04T21:00:00.000Z

Now you're going to think that my life is one long round of dinner parties, but have you noticed that all these posts are about meals I have cooked but not one is about being invited to someone elses place to sample their cooking? Eh?! (but see footnote) Must say a lot about my personality I guess, but I digress.

Tonight we had Ruth & Ian to dinner so turning once more to Dennis Cotter's Paradiso Seasons we had pumpkin gnocchi, not that he called it that of course. No, it was (and I quote) "Pumpkin gnocchi with spinach in a roasted garlic cream". Quite a short title for Dennis. I left out the chives because I forgot to go and pick them from the garden, but the pumpkin was one we'd harvested a few weeks earlier from the pumpkin patch before it took over the bottom half of the garden and the shed.

And though I got the pumpkin part right, it was still a very wet dough that took a lot of flour to firm up to a gnocchi consistency. I've tried this before and got it wrong but I thought I was on a better track this time. Oh well, it was alright in the end.

Footnote: Last night we did go round to a friends. It was meant to be a quick drink before dinner, but Paul had accidentally made some onion, mushroom and cauliflower bhajis and some garlic mayo. Unfortunately the seven bottles of wine between the three of us rather overshadowed the food. In fact it overshadowed the last two bottles of wine - I mean, some sort of safety mechanism should kick in when you reach for the warm cava at 1am. Where is the nanny state when you need it most?

What I had for dinner #2

2004-11-15T15:16:00.000Z

The second in an occasional series, as if the title hadn't already told you that.

Last night we attempted and eventually succeeded in making butternut squash gnocchi. It was a recipe straight out of the fantastic Paradiso Seasons by Dennis Cotter, though I overlooked one crucial part - he used pumpkin where I used butternut squash.

The problem with this is that butternut squash can be a lot wetter than pumpkin when cooked; something that endangered the gnocchi. It meant that more flour and Parmesan than ideal was necessary to ensure a good consistency for the dough, but it worked in the end.

To summarise, here's the recipe kind of from memory, though I recommend you buy the book.

Chop pumpkin or squash into cubes and roast it, along with some garlic cloves still in their skins.
When cooked, let it cool and then mash the pumpkin/squash in a bowl.
Fold in some flour and grated Parmesan cheese. You will probably want to use more flour than cheese unless you're rich. You should end up with a stiff dough.
Roll out the dough into one or more long sausages and cut this into 2cm long chunks. Keep these covered in flour to stop them sticking together.
For the sauce, squeeze the garlic from its skin into a mixture of half stock, half white wine. You probably want about 150mls of liquid. Liquidise the mixture and then sieve it into a pan. Reduce it by half and add some cream, 150mls will do. Heat this through, season with salt & pepper and add some chopped chives.
Cook the gnocchi in boiling water until it rises to the surface, some 2-4 minutes. Don't crowd the gnocchi, you'd be better off cooking it in a couple of batches. Put it into individual serving bowls with some wilted spinach and pour over the sauce. Sprinkle with Parmesan and pop under the grill until just starting to colour.
Eat it. Really quickly. If your fellow diners can't be bothered to sit down, start with out them. I mean, why can't they go to the toilet and wash their hands when you say "Ready in 5 minutes!", eh? No, they have to do it right at the last moment and let the food get cold. Well, they can eat theirs cold, but I'm not waiting and I suggest you don't either. So there.

A restaurant recommendation

2004-11-15T14:53:00.000Z

Yesterday I was in Islington and we decided to have a late lunch after our business was concluded. Upper Street is packed with eateries - most of the chains are represented along with a very healthy number of independant and local places.

We settled on one of the three branches of Cafe Gallipoli. All three are on the same 100m stretch of road and called Cafe Gallipoli, Gallipoli Bazaar and Cafe Gallipoli again. I don't know how they differ from each other as they all appeared to offer the same menu.

The menu is a collection of dishes from throughout the Middle East, with the restaurants having suitable authentic looking interiors. We shared the Meze Bazzar, a selection of 5 cold and 2 hot starters. I wish I'd taken some notes of what was included (or pinched a menu) but I was too busy enjoying the food.

What I can remember of the meal was felafel, a filo pastry filled with cheese and herbs, a superbly smoky flavoured hummus and some yoghurt dish, potatoes in a tomato sauce with some fantastic seasoning, a bean dish and a very real tabbouleh which featured parsley to bulghur wheat in a 10:1 ratio; really a salad flecked with grain rather than the more usual intreptation of grain flecked with herbs. The tabbouleh really was the highlight of the meal. Bowls of olives ae provided on every table and there are bowls of breads to rip and share and dip.

It was one of those restaurants where the staff eat at the same tables as the customers with their families and their children, an always reassuring sign I think.

The bill for all the meze and a beer, a glass of wine, some bottled water and mint teas came to under £20 and I shall definitely return to explore more of the menu. Highly recommended.

Farmers markets

2004-11-11T10:22:00.000Z

Where I live in Tunbridge Wells, we have a twice-monthly farmers market, held on a stretch of closed-off road in front of the town hall. And yet Tunbridge Wells has a market square, although a pretty poor one. It was included when the monstrous Royal Victoria Place was developed in the centre of town in an apparent effort to turn Tunbridge Wells into Anytown PLC, UK. Not for one moment am I suggesting that the farmers market move to the market square; the Pantiles would make a far better location as shown be the French, Italian and Christmas markets that are being held there. No, the question arising is why is the market held in the market square twice a week afforded the title "market" when all it sells is out-of-date tinned processed goods, mirrors printed with a picture of Elvis and generally, tat?

I think it is about time Farmers' Markets should reclaim the name "market" from the awful experiences that currently trade under that banner. For isn't a farmers' market what a market should be? Through the rest of Europe, markets are held in town squares and villages; the addition of the word "farmer" isn't even remotely necessary to make it clear that here is an event selling local produce from local suppliers to local people.

So let's reclaim the name "market" to describe the local supply of good food from local suppliers, not let it be wasted on some white-van man selling imitation-brand jeans.

Half Full or Half Empty?

2004-11-10T21:25:00.000Z

I'm sure "Le Chef" will have seen the latest BBC food programme, Full On Food which has just finished... I must say I was pretty "full on food" whilst I was watching it, having just consumed loads of sausage and chips. But the programme itself seemed to be running on empty.

I think there seems to be some sort of obligatory code at the BBC which prescribes that their food programmes must appear to be as relaxed and casual as possible. This may be in order to exorcize the spirit of Fanny Craddock, whose uneasy ghost must hover over the saucepan hand of the current crop of food presenters. Nowadays, the programme has to appear totally impromptu and unstructured. The food must be perfectly authentic and genuine, yet totally without effort.

The presenters, ideally, would be tousled Italians who slosh the extra virgin around, whack the hell out of vegetables and slice fruit in a blur of razor-sharp steel. Strangely, the eventual product of all this primal activity appears to be a gorgeous delicate fantasy structure of unparalleled beauty and deliciousness. Imagine the creative technique of Jackson Pollock, resulting in a Tintoretto. Seems a bit unlikely to me. I think it's all done by camera trickery.

The next step will be to have presenters who just sit around doing bugger all, for 25 minutes, and then there's this "ping" noise, and they hoik something utterly perfect out of the microwave and then all grab little spoons and tuck in and compete for who can make the most orgasmic noises of gastronomic pleasure.

What I had for dinner #1

2004-11-09T17:43:00.000Z

The first in a very occasional series of postings.

Tonight it was lentil dahl (not to be confused with the "model" Sophie Dahl, granddaughter of author Roald Dahl).

Here is the recipe for what I made up.

Chop an onion - almost unnecessary to say really. How many recipes start with anything else other than chopping an onion? Maybe ice cream.
Fry the onion in some vegetable ghee along with some black mustard and cumin seeds.
After a short time (maybe enough for a beer) add some lentils. About as much as you feel like eating. Or more.
Add some spices. I used the Penang Coconut Curry blend from the most excellent Spice Shop in Notting Hill.
Add some water or stock. Enough to cover the lentils (the ones in the pan, not the ones you put back in the cupboard).
Simmer for a while (the pan, not you) until things are cooked, probably around 30 minutes. Why not treat yourself to a beer while waiting? You want the lentils to be on the verge of breaking up, not a complete mush of baby food.
Serve with some boiled basmati rice. I was going to have naan bread but I forgot to buy them.

The tale of the strange sea vegetable...

2004-08-04T14:25:00.000Z

I recently spent a few days on the north coast of Norfolk, UK. It was intended to be a few days away in lieu of a proper summer holiday and it was fantastically relaxing. We stayed in Blakeney and spent days walking on the beaches for miles with no one in sight. It's a rare time when you can stand on a beach in the UK with a view of miles in both directions and there not be a soul in site, especially in July.

One of the great joys in travelling anywhere is to discover food. You may think that travelling just a few hundred miles would have little new to offer, but this wasn't the case. Norfolk is famed for it's scenery but a lesser known jewel is a coastal plant called samphire (Latin: Salicornia europaea). It's common (but not that common) to European coasts but isn't found in North America. It's existence has been known since ancient times; Culpepper the famous herbalist wrote of it and Shakespeare mentions it in King Lear (though to be pedantic, that's rock samphire as opposed to the now more common marsh samphire).

It's name (sometimes given as sea-fennel, also in German meerfenchel) is derived from Saint Pierre, the saint of fisherman, probably because it tastes quite salty, just like fishermen. Hence its name in French, sampier, and in Italian, Herba de San Pietra. (Source: Botanical.com)

It's season covers the spring, when it can be eaten raw, and summer in the UK. By the end of the season, you really do have to cook it. The web site for the wonderful village of Cley (where we stayed last year) has details on cooking it, which can be summarised as:

Boil it for 6-8 minutes.
Drain it.
Toss it in extra virgin olive oil and a dash of lemon juice.
Eat it. Etc.

What they don't say is the additional step that I read on a set of cooking instructions pinned to a gate post just outside Cley. Here some young entrepreneur had been out that Sunday morning collecting fresh samphire and had left a bucket of it by his gate for sale (put the money in the tin sort of thing) and some cooking instructions. Theses were:

Boil for 10 minutes and drain.
Strip the fleshy part away from the woody inner stem, which is discarded.
Etc.

The part about stripping it away from the woody stem made a world of difference to the edibility of late season samphire.

Anyway to conclude is the recipe we cooked with this samphire in the cottage we rented in Blakeney.

Goats cheese and samphire tart
1 packet puff pastry
1 lump of goats cheese/chevre
1 bunch of samphire

Roll out pastry to fit a greased baking sheet.
Fit pastry to said greased baking sheet. (NB. no need to use adhesive, gravity will suffice.)
Cook samphire as directed above.
Score a border about one inch in from the edge of the pastry and brush this with milk or beaten egg.
Prick the area inside the border with a fork.
Chuck the samphire in an artistic manner over the middle of the puff pastry, making sure you stay inside the border, just like you learnt at school.
Crumble the cheese over the top and season the top with pepper - you won't need any salt as you should now by now that there is plenty in the samphire.
Bake it for as long as it takes in as hot an oven as it needs. Probably something like 10-15 minutes at 180 Celsius.

Welcome!

2004-08-04T13:47:00.000Z

Hello and welcome to my new (well actually first ever) blog.
I intend it to contain my thoughts on food, the food industry, ingredients, restaurants as well as other small things like spelling mistakes. It's not intended to be a professional look at anything, more just a keen amateurs view of the world of food. I realised after a while that I was spending most of my free time reading about food, thinking about food, preparing food and musing about food.
So I thought;
"Let's get some of this in a more structured form sort of thing."
and when I couldn't find a paper, pen, chalk or tablet, I thought;
"Why not blog?"
Well, here it is.
Not sure how often I'm going to post or what form it's going to take but, hey it's my life.