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Saffron Walden haul

Published September 11, 2009 Food , me 3 Comments

Autumn, the best time of year visually, still warm, but with a nip in the air, and the best time for food in my book too.

A daytrip to Saffron Walden yealded some interesting foodie items, Walnut and apricot bread, beetroot, onions, squashes, fresh carrots, a bloomin’ great marrow, cavalo nero, a lettuce, local beer, local honey, some sorrel and two books. The Graham Kerr Cookbook by the Galloping Gormet (Where’s his bio-pic BBC? He’s not dead yet granted, but you could get Martin Sheen to play him, look at the back story, it’s got everything!) And Eating and Drinking, a food anthology of prose poems and other bits and bobs all arranged under various headings.

The beer was slightly too yeasty for me, with not quite enough fizz, tasted a little, well dead to be honest. Flavour was right, but it just fell short of the mark. The honey was from Gerald Smith Honey of Stanleys Farm in the town and is so good I’ve put it in with roasting veg as well as had it on toast and in porridge.

The cavalo nero went into some chicken broth as a soup, love those bitter irony leaves. The other squashes, beetroots, carrots and the mahoosive marrow were roasted with a whole head of garlic and the onions to create literarly gallons of soup. Soup’s a favourite in our house at lunchtime, it’s hot, quick and in a mug you can eat it with one hand while holding the nipper.

Finally the sorrel has appeared in salads and various other things, and there’s still loads left in the fridge.

The cabbage and the beer came from Sceptred Isle, the root veggies from a little ‘local &/or organic’ gazebo round the back of the town hall and the bread from a stall in the Market square. So in all, £20 the lot, not a bad autumnal haul.

Yay for the arrival of Autumn.

leftovers to go please

Published September 8, 2009 Food , me 3 Comments
Tags: Food, grouse, leftovers, making things last, st john, value

Ahoy! Like a lazy Frenchman I took the whole of August off blogging to concentrate on learning the ropes of dadhoodness. Surfice to say I think I’ve about got the basics sorted now. So some sort of service will resume on these very pages.

Dinner at St John

Now, August is a bit ‘too hot can’t be bothered’ month for food, but it does have the glorious 12th, and that means grouse. I had one at Saint John on the 29th. The little fella had been hung for 4 days or so to firm up a little, and was then roasted. They served it pink, very pink, so pink in fact a good vet could have brought it round. The liver and other good bits came pated on a crunchy square of toast, there was the traditional bread sauce. and the obligatory water cress protruded from it’s derriere.

Yum, bloody tang

Very nice it was too. But here’s the rub. Very hard to really pick all the meat off with a knife and fork, and though I got stuck in there with my fingers for the legs, I still felt it had more to give. Rest assured this grouse did not die in vain. With as much meat extracted as possible in a smart busy restaurant wearing a light colours shirt and on a date with my wife, I asked for the carcass to take home.

Roasting the poor thing a second time

Here, late at night it was put the oven, to roast once more, before being slowly simmered in root veg and onions till dawn, when the cockerel call of my baby daughter had us up with the lark.The next day I used it along with a half a bottle of white wine as a base for braising a shoulder of lamb. This was stunning, you could pull it apart with the slightest nudge. After straining off the fat in my trusty gravy separater, I made a gravy by reducing the cooking liquor down.

lamb, veg, stock, time = delicious

Now a small amount of that gravy was left over, and because of the high fat content set solid, I duly popped that in the fridge. Today’s the 8th September and I made a squid and chorizo stew, for a tiny flavour push I added the last of that gravy, and so the final essence of the grouse slipped under the surface of the stew like Arnie at the end of Terminator 2.

And so I say this. Yes to doggy bags, yes to restaurants giving you the bones, yes to walking out full with a warm foil package under your arm. I did the same at Hawksmoor in May. The fore rib was 40 odd quid and my wife ordered the fish. No probs though, we just had the remaining beef in sandwiches the next day, then a curry, and the huge bone went on to again make stock, which went into French onion soup, with brings us round quite nicely to end on a French note, where we began – bon ap.

Food and beer tasting session

Published July 27, 2009 Food , me 4 Comments
Tags: beer, CAMRA, tasting

Bill Green is the sort of chap who can pull off a cravat with a CAMRA monogrammed polo shirt. He’s also the press officer for the East London & City Branch of the Campaign for Real Ale, so it would be fair to say, knows a hell of a lot about the stuff. He’d very kindly invited myself and 30-odd other people for a beer and food matching evening in the upstairs room of the Dispensary, EC1, (itself chosen and the East London Camra pub of the year)

The themed for the evening was ‘beers brewed without hops’, which only became popular in the 13^th Century. Before their introduction other botanicals such as dandelion, wormwood and heather were added to beer for flavour and to add some bitterness. Bill lined up a selection of beers that contain additional flavouring elements, and worked carefully with the Dispensary’s head chef and owner Dave Cambridge to produce an accompanying menu.

My olfactory sense was somewhat diminished due to the onset of a bout of man flu, consequently my tasting notes reads along the lines of ‘yup, that tastes like beer’ so I’ve included below Bill’s thoughts.

Seconds away, eyes down, and we’re off..…

Umbell Magna Porter 5.0%
Food: Parma ham Crostini
Nethergate, Pentlow, Suffolk
Bill says ‘Infused with coriander and following a 1752 recipe. Warm, rich and fruity. Taste a favourite tipple of Dr Johnson, David Garrick and Sarah Siddons!’

I say ‘unusual one to start with, I’d have perhaps looked a little further east that the Italian peninsular for the food match. It works fine, what with the saltiness of the ham, but I’m wondering if more could be made of the coriander flavoring, perhaps middle eastern style lamb?

Next we’re off to bonnie Scotland…

Beer: Heather Ale 4.1% Williams of Alloa, Scotland
Food: Quail Egg with Haggis and Hollandaise
Bill says ‘Unique taste of heather flowers recalling Scottish Mediaeval ales. Robert the Bruce was inspired by this Beer to conquer at Bannockburn! Earthy with hints of honey and a herbal aroma.’

I say ‘Great combination, Scotch eggs being one of my favourite things on Earth, the beer’s bouncy, and despite the conk full of snot I can still detect the peaty heathery notes and the distant drone of a Runrig gig. William’s website declares heather ale has been brewed in Scotland since 2000BC. The peppery earthy taste and texture of the Scotch egg holds up well with the beer.

Then we’re off to the Far East via Salisbury…

Beer: Taiphoon 4.2%
Food: Thai Chicken and Coconut Satay
Hopback, Salisbury
Bill says ‘Coriander and lemongrass give an Oriental zing to this Pale Ale. Unusual and interesting in being brewed from a mixture of barley, maize and wheat malts.

I say ‘there was a fair chili kick to the skewers, and the coriander was there in the beer, but I had trouble tasting any lemongrass. Tasty drop mind, and was light and refreshing after the heat of the chicken. Hopback brewery produce one of my all time favourite drops, Summer Lightning, the taste of summer as far as I’m concerned, that and rain water obviously.

Beer: Dandelion 4.5%
Food: Tempura Roast Pimento
Hall and Woodhouse, Blandford Forum, Dorset

Bill says’ Light and golden organic bitter with herb aroma and bittersweet aftertaste. Dandelions have been valued for centuries for their herbal qualities and this beer style was an 18^th century favourite.

I say ‘Dandelions get a bad rep in the UK, pick them and you’ll wet the bed we were told as kids, which is based on their powerful diuretic nature (wonder if the same is true after a session on this beer?) and the heads come in handy for playing ‘what’s the time Mister Wolf?’ The people at my table detected a slight sweet grassy smell, but I’m drawing a blank due to the cold. The peppers were nice and sweet, not greasy. Hall and Woodhouse also make a pumpkin ale, which sounds fantastic, one for Autumn for sure.

Beer: Grozet 5.0%
Food: Wild Boar and Apple Chipolata
Williams of Alloa, Scotland

Bill says ‘An unpasteurized Lager that proves the Czechs can be matched. Gooseberry-infused it is clean and crisp with delicious floral aromas.

I say ‘sausage and beer are natural bedfellows. Indeed the Grenadier Pub in Belgravia does sausages on the bar for a quid. Bill here confessed to not being a lager fan, and indeed it did sit oddly on the mouth after the other beers, there were comments on my table of a slight medicinal quality to it. Good bangers mind, all made from scratch by David.

Beer: Chocolate Strong Ale 6.5%
Food: Teriyaki Beef
Meantime, Greenwich.

Bill says: Montezuma’s reward! The Aztecs added chocolate to beer and now innovative brewers are now copying. Dark chocolate contrasts with the crystal malts to give puckering bouquet and complex taste

I say: Simply stunning, the best match by far, a match like Bjorn v McEnroe is a match, a match like Swan Vesta is a match. A match that in two mouthfuls triple jumps its way across three Continents looting tastes from the far east, south America and the home of time itself, Greenwich. The best one of the evening as far as I’m concerned. Even the back of the bottle sums up my attitude before trying it saying ‘Chocolate and beer! Are we mad?’ No sir. Eccentric perhaps, even genius, but not mad. It’s really something else; indeed I slow cooked ox cheek in it at the weekend.

How do you follow that? Well, with something sweet, and from the same brewery too.

Beer: Raspberry Wheat 6.5%
Food: Mini Summer Pudding
Meantime, Greenwich

Bill says: Vibrant red colour and mouth-arousing zesty finish. Challenges the classic Berliner weisses. Secondary fermentation of the fruit sugars gives potent flavour and lingering aftertaste.

I say: Another good combination, sharp and tart to finish off with and leaving our mouths puckered shut like a dogs bum… um, in a good way.

Conclusion.

For me the pairing of food and drink has always been more subjective that the pairing of flavours or ingredients on a plate. I don’t know about you but I’ve never taken as gospel the food suggestions on the back of a bottle of wine for example. Food’s relationship with drink is an open relationship in which pretty much anything goes, yes even red wine with fish for which James Bond once shot a man.

However, some things ‘go’ better than others. For me, the best beer and food combinations of the evening either shared a cultural link, a terrior if you will, (think haggis and heather) or had a connection through similar ingredients. I try to look past the standard formula of ‘the w of y cuts through the x of the z’ (where w is an characteristic of the drink y, and x an attribute of ingredient z)

When looking at food with drink, I’m looking for something more, some soul at the bottom of the glass maybe, some other reason for these tastes being together and why they work. I am however watchful of the biblical saying ‘eat, drink, and be merry’ and that at the end of the day drink is present on a table for toasting as well as tasting, so let’s not get to hung up about it.

Far more interesting to my mind is the progress that’s been made. To think that 40 years ago we’d have been pairing a Whatney’s Party Seven with Marguerite Patten’s cheddar fondue or chicken in a basket. Today UK breweries are producing a broad enough range of beers to compliment and enhance almost every cuisine from across the globe. I’d even go so far as to say that the depth, range and colour of that palette is greater than that of wine, yet you’ll see few beers on sommeliers’ hefty tomes.

If you’d like to find out more, the CAMRA website has a nice ‘rule of thumb’ page listing major ingredients and what ‘goes best’ with each of them. Cheers.

In praise of washing up

Published June 7, 2009 Food , London , me 1 Comment
Tags: sunday lunch, washing up

When I was younger and extended family came for a visit mum would do a lunch. On the day itself was an air of palpable excitement in the house, extra cleaning had to be done, a special lunch was planned, and no one was allowed to use the loo or make a mess anywhere until the guests had arrived. As the allotted hour of arrival approached me and my sister kept station at the front window listening for the sound of a car in the street outside. Meanwhile in the kitchen the kettle was practically kept at a rolling boil, ready for the cups of tea and a full debrief of the traffic conditions and journey highlights.

Later we’d all sit down for lunch; probably salad and cold cuts in the summer, or something meaty in the winter. Then with the meal over, the blokes would help clear the table and then move into the lounge or out to check oil in cars and have a crafty fag, while the aunts, mums and grandma did the dishes. Us kids were press ganged into putting away, and I always found that the washing up was where the real gossip, chat and exchange of views seemed to happen. Back then no one owned a dishwasher, and washing up – like shelling peas or licking the cake bowl – was part of the food production process. I remember the chatter mixing with the chink and clatter of dishes and the tea towels that put in three minute bouts before being too wet to use and had to be replaced by new ones. When domestic order was once again restored, more tea was put on, as was the telly and we all settled down, the world now put to rights.

I mention this vignette from yesteryear because a few weeks ago some old BBC friends came round for Sunday lunch. We had some special sixty-day aged beef that my friend Theo at the Ginger Pig’s Hackney branch had set aside for another customer who’d changed his mind at the last minute apparently; his loss was our gain is all I’ll say. The lunch was lovely, lashings of wine, tasty gravy, cauliflower cheese and roasties. The spuds for the roasties were Cyprus, a potato I’d never roasted before, and my friends did look at me a little oddly when I told them I had a practice run with one potato last night just to make sure nothing went wrong.

Anyway, with the lunch over I began to scrap the plates and run the hot tap for washing up. This is when my friend Neil chipped in with ‘let me help you with the dishes’. Washing up on your own is dull, washing up with a friend is a chance to confide and talk to each other in a different way. You’re both engaged in a task, so there’s all the dealing with ‘you’ve missed a bit’ and ‘where does this sieve live?’ stuff. This of course runs concurrent with the big life issues of love and loss. It’s a sort of duet, a dance; a totally different space and activity on which to host a conversation, different things are said than at the table. Let’s face it, no one ever says ‘ooh let me help you fill the dishwasher’, that’s just boring. You try it next time you have people round, make washing up part of the whole process. It gives both host and guest a chance to talk in a more personal way. You also end up with a nice clean kitchen, and all your pots and plates put back in new and unusual places.

Feed your imagination? I left hungry

Published June 5, 2009 Food , London , me 10 Comments
Tags: art, east end, Evocative foods, London, nonsense

What happens when you combine a Collection of THINKERS,
a World Renowned CHEF and a FOOD FUTUREOLOGIST?

The answer is general confusion if last night is anything to go by. Oh where to begin? As a food journalist and an ex-Central Saint Martins graduate the prospect of a food/art event in East London organised by MA students from my alma mater sounded like the sort of hip, urban, fusion event I should attend. And attend I did after an invite from one of them via twitter.

About 7ish I found the venue, and upon entering was given a booklet (more on this later) and told to experience the food, particular attention was drawn to the accompanying green stickers that I was to stick next to each course after I’d tried it – right. The hosts broke the cardinal rule of London event organising by not having a drink ready on arrival, there was one girl pouring out water, no one handing it round, and lots of cocktail glasses and wine glasses standing empty on the table. Confusion seemed very much in charge.

The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small. – Woody Allen

Wandering round this table to the kitchen I heard someone exclaim ‘everyone’s come at once!’ The kitchen obviously couldn’t cope, and that left me, Chris, Lizzie, Helen and Charlie waiting, for what seemed like an entire epoc. When the food did issue forth from the kitchen there wasn’t really enough to go around.

And so to the menu, which was a prime piece of codswallop marinated in nonsense. I almost resent typing it out but here it is.

Asparagus in textures, cooked and raw, gelee and granite with garnishes.
Young carrots – crisply chopped, marinated whole
English spring peas- on the half shell with liquid gel and flowers
Sprouting broccoli, egg yolk spheres, and warm mayonnaise
Jersey Royals prepared in many ways with seasonal garnishes
Radishes- dug up from the earth, crispy soil
Cauliflower- Couscous pickled and puree. Apple air
Wild garlic with its flowers warm and cold. Vegetable ribbons
Strawberries and rhubarb. Hazelnut powder and reduce milk
Berry bundles

Crisply chopped? Prepared many ways? I tried one dish with slices of courgette on, was the number 8? There were no flowers on it, but there was a sphere of something and a pickled onion sort of thing – I didn’t know where to stick my sticker. I think number 2 had to be the worst. It was a tiny carrot, topped with tasteless foam, next to some frozen carrot pulp, the entire lot tasting of…cold wet carrot.

Eventually one chap then started making something to drink other than the water. A single shot of vodka was measured out slowly from a solitary bottle, added to a ladle of lychee juice and then divided into four glasses. I’m no a ligger or a lush, but the bare minimum when you invite someone to a food and drink ‘event’ is to provide plenty of those two very things. I was offered a berry bundle. It was a raspberry (from Tesco’s across the road according to the packet in the kitchen) wrapped in jelly, unsurprisingly it tasted like a raspberry.

Misspelt muddled manifesto.

And so to the accompanying booklet. As Chris said ‘I’ve read it three times and I still don’t understand it’. I had a read, I tried to get into it, I really did – look at the concentration. But my eyes kept sliding of meaningless words and pointless graphics.

Take this for example.

“We felt that ‘we’ as a whole have lost our capability to be enchanted by the world that surrounds us. To re-establish the once magical connection between our Selves [sic] and different interactions that compose our universe”

What on Earth does that mean? That makes no sense whatsoever. Over the page were more bonkers graphics, such as this.

Mind. Body. What if… mind and body were joined? Hands up who’s mind isn’t joined to their body? But the best of all was the following on the ‘who are we’ page.

“A group of CSM’ers on their Masters, who’ve been given a project to do and attacked it with vigour. Creative, Inquisitive, Curious, Hopeful and sometimes blinded by Enthusiasm, we are students and proffesionals, [sic] who just like you…

Have ideas.”

So far I can forgive the random caps scattered throughout the book, but of all the words to misspell professional is very much not the one (The other howler was characteristics in the paragraph above). I went to art school so by default I can’t spell either, but if I was getting something printed I’d at least get it subbed.

If you can’t say anything nice…

Making anything is hard work, I know that, but these are MA students doing a masters for heaven’s sake. If they’d spent more time on the food and the organization and less time on the navel gazing arty nonsense it could have worked. As it was it was just really unclear what exactly we as an audience were supposed to be doing; and eating a raspberry does not make me re-establish a magical connection with the Universe. Art and food have a long and close relationship, from the Last Supper to Sarah Lucas’ two fried eggs and a kebab. This however had the feel of an event put together by a losing team in an early round of the Apprentice.

What’s more they charged people for this event, and once you’ve asked folk to put their hand in their pocket and pay for something they expect to get it. If this had been a free event (though it was to me) I wouldn’t have minded so much, I would have said ‘well done for trying’. But my friends had paid £30 to be there it took alot of beers and lovely Vietnamese food in Old Street afterwards to get rid of the bitter taste of disappointment in our mouths.

Something Brewing in the East End…

Published June 3, 2009 Food , London , me 1 Comment
Tags: CAMRA

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Leyton, where we lay our scene.

The families of both CAMRA and Slow Food came together last Thursday for a tour of East London’s newest brewery. Brodie’s Beers was set up a year ago round the back of the William the Forth pub on Leyton High street. It run by brother and sister James and Lizzie Brodie, James was a Home Brewing enthusiast and Lizzie has a degree in Biological Sciences.

Their beers are available in the pub next door, but also in the Crossed Keys in Covent Garden, The Hermit’s Cave in Camberwell, and the King Charles I in Kings Cross. The first beer James produced was an IPA to a recipe he used to make for himself in his bath. It’s available now in bottles, but I’m keen to try some of what’s on tap. First off Brodie’s Red, it’s a chestnutty brew, plenty of flavour. Later I move on to Sunshine; lighter and more golden it’s a perfect summer pint.

Tonight James is letting 23 year old brewery student Tom Unwin use the equipment to make a brew to his own recipe, which is very nice of him. Tom’s not thought of a name for the beer yet, and so I suggested that Londonist readers might come suggest one, use the comments box on the Londonist version of this article for your suggestions.

Finally Boris’ tube booze ban applies to alcopops and louts right? Not real ale enthusiasts like this chap here…

Eating Eurovision: Malta

Published May 16, 2009 Food , London , me 16 Comments
Tags: eating, eurovision, malta

Malta?! I put my hand in the bag first and out of the 25 countries I drew Malta. My GCSE Geography dusted itself off and swung into action. ‘Small Island, somewhere in the Med, bombed a lot during the war’ it said. But as for food, it drew a blank, along with the rest of my knowledge.

Bernard Hamilton: Deputy High Commissioner of Malta

The next day when I asked the press person at the Maltese tourist office about Maltese food in London he replied “there isn’t any”. Two hours later I’m sat in the office of the Deputy High Commissioner for the Republic of Malta having Maltese coffee and biscuits. “It’s true, sadly there’s no Maltese restaurants here,” says Bernard Hamilton. Bernard very kindly found 30 minutes at ridiculously short notice to talk to me about Malta, it’s history and people, and it’s relationship to the UK. Churchill once called Malta the ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’, and the former British colony is now an active member of the Commonwealth. “Our natural resource is our culture and heritage,” says Bernard, a heritage that has been shaped by nearly all the civilisations of antiquity as well as a few modern ones laying claim to the islands. Empire’s come and go, but Malta remains it seems. In fact the main island is home to the oldest free standing structures in the world, these rocks are old.

We come on to Eurovision. “Jade was in Malta a few weeks ago. (She was a guest of their act-choosing show) In Malta we take Eurovision very seriously”. It’s front-page news apparently. Malta, you’ll no doubt be aware, (mostly) give us the maximum 12 points no matter who we send to the competition (yes even Scootch). They are our last unsinkable ally against the axis of eastern Eurovision dominance, our brothers in arms, as Mike Atkinson says in the Guardian ‘we owe them’.

I move the discussion on to food. Bernard talks about the coffee we’re drinking, which is flavoured with fennel, cloves and something called cikwejra, which it turns out is chicory. The traditional flavoured coffees are falling out of favour, being replaced by the standard Italian styles. We also have some little dry biscuits to dip into the coffee. We move on to more substantial matters. “The national dish is rabbit,” says Bernard. “Families often keep their own rabbits to eat, and so consequently look after them well”. We talk some more about being a diplomat, Bernard won Young Diplomat of the year for his consular work, and the day to day tasks of the Commission, which are dealing with visas, promoting trade and tourism, and helping look after Malta’s interests in the UK. Before I leave Bernard very kindly gives me some Maltese wine, a 2006 Medina Vineyard. It’s a blend of syrah, Grenache and carignan from Delicata and gratefully received.

Things are moving…

I head back home and get a call from one of the other leads I’d frantically found earlier in the morning; Barbara from the Maltese Cultural Movement. We arrange to meet in a pub in Highgate, as she’s a few Maltese treats for me. These turn out to be some bottles of Cisk (pronounced Chisk) lager, six cans of Kinnie (a bitter/sweet soft drink native to Malta) and some Pastizzi – the ubiquitous (in Malta anyway) snack. Pastizzi come with either ricotta or pea fillings, and each village baker has their own way of making them – all done by hand. The ones I’ve got are frozen; I’ll be having them during Eurovision. If you want to try some either order them off Barbara or keep an eye out for Cynthia who runs www.ilovepastizzi.com and does some of the markets in London. Kinnie is a bitter drink made from oranges, but with slight aniseed notes. It’s reminds me of Campari, and is probably best served ice cold in a little café in Valetta. It’s the Irn Bru of Malta.

Cisk lager and Kinnie soft drink

Barbara and her husband set up the Maltese Cultural Movement 11 years ago “because there was nothing really for the Maltese people in the UK”. (Earlier Bernard estimated that people of Maltese extraction number 50,000 in the UK, mostly based in London). “When we opened the centre in April 1998 we were overwhelmed by the response”. They now organise three Maltese themed events every year, the next being June 27th to celebrate mnarja. The festival takes place in Malta to honour St Peter and St Paul. “The whole island gets together, and it was at the festival that you hoped to meet a wife or a husband,” says Barbara. Indeed from listen to both Barnard and Barbara the Maltese like to party most weekends of the summer, there’s always something going on. (More on Maltese festivals here)
Barbara then talks about the future of the Maltese Cultural Movement, “when we set it up, we go the support of the first generation community, those that came over after the war, now we’re into the second and third generation –as well as young Maltese coming here for the first time – we need to be there for them too.”
Barbara also gives me a rabbit recipe, and here it is.
Fried Rabbit
Ingredients:
1 rabbit cut into portions
Plenty of Garlic cut roughly (nearly a whole bulb)
Bay leaf
White wine (couple of large glasses, maybe more)
Method:
Fry the rabbit in a shallow oil and add half the garlic, season with salt and pepper. When the rabbit is golden in colour add the bay leaf for about a minute then take out the excess oil. Add the rest of the garlic and fry a little before adding the white wine and simmering until tender.

Lots of garlic, lots of bay leaf

More Maltese kindness

Garlic it seems is key it seems to Maltese cooking, and indeed ‘did you put the garlic?’ is the blog name of a second generation Maltese Mary Rose who I met next.

Mary and her lovely cakes

Mary-Rose was born in Melbourne to Maltese parents, she went to and fro between the Island and Oz before eventually settling in the UK. We arrange to meet at St Pancras at 7:45 and since finishing work at 6 she’s been home and baked me some cakes – I’m aghast. She’s also got a Maltese cookbook to lend me “my mother thinks this book’s rubbish” she says. The cakes are Pastini tal coconut, and here’s the recipe.

Ingredients
250g plain flour
250g butter
500g desiccated coconut
350g Sugar
A few drops of vanilla essence
4 eggs

Method (makes four dozen)
Rub the flour and butter together, them mix through the coconut. Then mix in the sugar and vanilla essence. Whisk the eggs into the mixture. Roll into little balls and decorate with glace cherries or almonds. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 200 degrees.
‘My mother always makes these in huge batches” says Mary, who then goes on to tell me about the pleasures and pitfalls of a Maltese mother. It seems that Maltese mothers are at the heart of the home, and Malta is a place where many traditional values are still present (The word for wife is the same as for woman). “My other half says it’s not so much backward, as just in a time warp”.

Mary goes on to talk about everything from the Maltese film industry to post war rationing to her mother’s lack of a toaster and the joy that is hobz biz-zejt. The later is literally translated as bread and oil, yet is more of an open sandwich. Take the traditional Maltese bread and place ripe sliced tomatoes on top, then add capers and tuna, before drizzling on a lot of olive oil. “This was often my lunch at School in Melbourne, when all the other kids had veggie-mite sandwiches” says Mary.
Bernard, Barbara and Mary all talked about rabbit as the national dish, and as it happens I had a bunny in the freezer from my trip round Smithfield Meat Market. So, armed with a recipe from Barbara and a Maltese Cookbook Mary lent me, I’m ready cook the Maltese national dish…

Rabbit, with liver in

Stuffat tal-fenek aka stewed rabbit.
Barbara’s rabbit casserole.
Ingredients:
Rabbit (plus liver and kidney’s). Red wine. Garlic. Onion. Tomatoes. Bay leaves. Spices (Chinese five spice). Salt & Pepper. Peas (Marrowfat).
Method:
Cut the rabbit into six pieces (legs, loin and front legs)
Sauté the rabbit with onion, garlic and wine and tomato sauce (made from more onion, garlic, bay leaf, spices and wine) simmer gently and add the peas.

adding tomatoes

It’s 9:30pm by the time I get back home, and the aim of the stew is to cook it long and slow so the meat’s almost falling off the bones, so this is very much going to have to be a dish for tomorrow. I’m not very good at following recipes while cooking. Some people can’t be with out them, relying on them as a classical musician might rely on sheet music. I tend to riff a little when it comes to cooking, Barbara’s recipe calls for Chinese five spice, Mary’s book calls for curry powder and some pork belly. I’ve got none of these in the house, so opt for a tea spoon of garum masala. I just remember what Barbara said, ‘lots of garlic and bay leaf’, and put in loads.

Next, the rabbit. Why I think rabbit fell out of favour and was replaced by chicken is that when it’s laid out in front of you, it looks like a dead skinned animal, where as a chicken – upside down with legs and feet off – just looks raw. The way to deal with any squeamish thoughts you might have is to just get stuck in and cut it up, once you’ve broken the form it too can just look like raw ingredients. I chop it down into legs, loin and other bits, deciding to leave the head out, and brown it in the pan having first removed the onions and garlic.

ready for tonight!

I put the lot back in and add a glass of Bernard’s Maltese wine and a carton of passata, bringing it up to a high heat. Lastly I add the liver, which is very delicate. Barbara recommends frying this with more garlic and oil before adding a splash of malt vinegar and eating – but it’s now getting on a bit so I just add it in and hope it’ll flavour the sauce. I set my oven to 100 degrees and pop the casserole in and set the time to turn off at 6am, giving 7 hours of long slow cooking. Most recipes call for peas to be added, Barbara says marrowfat are the best, but I’ve only got petit pois and they’ll have disintegrated after 7 hours cooking so I decide to add those when I reheat it tomorrow.
This morning the stew looks amazing, the sauce has thickened and darkened considerably, and the rabbit is soft and moist. Traditionally you would spoon off some of the sauce and have that over spaghetti as a starter, then have the meat with potatoes as a main course. Which is what I intend to do, with a glass of Maltese wine, an appetiser of pastizzi or two, and a drink of Kinnie.

When I woke up on Friday I knew next to nothing about Malta, and bugger all about its food. In 24 hours I’ve had coffee with the deputy high commissioner and sourced Maltese products and recipes first hand, which is exactly what Eating Eurovision is all about. As I said in the guidelines, most people are proud of their heritage and culture, and want to share it, and that makes the world a better place. There may not be a Maltese restaurant in London, but there’s lots of people who are proud to be Maltese, and who knows, maybe it’s time for one.

A tour around Smithfield

Published May 12, 2009 Food , me 2 Comments
Tags: market, meat, smithfield

Waiting for the first tube of the day

Ah dawn, only ever viewed through blood-shot or sleep-filled bleary eyes, and it’s the later that look upon the low sun at the end of Gillespie Road N5 this morning. It’s 5:15am, and I find myself staring at the locked gates of Arsenal tube station that should be open by now. A yawning member staff comes over and slides back the barriers and 7 minutes later I’m on the first Piccadilly line tube of the day. The early start is necessary as I’m off for a tour of London’s historic Smithfield meat market.

Upon reaching Farringdon things are eerily quiet a la 28 days later, only the distant rattling and ‘vehicular reversing’ beeping coming from further up Cowcross Street belies any human activity. As I approach the building I see white transit vans clustering round each hole in the market’s side, doors open like mouths. Each of these vans is attended by somebody in white overalls and boots – and the first impression that comes into my head is, I’m sorry to say, maggots. I head up to the Superintendent’s office where I walk into a room of slightly bored looking students from Thanet catering college, who along with myself are here for a tour. A guide is recently retired market copper Tom Hunter, who for 37 year pounded his beat either side of the Grand Avenue and all around the 10 acre site.

After donning white coats and hard hats we’re off downstairs following Tom like ducklings. Everyone it seems knows him and he stops to shake hands and say hello to various stallholders. He leads us round the back to where the meat is unloaded or ‘pitched’ and shows us the rail and hook system that moves the heavy carcasses around to the rear store room of each unit. “In the old days men would carry it all by hand, and when lifting a frozen pig carcass on or off their shoulder men would often rip their ears, which would bleed badly.”

buying lamb for a big party

We stop to admire some fine looking welsh lambs hanging up waiting for processing before moving onto the trading floor. The market is about 80% wholesale and consequently caters to many price points, and so there’s plenty of large blocks of industrial orange cheddar and intensively farmed Chinese chicken on offer as well as quality UK lamb and beef. Further on I peel away slightly from the group and stop to chat to three West Indian ladies who are shopping for a party. Jackie says she’s making curried goat (though she’s using lamb) with rice and peas, she’s also got chicken, beef, more lamb and two lambs heads. They’re shopping for friends’ freezers too. “We come here once a month – it’s much cheaper and the quality’s good” she says “I can get three, four times as much meat here as what I can get in Morrison’s. For under a £100 they’ve got an old shopping trolly packed to the gunwales with quality meat from Stephen at Andrade’s Butchers. Tom later tells us that this is the only business that’s been here in the same family since the market opened in the 1900s

I then talk to the owner of another stall, Kentas ltd. I ask him how the market’s changed over the years. “It used to be brilliant here, but with the congestion charge everyone wants to be long gone by 7am. Add to that the health and safety, it’s gone mad.” He says, going on to quotes this story about stepladders in the Bodleian and finishing off with a pop at Brussels and the EU. “I’m not allowed to have anything open or out on display here, how can people try things? Years ago at Christmas we’d do a big urn of hot punch, and have mince pies out for the customers and other traders, we’re not allowed now.” It may sound like a rant, but he’s got a point, his stall has huge parma hams hanging up, as well as Italian cakes and salamis, it’s a shame he can’t open them and perfume the air.

Buying the Waygu

We move on to the Poultry hall where I buy a French rabbit and four quails to be used at some future date (any suggestions?). Here again I loose the group and fall in chatting with a North American guy at the counter who’s buying wagyu beef. “For a special occasion?” I ask. “Yeah, it’s a treat for myself” – Spencer Morley it turns out, is a cage fighter. It’s partly for the fitness and the discipline he tells me, but also as a foil against what he feels a safe, cosseted, danger-free life. He also has a day job as an IT consultant. Spencer eventually settles on a huge rump costing over £150, he’ll cut this into steaks, cook it sous-vide and then on a high hot flame. “It’s the best way I’ve found of doing steaks”. He shops for more ordinary meat at the market too, “Fighting means you need a lot of protein, and it’s just to expensive in the supermarket, here it’s much cheaper”.

Fight night!

Indeed the pugilistic arts and the market have a long history, later on back in the office Tom tells me of Tommy McGoven, who as well as being a porter was the lightweight champion of Great Britain. He shows me a poster from 1951 detailing a bout at the Royal Albert Hall in which Tommy was the main billing, and guess who else is further down the bill? Charlie, Ron and Reggie Kray.

The students having moved on, I sit and have a chat with Tom. He only retired 18 months ago, and says it’s hard leaving something he loves so much, so he does these tours. “I’m from Scotland right, but I think London, and round here especially, is the best place in the world”. Like the owner of Kentas, Tom too tells me of a certain loss of jour de vivre within the market; how it used to be a community full of characters. “I used to nick ‘em sure, but they were great guys”. There used to be barrowing running competitions and carcass carrying races between the porters too. “Every Christmas we’d get a barrow full of toys for this kids at St Barts, Homerton and the London hospital” Tom tells me.

He also tells tale of one porter who was, despite a love of the booze, a good singer. “The Queen mother was coming to visit and I wanted them [the traders and porters] on their best behaviour. Well after she’s out of the car this chap rushes forward, drops onto one knee and starts to sing ‘If you were the only girl in the world and I were the only boy’. It brought a tear to her eye I believe.” He says. “The Queen Mother came here many times, she new when the people here spoke about things, they were telling the truth”. Indeed she was made a horary freeman of the company of Butchers, and took a great interest in them.

We then look at a supplement published by the Meat Trades Journal in 1968 for the centenary of the market. It’s full of history, but also Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’ and a belief in the future. These were times when science and farming were going to feed the world, where communication and commerce were near instant and global. What caught my eye is this image in a section about the future of the market. ‘Advance methods of selling may include phone-vision during which the seller will be able to show his meat in perfect colour’. Next to it an image straight out of Thunderbirds, ‘Smithfield may one day be on the ground floor of a multiple storey building with office and even flats above it’ and finally ‘no method has yet been discovered to move quantities of meat mechanically, but this problem will be solved.’ At least the last one came true. The future Smithfield actually got was courtesy of Thomas Bennett, who designed a new poultry hall after Horace Jones’ 19^th Century original burnt down in 1958. Other modernist roofing and adornments were added, the result not so much being a ‘carbuncle on the face of an old friend’ as repeatedly hitting said friend in the teeth with a breezeblock. Later additions glass and steel additions in the 90s are now too looking jaded and worn, making Smithfield look a mess. The fish market is abandoned, and some of the stalls in the poultry hall are boarded up and empty.

Could this space be put to use?

And yet, if you close your eyes and imagine you can get a sense of what this place was and what it can be again. What Smithfield needs I feel is restoration not development, Even the modernist additions are getting on for 50 years old now too, well on the way to becoming historical and, like them or not, are part of the history of the place. Smithfield is one of the few markets left in London in its original Victorian location. Look at Borough market, you can hardly move there at weekends, and yet here across town stalls are boarded up and empty.

We’ve had a huge resurgence in produce and provenance over the past 15 years. The Smithfield site restored to it’s former glory could be a dream location for food fans, diners, catering students and businesses. Just across the street from the market is St John, Hix Oyster & Chop House, Smiths of Smithfield owned by John Torode, Comptoir Gascon and many others, all of whom are trading on the location and yet are thoroughly contemporary in outlook and service. What if the big names behind those eateries got together with the traders and the powers that be, and came up with a plan that promoted both history and heritage hand in hand with produce and provenance the area? Could Smithfield once again be, as Daniel Defoe described in 1726 “without question, the greatest in the world”.

Epilogue

Not the best fry up in the world

Leaving the market at 8:30am, hungry and swimming against the tide of office workers, I sought to canvassed opinion on where to go for a breakfast. Smith’s of Smithfield seemed to be doing a roaring trade with plenty of suits chowing down, and there’s always the Cock Tavern in the market itself. But their was something sinister about their ‘special’ of a fish finger sandwich (in the middle of a meat market!) that put me off. I took the advice of one of the porters and headed for the Hope and Sirloin. The sign on the door said breakfasts were available upstairs, but after getting up there and finding no one I came back down. The guy behind the bar said I could order and eat downstairs, so I ordered a full English and customary pint of Guinness and waited. 10 minutes later the chef himself brings me out a fry up poorly piled together on a oval plate no bigger than 8” across. The beans were watery, the egg snotty in the middle and the kidney bloody. In its defence the sausages were good, as was the black pudding, but the liver was tough as old boots. It then took five minutes to find a clean knife and folk (followed by a ‘sorry mate’), and once I set to I felt less like a diner and more like a watch maker taking apart a pocket watch. There was so little room on the plate for any cutting of it’s contents I ended up spilling beans over the edge of the plate. Add to this the fact that I had to ask for the toast that was meant to accompany it, (followed by another ‘sorry mate’) and the fact that they were playing The Stones’ ‘Biggest Mistake of my Life’ and you can see where this is all going. As I left I read the board outside to the bottom, potato spelt with an e says it all. Still, you live, eat and learn.

Spot the typo

Eyedropper’s excellent eggy bread

Published May 9, 2009 Food , me 2 Comments
Tags: breakfast, eggy bread, Food, hangover

Of all the things to reach for,
to quell both stomach and head.
There is but one true winner,
My old friend eggy bread.

Eat it fast, eat it hot

Like most people I have on occasion been known to over indulge. That ‘one last round’ to make the debit card amount up over a tenner, the night’s cash having just ran out, we’ve all done. it. The morning after, a touch delicate and with culinary skills not quite up to par, there’s one thing to reach for: eggy bread.

And let’s clear one thing up, it’s eggy bread when made this way, not French toast, not pan perdu, not dusted with icing sugar and served with a fruit compote. The only way to eat it is mouth blowingly hot, straight off the chopping board while the next one’s in the pan cooking.

However, in a nod to health but also texture, I take a leaf out of Sting’s ‘Englishman in New York’ and like my (eggy)toast done on one side. Toast on one side you say, but how? Well, you can do it under the grill obviously, but that require keeping your eye on both hob and grill – far too much effort. Besides if you’re going to bother waiting for the grill to get hot you might as well get some bacon on, and a tomato maybe, hell go the whole hog to a fry up, and that’s a whole other exercise.

See I’m lucky enough to have a Dualit toaster that can take four slices, I simply switch it to ‘two mode’ but place each slice in the ‘cold’ slot so that the element only heats one side. The opposite ‘raw’ side then gets to slip into the eggy bath and soak while the oil and butter in the frying pan heat up. Then it’s straight in and twisted round to gather up any straying egg. If you are doing the grill method my advice is lightly toast four pieces of bread at once, it won’t matter if they go cold as you can easily reheat by flipping in the frying pan.

Why go to all this effort? Well I just find that keeping things ‘toast’ on one side give you both ridgidity, texture and crunch. Egg on both sides, even on good bread but especially on cheap thinly sliced white bread, gives too much sogginess and grease. And the last thing you want with a hangover is a greasy eggy gag.

And who knows, maybe one day, I’ll be hungover enough to experiment with eggy-one-side-fried-the-other-bread™ ? I won’t insult your intelligence with a recipe, just try the above technique and see if it works for you.

Picnic recipes

Published May 5, 2009 Food , me 1 Comment
Tags: bbq, birthday, cooking outdoors, Food, me, picnic

Sunday was the nicest day of the bank holiday weekend, it was also the chosen day of my birthday picnic. I’d spent Saturday making things and getting bits marinating. It was mainly salads and cold things, but also a few kebabs and koftas that needed cooking.

Now, I’m not really a fan of those disposable barbecues, it’s very difficult to control the heat, and they chuck out loads of smoke so that everyone gets a bit sick and smells of smoke for the rest of the day.

Far better to use a small cooking stove and a pan, with this you can cook in small batches as needed, the heat can be controlled and it doesn’t taste of charcoal.

But a picnic wouldn’t be a picnic without some salads, so here what I made.

Puy lentil salad

Half a pack of puy lentils
One packet of feta cheese
One tomato or half a pepper
Large handful of mint leaves
Olive oil

Boil the lentils as directed on the packet. Drain and cool. Cut the feta into small cubes, finely dice some red pepper or small tomatoes to provide a few flecks of red. Wash and chop the mint. Combine all the ingredients with the oil, season and serve.

Chorizo and chickpea

1 tin of chickpeas
1 chorizo (unsliced)
1 large onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 tin of tomatoes
Splash of pepper sauce
Pinch of saffron
Teaspoon red wine vinegar
Fresh parsley

Put the chickpeas in a small saucepan and boil gently, this will help soften them. Fry the onion and garlic in a frying pan and add slices of chorizo. Add the cooked chickpeas, the tin of chopped tomatoes and all the other ingredients, season and cook slowly for 20 minutes till combined. Add the fresh parsley at the end.

Koftas

Handful of minced beef and pork
Finely diced onion and garlic
Tea spoon cumin
Tea spoon chilli flakes
Salt and pepper
Chopped mint and parsley
Pinch curry powder
Handful breadcrumbs
1 egg

Fry the onion and garlic until translucent and leave to cool. (I find adding cooked onion keeps the moisture content in the koftas down) Add the onion to the meat along with the other ingredients and mix. The egg and the breadcrumbs help bind the mixture. Another tip is to use two bamboo sticks in each one. This gives extra grip and stops the chance of the meat spinning round when turning. Squeeze the meat tightly on and chill before cooking.

There were some ‘also ran’s’ that you can kind of figure out from the description.

Chilli beef kebabs - These were just cubes of beef marinated in oil, lime juice, chill flakes and pepper sauce and then skewered on sticks.

Minty lamb kebabs – Lamb, lemon juice, mint and natural yoghurt marinated and skewered.

Tuna and sweet corn salad – Dead basic this, can of tuna, sweet corn, chopped celery, parsley, mayonnaise – mixed up.

Potato salad – Boiled new potatoes, mint, mayonnaise, whole grain mustard.

Tomato salad – tomatoes deseeded and chopped, olive oil, balsamic and basil

Fennel and celery salad – fry the fennel and celery with onion and garlic, cool, and add to salad leaves. Add the fronds of the fennel and celery leaves too.

Sticky chicken wings – marinated in honey and soy sauce then cooked in a hot oven.

Add to the above bread, humus, wine, and some halloumi kebabs for the veggies and we all proceeded to get nicely smashed in the sunshine. Mmmm.

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