Essex Eating

Essex Eating in Spain - Núñez de Prado Olive Oil

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:42:00 +0000

The surrounding countryside on the hour long bus journey from Córdoba provided a constant reminder of why I was travelling on this ageing coach in blistering heat. With my head resting against the glass, I watched reflected a continuous vista of olive groves stretching up and down in beautifully neat lines over the gently undulating hills, nothing else but olive trees, trailing off into the distance in every direction.

Stepping off the bus, in an incredibly louche manner, I took in my surroundings, the rather sleepy Spanish market town of Baena, destination for a fair amount of the olives I’d seen on the journey, there to be squashed relentlessly and mercilessly at the hands of Núñez de Prado, makers of some of the finest organic olive oil you can get your grubby mitts on, which was exactly what I had in mind.

Taking a swig of water and bemusedly studying the map on my phone, I wandered off aimlessly into town, accompanied by Elly, in search of the famous olive oil mill, determined to bluster, cajole, bribe or threaten my way in (as it turned out, there was no need for any of this, they happily let anyone in).

Arriving unannounced in the oil mill office and enquiring about the possibility of a site tour I was a little taken aback to have the President of the company, Francisco Núñez de Prado (or Paco to his pals) stepping up to act as guide.

Joined by a handful of fellow olive oil tourists we were led around the mill by the extremely entertaining Paco, who explained the process in English, Spanish and French – with a little German thrown in, just for the sheer hell of it.

The Núñez de Prado family have been making Olive Oil for seven generations and have eschewed the use of chemicals in the growing process since 1986 being subsequently certified organic in 1990.

Harvest season runs from November-January with 160 employees picking the olives entirely by hand ‘working really fast’.

The olives are crushed in terrifying looking, rolling, heavy granite presses which date from just after the Spanish Civil War, in 1944 and were installed by Paco’s father.

The resulting paste is then hydraulically pressed. They only produce Extra Virgin Olive Oil and there is only a 1st cold pressing.

The company’s primo product is Flor de Aceite or ‘Flower of the oil’ a free run EVOO that is produced by squeezing the crushed olive oil paste between mats, 10 kilos between each mat with a total of a tonne being pressed at a time. The end product is the oil that seeps out. 11 kilos of olives are needed to make just 1 litre of this oil.

After pressing the olive oil is pumped into glass tanks that are hermetically sealed to prevent flavour contamination. As the oil sits, it separates naturally from the water, which is then pumped away. Nothing is wasted, this ‘black water’ and the leftover crushed, tasteless olive oil paste is combined and used on the olive groves as a fertiliser.

The finished oil is then rested for a couple of months before bottling.

And that is more or less that. We then got the opportunity to purchase some of this exceptional product at almost ridiculous knock down prices £4.25 for a bottle of the Flor de Aceite. Thank you very much, stick me down for a case.

I found the whole thing fascinating, probably because the process is so beautifully simple, just like me. Also, I hadn’t really considered how olive oil was actually made, I mean, I had intelligently surmised you squashed the olives, but had absolutely no idea what the actual squashing operation looked like. Now I do. Artisanal squashy.

Afterwards we had a quick wander around Baena, noting that olives, somewhat unsurprisingly for a town surrounded by the things, are sold absolutely everywhere.

Feeling a bit sharp-set and having an hour or so to kill before our bus back to Córdoba we wandered into a bar down the road from the bus station, where the bocadillos we ordered (despite taking an age to arrive, what with the kitchen actually making a tortilla from scratch for the filling) were each about the heft of a midget’s arm. These combined with some patatas and a bottle of water came to10 Euros. Bar La Tella, I salute you and your two-fingered attitude to proportion.

I have much to share with you all about Spain in the coming weeks. I basically ate and drank my way non-stop around three cities, no doubt forever ruining my health, just for this blog and its readers. I really hope all 3 of you appreciate it.

Where to eat and drink in Bath

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:47:00 +0000

When I moved to Bristol three years ago, I was astounded to find that Bath is pretty much right next door (my mental geography image of this part of the UK at that time mostly consisting of the word ‘Cider’ scrawled across the South West portion of the map, in crayon). It is in fact a mere 15 minutes away on the train from Temple Meads and it’s fair to say that it’s bloody lovely.

As you are no doubt aware, I’m a sophisticated chap and like nothing more than a meander around this rather beautiful city gawping at some Georgian architectural majesty. Innit. As such, I have visited Bath a fair old bit and I reckon I have a pretty good handle nowadays on where’s good for a drink or something to eat and I want to share this hard earned information with you.

Now before I begin, as with my previously published Bristol guide to eating and drinking, I should point out these are the places I like, so bear that in mind whilst reading and subsequently spraying tea over your screen in a flabbergasted manner, then resultantly pounding out an angry comment, all elbows and arses.

Saying that, I’m not ashamed to point out that I have supremely good taste and you could do far worse than to follow my guidance on such matters.

So, lets get cracking…

Colonna and Smalls

First of all, coffee. This is undoubtedly the best place to get ‘cwaffee’ in Bath, in fact it’s probably the best place to get coffee in the South West. These guys take their brewing so seriously, it’s verging on geeky. I love it. Oh, and the cakes are bloody nice too.

6 Chapel Row

BA1 1HN

Telephone: 07766 808 067

http://www.colonnaandsmalls.co.uk

The Star Inn

A fairly new discovery for me. One of the most beautiful and unspoilt pubs I’ve ever sipped a pint in. Seriously, the interior looks like it hasn’t changed since at least 1935. It’s like stepping back in time. No fruit machine, no flat screen TV, no garish posters offering 2 for 1 on WKD, just a fire in the grate and a background murmur of conversation and laughter. Absolute pub heaven. I reckon the locally brewed Bellringer Ale is the drink to order.

23 The Vineyards Off the Paragon (A4)

BA1 5NA

Telephone: 01225 425 072

http://www.star-inn-bath.co.uk

Sam’s Kitchen

An Ottolenghi’ish display of beautifully heaped salads, cooked meat and cakes greet you as step into this cracking little café. The lunch I ate here recently was probably one of the best I’ve eaten anywhere in Bath. A plate piled with various salads topped with slices of roast lamb and olive tapenade. Superb. The excellent aforementioned Star Inn is just in the next street up.

61 Walcot Street

BA1 5BN

Telephone: 01225 481159

www.samskitchendeli.co.uk

The Chequers

I had a cracking lunch in this Bath Gastropub and was so inspired by the dessert I ate, Elly and I nicked the idea for one of our most successful ‘Basement’ desserts. Looking at the menu, puddings are a particularly strong section. The set lunch menu is decently priced. The sister pub to The Chequers, The Marlborough Tavern is just nearby. I’ve had some extremely nice food there and some that’s been just OK, so I’ve found it a little inconsistent to be honest, nevertheless it has a superb beer garden, if the sun’s shining.

50 Rivers St

BA1 2QA

Telephone: 01225 360017

http://www.thechequersbath.com

Bertinet Bakery

I’m a huge fan of Richard Bertinet’s excellent sourdough. Definitely pick up some of that, even if you’re just visiting Bath for the day, (preferably sliced) it keeps really well and toasts nicely from frozen and while you’re at it, grab some pastries and cakes too. Everything is superb.

6 New Bond Street Place

BA1 1BH

http://www.bertinet.com/bertinetbakery/bakery.php

Green Park Farmers Market

If you’re in Bath on a Saturday morning, head over to Green Park (formerly a train station) for the Farmers Market. There’s a fair bit of local produce on offer. I particularly recommend Homewood Cheese for their Ewe’s Curd. It’s cracking. Colonna & Smalls is located just around the corner, so get a coffee first to drink as you walk round.

Every Saturday 9am – 1:30pm

Green Park Station

Green Park Road

BA1 1JB

http://www.bathfarmersmarket.co.uk

The King William

A lovely little Bath gastropub set over a couple of floors. There’s a bar and a small dining room on the ground floor and a couple of attractive dining rooms upstairs. There are some extremely nice wines on their list and some great local ales on tap. Elly and I had a stonking Sunday lunch here.

36 Thomas Street

BA1 5NN

Tel: 01225 428096

http://www.kingwilliampub.com

Allium

Chef Chris Staines, formerly of the Michelin starred Mandarin Oriental in London has recently made the move to Bath and already achieved some rather impressive reviews from national newspaper reviewers, including Jay Rayner of The Observer and John Walsh in the Independent. Hard to believe the restaurant is located in a Best Western hotel, nevertheless the food is beautifully cooked. The set lunch menu is a bit of a bargain. I’m really looking forward to eating there again.

Best Western Abbey Hotel

North Parade

BA1 1LF

Telephone: 01225 805245

http://www.abbeyhotelbath.co.uk/allium-brasserie

Hare and Hounds

Since I last ate here, a new head chef has arrived so until I go back, I can’t really recommend the food (Although the pub has the same owners as The Chequers and The Marlborough Tavern so the odds are it should be fairly decent). The reason I’ve included this pub in my Bath recommendations is the view. This place has the most amazing vista over the surrounding countryside, both from within the interior of the pub and outside in a rather lovely terrace and garden. Although it’s a little way out of town, if the weathers nice, head here for a drink and if you do have some food, let me know if it’s any good.

Lansdown Road

BA1 5TJ

Telephone: 01225 482682

http://www.hareandhoundsbath.com

Finally, a couple of non-food related Bath tips…

Bath Thermae Spa

Something to do in Bath that I highly recommend, especially if you’re in town midweek. (It gets stupidly packed at the weekend) The Bath Thermae Spa is absolutely frigging uber. Yes, it’s not cheap at £26 for 2 hours (Although if you’ve travelled to Bath on the train, print this voucher out and get 4 hours for the price of 2) but it’s worth it. Seriously, floating in a warm open-air pool up on the roof, the surrounding countryside visible through the steam rising around you just has to be experienced…unless you don’t like pools. Personally I could have floated around in there all day. Tres ancient Roman. As I said, go midweek, in the morning, for the best experience.

The Hetling Pump Room,

Hot Bath St

BA1 1SJ

Telephone: 0844 888 0844

http://www.thermaebathspa.com

Found

Found is a shop owned by friends of mine and Elly’s, located just over Pulteney bridge. It’s basically full of extremely cool and well-chosen items, clothes, cards, stationery, bits and bobs and magazines (they stock David Chang’s Lucky Peach). Apparently Vogue has listed it as one of the top 100 stores outside of London, dahling. Well worth poking your head in for a look. Tell them Dan and Elly sent you to get 150% added on to anything you buy.

17 Argyle Street,

BA2 4BQ

Telephone: 01225422001

http://foundbath.co.uk

So that’s my Bath food and drink recommendations. It’s not an exhaustive list, I’m always finding about new places to eat and booze at. If you think I’ve missed somewhere worthwhile, or you have a recommendation, let me know.

Doughnuts Part 2 – Fennel and Raisin Custard

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:27:00 +0000

After the last nerve-shredding excursion to doughnut hell, I can hardly believe that I’ve managed to summon the sheer brass bollocked fortitude needed to make another attempt, but I have and this time, things were different.

First of all, I tried out a new flavour combination. Inspired by the rather bloody superb fennel and raisin bread available from Harts Bakery, (Located just around the corner from Bristol’s Temple Meads station) my doughnuts would be stuffed with fennel and raisin custard and would taste, it turns out, frigging uber. Even if I do say so myself.

Secondly, I actually followed my pastry chef mate’s tips, advice and amendments to the published St John doughnut recipe.

If you read my last post on the subject of doughnuts, you may be asking yourself why try again, Dan? Why Dan? WHY?!

Well, if I’m honest, my ridiculous sense of perfection and my mungus ego was left critically wounded by how much of a massive ball ache I found the whole process last time. I just ‘had’ to have another go at it and confirm that I’m the absolute frigging daddy / an utter half-baked cretin (delete as applicable).

Well yep, I’m pleased to report it’s cheesy grins and congratulatory back slaps all round as a sweet yeasty doughnut smell of success pervades my smug old ass right now. I honestly couldn’t be more chuffed with how they turned out this time. I rock. Totally.

If you too fancy grabbing yourself some of this impossibly self-satisfied conceit, here’s what you’ll need in addition to the doughnut recipe from my previous post, HERE.

Fennel & Raisin Custard Doughnut

You’ll Need: -
6 Tsp Fennel Seeds, Crushed (to infuse the crème patissiere)
200g Raisins
2 Tbsp Fennel Seeds, Crushed (to dust the doughnuts).

First, as my chef friend advised, after mixing your dough, don’t leave to rise as the original recipe advises, place it straight into the fridge. I made it in the evening and left it in the fridge overnight. The resulting dough was much firmer and easier to handle than on my previous attempt.

I weighed the dough out into 50g per portion, before rolling into balls to rise, with my hands coated with a little sunflower oil.

Also as advised, I placed the doughnuts on greaseproof paper, two to each piece.

When it came to frying, (at 175C) I dropped both into the fryer at once, paper and all, holding onto the edge of the greaseproof and pulling it away as they dropped into the hot oil. This saved me handling the doughnuts and squashing them, something that caused me so much frustration last time.

When dusting your just fried doughnuts add a couple of tablespoons of finely crushed fennel seeds to the caster sugar.

The other changes are to the crème patissiere recipe, at the beginning; add 6 tsp of crushed fennel seeds to the milk and vanilla pods mix to infuse.

Finally, pour boiling water over the raisins and leave them for a few minutes, to puff up a bit, before straining and stirring through the finished crème-pat. No one likes a flaccid raisin.

So that, as they say, is that. I can hold my head high (and suck my stomach in even more) I have persisted and prevailed over doughnuts!

* Wild Applause*

Bacon and Bourbon Custard Doughnuts

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:59:00 +0000

Before last week, I had never made a doughnut. Yes *pats belly* I have eaten muchos many, but actually crafted a sugary orb of loveliness with my own fair hands? Tres massive non.

Looking back now, what prompted me then to sit up and declare ‘I shall make doughnuts this day’ (because that’s how I actually talk), I have no idea. I obviously had a yawning circular shaped chasm in my life that needed to be filled, totes Freudian. But anyway. I did it and bloody hell, what a journey it was. A whole day of mixed emotions, ok, I say mixed, it was pretty much howling anger and frustration but at the close, there was just a tiny measure of delight.

You see, I found making doughnuts to be a complete and utter fucking ballache from start to end, but the finished, aesthetically misshapen, fried sugar dusted globes, oozing bourbon custard specked through with caramelised bacon were an absolute joy to eat.

Where did I get the inspiration for bacon and bourbon custard doughnuts? I have no idea. It just came to me in a similar boss-eyed brain flash that brought you celery ice-cream (yay) served with hot Stilton fritters (errr retch). My noggin just spits out stuff, that’s how it works. Sometimes it’s ‘mazers. Sometimes it’s totally ming. There’s no way of knowing until I actually make whatever it happens to be. Thinking about it, in all honesty, there’s probably a combination of influences at work, from the BBQ flavours in the day job as a manager at Grillstock to the incredible oxtail doughnuts at Duck at Waffle.

I decided to adapt the St John doughnut recipe from Beyond Nose to Tail, theirs are generally considered to be the best example money can buy (although if you’re reading this and are Bristol based, check out Pippins doughnuts, every Friday at Corn Street market – made by a former St John pastry chef, they’re just as good, unsurprisingly).

Towards the end of the doughnut making process, when I was feeling utterly broken, covered in a combination of flour, dough and desperation with every single bare surface in the wreckage of my kitchen littered with discarded ingredients and equipment, like a far warmer, gastronomic version of Napoleon’s 1812 retreat from Moscow; salvation came.

I’d forgotten that a friend of mine was until recently a pastry chef at the St John Hotel and was just a bit more than au fait with the whole doughnut making process. No doubt observing my blood curdling, profanity laden doughnut hell via the medium of Twitter, he offered to email me some tips and addendums to the published St John recipe, based on his own professional experiences. This much-needed lifeline came too late for me friends. I will be forever mentally scarred by my delicious but ugly doughnuts sat there, silently mocking my herculean baking efforts, just by their very existence.

But this need not happen to you. I’ve added my chef friend’s observations to the recipe, so if you attempt it yourself, you’ll be better prepared than I was.

The doughnuts themselves are delicious. The bourbon flavoured custard is subtly boozy, the caramelised bacon bits, salty-sweet and you know…as porky as you’d expect. If you’re really not sure about the meat element, leave it out. I’ll forgive you. Sort of.

One final observation. Crème patissiere is the f*cking daddy. I’ve never made it before and to say I was massively impressed is something of an understatement. Holy shit, I couldn’t leave it alone. Sneaking back for sly spoonfuls, smearing it in hot cross buns, mainlining it intravenously…. perhaps not the last one…yet, but you get the idea. Consider yourselves warned and go purchase some fatty trousers now.

Bacon and Bourbon Custard Doughnuts
Makes 25

You’ll need a freestanding electric mixer with the beater attachment (like my faithful KitchenAid, Klaus Von Battenberg).

You’ll Need: -
500g strong white flour
65g caster Sugar, plus extra for coating
10g salt
15g fresh yeast
4 large eggs
Grated zest 1 lemon
155ml water
125g softened unsalted butter
Sunflower oil for deep-frying

Place all the ingredients except the butter and the oil in the bowl of the mixer. Mix on a medium speed for 6 minutes, then scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Start mixing on a medium speed again, adding the soft butter about 20g at a time until all incorporated. Keep mixing for 6-8 minutes, until the dough has come away from the sides of the bowl and looks smooth, glossy and elastic.

Place the dough in a large bowl, sprinkle the surface with flour and cover with a tea towel. Leave to rise for 2-3 hours in a warm place, until doubled in size, then knock back the dough. Cover the bowl with cling film and place in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Cut the dough into 25 pieces and roll them into smooth balls. Place on floured baking sheets, leaving about 5cm between each one. Cover with cling film and leave to prove for 2-3 hours, depending on how warm it is; they should double in size.

Heat your deep fat fryer to 190C

With the oil at the right temperature, start frying the doughnuts in batches of 3 or 4. They will take about 2 minutes on each side. Remember to check the temperature of the oil between each batch, as the doughnuts are done; place them on kitchen paper to soak up the excess oil and then toss in caster sugar.

To fill your doughnuts, you will need a piping bag with a nozzle. Make a hole in each doughnut with a small knife and pipe in the filling, about 4 Tbs per doughnut.

Here’s the Bacon and Bourbon Crème Patissiere recipe for the filling.

Makes enough to fill 25 doughnuts (that’s handy then).

You’ll need:-
2 vanilla pods
1 litre full fat milk
12 large egg yolks
130g Caster Sugar
80g plain flour
250ml lightly whipped double cream
3-4 Tbsp Bourbon Whisky
8 rashers streaky bacon
8 Tbsp brown sugar

First, lay the bacon out on a silicon-baking sheet or foil-covered tray, sprinkling each piece with the brown sugar. Place in a 200C oven and bake for 12-16 mins. Halfway through, flip them over. When dark brown, remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Once cooled, chop into small pieces (remember, they have to go through a piping bag nozzle).

Next, make the crème patissiere.

Slit the vanilla pods lengthways and scrape out the seeds. Put the pods and the seeds in a saucepan with the milk and bring to the boil over a medium heat.

Meanwhile, mix the egg yolks and sugar together in a large bowl. Sift in the flour and whisk it all together. When the milk is boiling, pour it over the egg mixture, whisking all the time. Then return the mixture to the saucepan and slowly bring to the boil over a low heat, whisking occasionally.

Once it is boiling, whisk continuously for about 5 minutes, until very thick and smooth. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl and cover the surface with cling film to prevent a skin forming. Leave to cool, then chill.

When you’re ready to fill the doughnuts, fold the whipped cream through the crème patissiere to lighten it and, stir through the chopped caramelised bacon and the Bourbon whisky.

Now, before you dive in and start madly churning out doughnuts here’s what my friend Sam, ex St John Hotel pastry chef has to add to the recipe and doughnut making in general…

Firstly, I think you can drop 5ml of water from the mix. This is probably one of those little things that creep in when you scale up/down recipes.

Second, you need to really mix it well before the butter goes in. The instructions in the book are misleading I think. I used to do it for 10mins on medium speed until the dough is really glossy and comes away from the sides of the bowl. At the start that seems unlikely but then it works and looks like proper dough! Once at this stage, add the butter, which needs to be properly soft. I add it a bit at a time, mixing slowly until it's all incorporated, then turn up the speed and give it a 3-minute blast, to really make sure the butter is properly combined.

Thirdly, we used to just stick the dough straight in the fridge, as leaving it out is going to make it overprove before it's chilled enough for shaping. When you refrigerate fermenting dough there's a degree of inertia - dough takes a while to chill, and it's fermenting all the time, so there is a tendency for it to overprove even in the fridge. I think if you leave the dough out before fridging, then overproving is guaranteed. It'll be pretty warm from the mixer anyway. I find they are best to mix the dough in the morning, then pop in the fridge all day, then fry in the evening, but the dough is good in the fridge 3 days as long as it went straight in there from the mixer.

Shaping wise: with the dough really cold it'll be a lot easier. Oil on the hands stops it sticking, and on the scales etc. Oil some pieces of baking paper which are large enough for the amount of doughnuts you can fry in one go, say 2, then when you fry you can drop the whole paper with dough straight into the fryer instead of having to manhandle them. You can drop the paper in the oil, just keep hold of one bit so you don't burn yourself taking them out again, they need to be kind of submerged so the doughnut cooks off the paper.

When you shape, you don't need to do much, but to get them very regular you need to shape them like a bread roll, taking the edges of the piece into the middle, one at a time, each time it stretches the dough and provides shape, then roll it between your hands 'til it's smooth. Hard to explain really.

Fry at 175c, not 190. They are best within an hour, but fine for a day.

Staff fave for leftovers is one bunged in the oven to warm, then cut open with a scoop of chocolate ice cream inside... Naughty.

So there you go, hopefully with the original recipe and these doughnut shaped words of wisdom from Sam, you won't have a nervous breakdown, like I did.

Massive thanks again to Sam for taking the time to email me such useful advice.
Follow him on Twitter @samjleach

Gypsy Tart

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:24:00 +0000

When I was a child I’d get taken on summer daytrips to the seaside at Southend. These were elaborately arranged affairs where we’d arrange to meet my grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins from East London and all head to the Essex coast by train. We’d get off at Leigh on Sea, breathing in that immediate, almost alien hit of seaweed and salty air and stroll excitedly past the cockle sheds, through the old town and down the baking hot tarmac path alongside the beach until it was decided we’d halt and stake our claim on a piece of sand. Out would come the wind breaks, towels and deckchairs, picnics and buckets and spades.

I’d paddle in the sea, make sandcastles, spread ice cream across my face and no doubt piss my parents off by showing them every shell I came across. Every now and again I’d glance curiously out across ‘the sea’ wondering what France was like over there on the other side. I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that this vast expanse of water was actually the Thames and that distant land on the horizon was Kent. I’m older now, a little wiser, and although it’s not quite another country across the Thames, they do some things differently over there.

If you were educated in Kent, you’d undoubtedly have eaten gypsy tart. This curiously named, ridiculously sweet dessert is specific to the county and associated with school dinners. I think that’s fantastic. Britain has sadly lost much of its regional food heritage but here one item stands, unmovable, unapologetic. Bravo.

I’d heard of Gypsy tart, but never eaten it. However, a newly published wine magazine, Noble Rot, has recently pulled off something of a coup for their first issue in getting Michelin starred, Kent pub, The Sportsman to provide a recipe for their first issue. Straight away, I was all over this. I’d say the best meal I’ve ever eaten was the tasting menu at The Sportsman and it’s rare to see Chef and owner, Stephen Harris’s recipe’s appearing in print. All around a result then.

I had a go at making The Sportsman’s Gypsy Tart recipe. Twice. I pretty much ate the first one to myself. Elly had a slice, but to my shame, I ate all of the rest over a couple of days. What can I say? I’m an absolute evaporated milk fiend.

As I thought it was so good; I made it again the following week for a dinner party.

The method of slicing the pastry and pressing into the tin to avoid gluten development is new to me, but it worked really well.

Overall, I bloody love this recipe; it’s relatively cheap, simple and tastes superb, especially with a blob of Jersey cream on the side.

Gypsy Tart

This recipe makes one tart.

Ingredients:

For the pastry (you may end up with far more pastry than you need, but it’s not really worth making less – it freezes well anyway):

250g butter, softened

500g low-gluten flour

190g sugar A pinch of salt

2 medium eggs, beaten

Egg wash, to glaze

For the filling:

410ml canned evaporated milk

350g Muscovado sugar

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar until the sugar has dissolved, then beat in the eggs.

Now, by hand, mix in the flour and salt, and knead until you have a pastry dough.Roll into a cylinder and chill until hard.

You don’t want to roll this pastry, as you want to avoid gluten development, so once it’s hard,cut as much of it as you need into enough 5mm-thick discs to line a 20cm tart ring (freeze any excess pastry).

Wet your fingers, place the discs around the edges and base of the ring, and work gently together until they cover it in a smooth, even layer.

Prick all over with a fork then chill.

Fill the case with baking parchment and baking beans, and blind bake at 180C

Remove the paper and beans, turn down the heat to 160C/320F/gas mark 2 and cook until the pastry is an even brown.

Remove, brush with egg wash, and return briefly to the oven to seal.

To make the filling, whisk the cold milk and sugar in a bowl for 10 minutes until you have a light, airy emulsion. Pour into the pastry case and bake at 160C/320F/gas mark 2 for 15-20 minutes.

The filling should be just set, with a slight wobble. There will be a few bubbles on the top and it will show signs of having risen.

Leave to cool until set.

Massive thanks to Noble Rot magazine and The Sportsman for allowing me to reproduce the recipe here.

Pease Pudding and Ham Hock

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:39:00 +0000

In these recession-ravaged times, food frugality is to be clutched to the metaphorical bosom. But cheap ingredients aren’t necessarily a poor substitute. A recent dinner of pease pudding and flaked ham was one of the best things I’ve eaten in bloody ages and it doesn’t really get more frugal than that. Split green peas, 50p. A ham hock that admittedly looks like the sort of offcut you might buy as a treat for your pet dog, £1.99. A bit of root veg to sex it all up, say a couple of quid, and you have dinner for 4 and a load of stock left to make soup with.

For me, pease pudding and flaked ham hock is evocative of the old East London I briefly glimpsed as a child in my nan and granddads kitchen, before the family’s exodus to Essex.

Pease pudding is now thought of as an exclusively Northern dish, but there was a real tradition of eating it in East London. Growing up, my Mum’s favourite dinner was Ham or boiled bacon, pease pudding, boiled carrots and potatoes (tres boiled, yeah). My granddad used to cook the split peas in a muslin bag along with the hock.

If there was some left over, the next day, cold pease pudding, ham and mustard sandwiches were another of my Mum’s favourites.

Even if they didn’t cook it at home, pease pudding was often on the cards. As a little girl, my Mum remembers ‘Webster’s’ a delicatessen opposite East Ham town hall, on the Barking Road selling pease pudding from a pot on the marble counter, slapped into grease proof paper and eaten along with saveloys or ‘very peppery’ meat pies which must have been at the dying end of a tradition that novelist Walter Besant wrote about in his book ‘East London’ published in 1901 – which describes an evening trade of ‘faggots, saveloys and pease pudding’

With all this family food heritage, I’m almost ashamed to say that, it was only the other day that I first tried cooking pease pudding and a ham hock myself. It definitely wont be the last time. It was astoundingly good. Pease pudding is subtle, peppery and strangely comforting. Topped with the slightly salty and rich ham hock and loads of white pepper, incredible stuff.

Even if you don’t fancy making the pease pudding, the ham hock is worth doing on it’s own. Life feels much more complete with some lumps of ham to pick at along with a blob of mustard and some good bread and butter.

If you fancy pushing the boat out and doing two ham hocks, you don’t need to add any extra veg, just bang them both in the pot.

I’d like to say this is an old East End family recipe, but I shamelessly pinched it from the always reliable, Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Great British Pub Food’,

Ham Hock and Pease Pudding

Serves 4

You’ll Need: -

1 large smoked or unsmoked ham hock, with bone. Soaked overnight in cold water

2 leeks, trimmed

2 celery sticks, trimmed

1 large carrot, peeled

1 large onion, peeled and halved

1 head of garlic, halved horizontally

2 bay leaves

few thyme sprigs

few rosemary sprigs

1 tsp black peppercorns

For the pease pudding: -

300g split green peas, soaked overnight in cold water.

1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 tbsp butter

few dashes of Worcestershire sauce

white pepper

small bunch of flat leaf parsley leaves, chopped.

You’ll need to plan ahead to make this recipe. Both the ham hock and the split green peas need to be soaked overnight in cold water. It might seem like a load of faff but believe me, it’s worth it. In the case of the ham it’s a precaution to rinse out any salt present. It’s impossible to tell how salty it might be and there’s the possibility of ruining the finished dish As for the peas, it softens them and reduces the cooking time.

Rinse and drain the ham hock, then put into a large pan. Cut the leeks, celery and carrot into 5 cm lengths and add to the pot with the onion, garlic, herbs and peppercorns.

Pour in enough cold water to cover. Bring to the boil, skimming any scum from the surface. Cover with a lid and gently simmer for 2-3 hours, until the meat is soft and pulls away from the bone easily.

Remove the ham hock from the stock and set aside to cool slightly, before flaking the meat into pieces discarding any skin, gristle or bones. Strain the stock, and measure out 600ml for the split green peas.

For the pease pudding, strain the split peas and put them into a saucepan with the chopped onion. Pour in the reserved ham stock and bring to a simmer, then cover and cook for 2 ½ - 3 hours until the peas are soft and the liquid has mostly been absorbed. Add the butter and Worcestershire sauce and season well with white pepper (the original recipe suggests black – I don’t agree).

Serve the pease pudding in bowls, topped with flaked ham hock, chopped parsley and some more white pepper.

Sussex Pond Pudding

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:22:00 +0000

I’m sure many would be surprised to learn that, despite my svelte athletic frame and whippet-like trim, where it comes to pudding, I favour traditional British varieties. Not for me the charms of an ethereally light, whipped to within an inch of it’s life, uppity frou-frou fancy, as favoured by our continental cousins and finer dining establishments. No. I want a bowl containing a ‘lump’ of pudding, definitely not a slice. Preferably consisting mainly of suet. It will be a squat, heavy almost leaden mass. It will be steaming hot. The only acceptable accompaniment will be cream or custard. This is the type of dessert that powered a globe straddling empire. Accept no substitute.

Is it any wonder then, when invited to dinner at the rather swanky Hix Mayfair (ensconced in Brown’s Hotel), for a meal that was planned, incidentally to celebrate duck (more about that later) I only had eyes for the dessert - the intriguingly named Sussex Pond Pudding. This was to be the first time I’d ever tried it. Of course I’ve heard mention of it, studied pictures and recipes but it always seemed a bit of an oddity. In case you don’t know, it’s suet based (praise be) but in the centre there sits a whole lemon. It’s always kind of put me off making it, as I just couldn’t imagine what it’d taste like or if it would be any good.

Well ladies and gentlemen, wiser and significantly plumper, I’m here to tell you it’s absolutely frigging top drawer. Hello sticky, sweet suet sitting in a puddle of buttery, caramel, lemon juices, get down my hatch pronto. One of the best British puddings I’ve ever tasted, possibly even better than spotted dick and that, is almost taking the piss.

I ate four massive portions. The rest of the assembled guests (including Mark Hix himself) looked on with what I can only describe as a mixture of awe, admiration, disgust and perhaps pity as I refused to submit and ate as much as I possibly could. Seriously, it was ridiculously good.

A week later, the memory of this exemplary pudding scored deep into my brain, I decided to have a go at making it myself.

I used Mark Hix’s recipe from British Food. It turned out looking exactly like the picture in the book, a broken, ruined skyline of suet with a lemon protruding through the rubble. The restaurant version unsurprisingly, was much neater. I notice they’re using shallower but wider bowls, perhaps that’s the trick. In any case it tasted amazing, even it if wasn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing. Elly wasn’t such a fan. This is verging on treason as far as I’m concerned. Over 3 days, I ate the whole bloody lot myself. Every last bit.

Here’s the recipe…

Sussex Pond Pudding

Serves 4-6 (or just me)

You’ll need: -

250g self-raising flour, plus extra to dust.

125g shredded beef or veggie suet

150ml milk

300g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra to grease,

200g soft light brown sugar

1 large unwaxed lemon

Mix the flour and suet together in a bowl, then gradually mix in the milk to form a dough. The dough should be soft but firm enough to roll out.

Roll out the dough to a circle large enough to line a 1.5 litre pudding basin. Cut a quarter out of the circle for the lid and to ease the lining of the bowl. Butter the pudding basin well, drop the pastry into it and join up the edges where the quarter was removed.

Mix the butter and sugar together and put into the lined basin. With a roasting fork or skewer, prick the lemon thoroughly, all over, so the juices can escape during cooking, then push into the butter mixture.

Remould the pastry for the top and roll it out to the correct size. Lay it on top of the filling and press the edges together to seal in the filling. Cover the top of the basin with a generous piece of foil, making a pleat down the middle to allow for expansion. Secure in place under the rim with string, making a string handle so it can be lifted out easily.

Lower the pudding into a pan containing enough boiling water to come halfway up the die of the basin, Cover and simmer for 4 hours, topping up with more boiling water as necessary.

To serve, lift out the basin and allow to stand for about 30 minutes, then remove the foil and loosen the sides with a small sharp knife. Put a deep serving dish over the basin and quickly turn the whole thing upside down – it may collapse a little (like mine did) but it’s to be expected.

Eat the whole frigging lot with cream, except the lemon, unless you REALLY like lemons.

As for the aforementioned duck dinner…

I was an enthralled witness to an immaculately turned out, white-jacketed waiter pouring a roaring napalm furnace of alcoholic fuel onto a duck pinioned upright, presumably by virtue of a pole up it’s harris. The heady smell of scorched flesh with perhaps a smidgeon of singed eyebrow wafted across the table. This act, played out in the luxurious, suave, civility of the wood panelled Hix Mayfair dining room, felt akin to Cary Grant taking a flamethrower to a Bichon Frise.

I highly recommend it.

Meat Mission - London

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:58:00 +0000

There’s been something of a ‘junk food trend’ backlash of late with one of the more respected national restaurant critics bemoaning the fact ‘gourmet junk food’ was so prevalent in 2012. I can see her point, but now that I call Bristol home and have the perspective that 100 miles or so of M4 motorway gives, from where I’m sitting I’d say, it’s very much centred in London. Personally, I’m not quite tired of it yet.

Although there are more places than I can count on my fingers and toes churning out gourmet junk to stuff your gob with in the capital, there are not many who are actually doing anything that’s really original or interesting.

With these very thoughts framed in my tiny mind, I recently found myself in Hoxton heading to the latest incantation of Yianni Papoutsis’ rapidly expanding empire, Meat Mission.

I’d already eaten at the older siblings in the group, Meat Liquor and Meat Market. With regards to ML, I wasn’t quite convinced. Don’t get me wrong, the food itself was great (I’m a big fan of the Dead Hippie Burger) but I’d eaten there during the daytime and it was the general environment that I found a bit much; gloomy lighting, pounding music, wall to wall customers, indifferent service, artfully exposed wiring and graffiti. It almost felt like it was trying just a bit too hard, a kind of TGI Friday’s for Hipsters. To be honest, I couldn’t eat up and clear out fast enough.

Strangely enough, I liked Meat Market a lot more. Despite having much in common, menu wise, with ML it has a very different vibe; less Hollister’esque, and more New York-Japanese neon and chrome, industrial cool. Having eaten there a couple of times now, I’ve come to appreciate the concept a lot more and was really looking forward to trying Meat Mission.

Housed in a former Christian Mission, (hence the name) Meat Mission is pretty damn big, dark, loud and absolutely rammed. The pulpit and carved stone memorials remain in place, now bizarrely co-existing with a stained glass effect graffiti ceiling. Almost all the things I previously disliked about ML were present and correct, but weirdly I didn’t mind that much. I figure it’s because it was the evening, and that kind of atmosphere just feels right after dark. During the day, it’s just disorientating, a bit like when you’ve spent hours ensconced in the cinema and walk out, somehow expecting night and instead squinting in the late afternoon sun.

It was so heaving I ended up squeezing myself in at the end of the bar and studying the menu masquerading as a hymn sheet, nice touch. As well as the ML and MM classics, there’s a load of entirely new stuff. The sheer inventiveness of the menu is definitely one of the restaurant’s strengths. Yeah, it’s the usual filthy US inspired trash food ingredients but in most cases re-worked into something entirely new, combined with a cheeky wink and huge grin. It’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Briefly consulting the (mostly) ever-reliable oracle, Twitter, I’d been offered a pretty much unanimous consensus, on what I should be trying; Monkey fingers and Peckham Dip.

Monkey fingers; strips of chicken fillet encased in a strangely flabby batter, which is itself coated in a sticky chilli sauce were an absolute mess to eat, I got frigging covered in it, all over my hands, my face and up my arms. But there’s no denying they were bloody good. The portion is fairly hefty, which is no bad thing. The seemingly all-pervasive chilli coating had a nice kick and combined with a monkey finger dipped in the accompanying pot of blue cheese dip was total bliss.

Unfortunately for me and my dry cleaning bill, the Peckham dip was just as messy to eat. A roast beef and fried onion roll with a bowl of bone marrow gravy and some horseradish sauce. The idea here is you dunk the beef roll in the bowl of gravy as you eat, in the US this is known as a French dip, originating in Los Angeles. Lovely. But gravy dip aside, the beef roll itself was strangely reminiscent to me of a much loved fast food item from my youth, growing up in Basildon, Essex. It was suddenly 1am. I’m in a car park behind ‘The Lakes’ near Ashlyns roundabout, joining a raucous queue of taxi drivers, lairy drunks, furtive track suited teenagers billowing clouds of skunk and saucer eyed clubbers all shuffling slowly towards a glowing, steaming hatch and the most amazing steak rolls. Unbelievably the Peckham Dip tastes exactly like the ones I used to eat in Basildon, the same kind of seasoning, even the roll itself looks similar. Don’t get me wrong. This is no bad thing. I took many a wide, stumbling drunken, detour just to procure one of these so I was well happy. I doubt Meat Mission will be much flattered by the comparison though.

After that, I was stuffed silly; I pretty much rolled out of there on my stomach.

I liked Meat Mission a lot. Yep, it’s loud, busy and in your face, the closest comparison would be eating in a nightclub. But the menu is clever, inventive, fun and most importantly, the food is bloody good and pretty cheap. As a temple to Gourmet junk food, it’s one altar worth worshipping at.

Meat Mission

14-15 Hoxton Market

London

N1 6HG

Telephone: 020 7739 8212

http://www.meatmission.com

Salmon in pastry with currants and ginger

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 12:39:00 +0000

This is a really interesting recipe. Almost certainly ye olde English in origin, with it’s combination of spice, sweet fruit and fish, it became something of a signature dish in the 1950s-60s for George Perry-Smith at his groundbreaking Bath restaurant, The Hole in the Wall. Later, Chef Stephen Markwick who’d trained with Perry-Smith also had the dish on his menu, right up until his recent retirement. Interestingly, it doesn’t end there, Chef Andrew Griffin, at Tart Cafe in Gloucester Road, Bristol, who previously worked for Stephen Markwick has also been known to cook it. So, it’s been passed down through different restaurants and chefs for at least 60 years. How about that for a dish’s lineage, eh?

As for the recipe itself I doubt I’m the only one that struggles to envisage the combination of salmon with the sweetness of currants and preserved ginger, but what the hell, I gave it a go anyway and found it works ridiculously well. In fact it’s surprisingly subtle.

I served it with new potatoes, little gem (inspired by my recent lunch at Green Man & French Horn), and Hollandaise…that split, repeatedly just as I was about to serve up. Bastard.

The recipe below is pinched from the incomparable Roast Chicken & Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson; who credits George Perry-Smith.

Salmon in pastry with currants and ginger

Serves 4

You’ll need:-

375g puff pastry

3-4 globes of stem ginger

2 tbsp currants

110g butter, softened

salt and pepper

pinch of ground mace

4x 175g pieces filleted salmon, skinned and boned, cut from a central piece.

1 egg yolk

Divide the puff pastry into four 75g pieces. Roll out very thinly (approx 2-3mm) to approximately 15cm squares (this is of course, dependent on the dimensions of your salmon pieces). Chill on a lightly floured tray in the fridge.

Cut the stem ginger into slivers, and pour a little boiling water on the currants and leave to swell up for 5-10 minutes.

Drain the currants and stir into the butter together with the ginger, salt and pepper, and the mace.

Spread the top of each piece of salmon with the seasoned butter and chill.

Mix the egg yolk with a splash of water and with a pastry brush, paint one side of each piece of puff pastry. Place a piece of salmon in the middle of the egg washed side, butter-side down, and then form a parcel around the fish with the joint on top.

Turn the parcel over, so that the butter side is uppermost. Chill again for 30mins.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Brush the salmon parcels with more egg yolk and if you fancy it, mark a criss-cross pattern on the top using the blunt side of a small knife.

Place on a buttered baking sheet and cook in the oven for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.

Apparently George Perry-Smith used to serve this with sauce Messine (A herb and cream sauce) but Simon Hopkinson prefers Hollandaise lightened with whipped cream).

4 Years of Essex Eating!

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:04:00 +0000

That’s right people; Essex Eating has gone totally frigging quadruple in years! Since birthing in January 2009 this now impressively whopping organ continues it’s inevitable, steady and relentless march, as I plough a wide, bite size furrow through anything that interests me, before regurgitating it exquisitely for your pleasure, through the medium of writing. Come on, I think it’s time to admit it; I’m pretty much a national treasure.

As is now traditional, I like to celebrate this majestic and most momentous of occasions with a round up of the past year. So, this was 2012, the absolute best, the worst and the downright f*cking appalling.

Best meal I ate in 2012

Casting my mind back and looking through my posts for the last year, it’s fair to say that I ate out a lot. So, there are loads of contenders for best meal. But if you twisted my arm, I’d have say that my favourite meal of 2012 was lunch at St John.

I’d been meaning to go there for years, and despite working just a stones throw away, I’d somehow never made it to this most British of restaurants. Last year I righted this wrong and had a rather extravagant (and costly) lunch on my own and enjoyed every minute of it. St John is a one-off institution, the menu is studded with iconic dishes and the service is professional and impeccable. I bloody loved it.

Other highlights included a posh solo lunch in April at Jason Atherton’s Pollen Street Social. I’m a real fan of his cookbooks (I’ve pinched loads of ideas from them) so was really looking forward to this. The food was beautiful to look at, inventive and delicious. I’d gone for the set lunch menu, and when you consider all the extra bits and bobs, pre-desserts, petit fours etc, it was a total frigging bargain. I even got to briefly meet the man himself, which was something of a bonus.

It seems like it’s been around for ages now, but Pitt-Cue Co in Soho had only just recently opened when I ate there in February. Spearheading the so called ‘dude-food’ revolution with excellent American style BBQ and booze whilst introducing London to the delights of burnt end mash and pickle backs. I reckon it was one of the best restaurant openings of the 2012. I’m looking forward to the Pitt Cue cookbook, out later this year.

An extremely upmarket lunch at 2 Michelin starred ‘The Square’ in October was also something of highlight. Not only because, as you might expect Phil Howard’s food and the service was impeccable, but also I’d taken my Dad along for his birthday, and it’s not something we’ve ever really done together. It cost me a fair old whack, but if you’ve never taken your parents somewhere for a top-drawer lunch, I highly recommend it.

A visit to Duck & Waffle in November was memorable for an entirely different reason…that white knuckle glass lift ascent and view! Incredible. The food was pretty damn good too, especially the oxtail doughnut.

Closer to home, I had a cracking lunch at The Old Spot, Wells in October. Manna in Bristol remains my favourite local restaurant; I ate there a fair bit last year and it was superb every time.

Best Dish I cooked at home 2012

Most of the more interesting food I cooked last year was under the auspices of ‘The Basement’ supper club. Don’t get me wrong, I still cook at home a lot, but the majority of the dishes I’m most proud of were served up to paying customers.

Slow roasted shoulder of pork in cider with mash and green sauce was an absolute winner. Very simple, rustic and unreservedly British. We served this up a few times. The accompanying mash, a recipe that I’ve perfected, is probably only second in the world mashed potato stakes to Joel Robuchon’s pomme puree. Just.

New York’s, Momofuku’s Milk Bar cookbook provided the Volcano recipe that rocked my world in 2012. Bloody incredible. We sold these at our four-day ‘Basement at the Runcible Spoon’ restaurant residency in August and couldn’t make enough. Basically a whopping bread roll, stuffed with a mixture of dauphinoise potatoes, caramelised onions, and cheese. These are every bit as delicious (and filthy) as they sound.

Another dish I’m immensely proud of is the Rosemary and Lemon Posset Crumble with Italian Meringue. We served this at a few ‘Basements’ and it never got less than an ecstatic response. Yes, we nicked the idea for the rosemary and lemon element from Jason Atherton and the idea for the crumble and Italian Meringue parts from The Chequers in Bath, but errr…the rest was all ours!

September 2012 will go down in history books as the year I created my version of Fry Sauce, Salt Lake City’s condiment of choice. Feeling inspired by an episode of Man vs Food, I threw this together and it’s bloody delicious. It enhances EVERYTHING I’ve tried it on. Splurge some of it’s lurid orange coloured goodness on roast potatoes and see what I mean. Utter filth, but the best kind.

Worst Dish I cooked at home 2012

I don’t think I’m kidding myself here, but honestly, I can’t think of a single thing I cooked in 2012 that was so utterly shit that it deserves mention in this section.

We had a few disasters at the supper club, nothing that would affect the customers just panicked moments for us in the kitchen. The full to the brim deep fat fryer tumbling off the worktop and a 5 litre vegetable oil slick spreading across the kitchen floor, just as we were about to go into service at our Runcible Spoon pop-up back in August or the oven packing up, luckily just at the end of the night. Come to think of it, equipment failures seemed to be a recurring theme last year, another pop-up I cooked at, a much needed deep fat fryer broke, and then later that evening a fridge full of ice-cream busted as well. Fun.

Best Booze I drank in 2012

2012 for me was all about sherry. In May I visited Jerez in Spain, a city that could best be described as sherry Mecca. I was the guest of Gonzalez Byass and frankly, it was bloody incredible. I drank so much of the good stuff, often directly from the barrel that it just blew me away. What impressed In particular was Del Duque, a 30 year old amontillado and Leonor, a Palo Cortado. I frigging love sherry.

Back at the ranch, I was introduced to Picon bière by my friend Claire. Picon is a French, orange bitters, which is bloody superb as a shot in beer. Apparently, this combo is ‘the’ beverage currently en vogue with trendy London bartenders and also Gallic alcoholics. It goes without saying that I also adore it.

I’m crap at remembering good wine, I should make better notes, in fact I resolve here and now to sort this out in 2013. However, one in particular I drank at a friend’s house, loved and actually recorded was Domaine Fillatreau Chateau Fouquet, Samur 2010.

Worst Dish I ate out 2012

One thing instantly springs to mind, beef brisket at the Bar-B-Q Shack, located in the Worlds End Pub in Brighton. At the time I described it as ‘curled around the edge of the plate, in a slightly distressing ‘pinched off’ fashion’ and ‘dried out, flavourless strip of leatherette masquerading as beef ‘. Time and distance hasn’t faded the memory. I'm sorry to say it was f*cking grim.

Best Dish I ate out in 2012

Firstly, I have to mention Istanbul. I ate so much good stuff there on my visit in March it’s almost impossible to list it all, but off the street, kokoreç, chargrilled lamb intestines and sweetbreads mixed with oregano, stuffed into bread and sprinkled with chilli flakes was definitely a bit special.

I also had a sebzeli kebab, the meat layered through with peppers, tomatoes and onions that was incredible.

Oh and a barbecued mackerel sandwich on the back of a boat moored at the edge of the Bosphorus. Finally, the Turkish breakfast dish of simit, a chewy type of sesame seed covered bagel dipped into kaymak, like clotted cream and made from buffalo milk was bloody incredible.

Back in the UK, a dish of Calves Liver, Polenta, Kale and Balsamic Onions at 10 Greek Street was absolutely knock out. Beautifully cooked and eaten sitting at the bar, with a glass of wine. Heaven.

In March, an unlikely sounding dish of Braised Ox Cheek with an Anchovy sauce, pieces of confit Lemon and Avocado Chantilly, served at Club Gascon left me embarrassed when I realised I’d been making whimpering noises of pleasure as I was eating it.

St Johns’ iconic Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad. Un-fucking-believable. That’s all I have to say.

In September at The Hardwick in Abergavenny, I was marvelling at the almost lacquered finish on my slow cooked pork belly with celeriac puree, black pudding and salted caramel apple sauce. A beautiful plate of food.

Roasted Pear with Quince Puree, Almond Croustillant and Sherry Vinegar Ice Cream at 2 Michelin starred The Square was one of the best desserts I’ve ever eaten. At the time I described it as ‘a masterpiece’. The sweet and sour combination of the sherry vinegar ice-cream and the sweet caramelised pear was simply incredible.

Duck and Waffle’s Spicy Ox Cheek Doughnut is another work of genius. I bloody loved it.

Jeremy Lee’s, Smoked Eel and Horseradish Sandwich at Quo Vadis is everything I’d heard it was and more. The subtle smokiness of the eel combined with the ‘take no prisoners’ eye watering, horseradish sauce. Frigging incredible. This dish pretty much has it’s own fan club and rightly so.

I’ve eaten so much good stuff at Manna in Bristol, this past year, but in particular a dish of Slow Cooked rabbit with Butifarra (a type of Catalan sausage), peas and spring onion impressed me. Perfectly seasoned, the rich rabbit meat and sausage, in a clear broth with the fresh peas. It was bloody amazing.

Finally, pork belly again, but at Bristol’s Bell’s Diner served with celeriac, apple and truffle. Beautifully cooked and as with all the food at this restaurant almost too good looking to eat. This was a cracking dish.

Weirdest Google searches that have led to my Blog 2012

dan vox-knobs essex eating

what do people eat in essex?

beff check pictures

arrogant bastard hated by many loved by few

are essex people smell

brain grey matter noodle grape bean

eating lunch under the table porn

eat me not that

does sambuca stop a hangover (followed soon after by…)

good cure for sambuca hangover

do essex people eat chocolate

is pork face meat the same as pork cheeks?

how to make mr.bacon stop oinking

men and lamb porn

sexy girl eating a lot food

pho soup gas bloating

whores in jerez

why do i eat ice cream then celery?

what is shaking the coffee beans gesture?

what does essex smell of?

wallpaper lady helping herself to plate of food

Best Recipe book 2012

My cookbook collection is shelf saggingly vast, I’m an absolute recipe book fiend…here are some of my favourites from the past year.

The Square Cookbook – Comprehensive doesn’t quite do this justice. Phil Howard’s excellent book pulls no punches and leaves the home cook under no illusion that recreating two Michelin starred food at home is a complete and utter ball-ache. But if you want to try, then it’s all here in staggering detail. I’ve pinched bits and bobs, elements from dishes etc for ‘The Basement’. It’s awesome.

Fäviken – If you think The Square cookbook is hard work, wait till you cop a load of this. Chef Magnus Nilsson’s beautiful book is completely inspiring, compelling and utterly bonkers. A lot of the recipes here would be a pain in the arse for a professional chef to re-create, let alone a home cook. Vinegar aged in a hollowed, burnt out log. A fish dish that takes 6 months to make and then you need to get it tested at a laboratory to ensure it’s safe to consume. But for all that, it’s fascinating stuff and leaves you with the distinct impression that Fäviken the Swedish restaurant is a bit special.

Momofuku Milk Bar – I’ve cooked a load of stuff from this, Volcanoes, Bagel Bombs and Cinnamon Bun Pie to name just a few. Everything is awesome; this was one of the most inspiring cookbooks I picked up last year. Bloody love it.

Richard Bertinet - Pastry – A beautiful book from the Bath based French baker, comprehensive recipes and full of step by step photos to show you exactly and clearly what’s needed to make great pastry. Useful!

Strangest thing I ate in 2012

I ate a few rather choice bits and pieces whilst visiting Jerez including percebes or goose barnacles, ugly ass, expensive crustaceans that could be best described as looking like a kind of alien pigeons foot. Got to be honest, I didn’t rate them much.

The previously mentioned kokoreç, chargrilled lamb intestines and sweetbreads mixed with oregano, stuffed into bread and sprinkled with chilli flakes I ate in Istanbul was pretty choice too.

Apart from that, it’s all been depressingly conventional. Nothing even comes close to last year’s winner, calves brains at Racine.

Best Ingredients and Produce I ate in 2012

This is a new category to my yearly round up, as I want to give a mention to some of the fantastic ingredients and produce I’ve discovered or used over the past year.

First up Trealy Farm Spicy Boudin Noir. I cannot get across just how much I frigging adore this. it’s unbelievably good. Without a doubt the best black pudding I’ve ever tried anywhere. In fact, all of Trealy Farm’s charcuterie is absolutely superb.

Bertinet Sourdough – Cracking bread, from Richard Bertinet’s bakery in Bath. Really top-drawer stuff.

Homewood Ewe’s Curd – One of my favourite ingredients. Locally produced and equally at home in savoury as well as sweet dishes.

Severn & Wye Smokery – Another South West producer, I’ve used their Smoked Mackerel, Haddock and Cod Roe and highly recommend it all. Fantastic.

Cupboard Love – Horseradish Mustard, a Somerset produced condiment I picked up recently. Holy f*ck, this stuff is hot. It has the sweetness of German mustard combined with an eye watering horseradish kick. Love it.

Wild Beer Co – I’m proud to say a mate of mine is making this because it’s truly excellent. There have been quite a lot of people who know beer raving about this. I particularly like Scarlet fever and Ninkasi. Definitely a brand to watch out for in 2013 and local as well.

Must visit restaurants 2013

As is traditional – here’s last years list. With hindsight, it appears to have been an almost total waste of time compiling that. I only made it to one restaurant I wanted to visit on the list last year! Oh well it was St John, so that’s something.

The Kitchin – Edinburgh

St Johns – London

Brawn – London

Hedone – London

The British Larder – Suffolk

Le Champignon Sauvage – Cheltenham

Restaurant Sat Bains – Nottingham

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal – London

Zucca – London

Wild Honey – London

The Felin Fach Griffin – Brecon

So that was then, this is NOW – here’s my personal list of 2013 must visits…be interesting to see how many of these I made it to when I look back in January 2014, a few more than last year, would be f*cking nice.

The Kitchin – Edinburgh (I will definitely make it there this year)

Brawn – London

The British Larder – Suffolk

Le Champignon Sauvage – Cheltenham

Restaurant Sat Bains – Nottingham

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal – London

Zucca – London

Bocca Di Lupo - London

L’enclume – Cumbria

Balthazar – London

Honey & Co – London

Hand & Flowers – Marlow

Galvin at Windows (or La Chapelle) – London

Wild Honey or Arbutus (or both!) - London

So there you have it, my fourth year at Essex Eating.

Despite everything I’ve achieved, I feel the best is yet to come, so gather around people, throughout 2013, for another truly educational year of unrestricted gluttony, drinking, cooking and y’know, just generally stuffing myself stupid. It’s going to be frigging vintage!

Mwah Mwah

Dan

Green Man and French Horn - London

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:35:00 +0000

Despite my aristocratic sounding French surname, noble Norman bearing and obvious high intelligence, you’ll no doubt be extremely surprised to learn that I hardly speak any French. I can get by of course, I learnt enough back in secondary school to announce with some degree of fluency, ‘I am Dan. I live in England’ and I can pull off a pretty convincing Gallic shrug of the shoulders and contemptuous ‘damn your eyes’ scowl, whilst sucking on an obligatory Gitanes. Not unsurprisingly perhaps, none of this helped me in the slightest when I visited the Green Man and French Horn for lunch, earlier this week.

This St Martin’s Lane restaurant is from the same stable as the excellent Terroirs, Brawn and Soif and shares their emphasis on good food and natural and biodynamic wine, but in this case all originating from a very specific section of France, which is along the length of the Loire river. This means sod all to me, my geography à la française being about as useful as my shoddy language skills. However, a quick punt on the interweb tells me. It’s the longest river in France (629 miles) and it runs from the Ardèche in the South East, all the way to St Nazaire and the sea, in the West. Educational, eh?

As I arrived at The Green Man it was snowing and bloody freezing. I took a hurried glance at the exterior, which looks every bit the former pub and hurried inside, where the interior is something else entirely. Bare brick walls, black and white chequerboard floor tiles, high stools at the bar. It all feels very comfortable, very French and very unboozerlike.

Running my eye down the English menu descriptions, albeit punctuated here and there with classic French culinary terms, I found myself struggling to remember exactly what some of these dishes were, and believe me, it matters where Andouillette (a particularly ‘challenging’ and infamous sausage made from chitterlings) or Tête de veau (calf’s head) are in the offing.

As if to emphasise the sheer Gallic’ness of the operation, my waitress had the most impenetrable French accent I’ve ever head. When I asked what Saucisse au Couteau was (the Plat du Jour), I was nonplussed by the apparent answer of ‘vegetable box’. Accurately reading the total look of bewilderment on my face, she had a few more attempts until my ear suddenly tuned in and ‘vegetable box’ morphed into ‘pork sausage’.

Idly munching on some rather good sourdough baguette and unsalted butter (to be honest, I’d prefer salted) intriguingly served on a vintage ‘Quo Vadis London’ metal platter, I had a flick through the rather weighty wine list. Comprehensive doesn’t come into it, but at the same time, it’s surprisingly accessible, even for wine dunces like me, with interesting and witty explanations introducing each section. This was all redundant however, as I’d ordered the ‘vegetable box’ plat du jour, and was sipping on the accompanying rather inoffensive glass of house red.

I’d had to look up Rillons (which I now know is a slow cooked cube of pork belly) and bloody hell, I’m glad I did. It was absolutely frigging delicious, served with sliced, crispy, chilled endive, which had been drizzled artfully with mustard. I’ll definitely be having a go at re-creating this at home.

Saucisse au Cocteau, a simple dish in the same spirit of my starter, consisting as it did of pork, crisp veg and mustard was something of a revelation for me. Sausage and mash, yes of course. But the addition of ice-cold lettuce on the side blew me away. It’s just something that would never have occurred to me to add and it worked incredibly well. The mash was very good (as you may know, I’m an absolute frigging connoisseur of mash) and the sausage was coarse and meaty, what can I say. I ate the lot and enjoyed every last bit.

Just then, sitting there with my glass of red wine, my bread to one side and a plate of very comforting food in front of me, I broke out into a smug, self satisfied grin. This all felt very right.

A poached pear sitting in a puddle of salted butter caramel with a sable biscuit propped against it was, pardon my French, un-fucking-believable, seriously good. When I broke through into the centre of the pear and was suddenly surprised by cream oozing out of the middle I almost felt like applauding. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed eating a dessert as much for quite some time.

I’ve got to say, I loved the Green Man and French Horn. I had no real expectations when I walked in, but I left completely and utterly enamoured. There is no extraneous faff or ostentation to what they’re doing, just honest, simple, beautifully cooked and plated food. Which is exactly the sort of grub that I enjoy eating the most. That the accompanying wine list is huge and very accessible just makes the whole proposition even more attractive. Thinking on it, this was easily one of the most enjoyable lunches I’ve eaten in the past 6 months and I will be heading back next time I’m in town, no doubt about it. Chalk this one up as superb.

Green Man and French Horn

54 St. Martins Lane,

London

WC2N 4EA

Telephone - 0207 836 2645

http://www.greenmanfrenchhorn.co

John Salt - London

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 18:35:00 +0000

First things first, Happy New Year and welcome to 2013, discerning readers!

When I originally started writing this blog, I treated it as something akin to a personal diary, among other things I wanted to keep a record of the restaurants I ate in, what I’d ordered, what I thought of them. That anyone was remotely interested in what I thought and actually read my ramblings has remained a source of constant surprise.

Just before Christmas, I ate lunch in the hip, new, thruster about town of a restaurant, John Salt. The chef, Ben Spalding of Roganic fame had been receiving a respectable measure of critical acclaim and some bemusement for the chicken mousse served on a house brick, which if nothing else, everyone was seemingly talking about. Just a couple of weeks after my visit and it was game over. Ben Spalding and John Salt had parted company (not entirely amicably judging by the press releases and reading between the lines) and my potential restaurant write-up was now less a ‘happening’ review and more a historical document. Bollocks.

Nevertheless, in the original personal diary spirit of this blog, I’ve decided to write it up anyway, just for shits and giggles.

A fortnight before Christmas, mid afternoon you’d have found me strutting my way down Upper Street in Islington towards John Salt. The timing hadn’t worked out for the more desirable house brick licking dinner upstairs, but I’d wanted to eat there anyway so lunch it had to be. I was looking forward to it. I’d eaten Ben’s cooking a while back at Roganic and it had been bloody impressive.

I stepped into a large and surprisingly empty room, except for a young chef to my right, head down, cooking at a table with four diners seated around. I walked up to the bar and announced that I had a reservation (obviously unneeded) and was here for a spot of lunch. The barman treated this information with something approaching a startled look, and then quickly recovering directed me to take a seat at the table I’d spied the chef cooking at as I walked in.

I pulled up a seat opposite the chef, cooking an arms length away on an induction hob and waited…

Waited some more….
Still waiting…
Nothing….

In an impressive case of customer service bullock dropping, I was being completely ignored. No one said anything to me, the young guy cooking so close I could have reached across and given him a polite slap around the chops with a chicken smeared house brick had his head down and seemed intent on not meeting my enquiring looks and polite coughs. The barman had also wandered off down the other end of the room. I sat there relentlessly ageing, wondering what the hell was going wrong here and hoping that someone would break the stalemate soon.

But wait, what’s this…

A sudden, hissed, barely overheard angry conversation between the chef and the barman concerning my seemingly awkward appearance. Yes I’d asked for lunch at the bar. No I didn’t have any cutlery. The barman stomped away again. My stomach grumbled.

At this point, deciding that potentially I’d like to eat today, I became captain of my own dining destiny and put it directly to the chef

‘What happens here then mate, do I order through you or what?’

Looking up, eyes returning my gaze for the first time he acknowledged that I could indeed place my order with him and just like that, the very fucked up ‘Ignore Dan’ spell was abruptly broken. Cutlery appeared, and then the barman with a drinks menu and the show very definitely trundled its raggedy ass onto the road.

Determined to recover from the shaky start and extract every last ounce of pleasure out of proceedings, I ordered the six course tasting menu and decided to let the chef pick what dishes to cook for me.

Things kicked off with Buffalo Mozzarella, warm maple dressing, Brazil nuts and turnip tops. A simple dish with clear, balanced flavours. Very clean tasting and delicious.

The next dish, Greasy Chicken Skin Sandwich was probably the weakest that I ate. Don’t get me wrong, it was pleasant enough, but unlike everything else that followed, it just didn’t really surprise or leave me thinking about the unusual flavour combinations

It’s hard to credit, soup often being considered something of a filler course, but the Violino Pumpkin and Douglas Fir soup was quite possibly the best dish I ate, finished with a side smear of smoked cream cheese it was absolutely delicious with such perfectly defined richness and seasoning, I was sure it had to contain chicken stock. Of course, one of the benefits of eating on the same table the chef is cooking at, is that you can ask. I did and was surprised to hear it contained vegetable nage.

The accompanying marmalade ciabatta with butter (Produced by ‘Butter Viking’ Patrik Johansson as served at Noma – I’d never heard of him before then) was unbelievably good. Rich and chewy with a perfect crisp crust and an underlying marmalade tang.

Pink Fir Potatoes, Lemon Grass Yoghurt, Bacon, Crispy Onions and Chocolate. As unlikely a combination as you’ll see anywhere, but it worked. This is the sort of food I silently marvel at, the seemingly disparate flavour pairings that combine together so well.

A Spiced Venison Wrap with minted sour cream and ‘blowtorched lettuce’ is assembled in front of me. In comparison to everything else that has come before it, the uninspiring white cylinder is somewhat Spartan. It’s a wrap, and that’s what they look like of course, but it doesn’t make for the most inspiring photograph. The chef obliges me by cutting it in half, on the oblique, naturellement. It’s bloody good, incredibly rich, but very conventional.

On the other hand, Ice-cold Basil Milk to accompany my dessert of Chantecler Apple and Lemongrass Crumble is anything but. Once again, simple clean flavours that work very well together, as a conclusion to lunch, no complaints here.

And that, my friends, was that. I paid £34 for the privilege, and buggered off into the rarefied air of Islington.

What to make of the whole experience though?

The food was good, no doubt about it, Ben Spalding (and his team) can cook. Inventive, unusual and definitely not boring. I enjoyed everything I stuffed in my gob. The lacklustre service, not so much. There was a pretty evident breakdown in communication between the chef and the bar staff and an almost palpable tension between them. It didn’t make for pleasant lunchtime viewing and left me with my thumb up my ass for 10 minutes. I don’t blame the chef, he was chatty and pleasant enough when he finally got warmed up, but he was young and I suspect probably wasn’t that comfortable meeting and dealing with customers (I certainly wasn’t at his age) In which case he shouldn’t have been left out there to deal with lunchtime front of house.

In any case, it doesn’t much matter now. Ben Spalding at John Salt is history, although I look forward to seeing what the chef does next.

But…. the King is dead. Long live the King.

In a final unexpected and very pleasant twist to proceedings, I’ve since learned that a mate of mine, Neil Rankin, former Head Chef at the rather splendid Pitt Cue Co is taking over at John Salt and will be doing entirely his own thing. I can’t wait to see what that is. Bookings are being taken from the 16th January.

John Salt

131 Upper Street

Islington

London

N1 1QP

http://john-salt.com

Salted Caramel and Rosemary Tart Tatin

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:20:00 +0000

If you cast your mind back (or scroll to the post before this) you may remember me regaling you in some detail how I was suddenly struck dumb(er) by the potential flavour combination of salted caramel and rosemary and how originally I envisaged it in some kind of apple dish (that at the time I couldn’t be arsed to make) well; hang on to your aprons people…I have pulled my finger out, and I have created, no…crafted… with my own fair hands, something…golden brown….

Oh yeah!

It’s a Salted Caramel and Rosemary Tart Tatin, and to replicate it’s wonder you need only read hither….

Salted Caramel and Rosemary Tart Tatin

You’ll need:-

For the tart:

200g Puff Pastry
12-14 medium Cox’s Apples
10g Butter – Melted
1 Tablespoon Caster Sugar
2 Heaped Tablespoons finely chopped fresh Rosemary
1 Lemon

For the Caramel:

50ml Water
100g Caster Sugar
25g Butter
2 Hefty pinches of Maldon Sea Salt

You’ll also need an 18cm baking or pie tin, 4-5 cm deep, preferably a solid one-piece job, not the removable bottom type.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry to around 2mm thick, place on a baking tray, and chill, covered with Clingfilm for 20 mins.

Cut a circle out of the pastry, 20cm in diameter. Prick all over with a fork and place back in the fridge.

Next, make the caramel. Put the water in a small saucepan, and scatter over the sugar. Let it absorb for a couple of minutes, then place on a medium heat and leave it. Don’t stir. Simmer until it turns a deep golden caramel colour, quickly stir in the butter and add your Maldon Salt. Quickly pour into your baking tin, turning to make sure the bottom is evenly coated.

Peel, halve and core the apples, placing into a bowl of water as you go, to which you’ve added a good squeeze of lemon juice.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C

Arrange your apples in the baking tin. First, sitting a half apple in the middle cut side up and topped with another half apple, cut side down. Place the rest of the apple halves upright around the edge in a circle. Cut the remaining apples into wedges and plug all the gaps. Really squeeze as much apple in as you can, the finished result will be better.

Brush melted butter over the top. Sprinkle with the caster sugar and the finely chopped Rosemary.

Bake the tin in the oven for 35 mins.

Remove and place your puff pastry circle over the top of the apples, tucking down the edges inside the tin with the handle of a teaspoon.

Place back in the oven, and bake for another 30-35 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown.

Finally remove and let it cool down, for a good 1-2 hours.

To unmould, slide a sharp knife around the edge, place a large plate on top and flip, giving it a gentle shake to release the tart.

Serve with Crème Fraiche or Vanilla Ice Cream.

Salted Caramel and Rosemary Baked Custard

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:36:00 +0000

Every now and again I have a flash of recipe inspiration. A gear slips somewhere in my brain, and just for a moment the dull grey veil that obscures my normal waking state, parts and I suddenly see flavours, textures and twists on classic dishes in extreme high definition clarity and then, it’s gone and I’m left scrambling to make sense and notes of my vision.

Of course I’d like you to think that my ‘gift’ is something special, enviable and absolutely infallible. An idea that could best described as absolute cobblers. I’m sad to say I’ve dreamt up some absolutely shocking ideas in the past; I was once adamant that I could get grapes to somehow work in mashed potato, to the subsequent disgusted grimace of everyone I shared it with. But sometimes…

I’d certainly seen the flavour combination somewhere else and forgotten, but the other day came an idea; rudely shoulder-barging aside any more mundane thoughts ‘apple, rosemary and salted caramel, I scribbled this down and mused on it a while. Deciding that I definitely couldn’t be arsed to do anything with apples right then, I thought on it some more and then it came. A crème caramel (or baked custard if you’re me) infused with rosemary and topped with salted caramel.

Right then and there, I decided to give it a go, mentally ticking off the short list of ingredients and realising that I probably didn’t have to buy a thing. Result.

As is often the way, I started making it, and then half way through wondered if anyone else had made something similar and wrote about it previously. A cursory Google provided the answer ‘not really’ which was slightly worrying. I ploughed on regardless, my quick research break had confirmed that rosemary and salted caramel go together, so what the hell.

Later that evening, I unmolded my inaugural Salted Caramel and Rosemary Baked Custard. Despite having made an individual portion that could choke a donkey, it wasn’t bad at all. In fact it was bloody nice. The rosemary-flavoured custard was perhaps a bit too subtle (I think I’ve fixed this in the recipe below) but yeah, I’m happy with the results.

Here’s the recipe – I’d really like to know what you think.

Salted Caramel and Rosemary Baked Custard

Serves 3 Greedy bastardos or 4 slightly more sensible people

Salted Caramel:
65g Sugar
3 Tbs Water
Generous pinch of Maldon Sea Salt

Rosemary Custard:
3 Sprigs of Rosemary (leaves stripped and chopped)
130g Sugar
Pinch of Salt
470ml Full Fat Milk
½ Vanilla Pod or equivalent in Extract
2 Whole Eggs
3 Egg Yolks
Vegetable Oil or other neutral oil.

Of course, you’ll also need 3 or 4 individual moulds or ramekins.

Preheat your oven to 160C

First, make the salted caramel. In a small pan, bring the sugar and the water to the boil. Turn it down a little so it’s not boiling quite so furiously and watch it like a hawk. When it turns a nice deep caramel colour, quickly sprinkle in your generous pinch of Maldon and give the pan a swirl.

Quickly pour the salted caramel into your moulds, making sure to coat the bottom and a little way up the sides. When they’ve cooled, grease the sides with the vegetable oil.

To make the custard, add the rosemary, sugar, salt, vanilla and milk to a saucepan. Bring to the boil, and allow to remain at the boil for 1 minute.

Remove from the heat and put aside for 5 minutes

In a bowl, beat the eggs and yolks together then slowly add your warm milk mixture, beating all the time.

Pass through a fine sieve and leave to stand for 5 mins.

Skim off the foam and any bubbles on the surface.

Pour the custard into your moulds, and place them into a bain-marie using a roasting tin with boiling water two-thirds of the way up the sides. Place into your pre-heated oven and cook for 30-40 mins, until the centre is set and no longer liquid.

Remove from the oven, cool and then chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.

To unmold, run a sharp knife around the edges, place a small plate on top, and flip over, giving it a bit of a gentle shake.

Slow Poached Eggs

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:50:00 +0000

Of all the cookbooks I’ve leafed through in the last couple of years, ‘Momofuku’ has been one of the most inspiring. Filled with brash, no nonsense recipes lifted straight from the menu of the now almost iconic New York restaurant. Perusing what Chef and owner, David Chang self effacingly describes, as ‘Bad pseudo-fusion cuisine’ is always a rewarding pastime. Every time I look, I find something I want to try cooking for myself.

Slow poached eggs for example. A Momofuku take on a Japanese method of slow cooking an egg in its shell, the end result; being able to crack it open and have a ready-poached egg slide out. It’s frigging cool, if nothing else.

1. Fill your deepest saucepan with water and put on the hob over the lowest possible heat.

2. You need to keep the eggs from sitting on the bottom on the pan, so improvise with whatever you have to hand to achieve this, maybe a steamer rack or scrunched up foil. I used an upturned bowl.

3. Use an instant read thermometer to measure the temperature of the water. You’re looking for it to lie between 60C and 63C. If it gets too hot, add an ice-cube of cold water, it’s important it stays in this range.

4. Add your eggs and let them sit for 40-45 mins, all the while monitoring the water temperature.

Admittedly a bit of a pain in the arse to achieve, but once they’re done either use right away, or place in ice-cold water to cool, and then keep in the fridge for up to 24 hours.

If you refrigerate them, warm them under very hot water for 1 minute before using.

To serve, boldly crack the egg into a small saucer (they seem much more fragile than they actually are), discarding any loose white whilst sliding onto a serving dish.

The Momofuku application for these is to serve them in hot ramen or broth, which is probably the best use. I found the slow poached eggs as a stand-alone item, a bit insipid looking when compared against your standard poached variety, although as I mentioned previously, cracking a perfectly poached egg out of an intact shell is just so frigging cool, it’s worth all the faffing around, just for the sheer hell of it.

So, a bit of a waste of time then?

Not quite. As a footnote, David Chang suggests frying a slow poached egg, 45 seconds a side, then sprinkling with salt.

Crisp fried brown edges encompassing a neat soft white egg package, which when cut, bursts open in the most lurid, porn’tastic way, positively ejaculating yellow yolk-flow alles uber da platz. Can I get a massive ‘Hell Yeah!’

Honestly – fried slow poached eggs rock my world and may well rock yours too. Waste an hour of your life and try them.

Duck and Waffle - London

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:12:00 +0000

Stepping into a glass lift, and suddenly being propelled upwards at a rate of knots, as the city streets, traffic and people below rapidly contract into dizzying; eye-straining miniature is definitely a thrilling way of reaching your table for lunch.

The doors opened and we spilled out onto the 40th floor of the Heron Tower, I turned to see ‘E’, her face displaying a mixture of shock and abject terror, back to the wall, clutching a handrail, wordlessly staring downwards into the void with the concrete cityscape spread out below, right on the other side of the glass.

It seems that unbeknownst to even her, extreme heights don't agree, and it took some gentle persuasion with a combination of claw hammer and crowbar to prise her grip off the rail and steer her into the relative normalcy of the restaurant itself.

Seated and with ‘E’ calmed somewhat, we took in the room. There’s no denying that it’s pretty frigging spectacular with views of London spreading out into the distance on three sides, even on the drizzly grey lunchtime we visited, it was impressive.

Reading through the menu prompted a quick tactical discussion on what level of greed would be appropriate here. Seeing as it was a bit of a treat for us, we'd been working hard the previous week, we rapidly agreed on going obscene with the ordering.

Starting off with some good Rosemary and Garlic Bread, nothing spectacular about it, but definitely no bollocks dropped either.

‘E’s’ Raw Sea Trout, sparingly dressed with olive oil, Amalfi lemon and some micro basil, arrived perched atop a Himalayan Salt Block. It’s the first time I've seen these particular serving ‘plates’ used. Apparently they can be either heated or chilled, hold temperature well and the salt in the blocks season whatever’s placed on them. Pretty enough, but I suspect in the long term these could well become as ubiquitous and ultimately naff as slate. The trout, simply treated, was delicious.

From the snack menu, Battered Sausages with Mustard were good, meaty and herby with a nice sharp mustard dip.

Mackerel Tartare, Pickled Cucumber, Smoked Vodka and Crème Fraiche was nicely made, fresh tasting and delicious. Happily it was a pretty hefty sized portion as well, with the accompanying chargrilled bread for dipping.

The Spicy Ox Cheek Doughnut is a work of genius. Easily the best thing I ate. A cricket ball sized globe, dusted with what tasted like a combination of sugar and sweet paprika and stuffed with shredded oxtail meat. On the side for dipping, apricot jam. The taste and texture really threw me, the doughnut batter, which I automatically associate with sweet flavours encasing savoury meat but then there’s the sugary-paprika coating just to mess with my head. The accompanying jam was sour, and tempered the sweetness perfectly.

‘E’s Hake Fillet with Haricot Bean Ragout and (apparently) Romanesco surprisingly threw a bit of a spanner in the works. The piece of fish was perfectly cooked, the ragout tasty – but ‘E’ head down; poking around with her fork in an almost archaeological fashion couldn't find any evidence of romanesco (which, as you no doubt know, is a strangely fractal looking variant of cauliflower). We decided to put the question to a waiter, who hurried off to the kitchen to investigate. He returned saying that there had been a problem with the vegetable delivery and this particular ingredient had been omitted. Fair enough you might think, but later in the meal a different staff member mentioned that the spectral romanesco had indeed been present, but mixed in through the sauce (it definitely wasn’t). All of this made ‘E’ and I speculate whether the menu was spelt incorrectly and ‘Romesco’ sauce was in fact being misrepresented here.

Putting mystery cauliflower shenanigans aside for a moment, I’d decided that it was required that I ate the restaurant’s signature dish of Duck & Waffle. It’s labelled as ‘for the table’ so presumably not really designed for solo dining, but as ‘E’ is a pescetarian I thought I’d give it a go anyway. Waffles, piled up with a crispy confit duck leg and a fried duck egg with mustard maple syrup for pouring. Tucking in with abandon, and instantly feeling my arteries begin to harden I could see why it’s a dish made for sharing. But, I'm a terrifically greedy bastard, and it was delicious, so I ate it all anyway, albeit struggling limply with the last few sickly sweet mouthfuls.

Strangely, cauliflower reared its knobbly head again, towards the end of the meal. We'd ordered desserts and the sommelier appeared presenting us with dessert wines matched to our choices ‘compliments of the chef’ as an apology for the head scratcher that’s now listed on Wikipedia as ‘the romanesco enigma’. I'm not entirely sure whether the apology was for the lack of said brassica, the confusion our innocent enquiry elicited, or the fact that the menu quite possibly should have read ‘romesco’ instead. In any case, the chef correctly sizing us up as borderline alcoholics and acting under the wise principle that booze makes everything better, salved our befuddlement nicely.

Warm Chocolate Brownie with Peanut Butter Ice-Cream and Crunchy Caramel didn't really do it for me. I thought the brownie a bit dry, the whole thing a bit too sweet. The individual elements didn't really come together in the bowl, despite being basically a deconstructed Snickers. Maybe I’d just ate too much sickly-sweet when gorging on duck and waffle earlier.

However, torrejas (Basically a Spanish version of French toast) with caramelised apples, cinnamon ice-cream and swimming in caramelised sauce was absolutely frigging-off-the-chart-good. Cheesy grins and thumbs-up all-round.

Duck & Waffle doesn't take itself too seriously, despite it’s central, city ‘spank the expense account’ location. It’s actually good fun.

The menu itself is interesting, studded throughout with particularly filthy treat dishes, which if you’re anything like me when it comes to ordering, may lead you down an incredibly unbalanced route of sickly cholesterol heavy sweetness. Saying that, the Spicy Ox Cheek doughnut is a thing of beauty and priced at £5 is an absolute must-try.

Service was generally excellent, although front of house was a little bit brusque for my liking and the sommelier was perhaps a bit, and I hesitate to say this, (as he was undoubtedly a nice guy) over-friendly, at one point holding us in lengthy conversation, oblivious to our rapidly cooling food which we couldn't begin eating, out of sheer politeness.

Duck & Waffle is not perfect, but I liked it a lot anyway. It’s worth booking just to appreciate the breathtaking journey to the top and the astounding views over London…oh and that doughnut!

Duck & Waffle
Heron Tower
110 Bishopgate
EC2N 4AY

Telephone: 0203 640 7310

www.duckandwaffle.com

The Old Spot - Wells

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:35:00 +0000

Former Bibendum chef, Simon Hopkinson holds something of a revered status among those who cook or like good food. His cookbooks, including Roast Chicken and Other Stories and Week in-Week Out are considered to be modern classics, that many (including me) regularly turn to again and again, because his recipes are delicious, so well written, so well judged, they almost never fail. That he retired from the professional kitchen in 1995 and I never got to eat his food will always be something of a regret.

But, as with many talented head chefs, Hopkinson’s legacy continues to deliver. The rather impressive list of protégés who passed through the Bibendum kitchen and who have gone on to have fantastic careers in their own right include Henry Harris of Racine, Bruce Poole of Chez Bruce, Phil Howard of The Square and Jeremy Lee of Quo Vadis. Closer to home in the South West, another former member of ‘Hoppy’s’ kitchen brigade is doing the business, Ian Bates at The Old Spot in Wells.

I’d heard a lot of good things about The Old Spot, from people whose judgement I trust, I was just biding my time and waiting for the opportunity to get my ass to the rather attractive cathedral town of Wells for a visit. That chance came about last week and I was tearing the phone off the hook and booking a table for lunch with a sense of haste verging on the obscene.

Walking into a somewhat disconcertingly empty restaurant, we were the first punters to arrive for lunch at 12:30. On the upside, this meant we got to choose any table we fancied. We instantly grabbed one on a raised area at the back, with incredible views across the green to the Cathedral and a grandstand perch over the entire room.

Bread and butter arrived, Bertinet sourdough, no argument with the quality there. ‘E’ and I munched away and studied the concise lunch menu, four starters, four mains, three desserts and cheese. Meanwhile the restaurant had started to fill up.

I’d chosen a starter of Cider-Cured Sardines with Pickled Vegetables and Crème Fraiche, purely because I’d never seen cider cured fish on a menu before and I was intrigued. In fact, it worked well giving the fresh sardines a sweetish tang offset nicely by the sourness of the crème fraiche and the sharpness of the crisp pickled veg. It was a beautifully balanced plate of food and I enjoyed stuffing every last bit in my gob.

‘E’ meanwhile was shovelling up forkfuls of Root Vegetable Salad with Hazelnuts and Creamed Goats Cheese in an obviously lady-like manner and admiring the food and the classic plating style. She had a point, from what I’d seen in books, the same dish could have happily been transplanted to the Hopkinson era Bibendum

Ham Hock and Morteau Sausage with Mustard Sauce arrived, reinforcing a growing feeling that this was the closest thing to experiencing ‘Hoppy’s’ style of cooking and food possible, not entirely unsurprising, considering Chef, Ian Bates’ background. The whole dish was so beautifully and precisely cooked, so unfussy in style, I honestly can’t remember the last time I enjoyed eating something quite as much.

‘E’s Grilled Mackerel with Beetroot, Horseradish and Parsley Puree appeared an incredibly attractive proposition. The beautifully cooked fish framed against the vivid green puree and the scarlet beetroot. ‘E’ loved it, the fish was crisp, the classic flavour pairings working just as you’d expect. It was another cracking plate of food.

I solicited the opinion of the restaurant manager for my choice of dessert, a simple Rice Pudding with Plum Compote. It was a bloody fantastic choice, rich, creamy and flecked throughout with vanilla seeds. I huddled in the corner and made embarrassing sensuous cooing noises whilst scarfing the lot.

Almond Tart with Mascarpone, proved to be a little pedestrian for ‘E’. Not that it wasn’t delicious, oh no, just not as damn sexy as my choice!

So, a 3 course lunch produced by a protégé of Simon Hopkinson, all so beautifully judged, subtle, unpretentious and perfectly cooked if they’d told me ‘Hoppy’ himself was doing the cooking, I wouldn’t have questioned it. £18.50. Incredible.

I would crawl over broken glass and flaming coals for The Old Spot and Chef Ian Bates to be located in Bristol and not Wells. I frigging loved everything. All of it, so much so I was scanning the menu to check if there was anything else I could order, a side dish or suchlike just to see if it was as beautifully prepared as the other grub I’d experienced.

Go to Wells and eat at The Old Spot. Don’t have a car? Get the bus like we did, they run regularly from Bristol Bus station, it takes an hour and costs £7 for a return. You will not regret it.

Me? I’m already planning on going back in the evening to try the a la carte.

The Old Spot

12 Sadler Street

Wells
Somerset
BA5 2SE

Telephone: 01749 689 099

http://www.theoldspot.co.uk

The Square - London

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:21:00 +0000

London restaurant, The Square is somewhere I’ve wanted to eat at for ages. Over the past few years, I’ve heard it come up again and again in conversation, often mentioned with some degree of reverence by people whose opinion I respect.

The Square is not achingly hip or in any way the latest thing, having opened in 1991; 21 years ago, it’s almost approaching institution status. With two Michelin stars and Head chef Phil Howard having been integral in both the career of star protégé, Brett Graham and the founding of his restaurant, which many consider to be London’s best, The Ledbury (Howard is a partner) . To say there’s an aura of excellence surrounding the place would be something of a frigging understatement.

I was due to be back in London for a day last week and I was fishing around for lunch recommendations, I always try and squeeze in a meal somewhere nice, wherever I can and The Square was mentioned once again. A chef friend of mine described it as the best meal he’d had recently and that was that. I didn’t need telling again. Booked!

Seeing as it was also my Dad’s birthday, and the old man is notoriously difficult to buy for, I thought I’d take him along, by way of a present. Strictly set lunch only, mind. What do you think I am, made of money?

So, striding down Bruton Street on a brisk, yet bright October lunchtime, the old man and I arrived at The Square, for a bit of posh grub. I don’t think we’ve ever been to a good restaurant together, at least not just the two of us, and I was looking forward to this immensely.

Greeted warmly and shown to the luxurious linen expanse of our table, we both settled in and took in a chattering room full of exclusively sharp-suited businessmen and women (this being mid-week lunchtime in Mayfair after all). As one half of this sartorially un-elegant, Essex duo of decidedly ugly ‘ladies who lunch’ I can say with some confidence, we stuck out like balls on a bulldog.

Not that this actually bothered me one bit, I’m well used to dining situations like this by now.

The old man, also seemingly unfazed by his surroundings surprised me by steering the conversation off-piste straightaway, stabbing his gnarled stump like thumb at a strangely luminescent feature wall,

“What do you reckon that finish costs?”

My Dad, just retired from a lifetime of working in London, constructing every kind of building imaginable, but mainly exclusive high-end, luxury type pads is a fount of arcane building industry knowledge. I realised he was out to shock me.

“Errrr a couple of thousand, maybe? What is it, polished concrete, marble?”

“No, a wall that size wouldn’t take the weight. It’s something called armourcoat, and a finish like that…”

…Taking a moment to appraise the exact dimensions of the wall with a professional eye…a dramatic pause, a casual intake of breath before delivering the good news…

“That’d cost you at least eight grand”.

The conversation then proceeded with a surprisingly amusing armourcoat based anecdote from a building job he’d worked on years ago. I looked around the elegant dining room again and thought it unlikely that anyone else had ever had the same discussion here. Ever.

Butter, unsalted and salted, riding atop flat backed glass swans made it’s way to the table. Posh. Digging into the offered basket full of absolutely superb bread, we paused to consider the set lunch menu.

But first, a baked beetroot and pickled herring amuse topped with cream and specked through with seeds was delicious and a nice way to kick proceedings off.

Ravioli of Langoustine with Crushed Cauliflower, Cepes, Pumpkin and Beurre Noisette was something else, bloody amazing basically. Ridiculously rich, of course, but as I munched away, the very distinct flavours came to the fore and were each in turn briefly discernible, the langoustine, cepes, lemon perhaps…If I could just once, make something so intriguingly multi-layered in taste and utterly frigging delicious I’d be a very happy man.

The old man’s plate of Tartare of Smoked Venison with Baked Celeriac, Crapaudine Beetroot and Chestnut Cream looked gorgeous, absolutely beautiful presentation and from my Dad’s feedback and the forkful I got of it, tasted the business. To be honest, the greedy bastardo in me wishes I could have eaten both starters. I have to admit, at the time I had no idea what crapaudine beetroot was, thinking it perhaps some particularly poncey French culinary term requiring a copy of Larousse to decipher. Turns out it’s a type of heritage beetroot. *groans and slaps forehead*

I’m from Essex; therefore I gravitate towards pie with mash, even in a two star restaurant. It’s the natural order of things. Yes, in this case a very swanky example, Game Pie, Savoy Cabbage and Creamed Potato, with a rich game Jus, poured over ceremoniously at the table. Cracking pastry, beautiful rich meaty filling. A dollop of superbly luxurious, whipped, creamy mash. Quite obviously crammed full of butter and cream, and all the better for it.

My Dad’s Fillet of Organic Salmon with Whole Grain Couscous, a Light Curry Dressing and Pomegranate wasn’t going down quite so well across the table. He was eating it, but as I had my head down like a pig in a trough, gorging on game pie, it wasn’t till the end of the meal that I noticed he’d left some. I did a startled double take, considering as I was, at that very moment, whether it would be truly bad form to lick my plate. The Old Man, ever the diplomat said it was really nice, but not as good as his starter. I tried a little and thought it was cracking. Maybe salmon just isn't my Dad's thing.

A pre-dessert, turned out to be a dainty portion of the second option on the set menu, which is a nice way of doing business. You’re not left wondering what the other unordered dish was like. Warm Amalfi Lemon Cake with Black Figs and Honey Ice Cream unsurprisingly was ridiculously sweet and sticky, so much so that I doubt I could have finished a full portion, but truly gorgeous.

We’d both ordered the same dessert proper, Roasted Pear with Quince Puree, Almond Croustillant and Sherry Vinegar Ice Cream. First of all, I have to admit I had no idea what croustillant means until I looked it up, but now I’m sagely nodding my head and stroking my beard muttering ‘crisp, of course’.

Although the finer points of French culinary terms count for nothing when you’re stuffing the lot into your gob as fast as you can. This was probably the best dish I ate at The Square. A bona fide frigging masterpiece. The rich caramelised sweetness of the pear combined with the sourness of the sherry vinegar ice cream. Holy Moly, that’s what I’m talking about.

Finally, no parsimony with the delicious Nougat petit fours, they kept coming till we were both groaning and waving them away, stuffed silly.

A three course set lunch at The Square will set you back £35, a non-extravagant glass of wine, coffee and tip; you’re looking at just over £50. Not cheap, but consider that you could walk into any rubbish high street chain and easily spank £20 on lunch or dinner, and it would be truly abysmal, then why not forego that horrendous experience two or three times and treat yourself to a posh lunch where the food will be incredible and the service faultless? Makes sense to me.

As you may have gathered from the write up, the food at The Square was pretty much faultless. The front of house and waiting staff complete professionals, striking just the right balance between being friendly; putting you at ease but with a nice level of formality too, just to remind you that this is an upmarket joint.

If I had to question any aspect of the experience at all, it would be the dining room itself. It’s very businesslike, very corporate and somehow quite characterless. Compared to say The Ledbury, which also has two stars but feels, to me at least, very different, more interesting and pleasing to the eye.

But, it’s all splitting hairs when you can eat dishes like the Langoustine Ravioli and the Roasted Pear with Sherry Vinegar, quite possibly two of the nicest things I’ve eaten, ever, anywhere.

The Square
6-10 Bruton Street

Mayfair

London

W1J 6PU

Telephone: 020 7495 7100

www.squarerestaurant.com

Coffee and cream granita

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:13:00 +0000

At ‘The Basement’ supper club I run with ‘E’, we often serve simple granitas or ices as a pre-dessert course. They’re refreshing, act as a bit of palate cleanser and are a nice way of moving from savoury to sweeter flavours. They are also, as you’d expect from me, incredibly sophisticated and posh.

At our most recent supper we served a coffee and cream granita. The coffee part we pinched from Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Just Desserts’ (which is a frigging awesome book by the way), I thought it’d be nice to pour a splash of cream over it, just before serving. It’s bloody nice.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, it actually tastes a little bit like one of those iced coffees available from shitty high street chain coffee shops, but please don’t let that put you off. This is much more intense and über.

Here’s the recipe…

Coffee and Cream Granita

Serves 6-8

You’ll Need:-

100g Sugar

150ml Water

2 Cardamom pods

1 Strip orange zest

500ml Fresh espresso coffee, cooled

Double Cream to serve

Put the sugar and water in a saucepan over a low heat. Stir until dissolved. Add the cardamom and orange zest and boil for 3 mins.

Remove from the heat and leave to cool for 1 hour before discarding the cardamom pods and the orange zest.

Mix the coffee with the infused syrup and chill.

Once cold, pour into a shallow container and refrigerate for 2-3 hours until partially frozen. Every hour or so, give it a stir with a fork, scraping the frozen crystals into the liquid. After a few hours of this, it will have a nice icy granular texture and be ready to serve.

Spoon some into a glass, splash a bit of cream over.

Eat.

Try not to suffer brain-freeze.

The Hardwick - Abergavenny

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Last week, I had lunch at somewhere I’ve wanted to eat for ages, Stephen Terry’s The Hardwick. We were in Abergavenny for the annual Food Festival at which I ate and drank more than is ever advisable. So much so, that upon returning, I had to spend an entire day in a vegative state, recovering.

Abergavenny almost has an embarrassment of riches where it comes to eating out, with four highly regarded restaurants located nearby. The Hardwick, The Walnut Tree, The Crown at Whitebrook and The Foxhunter. Although admittedly, it’s a bit of a hike or a short cab ride out to reach any of them. Strangely, within the environs of the actual town there’s a real lack of decent places to eat, but with such a concentration of culinary excellence, more or less right on the doorstep, perhaps that’s not so surprising.

It’s worth noting that all of these restaurants are easily reachable from Bristol for lunch or dinner. It’s easy to forget the city’s proximity to Wales, but Abergavenny is a little over an hour away by train.

The Hardwick sits a little way out of town, on the Old Raglan Road, surrounded by an incredibly verdant early autumn panorama of hills and valleys. The exterior, freshly painted white, looks well kept, but a bit plain from the roadside and not especially alluring.

Fortunately, the interior is an entirely different proposition. It’s evidently very old, by virtue of the uneven tiled floors and the ancient wooden joists and there’s a definite understated air of polished comfort. Rustic but with just a veneer of fancy-pants slickness. To randomly use a (probably entirely unsuitable) nautical term, I instantly like the cut of The Hardwick’s jib.

Adopting a nonchalant, ‘damn the expense’ air, (E was paying) I glanced down at the menu coming to the instant conclusion that an ‘understated air of polished comfort’ doesn’t come frigging cheap. It’s definitely special occasion prices, for me at least. Mentally toting the menu up like an idiot savant, in the most literal sense, I reckoned that the 3 courses I wanted, plus half a bottle of wine and tip would come in at something like £60 each. That’s a pretty hefty whack for a spot of lunch in my book.

Then I spied the set menu, aaaaaand relax. 3 Courses, £21. Job-jobbed. Don’t get me wrong; I like spanking huge wads of cash on meals as much as the next corpulent bastard, but sometimes I just have to accept that although the stomach may be willing, the bank balance is a particularly barren, flaccid-sack, bereft of coinage.

Let’s talk about bread. The Hardwick is using baker Alex Gooch’s, and it’s bloody excellent. I ate more of it later that weekend, in the form of rolls at the Trealy Farm stall at the food festival itself and couldn’t have been more impressed.

So, pan-fried local pedigree pork meatloaf with red onion marmalade, toasted sourdough and cornichons. A fairly standard starter, apart from the sheer heft of the monolithic cube of meatloaf on my plate. It was frigging massive. I’m not complaining, mind, it was bloody nice, in a warm chunky pork paving-slab, kind of way.

Meanwhile, in the long shadow cast by my starter, ‘E’ was eating organic salmon and cod croquette with smashed peas, tartar sauce and lemon. And a very nice thing it was too by all accounts. From my side of the table, I particularly admired the geometrically slashed croquette styling. Fancy.

Slow cooked pork belly with celeriac puree, black pudding and salted caramel apple sauce. I’ve eaten pork belly alles uber da platz, and this was probably the best I’ve had anywhere. Ridiculously meaty, sticky, and soft but with perfectly crisp, almost lacquered skin, which I couldn’t help but wonder at. I’ve cooked muchos belly myself and never once attained such a beautiful glazed finish. I’d be really interested if anyone knows the technique to achieve similar results.

The salted caramel sauce was a nice unusual twist. As with my starter, the portion size erred on the mungus, the concluding forkful pushed into my gob with just a small degree of effort. I was very happy but stuffed silly.

‘E’s pescetarian tendencies had led her towards pan fried tomato risotto with Perroche goats cheese, grilled courgettes, rocket and black olives. As with everything else we’d ordered, this was a substantial portion of food. The risotto had been pressed into a rectangular cake and seared, which is something I haven’t seen before. Combined with a generous lump of Perroche, a fantastic fresh young goats cheese from Neal’s Yard Creamery, ‘E’ was well pleased.

As we both go a bit stupid where ordering food is concerned, we'd also requested a completely unnecessary bowl of very decent triple cooked chips and a cracking dish of courgette fries. These were different to any I’ve eaten previously in other restaurants, being cut extremely thin – shoestring style, then presumably coated in a light tempura batter and finished off with what appeared to be grated parmesan. They were frigging excellent.

Neither of us fancied the set-menu desserts, so eyes roaming over to the a la carte, ‘E’ ordered ‘A jar of lemon crunch with Italian meringue’ which proved to be very similar to something we’ve made ourselves at ‘The Basement’ supper club (ours were inspired by a dessert we’d eaten in a Bath pub). A Kilner jar, layered full of lemon curd, custard and a shortbread crumb. It was lovely, but way too big a portion of something so rich. Which isn’t much of a complaint really.

Meanwhile I was hacking into one of the trio of golden balls on my plate and gleefully watching molten chocolate slowly ooze out of the centre in an obscene display of the most depraved kind of food porn ‘Deep fried, breadcrumbed rice pudding & chocolate arancini with morello cherry parfait’ was ridiculously good.

I really enjoyed lunch at The Hardwick. The restaurant itself has a nice relaxed feel to it. The cooking is excellent, rustic but polished with some very nice, unusual twists on classic dishes and flavour combinations.

Superb local produce is woven throughout the entire menu. You couldn’t ask for more really. The a la carte is definitely on the pricey side, but if like on my visit, you’re not feeling particularly flush then the set menu is bloody good value. I’ll definitely re-visit the next time I’m in Abergavenny.

The Hardwick

Old Raglan Road

Monmouthshire

Wales

NP7 9AA

Telephone 01873 854220

www.thehardwick.co.uk

Fry Sauce

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:32:00 +0000

I recently heard about ‘Fry Sauce’ on an episode of Man versus Food. Originating in Salt Lake City, and specific to the state of Utah, this ketchup-mayonnaise condiment is used in a number of ways, as a sauce in burgers, as a dip for fries and even as a dressing for salad. Although the bog standard version is simply one part ketchup to two parts mayonnaise, on the program it was mentioned that most burger joints have their own closely guarded recipes, with various additional bits and bobs.

Inspired, I knocked up my own version, and even if I say so myself, as a burger sauce or dip for fries, it's frigging superb. Tangy and spicy yet smooth. It’s very moreish, which is unfortunate, because as you’d expect from the lurid orangey-yellow colouring, it’s absolutely filthy and used indiscriminately will no doubt expand your waistline at a rate of knots. But whoever said burgers were healthy anyway, eh? Get stuck in.

Here’s my recipe: -

Dan’s Fry Sauce

Makes enough for 4 burgers

1 Tbs French’s classic yellow mustard
1 1/2 Tbs Heinz ketchup
2 Heaped Tbs Helmans mayonnaise
1 Tsp Colman’s English mustard
2 Heaped Tbs finely chopped gherkins or cornichons,
2 Dashes Tabasco
Dash Worcester sauce
Grind of Pepper

Method - Tres basic this one, just mix everything together in a small bowl.

The photo models a generous splurge of my fry sauce under a rather nice, thick, Donald Russell burger, and a not so great bun – I'd have preferred a brioche style, but it’s all I could lay my hands on.
Don’t judge me.

P.S.
If anyone bothers to make some and tries it as a salad dressing, I’d be interested to know if it works.

My guide to eating and drinking in Bristol

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 10:25:00 +0000

So, I’ve been living in Bristol for around two years now and I reckon I’ve now spent enough time stuffing my face and staggering around inebriated to be able to pass some of my hard won accumulated wisdom onto any visitors to the city.

Therefore, I’d like to present to you my favourite places to eat and drink in Brizzle, handily broken down into sections. I should stress, before I get any hateful comments, no doubt accusing me of being an Essex- know-nothing-twat who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, these are ‘my favourites’, and as a result there’s the remote possibility that the places I like may not always tally with what you like.

Although, saying that, you should also be aware that I have impeccable taste and you could do muchos worse than to listen with rapt attention to every glittering nugget of well judged wisdom that is thoughtfully and modestly projected from my handsome mouth with regards to eating and drinking.

On that note, let us begin...

RESTAURANTS

Flinty Red
This small Cotham Hill restaurant has a daily changing Spanish- Italian influenced menu, which is always interesting. The cooking is superb, extremely polished yet rustic. The Chefs jointly own the restaurant with the proprietors of independent wine merchants, Corks of Cotham, just down the road. Somewhat unsurprisingly then, the wine list is excellent and well priced.

34 Cotham Hill, BS6 6LA
Telephone – 0117 923 8755
http://www.flintyred.co.uk

Source
This St Nicholas market restaurant and food hall has only recently started opening in the evenings, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and I’ve already had some very good meals here. The fish and meat on the menu is straight from their own butcher and fishmonger counters and available to buy. The short, regularly changing menus, could probably be best described as modern British. The cooking is very good with the steaks being particularly top drawer. The bread and desserts are made by their own pastry chef, and are also superb (try the chocolate salted caramel cherry brownie).

1-3 Exchange Avenue, St Nicholas Market. BS1 1JW
Telephone – 0117 927 2998
http://www.source-food.co.uk

Harvey Nichols
The Bristol outpost of the high fashion department store has a very decent restaurant on the second floor. The dining room is glamorously decorated in a Bond’esque style, featuring lots of gold and plush white carpets. The beautifully presented, classically cooked food is excellent, particularly from the a la carte menu. The wine list is superb and extremely comprehensive. This is definitely the place to head if you feel like a bit of posh.

27 Philadelphia Street, Quakers Friars, Cabot Circus, BS1 3BZ
Telephone - 0117 916 8898
Website

Manna
Right now, this is undoubtedly my favourite restaurant in Bristol. Located just on the suburban edge of the city, the Chef is ex Moro, Lido and Flinty Red and he can really cook. The food is absolutely bloody fantastic, gutsy and full of bold interesting flavours but with some really subtle touches where needed. There’s a definite Spanish influence there, with a passing nod to British and classic French. The menu design and bargainous pricing lends itself to ordering lots to share, so go, get stuck in and enjoy.

2B North View, Westbury Park. BS6 7QB
Telephone: 0117 970 6276
http://www.mannabar.co.uk

*Update April 2013* Sam, the head chef has moved on and Manna has a new chef.

The Pony & Trap
A Michelin starred pub, which actually manages the tall order of being a proper pub as well as a restaurant, just 10 miles outside Bristol in the village of Chew Magna. The six course tasting menu I ate there last year was undoubtedly one of the best meals I’ve eaten anywhere let alone Bristol. At £45 it was an almost ridiculous bargain. Chef Josh Eggleton’s modern British cooking is inventive but remains on the right side of experimental. If it’s available, definitely go for the tasting menu. The wine list is decent and very well priced too.

Newtown, Chew Magna, Bristol, BS40 8TQ
Telephone - 01275 332627
http://www.theponyandtrap.co.uk

The Runcible Spoon
I love The ‘Spoon. This Stokes Croft restaurant is owned by a co-operative of chefs, with much of the produce coming from their own allotment. It has a lovely rough rustic charm all of it’s own. The food is good with elements of real flair, generously portioned and always interesting with its admirable emphasis on seasonality and Britishness. That it’s all so fantastically cheap caps it off nicely.

3 Ninetree Hill, Stokes Croft, BS1 3SB
Telephone – 0117 3297645
http://www.the-runcible-spoon.com

*Update April 2013* The 'Spoon' is now only open on Fridays for dinner, Saturdays for brunch and dinner and Sundays for roasts.

Soukitchen
Absolutely cracking modern Middle Eastern restaurant, just South of the river in Bedminster. The food is superb, beautifully presented and good value with an interesting specials board that changes daily

277 North Street, Bedminster, BS3 1JP
Telephone 0117 966 6880
http://www.soukitchen.co.uk

BREAKFAST/BRUNCH

The Gallimaufry
My new favourite place for breakfast/brunch on Gloucester Road. A cracking plate of flaked ham hock poached eggs and hollandaise on toast for just four and a half quid?! A huge pot of tea for two, £2? I don’t know who the hell is pricing their menu, but I’d say get your ass down there quick before they come to their senses. Unfortunately, the brunch menu isn’t available on a Sunday, which is probably a good thing; otherwise I’d spend all weekend living in there. Oh, and can I just add, any place that serves devilled lamb kidneys for breakfast can do no wrong.

26-28 The Promenade, Gloucester Rd, BS7 8AL
Telephone – 0117 9427319
http://www.thegallimaufry.co.uk

The Bank of Stokes Croft
I bloody love a fry up on the weekend, and Stokes Croft’s ‘The Bank’ does a cracker and its dirt-cheap at £5.50 which also includes either tea, coffee or, wait for it… a pretty decent Bloody Mary!! Can I get a massive WTF? Yes, service can be slightly erratic; the weekend staff often appear to be just as hungover as you, if not worse. But…£5.50…. tantalising.

84 Stokes Croft, BS1 3QY
Telephone - 0117 923 2565
http://thebankofstokescroft.com

*Update April 2013* The Bank breakfast, as it was when I wrote about it is no more. Quelle horreur. It's all gone hot dogs and waffles.

Poco
Just across the road from The Bank is Poco. Their breakfast options include a Moroccan breakfast, merguez sausage, harissa, sourdough and awesome creamy scrambled eggs. I like it a lot.

45 Jamaica Street, Stokes Croft, BS2 8JP
Telephone: 0117 923 2233
http://www.tomsfeast.com/restaurants/poco-bristol

COFFEE

Boston Tea Party
Ok, it’s not an independent, but this small chain only exists in the South West and hasn’t reached evil corporation size quite yet, and there’s no denying that their coffee is bloody good They can always be relied upon to provide a decent flat white.

Various Bristol Locations
http://www.bostonteaparty.co.uk

Baristas Coffee Collective
This IS an independent, and they serve excellent coffee.

29 Victoria Street, Harbourside, BS1 6AA
http://www.baristas.co.uk

*Update April 2013* In the last couple of months, there has been a sudden outbreak of excellent independent coffee shops opening in Bristol, strangely all within a stones throw of each other. Definitely check out Wild at Heart on Broad Street, Small St. Expresso on errr...Small Street and finally Full Court Press, just about to open it's doors, also on Broad Street.

POSH DRINKS

Hausbar
Found at the top of Whiteladies road, down a staircase almost hidden underneath an Indian restaurant. This low lit cocktail bar is all 1930’s Berlin understated elegance. Best enjoyed sat up at the bar watching the extremely knowledgeable staff do their thing.

52 Belgrave Road, Clifton. BS8 2XP
Telephone – 0117 946 6084
http://www.hausbar.co.uk

Milk Thistle
Located in a historic harbourside building, behind an unmarked door. This buzz and they might let you in cocktail bar has to be seen to be believed. Think gothic, wood panelled English country house spread over a couple of floors. The bar staff know what they’re doing and make fantastic drinks.

Quay Head House, Colston Avenue, BS1 1EB
Telephone - 0117 9294429
http://www.milkthistlebristol.com

Hyde & Co
Up at the top of Park Street, just by The Triangle, this smaller sister bar to Milk Thistle, has a similarly eclectic, gothic, English gentleman vibe going on. It’s a fantastic place for a cheeky cocktail.

2 The Basement Berkeley Crescent, BS8 1JY
Telephone – 0117 9297007
http://www.hydeandcobristol.net

The Rummer
A historic Inn in St Nicholas Market, now a very good cocktail bar. The selection of spirits behind the bar is huge. They know how to make a superb gin martini.

All Saints Lane, Old City, BS11JH
Telephone – 0117 929 0111
http://www.therummer.net

Harvey Nichols
On the 2nd floor as well as the restaurant, there is a pretty swanky small cocktail bar. Just the place for a pre-meal snifter or a posh drink if you happen to be in that part of town.

27 Philadelphia Street, Quakers Friars, Cabot Circus, BS1 3BZ
Telephone - 0117 916 8898
Website

NOT SO POSH DRINKS

The Green Man
A fiercely independent proper boozer up the hill in Kingsdown with a nice selection of seldom seen beers, ciders and ales. There is a small but very decent food menu. Its wood panelled interior is a very pleasant place to sit and have a drink and a chat. This is about as far away from a Wetherspoons or a trendy bar as you can get. If you wanted to show someone a real-deal proper English pub, this would fit the bill.

The Green Man, 21 Alfred Place, Kingsdown, BS2 8HD

The Arnolfini
On a sunny afternoon in Bristol, there is no better place to be than sat outside the Arnolfini bar, on the harbourside with a pint. Ok – just about every other frigging person in the city has undoubtedly had the same idea, but it’s still worth joining the throng and queuing at the bar before sprawling yourself on the quayside.

16 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA
http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/pages/cafe-bar/

No 1 Harbourside
On this side of the harbourside on the weekends it’s hen and stag do central, drinking it up in the rubbish chain bars on the strip. If that’s not your thing, then head here. A large independent bar with decent local beers, ciders and ales with the added bonus of a small menu of pretty good, cheap and filling grub. Think beer battered hake fillet with fries and homemade tartar sauce, lamb stew or white wine mussels, all with free soup.

No. 1 Canons Road, BS1 5UH
http://no1harbourside.co.uk

Canteen
No 1 Harbourside’s sister bar located in Stokes Croft. It’s more or less exactly the same except it’s ram packed all the time with a young, arty and trendy crowd. A decent place to sit outside with a pint and watch the comings and goings of the Croft, which lets face it, would keep even the most jaded people-watcher enthralled.

Hamilton House, 80 Stokes Croft, BS1 3QY
http://www.canteenbristol.co.uk

Seven Stars
This historic pub, just over the Bristol Bridge, in Redcliffe is what I’d call a proper boozer. Winner of the CAMRA Bristol pub of the year in 2010 and 2011, there’s a fantastic selection of unusual real ales and ciders, a dartboard and a pool table. Which is all you need really.

1 Thomas Lane Redcliffe, Bristol BS1 6JG
http://www.7stars.co.uk

TAKEAWAY/DELIVERY

China Capital
I’ve struggled to find decent takeaway food in Bristol, I’m still looking for a good Indian, but when it comes to Chinese/Thai/General Asian goodness, then China Capital is incredibly hard to beat. In fact, it’s so frigging awesome ‘E’ and I have had to agree to restrict ourselves to only ordering once a month, to when we’re feeling particularly lazy and don’t want to cook. I particularly recommend the udon noodles and the chicken satay skewers.

24 Ashton Road, BS3 2EA
Tel: 0117 953 9666
http://www.chinacapital.co.uk

FINALLY
I should mention my own ‘Basement’ supper club. If you’re visiting Bristol and we’re holding one on that night – then this is where you should undoubtedly be headed.

http://thebasementbristol.blogspot.com

Four days spent 'owning' a restaurant

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 18:49:00 +0000

I suspect many of us who while away our days thinking or writing about food, harbour secret restaurant owning ambitions. Not serious intent of course, just happy daydream fodder, idly picturing in our mind’s eye the look of the place, the menu, the wine list, perhaps even the name above the door. Because we all know what makes a good restaurant and what makes a frigging awful one, right? Our individual visions, pure and true would obviously be sure-fire winners and have punters queuing round the block to sample, say, the delights of a Mongolian-Cajun-fusion restaurant, which solely sells Jagerneister…by the pint.

Massive lottery win withstanding, for most of us, that’s about as far as it will ever get and our dreams will forever remain, just that.

Not for me.

Last week ‘E’ and I were ‘loaned’ the keys to a restaurant and spent four days running it exactly how we wanted to, more or less.

The Runcible Spoon is a friendly little Bristol neighbourhood bistro, which I like a lot and have written about in the past. The co-operative (very Bristol) of chefs who own it had decided to take a well-deserved holiday, and decided to close the place throughout August. Knowing that our ‘Basement’ supper club had been forced to move venues, they very kindly offered us the use of the ‘Spoon.

What a frigging opportunity eh? The only nagging doubt we had was whether we could hack it in the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong, we are well used to cooking set menus for fairly large groups at the supper club, but the numbers are fixed, you buy exactly the right amount of ingredients, there’s no waste and everyone gets the same. Contrast this against unknown numbers of diners, a high chance of either running out of ingredients (or possibly worse, buying too much, so loads of waste), and having to cook every single plate of food to order. It would be a real test of our abilities and nerves. Resisting an almost overwhelming urge to immediately purchase a Marco Pierre White style headscarf, we decided to crack on with planning exactly how we were going to pull this caper off.

Deciding that the best way to go would be two evenings, Thursday and Friday, then straight into an all day weekend menu on Saturday and Sunday, we started pilfering our back catalogue of ‘Basement’ menus for suitable dishes. The process we went with was for us to compile our own menus separately, and then meet back to compare notes. Naturally, this structured and well-ordered meeting of minds involved much impassioned discussion, swearing and shaking of fists, ending with a refusal to actually speak to each other. Two days and some intense counselling from friends later, we had an evening menu consisting of 3 starters, 2 mains and 2 desserts, and a final savoury flourish, our signature rarebit.

Another bruising bout of discussion left us with a room full of broken furniture and a single screwed up ball of paper, on which was scrawled the weekend menu. Mainly consisting of (hopefully superb) Bacon Sandwiches, which are a surprisingly rare find in Bristol and the pièce de résistance, Momofuku style Volcanoes (a bread roll, stuffed with potato dauphinoise, caramelised onion and with our nod to the West country, topped with Keen’s cheddar). For the rest, we planned on making up dishes from the evening leftovers.

A ridiculously huge shopping list, a timeplan, a quick tour of the ‘Spoons kitchen, a daytime music playlist and a brand spanking new ‘Basement’ website later, we were almost ready get on with it.

Gonzalez Byass makers of our favourite sherry, Tio Pepe, had readily agreed to provide the booze on a sale or return basis. At their suggestion we arranged delivery of half bottles of fino, red in the shape of a cracking Berionia Rioja Reserva, and white, a Vinas Del Vero Gewurztraminer. They also agreed to supply some bottles of Matusalem, a 30-year-old dry Oloroso, as a match for the rarebit.

Unfortunately, we both had to work, so after collecting the restaurant keys, prep didn’t start till late Wednesday night. We were on top of it; we had a plan and our own restaurant to implement it in.

Thursday morning flew past, deliveries came, one after the other. Meat, Vegetables, a whole pallet load of booze. Resisting a strong urge to wade into the sherry then and there, in a disgusting display of excess, ‘E’ and I instead were head down in the kitchen working through a prep list as long as your arm. At this point, the indomitable Kate arrived, a glamorous yet grizzled veteran of the restaurant game, she had agreed to work as our front of house. We also had the unheard of luxury of a Kitchen Porter, Alice, completely overqualified for the job really, being an old hand at waitressing and also a recent Ballymaloe graduate. She would be able to help out anywhere she was needed basically.

As is the way with these things, in the blink of an eye it was now late afternoon, and we hadn’t made much of a dent in the to-do list. This realisation injected a feint undercurrent of panic into proceedings, and we both unconsciously upped the tempo. The thing is, being in an unfamiliar kitchen, without a considerable amount of your normal everyday kitchen kit slows you down a fair bit. Also factor in that every single job, even the most mundane always takes longer than you think it will and the potential for abject humiliation was rising by the minute. I suddenly had a wave of fear wash over me, my stomach knotted and I had to fight back a rising feeling of panic.

On the plus side, the ‘Spoons professional oven, a sexy rather expensive wonder of technology was proving frigging lovely to use. Balanced and even, with a button to check current temperature, it even automatically overcompensates slightly over the desired heat, for when you open the door. I had to spend some quality time fawning over it; delicately caressing its buttons and basically playing with its knob.

6:30pm, exactly 30 minutes until the doors would be flung open, the first customers would be arriving and potential chaos. We were still cooking. I was hoping there would be a small lull before things kicked off proper, time for a mug of tea, a chat, with ‘E’. Kate and Alice, a walk through proceedings, and a chance to mentally prepare. No. We were going straight into service still completing our prep. Talk about making things hard for ourselves. Strangely enough, I now felt completely calm, and despite being patently not, pretty much on top of things.

Our first customers arrived, smiling and were ushered to the dining room downstairs. I saw Kate preparing a drinks order, and I tried to get on with the last few bits…. then almost, in slow motion, our first ticket was tucked into the holder with a “Check on” and that was that, we were off.

The next few hours passed in a blur, ticket after ticket came into the kitchen. Making dishes to order felt at first a bit clumsy, until I settled down and found a bit of a rhythm. The right frying pan for sautéing potatoes, my mise en place laid out just so, the right saucepan for poaching an egg. It’s hard to go into it with no experience of the menu and the kitchen equipment; I was fumbling my way through. It was unbearably hot and hectic. ‘E’ and I danced around each other, trying our hardest to ensure that every tables order went out together, as hot as we could make it. We both burnt ourselves often, and had a few hissed words with each other as tensions spilled over, but for the most part we stayed on top of it and suddenly, the fluttering strip of orders was reduced to just one and then none. To go through such intense all encompassing activity and then suddenly stop, left me in a bit of daze. I’ve got to say it; the mental-high of working through pressure like that and coming out the other side intact is huge.

The odd ticket came in, but compared to the deluge we’d steamed through earlier, it wasn’t anything to tax us, two now gaunt, hollow eyed and bedraggled looking 'sort of' kitchen veterans.

At this point, right at the end of the evening, the expensive super oven switched off and refused to come back on. Luckily, that was pretty much it for the night, but we had to repeat the whole thing again tomorrow, and we’d obviously be needing an oven.

As the last guest left, the front door clicked shut, a weary ‘Team Basement’ gathered around a table and alcohol was produced. We wound down, chatted and had a booze driven debrief on how we thought the evening had gone. A little worse for wear, ‘E’ and I finally got home to bed at 2:30am.

Back at The ‘Spoon for 9am, Evie, one of the owners, was waiting for us and had arranged for an engineer to come in and have a look at the busted oven. Diagnosing the problem instantly as ‘overheating tripping the switch’ the oven was functioning in minutes, by virtue of him pressing a hidden reset button on the back. He then proceeded to thoroughly milk us, his customers, by performing various, and no doubt needless diagnostic checks. His final bill. £80, for basically pressing a button.

Damning the oven engineer’s eyes, we moved on and began prep. We’d planned on Friday being more leisurely. Having done a lot of the organisation and big cooking jobs the previous day, so were confident this wasn’t going to feel anywhere near as hectic. And so it was. We worked through the list, had time for a bit of a breather before service, after feeling the heat the previous evening, we weren’t nervous and were actually looking forward to it all. At ten to seven, and just about to open the doors, a final check saw me looking around for the roasted fennel, a component on one of the main dishes, it had gone in the oven ages ago…. fuck! Quickly opening the oven doors I surveyed the blackened, steaming wreckage of the fennel, and felt physically sick.

After five minutes of recriminations and tension induced blame apportionment, we had to crack on and try and get some more prepared, rather than roasting it, we’d parboil it and then sauté it. All of this was taking up precious time. People were arriving and starters were going out already.

Fantastic. Someone had skipped starters and ordered the fennel dish. It wasn’t anywhere near ready and as we scrambled around, tickets started to back up, and more were coming in. The pressure levels in the kitchen were going through the roof, but somehow, I’m not sure how, heads down, working like automatons we got through it, plate after plate heading off the pass, in what seemed like 10 minutes but was actually around 3 hours. So much for a more leisurely day then.

Exhausted, at the end of service, after cleaning up, we gathered again round the table and had a drink and a chat about the weekend’s menu and dishes. Saturday and Sunday were going to be all day menus. Some dishes could go back on the menu as they were, and some could be recycled – the leftover cooked pork joints, shredded and served with green sauce in rolls, for example. When we knew exactly what the next days menu was going to look like we headed home. ‘E’ and I got in at midnight.

Up at 6:45 for an 8am start, I was making Volcanoes half hour later, and was selling 7, pre-ordered to a single customer by 9am. Things were going well already, we had a time plan and were on top of things, feeling fairly fresh and optimistic. Whilst leaving Klaus, our Kitchenaid to mix more dough, ‘E’ and I hefted the restaurant signboard out onto the pavement outside and straightaway heard a massive bang from within, accompanied by Alice seemingly shouting ‘FIRE!’ Dropping the board we ran back into the kitchen to a sight almost as terrible as a raging conflagration.

Alice had in fact shouted ‘FRYER!’ The countertop wasn’t level, and Klaus the Kitchenaid’s strenuous dough mixing exertions had made the whole thing vibrate wildly. The industrial deep fat fryer nearby, helped along by the tremors had worked it’s way to the edge and upended onto the floor. The horrific sight that greeted us was a 5 litre thick slick of vegetable oil spreading rapidly across the whole kitchen.

Panicked and cursing liberally, as a group we descended on the spillage with bundles of blue roll, a mop and a flat rubber broom, which seemed curiously designed for just such an incident. There is absolutely nothing worse than cleaning up oil, we slipped and slid around the kitchen getting smothered in it. 45 minutes later, the floor sparkling and us now noticeably less so. We opened the doors for our first crack at the all day menu.

Customers started arriving, tickets started coming into the kitchen and straight away everyone seemed to be ordering the same thing, herb potato cakes with bacon and either fried or poached eggs. Unfortunately, we’d had no time to pre-poach the eggs and providing that many to order, whilst trying to cook everything else was quickly becoming a problem and holding things up. We made a hasty command decision to drop poached eggs from the menu, and only offer fried.

I’ve never cooked so many bacon sandwiches in my life, and I started to think that working in a greasy spoon café was obviously a much harder gig than I’d have given credit.

As the day progressed, bacon sandwich orders started to wane, and pulled pork rolls with green sauce started to fly out of the kitchen instead, along with Volcanoes. This continued until about 4:30pm, when apart from the odd customer, things quietened down.

We closed the doors at 7pm, utterly exhausted. Our third day over, I was so tired I was almost falling asleep standing up. We had the now traditional debrief, and headed home. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Sunday, our fourth and last day running a restaurant. Happily, no accidents or disasters. The doors opened at 11am, and off we went. It was busy, far busier in fact than Saturday but we were now old hands at this; knew which pans were best for which job, where all the equipment was located and as a result we worked quickly and steadily.

It was incredibly satisfying to start seeing menu items crossed off the blackboard as gradually we started to run out of ingredients. We’d bought a mountain of bacon from our butcher, and after the first day I was doubtful we’d get through it all, but it was all gone.

Again, as it got to late afternoon, around 4pm, things started to die off again, and then I saw a couple eyeing the signboard outside, where Kate had billed the Volcanoes as ‘The best thing you’d put in your mouth all weekend’ and I popped my head out to explain what they actually were. It turned out they were looking for something to eat, and somewhere to meet friends. They came in and sat at the window ordered some beer, a volcano and some pulled pork sandwiches. 5 Minutes later, their friends arrived, and ordered more beer, volcanoes and pulled pork. Another pal arrived and ordered more of the same. We were kept busy for the rest of the afternoon, and they spent over a £100 between them. They even took volcanoes away.

When we finally closed at 7pm, we’d pretty much sold out of everything, which was a huge relief, the idea of throwing expensive ingredients away as waste doesn’t bear thinking about really.

Now we had to pack up all of our kit, get it all out and leave The Spoon looking as spotless as when we arrived. A couple of hours later, between the four of us we had the majority of it done. ‘E’ and I would come back on the Monday to finish it all off.

We sat down around the table for one last time, got the booze out and together celebrated a job well done.

At the end of the day, no one had waited that long for their food, it had all gone out of the kitchen hot, and looked decent. We’d had no complaints whatsoever. That’s about as good as it gets, considering it was the first time ‘E’ and I had worked in a kitchen together, cooking food to order. Obviously, we were helped immensely by the fact that Kate and Alice were so good at their jobs, real professionals adding a veneer of slickness to our dog and pony show, no doubt.

Working in a professional kitchen, off tickets, was a revelation for me. Yes, extremely hot, pressured, frantic and exhausting but at the same time, incredibly rewarding and addictive. When we were all working together as a team, at full tilt and dish after dish was flying off the pass and tickets were being spiked one after the other, it’s actually exhilarating, a real high.

As for the lows, it’s fucking hard work, almost ridiculously so. Even for just four days, the hours we put in were immense. Personally speaking, at the end of all that I was covered in burns, utterly exhausted and generally feeling a bit minging and spotty.

After paying staff, suppliers and The Spoon for the use of their restaurant, we didn’t exactly make out like bandits. The amount of work we did was out of all proportion to the profits. This restaurant lark is a hard game to make money from, there’s no doubt about that. I have a deep and newfound respect for anyone who’s no doubt knocking their cods off in kitchens or dining rooms up and down the country.

Finally, did the reality of my four-day restaurant ‘owning’ experience kill the dream? Happily, No. It just brutally opened my eyes to how much work is involved in actually pulling it off.

I’d like to thank both Kate and Alice for their hard work and professionalism, Jeremy and Louise at Gonzalez Byass for all their help and supplying the best alcoholic drink EVER, Dave Giles Butchers, Scott at Powell’s of Olveston, Ben at Charlie Hicks, Rory at Roy Ireland, Somerset Dairy, Herbert’s, Trethowan’s, Bristol Beer Factory, Darren at Grape and Grind, Andrew at Tart, The Runcible Spoon for actually lending us their restaurant and finally everyone else who supported us over the four days. Oh, and our mate Liz, up the road who let us put all our glass in her black recycling box.

You’re all awesome.

To see what we do next, visit…

http://thebasementbristol.blogspot.com

Cider Battered Onions

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:58:00 +0000

This is a quick recipe we’ve served a number of times at ‘The Basement’ supper club as a nibble and it’s bloody superb, ridiculously easy to knock out, cheap and absolutely frigging delicious. The flavour combination of deep fried, hot battered onions and the sharp tang of the onion salt is cracking.

I wish I could say it’s my recipe, but it’s pinched from Mark Hix, although we only use one type of onion, made our own onion salt, and most importantly changed the name of the dish, which makes all the difference….probably…errr….not so much.

Just a couple of onions make enough to feed a whole frigging horde, it’s amazing, so it’s tres frugal too and therefore suitable recession eating.

Cider Battered Onions

Serves – a lot

You’ll Need:-
2 Large Spanish Onions

For the cider batter
80g Self Raising Flour
120ml Cider
Sea Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper
Vegetable Oil for Deep Frying
Plain Flour For Dusting

For the onion salt
2 Tbsp Sea Salt
2 Tbsp Dried Onions

First make the onion salt by blitzing the onions and the salt together in a mini processor until suitably pulverised into a fine, salty dust.

Peel and slice the onions in half, and then into 1cm thick half moons. Separate the slices.

Make the batter, put the flour in a bowl and whisk in the cider until it’s thick and smooth. Season and leave to rest for 30 mins.

Heat the vegetable oil in a deep fat fryer to 180C – be mindful that it’s incredibly scorchio so don’t go sticking any delicate appendages in there. Remember, if you burn those fingers, you won’t be able to continue with the next step, which is…

Season the flour for dusting the onions.

Toss the onions in the flour, then coat in the cider batter before dropping into the hot oil. Work in small batches.

When golden and crisp, remove and drain on kitchen paper before sprinkling with the onion salt.

I'm not the only one suggesting eating the lot, whilst hot and necking loads of cold Fino sherry. Refuse to share. (That's just me).

Bar-B-Q Shack - Brighton

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 07:33:00 +0000

BBQ is absolutely scorching hot at the moment, but not in the sense of that very British, back garden gathering. All cheap rickety white plastic furniture, Chernobyl raw sunburn, warm metallic dregs from a can of Stella, the steaming heap of carbonised burgers and the chancy half cooked salmonella sausages. All consumed within a raw haze of B&H smoke and washed down with a cocktail of Pimms and culinary disappointment. No. Forget all that.

It’s ‘American style’ BBQ that’s giving everyone the raging horn (a hopeless generalisation perhaps, there are a number of different styles of BBQ in the states), but I’m thinking US staples such as ribs, pulled pork and brisket smoked at low temperatures for hours until moist, almost falling apart and possibly basted in something unlikely, homemade and sticky… poles apart from your standard cremated British banger basically.

Bear with me – let’s rewind a year.

Last July, a piece in The Guardian by Jay Rayner had caught my eye. It was a review of the Bar-B-Q shack in Brighton. To cut a long story short, an old, sticky carpeted pub, situated in what could be generously described as the arse end of town was serving amazing American BBQ. The chef, John Hargate had honed his skills in Texas, and had subsequently won all kinds of Championships and awards. Jay reckoned it was the daddy. I was sold and vowed whenever I was next in Brighton, the first place I’d be dragging my greedy arse was there.

Back to the present (or to be really pedantic, last week). Barely stepping off the train at Brighton station and me instantly heading off, like a meat-seeking missile to the Bar-B-Q shack, ‘E’ trailing in my wake, with me vigorously assuring her that ‘yes, they cater for vegetarians too’.

The Worlds End is a pub in Brighton’s London Road. Entirely unremarkable from the outside, it looks like almost any other boozer in the UK. The darkened wood panelled interior doesn’t do anything to change this assumption, but ignore all that. It’s the menu that’s exciting.

Texas style beef brisket, North Carolina pulled pork, Texas Hill Country hot link hot dogs, ribs, hot wings…on and on it continues. I was caught in a horrifying menu choice dilemma and didn’t know where to start first. I didn’t want to miss out on anything. There was a definite air of grim determination about me as I studied the menu, rolling my eyes tortuously and working through every possible permutation, muttering quickly and quietly to myself, like a fat Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

At this point my eye lit upon the dinner plate section, up to 6 meats, with fries, onion rings, salad garnish, pickles, jalapeños and BBQ sauces.

Come to papa.

Deciding that ordering more than 3 meats would be particularly gluttonous, even for me, I spent the next ten minutes whittling my choices down in an absolutely agonising fashion. Eventually settling on Beef Brisket, Pulled Pork and Ribs.

‘E’ meanwhile, ordering from the understandably far more compact ‘Bad Hunter’ section of the menu, quickly decided on a Vegetarian Chilli Cheese Dog.

Now lets just throw some information out there. I’ve been to America just once. New York and I didn’t eat any BBQ whatsoever whilst there. However, I’ve eaten enough UK approximations of it, particularly at the frankly amazing PittCue to be a fair judge of what’s what. And if that’s not qualification enough, I’m falling back on the ‘I know what I like’ defence.

My mound of meat arrived, and I spent a moment to orientate myself before digging in, onion rings yes, sticky glistening ribs, nice, the pulled pork underneath, yep, the beef brisket curled around the edge of the plate, in a slightly distressing ‘pinched off’ fashion errr…. check.

I’ve never eaten American style beef brisket before, so have no benchmark to really compare, but I have spent time dribbling over my keyboard and ogling food porn examples, and good old common sense tells me the dried out, flavourless strip of leatherette masquerading as beef on my plate wasn’t a good example. I was crestfallen.

However, pushing that aside, I perked up considerably when I discovered the pulled pork was very good, meaty and moist, just as it should be.

And then I tried the ribs. Now that’s what I’m talking about. My mood soared. Sublime, sticky, almost indecent. I gorged and slathered, ripped and licked. My face, my hands even my phone were covered in sauce and right then, at that moment, I couldn’t have given a shit. The Ribs rocked my world, almost cancelling out the disappointment of the brisket entirely.

Meanwhile, ‘E’s vegetarian hot chilli dog, wasn’t impressing the hell out of her. Fair enough, a veggie eating US style BBQ is almost asking to be shafted, and all credit to the Bar-B-Q shack for even throwing the ‘bad hunters’ a metaphorical bone. But it wasn’t great. The hot dog was a pain in the arse to eat, it fell apart instantly, and just generally didn't live up to it's billing on the menu.

On the side dish front, the coleslaw was a bit too full of mayonnaise for my liking; the ‘fries’ were more like chunky ‘steakhouse’ style chips and there wasn’t a jalapeño in sight. The onion rings however were great, as was the homemade BBQ sauce.

Not quiet what I expected then. In summary, a real mixed bag. The brisket was obviously awful, the side dishes apart from the onion rings, OK. But, tantalisingly the pulled pork was very good and the ribs were off the frigging chart amazing.

As an unrepentant meat eater, it could be argued vegetarians get what they deserve.

Maybe the Bar-B-Q Shack were having a bit of an off day, it happens. But based on my visit, I’d say definitely go for the ribs and the pulled pork. Avoid the brisket. There are some other intriguing items on the menu that I’ll be heading back to sample, next time I’m in town, particularly the Hot Link Hot Dogs and the Armadillo Egg.

Despite my gripes, I actually enjoyed what I ate, apart from one item *hard, cold stare at the brisket*. It wasn’t expensive, the portions were decent and I waddled out of there stuffed silly. At the end of the day, I’ve got to say it’s probably worth visiting just to eat the amazing ribs alone.

The Bar-B-Q Shack
World’s End
60-61 London Road,
Brighton,
BN1 4JE

Telephone: 01273 275757