Ducks Eggs and Radishes

Pork chop, lemon + capers. Monday night after a long walk home.

2011-03-29T01:16:00.000-07:00

Griddled then oven roasted with lemon and capers. Sear on griddle, then into roast pan with lemon squeezed over top and lemon half face down in pan. 16 - 20 mins at gs mk 6.

Sweat chicory in butter and eggcups worth of veal stock, and then a squeeze of lemon. Season then bung in oven when the chops go in.

Serve with purple broc, pour juices over everything.

very tasty. very quick.

An heroic work lunch:

2010-06-21T04:06:00.000-07:00

Iberico ham from Esther at Fortnums.
Yellow fleshed Spanish peaches from Waitrose
Rocket, erm, from Portugal
Avocado, South Africa.

Actually, when you put it like that it looks rather terrible. A summer plate of airmiles. But it was mighty delicious

Great queen street (again!)

2010-05-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

My god I had a good bottle last night. I once again found myself at Queen Street, a restaurant fast becoming my favourite place to eat. It was one of those wonderful evenings, four of us, some big and extremely exciting news, the windows swung open, a warm breeze flooding the floor. We feasted on sand eels and bream, snails, wild garlic, chickpeas and aubergine, squid and pigs cheeks and a hearty plate of brawn with a duck egg.

And to wash it down, a Beaujolais, straight from the fridge, cold rather than chilled. Made by a man called Henry Fessy. It was absolutely THE thing to be drinking right then, right there. Bittersweet cherry juice, bright as a button, the sort of thing to dribble down your cheek as you lie on your back in a field gulping from the bottle with a pic nic, in the heat of the afternoon.

A subtle way with risotto...

2010-05-03T06:04:00.001-07:00

A made up bank holiday lunch, storecupboard if you will, but with added extra pizzaz by way of my newly discovered Farmers Market and the all too brief joys of the wild garlic season. It is no more than five minutes from home and a total crime that I haven't been before. But oh what a joyous discovery!

Fennel, Saffron and wild garlic risotto. Put it all together, the wild garlic right at the end ,a spash of Amontillado sherry at the begining, butter, olive oil and salt. Its a winner. Delicate, gentle spring like flavours perfect for a green and windy day, huge billowing clouds patroling the azure skies.

A crab for supper, delivered fresh from Cornwall. She knows....and with it a little white Burgundy; a fiting end to a lovely weekend.

It really is a charmed existence...

Veal Sage and Lemon

2010-04-21T12:29:00.001-07:00

So following on from that delightfully simple soup an escalope of english veal with lemon and sage. What a glorious word, slipping, clip clopping from the tongue to land with a plop on some fine polished china. It was almost as big as my plate, dribbling juices, simply adorned with crispy sage, a mild char, and a tangy molten pool of lemony butter. A forest of watercress and a side of hispi cabbage to support- so simple, so Italian. It was a major result

A charmed existence....

2010-04-21T01:23:00.001-07:00

I do sometimes think I live a very charmed life. With less than a week to go before the marathon I am taking on board an extraordinary amount of food. And so much of it extremely good. There's so much to write about but right now I just don't have the time to do it all justice. I shall have to return to recent feasting. Last Wednesday was a trip to Viajante, Nuno Mendes' new place in Bethnal Green, candidate for a full on write up if ever there was one. My three word review would be "Clarity of Flavour"....but we all know that's just not going to be enough....

And last night I was at one of my favourite central London spots, 32 Great Queen Street. I ate brilliantly as per usual. Mr Norrington-Davies, I heartily and hear-by salute you. I shan't deny feeling a pang of envy on hearing that Vauxhall has been granted your third installment.

White bean, bread and wild garlic soup followed by English Veal Escalope with Lemon and Sage and Pistachio Cake with Blood Oranges. Soothing beans, a smattering of sour dough, soft of crunch, and the whiff of fresh verdant garlic. All wrapped up in lovely glossy stock. Simple, comforting, delicious....

And there's more, but it will have to wait. The Square for instance, for a 40th this Thursday. Philip Howard, often referred to as the best chef in the capital. Two michelin stars of tasting menu, which I'm told includes a dish of sweetbread ravioli. Stop it. All wines from double magnum or bigger. I mean, seriously. Say no more.

So yes ,it is charmed. Extremely charmed. And I really must put it all down here. But just not...right...now...

Morey St Denis, En La Rue de Vergey, Bruno Clair 1998

2010-02-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

My neighbour took in a case of this wine yesterday, delivered from my reserves. Her fee; a bottle of Scavinos very drinkable Rosso di Tavola 2005 that combines bright black cherry with Piedmontese tannins to create an excellent long saturday shoulder of lamb lunch acompaniment. Ripe and structured and with bundles more fruit than your everyday Rosso di Tavola. Very accomplished.The burgundy I couldn't resist, cracking a bottle as soon as I got home. Good pinot, with a little age needs little excuse save for a hungry palate and a willing audience. I had one, and soon I had the other as a knock at the door signalled a friend over to collect some frozen mice from my freezer - a remnant of my days snake-sitting.

Morey St Denis always conjures sweet fruit for me. It has some of the prettiness of Chambolle with some of the depth of a Gevrey. And this didn't disappoint. High-toned strawberries, minerals and a whiff of autumn pipe smoke on the nose, and some clearly stated concentration on the palate. Classic Clair this, not an ounce of tomfoolery here just pure pinot Morey fruit. The merest hint of aged pinot creeps in but purely to complement the absolute grace in which this mans burgundy ages. Thoroughly enjoyable, I couldn't help but repeat my mantra that a good bottle should leave two of you wanting just a little more. It should, as it did, put a slight spring in your step and give you the urge to talk and laugh and love. This is not the most profound bottle you'll find. But it does give you all the pleasure that a mid-range burgundy should - it makes you want to have fun and I had to be held back from drinking another bottle. Which my date tomorrow should thank me for.

Rosso di Montalcino, Pertimali

2010-02-22T14:25:00.000-08:00

Italian wines offer wonderful value. Not necessarily the most commonly held view, yet one I hold true. Take last nights wine at a dinner party hosted by my cousins. I'd sold them this wine and was thus a little on-the-line as to whether it was going to hold up to a very slow roasted shoulder of pork. It was magnificent. It tips the scales at £15 and for that you get a wine that drew oohs and aahs when each person took the time to have a good long moment with it. There is nothing flashy about Pertimalis Rosso. Grown in the cooler northern part of Brunello it is wine as wine should be. A partner. A cradle. Complex, a conversation piece, full of character. Not in your face, "oh what a card" stuff. Subtle, refined and intriguing.

I suggested David decant it some three or four hours in advance. I'd done a little experiment at work. When we came to sit down there it was, open, but still not fully. Perfect. Gas in the tank. There was something curiously Bordeaux-esq about the nose. Old Bordeaux though, something like 1978 or a 1975. Definitely Medoc. Then the warm tanned leather works its way in followed closely by bramble and hawthorne and you're no longer in France. You are somewhere innately more concerned with texture and earth elements. Finally, at a further swirl, a sense of mocha and dark chocolate fills the glass. See what I mean? This is character. If the nose carries on it's shoulders a vague sense of austerity and the world worn traveller the palate is broad, generous and ripe. There are ample tannins, mouth coating layers of berry fruit and amazingly for such a warm vintage, a freshness of acidity. We are talking man-on-wire balance here. Matched with the salty pucker of slow cooked pork in all it's sweetly saline juices it was tremendous.

Lamb ala Osso Buco Bianco with Pinot Gris (unplanned joy)

2009-12-05T03:48:00.000-08:00

I don't know what it is but I only seem to pull out the goods when I cook for one.

Monday saw a bag of chops come out of the freezer that I foolishly hadn't separated into manageable amounts. I think they were neck enders as all that was left after eating was a little T-shaped bone. Having personally gobbled 5 this week, each cooked fast and pink with plenty of salt and pepper, a change was called for. I looked back to an Osso Buco Bianco recipe from the River Cafe for inspiration. What came out was one of the most delicious things I have cooked for some time and lead to to something rather unexpected:

A curious wine and food paring last night has raised more than a few questions about my own long held beliefs on the subject. Cooking a thick fatty autumn lamb chop as you would osso buco bianco (onions, celery, carrot, garlic, anchovy, white wine and a good slow cook in a covered casserole under baking paper) I found myself wondering what to drink with it. A taste half way through the cooking process confirmed that this was to be an unctuous meal. An unctuous, delicious, warm you from the inside and make you smile kind of meal. Served with leftover pumpkin risotto that was as sweet and comforting as an eiderdown rug I was puzzled as to what red could stand up to the inherent sweetness of the dish. There wasn't a dash of sugar in the whole ensemble, but the caramalisation and natural sugars released by the ingredients were giving rise to a dish that could patently reduce the impact of anything less than brassy. The subtlety of a burgundy would doubtless fall on deaf ears, smothered in the brazenly sexiness of the flavours on the plate, and the handsome flavours of Bordeaux might seem rather strict next to its burlesque curves. The thought of a big new world red sitting alongside the richness of a slow cooked, moreishly likeable meal like this held no pull whatsoever. How on earth to balance and enhance this deliriously tasty lamb without putting a good wine to slaughter?

As luck would have it I happened to be having a glass of an Central Otago Pinot Gris, bought home from a tasting, and made by the relatively newly found Te Mara Estate. Not my usual fare but I was enchanted from the first drop. It was a delightful warm up, soft and silky smooth with a texture like honey consomme, or one of those old school white ovoid rubbers (you know the ones, almost too silky and impossible to resist having a stroke of while you puzzled over tangents and frictional coefficients). Well there were no angles here. Not a rub of friction. But don't get me wrong, this is not a lazy wine. It has compelling freshness and that terrible word, lift. The acidity, and there must have been some, was encased in luxurious fruit and the few grams of residual sugar present were noticeable in the wines body alone. This was a wine with curves. A wine with all the gentle aerodynamism of a silver sixties caravan. A voluptuous pairing to my slow cooked lamb bianco?

Lamb cooked slowly like this so that the fat is rendered and allowed to seep into all the component parts of the dish loses it's red meat dimension and becomes something softer and more soothing. So why not have a leggy white with it?

When the pain in my burnt thumb had resided I sat down with liquid and lamb and realised I had stumbled into something approaching a holy communion. A meeting of mine the likes of which I had not created for months. These flavours were each others lost hugs. Platonic they were not. These two lovers knew immediately that together was bliss. Slow cooked carrot with the puck of anchovy and lamb fat were met in steamy embrace by quince, pear, limes and guava, steadied through their late night waltz by a slate of salty minerality.

It was a resounding success and it made my night.

Chicken Soup

2009-12-02T04:25:00.000-08:00

What is it about Chicken soup? When the chips are down, the chick does the trick - every time. Feeling little below par and low on juice, a few slurps of milky clear chicken stock cooked respectfully with carrot, celery, and onion will have you back to full speed in no time, or at the very least accelerating away from those doldrums at a speed you can be proud of.

It's the equivalent of slipping into a warm and ready run bath, on a morning when the heating's off and it's December already, and your stupid self has forgotten to close the windows the night before.

Humble supper

2009-10-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

Some Tuesday pints in the pub with an age-old mate quite simply because we haven't done it for a while, and heading home I'm in the mood for easy chow. The fridge is bare, I've been away for a week, and cooking aint on the menu. Queue easy yum. Queue budgens. Queue fish finger sandwich - comfort food of kings.

Queue no queue in budgens. Queue one happy shopper.

Now I'm no slouch when it comes to eating but the long and the short of it is, sometimes simplicity rules.

Last night, posting my piece about the Loft, some of the most scintillating food I've eaten (see below), I munched two fresh, organic corn on the cobs with President Beurre and Maldon. Such irrevocably simple fare. Such digestive delight!

The humble fish finger sandwich is often missed off peoples list of favourite comfort foods, purely I think, because it's a forgotten art. Its the epicurean equivalent of the Lost Wax technique. We understand, more or less, the technique. We get the end result, but we simply don't practice it any more.

Why? Kebabs and burgers and battered sausages (wonderful though a B.S. is). Convenience and eating on the run are so de rigeur as to have rigour morticised the low-key cook-at-home post-pub-grub option.

Sit yourself down on that tube, head a-lolling, and try to picture the grease contained in a hand carved sluice of reconstituted animal waste, tawdry red cabbage and Sellafield-worthy sauce blanche that is the modern day London Kebab. Even the oft-practiced attempt to perked things up with a sad looking pickled chilli (they never look well kept do they?) constitutes ribaldry. Dismiss this image immediately.

Pick up a pack of Fish fingers, white pitta, and assuming you have some condiments and greenery at home, really that's all you need. Grill your fingers, toast the pitta to crispiness ( a flacid pitta here is a useless pitta), spread with what-the-funk you want, add the greenery, twist of salt and pepper (the good stuff) and sit back to enjoy a bite that goes something like this:

Crunch(pitta), crisp (breadcrumb), Green crunch (lettuce), salty sweet tang (condiment), soft white flesh (fish), crisp(breadcrumb) and crunch (pitta). No grease, lots of texture and simple flavours that are not going to repeat on you.

No more kebabs. I have my birds-eye on you.

The Loft: Nuno Mendes, in full (couldn't resist)

2009-09-30T03:14:00.001-07:00

It seems to me that in life there are those that understand the fundamental building blocks of existence, and those that don't. Be it in art, literature or food, those fortunate enough to comprehend the laws of being, the principles of creation, the natures of construction, are those that are predisposed to fashion newness from the known. These are the people who take our thinking to new places, who modify our experiences in this world by rearranging the cognito without rendering it incognito.

When it comes to cooking, the ability to envisage new flavour combinations that harmonise while at the same time confound, represents, for me, the essence of exciting modern gastronomy. Learning technical skills, like dedicating a year to becoming a body builder, is something I believe we could all do given the time and the inclination. Having an incling that the combination of creamed cauliflower and strawberry compote might just sing is a vision more instrinsic to the laws of flavour than the majority of us are privvy to. But by jove sing it does. Eating a little shot glass of this stuff I had the intense impression of my tongue splitting, serpentine, while two trapeezinng flavours swung apart, suspended aloof for the briefest of moments, to come crashing back to catch each other in a riotous mid-air taste embrace.

Barring dinner parties, eating in someone's private space was a new concept to me. It reminded me of a Black Cab ride I once took with the legendary musician Rodriguez. Mid fare he played two of his songs live, to me and one other. It moved me to my roots and my cycle home that night was smile powered. Both The Loft and Rodriguez were experiences that were touchingly intimate, and both left me with a sense of being a priviledged joyrider on a rather special journey. Participating in something fleeting, and by association secretive, in this great city lends a sense of ownership to one's life in London. It makes you feel like you're a part of the fabric. You dig a little deeper, scratch below the surface and suddenly you're sub-terrineian

And frankly that's a pretty good place to be.

And so was Nuno Mendes' Loft last night. In fact it was a truly lip-smackingly, head-spinningly heart-warmingly wonderful place to be. It started with a minor mix up when the returning dog walker and I couldn't tell which intercom attempt had worked, leaving me no option but to ask the question of the unknown answerer, "Do you have a dog?". It sounded ridiculous and felt pleasingly Peter Sellers-esk, heaping a nice soft spoonful of absurdity onto the off-hand aprehension we both felt at having supper with a bunch of strangers. Not that we needed to worry.

Once in we were soon in possession of a lychee martini that was nice, but nothing more. I think I rather prefer them as god intended. Clean and simply adorned. Refreshing, palate cleansing, on edge and the ulitimate hunger inducer. Sans sucre.

But this was merely precursor's juice. The real show was only just beginning.

Watching a great chef at home is an audience precious few are entitled to. Here you pay your money, book your spot (albeit many months in advance) and the treat can be all yours (though sadly since going to press it seems Nuno has gone on hols; you might have to wait a while). It's what I imagine it must be like to sit with a painter while the paint is applied, as opposed to merely viewing the final piece. Illuminating and refreshing, the kitchen was almost totally devoid of gizmos and science kit, and as our chef pointed out, "not so different from your average household kitchen". His stated aim is to show that cooking need not be overly scientific; that food need not be overly fanciful or excessively complicated to open unexplored avenues of flavour pairing and gastronomique completeness. Seňor Mendes' cooking is characterised by a delicacy and lightness of touch that shows real respect for the properties of each ingredient he uses. By paying homage to every log in the fire he opens ones senses to hitherforto unforseen furnaces of flavour and texture. And although excessive technification might be hors limites, playfullness if most definitely not. It just doesn't need a Phd to be achieved.

So what else did we eat? Well, course number three was perhaps the most rivetingly delicious thing I have ever eaten. A apparently simple combination of sweet, raw marinated seabass with crispy, smoky flame roasted skin, sweet apple and daikon. Fish skin, so were were told, is separated from the flesh by a thin membrane of fat. Apply a blowtorch and this fat melts allowing the skin to be gently prised from the flesh, before complete smoky cripness is achieved in an oven.

This tickled me pink in much the same was the the finest Burgundy does. It painted flavours in my mouth that were so utterly separate yet so completely harmonious - simply told, it stopped me in my tracks. It's nothing new per se. Salty balances sweet, smoke the sea. Yet in his hands these strong notes zet off in different directions to be tugged softly back to the canvass the way a wave returns to shore. Perfect balance is really not very easy to achieve with such strong direction. These flavours are heavyweight and yet somehow fleet of foot. Deliniation and definition are a signature.

Immediately following this was a enthralling dish entitled Aubergine, Soymilk and Truffle ( I do love a simple description on a menu). A shot glass appeared and while we all tried to guess what it contained, no one got close to the smoky sweet flavour of Aubergine consomme it so obviously was once the identity was revealed. A japanese style bowl that married design, texture and simplicity arrived with what I thought looked like a dragons tail draped over the edge. It was actually the roe of the aubergine, dipped in sesame. It looked fucking cool, reminding me of paintings done as a kid: of puff the magic dragon flown to Japan on a whim. There was a smear on the bowl, and I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, but we were advised to have a touch every three or so bites to lend zip and acidity to the truffly sweet, smoky flavours of soymilk aubergine and tartufi. It worked. A touch of tang in a loch of sweet earthy milk, like vinegar on lentils, but more luxe.

The rest was gilt edged showboating in the best possible sense. Culinary alchemy with an entirely refreshing absence of ostentatious magic, just a marvellous understanding of flavour (White chocolate fondant with black olive? Delicious. Who knew? Building blocks, see). Super slow cooked fillet of beef with mushroom caramel; Razor clams with pickled carrots and enoki mushrooms; Raw prawns, buttered hazlenuts and pea puree. The last, to the bemusement of others gathered, sent images of fresh bamboo forests and crouching tiger straight to my inner pupils.

All of this was served swiftly but not hurriedly, with respect and deference but not an ounce of pretension. Nuno came out to introduce most dishes offering his thoughts on how we might best tackle each. And almost best of all, whilst waiting we were completely free to wander up to watch. We did a lot of that. Why wouldn't you? It was completely engrossing - particularly when he offered us a tutorial on how to spherify liquids. It's a bizarre process that gives the liquid a skin holding the contents inside intact. It led onto perhaps the finest dish of all, Onion Soup Moderne. A classic given an entirely new direction and an entirely fresh interpretation of the flavours and textures of something we all know and love. All the elements were there. Sweet caramelised onion. Melted cheese. Rich deep flavours of allion, stock and pepper. Each represented an isolated and defined part of something utterly coherent. Such fun, such harmony.

This is what sets Nuno Mendes apart from other chefs. Fun and Harmony. His cooking echoes life in a better place where people try a little harder to achieve the accepted in ways that differ slightly from the norm. It's food as you know it with tastes one can immediately understand and bond with, presented in a way that excites and delights. I simply cannot recommend it enough. It's eating that stimulates the creative processes, makes you talk (perhaps too much) and forces you to think, confronting along the way. Open up and get booking. Life is too short to let things like this pass you by. As a meal, as a date, as just a hugely fun evening with a very great mate you will be hard pressed to enjoy it more.

The Loft : Nuno Mendes

2009-09-26T04:08:00.000-07:00

We ate well last night. At times as good as anything I've eaten before. I'm not going into details, but I cant resist transcribing the menu.

Lychee Martini, Lemongrass and Basil Oil

Oyster and Mango, Green Chilli and Radish

Harvest Vegetables and Fruits Salad

Marinated and Charred Sea Bass, Green Apple, Daikon and Crispy Ponzu

Aubergine, Soymilk and Truffle

Prawn Confit, Chilled Pea Puree and Buttered Hazelnuts

L'Explosion Thailandais

Razor Clams, Pickled Carrots, Enoki Mushrooms and Basil

Slow Cooked Eggs, Potato and Iberico Crumb, Pear Puree, and Thickened Milk

Onion Soup Moderne

Sirloin of Beef, Mushroom Caramel and Spiced Mushrooms

Cauliflower and Strawberries

Warm Chocolate Fondante Mango and Black Olive

Scrambled Eggs

2009-06-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

My dear dear housemate woke me up this Sunday morning with a cup of tea and the words, “Is it time to get up?.... I’ll make you eggs”.

These last four words could be four of the nicest you could ever hear strung together, particularly first thing in the morning. Suffused with homely comfort and simple joy - I don’t suspect they would sound any different coming from a lady three hundred years ago. Eggs have always been eggs.

The offer of eggs is quite simply the glue that binds humanity; the cooking of breakfast an offer of a better entry into the day; into the world. It’s entirely tied up with the notion of rebirth that each morning sleepily is. Come, I’ll give you some eggs so you can be a man in the day, fight a good fight, see the sun from the night. They offer a blanket of goodness from under which, all things seem possible.

I was up in a flash, sleepy eyed, tousled of hair, puffy of face, but smiling at the prospect of my first meal of the day being cooked as act of pure kindness. What a start. And what a plate of eggs they were. Scrambled, my favourite way, on hot buttered baguette, glossy and rich and flecked with parsley, the green shoots of my recovery. I felt better immediately. It was a huge plate of golden life and I enjoyed every mouthful like a first breath of air.

Thanks dude.

Pasta again

2009-05-27T13:17:00.001-07:00

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It must be a combination of factors that keeps my arm reaching for the spaghetti jar and my head thinking about Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers. It’s the life of an Italian peasant selling Bordeaux en primeur. It’s a hungry fellow who cycles to work and back each day. It’s the endless permutations that pasta offers; the tang and fresh sun-drenched fire of anchovy, tomato and chilli, the white cosseting of parmesan and butter, the salty schlick of clams and Prosecco. Mainly though it’s because I’m a thoroughly haphazard and disorganised cook and never can quite remember what’s in the fridge, nor visualise what I want to cook till I have the ingredients out in front of me on the work surface. More than that it’s almost certainly got a lot to do with this inability I have to retain recipes after a single cooking. More often than not I cook something, eat it, and move onto something else for the next meal.

I think it’s to do with the fundamental reason I cook. I cook for one. I cook to relax and to enjoy eating. Oddly, I’m not sure I really enjoy cooking for others. This is almost therapeutic to learn, but deep down I think perhaps I simply do not enjoy eating and being judged. Perhaps I just do not like being judged full stop. This blog is a straightforward example. I enjoy the writing. I dislike the scrutiny. Very few will know about it.

I’ve been harbouring intentions of doing something more creative with food, or wine. Learning to write, finding my voice. Perhaps what I really need to do before I get all out there is learn to love my own voice.

As a side to the anchovy and tomato pasta tonight I cleaned some leeks and cut them into ten centimetre halves. These I steamed for six minutes and dropped cut side down into a small frying pan of foaming butter. After a minute or so I spooned the butter over the top, added a good squeeze of lemon and left them to caramelise slightly. Another dousing with the butter in the pan, a flip over and then heat off. Left for ten mins to slink back to room temperature and with a good pinch of Maldon sea salt over the top they a were sticky and toothsome foil to the my pasta for one.

Chateau Margaux, Margaux 1997

2009-05-19T04:49:00.000-07:00

En magnum.

deep ruby. vibrant to rim.

Initially this had a little pong, but after 20 mins in the glass there is a waft of sweet fruit on a bed of rich oak. Typical Margaux femininity, some sweet spice below, cinnamon and a hint of sweet clove.
Palate is mid bodied, reserved character, very fine boned and whilst not hugely concentrated this has balance and a lovely sense of breeding and purity.
Seriously charming.

Barolo Carobric, Paulo Scavino, 2001

2009-05-19T04:44:00.000-07:00

En Magnum.

Glorious ripe cherry colour/core to a mahogany rim. This blend of three vineyards is perfumed and very floral, white pepper, vetyver, young strawberries. Not an exuberant nose for a Barolo + hints of menthol and eucalyptus.
Palate attack is menthol, red earth, forest and hedgerow berries, coffee bean. Pure and elegant. Sleek. Some pencil leads, wood shaving notes. Making me hungry.
Either needs time or it is a little mean.

I've been trying to put my finger on something. It's sherbert.

Not a bad left right brace, at my desk

2009-05-19T04:24:00.000-07:00

It's not all bad, this working lark.

I'm sitting at my desk having just decanted a couple of wines for a lunch happening upstairs today. To the left sits a glass of a Barolo, Carobric 2001 from Paulo Scavino, to the right a glass of Chateaux Margaux 1997.

It's a charmed existence for someone who loves good wine. And really quite spoiling for a tuesday, at lunchtime.

And to cap it off I can see Llyod Grossman standing outside my window on the phone.

Hello Lloyd.

I'll put the notes up now, exactly as I put them down on paper. I jot them all down on little revision cards and one day I might transcribe to this site. It's unlikely to be any time soon though. There are hundreds.

A bleading heart (part two)

2009-05-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

When I saw it I laughed. I couldn't stop laughing. A whole Ox Heart is a mighty thing to behold, the size of a chicken, crimson red with a protruding aorta big enough for a pencil.

The butcher asked if there was anything I wanted him to do with it. I said I wasn't sure. What would he normally do? He said he wasn't sure either as he'd never sold one before?

He ended up chopping out the main tubes. I was quite glad frankly as they looked a bit much.

The meat is quite delicious and really not particularly offally. It's more like lean steak meat than one of the more common organs. If anything it's a little too lean. It's a doddle of a piece of meat to deal with, most of it is simply juicy muscle. There are some sinewy bits in the middle but nothing a sharp knife and keen knife cant deal with.

When I retrieve my camera lead from the not-so-grey-area any more, I'll show you....

Aural umami

2009-05-18T04:31:00.000-07:00

Umami.

Some have it. Some don't. Everybody wants it.

None can define it and so none can refine it, though the Japanese, if they could, would mine it.

The best I can come up with is Savoury Balance. A lip smacking sense of togetherness and wellbeing.

I was trying to explain it to TJB over a cup of Marigold Bouillon (which I crave on a hangover). What was it that made it so comforting when you feel a little below par. I mentioned Umami and ended up likening it to the satisfation I get when I hum to myself in a bathroom or shower and manage to find the resonant frequency that amplifies the hum. It's satisfaction is primal. The results are all up-side.

He claimed I was probably alone in doing this hum-thing. Can that really be the case? Try it. If you find the resonance, you'll get a sense of warm, contented satisfaction. Listen. It's like the savoury stroke of warm chicken soup, for your ears.

In defense of the lamb chop

2009-05-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

The Boot Inn, Stanford Dingley, not far from Bradfield College is just about as good a place as any to have an argument about the merits of lamb chops. Sadly I missed the chance, so here is a retrospective, one way poke at it. The garden has a lot of grass and a few proper pub benches with blistering paint and wobbly joints. It’s a pub where the owner sits outside having a pint waiting for custom. We sounded like posh uns, not that they minded.

I was on my third pint of Cider when I heard the pronouncment that "Lamb Chops are useless" "totally pointless". "Too much bone". I was in another conversation and couldn’t excuse myself but still, what a thing to hear! The person who said this has been to cookery school (and public school, not that this teaches you a thing about eating.. Our Jimmy the kitchen hand was on loan from Broadmore having killed a man with a toothbrush. A deft eye for finesse in the kitchen he sadly lacked). He works in the art world (not Jimmy) and eats at more top end restaurants in a month than I do in a year . He's even got one of those silly names you write one way but pronounce another. He's a bit of a fat fascist, one of my oldest friends and frankly he ought to know better.

You see, I think he's missed the point of the chop totally.

Think of yourself writ very very small. As small as one of Jake and Dinos Chapmans horrible mutilated figures from their recent devastating and rather apocalyptic work. So small that a Lamb Chop would be the size of a saloon car next to you. A lump of meat you could jump over only if very, very fit – really very agile. Now have someone cook that chop extremely well so that the fat renders, blisters and crisps up and the meat gets seared with smoky savour and remains pink, juicy and cherubic within. Remember you are very very small. Take a step up. Hop on board. Feel the tension of that unctuous cut like the the firm, cat gut on a well strung tennis racket, a skein of crisp cooked affluence above the soft sweet excess. Affluence. That’s what the fat of a lamb chop, or any good meat for that matter, represents. It’s a sign of a better life (a lot better than sitting on your plate), of being well fed, happy, not hungry. It’s well-being as one word. Fat animals are happy animals. Why eat a skinny goat when you could have a fat happy cow. Look at the Japanese obsession with whale blubber. They might be stressed but they are healthy and they give they give two hoots about eating. And they live longer than all of us. Haaaa-soh to that.

Smell the chubby little oligarch. Smell that savoury sweet sticky waft that sets your mouth sweating like a tubby dancer in a knocking shop. Now take a step over the hot love and onto the firm springboard of charred meat. Gymnasts could train on the lovely, puckered boing of the chop cooked Seign0n. The smokey delight soon gives way to something more fleshy, real pink, bloody meat. Carnal joy. And it’s only a tiny disc., like a scallop, or the joy of scooping the oyster from a freshly roasted, herb encrusted chicken. It’s not sheep. Its gold dust. And it’s the easy bit. The calm before the storm.

You cook meat on the bone to retain flavour. The subtle smack of marrow seeps into cooked flesh and lends a nutty hand. The heat transfer is kinder. You eat from the bone because it reminds you of being young and messy and free, allowed to explore whatever it was you were eating. Your teeth gnaw at scraps of meat and the taste in your mouth is vapourised as you chew sending fine particles of flavour from bone to tongue and up the olefactory highway. It’s carnal pleasure must come from an earlier age, sewn into our genes like the desire to mate and make babies. It’s rewarding as a sensual exercise. You really don’t get much meat. But then we all eat too much anyway and getting flavour, without the heft, might just be good for all of us.

Carbonara

2009-05-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

I cant get enough of good pasta.

Tonight I needed supper in a hurry. The fridge has ginger pig bacon, an egg, some parmesan and an onion. Riverford come tommorrow.

Crack the egg into a good fist sized mound of grated parmesan (gruyere or emmental would have been nice additions), mix well and add a big spike of freshly ground black pepper. Most important this last bit.

Carbonara. Like carbon, or actually, Coal. Originally this childhood favourite was a mining dish. I suppose it was easy for the Italian miners to cook in one pan. The pepper supposedly representing flecks of coal. What else?

Cook your bacon and a shallot in olive oil, add the cooked pasta, coat in the fats, and tip in the egg and parmesan paste. A simple tomato salad of olive oil and Maldon sea salt and you're good to go. Ten mins max.

And never, ever please, add cream.

Duck Confit, lentils, red pepper

2009-05-11T13:29:00.001-07:00

I wanted to use up what I had in the fridge tonight. I made a weird though tasty brocolli soup with chilli, lemon and creme fraiche. The brocolli was really just a base note with the real jousting match betweeen the other three ingredients.

A duck confit in the fridge also needed eating. I always have rice or mash and casoulet beans with confit so tonight I decide to grill and skin a pepper and marinate it in the new "free run" olive oil and some red wine vinegar. I can't get my head around the concept of free run olive oil. There must be such a huge mass of olives to squeeze the oil from those on the bottom with no external pressure. Tokai Essencia uses the same method (and what results that produces) but then a grape squashes a lot easier than an olive, especially a grape shrivelled by rot. It's not even that great an oil, with a hint of tannic bitterness at the end. Puy lentils I chucked on with a bay leaf from the garden, a massive glug of Fridays Chablis, some water and bouillon to double the mass of lentils, onion and plenty of pepper. I mixed the marinated peppers and a good deal of the olive oil with the lentils. It's been sunny today. I'm burnt. Perhaps this is rubbing off. It did taste rather provencale: the sweet peppers, the earthy mushroomy chalk of the lentils and the rich deep, supremely savoury flavour of the duck.

A tasting note.

2009-05-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

This is an example of the sort of tasting note, be it food or wine, I would like to be penning in a few years. Authoritative, grounded in knowledge, and erudite. Courtesy of Mr Allen Meadows, fine sir.

Chablis Blanchots, Raveneau 1999

This is textbook Blanchot with its ultra elegant, subtly spiced fruit and barely medium weight, superbly detailed, wonderfully mineral laden flavors that seem as though they're chiseled from liquid rock. By no means a big or powerful wine, in fact the Montée de Tonnerre is substantially more impressively constructed yet this simply outclasses it by virtue of its sheer elegance and finesse, not to mention the understated complexity and driving persistence. Do not expect to be bowled over by this wine; rather, it seduces through its wonderfully linear character, purity and superb breadth of expression. This is not a simple wine but I was extremely impressed at how something so compact and transparent could be so profound. In fact, this struck me as an exact parallel to the genius of a great d'Angerville Clos des Ducs with its Zen-like signature, e.g. the "real" signature was the absence of one. Some say that Blanchot is not deserving of grand cru status but I would suggest that those who are in doubt taste an example such as this against any of the premiers crus above; I submit that they will ultimately be found wanting, if not in size, weight or power then in completeness as this quite simply aggregates more attributes than any of the foregoing '99s. Tasted multiple times with consistent notes.

A summer pasta

2009-05-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

Lemon Zest and Juice, creme fraiche, rocket, parmesan and fresh tagliatelle. Pretty much in that order. Creamy and fresh summer pasta direct from the River Cafe Easy cook book. Thanks you two.

A bleeding heart

2009-05-08T02:19:00.000-07:00

Excitement today.

I placed an order for an Ox heart from the wonderful Gardeners Butchers in Wimbledon Park. Sounds like it might be massive, at least the size of two beating fists!

Thinly sliced, griddled, Watercress, pickled walnuts, and a dressing. Blatant plagiarism from St John's but hey ho.

Burklin-Wolfe, Trockenbeerenauslese 1986

2009-05-07T05:46:00.000-07:00

This is a revelation.

The nose comes floating out like slightly overcooked, thick cut, dark english marmelade. Brandied apricots. orange infused sugar crystals.

The palate shoots corruscating showers of electric fruit. Vivid isn't the half of it. Delineated, crystalline flavours refract across the palate in a kalaedescopic fireworks display of razor sharp focus. Cooked limes, apricot jam, peach, elderflower, grapefruit - demerara sugar and raisin cake. The list could go on.

Free yum too. Hurrah!

Hand Rolls from The Japanese Centre, Picadilly

2009-05-07T05:06:00.000-07:00

No free lunch today, just a free prawn. Tempura battered to boot. I'm slightly addicted to the hand rolls from the Japanese centre and find one in my basket everytime I go. You unwrap the celophane, read the instructions and roll them up like a jolly rolly and take a japanese sized bite. The textures are layered like the jurassic coast. Salty, papery green crisp of thick dry seaweed. Soft, sticky, glossy sushi rice. A seam of crisp tempura batter, light as you like, and the grassy green crunch of a bean or the snap of baby sweetcorn. A whiff of gooey soy. Today, having bought a vege version, it wasn't the cruch of milo that my teeth sank into but the soft, sweet lush of a large pink prawn coccooned in batter. I can think of no better snack to eat on the run if you want a light bite. China's spring roll, the Indian samosa, the British battered sausage, Scotlands battered mars bar, the Cornish pasty (though this might run it close), Peruvian Guineau pig, Bolivian Empanadas (though these too are contenders), the hot dog...they all pale when faced with the sheer fun and delicate interplay of flavours found in the Japanese Centre Hand Rolls at £1.50 a pop. Next time you're hungry and bored of dodging tourists at Picadilly Circus. Buy one and have a rollover. You never know, the next free prawn could be you.

2007 Vintage Port at Somerset House

2009-05-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

Well that must have been one of the most suprisingly enjoyable tastings I have been to in months. I cycled to the first Taylor Fladgate, Symington, new vintage Port Declaration on my brand new second hand Raleigh Winner 80's road bike, the only way to navigate London in the sun. Somerset house is an immense setting with virtually nobody in the inner courtyard, just the cooling tinkle of 50 minimal fountains. The room was airy, uncrowded and I was able to lean on a half open window sill, in the breeze, overlooking the Thames and the Royal Festival Hall and jot my notes on what turned out to be a very elegant and refreshing set of ports. By and large the fruit is very pretty, ripe and juicy, and there are nice levels of acidity to buoy these megaliths and give them lift. Standouts for me were Grahams for the incredible purity of it's fruit, Dows and Croft for their balance and elegance, and Fonseca for it's brooding, powerful intensity. Taylors was reticent, complex and shy and it's behaviour made it seem like the Lafite of the tasting. Grahams would be somewhere between Petrus and Margaux, Fonseca perhaps a blend of Troplong-Mondot and Latour.

Burklin-Wolfe, Riesling Eiswein 1990

2009-05-06T04:22:00.001-07:00

Laser sharp focus. Frozen marmelade. Honeycombe. Unswerving and disarming levels of grape extract. Apricot stone. Honeydew. A deep, unctous and mellifluous finish.

Bourgogne Blanc, Domaine Leflaive 2005

2009-05-06T04:17:00.001-07:00

There are no two ways about it - this aint cheap. But that fact is that it manages to live up to reputation. Extremely serious Bourgogne that I would argue justifies it's price tag. Intense fruit, concentration and Village level complexity.

Haut Brion 1999

2009-05-06T03:39:00.001-07:00

An inky well of dark smokey damsen and plum. Statuesque. Reserved. Layed and complex, yet shy. Crammed with tight knit black and red fruit and fine graphite tannins. Very impressive.

Langoa Barton 2001

2009-05-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

Hightoned, extremely pretty fruit layed with shades of pauillacs smokey dusty gravel road. Blueberry, raspberry and sweet woodsmoke on the palate. Great balance, purity and succulence. Gorgeous and very engaging.

At its best now and over the next 8 years.

Vintage Port

2009-05-06T02:47:00.001-07:00

A vintage port tasting today at Somerset house. Heavy going, but it has been four years since the last declared vintage and these 2007's sound like the business. A lunch will be laid on which is just what you want after the gruelling sweet heady business of tasting thirty young ports. Further proof that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Before that I need to open some Leflaive Bourgogne 05, decant some Langoa Barton 2001 and Haut Brion 1999 and check on the condition of some 1990 Burklin-Wolf Eiswein.

It's gonna be a late one. Thankfully the asparagus I'm going to swamp myself with tonight will take a mere minute or two's cooking.

The tenets

2009-05-04T14:44:00.001-07:00

Authenticity. Value. Simplicity.

It seems to me that if you offer these three things to your paying public, you have to be half way to winning.

A delicious and frugal bank holiday supper

2009-05-03T13:40:00.001-07:00

A Soho wedding followed by a Portuguese club somewhere in Vauxhall and it wasn’t until seven this evening that I turned the corner and started to feel human again. Coming out of a hangover always makes me ravenous. I woke up craving gazpacho and must have walked into ten shops, including a major supermarket before I could sate the urge for cool, tangy tomatoes, cucumber, olive oil and vinegar. Its a liquid salad. Refreshment in a bowl. It’s in every Carrefour in France and Spain, and should be pretty high up the list of any shopper come summer. In the end I spied a tapas bar called Carmen and was given a version that was delicious but, curiously, contained cream. I didn’t think that was part of the deal?

Tonights supper was great fun to cook. Bucking the current hysteria I cycle trip to Borough market yesterday yielded a bag of things porcine, as well as some peppery radishes, smoked paprika, and a fruity bottle of Spanish olive oil. I always spend more than I mean to. A real soft spot for sweet nutty Pata Negra ham doesn’t help. One of my piggy bits was a lump of smoked pigs cheek from the Ginger Pig – if you have never tried their bacon put it on your list of things to do before you die. Pigs cheeks are mainly fat but you can trim them and the meat left over is full of flavour and succulence. This was my alpha ingredient. Smoked paprika number two. Onions, loads of garlic, five ripe cherry tomatoes and just before the end a mound of fresh peppery green basil. Fry the lot up and mix well with spaghetti. I cooked something called Bucatini which I thought was just thick pasta (I was aiming for an ingredient heavy, spag lite dish) , but which is actually like a very thin straw. Good quality olive oil is a must here as it forms the basis of your minimal peppery intensely flavoured sauce.

Radishes and some Mimolette to finish and to wash it all down: a bottle of Marco de Grazia’s fantastically tasty and well priced straight Etna Rosso from his Tenuta dell Terre Nere on the slopes of Mount Etna. It’s a blend of Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Mantellato, both indigenous to Sicily. They produce a wine with the aromatics levels of a Pinot Noir/Nebbiolo clone. Cloves, peaches, rosehips, mountain strawberry, pepper, nutmeg, and a dash of blueberry. Light footed yet possessing a tannic structure that allows it to hold its head up to the pigs cheeks. It’s an awful lot of wine for less than £8.

A wonderful evening pandering to my misanthropic ways.

Borough

2009-05-02T02:49:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday morning, the sun's ablaze, it's crisp and bright and I'm off to Borough market with some vintage tunes in my ear.

That. Makes. Me. Happy. Dip a dip e doo.....

Mimolette Reserve

2009-05-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

It’s Friday and I’m eating reserve mimolette at my desk. A cheese from flanders whose defining feature is that it is matured by chese mites. They keep it in a bowl in the cheese shop so the mites can drop into that instead of all over the counter. Delightful! They tell me it helps the aging process by allowing oxygen to enter the body of the cheese.

It's surprisingly tasty. Complex with notes of whisky, butter scotch, meadow grass, bovril, marmite yeast and freshly churned alpine butter. The texture is very firm with small levels of salt crystal while a long and oscillating finish displays a curious note of ostrich biltong along side a more structured character of window putty.

In search of value (Duck egg and radish)

2009-05-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

The notion of value has been on my mind lately. If you’re one of those people who is always struggling for pennies yet needs a dose of deliciousness now and again, London can be a hard place to be into food. I always used to subscribe to the notion that when going out I wanted it to be bells and whistles, all courses of course, a bottle (or two) and probably some fizz before…..well I’ve discovered that this mounts up and I can’t keep up. It was actually while out on a date with a food writer that I was struck with the notion that to enjoy the culinary sights of London I was going to have to either change my job, or go little and often. Much like a scout. Recce missions. Search and locate. Have a glass of wine not a bottle (unless I can take my own), a single course or perhaps two starters. If it is truly memorable put it in the book to be done properly. If not, enjoy and live to eat another day.

Realising that the only option was to tone down and spread the wings was wonderful. Absolutely too free-making. Up this week is a single course I had while ruminating as to whether or not I still had a girlfriend, whilst the same said girl was sipping a Portuguese beer next to me at the bar. I thought not. She thought maybe. Neither of us said so. We both I think, thought the other was wrong, except when it came to ordering a portion of “soft boiled duck egg, anchovy butter, and radish”. I’d made Bagna Cauda the night before and this winked so hard at me (as if to say, “look how we do me here”) I couldn’t ignore it. The duck egg came in its shell, Soft Boiled to perfection with a yolk glistening gold like a Russian diplomats bathroom. A fine piece of toast came wielding a slightly too large, enormously decadent and slowly melting puck of anchovy butter. Four or five bright and erect little radishes decorated the other side of the plate with green radish tops bright and bushy. I’m into radishes at the moment. I can’t put my finger on what it is that I like. The flavour, when you taste them, is best described as, white, with perhaps a touch of muted pepper. But I love it. We ate it and chatted, engaged in a delicate tug of war that I felt unusually in control of. It was splendid and myriad in it’s permutations. Simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve, especially on a budget, and this had it.

It’s funny but two days later, heading home after two hours of tough tennis with my perennially stoned playing partner (a depressingly good game considering how stoned he was) and I got to thinking, not about the chat and where we stood, but about that plate of morcels and how we’d gone about eating them. I wondered if perhaps I ought not to have peeled the egg fully and cut it open, delivering it like an offering to the toast, but perhaps rather made anchovy smothered soldiers to dip in the egg alternating with my little erect radishes. Bushy end first perhaps. Anchovy and radish and the egg separately. Yolk spread on toast with the white of the egg and the white of the radish like one of Nicholson's white paintings.

That’s a good course. A great bar snack. A dish, the eating of which probably says as much about you as the order in which you pick up the Sunday papers. Sport-style-travel. Broadsheet-culture-whats going up/whats going down. Who’s going straight for the perky little radish. Who wants to dip their crust in the juicy egg.

And the cost of this little puzzle. Three English pounds. That made me smile so much the chatty barman did a double take, muttered that it was probably wrong, and promptly wished me a very good night.

32 Great Queen Street, London, WC2

Pasta with garlic, chilli, anchovy, thyme and broccoli

2009-04-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

Tonight, for the first time in ages I took the detour to my local pub and went for a quiet solo pint. I’ve been exhausted after driving to the Cotswolds and back for a surprise party the night before. In reality I enjoy feeling like I have done today, often achieving a sense of dopey calm once in making it through the ardour of the day. I feel dazed and well prepared to let London roll on by past my own little windows. It’s when I most enjoy a quiet one watching people go about their business.

I was looking at a bowl of aubergine soup for a fiver when I got to thinking about value. It put me off the soup and I came home to cook what I could find. I started off by making a little cairn of garlic, a dried chilli from kerala, and thyme from the grocer left over from yesterdays risotto. Broccoli in the fridge, a smidge tired and soft, like you feel when you’ve had a hot bath, and the heart of a spring greens. I took out some pickled chillis then put them back, their acidity wasn’t what I was after. I wanted something garlicky sticky, with spicy warmth and the play of salt and green veg. A big glug of olive oil in the pan, the spag on to boil, crumble of dried chilli into the garlic and then a good squeeze of what’s becoming a staple fridge dweller; Anchovy paste. Salty yet with more depth than Maldon. Could be onto a winner here. Let that lot bubble away giving it a good stir to meld those three strong characters.

Pasta cooked I chuck in a nob of butter and the blanched broccoli, greens and handful of thyme (labelled plain thyme but tastes like lemon thyme) Let the butter melt coating both and when the anchovy oil is hot pour over the top giving the whole lot a big Italian kitchen style theatrical lift and stir.

Its lovely. The bitter edge of mildy cooked green veg parries the edge of the anchovy and the sweet stickyness of the garlic. Underplaying the lot is a gentle warmth and the fruity pepper of olive oil (a top olive oil would work wonders here, perhaps added at the end of the garlic cooking). To finish, the herbal, lemony freshness of the thyme. This is punchy in a subtle way and can be furnished with more or less poke as you like it. Just add more of the tasty bits.

Green, frugal, tasty pasta easiness.