Lost In The Larder

Lost in the Larder moves home!

2010-09-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

Lost in the Larder has moved home to a self-hosted wordpress site at www.lostinthelarder.co.uk. Be sure to update your RSS feeders. The redirection of www.lostinthelarder.com will be active shortly but to keep up to date and make sure you don't miss out, go to www.lostinthelarder.co.uk

The Dorset Charcuterie Company

2010-09-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

British charcuterie is pretty scarce these days. You are more likely to pick up some Spanish chorizo or a German salami than dry cured meats from our own fair land. The Dorset Charcuterie Company operate from their butchery and tea room, The Purbeck Larder, on the outskirts of Lychett Matravers in Dorset. Ben and Lee are the young entrepreneurs who have established this business, both trained butchers and crazy about the practice of charcuterie. I went over one morning recently to learn a little more about breaking down a pig and to see the setup out there. I rolled up into the old farmyard and made my way into the converted barn. It was early, seven am, and the boys were already in full flow. This being my first experience in a working butchers I was absolutely mesmerised by all the meat, trays ram-packed full of lamb chops, buckets full of mince, half a cow being chopped up on one bench by Lee whilst Ben made his way through half a pig. I felt very manly stood there amongst the dead animals, blood and blades. I lingered by Ben and the pig and all I could think about was reaching out and getting a good old squeeze of that bum cheek, not Ben's I might add, the pigs. The ham was large and from the side I could see it had a beautiful thick layer of fat surrounding the meat. I breathed deep and let the aroma of dead animal fill my lungs, it was satisfying. Lee showed me round the fridge and I got to see the sheer size of the cow sections, "The cows come from that field just over there, sometimes we go and pick the ones we want out." Lee then showed me through to the curing room where panchetta, coppa and guanciale were hanging. A bucket full of salt sat on the floor with the trotters poking out the top from two large hams."All the pork is from a farm a few minutes up the road." Lee informed me. What is so nice about The Dorset Charcuterie Company, is that they really are just so enthusiastic, the meat as local as possible and the dedication to charcuterie is something which I wholeheartedly believe will become a fantastic alternative to European cured meats. As we wandered back into the kitchen a tall thin man came to greet the boys and gave them a big blue sealed bucket. "Caught these eels for you in the river Piddle this morning." (yes the river is really called the Piddle) Ben and Lee explain to me how when you cut the heads off, that the eels still writhe and wriggle for several hours. Eels freak me out and fortunately they put this to one side to deal with later. Don't get me wrong, I love eating eels, but live, they are too much like snakes for my liking. Victor Borg, of River Cottage fame, does the smoking for the boys down near Kimmeridge and in the fridges you can find packs of smoked eel, smoked pork tenderloin and smoked bacons alongside the offerings of pancetta, coppa, Bath chaps, lardo and nice big fat lardons. It was time for me to take a look at the breaking down of a pig. I have had many adventures with severed parts of the pig but never had I witnessed the dismemberment of the beast into the traditional cuts. Lee was busy and so I merely stood by and watched him do what he does best. It was a surprisingly short process and it has now got me playing with the idea of breaking a whole pig down myself. At around £200 a pig, I don't foresee it happening anytime soon, something Emma, my wife, is thankful of. Before I left Lee brought out a ham which he had dry cured and aged for nine months. Bolted into a Spanish style ham holder Lee took paper thin slices of the ham. The salty fat melted with the heat from my lips and the meat had a flavour that lingered throughout my mouth. I looked up to the rafters to see several hams hanging, some already have names on, pre-ordered for Christmas. The Dorset Charcuterie Company or The Purbeck Larder is well worth the visit. The cured and smoked offerings are tremendous and I know Ben and Lee are always happy to talk you through various process without you feeling a fool for not knowing.

The Purbeck Larder
Bere Farm,
Wareham Rd
Lychett Minster
BH16 6ER

Telephone: 01202 625688

www.thepurbecklarder.co.uk

Crab Ravioli with Chorizo Oil

2010-08-24T06:24:00.001-07:00

I'd been invited for dinner and was asked if I would mind making a starter. The thought of getting under someone's feet in their own kitchen didn't appeal to me. I wanted to be in, bang, and out. These Crab Raviolis seemed like a good idea because all the prep was done back at the flat, all I had to do was rock up with my tray of raviolis and drop them in some boiling water for a few minutes. They tasted brilliant, a nice strong flavour of crab meat with the cut of some drizzled chorizo oil and some peppery rocket. I made them quite large using a 10cm diameter cutter so each person got one nice big ravioli with the meat to pasta ratio just right. Pork products with seafood makes me smile immensely, my two favourite things. They work terrificly well together and a favourite in my kitchen arsenal is chorizo oil. A recipe for making some is found here.

Hunting down good produce down here is kind of fun. There are hardly any fishmongers in Poole, which is pretty appalling, but I managed to get hold of two Dorset brown crabs from Pete Miles. Pete distributes Othniel Oysters and also owns Storm seafood restaurant in Poole. I arranged to meet him early on a Saturday morning at the back door of his restaurant. Stood in the alleyway I felt more like I was about to do a drug deal than buy some fresh local Crabs, but after a short wait the door opened and Pete invited me in. At the back of his kitchens we went through two big containers of crabs as we rummaged through to find the two largest specimens. Pete even gave me a crab pick to extract the meat out. I bagged the lads up, (I think they were boys) and went home to set about them. I won't tell you how much I paid for the two large brown crabs but I will say that at those prices, I will be eating crab far more often.

You hear a lot of people say that pasta machines usually get used once or twice then sit at the back of the cupboard forgotten. I use mine about once a fortnight and subsequently it doesn't take me very long to knock up some dough, run it through the rollers and clean up afterwards. It really doesn't take that long once you have the hang of it, you could always just buy fresh lasagna sheets if you don't fancy making your own pasta.

CRAB RAVIOLI

This recipe makes 7 raviolis.

FOR THE PASTA:
200g Tipo '00' flour
6 Egg yolks
1 tbsp Milk
1 tbsp Olive oil

You can still get good results with less refined flour if you can't get hold of any '00'. I've used plain all purpose flour before now.

FOR THE CRAB FILLING:
2 Brown crabs, boiled and picked of all white and brown meat
Salt and black pepper to season.

TO SERVE:
Some washed wild rocket
Chorizo oil, for a lightly spiced porky pick up.

Place the egg yolks, milk and olive oil in a large bowl and add half the sieved flour. Use two bent fingers in a circular motion to bring it loosely together before adding the rest of the flour a bit at a time. You should end up with a flaky dough with lots of little flecks all at the bottom of the bowl. Tip all this out onto the side and work the dough with the heel of your hand for 10 minutes. During this time you'll find the dough becomes silky and all the small bits will come together. Wrap in cling film and stick it in the fridge for at least half an hour. You've made twice as much dough as you need here. You can use the extra another day for taglietelle or more Raviolis.

Once you have boiled your crabs, remove the flap that covers its bottom and separate the legs and body from the main shell. Remove the gills or 'dead mans fingers' (it is a myth that eating these will kill you but they will upset your stomach and make you need the toilet so make sure you remove them all.) Crack the legs and claws and pick all the fresh white meat. Make sure to pick the body and the sockets where the legs once joined. Now, pick the brown meat and add it to your bowl of white meat. The brown crab meat is where all the best flavour is in my opinion, it's also much wetter so add just enough to bind the white meat together into a coarse, thick paste. Season with plenty of black pepper and a little salt and set to one side. This is also a good point to add a splash of tabasco if you fancy a little kick but to appreciate the full flavour of these fresh crabs I kept it very simple with just salt and pepper. I cracked the crab shells and roasted them along with the legs and set them aside for a crab stock.

Cut your pasta dough into quarters and roll through the largest setting several times folding the rolled dough in half in between each motion. You will see the pasta become much smoother, now run through the machine settings until you have fresh lasagna sheets, I stop at the second the thinnest setting for raviolis. With a 10cm round cutter, cut 12 discs of pasta. I used to use a mug and then cut around it before I had one. With teaspoons place generous sized balls of your crab filling into the centre of the circles and brush water around the edge of the pasta. Place another disc on top and crimp the edges together with your fingers making sure not to squeeze any filling out of the other side and also not to trap air bubbles which could pop and split your ravs. With scissors trim around the ravioli approximately 1cm away from the edge of the filling to tidy them up a bit if necessary. Lay on a flour dusted tray and repeat until all your raviolis are done. Dust with more flour and cover with cling film and leave in the fridge until ready to cook. They will take 3 minutes in simmering salted water.

Dress your rocket in the chorizo oil and form into tight balls. Place a cooked ravioli on top and then drizzle with a little more of the chorizo oil.

Marred With The Efforts of The Kitchen

2010-08-16T23:20:00.000-07:00

When I left home my mum handed me over two wooden utensils. A spoon and a spatula. I didn’t realise it at the time but these would soon become great allies. They have both become old and trusted friends of mine and although I have collected silicon and metal alternatives over the years, my fingers always reach for these when my eyes are on the pans. Metal peers of the utensil will never look old and weathered, they will never darken and smooth through love and excessive use. Simply cold and hard, uninspiring, bringing no warmth to the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not lost in a fairy tale of enameled tin dishes, cast iron casseroles and Agas, quite the opposite. But I find the wooden spoon has been provoking me of late, nudging me. I’m sure every keen cook has an old wooden spoon with a smooth sheen and slight bend to the handle. Perhaps your wooden spoon has some black marks on the back of the face where it has been left idly in a pan while you answer the phone. As fundamental to my kitchen as the chefs knife, the fridge or even the oven, yet I can’t help but wonder whether the wooden spoon will one day be defunct. Inglorious health and safety inspectors have stamped out the likes of wooden handled knives and chopping boards in professional kitchens in favour of plastic, stainless steel and silicon. The wooden spoon has already been on the decline. In the want for minimal and clean looking kitchens, uniform stainless steel utensils have become a desired essential while the wooden spoon has been overlooked once more.
When I think back to when I was a child and reminisce of Sunday dinners and making cakes, I remember my mum creaming the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon. There’s a certain romance with them. The images it conjures up in the imagination. I can be inspired to cook by simply looking across to my utensil pot and notice that cheeky friend eyeing me up. It may have taken on a slight odour of garlic but who doesn’t love that smell and although my wooden spoon is tainted yellow and orange from spices, functionality far outweighs aesthetics and matching my other kitchen tools. If I am bringing dough together, it won’t bend like its silicon equivalent. When tasting a little of my Bolognese, I am less likely to burn my lips as I would on its heat transferring metal counterpart. To own a well-used wooden spoon, tainted and worn from a history of kitchen conquests and catastrophes, is to own an autobiography of your cooking pilgrimage. The spoon wears its heart on its sleeve, it’s honest, it signifies time served, mistakes and hard work.
It shows you’ve been through something together. For all our victories won, we have also been outdistanced on occasions, we have shared those times at the cooker and it shows. Is your silicon spoon marred with the efforts of the kitchen? Or is it simply still black?

Hurn Honey Farm - Dorset

2010-08-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of love involved when it comes to bee keeping. Tremendous amounts. I had no idea quite how much back-breaking work was involved until I visited George Mantzikos on his honey farm in Dorset. George is from Greece, a country that has grown synonymous with honey. "Growing up in Greece, honey was everywhere", George explained. "I always knew that it took a lot of work to make honey." Much later, after making a permanent move to the UK and during his career in engineering, George's interest spurred him to begin keeping bees, on a small scale and just as a hobby. His interest grew and subsequently so did his colonies. It wasn't long before he acquired some land and in 1984 he not only built an impressive workshop but also his home, slap bang in the middle of his honey farm. "Beekeeping takes up a lot of your time and I wanted to be close to them". George now has over 300 colonies which equates to hundred's of thousands of bees.

George led us down the path to the hives he had to check on. As we drew nearer the theraputic hum of 150,000 bees lulls me into a calming numbness. I'm so relaxed about it that I don't feel the least bit worried when George tells me I should not have worn deodorant or aftershave, "The bees are going to be very interested in you but try not to panic." My Dad, who has joined me on this visit, looks like he is having second thoughts, especially when George tells us that he doesn't like to use smoke to calm the bees any more. "It's not nice," he says. Dad's eyes widen. Inside each hive is a series of frames which is where the bees construct the honeycomb. The full frames are lifted out and replaced with freshly cleaned empty ones. Each section of the hives is incredibly heavy and after moving a few I realise just how tiresome this can be. The bees start to become very interested in me and it's not long before both my dad and I are edging away from the area and back down the path.

Back in the workshop, the honeycomb has to be cut away from the frames, some is cut into neat rectangles and placed in plastic boxes to be enjoyed simply as the bees have left it whilst others are put to one side to have the honey extracted from the waxy comb. The wax is then melted down and sold off. Emma Dick, Buyer for Lush Cosmetics says, "We have been using Georges beeswax since we first started out making soaps."

After showing us how the honey is made we finally get to tasting some. "Some people don't realise that honey changes with the seasons, right now, the bees are making their honey from bell heather. Later in the year, when it is pure heather honey it sets like jelly, if someone offers you heather honey and it is runny then it isn't the real thing." I chomp down on a chunk of fresh honeycomb and instantly decide, that this is my favourite. All the empty frames then have to be boiled clean, bleached and then tightened up and stacked, ready to be used on the next swap over. "Cleanliness is very, very important. When you see dirty colonies, disease is close behind." I ask if Colony Collapse Disorder has been a problem. "We all have to deal with CCD on occasions. I have been a very lucky man and fortunately it doesn't happen very often here." Although George is telling us vast amounts of information, it is clear we are only scratching the surface and that there is a lot to consider. Each answer is delivered with a concerned pause that leads me to believe that everything is subject to change. That, with bees, you are constantly learning and adapting. George politely excuses himself to return to the mountain of work that lies before him over the summer. His time is very precious and so I leave him to get on with cutting out the honeycomb of what looks like around two hundred frames.

The next morning, I drizzle some of George's honey over my porridge. The amount of care, time, patience and love that goes into producing this honey is phenomenal, and that's before you even begin to consider the work of all those bees. It's so very easy to overlook how much work goes into the sweetening of my porridge and at just under £4 a jar, I think it's the best value for money to be found.

Hurn Honey Farm,
Barrack Road,
West Parley,
Ferndown,
BH22 8UB
01202 593 040

Guanciale

2010-07-26T05:27:00.000-07:00

Guanciale, or guancia is an unsmoked cured bacon-like product made from the jowls or cheeks of a pig. I had made an attempt at guanciale earlier this year when I hastily came home from our butchers with a pigs head, much to the bewilderment and shock of my wife Emma. Something went very wrong last time though, I think I had left them for too long before I started the cure and the god awful smell emitting from the jowls prompted me to abort the process and bin them. Some time has elapsed since then and I thought it high time I re-attempted guanciale. At only £1.68 for two plump pig jowls it seemed rude not to.
The first stage was the cure. A mixture of sea salt, sugar, peppercorns and thyme was massaged into the meat on all sides for several minutes before each jowl being laid on a bed of the remaining mixture in sealed tubs then placed in the fridge. Each morning the liquid drawn out of the jowls was tipped away, there was no funky smells this time, all I could smell was pungent thyme with a faint whiff of pepper. After a week there was little, if any, liquid being tipped off each morning and so began the maturing process. Plan carefully where you will hang your guanciale to mature. You need somewhere with air flow, out of direct sunlight and at a cool temperature no higher than 60F. A corner of my kitchen was just fine. This is something which I should have planned in advance as Emma now dances on the fringe of vegetarianism, don't worry we have had words and meat is still firmly on the menu. The problem began when I served dinner one evening. Emma sat down to her meal and dangling from the shelf above the table, at eye level and about eight inches from her face were my two guanciale. I was quite proud of my charcuterie whilst Emma was a little put off her food. In fairness the Guanciale were looking sweaty and some beads of guanciale juice had dripped onto the table by her knife. We ate dinner in the lounge for the rest of the maturing period though the trouble didn't end there. My guanciale was the subject of a few lovers tiffs during the three weeks, unfortunately I had absolutely nowhere else to hang them, I am now putting a rail up in a storage cupboard in the hall and finding homes for all the junk in there. This will become my cellar of sorts as I plan to get into charcuterie even more, though a fear of botulism has me re-reading a lot of books at the moment.
Today I had my first sample of home cured guanciale. I cut a few slices off and placed them in a hot frying pan, the ribbons of fat started to melt and quickly turned translucent. The sizzling meat gave off the most amazing smell with strong thyme and pepper notes. I ate a few slithers on their own whilst I quickly assembled a bacon sandwich with the guanciale, better than any bacon buttie I had had in years. I used no condiments in the sandwich and simply let the fat soak up into the bread. The meat has a deep, rich flavour and the fat is simply beautiful. It melts away and leaves a refined porcine taste in your mouth. The pig is still, unquestionably, my favourite animal to eat. Just do yourself a favour and make sure its not maturing near to where your loved one eats their dinner. For any other culinary related relationship advice, just drop me an email.

Flat Peaches - A Growing Dependence

2010-07-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

Walking back from doing some errands in town last week I stopped in my local grocers, as I often do, for some fruit to eat on the walk home. There is always a table outside filled with what's new and in season. This time of year the table is always full of colour and like a child who has just seen Santa in the corner of a department store, I can't take my eyes off of it. A small handwritten sign reads, 'Stan's Tomatoes', and is placed above a huge basket full of them, all different shapes and sizes. Stan is a guy from a small town on the edge of The New Forest and for a few weeks each year you can spoil yourself on his exquisite, deep red tomatoes. There is a tub of yellow plums placed next to a tub of the regular variety which are from Devon. Cute little apricots are sat next to stacked punnets of local strawberries and there are bulbous globe artichokes lined up along the shelf. The best thing about my grocer is that there is almost always a local option, just like with the tomatoes. For new potatoes, there are some from a farm five miles up the road. Recent gooseberries have come from Wimborne, a neighbouring town, and an array of lettuces all come from Sopley on the outskirts of Christchurch.

What I really fancied today though, was a peach. I looked the peaches over and selected one that I felt would be sufficient for the stroll home. I was reaching across the table when I noticed the words, 'Spanish Flat Peaches', scribbled on a piece of card above a small wooden crate. I'd never had one before and so took one to eat alongside my other peach and compare them on the way home. No sooner had I reached the end of the road, I had to turn back. I was completely besotted by the flat peach. It was intense and subtle at the same time, its skin, which wasn't too fuzzy, broke under the gentlest pressure exposing the pale yellow, almost white flesh, swollen with juice. It was sweet, but not overly so, and as I worked my way around the tiny stone in its centre, my surroundings faded briefly into insignificance. The Big Issue sellers voice became a muffled bass line to the hypnotising hum of the traffic. Within moments, it was over, all that was left was a tiny stone and a few rogue droplets of peach juices dripping through my beard. I wanted more and I wanted it now. I bit into the regular peach, it came nowhere close. The Big Issue sellers gruff voice was grating on me now and I wanted to do anything just to get away from the drone of the traffic. In comparison it was sharp, tart and didn't emit as much juice. I would guess that this was because like most commercial fruits, my regular peach was picked before it was fully ripe. This means that the harvesters don't have to be as delicate with the fruit, it will take more of a beating without bruising. When picking fruit early, although the colour and texture of the fruit may continue to change, the flavour of the fruit will not. I cannot guarantee that my new favourite food drug, the flat peach, wasn't harvested in a similar way, but I very much doubt it due to the ethereal taste I had just experienced. I headed back to the grocers and filled a small bag with some more. They worked out at about 30p each, only 3p more than the regular peaches. I am sure there are many ways you can cook and prepare these flat peaches for desserts, coulis and juices, but I haven't got that far with them yet. Each time I have bought some, they are simply devoured as they are.

Fruits of the Forest
64 Seamoor Rd,
Westbourne,
01202 761646

Kings Cross With A Wok

2010-07-13T00:52:00.000-07:00

I found myself wandering around the back streets near Kings Cross a little unnerved. In the stifling heat of the evening, I felt like a sitting target, "What's in the bag pal?" some boss eyed scouser hocked. I was not going to tell him I had a copy of Jo Pratt's latest book, In The Mood For Entertaining in there. I doubt he would have wanted it, if indeed he could even read, but I thought it best to something that made me sound tough, like boxing gloves, or better yet, ignore him and keep on walking. "'Ere mate, don' be likgh tha', come backgh". My pace quickened as I could see the entrance to the train station at the top of the road. They had armed me with a weapon of sorts, so as to give me a sporting chance, a wok which I was beginning to wish wasn't jammed in the bottom of the aforementioned bag. As I turned into the station I looked round to notice the unsavory gentleman from Liverpool had found someone else to bother, I believe it was a pound he was after, or perhaps a cigarette, either way his manners were appalling.

Tilda were the ones who had armed me with the wok, along with some samples of their new stir fry rice. A straight to wok product already seasoned and flavoured in four styles. I had been fed and handsomely watered with prosseco, which may or may not have added to my slightly paranoid state in the Kings Cross area that fateful Wednesday evening. Inside a beautiful Georgian townhouse at the cookery school, Food at 52, ten of us had been given a demonstration of recipes by the graceful Jo Pratt who has such a calming presence in a kitchen. Well I was calm until we were told it was our turn to cook. We paired up and set about the woks, I teamed with Mimi and in between reciting Flight of the Conchords songs we managed to pull together a fiery prawn and chilli dish with the Thai red rice. I did spend most of the time trying to get the lid off a bottle of rice wine, but thanks to Mimi, and a shared love for chilli, we had a fantastic plate of food. There were some really interesting dishes made using the new rice and the one that I recall in particular was a lamb stir fry where the lamb had been briefly marinated in sweet chilli sauce and soy I think, correct me if I am wrong. Over dinner, sat in the cute courtyard, we joked around, laughed a bit and drank ginger cordial, how very Enid Blyton.

Thanks to Food at 52, Tilda, Wildcard , Jo Pratt and all the lovely people who I shared the evening with.

Mimi is also hosting a Burmese pop-up at Matt Follas' Wild Garlic in Beaminster, Dorset on 1st October. Book now on 01308 861446. It will be a fantastic night I am sure.

BANANAS!* Competition

2010-07-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

My fingers begin to feel slightly numb as the handles of a weighty bag of fruit and vegetables digs in tightly to the crook of my elbow. Trying to peel a banana during my walk home from the grocers has often gone awry, the peeled, naked top half of my banana ending up on the floor followed by me standing still, staring at it, feeling like I am five years old and just dropped my ice cream. I pause for a little too long, then remind myself I am twenty-five and to be seen slightly tearful at this age over a banana could be a little embarrassing. Bananas have always been my favourite fruit, it comes in its own natural wrapper and its phallic embodiment never ceases to amuse me. My mothers fruit bowl was no end of jokes when I was younger, positioning one snugly between two oranges. I would like to say that my immature sense of humour has left me, but alas, my wife regularly shakes her head at my futile attempts to make her laugh. It doesn't matter though, I am always amused.

Whilst I had previously not given much attention to the story of the banana, recently I have become somewhat enamoured with the fruits history. In the 1920's, when bananas first took the hotspot of most popular fruit in Northern America, the fungus named Panama Disease took hold and began to obliterate crops. A solution of planting in virgin soil was proposed and the fruit companies United Fruit and Standard Fruit (now Dole and Chiquita) took land in Latin American countries such as Honduras and Nicaragua, often by force with the help of U.S government. The companies greed did not, unfortunately, end there.

The guys at Dogwoof productions sent me over a copy of their new documentary, BANANAS!*. I must admit, hearing it was a courtroom drama following the case of twelve Nicaraguan plantation workers against the Dole Food Corporation sounded a little testing. My instant reaction to 'courtroom drama' conjoured up images of Ally McBeal and that terrible CGI'd dancing baby. However, the documentary had me engrossed. The case is made against Dole for knowingly spraying pesticides over entire plantations that are seriously harmful to humans. The consequences have been shown to cause infertility in men and women. What unravels shows how Dole refused to stop using the pesticide even after constant advice and tests that deemed the chemical spray Fumazone seriously harmful to humans. Even when Fumazone was banned, Dole continued to use their stockpile of the chemical for a long time after spraying it over the crop, the land and the workers dormitories. It is a little disappointing that the Nicaraguan plantation workers change their statements and lie during the course of the trial, but the suspense throughout the documentary is immense and I definitely recommend watching it.

So Dole Food Corporation, not nice guys, and unfortunately, Chiquita is guilty of the same crimes. This documentary has me asking more questions though. What about the other food companies, where can I buy guilt free bananas, and what banana alternatives are out there? Well luckily my grocers don't carry either of these conglomerates produce, I am yet to find out on other major banana producers but I endeavour to do so. The thing is that due to their market dominance, Dole and Chiquita are the main reason that we most commonly only have one banana option, the Cavendish. More recently Plantain can be found much more abundantly and I have been lucky enough to get hold of some Manzano bananas. At this moment I am still yet to find somewhere that stocks Lacatan bananas but perhaps one day soon, I will find some.

The guys at Dogwoof have kindly given me 5 copies of BANANAS!* on dvd to give away. To enter simply email lostinthelarder@hotmail.co.uk with your name. Winners will be picked at random and emailed for delivery instructions on Friday 16th July 2010.

Taking Mum for Afternoon Tea, The Print Room, Bournemouth

2010-07-02T00:50:00.000-07:00

I hadn't been to see my mum in a little while, I'd decided to give her a break from my perpetual chatter on the subject of this blog. Mum had been busy lately on one of her projects and now things had eased up and she had some time I wanted to take her somewhere nice. I met her in Waterstones, a ploy to lull her into the thought we would just grab a quick coffee in the Costa upstairs. I mentioned I wanted to look in another shop first and led her down towards The Print Room. It was a muggy, humid afternoon and the high ceilings and cool floor of the old processing room of the Daily Echo made it a perfect place to relax over a pot of tea. I took a pot of a superlative lapsang whilst mum went for a breakfast tea, my mother drinks more cups of tea per day than anyone I have ever known. The used tea bag dish is always mounded up as high as possible and yet it gets emptied once or twice a day too! A tea fiend.

The classical spread of an English afternoon tea arrived on the obligatory tiered stand. Sandwiches, crusts removed, scones with clotted cream and jam and finally some cakes at the top. The Print Room have a night baker and everything from breads to cakes are made in house. We cut the sandwiches in half to share, egg and cress, ham and mustard, cucumber and smoked salmon. Exactly as a traditional afternoon tea requires. I want to point out that I wasn't being stindgy by only ordering one, I had a joint in the oven back home and had my mum wanted one all to herself then naturally I would have insisted that is what she have. Ever the mummy's boy, I like to make sure my mum's ok, the fact that she was quite capable of looking after herself long before I arrived on the scene, then took care of me and my sister for many years, is irrelevant to me.

Next we attacked the scones and more importantly, the clotted cream. There was a moment of panic as mum thought she smelt something burning, but on further investigation it was just my lapsang tea giving off its smokey aromas. Mum, now much calmer knowing the wooden booth wasn't smoldering, removed the top plate and sat it neatly on the table between us. The chocolate mouse cake didn't stand a chance and was devoured in a matter of minutes, then, both feeling a little guilty from making such short work of it, we took our time over the shortbread. Service was polite and subtle and I had a lovely afternoon with my mum. Afternoon tea at The Print Room is just £10.50 and includes one pot of tea, four sandwiches, two scones and two cakes from the in house patisserie. I think it's fantastic value.

Guilty Pleasures

2010-06-28T02:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, so a kebab shop may not be the type of thing you would expect to read about on a food blog, but this is one of my guilty pleasures that once in a while I feel the need to indulge in, and besides, food for me is about what tastes good. I don't recomend having this kind of thing every night, but it should be up there with such great pleasures as the pork scratching. Many a drunken night has been underlined with a kebab. In the vicinity of Bournemouth and it's surrounding towns and suburbs, there are countless kebab places, most of which I have visited at some point over the years, but none come close to Kebab and Pizza Junction in Charminster. Raz, the proprietor, took on the shop just last year, then only doing pizzas, and immediately set about offering variations of kebab. It's been a long while since I have braved a donner kebab but the char-grilled chicken shish kebab wraps here get me very, very excited. Fresh made coleslaw, always crisp salad and house chilli sauce all wrapped up with the afore-mentioned chicken keeps me very quiet and occupied for all of about ten minutes. Emma turned to me on our latest visit and said, "I always know when your food is good because you don't speak." For those of you who know me you will appreciate that such reprise in my incessant verbal dihorea are moments which are few and far between, and are to be savoured. Raz's place isn't just a counter, firing off takeaways though, he has an area full of tables, it reminds me of the small street food eateries from my travels. It is always busy here, and not with drunken, dribbling louts, but with families and couples of all different nationalities. Sport is often on the big screen tv and there is even a room downstairs with a pool table. How many kebab houses can you go to eat, shoot some pool and pretend you are Tom Cruise or Paul Newman in The Colour of Money? As I mentioned earlier, this is one of my guilty pleasures, we all have them. But on those occasions when the lust for such foods arise, treat yourself, and get the best kebab in Bournemouth, Chicken Shish Wrap from Pizza, Kebab Junction.

The Fish Man, Bournemouth Beach

2010-06-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

I'm going to share a secret here, it may not be very heavily guarded but it has been one of my favourite finds for a couple of years now. Anyone who lives in the Poole / Bournemouth region will know that, surprisingly, though living on the water, we have hardly any fishmongers, in fact I think the nearest one would be Christchurch or Ringwood, some ten miles away.

I had always seen the cluster of rowing boats on Durley Chine beach, not far from the pier, but it wasn't until just a few years ago, when my wife Emma and I first moved into our flat, that during early morning walks to work along the beach we discovered a man hauling small nets onto one of the boats. I assumed this was merely a one off, but as the week drew on I noticed him further and further out each morning, sometimes I wondered how he rowed out so far, sat out a good few miles off the coast. I imagined how nice it would be to have fish, caught off my local beach, just a mile from my home and eat for lunch just hours after being landed. After a week or so I managed to arrive at the same time as the fisherman was bringing his boat ashore, laying down tied pairs of buoys acting as rollers to lift the boat off of the sand and bring the vessel back up a few metres away from the ebbing tide. I wanted to see what had been caught and as I started towards the sand I noticed that the few idling people on the promenade came together near a bench and started to form an orderly queue. The fisherman carried a big fish crate up to a small plastic table, washed his hands in a bucket of water and greeted his first customer. It seemed to be first come first serve but the box was full of beautifully patterned mackerel, a few pollock, some spotted grey mullet and a few red gurnard. I stood in line and bought a nice big pollock for £2. That walk home I must have had the biggest grin on my face, I was so incredibly chuffed and I knew I had found something special. The early bird definitely catches the proverbial worm. Over the seasons I tried lots of fish, all extremely reasonable prices and caught on my doorstep, you couldn't possibly get more local. I had Dover sole, plaice, mackerel, grey mullet, gurnard, I never had a set plan of what fish I would buy, I just wandered down to see what was caught. Some days he doesn't go out, but the added gamble of whether or not he is there, has gone out or even caught anything all adds to the anticipation. Dave the fish man has been fishing off the beach since 1959, "Back then there were loads of fishing boats being launched off the beach." he informed me, but if you walk along the beach early in the morning now, you will see that he is the only one. I am too polite to ask the age of Dave the fish man, but rowing a boat for over fifty years has served him well I am sure, he looks very young. I wondered why he always rowed though. "Magna Carta" he replied. The Magna Carta gives fishermen the right to fish the foreshore under rowing or sail and also the right for fishermen to sell their catch on the beach. On my latest visit I picked up a handsome pair of mackerel, the pattern on their backs mesmerise me. As I am sure many of you know, you can tell how fresh a fish is by looking at its eyes. They should be clear and slightly bulbous, not cloudy or sunken back. These two specimen caught half an hour demonstrated this perfectly. It seemed a shame to take a knife to them, but I was hungry and approaching an early brunch. I took the fillets off and pan fried them gently with some oil and chopped shallots, layed them on top of some boiled and crushed new potatoes and some griddled asparagus, before soft poaching an egg to sit atop the lot.

Hix Oyster & Chop House

2010-06-21T03:05:00.000-07:00

From his career through Caprice Holdings, running the kitchens of the 'to be seen at' restaurant of the late 90's, to preparing Oscar ceremony dinners and now adding more and more restaurants to his own expanding empire, Mark Hix has been a longstanding and established face in the British Chef line up. To say I was excited about receiving a copy of his latest book was an understatement. Hix's food writing has a certain restful charm, quite polite really. Not too heavy on superlatives and even complex recipes seem so very relaxing to read. I must admit, I was a little dubious as to how he could follow up from his previous book, British Seasonal Food, but I needn't have worried. Hix Oyster & Chop House takes quite a different approach. It's a cook book to take with you to the beach or to flick through in a pub. A gentle read but informative and inspiring. It's also nice not to hear, "seasonal", and "local produce" every five minutes, which these days, can be words often tiresome to hear. With someone in Hix's position, you take it as a given, you need not ask.

The Oyster section is brilliant. After my recent trip out on the Othniel Oyster Farm in Poole Harbour, a place I source my own Oysters from, I was pleased to see that the guys got a proper mention for their outstanding product not to mention their unique and delicate way of harvesting them. The recipe for Bloody Mary Oysters will have me on the phone as soon as I have finished this post to go pick up some Rock Oysters this afternoon. I may even knock up one of the beef and oyster pies for supper.

Amidst all the wonderful recipes, (I don't mean to kiss ass but I really do fancy making all of them), The Bar section, I can tell now will become the most dog-eared of all the pages. Pork crackling with Bramley apple sauce, Quails egg shooters and deep fried scallop frills all look so simple to make and perfect for a sunny day alongside a drink. Which could be chosen from the British drinks list that Hix has created and written about. Perhaps, the white wine named collaboratively Tonnix by Mitch Tonks and Mr Hix, or the Nyetimber Sparkling white wine made in West Sussex from traditional champagne grape varieties.

'On Toast' could possibly be the next section to see quite a bit of use from me. Chopped livers, mackerel, tomatoes and Dorset crab all are making me reconsider my mundane cereal I had this morning. There are sections for every occasion and I think whether you are shy and intimidated in the kitchen, or incredibly confident preparing meals, I am sure you will find recipes that you will actually have a go at and cook, not just look at the pictures. If anyone ever dare contest or question what Britain has to offer culinarily, pick up this book and throw it at their head, if the spine end gets them somewhere near the nose, award yourself extra points. This book really has me excited about cooking at the minute, I must admit that recently I had been lacking motivation in the kitchen some evenings but with the added bonus that a lot of the ingredients are local to me in Dorset, I really have had an injection of enthusiasm.

Hix Oyster & Chop House is available from 2nd July 2010.

Mozzarella and Cannellini Bean Salad

2010-06-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

So it's almost Summer, the suns out, I'm opting for the quicker dinners more and more often and the missus wants to eat a little more healthily too. I can't blame her, I did drag her round far too many burger joints on our recent trip away, as well as many a taqueria. Not to mention the heart attack inducing Roscoes House of Chicken and waffles. So when the request came in that we eat a little more consciously over the next few weeks, I naturally obliged.
The beaches here are so peaceful and with my cool bag topped up with a few cold beers I aim to make the most of the sunshine whilst it still hangs around. I've been growing courgettes again this year and the little ones, cut very thinly are a great addition to salads when raw and add a satisfying crunch to the mix. Anyway, it's sunny outside and I want to get out in it so here's a quick little salad I have been making recently, it's surprisingly filling. Stick it in a box and take it out with you. And close the door behind you on your way out.

2 tomatoes,
1 small courgette,
1 tin of cannellini beans,
1 red onion,
1 small yellow pepper,
1 large ball of mozzarella,
a good pinch of sea salt,
a crack of black pepper,
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
3-4 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil

Cut your tomatoes into 4, deseed and cut into thin strips, drop into large bowl. finely cut your onion, yellow pepper and courgette into wafer thin slices, drop into the bowl. Drain the cannellini beans and rinse under cold water in a seive before adding to the bowl of vegetables. Break and tear your mozzarella into thin short layers and add to the bowl. Add your salt, pepper, red wine vinegar and olive oil and toss with your fingers until well combined.

This salad is really fresh simply on it's own. Try swapping the mozzarella for tuna or some steamed mackerel with a little diced chilli.

Lost in the Larder: Food Inc Screening

2010-06-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

I'd been wanting to put on some sort of food event for a while, something that would bring together people from South Dorset, and one day beyond. You see there isn't such a tight community of food bloggers down in Bournemouth as there is in central London. The guys up there in the big smoke have events or dinners to attend quite often and I myself have shown my face at a few before now. Having to travel up to London, sometimes staying overnight in cheap hotels, certainly makes a considerable dent on my wallet. There's always going to be more going on in a city but I don't think that makes too much of a difference, it just means you need to put a little more effort in. Seeing as I was traveling up to the city for meals, sometimes comprised of ingredients and produce from just five miles away from my home, I thought about trying to get a network started down here where we have so many amazing producers. The time had come and I decided to add another dimension to Lost in the Larder.

On Sunday 13th June 2010, the first Lost in the Larder event was held at Lighthouse Poole's Centre for the Arts. The girls from Green Deli had a lovely stand as did Louisa of Lulubelle's Cupcakes. The Olive Tree Cookery School were present with Giusseppe giving fresh pasta demonstrations and tastings from their Veru Truly Sicilian food products, Caponata Melanzane is my personal favourite.

Chef Jim Knight from the Lighthouse Bistro kindly gave a reduced rate for ticket holders and spoiled them with monkfish tails with confit chorizo and basil pesto. The guys at Piddle Brewery had looked after us and Piddle's blonde ale was just £1 a pint. Angus 'Vijay' Miller, gave incredibly interesting and extremely popular raw chocolate demonstrations whilst Brian Chamberlain of Wheatgrass World knocked out super-food smoothies, which was very welcome to those who were hungover from the football match the night before. I wasn't feeling my greatest due to attending a wedding the night before and I have to say that the beetroot, apple and wheatgrass smoothie not only tasted nice but slapped me round the face and brought me back to life again.

The film, Food Inc, went down really well. The insightful and investigative documentary on the US food industry seemed to open a few eyes and hopefully make people think a bit more about what food they buy.

Thanks to some generous support we were able to construct some great goodie bags and also a very impressive prize draw. I think we managed to send almost everybody home with a prize. The day was a success and I am happy to say that the next 'Lost' event will be surfacing later this summer. If you have any suggestions, or would like to get involved please email me at lostinthelarder@hotmail.co.uk or join the facebook page for regular updates and plans of what's going on.

Thanks to Clipper teas, Quadrille Publishing, River Cottage, Casillero del Diablo, Dorset Cereals, Jamie Magazine, Ryvita, Piddle Brewery, Cafe Boscanova, Jim Knight, Penguin Press, The Olive Tree Cookery School, Angus Miller, Wheatgrass World, The Green Deli, Ebury Press, Lulubelle's Cupcakes and everyone who came to show your support and get involved. Also a big thank you to Mathilde for some behind the scenes help. If you don't already, you should follow Mathildes blog, always a gentle read and full of wonderful recipes and in-depth posts.

The Apple Pan, West LA

2010-06-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

When in LA recently, and feeling slightly down when a certain burger joint I had been hoping to eat at was closed, I happened across, completely by chance, The Apple Pan. I hadn't planned on visiting the place although it was featured on an invaluable list recently given to me. Discussion forums and other blogs had been indifferent on the place, some had commented "inglorious dive", whilst others opposed, "undeniably true burger". As I got closer and started to cross the road I could see just how busy the place was. Heaving. We squeezed in through the door and stood behind the cramped bar stools and waited for a space to come free. Apple Pan seems to have a fast turn around time and it was only about five minutes before we had two stools at the end of the bar. I took the Hickory burger with cheese and in a few minutes was presented with it. The buns they use in these kind of places in America seem a million miles away from the buns back home. As you pick them up your grip forces the surface of the bun to crack, even though it is so soft. The big chunk of iceberg lettuce, although crisp was bigger than the burger which was a bit weird but the hickory sauce was divine. Smokey yet subtle. The patty wasn't too thick but was cooked medium rare just right. The Apple Pan hickory burger again demonstrated just how wrong we often get it over here in the UK. I can't quite put my finger on it but there is something fundamental that we seem to miss or overlook or just frankly, get wrong. We had to try the apple pie and the happy old dude who had served us disappeared again before returning with a round apple pie that was absolutely massive. It was about six inches high and looked like something from a cartoon, think Desperate Dan's cow pies but without the horns. Although I would have given it my best shot, we settled on a slice each with some vanilla ice cream. The pie had a hint of cinnamon to the short crust that was light whilst the hot cooked apples in their sweet, juicy sauce melted the ice cream and swirled amongst each other. The old guy rung it up on the old fashioned till, which was probably as old as he was, and we went out into the California night. It had been a bit of a burger fest in LA and the calories were the last thing from my mind. But what I'll say is that if your going to eat fast food, you may as well have the best, and whilst this may not be the best, it is definitely up there as a strong contender for me so far.

The Scandinavian Cookbook - giveaway

2010-05-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

Scandinavia has been known for many things such as Hans Christian Anderson, the Vikings, Abba, Ingrid Bergman and even Ace of Base - fantastic early 90's roller disco tunes. They eat reindeer over there, can see the northern lights in certain areas, produce some of the worlds greatest snowboarders and it is believed that lapland is where Father Christmas has a second home, though it is yet to be confirmed as to which one is his primary residence. It appears that lately, Scandinavian cooking is seeing a great rise in popularity to rival even that of the Moomins. Jamie Oliver recently made a stop off to feature foraging, fjords and fermented tinned herring in his latest series 'Jamie Does...' The fantastic restaurant Noma in Copenhagen has just taken first place in this years S. Pellegrino "Worlds 50 Best Restaurant" Awards and it seems that as I leaf through one food periodical to the next, Scandie cooking seems to be popping up more and more often, highlighting that there is more to Scandinavian food than gravadlax and fermented fish. Trina Hahnemann's Scandinavian Cookbook arrived a few weeks ago and it took me several browses of the book before I even looked at what the recipes were. The photography, by Lars Ranek, one of Scandinavia's leading food photographers, is so gentle and calm. With pictures not only of the food but also many of Scandinavia's beautiful countryside and moody, city streets, the book takes a month by month seasonal approach demonstrating what can be had in even the bleakest of months. What got me most excited in this book was the winter month dishes. I have the recipe bookmarked for braised, stuffed pheasant with savoy cabbage, gravy and potatoes to use as soon as the season kicks in again later this year. But for now, the Smorrebrod, Kransekage: almond cakes and home made Danish pastries are more than enough to keep me occupied. The guys at Quadrille have kindly given me two copies of Tina Hahnemann's Scandinavian Cookbook to give away. For your chance to win a copy simply send your email address and name to lostinthelarder@hotmail.co.uk. The winners will be drawn at random on Friday 4th June 2010.

Kogi Truck

2010-05-23T17:01:00.000-07:00

Of all the food trucks that have twitter followings in Los Angeles, the most popular, the one with the biggest cult following, is without doubt, The Kogi Truck. Kogi has grown since its humble beginnings, founded by Mark Manguera, Caroline Shin-Manguera and Chef Roy Choi who was named "Best New Chef" by America's Food and Wine magazine earlier this year, and it now boasts four trucks named Azul, Roja, Verde and Naranja as well as serving food from the Alibi Room in Culver City.

There have been a few negative reviews popping up here and there, saying overhyped and mentions that considering it's Mexican/Korean you won't see a single Mexican or Korean standing in the long lines outside the truck. On the other hand, there are a host of people who say quite the opposite, that it works, that it incredibly good, and well, the long queues speak for themselves. The LA Times published a podcast on Kogi Truck last year and ever since I have been wanting to go stand in line myself. Now in California I knew that I owed it to myself to track a truck down and go taste some Korean barbeque tacos.

We had been staying in Huntington Beach for a few nights and, as I had been most mornings since being in the vicinity of LA and Orange County, logged onto Twitter to see where the trucks would be stopping today, a system which up to now has obviously worked succesfully for Kogi. The Naranja truck was to stop outside the RVCA warehouse in Costa Mesa just five minutes up the road. So after battling the waves on the beach all morning we jumped in the car and made our way to RVCA. As chance would have it, RVCA were having one of their annual warehouse sales which was a welcome and pleasant distraction whilst we waited for the truck to arrive. Sure enough a line started to build and build and as we joined, about twenty places deep in the queue, the Naranja truck rolled up and set-up shop. There were many ethnic nationalities in the line, including Mexican and Korean to go against the negative Yelp review I had read. I took a kimchi quesadilla and a Korean spicy pork taco whilst my wife Emma took the Korean chicken burrito. Everything we had was remarkable. Fantastic! One of our favourite eats in California (which has included a lot). The Kogi Korean barbeque sauce, used in the Korean chicken burrito and most of the food served at Kogi trucks, has such a deep flavour. A peanut satay type undertone to a rich and spiced barbeque sauce. My spicy Korean pork taco was not as spicy as I would have liked but it was full of flavour. The kimchi quesadilla, which is on their favourites list, was the highlight for me, spicy bbq sauce with sesame seeds and the same slight undertone of satay amid the fermented cabbage sandwiched in a large corn tortilla. In my opinion, the wait in the line was absolutely worth it. The food was brilliant value for money, just $14, and I would highly recommend, to anyone visiting the area, to keep an eye on Twitter and somehow find your way to the nearest Kogi Truck one night and wait in that line. Kogi - believe the hype.

Follow Kogi on twitter @kogibbq

Marty's Burger Stand, West LA - The Double Chilli Cheese

2010-05-21T20:09:00.000-07:00

Before arriving in Los Angeles I had been looking for recommendations of places to eat in the city. There was only one person I thought of and whose opinions I regard highly. Simon Majumdar, author of Eat My Globe and Eating for Britain has not only eaten his way around the world but is also now semi resident in LA had been kind enough to supply me with a great list for good eating in the city of angels. Many of you who follow the blog he runs with his brother, Dos Hermanos, will know that the double chilli cheese burger from Marty's Burger stand in LA is said to be his favourite and the best. Coming from a man who's mantra is "go everywhere, eat everything" and who has travelled the world over in the name of food, I made this one of my priorities and the intrigue had me waking up at 6AM every morning and counting down the sleeps before I would be able to taste it for myself. We drove into town around six thirty in the evening and headed straight for the crossing of West Pico Boulevard and Prosser Avenue and located Marty's Burger stand. Unfortunately it was closed. It was a Sunday though and so my disappointment was consolable. We settled on something else for dinner and the following day, we took a bus, up Santa Monica Boulevard and then walked for half an hour to taste the legendary burger. We arrived at six fifteen and again it was closed. My heart sank, I was worn out and tired and we were leaving LA the following morning. I sulkily walked over to the pay booth at the petrol station next door and asked when, if ever, Marty's is open. It turns out it is open from eight in the morning until six in the evening. I had previously, since coming away empty handed the first night, googled and scoured the internet looking for Marty's opening hours but to no avail. I had presumed, wrongly, that surely there would be more trade in the evenings. Now, after two longwinded visits I had finally found out the operating hours of the business. So there was only one thing for it.

Having the double chilli cheese burger for breakfast was a turning point in my life. I knew there was something so very, very wrong with me to even consider such a breakfast. Especially when I had been for a hickory burger at The Applepan just the night before, but west LA's finest burger beckoned and so at eight fifteen in the morning, just before I drove to Las Vegas, I wandered up to the counter and ordered the burger I have been so eager to try. The burger exceeded my expectations. The perfect amount of chili, not too spicy to dominate the flavour and not too much of it that it soaks into the bap and makes it soggy. Two patties of beef, not too thick, cheese, crisp lettuce, tomato and a lightly toasted bap. The result is a burger full of flavour, not too stodgy, not greasy and for just $5.50. I sat quietly on the side of the road eating my breakfast, so very wrong yet so incredibly good. I contemplated what I had become and what lay before me on this long and twisted road of eating I have embarked upon. The three trips across the city had all been worth it, ten fold. We have some catching up to do when it comes to burgers in the UK. Whether or not they should feature on breakfast menu's is another matter though.

As we drove towards the edge of the city I spoke relentlessly about Marty's and the burger I had just had. My wife turned to me after about twenty minutes and said, "I wish I had a bite." Then it struck me, not only had I turned into some sort of monster that eats double chilli cheese burgers for breakfast but had become so engrossed in the experience that I had neglected to share it with my partner. I felt bad for a moment and then realised. We will just have to come back again next week.

Marty's Burger Stand is on the corner of West Pico Boulevard and Prosser Avenue, West Los Angeles and is open daily from 8AM through until 6PM.

Big Sur Bakery, CA

2010-05-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

The drive down through Big Sur is absolutely stunning. The coast line and forests are just jaw dropping and as we rolled up to Big Sur Bakery as planned, both the wife and I were ready to ditch the car and just stay in Big Sur forever. I took a coffee and a slice of the potato frittata whilst my the wife had the asparagus tart and a hot chocolate. This place isn't cheap but is phenomenal quality and for the money and location I think it is very good value. Due to the location, Big Sur Bakery can sometimes have trouble with produce deliveries and so the menu and food for sale changes almost daily reflecting not only what is in season but also what has been delivered. I think this shows just how versatile they are here. After looking at the pictures and recipes in The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook I was a little worried that, like quite a few similar cookbooks, the food would look great but be lacking in flavour. This was not the case here. Packed with californian asparagus, deep, light and with a dark shortcrust base the tart was not just an unusual breakfast choice, but a welcome one. Meanwhile the potato frittata was really thick and the potato was not overcooked as can sometimes be the case with frittata. We polished off our drinks and took a chocolate brownie and a lemon slice to go which we ate whilst meandering along the pacific coastline. Big Sur Bakery is such a peaceful and laid back place to be, it's not fancy and it over delivers with the quality and flavour of the food. Something few places ever do. If you're passing through, or even if you're not. This place is worth the trip.

Boccalone - tasty, salted pig parts in San Francisco

2010-05-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

I had noticed, sometime before we left for San Francisco, that Fergus Henderson would be having a St. John evening at Incanto to promote his new St. John hotel just off Leicester Square in London. Incanto sold out within three hours of taking reservations but had thoughtfully reserved twenty-five spaces for walk-ins on a first come first serve basis. This is where I thought I would have a go and aim to get there in time to beat the queue. My wife and I walk most places we go, I don’t know why, we just do, and so when we got off at Market near The Castro and walked our way down Church Street I saw it was roughly 12 blocks away. What I didn’t take into account, foolishly, was that the blocks stem up and down incredibly steep hills.

After scaling the hills we stopped in Omnivore bookstore, which is San Francisco’s equivalent to Books For Cooks in London and is also just around the corner from Incanto. After speaking with Sam from Omnivore books she told me how people had been queuing round the block all afternoon and so decided to stay and browse the bookstore, which is phenomenally well stocked, and chat with Sam about places to eat and check out in the city. As we walked past Incanto, the queue now gone, I stuck my nose in just on the off chance they had had a late cancellation. They hadn’t. Fergus Henderson and Chris Cosentino were stood happily chatting before the rush of service. I had a nosey around, wished I was eating there and went home with a menu anyway. Next time I am here I will plan ahead more thoroughly and make a reservation well in advance. Chris Cosentino and Mark Pastore also have a side business called Boccalone with the tag line ‘Tasty Salted Pig Parts’ and produces and sells exactly that. Boccalone’s outlet is based in the Ferry Building and amongst various salami’s are vac-packed guanciale, pig liver, porchetta di testa, coppa di testa, and whole array of, well, tasty salted pig parts. As well as sandwiches stuffed with your choice of porcine meat, one of the most popular snacks are the Boccalone meat cones. For $4.50 you can have a custom cone and choose three types of cured pig to have sliced. I chose the almost crimson red coppocollo, made from pig shoulder with some Coppa di testa and porchetta di testa, both made from the head. They were all gorgeous and if, like me, you love all food piggy, then this place could have you sat at the counter for hours. Unfortunately I don’t fly home for another ten days and so some of the more interesting and flavourful parts like the guanciale, would not last without refrigeration. I bought some salamis that would last the duration of my trip sat in my bag, said my tearful goodbyes and hoped that it wouldn’t be too long before our next encounter. Another great reason to come back to this city.

Chez Panisse - Berkeley, California

2010-05-13T21:21:00.000-07:00

It seems, for the food enthusiast, that everywhere you turn in San Francisco Alice Waters gets a mention. Her name is almost eerily present and if you listen closely, you can hear it whispered through the cool Californian breeze everywhere from book stores, delis and farmers market. Ms Waters has most likely got signed books for sale on the counter too. A kicthen antique shop had a sign on the door reading "One of Alice Waters favourite shops". It seems the Waters seal of approval, whether official or not, is enough to draw in the crowds. I had planned to go and have lunch at Chez Panisse during my trip, but in my freewheelin' approach to holidays and travel I had neglected to make a booking. But we boarded a BART train from Montgomery and zipped along to Downtown Berkeley on the off chance of a walk in. We were surprisingly early and there was already a small queue almost an hour before they opened. We decided that rather than wait we would go and walk about some of the gargantuan University campus in Berkeley, it really is impressive.

We had no reservation but the old lady maitre'd greeted us with open arms and showed us to a table upstairs. I worried for a moment whether she would be okay to make it across the room without a zimmer-frame or walking stick but luckily she made it there without having to press her panic button and we were soon greeted by a very kind waitress who supplied the staples of water, bread and butter. It's quite dark inside Chez Panisse and considering the beautiful weather and vegetation around at first story height, all the windows have the shutters closed just that little bit too much. The age demographic seems to be the later side of 60 although the only other young person in the restaurant was a young girl of about twenty who wore socks and sandals. I said nothing but Mrs Lost in the Larder knew exactly what I had just noticed and pointed out that it was lunchtime on a Thursday which explained most of the pensioners but not socks and sandals. There's no excuse. They were pink socks too.

I took the roasted grass-fed beef bone marrow, toast with a salad of capers, parsley and celery. Fergus Henderson had just hosted a canape evening at Chez Panisse the night before and maybe this pre-empted a Chez Panisse version onto the menu, although the salad had too subtle an acidity to bite through the rich beef marrow. The marrow from my first bone was very nice but the middle was not quite as giving enough as I would have liked and the second bone of marrow was undercooked which I found to be a great shame as the taste of the more firm and undercooked, pale marrow was incredibly subtle compared with the much softer, brown-grey, roasted marrow which released a much richer, savoury taste. For my main course I had the house-made spaghetti with pesto and Riverdog sun dried tomatoes. It was superbly put together with the pesto and sun-dried tomatoes accentuated with salty peccorino shavings.

For dessert I had creamy light balls of honey ice cream with a slightly bitter tangerine sherbert and a syrupy confit of baby tangerines which was gorgeous.

I had a great house wine, the Chez Panisse Zinfandel red. It really was fantastic and before now I had not tried many Californian Zinfandel. This is a grape I plan to spend much more time on in future. I was very impressed.

When leaving Chez Panisse I was still puzzled as to why the place is so revered. Is it simply because no one else is doing what Alice Waters is? Alice Waters is said to have created and developed Californian cuisine, but what defines it to be Californian? It all seems very mediterranean to me. Don't get me wrong though, I had a great meal, in a wonderful restaurant, in a beautiful part of the world. But I would find it difficult to define the style of cooking as, "Californian Cuisine". Definitely worth the trip out from San Francisco and a welcome breath of fresh air from some of the restaurants in the city. Chez Panisse doesn't try to be anything too special, well at least I don't think it does. It's simple, seasonal, locally sourced food, cooked carefully in what looked to be a very calm, open plan kitchen. Alice Waters and Chez Panisse aren't just selling meals, they are selling a lifestyle, a whole new attitude to food for some and maybe this is why she is so cherished out here.

Red's Java House - San Francisco

2010-05-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

We covered a lot of ground on our first full day in the city. After getting caught out in the rain the evening before and eating in a place that can only be described as a soup kitchen, we had some catching up to do. Tuesdays is one of the days the farmers market is present outside the ferry building, to be honest I felt let down by the size of it. Supposedly one of the foodie capitals of the country and this was all that could be mustered up. What didn't come anything short of fantastic was the ferry building shops. The breads from Acme Bakery look amazing and after settling on a small sourdough round I wandered just a few feet up the way and came to the Cowgirl Creamery and bought some of the stinkiest cheese I could find. Boccalone is also inside the ferry building which is the side-business of Incanto duo Chris Cosentino and Mark Pastore. Boccalone and their tasty salted pig parts are incredibly popular, so popular in fact that the queue was bent out the entrance and trailed off down the hall. After browsing the mushroom stores and the wine shops we decided to walk along to Fisherman's Wharf and see what that was all about, who knows, maybe some shellfish....

Fisherman's Wharf is a car crash. Something Disneyland has chewed up and spat out. If you like the theme park environment, Hard Rock Cafe and Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurants then you might like this place. If so then please stay there. We took a silent walk along Fisherman's Wharf where the pair of us were in shock, knew each other hated it, but carried on regardless. We were hungry and no amount of sea lions were going to take our minds off it. I'd seen some Anthony Bourdain clips on youtube a while back and remembered that on pier 30 was a little dive bar that serves cold beers, chili cheese fries and burgers. I stated I would rather eat in the soup kitchen from last night than at Bubba Gumps on Fisherman's Wharf and with my wife in tow, made our way back along the Embarcadero to the Bay Bridge where Red's Java House lies. Any extra revenue generated from the spotlight Bourdain's No Reservations show shone on Red's has almost certainly not been spent on smartening the place up. Which is good because without the character of the place, you would quickly be turned off. A chilli cheese burger and some chilli cheese fries for me, I was hungry. It was a scorching day so we ventured out back onto the terrace area where I quickly felt at ease and ordered a beer from the makeshift drinks bar out back. Red's seems to take all kinds here. There were two miserable old guys on the table next to us who reminded me distinctly of Waldorf and Stadtler from the Muppets. Some people just clocked off work, some people probably never been to work, a mexican family with their young boy. One demographic that was nowhere to be seen to my great pleasure, was the suits, no tall skinny latte drinkers here. Our burgers came and I suddenly realised how much I'd ordered. There may be burger connoisseurs who have not rated this place particularly well, but for someone from the UK, where good burgers are few and far between, the burger lasted all of two minutes. Red's doesn't try to be anything, it's simple, booze and some food on the side. I relaxed, properly this time, like I haven't done in ages. The sure sign of a place worth going. As I lay back in the plastic chair, felt the breeze on my neck and sipped my beer I felt a nudge in my side. It was the wife, "That little bird is eating up the sick from under that table," she whispered. "Well maybe he's hungry too."

Othniel Oyster Farm

2010-05-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

Oysters have long been considered a rich mans food, a luxury. But some time ago oysters were a cheap way to bulk up casseroles and stews when meat was not so abundant or affordable. There are in fact many traditional recipes for Lancashire hotpot that call for oysters to be included. It seems the cheaper cuts, offal and seafood that were once seen as paupers food have come full circle and are now the mainstays on high-end restaurant menus around the world. With higher demand and an increasing popularity, I was surprised to find out that there is an exceptional oyster farm on our doorstep here in Poole. The Othniel Oyster farm has been established since 1985 and now produces around 400 tons of organic rock oysters a year. I’ve long had a penchant for oysters and to hear that there was a farm just a few minutes drive from my house, I had to go and try some. Gary is a happy guy who’s passionate about his farm and is more than prepared to take the time explaining the methods and engineering that he has developed to make the Othniel Oyster farm what it is today. I met Gary and his team on Poole Quay and boarded the barge along with two pallets of oyster seeds. I was handed my lifejacket and leant against the cab whilst we pootled across the shipping channel and over to the farm. After a short journey we moored up at the mouth of the old Sandbanks chain ferry that Gary has bought, converted and anchored just off of Brownsea Island that’s now converted into a floating warehouse, processing and seeding unit. Eight years ago, the time came for the Sandbanks chain ferry to be replaced. The Othniel Oyster farm was operating from several rafts that featured internal cages to seed the oysters. Obviously this entailed a lot of logistical problems between rafts and also man-power. During the crossover period Gary managed to buy the old chain ferry and had it converted into what is essentially a warehouse unit that floats. The ferry, now painted blue, has many seed cages fixed to the outside, increasing the speed in which they can bring oysters up to a size that the crabs and fish can’t break into. Gary has also acquired a forklift truck that obviously saves a lot of time and man-power when getting the sacks and pallets of oysters ready for shipment. This seems to be the nerve centre of the operation and with the added mystery that not many people know this place exists, it left me feeling a little like James Bond discovering a secret hideaway, sadly without a Bond Babe in sight. We have such rich waters here in Dorset and mixed with the position of the farm Othniel’s oysters grow much faster and consistently than in other regions. Due to the nutrients and food in the water, from a thumbnail sized seed to a respectable sized oyster takes just eighteen months. Gary produces around five million oysters a year and has recently been awarded organic status from the Soil Association due to the delicate and ethical way in which they farm and harvest.

The method of harvesting oysters varies from site to site and subsequently Gary has engineered a unique process that he has also replicated for other farmers on similar sites in Canada. The grounds dry out very rarely on the Othniel Farm and so a conventional tractor based harvesting process can’t be used. Gary has, over time, developed a unique conveyor harvester that blows the shellfish out of the substrate using water jets. They are then gently transported into the boat via a stainless steel mesh belt where the correct sized oysters are picked whilst the smaller mollusks not yet fully grown continue along the belt and fall back into the water. Standing in Gary’s converted chain ferry, anchored just off Brownsea island, I endeavoured to find out where most of these oysters end up. A large proportion of the oysters wind up in Hong Kong and China and amongst vast customers across the UK. I am told Mark Hix uses these oysters in his restaurants and was recently out on the barge to check out the operation. Hix has a restaurant in Lyme Regis and obviously has many suppliers available. His choosing to use these oysters, really does speak volumes of their quality. Just before we were about to head back to Poole Quay, Gary called me over the conveyorbelt, shucked a palm-sized oyster open, cut the anchoring muscle and flipped it over in its own juice for me to taste. I had, after a long day, finally managed to taste what I had come out here for and it was easy to see why Mr Hix, who has cooked at the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood, buys Oysters from our very own Poole Harbour.
Some of you will want to take advantage of yet another great producer here in Dorset. If you are interested in getting hold of some of these locally farmed mollusks, get in touch with Pete Miles.

Pete Miles, who distributes these oysters is also a keen and multi tasking foodie to boot. Pete not only owns and operates Storm restaurant in Poole but also fishes prawns, crabs and lobsters amongst other fish and seafood which he supplies to his restaurant. He is a keen horticulturist and his own crops of veg can be found on his menu along with his county fair winning honey produced from the bees he keeps. Some people just don’t let time get in their way. Pete is a thoroughly nice bloke and should you have any enquiries for Oysters, contact him at Dorset Oysters.
01202 666057 or visit www.dorsetoysters.com.

My Balls...

2010-04-28T10:34:00.000-07:00

When I found out I had been selected to be an official taster for Lulubelle's Cupcakes of Dorset, I wondered whether I was the right person for the job. I am much more of a savoury man myself and have little of a sweet tooth. My wife on the other hand could happily eat chocolate for the rest of her days and so I saw an opportunity, thought I best keep quiet regarding my suitability as the cupcakes would come in handy to distract the wife and keep her occupied for those times when I hole myself up in the kitchen. Through further reading I realised it wasn't necessarily cupcakes I was to be tasting but, 'new products'. This intrigued me greatly and had me trying to guess what it might be all weekend. When the little pink box turned up I was pretty sure this was it, but still had no idea what it contained. I had been supplied with Lulubelle's newest products and upon further inspection unveiled the new cake balls.

I had only meant to have the one, the white chocolate one, and underneath the crisp chocolate was a moist strawberry flavoured cake. It was gorgeous and lingered in my mouth afterwards. It was very, very good. Not too sweet and not too dense, just, you know, right. I wanted another straight away but fighting my inner addict I put the rest in the fridge and started to crack on with dinner.

Is it just me, or do you graze whilst cooking too? I usually keep a jar of pickled onions in the cupboard by the cooker hood and whilst I am stirring my sauces or checking on my stock, I eat a few. Visits to the fridge for vegetables and butter are all too often accompanied by chunks of cheese and slices of cured meats and in the same fashion I slowly worked my way through the cake ball flavours. When I dipped into the fridge for some butter, I had a milk chocolate one with dark chocolate drizzles over it that had yet again, a wonderful moist texture but this time orange. Then obviously when I returned the butter to the fridge I had to have another. I continued like this for around forty minutes and by the time I was dishing up the dinner, I had sampled one of each flavour. The one that really blew me away though was the little cake ball that had a dark chocolate coating with white chocolate drizzles with the most tingly mint flavoured cake centre. I was completely agog afterwards but decided to control myself and close the fridge door. Besides, dinner was ready.
Luckily though, Lulubelle has a sixth sense, had the foresight of my greed and included two of each flavour so I still have the weapons of bribery at my fingertips.

Louisa of Lulubelle's is the Willy Wonka, no the Willemina Wonka, of the South and crams an incredible amount of intense flavour into each and every cake ball. Lulubelles are available via mail order so visit her website and order some of these cake balls. A box of the dark chocolate and mint ones, they'd be great after dinner. Lulubelle's also do fantastic cupcakes, so next time you have someone to woo or apologise to, don't send flowers, send cakes.
http://www.lulubellescakes.com/

New Urban Farmer

2010-04-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

I have been growing the odd bit of fruit and veg for the past couple of years now. I'm not overly successful but then seeing as I live in a flat and don't have a garden i'm probably not doing all that bad. I have recently adopted a guerilla growing method and have sown carrots and leeks in the communal grounds of the block I live in. Secretly scattered amongst the flowers of the ground floor planters, I go on stealth missions late in the Summer to unearth my carrots and courgettes. Perhaps it's not quite the stealth mission I've just been banging on about. For the record I don't don a balaclava and a rope system akin to mission impossible. I'm just a food geek rummaging in Flat 3's flower beds. Luckily for me there are quite a few old people in my block and I don't have much of my crop nicked, which was my main concern when I first started. My veg growing has often been ill timed, sprouting my tomato plants too early or forgetting the cabbages and losing them to pests. I've meant to get a book on the subject to help me plan my yearly growing rota, but have always been side-tracked and forgotten.

There are many 'grow your own' books out there and over the past few years allotments have seen a revival of sorts. Nowadays your average allotment is more likely to be maintained by a young twenty-something than a pensioner as I remember when I was five or six. The only people I knew who had an allotment were my granddad and his pals. New Urban Farmer caught my attention, not just because Celia's allotment has an abandoned skip in the middle of it. Although I have always preferred recycled tin cans for plant pots than the lifestyle porn of perfectly maintained vegetable patches complete with designer sleepers and raised beds as often seen on television. This book takes quite a laid-back approach to vegetable growing. It lets you know which jobs need doing each month without sounding like your old maths teacher and rewards your hard work with seasonal recipes at the end of each month. Cecilia Brooks Brown gives the reader an insight into some of the people she's met since obtaining her allotment from the council. Taking a more bodge-it approach, with notes on raiding skips and foraging for materials for creative construction back on the allotment, New Urban Farmer is anything but pretentious or preachy. I don't have an allotment and to be honest I don't want the responsibility of one, but even for a guerilla growing young amateur with a few plants on the balcony, the book has come in handy already.

Lost in the Larder has a new copy of New Urban Farmer to give away. To enter simply email lostinthelarder@hotmail.co.uk with your name. The winner will be drawn at random on Saturday 1st May 2010 and will be contacted shortly after to arrange delivery.

For more from Celia Brooks Brown and to read her blog visit www.celiabrooksbrown.com

Kitchen Rituals. Routine, or a form of witchcraft?

2010-04-22T00:14:00.000-07:00

It is imperative that they be stacked neatly next to the sink in an orderly fashion. Glassware nearest the sink, all mugs drained of dregs and holding cutlery, then plates and bowls and finally the greasy pots and pans. Have I always been this anally fastidious about tidiness or has O.C.D set in since I became a kitchen geek?

Over the course of time, engrossed by all things food, I have adopted some rather methodical habits in the kitchen. Where some seem quite sensible others tend to lean to the more avant-garde or mentally unbalanced as has been mentioned before now.

Routines and superstitions have been instilled in me since I was very young from walking under ladders to stepping on pavement cracks. My earliest experience was once being told that to walk over a bank of three drain covers was bad luck and I have ever since found myself dancing down the street in order to avoid them. Nowadays my superstitious rituals extend to the kitchen.

It started with the tinned food and my need to have all the labels facing the same way, stacked in categories. Through time this evolved into a stock rotation system put to use every time I returned from the shops. My wife thought it a little unusual but was happy to leave me occupied whilst she gained the lounge to herself for a few priceless moments.

As things progressed I knew deep down that it wasn’t normal to feel a surge of panic upon realising I have less than ten onions in the blue rimmed bowl on the table. It matters not whether I need them or have something planned, I seem to insist on having at least ten onions to hand or else I break into mood swings and become fidgety. When that bowl drops below a certain level it makes me feel naked and as though things could quickly descend into a world where no matter how sharp my knife is, or shiny my shoes are, I will not pass the inspection from my inner tormentor.

The onion thing comes from my mothers own kitchen constitution, in keeping with her philosophy of potatoes.
“Always keep plenty of onions and potatoes, you never know who might pop round,” I remember my mother reciting, although I’m sure whatever guests she was expecting would quickly grow tired of the mundane meal of onions and mash and ‘pop’ somewhere else for their impromptu feed.

The more you cook and prepare meals in a kitchen the more you find more efficient ways of doing things. How many of us have worked out ways to reduce the washing up, striving for that one pot method of a making a meal. Or realised that having a bin handy and your worktop clear makes the time in the kitchen that much smoother. I think what it all boils down to is the fact that cooking creates a certain mindset, one of order and organisation. Being highly-organised is a trait that many a successful chef would commend in a young Commis. However in the confines of your own home, if you’re not careful, you can wind up an eccentric, knife wielding, onion counting nut-job.

What routines and rituals do you have when you set up shop in the heart of
the home and are there any that others sometimes deem unusual?

Pozole

2010-04-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

A few years back my wife and I spent some time in Merida in Mexico's Yucatan. It's a beautifully quaint city that has shyed away from conventional resort tourism for the most part and was a breath of fresh air for the three and a half months we spent living there. I strongly urge anyone contemplating visiting Mexico to stop by Merida and experience it's wonderful charm.
During our stint out there we uncovered some fantastic taquerias and even more amazing new favourite meals, not to mention serving plenty of time on the porcelain throne. Before long my wimpy, delicate stomach manned up and I was chowing down the habaneros like the best of them. Although I remember being caught agog at an old local man who at 9am in the morning bought a paper bag full of yellow and red habaneros and walked off down the road throwing them into his mouth like sweeties. Perhaps I wasn't habaneroing as well as I first thought. The Yucatan has so many regional dishes that have to be tried, Panuchos, Salbutes, Poc-chuc and Pibil chicken to name but a few. La Virgen Morena in Santiago Plaza became our favourite taqueria in the city, there I ate Gringas, which are tacos filled with marinated pork grilled with cheese and topped with salsa and lime juice, almost everyday. Salbutes
Gringas

Pozole is dish more often found in Northern Mexico. However, people travel and with them they bring their food, so wherever you are in Mexico, the chances are, there will be somewhere selling bowls of the stuff. My wife and I had made a friend in a painter and decorator called Jose-Luis Bolio who as well as painting the outside of buildings in plain colours, also painted magnificent oil paintings, some of which were in an exhibition that was touring the world. I bashfully practiced my Spanish on Jose, he had studied in San Francisco and spoke perfect English and was a great teacher, although I'm very rusty on my Spanish now. Jose was very proud of Merida and upon discovering my fascination with food, invited us round to cook us pozole. We arrived one evening, a few days later and had one of the most interesting and lovely nights I can remember, one I will never forget. Not because of the food, so you are spared the long winded, Mills & Boone-esque descriptions of pozole, but more memorably so because of the 6 inch black scorpions that scuttled under the table whilst we played Cuban dominoes after dinner and the proceeding scorpion massacre that ensued thereafter of Jose-Luis and his slipper. He also plays guitar better than anyone I have ever seen.

That was a few years ago now and I often wish I could taste the food again here but am usually let down with the non-authentic taste of badly reproduced tortillas which to be honest don't taste a thing like the good stuff in Mexico. I was lucky enough recently to get in contact with Tansy who is not only a fellow Mexican food enthusiast, but also head chef at a very cool local cafe in Boscombe called Boscanova. Tansy not only helped me get hold of several different types of corn tortillas to try but also gave me some of her chipotle chilli jam, which is amazing on or with anything. I have been eating it on its own with a spoon and am becoming quietly addicted. Tansy also gave me a nice block of Achiote paste which I now recognize as one of the main ingredients to the Poc Chuc marinade and also Gringas. In my search for Hominy, the white corn kernels for Pozole, ScottCanCook had directed me to CoolChile in London. Fortunately, just before I was about to part with my hard earned, a phone call came in from Poppa Baines saying he was coming back from a business trip in Mexico and did I want him to bring anything back with him. My dad has gotten used to ferrying strange food products with him from overseas trips now and without him my store cupboard would be much less diverse. So the Hominy was procured!
A few of the ingredients for my pozole recipe may be hard to find but they are available. It really is worth the wait or the extra money to get hold of corn tortillas and hominy. Achiote paste is also my new favourite store cupboard essential and I can't see me being able to live without it anymore. Pozole is a regional dish in Mexico, and like many dishes around the world there are sometimes several different variations. This is my variation which I have tried to make as authentic as possible

Pozole

2 white onions, finely chopped
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and grated into a paste
2 tsp oregano
1 small white cabbage, finely sliced
1 bunch radishes finely sliced
2 lemons cut into wedges
chunk of achiote paste
bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
juice from half a small orange
1.5lb pork loin on the bone
1kg hominy/pozole corn

First trim off the skin from the loin and cut away the bones, you should be left with a very lean piece of loin with a few extra bits trimmed from the bones. Roast your bones for 20 minutes in a very hot oven, gas 8-9. Meanwhile fry off some of the onion in a high sided stockpot. Throw your roasted bones in along with the pig skin/fat that you trimmed off earlier. Cover with water and leave on a simmer for about an hour.

Slice your pork into thin slices and chunks, squeeze the orange juice over and break off a nice chunk of achiote paste and massage and rub it all into your orange juiced pork.
Strain your quick pork stock, (if you have any dense pork stock left over from cooking before use that, the best I have yet to use was the stock I made using a pigs head. Such an intense stock and great value for money.)

Place a high sided pan over a medium heat and soften your onions in vegetable oil with the oregano, grated garlic paste. Once softened, drop your marinated pork, drained hominy and cover with pork stock, top up with water if necessary. Bring to a gentle simmer and leave for half an hour to an hour. The pozole should turn almost see-through.

Serve your pozole in bowls with plenty of soup juice, Put your sliced radishes, cabbage, tortillas, coriander and cut lemon wedges in bowls for everyone to help themselves from. Add handfuls of the accompaniments to your pozole and fold it all in so the hot soup can soften the cabbage and tortilla shreds. We had some fresh sliced habaneros which were amazing, if not a little too spicy and overpowering. Pozole is a very humble dish more traditionally associated with the poor, but then most of the best food usually is.

Caught With Your Trousers Down and Other Kitchen Tips

2010-04-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

I was once chopping fresh chillies up before I went to the toilet. I am sure you have heard all the stories of people forgetting to wash their hands and ending up with burning sensations in regions they would rather not. Which is the predicament I had got myself into this time. After franticly searching the internet one handed whilst holding ice cubes to myself with the other, I found some information explaining that as the capsiacin is an oil, that acid will neutralise the PH level and hopefully reduce the pain and burning. I am not suggesting hydrochloric acid here but a cut lemon. So there I am stood in the kitchen, trousers down and rubbing half a lemon over myself when my wife comes through the door back from the gym. The look on her face was one of surprise, shock and a deep, deep shame. It seemed I had some explaining to do and to reassure my other half that my food obsession hadn't turned into a food fetish or perversion. But let me assure you, the lemon tip works but going to the toilet before you start saves a lot of embarrassment.

Do you have any unusual yet helpful kitchen tips and have you ever found your self in such compromising positions when food is involved?

Gluten-free Brownies

2010-03-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

It was my sisters, boyfriends birthday this weekend, but making a cake for him isn't so easy because he's a coeliac, so can't eat anything with wheat or barley (there had to be something wrong with him but at least he's not a vegetarian). There are plenty of gluten-free cookbooks available but some of the recipes are really longwinded and after wandering around the shops looking for all the ingredients for a recipe I had found I quickly realised that this special cake was going to cost a fortune. I started to wonder what would happen if I gave him a normal cake and just told him it was gluten-free, would I kill him? How much damage could a bit of flour cause? After wrestling with the potential consequences in my mind I decided it was probably best not to finish off my potential brother-in-law and went home to wing it and try make something up. I already had buckwheat flour in the cupboard, which is naturally gluten and wheat free, and thought that its sweet and nutty flavour would marry particularly well with chocolate so decided to knock up some brownies. He can still stick a candle in one if he wants. The brownie rose a lot in the oven but having no gluten to hold the shape, it sank back down quite a bit. Overall I was quite proud of what I had made. They were rich with the distinct subtle tones of the buckwheat with slightly chewy edges.

BUCKWHEAT BROWNIES

100g buckwheat flour,
100g unsalted butter, diced,
100g caster sugar
150g of chocolate, broken into small pieces,
2 eggs lightly beaten,
50g cocoa powder,
1tsp bicarbonate of soda,

Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 5. Place a glass heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Chuck the butter and chocolate into the bowl and leave to melt, stirring occasionally. Once the butter and chocolate has fully melted and blended together, stir in the sugar and once combined, add the beaten egg, sifted cocoa and buckwheat flour and add your teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Grease and line your baking vessel with greaseproof paper before scooping all your brownie mixture into it and popping it in the oven. Bake for between 30-35 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the baking tin for 5-10 minutes. Lift the brownie out by the edges of the greaseproof paper and leave to cool completely, I then put mine in the fridge for half an hour for it to firm up before cutting it into portions and peeling the greaseproof paper off the back, and dusting with icing sugar.

Lemon Curd

2010-03-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

After finishing off a few beers last Friday evening, I wandered into the kitchen to make a start on the gin and tonics. It was meant to be a fleeting visit to the drinks shelf but when I looked amongst the fruit for a lime or lemon for my drink, I noticed we must've bought a small bag of unwaxed lemons as oppose to the usual lonely yellow chap rolling around the fridge waiting to die. As soon as I had cut one of the little lemons I became instantly sidetracked by the smell, I tend to do this when I have had a few drinks, I forgot what my main reason to come in the kitchen was and before I knew it I was turning to the fridge and the cupboards to see if they knew why I was there. Lemon curd takes just a few minutes to knock up, well about half an hour from start to finish, and fueled by gin I set about the kitchen with the thought of a lemon meringue pie the next day. Drinking gin along the way isn't for everybody though. You could find yourself sat in the corner clutching the whisk and crying. Mothers ruin - was it the gin, or secretly the lemon curd?

LEMON CURD

grated zest and juice of 3 unwaxed lemons (more if you like)
100g caster sugar
2 large eggs and an extra yolk
75g butter diced

Place a heat-proof glass bowl over a pan of simmering water, make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water though) and chuck your lemon juice and zest, caster sugar and butter in. Stir occasionally until it has all melted down into a lemony liquor.

Pour in your beaten egg bit by bit and whisk slowly in the same direction for a few minutes. Leave the curd to thicken and stir now only occasionally. Once it becomes thick and has a good bit of resistance to the whisk, remove from the heat and leave to come to room temperature. Now either spoon into sterilised jars and refrigerate or use in your lemon meringue pie like I did.

Long Crichel Bakery

2010-03-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'm very hit and miss when it comes to making bread. It's something I feel I should be able to do, something I should be good at. Once in a while I will knock up a beautiful light loaf that fills the flat with that most comforting of aromas. The smell of freshly baked bread wafting into the hall outside for all my neighbours to smell too. These instances don't happen often though, and on many attempts it all goes terribly wrong. The beautiful smell is there but the dough has been underworked, over-kneeded, didn't rise, was too stodgy. Whenever anyone has eaten my bread and commented how good it might be, the truth is that it is most likely a fluke. I have only ever made a small hand full of edible bread, with the other loaves cast off in great chunks for the birds to struggle through on the lawn. Sourdough was one area I managed to do fairly well, but even then it never tasted quite as I'd hoped. Some people go crazy for bread, oggling dimly lit photos and writing passages on the methods that are more akin to a Mills & Boone novel than some food literature. Bread porn is something that spurs on great debates and many descriptive discussions. How some people can lust over such a humble food seems almost perverse and up until recently I had never quite had the adoration.

Long Crichel Bakery has changed my mind though. Feeling a little lost and like we were in the opening scene of a bad horror movie we rolled up to Long Crichel at around 11am with dark clouds and hammering rain overhead. From the outside, the renovated 18th century stable block looks like any other but on opening the door a familiar bakers smell drew us in like lambs to the slaughter. I like the cute little bakery, it's simple and to the point. Baskets of root veg, some farmhouse butter, cheeses and other select food products are on the few shelves whilst the counter is bustling with croissants, pain au chocolat, alsace tartes, simnel cakes and sausage rolls. The shelves of bread, the reason we made such a drive to come and try, were full of warm loaves all in varying shapes, sizes and colour. Set against the white washed stone walls I was beginning to understand what those bread pervs were on about now. The kind lady let me loose through the labrynthine rooms of the bakery to see the ovens and starters and trolleys full of sticky topped hot cross buns and take a few pictures. As I crossed the threshold behind the till and into the main area of the bakery I almost knocked over a whole tray of the aforementioned shiny hot cross buns. Luckily my wife has reactions like a superhero and, as per usual, saved me from terrible embarrassment.

Long Crichel Bakery is completely organic and biodynamic where available. They have perfected their craft out there in the sticks and it seems every loaf has a crunchy crust with a soft and moist inside. The bakery uses freshly milled flour from a nearby mill, milk and butter from a Dorset dairy farm and all the bread is baked in wood fired ovens fed from a local, sustainable forest. After being shown around and taking hundreds of photos of hot cross buns I left with one for the drive home along with a five-seed sourdough loaf. The hot cross bun was still warm with the outside all sticky and crunchy with a soft fluffy inside which tasted a million miles away from any I have ever had before. The five-seed loaf has now become my best friend. I don't want it to end. It's fantastic and over the past few days we have just been eating it with nothing but butter or some cream cheese. As we near the end of the loaf and my eyes start to fill up, my wife tells me to pull myself together and stop being a dick.

Turns out the Green Deli in Ashley Cross sells Long Crichel Breads and has two deliveries a week which will save such a pilgrimage next time I fancy a decent loaf.

Below are the details of Long Crichel Bakery and The Green deli in Ashley Cross. I'd go for the five-seed sourdough myself.

Long Crichel Bakery
Long Crichel
Wimborne
Dorset BH21 5JU
01258 830852
info@longcrichelbakery.co.uk
http://www.longcrichelbakery.co.uk/

The Green
24 Station Road
Ashley Cross
Poole
Dorset, BH14 8UB
01202 914656
info@the-green.co.uk
http://www.the-green.co.uk/

Old Faithful

2010-03-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

My coffee percolator has been with me a while now, and I percolate frantically, some say i'll go blind. I have a routine of pulling it down from the shelf and loading it up with some fine ground coffee to lift me from my haze. It's a partnership, one that works well I find. Although, recently I found myself questioning our relationship. We had been to Steamer Trading, not me and the percolator but my wife and I, and dazzled by the lights and shiny chrome of the coffee machines I found myself in doubt as regards to the performance and quality of my faithful little coffee pot. Feeling a little like I had just parked my old Vauxhall Nova next to a Bentley, I started to think up ways in which I could justify the price tag which is always a little tricky when you are the only one at home who drinks the stuff. The possibilities I was shown and told were endless. Well not entirely endless at all really but it seemed a lot more dynamic and diverse than my hob-top compadre. Was there a way I could somehow create the extra work top space for the machine? Ideas of it on my bedside table and in the spare room quickly dissipated.

As I left the shop and began my walk home, feeling a little giddy from the two espresso's and the macchiato, I stopped off to buy a tin of illy. Back in the flat I reached up for the metal percolator that I keep on the shelf above the door and loaded him up before whacking it on the hob on the absolute lowest setting and waited. In the store, knocking up an espresso took no time at all. But now, sat at the kitchen table I shamelessly flicked through Glamour and Marie-Claire as I waited. As I finished looking at the feature on peep-toe Louboutins the gentle music of my kitchen came to life with the phlak, phlak sound as the last few splashes of coffee percolated up and into the top chamber. The thought of hanging up my percolator just doesn't seem right at the moment. It's only small and nestles neatly on the shelf by the pasta and whilst waiting for my coffee might take longer, the equivalent to a browse of "Award Ceremony Dresses" and a feature on handbags, slow coffee tastes better. Anyway, you're bound to earn extra brownie points when you appear to know your peep-toe from your sling-back. Well that's what I keep telling myself anyway.

Noodle soup

2010-03-12T08:34:00.001-08:00

It's Friday night, the sun is staying out that little bit longer and my food cravings are gently beginning to change. The heavy and hearty pies and casseroles are getting pushed to the back of my mind whilst I look to repot the tomato and corgette plants I seeded just a couple of months ago. I'm keeping todays blog short and sweet. Just like the recipe, it leaves more time to do other things. Namely, drinking, talking and perhaps going for a wander down to the beach. Although that might be slightly optimistic on the daylight front.

This spicy noodle soup is easy and quick to make and leaves my mouth feeling fresh. They are quite simple, honest flavours which softly merge together to make a quick supper that isn't from a packet. I like to eat it with chop sticks which makes it last longer and also gives my body plenty of time to realise when it's full. I reckon chop sticks could shave a few pounds off me.

QUICK NOODLE BROTH

1 clove of garlic very finely diced
1 shallot very finely sliced
1 thumb sized piece of ginger, very finely sliced into short matchstick
1 ltr Chicken or veg stock,
3 cloves
2 star anise,
1 tsp crushed sichuan pepper corns
1 sheet of dried noodles,
150g roughly chopped shitake mushrooms,
10 raw prawns
Some fresh corriander, torn

In some sesame oil lightly soften your garlic ginger and shallot. Cover with your hot stock and bring to the boil. Add the star anise, cloves and sichuan pepper and leave for a few minutes. Drop in your mushrooms and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the noodles to the pot and cook to packet instructions.

Just as the noodles are about done, drop in your raw prawns and cook until they are all pink. Season to taste, stir in your torn coriander and serve in small bowls drizzled with sesame or chilli oil.

Trial Separation...

2010-03-08T13:53:00.000-08:00

Saltiness is the alcoholic beverage's partner in crime and is only too often overlooked. One without the other simply doesn't work. Starsky without Hutch would never have got to the bottom of anything, Paul Simon was rubbish with out Garfunkel as would be Bert without Ernie. There was a time when almost every bar I propped myself up against had a dish of complimentary peanuts, the better establishments opting for bombay mix. But after an evening sojourn at a pub recently, I was caught completely agog with the words that left the barman’s stiff lips,
"we don't sell pork scratchings." he mumbled.
“Scampi fries?”
“nah”
“nuts?”
“…sorry”
What do you have that I can eat whilst trying to enjoy my pint?”
“We have ready salted crisps and Quavers. That’s it”

I don’t know what your view is but Quavers, to me, is not beer food. Having already bought my beer I retreated to a corner table feeling quite sulky and a little uncomfortable then proceeded to drown my new found sorrow. How do they expect me to need another drink if I don’t have a dry salty mouth? I drank my beer and left before they stopped selling that too.

Bar snacks are as important to any public house as the draught ale. Whether spicy bombay mix, pungent lemon scampi fries or a comforting bag of nuts. Why are some establishments refusing to stock? Are sales down due to health conscious, calorie counting metrosexuals too obsessed with the gym and panicing over saturated fat? What's happening?

Walking into a boozer nowadays can be a largely hit and miss affair. Poorly attempted gastro pubs, themed pubs and the increasingly popular student bar have assaulted the streets for a while now and to find a “proper pub” with salty bar snacks, a barman with a tea towel thrown over one shoulder and dog laid down by the fruit machine is as rare a find today as excrement from the fabled wooden rocking horse. Fortunately, we have quite a few round our way where scampi fries and pork scratchings remain.

When was the last time you saw a dish of bombay mix sat idling on the bar, waiting for the pissy-fingered blokes to return from the loo’s and scoop the dried noodles up to their nicotine stained lips. Perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing complimentary nuts have left our bars after all. But there’s no excuse for not selling pork scratchings.

Scotch Bonnet and Bourbon Hot Sauce

2010-03-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

A fiery hot sauce is always a welcome condiment in any man's kitchen. Not only is it a must for drunken male showdowns, but you always need something to give those cute trick or treaters come halloween. Below is my recipe for a hot sauce that in large doses could probably be used as a weapon. It was my dads birthday recently and he is always a bugger to buy for. He loves chillies and hot sauces so I thought I would brew him some up with a personallised label. He has hot sauces on literally every meal he eats so it was always going to be a winner. There is a cool ethnic food store in Charminster where I bought a carrier bag full of fresh scotch bonnet chillis for around £6 which compared to supermarkets offering just 3 for nearly £1, I considered it a bargain.

The key to hot sauces is to add other flavours but without loosing the actual flavour of the chillies. This is why scotch bonnets or habanero chillies work really well as they have a sweet, fruity flavour to them that doesn't subside once the capsaicin starts to kick in. Capsaicin is the chemical in the membrane and around the seeds which contains all the heat and burning sensation when eaten. Don't be a slap-dash chef here, make sure you taste what you are making every step of the way and introduce other flavours a little at a time, especially when using milder flavoured chillies such as jalapeno or thai.

The bourbon I used was a healthy tot of Woodford Reserve, the sweetness and smokiness of the whiskey really mellows the sauce and with the few dried chipottle chillies I threw in it just gave the sauce an extra dimension. Don't worry if you have to leave them out though. It will still taste great, though I would advise the use of bourbon.

Don’t be shy of the vinegar. It’s there to help pickle the sauce and give it a longer shelf life. The recipe below will be of a similar consistency to ketchup but by adding more vinegar you will end up with a runnier version which is equally as good. It all comes down to personal preference although some vinegars with strong flavours such as balsamic should be used in moderation so as not to overpower the flavour of the chilli peppers, but get creative and find what you like best. You can play around with flavoured vinegars, I used some tarragon vinegar which worked really well.

Hot Sauce

200ml of red wine vinegar
50ml of balsamic vinegar
Shot of Bourbon
25 Scotch bonnet chilli peppers roughly chopped
2 dried chipottle chillies
5 garlic cloves, grated or finely diced
1 shallot, finely diced
1 red onion, finely diced

Put a large high sided pan on a high heat. Combine the onion, shallot, garlic and fresh chopped chillies and sauté for 4-5 minutes.

Add the water and dried chili’s and reduce to a simmer for around 20 minutes or until the chillies are all soft and have absorbed the water.

Add the bourbon and give it a few minutes, constantly stirring until the alcohol has cooked off a bit. Leave to cool for 10 minutes. Stick it all in a blender and whiz up adding your vinegars slowly, add a little extra vinegar for god measure.

Leave to cool completely before funneling into sterilized jars or bottles. Use cautiously. It’s potent stuff!

Chorizo Oil

2010-02-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

Some say he is the secret love child of Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal. Some say he has a temper to rival that of Gordon Ramsay and it is said that he is not legally allowed within 100 yards of Ainsley Harriot. All we know is…He’s called Chef. Born and raised locally The Chef has worked his way up through some of the countries finest kitchens. Since escaping from Guantanamo Bay, this highly trained militant of cuisine is back behind a stove at a secret location on the South coast.

Flavoured oils are a great way of injecting some pokey flavour into a dish and with its high burn temperature you loose the risk of burnt flavours. They are readily available off the shelf but all too often these mildly infused oils have no real depth and come with relatively high price tags. By making your own you have more control on the concentration of the flavour and you’re also left with an equally useful by-product. Cross usage from ingredients is a practice seen almost as religion in the professional kitchen and in effect makes this a more viable and savvy way to approach any type of cooking. My most recent meeting with Chef was in a moment between services where he was calm enough to take me through his chorizo oil without dismembering any incompetent Commis'.

Chorizo oil will liven up even the dullest of pasta dishes. Drizzle over pizzas and salads, use as dipping oil with bread, fry your onions in it and use as a meaty risotto base. The oil will not only impart its flavour to other foods but also it’s colour which can add lovely red tinges to chicken and fish. Chorizo oil marries especially well with shellfish, so be sure to drizzle plenty over crab ravioli or prawns. So get yourself some of this made up and keep close to hand at your cooker. It opens up all kinds of possibilities and makes a great gift too.

Chorizo oil

1 Litre of mild olive oil
500-700g Chorizo sausage

Preheat your oven to 180°C/gas mark 4
Slice your chorizo into coins about 1cm thick. Lay out flat in a high-sided roasting tray and pour your litre of olive oil over the top. Your chorizo coins should be submerged.

Place the tray in the oven. After ten minutes take out the tray and give it a little stir to make sure none of your chorizo is sticking to the bottom. (be careful here as the bubbling oil may spit.) Then return to the oven for a further ten minutes.

Once the twenty minute cooking process is over remove the tray and leave to stand for half an hour before straining the oil through a sieve and funnel into your re-useable glass bottle. Leave the lid off for another half an hour or until the oil has cooled. This prevents condensation forming in the neck of the bottle.

Extra yield
The remaining chorizo coins are now full of intense flavour and are great on their own as antipasti. You can also chop them down and use in salads, pizza toppings and tomato sauces.

Keep your eye out for more future collaborations from me and Chef - we have a few irons in the fire...

Got milk?

2010-02-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

I’ve always had a quizzical outlook towards milk. Stood there in a glass it may all look the same but from an early age I knew there were distinct differences in the white stuff. Add to that a creepy milkman who would leer at my mum when he came to collect the money at the end of the week, Ernie I think his name was, and it’s not hard to understand why a young boy would have such a skeptical approach to milk.

In our house growing up, like many households across the country, we always had semi-skimmed, the green labeled middle road in the milk world. We got the occasional treat of some full fat whenever dad was left to do the shopping on his own, “what your mum buys is women’s milk and we should have the proper stuff once in a while to remind us we’re men.” Words I carry with me every time I go shopping. If my sister and I didn’t cause too much trouble, fight, or go missing in the supermarket then we were often rewarded with a carton of chocolate milk to keep us quiet on the drive home. Magic milk he called it, the magic being that it kept us quiet for about ten minutes, just long enough to get back home.

On rainy days when mum would sometimes bake a cake. I would watch in the hope she would open the tall cupboard and take a can of condensed milk. She would place it in a pan of simmering water and a few hours later I would help her spread the thick caramel over whatever cake she had made. Sometimes we wouldn’t even have a cake, reduced to simply spreading it over the back of digestives whilst mum brewed up some hot chocolate.

Most weekends my sister and I would stay at our Grandparents. Breakfast consisted of toast, always toast. They only had red-top in their house due to my Grandmothers diabetes and to save any confusion my Granddad had adapted happily. Skimmed milk seemed like a punishment to us and to escape corn flakes dowsed in pale flavourless fluid my sister and I always opted for the toast. As I grew older and visited less and less, I soon learned to take my coffee black, an appreciation I have only the red labeled imposter to thank for. So something good came of the wimpy white water.

When I left school I decided to go and live in Austria for a season snowboarding. For some unknown reason the valley in which I lived only had one option for milk. You would think, that being the postcardesque idyll that is the Austrian countryside, that there was an abundance of pipe smoking farmers, young blonde girls running through the long grass and small boys dressed in lederhosen ready to happily wrestle a goat to the ground and fill my pail at the faintest yodel in their general direction. No, that was not the solitary milk option available in the depths of the Tyrolean mountains. Ultra High temperature, or U.H.T. is a process in which the milk is brought up to a temperature of at least 135˚C to burn off any harmful bacteria that may be present in the milk. Along with what little characteristics the white liquid has left. The benefit of UHT milk is the long shelf life? The downsides would be it tastes like the yellow tainted water you receive from an old dirty tap and that it instantly ruins a good cup of tea. Needless to say, my stainless steel teapot I had brought along with me went back in my bag and I turned to the afore mentioned black coffee for the winter.

My mum came to collect me from Gatwick six months later to find her son pale with a nervous twitch holding a triple espresso and looking every bit the Vietnam war veteran. My god what happened out there? She sobbed.
U.H.T Mum…..U.H.T

In more recent years I have come into close contact with probably the most revolting product to bear the name milk. In fact I can’t for the life of me figure out how it dares call itself a milk. The M-word is far too superior a word to be brandished across packaging for such an offensive liquid. I feel for the people who have to use soya milk due to dietary requirements but there are people out there who actively choose to drink this stuff.

We’ve had a rocky relationship over the years Milk and I. I’m forever taking her for granted, not giving her the respect and care she deserves. I have flirted to the very edge of seduction with alternatives but the fact remains, I’m a semi-skimmed man, green labeled through and through. It may be boring but the occasional fling with some full fat or even Jersey milk is like a nice long holiday, fantastically different but always nice to get back. What are your milk preferences? Do you have any traumatic memories of the white stuff?

Lazy Pork Cassoulet

2010-02-15T12:48:00.000-08:00

I like making this. Aside from the pork, all the ingredients used are what I consider store cupboard essentials and so even on days when the fridge is bare, you can rustle this up without the meat for a warming dinner that's full of flavour. Much better than resorting to the studentesque meals of pasta and ketchup. Below is my lazy cassoulet. It's lazy because rather than draining the butter beans I simply empty the entire contents of the can into the pot and instead of dissolving the sugar into the red wine vinegar for a reduction, like I probably should, I just add it to the pot willy-nilly. This dish tastes fantastic and the tomatoes, helped along with the sugar and red wine vinegar, really poke through in the dish. It's incredibly easy and when cooked slow the pork can hardly hold itself together.

Lazy Pork Cassoulet

1 lb diced pork shoulder
1 can of butter beans
1 can of plum tomatoes
2 medium red onions roughly chopped
1 carrot roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic grated
1 ltr veg stock
a bay leaf
1 tsp sugar
a good glug of red wine vinegar
chunk of good butter
salt and pepper to taste

In a high sided casserole or saucepan glug in some oil, I tend to use some home made chorizo oil and soften your onions. Add your pork and get some colour on the meat, add your grated garlic cloves and if you want to add some peppers as well then this is the time.

Tip your plum tomatoes in and squash with a wooden spoon in the pan so there are still some big chunks. Add your butter beans, juice and all, top up with your stock and add your bay leaf, red wine vinegar, sugar, salt and black pepper then bring to the boil.

Once boiling, cover with the lid and turn to the lowest setting and simmer for about an hour and a half to two hours. Check on the cassoulet after 40 minutes and give it a stir to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom, if it's looking a little too thick at this stage, add some water. You want the pork to collapse with the slightest interrogation from a fork. The consistency is down to your personal preference. I like mine quite thick, like tomato pasatta. Five minutes before you are ready to serve, remove your bay leaf, stir in a chunk of good butter, which will leave it glossy and check the seasoning. Ladle your cassoulet into bowls and serve with a chunk of crusty bread.

Sourdough

2010-02-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

I went through a phase of buying sourdough loaves quite a lot last summer. For crostini, which we use as a base for a lot of our summer suppers, it has a quality unrivaled by any other toasted bread. We have a habit of toasting slices of it drizzled in olive oil and then spread with sun-dried tomato puree as a quick snack after work before we head to the beach. I quickly became aware of the long-winded process of making sourdough and the effort involved seemed more akin to owning a dog, at least the dog would fetch.

At the beginning of January I had decided it was time. The idea that my sourdough starter would stay with me indefinitely sounded kind of nice, like a girlfriend that doesn't nag. I had sought out some advice and Food Urchin, a fellow food blogger, had steered me in the direction of Moro's sourdough starter recipe along with a few encouraging words, not least forewarning me of the gut wrenching smell it omits. I played a preemptive strike by putting the starter in a sealed tupperware box up on a shelf out of sight. In a preventative exercise to diminish any chance of the wife castrating me in my sleep due to the foul stench I may have saturated our flat in. Feeding often became a difficult time in our household, especially when I remembered to feed it just as she was making a cup of tea. (The blistered skin from the scolding has only just healed)

A month later, Clarence, as I call my starter, is at what looks like the desired consistency. A bit bubbly and fizzy to the taste. The evening before I baked the loaves I mixed 250g of Clarence with 700ml of cold water and 450g of plain flour in a bowl, covered with a tea towel and left in a warm corner of the kitchen over night for the first phase of the proving process.

Today I added 3 tsp salt and another 450g of plain flour and brought together to form a bowl full of stretchy wet dough that I worked with my fingertips for five minutes. It came to a similar consistency of that gunge you used to be able to buy circa '89. Ectoplasm I think the Ghostbusters version was called. The Moro recipe calls for the use of a tin but I like rustic looking loaves and so opted to do one of them straight on a baking sheet. Thirty minutes at gas mark eight then remove from baking tray and tin before another fifteen minutes in the oven.

It turned out ok, not enough big air bubbles and a little too moist on the inside for my liking. I think I may have over worked the gluten in the dough or my starter hasn't got enough oompf yet. Either way, batch number one is done and out the way, I didn't do too badly and now I am left to tweak and play around until I get somewhere close to the light and airy loaves I usually buy from the shop. I have a little way to go yet but the art of bread making was never going to happen over night. Whilst dipping some of my bread into balsamic vinegar and olive oil I toasted thinly cut slices, smeared them with sun-dried tomato puree and topped with tuna-bean salad. Eased into the flavours of summer I felt like slipping my flip-flops and board shorts on there and then, but it was freezing so I kept my bobble hat on instead.

Blokes Eat Beef

2010-02-02T11:07:00.000-08:00

John Cadieux - Goodmans

With an average of 1.5kg of beef per person, Blokes Eat Beef was always going to have to be addressed on a thoroughly empty stomach. A few of us met for cocktails at HIX for pre-dinner drinks. Note to self - not for the thin-walleted drink enthusiast. After introductions, some stimulating conversation and two fantastic Plymouth Martini's, I suddenly became far more wide-eyed in fascination with the world of cocktails. Simon has an infectious excitement in his voice when talking about cocktails and the history that encapsulates them and I found myself taking mental notes of the fascinating facts to bring up at a later date. I live in Bournemouth where I find most things quite modestly priced but London quickly kicked me awake when the kind barman handed over my bill for £28! I think cocktails could be an area I may have to dip into sparingly at the moment.

We wandered over to Goodmans for 7pm to be ushered into a large private dining room where Chardonnay and Rose was offered to the congregating males. Rose and Chardonnay doesn't sound too blokey though does it, looking back at the thought of it has me conjouring up images in my mind of dainty men with man-bags and chinking their glasses of white wine. But let me intervene right there and state that it was a room where you could smell the testosterone in the air. The cavemanesque look in the men's eyes were of blood and dead cows. Does that sound more fitting? I sat myself down between Foodurchin and Essexeating and tried to calm the nerves in my already butterfly-filled stomach. Frank Hederman had flown in with some of his acclaimed smoked salmon and prior to our not one, but two starters he gave a talk on his processes to the macho mob of hungry listeners. The smoked salmon was the best I have ever tasted. Thick and silky, Frank Hederman smokes the salmon with beech wood chips rather than oak which makes for a much smoother smokiness without being too overpowering.

John Cadieux also took to the centre stage as did David Strauss who captivated their audience between courses explaining the lives the breeds of cow live before they are led to slaughter. Trays of the beef were brought into the room for us all to stare at, which made me feel like I was in the Flintstones due to the sheer volume and size of the cuts. A plate of Belted Galloway was passed around the room for us to smell. "It smells like a corpse." was probably the quote of the evening and what is more disturbing though is the fact we all loved the aroma from the offending meat relishing in it's fragrance. The delivering of beef was continuous all charred beautifully from the charcoal grill downstairs. I struggled to keep up with exactly which meat I was being fed partly due to the wine and it's affect on my body and partly due to the animalistic instinct taking over as I gorged on the slices of steak and gnawed on bones. The sides of creamed spinach, thick cut chips, mushrooms and béarnaise sauce could almost have been described as a distraction to the main event but creamed spinach and béarnaise are hands down my favourite accompaniment to smear over steak.

The whole time our glasses were filled, topped up and replaced continuously with a fantastic Argentinian Malbec by Catena. Some seriously pongy Stinking Bishop featured on the cheeseboard before our table took our turn at being shown the bounties of the meat room and the charcoal grill downstairs in the kitchen. I had a fantastic evening, thank you to everyone, especially Simon, for organising such a great night. The wine got the better of me which resulted in a brief rest of my eyes whilst my digestive system screamed for more blood to cope with breaking down so much meat. As I wandered off into the night pleasantly pissed, my coat saturated in the stench of smoked salmon and meat, I felt a little like Champagne Charlie as I made my way home at least 1.5kg heavier.

The Torta Got Me Going Again.

2010-01-26T04:19:00.000-08:00

A cold and slow start to a week is never the most inspiring. Sat back idling in my chair I let my computer screen darken before drifting off into the sleepy screensaver of yestermeal. My screensaver, which I haven't seen in months, is a compilation of food photos I have taken over the past few years and it's in times like these that I remember why I have this photo album set to screensaver. Pulling me slowly from my desktop-doldrums were images from eating on my travels. One image in particular got me roused, alert and ready to get back to work. It wasn't of a homely meal cooked by my mother nor a perfectly plated course from a Michelin starred restaurant but a photo of a greasy, torta al pastor from the roadside in Merida, Mexico.

My wife and I were living in Merida for a while a few years back and whenever we passed this spot on the way to the city market we always dropped in for some 'dirty tortas' as we affectionately named them. Just two men and two fillings, chicken or pork. With numbers like that there is far less to go wrong and it never did. One of the guys would pull apart some marinated and slow cooked pork shoulder with some tongs before scooping up the meat with his fingers along with plenty of the fatty juices, he would then but the other half of your bread, cut side down, into the fatty juices to soak whilst he used his fingers again to scoop some pickled red onion salsa onto your pork before picking the oily top to your torta and dropping it onto a plastic plate. On the plastic tables were small bowls of possibly the hottest habanero chili salsa known to man for you to add to the torta while swatting the flies away from your sarnie. All this for just 5 pesos each (about 35p). It's little surprise that I used to eat about three each time we stopped by.

Do you have a screen saver for moments in need of inspiration? Is there a food or meal that gets your mouth watering at the mere mention of it?

Brits Abroad for the F-man!

2010-01-21T02:00:00.000-08:00

Is it any wonder that we get a reputation for being disrespectful as tourists? Hands up if you have ever felt pig-headedly ignorant when on holiday in a non-English speaking country. Bumbling your way along with your phrase book in a terrible accent only to have the checkout attendant give in and make your holiday easier by helping you out in their more than competent English. Then we have the "Lads-on-tour Summer 2009" to contend with. Mediterranean beach resorts being inundated with plane after plane of excitable holiday-makers drinking until they can't stand up, demanding pie and chips and spreading STDs like two-for-one drinks vouchers in Magaluf.

Then ladies and gentlemen, we have Gordon Ramsay. Someone who is renowned the world over. Someone who, despite his foul language attracts vast audiences across the globe. Perhaps a role model to some and whilst filming a television series abroad some might say an ambassador for our country, what with the words 'British' and 'Chef' being synonymous with his name. I have always admired Gordon Ramsay and his drive. He doesn't tolerate fools and I've always tried not to. He has had a slow decline over the past couple of years and it seemed as though his bubble had burst along with everybody else's. So here we have a new and different approach from a Gordon Ramsay television show. Of course we expect some bad language and plenty of straight to the point attitude but with the finesse and respect of a gorilla, Gordon single handedly confirmed to almost everyone he met on his trip the horror stories they may have heard of the British lout in a curry house. He played up to that brits abroad stereotype we all try to forget about, he didn't even look like he wanted to be there most of the time. I found myself cringing with embarrassment, especially when he called an old Indian man, who clearly didn't understand him properly, a twat. Woah there Gordo! It's not his fault Claridges lost its Michelin star. He doesn't have it.

The title of the show was very misleading, rather than adopting the title of Jamie Oliver's Italian series circa 2005, they could have gone for one of these suggestions. Gordon Gloats in India. Or, Gordon on tour, India 2009? They could have had a t-shirt made up for him.

So what's next? Guest appearances on the television show Benidorm? I'm starting to see Mr. Ramsay stretched and sun burnt on a sun lounger next to Johnny Vegas quite well now.

Face Off: Part 2

2010-01-18T00:17:00.000-08:00

On Saturday afternoon I had myself a hogshead lunch. Not at the pub around the corner which shares the same name but a meal consisting of the cuts I butchered earlier. I decided to slow roast one of the jowls rubbed with crushed fennel seeds, salt and pepper. I laid the jowl on a roasting rack over a tray of water and covered the lot with tin foil and roasted/steamed the jowl at gas mark 3 for around four and a half hours.
I carefully removed the sinew from the two plump cheeks and seasoned before searing in a pan with some finely chopped shallots and garlic, once coloured I poured over the stock I had made from the skull which had been simmering in a pan, a few sprigs of thyme and braised for three hours on the lowest possible flame. After an hour I dropped in some skinned tomatoes that were roughly chopped and they slowly melted into the broth. The torchon style sausage I made from the rolled pig's forehead had been in the fridge two days and I guessed the flavour of the lemon zest should have been absorbed by now. I sliced it ever so thinly on a chopping board and poured myself a glass of Malbec to begin the tasting.
I won't lie to you, it was quite unpleasant largely due to the lemon zest, I went a bit overboard with the quantity and it had a very sharp lemon overtone, the pig forehead sausage thing tasted nice when you hit the meat but the fat took up so much of it and was so dense and chewy that after a few slices I decided I'd package it up and just continue with extra wine instead.
I placed the pigs cheeks in a large terracotta dish and poured over the thick, reduced broth. This was amazing, the cheeks kept their shape but collapsed under the mildest of interrogations with a fork. The thick, saucy broth was incredible. So rich and full of deep and savoury pork flavours. The cheeks disappeared all too quickly, well there were only two, and I mopped the dish clean with some bread. Over in minutes but was in my mind all weekend. It was worth all the effort and time just for these two.

The fat from inside the jowl was like soft butter and was melting in front of my eyes over the strands of juicy pork. I should probably have spent more time shaving the beast though as the crackling at one end was spoilt a little by the area of stubble which was as coarse as a wire brush. On the whole a slightly deeper flavour to pork belly but probably less meat. I devoured the whole jowl to myself where as I can usually share a good sized portion of belly pork. There did seem to be a higher fat content and not the chewy type, we're talking the soft oozy type that you could spread on toast. All in all, with a good helping of Coleman's mustard it was a sterling pig feast. The other jowl is curing for a week on the top shelf of my fridge in salt, sugar, pepper and thyme before I hang it for three weeks in m attempt to have me some Guanciale which is similar to pancetta. How this will turn out only time will tell as I battle against mould and potential food poisoning.

You may be wondering what became of the snout and the pigs ears. I had planned to have pea and pig's ear soup with the grilled snout on the side the next day. On Sunday morning when I unwrapped them from the tin foil the smell and appearance of them both made it clear they had been left too long.(since Thursday)
The snout had gone all slimy and smelt terrible whilst the ears had turned very dark and smelt equally as bad. I hadn't completely done what I set out to do but I thought I had a bloody good run at it. Only wasting the snout and ears was no major loss and I can always go and buy just the ears one day this week. But there's just one thing I can't stop thinking about. I just want a bag full of pig cheeks now.

Face Off: Part 1

2010-01-15T00:38:00.000-08:00

I've been intrigued by the pigs head for a while. After watching Tim Hayward's video piece for the Guardian back in August last year I've been fascinated and waiting for the opportune moment to have a go. There's a problem in this adventure though. My wife has absolutely no inclination to try or be around the decapitated head of a pig. This posed a slight problem. I had originally planned to braise then roast the whole head, I would need someone to share it with as the whole point of this exercise is to use a part of the pig that would otherwise be wasted. If I was to only pick at some of it then have to "feed the rest to the birds," then that would defy the whole point and I would be back where I started. After scouring the various forums and discussion websites online I decided I had procrastinated long enough and went down to see my friends at my local butchers. I took home a fresh pigs head, the tongue had been removed, for just £3. I cleared the kitchen table, un-bagged the beasts head, poured myself a cup of coffee and stared at it resembling a twisted Smith and Jones sketch, while I pondered on what potential meals this face will provide. First, of course, the swine needed to be clean shaven, I took a plastic lady-shave razor out of the bathroom and set about shaving the coarse ginger hair away from my new friend. The eyebrows and corner of the eyes in particular were incredibly dense and stubborn to remove. Following the shave I rinsed the head thoroughly in the sink, my piggy now looking much more fresh faced and ready for the larger task at hand, the de-boning. Starting in the middle of its bottom jaw, I cut from the neck up to where its front teeth are. Working close to the bone in small, neat cuts with the tip of a knife, I slowly brought away the jowl.

If trying this at home be aware of the cheek bone as this is a little fiddly and you don't want to damage the lovely cheek meat. Just take your time and keep your eye on what is going on and the definition of the skull. Once over the tricky cheek work your way down and underneath the upper lip and stop about 3cm away from the snout. The eye area can also be a bit difficult but don't worry if you cut through the skin here too much as there is little between the skin and the bone here anyway. Once you can see half of the face de-boned it's time to turn it over and repeat on the other side. Eventually you should be left to separate just the area between the eyes and down the nose which is relatively simple and then chop off the snout. So I was left with a scary looking skull, eyes looking at me and once turned over an equally as scary mask. Bookmark this for next Halloween and freak out the kids.
I put the skull in the oven to roast, then put it in a pan with some onions, carrot and garlic and water for stock. Only half the head would fit so I made sure the back half was submerged where I guess there must be more flavour.

I cut away the snout and ears and wrapped them in foil and popped them in the fridge to tackle another day. Fergus Henderson's Pea and pigs ear soup might get tried in the next few days. I separated the two jowls and carefully removed the round cheeks. The two muscles alongside the snout were also removed. The thin, fatty skin from beneath the forehead area was dropped into my simmering stock for good measure and I was left with a small piece of forehead. I went out on a limb here and heavily seasoned it with salt, pepper and lemon zest before rolling it tightly in muslin, tied with string and poached it in simmering water for about half an hour. I let it chill and have left it in the fridge for a few days in the hope that It should be nice sliced thinly with some bread and salad.

My dad has agreed to come over in the next few days to help me polish off one of the jowls and the pigs ears while I plan to make Guanciale from the opposing jowel and I am yet to decide with what to do with those gorgeous cheeks. I had the whole kitchen sorted and disposed of the skull before my wife returned and I had the richest pork stock I've ever made. Perhaps I'll braise the cheeks in some. When I was questioned as to why on earth you would choose to eat the pigs head I thought for a moment and then gave my answer. To quote the great man himself, Fergus Henderson, "it's only polite."

A New Pet: My Sourdough Starter

2010-01-12T05:20:00.000-08:00

I have a new friend, a pet. Something that is going to require feeding and loving. Ten days ago I created my sourdough starter. I sought a little advice on recipes to use and after much deliberation, and a little guidance from Food Urchin, I settled on one. I had been warned about the foul smell starters can emit and to protect my nose from the stench, made sure I had a large tupperware box complete with lid at the ready. By keeping it in this box I have not only protected myself from such an assault on the nostrils but also from the potential battering I may have received from my wife had I saturated the flat in the odour I smelt today. After ten days sat sealed and hidden away on a shelf I thought it high time I knew what all the fuss was about. It has what can only be described as a combination of bile, urine and human vomit with a faint hint of grape to the nose. A full bodied sludge that is living. I Feel a little like Dr. Frankenstein, what kind of monster have I created? I start feeding it next week but for now it has its lid back on and is safely nestled on the shelf. I'm already feeling quite paternal over my new pet. What with the responsibility of feeding it, keeping it the right temperature and the added reminder that I will have to stick with my commitment of making my own sourdough from now on. I've settled on the name Clarence. At least he won't mess on the carpet...

Virtual Farmers Market: A Nail In The Coffin

2010-01-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

About once or twice a week I walk down the road to my local grocers. I roam his shop fondling and smelling the fruit and veg I am about to buy for the week. I can spend ages in there chatting to the owner about where the veg has come from and sometimes bend his ear on ways to prepare them. I am particularly fond of the Romsey plum tomatoes when available along with his large selection of squashes. I then wander a little further into a local deli where I pick up some cheeses, perhaps some Snowdonia Black Thunder and usually a hunk of Chevre Log. They also sell the most amazing Somerset butter which almost always finds it's way into my fridge. For meat I go a little further out the way, up to a butchers where the banter always flows and the old boys are happy to talk to me about the different grades of beef they have in the store room, I've often been in there to be shown the sides of cows hanging and learnt exactly where the each cut comes from. After a little bit of schooling and some generous portions I carry my shopping home. Fresh air, exercise and helping keep local business' alive.

Now let me turn your attention to a new website. This week saw the launch of the worlds first virtual farmers market. Essentially an online, mail order deli with a 3D interactive market simulator. Why does everything have to go online. I'm sure most food lovers relish the occasion of going to a farmers market once in a while or taking a trip to their local deli. This website has saddened me greatly. What's next? will we even go to restaurants or just plug in a taste adaptor via USB whilst twittering our opinions? How long before we don't leave the house, are we destined for a virtual life similar to the Matrix, plugged into our computers, working from home and online mail order. It's scary to think of how quickly social networking has pushed us into a new era where no matter how idyllic a lifestyle these back to basics TV shows may portray, the chances are, your watching it online whilst you have another tab open shopping for those cute wellies the presenter is wearing or googling where to buy a bundt tin similar to that one Nigella has in her staged kitchen.
Websites like this are contributing to the death of the grocer, the deli shop and one day the butchers. No more cheeky banter by the till or a little discount for being a regular. Those days could be on the way out. So if you don't already, find a good grocers, butchers and deli. If they don't stock something you want, ask them to get it in. You should find little if any difference in your shopping budget by frequenting independent shops such as these. In fact my meat is almost always cheaper than supermarkets and not only local and free-range but tastier. Don't fall into the trap of gnawing on the edge of your keyboard. You're supposed to love food, so be more hands on about it, and I don't mean the keyboard and mouse. Get outside and buy something the old fashioned way. Virtual Farmers Market has a £35 minimum order, I know the deli doesn't...

The Print Room, Bournemouth

2010-01-05T00:42:00.000-08:00

In 1987 the Daily Echo produced its first completely computer designed and written newspaper, thus beginning the slow redundancy of machines and space in the printing halls of the newspaper's building on Richmond Hill. In 2007 a £2million renovation saw the empty hall transform into the French, brasserie style restaurant that is The Print Room. My birthday is approaching and my Dad took me out to lunch to celebrate. The booths that break up the vast space offer a very private setting for your meal which is brilliant when you want to catch up and have a chat without straining to hear or having to whisper. Due to the high ceiling and booth layout the Print Room takes on a hum of activity. The muffled sound of conversation, knife against crockery and the chink of glasses all blend into the constant murmur that creates a relaxed atmosphere to the grand old room.

Dad chose the wine; we had a 2007 Malbec which was exceptionally plummy and full bodied. We shared the chicken liver and foie gras mouse with black truffle butter and a carpaccio of Cornish beef with parmesan cream. The foie and chicken liver mousse was smooth and strong picked up by the truffle butter which I didn't want to end. The beef was so tender and there seemed to be quite a lot of the cream but the slight salty bite from the parmesan complimented the meat beautifully.

For main, we ordered the pork belly with pumpkin puree and parsnip and the roasted loin of venison with confit of lamb, potato gratin and red cabbage which sounds like a lot to take in from just one plate. The venison was perfectly seasoned and cooked, bright pink centre but still warm, something which few restaurants manage to do well, the lamb confit was full of such deep and intense flavours that neither one of us spoke whilst we polished it off and continued to devour the venison and potato gratin. Pork belly, another meat that can so often under whelm was spot on, not one tiny bit of chewy fat throughout the meat. Soft, juicy and collapsed under little pressure from the side of a fork. Before we finished off our second glass of Malbec I managed to eat more than my share of the pork, potato and red cabbage.

It has been a long long time since I went for lunch just me and my dad and to have the more intimate confines of a booth whilst still feeling very much part of the room we talked long into the afternoon and running over our car park time. I walked back to the car for a lift to mine and Dad handed me a carrier bag. "One more present," he said holding it out for me to take. In it was a fresh pigeon he had shot that morning (in his garden that backs onto the forest before you ask, don't worry, no city pigeon here)He'd got it especially for me as he knows it's my favourite. So from one fantastic meal to the beginnings of another. Great day and I think The Print Room could be one of the most underrated restaurants on the south coast. Definitely deserves more attention, so check it out.

Eggs Benedict: An Alternative to Tinned Peaches

2009-12-30T01:58:00.000-08:00

So Christmas is dead and buried for another year. Fitness dvd's from Z-list celebrities are being plugged on our television screens and those gym offers seem to be everywhere. Has everyone forgotten, it's time to overindulge, not just because it's Christmas but because it's so damn cold. It's winter and nature requires us to keep our organs warm with a snuggly layer of fat. When you consider all of your meals over a whole year, do you not think it all kind of balances out? That the summer months when you eat less and usually light, fresh and more swimsuit friendly meals, make up for the gorging that ensues over winter? January's meals reflect what money I have left over from Christmas. Perhaps it is a slimming month after all. My frugal cooking of store cupboard items and potatoes reflecting my thin, light wallet. If we didn't have Gyms would you be likely to start running everyday in the ice, frost and rain? Doubtful. If Coleen Nolan didn't have a fitness dvd would you be naturally inclined to prancing around your living room twice a day with tins of beans for weights? Is there any wonder Coleen needs to dance around her lounge with tinned food after all that crap Iceland party food she's been pimping out since mid November. Eighty-four piece oven party bites for 69p. There's a reason for that.

So I ate and drank too much, Lemuel Benedict is said to have taken a monster hangover to the Waldorf Astoria in 1892 and seeking a cure for his overindulgence ordered, "buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon and a hooker of hollandaise." The dish went down so well that it became a regular fixture on the breakfast and lunch menu with the toast being substituted for English Muffins and the crisp (streaky) bacon being substituted for back bacon. Sounds a bit more fitting for a grand dining room I suppose. A.A. Gill claims that Eggs Benedict is still the best morning-after dish ever invented and I definitely agree with him. After several days of drinking, eating and general kitchen debauchery why not make your first meal this January Eggs Benedict. Rich, runny yolks piercing through the buttery hollandaise and running down over ham or bacon and onto your plate via the side of the toasted muffins, a sprinkle of cayenne pepper to cut through the thickness and hello 2010. Some of you may be counting the calories already and thinking back to that resolution to join the Gym or Coleen Nolan with a can of tinned peaches. I'll be thinking of my slim wallet and what frugal meals await me for the rest of the January. With that in mind, how can you not approach the New Year with a hair of the dog attitude and overindulge some more.

Fire and Knives to your Christmas Cold's

2009-12-22T05:17:00.000-08:00

Last few days before Christmas and I'm sure most people are clock-watching and cruising the internet. I, on the other hand am ill. Holed up in the flat with Lemsip, honey, ginger and whisky and desperately trying to shift this cold before it gets a chance to ruin my Christmas dinner and drinking. The closing down of Borders has left me with Simon Hopkinson's Second Helping of Roast Chicken for £1, along with The Guardian book of Drinking for 70p among others. I am camped out on the sofa, not in the Quentin Crisp sense, flicking through books and magazines whilst I slip in and out of conciousness in the hazy stench of illness. Cue sympathy here.
Amongst the books I've been thumbing through all day whilst I wallow in self pity I can't help turning back to something rather special. Fire and Knives Magazine. Fire and Knives is the food quarterly creation from Tim Hayward. If like me you grow tired of food magazines being crammed with recipes but no real content, nothing to make you think, then get yourself a copy of this magazine. No recipes, just original and interesting food writing from opinions and fiction to photography and food history. I have hardly put Fire and Knives issue one down, Tom Parker Bowles' confessions of a cook book obsessive to a warming, cultural piece from Rejina Sabur giving an insight into a community of bengali women who share an allotment at City Farm. This magazine is aimed at those food enthusiasts that border on the obsessive and if you are reading this blog then that should include you. Smile, you're a food geek. Fire and Knives is brilliant, printed on good quality paper, beautifully designed, full of great content, no recipes and stares seductively at you from the shelf. The attention to detail from Mr Hayward is what has crafted this magazine into something that I will treasure and keep neatly on my bookshelf for a long time to come. I wish Fire and Knives every success for the future. We needed this and more importantly, it's getting me through this god awful cold. www.fireandknives.com

Devilled Kidneys

2009-12-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

A good butchers is something that should be treasured. I have tested many near to where I live and whether something as trivial as a miserable butcher or as dangerous as 'off' chicken thighs, once bitten, twice shy. No wonder so many people I know favour the plastic packaged meat from the supermarket. I look forward to my visits to Yeates' butchers. I'm always greeted warmly with a bit of banter and the general chit-chat I've come to enjoy. If I don't know what something is, they'll explain it to me, nicely. In another butchers I once asked what a jacob's ladder was, I was looked at like I'd pissed on the butchers dog. Feeling like you've wandered into an elitist club with no invitation is not how a decent butchers should make you feel. I know people that want to frequent a butcher but feel too intimidated to part with their tradition of dropping packets of sausages into the trolley, simply reading the labels and not having to interact with anyone. Which is a shame .

I'd been working late the night before and after getting myself up and sorted it was nearly eleven. Too late for breakfast I thought, so I dropped round to see the old boys at my butchers. As I wandered in three of them were lifting piece of cow that was equivalent in size to a Ford Cortina. I'd come a little late for what I wanted but they still had one lamb left to do and I was lucky enough to get that last lambs two Kidneys. It was only me eating and so would suffice for a lazy lunch. £1 - Bargain. After a little chat and a cheerio I sauntered back to the flat picking up some fresh bread along the way. I love all things spicy and wanted to really give these kidneys a kick. The old English, traditional way can be a little too tame for some chili aficionados, resembling less of a devilled kidney and more of an ASBO kidney. It depends how much cayenne you are willing to use. I decided to do each kidney different. One in the more traditional way and the other with smoked paprika, dijon and chili giving it more of a spicy Mexican aura about it.

Devilled kidneys

3tsp plain flour
2tsp cayenne pepper,
1tsp english mustard powder,
good glug of worcester sauce,
a splash of water or stock,
salt and pepper,
knob of butter
vegetable stock

Riñones diablo

1tsp dijon mustard,
1tsp plain flour,
1tsp chili powder,
1tsp smoked paprika,
salt and pepper,
olive oil
vegetable stock

You can get your butcher to trim the suet and gristle from the kidneys but as they were busy I took it on. It really isn't difficult or messy, almost like peeling the shell from a hard boiled egg.
Once the suet is removed, cut the kidneys in half and with a pair of scissors or a small paring knife cut out the gristley white bit in the middle, this is a little fiddly but don't worry about making it look perfect, the kidneys will shrink in size in the pan and seal any accidental slices into the meaty part anyway. You now have four pieces of kidney. For the traditional devilled Kidneys, mix the salt, pepper, flour, cayenne pepper and mustard powder. Melt some butter in a pan over a medium heat and roll the kidneys in the mixture so they are evenly coated and place in the pan. give the pan a good glug of worcester sauce and nice splash of stock. Give the pieces of kidney around two to three minutes each side. The liquid in the pan should be of a light buttery sauce consistency, if it starts to burn and reduce too much simply add more stock and a tiny piece of butter. Once cooked to your liking place the kidneys on your toast and pour the sauce from the pan over the top.

For the Mexican devilled kidneys, or riñones diablo, mix the smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, flour, salt and pepper together to form a dry mix. Turn your kidneys in the mix. Put a drizzle of oil in a hot pan and add your kidneys. Put a heaped teaspoon of dijon mustard in the pan and add a bit of the stock, break down the dijon mustard with the back of a wooden spoon until you form thin sauce in the pan. Keep an eye on the liquid and if it starts to burn or brown too much then just add a little more stock. Again, two to three minutes each side and straight onto some toast with the pan juices pored over the top. This version packs a bit more of a sting with the spices which I love. For two quid, you can't go wrong. So next time you wake up late on a saturday morning, nip down the butchers and get some lambs kidneys and soak up last nights hangover.

Arbutus, Soho

2009-12-16T02:33:00.000-08:00

There have been mixed reviews of Arbutus over the past few years, so on a cold mid December afternoon my wife and I went for lunch to make our own minds up. We arrived prompt for two o'clock only to wait nearly ten minutes nestled next to the display cabinet of cheeses. We were brought menus and a carafe of water which was perched precariously in the small space at the end of the bar. Being handed my menu before I've sat down is something I would associate more with a chinese takeaway than an acclaimed restaurant with a michelin star. Once we were seated we were brought the trademark chunk of butter on a slate tile and a selection of fresh bread. From here on in the service was astounding.
The wife ordered the slow cooked rib of beef, potato gnocchi and greens whilst I wanted to taste the dishes I'd read so much about. I ordered the squid and mackerel 'burger' with parsley and razorclams to start and the braised pig's head, potato puree with ravioli of caramelised onions for my main. My starter arrived and lacked a little in presentation seeming rather sloppily plated. The marriage of the squid and mackerel was beautiful, a great combination accentuated by the more robust texture of razor clams. The parsley juice was a little underwhelming and went almost unnoticed, just seemed rather pointless alongside the rest of the dish.

The mains arrived and the first one I tried was the wife's. The beef was tremendously tender and just fell apart when tackled with the side of a fork, leaving pinkish strands of meat collapsing across the plate. Gorgeous. The greens perked up with a healthy hit of parmessan was a lovely contrast alongside the gnocchi and what I think was a salsa verde smeared across the top of the beef. I only tasted a few bites but the wife did say that all together as a dish she felt that the flavours were competing against one another.

The pig's head was plated much more carefully than the squid and mackerel burger and the combination of flavours was pleasant. In particular the french andouille sausage which was used as the package to contain the caramelised onions. The sausage adds those extra offally tastes that run alongside the pork so well and make this dish shine. If you posses a weak constitution, or have not yet discovered a penchant for offal then you may not appreciate the power of the french andouille sausage, for those of you, be warned. A very lovely dish.

The service, after the initial wait by the cheese, was flawless. The timing of the arrival of dishes, the clearing of the table and the pouring of wine were what you would expect from a restaurant with a michelin star and rightly so. I was told, upon checking by telephone, that the dress code was, "whatever you feel most comfortable in." Exactly what I want to hear in this day and age. I remember having to suit up to eat at Le Bernardin and, whilst I don't mind being respectful and certainly not so when eating at such establishments, I find it much more convenient to be made welcome and relaxed in my usual jeans and t-shirt attire. Not all of us work in the city, donning collar and tie everyday. Arbutus covered this admirably which made for a very relaxed lunch.

It does seem a little cramped inside by loosing just one table and sharing the gained room would do wonders to the place. We both really enjoyed Arbutus and our lunch including a carafe of malbec and 12.5% service charge was just £49.50.
I will go again and I would recommend it to anyone. Not the atmosphere some might have preconceptions of when thinking of michelin starred restaurants. Arbutus has a very relaxed and comfortable air about the place and the menu is reasonably priced too.
The squid and mackerel burger and the braised pig's head are probably considered Anthony Demetre's signature dishes. Could either of them become as revered as Pierre Koffman's pig trotters, Marco Pierre White's taglietelle of oysters or Fergus Henderson's bone marrow and parsley salad? I'm not sure. What do you think?

Chicken Liver Perfect

2009-12-10T06:42:00.000-08:00

The temperature has dropped, port has been moved to the front of the supermarket shelves and there are pikeys on the corner flogging trees. Yes, it's almost Christmas and what gets me excited isn't the trash on the TV or scoffing Quality Streets in front of the fire, but all the food I get to eat. I'm going to gorge myself on cheese and crackers, sausage rolls and pates. Mince pies might get a little action but I'm going to hole myself up in my kitchen and consume.
I've been combing through my cookbooks lately. I've been trying to make a note of all the Christmassy food I want to eat. I thought I'd get the ball rolling with some chicken liver parfait. There are many different recipes for it knocking around, from Delia to Jamie and even Nigella, but I have found a favourite in Stephane Reynauds, Rippailles. This classical French cookery encyclopaedia has become more of a coffee table book in our house. Full of mini profiles on producers and quirky illustrations, it is often leafed through for wafts of inspiration or to try and find something new I want to make. Mr Reynauds recipe has hints of juniper berry and port in the mix, I often add one or two extra garlic cloves to it but that depends on how much you like garlic or how strong the garlic you have is. I usually have some fiendishly powerful Spanish garlic which my parents bring back for me. Below is my slightly adapted version. I found the garlic and the juniper berries were lost previously and the bay leaf seems to bring an interesting depth to it. I do tend to go a bit heavy on the port too which is always welcome.

Chicken Liver Parfait with Port and Garlic

2lb chicken livers
6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 white onions, finely chopped
4 rashers of streaky bacon
4 juniper berries, crushed
A bay leaf, ripped
A nice glug of port. Around 50ml or so if you need a measurement
300g butter, diced
100g melted butter
A grind or two of black pepper
salt

Soften the garlic and onions, then add the bacon and livers along with the crushed juniper berries and torn bay leaf.
Keep turning the livers so they are seared on all sides, this should take around four minutes.
Find and remove the bay leaf, then tip the contents of the pan into a blender. Deglaze the pan with the port, reduce this for a minute or two until thick and then add this to the blender too. Blend for a few minutes then add the butter; keep blending until it is all smooth with no rogue lumps of butter left.
Pour this into the dish or dishes you want to use, I filled three medium sized tapas dishes, then refrigerate for an hour.

Melt your butter in a a pan over a low heat, leave it to cool.
The parfait won't be runny anymore and when you tip the bowl it shouldn't move at all. Carefully pour over your melted butter and put back in the fridge to set. You've done well, I'd reward myself with the rest of the port if I were you. 'Tis the season and all that.

Basilica, Westbourne.

2009-12-07T02:27:00.000-08:00

I like Westbourne a lot. That may be a slightly biased view of the area seeing as I live there, but I think it has everything you need and is still in close vicinity to Bournemouth, without being too busy. I like to use my local, independent business' because without them there wouldn't be that charming character Westbourne owns. One thing had been troubling me lately though. The arrival of the new Pizza Express may have given a new lease of life and a fresh lick of paint to the empty old bank by the zebra crossing, but I notice that while the pizza chain's latest outpost is full every night, some of the local restaurants sit very quiet and empty. This year when we had a long overdue get together with friends, the wife and I had made a point of going to one of the indpendents in town and chose Basilica. Walking past that morning we noticed the second letter 'i' from their sign had fallen off and watched as two men struggled with a ladder and some brown parcel tape. Yes you heard correctly, they had decided that rather than have their sign spelt wrong they would sooner have fat, brown tape plastered over their very smart looking sign. Had they not thought of clear sellotape? Surely a tube of superglue wasn't too much of an ask. I know times are hard but this is the christmas season, the time for restaurants and the catering industry to stuff their stockings with cash, or was that the gentlemen's clubs? Perhaps they didn't get the memo.
We had to pre order our meals the day before, and before you ask, no this wasn't a get together on the scale of a Liverpool Victoria christmas party. No, there were just seven of us. Starter and Main.
I had bread, olive oil and balsamic vinegar for an appetiser, it was gorgeous, followed by the fish special which was pan-fried fillets of sea bass and squid rings on spinach mash with a tomato, wine and caper sauce. It was really well presented and the flavours were perfectly balanced. The fish was soft and tender with the skin slightly crispy. The wife had Byrek which was like a filo pastry pie containing goats cheese, leek, spinach and pine nuts which was as delicious as it sounds. I don't think anybody was disappointed with the quality of the food, but there was a query on the quantity of a certain dish. A friend who ordered a £7.50 starter of prawns was agog upon delivery of only two, very normal looking prawns with a smattering of salad leaves. Well the money they saved on the superglue for the sign obviously wasn't going towards respectable sized portions. After eating our main courses and a bit of chatting it was time for desserts. The wife noticed on the way in that the restaurant had big chocolate brownies in a glass fronted chiller cabinet. When the dessert menu arrived the brownies were not featured and so she went upstairs to ask the lady behind the counter if she could have one. Certainly is what you would usually be told. which one in particular do you like the look of, perhaps. Not, "Erm... well I don't know if you can. I suppose if thats what you REALLY want." My wife doesn't stutter. She doesn't trail off mid sentence staring into oblivion. Of course it is what she wanted, that's why she had walked up the stairs and asked you for it. What part of, Please may I have one of those Brownies for dessert, could possibly have made you think that she wanted something different. Begrudgingly she handed one over as if it were her child into the custody of the taliban.
As I mentioned before the food was really good and service for the most part was pleasant. The prawns, or lack of, were a let down. They did not drop the charge for that starter, nor reduce the price of it. In fact upon leaving, I had one foot out the door when a waiter came running up to me and said, "You pre-ordered right. Well you knew how much the prawn starter was then." Yes but did we know it would be only two sorry little stripped prawns with some baby spinach? They must either be struggling or just trying to cash in, but either way at this time of year and in these economic times keeping customers happy would go a long way. It was just a shame that by eating a brownie, the wife completely ruined the feng shui of their chiller cabinet.

Who Killed Donald Duck?

2009-12-04T01:12:00.000-08:00

My dad invited me shooting with him last weekend along with my brother and an old family friend. It was over a farm in Pulham which is right in the middle of rural Dorset. We didn't see much all morning, a few pheasants had escaped us and I saw a field mouse but that was about it. I could have bagged old mousey but there wouldn't have been enough for a sandwich. So I let him live. We stopped back at the Land Rover for a cup of coffee and something to eat before doing one last circuit of the bottom two fields. It had been raining severely during the previous week and on the uneven land large puddles of water had collected that were the size of ponds. We turned the last corner and leaving one of the aforementioned pond-puddles were two ducks. We got them both and I was quite impressed with myself killing it clean and not having to finish it off. However Mr. Ducky had quite a bit of momentum going and as he fell, still moving forwards, he landed on the far side of an unpassable river. The other side of the river is someone else's land and hearing the shots the Game Keeper quickly turned up and stood there smiling. He was pleasant enough but his presence was more of a warning so as not to attempt to cross the the deep old river, even if I could. He looked down at my duck and walked off. Bet he went back and fetched it. Feeling guilty of taking the duck down but not making use of it, I moped back to find the others. They were staring up at the top of a ten foot high blackthorn bush with a dead duck neatly nested on top. I was not having that one escape us too, so with my brother leaning, back against the sharp wall of thorns, I climbed up his knee, onto his folded arms and stood on his shoulders outstretching myself across the top of the spiky Blackthorn bush. The tips of my fingers were still about twelve inches from the bird and in a last minute death or glory effort, I jumped from Anthony’s shoulders springing myself up and out onto the plateau of the top of the hedge. My hands firmly around the bird I could only roll and slide down the side of the bush until my feet were guided to the floor by my brother. I felt a little better now that we weren't about to waste two ducks.

We got home and I set about plucking and drawing the bird. I took the breasts out skin-on and singed the remaining fine feathers on the hob before marinating the breasts in soy sauce, orange juice, sugar and chinese five spice over night. The following evening I explained to the wife that we were going to have stir fry with the duck. "That's fine but just don't remind me you shot it," was the response I got as she swiftly left the kitchen. I sliced the breasts into finger sized pieces and threw them in the wok with shallots, peppers, leek, chilli and a tiny bit of fresh ginger. A bit more five spice, a teaspoon of oyster sauce and It was cooked as quickly as it was shot, though we'll forget the long winded retrieving of old Donald. Turns out it was a little too strong for the wife and I admit it was quite rich and very gamey, but seeing I was getting her share of the meat, I didn't try to persuade her to try some more and quickly stole the chunks of duck from her bowl. I like to tell myself that the neighboring game keeper went back and picked up the other duck that I shot and ate it. Perhaps in a sandwich with plum sauce, spring onion and cucumber. I'm sure of it.

Eating Beijing

2009-11-29T04:17:00.001-08:00

While reading Anthony Bourdain's The Nasty Bits, I was intrigued by the piece written on China. Although just a brief chapter in the book, Bourdain tells of a small restaurant called Li Qun's which is hidden away in a hutong in central Beijing. My wife and I had been planning on checking out the city for a while and with the added enthusiasm of my taste buds we booked a week out and jetted off to the far side of Asia. I'd had visions of small kitchens on every alleyway, each cooking up different and individual dishes passed down from generation to generation. Unfortunately almost all the eateries I found in the hutongs just sold pork stuffed dumplings of varying quality. The Donghuamen night market was like a theme park and although I succumbed to the intrigue of silk worm cocoons, scorpions and snake among other things, the honest truth is that they all taste incredibly similar due to the very dirty oil everything is cooked in that has been reused for days. The snake had a texture similar to a rare steak and was very tender and moist, probably the best of the street food I tried, shortly followed by the sea urchins whose gooey, orange insides engulfed my mouth with a clean, refreshing ocean flavour. On Wangfujing snack street I tried the deep fried baby seahorse I'd often heard about, let me warn you now, this is absolutely not worth eating at all. I bit down on the cute little ocean critter and almost shattered my teeth.
It was solid, but I had committed now and so had to finish it, I wasn't going to loose face in front of all these Chinese vendors. I battled on through the ordeal best I could, managing to grind its body down to a powder between my teeth before it formed a paste in my mouth which tasted slightly of seawater with an aftertaste of the aforementioned dirty cooking oil. I found a lot of the restaurants in Beijing to be flat and dull with menus the size of encyclopedias and all looking the same. The obligatory cream walls, red lanterns and an abundance of waiting staff.

In Eat My Globe, Simon Majumdar warns that the sound of China is a man spitting. This prepared me a little although I didn't expect it from women. Perhaps that's just the English prude in me but I disinfected my shoes when I got home all the same. Mr Majumdar had also written of an underground food hall he had found beneath a shopping mall called Gourmet Street. When I found the sign above a set of stairs my heart rate quickened and I ran off ahead to see what was below. Gourmet Street was a fantastic place to escape the drab restaurants on the high streets but amidst all the food stands offering dishes from every region of China, I still felt that I was in a fast food market and in all honesty it is just that, but I wasn't here for silver service I was here to eat and so I got on with the job in hand. Forget the snack streets and the dirty oil, put a little effort into finding some of these underground food halls and try a little of everything, the dishes are small and cheap so you can work your way around China in the confines of a basement beneath a mall.

One evening we took the subway (20p a journey) to Ghost Street, a street around a mile long which has thousands upon thousands of red lanterns strewn across the road. There literally must be a restaurant for every lantern, with staff outside each one touting for your business, at one point even pulling me by my arm to try and force me in. I was looking for one dish in particular though, the hotpot, and after about forty minutes we found somewhere. I took a sichuan hotpot and ordered some cuttlefish and fish balls with a Yangjin beer and some erguotou. For those of you who don't know, the hotpot arrives at your table, a pot of spiced bubbling oil and stock. You then order your food which comes raw which you drop your into the boiling broth cooking pieces of food to your liking right at the table. The cuttlefish, although difficult to pick up with chopsticks, was gorgeous. Like a very silky and tender squid with no chewiness. I was sold. We were brought a complimentary dish of dry, spicy cooked prawns which you eat with the shell on. This may sound a bit weird but somehow the way they cook them makes the shells extremely brittle and you don't even notice the texture alongside flakes of chilli and sichuan pepper. The meal was amazing and although the wife found a cooked maggot in her noodles, I ensured her that it was cooked and therefore any harmful bacteria would probably have been killed during the cooking process. She still didn't look too happy about it and after the obligatory photo of said maggot she drank her water and we left. It turns out that by pure coincidence, sitting the other side of the room was an American photographer that I have been in contact with for some time. Oliver had been living in Beijing for six months and it turns out my gut instinct to eat here was a good one as he and his Beijinger girlfriend frequented the place saying it is one of the best in the city. Another great find, perhaps Beijing wasn't as dire on the food front as I had first found. You certainly have to put a bit of effort in to eat well in the city though.

Finally I come to my most memorable meals of the week, both at Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant. As I mentioned before this was part of the enthusiasm for our visit. After feeling very lost wandering through the hutongs south of Tiananmen we spotted a duck painted on the grey wall of an alleyway, the tell tale sign we were near. We followed the painted ducks that led us to a small door with Li Qun written above it in red. Upon entering you walk past the wood oven where all the ducks are cooked, the smell instantly wetting my appetite. The atmosphere in this place was phenomenal and filled me with so much excitement. Having spent all week in the shiny false plasticness of Beijing, with government owned and provided eateries I finally felt like we had found something that wasn't tarnished by the red flag. We were seated next to a mother and daughter in the courtyard that has an old glass roof over it like a Victorian greenhouse. I ordered the Roast Duck, the reason for such a pilgrimage and had the chilli duck wings, duck livers and duck feet for appetisers. Let me start with the ducks feet, had I known they were cold and raw, only being marinated in a vat of horseradish then perhaps I would have been better prepared for the assault on my senses that followed. I had thought they were going to be hot and by the time I popped the first deboned and de-cartilaged duck foot into my mouth it was too late. My nose felt like it was going to explode from the horseradish and the texture of the feet were, lets say, new to me. The heels of the feet crunch which is a bit off putting but once you get used to it they aren't all that bad, but I wouldn't order them again. It was time for the duck. They bring the roasted bird to your table side and show you it whole with its fatty skin all shiny and amber. Once given the nod your server slices your duck up in a very precise way leaving nothing but the head and carcass, all within about a minute. I suppose they get plenty of practice. Peking duck in Peking, if i'm going to taste the best roast duck surely it has to be here? In my mind, any food you eat with your fingers is always going to be good and rolling one of these pancakes packed with slow cooked duck straight from the ancient wood ovens, was perfection of the dish. I loved it and have not since had duck pancakes that come close to Li Qun's. Obviously it's not just the duck that made it taste so good, the surroundings, company and service all play their part equally too. I will warn you though that if you have a bit of an upset stomach, that through the twisted corridors the only toilet has a great big mesh over it with a sign that reads in english, "NO SHIT." So make sure you go before, or take plenty of Imodium. We came here twice during our stay as it was so good. Quanjude is another favourite in the city but as it has several sites and is completely government owned, I favoured Li Qun for round two rather than risk being let down by Quanjude, after all I already knew how much I loved Li Qun's. It's hidden away, a bit shabby and understated. A place you go informally with family, friends or on your own. Dare I say, it has that authentic chinese feel that I was craving for. Bourdain had my attention with some wistful writing but Li Qun had my heart with two roast ducks and some nosebleed-inducing ducks feet.

Kitchen Clutter?

2009-11-25T07:46:00.000-08:00

What clutters your kitchen? My wife would probably say the ever growing collection of whiskeys, gins, rums and vodkas that engulf the area next to the fridge. Is it your electric whisk, a pressure cooker, Or the colossal bread maker that always seems to be in the way? Are they cluttering your kitchen, or have you grown lazy? If you can't bring yourself to throw it out or give it away then the answer is probably yes, you have grown lazy. Or preoccupied with more pressing matters perhaps. You feel guilty every time you look at it don't you? At the back of many kitchen cupboards across the country, behind the empty jam jars and sauce bottles, there can sometimes be found a pasta machine. I remember pondering on whether or not to buy one and the main argument I wrestled with was that the novelty might wear off. I'd read of people buying them on a whim after watching a Jamie Oliver episode only to run the rollers through once or twice before ebaying it away or banishing it to the cupboard under the stairs. When a friend of mine moved out from home, he turned his mother away when she offered him her pasta machine. I can understand people being put off with the added work compared to turning out a bag of dried fussili into a pan, but making your own pasta isn't necessarily an alternative to packet pasta, it's alternative to cooking altogether. Sometimes I want to be lost in the kitchen for hours on end, making meals and sauces and jams. I enjoy my time in the kitchen, it's therapeutic and a chance for me to zone-out and forget. Too often its all over and done with so quickly. Preparing a meal that is. Sometimes you want to spend more time in the kitchen, be guilted into making meringues with your electric whisk, use your bread maker or prepare some fresh pasta. Sometimes I like to work my way through bottles of whiskeys and rums. In fact only too often. Some people may think it's all too much effort but I smile every time I pull my pasta machine down from the shelf. I find such appliances to give me inspiration, add a new dimension to my capabilities with food. Kitchen clutter? I say versatility.

The Seven Fish, Ringwood

2009-11-23T07:38:00.000-08:00

It was a friend of ours birthday last Friday. A group of us were going to go out for a meal and the birthday girl had chosen the Seven Fish in Ringwood. We arrived in the pouring rain at around quarter to eight and although a little early our party of twelve was seated immediately. I made a run for the toilets only to be greeted by naughty framed photos on the wall next to the urinals. I was on the left and had the very french looking moulin-rougesque photo taken through a keyhole of a lady in lingerie perched on the edge of her bed. This took me by surprise considering it didn't go with any theme of the restaurant and definately not with the clean minimalist surroundings of the dining room. Did I mention it came as a pleasant surprise? Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of it to show you because as you can imagine, excusing yourself from the table and wandering in to the toilet with a big SLR camera tends to attract the wrong kind of attention and wanting to avoid any potential lawsuits I resisted the urge and decided to order my food.
I chose a starter of smoked sea bass fillets with a chorizo salsa. Once ordered I did start to wonder whether the saltiness and strength of the chorizo might overpower the fish. I had nothing to worry about though because the dish was really well balanced, the paprika in the chorizo complimented the smokiness of the sea bass flawlessly and at only £7.50 I think this was the best value item on the menu.
For my main course I had ordered the scallops with braised fennel and marmalade sauce and my wife, who had skipped on the starter to save room for the all important dessert, had the poached smoked haddock with peas, mash, spinach and wholegrain mustard sauce. My scallops were really plump and pan fried perfectly, incredibly soft and delicate and not at all rubbery as can sometimes be the case. The fennel lacked that certain aniseed kick and could have done with a little more salt. As a main course I think it needed something to complete the dish, definitely more fennel and maybe some other vegetables?

The wife's meal came a little late, she has that annoying habit of ordering better than me, or maybe thats just me being fickle but I usually find myself eating my meal while staring longingly at her plate until she lets me have some. Not much of a wholegrain sauce but the potatoes were smooth and buttery and the fish tender and moist.

Afterwards I ordered a coffee and a cognac while the wife ordered a chocolate brownie with toffee ice cream and white chocolate shavings, the brownie was unbelievably light and not at all stodgyl. The ice cream melted down the side of the warm brownie and swirled into the rich, thick dark chocolate sauce. It was like a Mills and Boon for the chocoholic. The birthday girl had Eton Mess and as I am, by my own admission a pudding thief, I had to try it. They know how to do good desserts at the Seven Fish, is that because they're open for coffee all day and most of their daytime customers are old ladies having tea and something sweet? I don't know, but they also know how to prepare seafood, just need to work on the accompaniments. The service was a little slow and impersonnal, our table sat filled with empty plates from our starters for a good fifteen to twenty minutes. A few things came late, but not substantially and as we were a table of twelve I thought the kitchen did well. Shame the waiting staff were slow.

Baking Bread

2009-11-20T03:03:00.000-08:00

I think baking bread is quite daunting at first glance and I've been meaning to make my own bread for ages now and as I've had a few days off this week I thought I'd step to it. Although it takes a few hours to do, keeps for only a few days and is probably no cheaper than buying a loaf from the shop, I think it is worth baking your own loaf just for the smell it fills your house with. This wasn't my first attempt, but the less said about my first loaf the better, if you imagine something that has all the characteristics of a brick, and could possibly be confiscated as a weapon and your somewhere near. Needless to say it has been nearly a year since that fateful day. So I found a recipe that looked gentle to the novice baker and set about the kitchen. The recipe was a Nigel Slater one that had been bastardised into american weights and measures, the whole cup system is too vague if you ask me, I much prefer grams or pounds. It came together as expected and once the ingredients resembled a sticky dough I tipped it out onto my side and worked the dough until springy, which took a while. Can Bakers get RSI?
I set it in a bowl with a tea towel on top in a warm place to rise for an hour.
When I took the dough out to 'knock-down' and knead again it felt amazing, really fun to push and fold, and if I'm honest I felt like a proper baker boy, "what this? Oh just knocking up some bread, you know."
After letting it rise again for forty five minutes I did start to think it was looking quite big. This is probably the point where I should have decided to split it into two smaller loaves or even three.
I tucked it into a nice long bloomer shape and floured it slightly before sliding my creation into the oven. Now I'm a bit of a nerd in the kitchen and often watch through the glass what's happening step by step in the oven to help learn and avoid problems in the future. "I've created a monster!" It wouldn't stop growing, I thought it was in danger or rising so much that it might touch the roof of the oven and wedge itself in there. Fortunately my bread considered its options and decided to take its chances at freedom rather than be confined to a life in the dark chamber of my oven. I set Frankensteins monster on a wire rack to cool and even though it was enormous and would probably be considered morbidly obese by his peers, I loved him anyway. The bread actually looked really good and as mentioned before, the smell my flat was now filled with was better than any incence you can buy.
Note to self: fresh bread incence, possible business idea, or the ramblings of an idiot?
Once Big Steve had cooled down, as I was now affectionately calling him, I cut into him and smeared some butter over a slice. The bread was good but slightly stodgy, It definitely wasn't as light and fluffy as I would have liked but as a second attempt I was quite pleased with myself. The behemoth bread wasn't actually that big once you cut a few slices off and was really a blessing in disguise. The slices were so big I made a massive sandwich with some extra mature cheddar, some free range, aged iberico chorizo and Tracklements Chilli Jam.

I was over the moon with my bread. I am going to keep experimenting with different flours and flour mixes and try to work the dough that little bit more. If I had eight kids the loaf would have been ample, but as it is just the two of us I will have to reduce the quantities, or start thrusting loaves of bread on my parents every time I see them.

The Gun, Docklands

2009-11-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

I've been crazy busy this last week and after working nights in Cardiff for a few days fitting carpet tiles in a call center, I came home and drove my wife and sister up to The O2 arena for them to go see Beyonce. Rather than pay £25 for the parking and have nothing to do but pay for overpriced coffees and internet I opted for a drive through the tunnel and into Canary Wharf and to a pub overlooking the Thames called The Gun. The Pub has been there for nearly 250 years and was a local meeting place for Lord Nelson before he died at the battle of Trafalgar. I managed to park right outside on the cobbled streets and for free too, I grabbed my rucksack with my computer hoping to do some work over a pint. The Gun is a very masculine old pub and I don't mean I had to step over fighting men on the way to the toilet but that it just has a rugged and warm feel to the place despite the high winds and chill of Autumn. I got a pint of Pride in and took a table bar-side right next to the log fire. Sadly the internet wasn't working and after lots of attempts the manager came over and told me that she uses a mac too and that she can never seem to get online using the pubs router, was a shame but I was impressed that the manager herself had come by to tell the scruffy, bearded twentysomething in a t-shirt that she apologised for the inconvenience. I wasn't planning on having anything to eat but the menu was stooped in game. I was still full from my lamb and roast potato lunch round mums but I knew I could fit in a cheeky salad, especially if it involved pigeon. I also noted the footnote to the menu which said all game may contain shot, which In my mind only added to the romanticism of this old rugged pub by the docks. I settled for the 'Salad of warm pigeon, spiced pear, parsnip crisps and hazelnuts,'
I asked for it bar-side and the waiter came and laid out my cutlery and brought me a selection of warm breads. My salad arrived and sat on the plate very well. The pigeon breasts were cooked perfectly, just seared but still warm to the middle, It came in a hazelnut oil and red onion dressing and the slices of poached spiced pear complimented the depth of the pigeon successfully. For my salad and a pint of London Pride the bill was only £10.20 plus tip, not even half the price for the O2 car parking. I left and tried to make my way to St. John Bread and Wine for a drink and maybe a starter or something small to eat, however forgetting it was Sunday and St. John having more traditional opening hours it was twenty past ten by the time I arrived and was closing. Next time I guess. After a little cruise around the city I doubled back to the O2 and sat down by the water to read and have some coffee before I drove home with two very excitable girls.

Back from Cornwall

2009-11-11T13:58:00.001-08:00

Just got back from a four day trip to Cornwall. Five of us rented out a beach house in Gwithian which is a little place by the beach near St.Ives. We had a really cool wooden house to stay in with an unusually well equipped kitchen. The surf is pretty good at Godrevy, just two hundred yards from the beach house, but due to mother nature and her anger at me for not recycling my Orange Juice carton the week before, it was washed out. We went in on our first day anyway and fought against the strong currents and the whitewash but after getting bored and trying to make my board do flips with my hands, the wind caught it and I got smacked in the face by the rail of my board and my eyes rolled back in my head. Time to get out and get some food in me.
I went armed to the hilt with a box full of store cupboard essentials and a more than a few bottles of wine. Between us we had bought a barrel of Ringwood Brewery's "Huffkin" Autumn Ale, anyone who hasn't tried it yet should put it on their;
"list of things to try before I'm too pissed to notice what I'm drinking." It's definately in my top three real ales.
We didn't eat out and I cooked a mean fish pie one night. One of the best things was climbing all over the rocks and looking in the rockpools when the tide was out, mainly looking for razor clams but sadly to no avail. However on two occasions we came home with a bucket full of fresh cornish mussels and once home, while the others had an afternoon siesta, I simmered them in a simple garlic, butter and white wine sauce, then sat at the Kitchen island with a deep bowl full of the mussels and picked at them while finishing off a nice bottle of white. Banging way to spend an afternoon.
Even though we only went surfing once whilst we were there and the fact the weather and waves suddenly turned the day we left, I wasn't bothered. I was just happy to have had some time to relax and cook a bit. I drank far too much and didn't get to read as muc as I wanted but it was a wicked holiday and can't wait to go back and look for more mussels in the rocks.