Is It Fudgy?

It doesn't happen that often but every once in a while, I have the misfortune to come across the sort of swollen, pompous, know-it-all, misanthrope who's only endeavour in life is to look down their snotty nose and lixiviate their ill-formed, arrogant opinions all over the place. Spluttering, through rubbery lips and with an air of disdain, the words they speak are usually only ever self-serving, sneering and sardonic. After issuing forth, they will often then gaze down from their imagined pedestal or cushioned cloud of indulgent wind and smirk, safe and warm in their own smug coitus. Their unwanted declaration the equivalent of a five second wank.

For want of a more crisper, concise description, for now, let's just call them 'Food Snobs'. And like I said, I've met a couple in my lifetime.

I'll never forget the suited gentleman queuing behind me in the sandwich shop who guffawed after my order.

"I think you'll find it's pronounced chor-ee-tho."

Or the sommelier who bulked at my appraisal of a glass of red.

"Hmm, farmhouse isn't really a word I would associate with this. Earthy, straw, robust maybe but definitely not farmhouse."

Or the time, when asked what I like to do with leeks, a well known food writer and editor, retorted, somewhat vehemently, "Well well, make soup eh? My God, that is so imaginative."

Naturally, I take these sorts of encounters in my stride, often compositing a scenario in my mind where I simply smile back and then suddenly lunge forward and rip their heads off with one bare hand, Wing Chun style, blood spraying everywhere, howling like Bruce Lee. And then I am back in the room, carrying on with the rest of my day. However, a couple of weeks ago, a particularly horsey female character very nearly got the real deal.

I was in Neal's Yard Dairy in Borough Market, set with the task of buying some cheese, as you might well expect. In fact, prior to this, I had put a shout out on Twitter asking what I should buy and the resounding response came back as "Cheese", therefore confirming my suspicion that the majority of my followers are sarcarstic bastids. Although, thankfully, I don't believe them to be snobs. Well, maybe some of them. Anyway, in the shop I approached a rather solemn but helpful and attentive, bearded cheesemonger (another thing, why are there mongers in cheese and fish but not in meat or baking? I'd like to meet a meatmonger one day) and simply said that I was after an all-round selection. Without further ado, he pointed me towards the goats cheeses, asking if I had any particular favourite and I replied that really, I knew sod all about goats cheese. So with a swift swish of the knife, he peeled off a slice Tymsboro, an ash-coated unpasteurised cheese and handed it over. As I put it up to my mouth, I was shoved forward and a scatter gun shriek burst my left eardrum.

"IS IT FUDGAAY? IS IT? I LIKE MY TYMSBORO FUDGAAAY. IS IT FUDGAAYY?"

I turned around to look and zero in on where the penetrating, nasal cawing was coming from and behind me stood a Barbour quilted, doggy smelling, faux-blonde bouffant with flashing eyes and hints of rosacea. She stared at me hard and long and brusquely asked yet again, "Well, is it fudgy?!" At least I think that's what she said, I suspect that class and years of in-breeding had left her without adenoids or any propensity to form words such was her clippyness. I simply shrugged, as if I no speakadaenglish and so she huffed at my apparent moronity, scooped the remaining goats cheese that was on Beardy's knife and then went to the other end of the counter whilst shovelling it into her mouth. Or maybe it went up her nose. I can't remember.

The rest of the shopping experience went past rather uneventfully after that. Beardy and I just carried on with our business and I left Neal's Yard happy with the decisions I had made. Yet as I walked back to the office, a sense of paranoia and annoyance crept up on me. What was that all about? Was she simply making an enquiry in her own special way? Or was she, via some extraordinarily loud bleating, asserting her own authority on the matter? "I BLOODY WELL KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT AND YOU DON'T, YOU PLEB!" It sort of felt like that. And that narks me that does, that sort of bloody food snobbery. So I have been making enquiries, as part of a plan to fight against it, to strike out whenever it occurs and stamp out this disease once and for all.

It comes in the form of a stamp actually, a custom made rubber stamp that will languish in the inside pocket of my jacket alongside a red ink pad. It will say "Food Snob." With "twat" in a smaller font and in brackets. And if I ever come across this sort of pretension again, I will simply pull the stamp out, calmly emboss it with ink and casually and silently press it on the forehead of the perpetrator. And then walk away.

It's not quite the same as ripping heads off but it will be just as satisfying.

 Tymsboro (lovely, tangy, creamy but not really that fudgy)

Laziness and Bánh Mi Buggery

Out of all the seven deadly sins that I am prone to (and I am pretty much prone to them all), the cardinal sin of sloth is the one that often snares me the most. It really is the one that I like to hang myself out to dry on because my head is always full, always teetering with good intentions and vim, to get out there and truly do something different with my life. And yet time and time again, these plans, these ideas, which always sprint off headfirst at breakneck speed, often suddenly slam violently into a wall of farty, apathetic, laziness. It's something that gets to me a lot, I am forever beating myself up but I don't know what to do about it. The crazy thing is that I am not actually lazy, I work very hard, bloody hard. I procrastinate too much though, that's the problem I think. I've lost count of the times I've sat down at the computer, flexed my knuckles and set about writing up a blog post or plan some new food adventure or tried to work out a book proposal even:

"Ah yes, right, here we go, right.....um OK......let's just have a think, ah.......ooh email, ah new Oatmeal! (click) ah...... he he, hehehe, HAHAHA........ ahhhh.................er what was I doing? Oh sod it, let's have a cup of tea."

Maybe I'll work it out at some point and very soon I hope. But in the meantime, whilst we're on the subject of indolence and torpidity, I thought it would be fun to write a quick post about a development in the world of baguettes, involving the sandwich chain Eat and their buggery with bánh mi.

So yes, Eat have recently launched their very own take on the Vietnamese classic, the Bánh Mi or in their case, the 'Very' Spicy Chicken Bánh Mi. And I picked up one recently, out of curiosity really and while I make no claim to be an expert on Vietnamese cuisine, I felt confident enough to pass this verdict. Now, this may or may not have been fair. After all, Eat do a fair to middling line range of products. But in all fairness, it really wasn't that good. The bread was far too dense and heavy. The chicken was saturated and pappy in a mayonnaise gloop. Shredded carrots and mooli were listless and sodden. And the chilli heat, smeared on as a base sauce, coating the bread, was far too hot, tasting like the "Extra sexy super chilli hot?" regret of a Friday night doner kebab. No, not good at all. And so I consigned the whole concept to the dustbin of history, never to be repeated again.

Then I popped to City Caphe earlier this week and one of those strange, whirlwind ideas came flying into my head as I stood in the substantial queue. 'Perhaps, I should order their chicken bánh mi and buy another one of Eat's version to do a test comparison? Yes, that might be good, perhaps I've been too harsh on poor old Eat,' I thought to myself. And so soon after, I found myself in a nearby park, sat on the grass, in the sunshine with two baguettes in front of me, looking like a proper glutton. That other sin I have issues with.

The resounding result didn't need much deconstructing really. City Caphe's baguette was far, far better. Light, crisp bread, succulent pieces of lightly spiced chicken, crunchy carrot with slices of red chilli and fragrant coriander leaves. Made with finesse and care and attention. It was delicious. Whereas the baguette from Eat, well it just reinforced my original conclusion. It was shite.

But what is the point of such an experiment anyway? Aside from pouring ridicule and pity on myself, I am sure my fellow park grazers were wondering what the hell was I doing eating and photographising two baguettes, the point is this; why launch a new type of sandwich to your customers when it's plainly obvious you don't give two hoots about it in the first place? Why offer a generic, modified, plasticised, Westernised version of an original? Why not be brave and introduce something to your audience that is authentic, different and vibrant? I think the answer for Eat lies at the feet of Sloth. And I don't mean that wonky-eyed, muscle bound dude from the Goonies. No, I mean it's just plain lazy. And therein lies the problem. Despite the great strides that apparently are being made with regards to this country's food cultcha, this sort of laziness will always put us on the back foot. Food prepared and served this way to the masses only waters things down to a bland, extraneous point of acceptability. This a shame and it irks me somewhat and probably needs a proper route of enquiry but this is all I can muster for now.

But hey, at least I don't feel so lazy after writing that. It's a start, eh?

Clash of the Bánh Mi's

Hmm, from this angle, they both don't look that bad but......

Delicious

Shite

Autumn Coleslaw and Hemophobia

'Deep breath now. Come on Dan, you can do this. Be a brave boy. Just press and slide down. Slowly press and slide down. Gently does it. Nice and easy. Press and slide down. That's it, press and slide down. There we go. Press and slide down. Ah, we've got some rhythm going now. Up and slide down, up and slide down. Oh, this is not so bad. Up and slide down. God, I should use this more often. Up and slide down, up and slide down, up and slide down. Ha ha! This is great! Up and slide down. Come on Dan, let's get down to it, let's get down to the very last nub. Ditch the tea towel now, be brave. Up and slide down, up and slide down, ohmygodImgonnadoit, up and slide down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and deyOOOWOOOOOONAHYAFUCKA!!!'

Plastic clatters over porcelain, eyes shut tight and a stubby, sausage finger is plunged into my mouth. I wait for the flow of copper to envelope my taste buds, wait to cough and spit. But nothing comes. Instead, I feel the rough edge of a fingernail scratch my tongue so I pull my digit out and examine the damage. Shorn off at a jaunty angle and down to the quick on one side, the nail looks odd but I am grateful that on this occasion, only keratin was sacrificed and not flesh. I glance at a small piece of carrot on the floor and then into the sink. A wicked blade, set against black, winks and flashes it's straight, steely, menacing smile, as if to say, "got you again." I grimace back with narrow, vengeful eyes and consider fetching a hammer from the shed. But then soon enough, this rarely used Christmas present, this instrument of torture is packed away, consigned to the dark place under the stairs. And it is only then, that I sit down and sadly think to myself, 'why do I ever bother with that poxy mandoline?'

If there is ever a piece of kitchen equipment that is exacting, vicious and cruel, it would have to be the mandoline. I appreciate the benefits of clean, uniform slices of vegetable which look very pretty and everything but seriously, what benefit is there to be gained by running your fingertips so perilously close to a guillotine. Health and safety bureaucrats will point out here that these devices often come with guards, which are supposed to clamp onto your vegetable and protect your hands from danger. You only have to try this once to realise that the endeavour is quite useless. Many an ungainly potato has rolled away and onto the floor in the past, escaping it's dauphinoise destiny. So it comes down to the bare knuckles, or bare bones even. To use a mandoline efficiently, really you have to use your hands and maybe a tea-towel to maintain a grip, which is hardly a concession to safety (although I have heard of chefs doning kevlar gloves, a good idea). As a result, I rarely use my mandoline.

Why am I wittering on about mandolines anyway? Well yesterday, I made some Autumn coleslaw as featured in Skye Gyngell's first book, A Year In My Kitchen and had just cause to fetch the beast out of it's hiding place. Skye's recipe takes a whole batch of vibrant, crunchy, seasonal fruits and vegetables such as apples, red cabbage, beetroot, carrot and fennel and guides the reader to finely slice each one. Now she makes no mention of using a mandoline to do this but feeling adventurous, I felt it was high time that I showed the damn thing just who was boss.

With fingers hesitant and trembling, I adjusted the setting on the dial and picked up a carrot and slowly but surely, dragged it over the blade length ways to create fine silky ribbons. I trimmed and relieved the fennel of it's tough outer leaves and repeated the process again. Next came the yellow beetroot and I soon began to get into the swing of things, upping the tempo, actually beginning to enjoy myself. By the time I started on the red cabbage, Vivaldi began to fill the kitchen, well my mind at least, resonating through my soul, the imaginary orchestra guiding me, goading me to slice faster and faster. The apples were blitzed in an almost orgasmic frenzy, each sliver was sent flying up into the air before floating back down, landing like feathers. And then, I was done.

I looked down at my work, all layered upon a wooden board and over the counter top and then at my steady, straight hands. No nicks or cuts were to be seen. I won. I tamed the mandoline.

Later that evening, enjoying this wonderfully piquant, sweet salad with some herbed chipolatas and a jacket potato, my wife noticed that there was something different about me. Had she detected my new found confidence maybe? An exuberant force of nature? A boastful vim, the kind that erupts when one smites their own enemy?

"You've got a cut on your nose", she said.

And just then, from under the stairs arose a deep, cackling, hollow laugh............

Autumn Coleslaw - serves 4 (based on Skye Gyngell's recipe and what we had in the house)

ingredients

Quarter red cabbage, finely sliced

1 small fennel bulb, trimmed and sliced

1 large yellow raw beetroot, washed and finely sliced (any kind of beetroot will do, we've got loads of yellow growing down the allotment)

2 carrots, peeled and sliced in ribbons

2 Cox apples, quartered, cored and finely sliced

Half a pomegranate, seeded

Handful of cobnuts, toasted in the oven for a few minutes and roughly chopped

Salt and pepper

Juice from half a lemon

A splash of extra-virgin olive oil

dressing

2 free-range egg yolks

1 tbs runny honey

1 and half tbs Dijon mustard

1 tbs cream

1 tbs cider vinegar

200ml mild olive oil

good pinch of dried tarragon (we didn't have any fresh)

method

Place the sliced cabbage, fennel, carrot, beetroot and apple into a large bowl and drizzle with some extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. Mix all together with your hands and then set to one side.

Tip the egg yolks into another bowl and add the honey, mustard, cream, cider vinegar and tarragon and whisk until nicely blended together. And then, whilst continually whisking, pour the olive oil into the bowl in a nice steady stream so that it emuslifies into a very loose mayonnaise. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Stack the sliced slaw into the middle of the plate (or to the side if eating with chipolatas, or anything else) and drizzle the dressing all over. Scatter over pomegranate seeds and chopped cobnuts and serve.

Autumn Coleslaw with Chipolatas and Jacket Potato

Pre-sliced fruit and veg in the Autumn sunshine

The close up

This was supposed to be a restaurant review.....

In my neck of the woods, that being Hornchurch and home of the Mighty Urchins (no relation), I have to say that we're pretty much spoilt for choice when it comes to eating out. For starters there is the local Prezzo which offers an exquisite range of pizza, pasta and grills. Continuing much in the same vein is a vibrant little place called Zizzi which offers a not too dissimilar line of Italian fare such as pizza, pasta and grills. Then there is the spectacularly cladded Wildwood and I can tell you that a wild night of pizza, pasta and grills always ensues whenever we go there. And of course, lest we forget the fantastic Ask, a restaurant that proffers a slightly more subtle approach, still supplying pizza and pasta but with a greater emphasis on insalatas rather than grills. Not all roads lead to Rome in Hornchurch mind. Oh no, for an utterly authentic Mexican experience then one can do no better than to go to Chimichanga, where one can wear a sombrero whilst chowing down on a big, fat, bulbous burrito. But best of all we have a Nandos, that symposium of bottomless soft, sugary drinks and endless varieties of PERi-PERi chicken. You can feel your head positively spin every time you pick up the menu and glance at the plethora of buzz words on the page. Hot, breast, cool, wings, medium, wrap, chicken, breast, hot, chips, coke, burp, chicken, diabetes etc etc etc. Authenticity and variety comes at a price though and there are times when the choice just gets too much. It's not unusual to find myself in the hubub of a Saturday night simply standing there in the middle of a zebra crossing, not knowing where to go and with tears in my eyes. Willing, just willing for a car to mow me down and put me out of my misery. Yes, it's that tough a call to make.

Of course I am being incredibly sar-car-stic here and perhaps a bit of a food snob but whenever I reflect upon what is available on my local high street, my heart does sink a tad at the creeping diaspora of corporate beige that is starting to envelop Hornchurch. Whilst I don't expect the suburban town I live in to be a mecca of fine dining, I can't help but get narked at the fact that the main eateries in the area are the same ubiquitous chains that run up and down the land. Having peeked under the bonnet today, I am particularly narked to discover that there are just a handful of people who run the show but who don't make it plainly obvious on their company websites. You see, all of the aforementioned restaurants are linked* in some way or another via affiliations or partnerships or under the umbrella of private equity. To be honest I feel quite daft and naive at this realisation because in essence they are all the same type of restaurant, peddling the same generic menus and using the same ingredients, they are just operating behind a different frontage or brand. But what is the deal behind this vague approach I wonder? What are these companies trying to hide? Furthermore I wonder how many of us know that we've been monopolised or do we even care as we're herded into these places clutching coupons and voucher codes? The argument or discussion I've got running through my head is half baked but the more I think about it, the more I think that it's a crying shame, this proliferation of plastic restaurants in the neighbourhood. Especially when there are smaller, local, family run establishments that offer so much more in terms of food, atmosphere and service. Places like the Turkish Mangal in Hornchurch which is a simple, sparce yet friendly and warm restaurant that serves up wonderful and reasonably priced Turkish food from a impressive looking barbecue grill. Great stuff. I went there on Saturday night and tried their iskender for the first time. Tender pieces of lamb covered with a spicy tomato sauce and served on a bed of torn bread mixed with yoghurt, it was delicious. I was also stuffed, full up to the brim but sadly the same could not be said of the restaurant. However, all around Prezzo, Zizzi, Ask, Wildwood and especially Nandos, well they were packed.

And now I am confused.

This was supposed to be a restaurant review.....

(*I should add that Josh from Cooking The Books pointed this out to me)

A Good Craftsman Never Blames His Tools

Ah the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowds. Despite the gaseous turmoil within, testing my intestinal fortitude to it's limit, this old stage trooper pulled through. You know what they say, once a luvvie, always a luvvie and all my training at RADA* certainly came flooding back. Yes I was very happy with the delivery of my rant for Rude Health at the Real Food Festival a couple of weeks ago. The subject of which was a tirade against inanimate objects in my kitchen that I personally hold responsible for past cooking disasters and misdemeanors, the usual kind of stuff that I bang on about in this blog. So I basically talked about incidents involving fish slices, pasta machines and *sob* my beloved chicken brick. Yes, you've heard it all before but if you would like to listen to me vent my spleen then follow this link and scroll through the list of culinary luminaries, you find me in there, somewhere. Please note, the sound is a little muffled, it's not just the quality of my diction so you may have to turn it up. To 11.

I have to say it was really good fun and hats off to Rude Health for pushing forward this idea of bringing speakers to the fore at festivals to mouth off and rant and rave. A lot of the speeches, though humorous and irreverent, delivered underlying important messages about food and I think that also reflects on Rude Health with their approach to the delicious breakfast cereals they produce. Issues concerning the environment, sustainability and our personal well being as consumers should be addressed but we don't have to be po-faced about it. So kudos to Rude Health for their spunky attitude and thanks for the goodie bag.

As for the festival itself, well the shame is that I didn't really take that much in. Prior to my rant, I spent a good while wandering around like a tit-in-a-trance, trying to focus on my performance. And then afterwards I went straight onto fudge packing duty at the Yum Yum Tree Fudge stall where I agreed to help out owner and fudge maker extraordinaire Lily Turner (her cousin is some miscreant called MiMi). That was good fun too and took me back to my days of working on a curtain stall on Romford Market - "there you go love and look, I've slipped an extra couple of yards of voile in yer bag, you lucky, lucky lady". After a short spell on the stall I made the assessment that, by and large, a lot of people just go to these things for an enormous picnic, wandering around for hours continually stuffing their faces on tidbits rather than actually coming to buy anything. One guy came back to the stall 4 times to gorge himself. 4 times! And didn't buy anything! I almost felt like chasing him and rifling through the greedy git's pockets. After doing my bit for Lily, I did have a quick scoot around again and bought some lovely Belgian beer from the guys at Daas, who incidentally sampled me with plenty of dutch courage before my rant. And I also bought some beer from a very laid back guy from Grain who quite possibly had sampled too much of his own dutch courage throughout the day. And I bought some chervil, sorrel and parsley from a guy who didn't know what he was doing, he was just manning the stall for his mate.

So there you go. I went to the Real Food Show, ranted, packed fudge and walked back out at the end of the day with pots of herbs, boxes of cereal and bottles and bottles of beer. Admittedly, the atmosphere at Earls Court was a bit flat that day but that was probably down to a hangover from Election Night. I would go next year though and take the time to have a closer look around. And maybe next time I'll have a go at the grazers, who do nothing but eat and drink samples, all day long. You know who you are.

Top of the bill

Dutch Courage

Lily and her Yum Yum Tree Fudge

A very big cow

*For RADA, read Drama degree at Nene College, Northampton. Very prestigious.