Moustache Lunchbox

For the last month or so I have been sporting some fantastically curious facial topiary on my boat race. Namely a 'handlebar' moustache. Ginger, wiry and oh so funky. Why? Well I recently got involved with a little project with the guys at Movember, purveyors of the 'Mo' and fundraisers extraordinaire, more of which I hope to divulge at a later date but naturally, any association with this charity requires a submission of the razor blade and a commitment to grow to a hairy caterpillar under your nose. So I went for it with great aplomb. I have to say though that opinion on the Mo has been divided, with some detractors commenting that I resemble a German porn star, a member of some cult or worse still, a Victorian paedophile. But other folk have been quite kind. Sophisticated, suave and sexy are just some of the adjectives that have swung my way, the latter coming from my good wife so I've persevered and I have to say, I reckon a lot of people are starting to look at me in a different light. Just the other day for instance, a gentleman in the public lavatory at Upminster station whispered across the urinals at me and asked if I was a friend of Dorothy. "I might be", I replied back, smiling conspiratorially before continuing with "didn't she used to serve behind the bar at The Golden Lion in Romford?" It turned out I that got the wrong Dorothy but still, he was a lovely guy to talk to. I've got his number at home, somewhere.

Accidental cottaging episodes aside, the really great thing about wearing a moustache becomes apparent at feeding time and let me just say, it really does make a difference to the whole process. Because to take a bite of cake, a slurp of soup, a nibble of cheese or a chomp of banana and to flick your tongue up and across, well it's blissful. And that's because (whisper it) with each mouthful, morsels and remnants of each bite often become trapped. Trapped by this unique, beautiful, baleen filter-feed type system. It's brilliant! It's like getting seconds before the seconds come out. Of course, I have been trying to spread the word, encouraging everyone I know to grow one, including my children and I've even boasting on Twitter about this new found application for a Mo, stating that the great thing about having a moustache is that you can store crumbs to snack on at a later date. Unfortunately the response so far has been fairly muted, apart from the faint sound of an electronic 'boak' across the ether of the Internet but then Eat Natural, the muesli bar people dropped me a line and asked would I like to try out their range of bars on my 'tache. I kid you not! They sent me loads. Thus began a bonkers experiment to test the viscosity, flavour and sticky attributes of Eat Natural bars, the hypothesis being - which of these breakfast bars, with the help of my beloved moustache, would help see me through a working day?

These are the results.

Toasted muesli bar with orange marmalade - A disappointing start as the muesli flake to moustache yield was quite low with only a solitary puffed speck of rice attaching after first bite. But still, the tangy aftertaste of the marmalade was quite pleasant.

Cranberries, macadamias and dark chocolate - After making a first crunch down upon this bar, I was quite pleased that a singular cranberry and piece of macadamia flew off and attached themselves in uniformity under each nostril. Fashionable but still not making the grade for sustainability.

Almonds, apricot and yoghurt coating - Now we're talking. One bite and this bar exploded and peppered my Mo with a luxurious even crispy, fruity base, ready to be picked off at intervals throughout the day. I would like to work on reserving yoghurt deposits in the corner of mouth with this one.

Dark 70% chocolate, brazils and apricots - Highly decadent with the chocolate making a heavy, deep penetration of the Mo, excellent storage for frequent licks, especially for that coffee break at 11AM. Scores bonus points with the wife as passionate kiss at the end of the day ensures a cocoa hit too.

Brazils, sultanas, almonds, peanuts and hazelnuts - The best of the bunch by far. Dense, squidgy and packed with nuts. A total meal in a bar and could feed the rest of the office at a push . I just wish my tongue could reach the tip of my nose.

This was as far as I got with this experiment. I should have tested eight in total but after the fifth bar I felt slightly queasy and as we all know, well those who have ever grown one that is, the last thing you want to find in your moustache is a half digested carrot.

But thank you Eat Natural for sending the bars my way.

Roasting Chicken The Food Urchin Way

The Food Urchin stands in the kitchen and he stands alone. By himself, in solitude, peerless, unrivalled, steadfast, ready, still. And then alone some more. In the other room, the buzz and bonhomie of crashing lego bricks fills the air. A dinosaur roars, Barbie loses a shoe and Scooby Doo cries "ZOINKS!" for the umpteenth time. Still, despite all the distractions going on, he remains focused. Staring. Staring down at the cellophane wrapped chook that is wallowing in a pool of water on the counter top. He glances to one side and spots a tea-towel on the floor, which had originally been used to cover the chicken whilst it was in it's frozen state. Which, no doubt, had been whipped away by a small, curious hand shortly afterwards and used as a cape of some description. In the cold light of day, now defrosted, pasty and flabby, the fowl looks, well pretty foul really. But no matter. Because the Food Urchin is about to work his magic. He is about to give Mr Hopkinson a run for his money. He is about to give this bird the roasting of it's life.



With a swift, deft lunge and a snappy twist of the wrist, the Food Urchin turns on the main oven on, heating it up to a perfect 220C. Give or take a degree or two. Or three or four. Or maybe even ten. The Food Urchin oven is not entirely accurate and the dial thermometer he bought to pop inside could do with a really good scrub. But this doesn't worry the Food Urchin. He knows when the oven gets to the optimum temperature. He feels it. By putting his head in the oven. When the hairs from his nostrils begin to smoke and singe, it's Hammertime. Or should that be Chickentime?



Whilst the oven is working it's way up to Maillard nirvana, the Food Urchin starts to prepare the bird. 'Keep it simple, stupid' is a mantra you'll often hear when it comes to roasting chicken. Butter, salt, pepper, no more, no less. But the Food Urchin firmly believes in that lesser known idiom - 'Throw in whatever shizz you have to hand and if it works you'll be a hero, if it fails, the chippy is just up the road'. So he dives into the condiment cupboard across the room and unearths a decade's worth of impulse buys, sorry, faded, near empty jars and at least 3 packets of IKEA dehydrated cream sauce for meatballs. Eyes flicker back and forth over the parade of spices, herbs, vinegars and oils with hands ploughing through and discarding over shoulders as the Food Urchin's synapses begin to fire on all cylinders. To the outside observer looking in, this hive of activity soon melds into a blur but to the Food Urchin, every flows in beautiful stop motion majesty. Finally, he decides on his prime ingredients, slamming each jar or bottle or packet to the side with a triumphant, albeit imaginary earth shattering clang of a gong.



So into the pestle and mortar, the Food Urchin throws some stale garlic, some dried oregano from Aldi, some out of date sumac, some random looking celery salt and a generous splash of exquisite, rosemary flavoured extra virgin olive oil, procured from a small Glaswegian lady. Who lives in a bush, in a park, in London. With a rhythmic pounding and swirling action, the combined elements soon turn into a bewildering witches brew, pungent and heady. The Food Urchin dips his little finger into the granite pot and tastes. Lips purse and an eyelid flickers. 'Oh my giddy aunt, that's got an unusual..... tang' the Food Urchin thinks to himself but is nevertheless pleased with the concoction and strides back across to where the chicken resides. A slight slip on jars previously cast aside nearly puts the mission in peril but the Food Urchin regains his balance with only a minimal spillage on his slippers.



The next stage is critical and the Food Urchin knows it. For it wouldn't do just to simply empty the marinade over the chicken, throw it in the oven and be done with it. No, the Food Urchin knows that he has massage the oily, speckled ferment into the bird thoroughly and comprehensively, liberally and totally. He has to massage the breasts. He has to massage the legs. From the Parson's Nose all the way up the back to the scruff of it's (formerly) scraggy neck, the Food Urchin's fingers must probe and rub. Basting must begin before as well as after you've put the bird in the oven. Most importantly though is the insertion of half a lemon up the chook's jacksy. This is an absolute must. Without and the chicken and the cook will suffer the ignominy of bone-dry, pallid offerings at the table thus rendering all life void and meaningless. The Food Urchin has spent many a night trapped in an existential nightmare, crying himself to sleep before he discovered the lemon trick.



Once this is stage is over, the Food Urchin thinks 'it's time to put this baby in the oven'. And so he puts the chicken into a roasting tray and into the oven and breathes a sigh of relief and contentment. He picks up the jars, bottles and packets. He sweeps up the floor. He wipes down the surfaces. He prepares the vegetables by the sink. Sweet potatoes for roasting, red onions for caramelising and mange tout for blanching for just one minute before refreshing in ice cold water to retain their fantastic emerald colour and crunch. And soon enough, beguiling smells and aromas begin to emit from the oven and envelope the kitchen. Putting aside his razor sharp cooks knife, The Food Urchin grins to himself, licks his thumb and peers into the fridge. Riding this crest of a wave, he wants to push the boat out just that bit further, for his wife and for his family. He spies some chorizo and thinks 'chicken, chorizo, chicken, chorizo, chicken, chorizo.......chicken, chorizo......well it's a winning formula isn't it'. So he takes the celebrated Iberian sausage out and proceeds to chop it up into neat squares for frying and a fine scattering. 'My family are sooo lucky to have me cook for them' he giggles to himself.



Then from nowhere, something taints the Food Urchin's sensitive, hairless nostrils. It's hard to pin point but the Food Urchin recognises the odour from somewhere, from some passage in time. Hands on hips, he steps back, bows his head and frowns drawing the scent in. Suddenly, this divine, talismanic number hits the back of the Food Urchin's head which he clasps in panic.



"190!!! Christ, I forgot to turn the oven down!!!!"



And with that he flips down the oven door and smoke plumes out as though it were some gate to Hades itself. The Food Urchin screams, grabs a tea-towel and pulls the tray out with extreme force. So much so that the chicken re-animates and repossesses the gift of flight right across the kitchen, the kind that it could only have dreamt of when it was alive. However, this new voyage of discovery is sadly cut short by an opposing wall and the Food Urchin screams yet again. Which is soon followed by a bout of extreme profanity. Tiny feet pitter patter into the kitchen and mouths remain agog for just a few seconds before emitting a barrage of questions with vigorous pointing at a half-cooked chicken in the middle of the floor. "Go back into the living room kids and no Isla, you must never ever repeat that word OK? Ever" instructs the Food Urchin before wiping the sweat from his brow and picking up the ungainly bird from the floor. Placing it into another tin, the Food Urchin leans over and surveys the damage and decides that it could have been worse. He could have used the C-word. He licks his thumb again and smiles 'actually, this doesn't taste bad at all really' so he brushes some fluff off one of the legs, turns the oven down to 190C and pops the old girl in for another hour. She comes out perfect.



Still, it's hard being a culinary genius sometimes.

Just some stuff from the cupboard

Red onions, pre-caramelisation (with sugar, salt, oil and balsamic vinegar)

Caramelised red onions

Sweet Potatoes

Mange Tout

Roasting Chicken The Food Urchin Way

My 7 Links

OK. So really I should have written up a whole load of stuff by now. Stuff to do with bees, whisky, food crawls, beer crawls, crawling in general, a random chicken recipe, an argument in a certain wine bar in Borough Market that I swear was not my fault and a misadventure at Tas involving a face first dive straight into a bowl of taramasalata (the last two are linked). But I haven't. Not yet anyway. I have been very busy you see. Busy digging holes generally. Burning things. And putting stuff in the ground to cook. All in the name of supper clubbing. Plus Dickie the diabetic cat has killed my laptop by vomiting on it, therefore halting any progress on FU at home. Although that doesn't really matter because my blogging mojo seems to have disappeared altogether. I suspect that it's hiding down the back of the cooker somewhere, perhaps next to a mouldy carrot. So these are my excuses and they are pretty poor ones at that but luckily I have been nominated to take part in an intriguing little project called 'My 7 Links'. Like all good ideas, My 7 Links is a simple one which strives 'to unite bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint endeavor to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again'. Any excuse to regurgitate posts from the past sounds great to me and I may carry on in this vein for the next few weeks until I run out of material. That won't take long so I better come up with something new.



But anyway, on with the project! Here are My 7 Links to stuff wot I wrote in the past and the categories are:



Your most beautiful post - er this one was the hardest to chose because I don't really consider my posts or photography to be heartwarming or aesthetically pleasing to the eye but am I fond of the colour green so it will have to be Wild Garlic Pesto, Soup, Bread, etc, etc, etc





Your most popular post - As a youth I used to weep in butcher's shops.... - Going by comments for this one, I think I tapped into the inherent catagelophobia you sometimes endure when walking into your local butchers.





Your most controversial post - Ten Hour Roast Lamb - Sponsored by Armitage Shanks - Some people were rather put off by my admission that I read cookbooks whilst on the throne. I don't know why.





Your most helpful post - In Search of OOMMAAAAMMMEEE Part 1 - For showing to the world that umami is a crock of sh......ugar. I did mean to do some more videos but dropped the ball on this one (story of my life).



A post whose success surprised you - Bag of Meat - This recent post surprised me because it got tons and tons of hits. But then again it did feature a bag of meat, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at all really.







A post you feel didn’t get the attention it deserved - Meat is Murder - a rare restaurant review on FU and one of my first and no-one read it. No-one. Who cares if it didn't have photos of the food. Or if it prattled on about Bobby Gillespie. Or.........oh I don't know.



The post that you are most proud of - A Night In The Life Of The Food Urchin - because it was silly and great fun to write (and a brilliant night out).

Now all that remains for me is to pass the baton on to these rather fabulous bloggers of which there should be 5 (according to the rules):



Essex Eating

Gin and Grumpets

Roast Chicken and Red Wine

Lost In The Larder

Kavey Eats



And thanks to the BFB for the kick up the backside, sorry nomination.

Grain Alcohol Day

I've been tasting fruit this past week from the roof dehydrator. It all came out nicely, very tart, chewy, serious plums, tomatoes and nectarines. And it then stuck me, why not go a step further? It must have been the limoncello recipe I was working on the other day. Why not toss everything into grain alcohol? I got a few little jars, you can see here in the center. Then I got carried away. The last meyer lemon on the tree with bay leaves and dried kumquats. Some shallots, ginger and lemon. Whole fresh tomatoes. Who knows? Some jars with spices like grains of paradise, cassia buds and long pepper. Went through 2 bottles. I have no idea which will be more interesting either, the fruit or the hooch.

Marrow Rum Update

In these scary, portentous and angry times, it doesn't feel right to be flippant but as I am absolutely fucked off with everything and haven't posted in a while, in an effort to lighten the mood and to get this blog fired up again, I thought I would give you all an update on my marrow rum. This rum or grog or batshit bizarre bongo juice has been gurgling away in my kitchen for the last few weeks now and just the other day, I took the brave steps to sample some. These were the unexpected results.



Like I said, the marrow has been sitting quite benignly in the corner of our kitchen for some time now. I had sealed the bugger up pretty well, using sellotape at first and then moving onto clingfilm. If it hadn't been for the attention of the odd fruit fly, I may well have forgotten about it but I do distinctly remember walking into the room thinking 'where the hell are all these fruit flies coming from?' and my eyes zeroed in on said corner. 'Aha, lets see how the ol' marrow rum is getting on' I thought. It was 10 in the morning.



Brushing the fruit flies away, I peeled off the clingfilm, popped the top of the marrow off and peered down into the abyss.



If I were to be really honest, looking at it, well it reminded me of a terrible case of bum gravy I once encountered in Zimbabwe a long, long time ago. But the fierce scent of alcohol was searing the hairs of my nostrils, clean off in fact, so I felt encouraged enough to pour some off into a glass using a funnel and an old pair of my wife's tights (at least I think they were old).



It still looked like bum gravy but the more vegetal, floral notes of the hooch started to emanate from the glass and I began to grin at this point. Sure it looks pretty grim, I thought but as experiments in home brewing go, this could be a success! Buoyed by a resurging confidence and a quick fire business plan to enter the drinks market with my new range of 'vegetable-based' rums, I toasted to a premature success.



I brought it to my lips. And my nipples exploded.



And then I turned into Edgar from Men In Black.



Can I say anything further on the tasting? Well no. I am really sorry but I really can't at present. Well apart from "er, it needs tweaking". I can say this though, I've tried some more tonight and given the transformation, I feel fully prepared to hit the streets and scare the bejesus out of the little fucking shits who are rampaging throughout our cities.



Keep an eye out for me on the news in the morning..............

Lion's Head

I've spent the 24 hours mostly testing recipes and shooting them. With a camera, of course. All for a big text book. Three World Cuisines. Equipment, ingredients, food and culture, etc. Recipes too. This shot of the Lion's Head Meat Ball will not go in, though I like it the most. The suggestive spoon and puddles of fat. It tasted the best after cooking a while. The other meatballs were younger and prettier, but the last did taste the best. So I share it with you. Pork shoulder chopped by hand very finely, ginger, shallot, Shaoxing, sesame oil, soy. Browned in the wok, then poached in stock with curly greens - the Lion's Mane! SO satisfying and delicous, you could even eat the wait staff. Tomorrow morning I'm ready to tackle hot and sour - OK, so I'm on the soup section. Soupcon.

Lamb Shanks in Almond Milk

Of all odd things, my wife and I came together on a single odd ingredient this past week. You have to understand, she doesn't eat anything I make on principle. But recently it has gone further: a raw food diet. I'll eat fish raw, meat, love it. Even human flesh. But vegetables in the juicer? And a never ending string of vegetal mush plates with nuts. They don't taste bad, but I'd shoot myself in the head before I ate only this.

And then I see boxes of almond milk. Horrid industrial pabulum. BUT, it can also be made from raw almonds and has been since the Middle Ages. Then there suddenly appeared raw almonds for about 12 dollars a pound at the health food store, and only 3 at the farmer's market. Must do it.

SO, you soak them over night, peel meticulously, and pound them in a big mortar, pour over hot water, soak several hours and strain, then you get this, above. Exactly like milk. Look closely. And delicious on its own. One jar went into various vegetal shakes. The other into lamb shanks with herbs, pepper, verjus (fresh unripe grapejuice) pinch of sugar and cinnamon. Can you see the marrow oozing out of the bones? Let me tell you folks! The almond milk works much like coconut, and even regular milk. You can also make cheese and butter out of it. OH, those are in the last cookbook. Well, check it out. A fabulously unctuous ingredient, well worth the time to make at home, even if it ends up in a shake.