Cinnamon Toast

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Unquestionably, the coffee shop chains have popularised cinnamon. It’s in the muffins, on the pastries, sprinkled on the top of my cappuccino and I could even get a shot of cinnamon syrup (I think). It’s the grown up spice that subjugates the sugar, it convinces me that I’ve overcome my sweet-tooth… really, it’s okay to have a cinnamon something – it won’t affect my middle-aged spread. It’s a delusion.

The easiest way I can get a fix at home is to make cinnamon toast. Some food-writers will go on about this being comfort food from their childhood, the indulgent parent offering them a treat when they got home from school, or how it was the punctuation on a rainy afternoon – a few minutes in the kitchen standing next to mother’s apron. Cinnamon toast didn’t feature in my childhood, I came to it late in life. I’m making up for lost time.

To make one piece of cinnamon toast, toast a slice of white bread. Spread it with a little unsalted butter, then as that melts, sprinkle over half a teaspoon of caster sugar. Then finally – and from an unlikely height, so as to avoid clumping – sprinkle on a little ground cinnamon. All in all, barely more effort than toast and marmalade.

Some people apparently like to flash their toast under a hot grill to brulee the sugar a little. Give it a go, see if you like it.

The only other way I make cinnamon toast is to cream a little soft butter with caster sugar and then add the cinnamon. This gives you a slightly beige butter to spread on your toast. It is very much quicker if you’re treating the whole family.

The final word goes to the toast – if you like plain toast for this then great, so do I. If however, for a weekend breakfast, you’re fond of eggy bread or pain perdu, then you’ll find this topping infinitely more agreeable than a slap of ketchup on the side of your plate.

Oh, and I’ve bowed to pressure and will be adding more photos as I write. Hope you like them.

Perfect Barbeque Pudding – Simply Grilled Peaches

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I’m not really a fan of the barbeque, especially the way we do them here in Britain; a little disposable jobbie from the garage forecourt and a few rather burnt sausages.

I’ve got a Weber kettle that gets used less than half a dozen times each year. Last night I gave in to my children. We had homemade burgers, blackened red peppers and some whole sweetcorns, just simply grilled. All was well.

Then, I wanted something for pudding. The grill was still warm, not the fierce heat from half an hour earlier – just a few glowing lumps. I could hold my hand over it, albeit a little uncomfortably. Grilled bananas are an obvious choice, but overrated I think. All that sweet gooey banana pulp reminding me of Elvis – unfortunately, the later version, with sideburns and jumpsuits.

Fortunately, there were some peaches in the fruit bowl. I cut them in half, removed the stone, and sprinkled just a pinch of sugar over the cut surfaces. After a quick but thorough scrape of the grill’s bars, I put them on cut side facing upwards, then after a minute or two turned them over. The result was some fantastic, warm, but not too hot, grilled peaches with just a tinge of char about them. We ate them with a spoonful of crème fraiche.

If I’d had some friends over, or had thought about it for more than twenty seconds before doing it, I’d have made a little sweetened wine sauce; just a reduction of white wine (flat or fizzy) with a scant spoonful of caster sugar and some vanilla seeds. The trick with such a sauce is not to make it too sweet – it’d be easy to over do it, ruining the subtle beauty and charm of the peach.

An excess of strawberries – it must be summer

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Ah, the height of a sunny summer, and it is, obviously, strawberry season. Strawberries are the one thing that my whole family can agree on – nobody complains. That, and so many shops doing their endless too-fa deals (two for the price of one) means we’re looking at strawberries for lunch and dinner, and breakfast and afternoon tea. I was going to do a definitive strawberry recipe, the single best thing you can do with them, something like that….but I think the real joy of them is that they are quick and best served relatively simply.

Wimbledon is synonymous with strawberries – I’ve never been, but I imagined that the price would be horrendous. A quick search on the web of truth and freedom revealed that Wimbledon sell approaching 100,000 strawberries every day. They are sold in punnets of at least ten, and cost in 2011 (last year), a surprisingly reasonable £2.50. I know that I’ve paid a lot more than that for far less agreeable food at very second-rate sporting events in the past. Wimbledon serve their strawberries plain as can be; just topped with cream and a little caster sugar on the side.

I tend to think that topping a strawberry means slicing the stalk, and sometimes the unripe white bit, straight off. Flush. Hulling brings to mind a more complex bit of knife work that involves inserting the point and twisting to remove the stalk. This leaves a little cone shaped indent. Either works just fine and they are interchangeable, depending on the ripeness of the fruit, except where you need the strawberries to stand upright – such as is the case with strawberry shortbread.

One quick cautionary tale on buying strawberries. I was walking past the fruit and veg stalls in Bury St Edmunds yesterday – not my usual shopping ground – and was inevitably excited by the vast quantities of beautiful fresh strawberries, cherries, peaches, and asparagus. All the stall holders were shouting out their prices. They were all doing deals “one-for one-fifty-two-fa-two-pound”, you know the routine. I wandered round and chose some fabulous looking ones from a charming ruddy faced gent dressed in tweed at the top towards the car park (I didn’t get his name). I chose a couple of punnets, handed him a couple of quid, he bagged them for me. The scoundrel must have swapped them for some almost completely rotten ones when he ducked down behind the stall. They were useless by the time I got them home, just forty minutes later. I was furious until tea time – the chickens ate well. The moral of this story is keep an eye on them, if they go out of sight, then check them before you walk off – or buy from your regular supplier.

So, in no particular order here is how my family loves to eat them:
1/ Chantilly Cream. Begin by stirring the seeds of one vanilla pod into a heaped tablespoon of caster sugar, this helps to properly disperse the seeds. Add just a little whipping cream – just to dissolve the sugar. Then pour in the rest of the 300ml pot and beat with a whisk until it is almost stiff. Serve in a bowl with plenty of freshly hulled strawberries. Not just delicious but cleverly avoids the problem of small children completely overdoing it when helping themselves to the sugar.

2/ Strawberry milkshake. My son’s favourite, and ideal for those slightly past their best strawberries – a too soft bruise can be simply removed. Combine a generous handful of vigorously trimmed strawberries, a generous scoop of vanilla ice-cream and half a glass of whole milk. Blitz with a whiz stick or in a food processor. It should be thick but pourable, if it’s too thick add more milk, if too thin then you’ll know for next time.

3/ Strawberry shortcake. Thin, crisp, shortbread biscuits with cream and strawberries on top – what’s not to like. Make some biscuits with your favourite shortbread recipe. The biscuits should be cut out to be at least 2½ or even 3 inches round – bigger than most biscuits. They should also be quite thin. I like to get a little arty with this. I put a biscuit on a plate, spread the biscuit with a little strawberry jam, then a generous blob of stiffly whipped cream in the middle of the biscuit, smooth it out so it’s flat. Now top the strawberries and halve or quarter them vertically, then arrange them standing upright (pointy tips to the sky) on the cream topped biscuit – they should be as tightly packed as possible. Finally, at the last minute, dust with a little icing sugar shaken through a small sieve.

4/ Strawberry sauce. If you are facing a glut of strawberries, and can’t stomach a full jam making session, then a quick cook up with some sugar will solve your problems. Add strawberries, an equal quantity of caster sugar and a splash of water to a large pan. Heat until bubbling and the strawberries have dissolved into a mush, then ladle into spotlessly clean jars. Keep it in the fridge and use in a week or two. I discovered the versatility of this when a vast batch of strawberry jam didn’t set. I used it all as strawberry sauce; simply poured over cheesecakes and almond tarts, to enrich Eton Mess (see below), or simply spooned over a bowl of plain vanilla ice-cream (essentially home-made strawberry-ripple).

5/ Eton Mess. Legendarily invented when a batch of meringues were accidentally broken in the kitchen at the eponymous school. I don’t know about the authenticity of the origins, but I did ask a friend went there if they ever ate it? “Yes, I suppose we did, but only very occasionally,” he replied. Make or buy some meringues, and break them into chunks. Mix together with whipped cream and trimmed strawberries. If you have some home made strawberry sauce (see above) then mix this through to enrich the mess. It should look like a car crashed into an iceberg, everything clearly identifiable but not yet homogenised. It also should not be made in advance, the meringue will go soft and soft meringue is utterly pointless.

6/ Stawberry Pavlova. Not a recipe, just a reminder, really. It’s the tidy, accomplished version of Eton Mess.

7/ Strawberry and Feta Salad. There was a time not so long ago when you couldn’t walk past a restaurant that wasn’t serving Watermelon and Feta Salad. This has a similar pleasant fruity-salty contrast. Nothing more than trimmed strawberries on a plate, artfully combined with some crumbled feta cheese. It’s a starter with a few herbs (mint and basil and dried oregano) throw in with it, and a little oil and balsamic dressing. Or, it’s a pudding and cheese course combined (hold back on the herbs – use just enough to make a tasty garnish) and just a little plain oil to make it glisten.

8/ Strawberry Jam. Surprisingly complicated to get it just right. I’ve found the one trick that really helps is to leave the strawberries trimmed and chopped overnight in the sugar – let them macerate. This seems to help them retain their shape when cooked. Beyond that, I can do no better than point you in the direction of Marguerite Patten’s The Basic Basics Jams, Preserves and Chutneys (published by Grub Street). The book is both encyclopaedic and authoritative.

9/ Breakfast. I’ll put them onto American pancakes with maple syrup, serve them atop yogurt and muesli, or my personal favourite is to make a little fruit salad, strawberries forming the mainstay. Add cubed or balled melons, grapes and maybe a little grapefruit or peeled apple. Orange juice makes a sauce.

10/ If you like to drink your strawberries, then put aside all those flavoured vodkas and strawberries soaked in Amaretto ideas. Just blitz some up and chill them. Then spoon into a glass and pour over some prosecco, stirring to fully dissolve. Every bit as good as the Bellinis in Harry’s Bar

11/ Chocolate Dipped Strawberries. As simple as it sounds. Melt your favourite dark chocolate in a double boiler (one with plenty of cocoa solids and a good crisp snap when you bite it). Then take strawberries at the very pinnacle of ripeness and holding onto the green stalky bit with pinched fingers dip it quickly into the chocolate. Place them carefully, so they don’t touch each other, onto tray covered with tin foil. When they’re all done put them into the fridge or a cool place to get the chocolate to reset. Serve after dinner at room temperature.

Quicker and Easier – Classic Coronation Chicken

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So Queenie’s been in the job for sixty years. Roll out the bunting, and have a picnic on the village green. Well that’s what we’ll be doing around here.
All those years ago for her coronation lunch in 1953, Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume of Le Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London came up with this original dish. It subtly reflected the fading Empire that the Queen had just inherited, our historical links with India (her mother had been the last Empress of India), but also looked forward to a brighter modern future. Then ten years ago at her golden anniversary celebratory lunch, she was, apparently, served a “Thai-scented” chicken curry – kind of inevitable, given that everyone was obsessed with lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves at the time. But what a vacuous gesture, what a pitifully ill-conceived, and ignorant nod to the past.

If you look at the original recipe (The Constance Spry Cookery Book, Grub Street) it has tomato puree, sautéed onions, tinned apricot halves, and red wine in the list of ingredients. All unusually and exotically complicated. You may be more familiar with Coronation Chicken from Marks & Spencer’s sandwiches. That’s a shame, you’re missing one of the 20th Century’s great British dishes.

Recipes evolve, but Queenie would still easily recognise this. I was astounded how, with a little care and attention, Coronation Chicken is a truly superb cold buffet-style centrepiece. It is deep and complex, quite far removed from the sickly slick of orange mayo-ed chicken that you find inside even a very good sandwich.

Use Mango Chutney instead of the Apricot Jam, if you prefer. The curry powder should be plain, bog-standard, common-or-garden, nothing-special-whatsoever-about-it curry powder. It will probably come in a little jar that just says “Curry Powder” on the label, and can be found hiding in amongst the herbs and spices. If you can’t find that, use a “Madras” curry powder.

It’s nice to buy fresh chickens and poach them, but if you have a butcher who cooks them fresh on the premises, then that can be a pretty useful alternative.
This recipe is an abridged, updated version of the one published in Five Fat Hens.

Ingredients
Enough to make the centrepiece for a buffet of eight

1 small onion, finely chopped – or a similar quantity of shallots
1 dessertspoon of “general purpose”/Madras-style curry powder
1 dessertspoon of passata, or thinned down tomato paste
2 glasses of good white wine
1 bay leaf
2 cooked chickens, each about 1.4-1.5kg
300g full fat mayonnaise
200ml whipping cream
3 big tablespoons of apricot conserve (best quality you can find), or sweet mango chutney
Roast flaked almonds and coriander, or plain watercress to garnish

Heat a little butter or oil in the frying pan, and add the very finely chopped onions or shallots – they must be finely chopped because they should almost disappear into the sauce. Sweat them down until completely translucent. Add the curry powder and fry that for a minute or two, add the passata, or thinned tomato paste, and let it catch a little on the bottom of the pan. It will turn from red to brown, this is important for both colour and flavour. Add the wine, bay leaf, a little salt and pepper and, if the wine is very dry, a pinch or two of ordinary white sugar. Bring it to the boil and keep it there for a minute, then turn it down to a simmer and reduce it to a thin syrup consistency – five or ten minutes should do. Let it cool completely.

In a roomy bowl, beat the whipping cream to soft peaks. In another bowl mix the mayonnaise, apricot jam and cold reduced curry sauce together. Fold this syrupy jammy, curried mayo into the stiffened whipping cream to create the finished sauce.
Pull the cooked chickens apart. You can discard the skin, keeping the bones for stock. Cut the pieces of meat into bites size chunks. Put a little of the sauce, which should have the consistency of fairly thick cream, to one side. Toss the chicken in the remaining sauce and taste it. Add a little seasoning if it needs it.

Put all the saucy chicken onto a serving plate, or into a bowl. Spoon the remaining sauce over the top, and cover with cling film until ready to eat. At the last minute, I like to fling plenty of roasted flaked almonds over the top (leave this until the last minute, or they’ll go soggy) and sprinkle, a little less generously, with roughly chopped coriander. Staunch traditionalists would garnish with a bunch or two of watercress.

Hockney at the RA, and a steak lunch

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David Hockney, The Bigger Picture, at the RA, and a quick steak at Rowleys on Jermyn Street

Years ago, in a different career entirely I was an art-dealer. Secondary dealing – meaning my partner and I bought and sold works, sitting in auction houses, visiting artists and other dealers. We sold quite a few Hockney prints, mainly his early sixties etchings. I’ve always adored Hockney’s work, so had been looking forward – like a child at Christmas – to the show at the RoyalAcademy. I don’t want to bore you with the minutiae details, but I had finally managed to get two tickets for the Hockney show – The Bigger Picture at theRoyalAcademy. It’s been all over the papers, you must have seen the reviews. Anyway, a couple of weeks before our day out Annie got the phone call that meant she had to work. Damn. The show’s a sell out so no chance of changing dates. I decided to take our eleven year old, Honor. Her head-teacher thought it was an excellent idea. Honor would have to miss French, so she was keen.

I’ve seen two previous shows at the academy – Pop Art and Saatchi’s early collection called Sensation. Both seemed busy, but for Hockney, The Academy was heaving. Not just busy, as in “oooh, excuse me”, or that slight claustrophobic crowd induced panic you may experience around too many people. It wasn’t even close to being as busy as your favoured supermarket on Christmas eve. Just imagine you’re trying to get somewhere near the stage at a really big rock concert. That busy.

But what of the show. It is poorly curated. There is too much average before the few paintings of genius. Hockney’s clear intention was to show the acclaimed newYorkshirelandscapes, and they’re there. And they’re brilliant. But, there was too much other stuff. I’d read all the reviews I could find, and have seen three programmes about his new paintings on the telly – I was not expecting so much of the show to be old previously seen, well known work.

Hockney also takes a while to get into his stride with his new foundYorkshiresubject. Many of the early paintings do not sparkle with the same affection, or shine with the brilliance and confidence of his later paintings on show. His very newest paintings have a lightness of touch that sees the earlier work fall flat. The four paintings of trees (the four seasons, naturally) that line the initial octagonal room add nothing to this show.

The video installation room was packed. I’d seen some clips, the best bits of it on TV, a few days before. There was a huge crowd in the room. Transfixed, happy to sit and stare at the slowly moving picture – whereas moments before they’d have been grazing on the paintings, doing the slow gallery shuffle. But then, that’s the power of the telly. The film worked better on the small screen, where in it’s brevity it was beautiful. In a crowded dimly lit quiet room with the images blown up to the size of a cinema screen it was pompous and plodding. And, why were huge benches provided to sit on and watch the TV show, yet you are expected to amble around in front of the paintings.

It was only after we’d left that I was struck by the fact that so many of Hockney’s landscape paintings feature roads. The majority of the big new paintings have a compelling single point perspective road, or track, or at the very least a path, meandering off into the distance. Not one of the big newspaper reviews or TV shows mentions this common link in all of Hockney’s big landscape works. Is Hockney a keen driver – is it metaphor for his escape toL.A.and his return toYorkshire- does he enjoy walking in the countryside – does he just arrive in his car and start to paint? I’d have liked to hear his answer to those questions.

Honor was understandably not impressed with an hour of being swept along looking at the backs of people’s heads, or maybe all she saw was their tweedy-backs. So, she decided she wanted some lunch. We crossed Picadilly, and ambled upJermyn Streetto Rowleys. Annie took me there once, years ago – I remember really liking it. It’s a nice little steak and chips restaurant near the offices of a company that she used to work for. It’s all old tiles, big mirrors and good tablecloths. Annie was often taken there on her employer’s expense account and watched with horror as the management consultants got competitive, trying to out spend each other on the wine list. And eat the biggest steaks. But, her old-employer’s sillyness should not put you off the fact that the restaurant does serve a pretty good steak and chips.

We had two rump steaks with the house butter and endless skinny fries. The butter is billed as their “unique herb butter” – I’m pretty sure it has Roquefort in it. They serve it on top of the steak. I liked the butter, Honor did not. Nice skinny fries. Honor left most of her steak, annoying at any price – infuriating at these prices. What’s the matter, darling? “It’s not as good as the ones you get from the butcher.” I thought about it. And she was right. The lovely surroundings, with its in-your-face obvious traditionalism doesn’t makeup for the simple shortcoming of the beef. It was short on flavour, lacked depth, and hadn’t been hung well enough.

“Had I enjoyed the show?” Honor suddenly asked me.

“Hmmm, dunnow. It was so crowded I couldn’t enjoy it,” I said.

“Durr. He’s famous,” she said. “What did you expect.”

Out two steaks and chips, with one salad, and soft drinks was just over fifty quid. Rowleys is at 113 Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6HJ. Telephone 0207 930 2707

Dinner at The Angel, Stoke-by-Nayland

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The Angel in Stoke-by-Nayland review

The Angel is one of those country pubs that has had to reinvent itself as a smart, but not dress-up, restaurant. It’s a place where older people go once a week to see their friends, and young couples head to when they have a baby-sitter booked and are out on their monthly date.

Mismatched old tables, waitresses dressed in black, specials written up on the mirrors. And beams. Like most old buildings around here, it has lots of old oak beams. They’ve been revealed and cleaned and polished. The rooms are left with not so much the cosy rundown feel of a good Midsummer Murders set – more the sense that a big team of builders has breezed through with the simple instruction to reveal the old character. Thus, also, the exposed bricks.

The menu is half a dozen starters, half a dozen mains, and the same number of puddings. There were some specials, all but one had already gone. By country dining standards we’d arrived late – 8.15. Out friends were later still – 8.25. We hugged, and chatted and where shown to our table – 8.30.

Our friend Jane, a celiac, has this little routine when she sits down. She simply asks the waitress what on the menu is suitable for a celiac. It’s a reasonable request, and one that waitresses normally go and check with the chef. Our waitress did just that, and came straight back with her findings. I cannot understand why more restaurants can’t handle such requests this easily. It should be as simple as “what is suitable for a vegetarian? or a vegan?” If your business is serving food you should know. This chef went out of his way to help. It seems he normally cooks the salmon with a light flouring to the skin, for extra crispness. He’d be happy to do it without. She ordered the salmon.

I had duck liver pate, served – quite bizarrely – with a brulee topping. There was some good toast and a salad that was too big to be a garnish, too small to want to eat. It was served, in that silly modish manner, on a chopping board. The brulee added nothing, the pate beneath was excellent. Annie had Moules Mariniere, which had travelled over the Pyrenees intoSpainand came with a little chorizo – which worked, and chickpeas – which did not.

For main course I ordered Four hour braised Dingley Dell pig cheeks in red wine & rosemary on swede mash with a parsnip puree & mixed baby vegetables. Now, a pigs cheek is a very generous portion of meat, it is at least the size of your hand, has the fatty / meaty quality that you only almost find in pork belly, and then nestled underneath this unctuous goodness there is a little nugget of meat, about the size of a squashed golf ball. Pigs cheeks can be cured to become Bath Chaps, or slowly braised until much of the fat has rendered out. They can be hung up to dry and become the perfect mid-point between prosciutto ham and lardo. I had an oblong plate with three of the little nuggets, perfectly trimmed, slowly braised. They were served, as stated. It was good, but I felt cheated not to have had a whole pigs face on my plate. The skinny chips came served in a little decorative faux frying basket. I have no idea why.

It’s my own fault for being a non-drinker, but there were only two puddings made without booze. Something with goats milk and a twix flavoured cheesecake. I went with the twix. Nice enough, and finally something served on a round plate. Two of the others had chopping boards again.

The waitresses were pleasant, but the manger clean forgot to bring a second bottle of wine we ordered. By the time we were eating, the restaurant was empty – 9.20. The staff waited until we were on our puds before polishing the other tables and setting them ready for breakfast. I half-joked that they where about to start hoovering.

The manager decided to bring us the bill, unasked for at 11.00. £132 for four including a bottle and two glasses, of house white. We split the bill between two – he suggested £116 on each card. A genuine mistake, for which he apologised.

Rocky Road with the children

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I don’t really do baking. Strange how, when the rest of the food-writing world is embracing their inner Mary Berry, I turn my back on it all. I can bake, obviously, it’s just that I don’t really enjoy it.

My elder daughter has been doing some after school cookery lessons this term. Of course, they can’t do actual cooking, so it’s focused on measuring and mixing and then bringing the cold doughy lump, or biscuits on a baking tray home to be baked that evening. Fair enough, I try to reason. Although the matter makes me furious – I’m not going to get into the politics and problems of teaching cooking at school. Cooking is now something we must teach children our at home, just like table manners.

The rocky road that she made at school was good, but I thought the biscuits had been over crushed, and she left the cherries out (“but daddy, I don’t like cherries”), so I had a go at making some myself. It is surprisingly nice, but a bit in-your-face sweet with all those marshmallows and cherries in there. Following that success, I made some tiffin, much the same idea, melted chocolate with butter and golden syrup, and biscuits for crunch, but this time partnered with finely chopped dried figs and toasted hazelnuts. To make tiffin just follow the melting and biscuit bits given below and then simply add as many figs and hazelnuts as you care for. You won’t go wrong.

If you where to have a Miss Marple style afternoon tea, you might feel a tad silly serving up rocky road, with all its obvious American sweetness. But, a little piece of tiffin with tea following a small cucumber sandwich, would be spot on.

125g unsalted butter
250g good dark chocolate – the 70% cocoa-solids stuff
3 tbsp golden syrup
250g digestive biscuits
100g small marshmallows
200g glace cherries

Warm the butter, syrup and broken chocolate in a non stick pan gently over a low heat. I’ve found that once you’re using golden syrup and butter you can almost throw caution to the wind and abandon the double boiler. My daughter told me they used a microwave at school – I didn’t understand what she was talking about.

Whilst that is melting put a few spots of oil into a 10×8 inch baking tray. Spread that around and then cover with cling film. The oil will simply keep the cling film in place.

Break the biscuits up in a bowl. It is important not to crush the biscuits, you don’t want crumbs. Pour about three quarters of the melted chocolate into the biscuits and stir gently to combine. Add the marshmallows and the cherries, stir again. Tip all this into the cling lined baking tray and smooth down with a spatula. Finally pour the remaining chocolate over the top and again, try to smooth it down.

It will need a couple of hours in the fridge, before being turned out, cling film removed, and cut into little pieces with a big sharp knife. I think two or three bites per piece.

Soif, Battersea Rise

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Yesterday I had lunch with my publisher, Anne Dolamore, and my producer, Juliet Baird. We went to Soif, on Battersea Rise in South London.

We ordered three starters to share. Lardo was as you’d expect; many little slithers of salted back fat, laid out on a marble board. They were less salty than you’d normally find, and completely without any of those herbs on the surface that easily overpower the delicate cured-fat. Rillette was a starter sized for two people. It was expertly made but at the restaurant end of the swing-o-meter. I prefer my rillettes a little more homely, slightly rough round the edges, a bit more rustic. Anne’s a regular and had previously eaten the pork terrine. She recommended it. Apparently it used to be presented in its entirety for you to help yourself to as much as you wanted. There was the briefest moment of disappointment when it arrived as a perfectly generous single portion. They’d correctly guessed our appetites.

I had a pork chop for my main course – when was the last time you saw one on a restaurant menu? It was served with one of those thin oily green herb sauces spotted over the top, the chicest pork chop I’ve ever seen. It was cooked only just on the pink side of normal – that takes some skill to get right. Anne ate the black pudding and squid – back on the menu by popular demand. A big thick slice of soft boudin style sausage with grilled rectangles of squid and a few tentacles sitting on top. It was well sourced and perfectly cooked. But like its upmarket cousin –  black pudding and scallops –  I’m never certain that this combination achieves more than the sum of its parts.  Juliet had a “perfectly good” braised beef and red cabbage.

I alone had a pud, which I happily shared with the others – a beautifully made slice of caramel mouse, that cleverly avoided being too sweet. Anne had a little piece of cheese, Juliet an espresso. 

With one glass of red it was eighty quid. Anne and I lingered awhile, ordering a couple more coffees, which generously came on the house.

Soif, 27 Battersea Rise, London SW11  0207 223 1112

An appetite for Goulash

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Just got back yesterday from a couple of nights inBudapest. What a place!

I went to shoot a little film about Goulash, trying to find the essence of the dish, to find out how they cook it. It often happens that an English-language cookbook version of a meal will be wildly different from any authentic local version. And I certainly found this to be true. Without giving anything away, I promise you that the six bowls I was filmed eating, were significantly different. Similar, obviously, but clearly different to varying degrees.

I had three different bowls of Goulash in the morning – breakfast, elevenses and ten-twenty-fives, all upstairs at the Central Market. There’s a row of little food stalls all selling simple, brilliant, inexpensive food. You take your bowl of soup and sit perched at a bar on a stool overlooking the market. Lunch was goulash in a tiny neighbourhood restaurant, crowded with local pensioners getting an inexpensive hot meal, or working-men eating huge platefuls of stewed meat, cabbage and potatoes. Tea-time, and I was the scruffy odd-one-out eating goulash in The New York Café; an utterly extravagant froth of renaissance and baroque gilded plasterwork with marble columns and floors. Cherubs frolicked across the ceiling as I ate. Dinner was Goulash at the director’s favouriteBudapesthangout – The Calgary Bar. It’s a tiny place, the walls crammed with objects and curios. Viky, the owner, former model and reputed beauty-queen, had made the goulash herself. Just as we were about to start filming, a piano player she had arranged walked in. Completely unexpected by us, and straight out of a casting director’s dream, he played everything we asked for – from Hungarian Folk to Tom Jones. It’s just that kind of place.

I haven’t got a recipe for goulash yet. I went with the intention of trying out as many as I could in one day. Seeing what I could learn from them, glean some little special details, taste them, and form an opinion. Looking back now, they all had something to teach me. That’s how good food-writing starts, I hope. I’ll begin cooking and writing early next week, assuming I have the appetite for another bowlful by then.

An ordinary week

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I wouldn’t want you to think that the life of a rural food writer is all restaurant openings, lunches with publishers, freebies from artisan suppliers and exotically complex four-star meals three times a day. Would you believe that absolutely none of that has happened to me this week? I know.

Saturday was a lovely day, completely given over to preparing for, throwing, and tidying up after our youngest child’s birthday party. It was endless rounds of sandwiches, little chipolata sausages and a couple of hundred tiny sausage rolls. Obviously, iced party rings, chocolate fingers and those lovely pink wafer biscuits too. The requested sandwiches were the Nigella-style marmite sandwiches; you smear the marmite into the butter creating a smooth beige homogenised paste. I don’t know why but they really do taste better that way. The sausage rolls have no secret magic touch to them, they’re just good sausage meat from the local butchers, and all-butter puff pastry from the supermarket chill-cabinet. Plenty of egg wash and a hot oven. The full recipe will be in my next book. The final few remaining leftover sausage rolls where re-heated for a tired dinnertime snack, Annie and I sat exhausted and merely dipped them straight into a nearly finished jar of wholegrain Dijon mustard. Just sufficient.

Sunday Lunch, and unusually we didn’t have my father in law here. I suggested we go out for lunch. One of the local Indian restaurants had been highly recommended by a friend. They do a buffet Sunday lunch, so I thought we’d take the children. The food was lovely, and just as you’d expect – all the Friday night favourites were there. The problem was, I have become so used to cooking a roast for Sunday lunch that even an excellent chicken tikka just seems wrong, at that time of the week. The life-long weekly metronomic expectations of gravy and roast potatoes can’t be stopped by one splendid buffet.

Purple sprouting broccoli has reappeared in the veg box. The first night I just pulled the really big green leaves off and threw them into some leftover thick vegetable soup. It had been left alone, gathering flavour in the fridge for a couple of days. I served it with some excellent bread, just toasted and rubbed with raw garlic.

Annie asked if I could please use the rest of the purple sprouting broccoli in one of her favourite pasta sauces. It gets quickly boiled until it’s on the soft side of tender, and then chopped and added to almost too much garlic and a dried chilli that have been gently sweating in good olive oil. The broccoli then continues to cook in the garlic and oil as you put some spaghetti on the boil. When everything is nearly ready just add a few anchovies to the broccoli and a splash of the pasta water. Drain the pasta, add to the sauce (by now almost a mush), check for seasoning and serve on warm plates. No parmesan is needed – instead grate some very stale bread over the top or make coarse breadcrumbs and swirl a little more of the good olive oil over and around the food.

My truly terrible discovery this week (and I almost kept this to myself – oh, the shame of it) is that crumbled up Oreo cookies are even nicer than crumbled up Bourbon biscuits when thrown on top of vanilla ice-cream. Just a dash of fresh cream helps lightens everything, or more traditionally go with a couple of splurts from a chocolate-gloop squeezy-bottle.

Sandwiches, sausage rolls, curry for lunch, vegetable soup, broccoli and pasta and the dubious delights of cookies and ice-cream. All in all, a very ordinary week.