MOVIE
I went to Budapest to discover how the Hungarians really ate their Goulash. It turns out, it’s not what you think it is. It’s much better than that. I hope you like the film.
Tim Halket’s Seven Bowls of Goulash from Tim Halket on Vimeo.
My thanks as always to my brilliant producer Juliet Baird, and Alan Deakins, and Finn McCleave.
MOVIE
I’ve just started another page on here called movies. Grandly titled, they’re more like videos. Some shaky home-shot stuff, and occasionally a real proper film.
This one is a beatifully made video portrait (of me) by Will’ Terran. My thanks to him and, as always, to Juliet Baird for being the best producer.
Video Portrait from Tim Halket on Vimeo.
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
My new year’s resolutions:
Don’t keep putting things off (like starting this blog).
Cook everything that The Saladman brings (he delivers a weekly veg-box every Friday).
Other than that, it’s just the usual guff about restraint, compassion, helpfulness and other such niceties.
At the end of last year my publisher, Anne at Grub Street, cajoled and persuaded me to take up twittering. I honestly believe that the contract for my second book landing on my doormat shortly after my first twitterings was an unrelated matter – purely coincidental timing. Anyway, it turns out I didn’t need to be afraid of twitter, and I even enjoy it, on most occasions. Twitter is quite a busy forum for foodwriters so I’m feeling right at home there. I’ll get a link and a feed to my twitterings up on this site as soon as I can figure out the techie stuff.
The other person in my professional life is Juliet. We’ve started a little fledgling TV production company together. She wants me to “blog and build a web-presence”. I’ll have to look that up. Our plan is simply to make some brilliant TV shows. Inevitably these’ll have an emphasis on food, and there’s already a couple of things in the “pre-production” stage. I will be in some of the shows. It’s very exciting. We’re also taking a micro-crew to Budapest at the end of January to film some showreel footage and do some rehearsals. I expect bits of that will get posted on here in time.
Whilst food writing is necessarily autobiographical (how can I possibly write about food and recipes if I haven’t experienced, cooked and eaten it all myself first), I’m not terribly comfortable writing about myself in a broader sense. So by way of an introduction, here is the blurb from the back of my first book Five Fat Hens, I haven’t changed a word, which explains the slightly out of place (on a blog) use of third person narrative:
Tim Halket was born in Bromsgrove in 1967. Aged ten his family moved to Cambridge. He left school at sixteen with few formal qualifications and worked for a while as a draughtsman. He met his future wife, Annie, on his seventeenth birthday. In his early twenties he opened an art gallery in Cambridge, later enrolling at the Architectural Association to study Architecture. He has spent his recent years as a full-time house-husband and fits his writing in around his children’s needs. Throughout his life food has remained a constant comfort and he continues to write about food, whether it is for his local parish magazine or his next book. Any spare time is spent with his family and friends or trying to keep his old sportscars on the road. He lives in Suffolk with his wife and three children. He cooks for them everyday.
So plenty to do, and it will get done eventually. Recipes, food issues, video clips and general ramblings – all regularly updated. So please keep coming back, or sign up for automatic notifications (just as soon as I’ve figured that bit out).