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Moving virtual home...

Dearest louts, loutesses, and loutettes,

I am currently transferring all of Ramsden's random ramblings from blogger to wordpress. Please bear with me.

The new site (with video channels, embedded playlists, and a real talking goat) should be up and running by Friday.

Much love,

James.

Broth for a rainy day

I once made this soup for my grandmother when she was poorly, devoted grandson that I am. A couple of hours later a fax arrived with a handwritten note from Grannie.

Dear Jammy,

Thank you for the soup. It cheered me up. Just a few criticisms:

The bits of cabbage and bacon are rather large and difficult to eat, and so as a soup it requires a knife, fork, and spoon to eat it. Perhaps next time you could chop the bits up a little smaller.

Your grandfather says it was too salty.

G

Now there's gratitude. I'm sure Grannie was right, yet part of this soup's charm is its very ruggedness - it's big and brutish and slurpy and utterly warming; ideal for this bout of miserable weather. It is also very much a blank canvas of a soup. You could tinker around with it until the cows come home, adding fennel seed and sausage, pasta and Parmesan - even some mushrooms. It's a t'riffic fridge slut. This is just how I happened to do it today.

(PS here is a 'music for making soup' spotify playlist)

Bacon and Cabbage Broth

Serves 6

150g smoked lardons, or 8 rashers of streaky smoked bacon sliced
2 onions, peeled and sliced
1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced
2 large spuds, cut into large dice
150g cherry tomatoes
a savoy cabbage, sliced
1 sprig rosemary
parsley stalks
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 litres chicken stock
Oil, salt, pepper

Heat a little oil in a large saucepan and fry the bacon until crispy. Add the onion, garlic and spuds, along with the herbs. Season with salt and pepper, cover with a lid and cook over a low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the tomatoes, cabbage, and stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are soft.

Serve as you like.

Pizza East, Shoreditch High Street

9/10

Translation can be difficult. Different countries have different ways of expressing what is essentially the same thing, but is yet so nuanced, so finely tuned, that the merest mispronunciation can lead to extraordinary difficulties. A friend spent a year in South America, to hone what was, until then, fairly ropey Castilian Spanish. Having somehow landed a job at an international company, he was, on his very first day, ushered into the biggest board meeting of the year. All the heads of the South American arm of the company had gathered around a large table, with Jim, a six foot six, red-haired Englishman (sore thumb, anyone?) plonked at the end. And like in a bad dream he was asked to introduce himself.

"Hola, soy Jim.....", God this is awkward, he thought - I should tell them. "Soy muy embarazado". I'm very embarrassed.

Except that isn't what he said. "Hello, I'm Jim", he said, "I'm very pregnant". The room exploded, Jim's face fast turning scarlet.

With the first hurdle having been limped over, his boss tried to put him at ease with some gentle, GCSE oral exam-style questions.

"How did you get from the airport Jim?" he enquired.

"Ah, si. Err, yo cogi un autobus. Duro cinco horas". I got a bus. It took five hours.

Except that isn't what he said. He actually said this: "Ah, yes. Erm, I fucked a bus. It took five hours".

Because in Castilian Spanish 'coger' means 'to take'. In South American Spanish it does not.

And in Britain 'pizza' means 'flat bread with tomato and cheese'. In Pizza East it does not. I have been 4 times in a week, and only once has my pizza had tomato on it.

I'll start at the beginning. Last Friday I met a friend for lunch at aforementioned and much-lauded restaurant, and I fell in love with the place immediately. It's in the Tea building on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road, and occupies the vast, expansive ground floor. And yet it manages to be utterly cosy, warm and welcoming. The decor is a delight - proper distressed wood (not the furniture equivalent of 'faded' jeans - why spend £20 extra on jeans that look just like the ones you're replacing?), great long tables with swing-out seats, and comfy banquettes to sit back and wallow in. It's immaculate yet unfussy, the service attentive but unintrusive.

The antipasti menu is as good a translation of Italian grub as I have seen - no half-arsed parma ham and melon here. Proper food, beautifully cooked. Over the course of those four visits I ate a pingingly fresh and elegantly presented mackerel escabeche with lentils, the criminally underrated fish soft and yielding and singing with lemon. Wood roasted bone marrow, all rich and wobbly and flecked with sea salt, was a joy, slathered on toast and crammed in with radish and parsley salad. Mussels were also wood roasted, and were just about the plumpest I have eaten.



But my highlight was the soft polenta with chicken livers. These are stupendous - crispy little nuggets of liver with the gentlest, warmest spicing, sitting atop a golden hillock of creamy polenta, and adorned with a piquant sauce. Potentially my favourite dish of 2009.



Onto the pizzas, and I hope I won't risk being turned away on my next visit (which, let's face it, will probably be this evening) for saying that they're a mixed bag. A great deal of thought has gone into creating these - so much so that when I asked to substitute toppings (on my 3rd visit) I was told that I couldn't. They have been meticulous in their design, yet rigour and street food don't necessarily go together. Call me a philistine, but I simply don't think pizza needs tinkering with. The bases of these pizzas are terrific, with that magical, much sought-after combination of crispness and chew. So why the need to try and make them extra-special with bizarre toppings - sprouting broccoli on a pizza? That's a mistranslation if ever I saw one.

Some of the attempts at ringing the tomato-cheese-pig changes do work. The veal meatball pizza with prosciutto, sage, lemon, parsley and cream is an absolute triumph, the duck sausage a glorious, rich delight. But the best pizza, like the best Italian food, is the simplest. The salami, tomato and mozzarella pizza is, while perhaps narrow-minded, splendid in its simplicity, the Margherita even more so.

Pizza East - you had me by the jaffers as soon as I walked in. After the starters - handsome, original, stupidly scrumptious - I was thinking about leaving home and squatting on your doorstep with a sleeping bag and a fork. You don't need to fart around with the pizzas. It's like the most beautiful woman in the world wearing make-up - perhaps minutely enhancing, but completely unnecessary.

Ethnic Eating Experiment - Day 5 (finally)

Well, after a week and a half in the editing suite the video for my final ethnic eating day is ready for human consumption.

This really was the highlight of the week - brilliant shop, delightful shopkeeper, and a very kind friend to help with the filming. The food was delicious to boot.



Aubergine Khoresht with jewelled rice

Serves 4

For the Khoresht
1 tin of aubergines
1 onion, peeled and finely sliced
2 potatoes, sliced
1 1/2 tsp turmeric
4 dried limes, pricked with a knife
Water
Salt, pepper, oil

For the rice
Handful of barberries
Handful of chopped pistachios
Half a pint of rice
1 pint water


Pour boiling water over the barberries and leave to swell for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a little oil in a large frying pan or wok and add the aubergines. Fry until lightly coloured, remove and add the onion. Soften, remove and add the spuds. Fry until brown, then return the aubergines and onions to the pan, along with the turmeric, dried limes, and enough water to just cover the spuds. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat. Simmer for 30-40 minutes.

Put the rice and water in a saucepan with a little salt, cover and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 15-20 minutes (resist the temptation to remove the lid). While your rice is simmering away, drain the barberries and press out any excess moisture. Fry in a little more oil for a minute or do, before adding the pistachios and frying for another minute. Once the rice is cooked, season with a little pepper and add the pistachios and berries.

Check the khoresht for seasoning, and walk to your nearest Persian shop. Serve to the owner with the rice and some pilfered parsley.

Ethnic Eating Experiment - Day 4

To Chinatown, where this little piggy lost his feet.




Five spice trotters


Serves 2

3 trotters, washed thoroughly
2 tablespoons Chinese five spice
1 clove garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
1 thumb of ginger, peeled and sliced
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 litre water (I know I say a pint, but I ended up adding more. cheeky)
4 pak choi, divided and washed
1 packet Shanghai noodles
Oyster sauce
Oil, salt and pepper

Heat a little oil over a medium heat and brown the trotters on all sides.

Add the five spice and toss to coat all the meat thoroughly, then add the garlic, ginger, vinegar, soy sauce and water. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for an hour and a half.

Remove the trotters to rest and bang up the heat, reducing the cooking liquor until sticky. Meanwhile stirfry the pak choi and noodles with a little oyster and soy sauce. Serve with the trotters, along with a generous tickle of the cooking sauce.

Tomorrow I meet the Iranian John Torode. Stay tuned.

Ethnic Eating Experiment - Day 3

If yesterday's ordeal was incoherent, vomit-inducing and, frankly, useless, today was a complete joy. This is really what the experiment is about - trying things that I'd usually balk at, and being pleasantly surprised by their tastiness. Huzzah for East African bread (and apologies for early mispronunciation)!




Chickpea and spinach curry for lazy bastards

Serves 4

1 red onion, peeled and chopped
2 teaspoons of curry powder
1 tin coconut milk
1 tin spinach (by the way - I now LOVE tinned spinach; it's delicious)
1 tin chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon (or thereabouts) tomato puree
Salt, pepper, and olive oil
Injera bread

Heat a little oil in a saucepan or wok and saute the onion until soft. Stir in the curry powder, then add coconut milk, spinach, chickpeas and tomato puree. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning and serve with injera bread.

Thank you to my two helpful and slightly tipsy helpers.

Ethnic Eating Experiment - Day 2

Yesterday I enjoyed a foray into Polish gastronomy, and discovered the joys of sorrel soup. But it was too easy.

So I decided to try and make my own sausages using halal meat from the ethnic food stores on Brick Lane. Turns out there's a reason somebody invented a device for this purpose.

(Parental warning - this video contains strong language and scenes of a sexual nature)





(The audio occasionally goes slightly out of sync - apologies)




I'm not going to write up the recipe for the sausage mix as it does need tweaking - the fat content was too low, and the spice balance wasn't quite right. I'd like to work on this (and perhaps invest in the attachments for my kenwood) and try it again - watch this space!)

If you fancy making your own sausages, for Pete's sake don't try my method. Read this article and we'll forget this whole sordid affair ever happened.

Investigation into London's rich cultural diversity, Day 1

POLSKI SKLEP
- Polish provisions on your doorsklep (sorry).

Yesterday I began a week of looking at what London has to offer beyond standard supermarket fare. The results are below. Be not alarmed by the video's duration, as always there is some music at the end - this time courtesy of the wonderful Beirut.



Polish shops for you - Click here to see where they are.

Oh - the recipe:

Serves 2 - probably costs 75p a head

1 jar of szczaw
A little chicken or vegetable stock
A little cream
An egg

Empty the jar of sorrel into a saucepan and add some stock. Simmer. You won't need to season the already salty soup.

Meanwhile boil an egg for 8 minutes.

Add a little cream to the soup and stir for a minute. Peel the egg and cut it in half, before serving on top of the soup in warm bowls.

OTHER IDEAS FOR SZCZAW


- The sharpness of sorrel makes it ideal for fish; try draining the szczaw and serving it warm with a smoked mackerel fishcake.
- A szczaw sauce/white fish combo is similarly a match made in the upper reaches of Elysium
- Try the patties on this Polish blog

Hit me with further sorrel-based ideas if you have any.

Pancakes

Turns out I'm half American. I already knew that but it's something I used to pretend I didn't. There was a time when being half American was something you kept quiet - like having a third nipple, or a verruca, or your family locked in the basement. But then a year ago Obama was made president, and all of a sudden I was proud of my roots. OK, I didn't go all-out, Randy-style nuts, but I was proud of my half-people - proud that they had proved the stereotype wrong, and so I put on some weight and got real stupid for a while to celebrate. 'Cause I'm one of them now.

A year later and my cousin Gep is staying at my parents', and I have an urge for pancakes - thick, sweet, doughy pancakes, drowned in maple syrup. They take approximately 4 minutes to make and even less time to eat. I would have put some chopped blueberries in the batter, but, alas, we had none.

Serves 4 fat Americans

300g self-raising flour
4 tablespoons caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
300ml milk
Butter
Maple syrup
Bacon

Preheat the oven to 60C.

Mix the flour and sugar in a large bowl (sieve the flour first if you can be arsed - at 8 in the morning I can't, frankly).

Stir the eggs into the milk, then make a well in the centre of your flour and pour in the wet mix. Stir until fully combined, but don't overwork the batter.

Melt a little butter over a medium heat in a non-stick frying pan, and add a couple of tablespoons of the mix. Fry for a couple of minutes, turn and fry for another minute or two. Keep warm in the oven while you make the rest of the batch, before serving with maple syrup and bacon. God bless America.

4 days to go until challenge week

And the winner is...

I must start by thanking all of you for your humorous, constructive, and carefully considered suggestions for my next challenge. I initially suggested that I would put a final shortlist to the vote. Perhaps this would be more fair, more democratic, more brave even. But ultimately I want a project that will enrich my understanding of food and of cooking. Gruesome as it was, the raw vegan diet forced me to think outside my comfort zone regarding the essential matter of cooking and eating - and that can only be a good thing.

So Fiona Beckett's suggestion that I live on Floyd for a week, while tempting, would be far too easy, and rather too close to my own gastronomic proclivities. Georgia's idea of only cooking food that appears in song lyrics was particularly alluring - I loved the idea of having a playlist that was linked directly to what I was eating that week. But it still wasn't trying enough.

I loved Ms. Alex's suggestion of throwing a dice to determine each meal - 3 nice options, 3 nasty. This might be one for the future. But for the time being it is the mysterious 'Nibbles' who has won my vote. This was their suggestion:

"Work your way round your local international delis/corner shops to find unusual ingredients. On many local high streets now you can find Turkish, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Asian, Halal... There is so much choice in Britain's ever more multicultural society. But most Brits don't know what ingredients to buy or what they can cook with them. It would be cool if you showed us how we can make use of this choice and add a dash of culinary mix to complement our cultural mix." .

How often do we shy away from strange ingredients? The same ones, again and again. How often do we feel intimidated because something is unfamiliar? I talk a lot about trying to get my friends out of their 'comfort zones', but, truth be told, I rarely saunter out of mine. Of course I try new ingredients - ox cheek, ackee, pig's ear, fish sperm (seriously) - but I tend to cook them in ways I am comfortable with, alongside familiar ingredients.

Every day for all of next week I will cook something that I have never cooked or eaten before. Perhaps we will all learn something. In the meantime, I want you to tell me which ingredients you're scared of, or, if you are feeling vindictive, dare me to go for something truly alarming. Roasted baboon, anyone?

Ta...

Thank you for all of your suggestions for my next challenge - some interesting ones, some terrifying ones. Results tomorrow.

A NEW CHALLENGE - YOUR SUGGESTIONS PLEASE

The vegan diet seems aeons ago, and I feel it is time I challenged myself once again. This time, however, I want the challenge to involve cooking. And eating. Lots of cooking and lots of eating. The question is, how masochistic am I? Or, more importantly, how sadistic are you? I don't want some cop out that I've chosen - I want YOU to decide for me.

Here are some ideas to get the cruel juices flowing:

- how much weight can I put on in a week? Not advised.
- only eating things that start with the letter 'm'
- only cooking James Martin recipes for a week
- cornershop week
- fast food week
- endangered species week


Give me your best shot. I wait with baited breath.

All you need is love

Of all the cliches, adages and tautologies on Masterchef, the word that turns my stomach again and again is 'passion'. Everything is about 'passion', it seems - passion for cooking, passion for food, passion for ingredients, passion for experimentation etc etc. It's terribly perfunctory. It has become a punctuation mark, a sentence filler for when the judges can't think of anything more insightful to say about a contestant. As Tony Naylor writes on the Guardian Word of Mouth blog, Masterchef has stripped the word of any meaning through 'flagrant overuse'.It is also, more often than not, a euphemism. The cooking equivalent to the schoolmaster's "Ramsden tries hard" (i.e. Ramsden is thick as mud soup but I've got to wrestle some positive out of this car crash of a term).

For me it is not only overused, misused and abused, but it is a notion that is revered far beyond the measure it should be. This passion for food - what does it really mean? Passion is an ephemeral emotion, an intense, uncontrollable reflex. Passion doesn't sustain. It is the lusty throe of ecstasy, the impulsive stab of desire. Passion glints fleetingly in the glossy covers of food porn, or explodes magnificently in the climax of a meal. Passion does not last, and food cooked with passion and passion alone will most likely be inconsistent. There will be flashes of brilliance, sure, but in those moments when the spark is gone, what is left to support the cook?

For without love, there is nothing. Love and everything that comes with it - care, attention, nurture, devotion, and - yes - passion. Take Monday night. I had been working all day (a rarity), and returned late and hungry. Sunday's chicken had been made into stock, while any leftover meat had been stripped from the carcass and awaited my greedy advances. Against my better judgement (and due to a fairly empty fridge) I landed on making a risotto. I have never been convinced that chicken risotto works. I just don't feel that chicken's texture works well amidst the starchy grains, despite it being a leftovers staple. I'd rather prod it into a sandwich with a generous spoonful of mayonnaise, or, even better, toss it through crisp salad leaves with croutons and a piquant dressing.

But fate seemed to have decreed otherwise - the rice winked at me from the front of the cupboard, the stock was there, waiting, on the hob, the chicken already diced. There was even a bag of peas in the freezer to add bite and freshness. But because I was not convinced by the risotto's validity, I cooked it half-heartedly, one eye on the pot, one eye on the television. The result was a perfectly edible risotto, but one that did not come even close to inspiring any kind of passion in me whatsoever. The cooking had lacked care, and it tasted like it.

Two night's later I return in similar circumstances. This time there are two of us, and this time I have thought carefully about what I want to eat. I cook with all due care, attention, and love. The soup, while simplicity defined, is soothing and delicious. It is also quick and cheap.

Chilli beef noodle soup

Serves 2

4 spring onions, finely sliced
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 thumb of ginger, peeled and chopped into matchsticks
2 birds eye chillies, sliced
A handful of coriander, roughly chopped
300ml chicken stock
1 tablespoon fish sauce
Half a Chinese cabbage, sliced
100g oyster mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 rump steak
A handful of rice noodles
1 red chilli, halved, deseeded and sliced
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and add the spring onions, garlic, ginger and chillies. Stir constantly for 30 seconds, then add the coriander (reserving a little for the end), chicken stock and fish sauce. Bring to the boil, then add the mushrooms and cabbage. Turn the heat right down and simmer while you prepare the rest of the soup.

Boil the kettle and pour the water over the rice noodles in a bowl. Leave to soak for five minutes.

Meanwhile, season the steak with salt and pepper and rub with olive oil. Get a frying pan very hot (so that holding your hand 6 inches above it is unbearable for more than a second or two) and fry the steak for two minutes on each side. Remove to a plate to rest.

Drain the noodles and divide between serving bowls. Spoon over the soup making sure you get plenty of cabbage and mushrooms. Slice the steak thickly and arrange over the bowls. Garnish with slices of red chilli and a handful of coriander.

Is style ever more important than substance?

It is Sunday morning. Early autumn and bright. You are sitting in a little cafe in Soho, a stack of papers beside you. You wallow in the false agony of which section to begin with, knowing full well that you are going to read the whole lot before you heave yourself away (and also knowing full well that you are going to read all the extraneous matter first, before finally making it to the actual news). Your eggs benedict arrives, and as if some higher being wished to emphasise the majesty of its creation, the sunlight falls onto the table at the very moment the plate is nudged in front of you. It's quite a thing to behold - a delicate poached egg, its mattress a golden toasted muffin, the bedsheets the crispest bacon you have ever seen. And hugging this aesthetic wonder is the most glistening, unctuous hollandaise sauce man has ever conceived. Trembling with lusty hunger, you cut into the egg, your entire mouth awash with saliva at the very anticipation of that joyous moment when the yolk, emancipated from its albumen chamber, trickles out to dress the bacon.

Except it doesn't. The yolk inside is overcooked and dry. Further investigation reveals bacon that is not so much crisp as burnt. The muffin, that bread so redolent of comfort and warmth, is cold and hard. To cap it all, the hollandaise is so lemony that with a little sugar you could stick a biscotti in it and call it a posset. How had a breakfast that promised so much, that looked so perfect and absolute, turned into a repeat of Christmas 1990 (when that box that you thought was a Superman costume sent from your aunt in the States was actually a box of cosmetics intended for your cousin in Nebraska)? How dare a chef promise so much to the eye and deliver so little to the palate?

Everybody judges a book by its cover. We look at people and decide subconsciously whether we like them or not, whether we fancy them or not. It's a reflex. This isn't to say it's always accurate. In fact, I love being proved wrong - when my initial opinion of a person, book, film, turns out to be miles off-radar. It's nice to be surprised. Food is no different. To drift into the realms of cliche, we eat with our eyes before eating with our mouths, and if our eyes are unmoved, our palate is less likely to be. But is it that simple? Certain 'ugly' dishes are cantilevered into the lofty realms of bewitching perfection through their very ruggedness. The pork pie, the cassoulet, bread and butter pudding - they are the Alan Rickmans of the food world, the dishes so full of surprises that every time you pile into them it's just like the first time.

Then we have the Victoria Beckhams. The plate itself is a study in aesthetic precision; the sauce so artfully skidded in with the back of a spoon (recreating the oft sought-after 'trod-in dog turd' effect), the roasted sea urchin whimsically dressed to look like an otter's ballsack, and pretty but utterly redundant microleaves scattered with an air of fancy (when we know full well that the little blighters were placed on with tweezers). Visually it is mighty impressive. But beneath the polished exterior is a dish that is completely lacking in personality, in good taste, and in intrigue. What's more, your brief foray into this one-dimensional plate has already destroyed its only raison d'etre. No wonder certain 'celebrities' have plastic surgery. If your only significant characteristic is your looks, what on earth are you going to do when you look like a weathered old muffin?

So is it possible that certain things can get away with vacuity when stunning to behold? My opinions on art certainly allow for this. I don't care if a painting represents the most intense of political struggles amongst the indigenous population of Siberia during the early 15th century - if it looks like a child has vomited on the canvas then it's not for me. Equally if I find a painting visually attractive, but discover that it represents the anguish of an early autumn mushroom, then fine. Paintings are for looking at.

Food, on the other hand, is not. Food is for eating. Yet, on Tuesday night I was forced to reconsider my standpoint on the subject. I was catering for a drinks party and, amongst other things, served blinis with smoked salmon, sour cream and wasabi caviar. Wasabi caviar, as caviar goes, is not expensive. They're hardly going to adulterate the expensive stuff with horseradish. A 100g jar was £8.45. The same sized jar of Beluga caviar £950 (yeah, I know). It looked stunning perched atop the blini, a bright, luminescent green on the crisp whiteness of the sour cream. The merest tip of a teaspoon was all that was needed for its visual effect to work, and after fashioning a tester I duly popped it in my mouth. Not a hint of wasabi. Odd. I tested another, this time with considerably more of the roes. Still nothing - not even the salty marine tang that are part of why you eat the stuff. I checked the label. Was this just plain old caviar that had the misfortune of being harvested in the waters of Chernobyl? Seemingly not.

I pushed the blinis, smoked salmon and sour cream to the side, and went at it with the teaspoon. This time I could just about taste the wasabi, but it was ever so faint, and certainly didn't have the nose-clearing bite of horseradish - a bite that goes so well with smoked fish. Now I was in a quandary. The stuff tasted of nothing, and the (flying fish) eggs were so small that you hardly got that delightful pop when you bit down on them. But it looked fantastic. Following the rule of 'only add it if it contributes to the flavour or texture' I should have dropped it altogether. But I didn't, I kept it in. And the guests were wide-eyed and exhilarated. And I didn't feel like a charlatan.

Should I have? I would suggest that when it comes to canapes, the visual effect is particularly important. It's not like sitting down to a main dish, when you have to eat mouthful after mouthful of the same thing. I have a hazy memory of a chef (whose name escapes me right now) once saying that anyone can make the first mouthful taste good - a great cook will make the last one taste good too. But with canapes your first mouthful is also your last mouthful, and as such the two senses of sight and taste are on a par. This isn't to say that an abhorrent tasting canape is kosher if it looks good, but in this context I believe a whimsical, if cosmetic, flourish is entirely acceptable, if its effect is at once mouth-watering, eye-catching, and amusing.

It seems I'm starting to rewrite my own rulebook. Next week, is pineapple and ham pizza always wrong?


Smoked salmon, sour cream and wasabi caviar blinis


It's very easy to make your own blinis or pikelets - they're essentially pancakes but instead of using a ladle use a teaspoon. I, however, do not have a recipe to hand, so will give you the version I did.

Makes 36

36 miniature blinis (easily found in shops)
150g smoked salmon
50g sour cream
Wasabi caviar (otherwise use the black lumpfish which is cheap but adequate)
Lemon juice
Pepper

Cook the blinis in the oven, remove and leave to cool.

When ready to serve (not too long before as they tend to go soggy) pop a little strip of salmon on each blini, curling it both to fit on top and to give it some height. On top of that add the merest quarter tea spoon of sour cream, followed by an even more restrained dab of caviar. Squeeze over a drop of lemon juice, a twist of pepper, and serve.

Like falling in love again

There's nothing like a bit of abstinence. When Jesus spent forty days (and forty nights, mind) in the wilderness, I bet the first thing he did on completion was pile into the biggest goat stew since his Dad knows when. With extra goat. And loads of water. Which he promptly turned into wine. In fact, I imagine he was so deeply enamoured by the feast that lay before him, and so terribly geoffed* from all the water-wine he'd been guzzling, that he swayed bleary-eyed, elbows on the table and cutlery swinging like pendula, and slurred:

"This meat shall inherit the earth".

The rest was lost in translation.

And I know how he felt. The simple joys of cookery have never seemed so profound to me as they have over the past week. My lunch in the Hawksmoor aside (which was transcendental in a more cathartic, singular way), every morsel that has passed my quivering lips has been adored and appreciated in a way that it wasn't before. A month ago a toasted muffin for breakfast would have been eaten as passively as any breakfast is usually eaten; a baked potato for supper par for the course. Now these things are special, magical, decadent. And hot.

So I guess the raw vegan diet had a purpose. It made me realise just how much better food tastes when it is cooked - more flavour, more vitatlity, more love. Say what you will about the health benefits (I'm just not willing to get into a debate on this - not now anyway), but raw food just don't taste as good. For that reason I'm glad I did the diet - it has made me appreciate real food all the more.

*Geoffed, abbr. exceedingly drunk. Geoff Hooned.

Grilled lamb rump with smashed chickpeas


This is a great quick supper. The marinating time aside (and if you can only do it for 15 minutes, so be it), this can be from cooker to plate in under ten minutes.

Serves 2

2 lamb rump steaks
A small clove of garlic, crushed
A handful of parsley, finely chopped
A few rosemary leaves, finely chopped
A red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
2 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
1 tin of chickpeas
Salt and pepper

Toss the lamb in the crushed garlic, herbs, chilli, anchovy and lemon juice. Add a little olive oil, season with pepper and leave for up to 2 hours.

Scrape the marinade off of the lamb (but don't for Pete's sake chuck it away). Stick a frying pan over a strong flame and, when it looks like it's thinking about smoking, add the lamb. Fry for 2 minutes on each side, then remove to a plate to rest.

Drain the chickpeas and cover with water. Pop on a medium heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain into a colander. In the same saucepan, heat a little oil and gently fry the marinade for a minute, taking care not to burn the garlic. Return the chickpeas to the pan and smash with a spoon, fork or masher, stirring the marinade through thoroughly. You're not looking for a smooth paste here; rough is how we like it.

Serve with thick slices of lamb and some (preferably cooked) green vegetables.

THE END OF THE RAW VEGAN DIET

Yes, it's finally over. I shall write about it in more detail when I have longer. In the meantime, here is the video of my post-diet lunch in the Hawksmoor. Life-affirming would be an understatement.

PS Don't be alarmed by length of video - it's half that length with music at the end. That's just how I roll.

Saf, Curtain Road

The one fillip to this bizarre experiment (and it is becoming, day by day, more bizarre) was the knowledge that Saf, the respected raw vegan restaurant in the east end, was just around the corner from my flat. The consolation that I was not the only person in this city who thought the concept of such a diet was anything but ludicrous offered me solace in those darker moments when I found myself seduced even by the lusty, crass allure of the kebab shop opposite. Let me tell you, that nondescript gobbet of flesh might as well be a rib of wagyu beef when, at midnight, you realise that you have eaten nothing hot, nor proteinaceous, nor truly delicious, for 10 days.

Of course, I had received mixed reviews about Saf. Some said it was wonderful, some said it was dire. (I'm not sure why I just wrote that. Surely the term "mixed reviews" intimates that opinions differed on the subject, so quite why I had to emphasize this in such a tautological manner I don't know. It must be the lack of protein. (NB lack of protein may lead to short temper and attention span)). But somewhere that so gauchely serves nothing but raw vegan food is always going to cause some controversy, and so off I went for lunch, in the hope that this eternal nightmare of salad and fruit (I'm afraid the will to 'try new things' disappeared along with my will to live) could be tempered by a lunch that was more remarkable than what I had been eating for the previous week. I wasn't entirely disappointed.

The restaurant itself sits on Curtain Road, just off Old Street. A long, clean room with a conservatory at the end, it is a pleasant space, but on this occasion it was also a very empty space. Perhaps Wednesday lunchtime is never the most rollocking of shifts in any restaurant, yet it struck me that Saf was plugging one small demographic. Of the estimated 180,000 vegans in the UK, let's reckon there are 15,000 in London (a generous assumption; surely most of them live in the woods). Then let's assume that of that 15,000, 1500 live in the catchment area of Saf (a more realistic figure - vegans tend to migrate to Hackney). Of that 1500, the number of them that are going to shaft £30 on lunch midweek is, well - there were about 5 of us in there.

I started with the beetroot ravioli with cashew herb ricotta (pictured above). It arrived quickly, as well it should have done, being raw (though there was some suspicious sizzling coming from the kitchen). It did not arrive, however, with the asparagus, carrot and fennel salad, balsamic figs and pumpkin oil, as promised by the menu. Instead it was accompanied by a pile of celeriac remoulade. This went completely over my head, as I had forgotten what it said on the menu (did I mention short attention span?), and so I piled into it uncomplainingly, being a big fan of remoulade anyway. The first mouthful was like nothing I'd ever tasted before, and as such was rather alarming. My recollection of the menu being as it was, the lump of stodge gluing together the two slices of beetroot was a complete mystery, and like putting any mysterious matter in one's mouth, unpleasant. Yet it won me over. Whether this was down to the rich meatiness of the filling, or my fetish for beetroot in any way, shape, or form, I don't know, but the dish was a great success, and as fulfilling a thing as I had eaten for some time.

Next I ordered a Pad Thai of courgette noodles with enoki mushrooms and mung shoots. Once again the menu had misled me, there being no mung shoots, replaced instead by manges tout (though this deception also escaped my notice until I looked at the menu later that day). It was pretty standard nosh for an experienced raw vegan like myself, consisting of those staple flavour-boosters of chilli, sesame, lime and coriander. It did, however, come with the added nudge of chipotle sauce, its rich smokiness adding a great deal of interest to an otherwise familiar plate. But something smelled fishy. Literally. And it was making me gag. It transpired that this rancid piscine whiff was coming from the seaweed that lined the bowl. It was like eating raw vegan food whilst someone wafted last month's sushi under my nose, and it ruined any enjoyment of an otherwise tidy and well-conceived dish.

So, as pleonastically predicted, Saf is a bit of a mixed bag. There is no doubting the inventiveness of the food, nor the skill in the not-cooking. For a vegan it is a triumph that such an impressive restaurant exists. But strip away the context and focus on the food and the food alone, and there is little that sticks with me besides the stench of seaweed clinging to my nostrils and the memory of the waiter's insistence on calling me 'mate'.

The perils of raw veganism and alcohol

I have a confession to make. I have not stuck completely to my raw ve-guns. This is what happened. I went to a friend's for dinner last night, already hungry from a day's disastrous eating - a lunch of thai coconut soup went awry when I had the mexico idea of trying to blend raw carrot and ended up with something like a cold curdled curry. The soup actually had potential. Coconut milk, ginger, chilli, lime zest and juice, coriander, grated carrot and cucumber. It tasted good - its texture was not. Later that afternoon, passing a grocer, I scooped up an apple - a bad apple, it turns out. I have always said that the definition of disappointment is biting into a furry apple. On this occasion that crunchless mouthful was less a case of disappointment and more one of abject despair.

So I was famished. But my transgression didn't come in the shape of food. No, I was tricked, heartlessly, mercilessly, wonderfully, into drinking bourbon, the sweet brown liquor slipped surreptitiously into a simple but delicious cocktail with cranberry and lime (Nic's invention, so says he). Bourbon is cooked, I was later told, and so I had technically slipped up. Technically. But I was not about to start feeling guilty - 9 days had passed and not a morsel had passed my lips that wasn't kosher. I was, however, about to start getting horrifically pissed. It transpires that drinking on an empty stomach is not a wise venture, and by the end of cocktail number one I was already feeling oiled. 5 hours later I was playing the piano in Last Days of Decadence on Shoreditch High Street. In my head I sounded like Rachmaninov. I probably sounded more like the submissions for the under 7s piano competition at Ripon Cathedral Choir School (there is some hazy recollection of chopsticks being wheeled out at one point). I certainly had a rip through my piano staple, Neil Young 'Till the Morning Comes'. Unfortunately when the morning did finally come, I found myself nursing the most almighty hangover since the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you did happen to be in Last Days last night, I apologise for ruining your evening.

While veganism might have stilted my own musicality last night, it certainly worked all right for some. Here is my ultimate vegan playlist, with Spotify to boot:

Meat Is Murder - The Smiths
Close to Me - The Cure
Get Gone - Fiona Apple
Porcelain - Moby
Monty Got A Raw Deal - R.E.M.
Lime in da Coconut - Harry Nilsson
My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
Suzanne - Leonard Cohen
Don't Get Me Wrong - The Pretenders
Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor

Spotify playlist: Vegan Vibe: http://open.spotify.com/user/jteramsden/playlist/35LZEwuBebIEHaxUbnT5KA

Raw vegan experiment - Week 1, done.

'Glosoli' - Sigur Ros

Raw vegan experiment - Day 6

'Music For A Nurse', by Oceansize

Raw vegan experiment - Day 5

'The Golden Age' - Beck

Beetroot salad with yogurt, lemon and cumin dressing


Serves 2

3 beetroots of varying varieties if you can find them
A pinch of ground cumin
1 tablespoon (soya) yoghurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
A handful of parsley and chives, chopped
A shallot, peeled and sliced
Salt and pepper

Peel and slice the beetroot. Stir together the cumin, yoghurt, lemon juice and olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Arrange your beets on a plate and garnish with herbs and sliced shallots.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 4

'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' - The Smiths

Cold cucumber soup



If you try and pretend that you are indeed eating soup, and not just a big bowl of tzatziki, then this is really rather delicious. Perfect for a starter in the summer. Next summer.

Serves 1

A quarter of a cucumber
4 tablespoons soya yoghurt
1 small clove garlic, peeled and crushed
A handful of mint, coriander and chives, chopped
A good squeeze of lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Grate the 'cumber into a bowl. Stir in the yogurt, garlic, herbs and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper and chill for an hour or so. Remove from fridge, check for seasoning and adjust with salt or some fresh tears, and eat.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 3

Couscous salad with cherry tomatoes and chilli


I'd never done couscous using cold water, and I have to say that I was not convinced it would be a success when told about it by my mate Dave. I'm thrilled to say that not only was it great, I actually preferred the texture to couscous done with boiling water. So there.

Serves 1

A handful of couscous
150ml water (or thereabouts)
A few cherry tomatoes, halved
1 chunk of cucumber, roughly chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
A good handful of mint and coriander, chopped
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Stick the couscous in a bowl and pour over the water. Leave for 15 minutes (the couscous, not the room - it's not that coy).

Fluff with a fork then add your other ingredients, seasoning with salt and pepper and olive oil. Devour like a crazed animal.

Banana and blackberry smoothie



Makes about a litre

3 bananas
A big ol' handful of blackberries
150g oats and seeds
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons soy yoghurt
200ml orange juice
Dried berries - raisins, cranberries, woteva

Stick everything but the dried berries in a blender and, you know, blend. You could sieve it if you are worried about having bits in your teeth for a week (I personally consider the detritus between my molars a cheeky mid-morning snack).

Chill for an hour and pour into a glass with a handful of dried berries on top.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 2

Gazpacho

Makes 2 large portions, serves 4-6 as a starter

2 large tomatoes
300g passata
1 red pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
1/4 cucumber, roughly chopped
1/4 red onion, roughly chopped
1 small clove garlic, roughly chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and, you guessed it, roughly chopped
A handful of herbs - parsley and basil, a little rosemary
Salt, pepper, sugar
Olive oil
White wine vinegar, about a tablespoon



Peel the tomatoes by putting a cross in the top with a sharp knife, then leave them in boiling water for a minute. The skin should then come straight off. Quarter them and remove the seeds.

Put the tomato flesh, passata, cucumber, onion, garlic, chilli and herbs in a blender. Season with salt, pepper and sugar and add a dash of olive oil and white wine vinegar. Blend.

Chill for an hour in the fridge and serve with a blob of pesto.

Raw vegan experiment - Day 1

Tagliatelle of courgettes with pesto and black olives



It might seem a little pretentious to be calling this 'tagliatelle', but for all intents and purposes the courgette was a replacement for pasta.

Serves 1

A big handful of basil leaves (no stalks)
50g pine nuts
1 crushed garlic clove
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
(N.B. - you will have pesto leftover. I intend to plonk mine in some gazpacho)
A few black olives, roughly chopped
2 small courgettes
Tarragon vinegar

Make the pesto by whizzing together the basil, pine nuts, garlic and lemon juice. Blend in olive oil until you have a loose-ish consistency. Season with pepper and salt.

Take a vegetable peeler and peel the courgettes down into strips. Toss through the pesto and olives, add a dash of vinegar, and serve.

Rocket and beansprout salad with chilli lime dressing



Again, genuinely tasty, though would have benefited from having a whacking great chargrilled steak sitting proudly atop it.


Serves 1

For the dressing
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon sesame oil (not strictly allowed, I since discovered, though just painting an honest picture. Replace with sesame seeds if being strict)
Dash of soy sauce
Dash of fish sauce (both technically fermented, I believe)
1 red chilli, finely chopped (I wouldn't recommend using a habanero as I did. A little too pokey)
1 small clove of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped coriander
A pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
(NON-VEGAN RECOMMENDATION: I have done this dressing before with yoghurt and it's delicious that way too)
For the rest then
Rocket leaves
Beansprouts
Some finely sliced red onion
A few coriander leaves

Make the dressing by whisking together the ingredients. Taste and adjust with a little more oil, sugar or lime juice if needed.

Assemble the salad leaves, sprouts and onion, and drizzle over the dressing. Garnish with a few coriander leaves. Try not to cry yourself to sleep.

Raw power

Today I start a two-week raw vegan diet and I'm beginning to wonder why. It all started a few months ago when discussing raw veganism with Frank 'Aloe Vera Frankie Baby' Bryant. Frankie told me that it was a diet that he had done often, and that it had the most extraordinary effect on him, not only making him healthier of body but also of mind and spirit. A child once came up to him in the street and hugged him, seemingly due to the spiritual energy vibrating through his very being. In a somewhat Thatcherite manner (and therefore not particularly raw or vegan), he needed only 4 hours sleep a night. There were clearly benefits to such a diet.

But come on - raw and vegan? Just raw I could probably manage, quite happily living off sushi and salads for a couple of weeks. Were it only vegan I might get by as well (only for those two weeks, mind). Toast with tahini and jam for breakfast, vegetable curries and pastas and the like...it would be very doable. But both at the same time? This ain't going to be a picnic (and quite frankly, what would a picnic be without a pork pie and a doorstop sized hunk of cheese?).

But I like a challenge, and seeing as I'd been doing a bit of writing for a vegan magazine called Off The Hoof (whilst remaining firmly ensconced in omnivorous territory), I decided to mix business with displeasure, and embark upon this fortnight of gastronomic insanity, all the while recording its effect on my mind, body and soul.

The implications on the mind and soul will, I imagine, become clear as time progresses. There are all sorts of lofty and wafty theories out there in the ether, suggesting that I will reach spiritual enlightenment, and that my connection with Mother Earth will intensify holistically, her bounty and succour becoming one with me, as I chomp through everything she has to offer without even bothering to cook the stuff.

As for the body, there are two schools of thought. Although I am doing this principally as an experiment to challenge both my willpower and culinary creativity, I'm not going to pretend the supposed positive benefits to my health won't be a bonus. Should the experiment be a success, I will have increased energy, better skin, and better digestion (sounds ominous). I should also lose some weight (a brief perusal of the last few posts should indicate that this can only be a good thing), and my risk of heart disease will decrease. I have a feeling that two weeks is not going to have a huge effect on my heart, though as someone once said, every little helps.

The bad news then. I am likely to suffer a detoxification reaction involving headaches, nausea, and cravings. Considering I crave meat and cheese at the best of times, God only knows the level of longing that will be pawing at my (supposedly composed) brain after a few days of this. I am also likely to be deficient in calcium, iron, B12, protein and calories. So quite where all this 'energy' is supposed to be coming from I'm not sure.

But it's the anthropological arguments that I find most fascinating. A vegan (and raw vegan at that) would argue that our ancestors ate everything raw, and therefore so should we. They have clearly never heard of the theory of evolution. Our ancestors lived in caves, wore loin cloths, communicated in grunts, gnawed at raw flesh, interbred, and then died somewhere in their twenties. Not the greatest yardstick by which to conduct life in the 21st century.

As the brilliant Jeffrey Steingarten points out in his equally brilliant The Man Who Ate Everything, neanderthal became homo sapiens when he worked out that a grilled mammoth steak tasted and digested better than a raw one. Health improved, brain power developed, and the neanderthal ceased to exist, remembered only as an idiom for crudeness and vulgarity. Sort of like Jordan, only better looking.

What Steingarten also explains, is that the notion that 'raw = healthier' is not only utterly misguided, but actually often contrary to the truth. Many foodstuffs are harmful until cooked. We've just about worked that out with things like potatoes and rice, yet continue to extol the virtues of raw spinach, broad beans and broccoli. It doesn't seem to make sense.

Nevertheless, in the coming two weeks I shall try to make sense of it, and will keep a day to day video diary of my progress on this site.


In the meantime, any suggestions for good raw vegan recipes (surely you have hundreds of them?) would be much appreciated.

Agony Lout

A new initiative -



Get in touch via email, comment, or even by sending me your own videos, and let's make blogging a two-way experience.

Coeur blimey!

The monthly freezer lottery has always been cause for intrigue and mystery. Yesterday, however, it made the leap from such a level to one of utter bewilderment and, ultimately, elation. For this indiscernible lump of meat that I had pilfered from home God knows when had been the subject of head scratching for quite some time. There were varying theories. (Please don't think me foolish or ignorant, though I may be both - something frozen is much harder to decipher than something fresh, that's why the yardies keep bodies in freezers). One theory was that it was a lamb's neck. Not wildly idiotic. Sure, it was a little stouter than a lamb's neck, but we were ball-parking. Perhaps it is shin of beef, we ventured. Again, possible, though unlikely. It looked somewhat offally, and yet it wasn't a kidney, and it certainly wasn't liver.

"Well it's something edible," I said to my sister as I pulled it out of the freezer on Sunday evening, "and whatever it is, we can eat it tomorrow night."

It was with a mixture of trepidation and excitement that I opened the fridge door yesterday morning to see what was in store for supper. We had friends coming, see, and while somewhat tickled by the prospect of serving a giant bollock to people who had probably eaten far worse at Notting Hill Carnival that day, I wasn't particularly enamoured by the idea of chowing down on that particular gland myself, much less so working out how to cook the bloody thing. But it wasn't a bollock. It was a heart. A sinewy, fatty, wobbly heart. A once beating heart. My own heart was suddenly beating rather faster than before. I was exhilarated.

But what to do with it? I consulted my latest cooking hero, Henry Harris, for inspiration. Henry is the chef at Racine in South Kensington, a restaurant at which I have eaten only once, but whose steak tartare will remain forever seared on my memory as the finest I have ever devoured (beating the first one I ever ate at La Coupole in Paris - a dish I had ordered erroneously as an ignorant 14-year-old, in the belief that I was going to be fed a cooked steak. I didn't regret my mistake). Henry's advice was, inevitably, sound, unpretentious, and made me salivate just reading it. He suggested: "stuff it with breadcrumbs, anchovy, garlic, rosemary, lemon zest and chilli". It was the word 'stuff' that got me. Anything that is stuffed is delicious, n'est ce pas?

So I set to work after a lunch of leftover mac and cheese, dividing the ventricles (that's right, ventricles) and working out how I was going to slip this behemoth of a ticker past some potentially fussy guests. On the one hand, I decided, it would be pretty outlandish to serve unsuspecting visitors some 'beef' before savagely revealing, like Titus Andronicus, that they had in fact just wolfed down an ox's heart (or, in T.A.'s case, their own children). But I didn't much fancy the other option. To go in all guns blazing and telling the bastards what was on the menu in advance would only make them prejudiced, and much, much less likely to enjoy their dinner. So I told them it was beef, and that they had to guess which cut it was. The freezer game began anew.

"Shin?"

"Nope."

"Neck?"

"Nope."

"Bollock."

"Bingo!"

"Really?"

"Nope.....it's actually heart."

Natalie's face fell; her fork, now half way to her mouth, fell with it. Then something wonderful happened. For only the briefest of reflections led our collective to reason thus: it tasted good before we knew it was heart, why should this recent enlightenment change anything? I suppose you could use this reasoning for something rather less savoury, such as eating a dog, but I think in this case my logic stands. As Brits we are irrationally squeamish about food. Bollocks and brains I can kind of understand, but besides that I don't really think much should be avoided. I guess that's all I've got to say on the subject. Anyhoo, here's what I did. Ta Henry.

Braised Ox Heart with Polenta and Salsa Verde

Serves 6

1 Ox Heart, about 1.5kg
50g breadcrumbs
A handful of parsley
2 sprigs of rosemary
Zest of a lemon
1 red chilli
6 anchovy fillets
12 rashers of streaky bacon

1 large onion
4 cloves of garlic
Half a bottle of red wine
500ml beef stock

For the salsa verde
A big handful of flatleaf parsley
1 sprig rosemary
A small handful of tarragon
A shallot
2 plump cloves garlic
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
4 anchovy fillets
1 tablespoon capers
5 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of a lemon

For the polenta
200g polenta
1.5 litres water
100g grated Parmesan
50g butter

Salt and pepper and all that jazz.

Preheat the oven to 170C.

Finely chop the herbs (first removing the stalk from the rosemary), the chilli (first removing the seeds) and the anchovies, and mix with the lemon zest and breadcrumbs, seasoning with salt and pepper. Gingerly open up the heart between and press in the stuffing. Wrap securely with the bacon.

Peel and slice the onion and squish the garlic (leave the peel on). In a large saucepan heat some olive oil and soften the onion with the garlic, until lightly caramelised (seasoning first, of course). Add the heart to the pan before sloshing over the wine and stock. Bring to the boil, pop a lid on top and slip into the oven. Cook for 4-5 hours.

Meanwhile crack on with the salsa verde, finely chopping the herbs, shallot, anchovies and capers, and crushing the garlic. Mix together with the mustard, lemon juice and olive oil. Season with pepper (no salt, due to the saltiness of the anchovies and the capers), cover and refrigerate until needed.

45 minutes before you're ready to serve, bring the water to the boil with 2 teaspoons salt. In a steady stream, pour in the polenta, whisking continuously. Stir for 10 minutes, then cook for a further 30, stirring regularly and topping up with water as and when needed. Remove the heart from yon oven and rest.

Stir the butter and Parmesan into the polenta and taste for seasoning. Serve with slices of heart, a dollop of salsa verde, and a watercress salad. I'd show you the snaps, but I've only gone and lost the friggin laptop lead.

So would you try this recipe? Honestly? I'm curious to know. I know that I wouldn't have necessarily searched out a heart for my tea, but I'm thrilled I did. A lesson, I hope, that I - that we - should all be more adventurous in the kitchen.

Why does no one write letters anymore?

Nearly a week has passed since yet another idyllic few days in France, and I am yet to write a letter of thanks to my hosts for a sojourn that was, even by my own prodigiously gluttonous standards, hard to beat. The days passed like one long meal, punctuated by the odd (sometimes very) game of tennis, or a brief lollop in the swimming pool. Breakfasts were spent fighting over the myrtilles sauvages (is there a better jam?) and discussing what to eat for lunch. Lunch, in turn, consisted of wondrously smooth mousse de canard slathered on crusty loaves, beetroot and goats' cheese salad, and the juiciest peaches. Then around 4, as the last of the salad was being mopped up and the cheese rinds gnawed at, talk would turn to supper. And on it went, in this perfect cycle of insatiability.

You will, then, understand my horror of taking so long to write after such a delightful week. I finally made it to a stationers by Old Street, in search of writing paper. I get a bit overexcited in stationers. All the pens, the paper, the funky notebooks and glossy diaries - it's the sort of procrastinatory nonsense I'm such a sucker for, as if buying pens and notebooks makes you feel like you've actually done something constructive. With blinkers firmly on, I wandered up to the counter:

"I say, old boy," I whispered conspiratorially (I often do this, when buying something as banal as writing paper - adds a bit of intrigue). "I say," I continued, "could you point me in the direction of the letter-writing paper".

"I'm sorry sir," replied the shopkeeper amiably, "but we don't sell that shit anymore."

"I beg your parsnips!" I ejaculated. "What is the meaning of this?!"

"Well," started the man, his wizened old face a strange amalgam of shame, amusement, and confusion, "no one writes letters anymore".

"But you sell envelopes," quoth I, aghast.

The man smiled.

"Seriously, are you joking?" I chuckled nervously. The oxymoron was beyond me at this particular moment of peturbation. You see, I'd been lamenting the slow death of the art of letter writing for some time now. So much so that a friend and I had resolved to write a letter once a week. I wrote two in a day and then, well, I went to France. Though I did write to my grandfather from there. So I guess that counts. Though it was a thank you letter. Quite a late one. Pattern emerging, I fear.

He was not joking, it turns out.

"Surely you could stock just some paper old bean, couldn't you? It's not like it goes off."

He mumbled something about quota-filling, then something that sounded like an swear word. I made a swift exit and stomped back to my flat to send an email to someone about the experience.

And that, my friend, is just the problem. If e'er there were a stupid title for a blog post, it sits atop this one. No one writes letters anymore because of email. This was highlighted for me during a previous trip to France, when a 95-year-old madame enquired of my friend as to his profession. His French shaky, his acting skills less so, he mimed typing (he is, you see, a writer).

"Ah, tu es pianiste alors!" she exclaimed, enthused to have a musician in the house. Ah, the technological follies of old age.

I was struck by Ed's reflex of miming writing as something that one does on a keyboard, not with pen and paper, and realised I do the same thing. It's a little bewildering.

I'm not saying this must change. God knows the internet, email, and all that comes with it (bloggers, facebookers, stalkers, twitterers, pornographers) have made our lives easier. But they've also taken the soul out of correspondence. Do you remember the elation of receiving a hand-written letter? There are few things more special, few things that can, in such an understated manner, say 'I care'. A revival is in order.

A plan is forming in my mind. A hand-written cookery book. How this might work, I'm not yet sure. In the meantime, do you think you have the discipline to write a letter a week, in which you have also written a recipe? If you email me your address, I'll send you a recipe. Could be the start of a whole new kind of food chain. Who knows?

Away (again)

Dear all,

I'm currently up north honing my other great passion (music) whilst endeavouring not to enrage the neighbours too greatly with our (aspiringly) epic post-rock. I will write when I can, but for the time being Mum is feeding our hungry bellies.

France next week - more from there.

Love,

James.

Mackerel, braised shallots with chorizo and chilli, and tomato salad

After bemoaning my fragile relationship with the kitchen, I again headed to the market in search of a delicious but deeply thrifty supper for me and my flatmate. Thrifty it was not - £17 I spent for 2 mackerel, a handful of tomatoes, ditto shallots, a bunch of basil and a loaf of bread. I hope my parents don't read this, as if they discover their unemployed son is splurging this sort of wonga then I fear sympathy may start to wear thin.

Nonetheless, for the time being (that is, until the bailiff starts bashing down the door) spending more than is strictly necessary on ingredients is worth it when they are of such good quality. Last night's supper was one of the best I have eaten in a long time - not on the strength of the cooking, but just because everything was so fresh. The tomatoes juicy and meaty, the shallots sweet and slippery, and the fish just perfect. Serve with new potatoes fried with rosemary and garlic.

Serves 2

4 banana shallots, whole and peeled, ends trimmed
25g butter
A little oil
100ml marsala or something similar. Or wine. Or not. Up to you. Marsala or sherry best though.
300ml chicken stock
50g chopped chorizo
1 chilli, seeded and finely chopped
4 mackerel fillets
2 large tomatoes
A few basil leaves
White wine vinegar
Olive oil
Salt, pepper and sugar

Melt the butter in a saute pan with a little oil over a moderate heat. Add the shallots, season and allow to gently colour on all sides, until well browned all over. Increase the flame and add the booze. Boil for a minute or so then add the stock. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 25 minutes until the shallots are soft and the cooking liquor has reduced to a sticky consistency.

Meanwhile, fry the chorizo in another frying pan, again in a little oil, until crispy. Remove and keep warm, though wash the pan at your peril. Make the tomato salad, slicing the tomatoes and tossing with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little sugar and vinegar. Tear the basil leaves and stir in.

Season the fish with salt and pepper. Heat the pan in which you fried the chorizo over a medium-high flame, and add the mackerel, skin side down. Fry for 2 minutes on each side then rest for a further 2 minutes. Serve with the tomato salad and the shallots garnished with the chorizo and chopped chilli.

A seismic shift

Something odd has happened since I moved to London. Something that perhaps I should have seen coming. I'm cooking less, and it's really alarming me. At university I probably cooked 5 nights out of 7. It was something to look forward to at the end of a long day, or something to wallow in at weekends. It hardly needed any planning. A vegetable box arrived weekly, and because I pretty much knew which nights I would be out my flatmates and I could do a weekly shop.

Not so in London, it turns out. The pace of life is completely different - and I don't even have a job yet. Last week for example. On Monday evening I went to play football in Battersea which was followed by a pint. Then another pint, and then before I knew it it was midnight and I hadn't eaten a thing. The following evening was a friend's birthday, so once again, supper was a hastily gobbled (but truly delicious) Vietnamese noodle soup on my way home. On Wednesday evening I was kindly invited to a do round the corner, where Vauxhall were promoting their cars, I guess, and free cocktails were accompanied by free hotdogs, and I returned home sated but to a depressingly unsullied kitchen. Thursday I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Rankin opening night at the Truman brewery. The swathes of photographs and gallons of mojito were sadly bereft of any kind of nibble, and sustenance wasn't found until the early hours of Friday morning, when a Brick Lane bagel was all I could unearth. I might have done much worse.

By Friday panic had set in, and I jumped on the number 48 to London Bridge with the express intention of losing myself in Borough Market. Considering it might well be the most expensive market in the universe I was pretty chuffed to pick up a spatchcock poussin for £2.50, as well as a seemingly cheap beef cheek. I say seemingly cheap, because a kilo for £9.20 was certainly a good price, but the thing was so fatty that before cooking I had to trim a considerable amount of it off. With the cheek I made a curry. It was good, without being astonishing. Once honed I shall write about it.

Until then I shall tell you about the venison loin we ate last night. I cook with venison a lot, and, as often happens with such things, had got into something of a rut (no pun intended), cooking it in a similar way every time, convincing myself that such good quality meat needed no adornment. But the time had come for a change. Ollie Thring (of the excellent Thring for your Supper blog) recommended ginger and chilli and bok choi. It sounded heavenly, and light. Here's what I did:

Marinated loin of venison with pak choi and oyster sauce

Serves 4

2 roe buck loins, each about a foot long and no thicker than your wrist
1 thumb of ginger
2 cloves of garlic
1 green chilli
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 small pak choi
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
Salt and pepper

The slight bugger about venison is that it has a thin film on it - don't mistake this for fat, 'cause it ain't. You need to take a sharp knife and remove this as you would skin a fish. You don't need to be overly fussy, but it tends to become tough and gristly, so the more you remove the better.

Right - now grated the ginger into a bowl. Peel and crush the garlic, deseed and finely chop the chilli and add with the spices to the marinade. Strip the rosemary leaves from their sprigs and finely chop. Rosemary might seem an incongruous addition, but it was truly delicious. That said, coriander would make a fine replacement, and you might try adding a little yoghurt too. (oh for a barbeque!).

Add the rosemary, soy sauce and olive oil, season with pepper and toss in the venison. Leave to marinate for as long as you can - ideally 24 hours, but at least 2.

Get a heavy-bottomed frying pan hot over a bullish flame and add the venison. Fry for 4 minutes on each side.

Meanwhile wash the pak choi and halve them. Blanch in boiling salted water and drain. Then heat a little oil in a frying pan over a moderate heat and stir fry with a pinch of salt and twist of pepper.

Remove the venison to a warm plate and rest for 5 minutes while you finish the pak choi by adding the oyster sauce and stir-frying for another few minutes until coating the greens.

Thickly slice the venison and serve with the pak choi. You could also serve this with noodles if you're feeling particularly hungry, though I'm not convinced it really needs it.

I hope this heralds the start of some sort of routine. Cooking once a week just doesn't come close to being enough.

In Flaubert country

It isn't difficult to see why Emma Bovary envisaged for herself such a life of bucolic bliss after growing up in Normandy. The undulating countryside, idyllic villages, and dramatic coastline vibrate with a romanticism and purity that is largely unsullied by modernity. Gloss over the happenings of 1944 and their aftermath and there is little to distinguish the landscape from how it might have looked 150 years ago. Close your eyes and all you smell is the sea, all you hear is the swell of the ocean, and the (incessant) squawk of gulls. No trains chuntering past; traffic sporadic at best; sirens? You kidding? It is utterly peaceful.

But let me tell you, some bad shit went down round here. Nazi officers occupied the very house that we ate dinner in on our first night. Elsewhere in the village, the grandmother of my dear friend Danielle returned home to find it had been used as a field hospital for the German army. Out of spite the recently vanished soldiers had blocked sinks and drains and turned the taps on, leaving the house 6 inches deep in water and rising. Going down into the basement she found a lone Nazi soldier, too poorly to have left with his division and close to death. The collaboration was in full flow, and to be discovered housing one of the enemy was to, at best, be ostracized for life; at worse, well....She fed the invalid supper and ordered him to leave. He died before reaching the end of the garden.

Down on the beach, lazily gazing along the cliff tops yields further reminders of this terrible moment in history. The chalky battlements are punctuated by concrete pill boxes, sinister evidence of a time that everyone would rather forget. Further west from the sleepy village of Yport the cliffs spill down onto Le Havre, where allied bombardment of the German stronghold spared but the churches, leaving a wasteland little improved by the post-war industrialisation. Yet further on you come to Colleville-sur-Mer, also known as Omaha Beach, where thousands of American troops were killed on D-Day. In short, there must be a lot of lost souls in Normandy.

And yet there is an air of positivity. Those still around today will happily talk about their experiences, their lives strangely enriched by having lived through such an extraordinary time. Or perhaps it is just because they eat so well. Because my word did we eat well. Lunch was, in a funny way, always the highlight. Cold cuts, salads, tarts and pates. Chunks of creamy coulommiers were slapped onto roughly hewn hooves of baguette and washed down with cider. Heart-stoppingly rich pork rillettes were similarly gobbled uncomplainingly. Indeed, bread became a vehicle for pretty much everything. A starter of mushrooms on toast was a particular highlight:

Champignons a la Normande


Serves 8

25g butter
2 tablespoons oil
2 large onions, peeled and thinly sliced
225ml cider
225ml double cream
500g button mushrooms, quartered
A lemon
8 slices of pain de mie or a rustic loaf
A handful of parsley or chives
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large saucepan with the oil. Add the onions, season with salt and pepper, cover and sweat over a low heat for 30-60 minutes (the longer the better), stirring every few minutes. Your onions should be rich, soft and lightly caramelised. The kitchen should smell heavenly and you should want to bury your face in the onions. You might choose to add a little crushed garlic here. I don't think it's necessary, but by all means do.

Increase the heat and add the cider. Bring it to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes until the alcohol has cooked off. Add the cream and bring to a simmer before adding the mushrooms. Cover and simmer until the mushrooms are cooked - 15-20 minutes - stirring occasionally. Add the juice of the lemon and keep warm. Toast the bread and roughly chop your herbs. Serve the mushrooms on the toast scattered with a generous handful of herbs and another squeeze of lemon juice.


A simple tarte a l'oignons made for another elegant lunch, though slightly marred by some careless shopping on my part. Ideally buy anchovy fillets (not whole anchovies, as in the picture) and arrange them in a lattice over the top of the tart.



Serves 6-8

Shortcrust pastry - I couldn't be arsed to make my own, though it's always better to
6 large onions, peeled and sliced
50g butter
2 teaspoons finely chopped thyme leaves
2 egg
100ml double cream
100g grated comte or emmental (optional)
a tin of anchovy fillets
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the onions. Season with salt and pepper and gently cook until you've reached the stage explained above.

Meanwhile, roll out your pastry and lay it into a tart tin, pricking it a few times with a fork. Chill in the fridge for half an hour (the tart, that is).

Preheat the oven to 170C. Line the tart tin with baking parchment and pour in some baking beans, or some old pasta. (What you're doing is holding the tart shell in place so that it holds its shape as it cooks.) Put in the oven and 'blind bake' for 25-30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and pour away the beans (saving for the next time you make a tart). Whisk the eggs and, with a pastry brush (though kitchen towel does the job) lightly brush the pastry case with egg wash (you won't need much). Return to the oven for 5 more minutes.

Meanwhile, stir the thyme into the onions and remove from the heat. Cool for a couple of minutes before stirring in the cream, the cheese, and finally the rest of your whisked egg. Mix together thoroughly and season with salt and pepper. Pour into your waiting pastry case and arrange the anchovy fillets artfully on top. Slide into the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes until set.

Cool for a good hour before serving with a green salad.

Lot of cream in these recipes, I know. That's Normandy. That's also me, sure. But mainly it's Normandy. A la Normande pretty much just means 'add cream and cider'. I didn't complain, though by the end of our daily prandial plethora of cream and butter there was little room for anything but a piece of fruit and a nap.




At dinner I tried to ease off on the cream, though that didn't mean we couldn't eat handsomely and indulgently. One ingredient that seemed to be everywhere, and that intrigued me (having never come across it before) was foie de lotte - monkfish liver. If you've ever seen a monkfish you will know how terrifying they look. If you've ever eaten monkfish you will know how delicious they taste. Their livers do little to buck this trend. They are vast. I didn't want to imagine how big the owner of the particular one that I bought must have been, its liver being, no exaggeration, 2 foot long and as thick as a beef fillet. I was tickled by the idea of farming foie de lotte like foie gras, imagining the intrepid farmer trying to force feed a fish that could devour his dog like an old twix.

The flavour of the liver was extraordinary - rich and fishy, in its incarnation below the dressing was essential as a foil to the intensity of the flesh. I'd like to track down some of this stuff in London to experiment with - it's terribly cheap - so if anyone knows where I might find some do point me in the right direction.

Salade de foie de lotte


Serves 4

A piece of monkfish liver, about 6 inches long
25g butter
A little oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons dijon mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 slices of pain de mie
Frisee salad leaves
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a frying pan with a little oil and warm over a medium heat. Season the liver with pepper and a pinch of salt and add to the pan. There should be a gentle sizzle, not the sort of hiss you'd look for when cooking a steak. Leave the liver for 5 minutes while you make the dressing.

Whisk together the vinegar and mustard, then whisk in the olive oil before seasoning with salt and pepper. Carefully turn the liver and cook for a further 5 minutes on the other side, basting with the butter continually. It should be lightly caramelised and rich, without having to thick a crust.

Remove the pan from the heat and rest the monkfish while you toast the bread. Cut the toast into rounds and arrange the salad on plates. Put the toast on the salad, slice the monkfish and put a slice of liver on each piece of toast, before drizzling generously with the dressing. Serve immediately.


There are many other recipes I'd love to divulge, though I fear this post has already drifted into the realms of self-indulgence (as did the holiday). After all, it's the month of holidays, and you have better things to do than read my ramblings - like telling me about your own favourite holiday recipes. Bring them on.