Summertime eating

The best kind of cooking, I don't need to tell you, is the kind that uses a few excellent ingredients well. This is by no means a revelation. Chefs and cookery writers have been trying to drum this into us for years. The 'old guard', if you will, by which I mean Simon Hopkinson, Rowley Leigh, Nigel Slater, Alastair Little - all the Elizabeth David acolytes - pioneered the mantra of 'less is more', inspired by the Franco-Italian attitude towards food. The phrase 'a few good ingredients, cooked with love' has become something of a cliche, but with good reason. Don't get me wrong, I love the Hestons of this world, but in my view that kind of cooking should remain firmly in the professional kitchen. This isn't to say don't experiment - if you find yourself cooking the same things week after week then maybe it's time to start being a bit more ambitious - but ultimately the emphasis should always come down to the ingredient.


With this in mind, I'd like to champion summer as the Queen of Seasons. 'Summer', in the gastronomic sense (or at least my gastronomic sense) stretches from early May until late-September, lavishing on us the heavenly asparagus, spinach, beetroot and broad beans from the off, and tumbling with tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes (it's like ratatouille was some wonderful and pre-ordained September Slut), and the last of the new potatoes as Autumn approaches. And let's not forget the wonders that come and go in this period - strawberries, raspberries, loganberries, gooseberries, and currants; french beans, salads, sweetcorn, radishes, and artichokes. It's all so fresh, so lively. God bless the parsnips and swedes of this world - I truly love you - but by March I've had just about enough.

Notwithstanding item 2 of 'Restau-rant' (see below), these are the ingredients that need the least attention. A radish, plucked warm from the earth and given a cursory scrubbing with the shirt before being popped in the mouth, is close to perfection (though brought closer by being dipped into soft, salty French butter). Courgettes are a joy sliced paper thin and eaten tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and shaved parmesan. Boiled artichokes need little more than a pot of melted, salty butter, the leaves plucked off, dipped, and stripped of their flesh. This stage is really just the build-up to the final event when, having removed the 'choke', you can devour the heart, dripping with butter.

It's also a season for toast - sourdough rubbed with garlic and olive oil and grilled on a barbeque, its crunchy chewiness working so well with smashed broad beans and mint, or asparagus and parma ham. Mediterranean eating at its very best.

And that's exactly where I'm going at early o' clock tomorrow - flying to the south of France for a week's post-exam celebration with 30 friends. I will, most likely, be off air till next weekend. Until then...

Fridge slut

slut n. a slovenly or promiscuous woman.

fridge slut n. any dish that is fashioned from various and usually unconnected ingredients found in the fridge. Most often encountered in student digs or my grandmother's kitchen.

I am moving to London this week, and so as a flat we have taken it upon ourselves to eat the entire fridge and freezer. It's a gargantuan task, and one that is not free of surprises. Some things should have been chucked out long ago - the indiscernible mayonnaisey thing that appears to have anchovies in, though I don't remember having used anchovies in the last 3 months (alas! fussy flatmates); the handful of tiramisu, saved with good intentions but that, realistically, was never going to get eaten unless by someone ravenous yet miraculously lucid at 4am, tucked as it was at the back of the fridge behind a jar of gherkins; the thai green curry paste that ought really to be edible still, yet whose odour is ever-so-slightly rancid, the coriander discoloured and the fish sauce just a little higher than is desirable.

The freezer houses further delights - a small zip-lock bag of crumble mix left over from Lydia's (10/10) rhubarb crumble a while back, hanging in there optimistically but with little chance of employment (ah, the poetic similarities between myself and that little bag of crumble); a plastic bag full of rhubarb from home, whose marriage to the crumble would have proved so perfect, so serendipitous, and yet whose consummation was just a bridge too far during exams; another zip-lock bag of burgers, purloined furtively from the freezer at home - wasted, it transpires.

Last night's supper did manage to make a dent, if only a small one, in the vast quantities of food that we have somehow amassed over the last couple of weeks. A Caesar Salad made with some roast chicken legs, baby gems, tomatoes, frozen peas, basil, and parsley, and humming with tabasco and English mustard, was a good, light Sunday night supper after sitting in the sun all day - Lydia had put on a Bollywood festival, a joyous end to the year, and so we'd spent the afternoon idling on the grass, drinking cider, watching some magical outdoor theatre, and wolfing down curry from Bristol's Thali Cafe.

I ambitiously defrosted some fish stock that I had made with some crab shell swiped from the Albion - it seemed to be the last thing that would get eaten, and yet I was adamant that it would. We had so many wonderful green vegetables, some leftover noodles, and, controversially (for the Asian purists), some smoked bacon from home. There was only one thing for it - fridge slut. And quite a slut it was too - spring onion, celery, courgette, pak choi et al were hoyed into a saucepan and simmered for a matter of minutes in the stock before being slurped up greedily for lunch.

Fridge slut soup

Serves 4-6

Some smoky bacon - 8 rashers or so
A bunch of spring onions, finely chopped
4 sticks of celery, sliced
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
A pinch of chilli flakes
25g butter
2 large courgettes, diced
White wine, a glass or so
1 1/2 litres of hot fish stock (chicken stock would do)
2 pak choi, sliced, the smaller ones left whole
Some noodles (optional)

Slice the bacon into thin strips and fry in a little oil until crispy - you'll need to stir them every now and then. Remove with a slotted spoon into a bowl, and pour off most of the excess fat. Return the pan to a moderate heat and add the onions and celery. Season with salt and pepper and soften for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, while you crush the fennel seeds in a pestle and mortar. Add these, along with the cayenne and chilli flakes, to the onion and celery, and stir for another minute. Increase the temperature and add the butter, stirring it until it coats the vegetables and they start to think about changing colour. Add the white wine and boil for 30 seconds, then add the stock. Bring to the boil and add the pak choi, most of the bacon, and noodles if you're using them. Simmer for 3 minutes and serve sprinkled with crispy smoked bacon.

Restau-Rant

I never set out to be a ranter, I really didn’t. I think it’s a bit of a cop out, a little bit lazy – a biased, subjective way of addressing something while being vaguely amusing and controversial at the same time. Kick off with an exasperated intro à la Jeremy Clarkson – Can you believe the state of the bloody underground? I literally can’t believe it, can you believe it? (Note use of rhetorical question to draw the reader in). Then develop the theme with some highly topical and highly predictable similes that contain some awfully shocking profanity or other – those tube drivers are as lazy as an MP that employs a Pole to feed their ducks and then charge it to their bl**dy expense account. Then rant, rant, rant, send to sub, and go to pub (where there is no doubt something else to whinge about).
But some things do need saying. Spleen needs venting; bees need releasing from bonnets, ants from pants, snakes from boots. As a sort of precursor to my upcoming comprehensive, and somewhat valedictory, guide to eating in Bristol, there are a few things about restaurants that I need to get off my chest, mainly because I simply do not have the balls to make a fuss at the time. I don’t personally think there is any superciliousness here, nor do I think these are complaints that I alone have. But let me know if you think I’m way off the mark here, and I’ll retreat back into my nest of simmering resto-resentment.

1) How often do you receive a fairly passable burger or sandwich or whatever, perhaps with some decent chips, but accompanied by the most depressing pile of dry salad you’ve ever laid eyes on? Way too often. Dress. The. F**king. Salad. Please. Surely it is obvious to whoever has produced this leg-side dross that this is a culinary abomination. If you, Monsieur le Chef, can come into the dining room, look me in the eye, and say “I think salad is nicer undressed” then fine, I’ll let this one slide. But come on, there is more chance of Gordon Brown resigning than there is of you believing that, and your refusal (and I am talking to a large percentage of cooks/chefs of the café/pub/bistro ilk) to try to make this sorry heap of iceberg lettuce, sliced pepper and tinned sweetcorn taste at all edible simply shows that you do not care. It’s a very small thing, I know, but if a chef is firing something out of his kitchen that he is not 100% happy with then something is seriously wrong.
2) Vegetables suffer from the same ignominy in these places, pubs in particular. If I’ve just paid £12 for roast lamb, how dare you send it with a soggy roast potato that’s been sitting in the warming oven for hours, and a few lame pieces of carrot, broccoli and cauliflower that have been cooked with about as much love as, oh I don’t know – Ronaldo for Fergie? Gordon for Hazel? Morrissey for a big ol’ T-bone? Just a little salt and pepper please chef, maybe some melted butter – would a sprig of parsley be too much to ask? If the answer to this is ‘yes’, then you should take off your toque, hang up your jacket and throw in the tea towel, because you do not belong in a kitchen. You clearly do not understand food.
If you, reader, can name one vegetable that is not improved by a little salt and pepper, or a little oil and vinegar, then I’ll take you out for dinner. But I think my money is safe. Such a miraculous thing does not exist.
3) ‘Discretionary 12.5% Service Charge’. All too bloody discreet most of the time. A A Gill has already had a pretty big go at this one, so I’ll leave this particular flag in his very capable hands. I do not possess the minerals to send the bill back when restaurants do this, like he does, but I do now insist on paying the bill to the penny, maybe even a penny short. That’ll show ‘em.
4) Menu spelling. Real head in hands stuff, this. For one thing, you run the risk of sounding like an absolute arsehead if you are going to insist on using the French or Italian name when the English one will suffice. Spell it wrong, however, and you are in the running for ‘Arsehead of the Year’. I’m pretty happy not to correct a restaurant that offers ravioli (plural) and then appears with a single raviolo, because in English that’s pretty much what it has come to mean. Ditto on the panini front (though some horribly pedantic part of me always insists on ordering a panino – I mean, you’d chuckle if you heard an Italian asking for a sandwiches, wouldn’t you?), but I just can’t help but make a kneejerk judgement about a place that serves pollo alla parmiggano, or confit de cannard. Come on. Oh, and if you ever correct my pronunciation of bruschetta (hard ‘k’) and tell me it’s bruscetta (soft ‘sh’) I’ll rip your tongue out. It’s one thing to get it wrong yourself, it’s quite another to try and correct somebody’s already correct pronunciation.
5) Water. If you bring a bottle of mineral water when the patron has asked for a jug, you’re liable to find that bottle smashed over the back of your head. It is daylight robbery, pure and simple, and underhand at that. If they ask for a glass of Prosecco is it acceptable to bring a bottle of Bollinger? Clearly not. If they order the vegetarian risotto and a side salad, is it OK to bring lobster and chips? Hell no! (Well, I probably wouldn’t complain too vehemently). But seriously, why the frig do people let this go so often? It’s abominable behaviour, and must stop.

Oh God there are hundreds of others, but most of them petty and pernickety. The five above are the main offenders, on the whole, and ones that I think most people will sympathise with. That said, I’d love to hear others, and specific stories too, because there are some real corkers. Not a complaint in the slightest, but amusing nonetheless, was the time I went into a Bristol pub during one of my (frankly idiotic) Lenten, beer-free fasts, and asked what wine they had. A befuddled look was followed by the hesitant riposte – “red… and white”.
I hate to come across as a snob, inevitable though it probably is. I would argue that my views are actually far from snobbish or patronising. These aren’t complaints about restaurants that claim to serve foie gras when it’s really only chicken liver pâté, or sommeliers who bring the ’83 instead of the ’82, or waiters who serve from the wrong side (does anyone even care about this anymore?). No, ultimately all of these gripes come down to apathy – the fact that someone in the kitchen staff simply does not care enough to make the infinitesimally small effort to do the even smaller things well, and more importantly, with love. And frankly, if you’re one of these people, you’re in the wrong profession mate. Go and be a tube driver. Apparently they don’t give a fuck.