The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Vodka Bullshot

 

 

Snow in November! Here in London. It's seriously cold. The Blacking Factory is currently unheated, and I'm praying that this year my Christmas stocking will include a pair of those fingerless woollen gloves. Those Bob Cratchitty things; I can't remember what they're called: mittens?

On Sunday afternoon we made steaming glasses of Vodka Bullshot- and I couldn't get them down fast enough. It's a great cocktail. Not the sort of thing you would want to drink everyday of course, or even at a party, but for a raw winter's evening it's just the ticket. It's very similar to a Bloody Mary, except you substitute the tomato or clamato juice with beef bouillon.

Here's how we made it.  Into a heatproof mixing jug, pour: a decent slug of vodka (Stolichnaya is the current brand of choice), a few shakes of green Tabasco, Lea & Perrins' Worcestershire Sauce, a good pinch of celery salt, freshly ground pepper, a squeeze of lemon juice and a few tablespoons of a decent dry sherry.  Mix, and top up with hot beef boullion (we used tinned beef consommé).

 

 

 

You don't want to boil the drink, as this will evaporate the alcohol and may even shatter the glass.  Warm to steaming hot is the goal. Surpisingly good. Try it.

 

 

 

All Change at The Greasy Spoon

 

As you can see, I've completely redesigned The Greasy Spoon. I'm thrilled with the result, and think it looks good. There's a new navigation bar at the top of the site to save space, and the all the former categories are now linked (or soon will be) to this. Please humour me while I update the links. It might take a week or so. In the meantime, many thanks for following The Greasy Spoon...

Measure for Measure

 

 

 

In Perfidious Albion, we can be a bit schizophrenic about measurement.  I was brought up in the era of decimilisation, and as a result, can tell you all about centimetres and grammes, but confess utter ignorance when it comes to hectares, litres, metres or kilometres.

I was thinking about this sitting in the traffic jam in Cheyne Walk on the way to work this morning.  We're supposedly a metric country, but even today, the road-signs and speed are still measured in miles, bitter is still measured in pints, and land is still quite decidedly measured in acres. Temperature is odd, too. Every summer in London, hot weather is considered worthy of a news headline, and there's a picture of some topless bathing belle on the front page of "The Sun" or "The Mirror", stripping off in the Trafalgar Square fountains, with the headline "98 F!!!!" And yet, freezing temperatures are measured in centigrade, not fareinheit. It's always minus two, or minus one on the radio, not 30∘Farenheit.

When I started "The Greasy Spoon", I made the conscious decision not to write down the exact measurements for each recipe.  Far too Delia Smith for my liking.  Destroys the spirit of experimentation. I know that I have broken this rule now and again, but generally the philosophy has stuck.  Obviously for certain things, like say,  pastries and cakes, measurement is important, otherwise your cooking could go seriously wrong.  But, otherwise, I resent being told that you need to use two tablespoons of olive oil for frying, or 3gm of butter.  This smacks of control freakery.  And it's often a matter of taste, isn't it?

Has anyone out there read Julian Barnes's "A Pedant in the Kitchen" ?  I've been meaning to read it for months now. It's on my ever growing amazon wish-list, but I gather that it is now out-of-print.  I'm looking forward to exploring the opposite point of view.

Chicken Maryland

 

 

 

Mrs Aitch is going to hate this one.  She's not normally fussy; not fussy at all, but she really hates bananas. In the same way that I loathe mashed potato.  If you are ever lucky enough to invite us to dinner, the worst scenario would be shepherd's pie as a main course, and banoffee pie as a pudding.  

To us Brits, American food can sometimes seem a bit Gothic.  I would include Chicken Maryland in this category.  Or, if not Gothic, certainly slightly weird.  A bit white trashy, perhaps?  Duelling banjos, denim dungarees and mobile homes raised on bricks.  Scrap metal yards and ravenous doebermanns. Maybe I'm being horribly unfair? Any observations are certainly not meant to be critical. After all, we're the nation which tucks into haggis, jellied eel and stargazey pie.

 

 

In America, Chicken Maryland is served with "gravy"- what we call in Blighty a "white sauce", or in The Great Republic, "Béchamel Sauce".  I suspect that the addition of banana fritters may be a British interpretation, and if so, I apologise.  If any Southerners out there in cyberspace think that the following receipe is inaccurate, please email me, and I will gladly post up a correction.

Okay.  That's that one out of the way.  Here's The Greasy Spoon's take on Chicken Maryland.  I've based this version on the recipe in Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham's excellent book, "The Prawn Cocktail Years".  I can't recommend it enough:

Take some chicken thighs (an excellent and affordable cut, by the way), rip off the skin and dip them into seasoned flour, and then again into a bowl of beaten egg.  Shake off the egg, and dip them into the seasoned flour for a second time.  In a deep frying pan heat up 100g of unsalted butter and 75ml  of sunflower oil, until frothy.  Put in the floured chicken piece, and fry gently.  The secret here is not to crowd the pan.  If you do so, your chicken will start to stew, rather than fry, because of the fall in temperature.  So, fry the chicken a few pieces at a time.  On a lowish heat.  It should take about half and hour.  Make sure you turn the chicken pieces about half way through the cooking time.

In the meantime, mix together 100g sweetcorn (tinned is absolutely fine, to be frank, I can't detect any difference), two small egg yolks, and salt and pepper.  Beat two egg whites until frothy, and gently fold them into the mixture.  Add a tablespoon of baking powder, and about 50-75g of breadcrumbs, until it forms a thickish batter.  Place to one side.

Take out the chicken pieces and keep them warm in a rack in a hot oven.  Strain off the hot chicken oil, leaving just enough in the pan to fry the sweetcorn fritters.  Drop tablespoons of the sweetcorn batter into the reserved hot oil, and fry for a couple of minutes on each side, until puffed and golden.  Drain on kitchen paper, and keep warm in the oven with the chicken.

Take 100ml of chicken stock, and reduce it by three-quarters.  Fry four small sliced bananas in unsalted butter, until golden, sprinkling them with some brown sugar as you do,  so that they begin to caramelise.  Grill some rashers of streaky bacon, until crisp.  Pour 100ml of double cream into the reduced chicken stock, and bring it back to the boil.  Reduce until slightly thickened, and squeeze in some lemon juice.  Check the seasoning and stir in some freshly chopped flat parsley. 

Arrange the fried chicken on a large plate with the sweetcorn and banana fritters, and crispy bacon pieces.  Spoon the "gravy" over the fried chicken, and serve the rest in a sauce boat.  Garnish with chopped flat parsley.  That's it.  Quite a lot of bother, in some ways; but strangely satisfying.  A perenniel favourite.

Coca-Cola Glazed Ham

 

 

 

Last Christmas or so, I wrote a post about a slightly weird recipe: "Ham Glazed in Coca-Cola".  It's still one of my most popular posts, and as I'm currently getting increased hits (no doubt because of Thanksgiving), I'm going to give you the recipe again.

It doesn't sound that great, does it?  However, as Coke is really just a very sugary, brown and fizzy syrup, there's no reason why it shouldn't work nicely with a lovely, juicy ham.  And the recipe's an old favourite from the American Deep South, too- which is no bad thing.  So, here's how you make it:

Put in a medium sized unsmoked gammon into a large pan.  Add a peeled onion (for flavour), and then pour in a litre of coca-cola.  Bring to the boil, put the lid back on, and turn down the heat.  Let the ham braise in the liquid for 2 ½ hours.

Take the gammon out of the pan, and let it rest.  Remove the skin and preheat your oven to 210˚C.  In the meantime, mix up a glaze from 100g breadcrumbs, 100g brown muscovado sugar, two tablespoons of French Dijon Mustard, and a tablespoon of Colman's Mustard Powder.  With a sharp knife, scour the gammon to make a criss-cross pattern. Stir in a spoonful or so of coca-cola into the sugar and mustard mixture, and then slap it onto the gammon. 

Roast the gammon in the hot oven for about ten minutes, or until the glaze has cooked.

 

The Greasy Spoon visits... Joe Allen

 

 

Photo: london-taxi-tour.com

 

I've just been to Joe Allen's with my little sister. I've been going there since the late 1970s, and it's amazing how it looks exactly the same after all these years. Hasn't changed one iota. Very New York, like something from a Woody Allen film- in the good days, when he was making "Manhatten", "Stardust Memories" and "Annie Hall". Think speakeasy basement, bare red brick, theatrical posters, signed black and white actor's photographs (Dirk, Larry and Ralph), red-checked tablecloths and an upright honky-tonk piano. Similar in a way to P. J. Clarke's on Lexington.

 

Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway, Manhattan, 1979

Of course, it's a luvvie haunt (or, at least, it's supposed to be) as it's one of the only restaurants in Covent Garden which stays open late and is convenient for an after-theatre or post-opera supper. My sister happened to eat there about two weeks ago and spotted Andre Agassi swanning around on the stairs wearing a snow-white fur coat.

The trouble with Joe Allen's is that everyone there looks like a famous actor, film director or a "somebody", even if they're not. We were squeezed next to a large party, seemingly hosted by a little old man with a white beard and black-rimmed glasses who hopped from table to table, seemed to know everybody and called out "darling!" at every opportunity. He looked (and acted) suspiciously like Dickie Attenborough. The man sitting next to him was the dead spit of Richard Eyre, and the little old woman to his right, I could have sworn, was that scary second half of the 70's husband and wife duo, 'The Crankies', forty years on. Anybody who remembers "Crackerjack" on Friday afternoons will know what I mean. 

But oh how wrong I was! At the end of the evening, "Dickie" stood up and addressed the restaurant. It turned out that he was hosting a local office party in honour of somebody called Kevin, who was retiring from a laser printing business after thirty years of loyal service.

Now about the food. Joe Allen's serves American, of the East Coast variety. Think Black Bean soup, pan-fried tuna, "candied" sweet potatoes and barbequed spare ribs. This time around, the food was actually quite, even rather, good. Since a recent visit to The Boundary, one of my favourite first courses is Ham Hock Terrine, and the Joe Allen version tasted juicy. Served with a piquant Mustard sauce. The main course was pork belly, served with crunchy cabbage which hit the right spot. Wine was red and raw and served in a carafe, which is no bad thing in a place such as this.

Service was smiley, quick and to the point. Another improvement, as the last time I ate at Joe Allen's, (albeit very, very late) we had a grumpy mama of a waitress who plonked the black bean soup down on the table as if it was gruel, and made it very clear that she couldn't wait to get shot of us.  But Joe Allen's is Joe Allen's, and somehow it doesn't matter if the joint can be a hit or a miss. London wouldn't be London without it, even if it looks like it really should be in New York.

Joe Allen, 13 Exeter Street, London WC2 E 7DT (020 7836 651)

 

Clientele: Out of Work Actors

Ambience: Woody Allen

Food: East Coast American

Service: Brusk

Price: ££

 

 

 

The Greasy Spoon visits... Marco Pierre White (Wheeler's of St James's)

 

 

 

I had been looking forward to eating at the new Wheeler's for months. The old Wheeler's was an established fish restaurant, beloved by many, and in latter days a chain, which sadly, died a slow death after it decided to serve up pre-cooked dishes, manufactured in a warehouse somewhere, delivered by white van and then re-heated-in the restaurant. Marco Pierre White launched the new brand in 2009 in a joint enterprise with Sir Rocco Forte of hotel fame. The new Wheeler's incidentally, is on the site of the old Madame Prunier's fish restaurant in St James's Street.

 

Now I happen to have my golden Fauntleroy locks shorn next door at a vast expense, and over the last year or so, had often sauntered past Marco Pierre White's newish restaurant. It looks dreadfully smart from the outside, and dreadfully expensive. It turned out that I was to be wrong on the first count, and correct on the second.

A few weeks ago, Mrs Aitch kindly decided to treat me to dinner for my birthday. We decided to head for Wheeler's. The front of the restaurant looked promising- a tiled, fin de siècle style oyster restaurant of the old school, albeit empty; although our faces were to fall when we led to the main restaurant: a cavernous hanger, painted a shiny red gloss (worthy of a tart's boudoir or a 70s Strikes 1926 burger joint), uncomfortable black lacquered cane seated cafe chairs, and decorated with semi-pornographic Bob Carlos Clarke photographs, of gigantious proportion. Look, heavens, I'm no prude, but there's a time and a place for everything, and I have to admit that I found the prints utterly distracting. There I was supposed to be looking at the lovely Mrs Aitch, but instead, found my eyes drifting helplessly towards nubile derrières, clad in oh-so kinky, skin-tight shiny black rubber.

 

 

I suppose the two big celebrity chefs of recent years have been Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay. Rock n' Roll Aristocracy versus Footballer's Wives. Of the two styles, I infinitely prefer the former: all Wiltshire long barrows, covert coats with velvet collars and Bristol motor cars. And St James's is very much my sort of place. There's the endlessly fascinating London Library, the understated Budd of Piccadilly Arcade (where you can buy those knitted silk Mad Men ties), Christie's in King Street, that slightly naff bronze statue of Beau Brummell in Jermyn Street, the impeccable New & Lingwood, and probably the greatest bookshop in London (quite possibly in the world), Hatchards, where, under the addiction of some form of bibliomaniacal crack-cocaine, I have spent my inheritance over the last twenty years.

The potted brown shrimps were good. Mrs A though her smoked eel a trifle bland, and her Halibut Provencal "passionless" (her words). My halibut was reasonably good, though a bit on the dry side. The cauliflower cheese was creamy, and the braised red cabbage, excellent. We ordered a Gavi de Gavi and were told by the sommelier that it wasn't cold enough, and that they wouldn't recommend it. I found this slightly annoying. Why have a wine on the list, if you are incapable of selling it?  Am I unfair?  But service was fine, and the sommelier was charming- a substitute Italian white was conjured up immediately at the same price.

The restaurant was more or less empty apart from an odd looking clientele. To our left, a silver-haired military type wearing a regimental tie entertained a svelte gentleman with a David Niven moustache (possibly Nigerian?). They moved tables to be out of ear-shot. Were they planning a parachute drop on the former Nyasaland? Otherwise, there were some nonegarian Teutons with bulbous girths, reminiscent of Baron Bombast in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And a few goofy-looking American tourists. Swinging London it wasn't.

It was all at terrific shame. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't especially good, and for our money, Scott's or J. Sheekey would have been a better choice. And Mein Gott, Wheeler's was expensive. Jaw-droppingly expensive. It came to £162 for the two of us. It didn't include a pudding, and we stuck to the less expensive items on the menu. Dressed Cornish Crab with sauce mayonnaise cost £15.50, Wheeler's Classic Fish Pie is £15.50, and Terrine of Foie Gras is £14.50. Mrs Aitch found it all a bit formulaic, and I think she is right: I'm not convinced that Marco has had much to do with the restaurant, apart from lending his name to the enterprise and dropping by to have a look now and again. Four and a half out of Ten. Sorry.

 

Wheeler's of St James's, 72-73 St James's Street, London SW1A 1PH (020 7836 651)

Clientele: African mercenaries, American & German tourists

Ambience: Commerical 'Fridge

Food: All Right

Service: Fine

Price: ££££

 

The Mexican Day of the Dead

 

 

I think I first became aware of the Mexican Day of the Dead after reading Malcolm Lowry's novel, "Under the Volcano". There was also a film with Albert Finney and the She-Who-Can-Do-No-Wrong Jacqueline Bisset, in which Finney plays a drunken British diplomat.

 

Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead on November 2nd. It's an extraordinary festival: families pray for the souls of the departed, and death is celebrated with dancing, sugar skulls, flowers, colourful altars and carnival.

I love authentic Mexican food, and it's only recently that the proper thing has begun to arrive in London. Up until now, we've had to put up with Tex-Mex restaurants (as beloved by students and the disenfranchised); the sort of places where they make you wear silly hats and pour Margaritas down your throat; not the same deal at all. Incidentally, I once had a fantastic chivichangas (fried burritos) at a drive-in gas station in San Diego, a few miles from the Mexican border. You paid a dollar or so through a grill, and then a few minutes later a tanned hairy hand appeared through a hole in a wall with your hot food. Fast Food in the best sense.

 

 

We're going to cook something Mexican tonight. I like Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz's book "The New Complete Book of Mexican Cooking". "Fish in Almond and Coriander Sauce" (Pescado en Salsa de Almendra Verde) is on the menu. 

First, you simmer some non-oily white fish (cod?) in stock. Normally, I would place the fish in the cold water or fish stock, and then bring to the boil. Once it's simmering, I immediately turn off the heat and put on the lid, and then leave the fish to "cook" in the hot water for about five to ten minutes. You'll find this is an excellent way to cook fish, and will give you perfect results every time.

 

Remove the fish, and set aside. Pour the hot fish stock into a jug. In a small frying pan, heat up a few tablespoons of olive oil, and fry a clove of garlic with a slice of white bread, until the bread is golden on both sides. Remove the garlic and chop up the fried bread, coarsely. In your food processor, whizz up the chopped fried bread, 50g (2oz) finely ground almonds, two jalapeno chillies (de-seeded and chopped) and half a cup of fresh chopped coriander leaves; and then thin it out with the reserved stock. Heat, check the seasoning and pour over the fish. Serve with rice.

I've got no idea what this is going to be like, but it sounds interesting, and the cooking techniques are relatively simple.

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