The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

If Looks Could Kill: Daniel Farson vs Fanny Cradock

 

Fear of Fanny: What are you going to eat? Live ones or dead ones? 

 

Television is dead. A generalisation, of course, but if recent viewing figures are anything to go by, this could be the end of the road for the big four British channels as we knew them. Younger people don't watch the BBC and ITV. They watch YouTube and Netflix, which means big box drama stuff, CGI thrills and spills, and home made films featuring psychotic kittens, and attractive young female doctors popping ginormous cysts. We've only just upgraded to a "smart" television set (I fear that here at the Greasy Spoon hovel, we're a little bit behind on these matters), and so far, it's provided hours of bonus entertainment- especially as I've discovered something called the BFi Player, which as I expect you already know, is a subscription service for British film buffs.

And buried deep within the BFi archives, is a fascinating car-crash television interview with Fanny Cradock from 1959. You can download it for a quid. I've written about Mr and Mrs Fanny Cradock before; the pair, for some reason, seem to crop up on the Greasy Spoon's pages at regular intervals, partly, I think because their cooking was "actually rather good", and because, of course, Fanny was such an extraordinary- if bizarre- character.

The set up goes something like this: investigative journalist, Daniel Farson, is invited to lunch by the Cradocks at their Louis the Something gilded South Kensington flat. So far so good. Farson- the official biographer of Francis Bacon- was another troubled, possibly damaged, television star of the period- whose education, following a stint at Wellington, was finished in the the drinking clubs of Soho: and in many ways the antithesis of the bourgeois Cradocks. It's a priceless clash of two journalistic styles: remember, this is commercial Associated-Rediffusion television, not the BBC.

 

Daniel Farson with Francis Bacon: his further education...finished in the drinking clubs of Soho

 

The lunch- sorry, luncheon- goes something like this. Almost Pinteresque dialogue: 

 

Fanny (presenting a huge silver dish piled high with crayfish, winkles and prawns, and garnished with shells, scalloped lemon wedges and champagne corks): In French this is called Assiette des Fruits des Mer. It's rather fun.

Dan Farson (clipped tones, pointing to a mollusc): They're moving!

Fanny (near collapse): Strangulated gurgle.

Dan Farson: No. It's true! One crawled off here a minute ago. Absolutely. It fell off!

Fanny: Give it to me. You're perfectly right it is moving. What are you going to eat? Live ones or Dead ones?

 

"They're alive! It's moving!"

 

Things then goes from bad to worse: 

 

Dan Farson: What is this?

Fanny: Butter. Even the gold dust is edible. It comes from Belgium.

Dan Farson: Quite honestly to my mind your whole approach to cooking seems to be the antithesis of good cooking- why even the butter needs to be dolled up with gold leaf and pink stuff, whatever that is. 

Fanny (jabbing her silver lobster pick in the air): This is an elaborate drawing room, Duckie, where I have a lot of Regency gilt, I like the butter to look the same.

Dan Farson: Do you have any sympathy with vegetarians?

Fanny: Yes. Profound sympathy. Think what they miss.

 

"Are you nervous cooking for your husband's boss? Want to impress that Mrs Jones next door?"

 

It's a masterclass in tact: Our Dan not only goes on to criticise Fanny's Filet de bœuf en feuilleté- beef wrapped in puff pastry, and a dish which she had kindly fed him in her kitchen a week before- and which he felt "ruined the fillet steak", but suggests that the pair's performance on stage is "like a circus act".

Curiously enough, I'm rather with the Cradocks on this one. Dan Farson is incredibly ill-mannered, and his comment on the Bœuf en feuilleté (not unlike our very own and much-loved Beef Wellington) verges on the crass. I detect too, alas, an element of tiresome snobbery going on here: Farson, whose family background happened to come from the American upper class, mocks the Cradock's perceived suburban pretensions, and thinking about it- in a recent documentary about British food in the post-war era, another well-heeled television cook, a recent convert to the zeal of the vegetarian cause, does exactly the same thing. It's all a bit sneery- but then what does one expect from the commercial channels? 

And in any event, aren't they all missing the point?  Fanny was a brilliant television presenter- one of the first television cookery stars, and years ahead of her time. And the woman could cook too: the endless Cradock books are even now, still "rather good" in their way- and eminently usable. Pulling one of them- at random- off my crowded shelves, I find recipes for: onion soup, hunter's pot, cabbage casserole, risotto Piemontese, fried sprats, gazpacho, and homemade bread. No sign of gilded butter in sight. Even from Belgium.

 

 

Food in the Sixties: The Enigma of Mr and Mrs Fanny Cradock

 

Here’s a piece I originally wrote for The Dabbler, but I don’t think it appeared on The Greasy Spoon. Subscribers may have to log directly onto The Greasy Spoon website to view the videos: 

 
There was so much to admire about Fanny Cradock. And then it all went wrong, horribly wrong...

 

I can’t quite make up my mind about Fanny Cradock. I’m on the fence about this one. There are many things to admire: the innovative cookery programmes, the slick, ball-gowned cookery demonstrations presented to packed audiences at the Albert Hall (ground-breaking stuff at the time), her grasp of the complexities of French gastronomy- oh she knew her stuff all right. Utterly professional, in those scary days of one-take television she could talk directly to the camera in a continuous stream without fluffing her lines, an extraordinary task for a cookery presenter. And she was one of the very first.

And then in the latter days, it all went wrong. Very wrong. The world moved on, leaving Fanny behind. I’m watching an old YouTube clip as I type. Fanny lampooning dear old A J P Taylor on the Parkinson show; pancaked make-up, grimacing Dan Leno eyebrows, all the glamour and snobbery of caustic coffee mornings and gin-sodden bridge parties at The Club. Strange. Aggressive. An excruciating performance:

  

 

Fanny on Parkinson: An excruciating performance...

 

But that may be part of the fascination. In those days, the servant-less middle classes aspired to sophisticated gluttony- to black-tie dinner parties held in honour of The Boss, graced by the food of Escoffier, as re-packaged and regurgitated by the Cradocks in their numerous books. Today, aspiration is dead, unless you count the current vogue for both the manners and diet of the Mediterranean peasantry. Fanny would flounder in the brave new world of dancing Hairy Bikers and guitar strumming, long-haired River Cottagers. Or would she have done battle?

 

 Johnnie Cradock, Major of Artillery...

 

Johnnie strikes me as an enigma. He left his wife and four children to shack up with Fanny, and if you believe The Independent, apparently never saw them again. Fanny was the star, Johnnie the claret quaffing, henpecked stooge. Does he not seem like a minor character from a Dornford Yates thriller or one of those badged blazer-wearing characters propping up the bar at the local Rotary Club? Patrick Hamilton or Murder at the Vicarage? An Old Harrovian and Major of Artillery- the Cradocks liked to remind you of both facts, often. Funny that. But then ‘bi-lingual’ Fanny was supposed to have been born in the Channel Islands, wasn’t she? When, in truth, her birth was formally registered in West Ham.

There’s a blurry black and white photograph of the couple: Fanny’s in an early 70s Liz Taylor trouser suit, (slightly plump, helmet hair); Johnnie’s sporting a monocle and a Conan Doyle tweed cape. Slightly shell-shocked. Unaware of his predicament. Planet Nine.

I’ve got some inside info. My mother once spent a day with the Cradocks. Back in 1967, my mother wrote to Bon Viveur declaring (their words) her ‘ever-lasting gratitude to The Daily Telegraph and Bon Viveur if they could teach her how to bake cakes’.  She won the competition but was forced to make bread instead- which, as a Cordon Bleu graduate,  she knew how to do perfectly well as it was. The event took place at the Cradock’s Georgian dower house, near Watford. Johnnie – I quote- was a ‘sweet old boy’, but the silly sausage forgot to turn on the oven and Fanny gave it to him: all two barrels of her scorn. It makes you wonder if this was all part of the act. Or was this the reality behind their marriage? But then, they weren’t actually married, were they?

I turned to Time to Remember, a year in the life of- a monthly account of their Continental excursions. There’s a bizarre moment when Johnnie, at the wheel of  “the Duchess” (their Bentley Flying Spur) is attacked by a huge flock of enraged owls. It’s also a catalogue of outrageous name-dropping:

“We brooded over what to give to Somerset Maugham when he came to luncheon…we unearth a dinner we gave for Mrs Douglas Fairbanks…a dish of very fine asparagus set Nubar Gulbenkian in a wilful humour, debating the perils of striving for a place in heaven….”

And in a later television interview, Fanny lets slip:

“Mr Heath has a very discriminating palate…”

 

 

"Would you like to impress that Mrs Jones next door?” 

 

Despite all this- or again, because of it, Britain has to be a better place for the Cradocks. Anyone who reveals the Mirabelle’s over-complicated recipe for a bog-standard Irish Stew has to be a good egg. In Fanny Cradock Invites you to a Wine and Cheese Party, the camera lingers on the Cradock’s West Highland Terrier, Mademoiselle Lolita Saltena, lolling by their front door. As Fanny herself said (of her dog): ‘Not quite a lady, but we adore her.'

 

Simon Hopkinson’s Vegetable Bouillon

 

 

 

In the last two posts we looked at two different ways to make a competent chicken stock. But have you ever tried to make a vegetarian stock? You might be surprised by the results. Here’s how to make a very simple tomato consommé: 

Take a batch of ripe tomatoes, chop them up very roughly and marinade them in the ‘fridge with a handful of sea-salt. Several hours should do the trick. Take them out of the ‘fridge and 'half-crush' them up in your Magimix, using a few jabs of the pulse button. The salty tomato pulp is placed in a muslin-lined sieve and placed over a large bowl, and the whole shooting match put back into the ‘fridge to drip over-night.

In the morning you’ll have a bowlful of clear tomato ‘water’, with the most delicate flavour. You might serve this, say, in small cups (chilled over ice, with a sprig of basil) as a trendy amuse-bouche for a summer dinner party. You could, of course, also add extra flavourings at the dripping stage- aromatics such as rosemary, thyme, basil, shallots or garlic might work well. Your friends will be amazed, delighted and amused. 

My researches into vegetable stock-making reminded me that I had a copy of Simon Hopkinson’s The Vegetarian Option languishing at the back of the book shelf. Massive fan of Mr H, and along with Richard Olney, currently one of my all-time favourite food writers. I should use The Vegetarian Option more often as it’s packed full of ideas- encouraging stylish ways with the vegetable. There should be so much more to vegetable cooking than the dreaded pasta and lentil bake. 

There’s a brilliant recipe for a vegetarian bouillon which Simon Hopkinson discovered at L’Espérance restaurant in Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay: 

You take 100g carrots, 100g leeks, 100g celery, 100g white button mushrooms and 250g white onion (peeled and chopped and the mushrooms thinly sliced) and mix them up in a large bowl. Get hold of three clean Parfait preserving jars and fill each up half-way with the vegetable mixture. Place a garlic clove, bayleaf, chopped parsley sprigs and a few black peppercorns into each jar and top up with the remaining vegetables. In goes a dash of good sea-salt and water, so that it stops about 2cm from the top of the glass jar. The jars are then sealed and placed in a deep pan of cold water until the water almost reaches the lids.

You are going to cook the jars a bit like the way you might cook a traditional Christmas Pudding. The water is brought to a very gentle simmer and the pan left (with the lid on) for two hours, topping up the level with boiling water from the kettle when you think it needs it. To prevent the jars from shattering, you will need to use either a diffuser or a folded piece of thick cardboard placed directly underneath each jar in the pan.

The bouillon is cooled and then strained through a muslin-lined sieve in the normal way. Thinking about it, this is a traditional cooking technique as used in Olde England- jugged peas and jugged hare immediately springs to mind.

The Bouillon can be served ‘ice-cold’ with a garnish of diced ‘jewel-like’ vegetables floating on the top. Simple, satisfying- and genuinely elegant. If you’re clever I expect you can think up alternative ways of using it- perhaps as an interesting re-interpretation of a Bloody Mary, with vodka and Tabasco?  Either way, the bouillon can be frozen and used to pep up soups, stews and sauces.

 

Hugh Millais & The Name-Dropper’s Cookbook

 

 

 

I bought The Name-Dropper's Cookbook (or to be pedantic, Hugh's Who: The Name-Dropper's Cookbook) second-hand, from one of those splendid old-fashioned bookshops in Burnham Market, Norfolk. It's been languishing on the shelf for a year or so, unread, and I've only just taken it down and started to use it. It's a terrific book.

Thinking about it, I remember hearing the old charmer on a local Oxfordshire radio station (Hugh left this planet in 2009) reminiscing with some DJ about his unusual life, famous friends, exotic travels and love of cooking.

As his obituary in The Independent says:

Hugh Geoffrey Millais, who has died at the age of 80, falls into the category of artistic dabbler and business adventurer who, when he wished to, could bring an immense presence to those films in which he appeared.

And in The Daily Telegraph:

Hugh Millais, who has died aged 79, wafted genially through life- sailing around the caribbean in his own yacht as a Calypso singer; starting an ambitious house building scheme in Spain, and appearing in two of Robert Altman's films - without ever having to suffer the indignity of full-time employment.

And in The Guardian:

Hugh Millais, who has died aged 79, was a brilliant sailor, an actor, a wonderful cook, a storyteller extraordinaire and a singer who could invent calypsos of sublime silliness. He also had a natural eye for design. But the greatest of his talents was a gift for life.

 

 

His star performance was as "Mad Dog Butler" in Robert Altman's western, McCabe & Mrs Miller, in which he plays a macho fur-coated gunslinger turned bounty hunter. For some bizarre reason, this film has escaped my radar (God knows how, as I love westerns), so I had a quick look at a video clip on YouTube (If you're a subscriber, I think you will need to log into The Greasy Spoon proper to see it):

 

 

 

Hugh puts in a terrific act; Altman told him to keep his English drawl and this adds to the panache. He also featured as a turtle-necked letch in Altman's Images, a shady camel-coated financier in The Dogs of War and a goaty old squire in the dreadful Michael Winner's hilarious re-make of The Wicked Lady.

 

 

He was also a keen amateur cook of the Old School. Robert Altman said "As an actor he is an excellent cook, as a cook he is an excellent actor", and sure enough the recipes in The Name Dropper's Cookbook are actually rather good. Interspersed with the amusing- and highly readable- yarns featuring the likes of Ernest Hemingway (inevitably they run with the bulls), Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Wolf Mankowitz, David Niven and Ava Gardener are a hundred or so recipes, of which, two have been tried so far.

And by golly, they're excellent. The Choufleur au Gratin was, essentially, steamed caulifower florets served with Hollandaise Sauce and grilled Parmesan cheese, but if you follow his instructions you will end up with a classic dish, perfectly cooked. He's keen on relatively simple Spanish, French and Italian classics; so you have: Pollo al Ajillo (chicken with garlic and chili), Cassoulet de Toulouse (baked pork, sausage, preserved goose and beans), Risotto al Tartufo (truffle risotto). All these sound like tried-and-tested favourites, and I have no doubt that they are delicious. We shall find out.

 

 

 

In later life, Hugh Millais enjoyed a career as an interior designer in partnership with his second wife, Anne Sheffield. I love his Oxfordshire kitchen with its huge seventeenth century iron fireback, Aga and huge copper pots and pans. Here, at the stove, I am sure many tales were told, stories woven and recipes perfected.

 

 

The Greasy Spoon visits...Otto's

 

 

 

It's 1968. I'm in a swankpot restaurant entertaining Dollybird Number Two. Edda Dell'Orso's crooning Morricone. There's a fawning waiter in a maroon mess jacket. He's flambéing Crêpes Suzette at the table. Behind him hovers a suave eagle-eyed maitre d' of the old school. Or that, at least, is how I imagine it; in my dreams. Silver Service. That's what they used to call it. And when was the last time you had that?

Well, Greasy Spooners, I have some exciting news. Please make your way as fast as you can to the soon-to-be-hallowed doors of Otto's in the Gray's Inn Road. Otto's opened in 2012, so it's a relatively new kid on the block. It's a small-ish restaurant, sandwiched between a dry cleaner and a sushi bar, just across the road from the barristers of Gray's Inn and almost next door to the newscasters of ITN. Visiting Otto's is to enter a culinary time machine. A little trip in time back to one of those smartish, sophisticated and very grown up local restaurants which used to exist in the land of Never-Never. We're in Frasier and Niles Crane territory; this, I think, is what used to be known as 'gastronomy'. 

The maverick genius behind this new enterprise is Austrian-born Otto Albert Tepassé, old-hand and late of the Tour d' Argent and Mirabelle. If you're lucky- and rich- you may have eaten at the Tour d' Argent. It's that oh-so-famous restaurant in Paris where they serve the spécialité de la maison: pressed duck. But this is no ordinary duck. Each dish comes with a signed and numbered certificate as if it was a trinket from the Franklin Mint.

 

Tour d'Argent, Paris, 1974. The generosity of a more leisurely age.

 

Now, too, you can experience the delights of pressed duck, here in foggy old London. If you're prepared to pre-book a slot, pay £140 and watch the whole performance (it takes over an hour). For this is the generosity of a more leisurely age. No second sittings with this one. Otto's devotes a whole page on its menu to the story behind its very own Edwardian duck press (Christofle, 1910, if you're wondering). They have a lobster press too, but somehow that doesn't seem quite as exciting:

Pressed Duck is mostly prepared in front of the customer. The Duck is roasted to rare and carried to the table where thin slices are cut from the breasts. The breast slices are then placed in a dish of reduced red wine. The rest of the Duck except for the legs, which are served grilled, is pressed in the special screw press. The juice obtained is flavoured with Cognac, thickened with Duck liver and poured over the slices of breast which finish cooking in the sauce. 

Which reminds me. Back in the early 90s, I managed- with difficulty- to secure a job of sorts as a junior 'expert' (I now hesitate to use the word) at the defunct auction house, Phillips, which then eeked its trade at the shabbier end of New Bond Street. The first objet I ever had the pleasure of cataloguing was- you guessed- a silver-plated duck press; a relic, I expect of some smart high falutin' 50s restaurant gone bust. Floundering, I described it as a 'grape press' and gave it an embarrassingly low guesstimate. Prudence Leith won it for a pittance.

 

 

Inside, Otto's has an Old European vibe. Whitewashed walls. Large tables, pressed linen, spacious padded banquettes in crushed raspberry, art nouveau lamps and Viennese busts. Decorative nick-nacks in silver-plate grace each table. Ours was a lobster. Downstairs, there's a framed poster of Catherine Deneuve's naked back, Belle de Jour; upstairs, bizarrely, there's a thing for Marilyn Monroe going on, and Audrey Hepburn to a lesser extent- photographs, posters and cushions. It's kitsch. But it works. I think. Up to a Point. It's weirdly edgy, even slightly eccentric as, seemingly, is Mein Host.

We sat quite close to the fabled duck press. Saw it in action, too- surrounded by a team of eager white-coated waiters wrestling with the wheel on the top. They like trolleys at Otto's. And waiters, of which there seems to be an inexhaustible supply. After a bit, one of them came along and with ceremony parked a trolley, spiked with a piglet's haunch, at the table opposite (presumably the Jambon Agé de Serrano?).

 

 

The food is of the Old School. It's rich. It's Gothic. It's French. It's wonderful. My first course of brains (Cervelle de Veau a la Grenobloise, Poêlée de Champignons Sauvage) was superb. Barely cooked, flashed in the pan - as it should be, meltingly soft, almost runny, served in a complex sauce enlivened with lemon, capers, parsley and mushrooms. Mrs Aitch's Snail Ravioli (Ravioles d’Escargots à la Bourguignonne) was 'divine'. 

Then I had to have the Steak Tartare with Rôsti potatoes (Tartare de Bœuf, Préparé à la Table, Pomme d’Arphin), of course, I did- it's a very Greasy Spoon dish. It said 'prepared at the table' on the menu. I thought this was going to take a minute or so. Not so, this was theatre. It took about fifteen minutes. Having something done in front of you is, of course, a childish pleasure. Then another trolley was wheeled out with various ingredients spread out across the top. And a wooden bowl. Our waitress cracked an egg into it and made a mayonnaise, subsequently mashing in all the other ingredients one by one with Lea & Perrins and Tabasco added to taste. 

Mrs Aitch had Saddle of Hare in a Raspberry Vinegar and Bitter Chocolate Sauce (Selle de Lièvre de Fennes, Choux Rouge, Vinaigre de Framboise et Sauce au Chocolat), an enlightened choice for a dark and rainy London night. The dish was 'immaculate', the meat was 'unbelievably tender' and it arrived with 'delicious creamed potatoes'. 'It was so much better than I thought it was going to be'. Always a good sign, that.

Through all this culinary excitement, Otto remained inscrutable. But on leaving, I told him how much I had enjoyed the brains, and his face lit up into a huge smile. The bill came to about £75 for two, including wine, two courses and coffee. And that included a Kir Royale and a Bellini. You can also have a very reasonably priced lunch at Otto's: two courses cost £24, and a half carafe of the superior house wine is £12.

 

 

As you can gather, we're rather smitten with Otto's. He's ignored popular opinion and just gone ahead and done it. Opened an old-fashioned French restaurant of the Old School. As if the River Café had never existed. It's all so splendidly unfashionable. It's terribly exciting. Who's ever heard of bruschetta?

 

Otto's, 182 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8EW (020 7713 0107)

 

Clientele: Barristers, Judges, Newsreaders, Gourmands, Drs Frasier & Niles Crane

Ambience: Old School Kitsch 

Food: Superb

Service: Silver

Price: ££/£££ 

 

Underneath the Arches: a Restaurant is Born

 

 

 

Just got back from a fascinating hour or so being shown round the building site of Counter, a new restaurant in London's Vauxhall- on the South Bank, just across the river from Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. It's the current baby of our enterprising friend, Philip Reicherstorfer, former J. P. Morgan banker turned restaurateur and visionary.

 

 

I've mentioned Vauxhall in previous posts- it's where we happen to live, and currently, I believe, now Europe's biggest re-generation zone and building site. The new American Embassy is under construction, and near the location of the original 18th century Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens one Mr Damien Hirst is opening a gallery featuring his entire art collection. A mini-Manhattan is planned linking the once edgy streets of Vauxhall to the East with a re-imagined Battersea Power Station complex to the West.

And that's only the half of it. Over 10,000 new residents are expected to live in the previous wastelands and bomb-sites of Nine Elms. That's 18,000 new homes.

 

 

 

You'll find Counter- or what is to become Counter- in one of those Victorian brick railway arches originally constructed by the London & South Western Railway. And it's not a half-hearted enterprise. The space stretches a phenomenal 60 metres, long enough to fit in the entire length of Nelson's Column with room to spare. The slightly Gothic arch at the end creates an almost cathedral like ambience, with the distant rumble of over-head trains echoing into the cavernous space.

 

 

I admire Philip's ambition. He knows exactly what he wants. It's going to be dreadfully smart. "Art Deco meets Disco" is the plan. No brick walls à la Joe Allen going on here. Or scrubbed pine floorboards. Or chalked-up blackboards. "Shabby Chic" ain't a popular phrase in these parts.

Instead, the walls are going to be lined with soft antiqued glass, creating a 'Hall of Mirrors, Versailles-ish' vibe. The space will be divided into two restaurants with a bar in the middle and private dining rooms. Orange is the house colour.

 

Philip examines the re-claimed wooden floor blocks

 

A darkish slate grey is the colour

 

 

 

The ceilings are being left in their semi-industrial state and are currently being sprayed with gallons and gallons of Farrow & Ball paint in a subtle off-black.

Food will be of the unpretentious comfort variety, covering different regions of the globe, suitable for London's increasingly international population. Sam Adams beer will be available on tap. 

Philip has asked me back in a month or two's time, and I'll report back with a progress update. In the meantime, watch this space. Counter plans to open in January 2015.

 

Nina St Tropez

 

 

I'm back. We had a terrific ball at the Battersea Decorative Antiques Fair and Josephine the Pig has found a new home. Sold to a nursery in one of the more salubrious parts of London, you'll be glad to hear. After all the hard work and anxiety, it's always a relief when your stand passes that designer litmus test, you shift enough stock to make a decent profit and new friends sign up for that golden newsletter subscription list.

But back to things gastronomique. Every now and again a book turns up that I rate. I mean I really rate. Please step forward Nina St Tropez. Nina Parker is a London-based chef who ran Bocca Di Lupo's Gelupo. Now as someone whose Desert Island Discs' luxury thing would be genuine Italian Ice Cream (plus a large American 'fridge) this looked promising. The blurb on the back of the book says:

"Classic. Simple. Delicious. This is the food of the South of France. With over 100 recipes inspired by the old-world glamour and elegance of St Tropez, Nina takes us on a journey to discover the culinary secrets of the town." 

 

 

 

Mrs Aitch was the one who first alerted me to the book. She'd read about it on that Voguette's wunder website, A Little Bird. Initially, It looked terribly girly. Nothing wrong with this of course, but there are quite a few of these books currently on the market; you know the thing: numerous lifestyle photographs, pretty girls in Cornish-Wared, retro kitchens; hip parties featuring chiselled, good looking people you have a sneaking suspicion might have been hired from a modeling agency; scented candles territory. And quite often with these sort of books, the recipes don't work.

Well I tell you something- Nina's recipes most certainly work, and not only that, they're extraordinarily delicious. We spent August in Cornwall, at a rather wonderful late 50's house in St Mawes, which my parents rent on a regular basis. It has the most marvellous position, right on the water, with it's own private beach and a sub-tropical garden to die for. Reminds me enormously of that house in Bonjour Tristesse. That slightly dubious B move with silver-foxed, aging roué David Niven wafting around on the terrace in a silk dressing grown, Dry Martini in hand. So what could be more suitable to cook from than Nina St Tropez?

 

 

We tried out several recipes. More than once. My current numéro un favourite is her take on Fennel, Carrot and Nutmeg Gratin aka Gratin de Fenouil et Carotte à la Muscade. Mein Gott, this is divine, the nectar of the gods:

Fennel bulbs, Spanish onions and carrots are sliced and placed into a mixing bowl. Crushed garlic, lots of grated nutmeg and fresh thyme leaves are added along with a decent slug of olive oil, sea salt and black pepper. Everything is then well-tossed until the vegetables are well coated. 

You then take a baking dish and make a layer of fennel and onions at the bottom. A new layer of sliced carrot is placed on top, and the whole thing is finished off with a final layer of fennel and onions. The dish is placed in a hot oven for just over an hour or so. The vegetables will caramelise and get slightly crunchy and charred, but that is all to the good. A mixture of milk and cream is then poured on top and the dish is sprinkled with sourdough breadcrumbs. The gratin is cooked for a further 15 minutes or so, until the top is crunchy and brown. 

It's a terrific (and slightly unusual) combination, the nutmeg, carrot and fennel. Works brilliantly. This is currently in my top ten dishes and I am addicted to it. Well done Miss Parker. Your book is a most definite buy.

 

The Greasy Spoon tests...Rick Stein's India

  

 

 

One more post about curry. Then I will shut up. You will remember, dear reader, that in the last post we were flirting with the charms of British Indian Restaurant Cookery. I tried a recipe or two from Undercover Curry (the secret of British Indian Restaurant cookery) and, Mein Gott, it was one hell of a marathon. The base sauce took an hour or two, and then I diligently obeyed orders and had to make a garlic and ginger paste, a tomato and tandoori mix and a tandoori masala marinade. Several years later, I came up with a reasonably authentic curry. A bit like the sort of thing you might order from your local takeaway. Except it wasn't as good. Tasted similar, but something was missing. The Sag Aloo was greasy, the base sauce had a lingering cabbagey smell, and the 'Madras' was far too tomatoey. Scary amount of vegetable oil too. Swimming in the stuff. All this, of course, could have been- and probably was- the fault of Mein Host, but it would have been far easier, frankly, to have picked up that telephone and rung up my old friend from bachelor days, Captain Korma.

 

 

Which takes me to Rick Stein. One of my favourite restaurants is his Seafood Restaurant in Padstow. I like their professional, friendly attitude, I like the fact the tables are spacious. I like the way they ladle their Cornish version of Bouillabaisse from a generous tureen, enough for two. And the food is still fabulous. It tastes of something. Oh yes, Rick Stein is still going strong, after all these years. And first "discovered" by none other than one Mr Keith Floyd during the making of his early series, "Floyd on Fish".

 

 

Rick Stein's India is a recent addition to the cookery library, and it's a superb compilation. It's based on his recent television series in which we enjoyed the sight of Mr Stein eating his way across the Sub-Continent. Don't be put off by all the generic BBC television hype. It's a buy.

Don't know about you, but I am so fed up with the current crop of television documentaries. Photogenic Oxbridge dons striding across the Saharan desert in jeans and open necked blue shirts, gesticulating wildly. Next shot they're on the Great Wall of China. Then they're driving a hired open Mustang on the freeways of the Deep South, their Byronic locks blowing in the breeze. Cue long shot of television expert standing on the edge of Beachy Head (Go on Man! Jump!), staring out to sea. Or on the Grand Canyon. Or gazing at the heavens and contemplating the mysterious Universe. Step forward Doctor So and So. You know who you are. And those ridiculous repetitive intros. Which reminds us retards- i.e. those of us with attention spans of five seconds- you and me- what the series is all about in the first place. Because we've forgotten since last week, haven't we? Tiresome intros which run about five minutes into the programme. "Im Professor So and So, and in this series, for the first time in television history, I will be unlocking the secrets of the ancient kingdom of ..." Cue commercial break for international television. They're always "unlocking" the past in these programmes. Yawn.

This is the reason why the younger crowd don't watch British television. Because it ain't no good no more. There, gastronauts, I've had my little rant. Now back to Mr Stein and the dilemma of authentic and not so authentic curries.

 

 

I've really thought about this one. Not quite sleepless nights, but it's been niggling me for the last few days. I don't see the point of going to all the trouble of making a British Indian Restaurant curry when you can knock up authentic street food from Rick Steins' book in about fifteen to twenty minutes, with minimum ingredients and little washing up. So far I've made the Dry "Curry of Cabbage, Carrot and Coconut", "Cochin First-Class Railway Mutton Curry" and "Chettinad Chicken". All were superb, especially the last two. I'll be using this brilliant book for years to come. Before you reach for that telephone, please give it a try. Buy it.

 

Elizabeth David's Kitchen

 

 

I was sorting out my considerable stock of old auction catalogues the other day, and came across one I had forgotten about: the Elizabeth David Kitchen sale from 1994. Many moons ago, I used to work as a works of art specialist for that venerable, if slightly eccentric, auctioneers, Phillips (or Phillips Son & Neale as it then was) founded 1796; and this auction was one of their more interesting efforts.

 

 

  Elizabeth David, 1957

 

Held at their shabby Bayswater salerooms, on the day of the auction a queue formed around the block. Everyone wanted a slice of the action. At the time, the directors of Phillips hadn't really appreciated quite how famous Mrs David was. I seem to remember one of them- who shall remain nameless- openly admitting that he had no idea who she was at all. Not one iota. I shake my head in disbelief: obviously not an admirer of the cuisine bourgeoise. 

 

The auction, of course, went crazy, with a scruffy kitchen table fetching £1,850, famously bought by one Pru Leith, and pots of worn wooden spoons running into many hundreds of pounds.

It was almost as if, by some occult osmosis, Mrs David's relics might impart or transfer a little bit of that magic into your own cooking. Could Potage aux Haricot Blancs et à l'Oseille really taste better if served in Lot 34, an "earthenware two-handled crock, part glazed, 34cm high"?

 

Elizabeth David by John Ward, National Portrait Gallery

 

 

Marcel Boulestin

 

 

 

I was pleased to see that Boulestin has re-opened on St James's Street. Or rather, a re-imagining of that old London institution which closed down in 1994. I've yet to book- but from the outside it looks desperately pretty, and the old-fashioned French menu looks promising: where else in London can you enjoy the Gothic delights of tête de veau on a regular basis? (It's Monday's dish of the day for £14.75). I'll report back soon.

This made me go and dig out my Boulestin books from the back of the shelf. So far, I've got three: "Classic French Recipes", "The Finer Cooking" (published 1937), and "Recipes of Boulestin". If you're inclined to collect, I'd urge you to have a look at the various Boulestin cookery books published over the years.

 

Xavier Marcel Boulestin was born in 1878. Very much a talented jack of all trades, he scraped a living from a variety of ventures, (including a sophisticated interior design shop in Belgravia) before settling on his eventual and successful career as the first television chef and restauranteur. In 1923 Boulestin published "Simple French Cooking for English Homes" which was an immediate hit. In 1927, The Restaurant Boulestin opened in Covent Garden- at the time the most expensive restaurant in London. In a prominent place was an immense bottle of 1869 liqueur "cognac de la maison". The food at Boulestin was obviously terrific, and apparently, Boulestin's standards were of such a high standard that the restaurant failed to make a profit, forcing Boulestin to make money from articles, books and public appearances. Boulestin died in 1943, trapped in a Paris occupied by German forces.

 

Boulestin's recipes are curiously charming, and by the fenickity standards of Auntie Delia, rather vague; allowing the reader the chance to develop his or her creativity. Here's his recipe for Sauce aux Noix (Italian Sauce with Crushed Walnuts):

This is a very pleasant sauce to serve with spaghetti; it has a delicious and unusual flavour. Peel a handful of walnuts and pound them well in a mortar. Fry in oil a small quantity of garlic and parsely finely chopped together ; add the pounded walnuts, cook a little but do not brown, moisten with a little olive oil, and very little boiling water. Mix well with the hot spaghetti and serve immediately.

This reminded me of my disastrous attempt to make Italian Walnut Sauce as described by one Mrs Elizabeth David. I shouldn't be surprised by this as Elizabeth David, apparently, fell under the spell of Boulestin and the Great Man influenced her writings.

Anyway, I'm a fan of the French cuisine bourgeoise, and feel strongly that it's time for a revival. As much as I like all that Amalfi coast/Mediterranean stuff, I do think that French country cooking is more appropriate for the Northern climate. After all, isn't Welsh Rarebit really just a Croque Monsieur in disguise?

 

 

 

The Dry Martini Revisited

 

 

 

Another great programme from Simon Hopkinson yesterday evening (Simon Hokinson Cooks, More 4, Monday Evenings), in which he made a classic Dry Martini. I know that this blog is in danger of becoming a tribute site to Mr Hopkinson, but he really is exceedingly good. And he made his Martini exactly how it should be made- right down to the Harrys' Bar glass pitcher.

First point- it's a gin martini. Gin. Not Vodka (Mister Bond got that one wrong), nor, god forbid, apple juice. No cherries, slices of limes, "inspired" extra flourishes, garnishes or anything like that.

Second point- it's stirred, not shaken. Stirred. (Mister Bond got that one wrong, too).

How to make it? Greasy Spooners won't need to be told. But if you're a new reader, this is how you do it:

You get hold of large glass pitcher or mixing jug and you pour into it a decent amount of fresh ice. Simon H rinsed his ice off with running water to get rid of the 'fridge smells- and that seems like an excellent plan.

Into the pitcher goes a decent splash of a dry white vermouth. Noilly Pratt (to rhyme with cat) would be great. Or, of course, Martini Extra Dry. Simon H probably put in a bit more vermouth than I would have done, but, hey, each to their own. Swirl the ice around with a mixing stick, spoon or chopstick.

Next, in goes the cold neat gin. Plymouth Gin would be an excellent choice, as would Tanqueray. The proportions of vermouth to gin should be about 1: 9 or 2:8. Something like that.

The Martini is poured into cold, frosted glasses- straight from the deep freeze. My own preference is for dinky, small glass tumblers, rather than those Martini glasses everyone seems to use, and you see on television. But, again, that's me.

Finish it off with a twist of lemon peel. Simon H just twisted his peel over the glass, so that the citrus oils floated onto the Martini- and then discarded it. I like the simplicity of this. No fuss. No garnishes. Just a classic Dry Martini, made properly. Simple, and served very, very cold. In small tumblers.

 

 

Simon Hopkinson Cooks

 

 

 

Good news, Greasy Spooners- Simon Hopkinson's presenting a new television series (Simon Hopkinson Cooks, More 4, Monday Evenings), and if the first episode is anything to go by, this one's actually rather good. You may remember that his previous series made me a trifle grumpy. That one was made by the BBC. Loud pop music, gimmicky camera angles, slow-motion offset by super-quick editing which made F for Fake look like Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Over Produced. This new series, however, is made for Commercial Television. That's a good thing.

My current theory is that the BBC is bogged down with political correctness: earnest acned producers (Oxbridge Fresh) desperately (and cynically) trying to appeal to a mythical yoof market that probably doesn't exist. Consequently, any germ of creativity is going to be found on the commercial networks. Look at the success of Downton Abbey for example. Admittedly it's trashy, but it's beautifully made, great fun and everyone loves it. I doubt very much that it would ever have passed through the hallowed pearly gates of the BBC. Too much of a risk. Not enough Kitchen Sink. Actors speaking Proper, Like. Put it this way, if Oliver Cromwell and his new Model Army crowd were still around, they would, without any doubt, be paid up supporters of The Beeb, not ITV.

Anyway. I really like the look of this series. In the first episode Mr Hopkinson explained how to make a classic Negroni (Neat Plymouth Gin, Campari and Sweet Red Vermouth, not that we need to be reminded), dropped by a few decent London restaurants (The River Café was one, where he had the most civilised exchange with Ruth Rogers; and the superb Fino in Charlotte Street where he chatted up the Spanish chef and learnt how to make an authentic paella, (along with an interesting green garlickey dressing), cooked a creme bruleé, anchovy toasties, a simple green bean salad à la Parisienne, and, to cap it all, a naked gnocchi. Next week he's going to make a Prawn Cocktail. Oh, I love it.

I gather that Simon Hopkinson was surprised when his production company agreed to 'allow' him to make Negroni cocktails. This really says it all, doesn't it?

 

Mireille Johnston

 

 

I've had fun re-watching some of the programmes from Keith Floyd's "Floyd on France". This was a brilliant (and intelligent) television series made during the 1980's, exploring the regional cooking of France. It made the radical innovation of filming in real-life kitchens, in real time; a sort of antithesis to the likes of Auntie Delia and the scary Mrs Cradock. Floyd's anarchic antics were, of course, very amusing too. But, oh, what a contrast "Floyd in France" makes with the formulaic, yoof-orientated rubbish peddled on the television (or computer screens) of today!

 

 

 

 

Which suddenly reminded me of Mireille Johnston and her French Cookery Course. I had forgotten all about her. In her BBC television series from the early 90's, Mireille comes across as a dishy and sophisticated French housewife, with a drop-dead sexy accent that will break your heart- a lip smackin' mid-life male fantasy. In reality, she was a dishy- and sophisticated- academic; a Fulbright scholar, and translator; she held a doctorate in comperative literature and taught at Yale. In her "Cook's Tour of France", like Floyd, she travelled across the regions of France investigating the local food and sharing the secrets of various Michelin starred restaurants. I'm sure that if we had ever met, I would have liked her. A Lot.

Her book was published by the BBC in two volumes. I bought the first yonks ago and, to my chagrin now, barely looked at it. But it was still there at the back of the shelf- a little yellow in places, slightly dusty and tired, but crying out to be used and loved. And what a terrific book it is!  As I get older, I'm really coming to the conclusion that the simple and classic food of the cuisine bourgeoise is The Way Forward for home cooks.

So far, I've made Poule au Pot Farcie (Poached chicken with a chicken liver and spinach stuffing), Poulet au Vinaigre (chicken with vinegar and cucumber), Marmite Dieppoise (creamy mixed fish and seafood flavoured with curry), and Salmon aux Lentilles (salmon with lentils). I love the integrity, simplicity and relative sophistication of local French food. Incidentally, the Salmon with Lentils dish could easily be rustled up as an after-work thing; it's essentially a pan-fried salmon filet served with a creamy lentil sauce.

Mireilles' recipes are easy to make, work brilliantly, don't require strange ingredients and look beautiful on the plate. But I am of course, typing the obvious. All these classic recipes have been handed down from generation to generation, and have been tried, tested, discussed, argued over and refined over many, many, many years. They smack of authenticity. How different from today's so-called celebrity cook books, rushed out for the Christmas market, peppered with mistakes, so often leaving you slightly disappointed; with over-complicated recipes that don't really work. 

Mireille Johnston's Complete Cookery Course is currently being peddled on amazon for a penny. I've posted up two videos of Mireille from youtube. If you're a subscriber you may have to have a look at The Greasy Spoon via your web-browser to see them.

 

 

 

 

Pierre Koffmann's Memories of Gascony

 

 

 

I've just had this for my birthday- it's Pierre Koffmann's Memories of Gascony. The book was originally published in 1990, and became a cult classic. Until this sumptious reprint, it was relatively hard to find, and was horribly expensive second-hand. Koffmann opened La Tante Claire in 1977.

 

I love the food in this book. It's simple, gutsy food of the French rural persuasion. Lots of armagnac, garlic, foie gras, duck... I'm tempted to have a shot at "Gratin d'Haricots Verts": green French beans in a creamy, garlic sauce, served with Bayonne Ham. Either that or the "Terrine de Foie Gras", soaked in armagnac. Or maybe "Lièvre à la Royale"? Stuffed Hare in a White Wine. But where to start?  It's all fabulous.

 

Called to the Bar

 

 

I was thinking about wine bars the other day. Realised that these are a vanishing breed. When was the last time you ate in one? There seem to be two styles. There's the spit- and-sawdust, oak barrel, vaulted cellar, pin-stripey, Dickensian thing. Hogarthian. Very Inns of Court. Where Rumpole of the Bailey might have spilt claret down his starched shirt front back in the late 70's. And then there's the 1960's groovy wine bar- all spluttering candles in wickered wine bottles, Spanish Bullfighting Posters, chalked blackboards, plummy waiters in black and white striped T shirts, and some dude playing skiffle guitar in the corner. Back in the early 60's, this sort of place was dead trendy- but I reckon by the early 90's they had really gone out of fashion. The world's a sophisticated place, and things had moved on.

 

I'm trying to think how many of these are left in London. I mean genuine examples, not those pastiche French cafés. Grumble's (Pimlico) was established in 1964 and is still going strong. The Troubadour (Earl's Court), admittedly more of a coffee bar, was founded in 1954. There's also that bizarre bistro, L'Autre in Shepherds' Market ("Mayfair's Oldest Wine Lodge"). Originally serving Polish food to the sound of Greta Garbo 78's, it expanded its repertoire to include Mexican food- accomodating the Mexican Embassy nearby.

 

The food in these places was invariably Mediterranean. The post war boom meant that European travel became accessible to the middle classes for the first time, and the affluent Conran generation wanted the food they had sampled in Italy, France, Greece and Spain back home: garlic mushrooms, taramaslata, olives, coq au vin, deep fried camembert, goulash, paella, beef stroganoff, piperade, l'escargots, garlic bread- all washed down with a cheeky little Spanish Red.

And then there was Nick's Diner in the Ifield Road, opened in the early 60s' and the haunt of fashionable Swinging London. It features in Joseph Losey's The Servant; one of my all time favourite films- there's that wonderful sequence with James Fox: camel hair coat, upturned collar, cigarette, striding past a grainy Woolworth's, Davey Graham's haunting "Rock Me Mama" filling the cold night air...

 

 

 

Richard Olney's "Fennel à la Grecque"

 

 

 

Following my recent post on the American food writer, Richard Olney, I'm having fun getting back into his books. I've got The French Menu Cookbook and Simple French Food- but have yet to read his autobiography, Reflexions; Ten Vineyard Lunches or Provence, The Beautiful Cookbook. He's a sophisticated cook, and there would be much to learn if you took the plunge and decided to go through The French Menu Cookbook bit by bit.

Here's Richard Olney's recipe for "Fennel à la Grecque", taken from The French Menu Cookbook. It will serve from four to six people. He's got it down as a "Simple Autumn recipe", although in England it might be just as suitable for the Summer. In these harsher Northern climes, Autumn usually makes me think of squashes, mushrooms, pheasant, game, chutneys. Bonfire smoke, fog, red poppies.

 

 

 

In a saucepan you assemble: 750g fennel (outer stalks removed, halved or quartered from top to bottom), 5 tablespoons of olive oil, the juice of two lemons, one onion (finely sliced into rings), 2 cloves of garlic (lightly crushed), 8 to 10 coriander seeds, a pinch of fennel seeds, a bouquet garni, and salt.

Pour over boiling water to cover, and simmer, covered until the fennel is tender. Arrange the fennel in a deep serving dish, pour over the contents of the saucepan, and leave to cool. Serve cold, and sprinkle with finely chopped flat leafed parsley.

The brilliant thing about this very easy recipe is that you can you use the formula to cook other vegetables in a similar manner. Olney suggests using as an alternative: artichoke hearts, baby onions, celery hearts split in two, or cauliflower florets.

 

Richard Olney

 

 

Do you remember remainder bookshops? Back in the bad old days of the Net Book Agreement, I used to hang around the plethora of pop-up shops that had spawned, like some form of bibliomanical penicillin in the Charing Cross Road. They were slighty seedy; often with open fronts, exposed to heavy traffic and all the debris of the London street scene: soggy newspapers, discarded McDonald's cartons, broken glass from the neighbouring ale house; and with an 'adult' department down rickety staircases. This was in the days when booksellers could return unsold copies to the publisher on a "sale, or return" basis. This made life easier for the harrassed rep. He could persuade the bookseller to take, say, twenty copies of Bernard Manning's kiss and tell autobiography, when the hard truth was that the bookshop might just about sell one copy if they were lucky, and on a sunny day at that. The remaining copies would be returned to the publisher to be pulped- or remaindered. It was all a terrific waste of trees.

But amongst the dross- the Z list celebrity memoirs, the regurgitated encylopedias of Ancient Egypt, gardening handbooks by people you had never heard of, picture books of The River Thames in CameraColour, Jane's "Handbook of American Warships" and "The Reader's Digest Book of English Villages", you could discover some gems. One such find was Richard Olney's "French Menu Cookbook".

 

Richard Olney was an interesting character. An American, he had lived almost his entire adult life in Solliès-Toucas, Provence, mingling with the Anglo-American bohemian set, including the likes of the avant-garde occultist and filmmaker, Kenneth Anger. Olney died of a heart attack in 1992. His books are beautifully written and have become highly sought after, although I see that you can currently buy my rather lovely edition of "The French Menu Cookbook" for a few pounds on amazon.

 

 

"Simple French Food' (republished by Grub Street in 2003, first published in 1974) is another Olney book well worth adding to your library. Simple it ain't. I'm looking at his recipe for Raviolis aux Grenouilles (Frog Ravioli) as I write, and it involves a fumet, a parsley, chive, tarragon and frog stuffing, and a noodle dough. He liked stuffing things, did Richard Olney. The ingredient list for his Terrine de Poissons, Crème Mousseline Tomatée (Fish Terrine, Whipped Tomato Cream) spreads out over two pages. No, this is relatively sophisticated cooking for a more lesiurely age- for a long, hot, dusty French August, with the dahlias coming into bloom- and all the better for that.

I gather that he enjoyed a mild feud with Julia Child. I love "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", but of the two of them, I think I would naturally gravitate towards Olney at the cocktail party (there was just something a bit strange about Mrs Child). Richard Olney's languid prose can be almost Proustian at times:

"Happily a stew is rarely subject to quite such a complicated and uncertain conceptual process...fired by the touching and too human desire to flatter a Sybaritic guest, to compose a menu, each of the parts of which may be of an exquisite purity, but which, in its plethoric whole, adds up to something in the way of barbaric orgy..."

From "Simple French Food"

 

Robert Carrier and Drinking in Vogue

 

 

 

It's hard trying to be a food writer when you haven't got a kitchen. It's the reason why you've had a series of posts from me on cocktails over the last few days. You're also going to get quite a bit about books over the next few weeks or so; that is until the dust settles, the builders are banished and the ribbon, unveiling the new kitchen, is cut. I might even post up a photograph of the whole shooting match when it's finished.

For this one, I'm combining the two by recommending Drinking in Vogue, written by Henry McNulty, first published in 1978. Condé Nast published a series of excellent design and style books in the 60's, 70's and 80's; all of which are now becoming highly collectable. Henry Piper McNulty sounds like one of those splendid old school Henry Jamesy Americans. His Princeton obituary describes him as "a man of the world". I like the dry, spare irony of his biographical entry on the back flap of Drinking in Vogue: "Henry McNulty was born in Soochow, China, the son of missionary parents..."

And what a useful little book is Drinking in Vogue; peppered with amusing stories and witty asides:

"Learning to appreciate wine is a bit like falling in love. It happens to you without you actually encouraging it. But unlike love there is little chance that divorce will set in, unless your doctor intervenes".

He's also disarmingly candid: " I make no claim to wine expertise. I just like wine. My personal preference is for red over white, and French over others, and Bordeaux over Burgundy..." 

 

 

 

Hintlesham Hall, Suffolk

 

I was amused to see Henry McNulty mentioning a recipe for the "Hintlesham White Lady" (gin and lemon juice in equal measures, a dash of cointreau, a touch of sugar to taste, shaken with the white of an egg and ice). Oh, crikey, that's a trip down memory lane. Back in the late 70's, Hintlesham Hall was the fashionable country house restaurant owned by the starry American food writer and television "chef", Robert Carrier. Hintlesham was the sort of place where the waiters would count to three, and lift their silver tureen lids in unison. I buy old Robert Carrier books whenever I see them. They go for a song.

 

 

Mr Carrier in action for the BBC

 

It's funny how nobody seems to remember Robert Carrier anymore. In his day, he was huge: a contributor to Vogue, the proprietor of a trendy cookery school, author of many urbane cookery books, the inventor of the wipeable Robert Carrier Cookery Card System- a novel concept at the time. Food, Wine & Friends (the book of his now long forgotten 1979 television series) remains a particular favourite. If I can find my copy, I'll post up some photographs from the book at a later date. You will find them highly entertaining. His "friends", of course, included glamour girls like Joanna Lumley, Liv Ullmann, Susannah York, and Valentina Cortese. 

 

 

Robert Carrier's dining room at Hintlesham, "Robert Carrier's Entertaining", Sidgwick & Jackson, 1977 

 

 

And he was a terribly nice man to deal with: a very long time ago, as a junior auction specialist at a well know auctioneers in New Bond Street, I was told to telephone Mr Carrier to tell him that his rather camp 17th century wood carvings (gilt-wood angels, heavenly cherubs, South German putti- that sort of thing) had failed to sell. He was utterly charming, shouted "good, good!" down the telephone and told me he was delighted to be "getting his old friends back".

There's hardly anything featuring Robert Carrier on youtube, but I did find him trying to flog Magimixes in an old ad from the 1980's:

 

          

 

 

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In praise of Lindsey Bareham

 

Followers of this blog will know that I'm a fan of Simon Hopkinson; "Roast Chicken and Other Stories" and "The Prawn Cocktail Years" are particular favourites. But if Simon Hopkinson's a culinary Batman, Lindsey Bareham has to be Robin: she was the co-writer on both books. Or maybe it should be the other way round, as Ms Bareham, in her understated way, has produced a large number of extraordinarily good cookery books over the years, as well as writing an inspirational column for the Evening Standard, read by thousands on their way back from work on The Tube.

Rummaging around in a cardboard box of discarded books, I came across Just One Pot, published by Cassell in 2004. The rather boring cover doesn't do the book justice- this has suddenly become one of my all-time favourite reads. I'm currently working through the recipes one-by-one. It's aimed at busy people who like to cook, but come back from work knackered and hungry. Everything can be made in one pot, in less than an hour. Ingredients are readily available from supermarkets.

Lindsey's food is gutsy, I detect the influence (of course) of Elizabeth David; she likes North African, Italian and Spanish flavours. So lots of chorizo, tomato, saffron, beans, the generous use of sea salt and herbs. I've noticed that she doesn't seem to use much stock; instead often adding salt and spices to onion and garlic at the frying stage. Her flavour combinations are imaginative and fabulous. She seems to be very keen on saffron, egg and almonds as a combination; this works beautifully.

So far we've had (in no particular order): Moroccan Chicken, Egg and Almond Tagine, Chicken Pilaf (this one was especially delicious, again with that saffron, almond and egg combination), Chorozio and White Bean Stew, Chicken with Bacon and Lentils, Lamb with Cumin and Aubergine.

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Floyd Remembered

 

 

 

I've just put up some old clips from the television series "Floyd on France" on the new Greasy Spoon Facebook page. I loved this series when it was first shown on British television back in September 1987. Floyd had actually made three series before that ("Floyd on Fish", "Floyd on a Pub Run", and "Floyd on Food"), but it was "Floyd on France", produced by David Pritchard, that put him on the map. I think it may have been one of the first cookery programmes in which food was cooked in real restaurant kitchens, in real time. At the time it seemed fresh, original and amusing. I remember my mother tut-tutting with disapproval, but as she ain't that keen on France, alcoholics, or people who stick their fingers into the sauce, it was kind of understandable. The rest of us loved it.

I'm afraid that I'm a bit sniffy about the later Floyd programmes- they lacked the magic of "Floyd on France", and by the end ("Floyd's India" and "Floyd's Fjord Fiesta", both 2001) had degenerated into formulaic early evening programming which lacked the integrity and passion of the earlier serieses. I remember Floyd wearily admitting at the end of "Floyd's India' how much he disliked the country- can you imagine him saying that about his beloved France?

 

 

Of course, with hindsight, "Floyd on France" was very much a certain type of Englishman's take on France, the view of a Private Eye reading 80's Rabelasian seen through rose-coloured glasses: panama hats and paunches, the Garrick Club tie and the Citroen 2CV; affordable French farmhouses and never-ending supplies of the local red. Peter Mayle carried on the tradition in his "A Year in Provence" (1989).

I would love to be able to see the complete series again. I've got the official video- but it's an edited version, and vast chunks of the original series have been cut. Even so, it's a rare old thing, and I gather might cost you £30 or so, to buy one second hand. The complete series doesn't seem to be available on DVD, no doubt because of the usual copyright problems.

Keith Floyd's first cookbook "Floyd's Food" (1981) has been re-printed and is now available brand new from amazon. I've got the original (albeit dog-eared and splattered) first edition: it's now extremely rare, and as I write, not one copy seems to be available for sale online. In any event, it's a terrific little book, full of simple but heart-felt ideas, and as the re-issued version's not very expensive, would make a lovely present for someone if you felt so inclined: I can almost guarantee they won't already have it.

 

 

 

 

Simon Hopkinson: The First Verdict

 

 

Various things I want- no, need to get off my hairy chest:

Did you watch the first episode of Simon Hopkinson's new television series "The Good Cook" (BBC1, Fridays, 7.30pm)?  The incidental music drove me nuts. 95% of the programme is accompanied with a loud, retro soundtrack: Stevie Wonder, Northern Soul; that sort of thing. Now, I love the music of Mr Marvyn Gaye and his friends; trust me, I really do. But not in this context. Not as a consistantly loud, in-your-face, soundtrack to a potentially decent food programme. It's along similar lines to that Sophie Dahl series: some hip, acned producer has fallen for the "let's go for the Jamie Oliver yoof culture" angle: it's all a huge shame. Simon Hopkinson is one of our best food writers, and he certainly doesn't need his new series dressed up with ersatz production values.

Because of the distracting music, I couldn't grasp anything he was saying. I'm not very good at multi-tasking, I have to admit. But am I alone in genuinely wanting to hear what Mr Hopkinson had to say for himself?  Am I one of that rare breed which actually watches a television programme for its own sake, rather than turning it on as some sort of background entertainment- as they all do in Los Angeles?  One of those saddos who buys the "Radio Times" at Christmas, and rings the programmes he wants to record in black felt-tip?  Am I turning into my parents?

And then there was all that ridiculous "freeze frame", macro close-up stuff going on- as, say, he poured flour into his Cornishware blue and white stiped sick bowl. I'm trying so hard not to turn into a grumpy old man. But in the modern world, this is becoming incredibly difficult. I'm swimming against the tide.

Having said that, my friend Miles pointed out that at least Hoppo was being introduced to a younger generation, and that surely, is a good thing. He could well be right. I had a quick look at the BBC website for the programme, and reckon that half the commentators liked the background music, and the other half couldn't stand it. I suspect that this later half is over 40 years in age. I need to move with the times.

On a completely different tack: has anyone out there attempted to make my "Gratin of Marrow with White Beans and Rocket Pesto"?  If you haven't yet, don't. I made it a few days ago; followed my own instructions to the letter- and the result was bloody awful. I steamed the marrow and then amalgamated it with the bean stew. The stew was fine: nice and thick. But the steamed marrow was stringy, and reminded me of the austere fare they served up at Dotheby's Hall. I need to go back to the drawing board with this one. As the great Eric Thompson (of Dougal and the Blue Cat Fame) one said: "If you can't fail, you can't do anything".

Simon Hopkinson: The Good Cook

 

 

 

I'm a massive fan of Simon Hopkinson and I was thrilled to learn that he's got a new book out; although I couldn't find any news about the publication date. It's a tie-in for his new television series. This is really good news: the current crop of so-called "celebrity" chefs are, in my opinion, dire (with the notable exception of one Nigel Slater). Can't wait.

Eggs Drumkilbo

 

 

Last week's Royal Wedding was terrific fun, and here in London we've all had a ball. Hats off to the Middleton family who handled the whole thing brilliantly. Can you imagine walking down that aisle in front of an estimated two billion people? Our Kate looked fantastic, and I have to admit to shedding a manly tear to Parry's beautiful anthem "I Was Glad"- it always gets to me for some reason. A good day for the country, I think.

I was interested in Anton Mosimann's unpretentious menu for the reception at Buck House afterwards. It struck just the right note- as with the wedding, showing just the right amount of understatement (not including, of course, poor Princess Beatrice's bizarre alien fascinator) and included: Cornish Crab Salad on Lemon Blini, pressed Duck Terrine with Fruit chutney, miniature watercress and asparagus tart, quails eggs with celery salt, Scottish langoustines with Lemon Mayonnaise, Bubble & Squeak with Confit Shoulder of Lamb, Smoked Haddock fishcake with Pea Guacmole, Rubarb Financier and Blood Orange Pâté de Fruit. The champagne was Pol Roger NV Brut Reserve. This is Modern British food at its best.

 

The Middletons stayed at the excellent and discreet Goring Hotel (not far from our hovel, I have to admit) and I was amused to see that they have the nerve to serve Eggs Drumkilbo on their menu. Eggs Drumkilbo was a favourite of the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Gawd bless 'er), and has recently been described by the food critic, Giles Coren, as "so awful it's almost good". It's a splendid old thing, with Lord knows how many flavours going on in there; completely over-the-top and utterly unfashionable. It was served at previous royal weddings. Here's how you make it: 

Eggs Drumkilbo

1 lobster
225 gm (8 oz raw prawns)
8 good tomatoes
8 hardboiled eggs
fresh mayonnaise
a little tomato purée
anchovy essence
Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco sauce
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons aspic powder
white wine or water

Cook the lobster and prawns. When cooled and shelled, dice the flesh of both. Dip the tomatoes into boiling water for half a minute, then skin and de-seed them. Dice the flesh and add to the lobster and prawns. Remove the whites from two of the eggs and discard and discard. Dice all the yolks and the rest of the whites, and add to the mixture. Mix all the ingredients with sufficient mayonnaise, flavoured with tomato purée, anchovy essence, Worcestershire and Tabasco to taste, to produce a good, fairly stiffish consistency. Check the seasoning.

Dissolve the aspic in a little boiling white wine or water, but do not let it actually boil. Stir into the mayonnaise mixture, making sure it is evenly distributed. Pour into a rinsed mould, or a pretty glass dish if you don’t want to unmould. Chill until well set.

Unmould or not, and serve as a first course with brown bread and butter or fingers of mustard and cress sandwiches.

 

Avocado Bering

 

I've had great fun re-discovering the Roux Brothers' old 1980's television series on youtube: Roux Brothers. For anyone wanting to learn the techniques of classic French cookery, this is the series for you: no background music, no trendy hand-held camera shots, or an emphasis on style over content; this is television aimed at viewers who have an attention span longer than three minutes, and just want to learn how to cook properly.

That's exactly right- it's just two middle aged chefs, both at the top of their game, Albert (he's the fat one from Le Gavroche) and Michel (he's the thin one from the Waterside Inn at Bray) standing in a badly lit (by today's standards) studio and talking directly to camera. And Mein Gott, in just a few minutes you can learn infinitely more from those two, than from any of the over-produced cheffy programmes I've seen on television recently.

 

 

 

I liked Albert's "Avocado Bering". You take an avocado pear (I think the hass variety with the knobbly skin tastes the best) and slice it in half. You brush the exposed flesh with lemon juice to stop it going black. You slice a small wedge off the bottom of the avocado, so that it stands up straight on the plate.

Next you mix up some fresh crab meat with a rose-marie sauce made from mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, Lea & Perrins, Tabasco, salt and pepper and a spoonful of cognac. You spoon the crabmeat and sauce into the cavity of the avocado, and then spoon further unadulterated rose-marie sauce over the crabmeat and sauce. More sauce on top of the crabmeat and sauce combination, if that makes sense.

Albert garnished it with half a black olive so that it ended up looking a bit like a nipple- but if you've read my previous post, you'll know all about my current feelings on garnishes, and I would recommend that you avoid this. Avocado Bering! Incredibly old-fashioned (even then; back in the 1980's), very simple, relatively unsophisticated- and strangely satisfying.

 

 

Egon Ronay

 

 

 

Sad news about old Egon Ronay, who has just died at the grand old age of 94. A year or so ago, I wrote this post:

Remember Egon Ronay?  He was that rather dapper Hungarian who published a series of restaurant guides; in vogue a few years ago. One of the favourite books in my modest cookery library is Egon's "The Unforgettable Dishes of My Life', published in 1989. If you're interested in getting hold of a copy, you should be able to get track one down from either amazon.co.uk, or that marvellous antiquarian book website, abebooks.com.

The book's very much a personal thing, with recipes that have held meaning to him for various reasons over the years. That's something I like about food: the way a certain dish can bring back memories, or have some literary or historical connotation. Without, I hope, getting too hyper-intellectual, wasn't that what Proust was all about?  You know, the madeline dipped into the lemon scented tea and all that?

Anyway, here's his recipe for "Roast Red Mullet with Cumin Sauce". Hopefully you will be able to buy one from your local fishmonger- if you have any left in your neighbourhood that is.  In London, they're more or less gone, and have been replaced by the fish counters of your local supermarket. And Sainsbury's ain't nearly as good as it used to be.

Clean and gut a red mullet, keeping back the bones and the livers. Cut off the heads and the tail. Put the heads, tail, and bones into a saucepan, and add leeks, shallots, white wine, and salt. Pour in two pints of water, and bring to the boil. Skim off the scum as it floats to the top. Cover the saucepan, and simmer for about twenty minutes. Hey presto! You will have a fish stock.

Add two teaspoons of cumin seeds and reduce three quarters of a pint of the stock, until the it takes on a syrupy consistency. Add half a pint of double cream and the red mullet livers, and boil for fifteen seconds. Liquidise in your magimix or blender, and then pass it through a sieve. That's the sauce finished.

Brush the cleaned mullet with oil, and wrap it in foil, first seasoning it with a generous amount of sea salt and chunky black pepper. Place the fish on a baking tray, and cook in the oven at 220C (425F) until the fish is cooked. The flesh will flake up a bit when it's done. Arrange the cooked fish on a plate, and pour the sauce around it.

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Mario and Franco and London's Trattoria Revolution

 

 

I've just heard Alasdair Scott Sutherland talking about his interesting new book on BBC Radio London. It's called The Spaghetti Tree: Mario and Franco and the Trattoria Revolution and looks at the growth of Italian restaurants in Sixties London, and in particular, the careers of Franco Lagattolla and Mario Cassandro; former waiters at The Mirabelle who opened the starry La Trattoria Terrazza in Romilly Street, Soho, in 1959; subsequently patronised by the likes of David Bailey, Michael Caine and Princess Margaret (I'm finding that "Princess Margaret ate here" is fast becoming a favourite mantra).

 

 

 

 

Franco Lagattolla published his own cookbook (with illustrations by Enzo Apicella) in 1978. It's called: The Recipes that Made a Million.  Here's his recipe for Salsa Verde.  Do you remember all the trouble and angst I had to go through when I attempted to make Elizabeth David's walnut sauce? Franco's version leaves out the walnuts, and is quite definitely served cold:

"Soak two tablespoons of fresh, white breadcrumbs in vinegar and then squeeze them out. Work one hard-boiled egg yolk to a paste, mix together with the bread and add four tablespoons of very finely chopped parsley, one finely chopped garlic clove and one teaspoon of chopped capers. Blend in one cup of olive oil. Season with salt and milled black pepper. If necessary, sharpen with a little more vinegar. Let this piquant sauce stand for at least one hour."

The Way of the Noodle...

 

 

I've just had a taste revelation. Following on from his success at Little Chef, the boys at Golden Wonder have persuaded that bald wunderkind, Heston Blumenthal, to develop a Snail Porridge flavoured Pot Noodle.  It's just been released in a special limited edition: yesterday, I managed to track my pot down at Fortnum's in Piccadilly.

And what does it taste like, I hear you ask?  Well, it's creamy, garlicky, and slightly nutty; with touches of fennel and aniseed to the aftertaste. They've also been generous with the snail: lots of lovely, meaty chunks to get your teeth into.  

As with limited edition Guinness Marmite, I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to be a runaway foodie success- so you'll need stock up right now, before supplies run out.

Boiled Bacon and Cabbage with Parsley Sauce

 

 

 

The Greasy Spoon's Book of the Month for April is A Life With Food by Peter Langan, annotated and with a memoir by none other than Brian Sewell. I love this book. It's an idiosyncratic account of the life of the late, eccentric restauranteur, Peter Langan, his restaurants and his art collections.

Odin's has some fabulous Modern and Edwardian British paintings, which is not surprising as many of them were chosen by the great Mr Sewell himself. There's a terrific Laura Knight to the right of the main entrance, a fabulous Harold Gilman in the main dining room and a naughty drawing by Ron Kitaj displayed at table level. 

Here's a very Irish recipe from the book for Boiled Bacon and Cabbage with Parsley Sauce:     

"There are two dishes that are Irish to the core- this is one of them. If it is smoked gammon, soak it overnight in water, and then put it into fresh cold water and bring it to the boil. Remove, skim and simmer for 30 minutes per lb.

The old Irish way is to add the cut up cabbage to the pot for half an hour toward the end. I do not like this. I prefer to boil the cabbage separately for 3-5 minutes. It is a crisp foil to the slowly cooked bacon.

The parsley sauce is simple. Melt 1oz of butter, add 1 oz of flour and cook until the flour is well blended. Add 1/2 pint of the cooking liquid slowly to begin with then the 1/2 pint of milk, stir, bring to the boil and simmer. Add a bunch of freshly chopped parsley- do not cook it in as most idiot restaurants do.

The bacon, crisp cabbage, and fresh parsley sauce could be the country's greatest dish. Serve it with floury boiled potatoes in their skins."

 

 

Egon Ronay's Roast Red Mullet with Cumin Sauce

 

Remember Egon Ronay? He was that rather dapper Hungarian who published a series of restaurant guides, in vogue a few years back. One of the favourite books in my modest cookery library is none other than Egon's "The Unforgettable Dishes of My Life', published back in 1989. You should be able to get hold of a copy relatively easily from either amazon.co.uk, or that marvellous antiquarian book website, abebooks.com.

His book's a personal thing, with lots of unpretentious recipes that have held some meaning to him over the years. That's something I like about food: the way a certain dish can bring back memories, or have some literary or historical connotation. Without getting too pretentious; wasn't that, in many ways, what Proust was all about? You know, the madeline dipped into the lemon tea and all that?

Anyway, here's his recipe for Roast Red Mullet with Cumin Sauce. I've posted a picture of the critter above, so that you can recognise one when you go to your local fishmonger- if you have any left in your neighbourhood that is; in London, they're all more or less gone, and have been replaced by Starbucks, Gap, and various other chains of a dubious sort.

Clean and gut a red mullet, keeping back the bones and the livers. Cut off the heads and the tail. Put the heads, tail, and bones into a saucepan, and add leeks, shallots, white wine, and salt. Pour in two pints of water, and bring to the boil. Skim off the scum as it floats to the top. Cover the saucepan, and simmer for about twenty minutes.

Hey presto! You will have a fish stock. Reduce 3/4 pint of this fish stock, first adding two teaspoons of cumin seeds, until the stock takes on a syrupy consistency. Add half a pint of double cream and the Red Mullet livers, and boil for fifteen seconds. Liquidise in your magimix or blender, and then pass it through a sieve. That's the sauce finished.

Brush the cleaned mullet with oil, and wrap it in foil, first seasoning it with a generous amount of sea salt and chunky black pepper. Place the fish on a baking tray, and cook in the oven at 220C (425F) until the fish is cooked. The flesh will flake slightly when it is done. Arrange the cooked fish on a plate, and pour the sauce around it. Eat.

The Genius of Edouard de Pomiane

 

 

One of my all-time favourite cookery writers is Edouard de Pomiane. Born in 1875, He was a dietician, amateur gourmand, and academic at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, and approached food with a simple enthusiasm that I find, even now, refreshing and inspirational.

His food was of the French Country school- those time honoured dishes that you will encounter on driving holidays across France, and I wholeheartedly recommend his two better-known books: Cooking in 10 minutes and Cooking with Pomiane. They may well be out of print, but you will be able to buy them from sites such as Amazon, and abebooks.co.uk. Here's his recipe for "Snails": 

Buy a dozen snails from a conscientious tradesman, that is to say, a man who will use good butter for stuffing his snails. Arrange the twelve snails on a large fireproof dish. It is not as easy as it sounds. The opening of the shell must face upwards. Otherwise as soon as the butter melts it runs out of the shell and the snail becomes dry and tough. When you have arranged the shells properly, pour a little water into the dish. Put the dish on the fire for three or four minutes, just long enough to warm it. Then put it under the grill. In five to six minutes the butter has melted and the snails are hot. Eat them as long as they burn your fingers.

Isn't that marvellous?