Former auction specialist turned antiques dealer, amateur cook and second-hand book obsessive, Luke Honey has been writing The Greasy Spoon blog since 2007: a personal, unashamedly nostalgic and sometimes irreverent take on the link between food and culture. He lives in London with his wife and book-munching whippet. Current enthusiasms include the food of the American South and London Dry Gin.
I'm very aware that I've rather neglected The Greasy Spoon over the last few months, due to 'pressures of work'- the blogger's perennial excuse. Sorry. But I'm glad to report that I am now hard at work on a new post for The Greasy Spoon. Fans of the Balham Mystery, aka The Bravo Poisoning (or Murder at the Priory) are in for a treat.
In the meantime, may I direct all Greasy Spooner's attention to my very recent feature, 'Dining on High', published in the excellent (and beautifully designed) cult Gourmand Journal? Six glorious pages on the revolving Post Office Tower restaurant- a celebrity favourite in the Swinging London of the late 60s and early 70s. Owned by none other than Sir Billy Butlin, and the haunt of the likes of Mick Jagger and Chrissie Shrimpton. You can subscribe to The Gourmand by following this link. Issue 13 out now. Hurry while stocks last!
And while I'm about it, a quick rant about The Greasy Spoon on social media. I know that some of you prefer to get your dose of The Spoon this way. That's dandy. But just to let you know- I'm now banned from posting any form of link to The Greasy Spoon on, and by, the Cromwellian organisation that is Facebook- as, apparently, my 'content fails to live up to their community values'. I've think I've finally worked out why this may be: it's 'cos I've included a handful of links- here and there- to interesting gin distillers in the past. Dearie me- naughty old Uncle Luke’s introducing the sinful pleasures of alcohol to the kiddywinks. Oh horror.
Actually, as we all know only too well, it's quite possible to declare that you were born in 1895 when you log in to any drinks website, so I suspect it's really more about covering their backs with the lawyers, isn't it?
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 Bœufenfeuilleté (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.
Green Silver Shads outside the Peninsular Hotel, Kowloon
Hong Kong in the Seventies. If there was ever a natural habitat for the International Man of Mystery in his later incarnation, this has to be it. Think "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974)- the guiltiest of all guilty pleasures: Brown Suede and Kung Fu. Golden Buddhas and Jade. Priceless Antiques (often Fake). Sam's Tailors and The Dragon Boat Bar at the Hong Kong Hilton. The Royal Hong Kong Police (Sam Browne Belts), Cathay Pacific and Suzie Wong. I last visited Hong Kong in the spring of 1997, just before the handover to Communist China, and loved the place from first landing; struck on my first day by the thrusting young tai-pans of Jardine Matheson in their all-wool, English cut bespoke suits- cool as cucumbers in the sweltering humidity of the Hollywood Road. I have no idea if they're still there, for I'm told that the former colony has now changed, some say for the better, many for the worse.
There was also a rather naff aftershave called Mandate, which, I think my Mad Man father advertised (although he consistently denies it), shamelessly championing the ersatz cause of sinful luxury, and with brilliant 70s packaging which, like sunken baths and golden dragon taps, for some reason reminds me of Hong Kong during that glittering decade: the gilt font set against simulated marbled cardboard in decadent chocolate brown.
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974): "A guilty pleasure if ever there was one..."
I suppose that alongside The American Bar at The Savoy and Harry's Bar in Venice, The Captain's Bar at The Mandarin Hotel (now Oriental) has to be one of the most famous watering holes in the world. It first opened its doors in the 1960s, and the decoration was decidedly clubby, as it more or less remains to this day: red leather banquettes, draught beer served in silver tankards, tropical palms, nautical nick nacks and chess-themed glass screens. By 1997, it had, perhaps, fallen on hard times and lost some of its former allure: I spent several evenings there, with a lonely Dry Martini as company- for it's very much a Greasy Spooner's kind of place, and the select clientele over that time numbered: Yours Truly, a Chanel-clad tart, two Alan Whicker types in double-breasted blazers, and a bowl of salted peanuts.
The Captain's Bar, Mandarin Hotel, Hong Kong, circa 1969
And it was in Hong Kong that I acquired my love of Dim Sum- those never-ending, bite-sized snacks, served from a trolley and taken as brunch; steamed and braised chicken's claws, a sweet, glutinous treat; shrimp dumplings and pan-fried turnip cake. Browsing our over-stuffed bookshelves this afternoon, I rediscovered a small hardback I had almost forgotten. It's called "A Taste for Music- Recipes from Hong Kong Kitchens", published in 1977 in aid of the Royal Hong Kong Philarmonic; one of those charitable cookbooks to which various well-heeled Society types contributed. My parents must have brought it back from one of my father's business trips. The first recipe is from a Mrs Frank Pong, and I like its utter simplicity. The second recipe is for those rather exotic looking marbled "tea eggs" and comes from Mrs Kitty Siu Hon Sum:
Drunken Chicken (Chicken in wine sauce, Shanghai) Recipe from Mrs Frank Pong, A Taste for Music, The Hong Kong Philarmonic Society, 1977
1 chicken, about 3 Ib
3 tbsp salt
2 cups dry sherry (or Chinese Wine)
Wash and clean the chicken. Wipe dry. Rub the inside and outside of the chicken with salt evenly. Let it stand for at least 5 hours. Place the chicken in a deep plate and steam it over a high heat for 40 minutes. Remove the chicken and let cool.
Cut chicken into six pieces. Place these in a deep bowl. Mix the drippings with the dry sherry. Pour the mixture over the chicken and cover the bowl tightly. Put it into the refrigerator for at least 12 hours.
When serving, cut into small pieces about 1/2" wide and 1" long. Serve hot or cold.
Tea Eggs (Recipe from Mrs Kitty Siu Hon Sum, "A Taste for Music", 1977)
12-18 eggs
3 tbsp black tea or 6 tbsp used tea leaves
2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp star anise cloves
3 tbsp soy sauce
Hard boil the eggs starting in cold water over a medium fire. Then cool the eggs in cold water for a few minutes and make cracks on the eggshells by rolling them gently on the table or a chopping board.
Place the cracked eggs in a saucepan together with the tea, soy sauce, salt and spice and simmer for about one hour.
The eggs may be served hot or cold. The eggs should not be shelled before serving as the eggshell will keep the eggs moist. This is a good dish for picnics. It is also an attractive hors d'oeuvre if prepared before quails' egg, in which case the eggs must be peeled before serving. In the case of the quails' eggs, it is not necessary to cook for as long a period of time and particularly gentle care must be taken when rolling the eggshell.
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 CradockInvites 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.'
Mezzotint by Philip Dawe, 1773, in the collection of the British Museum
I’m convinced that the best food in the world is governed by simplicity; cooked with skill, precision and care, and presented with honesty. No flamboyant garnishes, superfluous flourishes or cheeky little twists if you please. I’m reminded of the humble- but tantalising- food we enjoyed on honeymoon in Marrakesh (Riad Enija) or the simple comfort food as cooked for Jacqueline Kennedy by her private cook, Marta Sgubin. Clare Latimer’s Comfort Food Cook Book (currently available online for a penny) is excellent on this front and well worth a second look. It’s one of the many reasons I’m a fan of Simon Hopkinson who, in the banal world of celebrity chefdom, alone has the self-confidence to describe himself as a cook, rather than a chef.
Ian Fleming had similar enthusiasms, which he passed on to our friend, Mister Bond. Old-Maid Bond, is, of course, a pernickety old bore and, presumably, a potential guest-from-hell at the dinner table (everything has to be oh just so, doesn’t it?) but he does have a point:
“I’ve got a mania for really good smoked salmon”, said Bond. Then he pointed down the menu. “Lamb cutlets. The same vegetables as you as it’s May. Asparagus with Béarnaise sauce sounds wonderful. And perhaps a slice of pineapple...
A waitress appeared and put racks of fresh toast on the table and a silver dish of Jersey butter. As she bent over the table her black skirt brushed Bond’s arm and he looked up into two pert, sparkling eyes...
M smiled at him indulgently. “It’s your funeral” he said. “Now we’d better get on with our dinner. How were the cutlets?”
“Superb” said Bond. “I could cut them with a fork. The best English cooking is the best in the world — particularly at this time of the year...”
From Ian Fleming’s Moonraker, first published by Jonathan Cape, 1955
But these days I’m lucky to be married to a talented cook, who happens to get better and better by every passing minute. Take her version of that old English classic, Macaroni Cheese. It’s currently an obsession. As a child, I can’t remember liking it especially. But cooked in the right way, it’s a miniature work of art: Crispy, slightly browned bites of crunchy pasta. A creamy, nutmeg-laced béchamel sauce. Hits of mustard and savoury crumbly bacon. Salty grilled tomatoes. Chunky black pepper flakes. It’s to die for.
The history of macaroni, incidentally, is fascinating and worthy of another post in itself. Put very briefly, it’s a dry Italian pasta, cut into hollow tubes which comes in a variety of sizes. Personally, for Macaroni Cheese, I prefer the smaller bite-size pieces, as the pasta crisps up beautifully. Etymologists think that the word derives from the Ancient Greek, μακαρώνεια, which, as you will remember, was a barley broth served to commemorate the dead. During the mid 18th century fashionable aristocratic English fops acquired a taste for the stuff on their Grand Tour and were said, by those in the know, to belong to the “Macaroni Club”.
Here’s an excellent recipe for Macaroni Cheese, as enjoyed by the Greasy Spoon. It’s similar in many ways to Simon Hopkinson’s version, which is topped by sliced tomatoes but has the welcome addition of fried crispy bacon. The white sauce/grilled tomato/bacon combination is a match made in heaven. I find that a pinch of sea-salt draws out the flavour of the tomatoes in a miraculous way.
A Jelly-House Pick-Up, mezzotint published by Carrington Bowles, 1772
Mrs Aitch’s Macaroni Cheese
Preheat the oven to 190 C and then cook the macaroni pasta in salted boiling water, as directed on the packet. (I like the smaller sized macaroni, available from Waitrose).
Next, make a béchamel sauce. You will need a decent amount. Mrs Aitch tells me that many Macaroni Cheeses fail because they don’t have enough sauce. Melt a dollop of butter in a hot pan, drop in a fresh bay leaf, and whisk in a tablespoon or so of white flour to make a roux in the usual way. When it’s cooked, stir in some milk and flavour with a spoonful of Dijon mustard, nutmeg, sea salt flakes and white pepper. Then in goes 200ml Double Cream andsome grated cheese (Simon Hopkinson uses Cheddar or Lancashire). Check the consistency. The goal is a thick-ish, silky-smooth white sauce.
Take an ovenproof dish and pour in the sauce, and then mix in the cooked macaroni. Put to one side.
Fry some bacon bits in a shallow pan until crispy. Mix these into the macaroni. Slice up some tomatoes and lie these overlapping on top of the finished dish. A little bit more sea salt, flaked black pepper and grated parmesan on top of the tomatoes will work wonders.
Stick the dish into the heated oven for about 20 mins or so, until the tomatoes are blistered, and the top is slightly brown and crunchy.
Personally, I like to “go easy", as our American cousins might say, on the cheese and prefer more of a classic white sauce. But that’s a matter of opinion. Clare Latimer’s version, incidentally, includes both cheddar and parmesan, diced ham, blanched asparagus tops, breadcrumbs and chopped parsley.
For several years now, I’ve had a secret hankering to join- or at least to apply for membership of- The London Whiskers Club. Beards, however, can be a risky proposition. The secret is to go for the “Rugged English Gentleman Explorer meets the James Robertson Justice” Look. But there’s a wafer-thin divide between looking like the Tsar, a Victorian Liberal MP or HRH Prince Michael of Kent and the cheeky geezer who’s come to mend the washing machine, the Gormless Middle-Aged Dad as portrayed on numerous and tiresome television commercials, or even worse, an earnest guitar-playing Play School presenter from the 1970s. And then there’s that worrying hipster thing, which despite being So Last Week Darling, still lingers- like a bad smell that just won't go away.
The Commander channels The Captain Scott Look
So last month, purely as an experiment, you understand, I stopped shaving. And as I’ve now reached the golden twilight years of Late Youth, the bristles that appeared on my manly chin were silver in colour, and shock horror actually looked quite good. Mrs Aitch seemed to like it. And then, despite the promising start, it all went wrong. Suddenly I was walking around with a wiry bog brush glued to my chin. An oily, matted, painful horror which itched liked mad and cried out- no begged- to be removed.
The Commander in action. That beard...
Possibly one of the most splendid beards of the mid-twentieth century is the groomed specimen pictured above, as sported by Commander Schweppes, aka Commander Walter Edward Whitehead CBE, RNVR (Rtd.), president of Schweppes (USA), polo player, fisherman, gourmand, explorer, sailor, author of How to Live the Good Life: The Commander Tells You Alland star of David Ogilvy’s famous advertising campaign.
I love David Ogilvy’s ads. They’re so urbane. I suppose in those days- we’re talking about the late 1950s- people aspired to become crusty, smooth-talking, tonic-drinking Naval officers. I used to waste hours in the Gothic gloom of the school library pouring over dog-eared back-copies of The New Yorker, with its tantalising advertisements for Harris tweed, expensive hand-built cars, rare whiskies, Sotheby’s cigarettes, Napoleonic Cognacs and tailored Viyella shirts worn by a mysterious silver-haired gentleman with an eyepatch- peddled in a glorious, backlit, soft-focus Technicolor.
And despite the unstoppable march of the excellent Fever Tree, I’m still drinking Schweppes Tonic. Partly because of a nostalgic feeling for that famous yellow and black label (although how splendid it would be if they brought back some a special edition tonic in the original glass bottles) and because the proper stuff is actually quite good. But unless you’re trying to lose weight, avoid the saccharine slimline version at all costs. Artificially sweet, in my opinion. Thinking about it, if you’re trying to lose weight, I’m not sure you should be drinking gin in the first place?
I’m back, after a short break from blogging. Yesterday evening I came across Anton Mosimann’s recipe for a Thousand Islands Dressing, which had me scurrying back to the bookshelves for further research.
To make the Mosimann version sieve two egg yolks into a bowl, mix in 80 ml sherry vinegar or lemon juice and season with ground pepper. Next, whisk in 250 ml olive oil drop-by-drop (as you might make mayonnaise), and then add three tablespoons of chilli sauce and two tablespoons of brandy. Finally fold in 125 ml whipping cream or plain yoghurt. Just before serving add one small red pepper (cleaned and finely chopped) and season with paprika and a little salt.
It sounds good if a relatively sophisticated and pared-down interpretation. The Thousand Island Dressing is one of those retro sauces with, belatedly, a tacky reputation, due, in part to memories of awful buffet parties: warm plastic plates piled high with limp lettuce. Lipstick pink radioactive sauces. Stale tomato wedges. Which is unfair, as a Thousand Island Dressing made with care and love might be a very good thing indeed. And as with so many other so-called classic dishes, there are many different versions, each one claiming to be the Real McCoy.
The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink reckons the dressing comes from the Thousand Islands region, located along the Upper St Lawrence River between the United States and Canada, which makes sense. There’s another theory that the earliest print reference to the sauce can be dated to 1912. What's in it? Apart from the obligatory mayonnaise, there’s a plethora of possible ingredients and flavourings which include: Tabasco, Mustard, Worcestershire Sauce, Chili Sauce, Tomato Ketchup, Cream, Yoghurt, Chopped Pickles, Onions, Green Olives, Chives, Garlic and Hard Boiled Eggs.
The Philadelphia Cookbook (published 1940) gives this version:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup tomato catsup
1/4 cup cream, whipped
1/4 cup celery, chopped fine
1/4 cup green pepper. chopped fine
1/4 cup pimento, chopped fine
Combine all ingredients and serve with Crab Canape Norfolk
Which brings me to the Marie Rose Sauce. With this one I’m on home territory, as according to that trusty sword of truth, Wikipedia, it’s of British origin and- shock horror- invented, apparently (really?) by scary old Fanny Cradock back in the 1960’s. I’m sceptical about this. It’s American, surely?
Fanny Cradock: The Face of Reason
And after years of tinkering and experimentation, I reckon I’m finally there with a definitive version. Here’s the official Greasy Spoon recipe for Marie Rose Sauce:
Take a bowl of mayonnaise and mix in two or three dollops of Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Add a dash of Lea & Perrins, a shake of Tabasco (I’m currently obsessed with the milder GreenTabasco, made from Jalapeno chilli peppers), and a squeeze of lemon juice. Now for the secret ingredient: mix in two teaspoons or so of cognac. Makes all the difference. Smooths out the sauce for some reason, giving it a slightly sweet taste, although, tempting as it is, you don’t want to add too much brandy otherwise you will end up with a thin and watery sauce. Finish with a pinch or two of Cayenne Pepper and a pinch of salt.
This will make you an excellent Marie Rose Sauce. Combine with fresh prawns to make prawn cocktail. As Nigel Slater says, you don’t want to tinker with this classic. Too many cooks try to pep it up with the dreaded “twist”. Don’t even think of it.
I’ve been struggling to make a decent chili for years. Back in the 90’s I spent some time in America, shuttling back and forth from London and New York, cataloguing auctions for Phillips on the Upper East Side, then for Freeman’s in Philadelphia (America’s oldest auction house); plus, latterly, an unsavoury sojourn in the Gomorrah that is Los Angeles, which included, amongst other things, a bizarre invitation to a nudist chili cook-off in the Californian desert just outside Palm Springs.
One of the greatest things about America is its diner chili. Do you know what I mean by this? It’s inevitably on the menu. Always. Wherever you go. A small white bowl of hot, thick, dark red chili; cumin rich, served invariably with a handful of saltine dry crackers and a topping of grated hard cheese.
And one of the best places to get this was at P. J. Clarke’s, the famous Manhattan saloon on 55th and 3rd, which became, inevitably, a regular after-work, if dusty, haunt: all grumpy Irish barman, red check tablecloths, foxed boxing photographs and cracked daguerreotype of Abe Lincoln. A rare bit of nineteenth-century New York, still standing, just; surrounded by glittering skyscrapers, in the manner of Donald J. Trump.
P J Clarke’s, 44 West 64th Street, New York
The Third Avenue Overhead Railway, New York City, 1942
A Mr Jennings established the saloon in 1884 when Third Avenue still had the overhead streetcar railway: reminding me of the sets in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone, and that infamous car-chase sequence in The French Connection. It features in The Lost Weekend, MadMen and The Last Days of Disco, one of my all-time favourite films, directed by the wonder that is Mr Whit Stillman, one of my all-time favourite directors.
Jacqueline Kennedy was a fan of P. J. Clarke’s, as was Richard Harris (he of Camelot), Marilyn Monroe, Nat King Cole, Buddy Holly and Woody Allen. Caroline Kennedy was chucked out for underage drinking, apparently.
Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny in Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco” (1998)
Inevitably, P.J.’s is under new ownership, and change is afoot, or to be more accurate, has already taken place. Certainly, in 2002, the restaurant was given a make-over New York Style, with the ancient interior, ripped out and replaced with a refurbished (new?) but supposedly identical interior. The website boasts:
“What’s Old is New. ...See if you can spot any major overhauls (you can’t)”
Sorry, boys, but the eagle eye of Mister Aitch most certainly can. The tiled floor for starters. What used to be nicely cracked and uneven is now spanking new. And what about the formerly nicotined ceiling? And anyway, if the whole point was to re-create exactly what there was there before, then why on earth refurbish it in the first place? Weird logic. A classic example of change for change’s sake; typical of new management who just can’t resist a tinker (the presumably failed re-packaging of Lea & Perrins by Heinz is another noticeable example). If it ain’t broke don’t fix it: it was perfect as it was, cobwebs included, although as a commercial realist, I appreciate that the expansion into what has become, effectively, a small chain of similarly themed restaurants might need to attract a slightly different clientele: curiously clean people who don’t appreciate dust. But there you go.
Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis photographed outside P. J. Clarke’s by Ron Galella, 1971
But how to recreate the chilli, as served in P. J. Clarke’s? There’s an awful lot of chilli recipes out there. It’s an American cult dish. Some recipes want you to add carrots. Others, celery and bacon. Redneck aficionados in the Mid West recommend stewing the beef mince in beer; Californians, Tequila. The Brits add red wine. You can make it with venison. Some experts ditch the mince and require you to chop up beef steak into large chunks. You can also add caraway seeds and coriander. Texas makes it one way. Florida makes it another. Some people get most upset if you add beans. Others don't.
I’ve tried all of this. I’ve experimented. None of it works. The result is nothing like the bowl of chilli you get in P.J.’s or diners across America. And then the simple truth dawned. It’s obvious. There is no secret. There are no extra ingredients. Diner chilli does what it says on the tin: Beef Mince. Oregano. Chili Powder. Cumin. Onions and Garlic. Tomato. Kidney Beans. That’s more or less it, and funnily enough, the finished product is so much more satisfying.
Here’s my recipe for a very simple, and very authentic American Diner Style Chili:
Fry beef mince in oil until browned. Meanwhile, in your Magimix whizz up an onion, garlic, and a few sliced green Jalapeno peppers (mine came preserved in a jar with brine). Add the mixture to the mince and cook for a few minutes, until the onion is soft. Next add chilli powder, cumin and dried oregano. All three are essential ingredients in the dish, and I will leave the quantities to you. Then comes a teaspoon of paprika, a dash of cayenne pepper, sea salt flakes and some black pepper. Cook. In goes a tin of chopped tomatoes, a tablespoon of tomato paste, beef stock, a dash of Lea & Perrins and a shake of Green Tabasco. Simmer at lowish temperatures until the beef is cooked through and the sauce is thick. An hour perhaps? An hour and a half?
Finish the dish off with kidney beans. I used dried beans that I had cooked previously, but honestly, the tinned variety would be just as good, and more appropriate. Check the seasoning and serve with a dollop of sour cream, grated cheese and dry saltine crackers.
You’re not going to win any culinary awards with this version, but strangely, I think it’s more satisfying and authentic than any of the numerous ‘enhanced’ interpretations you’ll find out there on the net. It’s the real deal.
Here’s a post I originally wrote for The Dabbler back in 2013, from a series of features on “Food in the Sixties”:
Colonel Ross: Champignons? You’re paying ten pence more for a fancy French label. If you want button mushrooms they’re better value on the next shelf.
Harry Palmer: It’s not just the label sir, these do have better flavour.
Colonel Ross (sarcastically): Of course, you’re quite the gourmet, aren’t you Palmer?
The Ipcress File (1965)
I want you to go back in time if you will, to the mid-1960s. To the years when olive oil, famously, could only be tracked down at the local chemist, and Crêpes Suzette was a dish of mystery, savoured only by the likes of the Fab Four and those lucky diners who could afford to splash out at the more desirable restaurants; where at your table, a fawning waiter in a maroon coloured monkey jacket would flambé a steak au poivre.
Into this culinary desert, strides an egg whisk bearing Harry Palmer, the working class protagonist in Len Deighton’s thriller, The Ipcress File, first published in 1962. Palmer is the perfect anti-hero: vice-versa, a flawed Mister Bond. While Bond holds Her Majesty’s commission in the Senior Service, Palmer scrapes the rank of Sergeant in the Intelligence Corps. Bond wears a Walther PPK; Harry Palmer wears National Health Specs. And if fussy old Bond requires his housekeeper to boil the speckled brown egg of a Maran hen for three and a half minutes precisely, Harry Palmer slips Mozart’s Prague onto his trusty record player and whips up an Armagnac soufflé.
Len Deighton was- is- a man of many talents. He studied at Saint Martin’s before winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Ou Est Le Garlic? (his first cookery book, based on his weekly cookery strip for The Observer) was published in 1965. His column appealed to the simplistic and mechanical brains of men: technical, cartoon-like DIY manuals on the fine arts of French and Italian Cuisine. Wannabe sophisticates learnt how to order from an A La Carte Menu (the correct pro-nunc-iation spelt out phonetically), how to stuff a Chou with Tomates, how to deglaze a copper pan, prepare Caneton à l’Orange, cut a cigar correctly (paper band on or off?) and ring up a fancy fishmonger to order smoked eel.
“You’re not the tearaway you think you are” purrs sexy Sue Lloyd during the kitchen scene in The Ipcress File, “You also like books…music…cooking.”
“I like birds best,” says Harry- an unsubtle reminder to a Sixties audience that although Sergeant Palmer appreciates the finer things in life, he reassuringly bats for the home side. At the time, Michael Caine’s character must have seemed remarkably novel, a prototypical yuppy before that depressing acronym had been invented, making it quite clear that it was okay for Real Men to cook, and quite possibly not just okay, but a desirable aid in persuading that voluptuous dollybird in the office (the one you’ve had your eye on for several weeks) to enjoy the delights of your home cooked Rôti de Porc aux Navets, and to climb in between your shiny black nylon sheets after the event.
International Men of Mystery, please take note: The Action Cook Book is still available to buy, albeit via the sinister Kindle. The art of seduction aside, it’s a brilliantly entertaining introduction to decent food, and in our Brave New World of Marks & Spencer microwaved mushroom risotto, this can be no bad thing. Even if Harry Palmer buys tinned Indian Prawn Curry from the supermarket.
Don’t think I’ve had a Brown Windsor Soup for a very, very long time. Trying to remember and my mind’s drawing a blank. It has a reputation. I’m thinking back to the late 1940’s or 50’s: deserted hotel restaurants; threadbare, rancid carpets, elderly waiters in ill-fitting, egg-stained tailcoats, chipped porcelain, grapefruit halves topped with a tinned glacé cherry, a wine glass of ‘chilled’ tomato juice masquerading as a first course; a slice of tinned gammon with a pineapple ‘garnish’. I’m crooking my little finger as I type.
If you’re interested in food history, there’s quite a bit of academic stuff on the history and origins of the Brown Windsor Soup: you can read all about it here. But despite its dubious past, the Brown Windsor Soup might be a good thing to serve to your friends on a damp Autumn day, especially now that the days are drawing in. Made well, it’s a surprisingly rich and smooth soup- if you buy beef and fresh, well-grown vegetables. There’s an excellent version in Mark Hix’s British Food:
Braising Steak is cut into small pieces and fried in a saucepan, along with chopped vegetables, such as onions, carrots and leeks, until browned. Flour and butter are added to the hot pan and stirred into the mix to form a roux, and cooked for a few minutes. In goes, tomato puree, crushed garlic, a few thyme sprigs, a bay leaf and beef stock and the soup is stirred and simmered for two hours until the meat is tender.
The soup is then whizzed up in a hand blender until smooth and passed through a sieve into a clean pan, reduced a bit (to thicken it up and concentrate the flavour), seasoned with a few pinches of sea-salt flakes and black pepper and finished off with a spoonful or two of dry sherry. That’s it.
When was the last time you had a Waldorf Salad? Does anybody make this anymore or has it been consigned to the culinary dustbin of history? According to our trusty friend, Wikipedia, the classic salad was “first created between 1893 and 1896 at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City. Oscar Tschirky, who was the Waldorf’s maître d’hôtel and developed or inspired many of its signature dishes, is widely credited with creating the recipe...In 1896, Waldorf Salad appeared in The Cook Book by Oscar of the Waldorf; the original recipe did not contain nuts, but they had been added by the time the recipe appeared in The Rector Cook Book in 1928.”
We’ve come across Oscar before. The bright spark who also invented- so we are told- Eggs Benedict and Thousand Island Dressing. The original Waldorf Hotel- built in a splendidly over-the-top German Renaissance style- opened in 1893 on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, on the site of the William Waldorf Astor mansion- now the site of the Empire State Building. The rival Astoria Hotel opened in 1897, built directly next door to the Waldorf; both hotels subsequently linked by a 980ft connexion (“Peacock Alley”) to form the new Waldorf-Astoria. The current Waldorf Astoria (from 1931 to 1963 the world’s tallest hotel) can be found at 301 Park Avenue.
I rather like a Waldorf Salad. It’s a simple old thing, really. Sliced or diced apple, celery and chopped walnuts are bound up in a smooth, creamy mayonnaise. But the visual side of the Waldorf Salad leaves much to be desired. Type “Waldorf Salad” into google images, and you will see what I am getting at. Oh the horror! Remind you of anything? There must be a way round this, presentation wise? Some enterprising chef out there. Please.
For the record, here’s a version as published in 1981. It comes from the Waldorf-Astoria Cookbook, so I don’t think anybody can argue with that. But nutmeats?
Waldorf Salad (From the Waldorf-Astoria Cookbook, by Ted James and Rosalind Cole, 1981)
1 cup diced apple
1 cup diced celery
1/4 cup mayonnaise
4 lettuce leaves
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts or pecans
Mix apples, celery and mayonnaise; pile in lettuce leaf on individual salad plates. Garnish with nutmeats.
Toast Water? Really? Or more accurately 'Toast- and- Water’, as Isabella Beeton put it. Like coddled egg, it’s one of those slightly fragile Victorian recipes intended, presumably, for invalids- and back in the dark days of Queen Victoria’s reign, there were plenty of those, including, ultimately poor old Mrs Beeton herself.
Surprisingly it actually tastes rather good. I’ve just made a jug of the stuff. The water takes on an attractive pale golden colour, and includes (as other bloggers have discovered) pleasing hints of nutty caramel, yeast and- wait for it- toast.
To MAKE TOAST- AND- WATER
Ingredients- A slice of bread, 1 quart of boiling water
Mode- Cut a slice from a stale loaf (a piece of hard crust is better than anything else for the purpose), toast it of a nice brown on every side, but do not allow it to burn or blacken. Put it into a jug, pour the boiling water over it, cover it closely and let it remain until cold. When strained, it will be ready for use. Toast- and- Water should always be made a short time before it is required, to enable it to get cold: if drunk in a tepid or lukewarm state, it is an exceedingly disagreeable beverage. If, as is sometimes the case, this drink is wanted in a hurry, put the toasted bread into a jug, and only just cover it with the boiling water; when this is cool, cold water may be added in proportion required- the toast- and- water strained, it will then be ready for use, and is more expeditiously prepared than by the above method.
It’s an inspirational drink. Portobello Road Gin has intriguing, slightly medicinal hints of cinammon and clove. And relatively affordable too at twenty five quid a bottle. Fever Tree’s clean. And fizzy. And doesn’t taste saccharine. And the lime slice gives a nod to the colonial origins of this most Engish of cocktails. Especially good with a dry and spicy Bombay Mix. Although I also like the idea of those cheese straws- from the American Deep South.
The only way I can think of improving this would be to freeze your ice cubes using a decent bottled mineral water, such as Highland Spring. But I expect the readers of The Greasy Spoon are already on to this.
One of my current Room 101’s is London tap water. I cannot stress how foul this stuff is. There’s a rumour that it’s been around the block about five times or so before we’re allowed to drink it. And you’re never more than five yards away from a London rat.
I quite understand why people don’t like liver. Back at Dotheboy’s Hall, the liver served looked and tasted like a bit of rubbery old boot leather. I kid you not. I think it must have come from one of those mass-catering packets or tins. The boys were paid ½ p (a day) to wash up afterwards, which is why I have inside knowledge of what went on in the kitchens. Think septuagenerean cooks of Irish persuasion, blue nylon house coats, hair-nets, rancid Woodbines dripping ash, battered tea-urns and austerity trolleys- and you will get the picture.
It was many years later that I learnt that liver, if cooked properly (flashed in the pan), could be surprisingly delicious. It works well with a bitter-sweet tasting sauce. So I’ve dug out this retro classic: Liver with Dubonnet and Orange. I’m not one hundred per cent sure who exactly came up with this recipe first, but it was certainly included in Margaret Costa’s Four Seasons Cookery Book (1969). Two years later it features in The Good Food Guide Dinner Party Book, as served by Lacy’s restaurant, London.
How to make it? It’s a simple affair. Here’s the Lacy’s version (with helpful extra notes from the GS):
You take 1 lb of lamb’s liver and get your butcher to cut it into slices ½ inch thick. Heat oil and butter in a large frying pan at a low heat. Cook finely chopped onions and crushed garlic until soft, and beginning to colour. Coat the liver slices in seasoned flour and cook them in the pan over a very moderate heat. As ever don’t crowd the pan, otherwise they will start to boil rather than fry. As soon as the blood rises, flip the liver over and cook it for even less. You’re looking at a few minutes, I would have thought. Remove the slices to a separate plate and keep them warm.
Now for the sauce. Add a tablespoon of fresh orange juice and 4 fl oz Dubonnet to the onions and juices left in the pan, scraping the bottom with a wooden spoon to make sure everything is mixed. Bring to the boil and reduce on a high heat. This will, of course, thicken the sauce. When the sauce has reduced by a half, strain, and turn down the heat. Add the coarsley grated rind of an orange and 1 teaspoon grated rind of a lemon. Pour it over the liver, garnish with chopped parsley and serve immediately.
There you go. I never find recipes which involve sauce reduction entirely satisfactory. Quite often I find that there’s just not enough liquid. Reducing it in a small pan also helps, I think. What else? Whatever happens don’t overcook the liver. But then you know that.
F. E. Smith by Sir Leslie Ward “Spy”, for Vanity Fair, 1906
It’s probably never occurred to you that you can make your very own Gentlemans’ Relish (aka Patum Peperium), but indeed you can- or at least something that tastes pretty similar. Gentleman’s Relish was invented in 1828 by John Osborn. Not that you need reminding, but it’s a savoury anchovy paste with a strong, salty, slightly fishy taste. Bags of umami. Elsenham Foods still make the original version, which contains a secret ingredient, apparently known to only one employee.
The Daily Telegraph gave a recipe last week: 400g butter,200g anchovies, a heaped teaspoon of cayenne and thyme leaves are whizzed up in your magimix, and then spooned out into little kilner jars. Brilliant idea if you’re looking for a charming, inexpensive Christmas present.
And here’s a recipe from Hawksmoor Restaurant: Whizz up: 125g tinned anchovies, 250g unsalted butter, pinch of cayenne, pinch ground nutmeg, pinch black pepper, pinch ground cinammon, 25ml fresh lemon juice, 25ml Worcestershire Sauce, 25ml water (optional).
Excellent spread on hot toast, mixed into scrambled eggs or topping off a steak. It will keep for a few days in your ‘fridge and freezes well. If you roll it up, sausage-like, before freezing, you’ll be able to slice off a round to have with your steak.
The Duke de Richleau and Rex Van Ryn had gone into dinner at eight o’clock but coffee was not served till after ten.
Dennis Wheatley, “The Devil Rides Out”, 1934
We’re in Courvoisier territory again. Serve up a box of After Eight Chocolate Mint Wafers to your dinner party guests, and you will be instantly transported into the world of the sophisticated Society Hostess: elegant country house parties, stuccoed London town houses, a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud in Dove Grey, Chinese antiques and private chefs; a box at Covent Garden. Or that, at least, is how the 1960’s adman envisaged it.
“Every woman loves temptation, that’s the secret of After Eight” purrs Mrs Roy Boulting, wife of the producer of “I’m All Right Jack”. Did she really serve up After Eights to her fashionable guests? Somehow I suspect not. But then did Patricia Neal really placate her mercurial husband, Roald Dahl, with a cup of lover-ly Maxwell House- “Good to the Last Drop”?
"The fascinating history of the mint has been collated by Nestle's archive curator Alex Hutchinson who recently rediscovered the old ads and publicity shots." You can read more about it here.
The Louis XV style clock on the After Eights box, if you ever wondered, used to grace the board room of Rowntree’s, the famous York chocolate manufacturer, and according to The Daily Mail disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the 1980’s. I would love to know where it is now.
Ahoy, there Lovebirds! It exists. An Italian cookery book by- cue trumpet fanfare- one Sophia Loren. In the Kitchen with Love was published in 1971. In an American edition, translated from the Italian original:
To open this book is to join Miss Loren in her own kitchen, where she talks about the art of preparing, serving and enjoying fine food. With customary spontaneity, she relates intimate details pertinent to the background of her favorite dishes...
Surprisingly, it’s actually quite good: I had assumed that it had been ghost-written, but then changed my mind on first reading; until I came across a glorious technicolor plate in which we discover that "Miss Loren likes to prepare tomato sauce with her cook, Livia”, and then you do begin to wonder who the actual author was...
All this Italian cooking reminds me of my all-time favourite gloomy Sunday afternoon feel-good film, How To Murder Your Wife, and if you’ve seen that wunderwerk you’ll know what I’m getting at. Except that it stars the devastatingly beautiful Virna Lisi. Bachelor Jack Lemmon marries her on a drunken stag night (she comes out of a cake), and then plots her murder. Why? Because she over-feeds him with delicious- if fattening- provincial Italian cuisine. Okay, Virna comes with a Wagnerian mother-in-law in tow and a tiresome, yappy little lap dog, but even so, it still has to be one of the most barmy, bonkers, crazy, ridiculous, implausible and bizarre motives for murder ever devised on celluloid.
Anyway, here’s Sophia Loren’s recipe for Gnocchi Alla Romana:
These gnocchi have a more delicate flavor than the others, as will be quickly seen from the ingredients.
For six people melt 3 tablespoons of butter in 1 quart of milk over a low flame, then increase the heat, and when the milk comes to the boil, pour in 1 cup of semolina, sirring it the entire time, when the mixture thickens and threatens to solidify, pour in another dash of milk; stir again, turn out the fire, add 2/3 cup of grated Parmesan, two egg yolks, without ever ceasing to stir.
When you see that the mixture, now very hot, has a uniform consistency, pour it out onto the marble top of the kitchen table, which you have previously dampened with cold water; shape it into a flat “cake”, about a quarter of an inch high, and leave to cool. Then with the rim of a glass cut the pasta into circlet: these of course are the gnocchi.
To cook them greasproof a fireproof dish and dust it with breadcrumbs; lay in it the gnocchi in tight rows wach with its edge resting on the next one, cover with melted butter and grated Parmesan, add another layer of gnocchi, then more butter and Parmesan; and bake uncovered in a moderate oven for one hour.
Photograph: Sam Fraser-Smith, under Creative Commons Licence.
I've just been experimenting with that British all-time classic, Toad in the Hole. Jamie Oliver's recipe from Jamie's Great Britain is quite good, but didn't work as well as I had hoped. His batter was excellent- light and puffy, but I wasn't convinced by the gloopy apple and onion sauce or the dried up rosemary. He's keen on de-construction is our Jamie: the sausages are served separately from the Yorkshire pudding. I didn't really see the point of this: isn't the Toad supposed to be in the Hole? Or is it the Hole in the Toad?
So I've developed my own recipe, tweaking it a bit here and there, simplifying (and I hope refining) it until we get to what I think, might just be a near-perfect Toad in the Hole. The rosemary infused milk gives the dish that extra dimension. Here's how you make it:
Pour 250ml semi-skimmed milk into a jug. Take two fresh rosemary sprigs and pull off the leaves, crumbling and rolling them in your fingers to release the oils. Add the rosemary leaves to the milk and let it infuse for about half an hour.
Strain the milk (discarding the rosemary leaves) and whisk in three eggs, 100g plain flour, a pinch of salt and white pepper to form a light, slightly runny, rosemary scented batter. Set aside.
Take a selection of Cumberland Sausages, place into a roasting pan and toss in olive oil. Cook in a hot oven (240° C) for about ten minutes. When the time's up, take out the pan and pour off most of the fat. Then pour in the batter, so that it surrounds the sausages. Back into the oven goes the pan. Watch it like a hawk (but don't open the door!). After a few minutes the batter will start rising and turning brown. You'll have your own idea when it's ready. The trick is to cook the batter properly, so that it's brown and crispy on top, yet soft in the centre. You dont' want to overdo the sausages either. Sprinkle the remaining rosemary leaves on top.
I serve this with a rich onion and cider gravy, which you can serve from a separate jug. It's very easy to make. Slice up two white onions very thinly indeed, and fry them in butter on a medium heat until they turn brown and caramelise. Sprinkle a bit of white sugar onto the onions to help.
I always think that onions need a great deal of cooking, so don't be scared to take your time over this. In goes a tiny splash of Balsamic Vinegar, a decent slug of Cider and 250ml beef stock.Bubble away like mad.
Whisk in a teaspoon of white flour mixed with water and cook on for a bit. This will help to thicken up the gravy.
Finish it off with a shake of Worcestershire Sauce to taste and then whisk in a final knob of butter to create a shiny glaze.
This will create a rich, very dark brown gravy with a piquant taste. You can of course, alter ingredients to taste, leaving out the balsamic vinegar if you find it too strong. I would also be tempted to add a dash of Soy Sauce for that extra umami kick. Those onions should be well cooked, very, very thin, and the sauce should not be too thick or gloopy. I also quite like the idea of straining off the onion slices- for that extra refinement; just leaving a glossy, dark, rich onion-flavoured gravy. Bisto? What on earth's that?
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)
Here's a Greasy Spoon classic for that most British celebration, "Bonfire Night": The Bullshot Cocktail.
It's supposed to be served cold, on ice; but I see no reason why it shouldn't be served hot (in a similar fashion to mulled wine or cider) and I have a sneaky suspicion that you might find it even better this way.
Empty a tin of beef consommé soup into a large pan. Pour in a large slug of vodka and add a dash of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, a squeeze of lemon juice, a pinch of celery salt, and finish it off by seasoning it with salt and pepper.
Warm up the bullshot on a medium heat, making sure that you don't boil it. If you've got guests, I would suggest serving it in small coffee cans or cups. If you're going to the Park, I would urge you to fill up your hip-flask and pass it around.
Gastronauts- a question for you this fine, sunny, July morning. Do you have a thing about takeaway curry? A secret addictive vice? Go on. Admit it. It's gloriously tacky, I know, unquestionably laddish, and possibly, no probably, horribly fattening (more about that later), but isn't there just something so very comforting indeed about a rich, oily, meaty, salty, spicy Madras on a Friday night, after a difficult week? There's a place for it, despite what Mrs Aitch thinks. Her view being that why on earth anybody would want to re-create the flavours of a British Indian Takeaway is beyond comprehension.
British Indian Restaurant (BIR as the aficionados call it) is a different ball game from genuine and traditional Indian food- as prepared and eaten by families across the Sub-Continent. It all started when Bangladeshis arrived in Britain just after the Second World War. They developed a new style of cooking, perhaps more suited to British taste buds, which could be prepared with relative ease, and on a strict budget, allowing many different dishes to be served at once.
Ever wondered how your local Indian Taj Mahal manages to serve up so many different dishes at such short notice? Ever wondered how Indian restaurants manage to survive even though you're the only punter in the room?
The secret lies in the various very affordable base sauces and pastes which the restaurant makes up before hand. I became curious about this and started to investigate. Surprise, surprise, there's a whole BIR sub-culture on YouTube, with beery jokey blokey types revealing 'for the first time' the mystery of the 'base sauce' and curry fanatics peddling their e-books revealing the 'secret' recipes of British Indian Restaurant Cookery. There's also several internet forums full of angst-ridden middle aged men arguing about the exact quantity of this spice and that sauce. In truth, there are now so many of these curry evangelists, that to claim the whole caboodle a 'secret' is, perhaps, as trifle economique with the actualité.
I've discovered that the base sauce tends to be, in essence, a puréed vegetable stock. There doesn't seem to be any major rules, but the sauce tends to include cabbage, carrots, peppers, fresh coriander, garlic and ginger paste, green chillies, tomatoes, water and a great deal of onions. And a great deal of oil. As much as a litre of sunflower oil is poured into the cooking pot, which explains why you get that dark red oily surface floating on top of your curry. The vegetable bit is extremely healthy, but I'm not sure about the quantities of oil. A litre of oil does seem like an enormous amount. Scary. Coming to think about it, none of the Curry Crusaders I watched on YouTube seemed to have- how can I put it delicately? - washboard stomachs.
Anyway, to move on. To cut a very long story short, it's simmered for several hours. When ready it can be used as a base for any dish you think of. There are all sorts of other nifty little tricks to know about too. In a Korma, super fine coconut flour is used, not desiccated coconut. And butter is added to the dish, as well as cream. Tomato ketchup often goes into a Rogan Josh. And so on and so on. Meat is pre-cooked and then warmed through in the sauce before serving.
The first book published on the subject seems to be Kris Dhillon's The Curry Secret. In its day it was breaking new ground. I've read this slim volume from cover to cover, and it's a bit different from all the e-books and YouTube videos out there. Very pared down. Basic even. The base sauce, for example, is much simpler and seems to lack ingredients (like cabbage and carrots) everyone else is recommending. I finished this book slightly unfulfilled, not convinced that with this one, we really were learning "The Secret"- whatever that might be.
A more complicated (and perhaps more genuine) approach seems to come from Dave Loyden's Undercover Curry, an insider's expose of British Indian Restaurant Cookery, which goes into great length and detail about exactly how to prepare all the sauces, pastes and wotnot that you need to create genuine BIR food. It's like a technician's manual. All great stuff, and worth getting, but there's so much emphasis on the technique, there's not much room left for the recipes. Classics such as Chicken Korma (which I would have loved to have learnt how to cook properly) seems to have been left out.
And then you turn to the internet. I love YouTube, I think, partly because I like enthusiasts. There's so much quirky stuff out there for enthusiastic amateurs. If you suddenly decide you want to breed orchids, raise Alpacas, restore a Bentley Mark VI or learn how to speak Cornish with a Newlyn dialect, there's going to be some nut on YouTube showing you exactly how to do it. And with their videos come helpful 'how-to-do-it' e-books.
For once, the Sinister Kindle seems to have come into its own. Talking of which, I'm toying- and I mean toying- with the idea of writing a "Best of The Greasy Spoon" recipe book. There could be two paths- a relatively expensive de-luxe edition, wood-cuts, hand-made paper, limited print run et al, or a democratic, affordable e-book, which could be downloaded immediatley to the computer screens at your Counting House for a few golden nuggets. With the first option, I would probably end up loosing money, with the second- I might actually make a few bob or two. Enough to keep me in take-away curries for a few months. But that's beside the point.
Which one would you prefer? Are there any unmissable classic dishes that you think I should include? Please email me at [email protected]with your views.
It's crunchy. It's spicy. It's horribly addictive. It's laced, I suspect, with our old friend, Mr Monosodium Glutamate. It comes in those little bags from the local corner shop. It's Bombay Mix. The Queen's a fan. Apparently she draws lines in felt-tip across her porcelain snack bowls. She discovered that quantities of the stuff were mysteriously vanishing. The Royal Protection Squad were the main suspects.
I've currently got a 'thing' about Bombay Mix too, finding it works beautifully for some reason, with a decent Gin & Tonic (Portobello Gin mixed properly, Fever Tree tonic, ice cubes and a wedge of lime). The rather appealing Bombay Mix in the picture above comes from the admirably named Ludlow Nut Company.
Mrs Aitch asked me what was in it. I'm ashamed to admit I couldn't tell her straight off. Nuts? Noodles? Raisins? I wasn't even sure if it was genuinely Indian either. Could it be one of those strange Anglo-Indian concotions conjured up in the 1970's?
Actually it is Indian (chiwda, chevdo, bhuso, chevda (चिवडा) or chivdo (चिवडो), Chanāchura, chanachur (চানাচুর) and chuda) a traditional snack which is enjoyed by millions right across the globe. Ingredients can include: peanuts, fried lentils, chickpeas, flaked rice, fried onion, noodles and curry leaves, flavoured with salt, pepper, coriander and mustard seed.
There are various recipes out there on the net. Every Indian family has their favourite mix, there doesn't seem to be any major rules. I like Ms Marmite Lover's version, which includes aromatic fennel, green chilis, sunflower seeds, red lentils and almonds.
Courtesans, Company Style, Northern India, 1800-1825.
Here's a recipe for an excellent- and aromatic- chicken curry which I've based on a version in Manju Malhi's recommended book, Brit Spice. It's similar-in a way- to the chicken curries of the Punjab in Northern India. I like the simplicity of the dish. It's a brilliant after-work standby: if you're in the mood for a decent supper, but can't be bothered to make anything elaborate. The ingredients are more than readily available in any supermarket- even one of those ersatz 'quick-stop' corner places.
Whiz up two green chillies, a generous knob of peeled ginger, a few cloves of garlic and a squirt of lemon juice in your magimix. This will create a paste. Put some chicken breasts into a bowl and smear them with the paste. Leave them to marinate for a few minutes.
Meanwhile, take a largish saucepan (I love those wide-ish, flat-ish saucepans with sides) and fry two chopped onions in oil, until brown. Fry them gently. You want them to go a golden brown colour, to caramalise. This will help to create a brown-coloured sauce. This is a good thing.
Stir in a teaspoon or so of garam masala, a teaspoon of turmeric and a generous pinch of sea salt. Add the marinated chicken pieces and cook for a few minutes, stirring until the oils come to the surface. Top the dish up with water, cover, and simmer for a few minutes. You can play around with the amount of water to add, depending on how thick you like your sauce to be. That's it. Incredibly easy, and you'll end up with an authentic tasting curry in no time at all.
Before I sign off, a quick note on Garam Masala. In Britain (a nation of curry lovers) you can buy this easily enough in little jars. It's a blend of spices used in the cookery of Northern India. If you're in the mood you can make your own:
Heat up a heavy frying pan and 'dry roast' the following ingredients: a handful of cloves, a cinammon stick or two, a few green cardamon pods, black cardamon pods, a tablespoon of cumin seeds, a few coriander seeds, one or two black peppercorns, a teaspoon of black mustard seeds and some grated nutmeg.
I gather that recipes for Garam Masala vary from household to household, so don't freak out if you can't get all the ingredients. Nothing is set in stone.
Don't add any oil to the pan- you just want to toss the spices very quickly in the pan until you start smelling the aromas. Make sure they don't burn. We're only talking about a minute or so on the heat. Whizz them up on in a coffee grinder or spice grinder and store. You could, of course, also crush them the old-fashioned way in a good old pestle and mortar.
I'm not sure why I haven't written about Bath Olivers before, as they're a very Greasy Spoon thing. "Fortt's Bath Olivers". The most elegant biscuit ever created, in my opinion: generously large, soft to the touch, light on the taste, with that quirky indented impression of their inventor, the good William Oliver, Physician of Bath.
It is thought that Oliver invented them around 1750. I suppose, in a way, Bath Olivers are really just like any other, more ordinary, dry cracker, but they do have that certain something which is hard to define. An Englishness perhaps? In Rudyard Kipling's charming children's book "Puck of Pook's Hill' they evoke the nostalgic Edwardian idyll of Kipling's Sussex manor house, Bateman's (cue Elgar's Nursery Suite):
...they were not, of course, allowed to act on Midsummer Night itself, but they went down after tea on Midsummer Eve, when the shadows were growing, and they took their supper—hard-boiled eggs, Bath Oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope—with them. [...] Everything else was a sort of thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass."
Puck of Pook's Hill, illustration by Sir Arthur Rackham, 1906
One part Gin. One part Red Vermouth. One part Campari. Serve on the rocks with a twist of orange.
Its origins are unclear. Count Camillo Negroni is supposed to have asked his barman to replace the soda in his Americano with Gin. This was back in 1919. In Florence. A the Caffè Casoni.
The Negroni was a favourite of that wunderkind, Orson Welles, who tried it for the first time in 1947 and is supposed to have said in that marvellous fruity voice:
“The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.”
Nice one, Mr Welles, and a great excuse to post a photograph from another all-time favourite, F For Fake, which includes a hilarious sequence at La Méditeraneé, Paris: Orson holding court on Modern European Art, surrounded by an entourage of giggly and extremely pretty girls.
I'm a massive fan of Orson, and not just because of his tacky advertising campaigns (Paul Masson, California Carafe "we will sell no wine before its time"). His 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast was terrific in the true meaning of the word.Would I have joined the panicking hordes, as they fled their cities from alien invasion? Quite possibly.
It's easy with hindsignt to imagine what career path you might have taken, if say, the course of events had led you down a different course. I quite like the idea of marketing spirits and liquers, especially if (through some sort of occult timewarp) I had been whisked back in time to the 1970's. But then my father used to be the account director on the Booth's Gin account, and I seem to remember tales of long liquid lunches at their panelled offices in Park Lane. Full Circle.
Another amusing fantasy career would to have been some sort of slick exec for the Franklin Mint. Hours of entertainment thinking up new ideas to flog to the unsuspecting readers of The Sunday Express: "I'm loving your King Henry and His Six Wives Chess Set, Luke" (dig in the ribs) "Real Class, Kiddo"..."Tooled in 24 karat gold and lined in lovingly crafted kidron?"..."Sure"..."But we're gonna up the limited edition size"... "Saya Ten Thousand?"
The Courvoisier account would have been fun too. Brilliant advertising. A fairly ordinary, supermarket shelf brandy was transformed into a sophisticated cognac enjoyed- no savoured- by connoisseurs, aristos and no one less than the Emperor himself. Buying a bottle of Courvoisier gave you that certain 'je ne sais quoi'- or that at least, is what the advertisers hoped for: the whiff of a leather-bound library, an ancient chateau in the countryside outside Paris, the discreet chime of an antique clock, the crunch of a gravel drive, sophisticated after dinner chat, the hint of an aristocratic pedigree. We're in the same territory as After Eight Mints.
Imperial Leather soap- by Cussons- was another one. Pretty ordinary stuff to be honest. But then the Imperial Leather family used it, didn't they? They liked to share a bath. All of them together. Didn't their butler bring them one of those old fashioned telephones to use? As they played backgammon whilst reading the Financial Times? These days that sort of thing would be banned. I can hear the tut-tutting now as I type, drifiting up over the leafy environs of Tunbridge Wells.
Mrs Aitch gave this to me this morning; as a present for Valentine's Day. Venus in the Kitchen or Love's Cookery Book was first published in 1952, edited by Norman Douglas (the subversive author of South Wind) and with an introduction by Graham Greene.
It's a collection of recipes with an aphrodisicial twist: Sturgeon Soup à la Chinoise, Black Risotto, Kidneys with Champagne, Oyster Cocktail, Artichoke Bottoms, Wild Boar. Many of the recipes have an Italian flavour, which is not surprising, as the author lived in exile on the island of Capri. The blurb on the front dust jacket reads:
The author explains that "after a succulent dinner with several bottles of red wine", some of the elder guests began to lament their declining vigour. Someone suggested that there must be certain dishes whose ingredients and spices would be likely to revive the fading ardours of middle age. The author then began to make a collection of these recipes.
I love old books like this: the slightly musty smell, the browning to the edge of the crisp, acidic paper, the decidedly old-fashioned pen-and-ink graphics ("decorations by Bruce Roberts"). And then there are those interesting bits of ephemera which fall out of books: old tickets, bookmarks, postcards, even letters. In this one some dreadful old goat had bookmarked the page opening at "Pie of Bull's Testicles" with a torn piece of old newspaper, leaving a tell-tale foxing mark behind on the page.
Here's Norman Douglas's recipe for Anchovy Toast:
Cut some slices of bread, toast nicely, trim to any shape required. Have ready a hot-water plate, on which put four ounces of butter; let it melt; add the yolks of four raw eggs, one tablespoon of anchovy sauce, Nepaul pepper to taste. Mix all well together, and dip the toast in, both sides; let it well soak into the mixture. Serve very hot, piled high on a dish, and garnished with parsley.
Anchovies have long been famed for their lust-provoking virtues.
Norman Douglas's last words were: "Get those f*****g nuns away from me".
"Just a Beaujolais sir, but a good bottler..." The Servant (1963)
One of my earliest restaurant memories is being taken by my grandfather to The London Steak House, somewhere near the old Roman Wall in the City of London. We were the only customers in an empty restaurant. I remember a few things. The head waiter falling over backwards to fawn over my grandfather (he looked distinguished- my grandfather, not the head waiter- not unlike David Niven with flamboyant Harvie & Hudson shirts, an Errol Flynn moustache and well-cut suits with narrow Edwardian cuffs and drainpipe trouser bottoms).
The London Steak House, I seem to remember, was a (relatively upmarket?) chain- but to an eight or nine year old's way of thinking, achieved sophisticated heights. Here a waiter would advance, and in a hushed tone ask if Sir would prefer "English, French or German Mustard?" All Colman's of course. I seem to remember thick (burgundy?) carpets, padded banquette seating and linen tablecloths. The claret was served in a ducky wicker cradle. My grandfather kept them waiting for about a minute while he swirled the wine around his glass and sniffed. It was a terrific performance. I was terribly impressed.
The London Steak House, Old Brompton Road (1966)
"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there". Back then (this was the early 1970's), people aspired to middle-aged sophistication, to becoming a grown up. Recently I've had fun flipping through old House & Gardens from the 1960's and 70's. Full of advertisements for cognac, expensive cigarettes, fine liqueurs and Martini. Libraries with chocolate lacquered walls, Chinese ancestor portraits and bookshelves lined with fine leather bindings seemed de rigeur. A place to relax at night with a balloon glass of armagnac, admire your collection of Marquis de Sade firsts and listen to the Bach 48 on the Bang & Olufsen.
Middle-aged aspiration, the true spirit of the 1970's, Dormeuil (1979)
I don't know why when somebody mentions the 1970's everyone starts thinking of Mr Travolta, white suits, hairy chests matted with sun oil, 100% polyester flares and Night on Disco Mountain. I remain unashamedly fond of Disco, for in truth, Studio 54 was a deadly sophisticated affair, a sybaritic rendezvous where Truman Capote, the Jacquelines Onassis and Bisset could intermingle with the likes of Andy Warhol, Disco Sally and the urbane haute monde. And for every tenth thousand turmeric-sprayed Austin Allegro (with square steering wheel and brown deckchair striped seats in static inducing draylon) there was one hand-made Rolls Royce Camargue, coachwork courtesy of Pininfarina, a car in which Lady Penelope herself might have cut a dash.
I found very little about The London Steak House on the net, apart from a stylish matchbook on Ebay, with black salt and pepper pot graphics set against a brown ground and the photograph shown above. Note the half-decent abstracts on the wall, and the serving trolley (Flambéed Steak au Poivre and Crêpes Suzettes?).
Retro diners are currently toute la rage in Old London Town at the moment (Soho is full of 'em), which is fine- good even; but wouldn't it be refreshing if some brave entrepreneur decided to look up for once, rather than down, ditched the 50's Americana Shack Look and aimed at something, well, just a little bit more sophisticated? These days everybody aspires to be a dungaree-wearing, Pepsi drinking, bearded 17 year old hick from the Deep South rather than a Bentley driving clubable chairman with an interest in rare books, antique furniture and Dry Martini cocktails.
So in memory of The London Steak House (long may it Rest In Peace), here's my recipe for a simple cognac infused Green Peppercorn Sauce. You have it with steak. The green peppercorns come in little jars full of brine.
The Greasy Spoon's Green Peppercorn Sauce
2 tablespoons peppercorns
Knob of unsalted butter
1 chopped shallot
Dash of Cognac
1 teaspoon of Flour
100ml Beef Stock
60ml Double Cream
Heat a small to medium sized saucepan and add the butter. Fry the chopped shallot and the green peppercorns very briefly.
Add the dash of cognac, and stir. Add a teaspoon of flour and stir, making sure it cooks properly.
Now add the beef stock and bring the sauce to the boil. Turn down the heat and let it bubble away gently. After a few minutes, add the cream and let the sauce reduce gently.
Season to taste, and serve with steak.
You may need to play around with the quantities of flour, stock and cream. The sauce needs to be just right. Not too thick (and floury) and not too thin (watery). I've found chef Michel Richard's similar recipe from The Washington Post which looks great. He adds a tablespoon of Soy Sauce, which, I think will help to bring out the beefy, meaty, umami flavours.
I've got mixed feelings about old Sir Terence. I still can't make up my mind about the rather empty, sparse Design Museum; loathed Mezzo (a formulaic joint for raucous Essex Girls up for a Night on the Town) and Quaglino's, although back in 1993 an exciting place for a liaison dangereuse, became a shadow of its former self. Conran's take-over of Heals, the famous furniture shop in the Tottenham Court Road, was also iffy, I think. I seem to remember that half of the amazing Art Deco convex (or is it converse?) shop windows were ripped out, a commerical decision, I'm sure (difficult to display stock), but not exactly a reassuring move from one of Britain's leading design gurus. And a half-hearted act, too.
And I've never been entirely convinced by the conranisation of his classic redbrick Georgian house in Berkshire either, as featured in the Sunday colour supplements and the old House and Gardens lying around at the bottom of my wardrobe. Not that I don't like it, it's all very lovely, but...but... it's as if the history of the house- the very essence of what the house is all about- no longer exists.
And then along comes the marvellous Boundary, a grown-up, civilised restaurant of the old school serving Anglo-French food with mâitre d's in pin-stripe trousers; a recent-ish enterprise located in the modish East End, a stone's throw from the former haunt of Jack the Ripper. It's all very confusing.
But then maybe I am missing the point. How exciting Conran must have seemed in the late 50's and early 60's! The man has had a huge and massive influence on post-war British culture. And for the better. If you wind back in time to the late 50's and 60's, Conran's sophisticated designs must have seemed like a breath of fresh air in a world of smog, lukewarm Brown Windsor Soup and grimy flock wallpaper.
For the young, aspirational couple, strapped for cash, newly in love with the colour supplement lifestyle as championed by Elizabeth David, Arabella Boxer and Robert Carrier; and attempting to convert a shabby tenement block back into an elegant and fashionable town house, the affordable but stylish Habitat catalogue must have come as a godsend. Especially as everything was paid for by the newly launched Barclaycard. It's bizarre now to think of a society where credit cards didn't exist, but until 1966 that was exactly the state of the union.
And the middle classes were travelling for the first time on a regular basis, to civilised places like France, Spain and Italy. Habitat led the charge, re-creating (successfully, I think) the imagined ambiance of a French ironmongers, with kitchen utensils piled high on scrubbed pine tables, white painted brick walls, terracotta chicken bricks, Cornishware, red enamel oil lamps, Victorian scales in iron, and colourful posters of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Belle Epoque. Classless too. Conran was more interested in the Quaker simplicity of the downstairs scullery than in the Great Exhibition fripperies of the upstairs Drawing Room.
And I had forgotten about Terence and Vicki Conran's recent cookbook, Classic Conran. This is a fantastic book, very much along the lines of our he-who-can-do-no-wrong-foodie-god, Simon Hopkinson, but with a practical edge, more suited to domestic cooks with less time to spare.
There's an emphasis on the classics of Anglo-French cookery, simple dishes made with good ingredients and cooked properly: kedgeree (they use the preferable curried pilaf Grigson method); Jambon Persillée,Eton Mess, Soup à l' Oignon, Poached Chicken with Tarragon Sauce, Chocolate Mousse, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Entrecôte Béarnaise, Roast Grouse, Toulouse Sausages with Lentils, Braised Oxtail, Leeks Viniagrette, Irish Soda Bread. This is Greasy Spoon food. This is what The Greasy Spoon is all about. The book's so darned good it's currently got pride of place in my top ten "cookbooks of all time" list.
I came across the Conran recipe for that old classic, Scotch Broth. I don't know what the weather's like where you are, but here in London it's cold and wet with that English dampness that chills you to the bone. The Greasy Spoon herb garden is sodden. My tarragon plant seems to have vanished and I've lost hope. And this weather is making me hungry, very hungry. Ravenous in fact.
I've got a craving for Scotch Broth. It's a British Classic. I used to hoard this in my tuck box at school. Tins of Baxter's "Scotch Broth". Or was it "Cock-a-Leekie"? There are numerous recipes on the net, many seem to be similar, some are identical. All seem to agree on the following ingredients: carrots, a turnip or two,onions, celery, leek, pre-soaked dried peas, cabbage (or kale) and pearl barley.
In the Conran version you simmer a neck of lamb for an hour or two until tender, leave overnight, skim off the fat, breaking up the meat into small pieces and then cook gently with the vegetables and lamb stock for a further hour, adding the cabbage towards the end. The soup is finished off with a garnish of chopped parsley. The BBC version is very similar but leaves out the lamb. Marguerite Patten's version in her Classic British Dishes, is almost identical in method to the Conran's except she refines it by blanching the barley in boiling water, which, apparently 'whitens' the barley and 'gives it a better texture'.
Mrs Aitch is making marmalade- as I write this. She makes it every year, and there's this terrific wait for the Seville oranges to arrive in England. Some years they arrive early, other years they arrive late. But January's the month for Seville oranges. If you're interested in her original recipe, here's the link. It works every time and makes an extremely professional tasting marmalade- I gather the secret is all about the quality of the pectin in the oranges and getting to the right temperature to release it. It sounds scientific.
This time I thought I'd have a shot at making Seville Orange Gin. It's a lovely old-fashioned drink, and apparently, a favourite of HRH The Prince of Wales. I've never made it before, so I've trawled the web and come across several recipes. They're all very similar- and pretty simple.
I can't hand-on-heart tell you if this recipe is any good, as I'm literally just about to make it. What I have learnt with Sloe Gin and Gooseberry Gin, is that it's often a good idea to go easy on the sugar, and if anything, deliberately add less sugar than the recipe demands. If your gin is too bitter in taste, it's an easy matter to add more sugar to taste. But if your gin is too sweet- there's nothing you can do about it, apart from chucking the whole thing down the sink.
5 Seville oranges
a litre bottle of gin
4 oz caster sugar
2 cloves
Peel the Seville oranges, carefully removing the zest from the pith – the pith is bitter and you need to get rid of it. Cut the orange peel into strips.
In a large sterilized demijohn combine the gin,sugar, orange peel and two cloves. Seal and keep in a dark cupboard for three months. Turn (or shake) the container every few days to make sure that the sugar dissolves.
After three months you strain the orange gin and, using a funnel, pour off the strained alcohol into sterilized bottles and seal. Ideally, you need to leave the orange gin for a year or two to mature and mellow over time.
The John F Kennedy Archives recently released a recipe for JFK's favourite fish chowder. It's a rather touching story. In 1961 a disabled girl called Lynn Jennings wrote to the President asking 'what he liked to eat'. The president's special assistant wrote back, thanking Lynn for her 'nice letter' and enclosing the typed out recipe (below) and a photograph of the president. Kennedy, apparently, was terribly greedy and liked to wolf down this chowder in enormous quantities.
NEW ENGLAND FISH CHOWDER
2 pounds haddock
2 ounces salt pork, diced
2 onions, sliced
4 large potatoes, diced
1 cup chopped celery
1 bay leaf, crumbled
1 quart milk
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Simmer haddock in 2 cups water for 15 minutes. Drain. Reserve broth. Remove bones from fish. Saute diced pork until crisp, remove and set aside. Saute onions in pork fat until golden brown. Add fish, potatoes, celery, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Pour in fish broth plus enough boiling water to make 3 cups of liquid. Simmer for 30 minutes. Add milk and butter and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve chowder sprinked with pork dice. Serves 6.
I like the way Jackie's reading a pristine copy of "Portrait of a President" in the famous LIFE photograph below. Nothing like a subtle plug, is there?
I'm a great believer in doing simple things well. This is far better than doing complicated things badly. The Croque Monsieur is a case in point. I've very recently eaten one (or more accurately, a Croque Madame) at Boulestin, and my God, it was good: perfectly fried brioche, creamy Emmental (or Gruyère) cheese, Béchamel Sauce, salty juicy ham and a fried egg. It's a fabulous classic- very much the sort of thing The Greasy Spoon approves of- and champions.
Not that you've forgotten, the "Monsieur" is essentially a fried cheese and ham sandwich, and the "Madame" is more of the same, except it's topped with a fried egg. The egg is supposed to look like a fashionable woman's hat (knowing the French, isn't there a far more obvious explanation?), and according to Wikipedia (so it must be true) only dates back to around 1960. In Normandy the "Madame" is known as a croque-à-cheval. The strange thing is that experts think that the "Mister" only made its first appearance on a Parisian cafe menu in 1910. The earliest mention seems to have been in Marcel Proust's "A Remembrance of Things Past", published in 1918.
But how to make the perfect Croque Monsieur? I turned to Dining with Proust, a luxurious coffee-table book published in 1992. Splendid book, but no recipe. There was another book, "Dining with Marcel Proust", but I haven't- as yet- got it and it's currently on my amazon wish list.
I had better luck with the New Larousse Gastronomique:
Cut slices from a fresh or stale loaf. Spread with butter on one side, and lay a thin slice of Gruyère cheese on top, with a slice of lean ham on top of that. Close the sandwich and fry until golden in clarified butter.
Ginette Mathiot's I Know How To Cook says:
Cut the (stale) bread into thin, evenly shaped slices. Spread all the slices with some of the butter and sprinkle with the cheese. Put a piece of ham on half the bread slices. Cover each one with a buttered slice. Tie together with kitchen string. Melt the remaining butter in a frying pan over a moderate heat. Add the croque-monsieurs and brown for 4 minutes on each side. Remove the string and serve.
But how did Boulestin make theirs? The bread tasted very similar to a brioche and I suspect that this was fried in butter very carefully- to avoid burning. I'm not exactly sure what cheese they used, but it may well have been Emmental- which had been grated into a creamy Béchamel sauce. Personally, I'm keen on the "Mrs". I like the way you cut into the fried egg, and the soft, runny yolk oozes over the fried bread.
Having grown up with the various shops dotted around St James's, I think I can afford to be grumpy when they close down, or get 'made-over', which seems to happen at an alarming rate these days.
Sullivan Powell (where I used to buy little boxes of unfiltered Turkish Sobranie Cigarettes rolled, apparently, on the thighs of hearty Balkan peasant girls). Gone. Maitland's the Chemist (until very recently, a corner shop at the top end of Piccadilly Arcade, where perfumed soap gathered dust and the clock stopped in 1914). Gone. Hawes & Curtis (once purveyors of fine shirts to King Edward VIII, Lord Mountbatten and Cary Grant). Completely, Utterly Ruined. Bates the Hatter (most famous resident Binks the Cat, stuffed and boxed, jaunty topper and cigar in his mouth). Demolished. That one really hurt. One of the last, original, authenticly preserved, genuine 1920's shop interiors, unnecessarily knocked down to make way for a parade of bland, slick 'international' units. Where Bates traded for almost a hundred years, can now be found Sunspel, the Y-Front shop, which looks, frankly, if it could be found in any city where rich people cluster: New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Geneva, or failing that Terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport.
And there are several others I could mention. I'm currently worried about D.R. Harris, chemist and perfumers, established 1790, which has recently closed for re-furbishment and re-development. I'm praying that this is going to be nothing more than a lick of paint and that the old atmosphere of the Victorian shop, with its apothecarist's bottles and mahogany shelving, will be preserved. Modernisation for Modernisation's Sake. The relentless creep of Internationalism. I don't like it.
But I'm not a complete curmudgeon. I do realise that times change, and if shops are gong to survive, they need to move with the times. The trick, I think, is balance; to keep somehow, the ethos of the old place: a daunting task for designers who may often have been raised on distant shores.
Budd, the shirt and pajama makers in Piccadilly Arcade, recently bought up by Huntsman, has re-fitted the shop brilliantly, improving things here and there, but keeping the atmosphere of the old, rather discreet shop, known to the lucky few. This is the antithesis of global brands such as Ralph Lauren, where cricket bats are displayed as props and portraits on the walls are still wet to the touch. Long may it thrive. Budd, not Ralph Lauren.
Fortnum's is another example. The recent re-fit has been a triumph. Every Christmas I make a quick trawl, primarily to buy presents on my way to Hatchards, but also as an excuse to breath in 'that' honeyed smell which hits you as you push your way through the swing doors: a mixture of rich wool carpet, glass, crystallised fruit, liquers and plastic. It's very hard to describe. They've managed to keep all the essential elements that make Fortnum's so special, the fitted carpets are still cerise, the woodwork is still painted in eau de nil, the staff still wear morning dress, often a size too small, or a size too big. It's a shame that the old St James's restaurant is now kaput, as for many Londoners, this place held special memories: the carving trolley (I can see my grandfather discreetly tipping the carver), the poe-faced waitresses in their 1920's starched linen headbands, the naff Montague Dawsons in their heavily gilded Impressionist frames. Full riggers in stormy seas. Still.
I love the new range of tea caddies that F & M have just brought out. Guard's Blend in particular. Brilliant, evocative packaging. They remind me of Edward Bawden's sumptious designs for Fortnum's Christmas catalogues.
Every year I post my recipe for Christmas Pudding. It works. I hope you attempt to make it rather than buying one of those ready-made affairs from the shops. It's not especially difficult and for those who like this sort of thing, there's nothing like watching their eager little faces as you carry it through to the dining room, set well alight. Here's the post:
Believe it or not, it's time to make your Christmas Pudding. Here in London, Christmas seems to start earlier and earlier. The television advertising spree has begun, and suddenly our screens are full of earnest, eager types wrapped up in noddy hats and woolly scarves, grinning kiddywinks, and beaming Old Dears. Teflon snowflakes are having a field day. The lights have gone up in Sloane Square too, yet the leaves are still on the trees. Look, I love Christmas, please don't get me wrong: I'm no Scrooge; but often the expectation is, truthfully, more enjoyable than the actual event itself. But London is particularly pretty in those two weeks leading up to Christmas, and I can't think of a better place in the world to be at this time.
Right now is the time to start making your Christmas Pudding; and if anything it may even be a bit on the late side. Traditionally, the Christmas Pudding was made on "Stir-Up Sunday", which was the last Sunday before Advent, (about four to five weeks before Christmas Day), but in our family we used to make it as early as late October. I love Christmas Pudding. The way your spoon plunges into the moist (you hope!), rich, fruity mass; and the contrast with the smooth, rich, alchohol infusedbrandy butter.
Here is my tried and tested recipe for Christmas Pudding. It's based on our age-old family recipe (which I suspect was nicked from Cordon Bleu), but I've "improved" it with the addition of Guinness and Black Treacle. It went down extremely well with my brother-in-law, who gobbled down the lot, and apparently, declared it "one of the best Christmas Puddings he had ever tasted"; in fact- "never was there such a pudding". Incidentally, as an experiment last year, I added Scotch Whisky instead of the traditional brandy- and it sort of worked, although the resulting smoky taste was not really that appropriate. So back to good old Cognac it is.
Here's the recipe:
Stir up all the following ingredients in a pudding basin:
350g Mixed fruit and peel (this means crystallised peel, dried apricots, currants, saltanas, raisins, grated lemon rind, and grated orange rind)
50g Chopped glacé cherries
25g Flaked almonds
50g Dried suet (you can't get the proper stuff anymore- the EU has made it illegal)
35g White breadcrumbs
35g Plain flour
70g Moist dark brown sugar
50gGrated apple
A dash of mixed spice and grated nutmeg. Some weirdos add carrot- but very sensibly, I leave this one out.
Once you've stirred all the ingredients together, mix in the following ingredients:
Two beaten eggs
The juice of half a lemon and half an orange
Two tablespoons of a dark stout (ie Guinness)
A tablespoon of black treacle
A dash of decent Cognac (ie Brandy or Armagnac)
Stir it up like mad. Now's the time to add the mixture to a basin. Recently, I've had this thing about those old-fashioned ball-shaped puddings- the ones you see in the Victorian illustrations of Phiz and in Walt Disney. A few years ago, I managed to track down a ball-shaped pudding mould from Divertimenti in the Fulham Road, and used that- but a traditional ceramic pudding basin is just dandy.
Smear the inside of the basin with butter. This will stop the pudding sticking to the side. Pour in the mixture. Top off with a piece of buttered greaseproof paper, ideally cut down to fit. Finally, place a cloth over the basin, and tie it off at the top with a bit of string.
Steam it for five to six hours. This means getting hold of a large pan, filling it about a quarter full with water and bringing it to the boil. Place the pudding in the middle of the pan, and put the lid on. The steam will rise up within the pan, and cook the pudding. Once it's cooked, leave it in a cool place with a piece of tin foil on top. It will mature in the run-up to Christmas. On the great day itself, you will need to steam it for a further three hours.
I've just made a kilner jar of Piccalilli. It's going to be good, but I think there's room for improvement. A quick recap (using my standard recipe): I chopped up garden vegetables, sprinkled them with sea salt and let them stand for 24 hours. I drained off the water and rinsed them in cold water. Next, I combined a bottle of cider vinegar (500ml) with 250g of white sugar, a dollop of Colman's English Mustard, various spices (including turmeric) and heated it though. I added the rinsed vegetables and cooked the whole thing gently for about ten minutes. Finally, a cornflour paste was added to thicken it up.
It's going to need tweaking. So if you're a Piccalilli junkie, and interested in getting it just so, here are my kitchen notes fresh from this Friday morning's experimentation. The beauty of Piccalilli is that, apart from the mustard and the cauliflower, there are countless variations, and it's impossible to say that one recipe is more correct than another.
Piccalilli: What is it?
A typically British chutney, often made at the end of summer and in early autumn. Essentially, left-over vegetables bound in a mustard yellow sauce. The dish probably originated in 18th century British India.
Colour
Traditionally, yellow. A radio-active yellow. And I think, in the interests of nostalgia, it needs to be like this. Otherwise there's a danger it's just going to look like yet another chutney. The stuff I made this morning's having an identity crisis- it's turned brown. I think that's because I used cider vinegar (rather than the lighter coloured white wine vinegar) and my turmeric wasn't fresh enough.
Vegetables
They need to be crunchy; to have bite. I used cauliflower (broken up into small florets), yellow and green peppers, cucumber, baby carrots, baby courgettes, shallots, baby yellow tomatoes and green beans. The vegetables were cut up into small, bite-size pieces, placed in a bowl, sprinkled with sea-salt, and left overnight. This is a "Dry Brine". After 24 hours, you'll find that masses of water will have drained away from the vegetables, leaving them extra-crunchy and crisp. The salt was washed off before cooking. The earthy smell that came off the fresh marinading vegetables was heavenly. This technique would also be great for Vegetables à la Grecque.
Ideally, I do think that the vegetables used in Piccalilli need to reflect the British nature of the dish. Mr Oliver includes mango and dried oregano in his. The Waitrose version includes American butternut squash. Really not sure about either of these and I'm not convinced by Jamie's addition of grated apple. After much thought, my ultimate piccalilli vegetable list might include: cauliflower, marrow (oh, the whiff of the allotment), red and green chillies, silver skin or pearl onions, cucumber, green beans, shallots, fennel, baby carrots, baby courgettes and baby yellow tomatoes. I would cut them up into relatively small pieces, too.
Spices
Mustard. Hints of Curry. The dish originated in India, after all. I used a large dollop of Colman's English Mustard, turmeric, ground ginger, ground mustard seeds, ground cumin, smashed up coriander seeds, chili flakes, nutmeg, black pepper and cayenne pepper. I think I can probably improve on this.
The Sauce
It needs to be thick. The Waitrose version looks too runny. Cornflour, you're needed! As well as being a fantastic thickening agent, there's also that shiny, glossy surface thing going on, think Chinese sweet and sour sauce. But it needs to be cooked through properly, otherwise you get that stodgy, uncooked floury taste. My original version adds the cornflour at the end. Much better if it's cooked right at the start.
Sweet and Sour
My current version is too sweet. I need to cut down on the sugar. Getting that balance between the sweet and the sour is difficult. I'm really not keen on sickly over-sweet chutneys. If anything, an authentic piccallili needs to be on the sharp side.
So after much deliberation (trumpet fanfare) here's the newly improved, ultimate and official Greasy Spoon Piccalilli Recipe. Please do let me know if you think we can improve upon it:
Ingredients
1 cauliflower, broken up into small florets
1 small marrow, diced into small chunks
2 green chillies, finely sliced
2 red chillies, finely sliced
Handful of green beans, chopped into small pieces
Handful of silver skin or pearl onions
A few shallots, chopped up into cubes
2 bulbs of fennel, cut into small chunks
Handful of baby carrots, peeled and cut into small dice
1 small cucumber, peeled and cut into small dice
Handful of baby yellow tomatoes, sliced in half
A finger or so of peeled ginger, grated
2 tablespoons mustard seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 tablespoons fresh turmeric
2 tablespoons Colman's English Mustard Powder
Pinch of grated nutmeg
Sprinkling of chilli flakes
Pinch of cayenne pepper
3 cloves garlic
Cornflour
500ml white wine vinegar (ie small bottle)
200g white sugar
3 bay leaves
Place the vegetables into a large bowl, and sprinkle generously with sea salt. Leave overnight. In the morning, drain off the vegetables in a colander and rinse with cold water.
Heat up a large saucepan, and add a little oil. Mustard oil, if you can get it, would be ideal. Fry the mustard seeds, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fresh turmeric, a sprinkling of chilli flakes, grated ginger and pinch of grated nutmeg for a minute or so. Lower the heat and add the Colman's Mustard Powder, crushed garlic, three tablespoons or so of cornflour and a splash of the white wine vinegar. Stir until it forms a paste. Let the flour and garlic cook for a bit.
Gradually mix in the remaining vinegar, stirring all the time so that the ingredients are combined. Then add the white sugar, bay leaves and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Check the seasoning, grating in some chunky black pepper if you think it needs it. Cook on for a few minutes, stirring well to make sure the sugar dissolves.
Add the drained vegetables to the pan and stir well. Cook for about ten minutes on a lowish to medium heat. The vegetables need to be slightly cooked through (especially the green beans), but ideally, at the same time you want them to be crunchy and firm.
Decant into sterilised jars. The piccalilli will need to mature in a dark cupboard for about a month, and then should keep for at least six months, meaning that it's most certainly going to be ready in time for Christmas.
You can play around with the amounts of flour, sugar and vinegar to use. You want a smooth, slightly thick, tangy, mustardy sauce and a nice balance between sweet and sour. I don't think you'll need to add any salt, as the vegetables, although drained, have been sitting in sea salt all night long.
The Barbara Cartland Cookbook. It exists. Or more accurately, 'The Romance of Food,' published by Hamlyn in 1984. I came across a copy on eBay and couldn't resist it: I've got a soft spot for the old gal in a way; not, of course, that I've read any of her lovey-dovey stuff- it's just not my cup of tea, dear.
But may I recommend John Pearson's (the biographer of Ian Fleming and the Clermont Club Gamblers) amusing biography, Crusader in Pink, (written under the pseudonym of 'Dr Henry Cloud')? And for a few days, Bab's bizarre, semi-autobiographical,I Seek the Miraculous made hilarious (and strangely compelling) bedtime reading, a breathless index of supernatural and mystical experiences encountered over her long, and over-documented life.
Barbara Cartland, of course, was a terrific self-publicist, and The Romance of Food is no exception. We learn that as well as being a playwright, lecturer, political speaker, and television personality, she is also a historian, and has sold over 400 million books across the world. And so it goes on and on: as a gossip columnist she raced MGs at Brooklands, and in 1984 she received the Bishop Wright Air Industry Award for her pioneering long-distance 200-mile tow in a glider, eventually contributing to troop-carrying gliders which were used so effectively during the D-Day landings.
And don't forget that "in 1976, Miss Cartland sang an Album of Love Songs with the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra". One for the record collection, eh? As Barbara croons: "I did fall in love in Berkeley Square, and I swear a nightingale did sing in the trees as I was kissed":
But back to The Romance of Food. It had me on the floor. Doubled up. In Stitches. Where do I begin? It's full of rather pretty technicolor photographs, beautifully arranged in 80s style, with carefully chosen antique porcelain and Regency pearlware nick-nacks ("all photographs were taken under the personal supervision of the author at her home in Hertfordshire using her own background and ornaments"). And then, underneath each dish, Babs's romantic captions to put you in the mood for love: enamoured with "the throbbing enchantment of gipsy violins" and "the allure of passionate Russians." The Queen of Love peppers each recipe with historical asides, anecdotes, and nutritional recommendations: our heroine is, of course, a champion of multivitamins and Royal Jelly.
"What women does not long to be carried like a lamb in the arms of the man she loves?"
But of course, she's an easy target. In truth, the recipes, have been taken from her private chef, Nigel Gordon, and in their 80s way are perfectly all right, if not actually rather good (ignoring the decorative chicken wishbones soaked in bleach) with that understated Country House vibe. I'm keen on the food private chefs rustle up: old favourites, with a nod to the French classics, cooked with care, and presented on the plate with a simple flourish. Who wants to eat restaurant food on a daily basis? An invitation to spend the weekend- sorry the Friday to Monday- with Babs at her appealing country house, Camfield Place, Hertfordshire- (once the childhood home of Beatrix Potter) might have been a hot passport to the shores of love; in these mundane times, The Romance of Food is the next best ticket.
I made her Devilled Crab, and it was surprising all right: Fry some chopped spring onions until soft (shallots might be better here, surely?) and then stir in dry English mustard powder and two teaspoons of cognac. Make a roux from butter, flour and cream; season and combine it with the mustard mixture, and then stir in fresh crabmeat. Spoon the mixture into ramekin dishes, with breadcrumbs scattered on top. Bake the dish in a moderate oven (180° C, 350° F) and serve piping hot.
I will leave you with a Barbara Cartland anecdote. During the 1960s, Sandra Harris interviewed Miss Cartland for the BBC's Today programme:
Sandra Harris (to Barbara Cartland): Do you think class barriers have broken down?
Barbara Cartland: Of course they have, or I wouldn't be sitting here talking to someone like you.
It's fun to discover a new series of books to collect. Browsing the net, I came across the Time Life "The Good Cook" series, edited by none other than our old friend, the great American gourmet, Francophile and food writer, Richard Olney.
I'm ashamed to admit to you that I had never heard of it before. Several foodie websites rate it as one of the best, most useful, and most comprehensive cookery books ever produced; they have a cult following. Published in hardback between 1978 and 1981, they were sold on a month-by-month basis. There are a whopping 28 volumes to collect; you'll find them on ebay and amazon priced at a few pounds each. I think the American and British editions are slightly different. Here's an entertaining American television ad for the series, I've just discovered on youtube, featuring an extremely pretty Stepford-y housewife (If you're a subscriber to The Greasy Spoon, you will have to log back on via your browser to see it):
I've ordered three so far- "Terrines, Pates & Galantines", "Hot Hors-d'Oeuvre", and "Snacks and Canapes", and from the moment the first one arrived, I can see what all the fuss is about. They're fantastic. This is serious cooking.
The first half of each volume covers technique (fully illustrated with step-by-step colour photographs), the second half has a comprehensive selection of recipes, carefully chosen from various highly reputable sources- Richard Olney, Jane Grigson, Michel Guerard, Fernand Point, Mrs Rundell, writers like that. The beauty of the thing, is that with 28 volumes covering a multitude of subjects, all the intricacies of sophisticated cookery can be explored in loving detail. I learnt, for instance, to add cold water at regular intervals to a simmering stock to stop it boiling. Sounds obvious, doesn't it?, but in the past I've just turned the heat down- and ended up with a cloudy stock as a result.
The Good Cook series is, of course, a trifle out of date (some even might consider it retro) with its emphasis on French cuisine; its detailed examination on how to disect, cook and glaze a dear little sucking piglet (presented Henry VIII style on a huge silver platter, curly tail and all), and it's obsession with layered vegetable terrines and aspic. Personally, that's part of its charm, and I can hand-on-heart say that if you studied, and followed, the instructions in these 28 volumes, you will learn a great deal.
A very different book is Charlotte and Peter Fiell's Essential Equipment for the Kitchen, A Sourcebook of the World's Best Designs which has just been sent to me for review. Charlotte and Peter Fiell are distinguished modern design gurus. If The Good Cook series is all about hands on technique, method and practical preparation, "Essential Equipment" is an indulgent trawl through a century of kitchen utensils and gadgetry (in all their immaculate glory), a bible of materialism and product placement.
Did you know that the Rex Model 11002 peeler was designed in Switzerland in 1947? That's that ubiquitous peeler which you know and love- the one that works. Or that Le Parfait jars were born in the 1930's?
Although this is an amusing- but utterly non-esssential- book to add to your cookery library, there is undoubtably the smack of perfectionism going on here. A case of 'Hey, Come Round and Have a Look at my Brand New Francis Francis XI Espresso Machine' (first designed in 1995 by Luca Trazzi, bn. 1962 if you've ever wondered).
All this reminds me of Patrick Bateman's' apartment in Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho". It made me have a sudden- and most juvenile- urge to seize hold of a shiny new Le Creuset L25W3-3630 wok (designed in 1992) and dribble sesame oil all over it, so that it stains. I'm afraid it is a truth universally acknowledged that there are many people out there who have shiny and immaculate kitchens, and yet never cook.
Essential Equipment for the Kitchen by Charlotte
& Peter Fiell, published by Goodman Fiell RRP £19.99 is
available from www.carltonbooks.co.uk and
all good bookshops.
Last week I had the greatest pleasure in tasting a new gin; a well received present from Mrs Aitch. Dodd's Gin, the stuff's called; I had only been vaguely aware of it, which is not really surprising as it's a brand spanking new gin, fresh on the market. Not that you would think that from the brilliantly Victorian packaging, and the beautiful old-fashioned bottle with its wooden stopper: 'crafted by season and established in 1807'.
This gin is produced by the London Distillery Company, at a traditional distillery in Battersea (just down the road from the Greasy Spoon Residence), using a 140 litre copper alembic by the name of Christina. Its organic botanicals include rasberry leaf and wait-for-it, London honey.
This gin really tastes of something, it's clean and almost medicinal (in a good sense) with a strong sense of clove which cuts through, but doesn't overwhelm.
But then you start looking at the price. It costs around thirty quid for a 500ml bottle. I realise, of course, that this is an artisan crafted gin, produced in small numbers (each gin has a hand-written batch number) and aimed at a high budget, connoisseur's market, but I just can't get out of my head that a 1 litre bottle of the perfectly drinkable Sainsbury's own, distilled by the distinguished old firm of G & J Greenall up in Scotland (but sold with naff Sainsbury's packaging) costs a very reasonable £15.50 (and is often available on discount, too).
'But that's unfair!', I can hear the gin distillers cry, 'that's like comparing Teacher's blended whisky with a Knockando Single Malt'. Perhaps. But as I happen to enjoy that Old English habit of adding tonic to my gin, I'm not entirely convinced. Sainsbury's Own for the tonic, and Dodd's for the Dry Martinis, served on High Days and Holidays (including the opportunity to toast St Swithin). That might be the way forward.
Nico Landenis once said: "A gin and tonic says a lot about you as a person. It is more than just a drink, it is an attitude of mind. It goes with a prawn cocktail, a grilled Dover Sole, Melba toast and Black Forest Gateau."
I would like to state publicly, on record, that I adore Prawn Cocktail, love a grilled Dover Sole, and would sell my mother to get my hands on a decent bit of Melba Toast.
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.
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?
Over the years I've had an on-off relationship with Sainsbury's. Actually, I tell a lie, scrub out the "on" bit. Back in the mists of time, probably before many of you were born, Sainsbury's had a reputation for quality. There may have even been a hint of smugness in the middle class housewife's "I bought it at Sainsbury's".
I can just about remember the Sainsbury's in Gerrard's Cross High Street, used as a location in Noel Coward's "Brief Encounter"- which says it all (actually, I tell another fib, as it was nearby Beaconsfield High Street, but you will get my drift); an old fashioned shop with a Mock Tudor shop front (circa 1914), with glazed Edwardian tiles, and a meat-counter, where a butcher in white apron and straw boater (or am I imagining this?) sliced out decent bits of ham on one of those stainless steel slicing machines.
So where did it all go wrong? Some might point the long finger of suspicion at Tesco's. In the 70's "Tesco Reject" was a term of mild abuse, doled out by little boys in long shorts and grubby, bloodied knees. Today, in London, if you compare the two flag-ship stores of Sainsbury's (Nine Elms) and Tesco's (The Hoover Building) Tesco's wins hands down. I'm a frequent (if reluctant) shopper at Nine Elms (purely, I admit, out of sheer laziness) and although the staff are hardworking and cheery, they seem to be constantly let down by bad stocking policies; at times, this so-called "Super Store" feels like something out of the good old German Democratic Republic, circa 1968. It's pretty tired and shabby, too. There are plans afoot to replace Nine Elms with a shiny new mega-store; part of the huge re-generation project in the area: so I'm watching this one with interest. Please don't get me wrong on this, I want Sainsbury's to succeed.
There, I've had my say. Which brings me to this fascinating book I discovered at the Artwords Bookshop in the fabulous Broadway Market. It's Jonny Trunk's Own Label, Sainsbury's Design Studio 1962-1977. It's a terrific book and a reminder that packaging of relatively recent years is an often-forgotten or overlooked phenomenon. In this case, I think images work better than words:
I've got a guilty secret. I like pork scratchings. Until recently, every day on my way home from the Blacking Factory (a quasi-heated, cavernous warehouse found in the scrappy, semi-industrial inner suburbs of North London), I would pull over at a garage on the A40 and buy a packet of Mr Porky's Pork Scratchings. It was sort of addictive. I kept this one quiet from Mrs Aitch, carefully removing the greasy, empty packet from the floor of the car before bounding up the steps to our shiny, Grecian knockered front door.
You see, it's been a sort of secret love affair over the years- I mean with the Pork Scratchings. If you're not British, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. Pork Scratchings are off-cuts of pork rind or skin, deep fried in fat, and then sprinkled with salt, flavourings and undoubtably, our old friend monosodium glutamate. They have a dodgy reputation; they're about as classy as a Knees Up Mother Brown at the local dog track. Those on a diet can look away now.
But now and again, you would run into tantalising, if raffish, home-made versions. The Star Tavern in Belgravia (that excellent traditional London pub; the former haunt of the Clermont gambling set and the Great Train Robbers) sold fresh scratchings, cooked to their own recipe, salted and presented in large glass jars, into which you could plunge your grubby mitts. I liked this.
And now, at last, Pork Scratchings can truly come out of the cold. Tom Parker Bowles, Matthew Fort and pig-farmer, Rupert Ponsonby, are the brainchildren behind a new venture: Mr Trotter's Great British Pork Crackling ('Hand Cooked For a Crisper Crunch'). I'm munching on a packet as I write this, it's a sort of manly, substitute breakfast. According to the packet, "it's seasoned with a special blend of ingredients, without a trace of MSG. Unlike other pork scratchings, Mr Trotter's Great British Pork Crackling is made with 100% prime British pork skin from the finest British Pigs".
They are indeed divine, and far less salty than the more ersatz brands. It's also nice to know that British pigs are being turned into scratchings- sorry boys, crackling, rather than Danish beasts. My only sorrow is that currently, they only seem to be available at the usual up-market parade: Harvey Nick's food hall, Fortnum's, the Chatsworth Farm Shop. But you can, at least, buy them online, and in bulk (£57 for 30 bags, if you're wondering). I quite like the idea of a pork scratchings hoard; in this case, there's going to be no need to keep it a secret.
I'm suddenly rather keen on this dish. Mrs Aitch made it for me last night, and it was truly delicous. Who makes Haddock Monte Carlo anymore? I can't think of anyone I know off-hand. But it's one of those classic English dishes which relies on the quality of the ingredients (in this case non-dyed smoked haddock, with the bones removed) and simple flavour combinations. It is, of course, pretty easy to make as well, which helps.
Place two smoked haddock fillets in a pan of milk and water, with a peppercorn and a bayleaf. I think it's important to buy un-dyed haddock, which has a more sophisticated flavour than that bright radio-active yellow version. Poach gently for about fifteen minutes.
Remove the fish, and scrape off the skin.
Place the cooked fish in a buttered oven-proof oval dish and set aside. Pour off the hot milky fish water into a small pan and start reducing furiously, at a high heat. When it has reduced by about half, remove from the heat and stir in a generous helping of single cream.
Slice up some tomatoes and scatter them over the haddock, and check the seasoning, adding sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, if you think it needs it. Pour the creamy sauce all over the fish and tomatoes, and bake the dish in the oven for a further fifteen minutes or so.
Serve with a poached egg on top, and finely chopped flat-leaf parsley. That's it. I like my poached eggs to be runny (who doesn't?) and there's that delicious moment when the yellow egg yolk dribbles into the creamy, savoury, tomato-infused sauce. This really is English cooking at its very best.
Mr Jagger samples the delights of the Positano Room, 1966
More about La Trattoria Terrazza, the most fashionable restaurant in Swinging Sixties London. Yesterday I spent a snowy afternoon re-reading The Spaghetti Tree- and what an entertaining story it is! Franco Lagattolla and Mario Cassandro opened La Trattoria Terrazza in 1959. It very quickly became the fashionable haunt of artists, writers, models, film directors, actors, photographers and society hangers-on. In 1962, the London Daily Sketch ran a feature which noted that on one certain night, between 6.30 and midnight, the following people ate at La Terrazza: Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Caron, Danny Kaye, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Laurence Harvey, Sammy Davis Jnr, Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton. They forgot to include Ari Onnassis. This is astonishing when you discover just how small La Terrazza actually was at that time. Len Deighton, immortalised the restaurant in his spy novel, The Ipcress File: 'In London with a beautiful girl,' Deighton wrote in 1961, 'you must show her to Mario at La Terrazza.'
I'm trying to work out exactly why La Terrazza was so successful, and I think, after much thought, there are at least two reasons. The innovative food, and Mario's considerable charm. The initial interior of La Terrazza, sounds, frankly, pretty naff: a kitsch mural of Vesuvius, framed by bunches of plastic grapes and hanging wicker work chianti bottles- nothing out of the ordinary there; but the food, obviously, by the standards of the day, was.
A quick glance at a 1967 menu shows that Franco and Mario were offering: fritto misto mare (fried octopus), rognoncini con funghi al barolo (sautéed calves kidneys/mushrooms/red wine sauce), salsiccie fresche con spinaci (Italian sausage on spinach, tossed in olive oil and garlic), and cervella di vitello alla monteverde (calves brain sautéed in special batter). Of course, nowadays, any decent Italian restaurant worth its salt might sell such dishes, but back then, after fourteen years of deprivation and rationing, this was exciting, new and different (rationing in Britain, unbelievably, only ended in 1954, a mere five years before La Terrazza opened).
And I forgot to mention that Franco and Mario introduced informality to the restaurant scene. Until then, fashionable restaurants, such as Le Caprice, were grand, carpeted institutions where a coat and tie were de rigeur, where waiters wore starched shirt fronts and funeral black tail-coats, where the dishes of Escoffier were served "silver service"- an elaborate ritual which involved waiters spooning out food from silver tureens at the table.
Instead, the charming waiters at Le Terrazza wore hooped Neapolitan fisherman's jerseys (I bet you anything they flirted away like crazy), the food was brought straight to the table, piping hot; staff and clientele were on first name terms, and any pretence at a dress code was abandoned- Tony Snowdon was admitted wearing his trademark polo-neck; from that day, they never looked back. In many ways this was the birth of the modern restaurant we have today.
And then in 1960, the cartoonist and designer, Enzo Apicella, re-designed the downstairs space to create the Positano Room: a cool, white, spare space; a modernist re-interpretation of the rustic. In came green-tiled floors, roughly plastered white walls, multi-coloured down-light spots over each table, arched ceilings, modernist rush-seated armchairs, and rustic lobster pots. Apicella went on to re-design many famous restaurants, including San Lorenzo and the Pizza Express chain.
Enzo Apicella in the Positano Room, 1960
Here's the recipe for La Terraza's most popular signature dish Petto di Pollo Sorpresa, taken from Franco Lagattolla's The Recipes That Made a Million. Based on Chicken Kiev, it has the addition of parmesan and parsley, giving it that certain Italian something:
"First, have your butcher cut and skin four tender breasts of young chicken,leaving the wing-tip bone. Carefully, without breaking the flesh, flatten them with a flat-sided mallet-cleaver, very, very thinly.
Place a 50g conical-shaped piece of well-chilled butter, which has been mixed with finely chopped garlic and parsley, a teaspoon of grated parmesan cheese, salt and milled black pepper, in the centre of each piece of chicken.
Roll them up tightly leaving the bone exposed rather like a handle. Seal in the butter by pressing the edges very firmly. Roll the chicken breasts in flour, dip into seasoned beaten egg and then carefully cover with breadcrumbs.
Deep fry the chicken breasts in hot oil until they are cooked and golden outside with the now melted savoury butter bursting to be released."
Not mine, I'm afraid. Franco Lagattolla's. It's the title of a fun book that I bought the other day for the princely sum of £2.50. That's right, £2.50. One of the things I love about second-hand book hunting is the amount of pleasure old books can bring you for say, the price of some awful paper cup of cold take-away coffee, otherwise known as a "Mocha Light Frappucino Blended Beverage- To Go". The coffee's gone in an instant, but the book stays on your shelf, to be poured over again and again; the cover, typography and graphics to be re-admired, the contents to be savoured and used as a spark for new ideas, or more simply, to dispel the gloom of a boring Sunday afternoon. Oh yes, I love old books. They're like trusty friends. And I like, especially, forgotten books from around forty years ago.
I've written about Franco before. As the blurb on the dust jacket of The Recipes That Made A Million says: "What did Michael Caine, Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra all have in common? Answer: they all dined at Mario & Franco's superb Italian restaurants in London- the eating success story with the 'beautiful' people in the swinging sixties".
Franco Lagattolla and Mario Cassandro; former waiters at The Mirabelle, first opened the starry La Trattoria Terrazza in Romilly Street, Soho, in 1959. It's hard to believe now, but La Terrazza was the first restaurant in Britain to serve genuine regional dishes from all over Italy. Their story is covered admirably by Alasdair Scott Sutherland in The Spaghetti Tree, Mario and Franco and the Trattoria Revolution, which I would recommend without hesitation.
Here's a recipe I liked the look of from "The Recipes That Made a Million". It's for Pȇches Flambées, otherwise known as Peaches flamed in kirsch. Those of you with pyromaniacal tendencies will appreciate it:
"Peel four firm but ripe peaches. Poach them in plain water and sugar syrup until barely tender. Do not over-cook. Keep them warm.
In a copper pan melt 25g (1oz) of castor sugar and allow it to take on the slightest colour over a low flame. Add the juice of one orange, four tablespoons of the poaching liquor and a string of lemon peel. Dissolve the caramelising sugar, moving it around with the back of a spoon. Now stir in two tablespoons of Melba sauce and add the poached peaches.
Bring up the heat a little and, turing the peaches gently, glaze them in the syrupy sauce. Pour in a large wine glass of kirsch. Prick the peaches so that they absorb some of the flavours. Pull the pan sharply across the fire, and stand well back while the whole lot bursts into beautiful flames".
Melba Sauce, by the way, is just a pureé of rasberry jam, diluted with a little water and simmered for a few minutes, then strained.
Devil- a culinary term which... first appeared as a noun in the 18th century, and then in the early 19th century as a verb meaning to cook something with fiery hot spices or condiments...The term was presumably adopted because of the connection between the devil and the excessive heat in Hell...Boswell, Dr Johnson's biographer, frequently refers to partaking of a dish of "devilled bones" for supper, which suggests an earlier use...
Oxford Companion to Food
There's something extremely satisfying about "devilled" food. As you know, "to devil" a dish means to add some form of spice, often something like Worcester Sauce or a hot mustard. These days "devilling' is slightly old-fashioned; it has a hint of the 19th century about it, a whiff of a St James's Street club. I happen to love the tangy, slightly sweet, piquant taste of Lea & Perrins (first produced in the English town of Worcester in 1837), and, like the Victorians, will quite happily devil just about anything, including ham, eggs, kidneys and mutton chops.
Here's a recipe for "Gravy à la Diable" from Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, Lizzie Heritage [Cassell and Company:London] 1894:
Required: half a pint of clear brown stock...half an ounce of arrowroot, a tablespoonful of claret, a teaspoonful of French mustard, a dessertspoonful of Worcester sauce, and a little soluble cayenne, with salt to taste, and a few drops of soy. Mix the thickening with the claret, and the rest of the ingredients, and boil for a few minutes. Serve with kidneys, steaks, & etc., or with grilled fish. For a hotter sauce, increase the Worcester sauce, or boil a few capsicum seeds in the gravy."
Arabella Boxer also has a recipe for Devil Sauce from her book of English Food (recently re-published by Penguin in a sumptious new edition), which I've adapted for The Greasy Spoon:
You melt 30g butter, and stir in 1½ tablespoons of flour, ½ teaspoon of English Mustard, and ½ teaspoon of Curry Powder. Cook this, stirring, for one minute. 275ml of milk is added, and 150 ml of double cream (both of which you've previously heated up together), and the sauce is stirred constantly on the heat until it starts to bubble. The sauce is then simmered gently for about eight minutes, until slightly reduced- and the remaining flavourings stirred in: ½ teaspoon of salt, a pinch of cayenne, ½ tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce, ½ tablespoon of Mushroom Ketchup and, last but not least, a dash of our old friend, Tabasco.
This will make a basic sauce, which can then be poured over an ingredient of your choice: grilled or fried chicken, boiled eggs, and game. I think it would also work well with slices of fresh, juicy ham.
For some weird reason, I always think that the British classic, Toad in the Hole, is perfect for a Saturday Lunch. Not Sunday or Monday, or even Thursday for that matter. Saturday. I can't exactly explain why, there's probably a regressive, childhood thing going on there. Toad in the Hole is easy to make. It's filling. It's cheap. It's also delicious. This is Comfort Food at its best.
If you happen to be American, you are probably now wondering how on earth us Brits can eat one of those slimey, knobbly creatures? Sort of less appealing then a French grenouille, I hear you cry. But as much as I am curious to sample one of those tantalising little critters, the 'toad' is, in all probability, English slang for sausage. It's a bit like Welsh Rabbit (which ain't a rabbit), or Scotch Woodcock (which ain't a woodcock, either).
Back to the Toad: Heat your oven to 220C (425F). Get hold of some decent, fat, organic sausages and chuck them into a roasting tin with a few knobs of lard. You could have fun experimenting with different types of sausage. The better your sausage, the better your Toad in the Hole will taste. Cook the sausages in the oven for about ten minutes. My latest sausage discovery has been Sainsbury's Taste the Difference British Pork & Caramelised Red Onion Sausages. These are utterly delicious! Sweet, juicy, slightly spicy, lots of lovely caramelised flavours going on in there.
Meanwhile, mix up the batter. Sieve 4oz (110g) of self raising flour into a bowl, and add a pinch of salt and some pepper. Make a hole or a "well" in the centre of the flour, and pour in 5 fluid oz (150ml) of semi-skimmed milk into the hole. Crack in an egg, too. Mix the flour, milk, and egg up very gradually with a wooden spoon. Beat well, and then add the same amount of milk, again. Pour the finished batter over the sausages, and cook them in the oven for a further 45 minutes or so, until the Toad is risen and browned.
The Onion Gravy is a cinch. You slice up some onions, and brown them in a frying pan. If you add a few pinches of sugar and salt, this will help them to caramelise. You want them to get brown and a bit burnt. This is a good thing. Add a tablespoon of flour, and let it cook in the oniony fat. Once the onions and flour are brown enough, you can deglaze the pan with some stock, water, and perhaps, a slug or two of white wine. Instead of gravy browning (what's that?), I use a few drops of Soy Sauce, which will give the gravy an even richer colour and taste. A teaspoon of redcurrent jelly is not a bad plan, either. Onion Gravy should be thin.
Back in July, I posted an emotive piece about the glamorous, beautiful and shabby interior of Odin's restaurant in Marylebone, writing "that I will be extremely grumpy if it ever closes down": that sad day has arrived; in as much as the art collections at Langan's and Odin's are being sold off. A fan of The Greasy Spoon has alerted me to a Christie's press release: "the core collection of 230 artworks from the legendary London restaurants Langan's Brasserie & Odin's...(to be sold at auction)...in December 2012."
Odin's
I've had a look at the Langans' website and it tells me that the three restaurants (Langan's, Odin's and Shepherd's) will be closed for redecoration, re-opening at later dates. I can tell you right now that without that fabulous interior, I will- with great regret- not be returning to Odin's. The food's not that good, the once impeccable service has declined noticeably in the last few years, and the only raison d'etre for the place was that fabulous art collection (bought with the help and advice of the art critic, Brian Sewell) and the wonderful interior. Without it- I really don't see any point of returning, even (and especially) if, the whole place is redecorated in the Los Angeles airport lounge style. Look what happened to The Savoy or Brown's Hotel. Surely without Peter Langan's art collections, the whole ethos, the intrinsic spirit, the whole flippin' point of these famous old restaurants is gone?
Langan's Brasserie
To be fair to the group I don't know what their financial position is- and they may have been forced into a depressing and uncalled for position where there was no other option but to sell up. Asset Stripping? Dunno. But what I do know, is that yet another two legendary London institutions- or at the very least, their art collections- are about to bite the dust. And on this grey, gloomy, and foggy November morning, I am extremely grumpy.
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...
Still on the subject of classic American restaurants, here's a photograph of The Grand Central Oyster Bar, New York. Back in the late 90's I used to spend quite a bit of my time in America (various auctions in New York and Philadelphia) and the Grand Central Oyster Bar, alongside P. J. Clarke's on Third Avenue was one of my favourite destinations.
The Grand Central Oyster Bar really is the most extraordinary place. It's massive: a cavernous warren of vaults, decorated with a mosiac of glittering Byzantine tiles in the Beaux-Arts manner. Imagine such a thing underneath Paddington Station!
It was founded in 1913, and originally served "Continental" (i.e. French) food, although it became famous for its oyster stew. From memory, there are various murky fish tanks dotted around the restaurant. I like the way you can point a long finger at your lobster of choice, and then a few minutes later the critter is paraded though the restaurant, held high by a waiter on a silver plated serving dish.
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