Hungerlust

Beer Bore and Old Manchester

2012-01-29T18:03:00.002Z

We were in a pub in Brighton drinking a few beers to celebrate Harry's birthday. Another friend, Richard, came back from the bar with a bottle of lager but no glass.

Me: Are you gonna drink that beer from the bottle?

Rich: Yeah why not?

Me: Well you've paid a bit of extra money to get a nice large bottle of interesting european lager and now you're gonna drink it from the bottle. A bottle isn't a drinking vessel.

Rich: You're just being a beer snob.

Me: That may well be but this beer has been designed so that as you drink it you can also appreciate its aroma and colour but you are negating that by swigging it from a brown glass bottle.

Rich: When you talk about beer I get an erection

Charming. My sarcastic friend highlighted an interesting problem for a beer enthusiast and blogger. When does your advice and encouragement turn from what you think is interesting and enthusing to boring and off-putting? The last thing that any beer fan wants is to seem like you are lecturing your audience. Beer is supposed to be a fun and, at heart, democratic, so any idea that it is becoming elitist or snobbish is worrying. Essentially we don't want to be beer bores.

However, last Thursday I fuelled my own geeky, elistist and snobbish beerlust with a spur of the moment visit to the Fullers brewery shop. Ever since I heard about Fuller's head brewer, John Keeling's visit to Marble brewery in Manchester to brew a one off beer, I have waited for the announcement of its arrival. Finally the word was out, it's now available in the brewery shop.

I left the shop with three bottles of Old Manchester and a bottle of Past Masters Double Stout.

Old Manchester comes in a handsome 750mL bottle with champagne style cork and cage

Old Manchester is based loosely on Fullers ESB but is a bit stronger and dry-hopped in cask for three months before bottling. It's a very interesting idea to use English challenger hops in such an assertive way like this and the dry hopping creates a very fruity, almost American hop aroma from the pillowy head. The malts, though, are very British and the ESB characters are cranked up to the max with candy and toffee coming through strongly and creating its rich brown colour. This malt backbone is a strong support for the powerful, dry peppery bitterness and hefty 7.3% ABV. I shared this first bottle with Claire and we both enjoyed it even though Claire doesn't normally get on with hop heavy beers. I think it would go very well with food and and has the potential to age well. It is in this vein that I am keeping two bottles of this for ageing. If I can stand to keep it that long I will have one in January 2013 an one in January 2014.

So then, Old Manchester, lovely stuff. If you're reading this Rich, I hope it has satisfied!

Best English Breakfast Ever?

2012-01-20T15:30:00.000Z

I think not;

But to be fair on British Airways it didn't taste quite as bad as it looks.

Champagne Afternoon Tea at Les Deux Salons

2012-01-10T22:00:00.010Z

This was quite a while ago now so I'm not writing much as I can't remember it all well enough. The afternoon tea itself was lovely - we couldn't fault much with regards to the food or service. It's just a shame that we were the only two there for afternoon tea - when we arrived there were still a few late-lunchers dining, but by the time we left the place was deserted. It was a bit of an odd feeling, especially as it's quite a large cavernous restaurant. I think we'd both return to Les Deux Salons, but probably for their bargain lunch deal, or an A la Carte dinner instead.

The stand arrived with 4 types of finger sandwiches (cucumber, smoked salmon, egg and cress another one we can't remember), 6 different types of cake, and warm scones with a pot each of jam and clotted cream.

A lovely big pot of tea and there was a good selection to choose from - I had chamomile, Sam had oolong.

Lemon Drizzle Slice

Fruit Tart

Tarte au Citron

Gateaux Opera

Pate a Choux (we think the cream was hazelnut, all we remember is that it was very, very good)

Chocolate Brownie - this was the only one we thought was a bit of a let down, it was a bit too sweet, with not enough of an intense chocolate flavour. We both agreed the ones I make at home are better.

Mmm....ooops, these got munched on before I remembered to take a picture....

Learning to taste beer...

2012-01-09T23:11:00.000Z

Beer appreciation (for want of a better word) is something relatively new to me. I have always drunk and enjoyed beer, but it's only been the last few months triggered by a couple of brewery trips that I've started to think more about it, and felt the urge to read/write and generally discover/taste more.

Triggered by the prospect of attending the European Beer Bloggers Conference 2012, I decided to test my beer tasting skills and do a blind tasting with Sam to see if I came up with similar ideas about the beers we were tasting. A trip to Sourced Market (near work) and a slightly hazy* trip to Utobeer the following day helped provide supplies. Surprisingly, I didn't do too badly on the taste test, although I didn't pick up on quite as much as Sam did, and generally he had better terminology - I guess that comes with practice. Here's a run down of what we tasted, and what we (mostly) agreed on;

Blanche De Bruxelles (4.5%) - Very yellow! Not much on the nose, but a nice thick head which was retained. Fruity, mild peachy flavour with floral notes. Not much of an aftertaste. This is one of my favourites from Belgium, although I'm glad the first time I ordered it (in Le Poechenellekelder, Brussels) I hadn't seen the label or I'm sure I would have dismissed it as a touristy gimmick.

Camden Wheat Beer (5.0%) - A cloudy, muddy brown in colour, with no discernible head (was it the way I poured it?). A banana and spicy scent on the nose - Sam identified this as cloves, which I didn't pick up on. Relatively strong in flavour both on tasting and afterwards, with similar banana, caramel and spice notes. There was something slightly peppery in flavour which we couldn't pinpoint exactly. A nice level of carbonation and a strong sweet aftertaste.

Camden Hells Lager (4.6%) - A vibrant pale gold in colour, with very little head (which disappeared fast), and a slight buttery toast smell. Quite carbonated, with an oily buttery flavour, and a slight peppery hoppiness. Sam informed me the buttery flavour is due to diacetyl (so I'll be looking that up later in the Oxford Companion to Beer which he got for xmas). I think we were both really disappointed with this one, as we'd found it a little on the bland side.

Goose Island IPA (5.9%) - Amber in colour and slightly hazy, with moderate carbonation. On the nose we got caramel, citrus (American) hops, tropical fruit, and I smelt an oaty smell. To taste it was very similar - a strong malt flavour with a bitter, refreshing citrus hop taste. The bitterness builds as you drink, and it has a well-rounded flavour. Interestingly Sam guessed this to be the Kernel. Had he tasted the Kernel first I doubt he would have done...

Kernel Galaxy IPA (6.9%) - A muddy, hazy brown/orange in colour, with a light carbonation. On the nose we got citrussy resinous hops, pine and Sam described it as a metallic smell. The taste was very similar - an intense hop taste - incredibly bitter, with a citrus pith aftertaste. I'll admit to not liking this one much, but then I never get on well with very strong (American) hop flavours which are the trend at the moment. Sam loves Kernel beers, but whilst he liked this one, he felt it wasn't one of their best and didn't have enough malt/sweetness to balance out the flavour.

Bonus Beer - Goose Island Mild Winter (5.6%) - Dark brown in colour, clear, with a thin head. On the nose we got caramel, Twiglets and burnt toast. The taste matched with a malty caramel flavour. Sam also tasted hazelnuts, but I couldn't get that at all. It was very drinkable (I was surprised how much I liked it), with a moderate carbonation, a well-rounded flavour and a malted aftertaste with slight hop bitterness.

*Hazy due to a lovely couple of hours spent in the Rake - notable beer mentions go to Harviestoun Mr Sno'Balls, Thornbridge McConnells Stout, Stone Ruination IPA, Barbar Winter Bok and Redemption Big Chief.

The Session Number 59: I almost always drink beer but when I don't I drink....

2012-01-06T00:01:00.000Z

Kinnie!

This months Beer Blogging Friday is hosted by Mario over at Brewed for thought. the topic covers what we beer bloggers drink when we aren't drinking beer. A bit of a toughie....but...

If you have visited the charming Mediterranean island of Malta, you will certainly have tasted the Maltese national soft drink. There is nothing else non-alcoholic that can refresh you on a 40 degree summer day quite like Kinnie. My mother-in-law is Maltese and when we visit my wife's relatives there are many treats we indulge in that are only available in Malta. Until recently top of this list was Kinnie but now, to my delight, it is available in 500mL bottles from Amazon UK and it's consistently in their top ten beverage sales.

Unless you've tried it it may be hard to understand why the Maltese are so obsessed with a drink made from bitter oranges and herbs. But it has beaten back competition from Coca Cola and San Pellegrino and reigns supreme on the streets of Valetta and Sliema. It is on these dusty hot streets that Kinnie can be found in its perfect state, from a vending machine in an ice cold 330mL bottle, cracked open and swigged to quench near impenetrable thirst.

For the mean time I will happily make do with these plastic bottles to give me my Kinnie fix. In a way its a good replacement for beer on a scorcher. It has a refreshing bitterness like an orangey US IPA and with a shot of vodka or two it can have a similar effect. It was served with vodka in almost 50/50 ratio at a Maltese wedding I went to last year. There are some other cocktail ideas on the Kinnie site which I might be trying soon as well as some recipe ideas I have to make use of its marmalade and spice qualities.

Favourite blogs of 2011

2012-01-01T22:14:00.001Z

As a sort of end of year list I thought I would mention a few blogs which have entertained and informed over the past twelve months.

There have been a number of good beer blogs I have started following this year.

One of which is The Beer Monkey
New to me this year, the Beer Monkey has entertained me with their straight to the point, no bullshit beer reviews and commentary

Another excellent blog I discovered this year is The Petit Four.
Emily is an American living in Belgium and her blog is a diary of her life there which tends to include a beer or two. I think Emily is one of the best beer reviewers currently online, I would liken her style and quality to Adrian Tierney Jones. Not only that but her recipes are always inspiring and well thought out.

Rabid Barfly
Glyn Roberts is the manager of the Rake, probably the first craft beer bar in London, certainly paving the way for Cask, Euston tap and the bloody Brewdog bar. Following his thoughts on beer and life can be refreshing and sometimes exhausting. In particular his drinking diary from last January was an illuminating look into the life of a beer fanatic's liver.

Ghost Drinker
This newbie beer blogger works at Beer Ritz, Zak Avery's beer shop in Leeds. I love his enthusiasm and unpretentious beer reviews from the point of view of the punters. Good work Ghosty, keep it up.

I don't follow many wine blogs but here are a few I do

Wine with Christina and Brunellos have more fun
These two ladies produce the lovely wine podcast, The Crush, which entertains me once a week on my way to work. Informative and funny, Whitney is in California and Christina is an American in London and their blogs are equally good.

The other wine blog I follow is from the veteran wine writer and multi talented good guy Tim Atkin. Not only is he a Saturday morning wine expert but he's pretty good at photography and not half bad on the guitar! He also taught me a lot of what I know about wine so I am kind of biased but I do trust his opinion about the grape.

Most of my google reader account is taken up with food blogs and it would take an age to sort the wheat from the chaff, but one blog that always stands out for me is:

Ideas in food
I've been following Alex and Aki's modernist food blog for a few years now but I think this year they have upped their game. Following the release of their excellent book there have been daily posts with links to archive posts from the past five years. This means that every day there are six inspirational ideas, recipes, reviews or photos to lighten your day.

And for a bit of media and politics fun I like to have a daily catch up on the following.

The Angry Mob for highlighting the ridiculous and disgusting exploits of much of the press in the UK

Zelo Street for his entertaining viewpoint on political blogging.

One last special mention goes to my favourite political blogger, Left Eye Right Eye whose thought provoking analysis shows that good quality, well thought out writing is possible on a blog and Lou does so with great success.

Christmas Beers and Beers for Christmas

2012-01-01T15:44:00.001Z

I find it difficult to think of things to ask for at Christmas and this year was no different. I sent out a list of out-of-print books and vouchers for homebrew sites. Luckily Claire intercepted, made some suggestions and added a few new books. Christmas morning arrived and Saint Nick left me some great beery gifts. Garrett Oliver is the Brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, the brewery which gave me my US beer epiphany. He is also a successful author and I received his Oxford Companion to Beer. A couple more Brooklyn beer gifts came my way, the history of the business, written by the two founders of the brewery and a bottle of my favourite Brooklyn beers, Local 2.

I've started to collect the labels of special beers I have drunk. Some of these can be pretty tricky to get off the bottle but I have a special technique that works with most.

Local 2 is Brooklyn's take on a Belgian beer. It's made with European malts, honey, orange peel and fermented and bottle conditioned with Belgian yeast. From the moment you open the elegant champagne style bottle, pour a glass and take a big sniff it feels like a Christmassy celebration. Waves of winter flavours wash over your tongue, dried fruits, honey, liquorice and caramel all blending together to make a warm Belgian Christmas pudding of a beer. Great for sharing and brilliant for pairing with foods that require something a little fruity.

The second label in the picture is from a beer I probably should have shared with someone else. Santa's Little Helper from Port Brewing is an imperial stout that comes in a 1pt 6floz bottle and clocks in 10%ABV. Out of the bottle it comes like black gravy into the glass, no head and no apparent carbonation. I lifted it up to the light and peered into it's impenetrable darkness, it revealed nothing to me. The first taste is powerful with burnt cola, coffee and caramel. Luckily there is some moderate carbonation and a little liquorice and aniseed flavour to lift this beer from what could be a treacly chore to drink. But still to attempt the whole bottle in one sitting is foolishness and I was that fool, by the end of the glass I poured it was beginning to taste like Marmite. I had to leave some of the bottle for the next day and when I tasted it the following afternoon it seemed to have opened up a little more but it was still a powerhouse of a beer and thoroughly enjoyable.

My Mum often searches out local beers for me from where she lives in Wales. The bottle on the right is the dark roasted beer from Jacobi brewery in Caio. This was by far the best of the range which I tasted and represented this style of beer very nicely with lovely coffee and chocolatey stout like flavours. Others in their range suffered from a little too much diacetyl and not enough body and hops.

My Mum also gave me the beer on the left, and I've included it here because I think that beers with ginger in have become one of my favourite hangover cures. The ginger seems to settle my stomach and the mild buzz form the alcohol sets my head straight. Ginger Beard from the omnipresent Wychwood brewery is a good example of style. My personal favourite is Brodies ginger beer from the great east London brewery.

I wanted to mention these beers because I think beer is a great gift for Christmas. Local seasonals and special beers are wonderful with food and warming this time of year. I also received some nice Bath Ales from my sister, including one of my favourite seasonal ales Festivity.

I'll wrap up now with a brief mention of these two beers from the attention seeking brewing pranksters Brewdog. Not that they need any extra promotion from me.

Abstrakt is Brewdog's range of more experimental beers that tend to be high in alcohol and flavour

Mark Dredge recently blogged that anyone with an AB:03 should probably drink it now because it won't be getting any better. So I decided to drink both AB:03 and my last bottle of AB:01. AB:03 is a two year aged imperial ale infused with fresh raspberries and strawberries. When I last opened one of these I thought that maybe it was infected. It still had the powerful, almost sickly berry fruit flavour but it erupted from the bottle and had an acidic and brett like tang that didn't really suit it. The good news is that this latest bottle was nothing like that. The fruit had subdued and although it still had acidity it was balanced and refreshing. I still don't think that it's as good as other fruit beers but it's certainly the best in this style I've tasted apart from brewdog Zephyr. But seeing as this style is really only made by Brewdog that isn't surprising.

AB:01 is a Belgian quad infused with vanilla. It's designed for keeping up to two years and I opened it after 18 months. To me it had very little Belgian qualities and no vanilla discernible at all. It was a nice beer but that's it and I think it was an overpriced disappointment.

I'm probably not going to buy any more of the Abstrakt series. I don't think the quality or volume of the beers justifies the price and the annoying plastic corks are a bitch to get out. As a hint what other breweries can achieve as a limited beer check out Local 2 above from the brilliant Brooklyn. That bottle cost less than an Abstrakt and that was imported from the US.

I hope that 2012 is the year that Brewdog calm down a bit a make some more of the brilliant Paradox series of beers.

Anyway this post has taken me much too long to write so I will sign off here, hope you had a lovely Christmas and wish you a wonderful new year. May 2012 bring you lots of fantastic beers and joyous fun!

Yountville Wineries

2011-09-01T16:27:00.001+01:00

Napa is beautiful. We meant to go last year as part of our great USA food honeymoon tour, but we couldn't afford the time that it would take to really enjoy this part of the world. Wine tasting in the states is a real pleasure.

The wineries we went to were all customer friendly and most had impressive tasting rooms. So, there wasn't much mystique behind them and you never felt like you were discovering a hidden gem, but I'm on holiday and I want things to be as easy as possible. I also recognise that a lot of people will baulk at the idea of a paying $10-20 dollars for a tasting, but the pleasure we gained from talking to these wine makers for 30 minutes and tasting wines we could only taste in that region is worth the price in my opinion. Two for one offers, and shared tastings make the price even easier to handle. Most of the time the tasting fee was waived when we bought a bottle anyway.

Walking along roads between wineries you are surrounded by grapes and views of grape covered hills

It's a good idea to keep an eye on the path in front of you when walking in California

Here are some of our favourite vineyards in and around Yountville

Goosecross, for their Chenin Blanc and our new friend Jose, the Richard Corrigan lookalike

Steltzner for their lovely pinot and the Sonoma info/gossip!

Girard Winery for their world class single vineyard cabernet sauvignons.

Robert Sinskey for brilliant pinots, their casual elegance, their friendly and informed knowledge

Other worthy mentions go to Hill Family

Domaine Carneros

And Cornerstone

A special mention should go to Hope and Grace wines for their refreshing Riesling and their huge floppy tasting room dog.

We had a very relaxing time in Yountville. The emphasis on wine is infectious but be warned, these canny wineries know how to make you feel like you are getting a bargain even though you are shelling out a lot more money for a bottle that you might back home. In a lot of cases this is price is justified, with very small productions of excellent quality, single vineyard bottles, which you simply cannot outside the state let alone in the UK.

After a few days in Napa we travelled to the quite different Sonoma. More on that to come.

Yountville Keller Quadrilogy

2011-09-01T14:25:00.000+01:00

Hidden sixty miles north of San Francisco deep in the beautiful Napa valley, Yountville is a strange place, barely a town, that seems like it only exists because of a few top class wineries and the restaurants of the chef, Thomas Keller.

It draws food and wine lovers from afar with the promise of good wine, great food and if they are very lucky a sniff of a reservation at Keller's flagship The French Laundry.

We had more than a sniff. We had waited on hold on the booking line with baited breath, we had confirmed exactly 72 hours before we drove through the California countryside to this picturesque toytown. The day we arrived we had a leisurely wander through the extensive French Laundry gardens where all of the produce for the restaurants is grown.

But it wasn't time to eat there yet. The first meal was at Ad Hoc - a restaurant that isn't really supposed to exist.

Ad Hoc serves a fixed menu which changes daily. You only find out what you are going to eat when you turn up (or if you sneakily check online like I did). A bright and bustling room, with chalkboard menus and casually dressed servers leads to a very relaxed atmosphere where you can kick back and enjoy the robust food at your own pace.

The menu looked great - No sign of the famous Ad Hoc fried chicken but this was more than made up for with the smoked beef short ribs. We opted not to have the additional fish and chips course which turned out to be a wise choice. Keller's legendary obsession with finesse is left at the door here with big, homely style cooking and this set menu without the extra course was plenty for us.

I'm sorry to say that the photos we took of this and the other meals are of poor quality and I have opted to leave them out. But I can tell you that Ad Hoc left a lasting impression. Finesse might not be the name of the game here but quality certainly is. The salad was a refreshing selection of the best the gardens had to offer. The single short rib, smoked in the back garden, was huge, meaty and deliciously infused with the hickory smoke. Plenty of meat for the two of us and served with a sweet and crunchy maque choux, a first for me.

The cheddar cheese was good, one of the best cheeses we had whilst in the USA, but even though matured for fives years it still didn't seem to have the depth of flavour of a Somerset farmhouse cheddar.

The monkey bread for dessert was wonderful. Tearing off the sticky, brioche-like lumps of pudding finished us off for the evening.

I was delighted to see Blue Apron Ale on the beer list - a beer made by Brooklyn Brewery exclusively for the Keller Group. Always a sucker for an exclusive beer I had to have it. Named after the uniform worn by the cooks before service starts, it's a Belgian strong ale weighing in at 7.2% and brewed by head brewer Garret Oliver specifically to go with food. It has a lively carbonation and a nose reminiscent of the best Belgian ales of this type. It is a rich beer with notes of chocolate, liquorice and even a little pipe tobacco balanced with dried fruit, plums and caramel. I had the whole 750mL bottle to myself while Claire had the well matched wine pairing.

We had a very entertaining time time at Ad Hoc and for those seeking a more accessible Keller experience this charming restaurant is a must.

The following evenings meal was at Bouchon.

I won't lie, we had done a fair bit of wine tasting this day and although I remember the meal being good I am a little hazy on the details.

All of the bread served at the Keller restaurants is made at the Bouchon Bakery and very nice it is too.

And what was this on the beer menu? It's only another exclusive beer, this time brewed by one of my favourite US breweries, Russian River. A superb example of a pilsner, refreshing and spicy, with Russian River's typical generosity with hops. I should have had a pint.

We shared a selection of local charcuterie , followed by Veal with grilled lettuce for me and steak frites for she. A little behind trend, I have decided that grilled lettuce is the future so I asked for an extra portion. Service was a little slow; I received my pilsner with my starter and the extra lettuce after I had finished my main/entree. But in my post wine-tasting fuzz I can't remember caring that much.

As is so often the way in the states, the generosity of the portions left us with scant room for dessert. Even so we shared this, which I think was a brownie type dessert with a fresh milk ice cream on top. It's times like this that I wish I took notes. A satisfying meal but not up to the standard of the meals we had in Bouchon Las Vegas last year

Right next door to Bouchon Bistro is Bouchon Bakery. We stopped in there a few times for breakfast and lunch. In keeping with its surroundings it is an expensive but high quality establishment. Luckily for the locals there is a far more reasonable deli attached to the local market, but if you want a patisserie treat or a quality cup of coffee then you can treat yourself here.

It's like being in Bordeaux!

The Main Event : The French Laundry

We were very careful the day we went to the French laundry. We knew we had a marathon event that evening so we avoided too much midday wine and we denied ourselves the complementary cookies and cheese at our hotel.

It was time for Mr Keller to bring on the finesse.

Nine courses with extras. From the classic salmon cornets to the prettiest chocolates, the whole thing is a leisurely blur of refined excess. The superb waiting staff brought us Caviar and Oysters, Lobster, sous vide beef with a poached quails egg. All extravagance was there for a reason and of the highest quality, but how much can one man take? Even though it was a perfectly paced meal it still forced me to take a breather in the beautiful candlelit garden to cool off. Damn their jacket only policy.

The only disappointment for me was the composed cheese course. A deep fried tomme de savoie which tasted more like something from a Czech fast food cart. In my opinion, if a cheese is worth importing from France to the best restaurant in California then you bloody well don't deep fry it!

Composed cheese courses, pah!

These chocolates were a work of art. Before I ate them.

One last mention should go to the caramelised macadamias. Our lovely waiter brought us two more bags of these to take away after I he saw me popping them like pills. Indeed, these are so addictive that they have been renamed Crackadamias. A name I will be submitting to Chef Keller for him to use on his menu if he wishes. Finesse!

Yountville

2011-08-02T01:28:00.001+01:00

The view from our hotel

Adnams First Rate Gin Review

2011-07-10T12:39:00.008+01:00

I've written before about my fondness for Adnams beers and I was pleased to see that they were one of the sponsors of the Beer Bloggers Conference.

It was during a the registration session, whilst tasting some excellent Tally Ho!, that I got talking to the Sean Clark, Head of Web, about Adnams' new distillery. To expand the company's already wide range of beverages into the world of spirits is appealing and exciting one for me and the way that Adnams are doing this seems like a natural progression. The starting spirit is distilled from beer and then redistilled with the botanicals. Sean kindly sent me a bottle of the the premuim gin of the range, First Rate Gin, to taste. I have heard that an Adnams Ale Eau de vie is on the way and I will be getting a bottle of that to try when it's available.

So let's review this gin.

The 50cL bottle has a great design and I think Adnams are going for "Coastal Quality" with the colour scheme here. The sturdy tube with it's copper lettering makes it a handsome addition to our Spirit Fireplace.

The botanicals used in the distillation are:

Juniper Berries

Orris Root

Coriander seed

Cardamom Pod

Hibiscus Flower

Sweet Orange Peel

Lemon Peel

Cassia Bark

Vanilla Pod

Anjelica Root

Fennel Seed

Caraway Seed

Thyme

Liquorice Root

It comes in at a strong 48% ABV so it's definitely a night gin¹.

Own its own

On the nose there's a little hairspray and a lot of juniper and pine forest. Some aniseed comes also through. It's very smooth to drink with floral and slightly vegetal flavours. There is a citrussy sweetness which gives way to the subtle herbal notes. It is very subtle and at this point I'm concerned that it won't stand up to mixers or cocktails.

Gin & Tonic

We used "Naturally Light" Fevertree Tonic Water for this and the gin struggled a little at first. When we ginned them up a bit more the herby and grassiness came through nicely.However it won't be replacing my normal gin choice for G & T because I think it's too subtle.

Tom Collins
Our first attempt at a Tom Collins with any gin and it's a very nice drink. Again the gin was a bit lost in the mix. What did come though in terms of juniper and spices worked well with the lemon but really not enough flavour power to shine properly.

Martini
For the Martini I consulted David at Summer Fruit Cup (a great blog which should always be consulted on matters gin) and came to the simple recipe.

Four parts gin to one part Dolin Chamberry Dry Vermouth and an olive.

Wowsers, my first ever martini and the gin shines.The soft flavours of the Dolin complement the gin's own botanicals very nicely. When this gin is allowed to come through its subtle flavour makes sense and in combination with the clean and understated bitterness of the Dolin, what appeared as muddled and dull flavours before, stand out with an understated savouriness.

I liked the martini so much that I followed it up with a version of the martini I have dubbed the Dirty Capertini. Instead of an olive I used three Maltese capers and a splash of the pickling brine. As the caper flavour infuses into the drink it becomes something very special. Try it, you might like it.

So in conclusion, I would say that the Adnams First Rate Gin is good for a strong G&T, very good for sipping and great in a Martini. It's too subtle for most cocktails but in it's own right a fine drink.

Many thanks to Gin and Crumpets and Summer Fruit Cup for inspiration for my first gin review. Also thanks to Sean at Adnams for the gin.

1. Day or night gin is a category used by another great gin blog, Gin and Crumpets.

Greg and John give us some buttery biscuit bass

2011-06-28T19:19:00.000+01:00

River Cottage Cakes - Somerset Cider Cake

2011-06-05T19:06:00.002+01:00

Last week I decided to treat myself. I'd seen the most recent River Cottage handbook in Waterstones, and despite owning some great baking books already (my favourite being this one), this one had some new recipes I've not seen before, so I went for it. I asked Sam to pick a recipe to try first, and after first going for Coffee and Walnut Cake, and then Toffee Apple Cake he finally settled on the Somerset Cider Cake. I used Sheppeys Dabinett cider, a medium sparkling cider. The cake is made with the cider, cider-soaked raisins, and a mixture of wholewheat and plain flour. It has a sweet hazelnut topping, which sadly sank into the middle of the cake when cooking - I'm not sure what went wrong here, but the cake mix was wetter than I'd expected so maybe I accidentally added too much cider. It smelt great whilst cooking, and was very tasty, although I'm not sure whether I got much of a cider flavour from it. I'd been dubious about the hazelnut topping thinking it was too much extra sugar, but as the cake isn't that sweet the hazelnut topping gave it a much deeper flavour, without being overly sugary.

Update: 6 days later and the cake still tastes great, and has kept incredibly well in terms of freshness.

Star beer lists in London

2011-05-31T22:26:00.010+01:00

There has been a big push by breweries and beer lovers in recent years to promote beer and food matching and rightly so. During the meals and the food matching session at the Beer Bloggers Conference it really struck me how well some of the beer and food matches worked and I think it is worth the beer world making a bigger deal about this.

However it is an interesting phenomenon that in many restaurants that have achieved the pinnacle of culinary achievements that their beer lists are terrible. In restaurants where you can experience amazing dishes of the finest ingredients, conjured up by the most talented chefs and accompanied by the most expensive wines in the world that the best you can expect in the way of beer is a bottle of Stella Artois or a pint of Guinness. It is unfathomable that in 2011 that most UK restaurants haven't noticed the explosion of sophisticated beers available from the UK, and the rest of the world. Of course it would be unfair to paint all UK restaurants with the same brush and it is certainly not the case in the US where some of the top restaurants take their beer list very seriously.

I have decided on a new policy when it comes to beer in restaurants. I will always ask what beers are available, commend a good list and lament the bad, and if they have a beer I like I will order it. I urge any beer lovers who read this blog to do the same.

So in this spirit here is my top five list of restaurants around London for beer lists.

Byron Burger- various branches in London
It was in Byron burger that I tasted my first ever Brooklyn Lager. A beer that partially set the course of our honeymoon trip across America. Just this week Byron Burger have announced their craft beer summer and they have carefully put together an impressive list of ten craft beers from the UK, US and Australia which is available in all of their branches. All of this was done with the knowledgeable advice of Mark Dredge from Pencil and Spoon. Some real proof there of the influence of beer bloggers. I am very pleased to see two London breweries on the list with both The Kernel and Camden breweries

Albert's Table - Croydon
I love Albert's Table because of it's excellent bistro style food. I love it even more because they have a nice little beer list. When I was there they stocked some Sam Adams, Sam Smiths, Worthington's White Shield and Veltins. The chef and owner Joby Wells say he tries to keep a good small range of mostly UK beers. This gets Albert's Table on my list.

Roast - London
What a pleasure is was to open Roast's bar menu and see that their whole range of beers that are brewed exclusively for the restaurant by Whitstable brewery in Kent. It's a nice selection with a stout, an IPA, a wheat beer and a pilsner. I think it's very good for beer to see restaurants working with breweries in this way.

Corrigan's - London
The food at Corrigan's is huge. Huge on flavour and often huge in size. They have a well selected wine list and a talent filled cocktail bar. But their beer list isn't great, They make this list because last year they started a beer and burgers menu available at the bar. This food combination wasn't snobbery but a careful matching. Veal Burger with smoked bone marrow was matched with Goose Island IPA, a hand ground beef burger with Brooklyn Lager and a venison burger with Hobgoblin. Last time I visited the beers were still available. Good work Mr Corrigan.

Le Gavroche - London
Michel Roux Jr was voted beer drinker of the year in 2007 by the parliamentary beer group. This was mostly because he has embraced beer and food matching. The Roux's flagship restaurant, Le Gavroche, has an extensive beer list and Roux and his sommelier have said that beer is the perfect match for some of the restaurant's dishes. I haven't eaten at Le Gavroche yet but I am assured that the restaurant truly deserves its reputation. We will visit one day.

Honourable mentions:
St John Hotel and Magdalen are stocking Kernel beers, a sign that quality will win over restaurants to the cause.
I almost forgot Canteen. The four restaurant chain serve a good range of of British beer in bottle, from white shield to Hopback stout, and draught Meantime. Very good.

The new restaurant from Marcus Wareing, The Gilbert Scott, has some Camden town and Meantime beers, I'll be checking this out next month so expect a full report.

I hear that Pearl also have a good list which I will update you on if they get back to me.

Outside London, Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons has a good list and I hear Aubergine in Marlow is doing its bit. Nathan Outlaw's restaurant has done a lot of beer and food matching recently with Stuart Howe from Sharps brewery.

In and out of London there are are plenty of restaurants pushing forward with exciting beer lists. So please encourage them, buy a beer, ask them for advice and congratulate them if they do a good job.

Where have you had a good beer in a restaurant tell me in the comments and I will add it to the list.

Beer Blogger's Conference: Fuller's Tour and Lunch

2011-05-29T00:17:00.005+01:00

Last weekend I attended the inaugural European Beer Bloggers Conference and what a weekend it was. I was left exhausted but inspired and enthused. One of the highlights of this weekend for me was always going to be the visit to Fuller's brewery in Chiswick. I already admire Fuller’s for maintaining quality in their core range of flagship beers while at the same time keeping us beer geeks excited with the Past Masters, Vintage and Brewer’s Reserve ranges. In fact it was in the past year that their new IPA, Bengal Lancer, reconfirmed my long-standing friendship with Fullers. It’s now a staple purchase which often sneaks its way into my grocery basket.

So it was with some excitement that we approached the impressive Griffin Brewery in Chiswick. We were greeted by the Head Brewer, John Keeling, with a welcoming talk. It was an interesting introduction to Fuller's which impressed with the dedication to innovate and and stay relevant.To highlight this point he mentioned Fuller's collaboration with Marble brewery from Manchester, a beer I am itching to taste. He was stopped by Derek Prentice, Fuller's brewing manager, to avoid overlap between their two talks. But it wasn't before John mentioned the cask of Brewers Reserve No.1 which we had all clocked on our way in. It seemed my hopes of a special tasting were with good founding and I knew we were in for a treat that afternoon.

A tour of the brewery followed which is a fascinating mix of old and new. Some beautiful original mash tuns, coppers and fermenters juxtaposed with shiny stainless vessels the size of houses.

I would advise anyone who has the opportunity to visit this historic brewery, the tour is very interesting.

After the tour we made our way back to the Hock Cellar where laid on for us was the meal of the conference. Not only was the food outstanding but the beers that were poured for us were of exceptional quality. Derek Prentice gave a presentation on the ageing effect on beer while we tasted the following beers.

The past masters range are based on old beers from the Fuller's recipe book. The XX strong ale is based on a recipe from 1891 which is matured for three months before bottling. It is a satisfying beer but without the subtlety of others of this strength. I will probably end up repeating myself but there is a lot of dried fruit and deep rich malt. Refreshing hops from

The comparison of the two vintage ales was a very good example of how ageing under the right circumstances can lead to something special. The 2000 was much deeper in flavour with rich sherry and dried fruit notes. the 2010 had a similar flavour profile but without the intensity and, not surprisingly, the aged characters of the 2000

The two brewers reserves were another kettle of fish. The ageing in cask had given them some sourness but also an incredible depth. I wish I could taste these again on their own, I didn't feel like I appreciated them fully after all the other beers we tasted that day.

The meal was prepared by Fuller's executive chef who develops all the food for the Fuller's pubs
We started with excellent fresh asparagus, soft boiled eggs and ham which was matched with my favourite Bengal Lancer

Next up was the full English roast experience. Roast rib of beef with yorkshires, roast spuds and cauliflower cheese. The beef was roasted in a combination oven (I think) to medium rare it was beautifully tender with a rich seam of fat running through it. one of the best Sunday lunches I've ever had. The advice from Derek was to drink it with the Brewers reserve but I think any of the beers from the presentation would have gone well with the beef.

Pudding was strawberries and cream with some rich crumbly shortbread. I'd love the recipe for that shortbread, it was a winner.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Fuller's and the Beer Bloggers conference organisers for this afternoon of beery fun. It was a truly educational day and I think was worth the entry fee for the conference on it's own. We were also given a goody bag of the beers we had drunk to take home with us.

I tweeted the following towards the end of the visit.

Beer Legends: George Washington and Taunton Ale

2011-05-18T01:00:00.009+01:00

The brief for entry into the Pilsener Urquell beer bloggers competition is to write about a beer or brewing legend. This can be interpreted in a number of ways and my approach to this conundrum led me down an interesting path of beer history.

At first I looked at famous pubs and famous drinkers. The George in Southwark and the Blind Beggar have been covered in great detail. So I thought about the death by heart attack of Oliver Reed in a Maltese pub after beating five sailors in an arm wrestling marathon. I thought about George Best and his notorious drinking binges. But ultimately these are sad stories about alcoholics who probably only appreciated beer for it's alcoholic content and not its flavour, range and romance in the same way that I do.

So I looked for a legend who appreciated beer in the way I do and the way I try to encourage others. Maybe a celebrity home brewer, maybe a famously particular beer enthusiast who also brewed his own.

Maybe George Washington.

Little did I know when I was leaving tips on bars across the US that looking up at me from the dollar bill was a legend in American brewing history. One of his recipes is recorded in the New York Public Library, was recreated recently by a New York brewery and is described as "pretty light, pretty dry, medium-bodied but roasty".
It was a list of drinks that were drunk at a party he held that really piqued my interest.

"10 bottles of Madeira, one bottle of champagne, 2 bottles of claret, 45 bowls of punch, 10 bottles of American porter, one bottle of Taunton Ale, 2 bottles of crab cider."

10 bottles of American Porter! - Very nice and rightly placed amongst champagne and claret, certainly the finer things in life. But what is or was Taunton Ale? I grew up very near Taunton in Somerset and had never heard of Taunton Ale. Was there a whole style of beer that I haven't known or drunk?

A little digging came up with some answers. Taunton Ale was frequently referred to in American advertising of the time as being shipped from Bristol. This makes sense with Bristol being a major port in England at the time and apparently being an important manufacturer of glass bottles.

I even found a brewing recipe my favourite part of which is the instruction for making sure that the mash liquor is the correct temperature.

It's a great recipe and well worth reading. It was a strong beer with lots of hops (a pound of hops per bushel of malt) which must have been needed for the long journeys of overseas export.
I was also delighted to find out that excellent hops were grown in the area too, there are certainly none there now.

It looks like ageing was also an important part of the beer's attraction with a note that

Two or more years in a cask must have given it some funky flavours. I wonder if it would impress the craft beer drinkers of today.

So there we have it. A forgotten legend of beer was brewed not far from where I grew up, shipped to America and drunk by a legend of beer appreciation and the President of the USA.

Edit : I have just found a quote from a book where a Mr Joseph Cottle meets Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Here is a description of the meal they had:

"We Approached the "Jasmine Harbour" when, to our gratifying surprise we found the tripod table laden with delicious bread and cheese, surmounted by a brown mug of Taunton Ale. We instinctively took our seats; and there must have been some downright witchery in the provision, which surpassed all of its kind; nothing like it on the wide terrene, and one glass of the Taunton settled it to an axiom."

I think if this beer can cause such raptures from the likes of Coleridge then Taunton Ale should be revisited and soon!

I will be following this post up with a more detailed article after some more research into Taunton Ale.

Open it!

2011-05-02T20:56:00.003+01:00

It's Open It! time again and to celebrate the fantastic snooker final we decided to open one of the treats we picked up when we visited Cantillon Brewery in January. We decided to drink the granddad of the Cantillon Range, the Lou Pepe Kriek 2008.

It's a beautiful beer to look at with a bright cherry red colour and a pink head that unfortunately I didn't catch in this photo. What a fantastic beer, all of the fascinating sour flavours of Cantillon Gueze but with intense cherry fruit flavours.

I'm Proud of British Beer

2011-03-01T15:44:00.001Z

Pete Brown just posted up this great video from SIBA about being proud of British beer. I'm reposting it here just to reach a few more people. I agree with everything said here. We should be very proud of British beer and stop the tax increases on our national drink.

Proud of British Beer from Society of Independent Brewers on Vimeo.

Chorizo and chickpea burgers with bravas sauce

2011-02-08T23:53:00.002Z

The brief was to cook something for dinner using some chorizo . I had seen a chickpea burger recipe so I thought I would adapt it and to go with the spanish theme serve it with a bravas sauce. I added some preserved lemon to the burgers.It's not very spanish but I had some in the fridge and I like the fresh lemony flavour it adds to savoury dishes like this. Some lemon zest could work just as well.

Ingredients
Serves two with two burgers each

For the burgers:
Half a loop of dried chorizo, skin peeled off
One small onion
One tin of chickpeas
The peel of one preserved lemon
Half a teaspoon each of ground cumin and ground coriander
Half a bunch of coriander, chopped roughly
oil for frying

For the Bravas Sauce:
One medium onion sliced
Half a green pepper sliced
two cloves of garlic chopped
one chopped red chilli, seeds in or out depending on how you like it. Or half a teaspoon of chilli flakes.
Half a tin of tomatoes
The other half of the bunch of coriander (I would normally use flat leaf parsley for this but one of the family doesn't like it)
Half a teaspoon of the hot smoked paprika.

Buns to serve

Make the burgers first. I chop the chorizo and onion quite finely either by hand or in a food processor. Fry in a pan until the onion is soft and the chorizo has released some of it's paprika stained oil. Now drain the chickpeas and puree them with the lemon and spices until as smooth as you can in a food processor. When thoroughly pureed, mix in the chorizo and onion. Season the mix with plenty of salt and pepper and shape into four burgers. Leave them to chill and firm up while you make the sauce.

Make the sauce in the pan you used to fry the chorizo so you utilise all of the paprika flavoured oil. Fry the onions and peppers gently adding more oil if necessary. Fry for twenty minutes until the onions and peppers are really soft. Add the chopped garlic and chilli and fry for a further minute. Stir in the tomatoes and paprika and simmer for ten minutes on a low heat. Stir in the chopped coriander and take off the heat.

When the sauce is ready fry the burgers in a little oil on a medium heat. They need about five minutes on each side until the outsides are crispy. Serve in the buns with a big dollop of heated bravas sauce.

What Brussels means to me.

2011-01-27T16:56:00.000Z

Cantillon Brewery, Brussels

2011-01-27T00:16:00.004Z

It shows what a lucky man I am that, when on her birthday weekend away to Brussels, my wife suggested that we made a trip to one of only two breweries left in the capital city. She had seen the Cantillon brewery tour described on Pencil and Spoon and downloaded a short walk from the Grand Place to the Brewery.

Cantillon specialise in Lambic beer and it's derivatives. Lambics are fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria, microorganisms (which would be carefully avoided in normal breweries because of the undesirable flavours and characteristics they give to the beer see below for a sciencey bit on these). But not here in Cantillon, in fact the wort is left to cool and spontaneously ferment in a shallow, copper, bath-like vessel in the loft of the brewery. They even leave the windows open.

This is a picture we took on the charming, self guided tour of the brewery. Yes, they really let you wander round on your own with an informative pamphlet while they get on with the more important job of brewing.

The beer is fermented in these oak and chestnut barrels and then either blended to make gueze or has fruit, sugar or even elderflowers added to make the different varieties.

This brewery is a special place. They have maintained brewing methods that are probably the first methods accidentally used by the original brewers AND their beer tastes fantastic. If I left a tub of wort by the window and hoped for the best there is very little chance I would make something drinkable let alone safe. But a sampling of the beers after the tour left us in no doubt that this is a quality product.

The day before our brewery visit we were sat in one of our favourite bars, Poechenellekelder (try saying that after a Rochefort 10!), and in preparation for our visit to the brewery we had some Cantillons. They are brought to the table in these fetching baskets and poured with the Belgian flourish leaving a large head and room for the rest of the bottle.

A traditional gueuze is carefully blended from different years lambics in order to balance the flavours and to allow for further fermentation in the bottle. This is why there is a recommendation on the label to keep the bottle for at least a year before drinking. I cannot describe this beer using the normal beery descriptive terms. It's sour; due to the nature of the brewing process all of the sugars are fermented out and the lactobacillus bacteria produce plenty of lactic acid. It's also funky from the wild yeast fermentation. Oak ageing gives the beer a wine-like character and in fact I think that it's almost closer in flavour to a dry cider or white wine than it is a beer. The hops used are also aged for three years before being used in the boil, making the hop flavour restrained, austere even.

However when bountiful cherries are added to year old lambics in the barrel another kind of magic happens (please read the cantillon website for more flowery prose than I could achieve even after a few bottles of their finest). The resulting beer is far from the sickly alcopops that bear the title kriek on their labels. The complex cherry fruit is blended perfectly with the sour farmyard flavours of the lambic. It seems like every sour beer I taste I come to the same conclusion. That I have never tasted anything like this before. Well this kriek was another one.

Okay, enough sycophancy. Here is the sciencey bit I promised earlier.

Brettanomyces (Brett to its friends) is a wild yeast, often found on the skins of fruit. Wild yeasts are carefully avoided in most commercial wineries and breweries because of the unpleasant characteristics that they produce. That being said there are some wines where these flavours are considered to be desirable and in fact it was these very flavours that used to be considered the sign of a high quality burgundy. Brett can give flavours of farmyard, sweaty saddle and even plasters (band-aids).

It tickled my science bone to discover that Brussels has it's own member of the brett family, Brettanomyces Bruxellensis, and it is likely that this is one of the more prevalent yeasts in the Cantillon brewery.

The other key component to the microbiological brew is Lactobacillus bacteria. Members of this family are present everywhere from our gut to rotting fruit and will convert sugar (and in some cases alcohol) to lactic acid and are no doubt responsible for a lot of the sourness of these beers.

Blended by the experts at Cantillon the undesirable qualities produced by these wild bugs are turned into the sublime.

Pork Cheeks in Belgian Abbey Ale

2011-01-24T22:41:00.003Z

If you can get them, pig cheeks are a fantastic and cheap cut of meat for slow cooking. In quite a short cooking time you can achieve a very soft piece of tasty meat. I would call them "~~unctuous~~" and "~~melt in the mouth~~" if these phrases didn't turn my stomach. I've been cooking these since Waitrose started stocking them, they are so cheap that I usually take away all they have.

Browned Pork Cheeks

Serendipitously the same week we got back from Brussels, I scored a kilo of pork cheeks (for only £3!) in my local supermarket and I received twelve bottles of Adnams Belgian-style Abbey Ale from Fergus the brewer at Adnams.

For our Sunday evening meal I decided to put together this easy braise hoping that the fruity flavours from the strong Belgian style beer would go nicely with the pork. I reckon you need three cheeks per person, it may seem like a lot but they shrink quite a bit while cooking. I also think it's important to dilute the beer when doing a braise so I usually use 50:50 beer to stock. If 100% beer is used the results can be a little too bitter.
The final dish was really tasty, the beer worked very well and pork was soft, dark and satisfyingly rich.

The Final Dish.
I really need to work on my presentation and photography!

So here is the recipe.

Serves 2
Oil for frying
6 Pork cheeks - about 500g
Seasoned Flour
1 onion, sliced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
a couple of sprigs of thyme
a couple of bay leaves.
half a bottle of Adnams Belgian Abbey Ale (or any belgian abbey ale or any strongly flavoured ale)
250ml veg or chicken stock
1 tomato (because it was in the fridge looking sad)
Salt and pepper for seasoning.

The first thing to do with the cheeks is cut off any silverskin still left on them. No amount of slow cooking will soften this chewy connective tissue. Heat the oil in a small casserole over a medium heat. Dust the cheeks with seasoned flour and brown them on each side in the hot oil. Do this in two batches to allow for good browning and remove to a plate. Slowly fry the chopped onions and celery in the pan for about 20 mins until the onions soften and brown adding more oil if needed. Add the garlic, thyme and bay leaves and fry for a further minute. Put the cheeks back into pan and pour in the beer. Use a spatula to scrape the brown residue from the bottom of the pan. Top up with the stock and add the tomatoes. Bring up to the boil then turn down to barely simmer. Cover the pan and and simmer for one and a half hours. Serve with mash potato or if you are trying to be healthy boiled potatoes like we did.

Maltese Galletti

2010-12-07T21:04:00.003Z

I'm a keen collector of cookbooks and I try to pick up a local book from the places I go on holiday. Whilst on holiday in my mother in law's home country, Malta, I picked up a great little book from olive oil producer Matty Cremona.

One of the recipes in Cooking with Maltese Olive Oil is for the ubiquitous Maltese savoury biscuit, galletti.
These tasty, puffed up little biscuits are cheaply available in their Malta and even the book says that no one makes their own any more.

But as I rarely visit Malta and I wanted to try some of the recipes from the book I decided to give them a go.

The recipe uses a quantity of olive oil and I thought it would be a good opportunity to use up one of those flavoured oils I always get for Christmas.

It's a pizza-like dough made with semolina and strong bread flour,

Roll it out really thin... it helps to divide the dough up. Into my four different sections of dough I mixed in, ground pepper, dried oregano, sesame seeds, or caraway seeds.

Then roll the dough out even thinner. Then thinner again, until you think it's too thin.

Cut it into rounds with a cookie cutter and prick with a fork to stop them puffing up too much in the oven.

Then pop them in a hot oven and watch as they puff up and brown.

These are one of the best biscuits to have with cheese but I made so many that I have a couple of other recipes I'm going to try to use them up

Edit: I've now been asked by two friends to put the recipe up so here it is. If anyone makes this recipe please let me know in the comments section. Please tell me in the comments how they turn out.

Ingredients

200g Plain Flour (I used strong bread flour)

150g Semolina (extra for Kneading)

4 Tablespoons olive oil (I used the flavoured oil)

Large pinch of salt

One Sachet instant yeast

200mL Warm water

Flavourings e.g. coarsely ground black pepper, caraway, oregano or toasted sesame seeds

Method

Sieve flour into a large bowl, add the salt and oil, rubbing the oil into the flour. When combined add the semolina. Add the yeast. You can add the flavourings now or after dividing the dough. Then stirring as you go, add the water bit by bit until you have enough to make a dough. Knead the dough well until smooth. Cut into manageable portions and roll out VERY thinly, I sprinkle a little more sea salt over the dough at this point. Cut rounds from the dough with a cookie cutter and prick with a fork once in the middle to stop them rising too much in the oven. Put them on semolina-dusted baking sheets and bake at gas mark 6 until they are golden brown. I found this took about 10-12 mintues but keep a very careful eye on them. Burnt galletti are crapletti. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Enjoy the galletti with cheese, dips or on their own as a snack

Open it!

2010-12-05T15:06:00.001Z

I recently inherited a fancy camera and being a digital SLR virgin I thought this weekend's Open It! online event would be a good opportunity to try out my new toy.

So without further ado here are some pictures from an evening of opening it!

I love the designs on some of these special bottles. especially the Delirium Christmas beer.

We enjoyed all the beers and a special thanks should go to trafalgar wines in Brighton who sold me most of these beers. And more thanks to the England cricket team who provided some of the entertainment!

1516 Brewing Company, Vienna

2010-10-13T15:15:00.002+01:00

As ever when visiting a new city I wanted to try to find some good locally brewed beer in Vienna. I didn't have to search too far when I found out about the 1516 Brewing Company brewpub based in the city centre. This brewery makes a range of specialy beers, some in a traditional Austrian style and some decidedly non-Austrian.

The bar itself is welcoming and relaxing and on the third visit the distinct and comforting smell of yeast and malt from the brewing permeated the building. It really is a beer geek's paradise with all of the wide range of beers described in detail on the menu and it seems that a lot of these brews were designed by guest brewers from other international breweries. I think this is an excellent model that works in the UK and is already being done by Brewdog and Brewharf.

We tried most of the beers during our three visits to the bar some of which I will describe below.

Check out the head on this!

This Altbayrisch Dunkel is a delicious dark lager. It is claimed by 1516 that most Austrian black lagers are standard lagers with colouring added but theirs is authentically produced with dark malts. I cannot comment on the other Austrian dark lagers but I can tell you that this effort was rich with the coffee and chocolate flavours associated with dark malts. A fine example of this style which is becoming popular in the UK.

This terrible picture is of one of the most intriguing beers I had at 1516. This is the Victory Hopped Devil IPA. This is the brewery's first brew with "whole leaf hopping" and brewed by US brewer Bill Covaleski from Victory Brewery in the US. I'm guessing it's an exact replication of Victory's own Hop Devil. The hops in this are powerful and I was instantly transported back to the USA and my first taste of Russian River's blind pig.

This is half a glass of 1516's very nice Bavarian style weissbier. I found this a lot more refreshing than some examples I have had here with good fruity depth.

And lastly is a glass of the M&N Amber. This was dry and hoppy from Amarillo and Cascade hops with five different malts giving it the rich amber colour.

Meierei Cafe, Vienna.

2010-10-13T11:45:00.002+01:00

This morning I went for a late breakfast at Meierei, the cafe on the ground floor of Steirereck I have previously described. Compared to previous days in Vienna which have been glorious, crisp and autumnal, this morning was grey, cold, windy and autumnal. So I treated myself to a walk round the park and a considerably better value breakfast that the 27 Euro buffet monstrosity offered by the Hilton.

This is a view of the terrace outside the cafe taken from a bridge over the canal.

Meierei is modelled on a milk bar and has an array of breakfast dishes, 160 cheeses and many variations on milk!

I sat near the window overlooking the park's canal and watched the dogwalkers go by for a relaxing hour or so. A couple of coffees, some orange juice, and a small basket of bread including a caraway seed studded rye were brought and I slowly consumed the lot while waiting for my scrambled eggs,

My eggs arrived mixed with yet more of the wild mushrooms I so enjoyed during my previous visit to this establishment. I don't think I have ever seen such generosity with mushrooms. I indulged as much as I could.

A brief note on the milks from this cafe. The range of milk based produce here is vast. You can have cow, goat, soya, coconut, sauermilch (a fermented and fizzy milk) and even horse. Much to my disappointment they had run out of horse milk. Maybe next time I'm in Vienna I will indulge again.

Vienna, Steirereck Restaurant

2010-10-13T11:13:00.008+01:00

I have been lucky enough to go to some exciting cities to visit some industry conference in the past 4 years. This year I have had the pleasure of visiting Vienna. A cursory search for places to eat and drink gave a definite response. It seemed we had to visit Steirereck restaurant in the Stadtpark. A 2 Michelin starred establishment and number 21 in the San Pellegrino top 50 Best Restaurants, it certainly has good credentials.

The tasting menu was an excellent showcase of local ingredients and modern technique. Unusually there is a choice for every course in the 6 or 7 course tasting menu and if you choose the 6 course you can omit any course you like from the 7 listed. This kind of flexibility brings the feeling of control you get from A La Carte but still with the exciting trip through the skills of the kitchen that comes from a multi-course tasting menu. Each delicate dish arrived with a small card listing all of its components. This is an excellent idea that I think all restaurants of this kind should copy. It is often the case that without the menu in front of you, it is easy to forget what course you picked for number 4 or 5 let alone what the red sauce is that has been artfully smeared across your plate. With these cards, each with a 3 digit number referring I presume to it's placement in the history of the restaurant's dishes, you can refer back to this construction and for me this really added to the enjoyment and understanding of the food. Others may think that this encourages the food fetishism that occurs in restaurants like this, but for us (and I am guessing the establishment itself) this kind of meal is all about the food. I am glad that I don't live in Vienna because the numbering system appeals to the completist in me and I think I would have to embark on a long mission to collect all the numbers, much like an expensive Panini football sticker collection.

I wish I could show you some beautiful photography from the meal but as is often the case I didn't feel comfortable photographing in this kind of intimate environment and the lighting was dim so Iphone snapping was would not have done justice to the food. There were a number of highlights for me incuding "Oysters", a clever play on the shellfish and the morsel of tender flesh usually enjoyed by the roast chicken carver while divvying up the rest of the meat. There was also an excellent marmalade icecream that came with my dessert, I could have eaten a whole bowl of this.

Another reason I had so much pleasure with this menu was the almost excessive celebration of mushrooms throughout the evening. Highlighting the menu's seasonal approach, no less than 5 of the courses between us had wild mushrooms of some kind. Trompettes de la mort, chanterelle, cepes and the medley of different small varieties that garnished the venison dish we had meant that this was true fungi celebration. It is a very good thing that I love mushrooms because I ate a lot that night from Claire's plate as well as my own.

So to summarise, an excellent evening of food with Austrian wine to match every course, lovely relaxing decor and service and some surreally disorientating toilet facilities mean that Steirereck truely deserves is reputation as the best restaurant in Vienna. I think it rivals the best in London and New York.

I popped back to the attached cafe Meierei for breakfast this morning. And a brief post describing this will follow soon.

Sorry!

2010-09-29T10:02:00.000+01:00

I haven't been posting recently because of an impending deadline for my masters, but I will be back with some views, reviews and kitchen fun in a couple of weeks.

Things to look forward to are a trip to Vienna, many beers to taste, some Maltese recipes and a book review or two!

Claire's top 10 cookbooks

2010-08-31T16:38:00.001+01:00

When I wrote up my top ten books it caused some consternation from a few people not least Claire who has her own, very well defined list of books.

So here they are in no particular order (apart from number one which at the moment is Claire's all time favourite), some are the same as mine, most aren't. All of the following text is by Claire

Jamie At Home;

Lovely book to look at, great programme to watch (I own the DVDs too), and not a bad recipe yet.

French Laundry;

Despite being rather intimidating, I have attempted a few recipes from this book. Each one has been incredibly easy to follow, and has turned out amazingly well.

How to be a Domestic Goddess;

I have made a large number of the recipes in this book. All have had outstanding results. All of this despite my hatred for the woman.

Moro;

A lovely read, and the recipes are all really straightforward, with fantastic results

Delia's Complete Cookery Course;

A go-to reference when I'm stuck on or unsure of any 'classic' recipes

Leith's Vegetable Bible;

Good for inspiration - especially when a glut of courgettes/tomatoes/turnips/squash comes our way.

Dessert Fourplay;

I think I wish I was Johnny Iuzzini (maybe without the tattoos). One day I will get up the courage to attempt some of his beautiful recipes. In the meantime I will swoon over the pictures.

The Return of the Naked Chef;

I love most of Jamie's books, but this is the second entry in the top ten purely for his 'Fantastic Fish Pie'.

Ottolenghi;

A beautiful book to browse through, but I've yet to make anything from it....

Nigel Slater's Real Food

One of the first cookery shows I ever watched and enjoyed on TV. I love the book and his style of cooking. Appetite is probably a better book in terms of number of recipes/quality of the read, but this is my favourite.

A tale of two beers. Adnams Innovation and Sam Hill Homebrew

2010-08-31T00:24:00.005+01:00

The first beer I'm going to write about today is a pretty special one. When I won the World Cup Beer Sweep my prize was three cases of beer, one from Ales by Mail, one (still to arrive) from the Highland Brewing Company and one from Adnams. The one I was most excited about in this package was the Adnams one. Adnams and I go back a long way, there beers were often on of the "out the back" real ales at my local when I grew up and I have helped drain casks of them at a few west country parties.
I will admit here and now that I was a little disapointed when the package turned up and it was 12 bottles of the same beer, one which I hadn't heard of. "No Broadside, Southwold or Explorer?" I exclaimed when ripping open the box, "How could they?" I am exaggerating my reaction somewhat, in the back of my mind I knew that Adnams, who had been making me quality beers for fifteen years, would see me right for my prize. What a prize it was, twelve sleek, sophisticated bottles that you see above, a mysterious embossed label with a single highlighted word, "Innovation".

An exclusive beer like this will always pique my interest. It is my hatred of feeling like I missed out that led me to carefully transport two bottles of Russian River Supplication home from San Francisco in our luggage. It causes me to spend too much money buying limited edition beers from crazy Scottish brewers.

I followed the instructions on the back of the bottle and chilled a few of these down before sampling and I was blown away. Tonight, four weeks after opening the first bottle we drank the last one. It really is a surprising and beautiful beer. It has a deep golden but not amber colour and a well established head. On the nose it has rich stone fruits, some tea and plenty of honey and caramel. The flavour really delivers all of those aromas and more. The sweetness of the honey and caramel is offset with delicious bitterness. This beer changes the further down the pint you drink and it becomes difficult to pinpoint individual tastes. I did have a stab at it though and this is what I have noted.

Christmas Pudding
Raisins
Honey
Peach
Jolly Ranchers
Cough candy.

All of this flavour riot sits over a 6.7% ABV but not once during the twelve bottles did it taste this strong. (I have to admit after 3 of these bottles it feels that strong!)
If you can't tell already I love this beer, so much that I am going to place an order for another twelve. I need this beer in my life.
After such an intensively flavoured beer it was probably a mistake to have an impromptu tasting of the homebrew I made from a St Peter's Ruby Red Ale kit, but I will tell you what we thought anyway.

It was my first time making homebrew beer and inexperienced as I am, allowed a bit too much yeast to end up in the bottles when it was time for conditioning. This has led to a nicely carbonated beer in the bottle with about half a centimetre of sediment at the bottom of the bottle. The only way to pour a clean pint of the beer is to chill it right down so the bubbles don't disrupt the sediment layer. This suppresses the flavour and as a result the beer really suffers. So, unlike the Adnams, a warming needs to be performed. About half an hour after pouring we tasted. Even with the warming the beer is a little flat and dry tasting. There appears to be little residual sugar from the malt extract and as a result not enough body. Having said that it is a perfectly palatable beer with a nice hoppy flavour. Next time I make a kit I will reduce the starting volume so there is a more of a body to it and of course I will be a lot more careful with the yeast!

Thanks for reading. I hope there will be plenty more beer reviews to come. Marble, Hardknott, Russian River and hopefully some Highland beers will be tasted and remarked upon as soon as I can!

Per Se

2010-08-25T12:46:00.002+01:00

I apologise for taking so long to post this post about our meal at Per Se in New York. It's taken a while to get used to being back in the UK with it's humdrum weather and everyday problems. The only problems we had on honeymoon were what to eat and drink for breakfast, lunch and dinner! The drink part more difficult than anticipated with the size and variety of the wine lists. In my top 50 cookbooks I mentioned two books by Thomas Keller, The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon. The French Laundry is Thomas Keller's flagship restaurant in Yountville in the Napa Valley and has been wowing its diners with contemporary French/American food since 1994. In 2004 Keller opened a sister restaurant in New York named Per Se. These restaurants are two of only six in the US with three Michelin stars such is the quality and dedication to perfection of these kitchens.

The status of Per Se in the New York restaurant world means that it is quite tricky to get a reservation, certainly one at a decent time. But we persevered and maybe via a friend of a friend or maybe by spread betting on the backup list we managed to get a 9:30 table on a Saturday night.

Per Se is housed on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Centre on Colombus circle. It is a bit strange to walk in through the side entrance of a shopping centre to get to any restaurant let alone one like this but this isn't a normal mall. It also boasts another top restaurant, Masa, as well as a lot of fancy shops.

It was Saturday evening and I was very excited as we entered the garden and approached the front door.

The glass panel to the left slid open and we were greeted by a dark, plush, deep red entrance hall and an English accent from the greeter. We were then shown to our table, drank some excellent champagne and perused the tasting menu and wine list. There were a number of choices to be made and this would take some careful consideration.

This is a scan of the menu we pilfered on our way out. It is almost identical to the one we had but the striped bass dish was replaced with Kindai tuna. This I'm afraid is one of the only pictures we have of the meal. It just felt wrong to sully our experience by wasting time, taking pictures instead of enjoying each other's company and the outstanding food which was being laid out in front of us.

A restaurant with Per Se's reputation will always keep a number of its famous hits on a tasting menu like this one. Per Se has a few chart toppers which made an appearance during our meal. The first of these which was not on the menu was the famous salmon tartare cornets topped with red onion creme fraiche. Just like tiny ice-cream cornets but with fresh raw salmon these were a lovely start to the meal.

The first dish on the menu was another one of the restaurants permanent fixtures and one we were not looking forward to, 'oysters and pearls'. However this sabayon of oyster and pearl tapioca with caviar may have changed my dislike of oysters in a way that it seems to do for others. It was delicious, so delicious that I think I may be trying a few more oysters in the future (as long as they come with tapioca!)

I won't describe all of the dishes but will highlight our favourites. The tuna was fantastic, (which was a relief because Kindai tuna is a very expensive ingredient). The courgette flowers stuffed with veal balls was much tastier than its English translation may lead you to believe!

The lobster succotash dish and the Calotte of beef were also stand-out dishes for me. The butter poached lobster was juicy and so sweet and with the chanterelles was a delicious pairing. The calotte, which is a part of the ribeye normally thrown out by the butcher, was really a really excellent piece of beef. I'm a sucker for bone marrow and it makes any beef dish better in my opinion. Gorgeous.

It was past midnight by now and we were still being brought plate after plate of desserts, petit fours, biscuits and bon bons. It all started to become a bit of a bluras we gorged oursleves on sweet treats but one thing I remember well was the extra-menu infamous coffee and doughnuts dessert. It's a cappucino semi-fredo with brioche doughnuts and this is the dish that finished Claire off. So I had to eat both of them. Oh well probably only 1000 calories between them.

Stuffed and somewhat dozy we left the restaurant clutching a couple of boxes of uneaten sweet things, ready for bed. The question we always discuss after any meal we have out is if we lived in the area would we go back. The answer for Per Se is a resounding yes. I think it's worth the trauma of booking and the seriously wallet busting price. We were treated very well and felt completely at ease. In actual fact we are sort of going back. Next year we are going back to the states for the second leg of our honeymoon and this trip will take in a visit to Yountville where we are hoping to book tables at the French Laundry and Ad Hoc.

Lunch from Acton Market and dinner: risotto stuffed round courgettes.

2010-08-19T22:21:00.003+01:00

I've still got lots of US restaurants to write up but in the mean time I'll tell you about lunch and dinner today.

My friend Tom has a stall at Acton Market where he sells his "seasonal, inspired foods" which he cooks himself. Some of my colleagues and I popped down to see him today and to buy our lunch. We bought quite a few of these satisfying and moreish seasonal vegetable pies. They were laden with fresh courgettes and parmesan and we kept going back for just one more!

The stars of the show for me were the range of Brutti ma buoni biscuits made both traditionally with hazelnuts and as an alternative with almonds. There was also a chocolate and nuts version and some lemon bicsuits.
The almond and hazelnuts biscuits were sweet, nutty and crisp. So I bought a box of each and they are going down very well both at work and at home the lighter almond being my favourite.

A far better lunch than the usual from the Hammersmith Hospital canteen, I would advise anyone in the area on a Thursday or Saturday to drop by and pick up some of these treats!

Tonight for dinner we needed to use up some more seasonal produce that had come our way from a number of sources. So I made a turnip and carrot risotto,

hollowed out two round yellow courgettes

stuffed them with the risotto

and baked them for 30 mins

A very satisfying dinner! Thanks must go to Frances at the British Library for the spectacular round courgettes and to Claire's mum for the turnips.

Observer top 50 cookbooks and my top ten

2010-08-17T22:43:00.000+01:00

This Sunday the Observer Food Monthly published it's top 50 list of cookbooks. It is a varied collection of (mostly British) books from the great and the good in the food writing world. I was very interested to see how many of these books I owned and whether I agreed with the choices. So I decided to put together my own list and see how it compared. At 30 years old I didn't experience the impact that many of the books in the list had to the British household so I have picked books that have had to most impact on me and my cooking.

A brief scan through the list shows that is made up of books from a lot of British writers, a few Americans, a spattering of French and a few other nationalities. I think this represented the make up of the panel which was mostly Brits. The list certainly concentrated on books for the home cook and omitted many of the coffee table restaurant books (mostly American) which I consider key tomes in my collection.

It turned out that I currently own ten of the fifty books, of those ten I think only one or two would be in my top ten. Some of my top ten's authors were represented but with books I don't consider to be their best. My top ten are all books that I've cooked from successfully and also one's I enjoy reading as books.

1. Essence:Recipes from Le Champignon Sauvage by David Everitt-Matthias

We went to the two Michelin starred Cheltenham restaurant, Le Champignon Sauvage a few years ago to celebrate Claire's birthday and the meal we had was an exhilarating celebration of British produce. Essence by the owner and head chef, David Everitt-Matthias, is a beautiful book, filled with the innovative and exciting dishes which are prepared in their kitchen every day. The recipes range between straightfoward to challenging and are split up into their component parts and all these recipes are illustrated with gorgeous photography. I have been inspired by the ideas in this book more than any other I own especially as the author encourages experimentation and combination of different components.

2. The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman

Some people have said that Essence is the British version of The French Laundry Cookbook. They both are detailed instructions on how to recreate their respective restaurant's menus at home and both are beautiful to read. But the French Laundry cookbook is a much grander and maybe even daunting affair. Some of these recipes are unachievable for the home cook but the majority are very much doable and will reward the daring cook many times over. This wonderful blog by Carol Blymire documents a home cook's attempt to cook every recipe in this wonderful book.

3. Jamie At Home by Jamie Oliver

Lot's of people seem to hate Jamie Oliver and I have never really understood why. I can see that the early Naked Chef persona may have grated and that the fake friends and lifestyle were just a bit silly, but his passion for good honest food really shines through especially in his later books. In my opinion the ultimate Jamie book is Jamie at home. It accompanied an entertaining TV series based around Jamie's vegetable garden and it epitomises his straightforward hands on approach to food where quality of ingredients and simplicity of flavours reigns over fiddly preparation. The Observer list has Jamie's Italy in the list but I don't think that it should be there as there are better and more comprehensive Italian cookbooks on the shelves and in the kitchen. Silver spoon and Locatelli's Made in Italy to name two.

4. Appetite by Nigel Slater

The Observer list has Slater's Kitchen Diaries in their top 50 but I believe that it is Appetite that is deserving of the top spot. This is the book that made me want to change the way I cooked and even lived. I have a bad habit of sticking religiously to recipes from the books I own. In Appetite Nigel Slater rails against this type of cooking. He wants the home cook to regain their independence and inherent knowledge of how to cook good food. I think you could find a large percentage of the Kitchen diary's recipes in Appetite either explicitly or in the suggested. The whole point of this book is to arm you with knowledge of techniques that lead to the ability to make an almost infinite number of dishes. The fact that the whole book is written in Slater's friendly prose means that it is a delight to read and feels like he is there with you helping out in the kitchen.

5. River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

This is the only book in the Observer top 50 that is in my top ten and with good reason. It is an encyclopaedic manual for the preparation and cooking of meat.This is the book I refer to whenever I want to cook meat or when I need inspiration for a protein heavy meal.

I will quickly list the next five in the list as I consider these to be slightly less vital to me in the kitchen.

6. Bouchon by Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman

7. Ripailles by Stéphane Reynaud

8. Leith's Vegetable Bible by Polly Tyrer

9. Moro by Sam and Sam Smith

10. Moro East by Sam and Sam Smith

WD50

2010-08-12T21:25:00.009+01:00

One of the restaurants I felt would be a one off experience for our honeymoon is Wylie Dufresne's HQ, WD50. If Grant Achatz is the US's Heston, then Dufresne is their Sat Bains. His restaurant is a welcoming and comfortable way to experience his novel and surprising food. Like a lot of the restaurants we've been to, lighting was low and romantic. Exactly the opposite of the ideal iPhone camera conditions as we have seen in the Jean Georges review. So when describing the meal I will link to the excellent photos on the WD50 website so you can get an idea of the detailed design of these dishes-Please click on these otherwise the descriptions may not mean quite as much!.

We were persuaded by the sommelier (it's amazing how persuasive they can be !) to have this italian number to go with our meal. A very interesting wine, its age had given it an interesting oily character whilst it retained its delicious dry fruit and acidity.

'Everything Bagel' is somewhat of a signature dish for WD50. Wylie Dufresne wanted a classic New York dish on the menu and this is how he did it (click here to see this beautiful start to the meal). The bagel is bagel flavoured ice-cream, the salmon is turned into threads with a Japanese method, then smoked and the white crisp on the side is made of cream cheese. I loved every mouthful of this dish and loved the idea of turning this classic on it's head. This is exactly what WD50 is about, revelling in fun and unexpected delights.

The next course was all about unexpected delight.This
Foie Gras and passion fruit course was exceptional. The foie gras pate had been pressed into a thick disk and in the centre a sharp passion fruit sauce which oozed out when the disk was cut. The sharpness of the passionfruit balanced the richness of the fatty foie very well. This was a standout dish of the night for us.

If you ask Claire what her favourite thing about high end restaurants is she won't say foie or truffles. Champagne and lobster don't impress her much. No, if you ask Claire what she loves about Michelin starred cuisine she will tell you she loves vegetables cut into tiny, tiny cubes. (brunoise to those in the trade). The next dish had extremely tiny cubes a plenty. these particular cubes were the fried potato that accompanied this fascinating scrambled egg and charred avocado dish. It came with some raw kindai tuna and was yet again was a fun and exciting course.

Another Dufresne soon to be classic up next. Apparently conceived when using up leftovers for a staff meal. The cold fried chicken with buttermilk ricotta and caviar was wonderful mixture of midnight snack and luxury.

Beef and Bearnaise was another of our favourite courses. Like the Bagel it's a classic turned on it's head. The beef part was a rich beef broth and the bearnaise came as dumplings submerged in it's savoury depths. I would have eaten this one may times over. WD50 should open a sister cafe serving only this!

Lamb loin with black garlic and soy bean was ok. The garlic paste tasted a bit burnt and bitter, the soy bean was grainy and unpleasant. The lamb was good though so we let them off for this.

The next course was not too good either. Chewy lychee sorbet was lovely but the lemon and celery that came with it was salty, weird and really not pleasant at all.

I very much enjoyed the Chocolate hazelnut tart with coconut and chicory. Claire found it a bit salty and the chicory too bitter for her taste.

Desert of the evening for us was the Rainbow sherbet, rhubarb, tarragon, orange, olive oil . The psychedelic tube of sour fruit sherbert was a real treat and the orange and tarragon brought refreshing subtle flavours.

I loved WD50. The most fun and relaxed meal I had in New York. I will definitely be back, maybe in a couple of years when the menu has changed again and when I can afford it!

Best Sandwich Ever*:An ongoing quest

2010-08-08T16:12:00.010+01:00

For a short while is was a sausage sandwich from Mario's sandwich shop next to Waterloo station. Greasy cheap sausages cooked on a hot plate, sliced in half and spread out on even cheaper white bread. The scalding heat melting the butter through into the napkin. Delicious with or without a hangover.

For the next few years I had a favourite sandwich that I thought could never be bettered. Herbi [sic] Chicken Salad rolled sandwich from Doughmasters in Croydon. In this fine chain of sandwich purveyors they prepare their own flat breads on their patented tabletop ovens. The Herbi chicken salad a delicious mix of chicken breast, herbs, black olives and mayonnaise. I rarely choose any of the other excellent cold or grilled fillings, I can't get enough of the Herbi.
A trip to Barcelona led me to find a sandwich which would easily rival doughmasters. Back in 2006 in the New York times, food writer Mark Bittman claimed that the flauta d’ibéric d.o. jabugo from Cafe Viena is the best sandwich he had ever eaten. I tried this sandwich twice while in beautiful Barcelona on business and I can say that it's one of the best I have tasted. The design is simple. A crusty flute is sliced open, spread with tomato pulp and filled (not stuffed) with some of the best iberico ham you can buy. The bread with tomato is the perfect vehicle for the beautifully soft ham. The tomato softens the bread and balances the saltiness of the ham. Truly a great.

Our honeymoon took us on a whirlwind tour of some of the USA's finest food. While investigating places to eat in San Francisco I was advised to visit Boccalone. So we visited the Ferry Plaza building to investigate. Boccalone make outstanding Italian style pork products and more importantly for this post, the outlet in the Ferry Plaza sell sandwiches. I had to get one, I had to see if Viena could be beaten. I was not disappointed. Made, I think, with an Acme Bread company ciabatta style loaf and filled with tomato (similar to Cafe Viena) greens and a huge amount of Boccalone's sublime Salami pepato. The sarnie has it all and it's the meat that makes it. Salty, peppery and piggy I couldn't get enough and was sad to finish it. So sad that over the never few days I went back twice for this sandwich from heaven.

Once

Twice

And thrice. This last time with a Blind Pig IPA from Russian river. Possibly the most bitter thing I've ever drunk.

So I presumed I had found it. I thought that this one couldn't be beaten. I may have been wrong.

We were taking a long walk back to the Ferry Plaza to buy another Boccalone and stumbled across the 21st Amendment Brewpub. Recommended to us by Mark Dredge we popped in for a beer and maybe more and oh boy did I get more. I opted for the meatloaf sandwich not thinking it would be a contender. Two thick slices of tasty meatloaf, full of herby savouriness, with bacon and cheese was covered with just enough excellent BBQ sauce. This is the current joint leader with Boccalone...for now.
So where is your favourite sandwich from? Please let me know in the comments!

*to clarify this is the best bought sandwich ever. The current joint leaders for best homemade sandwich ever are my darling wife's fishfinger sandwich and my best man Hatch's ultimate bacon sandwich, peanut butter, mayo and illegal amounts of bacon.

Katz's Deli for Lunch

2010-08-08T14:37:00.004+01:00

Another New York food must is a visit to Katz's Deli. Famous in New York for decades for serving the best pastrami and hotdogs in the city before Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal had their highly satisfying meal there in When Harry met Sally. The stats back this up with the deli serving 5000 pounds of corned beef and 12,000 hotdogs every week.

The queue to get in is also testiment to Katz's quality and popularity. We stood in line for a few minutes before being handed a ticket and ushered through to one of the many secondary lines at the counter. For the uninitiated the system for ordering is more than confusing. We made our way forward in one of the sandwich queues and got to the front. We ordered the classic Katz sandwich of pastrami on rye with pickles. The pastrami was sliced in thick hot chunks and then piled high in between two slices of Rye sourdough. It's big and not pretty but the pastrami is soft, fatty and very satisfying. We shared this sandwich and it was enough for our lunch, I wish we could have gone back to try their corned beef and hotdog.

Les Halles:Back for brunch

2010-08-08T13:35:00.006+01:00

A couple of days after our busy dinner at Les Halles we were passing again and decided to pop in for brunch.
It was a lot quieter but there were a few tables of people enjoying a a lazy morning meal. We went for some classic brunch dishes. I had a New York classic, Eggs benedict. This is poached eggs on an english muffin, ham and covered in a hollandaise sauce. This was my first eggs benedict and it was delicious.

and Claire had an Omelette Savoyarde which is filled with Gruyere Cheese.
Both dishes were served with sauteed potatoes and slightly strangely slices of orange and pink grapefruit!

We really enjoyed both our meals at Les Halles, it was reasonably priced and I would recommend anyone visiting New York to pop in and try it out.

Cheeky lunch at 21st amendment

2010-08-02T21:12:00.002+01:00

We spotted the 21st amendment brewpub and restaurant on our way between buying beer and buying some sausage and remembering it had been recommended to us dropped in for lunch. A burger for Claire

and a superb meatloaf sandwich for me

(more on the Sam Hill best sandwich in the world competition in a later post) soaked up two glasses of watermelon wheat beer for the lady

and for me an Amber waves

And a Brew Free! Or Die IPA.

I think this is the best draft IPA of the trip yet. I am still thoroughly enjoying it!

Location:2nd St,San Francisco,United States

Nopa and Toronado

2010-07-31T23:28:00.003+01:00

We are in San Francisco and it is cold. Not just a little bit cold but go and buy a jacket in Macy's cos we didn't pack one, cold. It heats up a bit in the afternoon but in the shade when the wind is blowing it feels a little like death.
It a bit of a shock after sweaty New York and Chicago and the ridiculous desert heat of Vegas.
Last night we took a trip to a lovely part of SF around Haight street. We stopped off first in the Tornado bar to try a few beers.

The lit up back wall is a list of the beers they currently had on tap. It takes a while to decide from the range of beers, some unfamiliar, some notorious! The most intriguing beer of the evening was the Russian River brewery Consecration.

The picture doesn't really show you the size of this glass. It's a lot smaller than a normal glass of beer, I estimate 150ml. It's a sour beer, something I've not tried before, but i will definitely hunt out more of it. Brewed with naturally souring bacteria it and matured in wine barrels it takes a bit of getting used to. I'm looking forward to trying Russian River brewery's other sours.
We left after a couple of drinks, pints of 7-8% beer are not the best aperitif before a meal if you plan to stay awake!
Round the corner from Toronado is the restaurant, Nopa, made known to me by the now ex-employee Richie Nakano who wrote the engrossing blog linecook415. We were seated up on a balcony overlooking the long bar and open kitchen. It gave us a great overview of the busy restaurant from our relatively calm position. The style of the restaurant is very much San Francisco, with European influence but with a very large emphasis on the freshness, locality and quality of the ingredients. This quality really shone through in our starters of goats cheese with crostini and tomatoes,

And a pizza-like flatbread with mushrooms, home smoked bacon and rocket. I ate most of it before taking this picture!
For mains the choice was almost made for us. We had to try the famous Nopa burger and the pork chop. The Nopa burger came in a huge bun with a slice of gruyere ,loads of fries a salad and a basil aioli.

The pork chop really lived up to it's reputation. It was the best pork chop I've ever had. Moist yet cooked perfectly and an amazing porky flavour. I've hears that at Nopa they brine the whole loin before cutting the individual chops and then grilling them. This is definitely a ploy I want to use for the BBQ on my new weber when I get home.

It came with potatoes and some salad. Delicious.

We had bottle of lovely Californian Pinot to go with it.

We had a great time at Nopa, the food was great and the now expected high level of service was very much present. I wish we had enough time to go back so I could have another pork chop.

Real tea

2010-07-30T19:09:00.001+01:00

Finally - the first decent cup of tea I've found in america - and it only took two and a half
weeks to find one...thank you Coffee Bean!

Cx

Location:Market St,San Francisco,United States

Gibsons steakhouse.

2010-07-29T17:57:00.003+01:00

We decided that our first American steak should be in a proper American steakhouse. So we booked a table at Gibson's in Chicago. It was a good thing we booked as there were people queueing out the door to try to get a table. The dining room was
buzzing with chatter as the waiters with white jackets and gloves whizzed around bringing food and drinks and showing off the magnificent steaks they had to offer. We ordered our steaks, Claire a New York strip, rare, and I a Gibson's special ribeye, medium rare and chose a Californian Pinot Noir.

I'm afraid my iPhone photography let me down again and I didn't get any good pictures of the steaks. Here is a picture taken on Claire's camera I can tell you that they were thick, juicy and possibly some of the best beef I have tasted.

Bouchon

2010-07-25T21:04:00.001+01:00

Bouchon restaurant is another string to the hugely successful Thomas Keller empire. I think Keller's success lies in the diversity of his restaurants and the obvious passion and attention to detail that he has imbued into them. Each new venture seems to be opened because he loves that style of restaurant. I will write about our amazing experience in his fine dining location Per Se, New York later.
Bouchon is Keller's take on a French brasserie. In Vegas this branch is housed in the tower of the Venetian hotel.

Like everywhere else in Vegas the Venetian is huge and exaggerated but somehow seems a little less tacky than many of the other places in the strip. Bouchon seems like an oasis of charm and elegance in comparison!
The generous and enthusiastic service we received from our waiter made the experience all the more special. We were brought some cocktails with nuts and some excellent French bread to drink while we mulled over the menu. The cocktails are themed on classic drinks from the 1920s through to now. Claire had the very powerful Bouchon classic,
and I had a nice gin and citrus
Bitters cocktail.

Sucker as I am, I was persuaded to have the special starter and main. My starter was a 'short rib gâteau', a layered slice with braised beef short ribs on the bottom, a layer of foie gras mousse in the middle and the top layer was a horseradish gelee. It came with a mini brioche loaf and a stone fruit relish.

I think it was the best thing I've eaten on the trip so far. Each element was soft, rich and luxurious. I could have eaten another one of these for main and another for dessert.
Claire chose a classic French pate de campagne which came with cornichon and radish. Her only complaint was that she wanted more radish!

My main was a huge veal steak, apparently the equivalent of a bone in New York Strip, slow cooked with wholegrain mustard spatzle, pickled bing cherries and glazed turnips. The steak was topped with a cep butter.

Not being a big fan of fruit with savoury dishes I was surprised at how well the cherries went with the mustard and the juicy pink veal steak. Another big thumbs up from me.
We were struggling a little for appetite by halfway through this meal, so the pile of fries that came with Claire's main of croque Madame wasn't easily dealt with, check this out.

To add to the heft of this plate of food, the croque Madame was made with two thick slices of buttery brioche and topped with cheesy mornay sauce. Claire admitted defeat but only left her crusts and some fries.

To go with our mains we had a bottle of syrah from Santa Barbera. A huge, fruitladen alcoholic beast of a wine, a little stronger than I had anticipated! It mellowed a little after opening a warming up a bit. We finished off this monster meal with a Bouchon signature dessert. Three 'bouchons' (corks) of chocolate brownie topped with, from left to right, coffee ice-cream, strawberry sorbet and peanut butter ice-cream.

Delicious!

A great start to crazy Las Vegas. I'm writing this in a minibus on the way to the grand canyon, have eaten a slightly less sophisticated sausage mcmuffin meal. It was damn good.

Babbo

2010-07-25T19:55:00.002+01:00

As we strolled down the streets of Manhattan on our last evening in New York we felt a slight sadness in having to leave this great city. We had grown very fond of wandering its varied and intriguing neighbourhoods, visiting its myriad of excellent galleries, museums and tourist attractions. I was even going to miss the crazy heat of the subway stations and the crazy people of the subway trains. Mostly I think I was going to leave with a feeling that we hadn't sampled everything that the big apple had to feed us.

We were walking to Babbo the flagship restaurant of the larger than life Italian American chef Marco Batali who was brought to my attention when I read the excellent book, Heat, by Bill Buford. The book records the author's experiences working in Babbo's kitchen but also his attempts to retrace Batali's steps by training to cook and butcher in rural Italy. It is a fascinating read and has meant that Babbo has been in my sights for a while.

As we opened the door and pushed aside the heavy curtain the warm and humid evening gave way to a cool but bustling and lively bar and dining room, decorated with Italian wine and paintings.
We waited a couple of minutes before our table became available and were then led upstairs to a second,slightly brighter room. We started in our typical way with a couple of G&Ts while we carefully picked our way through the very Italian menu. Antipasti, primi, secondi, pesci, carne and dolci all had sections on the menu. But we settled finally on our dishes and a fine bottle of Brunello de montalcino.

I started with a warm lambs tongue salad and Claire had a beetroot tartare with ricotta salata. My tongue was sliced thinly into delicious ribbons and dressed with a...
Claire's beets mimicked a steak tartare in look and with it's seasonings which were laid out carefully on the side of the plate for the diner to add to their taste. Anchovies, capers, gherkins and mustard were all lined up in cute piles.
Claire's main was chianti stained papperdelle with a rich wild boar ragu. I had a stuffed rolled beef flank.

Brooklyn brewery tour

2010-07-25T19:50:00.001+01:00

We some excitement and a little trepidation we caught the subway to Brooklyn to visit a very special brewery. Brooklyn brewery has been on my must visit list since I first tasted the fantastic Brooklyn Lager a couple of years ago in Byron burgers, London.

I was gobsmacked, an American lager with flavour. Actually more flavour than a lot of European lagers! How naive I had been. A little more research showed me that the American brewing is one of the most forward thinking and innovative in the world and that a lot of new breweries in the UK have taken inspiration from this.
Anyway back to Brooklyn brewery. It seems that every bar and restaurant has a Brooklyn beer on their list. Here is their summer ale in the Metropolitan museum of art.

Situated near the first subway stop into Brooklyn this relatively new brewing facility also houses a busy bar amongst the bottling line which rocks along to loud music, delivered pizza and the whole range of Brooklyn beers.

By the time our tour had finished it was one in, one out and the queue for the bar was out the door. This brewery guy showed us into their small brewing area.

It was a short but very informative tour. The history of the brewery is very interesting. One of the founders was a middle east news correspondent and started brewing beer illegally in his hotel bathroom because of the no alcohol laws. He soon realised that the stuff he was brewing in his bath was better than the standard beer brewed back at home. When he came back to New York he found business partner, a head brewer and a cool logo and the rest is history. I found it a very inspiring story.

We stuck around long enough after the tour to buy a special bottle of the Belgian style Local 2 and a cool logo t-shirt.

Needless to say the beer was fantastic, we drank it in Chicago so as to compare it with the Goose Island beers.

More to come soon from New York, Chicago and Vegas Baby!

Cheers for now,

Clark st ale house

2010-07-22T23:23:00.001+01:00

Clark street ale house gave us 3 tasty beers,

Goose island pere jacques was a Belgian style with notes of candy and root beer.

The blueberry wheatbeer exorcised our blueberry demons. It was mostly cakey wheat wirh a light blueberry fragrance.

Clarke street pale ale brewed by twobrothers was a revelation. A delicious pale ale with hoppy flavours of Rose, black tea and citrus. Outstanding.

Location:E Chestnut St,Chicago,United States

Goose Island Brewpub

2010-07-22T20:31:00.002+01:00

Lunch today is at the goose island brewpub.

Black burger: medium beef patty with goats cheese croquette, spinach and caramelised onions.

For me a jerk pork sandwich: pork with jerk mayo, plantain on ciabatta.

Award winning goose island IPA is outstanding.

An interesting, refreshingly light wheat beer, with peach notes. A farmers Market special

Sai-Shan-Tea: a saison brewed with lemon heritage tea (I think Mark Dredge would be interested in this one)

Chicago saison: chef collaboration series. Floral with hints of grapefruit and papaya. Brewed with local chef Nicole Pederson

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza at Pizzeria Due

2010-07-21T01:08:00.001+01:00

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, we have been so busy and the iPhone keyboard is tricky to type quickly. I want to take my time over writing up WD50, Per Se and Babbo so I will give you a quick post on Chicago Pizza.

We arrived in Chicago from New York on the tiniest passenger plane I have been on and headed for our hotel. The seneca hotel is great and our room has a kitchen I'm it, I'm not kidding.

Most importantly it has a full size fridge, something we missed in New York. So we can keep fillings for sandwiches and beer cool. Nice.

We decided on this holiday to make sure we try as many foods that we couldn't get anywhere else. This meant that last night we had to have Chicago Pizza for dinner. We found Pizzeria Due and went in to see if they had a table.

The system for table reservations in Due is great. On a busy night you order the pizza pie in advance and then wait for a table to become available. This is because the pie takes 45 minutes to bake. You can wait almost anywhere for your table, they call for you over a tannoy system with speakers outside, on the patio, at the bar and even in the 'restroom'. Claire and I waited at the bar where we had a beer each. I had a Sam Adams summer ale and Claire had a Sam Adams lager.

The beer on this trip is getting better and better. Both beers were excellent. We were called to our table and waited for our pizza with a hefty slice of garlic bread with cheese.

The tomato sauce that came to with the garlic bread was fresh and tasty, the bread was doughy, cheesy but not much garlic.

Next came the main event, the pizza. I should explain to those who don't know that a chicago pizza is not the same as an Italian or even New York pizza. It's cooked in a deep sided pan with a thick crispy base (and sides). It's layered thickly with mozzarella, then huge trunks of your meat of choice( we had sausage) and topped with a rich tomato sauce. This is what a quarter looks like in the pan.

And this is what the layers look like,

The other factor that makes it different to a thin crust pizza is the ability of this thing to fill you up. Claire and I shared a small which was about 10" and we were stuffed by the end. We would usually have a thincrust 12" pizza each at home!

We thoroughly enjoyed our first deep dish Chicago pizza, but we both decided it may be a while before we try one again. The thing is just so dense and heavy even if it's truly delicious.

We promise to get back on the fine dining tip ASAP but tonight we dine on steak. and I think I may go LARGE.

Jean Georges part 2

2010-07-17T22:44:00.002+01:00

Dessert time at Jean Georges. Ever since reading Johnny Iuzzini's book, Dessert Fourplay, I have longed to visit Jean Georges and this was the main reason it was on our list of must visit restaurants in New York. Each dessert he creates is 4 miniatures based on a theme. I chose 'Cherry' and Sam chose 'Garden'. Cherry included an amazing traditional cherry and almond clafoutis, a cherry stuffed with white chocolate ice-cream, again very tasty, a cherry cola which made me grin like a child (also delicious) and the only part I didn't enjoy which was stewed cherries with a chicory foam topping but mainly because I'm not a fan of chicory. Sam loved this one. I was thrilled with my dessert and it finished off our nearly perfect meal wonderfully.
Sam's garden dessert had a root beer float type drink which was a bit weird, a pea shoot sorbet based dessert and chocolate dessert with blackcurrant leather.
He had a glass of Riesling with this delightful spread.We were very surprised when our waiter brought us a special dessert of creme caramel with a pastry twist and this decorated biscuit on top.

Somehow they had found out that this is our honeymoon and brought us this as a special end to our meal.

Pictures will be added later to this section so we'll just leave you with this beauty.

Jean Georges part 1

2010-07-16T23:43:00.003+01:00

After the slightly disappointing experience at Le Bernadin the night before we really needed a spectacular meal to get us back on track. Jean Georges gave us that and more.

Jackets were again required but this time when we walked through their dining room to our table we could see and hear people relaxing jackets on and off. The table we were shown to was in an intimate booth overlooking the rest of the room. Instantly we felt it easy to relax and enjoy our meal. Our waiter led us through the dining options while we sipped on a glass of champagne, and we opted for the 4 course prix fixe menu so we could mix it up a bit. We started with an amuse bouche or camomile and ginger broth, served with a piece of chilli infused watermelon and a chunk of mozzarella with pickled raspberry. An intriguing and fun start to the meal. We wanted something local(ish) to drink so with the help of our waiter/sommellier picked a Californian Pinot Noir. this went very well with our starters. I had sea trout sashimi with trout roe and a lemon and horseradish sabayon. Wowsers this was good.

Fresh trout was delicious with the fresh and sharp sauce and I love trout and salmon roe, the little pink salty balls bursting under my bite. (note:should edit that last sentence). Claire had scallops with roasted cauliflower and a caper and raisin emulsion. Claire is a sucker for cauliflower and capers so this was a no-brainer for her.

She declared the cauliflower the best she's ever tasted and the flavour combination sublime.
Next up we went more fish. Claire had turbot (or turbo!! as they call it over here) with a sauce made from a french fortified wine, chateau chalon, and a lot of butter by the taste of it.

This was the first time we've had turbot and it won't be the last. It was a huge piece, slow cooked, and they sauce had a rich sherry like flavour.
I had the largest piece of halibut I have ever eaten served in a spiced broth.

This thick slab of fish flaked beautifully and the broth, which was more of a butter sauce, was infused with lemongrass and other spices. I nearly cried when I finished it.
So far so good for Jean Georges.
Next up were the entree (main) dishes of the meal. Claire had one of the courses which called out to us both from the tasting menu. A rack of lamb with minted pea purée and peas in their pods cooked in butter with toasted almonds. OMG this was good. I'm glad Claire ordered the lamb medium because if it had been any rarer it would have baaed and eaten the peas. But it was just right for Claire and I could have eaten a whole bowl of those peas and almonds just to myself.

For my main I decided to face an old enemy, game meat. Now don't get me wrong, I love game. I love rabbit, pheasant, pigeon, venison and guinea fowl. But I have never enjoyed it in a restaurant. St. John, Moro and Marcus Wareing have all let me down, so this was a true test. I had crunchy rabbit with a spicy jalapeño sauce. This was the best rabbit I have ever had (apart from my mother in law's Maltese rabbit stew of course). The large fillets were rolled and I presume poached with a chilli stuffing. The whole rabbit croquette was breadcrumbed and fried to crispy perfection. This was served with a chilli gravy and another quenelle of the chilli stuffing if I wanted to add more heat which of course I did. The true quality of Jean George was shown in this dish, they reversed my restaurant game fortunes! Hooray!

I will leave it there for now, Claire will write about desserts in the next post.

Disclaimer:the second half of this post was written under the influence if the following beer.

Location:New York

New York Public Library

2010-07-16T13:56:00.002+01:00

Needless to say, as a librarian, I had to drag Sam along to the New York Public Library which I always remember fondly from Ghostbusters. Imagine my overwhelming disappointment when we arrived to find the exterior covered in scaffolding.

We joined them for an hour long
tour of the building which was very spectacular and my British Library Colleagues will be astounded to hear that they still use paper request tickets and have a separate room for the OPAC.

The library is a beautiful building built from materials from all over the world: marble from Greece, floor tiles from Wales and a lot of American money.
They have some very rare collections including one of the first copies of the declaration of
Independence and Charles Dickens' desk and chair.
Alas Sam didn't find the librarian ghost. SSSHHHHHHH!!!!

Le Bernardin

2010-07-15T23:53:00.001+01:00

We went to the fish restaurant Le Bernardin last night. First impressions are that this place holds itself in quite high regard. In fact I feel a little underdressed and this is the first time
I've ever HAD to wear a jacket to dinner. (The second time will be tonight at Jean georges). Nowhere in London we've been to requires one. This was a muggy hot night and the jacket was uncomfortable, Claire suggested I take it off, so I did and hung it on the back of my chair. Quick as a flash a waiter ran over and told me I was required to put it back on! So I was helped back into my jacket. As you can imagine this made me even hotter!
After a little confusion over the wine list and tasting we chose the 7 course tasting menu and a bottle of Long Island Sauvignon Blanc. We started with a yellowfin tuna carpaccio, which was laid beautifully over a slice of crisp slice of baguette covered with foie gras and chives. This was delicious, not least because the crisp bread with chives and lemon dressing tasted to me of pickled onion monster munch! Second course was grilled octopus with a black bean sauce. I could leave it there. But I'll just tell you it was nice...very rich and Claire and I are wooses. I ate all mine like a man but the suckers made me feel a little queasy. I ate Claire's too! Next up was a warm lobster ceviche with endive (chicory to you Brits) again this was delicious the endive adding a crisp bitterness to the rich luxuriant sweetness of the lobster. Then it was a so so striped bass dish. Next was my favourite (and claire's least) surf and turf. It was white tuna with wagyu beef. The beef and tuna were both perfectly cooked but while I found the salty anchovy sauce a fine accompaniment to the beef Claire found the whole
dish over seasoned. Even I will admit by the end I was chugging down the water.
After this was a nonevent of raspberry and tomato pre desert before Pistachio Mousse, Roasted White Chocolate, Lemon, Cherry. This was a very special dessert which we
paired with some great dessert wines. A delicious end to quite a stuffy meal! We disappeared into the balmy night, jacket safely removed. I even managed to take this great photo outside the restaurant. You can just see the top of Claire's head!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:New York

Les Halles

2010-07-15T14:55:00.002+01:00

Anthony Bourdain first came to my attention when I was recommended his warts and all expose of his own cooking experiences, Kitchen Confidential. His following cookbook, Les Halles, made this restaurant a must visit for us. Bourdain hasn't cooked there for a while but the classic French brasserie fare is still the focus point of this rowdy restaurant. We turned up at the restaurant at 8pm after landing in New York at 6pm and waited at the bar with crowds of other customers for our table to become available. The turnaround is very fast and we didn't have to wait long. We weren't hugely hungry after our long day (and Gordon Ramsay for lunch) so we went straight for the main course with a couple of glasses of Brooklyn Pennant Ale 55. I had confit canard and Claire had hangar steak. Both were huge and delicious, my duck leg was soft with crispy skin. It was sat on a slice of toasted baguette to soak up all the precious fat and turning into a decadent treat with the garlicy dressing. Claire's steak was delicious american beef with a mountain of fries. this was our first experience of american service and it couldn't be faulted. Our water glasses were constantly refilled and it was cool to see traditional steak tartare being prepared from a
trolley by the waiting staff. I couldn't get any decent pictures on my phone but I'll try to upload some from our camera later. We were flagging by now so we skipped dessert and went back to our hotel.

A side note on the beer: it was a
good start to my American beer sampling, this has so far been a high point. It is a copper coloured ale, with a biscuity malt flavour and some good bitterness to finish. It was a million times better than this blueberry flavoured beer from the Bluepoint Brewery in Long Island. It had an aroma of vomit and blueberries, a flavour of cardboard with the malt and blueberries leaving an aftertaste as if we had been chewing on blueberry muffin packaging.

Bleurgh!

Gordon Ramsay Plane Food

2010-07-14T00:01:00.002+01:00

We turned up to heathrow's glamorous terminal 5 a little early and went straight through checkin and customs in no time at all. It was our first time flying from T5 and we were very impressed with the modernity and cleanliness of the building and facilities. We had a quick wander round then decided to go for lunch early. Plane Food has an unassuming entrance and a slightly cafe type feel to the layout. But an impressive bar and impeccable service make this a much more refined experience than the usual airport eateries. We were sat facing the vast glass wall of the terminal which gave us a view of the grey day we would be soon leaving behind. Very quickly we were offered cocktail of the day, a raspberry champagne mojito.

A very refreshing start to the meal. Short of time as we were we skipped starters and went straight for the mains. I had a 28 day aged rump steak cooked expertly to medium rare with giant onion rings, shallot butter and delicious roasted garlic. It was a lovely steak (I am looking forward to something a bit bigger and richer in Vegas!) The only down point to this dish was the lack of a steak knife. As it's housed in an airport plane food cannot provide a knife which is a. Sharp or b. over 6cm long. But both our dishes were so tender that we managed perfectly fine with what we were given.

Claire had the marinated lamb chops served with spicy wedges, mint raita and salad. These were tender as they come and deliciously spiced. I ate her wedges as I was craving chips
with my steak and I was disappointed that they weren't as
Crunchy as expected. Claire had a delicious side of buttered jersey royals.

We washed this all down with a carafe of Chapel Down Bacchus. An old favourite, crisp, floral and just what was needed on this muggy day.

Our desserts were a perfectly respectable chocolate and pecan brownie with vanilla ice-cream and the star of the meal Ramsay's famous pineapple carpaccio, which was served with banana and passionfruit sorbet and a pineapple crisp. Despite dubiousness regarding banana and passionfruit sorbet this combination hit the mark. We once said we wouldn't go to a Ramsay restaurant but I'm glad we changed our minds on this
occasion. Certainly the best meal we've had in an airport and it put the stodge on the BA flight to shame. Cheers Gordo.

As an aside the BA Plane food was not up to scratch (Claire's quite a fan of aeroplane food) but the wine was ok. The red Bordeaux was lacklustre but the Californian Chardonnay was surprisingly good.

And thanks to BA for their entertainment system crashing for an hour which allowed me to write this on the tiny, tiny keyboard in my iPhone.

Location:Heathrow Terminal Five

Supermarket Cider Review

2010-07-12T12:48:00.010+01:00

I've been saving this post for a while but seeing as we fly to New York very soon for our honeymoon food extravaganza I thought I should put it up now.

The weekend after our Spanish beer feast for the world cup beer sweepstake, Claire made the excellent suggestion that we should review some supermarket ciders the following weekend.
So we popped into our local supermarket during the week and ended up with six different ciders from a number of different brewers and suppliers. We sampled each of the ciders in turn and then sat down for dinner and finished some of the better ciders with the food. Ciders were scored out of 10.

So here they are from left to right on the following pictures with tasting notes:

1. Stoford Press 4.5%

This was our least favourite, light amber colour, a vomity aroma without any apple at all, the flavour was smooth and it was a pretty standard commercial cider. 6.5 points

2. Henney's Dry Cider 6.5%
A very nice drinkable cider with a dark amber colour, a delicious apple aroma, a fresh dry flavour. This is a cider I would happily drink on a summers day, a winters evening with or without food. 8 points

3. Waitrose Cox's apple vintage cider ?% (for some reason I didn't write the strength down)
This beat the Henney's by the slimmest of margins to be our joint favourite of the day. It pours a very pale, almost white colour. It has a very mild fresh appley aroma which doesn't prepare you for the incredibly fresh cox's apple taste. It is slightly sweeter than the Henney's but its refreshing acidity balances this perfectly. Perfect for a hot summer day. 8.5 points

4. Duchy's Original Organic Dry Reserve. 6%
This a strong contender. It has a pale amber colour and a dry apple aroma. It has a very apple fruit taste and could almost pass for a very dry apple juice. There is a slightly vegetal cardboardy aftertaste, but this didn't detract too much from the cider. 7.5 points

5. Aspall's Dry Premier Cru 7%
The Aspells has a golden straw colour and a strong smell of Strongbow. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as I find Strongbow has a distinctive appley acidity and can be a refreshing pint on a hot day. It a much higher carbonation than any of the other ciders which adds to it's champagne like branding. So we tasted and weren't disappointed, it has a very champagne-like effervescence on in the mouth and lovely light fruit taste which was balanced excellently with the acidity. The only reason it didn't score higher was because we preferred some of the other ciders. 7.5 points

6. Waitrose reserve cider 8.2%
This Hereford strong cider is a pale amber colour with a lovely sweet apple smell. It tastes fantastic, everything you could want from a strong cider. A great fruit flavour balanced with mellow acidity. The high alcohol content doesn't show in the same way as a classic scrumpy style can and this makes it a appealing flavour a dangerous thing if you are looking for a thirst quencher! 8.5 points

We finished off some of the ciders with a plate of charcuterie, followed by some pork kebabs with a potato and radish salad with a lemon and caper dressing. The drier ciders went very well with the charcuterie and I think it's a match I will use again. I have to admit that after finishing off the strong ciders I forgot to take any pictures of the food. Which I will try to make up for with our upcoming meals in the US.

Stay tuned for our American adventure!

World Cup Beer Sweepstake-Spain

2010-06-22T16:09:00.021+01:00

A couple of weeks ago just before the World Cup started I put my name in for the World Cup Beer Sweepstake. I figured that as well as being fun it would be a good start to my more determined blogging efforts. So here is the blog post that is required by the competition for a legitimate entry into the sweepstake.

I was pretty lucky to draw Spain. Lucky on a number of fronts.
Firstly from a football point of view. Spain are favourites to win the world cup and so I am favourite to win the beer haul, nice. Secondly from a personal point of view: I love Spain, I love its food, its weather, its wine and the people. Thirdly the most popular Spanish beer in the UK is very easy to get hold of. So this third point is not very inspiring for a world cup beer extravaganza but I knew that if I failed to find any interesting beers that I could fall back on San Miguel.

So I did a little research into Spanish micro-brewerys and to be honest realised I would be hitting a brick wall pretty fast unless I flew to Spain. So instead I got the train to Brighton and visited Trafalgar wines, a little beer and wine shop near the station. Here I found my first Spanish beer of the tournament, Alhambra Mezquita. It is from a large brewery but at 7.2% this is no standard Eurolager. But I wanted more, so on the morning of the Spanish feast I was planning I caught another train to London bridge and visited Utobeer where I found a couple more Elhambra beers, the (not very special) Especial and the very smart looking looking Reserva 1925.

I also picked up a San Miguel for good measure. Here is a picture of my handsome amigos.Lovely looking bunch aren't they.
While in Borough Market I picked up a few bits from Brindisa, the Spanish food shop, for the evening's meal. I also bought a couple of bottles of Spanish wine and some lovely single hopped pale ales from The Kernel Brewery. (Seriously, if you get the chance pop along to kernel near Tower bridge and pick up some bottles, it's very good)

Later that evening, I had my four beers to try and I had cooked up some spanish treats. Apologies for the poorly lit, grainy and frankly terrible Iphone picture of the spread but below you should be able to make out, clockwise from bottom, pimentos de padron, albondigas, chorizo with grilled peppers and salad and aubergine with pinenuts.
We opened the bottle of San Miguel first. Prevalent as this lager is in the bars and chain pubs of London this held no surprises. It tastes like what it is, a passable standard premium lager that this tastes a lot better when sitting in a park in Barcelona.

So moving quickly on we then opened the Alhambra Reserve 1925. The aroma has hints of light malts and caramel. This weighs in at 6.4% ABV but seemed to wear this strength well and actually came across quite lightweight. The flavour is typical lager with some nice caramel notes. But to be honest I was quite unimpressed and we ended up finishing it up quickly so we could move on to the next beer.

The Alhambra Mezquita was a huge improvement. It pours a lovely amber colour with a small white head. (I apologise for not taking any photos of the poured beers, I'll have to remember to stick to the blogging rules in future: Number 1. take as many photos as possible). The aroma was heavy with caramel, dried fruits and sherry. The sherry may have come from the high alcohol content but was far from unpleasant. The flavour was much like the aroma, heavy on the caramel and dried fruits. By the end of the small glass the sweetness became cloying and left an aftertaste that was not very pleasant.
After this beer we decided to skip the Alhambra Especial and opened a bottle of wine. It was an Angosto white from Oddbins, as this is a beer post I won't give any tasting notes but I will say it went very well with the remaining tapas and is an excellent and interesting wine.

After the main course we had a slice of almond tart from Brindisa called Torta de Santiago. It was light, crumbly and decadently rich. I'm going to find a recipe for this and make it because it is awesome.

This is what it looked likeI did eventually drink the Alhambra Especial and to be very honest it had no positive aspects at all, it was shite. A bit like England's performance in this world cup. Ah well, at least we are beating the Aussies in the cricket.

Very brief thoughts on food blogging and this blog.

2010-06-16T10:37:00.004+01:00

I have been meaning to start this food blog for proper for a while now, but I think I've been facing the same dilemma that a lot of people have when starting out on this path. The problem is there are a LOT of food blogs and a lot of them are pretty good. Why would anyone want to read mine and what the hell would I write about anyway?

I've been tempted to do a cookbook cook-through blog, but this is a lot of commitment and there are other people who do an excellent job which I probably wouldn't live up to. I also have an excessive number of cookbooks and picking one would be tricky.

I would also like to do a beer and wine blog but again I think I would be put to shame by my lack of subject knowledge compared to some other established blogs.

But recently two events have created the kickstart to get going on my quest to have a well maintained blog.

Firstly and most importantly I'm getting married to my wonderful fiancee (hi Claire) and I am sure this will be the most wonderful day of my life. But it will also mean I am going on what I hope will be the most wonderful holiday of my life. We are going for a three week tour of the USA stopping in at New York, Chicago, Las Vegas and San Francisco and sampling all the best food that these cities have to offer. I will be recording these meals and other food experiences here for my famliy and friends to read about and maybe some other people may start reading and like what they see.

There will be many treats on our journey including some of the best restaurants in the world, some of the best fast food these cities have to offer, some world renowned breweries and a baseball game!

The second event that will push me into the blogosphere is the World Cup, more specifically the World Cup Beer Sweep organised by Mark of Pencil and Spoon and Andy of Beer Reviews. The premise of this competition is to find a beer from your assigned World cup playing country and blog about it. If your team wins you win an excellent beer prize.
I very luckily drew Spain, so having found a beer in Brighton last weekend I will be cooking up a Spanish extraganza this weekend and blogging about it. I just hope the beer is nice! Follow everyone's efforts on twitter at #wcbeersweep.

I think I'll wrap it up now, all this typing has left me exhausted.

2010-04-24T19:27:00.005+01:00

I'm currently enjoying a lovely bottle of Bath Ales Gem (in my new Brewdog pint glass) whilst writing an assignment for my masters course.
It's a lovely amber/brown bitter in the traditional british style, complex but well balanced. I might buy some more of these.

Spotted on my way to work

2010-03-20T14:55:00.002Z

Two empty casks of lovely Sharps Doombar waiting to be picked up outside The Bull in London Westfield.

Very brief, just about to leave work.

2009-11-20T16:13:00.003Z

So after thinking long and hard about what kind of food blog I want to write, I have a couple of events I am going to write about.

First up tomorrow I'm going to go to the rake bar in Boruough market to taste some Brewdog Beers.

And a week monday I am going to see Herve This speak, twice!

I will write more on my thoughts about the blog (and food blogging in general) very soon.

I promise