JINGLE SOME OF THE WAY

 I was once at a wedding where some unpleasantness broke out over the crumpets.  The host presented guests with a platter of crumpets that had been pre-buttered and spread with jam.  More than one wedding guest expressed the opinion that a crumpet was a savoury thing and that spreading it with anything sweet was an abomination.  I tend to agree, though I wouldn’t get unpleasant about it.

 

It would probably have been worse on Christmas morning to be served Jingle the Reindeer Crumpets, the pack of which tells the consumer to “top with jam for a fantastic festive breakfast.” Yeah, right.

 

These crumpets are are shaped like reindeer faces though I think you wouldn’t necessarily know it just from looking, but in any case spreading jam on them wouldn’t have helped.  

 

I slapped a poached egg on top. It was fine, if some way from being fantastic or festive.

 

I was born and brought up in Sheffield where crumpets are generally known as pikelets: some sources say pikelets are thinner but I never noticed that.  This is the kind of pikelet shop they used to have in Sheffield:

 

 

My dad, who was a very ordinary man in many ways and very odd in certain others, once had the idea of becoming a mobile pikelet seller.  It was never very clear if he was intending to have a van or whether it would be some kind of hand cart and he’d walk the streets, going from door to door selling his ware.  This kind of thing (although in fact it’s a hot potato seller from Sunderland):

Fortunately my dad didn’t pursue the idea but he did have a slogan “Get ‘em while they’re hot!”  I don’t think that’s the worst.

THE CROQUETTE AND I

 Sometimes during school holidays when I was a lad growing up in Sheffield, my mum would take me out for lunch at the Sidewalk Café in Chapel Walk.  I remember it being a nice enough place but photographs from its early days make it look way cooler and hipper than I could ever imagine, let alone remember.

 

I remember two things about the food. One, that on the counter there were huge bowls of sliced onion in vinegar, which you could scoop out and have with your cheese roll, which is what I usually had: you could take as much as you wanted. Also, and I don’t suppose this went with the cheese rolls, they served potato croquettes which I’d never come across before and which I loved and which seemed the height of sophistication and exoticism.

 

Well, the years go by and I’d have said that these days it’s pretty rare to find croquettes on a menu, and yet in the last few weeks I’ve had two different kinds in two different places.

 

The first were at the Cabbage Patch, a pub in Twickenham – they were leek and black pudding which I think is hard to beat - that's apple sauce in the little pot:

The second lot were at a pub called the Goose, in Walthamstow, and went by the name of Spanish Ham Croquettes with ‘smoky baconnaise’ – which I  suppose is mayo with bacon in it, though I couldn’t taste any bacon and in fact it seemed more like Marie Rose sauce.

 

The Cabbage Patch has a terrific pub sign outside, like this:

 

The current sign outside the Goose is quite muted, with just with the pub name on it, no illustration, though it does have this strangely appealing sign for its not very secret garden – it’s the chain that makes it special.

 

However the signage hardly compares with the old days when the Goose was The Tower, complete with folly tower and a giant concrete head.  I do wonder what happened to the head:

 

And here from the interwebs is what claims to be the world’s biggest croquette, made in Assabu, in Hokkaido, on July 23, using 600 kilograms of potatoes, 50 kg of ground meat, 200 eggs, and weighing 279 kg.

 

It doesn’t look in the least like my idea of a croquette but probably it’s a cultural thing and in any case it’s in the Guinness Book or Records so I suppose that’s good enough.

FAR FROM WASTED

 

The first time I had a margarita I thought somebody was having a laugh, either that or they were trying to poison me.  It was in a bar in New York, and I was with people I didn’t know very well, and I couldn’t believe that any sane person would put salt around the rim of their glass.  

 

Well the years go by, our taste buds change, and these days I think the salt is the best reason for drinking a margarita.  I mean I like the tequila, I like the lime juice; I could totally live without the sweet sticky Cointreau or Triple Sec, but I absolutely couldn’t live without the salt.

 

Psycho-pic by Caroline Gannon

So finding oneself in Macayo’s in Scottsdale, Arizona, and attempting to go very slightly native, what could be better than a coupla margaritas and a giant bowl of nachos?  Very little. Macayo’s looks like this.

 

And then a couple of weeks later, in the bar of the Leopold Hotel in Sheffield, England a margarita was again to be had. It looked like this:

smaller and perhaps a little more intense than it’s American cousin and far more expensive ounce for ounce, but still very definitely with the salt.

 

The Leopold Hotel looks like this:

GOOD MORNING

If you find yourself in Broomhill, in Sheffield, you may well catch sight of the Nam Song Ca Phe, a Vietnamese joint that serves meals all day.  So obviously you might go in there for breakfast.  And as you sit down at the table and  look at the menu you’ll probably be tempted by this offering:

 

BÁNH MÌ OP LA FRYUP £11.95 

SWEET CHILLI SAUSAGE, BACON, BEEF, TWICE FRIED TOFU, SRIRACHA FRIED EGGS, SAUTEED SPRING ONIONS, DAIRYLEA CHEESE TRIANGLE, TOAST & PATE 

 

And you might think, as did I at first, that this item was a product of well-meaning immigrants who hadn’t quite got the grasp of the full English breakfast. Well you, and I, would be wrong.

 

Photo: Caroline Gannon

As soon as we entered it was conspicuous that there was nobody working there who looked at all Vietnamese, neither front of house nor in the kitchen, which you could see into from the dining room.

 

The explanation, perhaps even a mission statement, can be found on the website.

 

ON OUR GAP YEAR WE WERE LUCKY ENOUGH TO 

EXPERIENCE THE INCREDIBLE COUNTRY OF VIETNAM. 

THE PLACES, THE PEOPLE, THE ATMOSPHERE,

THE FOOD AND THE COFFEE. SIMPLY UNREAL.

 

ALL WE WANTED TO DO WAS TO BE ABLE TO RELIVE THIS EVERY DAY SO WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE UK WE CREATED NǍM SÔNG!

​

NǍM SÔNG (MEANING FIVE RIVERS IN VIETNAMESE, AN ODE TO OUR FOUNDING CITY OF SHEFFIELD WHICH IS BUILT ON SEVEN HILLS & FIVE RIVERS) IS AND ALL-DAY-ALL-NIGHT COFFEE SHOP, RESTAURANT AND BAR SERVING UP OUR FAVOURITE VIETNAMESE FOOD, DRINKS AND OF COURSE THE LEGENDARY PHIN FILTER COFFEE.

 

There’s more but that’s enough for anyone.  The ‘legendary phin filter coffee’ can be seen at the top of this post.

 

The breakfast duly arrived looking like this:

And no, I wasn't quite as troubled as I look in the photograph below.

Photo: Caroline Gannon

Everything tasted pretty good but you did have to wonder if it all belonged on the same plate.  I could certainly have done without the pate, and probably without the Dairylea triangle but I’m not complaining. The eggs were decent and the beef was terrific.

 

There was too much food, of course, but that was probably the whole point.  We honestly didn’t need to eat again for another 7 hours. And didn’t.

 

Now, I have never been to Vietnam, though I have been to a reasonable number of Vietnamese restaurants both in the UK and in the States.  Would you find anything like this in a restaurantion Vietnam?  Well I suppose so, otherwise why would the Brromhill folk have tried to replicate it?  But I can’t find evidence for this.

 

On the other hand a little light research (I mean I didn’t get much further than Wikipedia) tells us that ‘In the Nguyễn dynasty, (which lasted from 1802 to 1945) the 50 best chefs from all over the kingdom were selected for the Thượng Thiện board to serve the king. There were three meals per day—12 dishes at breakfast and 66 dishes for lunch and dinner (including 50 main dishes and 16 sweets)’

 

So who’s to say that somewhere among the 78 dishes there wasn’t an English fry up. It’s what they call fusion.

SATANIC NOT STIRRED

I know some people have adopted the slogan “eat don’t tweet” and I think they have a point, so I’ve been trying to think of a similar slogan for booze –“imbibe, don’t inscribe” – not nearly as good, I know.  In any case I’m not sure my heart is really in this slogan, and I’m not sure it has to be either/or.

The fact is I really enjoy seeing pictures of what other people are drinking, especially if it’s in some fancy watering hole. My pal Steve from Sheffield, for instance, has just returned from Lake Como, where he drank in the Grand Hotel Cadenabbia, and he had the James Bond Martini.  It’s the one in front below:

He tells me it contains gin, vodka and Lillet, so it’s actually a version of the Vesper from “Casino Royale,” although that one contained a slice of lemon rather than olives, and lemon is a non-starter in a martini if you ask me.  He tells me it was clean and cold – which is always necessary, if not always sufficient.  (Martini-bore, moi?)

    The drink in the rear belongs to Steve’s wife Julia, and is a White Lady, though without the egg white of legend.

Meanwhile my pal Lynell George posts this cocktail served at Elysian, a fancy place down by the Los Angeles River. 

It is, she tells me, a “Lychee-Gee”:  vodka with lychee and an edible hibiscus.  Gosh.  However confident you are in your masculinity, I can’t help thinking most men consider this a “lady’s drink” – which is of course fine, if you’re a lady, as Lynell is.

Meanwhile, again, my pal Anne Billson (yes, I have at least 3 pals) who’s based in Belgium, and photographs and writes about many things, not least movies and Belgian life, is conducting some extensive beer research, and the results appear on her Facebook page as well as on the website http.lempiredeslumieres.com.

Of course it’s no surprise that the Belgians know all about beer, but even so, her photograph of Satan Gold left me prostrate with envy.  Online research says it’s “not available in my area.”

Still, I’ve been doing my best to fly the flag here in East Hollywood.  I was in my local BevMo, a name that makes it sound like it ought to be super-cheap and cheerful and vaguely disreputable, but is in fact a rather sophisticated place, and I swooped on a bottle of Trooper.

This is a beer brewed by Robinson’s, and inspired or possible even “curated” by Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden, and named after the Iron Maiden Song “Trooper,” about the Charge of the Light Brigade.  I went to the same school in Sheffield as Bruce Dicksinson, though not at quite the same time.

My pal Steve tells me there are 280 different beers on sale in Sheffield.  And I’m sure he’s right.  When I was in Sheffield this summer I went to the market, where there’s a place called Beer Central, and I bought a bottle of Yorkshire Square Ale.   I did like that black square on the label:

But now I’m thinking I should have bought the Green Devil. 

 They don't go much for ladies' drinks in Sheffield.

STEEL CITY STOMACHS

If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning you’ll know that the title doesn’t only refer to the psychosis of eating, but is also a pun on “psychogeography,” defined by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."  That’s him above, on the right with the specs.

So I’ve been trying to do something similar with food, examining the ways food effects “the emotions and behavior of individuals,” though I don’t believe there are “laws” in this area, precise or otherwise.  Sure, we are what we eat, but what we eat is largely determined by what the culture makes available to us, the way the environment, natural or otherwise, tells us what we should and shouldn’t eat.  So having been in England for a couple of weeks, I shall make a stab at describing some of the “special effects” I experienced while eating there. 

My first stop was in Sheffield, my old home town.  Fresh off the train I headed for the Showroom Café in search of a cup of coffee and a sandwich.  But seeing that they were offering something called a Henderson’s hotdog (and especially given my recent adventures with Detroit Dogs and L.A. Street Dogs, op cit) how could I resist?

The Henderson’s, of course, referred to Henderson’s Relish (even more op cit), Sheffield’s own vegetarian alternative to Worcestershire sauce.  I wasn't quite sure what was coming, but even so I got a lot more than I expected.  I didn’t even know it came with chips, for instance nor that it came in a huge baguette.   And although it wasn’t a huge surprise that it came with fried onions, I hadn’t expected them to be so coated, drenched, perhaps marinated, in Henderson’s Relish.

 You could argue that the sausage (and I think it was a genuine sausage rather than a true hotdog, though I’m certainly not complaining about that) got a bit lost amid all the bread, onions and Henderson’s, but as an instant introduction to the joys of Sheffield cuisine, it was hard to beat.

A couple of days later, in search of Sunday lunch, we went to Carbrook Hall (that's it above), on Attercliffe Common, a formerly very rough part of town where the Nicholsons  are supposed to have originally come from.  Carbrook Hall is a formerly grand private house with a huge amount of history.  It was  built in the 12^th century, rebuilt in the 15^th, used as a meeting place by Roundheads, then more or less demolished in the 19^th  century, and what remains is a 17^th century wing from 1620.   The current Pevsner Architectural Guide to Sheffield describes the exterior as “unpromising” which is hard to argue with.  But most importantly, the place is now a pub, allegedly the most haunted pub in Sheffield.

Again we’d have been happy with a sandwich, but it was a Sunday and the options were full Sunday roast lunch or no lunch at all.  So we had roast beef and all the trimmings it looked like this.

It was a very serviceable pub lunch.  There’s a big roast potato lurking behind the Yorkshire pudding, which was the best thing on the plate.  We ate in the oak room, a wonderfully paneled space, full of ornate carvings, and a molded ceiling that would overwhelm most other rooms.  

Above the fireplace we observed a carved panel showing a man, possibly a priest, standing on the body, or perhaps corpse, of a supine woman.  Her skeleton is showing, although her womb seems to be intact, and she’s apparently pregnant, and she also has a devil’s tail.  It seemed an odd bit of decoration to accompany your Sunday lunch and no less odd as decoration for a private 17th century home, but perhaps there’s a potent religious message there.

Not far from Carbrook Hall, a pub called the Noose and Gibbet was delivering a different though no less disturbing message.  The pub commemorates the execution of Spence Broughton, in 1792, for robbing the Sheffield and Rotherham mail.  The execution actually took place in Tyburn but his corpse was brought back to Sheffield and displayed in a gibbet for the next 36 years, at a spot not far from the current Noose and Gibbet.  It was quite a tourist attraction, apparently.

In the absence of a real corpse the pub has put a waxwork figure up in the gibbet, at the top of a pole, like an inn sign, and from the road it certainly looks as realistic as you would want it to be.  You might think that the sight of a hanged man or a pregnant corpse might be enough to put you off your food, but no, this is Sheffield, where people have strong stomachs, and they make extremely good use of them.

EAT WITH THE GUITAR MAN

Have you been keeping your eye on the revival of Duane Eddy’s career?  I have, largely because he owes it all to Sheffield, and specifically to Richard Hawley, singer/songwriter, guitarist, former sideman in Pulp, and connoisseur of all things Sheffield, especially Henderson’s Relish.  More of that later.

The story goes that Hawley (above), a great fan of retro guitar twang decided it was time for Eddy to come out of retirement, got him to Sheffield, made an album with him, had him play at the Glastonbury Festival, and so on, and along the way turned Eddy into a fan of Sheffield and the Peak District.

I can’t find much foodie reference in the Eddie oeuvre.  There are tracks titled “Giddy Goose,” and “Soda Fountain Girl” one titled “Shuckin” which I guess is a reference to oysters, and there’s one called “Tiger Love and Turnip Greens” but I’m not sure what that’s about.  Still, what’s in a title, especially when you’re a non-singing, guitar instrumentalist?

However, now that Eddy’s been to Sheffield it appears he’s found his inner foodie, and he’s a locavore too.  Here he is interviewed on the Quietus website:

“There's a pub called the Strines Inn, up on the moors above a reservoir with peacocks running about the place. We had a great meal there and they had a huge Yorkshire pudding, so I ordered that with the home-made chilli in it, like it was a big bowl. The chilli was amazing, as good as any I've had in Texas or anywhere else.”

       The Strines Inn: I know it well.  Everybody who’s ever lived in Sheffield knows it, though I don't remember any peacocks.

“We also went to Bakewell,” Eddy continues, “because we'd had a Bakewell tart, with custard. That was just heaven, one of the most delicious things I have ever had in my whole mouth, that's an old corny joke, but I'm not joking about the deliciousness.”

I love his enthusiasm, but having grown up eating my mother’s Bakewell tarts, I really don’t see what’s so great about them.  Maybe a tart is always without honor in its own county, although we were in Yorkshire and Bakewell's in Derbyshire, but nah, I'm trying too hard.

Now, I’m not sure how much of a foodie Richard Hawley is either, but he seems to like food.  The cover of his early album Late Night Final had a picture of him in a café in the Sheffield Castle Market, mentioned before in this blog.

He did an interview about food last year with The Financial Times (of all people) and revealed that Pomegranates remind him of childhood, that he doesn’t like pineapple, and that he finds Guinness irresistible.  But above all he’s a fan of Henderson’s Relish

I stand to be corrected, but I think Henderson’s relish is Sheffield’s only indigenous food invention.  I grew up splashing it on stew, meat pies and mushie peas, much like everyone else in Sheffield.  It’s a kind of Worcestershire sauce, but it doesn’t contain anchovies so it can claim to be vegetarian.  It's interesting that we used so much of this stuff in my family, because it contains all sorts of ingredients that my mother otherwise wouldn’t have had in the house: garlic, turmeric, tamarind.  Tamarind, for Pete’s sake.

Hawley played a gig at the Henderson’s factory to promote that first album and there’s been back a “limited edition” Hawley Henderson’s Relish, though I think it was just the label that was limited.  The stuff inside was classic Henderson’s.

And now I discover two things, first that there are  Henderson's flavor crisps available in the UK, and secondly, as I look around my kitchen I see that my own supply of Henderson’s is getting low (see below).  Maybe it’s time to visit Sheffield.  Maybe I’ll run into Duane Eddy.