SETTLE DOWN DEER

 I was prepared to be a little disappointed by St John, Marylebone, not because I thought it would be bad but because the inamorata and I love the other two branches – Smithfield, and Bread and Wine - so much.  

This and the vast majority of the other pics by Caroline Gannon

Also the menu didn’t include bone marrow, which is the single thing I like best about the other St Johns.  But we had an American friend over from California and he said he wanted to go to St John, any St John, and since you apparently have to book months in advance for the other two, off we went to Marylebone.

 

Well, I was a fool even to have contemplated disappointment.  Admittedly the appearance of the martini (above) didn’t reassure completely.  How on earth do you make a martini look as cloudy as that? Though it tasted absolutely fine.

 

But then the food arrived and it was as good as anybody could wish.  The so-called Rarebit was a revelation.  I expected it to look this this:

but in fact it was a Deep Fried Rarebit, so it looked like this:

which if I hadn’t known better I might have thought was a rissole or even a croquette.

 

There were Crispy Sweetbreads with Aioli which were top notch:

But star of the show was the Roe Deer with Celeriac.  I’m not sure exactly what they did with the venison, slow-cooked it in a fine broth I expect, but the result was fantastic.

     Now, I’m not sure I could tell a plate of roe deer from any other kind of deer but some apparently can.  I remember a terrific piece by AA Gill in which a waiter tells him the special is venison. 

“What kind of venison?”  

“It’s the fillet sir.”

“No, where does it come from?”

“From our specialist supplier.”

And so on for some time, until in the end, having eaten the meal, Gill concludes, “Anyway, the deer was roe and it was a buck … I could tell.  It had that odd tang buck gets when it’s rutting.  It’s some sort of secretion.”   No competing with that.

 

And to round it off there was an Eccles Cake with Lancashire Cheese, for the inamorata and I:

and our American friend had a Bread And Butter Pudding, seen here in a mise en abyme:

INSOUCIANCE WITH EVERYTHING

 In London again, and first of all, lunch at the Seven Stars pub, in Carey Street out by the Inns of Court. There’s some evidence that this is London’s oldest pub.  The place is run by the somewhat legendary Roxy Beaujolais. This is how she looks on the pub’s website.

 

I had the cheese and onion pie which in ordinary circumstances would have been way too sweet for my tastes but the dressing on that salad was so wonderfully tart and sour, it was just great.

 

The external window displays are another attraction, seen below in my own poor photographs. The first one is a replica of Marcel Marien’s ‘L’Introuvable,’ a one lensed spectacle, or I suppose monocle.

and the other is simply labeled Cabinet of Jurisprudence.  Yep, something’s dead in there:

 

Who doesn’t like a Surrealist display and a bit of ironic taxidermy with their lunch?  Better pictures are no doubt available, or you could just go there and see for yourself.

 

Then the next day St John, so reliable, without being predictable.  Among other things we went with the oak leaf and snails, yes there are snails in there:

Photo by Caroline Gannon.

 

 and then sweetbreads with mint.

 

Photo by Caroline Gannon.

Ya know, sweetbreads were one of the first things I ever cooked for myself when I was becoming a foodie.  I used to work round the corner from Selfridges and there they were on display, so I bought and cooked them – somehow it seemed less daunting than cooking, say, a steak.  

 

Our St John waiter was perfectly good if a little more insouciant and lugubrious than you normally get there. I saw on the drinks menu something called Gin and French and I asked, ‘Is that like a dry martini?’ and our man said, ‘Well, it’s more like a wet martini,’ which didn’t explain anything.

 

Photo by Caroline Gannon.

We ordered two.  They were fine, but I wasn’t sure what I’d actually drunk till I got home and looked it up in The Book of St John p 265 – it’s equal parts gin and vermouth, and obviously served on the rocks. It wasn’t as good as a real St John martini but it was about half the price, so that was something, if not everything.

 

 

 

 

FAT IS FLAVA

 I know it’s only January but I think I’ve just bought the food book bargain of the year.  It’s The Book of St. John by Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver.  Mine for a mere £2.50 in the local charity shop.  It looks unread, possibly unopened.

 

It’s full of excellent photography by Jason Lowe who doesn’t get his name on the cover, and he is responsible for what I think is one of the sexiest food photographs I’ve ever seen.  

 

(These things are subjective, obviously)

FREE IMPROV SANDWICH

 St John Restaurant put up this image on Instagram:

 

The caption was, ‘”Creating a sandwich is like jazz,” says Fergus (Henderson). “You must find your unique sounds.”  Fergus always orders the Egg Mayonnaise sandwich from the chalkboard bar menu, and requests the addition of brown shrimp or anchovy.  The perks of being the boss.’

 

I’m not sure that creating a sandwich is really very much like jazz but I would never argue with Fergus Henderson.

 

 

And then Fuchsia Dunlop put up this image on Instagram: 

 

with the caption, ‘Scotch woodcock (a scrambled egg and anchovy dish, no bird involved) and crab on toast …” A Scotch woodcock is a version of the Welsh rarebit – the anchovies can be on top of the egg (as in the pic) or below the egg as in Gentleman’s Relish.  

Both would be OK by me.

 

I decided the kitchen gods wanted me to make an egg mayonnaise sandwich with anchovies.

 

The truth is I never willingly make an egg mayonnaise sandwich without anchovies so I boiled my eggs readied my mayo and anchovies and in due course began assemblage.  

But the fact also is that I never willingly make an egg mayonnaise sandwich without smoked paprika - and I suddenly realized I’d run out.  I’m not prepared to drive to the supermarket just for a jar of smoked paprika, so I improvised.

 Here is my egg mayonnaise sandwich with anchovies and ... turmeric. 

 

It tasted pretty good. To be honest I think that was because of the egg and the mayonnaise and the anchovies rather than the turmeric.  Does turmeric really have much taste at all? I don’t think so, but I stand to be corrected.  But it looked reasonably jazzy.

Do you want to see a picture of a young Rachel Riley (of Countdown fame) dressed as an egg salad sandwich?  Well, of course you do.

 

 

ART MEAT

  

Do you eat less meat than you used to? 

I do, or at least I think I do.  

In fact I thought everybody was eating less meat, but apparently not.

 

According to a Times review by Christina Patterson’s of Rob Percival’s The Meat Paradox, the ‘average’ person in the UK ate 78.6 kgs of meat in 2013, but by 2017 it was 84.9 kg.  And apparently we’ve all been eating more meat during Covid.

Given that increasing numbers of people are supposedly vegan or vegetarian I wonder if this means that the people who do eat meat are eating more to compensate.  Or are people simply exaggerating the extent of their veganism and vegetarianism?

 

Incidentally Rob Percival is head of food policy at the Soil Association which not everybody thinks is the most wonderful institution; see Jonathan Meades passim - “It is difficult for instance to imagine that such titans of contemporary thought as Prince Charles and Mr Sting will be dissuaded of their support for the Soil Association because its founder, Jorion Jenks, was a member of the English Mistery and British Union of Fascists …”

 

Meat was on my mind as I went to the Damien Hirst exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Britannia Street, London.  There on view were various meaty (and occasionally fishy) exhibits of cows, sheep, a pig, sausages, and of course a shark, some of which I’d seen before. 

But I hadn’t previously seen a sort of replica butcher’s shop with the phrase ‘Shut Up & Eat Your Fucking Dinner’ painted in cursive script its front wall.  This is from 1997.

 

And in this faux butcher’s shop window were what looked like faux pieces of meat that might have been made out of plaster or even wax, though since the press release insists these are ‘formaldehyde sculptures’ I guess it’s actual preserved meat.

 

I’m never sure to what extent Hirst is trying to freak out the straights and the squeamish with his dead critters.  My own feeling is that if you’re prepared to eat meat you should be prepared to look at it in the butcher’s window or even the abattoir.  Of course if you’re not prepared to eat meat you might think using dead animals in art is bad and wrong.

 

The visit to the Gagosian was in anticipation of dinner at Fergus Henderson’s St John restaurant the home of nose to tail eating, which certainly used to a be place where you might spot the occasional Young British Artist.

 

I always say that St John is my favorite restaurant in the whole world and sometimes, when I haven’t been there for a while, I fear that I’m over-rating the place.  And then I go there and all is well and I realize I was right all along.  It’s good to feel right.

 

Pic from the St John website

The room isn’t the loveliest in the world and yet the ambience is terrific – and not a bad place for people watching. I’ve always found the service excellent though some Tripadvisor reviewers would beg to differ.

 

But of course it’s the food that counts – it was impossible to resist the old classic of marrow bones with parsley and caper salad, 

Photo: Caroline Gannon

And this was the special.  When you see deep fried tripe on a menu you have to order it.  It was fabulous and meaty and chewy.  Damien would have loved it, I imagine.

Photo: Caroline Gannon

There were other delights too – sliced lamb with lentils, and roast Middle White.  And sure it’s a menu to scare off the vegan: pigeon, potted pork, devilled kidneys - but fish eaters are well looked after.

 

I also – and why oh why hadn’t I done this before – I ordered one of their martinis.  It was exactly as a martini should be, only more so.

Photo: Caroline Gannon

 

DECONSTRUCTING FERGUS

I always say that my favourite London restaurant is Fergus Henderson’s St John, and while this is completely true, it’s depressing how rarely I go there.  Of course nobody goes anywhere at the moment so I’ve been consoling myself by following St John’s Instagram page and was especially taken with this image of what I take to be ‘deconstructed’ egg mayonnaise.

It’s an image that confirms many of my prejudices; the main one being that you really do need an anchovy or two to make egg mayonnaise go with a swing.  I generally make it with a as sandwich but I suppose Fergus would thinking than serving up a sandwich at St John would seem a bit crude.

Here’s one I made earlier, some years earlier, 

and here’s one I made just today:

FEASTING WITH FERGUS

A few happy hours were spent over the Christmas holidays leafing through this book Inside Chefs' Fridges, Europe: Top chefs open their home refrigerators, photographs by Carrie Solomon, words by Adrian Moore.

One of the small problems with it is that I’d only heard of two of the chefs included, though I know I lead a sheltered life.  And one of them was Marco Pierre White who doesn’t keep anything at all in his fridge.  The other was the mighty Fergus Henderson, of St John restaurant in London - more or him later.  

It’s fascinating to see what the pros have in their fridges, though the fridges all look suspiciously clean and well-ordered, which may be the mark of a professional chef or it may be the mark of knowing that somebody’s coming to photograph the interior of your fridge.

And one really big surprise is to see how many chefs keep lemons, soy sauce and canned anchovies in their fridge.  Do these things actually need refrigerating? Well not in my house they don’t.

Each chef offers a recipe or two, and one of Fergus Henderson’s is for Welsh rarebit.  Now the Welsh rarebit, often “rabbit” is one those odd thing that in some places, e.g. my parents’ house, was nothing but cheese on toast, but it gets much fancier elsewhere – Hannah Glasse has a recipe that involves soaking the bread in red wine.

Fergus Henderson’s recipe is as follows:

Serves four


2 tbsp butter


1 tbsp flour


1 tsp English mustard powder


½ tsp cayenne pepper


200ml Guinness


2 tbsp  Worcestershire sauce


450g mature strong Cheddar
 cheese, grated


4 pieces toast


Melt butter in a skillet, stir in flour, cook together until it smells biscuit, without turning brown. Add mustard powder and cayenne pepper, then stir in the Guinness and Worcestershire sauce, and gently melt in the cheese. When it’s all of one consistency, remove from heat, pour into a shallow container and allow to set.  Preheat broiler. Spread the sauce thinly onto toast and place under the broiler until golden brown.  Serve immediately with a glass of Port.

*

Here’s a photograph by Carrie Solomon of the end result:

Actually it’s pretty much the same as the recipe in Henderson’s Nose to Tail Eating but there he says you should use a “knob” of butter, and rather improbably he says it serves six. 

I decided to make it the Fergus Henderson way, although it didn’t seem to me there was enough flour.  I couldn’t see it thickening much, but I followed orders, and sure enough it remained pretty thin.  It tasted fine, but it didn’t look at all the image in the book. It looked like this:

So I went rummaging through the Nicholson Gourmet Library, and indeed the internet, and found a great many versions of rarebit – many with no flour at all.  But a surprising number of online sources repeat the Nose to Tail recipe exactly, with many compliments paid to Fergus H. as the rarebit meister.  I don’t know where they get their photos, but this is how one accompanied a piece about the Henderson rarebit in Country Life magazine:

On the other hand when people actually post pictures of rarebits as served and eaten at the St. John restaurant, the results don't look like much like the version shown in Chef's Fridges nor like mine.  Here’s one from yelp:

Cooking, it’s an art, innit?  Food photography even moreso.