POLA VORTEX

 Say what you like about Pola Negri, but she knew how to pose with a glass:

But really, who can really compete with Bette Davis? - a glass and a shoe!

THE GROOVE IS IN THE PORK

 What better way of celebrating Earth Day and the end of 

Ramadan than with a nice roast pork shoulder?

 

Cooking pork is isn’t all that – it’s the anxiety about crackling that can make a man lose his mind.  

Salt it or not salt it?  I’d say salt it?  

Oil it or don’t oil it?  I’d say oil it but I’m not 100% sure about that.  

Scald the skin with hot water?  Well, I can see some logic in that but all the authorities say how important it is for the skin to be really dry before you roast it so if you’re going to scald it, it has to be done at least a day in advance, and I can never think that far ahead.

 

Here’s some I did earlier, quite a long time earlier - I had a better oven in those days:

 

and here’s one cooked by some fine chefs in Vienna – I can’t even imagine what ovens they have:

In the current case, at the end of the roasting period, the pork looked good but the skin looked at best so-so.  Bits of it looked like acceptable crackling but a lot of it didn’t.

 

And having done a little bit of research earlier I happened to have found a source that said when in doubt detach the skin and stick it in the microwave.  I had never done this before and frankly it sounded like the devil’s work but I felt I had nothing much to lose so in it went and OMG it worked really very well indeed.  Perhaps not the VERY best crackling ever but not at all bad:

On the plate it looked like this - and yes I know those roast potatoes lack poise - another source of anxiety.

SOMETIMES THE MAN EATS THE SANDWICH, SOMETIMES THE SANDWICH EATS THE MAN

PHOTO: CAROLINE GANNON

It's not easy to take a good and informative photograph of a sandwich. I think this is largely because it’s hard to glean much about the inside of a sandwich from seeing the outside.  Of course you can open up the sandwich to disaply the ingredients but at that point it no longer looks properly like a sandwich.  I suppose the problem is solved if you only eat and photograph open sandwiches but that seriously limits your scope.

 

And then (see above and the two below) I was looking at the Instagram feed of Sandwich magazine, a publication which according to its website ‘takes an iconic sandwich and uses it as a lens for cultural essays, features, photo stories and more.’  Well, why not?

They solve the above aesthetic problem by stuffing their sandwiches with such massive amounts of filling you might identify it from across the street.  They’re great photographs, though the sandwiches don’t look at all easy to eat.

 

The problem was further driven home to me t’other day when I made a sandwich of sliced pork, cream cheese and pickled carrot on olive bread. But you probably wouldn’t know that unless I told you.

 

And then yesterday I was in the Gardeners Rest Restaurant (do you think there should there be an apostrophe in there?) at Hyde Hall, a place that I think aspires to being a proper restaurant (I mean they have 4 kinds of Sunday roast). The inamorata and I shared a couple of sandwiches  ‘Double egg and watercress on thick sliced granary bread’ and a ‘Pastrami with dill pickles, mustard mayonnaise, rocket and Leerdammer cheese,’ again on thick sliced granary bread.’

 

They were pretty decent sandwiches but they didn’t make for wonders of photographic sandwich art.  The tomato and basil soup was much more photogenic.  But you know, being photogenic isn't everything, as the first picture in this blog goes to prove.

 

SECRET INGREDIENTS

 I had lunch at Soho House this week with some honest film production people.  I hadn’t been there for ages, not since I used to have an agent with loose pockets.

 

The dining room was very nice indeed. In other circumstances I might have taken a photograph, but there were notices around the place saying you shouldn’t take photographs so I didn’t. This is from Tripadvisor:

 

I had, in fact we all had, the club steak, chips and peppercorn sauce, which was very good.  The chips came in a metal container, of course; and of course I didn't photograph it.

 

The menu was satisfying short – but there was one thing on it that threw me sideways:  “hispi cabbage, black garlic, toasted yeast.”  I had no idea that yeast could be toasted but apparently it can.  And according to the Internet, it looks like this:

 

I often order the thing on menus that I’ve never had before or even heard of.  But there are limits. 

 

There was also steak tartare on the menu but I didn’t order because here’s one the inamorata made over the weekend (the secret ingredient is venison):

PENULTIMATE SUPPER

In anticipation of the Easter festivities we had some rabbit-related food: bunny-shaped crumpets, 

 

with poached eggs 

 

and then an actual rabbit

 

which tasted much better than it looked.

 

Scholars differ in their specualtions about what was actually eaten at the Last Supper: definitely bread and wine, and if it was a Passover Seder there’d have been eggs, a shank bone, charoset and the ever popular bitter herbs.

 

So definitely no oysters (Leviticus and all that), but we thought that they added considerably to the festivities.  

 

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.

 

 

 

 

MARTINIS WITH EVERYTHING

 

I was reading a January article from New York magazine by E. Alex Jung about the joys of drinking martinis with a side order of French fries.  He apparently first enjoyed this combination at Café Loup, a place I’m reasonably sure I went to at least once in my Manhattan days. It’s gone now anyway.

 

Jung goes to an establishment called Mimi and the article is illustrated with this picture. 

 

I don't know if you read the caption, it says 'Mimi offers a romantic mood: its martini glasses leave something to be desired.'  Yes that glass is an oddity, but in fact I was rather intrigued by it, thought it was quite a bold move, though I see the obvious disadvantages.

 

The combination of martini and French fries sounds a good one, the problem I see, as a man with an English palate, is that I’d want some vinegar on those French fries, and I fear that would play havoc with the taste of the martini.  I’m not saying I wouldn’t be able to drink it, but I’d fret.

 

In general however Jung is very sound on the nature of the martini – what I call a meniscus, he calls a baby bump. And he also says, ‘These are feral times, and there’s an invitation of madness with a martini — a willingness to see where the night may go. There are dedicated martini menus and endless variations with everything from MSG to seawater drawn from Montauk. (The Ocean Martini at Honey’s, dotted with two cured autumn olives that look like blood clots, is fantastically briny.)’ Well it would be, wouldn't it?

I’m still working out how I feel about that, but I suppose it’s just an extreme version of a dirty martini.  Apparently it looks like this:

 

Below is E. Alex Jung who doesn’t look like a typical   martini and French fry kind of guy, but we know that martini enthusiasts come in all sizes and shapes.

 

Meanwhile in similar news here’s a (rather cloudy) gimlet I made earlier, with a bowl of Keogh’s Mature Irish cheese and onion crisps; similar concept, different execution.

THE DEVIL TO PAY

 ‘I’m an offal man’ declared Bear Grylls in a headline in the Times on Saturday.  Personally I find this about as interesting and newsworthy as learning what Bear Grylls does in the woods, but that's just me.

I was far more interested, and amused, a couple of years back, to see the picture of him above, eating a frog he killed and cooked in a Bulgarian National Park. Apparently this was illegal and he ‘faced a fine’ though I can’t find any information on whether or not he actually paid one.

 

Having grown up with at least weekly dollops of liver and tripe, massively overcooked my mother who really didn’t care about food, it took me a while to develop the taste for offal when I left home and became a bit of a foodie.

 

Of course I’d read my Ulysses and I was all in favour of eating the inner organs of beasts and fowl, either with relish or preferably with a splash of wine and a squeeze of lemon.

 

But the first time I ate devilled kidneys was in a restaurant in Perth, Western Australia, and I knew I was in a good place because Maggie Fitzgibbon, best remembered (if she’s still remembered at all) as the star of the soap opera The Newcomers, was eating there too.

 

Those Australian devilled kidneys were great - and of course I didn't take a picture because you just didn't in them days, and I’ve tried with varying degrees of success to cook my own, and although I don’t cook a bad devilled kidney I don’t really cook a great one.  Recipes vary, but there’s no great mystery about it – you coat your lamb kidneys in seasoned flour (paprika, cayenne pepper, mustard powder, that kind of thing), then fry them up with Worcestershire sauce, sherry, maybe vinegar, and most often they’re served on a slice of bread or toast.

 

Mine usually taste pretty good but the problem I find is that I think raw lamb kidneys are a thing of exquisite beauty 

 

whereas when they’ve been cooked they can look a bit nothingy.

 

Of course that’s no reason not to eat them, but I do wish I could retain there basic beauty.  Still I can live with it.  Food can be very good without being photogenic.  There is a life outside of Instagram.

    And here are some I made much earlier, in California since you ask.  Devilled kidneys - consistent in at least three continents.

THE POTATO AND I

  

You know I’ve long thought that what the world needs is an eccentric, obsessive,  borderline crazed, 1000 page book about the sandwich. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to convince anybody, least of all my literary agent, that this is in fact what the world would actually be grateful for. 

But what about the potato?  Now here’s a subject surely crying out for that kind of treatment. 

Above and below is a minute sample of the stuff that would be in this stately tome, which is currently in a file in my hard drive, simply marked ‘Potato Madness.’