SALTY DOGS

 

This is one of the better sandwich-related headlines I’ve ever read:

 This is possibly the least flattering photograph I’ve ever seen of Grace Dent with a sandwich (it’s from her Instagram, so don't blame me).

This is a sandwich I ate at the Rosey Lea Café at the Henry Moore Garden and Studios: 'Salt Beef: Fresh rocket, fresh tomato, red onion and horseradish.’  It was good.

 

And this is a sandwich I ate at the Rose, a rather good pub, on the Albert Embankment: ‘Salt beef sandwich - salted beef, mustard, gherkins, skin on fries.’  I really didn’t need the fries.

 

Then I saw that my local Co-op sells salt beef – made by a company called The Taste of Suffolk - so I bought some of that and made my own sandwich.

 

     Then I saw that the Co-op was also selling brisket joints and I had some notion that salt beef is made from brisket so I bought some of that.  Then I got home and looked up recipes and discovered that a good salt beef is brined for 10 days, and that was just too much delayed gratification, so we made a brisket hotpot which certainly involves a certain amount of delay since you’re supposed to cook it for four hours but we decided we could live with that.  The result looked like this:

Brisket pics by Caroline Gannon

Our verdict at the time was ‘tasty but tough’ so maybe we should have cooked it even longer.  In any case, there was plenty left over for a sandwich.  Like a fool I bought some bagels, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I really don’t like bagels.  But the meat was great.  There’s some Boursin in there too because that’s the kind of guy I am.

Is a bagel a sandwich?  Of course it is.  

THE INFAMOUS SANDWICH

          You know, one of the things people sometimes ask me is, ‘Geoff, is a taco a sandwich?’

And, because I’m that kind of guy, I’m often able to direct them to legal precedent.  There’s a lot of debate about this kind of thing in America, usually in food courts that have some restriction on what kind of restaurant can open there. I’ve been following it for years.

 In the most recent case I know of - Quintana v. Fort Wayne Plan Commission – the developer Martin Quintana wanted to open a Mexican restaurant - Famous Tacos - on his property, but years earlier he’d agreed with the commission and a local homeowners’ association that he couldn’t open a ‘proper’ restaurant there, but he could open ‘A sandwich bar-style restaurant whose primary business is to sell “made-to-order” or “subway-style” sandwiches (which by way of example includes, but is not limited to, “Subway” or “Jimmy John’s”, but expressly excludes traditional fast food restaurants such as “McDonalds”, “Arbys” and “Wendys”).’

In 2022 Quintana tried to get the zoning restriction amended, and it went back and forth through the courts until May of this year when it was agreed that ‘The proposed Famous Taco restaurant falls within the scope of the general use approved in the original Written Commitment. The proposed Famous Taco restaurant would serve made-to-order tacos, burritos, and other Mexican-style food.’

         The court agreed with Quintana that tacos and burritos are Mexican-style sandwiches, and the original zoning law didn’t specify that the sandwiches had to be American-style.  ‘The original Written Commitment would also permit a restaurant that serves made-to-order Greek gyros, Indian naan wraps, or Vietnamese banh mi.’  So everybody wins, I think.

 

This was on my mind a couple of days ago when I ate something designated a ‘French taco,’ a thing I’d never heard of before, at Moozak’s French Tacos, in a small food court called Medz Corner, in London’s Kensington High St.

 

If I may quote the website: ‘Step into the world of French tacos, where two delicious cultures come together in a mouthwatering fusion. These "tacos lyonnais" are a blend of Mexican and French flavors that anyone can enjoy.’

 

I had the Lamb Special which is described like this on the menu:  ‘Saucy Minced Lamb, Crispy Chicken, Fries, Mozzarella Cheese, Signature Cheese Sauce.’

 

Yep the French fries are inside the taco, smothered in two kinds of cheese.  I’m prepared to believe there was chicken in there too, though I didn’t detect any crispiness.

 

It was a hell of a meal, and personally I’m not sure I’d have considered it either a sandwich or a taco – I’d probably have said it was a wrap.  It tasted pretty good, and there was enough food to serve at least two and a half people. So yes, I was overwhelmed, but in a more or less good way. 

I MAY HAVE EATEN WORSE

As Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, 'No worst there is none.' Here's one I ate about a week ago.

Of course, Mrs Lovett's pies have the great advantage of being fictional.  Mine was all too real, and admittedly it wasn't in London.

But not all the pie news is bad. A few days back, in London, we were in the Viaduct Tavern. Some sources will tell you that there are jail cells in the cellar, once associated with Newgate Prison, though other sources say this is nonsense.  Even so the place is happy to call itself a gin palace, as well they might.  The interior looks like this:

 And there we were presented with a pie-based menu, which ticked a great many boxes.  I briefly fantasized that there was some rehabilitated Mrs. Lovett working out back expressing herself through pastry, but no, these were Mr. Barrick’s Pies:

 

PHOTOS BY GANNON-NICHOLSON STUDIOS.

We went for the Pork and Black Pudding

 

and the Chorizo Style Pork and Wensleydale.

 

The Pork and Black Pudding was good, though I could have used a lot more black pudding. but the Chorizo and Wensleydale was superb - a highpoint in pie art, largely because of that cheese topping.  I can’t tell you exactly what they do to the Wensleydale to create the effect, something to do with curds and whipping I imagine but don’t hold me to that.  In any case they’re doing something very right.

 

       And possibly the most exciting thing I discovered in my recent pie research was that it is apparently possible to own a prop pie as used in Sweeney Todd, such as this one belonging to a collector who goes by the name of ‘Guardian Devil.’  What a time to be alive.

MANY SIZES FIT ALL

 Say what you like about the people of Yorkshire, but when it comes to dessert, we are not chauvinistic.  All the years I was growing up in Sheffield, we thought of an Eccles cake, a thoroughly Lancashire creation, as a perfectly acceptable way to round off a meal.  

The Oxford Companion to Food describes an Eccles cake as ‘similar to BANBURY CAKES except that they are normally round in shape and the filling has fewer ingredients’ – so not really all that similar at all, and I have never knowingly eaten a Banbury cake.

 

Fergus Henderson and the lads at St John evidently like an Eccles cake too and serve it with a triangle of Lancashire cheese, which is as it should be.

 

Here’s one I ate earlier:

Until recently my local Co-op here in Essex sold Eccles cakes and I bought them regularly, but lately they’ve not been on the shelves.  Whether this is a change of policy or just a hiccup in the supply chain I’m not sure, but I suppose time will tell.

 

Fortunately the so-called farmer’s market up at the local garden centre is now stocking giant Eccles cakes, which are frankly too big for my needs but it’s no great trouble to cut them in half or thirds or whatever.

The garden centre is also selling Chorley cakes – with which I was unfamiliar. The Oxford Companion describes them as a variation on the Eccles cake but ‘usually somewhat plainer.’  

In fact the Chorley cakes I bought are made by the same people who make the standard size Eccles cake but the difference is significant, and these are better in my opinion, being less sweet. Apparently one recommendation is to serve them buttered which strikes me as going a little too far, but different strokes for different folks, and all that.

FUN WITH BIVALVES

 

Some say, and if you ask me, they say it far too often,  ‘It was a brave man who first ate an oyster.’  (The quotation comes in various forms and is attributed to a wide variety of people).

 

Ed Ruscha, of course.

I’m not saying it’s untrue, but my feeling is, it was a brave man, or woman, who first ate just about anything. Imagine pulling a leg off a sheep and thinking that would be good to eat.

 

And how about potatoes?  They’re dirty, misshapen, subterranean lumps that you can barely get your teeth into until they’re cooked.

 

Anges Varda, who else?

Or maybe it wasn’t a question of bravery but of desperation.  We have to imagine that there was a lot of trial and error in the eating lives of early man. ‘Hey, those laburnum flowers look good, I’ll bet they’re really tasty.' And so on.

 

In my family as I was growing up the only person who ever ate oysters, and only when we had a day at the seaside, was my grandmother.  Nobody joined her.  It was just another weird thing that my weird grandmother did.

 

I was well into my twenties before I ate my first oyster, bought from a stall in Bridlington.  It really didn’t require any bravery.  It was great.  I’ve been eating them ever since.

 

And then a week or so ago we spotted some oyster plates in the local antiques emporium. Resistance was useless.  

 

Photo by Caroline Gannon, who else?

Of course having acquired some oyster plates, we needed to acquire oysters.  This was June, and there used to be a big fuss about not eating oysters when there wasn't an R in the month, but nobody seems to pay attention to that anymore, certainly not my fishman.

 

Saturday night, what could be better than half a dozen Malden oysters served on elegant, if slightly kitsch, glass plates?

 

Photo by Caroline Gannon, who else?

Living well is definitely the best revenge, which is another one of those things that people say far too often.