MY YEAR IN NOSH

 It being the end of the year, the assiduous blogger obviously has to do a round up of things eaten and formerly unblogged about.

 

Here for example is a tuna melt eaten at Caffee Torelli, right by Kew Railway station:

 

Here is a galette at L’Hirondelle in Walthamstow:

Here’s a Cornish Pasty and a can of Diet Pepsi (I drink at most one can of Pepsi a year and afterwards usually wish I hadn’t).  

I was sitting alone eating my pasty on the seafront in Dovercourt when this dog came along and stared at me in a beseeching way:  

 

His owner came along knot shortly after, riding on a mobility scooter, and said told me that dog had recently become ‘a beggar.’  His begging did him no good.

 

This is a scone with butter and jam, from the caff at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire:

 

Must say I never really crave scones and yet when one’s put in front of me I tend to enjoy it.

These are Gyozas and Sushi Tacos (yes, really) from Kensu Kitchen, an establishment within Medz Corner, a kind of food court in Kensington High St.  The sushi tacos worked, more or less.

This is a fairly dreary plate of sausages with extras at Dirty Dicks in Spitalfields – the sausages themselves were the problem.

This is a ham and cheese sandwich with chips at The Mad Bishop and Bear in Paddington station:

And these are some truly remarkable and excellent seasoned chips from Ousia in Charlotte Street, London:

 

Then then there were two weeks in California, and the brakes came off.  (Nobody wants to eat while wearing gloves)

 

There was this very substantial tuna salad sandwich at the 1919 Cafe in the Huntington Gardens, San Marino:

These are Beef Wellington Bites at Zin in Palm Springs:

 

These are some so-so eggs Benedict at the Lakeview Bistro in the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown LA.

 

All in all it wasn’t such a bad year food-wise.  I hope you can say the same. Cheers.

 

 

 

 

 

HOGGING THE PASTY

Like I said, I went to Cornwall, and had a Cornish Pasty in St. Ives.  This one:

The ‘L’ in the pastry stands for lamb, and I know that lamb is not an authentic filling for a real Cornish Pasty. The shop where I bought this one also sold steak and stilton pasties, which I thought sounded OK, but would have been even less authentic.

But this was the least of it – other shops were selling unthinkable variations: Red Thai Chicken Curry!  Chicken, Bacon, Chirizo!!

Later that same weekend, eating at the Seven Stars pub in Stithians I was hoping a Cornish pasty would be on the menu, so I could order one for compare and contrast purposes.  I was disappointed but settled for the turkey and ham pie, which was no less of a pasty than some of those others.

Still I think the real culinary adventure I had in Cornwall was buying a Cornish Hogs Pudding from RJ Trevarthan, Wholesale Butcher and Livestock Hauliers.  And for those who like to know about local sourcing and provenance, the label even had details of where the hog was slaughtered – at the Roskrow Abattoir, Roskrow, Penryn.

When it was cooked, the hogs pudding looked like this:

BUFFETING OURSELVES TO DEATH

A good friend of mine has been on holiday in Cornwall and he has very kindly been sending me foodie postcards, including this one, illustrating the traditional English breakfast:

On the back he writes, “For breakfast this morning I had cranberry juice. Mixed berries, yoghurt, porridge, 3 rashers bacon, 2 poached eggs, mushrooms, 2 croissants, honey and coffee.”  He then adds (without irony as far as I can tell) “a reasonably healthy balance I thought.”

I don’t know the full details of his holiday arrangement but I’m going to bet it was an all-you-can-eat buffet, included in the price of accommodation, and therefore, as it were, “free” - in which case you’d be a fool not to eat as much of it as you possibly can.

I was reminded of goldfish, who supposedly eat themselves to death given a chance.  I’ve never been sure whether this was an urban myth.  Eating yourself to death whenever the opportunity arises would seem to be a major evolutionary disadvantage, and yet goldfish continue to thrive.  Equally I think you might argue that this is an evolutionary disadvantage that humanity also suffers from.

Given that the “Full English” is regarded as an unassailable highpoint in English cuisine there’s never been much ambition to change it.  Instead there’s been an ambition to serve more and more of it.  There’s a café in Great Yarmouth called Jesters Diner (no apostrophe) that serves something that looks like this, a breakfast buffet in itself:

My friend in Cornwall also sent me this recipe card showing how to make a Cornish pasty: 

I suspect that even in Cornwall there aren’t many people making their own pasties these days, but it’s still good to have a recipe.  The (less than) secret ingredient is lard.