MORAL PUB GRUB

'Cheese is a mity elf,

Digesting all things but itself.'

Folk rhyme, apparently.

 

 

I remember, when I started, or started trying, to read Joyce’s Ulysses, when I was about 16 years old.  Much of it went over my head, as I suppose much of it still does, but I was all fired up by the scene in the ‘Lestrygonians’ chapter when Leopold Bloom goes to Davy Byrne’s (the apostrophe seems to come and go) pub for lunch. This is a heavily edited version of the part that did the firing.

—Have you a cheese sandwich?

—Yes, sir.

A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?

—Yes, sir.

Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. 

—Mustard, sir?

—Thank you.

He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. 

 

I was a cheese lover from a very early age, and my parents were moderately indulgent in buying me moderately exotic cheeses. I’d never eaten gorgonzola at the time I read that bit of Joyce, though I knew what it was, and I’d definitely tasted Danish blue. My grandma told me it had worms in it, which I doubted even at the time.

But reading that passage in Ulysses, I was confused by the reference to mustard.  Who puts mustard on a cheese sandwich?  A great many people, no doubt, but it was news to me, and still doesn’t strike me as a good idea.

 

         Anyway, being in Dublin last week, off we went (Anthony, Caroline and me), to Davy Byrnes, now definitely without an asterisk and styling itself a gastropub. The “Classic Gorgonzola €13.00 Classic Gorgonzola and brown bread served all day (pair with a glass of Pinot Noir for €20)”is still on the menu, and apparently it looks like this, 

 

Very appetizing though not as I ever imagined.  It’s an open-face sandwich I suppose, but it would be hard to cut it into strips.

 

We didn’t order that. Instead we had Connemara oysters, 

Davy Byrnes photos by Caroline Gannon

Cod Croquettes - yep I'm still on my croquette kick

and Sneem Black Pudding with ‘Charred tomatoes, apple chutney, Lyonnaise onions and Guinness brown bread.’  I might have wished for apple rather than the tomato which actually appeared totally uncharred, but let’s not quibble. 

       It was all very good indeed – and the place was full of Joyce memorabilia, and the staff were great, not least the owner - Bill Dempsey, I believe - who was very chatty and charming, and it was karaoke night, though fortunately that was happening way down the other end of the room.

 

       And other things about Dublin …  Now, I am not the world’s greatest drinker of Guinness – I drink about a pint of it per year. So during my time in Dublin I probably had a decade’s worth.  There is, apparently, much discussion about where the best pint of Guinness is to be, and The Gravediggers, adjacent to the Glasnevin Cemetery, is high in the list of contenders.  

As a non-connoisseur I might be inclined to think that all Guinness tastes pretty much the same, but no, the one I drank at The Gravediggers was very superior indeed. VERY superior.

 

THE WORLD YOUR SARDINE

 Did you know (and I certainly didn’t until about 24 hours ago) that sardines belong to the clupeoid group of fishes, in which there are  over 300 species?  These include Sardinia pilchardus pilchardus, Sardinella  aurita,  and Sardinops melanosticus, to name but a few.

This is only to say that I have no idea what kind of sardines we bought and ate last weekend from our trusty local fish man, who had gutted and decapitated them in advance.  But unidentified though they might be, heck they were good – dredged through a little seasoned flour, fried rather than grilled (though I gather grilled is the approved method) and served with samphire - how could you go wrong?

ABOVE PICS BY CAROLINE GANNON

After the fact I consulted Alan Davidson’s  The Oxford Book Companion to Food which tells us, ‘Canned Sardines are among the few canned products which have their own retinue of connoisseurs.’

I can see how that might work, though I think mostly I’d be in it for the design of the cans, which can be deeply wonderful:

 

And just in case three sardines each weren’t enough (though they were), and despite there being no R in the month (though only 2 weeks to go) we had a few oysters as well.  

They were some of the most difficult oysters I’ve ever had to open, but I got there in the end, and they tasted great - and no, I can't tell you what family they came from either.

 

 

NOSE TO TAIL, AND BACK AGAIN

 And speaking of artificial food, there’s currently an exhibition on at London’s Japan House titled “Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River.”  It’s about life and culture in Hokkaido, the island at the far northeastern end of Japan; and life and culture of course includes food.

 

So there are some representations of the local cuisine, including sito – that’s millet dumplings; irup - dried lily bulb cakes; and sipuskepmesi - millet and rice.

But far and away the most appealing, and something I might actually try doing myself, is ciporemo – that’s potato with salmon roe – how could you go wrong?

 

I’ve never been to Hokkaido but I have been to Tokyo where I ate some oysters from Hokkaido, the biggest and best I’ve ever tasted –  they looked like this .

 

Since the visit to the Japan Centre coincided with my birthday, we also had some actual food.  The inamorata (aka Caroline) took me to St John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields.  

Naturally there were martinis to start

 

Then we ate Rollright cheese.

 

When it arrived I wasn’t quite sure about that spring onion, which was extremely strong, but the lads and lasses of St John know their business and it was great,  as right as it was surprising.

 

There were also sardines:

And top of the bill, nestled under the salad, was pressed pig’s head terrine (at least I think that’s what it was – the menu just said pig’s head).

 

And because Caroline had clued in the restaurant to the fact that it was my birthday they delivered a doughnut with a candle on the side, which was only marginally embarrassing.

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.  

 

A FEAST ISN'T ALWAYS ENOUGH

 

I’ve been slightly worried about the fish man down at the market.  The last few times I asked him for oysters he didn’t have any and he said he was having trouble getting them.  Well, the oyster shortage is over, at least for now, and on Saturday I bought a dozen and they were very fine.

Photo by Caroline Gannon.

 

They were £1,50 each, which was what I expected to pay, but it did cross my mind that 18 quid for two starters was a bit steep; though when you think you can expect to pay several quid for a single oyster in a restaurant, it seems a lot more reasonable. Bibendum is currently charging £4.50 for a Maldon oyster (which is what I believe my fish man sells) and they’re charging £8.50 for a Gillardeau.

 

All of which, naturally, reminded me of Brillat-Savarin and his oyster anecdote.  In the transaltion I have in front of me this reads. 

‘In 1798 I was at Versailles as a commissary of the Directory, and frequently met M. Laperte, greffier of the count of the department. He was very fond of oysters, and used to complain that he had never had enough.

‘I resolved to procure him this satisfaction, and invited him to dine with me on the next day.

‘He came. I kept company with him to the tenth dozen, after which I let him go on alone. He managed to eat thirty-two dozen within an hour for the person who opened them was not very skilful.

      ‘In the interim, I was idle, and as that is always a painful state at the table, I stopped him at the moment when he was in full swing. "Mon cher," said I, "you will not to-day eat as many oysters as you meant—let us dine." We did so, and he acted as if he had fasted for a week.’

      I’ve often had ‘enough’ oysters but I’ve always thought I could manage a couple  more, though perhaps not another 32 dozen.

 

Thirty two dozen is 384 – that’s a lot of oysters, and quite an expense even at £1.50 each, let alone at Gillardeau rates. I don’t know how much money a commissary of the Directory earned in 1798, or whether he had a generous expense account, but the final bill would surely have stung.

 

I was also taken by that line ‘the person who opened them was not very skilful’ which reminded me of the food writer Christopher Hurst, who I used to meet one in a while though I haven’t seen him for years.  When he was writing for the Independent I think it was, he got roped in to an oyster-opening contest, at Bibendum.  It may have been for charity.  He was strictly an amateur and he found himself up against the professionals. I’m pretty sure Tom Parker Bowles was one of them – he seemed a nice lad.

Of course the pros trounced poor Christopher, and I do remember Christopher looking ashen and humiliated afterwards, and saying the whole thing was jolly unfair. Which it was.  I imagine he’s got over it by now, though on the night it looked like something he might never get over at all.

GEOFF THE KNIFE - PART TWO

 

You’ve probably been worrying about my lack of oyster knives.  You may recall I broke a couple:

 

The local kitchenware shop was no help so I went online.

 

I found one I liked the look of but it cost 15 quid plus delivery, whereas I could buy 4 plus a pair of gloves for about the same price. The gloves are 'Cut Level 5"!! and no, I don't trust them at all.

I ordered the set, but then I had to wait.  The supplier did keep me informed with updates about the order's movements around China, and I admit there was some anxiety, but finally it came.

 

Not a bad haul for the price, I thought.

 

And then I went down to the fish man at the local farmers’ market.  He had some oysters – which isn't always the case.  They were, I think, the biggest oysters I’ve ever seen in England, though I think I may have seen bigger ones in Japan, from Hokkaido.

Photo by Caroline Gannon; and yes that is a UFO outside the window.

 

The new knives did the job, though when it was over I saw that one of them was bent like this, which may not be the very best sign of quality:

 

On the bright side it didn’t break – and I have 3 others in reserve

Meanwhile I am left with some very big oyster shells, which I like, and the feeling I should DO SOMETHING with them

 

Norman Mailer apparently used to draw faces on the inside of his oyster shells but I’ve seen no examples of this.

 

The internet is full of crafty and creative things to do with oysters shells.  Here’s just one of the things I shan’t be doing with mine:

 Below - Geoff and his Hokkaido oyster - in fact not quite as big as I remember it.

 

 

THE TIME HAS COME

          Oysters.

         Oysters haven’t been especially easy to get at my local farmers' market lately.   The fish man hasn’t had any.  The autumn was warm and he lost a fair bit of stock, he says, so he stopped selling them for a while.  But on Saturday he had some – well, just six, so I bought them.  They were biggies – and cost 1.50 rather than the usual pound.

 

Photo by Luna Woodyear-Smith.

When I say they were whoppers I should perhaps say they were monsters, which is also to say it was one heck of job to get them open.  And one of them looked a bit dodgy so here are the other five.

 

Photo by Luna Yearwood-Smith.

In fact the job was so Herculean that I broke my oyster knife on one of them.  My oyster knife isn’t especially treasured but I’ve always thought it was pretty serviceable.  So I was reduced to using the point of a knife and that broke too.  This adds to the pain (and the cost) of the pleasure.

The oysters' revenge.

 

NAKED BIVALVES

 I was in Whitstable in Kent at the weekend.  

 

There are many things to do in Whitstable but eating oysters is top of the list.  There were two kinds of oyster on sale: the native oyster and the rock oyster.  

 

The natives (Ostrea edulis) are about twice the size of the rock (Crassostrea gigas), so I went for the big ones first (above).  They were grandly excessive – one of them bigger than I could fit in my mouth in one go.  Some of them were very sweet, some less so, all of them profoundly briny, you know, just like an oyster,

 

But size isn’t everything so we returned for some more, and this time went for the rock oysters (below).

  

I don’t know that they were better than the natives but they certainly weren’t worse – I suspect there would be some days I’d chose one, some days I’d choose the other, depending on mood.  It's good to have options.

 

Perhaps we were lucky to find any oysters for sale at all.  Earlier in the year there had been closures after a lot of people went down with food poisoning.  That really would have ruined a trip to the seaside.

 

And then, back home, more or less coincidentally, I came across a menu I’d saved from the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, New York, which I can date precisely to Tuesday October 22^nd, 2013, because it says so on the menu.  How time glides.

 

Now I’m not saying that the American version of the English langauge is necessarily always zestier than the British version but OMG – just look at those names the Cuttyhunk, the Kumamoto (and yes OK, that probably isn't English), the Lovers Creel, the Witch Duck, and above all the Naked Cowboy which apparently looks like this:

and is named after the man who looked like this in Times Square:

 

We didn’t see any of that in Whitstable.