ALL AMERICAN WALES

I knew it wasn’t going to be a big foodie weekend in Swansea, there were others commitments.  I didn’t think it would be all laverbread and crempogs; and that was just as well.  We were staying in a chain hotel with pretensions to being a boutique hotel, and since it was in the middle of nowhere, and since the weather was dodgy, it made sense to eat Friday night dinner in the hotel bar.

Now, I’m sure that people more sophisticated than me know all about Trash Can Nachos, but I had no idea.  It isn’t really a very special or inventive notion – you stick a lot of nachos in a topless and bottomless tin can, add grated cheese, sour cream, jalapenos, some tomato glop, and then the waiter drops it all out at your table into a big bowl. Who knew? 

 

Trash can pics by Caroline Gannon

Only subsequently did I discover this was a ‘thing.’ It appears to be devise by Guy Fieri, which isn’t much of a recommendation in itself, but why stop at Nachos?  It would surely work just as well with refried beans or Irish stew, or even, at a pinch, laverbread.

 

On the way to the hotel from the station we’d seen there was a Denny’s in a nearby retail park - the only one in the UK as far as I can tell. And the fact is I do love Denny’s – I think it’s a high point of American culture, so on Monday morning on the way back to the station in we went, if nothing else to see how it compared with the American original.  And the answer was, so-so.   

 

The menu was similar but there was no chicken fried steak.  Below is the Chicken Fried Steak I had last year at Denny’s on the Twentynine Palms Highway.

 

But I can imagine they wouldn’t sell a lot of that in Swansea so I ordered the American Slam – scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage, bacon.  What came was this.

 

The shrewd observer will note the eggs are fried; I’d been given the wrong, and possibly someone else’s, breakfast. But the lad who was serving (and being run ragged by lack of other staff) was apologetic and happy enough to replace it.

I think it was a bit greasier than its American cousin would have been, but it was fine.  The lighting was a bit fancier than I think they’d have in an American Denny’s – but I’ll need to go back and check that.

THE MINDLESS MARTINI

 A true friend sends me an article from the New York Times, titled ‘The Martini Has Lost It’s Mind’ by Becky Hughes about the mutant variations on the silver bullet, currently available in New York and elsewhere.

 

Of course a mind is a terrible thing to lose, but since a martini has no mind of its own so the responsibility rests soldily with the makers and consumers of drinks.

 

For instance The Caprese martini at Jac’s on Bond is made with basil, olive and tomato-infused vodka.

 

The restaurant Bad Roman offers a pepperoncini martini.

Este in Austin, Texas offers a martini made with muscadet and kombu seaweed. There are ‘martinis’ with pickled fennel. radish water, garnished with mozzarella balls.

 

A chap named Jazzton Rodriguez who runs, a blog, a website, an Instagram page, titled Very Good Drinks  has invented a chicken soup Martini – funny you don’t meet a lot of people named Jazzton.

Now, you and I might argue that these drinks aren’t martinis at all, but Trevor Easton Langer, the bright spark who came up with the Caprese martini is there to put your mind at ease.  He says, ‘The word martini isn’t as much of a hard-and-fast rule as it is a descriptor of how you’re going to receive the drink. It’s much less about the contents and more about the glass.”

 

To which you may reply ‘Oh no it’s not.’  By this paradigm you could put a pint of crème de menthe in a beer glass and call it beer, but you wouldn’t would you?

IN THE PINK WITH OLD SAM PEPYS

 Like me, you’ve probably been intrigued by the Hyde Park incident at which a fan handed Pink a whole, boxed Brie. The fact that she held it up so clearly to display the name of the manufacturer did suggest to me that some sponsorship or at least product placement was going on, but then I’m a cynic.

 

My mind drifted back to Tuesday 4 September1666 when, in the middle of the Great Fire of London, Samuel Pepys recorded:  ‘Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.’

I imagine a whole Parmesan might survive being buried better than a brie would, but I think more research may be necessary.

Not as part of this research, I went to the Samuel Pepys in Harwich, an establishment variously described as a pub, wine bar or hotel.  I understand it was previously known as Sam’s Wine Bar, and before that the Rose & Crown.

Pepys did have a considerable connection with Harwich, as naval administrator and then MP.  I’m sure he must have done a lot of eating and drinking in the town, though I haven’t seen any absolutely hard evidence of where and when, though the pub’s website reads ‘he is said to have frequented this old tavern.’ 

The inamorata and I, not being very hungry, decided to share a panini – There were no Parmesan options on the menu that I could see.  There was a brie panini but it came either with cranberry or Marmite; neither of which ever strikes me as a good idea.

So we had the Cheddar cheese and grilled back bacon. Tripadvisor has some poisonous reviews for the Samuel Pepys but we found our food was perfectly good and the service was very friendly. What more do you need on  a quiet Saturday afternoon?

Want to see a picture of Pepys inspecting the King’s navy, painted by Robert Lyon?  

Want to see a picture of Debbie Harry with a piece of Brie in her mouth, the photograph taken by my pal Lisa Jane Persky?  Well of course you do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE SQUID AND I

 

In general I’m constitutionally, perhaps pathologically, incapable of following a recipe, but when I saw a recipe in the Times mag for Stuffed Squid with Chickpeas by Tomos Parry (officially a ‘great British chef’) my kitchen companion (that would be Caroline) and I thought we might have a go at it.  

There was a message on the magazine page saying ‘For Good Cooks Only!’ but I’m not a man to be detered by a flying exclamation mark.

 

I reckon I can cook squid but I’d never stuffed one before and I’d never baked one either, pan frying is what I do, but the squid in the picture looked so good I decided I’d go down the stuffing and roasting route.

 

Basically you make a risotto: the obvious stuff plus the chopped squid tentacles and then  - and this is the beauty part - some black pudding.

 

Tomos reckons one squid per person but obviously his were small.  We got one big one that would probably have served three.

 

I could see there might be problems getting the risotto inside the beast but it proved easy enough. The recipe advised pricking small holes in the squid with a cocktail stick and then holding the open end together with another, or possibly the same, cocktail stick. This seemed like a good idea so I obeyed.

 

Tomos said to bake for 20 minutes but I couldn’t see that would be enough to produce the fine colour seen in the magazine photograph, so we decided to give it a bit longer and we began by rubbing some turmeric and paprika on the outside. It still never achieved the golden look I was hoping for but very likely Tomos has a fiercer oven than I do.

 

While the squid was roasting we cooked a bed of onions, chickpeas and actual peas, 

then sliced up the squid 

and lay it on the base, and the end result looked like this. 

In the Nicholson kitchen that counts as success, and a successful recipe.

 

If I made it again I’d use more black pudding, possibly a lot more, but apart from that I’d do what I was told by the recipe.

 

As a result, one might almost be tempted to go to Tomos Parry’s restaurant Brat in Shoreditch which looks like this:

 

In fact stuffed roasted squid wasn’t on the menu when I checked, possibly because the restaurant specializes in ‘open fire cooking.’  Still, the lamb chop with grilled sweetbreads for £14.50 sounds like a bargain.  

CORDIAL GREETINGS

 I went for the second time to Iberica, one of chain of Spanish restaurants, this one in Victoria, which apparently ‘celebrates the spirit and style of our homeland with the finest food, award-winning wines, and a truly authentic experience of Spain.’  Ok then. 

The first time I was there I had the Atlantic Negroni - Bombay gin infused with thyme, Nordesia vermouth, Burla Negra rum, Campari and angostura bitters,.  I had not expected the rum, but that was fine. It looked like this: 

 

This second time I had Mezcal & Lime - Dewar's scotch whisky, Quiquiriqui Mezcal, cordial, lime juice and angostura bitters.  I hadn’t expected the whisky, but more confusingly I didn’t know what that ‘cordial ‘was doing in there. Or what kind of cordial it was. Was there a punctuation error?  Was it perhaps a lime juice cordial, say Rose’s?  Or was it (which seemed completely unlikely), a mescal cordial. Is there even such a thing?

 

I asked the waitress what the cordial was, and she spent a certain amount of time trying to define the word for me, but that didn’t help, and in the end we both gave up.  I ordered it anyway.  It was good, better than the Atlantic Negroni, and it looked like this:

 

DIRTY DRINKIN'

 There have been a few stories in the media lately about the retirement of Colin Field (sometimes Colin Peter Field), the Warwickshire lad who was barman at the Bar Hemingway, part of the Ritz, in Paris.  I have a feeling I might have been in there once, though the memory is vague.  This is Colin:

He's 62, which seems no age to be retiring, though I gather he’ll still be doing private parties and will be guest bartender two nights a week at a boutique hotel called the Maison Proust.  How do they come up with these names?  This is Colin with Bruce Willis.

 

Field did write a book titled Cocktails of the Ritz Paris, though I haven’t been able to find a copy for sale.  

But chiefly what drew my attention was Field’s invention of variations on the martini: the Picasso Martini and the Clean Dirty Martini.  I decided I would follow in his footsteps and, in the absence of his book of recipes, attempt to make my own versions. 

 

The Picasso Martini involves freezing vermouth into ice cubes (Cubist – get it?) - and then putting them into a glass of icy gin.

Now, I have been to bars in New York where they’ve rinsed the glass with a minimal splash of vermouth them tossed it out, but personally I’m pro-vermouth, so this sounded like a plausible drink.  However, my vermouth refused to freeze solid, and l was surprised by this  – I mean I’ve had bottles of wine freeze in the freezer when I forgot about them and left them in over night.  I left the vermouth cubes in much longer than that.  But a less than solid cube of vermouth seemed just about acceptable since it was going to melt in the gin anyway, even it in undermined the Cubist aesthetic.

The cubes looked like this when they first went into the glass, 

and like this when they were in the gin.

 

How was it?  Well it was all right but somehow, surprisingly, just a bit watery.  Maybe next time we should go for Picasso’s Blue Period and add a squirt of curacao.

 

Apparently it took ten years for Colin to develop the Clean Dirty Martini. Now, I have always thought the Dirty Martini – gin, vermouth and olive brine  - was a bit of a rip off.  I love olives, but If I’m paying good money for alcohol, I don’t want it diluted with salty water.  But heck, in the interests of science I duly put some olive brine in an ice cube tray, and just to jazz things up I put an olive in each cube.  When they were frozen, they looked this:

 

This time I was surprised that the brine froze so easily – I suppose olive brine contains less salt than I thought it did.  And when the gin was added it looked like this:

 

How did it taste? Well not bad, but not as good as an actual clean martini, but not bad at all.. Of course if Colin Field had made it, it might have tasted very different, and much better.  I’m no Colin Field, but we knew that already.  I’m not even a Bruce Willis.

 

 

 

 

TRENDS, YEAH RIGHT

 I was in London for a couple of days, not specifically to check out the latest food trends but you can’t help noticing some developments.  For example it seems that some Londoners have gone mad for salad, as seen here with these people queuing for The Salad Project; perhaps not as soaringly ambitious as the Manhattan Project but it obviously has its fans.  

The Salad Project is apparently a ‘new casual dining concept’ which hopes to become a major chain.  There are apparently ‘customizable salad options’ which I think means you make your own salad from the salad bar; not the most revolutionary concept I can think of.

Did I try it? Obviously not.  There are very few things I’ll queue for and salad definitely isn’t one of them.

 

Elsewhere I saw that cocktails are still popular, as proved by this window display at a Nicolas wine shop where they will actually sell you ingredients!

   And there was a temporary, I assume movable, falafel hut right there on Oxford Street.  No queuing necessary.

 

         But if you’re looking for a concept it’s hard to beat Redemption Roasters,‘The UK’s First Prison-based Coffee Roastery’ – yes really.  The coffee is roasted inthe prison roastery at HMP The Mount, all part of an effort to rehabilitate prisoners and reduce reoffending.  We went to the one on Gate St, close to Grays Inn.  My Americano was perfectly decent and there smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel had a very generous filling.  Again, no need to queue.

 

And then I started thinking about Iain Nairn, the British architectural critic (1930-1983), because I’d been browsing through Nairn’s London in mild preparation for my London visit.

 

Quite a bit of what I know about Nairn comes via Jonathan Meades.  The first time they had lunch together Nairn ate a packet of crisps and drank fourteen pints of beer.  The second time, says Meades, Nairn was ‘thinking about his figure’ so he didn’t eat anything at all and drank a just eleven pints.  ‘He died a few months later of cirrhosis,’ says Meades.

 

Meades describes Nairn’s London as ‘a sort of characterless novel of the capital by the greatest topographical writer of the past half century.’ This was written in 2007, and of course he doesn’t mean that Nairn’s book lacks character but that it has no dramatis personae.

 

I’d been especially drawn to Nairn’s description of the ‘Long Bar, Henekey’s, High Holborn,’ which starts with the lines, ‘Any long bar implies serious drinking, but this has a sense of dedication that is far beyond mere commerce.’  So I thought I’d better go there.

 

The pub is now called The Cittie of Yorke - there's a sign on the front saying there's been a pub on the site since the 14th century so either it's kept up with trends or it's immune to them - and the reality still matches Nairn’s description: gigantic barrels position high up behind the bar and linked by a dangerous looking catwalk, with cabins along one wall, which look like confessional booths, and in fact there is something ecclesiastical about the place.  Nairn concludes his piece, ‘but this place needs no stage props.  They sell spiced buns.’

 

I think they’ve stopped selling spiced buns, though I didn’t seek them out.  But they definitely do sell plates of nachos with cheese and salsa and guacamole and whatnot, which we ordered and they looked like this:

 

Probably a little better than a bag of crisps for soaking up fourteen pints of beer, but only a little.