Trout Roe Taramasalata

I have been dying to do this for a long time but never felt very confident doing it.  That and the fact that we needed a few roe to make a decent quantity and the size of the fish was important  I had managed to get roughly 1 1/2 pounds (salted weight) of trout roes.  I had absolutely no idea what to do with them and it was surprisingly  difficult to find a recipe for preparing the roes to make the taramasalata.

Fresh Trout Roes

To start with you need trout roes.  Now I am not sure whether you can buy trout roes, I suspect they are hard to find but clearly you can buy other fish - cod, pollack etc.  To buy whole smoked cods roes is unbelievably expensive £75 for a whole roe isn't unusual.  When you look at the actual roe content of shop bought taramasalata its around 20%.  Where they get the pink colour from I do not know as that is certainly NOT the colour of smoked roes!

Salted Roes

Stage one you need to salt the roes which starts the curing process and removes much of the water in the roes and turns then from sloppy roes to solid roes.  Now I have no idea how long to salt them.  I saw just one recipe for cod's roes which are much bigger and that suggested 8 hours.  I saw another recipe for salted roes which suggests salting for up to 7 days but that is to totally dessicate the roes and allows you to store them indefinitely as they are totally moisture free.  You can use these as a flavouring which is something I will try next time.  I am going to salt them for about 24 hours.  You need to lay them on kitchen towel and keep salting them and removing the moistened towel regularly as the salt pulls the moisture from the roes.

Salted Roes after 15 hours of salting

After salting the roes, you need to wash them thoroughly but they are still quite salty which you would expect. Next step is to smoke them and I used my hot smoker for this.  The hot smoker is basically a metal box with a sliding lid with two meths burners underneath.  I use a mix of wood dust (from Chilboton Smokery) containing majority of oak but some apple and alder.  The burners normally last about half an hour but the dust will carry on smouldering for a good half an hour after that.  I left the roes in the box until the box had cooled, roughly the whole process took about an hour.

Hot Smoker

The roes came out well, smoked and not overly 'cooked' which was my main concern. The roes had now taken on a copper colour and smelt wonderfully smoky and fishy at the same time.  Now at this point I enlisted the help of Andy as I had never made Trout Taramasalata before (well neither of us had) so it was a bit of an experiment.

Smoked Roes

Unlike cod the roes weren't in a leathery sack, the smoking hadn't rendered them leathery just firm so we decided to blend all the roes together with some oil, paprika, lemon, touch of cayenne pepper and breadcrumbs to give the taramasalata some body.  The taramasalata comes out a light brown colour, none of your violent pink colour here.  God only knows how they make shop bought tara pink as there is no part of the process of smoking anything that will turn it pink as you can see.  This is the colour it should be and the taste is seriously fantastic.  If you're around over the next week or so then you'll be able to sample this at The Mansion but once it's gone it's gone sadly.

Blending the roes mixture with the breadcrumbs

Trout Taramasalata 

The trout is served with toasted bread, lightly oiled and a wedge of lemon.  We have been experimenting with trout for sometime now, finding new and interesting ways to serve it.  This definitely takes it to another level.  The Trout Taramasalata is served as part of a trio of trout using which we vary with either potted trout, hot smoked trout pate, cold smoked trout pate, beetroot cured gravadlax and trout cerviche.  The next post will go through the process of smoking trout and how to make gravadlax and plating up the trio of trout.  So if you are a keen fisherman and are running out of ideas on how to serve trout hopefully this will come in handy.  And bear in mind it doesn't have to trout...

Dean Street Townhouse...pricey

It's had so much press and blogger interest that it would be impossible to pass this restaurant by.  Given that it is owned by SHG and the irrepressible Richard Caring, owner of the Ivy and Caprice, in fact pick a famous restaurant and he probably has something to do with it.  What's clever about all of his restaurants is that the food, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, is secondary to the experience.  That's not to say that the food isn't good, it is it's just that you can have better quality food (at a much cheaper price) elsewhere.  What you can't get elsewhere is the feeling that you are really amongst it, rubbing shoulders with the great and the good (well not necessarily good).  You can't help scouring the room to see who you recognise -'Oh don't look now it's so and so off the telly'.

The Dean Street Townhouse is no exception.  Right in the heart of Soho, juxtaposed advertising and film  companies, it is a stunning dining room through it's simplicity.  One thing that all the SHG locations have is brilliant design, nothing over the top, just that it all works, from plain but interesting tiling to well thought through furniture and a real stand out bar.  Just through the design alone you can see why this is a very successful and talked about restaurant.

We started off with Bloody Mary's at the bar waiting for our table to become free. We were in no hurry and we had arrived early and a perfectly seasoned Bloody Mary kicked off proceedings. The Maître D showed us to our table (earlier than expected) and we were promptly given menus and presented with the wine list. 

We decided on main course only, I went for the skate and my lunch partner opted for the steak. My dish came with nothing, just a piece of a skate wing and same capers. I ordered sides of chips and peas. The sides were £4 each and the skate was £19.95 so you were looking at a £30 dish with service with what was basically posh fish and chips. Also there were no frills with the peas - none of your creamed peas cooked in stock with onion and lettuce - these were, unless I am very much mistaken, out of a packet. However it was a good piece of fresh fish and I did enjoy it. The steak was cooked well, having been asked for rare, that's how it came - nothing more to say about that.

All in all the experience was a good one. Like a lot of lunch or dinners, the company tends to be a big factor in whether you are going to enjoy yourself. Dean Street Townhouse, and mine was good.  DST is definitely about the experience, like I said no complaints about the food and the cost of it - and it's priced accordingly - if you want to hang out and get noticed that's what you pay!

Canton Arms...pretentious

It's the kind of place you either love or hate.  It's again one of those places that throws up the question again 'When is a pub a pub or a restaurant'.  See Harwood Arms review The Canton Arms takes 'gastro' to another level in that the 'pub' bit is there in the form of the fact that it's in an old pub but there is nothing 'pub' about the menu.  Before I say any more it was busy and is clearly popular so this is not a criticism - it is an observation.  I think the Canton Arms sorts out the, what marketeers would bracket as, 'I like to try new things' and I prefer the tried and tested' individuals.


I also think the Canton Arms must be a very profitable kitchen and hence business.  But the shortness of the menu and the lack of what I would describe as pub favourites slightly put me off. That and the fact that we had arrived at 8.30pm and already many of the dishes were no longer available. It's not THAT big a place and I couldn't see tables being turned so I can only assume that, which is a good thing in that everything is cooked fresh, that the Chef wants no wastage, again something I applaud but it got my hackles up that so many of the choices weren't available. Would it be so bad to have the same dish on for 2 days?

The starters were good, my minestrone must have been cooked fresh that day, crisp vegetables expertly cubed, al dente pasta and a very good chicken stock which again must have been rendered down in the kitchen earlier. The other dishes were an excellent bit of charcuterie, Bresaola, air cured beef, served with parmesan shavings and aubergine with flat bread which was delicious.

As there was only one Onglet for two left, the girls very kindly let then men indulge their blood lust with this. I was going to order the plaice but when I was told I wasn't allowed to have chips with it I was put right off. This I really couldn't quite believe. The reason - the chef only cooks enough chips for the dishes she serves with chips....COME ON??!! It's a pub! And now you can see why the argument of when does a pub become a restaurant and not pub come up. God help you if you fancied a bowl of chips with your pint...

The onglet was however delicious, served with a lovely aioli and ...wait for it....CHIPS. onglet is served rare (we weren't given a choice!), it's a very flavoursome cut given its proximity to the offal and takes on the flavour. This was an excellent piece of meat, you could have been forgiven for thinking it was one of the finer cuts of beef. The plaice I am sorry to say did not look great. It appeared to either have been over cooked or dare I say, had been frozen.

I am glad I have been to the Canton Arms as it is good at what it does, and I enjoyed the company and was not unhappy with the food. But there is something incredibly annoying about not being able to order the dish you want and feeling rushed as they were running out and being told that you can't have what you want to accompany your meal. No doubt I will be accused of professional jealousy, I can see why it has gained the popularity it has but that style isn't for me...

River Test 8th September

Blimey seems like an age since I put finger tip to keyboard. I shouldn't have been under any illusions that writing a blog wouldn't take up a considerable amount of time but there we go.  August was a month off, we are all deserving of time off and what a pleasant month off it was too.  Not that I wasn't working, just not as hard as I should....  I did manage to fit in a bit of fishing and in fact, although there was nothing in the bag to brag about I did manage to tick off a few species - Sea Bass, Mackerel, Garfish in Deveon and Catfish, Chub and lots of small Sea Bream (which Max caught lots of which was great to see in South West France.

 

Late Summer Berries

Fishing at this time of year is challenging to say the least, well it is if you are a dry fly purist and only prepared to take home those fish you have managed to coax to the surface with the offer of a little morsel of fly when the fish, which I have come to the conclusion, are lazy bastards and would far rather stay put and move their mouth from left to right only snaffling up those bits of food that don't rely on the smallest amount of effort of swishing the tale and moving off their lie.  In fact I am pretty sure if most of these fish weren't disturbed by some eager animal hell bent on tricking them to eat a sharp hook, they wouldn't move at all.  I can't say I blame them, must be quite nice being in suspended animation, kept in position by the flow of water of a streamlined body with only the occasional movement of the tail and fins (sure I know they probably do more than that or they wouldn't be so nice and muscley) and constantly eating.

So we arrived at the river not really knowing what to expect, at least it wasn't raining which it had been on the way down.  You rely very heavily on the weather, especially the warmth if you are to have any surface action, you need the warmth to stimulate a hatch, without that it is very unlikely you will persuade a trout (that isn't suicidal) to come to the surface.  They may be lazy but they aren't entirely stupid and at this time of year they are very skittish.  That combined with low, clear water makes it hard to catch them unaware.  Also when you have disturbed one they have the habit of telling all their mates and charge up stream so the knock on effect can be quite profound and bloody annoying.  So lazy until provoked to be otherwise and the silhouette of a man with a 9 foot rod in his hand is definitely enough to stimulate the 'get the f**k out of here' response.

The GH Prince 

The tactics therefore needed for this scenario were stealth and nymphs, and fast sinking nymphs at that.  It was the Czechoslovakians who came to the fore with their Czech Nymph, a fast sinking nymph which earned them the world championships one year.  Armed with some gold headed nymphs (we justify this addition of a brass bead as mimicking an air bubble which is common with a rising nymph - in actuality its more likely an attractor and the fish uses its mouth to see what it is!!).  The first fish came relatively easily, I had spooked a few but was lucky with the position of a relatively high bush which gave me some cover and managed to get the nymph far enough ahead to allow it to drop and to not spook the fish.  The fish made a just-perceptible opening of the mouth, enough of a sign to know that the mimicry had worked and sure enough the line went taught, the rod bent and the fish went off downstream very fast, understandably pissed off.  It stripped the line down to the backing and gave a very noble account of itself, several strong runs, a powerful fish indeed.  A good start with a rainbow in excess of 4lbs on the bank always gives confidence for the rest of the day.

Wood Ear Mushroom

The next fish went the same way.  This was a text book lesson in upstream nymphing.  This was a big fish and was in a very narrow, shallow carrier and I was able to see it before it saw me.  Again this was going to be one cast - get it wrong and that would be that with that particular fish.  Luckily the fly landed just far enough ahead and reached the fish at the right level at the right moment, a slight tilt of the head and the tell tale whiteness of the mouth and then WALLOP!  A 7lb brown trout to the net, a really solid fish which is now at Robinson's being smoked..

A fat 7lb Brown Trout

I caught a couple more and waited for the rise which never materialised but it was a good day nonetheless.  Whilst the fish are stocked these were really good fish.  All of them gave a fantastic account of themselves, some of the best since we have been lucky enough to fish The Test.

A Happy fisherman

I am now in the process of curing and smoking the Trout Roes and will be hot smoking some of the fillets and curing the others to make Beetroot Cured Gravadlax.  I am very excited as I have also just ordered a cold smoker....

Beautiful late summer sunset

Yauatcha 4th July 2010

Our friends from the Philippines had missed their connection from San Sebastian (strikes in air traffic control, would you believe it) resulting in their missing our Friday night dinner engagement which would have been at Yauatcha had we managed to get a table after tea time for the children and just before normal people are going to bed.  So with the new appointment set for Sunday the call to Yauatcha with the question 'Do you have a table for 4 at 8.30pm' was met with a resounding 'Yes'.

As you may have deduced from reading any of my other reviews I am a, what marketeers would not bracket in their targeting as 'Likes to try new things', more of a 'Feels comfortable with what he knows'.  So this clearly wasn't my first experience.  I first went to Yauatcha on expenses - not mine I hasten to add but it had given me the exposure to a classic London restaurant.  Despite being able to get a table when we wanted, this was Sunday night and the place was busy, the kind of busyness that most restaurateurs dream of (I know I have).

My friends, who have entertained both Lisa and I, 5 years ago and me more recently on my own (Leo promotes events in the Philippines part time and has brought me over to DJ for some great gigs over the last 5 years).  Leo and Mariella have taken me to some spectacular Chinese restaurants in the Philippines so this seemed like a good idea for a return match.

We took ordering duties on a 50:50 basis, and ended up with a pretty fine collection of dishes.  Apparently, and this I loved, Mariella had heard that Peeking duck the way we do it in the UK is a 'must have'. Well I am pleased to say that it lived up to expectations but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Yauatcha is known for its dim sum and a very impressive list of dim sum it is and not the freeze dried, steamed, Wing Yip variety (although nothing particularly wrong in that).  We kicked off with some favourites from the shui mai family of dim sum, definitely higher up the evolutionary chain of dim sum's; these were wonderfully light with very delicate, translucent rice-flour skins.  This is the test of the skills of the dim sum chef as they are dammed hard to make.  Traditionally dim sum was served with tea, in fact started its life as a tea tasting and food was then introduced once the Chinese discovered that tea aided the digestion and not make you fat when you drank tea and ate together, I find wine does that for me!  Have a look here if you want to know more History of Dim Sum. We chose Scallop shui mai, Blue swimmer crab shui mai, and Pork and prawn shui mai.  Next up was King crab dumpling and tobiko caviar and the delicious Soft shelled crab and salted egg croquet.  The main event was the Peking duck done the usual way and stir fry rib eye beef in a black bean sauce, beautifully cooked.  We broke with tradition and did not drink tea but indulged this fantastic food  with my favourite choice, with spicy Asian food - Gewürztraminer, from Spain of all places, (and I can't remember the bloody name!) which was delicious.

All in all we were very happy to have taken our friends, experts in this cuisine and not be let down, but then again we shouldn't be given this restaurant has held a Michelin Star for 5 years (mind you they give them away now!).  It once again re-enforces my belief in the tried and tested as a safe bet, this wasn't an earth shattering experience but then again we were there to meet old friends and have a good time and good food and wine was a bonus.  That and the fact that it was less than £40 per head.  I have no hesitation recommending Yauatcha.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, Chez Bruce 21st June 2010

Our last restaurant experience was nothing short of a calamity at Hix (oh it's just won Time Out's top bars...hmmmm).  This one was nothing short of culinary excellence.  We have been to Chez Bruce over the years.  My first experience must have been at least 10 years ago and more recent to that probably no closer than 5.  There now seems to be no doubt in my mind that those tried and tested restaurants that quietly get on with the business of delivering expertly cooked food with attentive service and great ambiance are 99 times out of a 100 more likely to deliver your naturally and deservedly high expectations when you go to a restaurant where you know, even with the great value lunch time offers, are going to cost in excess of £100 for two.


This was my Father's Day treat and a chance for Lisa and I to have some time together after the last few weeks.  Chez Bruce has a great lunch time offer of £19.95 for 2 courses or £25.95 for 3 - and it's a well thought through a la carte menu, not a collection of obviously cheap dishes.  It was a Monday and yet there were plenty of fish dishes (fresh not frozen!) and that's what we chose as a main course but I am getting ahead of myself.

We ordered a bottle of Portuguese white wine.  I am tightfisted at the best of times and have learnt that these wines are on the whole pretty good and undervalued.  You can be confident that if the sommelier at Chez Bruce has put a wine on the list its going to be OK.  We made a great choice, Planalto Branco Reserva 2008 Duoro - a 'cheap' wine compared to the rest of the list at £24, the cheapest Burgundy was £26.  The first bottle was corked but not even presented at the table, the sommelier had checked, we were presented with this bottle and was duly tasted (I felt i had to! - it was the perfect temperature, a delicious wine, complex with huge fruit yet dry at the same time.

It was a good start, no, it was a great start, that and being served freshly made (still hot) parmesan biscuits and freshly baked bread.  Our starters arrived.   Mine was Sliced roast pork belly with tonnato dressing, anchovies, parmesan and crackling.  What can I say, it was superbly executed, the presentation and the balance of colour and texture just proved what is stated on the website that the inspiration comes from true legends such as Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson and the Dr Johnson of the culinary world, Larousse.  This is not a chef trying to impress a la Saturday Kitchen, this is proper cooking, centuries old techniques perfectly honed to produce awe inspiring food.  Lisa had an equally well thought through and perfectly executed dish Cornish crab with leek and cockle vinaigrette, warm potato salad and tartare sauce.  What a start...

We both ordered fish.  Now given my last experience and that was ordering fish on a Friday, normally a traditionally safe bet, we ordered fish on a Monday.  My dish was Fillet of sea bream with shellfish sauce, potato pancakes, shrimps and basil and could not have been fresher if the chef had literally walked in that minute straight from the dock.  The sauce was steeped in flavour combining the brown shrimps and mussels, fish stock and cream.  It was seriously delicious.  Lisa had Roast cod with olive oil mash, grilled courgette and gremolata which was equally as delicious.

I was seriously blown away by this cooking and a little depressed that so many terrible restaurants get rave reviews because of who is in the kitchen and the ability of full witted PRs to sleep walk lazy journalists into writing good reviews for piss poor performances.  Even Giles Coren has admitted getting carried away with the moment and giving good reviews where it hasn't been deserved.


On the strength of what we had eaten so far, not having a pudding would have been darned right rude and given the fact that the pudding wine list ran into over 50 wines we just had to, didn't we?!  We went for an obvious choice and boy was it divine Hot chocolate pudding with praline parfait washed down with a red pudding wine.  Suffice it to say it was similar to fireworks at the end of a great party.  It was in every way the grand finale and underpinned what was simply one of the best meals we had had in a very long time.  Oh and if that wasn't enough they came round with some shortbread which I am surprised wasn't weighed down on account of its lightness.  

Chez Bruce is another very good reason to live in South London and another good reason to continue to support restaurants that are worthy of our hard earned money.  I am done with making mistakes of going to over reviewed, over stated restaurants and remember the adage that all the glitters isn't gold.  Chez Bruce on the other hand is a real treasure.

River Test 16th June Upper Beat First Weed Cut

If you have read the previous blog entry you will know my sad news.  The funeral was yesterday and was a demonstration of just how well liked my mother was and how much she will be missed.  So today was a good day, happy memories and a feeling of calm that follows the ritual of the funeral and burial a day that was celebratory and not in anyway morose, sad yes but uplifting and joyful.

This was the first day after the end of the Mayfly which is traditionally known as Duffers Fortnight when the fishing is allegedly easy as all the activity is on the surface.  Following the Mayfly the river has a short back and sides, the verges are trimmed and the weed in the river is cut back.  In the past, and I mean the long distant past, the River Test and The Itchen were nothing more than a series of interconnected channels that went through meadows.  Over millennia man started to channel the water and hence we now have a river system.

The rivers were all controlled by a series of weirs, sluices and hatches to control the flow.  In water meadows that were controlled this way the farmers could flood the meadows in spring which would spread nutrients and raise the temperature of the soil and hence promote early growth  so cattle and sheep could be fed.  A very small part of the River Test was navigable and used in the 16th and 17th centuries unlike The River Itchen which was navigable along a large part.  I digress, the point is that the river has to be constantly managed to maintain flow.  If the river was allowed to do its own thing it would quickly become overgrown in the summer and the flow would be interrupted with large parts becoming nothing more than a spring fed marsh.

The weed cut is normally a difficult time to fish as you have to cast a fly to a fish avoiding the huge amounts of weed coming down river, that combined with the fact that the normal gin clear spring fed water has been churned up to the colour of weak tea.  However this year due to the very cold winter and the corresponding coldish spring, bar a few decent days has resulted in very little weed growth.  Large parts of the river still seemed not to have recovered from the winter and that combined with the voracious appetite of the resident swans which, whilst being nice to look at, are verging on being a pest.  A group of swans is known as a bevy, lamentation, herd or wedge.  (check this site out - I never knew there was a noun for a group of trout!!! Animal Group Names ).  This lamentation of swans (see what I did there) is a mass of adolescent swans, last years cygnets and like to use the river as an aircraft carrier.  One minute your happily fishing away, next thing you have 10 incoming teenage swans to disturb the peace and of course the fishing as I can't imagine if you were a trout that you would be happy about a 30lb bird landing on top of you...

With the wind, the colouring of the water and the trout suffering from a serious hangover following the Mayfly gorging of the last two weeks the fishing was very tough.  I managed to winkle out the only fish that I had seen rising, taken on a smallish Grey Wulff but that was the only fish I saw rise the whole length of the carrier I was on.  At times like these it's best to return to the pub and sit out the afternoon and wait for the evening.  It's no guarantee there will be a hatch but it was sunny and if the wind dropped we could be in luck.

Returning to the river at 5ish the wind was starting to drop and small hatches of sedge and olives were occurring,  By 7.30pm there were huge bunches of olives and sedges and a few, very late, Mayfly were starting to land on the water to lay eggs.  These Mayfly were in sufficient numbers to turn a few trout on to them and I hook and lost two and landed another 2 in very quick succession.  Meanwhile Guy was over on the main carrier and having great success with sedge and hooking fish after fish, quickly reaching his 4 fish limit and a number that came short, hooked and subsequently got off.  It was a spectacular hours fishing, definitely worth waiting for.  Just after 9.00pm we packed up, very content that the gamble of staying late had paid off.

The end of yet another great day on the Test.  It's also the time of year when the seasons start to change again as we move into summer.  The last of the blossom from the Elder trees signifies that spring is finally over and the wonderful array of spring greens starts to merge into one shade.  The fishing gets harder - either early in the morning or for a brief but frenetic hour or so before dusk.  As I write this we have reached the longest day, it's sad to think the days get shorter from now on.  I am going to make sure I enjoy each day before the leaves start to turn again - we have the whole of the summer to look forward to...

In memory of my mother, The River Test Middle Beat 2nd June

Anne Veronica Sowton 

1st July 1934 - 6th June 2010

It is with a very heavy heart that I write this entry.  This time last week I received a call at 3.30am to be told that my mother had been taken suddenly, very seriously ill and was not expected to last the night.  My mother was able to have the strength to enable us to say our goodbyes, she was sedated but I know in my heart she could hear us.  She was an incredibly special person.  It is with my mother that I can remember catching my first trout, just days before I was due to go to Prep School at the age of 8 while my parents went off to Malawi in 1974.  This was a public strech of the River Itchen just below the weir in the water meadows just down from the chucrh of St Mary where my mother is to be burried.  We had no idea what we were doing but a worm on a hook in the right place saw us hook and land our first.  It was no monster but it was a trout and like the fish I was hooked.  In the same place last year mum and I took Max and we caught a trout, Max's first.  


I remember my mother waking me at 4am to drive from Blantyre to Mount Zomba where I had just started to fly fish.  Again neither of us had a clue but after awhile the thrashing around was productive and a trout was snagged and landed.  Both my parents were very patient with my fishing, my father rowing me out over Lake Malawi and fly fishing on the 10,000 foot Mount Mulanjie (where we hooked and lost a monster that nearly dragged us both in and I snapped the rod!!) and I owe it to them that I am now a semi-competent fisherman.  


They both came down to the Middle Beat exactly this time last year for the Mayfly, a very happy day and one I shall never forget.  The Test is very special to me and for my mother to have seen it means a lot to me and will do every time I come to fish here...

Mum and Dad on The Test June 2009 for the Mayfly

So I owe it to my mother to make sure that I continue with this blog, she loved cooking and was an amazing cook, hostess you name it.  Someone who really lived life to the full and I can honestly say she managed more in her lifetime than most people could do in two.  I love you very much mum and I will miss you terribly as will hundreds of people but I can assure you, you will never be forgotten.


The Mayfly

This was the day we had been waiting for all year.  The conditions were perfect, warm and sunny.  Whilst we new the sun would put the fish down in the day due to the brightness, the warmth would stimulate a lot of fly activity and we weren't disappointed.  Not on;y were there prodigious numbers of Mayfly, there were huge hatches of Sedge, Olives, Pale Wateries and Black Gnats.  The air was thick with flies and under all the leaves, the Mayfly that had hatched earlier, were waiting expectantly for the mating dance that would take place in the evening.  The Mayfly spends two years of its life as a nymph and spends only a few days as an adult fly from the order, Ephemeroptera, coming from the Greek, meaning 'short-lived' - hence the name.  

For 2 weeks at the end of May and beginning of June you have an explosive number hatching and the trout go crazy for them, no wonder, they are a big meal in comparison to the usual fair of gnats and smaller insects and grubs.

The fishing 

The morning was brief, we had some good sport for the first hour and a half but by 10.30am it was already getting hot and the sun was bright pushing the fish down and making it difficult.  We persevered for another hour calling it a day at 1130 to go in to Stockbridge to top up on some more flies.  We went via The John O'Gaunt pub as they sell flies for half the price and have an excellent selection of dry fly patterns.  The most popular being a fly called a Grey Wulff which is tied in many sizes as it represents any up winged insect from the Ephemeroptera order - small patterns for Olives, large for Mayfly.  

The famous Grey Wulff

Lee Wulff, an American fisherman invented the fly and left a few for fisherman on The Test and is now the most popular fly pattern and has many variants in size and colour, a serious legacy!

We returned to the river and having brought with us , wasabi and dark soy we decided on the freshest trout sashimi for lunch.  We had a large brown trout which in hindsight was probably a bit on the old side as the fish wasn't as tender as we had hoped.

Trout for the chop

Well at least it looked good!

Well it was a good experiment but I think a younger fish than the big old gnarly leviathan would be a better bet. 

In the afternoon the boys came down to the river with Lisa, it was the first time they had been down and Lisa could see why Guy and I so look forward to coming down to the river as it is such a magical place.

Lisa and the boys with Joseph, Nick's grandson.

The fishing started in earnest around 5pm as the mayfly were now starting their mating dance and come to the river to lay their eggs.  The fly has 3 main stages as an adult - emerging, the dun (upright adult) and the spent gnat (dead, flat winged on the surface).  The fish will switch to the different stages when one is more prevalent than the other and the fisherman has to adjust accordingly.  Not only that but you have to present the fly so that it looks more appealing than the thousands of actuals on the water.  

The dance was well under way now and it was looking better than we had seen in years.  We had been lucky that the weather had been cold up and till today so the ones that had hatched previously had all been waiting under the leaves.

The air thick with Mayfly 

Guy with a very nice looking brownie (not a chocolate one!)

 The fishing was spectacular and a number were caught and reaching our 4 fish limit was a little too easy so selecting the fish to go for was important, you didn't want to waste your limit on small fish today, this is the one time of the year that the fish loose all sense of safety and just smash into these flies - manner from heaven so to speak!

I have to thank Max, my eldest who was very handy when it came to landing fish and he managed to land some pretty big fish which I was very impressed with. 

Sunset and the end of a lovely day

So the day ended having been a spectacular days sport for us all.  Earlier in the day Lisa and the boys had spent a lovely day with my mother, I take great comfort in that she enjoyed a beautiful day with my wife and my children and her last day was an earlier summer's day, having seen the best of her roses and blossom and not a horrible winter's day.  I will remember my mother in that way, a summer's day spent on The Test with my family, that's as good a way of remembering someone as I can think...

I love you mum....

Utter disappointment, Mark Hix, Brewer Street, W1

Never has the parable of The Emperor’s Clothes been more applicable than our experience of Mark Hix flagship restaurant.  Well I say restaurant, it is a restaurant if you look at the dictionary definition which is ‘a place where meals are served to the public’.  Of course this is a definition that is very simplistic and does not have any of the nuances that we imagine in our minds eye for a restaurant to be.  McDonalds is a restaurant, Wetherspoons pubs have restaurants, yet we don’t associate these establishments as being the same as what was alleged to be the new paradigm in cooking/restaurant experience.

This was our first experience of a Hix restaurant, and was our wedding anniversary so an important occasion as far as we were concerned.  We had read lots of reviews and had been given personal recommendations that this was the new Mecca for culinary greatness, is this fact or turning a blind eye to the food as it's the place to be an no one wants to be the first to say something bad?  Mark Hix, the not so new kid on the block having been kept in the shadows in the Richard Caring Empire producing popular dishes to the cognoscenti, is the current hot news.

Our first impressions of the restaurant were moulded by the couple eating each other’s faces by the front door and one of the door hosts in a hat saying ‘yeah be there in a minute’.  We were shown to our table in what we thought was the bar.  No, the bar was downstairs.  This was the restaurant.  We were offered a drink from the bar, my wife ordered a lychee martini.  Now I would have expected this to have been no problem, but fresh lychees they had not.  So it was decided on wine.  We often go for the default, good value, white burgundy, Macon which we duly ordered.  I don’t normally pretentiously try wine but just give the glass a good sniff to check that it’s not corked.  I should have checked this.  The bottle was as at room temperature and was very poor indeed.  How hard can it be, i have tried countless Macons and rarely have i found a bad one, well at last i had.

But things now go from the sublime to the ridiculous.  We ordered, just main courses which in hindsight was a very good call.  I ordered plaice and L ordered brill.  My plaice arrived, skin down on a white plate with no garnish or accoutrement.  It looked very bland, often looks are deceiving but in this case it looked like it tasted – but worse.  This fish must have been frozen; it disintegrated in to a mash.  I called the Maitre D over and showed him the blob of fish i had created by pushing the fish of the bone into what can only be described as a blob of fishy blancmange.  He admitted that this didn’t look right and took it away.  He came back to inform me that Simon, the chef said the fish was fresh and i quote ‘That’s what happens to plaice when you cook it’.  This as you can imagine was the equivalent of lighting the blue touch paper.  I was from that moment on understandably pissed off.  I was presented with another dish, the same as my wife’s which I have to say had no flavour and another disappointment. 

We were offered no apology, no attempt to  placate, in fact I was told by another member of the boy band that waltz around masquerading as Maitre D’s or management, I couldn’t tell, that other people had had this dish and they didn’t think anything was wrong.

This isn’t a credible foodie restaurant in my humble opinion and I am very surprised that a chef of that calibre would put his name to a restaurant where he doesn’t cook and employ a chef and management that has an attitude of total disdain for its customers.  I know something about fish, a lot more than the people serving me and to be treated the way we were was nothing short of a disgrace.  

I will not be going to another Hix restaurant unless I know for a fact that he is in the kitchen cooking my food.

The River Test Lower Beat 18th May

As you will read in Guy's very witty description of our biweekly fishing on The Test, I was unable to go as a result of what must have been proper flu, not the usual man flu but the real McCoy.  It was however with a touch of glee that i heard that the Mayfly hadn't started to hatch and a large amount of relief - an early hatch would have been deeply unfair.  So I will hand over to Guy with a little help from our good friend Dom...

The Hut which is listed 

If a week is a lifetime in politics, a fortnight in fishing is a long 14 days. When Ben, who is the brains, and considerably more, behind this blog, called me and bleated that his man-flu was so severe that he couldn’t make it fishing I sprinted to the nearest pub, and racked my brains as to who, at such short notice, might fancy a day’s fishing over work. We had had, two weeks ago, an extraordinary day’s fishing and with the Mayfly season upon us and we were expecting another fruitful day. Safe in the knowledge that Ben’s man-flu would either turn out to be fatal or, as I daren’t say, incurable, I invited our mutual friend, Dom Makin, the Dog Father, to come along. Dom is a keen fisherman but it was only when I said that he might have miss Ben’s funeral in order to make it, and he said “no problem”, I knew he was serous about fishing.

The Lower Beat is one long wide piece of river, when there's no hatch it can be daunting 

Dom has, for a number of years, been a great friend of both Ben and mine and, true to form, managed to reschedule his day job so as to ensure he was only slightly late for a very early lunch in Stockbridge. The Boot it was!

The Boot, many an afternoon has been 'lost' here

I had plumped for my new routine of getting up at 5am but, having left home by 06.00. found that, on arrival, access to the river, was closed. Two weeks ago, Ben and I had crashed Phil, the river keeper’s, cottage before the gate was open, hoping for a cheeky bacon sarnie and jokingly Phil told us to bugger off until the river officially opened. Two minutes later we were following him down the drive to the water’s edge to have up of tea. I’d love to tell you he made Ben and I walk the plank but I’d be lying. I refused, and as he pushed Ben off the plank into the puddle I knew that, for once, Ben wasn’t out of his depth. Phil, and his father David, represent the best in river keepers and it’s only when you have had the privilege of spending time with them that you truly appreciate that they are not just funny, they’re also not as funny as they look!

A nice plump brownie probably stuffed after the Hawthorn frenzy

I arrived on the river shortly after nine am only to be greeted by one of our fellow syndicate rmembers bemoaning the fact that he had broken his rod. It gets worse; he set up his spare rod which, on the first cast, also broke, so headed of the Orvis, where he purchase a new rod. Orvis, for the record, offer a 25 year guarantee on all new rods. When Peter, on casting with the third rod of the day, heard the top section of his rod snap, first cast, I thanked the Lord, and Orvis, for their guarantee. He then proceeded to catch several trout with the said replacement (fourth) rod, so well done Orvis.

 Peter into a good fish...or is that the bottom?!

The weather forecast was as good as one might have wished for, having been unseasonably poor for the whole of May. As I was driving down the temperature crept into the early teens and with Hampshire just the right side of the weather forecast, things were looking good. Cloudy but warm and with the potential for some rain is, in my humble opinion, a great combination.

It was clear from the start that the Mayfly were not hatching in any numbers and, after the Hawthorn, which had appeared in Biblical proportions over the last two weeks, it was an entomological likelihood that the fish might deviate from the norm.

A classic chalk stream dry fly pattern - text book fishing from Mr Joseph! (not a daddy long leg in sight!!)

Had you seen the fish, two weeks ago, gorge themselves to the point where their stomachs were so distended you might have assumed that they would lunge at our flies with gay abandon, I am only sorry that  if you were expecting a review of our riverbank exploits that mirrors the events of a fortnight ago you’ll be disappointed. They say, and “they” are the old, wise, great and sometimes pissed, that if the Hawthorn hatch is prolific, the mayfly hatch won’t be. I fished olives because they were hatching and I caught fish as a result.

Guy observing the rules, observing mind you, that's all!

I fished flies that I believe matched the hatch. Having showed my fellow guests what I believe to be traditional dry flies that might rise a trout, I could nor escape the feeling that size or ease of catch somehow reminded me that perhaps we all love, rather too much, big hatches of flies, like the hawthorn or mayfly forgetting that when you tie on a size 18 grey duster, and rise the only rising fish in your swim, if feels different, and special. If you’re reading this and don’t quite get it, give it chance, you won’t regret it…..

Guy with a good brown caught in the fast water on the bend down from the bridge 

  

The afternoon was dead, as far a rising fish were concerned but it was a great reminder that fishing is about the un-catchable not the slaughter. Emerging olives and tiny dry flies were a beautiful reminder that the harder it gets, the better if feels. By the time I was thinking about leaving, mayfly were coming off the water but not a trout rose to one whilst I was watching. This time in a couple of weeks.....

One of Dom's charges!  The Dogfather's work is never done!

This is my first attempt at blogging so if you’re reading this and have issues with my views or the ways in which I express them please open your heart and say what you see....

 Rounding of the day with a very fat brown trout

Cheers Guy, excellent bit of writing, please do it again soon!!