I give you this one thought to keep

I am with you still, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush,

I am the sweet uplifting rush -

of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not think of me as gone – 

I am with you still - in each new dawn.

Love you Dad xxx

Viajante Saturday 19 February 2011

Me and the main man (Sam titled this 'Happy' - good choice!)x

Anyone reading this blog will think I have just won the lottery seeing as this is the second week running that I have been privileged to eat at two Michelin starred restaurants two weekends 11th and 19th Feb) -
on the trot. No I haven't booked one for this weekend but I will be playing the lottery. The similarity of both restaurants starts and ends with the fact that they both have Michelin stars and they serve food. Every aspect of these restaurants (Le Gavroche for those that didn't read last weeks)is entirely different. The locations speak volumes about what experience you're going to have - Mayfair - foie gras. Bethnel Green - Sea Buckthorn! The latter was a favourite of Genghis Khan who treasured it as an essential ingredient in keeping his soldiers strong. I can't say that foie gras would have done the same - what does that say about the French army?! (sorry for casting aspersions on our bravery of our Gallic (garlic) allies (although 17 to 9 in the rugby in our brave warriors favour tastes so sweet this morning!). Anyway I seem to have sailed off course with this review partly as I am unsure how to start to comment about this meal - much easier talking waffle as those close to me can attest...

Right, OK, here we go.

Having sat down and offered cocktails from the bar we are served with a glass of complimentary champagne (the benefits of going with someone of note (Sam! xx).  We are given the run down on what to expect and looking around for a sheet of paper listing the evenings promises....However we are told the menu is received AFTER the meal, a fact that may seem strange to some of you - and to us at the time. The menu, we are told  is to REMIND you what you have eaten not what you are about to eat, you just have to decide how much!. Annoyingly we forgot to take the menu home but they have kindly forwarded what we had although on closer inspection it does appear that we were treated with some slight variations to the dishes as Sam had already eaten at the restaurant a few days previously. We also had, we think 10 courses rather than 9 or 12 so the memory is a little sketchy, that and the 10 glasses of wine that accompanied the dishes can only have assisted in the memory loss.

The first step in the process is to choose between the number of courses whether it be 6, 9 or 12 (it is less at lunchtime for obvious reasons.). When you have 4 people with varying appetites this does present the first hurdle as appetites are different. We were informed however that you have a similar quantity of food in that the portion sizes are greater the fewer dishes (not the price). The other main option is wine - to opt for the wine pairing or not. With so many dishes and tastes it would not have been the right option to have gone for a bottle of white or a bottle of red and we were all very glad that we went for the paired option.

I am going to summarise the evening and the experience rather than try and remember each dish as that would not only be unreadable (OK impossible to write without a great embellishment and a tissue of whoppers!) so I have simply listed and shown some of the dishes we THINK we had.  The most memorable part of the evening was the grace - the quiet, deliberate way all the staff went about their business. From the incredibly well briefed waiting staff (there was no need of a Maitre D - if there was one I would never have guessed), each and every one knew exactly what was going on and yet how could they?  It was almost like a Victorian stage magician in that there seemed to be no dialogue between anyone and the kitchen was completely exposed and yet each dish arrived, perfectly executed and the description an exact narative on the plate in front of us, a conjurers trick surely?  We can't have been in the real world as the sommelier didn't laugh at my jokes??!!  Reality was put to the test when we were served ice cold sake paired with the langoustine and then razor clams (which aren't on the menu supplied) with what we really thought was topping up the water but in the wrong glass burst into flavour when paired with a Portugese wine the name I don't annoyingly have.

The chef, Nuno Mendes and you must look at his website Viajanate is clearly of the new school.  He hasn't quite gone the whole nine 'foraged' yards like Rene Redzepi (who I may add I have the utmost respect for...) but he is de-constructing food in a very pleasurable way and paying homage to the new culinary way of 'thinking about food' - and for that you get a star without foie gras.

The Kitchen

Note Nuno, like a conductor, getting the best out of his well rehearsed orchestra

This was a noble experience, one where you feel you have been privileged to experience a man at the beginning of a new chapter in the way we eat and the way we appreciate food.  Some of it didn't rock my world but that's why you need to experience a whole journey and not just go for starter, main course pudding.  This won't appeal to everyone and that's good as it means financially this will still be obtainable to those that don't have expense accounts to impress the impressionable and I hope that it doesn't become like El Buli, where Nuno cut his teeth, another notch in the proverbial headboard of a black Amex card because they managed to get in.  This really was exciting and I have taken away more from this experience than any other in a very long time and you know what - Nuno is a very humble man and deserves to be admired for what he does not the ratings he generates on TV or the shopping centres he opens....

I have resisted the temptation to compare this with DJ/producers but as a wannabe DJ and foodie I can see the parallel.  The establishment enshrined in the Radio One/ Tong autocracy pumping out shit versus the underground and mostly unknown likes of Oxia, Joris Vorn producing the music that most of us really get off to without even knowing...

I said bravo to Michelle Roux last week and I meant it but what I say to Nuno Mendes is simply

Thank you.

PS

Some of the dishes below - they are not in the right order and I am sorry to say in case Genghis Khan is reading (I doubt from above) I have no picture of the Sea Buckthorn with burnt meringue and yoghurt sorbet which was sensational

Thai Explosion 

Champagne

Bread and Buttter!

Scallops with carrot, mustard and watercress

Pares Balta "Blanc de Pacs" 2010, Penedès

Lobster, potato, confit egg yolk and saffron

Kooyong ‘’Clonale’’ Chardonnay 2008, Mornington Peninsula 

Roasted squab with beetroot and pistachio

Maisonneueve-Cosse “Abstémes s’Abstenir” 2008, France (Cahors)

Frozen maple pannacotta with shiso granite and green apple

Duck heart and tongue, celeriac, pine and hazelnut

Teruzzi & Puthod ‘’Carmen Puthod’’ 2009, Toscana 

Le Gavroche Friday 11 February 2011

What a great surprise when having driven and not known exactly where I was going, to turn up outside a building covered in scaffolding and seeing the illuminated sign above the door stating that this was indeed one of the finest restaurants in the world. Not only is it one of the finest restaurants in the world, it's also home to one of the finest chefs in the world and one that I have the utmost respect for. What makes Le Gavroche stand out is that every ingredient of what makes an evening great was there in spades. I won't say that the food was the best I have ever had but the combination of the food, Michelle Roux, the service, the wine, the ambiance was, all together, enough to give this restaurant, or rather the experience 10 out of 10.

Most people who were there were there for a special occasion. There were a couple of tables that looked liked they were businessmen/women but on the whole it was clearly people going out for a once in a lifetime experience. Well I am sure there are people who dine there regularly but for us mere mortals this was an experience to be cherished. Lisa had booked the table back in November and was to be my surprise Valentine's dinner. We arrived and were shown to our table. It's one of those restaurants that doesn't seem to have a bad table and I was pleased to see ours was a cut above the average. The restaurant is like a plush homely (stately one that is!) and very welcoming, the tables are adorned with silver and you really do feel special.

Amuse bouche were served along with our aperitif. I have to say I am not a big fan of these. I think more often than not they are underwhelming and to a degree pointless. These were I felt unnecessary and lacked the finesse of what was expecting to eat. As you can imagine foie gras featured heavily on the menu and it was in fact a challenge to choose a starter and a main course that didn't both contain it. In fact having decided on two courses both featuring foie gras the Maitre D suggested I change my choice of main course which had been the filet steak to the veal cutlet. My starter had to include foie gras so I opted for the hot foie gras and crispy duck pancakes. Now I am sure Mr Roux would have been very embarrassed had I shown him but my foie gras had not been de-veined and this somewhat took away from the experience. The taste of both the foie gras and the duck was sensational but I had to remove the veins before I ate it as it's difficult to have a melt in the mouth experience with rubber bands included! Lisa opted for the artichokes with truffle and foie gras and this was delicious.

The main course was a beautifully tender veal cutlet served with the richest, creamiest mash I have ever eaten (probably not a good idea to eat that more than once given the heart stopping quality of it). I have to say I think the veal cutlet I had at Quo Vadis was better but nonetheless this was a great piece of meat cooked well. Lisa had a trio of pork, a chop, pork belly and cheek and that too was excellently cooked. None of the portions were small, in fact they were huge considering the richness of the food and we struggled to finish our dishes. Annoyingly I can't remember the name of the wine we had but it was from a decent chateau in Burgundy (ours was the cheapest from that chateau at around £70!) but it was superb and complemented the food perfectly.

We had no room for pudding so opted for coffee and petit fours to have something sweet and I went for a '67 Armangnac which was seriously good. Like the portions of the food there seemed to be no holding back and I was poured the most enormous measure - generous to a fault but boy did that hurt in the morning.

To finish off the night none other than the main man came round every table and was clearly genuinely interested in his customers having the experience they came for. Unlike certain other chefs I have mentioned previously Michelle Roux deserves his 2 stars and when you're paying that kind of money (£350 for 2!!!) you want to know that you are paying for the real thing and not any old Jo in the kitchen.

All in all in was a great experience, one we won't do again in a hurry simply for financial reasons and I would say that it's something that any one who is interested in food should do once. Bravo!

Mushroom Soup

Well it does help if you like mushrooms and I LOVE mushrooms so you can't really go wrong with mushroom soup as there's not much else in it apart from mushrooms.  You can of course sex it up by adding wild mushrooms, cream and booze which is precisely what I did - all three of them - and you end up with a seriously delicious soup.

Like all soups it does help to start with a good stock and if you can be bothered and have the time (and the chicken bones!) you make your own stock and use that as the base of the soup.  Frankly it's often too much trouble and chicken stock isn't like beef stock in that it can end up pretty bland.  That said better using bland chicken stock and adding Knorr than just adding Knorr to water! Also when it comes to the mushrooms,  Sainsbury's basics were the best buy. I like the fact that they are higgledy piggledy and misshapen.  I think they taste better because of it.

What you will need

• 400g of mushrooms
• 30g dried wild mushrooms (including the water from rehydrating)
• 1 large onion
• 1 large potato (for thickening)
• 4oz or 120g of butter
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 Bay leaves
• 1 heaped tablespoon of chopped parsley
• salt and pepper
• 8fl oz of cream
• 3 tablespoons of medium sherry

You start by chopping everything and add the butter to a saucepan big enough for all the ingredients (sounds obvious but the number of times I don't get this right and have to move up a size).  Once the butter has melted add the chopped onion and garlic and simmer gently until they are cooked through avoiding any browning as this affects the taste.  

Next add the stock, the Bay leaf, parsley, stock, potato and mushrooms (don't forget you need to rehydrate the wild mushrooms and don't through the water away, add it to the pot).  This needs to simmer for about 20minutes until everything is cooked through.  At the end of this add the sherry and simmer for another couple of minutes.  

You now need to blend the soup which will turn into a semi smooth soup, but before you do that take out the Bay leaves.  You can add some of the cream and blend holding back some for garnish along with a sprig of parsley.

Serve with chunks of fresh bread....yum!

Japanese Gyoza with Soy Dipping Sauce

I love gyoza  and always order them in Japanese or Chinese restaurants.  They are dumplings that can be steamed, fried or first fried and then steamed (potstickers).  Popular in Asia , the Japanese version known as gyoza and the Chinese version known as jiaozi.  They are, as you can imagine similar but use different filling are cooked slighly differently.  They are the Asian version of the Italian's ravioli.  The version we cooked was leaning towards the Japanese but I would say that we spun it a little with flavours more associated with Thai and it really worked.

We took a traditional recipe for Japanese gyoza - minced pork and cabbage being the main ingredients.  We added spring onion, coriander, ginger, garlic, fish sauce and lime juice and grated lime peel.  The dipping sauce was a mixture of Japanese rice wine and soy sauce although next time I would use Tamari which is the Japanese equivalent but we had run out annoyingly.

We also slightly cheated in that we had some wanton pastry in the freezer and whilst wanton pastry is different in that its slightly thicker it didn't seem to make a huge amount of difference.  The most notable was the wanton skins were square and smaller and the gyoza should be made from round so you can make crescent shaped dumplings.  The difference in the pastry is wanton pastry contains egg and as I said early is thicker, the remaing ingredients is water, wheat flour and salt.  So ignoring that fact we went ahead as we wanted to make them anyway as an experiment as paying £6 for 4 dumplings in a restaurant was good motivation to perfect the making of these delicious dumplings.

Ingredients
1 small sweatheart cabbage
6 spring onions
3 cloves garlic
250g pork mince
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 heaped tablespoon chopped coriander
1 lime grated peel
1 teaspoon lime juice
gyoza wrappers (although as I said we used wantons and they were fine)
1 egg white (to help stick the dumplings)
oil for frying

For the sauce
1 tablespoon Soy sauce
1 tablespoon Japanese rice wine

To start you need to finely chop and salt the cabbage with about 2 teaspoons of salt and really work into the cabbage.  Good old osmosis goes into action and the pile of sweatheart cabbage is stripped of all its water and, after 20 minutes, once you have given it a good squeeze in a cloth, you are left with a ball of chopped cabbage.  While this was going on you take the minced pork and add the finely chopped spring onion, chopped coriander, garlic and ginger, fish sauce and lime.

Once you have mix this up add the cabbage which will now have much of the water removed by the salt.  Mix this again so that its all mixed through and now start to fill the pastry.  With this amount of mixture you should be able to make around 40.  Each one has around two teaspoons worth of the mixture.

Once you have finished the dumplings add them to a pan and fry them until they are brown.  Some recipes say to just fry on one side - I didn't I fried both sides.  You then add about 200ml of boiling water and cover the pan so that the dumplings are cooked through.  You need to cook them until the water has evaporated and you are left with delicious gyoza.  Admittedly mine weren't going to win the shape award but they more than made up with the flavour - awesome!

Serve straight away with the dipping sauce...

Christmas 2010 (Chicken Liver Pate with Wild Mushrooms)

Flambéed Chicken Livers with Cognac

This is another really simple recipe and can be made whenever and used at your leisure.  It was always tradition with my mother to make a pate for consumption in between Christmas and New Year once the leftovers from Christmas day have been consumed and you need something to go with the last of the Stilton.  Obviously this dish can be made and used whenever as, just like dogs, it's not just for Christmas.  

Whether you buy fresh or frozen chicken livers it makes very little difference. You will need the following:

Ingredients

450g (1lb) chicken livers

5 rashes of pancetta
4 shallots
50 g of dried wild mushrooms
50ml of Cognac
1 teaspoon chopped fresh Thyme
Seasoning
40g butter
(50g butter for the top of the pate)

Finely chop the shallots, thyme and the pancetta and fry with some of the butter until cooked through but avoid browning them.  While you are doing this take the dried mushrooms and rehydrate these in boiling water.  Remove the fried shallots etc.and place in a mixing bowl.  Add the chicken livers (check them before hand there are now large veins attached) and cook these, leaving some of the pinkness in the middle and add half the Cognac and flambé.

Add the chicken livers to the mixing bowl and blend until a smooth paste.  If you want a very smooth pate then you can push through a sieve but as we are adding mushrooms to this I didn't bother.  Take the now hydrated mushrooms and take out any excessive moisture (kitchen roll will do) and add to the pan and fry with some butter and add to the blended pate and the remainder of the Cognac.

Finished Pate

Pour out the pate into a bowl of your choice or separate Ramekin dishes should you prefer and cover the top of the pate with butter (this should be clarified as this will keep longer and won't go rancid) so that none of the pate is exposed to the air.

We devoured this in between Christmas and New Year but as I said this isn't a dish for Christmas, this is very much a dish for any season or occasion.  If you want to jazz it up you could try putting a Sauternes jelly on top and serve in slices as a starter for a dinner party...

Christmas 2010 (Steak and Guinness Stew)

Well I have many good excuses for not keeping up with the blog as much as I had hoped for at the beginning of the year.  It has been a tough few months and what precious little time I have had to myself, sitting down again in front of the computer just didn't appeal.  That's not to say that I haven't been cooking as I have been cooking but not with the same sense of adventure, more about convenience cooking and tried and tested favourites.

Christmas however is a time for getting back into the kitchen.  It's a time when you have no alternative but to don that apron and start amassing the dishes necessary to make for a good Christmas.  There are several days to provide for and not just that but all the 'down-time' eating that is as essential to the Festive period as the main meals themselves.

The stew reducing on the hob

We had divided up the responsibilities for Christmas amongst the family/families.  We were having the in-laws round on Christmas Eve (Lisa's family) and due at my father's in the morning.  Christmas Eve dinner is a tricky one.  You want something that is worthy of an occasion, simple in that it doesn't take up too much time and also nor excessively rich seeing as this is the first evening in a long run of potentially heart attack inducing meals.  The obvious choice, especially with the Irish Connection, a good old fashioned Beef and Guinness stew with added puff pastry lids, served with creamy mashed potato and Savoy cabbage.

As with all good stews it has to be made the day before it's eaten.  This is a very simple recipe and requires very little in the way of skill.  Provided you can you use a knife you can make this dish.

Ingredients for 6 people
2lb of stewing steak (remove any sinews, keep the white fat)
1lb of mushrooms
1/2lb of lardons
2 heaped table spoons of tomato purée
1 bouquet garni
2 Bay leaves
1 pint of beef stock
4 large carrots in batons
2 sticks of celery batons
2 large onions cut into 1/8ths
2 cans of Guinness (2 pints roughly)
Seasoning
1 teaspoon of brown sugar

Once you have trimmed the meat and cut the vegetables up you add everything to the pot at the same time, no need to brown the meat and fry the onions.  I also added the juice left over from re-hydrating the Ceps (Porcini Mushrooms) and Slippery Jacks (which I had picked in the Autumn in Devon) which were going to be used in the pate I was going to make next.  You preheat the oven and add the dish.  This is cooked for about 3 hours on a relatively low heat of around 160 degrees.

The tomato and the lardons give this recipe a really rich finish, perhaps a little French influence to a British dish but the resulting depth of flavour is well worth it.

When it comes to eating, reheat on the hob without the lid and reduce the liquid content so you have a more intense flavour and reduce the amount of liquid to get the sauce to the right consistency.  Now you can either put in a pie dish and add a pastry lid or serve as a stew.

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.