Observing

Hello you big bunch of piss kidneys. Check out some stuff that happened in the food world this month, or rather, this year.

Click on the orange thing. It's not a mobile phone award.

It's better than me regurgitating words out of my anus. That's what happens if you eat too much Alphabetti Spaghetti. Now fuck off and read some stuff from this middle class, slightly left of centre news paper. 

Seriously, it's great to see a local restaurant win the reader's award. I still haven't been to The Seahorse although I did review their fish and chips.

Natural Wine

I'm supposedly cutting out booze until Christmas, but I'm still on the wagon and just trying desperately not to fall off, so I'm basically holding on to this old vehicle with one hand while clutching a bottle in the other, the road is steep and very bumpy indeed. I also feel this uncontrollable wagon is long overdue an MOT, so lets hope the wheels don't come off.

Bourgueil Cuvee Venus 2010

So, again I'm plugging Whistle Wines, but it's the only place to unplug natural wines in the South West and luckily I work next door to it. So yes, Whistle Wines does a fine selection of these amazing natural wines and I'm ploughing my way through them like an organic farmer on a Lamborghini tractor. 

There are many meanings to the term Natural Wine, for example the grapes could be grown organically or bio-dynamicly, there could be no added sulphites, sugar or yeast. It's all open to whatever the wine maker wants and the labelling isn't really certified. It's all a load of hippie bollocks really, but I'm certainly interested in the idea of consuming a product that's real, alive and not full of chemicals.

The yeast normally comes off the skin of the grape, but it can come from anywhere (sweat from the grape picker's hands, the air, the wildlife, the equipment), as long as its not an inoculated yeast (cultivated yeast). Often bakers create a sourdough starter for their bread by using grapes in the starter batter, actually sourdough bread is a perfect analogy to use when describing natural wines which contain wild yeasts, as their characteristics bear a resemblance and they act in a similar manner during production. The wine will take on the taste of that yeast and really develop a unique flavour belonging to that vineyard, but when I say belonging, I mean 'on loan', as the following year those yeasty flavours will change, as in normal vineyard circumstances, the flavours of the grapes change, depending on the sunshine, the rainfall, the temperature of that particular year. But the yeast flavour goes far deeper than the other changeable influences. This yeast flavour is ingrained with a barbed hook and no wine blending is going to shift that.

I know wine does change, but I mean it really changes with natural wines, in an out of control fashion like this wagon I'm riding. And this is my point, it's exciting, it's inconsistent, it is a product that really comes from a particular region.

These wines have now started to come into fashion with London restaurants like Elliot's,  Duck Soup, Brawn and Green Man & French Horn (anywhere connected to Ed Wilson & Oli Barker). Also events like the Natural Wine Fair, RAW and the Real Wine Fair have really taken off in the last couple years.

Vino di Anna Jeudi 15

Both white and reds are fantastic as natural wines, but the whites do tend to be more on the interesting side and can taste a bit like cider. The reds tend to taste like very high quality wines and seem to come without the attachment of a hangover (could be to do with the lack of sulphites). A few weeks ago I sampled an Italian Red by Anna Martens called Vino di Anna Jeudi 15 (pictured above). This wine had a very interesting nose, almost like it had absorbed the sulphurous gases emitted from Mount Etna, similar to the essence of a photographic dark room, but I love that smell. The taste was of quality, deep berry and a peppery back ground. Quite simply a very good wine. 

Lard des Choix

Whist riding my wagon, other highlights along the road have been the Lard des Choix(Grenache)Blanc 2010, appley and would be great with fish and the Dard & Ribo Saint Joseph 2009 which was as good as it's price tag (£25). But my Voyage dans la lune has been the Bourgueil Cuvee Bon Heure 2011 (Below)and the 2010 version Bourgueil Cuvee Venus. This company has some amazing branding and display a French sense of humour that I've not seen before. I just love the way this wine works and how the producers have got the bollocks to make wine that is so different. 

Bourgueil Cuvee Bon Heure 2012

If you can find some natural wine, then do try it, but remember it's not like normal wine and will be very different, you may not like the taste at first, it may give you the shits, it really must be drank with food (although you can get pissed on it) and it will cost a couple quid more than the usual wine. But it is special and it is in short supply, as it can never be mass produced for the mainstream and maybe that's why I love it so much, it feels like I have some ownership over the product and it's just for a select few who really appreciate it. A bit like a rare 7 inch vinyl record that has a limited run of 100 copies and will never be released on MP3 to download from iTunes, as this wine will never reach the supermarket shelves to be guzzled by the Gannets on a three for £10 special offer. Drinking this wine buys you a ticket to jump on my wine wagon and take a fabulous trip to the moon, whist looking down on all those cunts who are afraid to try something new. Well the Gannets can all fuck off and carry on swigging their JP. Chenet. More fuel for me on my road trip of life.

My Tender Loin

A while ago I went to Eyre Brothers and had a marvellous meal. This Iberian restaurant has an incredibly stylish interior, a gutsy contemporary (I hate that word) menu and the best grilled pork fillet in London. The Fino was superb, as was my starter (pictured below). 

Pressed Madeira and Porto marinated duck foie gras; chive  and toasted almonds £12

But it was all about the main, which was this incredible piece of pork. I would suggest it's the restaurant's signature dish and you must try it if you ever go there. On the menu it's described as;

Grilled Fillet of Acorn Fed Ibérico Pig, Marinated with Pimentón, Thyme and Garlic. Served with Patatas Pobres; Oven potatoes with green peppers, onions, garlic and white wine. We would recommend that lean cuts of feral Ibérico pig to be grilled to medium-rare. £21

The texture and flavour of this meat is one of the most amazing things ever to enter the hole in my face. I couldn't stop thinking about this dish and for days and I wondered how to create it or rather, recreate it.

It did take three attempts, the first being a BBQ-ed version which I over-cooked and it didn't gather enough flavour from the marinade (below). 

The next I tried under the grill in the oven, with it wrapped in a bit of foil to keep it moist and to get the flavour deep into the meat, then finished it off out of the foil to get the charred-ness. This also didn't really work, as too much liquid came out of the meat (below).

Both my previous attempts were OK and not bad, just not the same as Eyre Brothers. But the last time I tried it, I nearly got it. It's all about cooking the meat when it's at room temperature and giving it a very long marinade in a bit of oil and a shit load of smoked paprika, thyme & garlic. I used a hot pimentón/paprika rather than a sweet one. I also used a slightly different cooking method to my other two attempts by using a cast-iron griddle pan. The trick is to get the pan smoking hot and I mean white hot. DO NOT OIL THE PAN. If you do, the kitchen will be filled with smoke as the oil will just sit in the grooves of the pan and burn. So the oil in the marinade will be enough to stop the meat sticking. Sear the meat so it's black on the outside and pink in the middle, burning the outside will lock all the moisture into meat, then let the meat relax for 10 minutes or so before slicing into medallions. Then season with a little rock salt, a few drops of lemon juice (or try a little sherry vinegar perhaps) and pour any juices back onto the meat if they come out.

Best served with an appley white wine, a light red or even a Fino sherry. I also made some bead and served it with a green salad. 

Next time I make it, it should be perfected, as I still haven't managed to find Iberian pork tenderloin, never mind some pig fed on acorns. I'm sure in time I can pre-order some special outdoor reared British pork from a local butchers. Obviously buying cheap pork from Morrisons means you're starting on the back foot.

I'm also still thinking about the Padrón peppers I had at Eyre Brothers. Give me a month or two and I'll see if I can nail a good method for cooking these little green monsters.

A-Z Food Guide

You bunch of cunts should probably read this for a round up of what's been going on in the food world.


The Guardian/ Observer's modern food lover's A-Z guide by Thomas Blythe.


Such a massive bag of dicks.

Baxter's Moveable Feast

Yesterday the Lady and I went to Jane Baxter's Moveable Feast. Jane Baxter left Riverford earlier this year and is now writing a book for the fast food restaurant Leon. So for the summer she has been doing these pop up restaurants in amazing locations.

The menu was similar to Riverford, although slightly higher-end ingredients and served in a slightly more homely fashion. Everything was just perfect and faultless on the flavour front and such a contrast to the lousy meal we had at The Jack in the Green earlier this week (5th best Gastro Pub in the UK and 60th best Restaurant, absolute joke, style over substance which seems to be a common occurrence nowadays).

Again this reinforces my argument about stupid fucking presentation. A friend brought this article to my attention recently, I know old Jay Rayner is a bit of a bell-end, but he has a good point. And I'm not gonna get started on Latte Art. I know it shows the milk has the right texture and a heart or rosetta/fern is cool, but the moment some cunt draws a teddybear in my coffee, my dick will kick their anus in the face.

Back to Baxter and her lovely feast, my foul language can now fuck off. The meal was set at Combe Farm Studios near Dittisham and we were supposed to eat outside, but the rain came down like piss from a giant pissy cock, so we ate in a barn conversion, which was fabulous and basically someone's dining room. 

Oh, the puddings, oh the puddings, let me talk about the puddings. Basically I'm not much of a pudding person and would much rather shove something savoury in my gob over anything sweet. Did I mention the puddings? No. Well we had a choice of three, but we didn't have to choose cos there was enough to eat all three. But actually there was more like five different puddings. Here are three puddings pictured below. Look at the puddings.

Plum, Blueberry & Blackberry crumble, 

Baked Custard

Poached nectarines 

Did you see the puddings? So after three and a half hours of middle class mayhem we left in a comatose state with sedate smiles and bellies bulging. An unforgettable experience. Thanks again Jane.

Nairobi

I just spent two weeks in Nairobi and have been eating my way through a lot of burgers and hanging out with a couple of good friends (We are the Three Wzungu). We cooked food only two of the evenings, one just a simple pasta dish, although it's one of my favourite meals; garlic chilli linguine. The other night was a big ass BBQ.


The first evening, after a death defying taxi ride from the airport (everyone drives like a dick in Kenya and people crash for a laugh), we headed straight to a joint called Brew. This is a bar with an industrial brewery inside and the lager was rather good, nearly as good as Tusker. The food here was pretty good also, this is where I had my first Kenyan burger. We scoffed sitting at a bar which looked straight into the kitchen. This place took down my naive misconception of the Kenyan lifestyle. We smashed in a Negroni or two or three, then we became real Wzungu.


Most of the fruit and veg in Kenya is a bit dogshitpiss apart from the Avocados, so every morning we'd walk down the road to get some from this little community, who basically lived on this bit of grass by the roadside. The Avocados were always perfectly ripe and cost between 10 & 20p each, and that's Mzungu price (what white people pay). At first we served the Avocados on toast with poached eggs, but the eggs turned cold so we ditched them, also we weren't sure on the African policy towards eggy ethics or salmonella. So a smashed up Avo with a bit of lemon, finely sliced chilli, salt, pepper & a big glug of E.V. Olive Oil is all you need. Simply dolloped on a dry piece of toast and the textures & flavours work for me. It doesn't look like an oil painting, but how about I paint you a different picture? There are starving people in Africa! So eat what you're given you bunch of cunts. Ah, I'm just kidding.

Another highlight was an Indian restaurant, Open House, where we went three times. The curry was superb and avoided that greasiness which is so abundant in the UK, but it kept all the complex spice flavours. The last time we went the waiter assumed he could keep our change from the bill, which pissed us off. What a bell-end.


Artcaffe is good for burgers and fuck my baps sideways I noshed off a lot of burgers in my cunty face.


We also had Sushi from Onami and it was ok. It could have been better if we'd done the ordering as we had some pretty basic sashimi. We also had some Teppanyaki on another night which was splendid.


Maxland Grill was the star of the show for me as it was the only authentic Kenyan food I had - Kenyans call it a Nyama choma, basically a BBQ, but without all the marinades & guff. This fiery furnace of a restaurant was smokey and dirty, but the coals kissed the meat in the most wonderful flavour filled manner. Simply raw meat on a plate, but obviously cooked. I mean 'raw' in the naked sense. A sexy naked goat flirting on my plate. So sexy it was fucked to flaming hell and back. I was driven Kuku.


Anyhow I'm starting to bore myself with this post, so you must be Bored to Death (We watched a lot of this).

The Cricket Inn

The Cricket Inn is in the process of being ran out, as yet another of our great pubs gets knocked for six and castrated by it's idiot owners. This crippled eunuch of a pub appears to be a transvestite restaurant with a shit wig.


The table was booked for 8pm and we arrived 20 minutes late. We were told that we had to order straight away to compensate for our lateness. Ok, fair enough. But the cunts didn't take our order until 9pm and our food didn't come until 9:45pm. You get the picture! This isn't going to be a pleasant bit of blogging.


The best bit was when my friend was told he couldn't eat because there weren't any tables available. So my friend said it's fine, I can sit on one of those unreserved tables in the bar area. He was told by the stupid fucking cunt of a waitress, that those tables are only for people who are drinking. My friend replied "well of course we will be drinking, and we'll be eating as well". I do love a bit of rudeness from staff, I find it quite entertaining, but she was just a massive Belliendiot (Bell End Idiot which sounds like Billy Elliot).


The unpleasantness of this place has reached a hight which I have never swallowed in my entire dining experience. I love the fact that our group of friends have never encountered anything quite like this, considering we have eaten in such a wide range of restaurants throughout the world from El Buli to Mac Donald's. This schizophrenic dogshit dive is somewhere in-between, but it's head has gone inside-out through it's own anus whist shitting puke. It has a serious identity issue, which is a shame because it could be a great pub, like the Lamb Inn in Sandford, probably the best pub meal going (picture below).

Shoulder and chump of lamb, fonadant new potatoes, 

shallot puree, spiced lamb jus - £16 from the Lamb Inn

To be completely fair the food was very good at the Cricket Inn and the manager did his best to accommodate a large group of people. They simply have a waitress with an attitude problem beyond her own vagina and she clearly hates her job and is not very good at it. The predominant clientel in this joint (Retired bankers and there wives, both aged about 65) have roughly 10 years left to live so perhaps the proprietors should start thinking more about the long game and be a little more accommodating. 

Sorry, no pictures. These words are all this fucking cunty place are worth and I think I've gone beyond my usual word count. Shit Twats.