Good bye, and fuck off.

A Scoffy Egg: Dyslexic food writer, acclaimed for his rants about food and all things cunty

A scoffy Egg, who wrote drunken opinions every few weeks has fallen from his roost and is now dead. His ridiculous blog posts were read by many, appreciated by few. Rather than being remembered for his eloquent way with words, he will be better known for his writing technique of; write drunk, edit drunker (Ernest Hemmingway's theory was blown out of the water like a 500lb Marlin).  

His reviews and rants about food establishments were all really a bit of fun and jest, with his tongue firmly stuck between a pair of chubby spanked cheeks. Obviously there was an element of truth in the tale, but nothing really malicious. I just hope his style of extreme blogging can help the food industry become a better place, but anyone who has enough time on their hands to write a fucking food blog should not be taken seriously. The worst cunts are the cunts who write on Trip Advisor, it's about as useful as the star rating on Amazon, where stupid fucking people give a pair of headphones 1 star because Royal Mail failed to deliver their product. That's like giving a restaurant 1 star because the taxi didn't turn up and the reservation was lost. So with old Scoffy gone there is one less cunt in this world, but cunts do come in all shapes and sizes, but the worst kind are the stupid fucking cunts. And sometimes they come in bunches.

With 100 blog posts under his ever expanding belt, Scoffy has left a crater in the blogging world, but no doubt this will be filled with other amateur writers bursting into the land of blogging like a load of bullshit in a china shop. These Roosters begin with some loud crowing and an agressive jazzy waltz, but it doesn't take long before they end up spit-roasted and tired of their own voice. A Scoffy simply ended up a pickled egg, although he was sour and a little lowbrow, he is preserved and ready to enjoy with a pint of ale and a packet of your favourite flavoured crisps.

Cause of death is still unknown, most probably gout. I understand that his last words were something like "Cunt-a-doodle-doo!". 

Toasted

Stop taking toast for granted and please give him a big kiss on his buttery lips when you next meet. Toast is probably my best friend, we have breakfast together most mornings, we never talk, we just enjoy the moment.

This basic form of cooking transforms one of the most wonderful pieces of food, a slice of bread, and intensifies it’s flavour through caramelising the carbohydrate sugars on its surface. Even cheap shitty supermarket bread can be turned into something delicious. The other aspect that changes through the toasting process is the texture of the bread, it becomes crispy, and if the slice is thick enough you will still have the soft bready crumb in the centre.

When toasting bread I like to push the caramelisation to a maximum, but obviously never stepping into the realm of burning. Burning is bad.  Because the bread is drying out slightly, you get a crispier texture, but I never want to dry my toast out completely, as it will verge on feeling stale in my mouth, I want it soft in the middle. To gain this result you need an intense high heat and a pop up toaster is probably the best man for the job. An oven grill is good, but it can give an uneven browning, which pisses me off.

When I have Marmite, probably my preferred spread, it is important to apply the butter whist the toast is still very hot and then the Marmite straight after the butter, this method mixes the Marmite into the melted butter and gives a well distributed spreading of both components. Otherwise the bread can become fragile from soaking up the butter and it can break up. My hand normally hovers over the toaster ready to pounce on the piping hot slices, with my plate, knife and butter at the ready. Obviously keep your butter and Marmite out of the fridge; this will make it much easier to spread. Once the spreading is done I like to eat my toast straight away, while it’s still warm, and whilst standing up looking out of the window to my balcony door. The morning river view is nearly as delightful as the salty Marmite butter dripping down my chin. Maybe I'll have one more slice!

Corny Flakes

When I was a teenager my brother and I would consume massive amounts of corn flakes, usually a bowl or two for breakfast and always a bowl on our return from school. Sometimes I had them with a bit of honey or a drizzle of golden syrup, but mainly with a sprinkling of granulated sugar and of course a big splash of chilled milk, preferably full fat. In the good old days I remember the milk man delivering bottles of non-homoginised whole milk with the fat separated at the top of the bottle. In the winter when opening the front door to retrieve the bottles I'd see that a Robin had sometimes pecked through the bottle top to get to the cream, but I didn't mind, I just loved the privilege of pressing the foil lid down to release it from the top of the glass bottle neck. But the real treat came when I got to pour the sweet milk all over my corn flakes with little lumps of cream sitting in the top of my bowl along side those toasted flakes of golden corn. 

My mother, on occasion, tried to fob us off with supermarket home brand corn flakes and even transferred the substandard yellow flakes into a Kellogg's box. It never worked. Mainly because in the nineties cheap cornflakes were a different colour and had a softer texture, Kellogg's were darker, more orangey and had a crispy bite (today there isn't a huge difference between Kellogg's and the supermarkets). With the corn flakes being so crispy I had a technique to soften them up, I used the back of my spoon to push down every flake in the bowl so it was submerged in the delicious, icy cold milk. This was such a ritual that my mother's friends called me the pie maker, as I spent rather a long time on this process. It was only after I made this pie (personally I think it resembled more of a pudding than a pie) that I would gently sprinkle the sugar over the top, but because I'd used my spoon to dunk the flakes during the pie making process, it was sodden with milk and the sugar would stick to the spoon, so I had to submerge it under the milk to release the sugary mess that coated it (I probably should have used a second spoon for the sugar). Only then I could devour my corn flake pie and afterwards bring the bowl rim up to my mouth to drink the sugary sweet milk that remained at the bottom. My mother would say "manners make a man", my response to this, bearing in mind I'd just created a disgusting noise from slurping down the milk, was a gigantic belch. To this day I still get a kick out of trying to shock my mother, usually with the word CUNT!

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.