Fifi - an obituary

I had intended to revive this somewhat moribund blog in the New Year, but I'm writing now because of what just happened. About an hour ago, Fifi, my/our beloved tabby cat died in my arms. I know its sloppy but I'm going to write about her, because I can, because it stops me getting too mournful and because I feel the need to communicate what I felt about her to anyone who might be interested. It's wrong to get too sentimental about our pets because they mostly live shorter lives than us, so we get that sense of loss more often than we, hopefully, have with human beings. Equally, its wrong to attribute human emotions or behaviour to creatures we cannot quite communicate with in the same fashion that we can with everybody else. They dont speak.
Nevertheless, its clear that we can have important and meaningful relationships with our companion animals, as we are now supposed to call them. And Fifi was an important relationship, not just because she was a lovely cat, but because of her place in my life and those around me. She was 18, old for a cat, and had been around for a third of my life.
She was born one dark November night in 1990, in a box at the bottom of the stairs at our home in Islington, where her mother, Flo, had chosen to give birth. She delivered five identical, gorgeously marked tabby kittens. Flo had come to us a year before through a colleague at the Independent and we picked her up on the day that I learnt that an old friend of mine had died, so this lovely tabby kitten was a welcome and distracting buffer against that particularly miserable day. Flo grew into a gentle, plump tabby, very affectionate and always ready to by picked up and made a fuss off. She was so relaxed, she would fall asleep in your arms.
Now Flo had produced five replicas of herself. So we elected to keep the smallest and last born, the nominal runt of the litter, the rest of which were given to family or friends. We named the kitten Fiesole, after the pretty little town outside Florence (which was her mother's real name - we had an Italy thing going at the time). But to everyone they were Flo and Fifi.
Fifi grew into an almost perfect, but always slightly smaller and skinner version of her mother. Possessed of a silky coat and perfect tabby markings, she had rings of kohl-black around her big green eyes, with black flashes trailing above her whiskers, and when she sat upright with her legs together, the marks on both formed a perfectly matching symmetrical pattern.
Flo had been a wonderful, caring mother to all her kittens and continued this with Fifi, who tended to behave like the pampered daughter who never left home. Flo would lick and groom Fifi endlessly and they would lie around, entwined together in a furry bundle that was never easy to dislodge from the sofa or bed. Since Fifi got all her attention from her mother, for many years, she was always a bit reluctant to be picked up or sit on your lap. She was attentive, affectionate and would run to you to be patted or stroked but preferred to sit beside you, or on the arms of your chair, crunching up her eyes with delight if she was patted and purring deeply.
About a year after she was born, they two of them were temporarily housed with my mother in Birmingham, while we had some work done on the house. There, Fifi was impregnated by a neighbourhood tom and gave birth to two kittens, the totally black Figgy, and the ginger and white Columbus, who both shared their mother's sinuous shape. Fifi, it has to be said, was not the best of mothers and left most of the caring of the kittens to her own mother, the ever maternal Flo.
Leaving the kittens with my mother, Flo and Fifi resumed their sybaritic existence in London, greeting visitors to house with whiskery curiosity and always occupying the seat you needed to sit on. They slept on the bed while my wife breast fed our sons and would always pick the spot closest to the cot, seemingly comforted by milk and baby scented warmth. My sons, of course, grew up with them, as a constant presence in the house and garden. Dozens of people who came on business, for family celebrations, Xmas parties, would meet and make a fuss of Flo and Fifi.
When my wife and I split up, I missed them terribly. Children can move back and forth between houses, but cats cant. I could have had them, but we didnt want to move two by now rather elderly cats from their familiar environment. I saw them when I returned frequently to the family home and fed them when my wife and sons were away.
Nearly three years ago, Flo died after a long illness, her body racked with cancer. It was terribly sad and we all mourned her loss. She's buried in the garden at the house where she lived for so long. If cat therapists existed, we should have called one in for Fifi, because her principal source of companionship and warmth had gone. But Fifi seemed okay, if a little more nervous and thinner than before.
Two months later, she came here, initially because my ex-wife was away and then permanently, by mutual agreement. I feel unbelievably lucky to have had her here since. Once she emerged from under the bed, where she had fled in terror at the unfamiliar surroundings, she gained in confidence and was soon queening it around the house. Causing enormous anxiety, she disappeared for one night of adventure - something she would never have contemplated before - returning the following morning, damp and with a slight limp. She explored the garden and had a few spats with the large and playful Felix from upstairs, eventually establishing some territorial rights. And she charmed Felix's owners, Julia and Tony, always happy to feed her when I was away.
But mostly Fifi's days were about finding the best places for a sleep, a prerogative of all elderly cats, because by this time she was getting on a bit and needed to rest. She liked to curl up on my bed, but curiously, only when the brown bedlinen was on. She never spent as much time there when the maroon duvet cover was in use. Maybe something primitive relating to her mother's colour? Another favourite spot was on one of the canvas chairs in the garden, where she spent much of the summer before last, slumbering under the shade of the pear tree. It was my first months at home after taking redundancy, so I was glad for her company while I recovered from 20 years at the Indy and plotted the rest of my life.
Just over a year ago, Fifi began to loose weight and developed terrible cystitis, which we eventually discovered were symptoms of thyroid disease. We feared the worst, but thanks to some miracle pills from the vets, she recovered and had a new lease of life. She put on weight, her coat improved dramatically, she largely stopped the intermittent vomiting which she had also been affected with and generally became more at ease with herself. I'm so pleased she had a wonderful last year.
She would come and sit on my desk next to the keyboard, positioning herself so close I couldn't move the mouse. Why she could never sit just and inch or two the other way only she could say. Another trait was to creep up behind me on the table and suddenly dig her claw into my shoulder, demanding I turn round to pay her attention.
Fifi loved just being near people. Not long ago, before her final illness, she spent ages one evening lying on my chest, her whiskery features just a few inches from my own face, her eyes screwed up with pleasure, as I stroked her. Whenever I stopped, she would lazily lift a paw and extend a claw just enough into my tee-shirt to give me the message that I was to continue. And she spent many happy hours asleep on my young son's lap while he watched tv, clearly enjoying his taste for the Simpsons and Futurama. A picky eater like most female cats, she developed a liking for only the most expensive Marks and Spencers cat food, which led me into an exploration of the cat food industry for the Independent magazine. She even got her own Facebook page.
During the last few months, I had to get up very early many mornings and we developed a little routine in the quiet, pre-dawn hours, when the rest of the house was asleep. She would climb onto my bed, still sleepy from her night on the sofa in the living room, and, always occupying almost exactly the same spot on the edge, would watch me get dressed and ready for work in that curious manner that cats have, knowing that I'd spend the last couple of minutes stroking her and tickling her chin, before she could settle down for a snooze on the still warm bed.
But Fifi's favourite thing during this time was having her tummy tickled, her body stretched out and her head thrown back in ecstasy, particularly if she was also getting her chin and ears scratched as well. Her favourite person for this task was not me, but my partner Cathy, seemed to have just the right touch and who devoted many hours to this job, usually when she should have been doing other things. Cathy would say to me that it was time well spent, because we didnt know how much longer we would have her with us. And she was right.
What is extraordinary is that Fifi, the smallest and weakest one of the litter, outlived all her siblings, the last, Snuffkin, who was with my sister, died in the summer, just a couple of months after Fifi's son Figgy. Her other kitten, Columbus died last year.
She began to lose weight again a few weeks ago and I delayed going to the vet for a while because I suspected the worst and didnt want to embark on the machinery of treatment until it was really necessary. When she went off her food, I took her. It was a fast growing tumour and inoperable, although given her age, I would have been reluctant to do so anyway.
She was weakened by the anaesthetic for the x-ray needed to confirm precisely what the trouble was and never really recovered. Fifi's last two weeks were spent mostly on the couch in the living room, being fed morsels of fresh salmon, about the only thing she would eat. As she grew weaker and her bones began to poke through her coat - which fortunately never lost its lustre - it was heartbreaking for all of us. She stopped wanting to have her tummy tickled. She could still walk around a little bit, but was clearly uncomfortable.
We've gone to bed the last couple of nights thinking that she might be gone by morning, but she was always a tough little thing and we felt it was better to let nature take its course than have her put to sleep. I hope - we certainly felt - that she was not in any great pain. But, up until last night, she would still purr when she was stroked and Cathy and I spent hours over the past few days, stroking and soothing her. This morning, when we got up, I found her almost comatose on the floor by her blanket. I put her on the blanket, where she was warm and comfortable. Unfortunately, having barely left the house for three days, I had to go and do some pre-Christmas things. When I returned, she was in a coma, her eyes were open and blank, although she was still breathing.
I lifted her and the blanket onto my lap, and, my eyes full of tears, held and stroked her. After a few minutes, she coughed a couple of times and gradually stopped breathing. I carried on stroking her until all the life left her frail little body. Then I rang a couple of people to tell them, poured a brandy and began writing this.
Tonight, we will mourn Fifi and celebrate her long life. Tomorrow we will take her body to be cremated. She was a wonderful friend and companion for almost a third of my life and we will all miss her terribly.

Not blogged for a while due to a combination of circumstances - pressure of various work commitments mainly. I've been working for both the Evening Standard, as a reporter and the Guardian, as commissioning editor on a supplement about, ahem, sensible drinking. The supplement is out tomorrow, when I will talk about it further then.
Other notable occurrences over the past few weeks include my older son's 16th birthday - celebrated with Batman and pizza, my birthday, celebrated with bodyboarding and steak in Cornwall and then Leo's GCSE results, just good enough to get him into the 6th form, cue much relief all round and a another movies'n'pizza celebration. (Hellboy 11 as it happens - mostly terrific fun and I'm confident del Toro will make a fantastic job of the Hobbit, although I suspect it will be more ghoulish and scary than the book or the Jackson films)
In the middle of all this work came a week in Cornwall - all the family in isolated rented cottage, perpetual rain, moody teenagers, blocked toilets, get the idea?. Despite the rain, Cornwall was as wonderful as ever; we couldnt go on the beach very much, so we went to see some standing stones, fished at Porthleven (with almost no success, apart from one small fish for leo and some crabs) went to the fabulous Roskillys farm and Trevarno gardens and generally pottered around. The weather eventually cancelled our much anticipated but daily delayed mackerel fishing trip, but we did manage to buy some terrific sole, crab and brill from the Quayside Fish shop in Porthleven, one of the foodie destinations I recommended in a piece I've written for the British Airways magazine, High Life, which is due out any day now.

The only proper sunny day happened to fall on my birthday, when we had breakfast in the garden and went to Sennen cove, near Lands End, where we ate Cornish pasties on the beach and I donned a wetsuit for the first time and learnt to body board - much to the amusement of my sons.
Anyway, and this is the point of this posting, I wanted to go for a meal in the evening to celebrate my birthday and there were a couple of places I had in mind, Cornwall now being one of the best areas for decent food in the UK. But a mile up the road we had discovered a promising, very new organic farm shop, Kernow Organics which stocked a good range of mostly local fruit and vegetables, cheeses and a range of other organic produce. It was clearly modelling itself on the fantastic Gear Farm shop a few miles away on the Lizard, which sets the benchmark for farm shops anywhere - fabulous produce from local organic farms, fish from Helford River, home made pasties and other goodies. But Kernow Organics has clearly decided to go a little further and open a restaurant, where we decided to eat that evening. I was a little wary because the menu was a bit limited, but they did promise organic Aberdeen Angus steak, so we decided to give it a go. But while it was not an unmitigated disaster, it was a bit of a disappointment: there was only one portion left of the chicken dish my sons wanted (why? it was only essentially grilled chicken with a sauce; there should have been more in the fridge) the steak may have been prime Aberdeen Angus, but it was bland, the vegetables may have been organic, but they were too plain, presented with little care and dumped on the plates, rather than served separately. And my heart sank when I saw the chef chopping avocados (for our dip starter) and peeling potatoes (for the saute potatoes to go with the steak)- simple stuff that could have been prepared well in advance, rather than lead to our meal dragging on for hours. I could not understand why was there no fish on the menu? This is Cornwall!!!!
The service was a bit amateurish and the stripped pine ambiance akin to a vegetarian restaurant in about 1985. And the wine, considering the vast variety of organic wines now available, was dire:limited to a choice or red or white; the former being indifferent. It was a shame because the owner-chef was very welcoming and it was a place clearly full of good intentions. Some of the food -the home baked bread, the Stilton/broccoli soup, was very good. I really hope that, since it had only been open a few weeks, these were just teething troubles. I wish it well - but I think the lesson is that it's no good to just open a place to capitalise both on the boom in Cornish eating and on the organic movement and hope for the best. It has to work as a decent place to eat as well.

Here's my latest wine Ten Best for the Independent, on roses
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-ten-best-ross-867230.html
There are some terrific roses around, which are perfect for drinking during the summer months, or rather when we have some summer...To my mind, you cant really enjoy rose unless the weather's hot (or warm at the very least) so lets keep our fingers crossed that we might get a few better weeks between now and the end of August, for sitting outside, eating some nice Mediterranean food and sipping an iced rose. They do it all over southern Europe, so why not here? At the moment, its cool and rainy, so....
Unfortunately, I can't recommend the one rose that to me is probably the most memorable I've drunk. It was many years ago, on the island of Fueteventura in the Canary Isles - a curious place that seems more like a setting for a Spaghetti western that a holiday spot - but the local fish from the warm Atlantic is cheap, abundant and fabulous, usually served simply grilled with garlic and a choice of red chili and green coriander sauces, which owe more to North African cuisine than Spanish. And the almost deserted beaches are sensational - or at least they were then. I suspect the tourist hoards may well have made more inroads since. Anyway, one evening, my then wife, Marion, and I had been directed a small village in a sparsely populated part of the west coast of the island, where we had been assured that terrific local peasant food was awaiting us, if we knocked at a certain door, marked Marias (or something like that) After losing our way in the twilight, we eventually arrived in this village - hot, dusty deserted streets, no lighting, a few stray dogs, shuttered houses, that sort of thing. After soom mooching around, we found this door, with a small sign that said Marias (or something like that) in a side street and peered through one of those plastic strip curtains so popular in hot countries. Inside was a small room and what appeared to be an elderly woman, dozing in a chair. There was a far off sound of a television, in Spanish. I was all for calling it a day and heading somewhere more welcoming, but Marion insisted on ringing the bell, mumbling about coming all this way, starving etc. No response. The women continued dozing. She tried again. No joy. Eventually, something stirred deep inside the house and an elderly man came to the door. The woman continued to doze. We tried to say something about looking for somewhere to eat, but the man wordlessly, but welcomingly, ushered us inside, past the dozing one and into a back room, where there were several plastic clothed topped tables and an assortment of chairs. A single bright light illuminated the room. It was pretty basic. He motioned to us to sit down. Clearly this was a place that served food, although with hindsight, I suspect we might have been a bit late in the day for them. Or maybe they just did lunchtimes. The man disappeared into the kitchen and there was a good deal of clunking and clattering of pots and pans. In another darkened room, separated from the dining area by another plastic curtain, what appeared to be an entire family sat on a bed, watching television, entirely indifferent to us. After a few minutes, we were each presented with a bowl of intensely flavoured fish broth, with some prawns floating in it. Fantastic. This was followed by a large platter of chunks of white fish, moistened with the broth and flecked with saffron strands. Again, simple, but fantastic. This was accompanied by a basket of bread and potatoes boiled for a long time in highly salted water, a Canary Islands speciality. And also the point of this story - a bottle of unlabeled, ice cold light pink rose, clearly straight from the deepest recesses of the fridge, covered with condensation and plonked unceremoniously on the table with a couple of Duralex tumblers. It was not, I think, from Fuertaventura, where the climate and soil don't favour grapes, but the neighbouring island of Lanzarote, where the volcanic soils are more fertile. And it was perfect: bone dry, almost acidic, light and refreshing, the only possible accompaniment to such basic, elemental, cuisine eaten on a hot night. Desert, by the way, was a bunch of bananas. And the cost? Well, minimal, obviously. We left, extraordinarily satisfied and with grateful thanks, past the still dozing senorita.
As I said in the earlier posting about moules frites, it was a trip where we ate and drank in a much more elegant fashion at other points, but it is such singular, authentic experiences, where the eating and drinking are inexorably linked with the surroundings and the occasion, that linger in the mind and on the palate many years later.

The International Exhibition Co-operative Wine Society is the worlds oldest wine club and one of the more interesting organisations from which to buy wine. In 1874, the then Government asked Major-General Henry Scott, one of the great family of architects and who helped design the Royal Albert Hall, to deal with a surplus of casks of wine left in the cellars of the Hall after the last of the great Victorian industrial exhibitions. Aided by two other grandees, a distinguished ophthalmic surgeon and a senior official of the Board of Customs, they held a series of lunches to publicise the wines. It was such a success that Scott proposed the setting up of ‘a co-operative company’ to buy good quality wines on a regular basis to sell to members. More than 130 years later, The Wine Society, as it is now commonly known, still exists to buy wines directly from growers and offer them to members at fair prices. Life membership is currently only £40 and seems to me to be a worthwhile investment, since it allows access to tastings, special events and a vast range of dependable wines at good prices - from fine vintages for laying down to cheaper wines for everyday drinking.It also makes you feel part of a small club, even one with 100,000 or so members. Unlike a lot of other wine companies, delivery is mostly free and they will also store your wines for a small charge.
I learnt all this on from Ewen Murray of the Society on a trip last Friday to its headquarters - not, as one might imagine, a set of dusty rooms and cellars in St James or the City - but a modern office block and warehouse in Stevenage where they have been since abandoning their London base in 1965. Here they are currently building a new extension which will create what they believe is the biggest wine warehouse in Europe.
I was at Stevenage at their kind invitation to sample some of the wines from their Exhibition range - around 30 wines specially selected from mostly well established and reputable growers in order to demonstrate the typical strengths of any one type of wine, grape or area. So, they have their own Pouilly Fume, their own Chianti Classico, their Pomerol, their Chilean Merlot etc.... Unlike a lot of supermarket 'own labels' this isn't bargain basement stuff - there's nothing less than about £7.50 and you can pay up to £29 for a 2003 Chateauneuf du Pape, (even more for champagne or brandy) but they do represent terrific value for money and absolute dependable value. Out of the twenty wines I tasted, most were excellent. The standout whites were a wonderfully unexpected Gruner Veltliner from Austria (£9.95) - bone dry, light, refreshing, but amazing white pepper flavours on the palate and the lovely grassy, Pouilly Fume (£13.95), perfect for fine, white fish. Among the reds, I loved the Moulin a Vent 2005, (£7.95) a bargain example of a wine I'd never normally consider drinking, the big, serious, ballsy but biodynamic Margaret River Cabernet Merlot (£14.95), the spicy, Pinotage-heavy Cape Blend, (£8.50) the chewy, oaky, hints of tobacco and vanilla tastes of the Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon (£13.95) and the Gigondas (£10.95) - the best of the bunch, full of the herby,spicy flavours of the south of France.
As Ewan explained over an excellent lunch, what the Society hope is that its members, reassured by their adherence to certain standards, will use the Exhibition range to sample benchmark examples of wines with which they might be unfamiliar and then move onto trying others of the type from its range of 800 wines. Which makes sense. It certainly worked for me with the Veltliner and the Moulin. The Society can be found here: www.thewinesociety.com or 01438 737700

It's amazing what we do, sometimes, in search of the perfect meal. Last weekend, Cathy and I were in Brussels for a friend's 50th birthday party. We had an early start and only some croissants on the Eurostar so by lunchtime, having a potter around the (rather nice) Grand Place, we were starving. Of course, Brussels is one of the great eating cities of Europe, but we didnt want a big, expensive lunch because we were due to eat with our friends that evening and the following day; but neither did we want just a snack or sandwich. No, this was Brussels and we wanted what has become almost the Belgian national dish. We wanted moules/frites. And a beer. And, furthermore, we wanted them in an authentic Brussels brasserie, full of mirrors, faux Belle Epoque decor and genuine locals stuffing themselves with waterzoi and Chimay. But we were in the center of town, in an area populated mostly by tourists. Sure there were many, many places selling moules/frites and some even had the appropriate decor. But I have an absolute ban on eating in places were they have pictures of the food posted up outside and menus which include a Swedish translation (except in Sweden, of course)and some guy who grabs you by the arm to drag you to a table. We walked for miles, getting hungrier, weaker and grumpier by the minute, (it was also quite hot) leaving the tourist area and passing some quite decent looking little cafes and bistros. However, none of them served moules/frites. We eventually staggered into a downbeat, empty little joint, which had a loud jukebox, a television playing Belgian soaps, a friendly waitress and best of all, a sign outside saying 'Festival Du Moule' or something like that. We sat down with considerable relief. Ok, it wasnt the best meal I've ever had, but the moules were plentiful, plump and clearly freshly cooked and the frites were hot and crisp. The bread and beer were precisely what they needed to be. We scoffed it all down. It cost about £10 a head.
That night, at supper in the glorious garden of our friends, we had some great food. The next day at the garden party in the grounds of a small Chateau to celebrate C's birthday, we drank champagne, ate wonderful nibbles, enjoyed a sumptuous barbecue and buffet and possibly the best birthday cake I had ever eaten. It was glorious and made all the better by the occasion and the company. But its not the only taste I shall remember from the weekend.

The doorbell rang the other day. It was a door to door fish salesman - or rather the advance man who asked if I wanted some fish - if so, the salesman would call in a few minutes. I've seen these guys around north London a couple of times before, although I dont know whether this was the same person who called a few months back, when I was just going away for the weekend, so didnt want to buy. Like the others, they've got broad Geordie accents and says they are down selling fish from North Shields. When the second man arrives a few minutes later, he's got a basket full of largish, clingfilm-wrapped packets of what he tells me are cod, monkfish, haddock, salmon, sea bass etc for £9.80 each, which seems like good value since there's probably enough for four portions. I assume that he is happy to sell everything at that price - the economics work by putting less fish in the packets of the more expensive ones. The guy is friendly and there's no pressure to buy. He's got a white fishmongers jacket and a name on the breast pocket and shows me something which is labelled sea bass, but I look closer at it and it doesnt look like any sea bass I've ever bought - the skin is dullish green, with a line down the middle, not the bright check of a bass. In fact, it looks more like a cod or perhaps pollock. I dont think that's sea bass, I say, the packet must be mislabelled. He shrugs, doesnt say anything and continues rifling throught the packs. I should have picked up on this and pursued the point. He shows me a pack of what he says is John Dory - my kind of fish and one you dont see that often. This doesn't look like cod but I cant see the distinctive spot that appears on the side, I assume it's hidden by the way the fillet is folded. But the packet is labelled Tusk. What's this I ask? "It's Tusk, what we call John Dory up north. Big ugly, spiny things.'' He jabs his finger at the packet 'You'll see the spot there when you open it, they all have it.'' He's talking about the right fish anyway, and, although I've never heard of Tusk, who am I to disagree. He mentions a couple of other local names for monkfish and he says that herrings up there are called "finneys' or something like that. Fine. I give him a tenner and tell him to keep the change.
Its only later when I unwrap the pack that I realise that this is not John Dory. It's the wrong shape and had clearly come off a long, rather than round, fish. Two minutes research on the net tells me that Tusk, also known as Cusk, or to give the Latin name Brosme Brosme, is one of those obscure members of the Cod family found commonly on both sides of the northern North Atlantic. I know a bit about fish, but not that much, I'm afraid. And its never been an alternate name for John Dory. Although it is listed in official 'catch' records for fish markets, Tusk does not see, to be fished in huge numbers, mainly because its a slow moving bottom feeder and never gathers in sufficient quantities to be trawler friendly. And neither does it have any particular reputation for food, so you wont see it in your local fishshop. Alan Davidson, the authority on such matters, devotes scant mention to it in his definative North Atlantic Seafood, giving only one recipe, although he does say it is said to be good smoked. But I suspect that most Tusk caught by trawlers looking for cod or haddock has always gone straight into 'seafood products' or pet food because it does not have the same texture or taste as what the trade likes to call 'prime' fish.
However, as we all know, cod and haddock have been awfully overfished and we should be all be trying out less well known species, like pollock. But not Tusk, which gets top rating of 5 the Marine Conservation Society Fish to Avoid list, because it is a slowing growing, low reproductive capacity fish and stocks are low.
But, as I said in my earlier posting on hake, once a fish that should not have been caught has been caught and bought, in my view letting it go to waste only compounds the crime. So we ate the Tusk, cooked, as I had intended to cook the John Dory, by simply frying it on a griddle plate and serving with a salsa verde and some fried potatoes. It was nice, actually, a bit like pollock, although I'm not sure I'd want to eat it that often.
So, back to my door to door salesman. What was going on there? It seems inconcievable that he made a mistake but was he really a fish salesman for P.Youngs Fish, the name on his coat and the label on the packet? I wanted to remonstrate with them, but there's no listed telephone number in North Shields for P.Youngs Fish. The label also says it was packed by Peter Kinnal, Wholesale Fish Merchant with a telephone number in North Shields. I've rung it several times, but there is no reply. Did the salesman assume that I would not realise the con - which I now suspect it was - when I opened the pack? But, if that's the case, why put a traceable label on it? Was it really his fish to sell? Or is the label a con as well?
I'm still not sure what to think - apart from the sea bass, the rest of the fish in his basket looked exactly what he said it was - its difficult to mistake salmon or smoked haddock, although I didnt look closely at the monkfish. Still kicking myself for not being more alert, I'll pursue this further. But if these guys are conning, are they the same ones who called before? Or who used to call on my neighbours down in Holloway? Why con and come back? Its against the rules. As he left, I asked the salesman when he would be back. "Oh aye, we're down this way every nine weeks or so, I'll put you on my list...'' Fine, I'll be waiting for a little chat, my friend.

I love the smell (to misquote Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now) of toast in the mornings...or indeed at any time. Sourdough or granary, slices of day old brioche, baguette or ciabatta, muffins, crumpets and teacakes, bagels, hot cross buns, Cornish saffron buns, Arabic flat breads and Indian nans....there's nothing I wont put in a toaster or under the grill. There's something about the application of heat and a little light charring to bread that creates a whole new set of aromas and flavours, even to the dullest bit of white sliced - not that such a thing is ever found in my house. And, I've discovered, there is a proper name for the process by which we create toast - the Maillard reaction, of which more later. I'm musing on toast because I've just bought a new toaster after the last one finally gave up following four years of hard labour. It's not a fancy designer toaster, where form comes before function, but a fairly average Tefal job, the updated model of the last one, which worked perfectly well.
But it did make me think, while perusing the vast range of toasters on sale, that the British appear to be the world leaders in toast and, indeed, it was a British firm, Crompton & Company, that made the first electric toaster in 1893. Much as they love their bread in France, Spain and Italy, toasters are not quite a fixture of every kitchen and toast not so important as it is in this country, with our traditions of tea cakes and sweet breads of all kinds. If the French want to toast something, they bung it under the grill. The Italians of course created the paninni, which seems to have spread like wildfire to every corner cafe, but I dont think they are quite the same thing at all. There is something very English and comforting about our toast tradition - think of toasting crumpets on a fork in front of an open fire, a pot of tea and Gentlemen's relish to hand at about five pm on a winter's evening, or hot buttered toast and Marmite (actually, I'm a Vegemite convert, but thats for a later posting) at breakfast and toasted Saffron buns and hot chocolate after a walk along the Cornish cliffs. No wonder Nigel Slater entitled his wonderful and evocative childhood food memoir Toast, no wonder that in Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Graeme uses images of golden globules of melting butter on hot toast, to evoke a sense of home and fireside to a homesick Mole.
I learnt about Cromptons and the Maillard reaction from a fascinating article on a website called American Heritage. It told me, obviously, that it was Americans who actually made the toaster what it is today. More interestingly, the article says that infrared radiation is the key to making toast. "Direct heating of bread to at least 310 degrees Fahrenheit triggers what food chemists call the Maillard reaction, in which sugars and amino acids in the bread react to form numerous flavorful compounds responsible for the change in the bread’s taste, color, and aroma. The Maillard reaction also reduces the bread’s water content by about two-thirds, making the toast crunchy.''
You can read the full piece here http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2005/2/2005_2_6.shtml.
But to me, it will never be about creating a Maillard reaction. For me, toast is about something far more elemental than mere scientific formula.

Still not able to blog much - computer problems and aches in my right arm are not encouraging me to do much. Its very frustrating.
But, as someone who tries to eat ethically, I just wanted to write about a dilemma I experienced. Last week, I went to Cardiff for a seminar of journalists in education, because I've got a part time job teaching news reporting at Goldsmiths starting in September, which is very exciting.
The night before the meeting, most of the journalists went for a meal at a Portugese restuarant in Cardiff. Now, I like Portugese food and this seemed a nice place, genuine, bustling, lots of happy groups of people, and interesting things on the menu.
I didnt want meat - it was a warm night, suggesting something lighter and I'd eaten a lot of meat earlier in the week - although there were great looking kebab type things, with hunks of chicken and lamb on a skewer suspended above the table. But all the main course fish on the menu was potentially problematic and the waiters didnt seem the types to know, for instance, whether the salmon was farmed, or the halibut from sustainable sources. I know this is difficult when eating out, rather , than buying from a shop, but if you are going to try and eat ethically, then you have to do your best and encourage restuarants of all kinds to name their sources, so to speak. I would not have had the chicken on the Cardiff menu, for instance, simply because I knew it was almost certainly not free range and I have and absolute ban on eating chicken that I can't be reasonably certain about. This can cause problems: I once created a bit of a scene in the restaurant at the Globe Theatre (and quite a smart one) because they could not tell me the source of the chicken on their post-show menu. My point is that restuarants like that at the Globe theatre, which operate to a certain standard and charge appropriately ought to be able to tell the customer where the chicken (or fish) is from, so that we can make informed choices. And anyway, I would expect a place like that to have free range chicken and it shocked me when the waiter eventually said he believed it wasnt free range. I ended up with a rather dull pasta dish.
So, back to Cardiff and a restuarant, despite an interesting menu, is not the kind of more upmarket place where they are going to know and cite the source of everything they sell. And their special fish of the night was hake. Now, in common with most of the Iberian peninsular, I love hake, but I also know that its one of the most endangered white fish because of over fishing and that the Spaniards particularly, have been guilty of plundering stocks without thought for the future. But I also know that they would cook and serve the hake with love and care at this place and that the greater crime was to have caught and bought it in the first place, rather than consume it once the deed has been done. That creates another ethical dilemma - the wasting of food. So, I ordered the hake. I consoled myself with the thought that, when the dish arrived - the fish steaks pan fried, with a garlicky sauce - at least it was from a large, adult fish, which would have had a decent life and spawned some offspring. Eating younger, smaller fish from endangered stocks, which is increasingly happening, is entirely wrong. But all was not well - this not being London, they served two huge steaks of hake and I could only manage one. The second would almost certainly have gone straight to the kitchen scraps bin. I couldnt really ask for a doggy bag to take back to my hotel. In London, I would have turned it into fishcakes the next day. So, it seems that whatever you try to do to eat ethically and with environmental awareness, there is some new dilemma around every corner. And the hake? It was delicious, of course. But I'm still worrying about that wasted steak.

Have not blogged for week due to following: Severe rsi in my right hand made using the computer, particularly the mouse very difficult, so I needed to limit my computer use for a few days. The problem, I think, was using the mouse a lot, rather than writing with the keyboard. Thanks to a very nice man called Martyn at the RSI Shop, I've now got a new type of joy-stick style mouse, which is just as effective, but much less demanding on my wrist and arm. I'm hoping it works. It has to. Secondly, the computer itself, my much loved Apple Mac G5, keeps crashing. Its a long and complicated story and I know what the problem is and how to deal with it, but I'm waiting for another laptop to be repaired so I've something to use when the Mac goes away for repair. Until then, my use of the computer is a bit erratic. Thirdly, had some friends over for dinner on Saturday night and went for a long walk in Epping Forest on Sunday, where, amazingly, the rain held off. All of this has kept me away from the keyboard and, yes, my arm has begun to stop aching.
So what did I cook on Saturday night? Well, a lot of dishes similar to those I cooked two weeks ago, for the white wine tasting, including the potatoes with lemon fennel and olives, on top of which I baked several red mullet, so I wont bother giving the recipe because its below in this blog. You just cook the potato dish until its almost done, then place the red mullet, slashed diagonally, top them with some thin slices of lemon, drizzle with olive oil, season and bake for another 15 minutes or so until the fish are cooked. The mullet is expensive, but there was plenty left over, so I made risotto, using heads and bones to make stock, for supper on Monday and tonight will make arrancini (one of my all time favourite leftover dishes) from the remaining risotto...

I bought the mullet from a shop that has become my favourite fishmonger, in Green Lanes in north London. He's a typical old fashioned fishmonger, who has a very knowledgeable and discerning customer base among the local Greek community and he has adapted very well to serving them. He's not phased by someone coming in and demanding twenty red snapper or a couple of large octopus and knows he has to give his customers a wide choice of spanking fresh fresh fish. And he still has traditional salmon and kippers if you want them. On a Saturday, you have to get their early to get the best choice - as I know to my cost when I arrived one lunchtime in search of cuttlefish to be greeted with a good humoured but derisive snort - but he will start discounting as the afternoon wears on so that everything is sold. He would not dream of putting Saturdays' fish on sale on Tuesday. This is the kind of brilliant local shop that we should support against the march of the supermarkets. Long may he continue in business.

Now, where do you think I read this bit of prose:

Finn. Max’s sister.
Sleeps in the running position
First throught the door
And good to party.
Complex fast and fine
Up for a touch of luxury
Day job chief of security
Night shift, loves the leather !
Finn…slide into it.

Was it:
a) On a Channel Four press release, describing one of this years Big Brother contestants?
b) On a dating website, one that caters for leather fetishists?
c) On the back of a wine bottle?

Its the latter actually. An odd label and name for an Australian white wine, Finn Off the Leash, sold by Oddbins for a hefty £11.49 a bottle and recommended in my recent Ten Best New World White Wines in the Independent. Here's the link: http://independent.net-genie.co.uk/Food_Drink/59883/the_ten_best_white_wines_from_the_new_world.html.

I recommended it because of the fact that, despite the slighty off putting, some would say pretentious, labelling, its actually a very good wine, made without oak, from a blend of Chardonnay, Semillion, Pinot Gris and Viognier. Its light and refreshing, but sufficiently complex and sophisticated to make it interesting and satisfying on the palate, although its a little overpriced for everyday drinking. I'd buy it to accompany a fine white fish like brill or turbot, or some simply cooked shellfish, for a decent weekend meal. The vineyard that makes it, The Lane, situated in the Adelaide Hills, produces a range of apparently quite serious, modern wines (although I've yet to try any others) and this wine is clearly attempt at even more 'fun' branding, designed to appeal to younger consumers. Finn, described as a 'contemporary drinking experience' is, as the label says, brother to Max, a shiraz/viognier blend.
While its part of a trend of wacky wine labels from Australia winemakers, all part of being fresh and different to distinguish them from their fusty old world rivals, in many ways its a more traditionally minded wine, very different from the oaked, tropical fruit flavours of the typical Aussie chardonnay. As I said in an earlier post, the Aussie winemakers, or at least the people that sell their wines over here, are moving away from the 'it's got to be either chardonnay or sauvignon' axis into more complex wines, using blends involving interesting grapes like viognier. Paradoxically, the French, of course, having embraced Aussie winemakers and single grape labels are now getting in on the act by now marketing their budget red wines with ironic names like Chat-en-Ouef. Compris?

Celebrated Max's 14th birthday last night with a trip to see the new Indiana Jones movie (huge fun but flawed, with astonishing holes in the plot) followed by pizza (Ask, competant, but not as good as La Porchetta, of which more at a later date) and then Champagne and chocolate cake at home. Well, not Champagne precisely, but Ridgeview, an exceptional, award winning English sparkling wine, which I developed a taste for when I wrote about English wines a while back. Like most English sparklers, its light, effervescent, dry but full of floral flavours, and the perfect summer celebration drink. It's served at many official Government dinners. The majority of people would be hard pressed to distinguish it from Champagne - it's made from classic Champagne grapes like chardonnay and pinot noir and pinot meunier, grown on chalk and clay on the Sussex Downs. While offering the deepest respect to Champagne, we should still support this wonderful, British product, low in food miles and made with love and care by a family business. Find it here http://www.ridgeview.co.uk/ at around £20 a bottle.

Here's the latest big piece I've done, for the Independent Saturday Magazine. A fascinating subject, I think. Although I can't say I've developed a taste for catfood.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people
/the-man-who-eats-cat-food-for-a-living-832554.html

Hopefully the link works on the copy and paste principle. I cant seem to find a way of posting a direct link.

Had a wonderful time at the London International Wine Fair yesterday. It's a massive exhibition at the Excell Centre in Docklands, where almost every type of wine from all over the world is on display. This includes wines from countries not normally associated with winemaking such as Thailand and India as well as exotics such as wine made from pomegranates, which, unfortunately, I didn't quite get around to sampling. Two things struck me about the fair: firstly, despite the vast amounts of wine being tasted, this is a professional business and, even by the end of a long day, there were only a handful of people who looked as though they might have forgotten to spit often enough. Secondly, more seriously, is the absolute dominance of the big companies and big brands who account for most of the wines we drink in this country. Small producers of interesting wines struggle to compete and make themselves known. I chatted for a while with Monique Germain, representing a small co-operative in the Perpignan area of Languadoc-Roussillon, and looking for a UK distributor for its premier wine, Chateau Montner. She had a small counter as part of a bigger stand representing all the wines of the region. A typically full-bodied, earthy blend of Syrah Grenache and Carignan grapes and utterly redolent of the sun-soaked terrior of this Mediterranean fringe, of quiet little villages of red tiled houses and endless rolling vineyards that supply the local co-operatives. So many lovely wines are made there, the largest by volume wine growing region in the world and yet so few make it here, where we resort to the easy familiarity of Aussie brands and single grape labels that dominate the supermarket shelves. I really hope she finds someone willing to buy - but it's significant that the biggest crowds were elsewhere.
On a slightly different tack, I stumbled (well, there had been a few samples taken) into a remarkable tasting of fine sherries matched with equally fine chocolates, hosted by Peter McCombie MW on the Pedro Ximenez stand. Highlights were a Bodegas Alvear 2005, a relatively light sherry matched with white chocolate flavoured with cardamon and a Bodegas Navisa, a much darker, more full bodied sherry, matched with an Amedei Porcelana, the first chocolate in the world produced only with cocoa beans of a single genetic variety, called "Porcelana". Simply stunning flavour combinations all round, both sherry and chocolate enhancing each other stupendously on the palate. Matching wines with chocolate, is a whole new area for wine buffs, since they were previously considered almost incompatible. I think I've found the climax for my next dinner party...
Later, thanks to Karis Hunt of Ehrmanns, I experienced some even more interesting taste sensations at a fascinating vertical tasting of Tahbilk Marsanne wines dating back to 1979. Tahbilk is a family owned winery in the Oragambi lakes north of Melbourne which has the oldest Marsanne vines in the world, first planted in 1860. Marsanne is a rare grape, originating in France and normally found mainly in Rhone white wines. At Tahbilk, it seems to have reached its absolute zenith: the wine is made simply, with no oak, allowing the flavours to come to the fore. Now, its generally accepted that, apart from the very finest French wines, most dry whites - certainly those popularly consumed by most people like chardonnays and sauvignon blancs - should be drunk within a year or two of being made. Not so the Tahbilk Marsanne. As we tasted the wines going backwards from 2007 - dry, aromatic, medium bodied - they became progressively interesting: darker in colour, highly aromatic on the nose and complex on the palate. Amamzing aromas of honey and toastiness and flavours of tropical and stone fruits increased as we went back through the 2000's and into the 1990s. A bizarre but not unpleasant kerosene or petrol aroma were present in some of them, although as as the winemaker and owner of Tahbilk, Alister Purbrick said, it would be nice to find another description. Curiously, while the older wines had the aroma and appearance of lucious, sweet desert wines, they remained dry and elegant on the palate and easily drinkable, although you would want to relish every drop. Due to climatic variations, some years were obviously better than others, but I'd drink the 2004 and 1993 anytime, if you could still buy them. The 1979, a wine almost 30 years old, was perhaps, as Alister admitted, past its best, but the 1982 was still going strong. Anyone interested in Tahbilk Marsanne can get the excellent 2005 at branches of Threshers (for around £9.50) or the 2006 via the Wine Society for £7.50 a bottle (although you have pay the one-off £40 joining fee, its worth it) or at these independents: www.cambridgewine.com, www.stantonwineco.co.uk and www.gordonandmacphail.com.

Another rite of passage for my sons - or rather for the eldest, Leo - today. They come thick and fast at this age. He's starting his GCSE examinations, on which so much depends. He's been working very hard for months now and I really think he deserves to do well. It does take me back to my own schooldays, when they were called O levels. I can so easily remember sitting, revising and working, on glorious spring evenings, as we have had this month and gazing from my bedroom window at the sunshine and just longing to be able to go out with my friends. As Leo has been doing. Why do we have to have the most important examinations co-inciding with this glorious time of year - and the time in a teenagers' life - when they are just developing a serious social network. How did that happen? Re-schedule examinations for the winter months and watch the pass rate rise, that's what I say.
And, while we are on the subject, another rite of passage is looming. Leo wants to go to Glastonbury. Oh dear. Cue big discussions with him, and with his mother. At not yet 16, I'm inclined to think he's a bit young, but subject to some promises and strict rules, I suspect he will end up going and we'll keep our fingers crossed. The liberal parent will prevail. At least my niece, a festival veteran at 27, will be around, somewhere in the mud, if there's a crisis. I never did the festival thing when I was younger and don't much care for it now. I remember, back in the early '70's, some friends returning from one of the very first Glastonburys: still spaced, still covered in mud. Not for me. Yes, I know its different now, but I've never fancied sleeping in a tent, walking miles for the loo in the middle of the night or going without a shower for three days. And as for prospects of eating decently....well, thanks, but I'm not going to pay outrageous prices for endless boxes of takeaway noodles or tofu burgers. I'm happy to watch it on the television (although I miss the comforting presence of John Peel) and with my own food to eat...

A bit late getting back with this, but here's another recipe from Sunday:

Potatoes with fennel, lemon and olives.

For four/six people as side dish:

One bag small waxy potatoes, like charlotte or nicola. No, I dont know how much those bags weigh, several pounds I guess.
One head of fennel
Two or three organic, or at least unwaxed, lemons, depending on size.
Handful of pitted black olives

Wash or scrub the potatoes and cut them into small chunks, smaller than roast potatoes.
Wash and chop fennel into small chunks.
Chop olives into quarters
Cut lemons into eigths, reserving half of one lemon.
Mix up all the ingredients with about four tablespoons of olive oil
Spread it all out on a roasting tin
Squeeze the remaining half lemon over everything and then add sea salt and black pepper lavishly.
Roast in middle of hot oven, about 220 electric, gas mark 7 for about three quarters of an hour to an hour. The potatoes need to be cooked through and browning nicely.
The idea is to get lemon flavoured potatoes with fennel, so you can pick out the charred lemon bits when you serve, because they have done their job. Or warn people.
Variations: use preserved lemons for a stronger taste, or omit the fennel and add dried oregano.
Goes well with roast chicken or fish.

A friend suggested that I provide a daily recipe, something I'd love to do, but suspect I will not be able to find the time. However, my intention is to provide regular recipes, so here are some of the things that I cooked for Sunday's wine tasting, which everyone seemed to like:

Stuffed squid and red peppers.

Delia Smith, I think, said life was too short to stuff a mushroom. Well, could not agree more. Why would you want to? And how? But squid, well, squid is just natures way of providing something stuffable....
I can't provide exact measurements here, it depends on your squid, which can come quite small, which makes them a bit fiddly to stuff, or very large, so you end up with something that looks a bit like a salami.I had two biggish ones, about seven inches long, which the fishmonger had cleaned.I also had the tentacles, wings and the head, minus eye and beak. I filled them with a pudding bowl full of stuffing, and had some left over.

Stuffing ingredients:
The squid tentacles etc
Rice, cooked or uncooked. I used some plain, cooked, basmati rice, left over from friday's curry.
A handfull of capers, rinsed and chopped
A handfull of black, pitted olives, rinsed and chopped
Some pine nuts, lightly toasted.
Some chopped parsley or coriander or both
Some chopped onion or shallots, plus a couple or three cloves of garlic.
A beaten egg.

Method: Soften the onions and garlic in some olive oil for a few minutes, then add the finely chopped squid bits and cook for a minute or two.
Mix this with all the other ingredients, mixing in the egg at the end. Salt and pepper copiously.
Having rinsed and dried the squid tubes, ease this mixture inside using a spoon and your fingers. Careful with the small squid, because they tear easily. Squeeze it down the tube until you have a sausage like creation. It gets messy; deal with it. You might need to use a toothpick to hold the ends.
The only caution here is to remember that if you are using uncooked rice, leave plenty of room for it to expand in the cooking process. I prefer to use cooked, its easier and there's less worry that the squid will cook before the stuffing.
Lay the squid in a shallow baking dish and splash on some home made tomato sauce, thinned with a little water, so the squid are bathing, but not drowning. You don't have any tomato sauce to hand? Shame on you. Learn how to make it. It's a doddle.
Cover with foil and put this in a medium oven, say electric 160, gas 4, for about 20 minutes covered, and a further 10 minutes uncovered. Leave them to cool for about ten minutes afterwards. If you have used small squid, serve one or two per person. If you have the big ones, then carefully, using your sharpest knife, slice the squid sausage into serving portions about three-quarters of an inch thick, which you lay lovingly on a plate, surrounding by a puddle of sauce. In theory, the egg binds the stuffing, so that it largely stays within in the rings. But dont get stressed when it doesnt. This is rustic cookery.

What to do with leftover stuffing:

Take a jar of the small, spicy, Spanish red peppers sold in most supermarkets. They are about the size of a large cherry tomato. Drain, rinse and dry. Carefully spoon leftover stuffing into each one. Push it in with your fingers. Yes, it's fiddly, but worth it. When you run out of stuffing, you are done. Or you can put whole pitted olives in them, or anchovies, or many other things left lying around the fridge. Surround the squid with the peppers, or cook and serve them separately, with more tomato sauce.

Fabulous weather for early May. So on Sunday, when I had some people over to help choose new world white wines for the Independent's ten best column, it was great to be able to sit in the garden and drink and eat the afternoon away. I was deeply grateful to my sisters' partner Phil, who was an invaluable assistant not only because of his good palate and knowledge of wines, but also because he helped me sort out the garden beforehand. It looked like a bit of a bombsite, because I'd chosen last week to try and fit in a bit of reconstruction of borders and so forth, which I hadn't quite managed to complete on time. I'm not really one for planting flowers, but I find it enormously therapeutic to spend a couple of hours on a warm evening, the birds still singing, doing a bit of light landscaping.
Anway, back to the wines. The full ten best will be published in the Independent soon - you can see some of my earlier ten best columns on wine and other drinks here: http://independent.net-genie.co.uk/Food_Drink/ - but a few random thoughts, which I don't get space for in the 25 or so words I'm allotted each bottle in the column. Firstly, I was slightly gobsmacked that, among all the wines I was sent by a cross section of supermarkets and online wine companies that there were so few Australian chardonnay's, which for years' has been seen as the atypical New World wine style. I think that, among several dozen bottles, there was only one Aussie chardonnay, a couple from Chile and one from New Zealand. Maybe the wine trade realises the public's taste for big, oaky chardonnays from down under is waning and it is trying to divert us onto other, possibly more subtle grapes. My girlfriend Cathy, from Melbourne, unashamedly adores her big chardonnay's, so was a bit disappointed not to have more to try. By contrast, there were dozens of sauvignon blancs to sample, mostly from the Marlborough area of New Zealand, almost all of which were excellent, although some had this slightly sulphorous, almost bitter finish to them, which is not to everyone's taste. And they all tended to taste very similar. The whites which varied most from bottle to bottle and divided opinion were those made with the Viognier grape, which can be a far too perfumed for me unless it is part of a blend, and so I was really surprised to find two terrific examples, which will probably feature in the final ten. Similarly divisive are those from the Reisling grape, which are, I think, mainly just too light weight and floral to drink with food. They do make an excellent aperitif, however. The best comment of the day though came from my friend Louise, who pronounced that the lavender scented bouquet of one particular reisling was 'just like the kind of perfume you'd expect the Queen Mother to have worn...'

Only a few days in and already this blog is getting a bit mixed up about dates....this entry relates to Sunday, although there is already a post datelined Sunday, which I wrote on Saturday night and I haven’t had a moment to write this until now...doh!
Anyway...on Sunday afternoon I underwent a right of passage with my two sons: I took them to a football match. Or rather, we all went to see Arsenal play Everton, seats courtesy of my old friend Alan, to whom much thanks must be given. It wasn’t much of a match, a bit of an end of season affair with not a lot at stake, but it was just great to be there and the players did a lap of honour, as it was the last home game of the season, which was a nice moment. We all enjoyed it.
It was the first time we've been to a proper Premier League match together, although the boys are Junior Gunners and have been several times to matches at the old Highbury and at the Emirates, which is a fabulous stadium. Born and brought up in Islington, where a Gunners flag flies literally and figuratively from almost every rooftop, it’s the natural thing to support their local team.
Now the reason why I've never taken them to a match before is simple: I just don't have the football gene...it's not in my blood in the same way as it is with Alan, a Gunners season ticket holder who has been supporting them for more than 40 years, since he was a schoolkid at the Angel. That's dedication to a cause.
I didn't grow up like that - there was no real fanaticism for football in Birmingham – unlike Manchester or Liverpool - and I didn’t live close to the City or Villa grounds. Of course the game was not as omniprescent then as it is now, but it was still a huge passion for many, particularly among the working classes, where it was very much a father and son affair. But my father was not remotely interested in football and I dont remember any school friends ever supporting any team, even the local ones. I played rugby at my grammar school and, so far as I can recall, never kicked a football around in the park with anyone until I had kids myself. So, apart from puzzlingly being a supporter of Spurs when they won the double sometime in the Sixties, when I was about eight, and remembering the 1966 World Cup only because it was on the television on the day of my sister’s birthday party, football mostly passed me by over the next few decades, whether it was Kevin Keegan’s perm or those penalty shoot-outs. And while I might have caught a bit of that on the television, I never felt it in the same way as, appparently, the rest of the nation did. Even my mother was more interested in football than I was. When we bought a house in Islington, some would comment on its proximity to the Highbury stadium; I was indifferent.
Then, of course, the kids grew up, I played football in the park with them many times and they eventually followed the local tradition of becoming Gunner’s supporters, although not, I’m glad to say in any kind of fanatical or anorak-style fashion. (Not like the ten-year-old I sat next to on the bus the other day, who appeared to have memorised ever Arsenal result and player since about 1956)
I began to enjoy their support with them. I read Fever Pitch. We bought them the Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp shirts and celebrated with thousands of others in Upper Street when they won the double in 2002. But I still didn’t quite get it, didn’t quite see what all the fuss was about until about three seasons ago, the one that ended with the defeat in the Champions League final. Suddenly, I realised the beauty and ambition of the football that Arsene Wenger wants his team to play, the purists way, even if it means defeat, and came to understand why football can be ‘the beautiful game’ although I prefer the ‘working class ballet’. So, as they say in the Mafia movies, I’ve been sucked in. I’m now an Arsenal fan. I’ve got the Sky Sports subscription as much for me as for the boys. I’ve taken to shouting at the screen and punching the air. I read the match reports avidly and have developed an addiction to Radio 5 Live.
And on Sunday, I even asked Alan about season tickets. Only a two year waiting list, apparently. I may not have been born with the football gene, but I think its growing in me.
Now, as it happens, Alan is about to become a father any day now and while his joy will be certainly unconfined, I think a part of him will regret not being able to celebrate both the birth of his son and Arsenal winning the Premiership and the Champions League all in the same month. But, he will also know that, as his son grows up, there will be many more moments they will share together supporting their team. I’m sure his season ticket will be booked and his Arsenal home shirt bought as soon as he is out of his Arsenal babygrow. Undoubtedly, this is a boy who will be born with not just the football gene, but the Arsenal gene.

One footie foodie footnote. Max refused to have anything to eat before the match, saying he preferred to eat there. Now, I’ve bought them up to eat well and I like to think that, compared to many teenagers, they have relatively sophisticated tastes. But, as I reflected , watching Max scoff his slice of fast food pizza out of a cardboard tray, while watching the action, sometimes its not what you eat, but who you are with and where you are that really counts….

I'm not an eco-fascist - I have people around me who more than compensate for my failings on that score - but I try to do what I can to re-use and re-cycle. What has got me really mad for many years and long before it became an issue, is the over-packaging of foodstuffs. When I buy my fish now, it gets sealed in some kind of foil bag and then put into another carrier bag - what happened to just wrapping it in paper and shoving it in your shopping bag? Supermarkets - yes, I'm not afraid to admit I shop there - are terrible offenders. Marks and Spencers, much as I admire their fresh food and applaud their policy on sustainable fishas well as their recent decision to drop free plastic bags, are among the worst at packaging their food in all manner of cardboard, cellophane and plastic products. And don't start me on Easter eggs. But its small things as well - recently, someone, with the best intentions, bought me a box of posh Earl Grey teabags. The box was sealed in its own cellophane wrapping, which I suppose is fair enough. I then opened the box to find two further separate packages of 20 or so tea bags, each also covered in cellophane. But that's not all: each tea bag was, as the posh style demands, in its own paper wrapper and individually tagged, with a string, so we dont have to use a spoon to fish the bag out of the kettle or cup. Making a simple cup of tea leaves behind a messy litter of wrappers, tags and strings, as well as the bag. I know it's all biodegradable, but it's not necessary in the first place, is it? And I might be less grumpy if it was a nice Earl Grey, but it's not, its bitter and tastes nothing like the real thing. It's a rubbish teabag in every sense of the word.

Tuesday, April 29

My mother just called for a quick chat (well, 30 mins plus is her idea of a quick chat) and asked for my recipe for garlic soup, which I’d made when she was visiting at Easter. There are many variations on garlic soup, some with bread, some with eggs poached or stirred into the broth. Mine is about halfway between simple and complex, omitting eggs. Here it is :

Garlic soup for four
Take four to six cloves of garlic, depending on size, remove any green bits in the middle and very finely chop. Put a generous pinch of saffon into a cupful of hot water and let it infuse.
Sweat the garlic in about six tablespoons of olive oil in a thick bottomed pan for a few minutes; keep the heat low, it must not burn.
When the garlic has softened, add the following: generous pinches of cayenne and paprika, the leaves from several sprigs of fresh thyme and some chopped fresh parsley. Stir until the spices have released their aroma
Add about 300grams of fresh breadcrumbs and stir until they have absorbed most of the oil/garlic mixture. It should be almost paste-like at this point. Add a tablespoon of tomato passata or chopped tomatoes and cook for a few minutes longer, keeping the heat low. Tomatoes aren’t vital, actually, and be careful not to use too much, otherwise you have a tomato soup, rather than a garlic one.
Add about 2.5 pints of water or light chicken stock and the saffron water. Stir it all in well, bring to a gentle boil and simmer for about fifteen minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
You could do as the French and omit the tomatoes and poach some eggs in the soup, making it more of a full meal. Or beat in some eggs as thickening, the Spanish way. If you stay with the tomatoes, some chopped fresh basil added at the end is good, but not essential. Either way, enjoy!

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Down to Surbiton to see old friends G and B, and their son L, an amazing, bustling ball of dark eyed, curly haired energy, demanding and giving entertainment all the time. Before and after eating a great fish pie (topped with cracked filo pastry, which works really well) and a fabulous tiramisu (the oldies are the best) we played football in the garden and Top Trumps at the table. B and L soaked each other with water pistols. And L spent ages sitting on Cathy’s lap, fascinated by her jewellery. He told us he had three girlfriends and I’m not surprised. I’d almost forgotten – my own sons being now both well into teenagerdom – just how much sheer fun a five year old can be. But demanding as well. He capped the day by, completely accidentally and inavertently, poking Cathy in the eye with a stick he was waving and she spent most of the journey home with a tea bag pressed to her eye. G and B were distraught and felt terribly guilty, but it was just one of those things. It didn’t spoil a splendid day and Cathy will live. I remember how my own son, Leo, aged 18months, had once jabbed me in the eye while I was bathing him. I could barely see out of it for two days and was still in pain a week later. Such are the pleasures and pains of parenthood.

The duality here had me thinking about how fascinating it is that some wines open up in the bottle, so they taste better the day after being uncorked. Last week, Cathy and I drank a bottle of Alchemy Shiraz Grenache 2006, an excellent wine by Aussie winemaker Linda Domas (Oddbins £8.99) over two nights. Full bodied and fruity driven, but with enough tannins and subtle spice to reign in the Shiraz on the first day; day two was a much mellower drink, more balanced with the Grenache even more to the fore and marginally better. Now on Saturday, I opened a bottle of Adnams Selection Chilean Estate, a blend of Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenere. I was my licking my lips with pleasure, thinking that here was a terrific new world version of those blended reds from the south of France, with all the concentrated, robust, spicy, black-berry fruit flavours I love. The perfect pizza/pasta wine, although with it I ate grilled Italian sausages, some pepperonata and cannnelli bean mash, which worked perfectly. But, finishing the bottle tonight while catching up with the Sunday papers, it tasted a little, well, flat, by comparison. Still drinkable, but definitely past its best. Should have drunk it all in one go, I suppose. (Adnams £6.99)


Friday, April 25, 2008

You know how it is, you are feeling a bit ho-hum, not exactly down in the dumps, but not full of the joys of spring either. Then you open a bottle of something and, suddenly, life looks a whole lot better. This happened the other night – I broached a bottle of cold rose from the fridge, thinking of a glass or too as an aperitif before dinner. Yes I know I said earlier that I don’t oftend drink rose in April, well, there are exceptions to every rule and, in this case, I wa glad I made it. When I took the cork out, there was a distinctive ‘pop’ and I realised that this was a Vino Frizzante (okay, I missed the miniscule lettering on the label and it wasn’t the champagne-style cork normally found on prosecco). Rosata del Veneto is a fizzy pink from Venice, (well, the foothills of the Dolomites, rather than the island itself, where, to my knowledge, there is little room to grow grapes). I felt instantly on top of the world. As light and effervescent as an Italian operatta, as refreshing to the senses as the first sight of St Marks Square, this the kind of bottle we see too rarely in the UK – a cheapish and cheerful sparkling aperitif, or drink it, as the Italians do, with fish. £5.00 a bottle, if you order 12 from Laithwaites, otherwise £5.99. And at 11% alcohol, its easily quaffable.


Thursday, April 24, 2008

An annoying day. Trying to write an article for the New Statesman – well a supplement on crime (I used to be a crime correspondent, for the Birmingham Post and then the Independent, many years ago, and still keep a working eye on the subject) – and keep being interrupted by internet problems and my sons, who are at home because the teachers are on strike. Both need to revise for their exams, but need constant nagging to do so. The internet connection keeps slowing down, the telephone keeps cutting out and the television also froze, all of which prompted groans from me and frequent complaints from the boys. Tiscali, who just fitted a new wireless router, tell me that its because my BT hasn’t got room for them all, therefore the internet will be slower when the tv is on. I think I’m going to kill someone at Tiscali. This never happened with my Homechoice service (a good little company which got taken over by Tiscali.) Felt a bit fractious by the end of the day. To settle my mind, I went to swim 40 lengths and to console my spirit, opened a decent bottle of red this evening……


Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The weather is better now, and the need for those warming bottles of red wine to accompany the meat-based stews and roasts of winter and early spring are much less - although its only in the sultriest weather that I feel able to forgo my nightly glass of red.
I’ve got some very decent white wines in the house in preparation for a piece I’m writing for the Independent, so I thought it would be a good idea to try a couple of them with some nice fish. The excellent if pricy fishmonger in Muswell Hill had some fine looking gurnard, so I bought a couple. Gurnard was previously often only used to bolster fish soup or stocks but, when so many other species have been over-fished it’s getting the revisionist treatment by chefs and food writers and being seen more in fish shops. And rightly so, its an excellent fish, a bit like red mullet in texture. It works well with strong flavours, so I made a simple Medittereanean fish stew (well, the evenings aren’t that warm yet), using a stock made from the heads and tails and stockpot veg. I then sweated some onions, garlic, fennel, parslay and chilli flakes, added some white wine, some passata and let it cook for a bit. Added the drained stock, saffron, some small boiled potatoes, a few black olives and bubbled it for about twenty mins until the potatoes were almost done. Then I added the gurnards, cut into chunks and cooked for another ten minutes or so, throwing into some raw prawns right at the end. Terrific, big flavours, every mouthful watched from bowl to mouth by my cat, Fifi, whose paw occasionally, but almost without her appearing to notice, strayed towards the edge of the bowl. But apart from a few small morsels, it was too bony to give her a taste, because she’s getting on a bit (18 years…that over 80 in human terms) and I didn’t want to risk getting a bone in her throat.
Now, normally, with rustic, garlickly fish stews like this, I like ice cold, bone dry roses, but while that feels the right thing in the garden on a warm summer night, in April, gently chilled whites are called for. As an aperitif, My girlfriend Cathy and I finished off the Iona Elgin Sauvignon Blanc (Waitrose £9.99) from South Africa, a lovely, elegant, benchmark Sauvignon, full of grassy, lemony flavours, with plenty of depth and decent finish. With the meal we had a Farnese Pecorino 2007, (Laithwaites £7.83) made with the rare Pecorino grape (yes, I’d not heard of it either and its nothing to do with the cheese) made near Italy’s Adriatic coast. It’s an absolute stunner and winner of several awards. With just enough oak to make Cathy feel she was drinking a Chardonnay from her Australian homeland, it’s a full bodied wine, full of character and sufficient minerality to give it a nice crisp palate. It went magnificently with the fish stew. So, there you go, one unusual fish, partnered with one rare wine. Life’s not all about cod and chardonnay you know….