TERRY KIRBY

The dilemma of deadlines and the risk with rose

2011-10-09T11:48:00.009+01:00

After the blissful heatwave of last weekend, which I spent enjoying the incredible sun and scenery of the Malvern Hills, the weather has cooled again and, fortuitously, my wines of the week in the Independent on Sunday, which are here, have a definite autumnal air about them again. When you are writing a couple of weeks in advance, the weather in spring and autumn can often be a little trap waiting for you that annoys readers - the casual reference to the warm weather and a recommended rose to be drunk ice cold might be incongruous when read in the middle of a cold snap, when a warming red is what is most needed. Naturally, readers do not like this, but often do not understand that production deadlines for newspaper supplements are usually at least a week or more in advance of actual publication, which means that I wrote today's column almost a fortnight ago. I'm just glad that my autumn wines special of two Sundays ago did not co-incide with last weekend - when it really was rose time. That would have felt wrong. But although I enjoyed a really good, iced Bergerac rose last weekend, with some nice fish, after a long, hot walk on the hills, I'd would have been foolish to recommend it in the column I wrote last Monday, because of the possibility of, say, a decent October snowstorm a week today. It would be tempting fate. As it happens, the Foncaussade Les Parcelles Bergerac rose is on special 25 per cent discount offer at Waitrose until Tuesday, if you want to stock up for next Spring - or hope for another autumnal warm spell. This is the wine here and Waitrose are right in saying it would be good with paella or similar dishes. And at around £5.50 a bottle, its a terrific bargain, cheaper if you buy six.
So far as today's wines are concerned, the Miranda de Secastilla 2008, it has to be acknowledged, does not have the most attractive label. But what a wine for the price - textured, aromatic, chewy, chocolate-y (yes) but still fresh on the palate, which makes it extremely gluggable. Great for autumnal, gamey foods of all kinds. I'm forced into cooking on my gas rings at the moment only because I'm waiting for the oven fan to be repaired. And the weather over the last couple of days has been distinctly chilly. So its a stove top venison and mushroom casserole tonight, with a nice, big red. Or that was the plan - but having been out and about this morning, its a bit warmer than I thought, so I'm having a bit of a dilemma over what to eat tonight, constrained by my oven's limitations. And I'll certainly be keeping some rose in the fridge just in case.

The pleasures of Oporto and port

2011-09-25T12:36:00.009+01:00

Just returned from a trip to Oporto and the truly wonderful Duoro Valley to visit both port lodges and some beautiful vineyards owned by Taylors, one of the great names in port. And of course, there was lots of sampling and drinking terrific ports - as well as some very nice Portugese table wines - and some truly fine food and lovely hospitality. Our party stayed for two nights at the awesome Yeatman Hotel, a five-star 'wine hotel' built by Taylors overlooking the centre of Oporto, a World Heritage Site. Will try and post more on Portugal later - and will be writing about the trip for the Independent food and drink pages but for the moment, here is a pic of the glorious Quinta de Vargellas estate, one of the finest port producing vineyards. It was taken by Sue Glasgow, who organised a fabulous few days.
Today also sees the publication of my Wines for Autumn special in the Independent on Sunday, which is here .
I've taken the liberty of using the Independent on Sunday's image which accompanies my piece because it looks so beguiling. So often, the sheer sensual beauty of a wine bottle - the shape, the art of the labelling, which can vary from the lovely to the banal, and the colour of the wine are treats in themselves, even before you drink what's inside. Which, in each and every case here, is rather lovely.

What to drink with....mushrooms

2011-09-10T12:25:00.004+01:00

In the last few months, I've been doing an occasional Saturday column for the iPaper, the Independent's cheap and cheerful sister paper on matching seasonal foods with wine. It has been dogged with problems getting it online because, for reasons too complicated to explain here, material written exclusively for the i doesn't automatically go online unless I specifically request it. Then I was away when the last column was published and consequently - being so distracted by the sun and sea of Skopolos - that I forgot to get it organised. I will try and get that online soon. Anyway....here is the latest column, published today. Three excellent and very different wines, with the Co-op Chianti a particular bargain, if you get to your local branch before Tuesday. And I'm off tomorrow to search for some wild mushrooms, hoping that the bounty is as sensational as it was last year, when almost every woodland I visited was full of the most extraordinary fungi, both edible and poisonous.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/what-to-drink-with-mushrooms-2352509.html

Wines of the week

2011-08-07T11:13:00.002+01:00

My wines of the week are here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-la-vicalanda-reserva-2005-tres-olmos-verdejo-rueda-2010-cuve-de-richard-ros-2010-2331203.html
The Vicalanda reserva is a fabulous wine I recently tasted on my trip to Spain, which I wrote about in June here
Already its August.....almost time for mushrooms and game, without even properly exploring the delights of summer. One or two days nice weather, meals in the garden etc, then its cool and rainy again. Time for a holiday, I think.

My wines of the week

2011-07-31T10:36:00.004+01:00

Here are this week's Wines of the Week in the Independent on Sunday New Review:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-chteau-de-segure-fitou-2007-raimat-abadia-ros-2010-ken-forrester-reserve-chenin-blanc-2009-2326908.html

Wine winners

2011-07-24T10:41:00.006+01:00

There are some wines that you try and they take a little while to grow on you, or perhaps just need to find the right food, the right time, the right place. And there are some wines you try that you admire and are happy to recommend to others as fine examples of what they are, even though you might not want to drink them yourself very often. Then there are wines that simply knock you out at the first mouthful, that you think, right away, this is stunning. And so it was with the Stanley Estates Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, which I am recommending in this week's column in the Independent on Sunday, which is here http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-stanley-estates-marlborough-sauvignon-blanc-2010-domaine-les-yeuses-les-epices-syrah-2009-trivento-malbec-2009-2317571.html It's hardly the most unusual wine, but I love Kiwi Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc - its approachable, refreshing, zingy on the palate. While standards are mostly high - you find very few duff bottles - such consistency often leads to over familiarity and one zesty gooseberry-and-lime flavoured bottle begins to taste pretty much like the others. Not so the Stanley Estates - yes, its got all those flavours, but in massive quantities: a hugely refreshing mouthful with the tastes of elderflower, gooseberry, asparagus, green peppers and lime all easily identified. And its made by a British couple: you can read all about them here: http://www.stanleyestates.co.nz/
Unfortunately, while you can get it easily enough online - the stockists are in the column - the Stanley Estates isn't yet available in one of the High Street majors like Waitrose or Majestic, because, I suspect, they can't produce sufficient quantities. It's a real shame, but reinforces the fact that if you want to try individual, different wines, going to small online retailers is often the best bet.

In the pink....

2011-06-13T18:00:00.004+01:00

While the quality of much Spanish sparkling wine is a given (see my earlier post) they do not really attempt to challenge the French in the higher price range, where bottles of rose champagne cost two, three or four times that of a decent cava. So, step forward an Englishman, hotelier Richard Balfour-Lynn, (left) who is producing a rose in Kent that, in taste terms alone competes with the best French can do, even if he can only make a fraction of the volume. Hush Heath Balfour Brut Rose is a terrific celebration drink, which should be supported by everyone who loves good wine. Here's my piece for the Independent today http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/in-an-age-of-austerity-at-least-we-can-raise-a-glass-to-british-bubbly-2296757.html

Sparkling Spain....

2011-06-13T10:15:00.014+01:00

Guilty feelings about not blogging or tweeting, particularly after a few days touring vineyards in Spain last week in the company of two enthusiastic bloggers, Andrew Barrow, who blogs as http://www.spittoon.biz/ and tweets as @wine_scribbler and Sarah Belizaire-Butler, who blogs as http://eatsdrinksandsleeps.wordpress.com and tweets as @sarahbb. Both managed to keep up a steady stream of tweets while I spent most of the time watching the battery drain out of my iPhone. Time for an upgrade, I think.
We were in Spain courtesy of Grupo Codorniu, for whom Sarah performs pr duties, to meet some of the winemakers (led by Australian Arthur O'Connor) who are attempting to bring up to date a venerable but perhaps slightly fusty company (it dates from the C16th, is still in the hands of the same family and pioneered Spanish sparkling wine) and sample some of their wines, many of which were excellent.
Among the many highlights was a visit to the astonishing Codorniu winery on the outskirts of Barcelona, which was designed by modernist Catalan architect, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, a student of Gaudi and a tour of its massive underground cellars where wine is stored.
Here are some pictures:

This one is, I'm afraid, a bit blurred (bloody iPhone again) but it shows the astonishing main hall, with its lovely curved seating, the arched doorway and the stunning stained glass panels above.
From intricate lunchtime tapas snacks (melt in the mouth octopus stood out) to delicious, fullsome home cooked fare at Codornui's 'castle' near Raimat (including a remarkable prawn and aubergine 'lasagne') and and a six course meal in the C15th atrium of a former prison now turned hotel in the Rioja town of Haro, (stunning roast vegetables and charcuterie) the food was delicious. There was also a simple lunch in a vineyard - tapas, tortilla and chorizo, morcilla and thin pork cutlets all cooked over a fire of vine cuttings, accompanied by lovely wines and followed by a 25-year-old brandy.
All of that went some way towards compensating for the meal on our first night in a boutique hotel in Barcelona, where the restaurant goes under the wing of Martín Berasategui, a Michelin-starred Basque chef. Heston Blumenthal and Ferran Adria have a lot to answer for: it was ill-conceived (cheese soup with salmon? Candied veal cannelloni?) poorly-served (my tuna was well done, the red wine arrived too late) clumsy (the pinapple 'jus' was straight out a can and accompanied banana from which the taste seemed to have been surgically removed; the 'cabbage cream' was pureed spinach) while requests for changes for vegetarians or the shellfish-allergic were done only grudgingly ('there is only a little meat in it'...).
But the real point of our trip was to visit the vineyards and taste the wines, which we did with gusto. From Codorniu HQ ( where we sampled fabulous cavas such as the Seleccion Reventos; £9.99 Majestic/Wine Rack)) we travelled south to the mountainous Priorat region, where Codorniu own the Scala Dei (God's ladder, named after the mountains) winery, which sits in the middle of the tiny village of the same name. While Codorniu HQ is grand and historic, Scala Dei is small and functional, making modest amounts of up-market wines from Garnacha and other vines grown on small, carefully tended plots high up in the mountains, such as the wonderfully intense, complex, spicy Cartoixa 2005 (available at Tesco, Wine Rack, Oddbins for around £30.00)
From Scala Dei, we travelled north to Raimat to see another contrasting vineyard - here, vast amounts of previously neglected land have been planted with carefully irrigated vines to produce a range of varietal wines based on the familiar varieties such as syrah and cabernet sauvignon for the mass market in both Spain and the UK. They grow about half the grapes for the main Codorniu cava production, although they also make their own. Here is a pic of one of their massive vineyards:

But despite the industrial scale of production, I was impressed by the fact that the vineyard is striving to be sustainable and converting as much production to organic as possible. In one vineyard, wheat is allowed to grow between the vines, providing a home for rabbits and quail, which themselves become food for birds of prey - who scare away the flocks of smaller birds, which had been eating the grape. Simple.
And this care certainly came through with some of their wines, particularly whites such as the Castell De Raimat, a lovely, citrus flavoured blend of the local xarello grape with chardonnay and the creamy, herby Terra chardonnay, both of which will be on sale in the UK soon at around £9.99. Raimat's own award winning sparkling wine, Gran Brut, is also lovely and worth seeking out in independent wine shops at around £14.99.
From Raimat it was a long, long coach trip to Haro, in Rioja, to try some of the Legaris wines (although the vineyard, actually in Ribero del Duero was too far to get too) in the previously mentioned atrium of the Hotel Los Agostinos. I've recommended the Legaris Reserva before in my Independent on Sunday column http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-legaris-reserva-2004-aliwen-reserva-pinot-noir-starborough-sauvignon-blanc-marlborough-2009-2275534.html and I'm happy to say the other vintages and wines we tried were just as good. As I said earlier, the subsequent six course, six wine meal was terrific, although the bar we found afterwards was a bit of a disappointment - a style borrowed from the best Parisien/Chinese red/black brothel look and a barman with one of the more eccentric tie/shirt combinations I've ever seen.
The following morning, it was a tour of the Bodegas Bildbainas winery in the centre of Haro, a tasting of their lovely wines, including the Vina Pomal (both Reserva and Crianza are in Majestic, £12.99 and £9.99 respectively; both recommended) and their top of the range, powerful, long, long finish reds, La Vicalanda Reserva 2006 and Gran Reserva 2001 (£15.99 and £24.99 respectively; independent stores). We also had the chance to taste their new, boutique wine, the Vina Pomal Alto de la Caseta 2007, which goes on the market shortly at around £45. Made from 35-year old Tempranillo vines, its one to put aside for a few years before getting out for special occasions. There is a pic of the vineyard and our party sampling the wine on Andrew's blog here: http://www.spittoon.biz/ To paraphrase Andrew's blog subtitle, he's done that, so I don't have to...
We got to see the incredibly stony vineyard (I had a chance to drive a 4x4 around the estate, which was great fun) before a wonderful lunch in the hut in the middle of the vines:

We digested our lunch (and ate some delicious tiny cakes) on the long journey to Madrid airport for the flight home.
I'll return to some of the wines I tasted in my IoS column at a later date, but in the meantime, here is this week's column, a tribute to the truly wonderful Wine Society: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-dunico-masseria-pepe-2007-the-societys-exhibition-grner-veltliner-2009-the-societys-corbires-2008-2294678.html

Living longer and drinking well....

2011-04-10T11:31:00.009+01:00

I've been very busy over the last few weeks - end of term for my students, various bits of freelance work and a couple of weekends away - so no time to blog. Not much time for anything other than work until the last few days, which have largely been about catching up and going to the gym. So I'm here, rather than being in the garden, which is hopefully where I will be this afternoon.
One of the weekends away was a lovely trip to the Gers area of Gascony, courtesy of the one of the largest wine co-operatives in the area, Plaimont, to taste some of their excellent wines, eat some of their local food and generally get to know the place. I'm not saying this just because they paid for a splendid, if brief, weekend, but because they seem a decent organisation, who appear to look after their employees, have a clear sense of the time honoured traditions of the area, but are also savvy enough to see that the emerging markets for their wine include India and China....I'll write more about Plaimont and the villages around Saint Mont later, either here or elsewhere. And one of their very fine white wines is recommended in this weeks column, which is here: http://tinyurl.com/3zrukp7
What is also interesting about Plaimont is that some of their red wines are made from the Tannat grape, which has been the identified as being a 'healthy heart' grape in research by Dr Roger Corder (which is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6195220.stm?lspan although there is something more technical here h ttp://ezinearticles.com/?Understanding-the-Health-Benefits-of-Moderate-Red-Wine-Consumption&id=4512803 ) although the diet of the area is heavy on meats, particularly duck, foie gras and, well, more duck, and relatively low on vegetables, grains and pasta and all the other ingredients of the supposedly healthy 'Mediterranean diet.' It's closer to the Atlantic than the Meditteranean anyway and the countryside has a distinctly English feel to it. But what is also astounding is the longevity of some of the local people - I met wine growers well into their 70's who still work in the fields every day and one extraordinary man, Rene, pictured here, who tends some of the oldest vines in France, if not the world, although they are for the table, rather than wine. His age seemed a bit variable, but he said he had been working in the fields for about 80 years, so he could be around 90.
This is, of course what is known as 'the French paradox': how can such a diet and regular wine consumption lead to such longevity? The answer of course lies in many variable factors - regular physical work, fresh air and a relaxed and relatively un-stressful lifestyle all play their part. It is important to remember such people as Rene when there are stories around such as the latest report this week that said, effectively, 'drinking gives you cancer' (here is the BBC version, which also links to the original, slightly less emphatic, BMJ report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12999000) I'm not going to get into the whole debate here, except to say that it is important to realise that society is constantly in a process of re-assessment and reviewing its own behaviour, something accelerated by technology, medical research, our expectations about lifestyles and means of communication. What was once acceptable is no longer the case: The British Empire, male chauvenism, casual racism, battery chickens, asbestos, tobacco....you get the picture. Maybe the world is just beginning a whole process of re-appraisal of its relationship with alcohol, just as it is doing with our production of carbon and has done with tobacco. But I also want to add two other things: firstly, it's not new that drinking more than is sensible carries a risk of cancer and other diseases for some people and that, secondly, many other things also carry a risk to our health - excessive work, stress, lack of fresh air and exercise being just some of them. Which is why I'm going to switch off the computer and go and spend some time in the garden. And if I had some vines, I'd be looking after them like Rene...

Feeling good about eating and drinking....

2011-03-06T10:36:00.003Z

Today's wines recommendation in the Independent on Sunday New Review are the first of two weeks' selections from the list of Wine Relief wines, a project started by wine writer Jancis Robinson, (I think, officially, the doyenne of wine writers) which is designed to raise money for the Comic Relief charity, which stages its bi-annual Red Nose Day on March 18. For each of the bottles sold from a selection, retailers who are signed up to the scheme - Waitrose, Booths, Majestic, Laithwaites and others - donate 10 per cent of the purchase price to Comic Relief. Like last weeks Fairtrade wines, it is a concept that I'm very happy to support on the basis of one simple premise - that the wines are good and worth recommending. While quality of the Faitrade wines is, frankly, a bit mixed, I'm happy to report that almost all the Wine Relief wines are absolutely worth drinking and its certainly a good time to, perhaps, spend a little more on these wines over the next couple of weeks to ensure even more money goes to a good cause. In this case charity begins not at home, but when we go shopping.
Here are this weeks recommendations, which include the stunning Grande Reserve Du Grassac Rouge, which has become one of my favourite reds: http://tinyurl.com/62dltve
So its nice to feel good about our ethical and charitable contributions while we are slurping down a nice bottle...which brings me, slightly tangentially, to today's appeal by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. Archbishop Vincent Nicholls has appealed to Catholics to give up alcohol and meat on Fridays for Lent in a spirit of self denial - but also, he says, that there are other benefits, like losing weight. While I abhor being lectured to by any religious leaders (particularly ones from institutions like the Catholic church) I can't help but agree we all need to give up or moderate our alcohol consumption - and I do not think that is a hypocritical attitude from a wine writer since I've always advocated sensible drinking and chose to do my period of abstinence in January - but he fails to mention other issues like liver diseases and cancers, which are equally or more important. And his plea to give up meat on Fridays for Lent seems amazingly out of touch - I'm sure there are very few people who eat meat every day now for either health or economic reasons and by implication endorses the idea of eating meat every day once Lent is over. Which is not anyone's idea of a balanced diet. In the same way that religious bodies should never be relied upon for moral guidance and the churches role in charity and ethical issues has been long shown to be overtaken by such secular ventures as Fairtrade and Comic Relief, I dont think we can rely on churches for advice for eating and drinking.

Fairtrade wines

2011-02-27T11:25:00.008Z

A brief note this week, as have much to do today - its a lovely sunny morning, so the first bicycle ride of the year is called for, I think, followed by a late brunch and, hopefully, watching Arsenal winning the Carling Cup...
So, this weeks wines in the Independent on Sunday are all Fairtrade wines, ie those produced under an agreement where small producers in South America and South Africa are paid an agreed fair prices for their grapes and wines. It is, of course, a laudable idea and this is the third time in past four years that I have tasted a large amount of Fairtrade wines before writing about them. I have to say that, although there are more and more Fairtrade wines around, the quality of many of them this year is, sadly, quite poor. Like English wine, it's something you want desperately to succeed, so it's all the more galling when the wines fail the most basic test of all - are they any good? Without naming names, so many of the wines I tried this year were either thin or acid in the case of the cheaper ones - mainly sauvignon blancs or chenin blancs - or simply too young and Ribena-like in the case of the reds - cabernet sauvignon, merlot or carmenere grapes picked only a year ago, which have simply not been allowed to develop long enough, either in the barrel or bottle. Why they have been rushed onto the market I have no idea. Thankfully, there were enough decent wines around to find three for recommendation in the column, which is here http://tinyurl.com/5tw8n6t
Some others which did not quite make the cut include the lovely, smooth Los Robles Canelo 2009, a cab-sauv/carmenere blend from one of the biggest Fairtrade co-ops in Chile (M&S £6.99 but reduced to £4.99 for Fairtrade Fortnight, which lasts until March 13); they also do a perfectly decent Sauvignon Blanc for the same price. Also worth mentioning are the darkly intense Sainsbury's Taste the Difference South African Cabernet Sauvignon 2009, (£9.99 but reduced to £7.49 until March 22) the crisp and apple scented White River Chenin Blanc and the lively, pizza'n' pasta friendly Six Hats Grenache,(both from South Africa; both Laithwaites; £83.88 for 12) and the Kleine Rust 2010 Chenin Blanc/Sauvignon Blanc (£42.89 for 6; www.bibendum-wine.co.uk)
Some supermarkets now have decent Fairtrade wine ranges - the biggest by far is at the Co-operative although Sainsbury's also have a good selection. And a case of their carefully chosen wine from the Fairtrade specialist online retailer, Traidcraft (www.traidcraft.co.uk) would be a great present. But, when in supermarkets, please remember my points above: don't buy a 2010 red and avoid the cheaper whites.

Vodka nights and old friends

2011-02-13T12:36:00.004Z

I forgot, when blogging last week, and have not had time to deal with it since, to talk about the vodka-themed dinner party I had attended the previous night, maybe because I was still a bit bleary eyed. Now I love vodka sometimes - a well made Bloody Mary is one of the greatest of all drinks and the best hangover cure I've come across. And a very cold shot as an aperitif is pretty good as well.
But an entire evening of vodka drinking - well almost, there was a glass of red to accompany the (ironic) chicken Kiev, but it seemed strangely out of place - was something else. It was because my old friend Lesley (someone I've known since we were both pretending to be older than we were in the pubs in Bham) now only really drinks vodka, because her stomach is resistant wine. Which is why there is always a bottle of vodka on the table when she comes for dinner. So Lesley and her partner Skye had an evening of Russian food - caviar, blinis, borscht, smoked fish and the Kievs - accompanied by a selection of iced Russian vodkas. I wasn't making notes and the evening ended in, well, a bit of a blur, so I cant give all the details - I must post them - but they were astonishing for their variety of styles - one creamy, another sharper, another fruity and luscious, which was particularly good with the strudel for pudding. A great idea for a different evening.
And particularly good company, which included an interior designer, a food photographer, a man who runs a history website and a conceptual artist from Canada whom I quizzed about eating moose. Curiously, three of those there were people who had been to the same schools in Birmingham as I, one of whom I had been friends with at primary school, climbing trees together in the park, sometime even before both of us got to know Lesley. Did any of us think then, that by curious paths and connections, we would, one day in our, ahem, middle years, all end up drinking and eating and talking in an elegant room in West London. It only really the sharing of food and drink that can bring people together like that, I think.
And yes, I know vodka isn't supposed to give you a hangover, I just always feel bleary eyed on a Sunday morning.
So, to this week's wines for the Independent on Sunday, which are here: http://tinyurl.com/6bfjhe6. It's Valentines Day tomorrow, so there had to be some sparklers. I've also suggested a terrific Spanish red for a main course for those sensible enough to cook at home, (rather then indulge in some awful Valentines Day themed meal in a restaurant strewn with pink balloons) and because while you can drink vodka with just about anything, as I've discovered, pink champagne really doesn't do much for food after the nibbles and oysters. Although of course that doesn't mean you can't save a couple of glasses for later...

Getting it right

2011-02-06T11:32:00.005Z

I am always slightly nervous about the whole process of recommending wines. The taste of something and the sensitivity of an individual palate are so variable and personal that it can be a risky business. One person's wonderfully subtle and aromatic red is anothers' thin and uninspiring vinegar substitute. There are some wines I love simply for their unpretentious nature and their appropriateness for time and place that would have many other wine writers recoiling with disgust. I've had people round to sample some wines where everyone agrees consistently on their merits or otherwise - apart from the one person who always takes the contrary view. Sometimes, you don't 'get' a wine until the second or third glass or when you are eating it with just the right food. I remember a particular South African Chenin Blanc, which I thought had probably spent too long in the bottle and was past its best. Then, by accident, I used it to wash down some grilled fish with a particularly strong aoili. It was a revelation - the almost oily wine perfectly marrying the garlic. Similarly, a dark Spanish red, dismissed by a group of us as rather flat and lifeless was revealed in a more thoughtfully drunk glass the next day to be something of stunning complexity and depth.
So it's nice to think you might have got it right when you find a wine that you really like and hope that others will feel the same. Therefore it was with some joy that when I walked into the front room of the house of my old friends Sheila and Gerry last Saturday night and saw everyone enjoying a bottle of La Vieille Ferme, a wine from the Cotes Du Ventoux which, by a nice co-incidence, I was recommending in the Independent on Sunday the following morning. Everyone there expressed their enjoyment of the wine - brought by another guest - and which accompanied Sheila's robust vegetarian cooking extremely well. I felt somewhat smug, it has to be said.
It is a wine I first came across in the on board shop of a ferry from northern Spain a few years ago. I bought a speculative box of six for about £30 and thought it a terrific wine for the price - medium bodied, well made, spicy and fruity at the same time, a perfect accompaniment to Mediterranean foods. I quickly discovered that it was made by Perrins et Fils, one of the great names in Rhone wine, who have been making wines for almost a hundred years and whose Chateau de Beaucastel, an organic Chateauneuf du Pape with great ageing potential, can cost around £80 a bottle. If you can find it. La Vieille Ferme is made using the same love and care but from grapes (a familiar southern French mix of Syrah, Grenache, Carignan and Cinsault) grown close to the main estate. It is therefore, a fantastic bargain, but also sometimes difficult to find. The couple who bought it to the dinner party found it in Waitrose, although it is listed as 'out of stock' on the Waitrose wine website. Unless you want to take a trip on a Brittany ferry, the only other place I could find it is in Majestic - where you have to buy six, but it is a steal at £7.49. The same has to be said for another Majestic wine I'm recommending in the Independent on Sunday this week, the Ravenswood Vintners Blend Zinfandel, which is possibly an even better deal at just £4.99. Although a single varietal from America's native grape, the Zinfandel, it is in many ways a similar wine - well structured, spicy, fruit driven, with a satisfying finish - and from a producer with real longevity and experience. Waitrose, it should be noted, are selling it for about £9.50. Majestic told me they are able to offer it at such a price because 'our buyer got a great deal on a few hundred cases.' Good for him and for us. Both these wines are excellent value for midweek meals and, as I said, neither would (or did) disgrace the dinner table. Go and buy...
Here is last weeks' column: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-coyam-emiliana-2007-la-vieille-ferme-ctes-du-ventoux-2009-st-hallett-poachers-blend-2008-2196344.html
And here are this weeks' wines: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-chteau-de-ciffre-faugres-terroirs-daltitude-2008-montgravet-chardonnay-2009-ravenswood-vintners-blend-zinfandel-2007-2202431.html

Bargain bin....

2011-01-23T12:54:00.003Z

Last week of January eh? Bit of a grim time all things considered - what seems to be endless gray days, all that let's-get-back-to business after the festive season workload, the collapse of our cricketeers down under (I think I know what the next 'An Apology' column in the Eye might say), the lack of interesting food around (the new season blood oranges is about the best I can look forward too) and, for some of us, the prospect of another week without the comfort of a nice glass of wine as we complete the January detox.
I've relaxed my previous total January ban a bit this year, as I explained last week, but for those of you still grimly hanging on, there is one reason to rejoice - it's a great time to buy wine for when you can drink again.
While prices seems to be rising everywhere, as my wine recommendations in the Independent on Sunday this week illustrate, there are plentiful bargains for wine drinkers out there, whether it is about big reds to warm the body and soul or cheapish whites for midweek meals and whether you are shopping in your local supermarket or online.
Here is the column: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-carchelo-jumilla-2009-champteloup-chardonnay-vin-de-pays-du-val-de-loire-2009-rockbare-tinder-box-mclaren-vale-shiraz-2008-2188854.html
These are not, I should stress, wines that fall into that category of almost permanently discounted, big brand labels, that sometimes dominate the supermarket shelves. Those wines are wines which are often rarely worth the full price of £7 or £9 or whatever; their real worth is at £4.99. These wines are, I hope, genuine bargains as dealers clear their shelves to make way for new bottles.
So, stock up the wine cellar, stoke up the fire, experiment with some new casserole recipes, (Tonight I'm going for mixed game - a big thank you to The Wild Meat Company - with mushrooms, chestnuts and parsley dumplings), and take comfort in another warming mouthful of a big red. Or just admire that bargain bottle and tick off another January day.

New Year, new wine column

2011-01-17T11:45:00.003Z

So, yes. Um. Where were we? I see that the last post I wrote here was in November 2009. Er, been a bit busy since, what with the teaching and writing and so forth.
Not that I suspect people were hanging around for my every word, but for those regular readers – my old friend Lottie, my mother and that strange chap who keeps sending emails in capitalised green - huge apologies for not keeping you up to date with details of my amazing life, astonishing meals cooked and eaten, fantastic adventures in wine etc.
Sorry you’ve missed out on hearing about that wonderful tasting of Spanish wines and foods, the terrific (well, I think so) meals that I cooked for a couple of dinner parties, the fascinating time I had exploring Morocco with my sons, a birthday weekend of vodka, caviar and borscht (thanks, Lena) the incredible once-in-a-lifetime displays of woodland fungi last autumn that had me scrambling around in the leaf litter for hours, my agonies searching for the right Christmas Eve meal and my utter joy at finding a raclette grill in Lidl, for just £14.99. Sorry, but I’ve just been far too busy just, er, doing all that. Any anyway, Tweeting has replaced blogging, hasn’t it? No one, surely, has time to blog anymore. I certainly have not. Blogging, is, in fact, just a bit last decade. And I don’t even have time to Tweet.
Therefore, it is time, obviously, to revive my blog. For several reasons. This weekend saw the end of my annual New Year detox – this time ten days without a drink, although I will stay off the booze on weekdays until the end of the month – and the publication of the first of my little wine recommendations column in the Independent on Sunday New Review. It is part of a revamp of the Review, which, since its inception, has been by far and away the best written and best designed Sunday supplement among the national newspapers. And I am honoured to be writing for it. So what better way to celebrate the column with a few glasses of decent wine: a fine Australian white and a robust South African red. And very nice they were too.
The Wines of the Week column is a simple idea – just three recommendations for wines to buy in the forthcoming week – something for Sunday lunch (or Saturday dinner; you get the idea, I am sure, this is one to spend a little on) a bottle for midweek drinking (a more modest proposal, what I call my ‘pizza’n’pasta’ wines) and a bargain buy (which can be anything from a good supermarket discount on a reliable branded wine to a bin end clearance of a pricey claret).
I will not be recommending wines I have not personally tried, neither will I advocate stupidly priced ones, at either end of the scale, or ones which are sold by one wine shop, somewhere in deepest Somerset, that does not do mail order. But I will be hunting down the best wines from among the thousands available from retailers ranging from High Street supermarkets to the very many online outlets.
And what I will also do – in recognition of the fact that almost all of us buy wine principally to drink when we eat – is recommended the best kinds of foods for these wines. Indeed, the successful marriage of food and wine is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sensory pleasures available to us. And that is the underlying basis for the column.
In January, of course, the kind of wines to recommend is a bit of a no-brainer. It has got to be big, warming red wines, the kind of bottle to put on the table with the venison stew or baked pasta and then finish off in front of a roaring fire afterwards. But in coming weeks, I’ll be suggesting wines for other occasions – Valentines Day, Fairtrade Fortnight, Easter Weekend and basically any other excuse for an interesting theme I can find. I will also try and post most of them on this blog and perhaps talk about them a little more. Here is the first column: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-terry-kirby-selects-the-best-bottles-to-buy-2182919.html
So, a New Year, a new wine column.

A daily glass of champagne....

2009-11-17T17:30:00.007Z

One of the reasons that I still enjoy journalism so much is that occasionally one gets to go to places, do things and meet people you might otherwise not get the chance to do. I'm not talking here about terrorist bombings or disasters but more personal things. Watching a visiting shoal of dolphins from a Greenpeace boat on a bright morning in the middle of the Channel, testing out a new interactive art installation at the Tate or ploughing through an autumnal New Forest in search of mushrooms in the company of a slightly mad, but highly entertaining mushroom expert are just three of the many moments that spring to mind. On those occasions I feel lucky and privileged to be a journalist and it makes me think that, after more than three decades, its still something I want to carry on doing, at least until I get a proper job.
Today was one of those moments when I was asked by the Evening Standard to go to the memorial service for the late great Sir John Mortimer at Southwark Cathedral. Now Sir John was someone I have admired for many years - from when he defended the publishers of Schoolkids Oz at the Old Bailey, through the Rumpole and Leslie Titmus years, right up to his wheelchair bound old age, when, surrounded by a bevy of admiring young women, quaffing his daily glass of champagne, he remained full of opinions, anecdotes, jokes and life generally. He was, as one speaker put it today, a perfect example to us all of how to grow old properly.
I rang him up a couple of times over the years, as did many journalists, to seek his views on matters legal or literary and he was always fun to talk to, always full of good quotes - and knew exactly what he was saying - and always seemed to have plenty of time to talk, despite his busy life entertaining his female friends and lunching. The last time was in the spring of last year when I called to ask his views on plans to modernise the bar. After being instructed by his secretary to call his direct line in two minutes, that familiar, croaky, distinctive voice came on the line, now though terribly wheezy. We spoke for a few minutes and he was as entertaining, friendly and quotable as ever.
Unfortunately, I think he then got me on the redial of his phone and I had about three more calls from him over the next couple of hours when he clearly called me by mistake. I felt terrible about the fact that I had to tell one of the great raconteurs and conversationalists of the age - someone who, it was said today, preferred 'an amusing fib to a boring fact' - that I really didn't have any more questions for him - and was up against a deadline.
So it was with some of these thoughts going through my mind that I sat in Southwark Cathedral today. Not only was it a privilege to be there anyway, alongside many of the great and good from the arts world like Alan Rickman, Sir Peter Hall, Alan Yentob, Richard Eyre and Tom Stoppard, but also to listen to some spellbinding readings - Sir Derek Jacobi, Patricia Hodge and Edward Fox all delivered passages from Sir John's work, while Joss Ackland read from the Bible and Jeremy Irons from Thomas Hardy. There was also some lovely music: Thomas Tallis, one of my favourite arias from the Marriage of Figaro and some classical pieces by Jon Lord, the former member of Deep Purple who became a friend of Mortimer.
I'm like Sir John himself, who, Lord Kinnock said, was a 'devout unbeliever' and an 'Atheist for Jesus,' but cannot deny that the soaring arches of Southwark provided a stunning and moving backdrop to such fine words and music in honour of a great man. As I said, something of a privilege....
Here's the piece I wrote:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23770782-great-gather-for-a-voyage-round-sir-john-mortimer.do
And now for my daily glass of champagne...

2009-11-15T11:50:00.007Z

Tomorrow, I'm off to the hospital for my check-up following the stomach problems I had during the summer and I'm happy to say that since having a tube poked around my stomach in September, I've felt perfectly fit and fine, without a trace of the terrible pains that dogged me in July and August. Which is a good job, because I've been so rushed off my feet over the past weeks by a combination of work and socialising, I haven't had time to be ill again...
Some of the socialising was, happily, combined with work, because I had to stage dinner parties for people coming over to help me test wines for two pieces for the Independent - one on red wines for autumn and the other on low alcohol wines. Well, you can't invite people over to taste wine without giving them something to eat, can you? (I am reminded of a comment I once read about a particularly garrulous and disputatious well known media couple, who it was said, would invite people around for an argument and then, almost as an afterthought, throw some food at them....)
Well I cant resist throwing some food at people, given the opportunity. So it was stuffed squid, spiced mackeral and roast poussin and quail for the red wine night, which was following by, for me, the highlight of the evening, the spectacular cheese board prepared by my friends Angela and Jeremy. Angela had been in Paris the night before and visited a fromagerie on her way back to the Eurostar and they arrived with Jeremy bearing a vast board, laid out with chevres, soft, blue and hard cheese and all manner of other things like grapes, nuts, dates, crackers and breads. Such style. I'm glad some of the wines stood out as well - here are the ten best for the Indy..
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-ten-best-autumn-reds-1810923.html
There were several other very good wines which just failed to make the cut, but I'll post on them later.
On October 31, there were more people around to taste low alcohol wines and, of course, a vaguely Halloween themed meal. I agonised over this for some time - not wanting to be silly (ghoulish masks for everyone and tomato 'blood' sauce were both immediately ruled out) but also relishing the challenge of sticking to certain rules. Everthing had to be orange and black or white, more or less the colours of Halloween. So it was pumpkin soup, morcilla sausages with apple and celariac puree and Portugese Feijoada, made with black beans, pork and chorizo as a main course, followed by black plums in white port. Well, it sort of stuck within the rules. And was fun. I was going to do a cuttlefish ink paella, but one guest, Nick, doesnt do fish at all, so that was out...
The Feijoada was, out of necessity, a cross between the original Portugese version, which uses Red kidney beans and the Brazilian one, with black beans and a more varied selection of meats. A dish I had always wanted to cook. It also led me to an interesting chat with the lady who runs a little Portugese cafe in north Finchley, where I had gone to seek peri peri, the Portugese tabasco like sauce, used to give the dish greater heat. She didn't have any to sell me, but took sympathy on my plight and eventually gave me a bottle of her own, firmly refusing payment. I promised to return to eat her own Feijoada one Saturday night - it looked an interesting place, with Portugese football on the tv and families scoffing hearty food, kids running around. My kind of cafe.
Anyway, Glenda (who I hadn't seen for some time and on whom motherhood has cast a kind of beauteous glow) asked for the recipe, so here it is:
Ingredients: for about 6-8 people:

Two/three large onions, thin sliced.
A whole bulb of garlic, chopped.
Two dried chillies, soaked in warm water until soft and chopped, water reserved.
Six or eight cooking chorizo, depending on size, cut into thirds. They have to be cooking ones, not the salami type.
Or use a chorizo/morcilla combination
About 2lbs pork shoulder, in bite size pieces
A packet of pancetta
Sliced red and green peppers (sort of optional)
Black beans, soaked overnight
Cup of tomato passata or sauce
Two pints at least chicken or vegetable stock.
You need a big casserole dish for this.

Season the meats and fry in olive oil in casserole until well browned. Remove with slotted spoon. Do not throw away the oil.
Gently soften onions, then garlic and chopped chillies in the oil, for about 20 minutes.
When they are soft, add the tomato passata, peppers if you want, and cook for another 15 minutes to get a rich, thick sauce. Season. Add more chilli if you want it hot.
Return the meats, add the drained beans and the chicken stock. Bring to the boil and simmer over a high heat for about ten minutes.
Then put it in the oven on a very low heat, gas mark four, covered, for about 2-3 hours, so it just bubbles away. You will almost certainly need to add more water/stock to keep it moist.
Serve liberally garnished with coriander and lime slices (This is Portugal, not Spain), copious amounts of rice (or fried potatoes) and that peri-peri on the side. It needs a really robust wine and any of the Ten Best I mentioned earlier would do fine, apart from the Pinot Noir, which might be a little overwhelmed. For authenticity, I'd suggest the Portugese Touriga Nacional 2007, made from the grapes used for port and just £6.99 from M&S.
The wines I certainly would not recommend with such a full flavoured dish were the low alcohol wines we tried earlier the same evening, which simply left us craving for the real thing...here's what we thought....http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/how-low-can-you-go-do-reducedalcohol-wines-pass-the-taste-test-1818842.html
Must go, have a son who needs the computer and a couple of pheasants to stuff....

Keith Floyd

2009-09-17T08:21:00.003+01:00

When I was first discovering the joys of cooking in the 1980's, Keith Floyd was my idol, hero and guru. I loved his chaotic, over the top style on television, his flamboyant bow ties ( I took to sporting one myself on occasions) his shunning of any kind of apron in the kitchen, the way he permanently flaunted a large glass of wine. I devoured his books like Floyd on Fish and Floyd on Spain. Browsing through them again now, I realised that there are dishes there I still cook and influences that are still on my cooking, even though I've long forgotten the source. I felt immediately inspired to rush into the kitchen and start cooking, my taste buds going strong. And that doesnt usually happen before I've had my first cup of coffee.
Floyd was a million miles away from the starched and stiff approach which, and its hard to remember it now, was the norm among television cooks until he came along. He was, as all the obituaries have made clear, the first television celebrity chef. But he was more than just an amusing drunk -as people like Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley Whittingstall, both inheritors his style - have made clear, he was enormously influential on them and on in helping to create the wider acceptance of the importance of everyday good food and cooking. He made cooking fun and casual, he demystified recipes, he made it all seem to so easy. It was, of course, very sad to see his decline in recent years - the failed marriages and restaurants, the health problems - and he must have looked slightly enviously (although I suspect with a healthy amount of realism) on the easy fortunes being made by his successors. But such a lust for life, for tastes, for indulgence. You had to admire it. And it was at least good to know that he died in his own chair, as the Indy reported yesterday, after a very good lunch of cocktails, roast partridge and a nice bottle of Cotes Du Rhone. The story is here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/cocktails-and-a-slurp-or-two--keith-floyds-final-day-1787742.html
So, was it the drinking that did for him? Or the smoking? Or the inevitably rich diet? He wasn't really a salad and mineral water kind of guy. Probably a bit of everything really - he had bowel cancer, but died from a heart attack. If one thing doesn't get you, another will, I think.

These things have been much on my mind recently. I learnt of Floyds death on the radio of the taxi that was taking me to my appointment at the hospital for the ERCP procedure that was designed to end the agonising stomach cramps that have been dogging me since early July. Well, I had the procedure - a tube shoved down my throat and into my stomach, a 3mm snip of the bottom of my bile duct and what they call a 'ductal clearance' designed to remove a stray gall stone that had, doctors thought, been growing there since my gall bladder was removed in April, together with what they termed 'sludge.' The thing is, they didn't find anything, even though my consultant believed that a stone was almost certainly the cause. What the doctors who did the ERCP did say was that the 'snip' should be enough to relieve pressure on the bile duct and stop the cramps. Since they have been occurring at intervals of between 5 and 14 days - although the intervals did appear to be shortening - then only time will tell whether they are right. I've been fine since the ERCP - just some residual soreness from the procedure itself. And my last attack and longest attack of cramps was 11 days ago.

But - and here's the slight connection with Floyd - one thing that does intrigue me is the connection between diet and the gall bladder and subsequent problems. Did Floyds bowel cancer stem from his imaginative diet? At no time have any of my doctors suggested there was any diet connection with my propensity for growing gall stones - it just happens, mostly in women rather than men. Neither was I given any post-operative diet advice, so carried on eating and drinking as normal. I have a varied, but I hope relatively healthy diet and certainly dont want to give any of it up. Some gall bladder removal patients do find they have to de-fat their diets (and take drugs for life) to prevent seriously loose bowels after eating - a common side affect. Thankfully, that hasn't happened to me, although my fat content is quite low. I do think there was some correlation between my consumption of dairy and spicy (specifically Indian) foods and the earlier gall stone attacks and later cramps. Its an unproven theory - some of the attacks came after I'd eaten the blandest of foods, but most occurred on a more or less empty stomach. What this does suggest to me is that there are many things we still dont know about connections between diet and disease.
Although I tended to avoid spicy or dairy foods over the past few weeks, I'm not going to bother now. And, I can drink alcohol again. So, its now just a matter of waiting to see if I get another attack. And getting on with the cooking. Tonight, I think it will be one of Floyd's finest- hake and potatoes from Floyd on Spain. I wont be getting out the bow tie, but I will be raising a large glass of rose in memory of a flawed, but rather endearing man.

Eating out

2009-09-12T11:10:00.005+01:00

I enjoyed the England football team's victory over Croatia the other night, which I watched at the home of Marion, my ex-wife, together with our sons, for particularly personal reasons. I'd strolled around there earlier and cooked some pasta - farfalle with a puttenesca sauce that I knocked up in about ten minutes - for all of us, which we ate while watching England demolish the Croatians. Marion had bought some sweetcorn the previous weekend from a pick your own farm and we had them as an utterly delicious starter - simply boiled for a few minutes, and eaten with butter or olive oil and salt and pepper. After the pasta, we had some ripe white nectarines, grapes and a dollop of ice cream for pudding. It was a very pleasant meal - although starters and pudding arent always necessary for midweek suppers - and i savoured every normal, home-cooked mouthful much more than usual. The good football was simply an added bonus. And the reason why? Well, after the match was over, I left the house and walked briskly for ten minutes up the Holloway Road to the Whittington Hospital, returning to my bed in Bridges ward, where I had spent the last five days.
By the time I got there, the lights were already dimmed and the ward quiet. Although my night out had been happily sanctioned by the nurses, I felt a bit like a guilty soldier returning late from a evening pass in town, a prisoner on day release or a boarding school abscondee. But at least soldiers prisoners and boarders get televisions and gyms - nothing like that in Bridges ward at the Whittington.
I'd been in the hospital since the previous Thursday evening when I checked into casualty, desperate for pain relief to ease the agonising stomach cramps that, by then, had lasted for three hours. I was given a big shot of morphine and admitted for the night. The source of the problem was a rogue gall stone in my bile duct - or so I had been told - which had been left behind when my gangrenous gall bladder (and up to fifty stones) had been removed in an emergency operation in April. Now this remaining gall stone had grown, was rumbling around in my bile duct and had been causing me intermittent but worsening pain for several weeks: I'd lost a whole day of holiday in Turkey to this pain and had spent an agonising and sleepless night the previous weekend before the Thursday attack. By the time I admitted myself to the Whittington, I was already being seen as an outpatient and had been told that the way of dealing with this was a ERCP - basically, they send a tube down my throat with a camera and a scalpel on the end of it and cut the bottom of the bile duct to release the gall stone. Its relatively simple procedure, done under local anaesthetic.
To cut a long story short, after my admittance I was told the next morning that I had the choice of staying in hospital, which would accelerate the process, so I might get the ERCP within a few days. If I discharged myself, then I was back to being an outpatient, with an ERCP possibly a few weeks away. It was also pointed out that, should another attack occur - which it did, with 12 hours of pain on Sunday, alleviated only by two morphine shots - I was in the best possible place. I was also suffering from mild jaundice because of the damage to my liver and I needed treatment for that.
I did ask for a weekend pass - I had a full social programme lined up, including a party on the Friday night given by one of my Goldsmiths' colleagues for our outgoing MA class that I had been really looking forward too- and had been in the middle of cooking for when I was overcome by the pains. But was told that if I left then they would have to give the bed to someone else and I would be discharged. As it happens, I wasn't feeling top notch - the day after each attack I always feel a bit battered - and could not have drunk anyway - so it was probably the best thing.
So, I decided to stick it out, hence my five days on Bridges ward. Well, it was supposed to be shorter, but the NHS being what it is, things kept getting delayed. And, once I recovered from the Thursday attack, I felt reasonably ok and determined not to be confined by the hospital routine any more than necessary. Between these attacks, I've been feeling fine, going to the gym etc. So, I nipped home from the hospital a couple of times over the weekend for clothes and other supplies and to eat decent food - I didnt want to waste what was left in the fridge. And I made use of a little internet cafe near the hospital to keep in touch with friends and work. I regret I didnt manage to get my running gear brought in.
I also went for a stroll down the Holloway Road to the Saturday morning organic market near St Johns Way. This is a small market - only about half a dozen traders on a wide bit of pavement - but included an excellent farm fruit and vegetables stall, from which I bought some lovely early season apples and Victoria plums; the rest of the produce looked terrific and I felt disappointed I couldn't take it away to cook with. There were also a great looking cheese stall, someone selling huge loaves of fresh bread, a sushi stall and a woman offering hot sausages in ciabatta. All very promising and certainly brightens up the often tawdry and traffic choked Holloway Road. . As in the way these things seems to grow, someone had also set up a second hand bookstall, which was attracting several browsers. The market is also outside a wonderful shop selling Iranian foods - a good selection of fruit and veg and massive bunches of fresh herbs, together with real Middle Eastern pastries, home made humous and other delights worth investigating. Long may such ventures prosper.
If anything needs the same treatment that Jamie Oliver meeted out to school meals, its hospital food. Even more than school meals, it is self evident that hospital food should be healthy, vibrant, balanced, attractive to eat. So why do they offer white sugar with the already over sweet breakfast cereals? 'It's because people ask us for it,' said the orderly. Why do they only offer white bread for toast (actually they don't offer toast, just bread. You have to plead for toast) Why is there only full fat milk with the tea and coffee. Why do they insist on plonking heavy, overcooked meat and watery veg meals in front of people at noon and at five? Most people seem to leave the majority of food on their plates. The menu seems stuck in the dark ages - more white bread sandwiches, pre-historic ideas of salads, stews and pies, endless nursery food. The waste incredible. And dont start me off on the almost entire absence of recycling in the hospital anyway. I despaired. If you want your food brought in, there wasn't even a microwave for heating stuff up - and, I learnt in my earlier stay, patients aren't allowed to use themselves anyway - its that health and safety thing.
While I caught up on my sleep and reading (Margaret Attwood's The Handmaids Tale and Dylan's Chronicles Vol 1) I survived by a combination of having some cold food brought into me ( I'm a not a massive fan of M&S, but thank heaven for their substantial salads) buying sandwiches and coffees at or the High Street-style food court in the hospital complex (a bit pricey, but a lifesaver in many ways) and nipping out on two evenings to local places - pasta one night, pizza the next - as well as the Wednesday night stroll down the Holloway Road to Marions. And the fruit from the Saturday market. Okay, a cost a bit, but not much more than normal food buying and I wasnt' spending much on anything else. What I really felt sorry for were those who were unable to wander around the hospital as I was or unable to afford the cost of a ham and cheese panini downstairs.
I was discharged late on Thursday night, without having had the operation - they couldnt get me on the list that day - and feeling I had largely wasted a week of my life. But I've got a bag full of painkilling drugs in case of another attack (statistically speaking, I'm overdue for one) and an outpatient appointment for it to be dealt with at another hospital next week.
And best of all? I'm back in my kitchen.

2009-07-05T22:57:00.003+01:00

Some recent highlights, food wise: Barbecue with friends last Sunday, immediately breaking my rule about bbq's during the day - see last blog - okay, it wasn't that hot and we had to do it during the day because its the only way I get to see G and B and L, who had school the next day and so could not come in the evening because they live a long way away. Did spiced mackerel and herbed sea bass on the barbie accompanied by lemon/fennel/olive potatoes - see blogs of about a year ago - which L adored, so much that he left me a little note and drawing and a FB message the next day. Shame my sons have grown out of that kind of thing.
Used mashed leftover mackerel to make crostini on Monday for lunch, with salad. Leftovers make the best food, sometimes.
The spiced mackeral was made using something I have discovered in Turkish (actually Kurdish, I suspect) shops around north London. I was told Kayseri Cemen was a dip - they keep it in the chiller cabinet next to the humous and taramalsalata - or should be spread on toasted pitta. But it is almost too spicy for that, although you can do a little bit, but seems best suited as a more earthier, full bodied version of harissa, the north African spice paste I adore. I used it instead of harissa in a marinade for the mackerel - mixed with olive oil, cumin and salt and pepper and it was terrific, with a real depth of flavour. I did the same this weekend on some chicken. Fabulous. Middle Eastern-flavoured food does seem to work better on warm summer nights. A small, foodie, discovery of the summer.
Have been drinking - since my palate returned -some lovely, lovely white wines for an Independent Ten Best White Wines column, due shortly. A couple of weeks ago, I took some around to my old friend and colleague Mike Durham's for a tasting of Italian cheeses - he was inspired by something I wrote earlier this year for the Wine Society newsletter - http://www.thewinesociety.com/Wine.aspx?PageCode=enjoy&PageName=How%20to%20Enjoy%20Wine&SubPageCode=match&SubPageName=How%20to%20match%20wine%20and%20cheese - so arranged for an evening spent tasting cheeses he had brought back from a stay in Italy. After a bowl of pasta, we ate two hard pecorinos, a very soft, smelly cheese and a medium hard cheese wrapped in vine leave, all brought back from Rome and all excellent. The two pecorinos - salty and tangy -worked very well with an organic Chianti and the others with two contrasting pecorinos (the grape, not the cheese) - the lovely, lightly fragrant Colline Pescarse IGT 2007 from M&S and the much more full bodied, nutty, complex Colle Die Venti, Terre Di Chieti 2008, from Wine Rack. Mike reckoned he knew the village, close to his Italian home, so it just about the got the vote for the Ten Best on that alone.
A footnote on the Wine Society piece: I write - and have written for many years - about many complex and often difficult subjects for national newspapers. As a journalist, one of the ways you get to judge your impact is by the amount of what you might call reader response and is fair to say that I probably have had more response to that piece, in a limited circulation newsletter, than I have had to many serious news reports and features in national newspapers. It may reflect better on the Wine Society than it does on national newspapers! I had one reader email me to say that, prompted by my piece, he and some friends had embarked on a five hour cheese and wine matching marathon - all the combinations carefully thought out - and that they had a splendid time. I only wish all my writings had been so inspiring.

Barbecues

2009-05-31T12:26:00.002+01:00

What is it about the first hot weather that always get people going crazy to barbecue. Frankly, the last thing I want to do for lunch on a hot day - there are too few of them to waste - is to stand with the sun on my back over a pile of intensely hot briquettes (or whatever) smelling the aroma of meat sizzling mingling with the sweat dropping off my forehead. Who wants all that cooked meat (and barbecues are mostly about meat, although some fish is actually just as good or better. But most of what people eat on barbecues is rubbish anyway.) Give me a nice salad or some meze and shady terrace anytime.
Dont get me wrong, I love cooking outdoors and do so at every opportunity. But to me, barbecues are best saved for warm evenings, when the sun is low in the sky or just setting, the fierce heat of the day has gone and appetites can be properly matched by the smell of smoke and grilling food. One of the best barbecues I've ever had was using a couple of disposable barbecues on the beach at Sennen Cove in Cornwall one June evening a couple of years ago. It was early evening, we needed our sweaters, the tide had gone out after a long hot day surfing, and we grilled local mackerel and chicken on skewers made from rosemary twigs. We played beach cricket in the twilight afterwards. All around us, other scattered groups were doing the same, the smoke of the barbecues and little fires drifting up and along the sands, everyone relishing the space on the beach that had been impossibly packed a few hours earlier. It was glorious.
And, sod the sun, you can barbecue in the rain. Maybe its just me, but I love warm rain on hot days, a combination you don't get much in their country, but is commonplace in warmer climates. Last Monday, the Bank Holiday, after a two days of warm weather, was a typically British summer muggy, cloudy day It was Max's 15th birthday and I'd been to the cinema with the boys and their mother, my ex, Marion to see Star Trek. (Excellent re-invention, actually. And I'm old enough to remember the original.) We were hoping the forecast rain would hold off, so that we could have a barbecue in my garden afterwards. When we came out of the cinema it had been raining, but the air temperature was possibly even warmer than earlier. There was a smell in the air that Marion said reminded her of the Med. So we had to barbecue. My garden was still, quiet and warm, with the birds singing evening songs. We ate sweetcorn, baked feta, my home made lamb koftas, chicken kebabs, made garlic brushetta by grilling bread on the barbie and toasted Max's birthday with some excellent M&S sparkling Burgundy. (Sorry about the plug, but its very nice) We survived the odd brief repeat shower of rain, sitting under the parasol and moving the barbecue under cover. And we sat talking by candlelight long after it was dark and the birds had gone quiet. It was not sunny, no-one was offered a blackened sausage or a still raw in the centre chicken drumstick and there wasn't a can of beer in sight. But it's what I call a barbecue.

Elizabeth David

2009-05-22T19:58:00.003+01:00

Today happens to be the 17th anniversary of the death in 1992 of the remarkable Elizabeth David, whose influence on what we eat now and the revolution in British cooking is immeasurable. I was made aware of the date when, by a curious co-incidence in the early hours of this morning, I randomly picked up an old copy of Convivium, a shortlived magazine-cum-book (think Granta or Readers Digest) which existed briefly in the early 1990's and whose 1993 inaugural edition, the one I was holding in my hands, was dedicated to David. It contained a fascinating series of pieces, adapted from the addresses given to her memorial service the previous autumn by some of those who knew her well. I re-read them with great pleasure, being reminded of David's dedication to stylish restraint and simple, elemental cooking - a dish of plain, grilled red peppers was a favourite - and that she considered herself first and foremost a writer, rather than a cook. She also abhorred the word 'foodie' which is deeply ironic considering that many of those who today described themselves as foodies - myself included - owe an enormous debt to David for changing the way we eat. Anyone wanting to know more about Davi's extraordinary life should read the fabulous (but curiously recipe free) biography by Artemis Cooper, Writing At The Kitchen Table.
In another strange co-incidence, earlier this week I had actually been discussing David's kitchen table with the great Prue Leith, another person who has done enormous amounts to drag British cooking out of its post-Second World War ration induced mire.
I was sitting next to Leith (or Prue as I now feel emboldened to call her, since we got on so well) at a magnificent seven course charity dinner at the Marriott Hotel, created by seven leading British chefs in aid of Hospitality Action, a charity that helps needy people associated with the catering trade. You can read my account of the meal in the Evening Standard website here: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23694512-details/Great+British+Menu+chefs+cook+up+seven+course+feast/article.do
Stupidly, I didnt think to ask Prue, who knew David well, what she would have made of the elegantly constructed modern takes on British food - a haggis mousse and a verbena blancmange might have been a bit fussy for her, but I'm sure she would have enjoyed the halibut with cockles and the lamb baked in a pastry crust. But Prue did regale me with stories of how grumpy and rude David became in her later years, as well as being mostly drunk, something I thought Cooper rather played down. The stairs in her small Chelsea house, said Prue, were almost impossible to negotiate - piles of books on one side, cases of her favourite French white wines on the other.
Prue's best tale concern the heavy old French table on which David made the centrepiece of her kitchen, where she spent most of her days, writing at one end, cooking at the other. At the auction of her kitchen contents which followed David's death, Leith paid £1,100 for the table, by then much battered, stained and worn, complete with ancient crumbs embedded in its cracks. "I had to have it,'' she said, 'It was the table, the one she wrote one. I mean, this is part of food history. It was an iconic table.'' At the insistence of her husband, she had much of the dirt and grease scraped away, but it remained a treasure for some years. She admitted that at one point she had considered widening it, but was unable to find a piece of wood sufficiently thick.
Prue confided that a few years ago she was made an offer she simply could not refuse. She explained: "Jill Norman, [the cookery writer] another friend of mine and Elizabeths, confessed that her husband had set his heart on buying the table - for a decent sum - so that he could give it to Jill for her 60th birthday. Jill was Elizabeth's editor at Penguin and literary executor, so I couldn't refuse, could I?'' She didn't say how much she was paid for it, but clearly, every kitchen table has its price.
Coincidence and memories. So that's why tonight, in my kitchen, at my table, I'm going to raise a glass of fine French white wine and nibble one of her favourite Rokka crackers, in memory of the great Elizabeth David.

Rehabilitation

2009-05-17T11:43:00.005+01:00

So, how is the old body going, not quite four weeks after my emergency operation to remove a troublesome gall bladder.....?
The good news is, after three weeks of an excruciatingly dry and often painful throat, caused by the candidiasis I contracted as a result of the anti-biotics I was being given, I've got about 99pc of my tastebuds back and I've stopped being woken up during the night by a mouth that feels as though the entire Sahara desert has taken up residence there. So, I can taste wine and coffee and a few other things properly for the first time in what seems like ages. Which is good because I've got a positive ocean of white wine blocking my hall waiting for my recovery so I can organise a tasting for a Ten Best White Wines column I've got to write for the Independent. And I'm going to relish every single mouthful of the seven course charity dinner, created by some of the country's best chefs, that I'm attending on behalf of the Standard tomorrow night. Could not have come at a better time....
Physically, things are a bit mixed. I'm still a bit sore around the wound. And I've some pains still deep in my lungs, presumably a hangover from the pneumonia. But I had a busy time last weekend, going for a long gentle walk and trimming a hedge on Sunday without too much trouble. I can walk up stairs, but still get very tired easily: I was just ready to collapse last night after a fairly limited jaunt around Tesco (I know, but its the closest and there was stuff I needed all on one place. There are situations when you dont have the time or energy to trot round the bijou delis of Muswell Hill, none of whom, so far as I know, sell soap powder and dishwasher salts. But I gave myself a good ethical slap). I might still be suffering from three very hectic working days last week - one teaching at Goldsmiths, followed by a busy evening, then two at the Standard. It wasn't so much the work that was exhausting, but the up to 90mins commute both ways - bus and tubeX3. Plus the fact that various roadworks and bus diversions meant that I had to walk some of the way home each night. Sod's law.
By the end of those days I was pretty knackered but was still determined to achieve my aim of going swimming on Friday evening, now that the scars have begun to fade to the point where they won't frighten the kids. Now I love swimming with a passion. I normally swim at least once or twice a week, 30-40 lengths a time at a reasonable pace and have done for years.It is the most therapuetic and relaxing of exercises and one which anyone of any age, including the very elderly and the disabled can participate. It's rhythmic, repetitive nature settles the mind as well as the body and I've solved many of life's major problems - difficult career choices, what to cook for dinner etc - during the course of a long swim. In recent years, when I have had some problems with my feet (plantar fascitis - no, don't ask) my knees (playing tennis) and my back (squash and badminton on the same day) swimming was the only exercise I could do. And so it is now.
I first stated swimming in the early 80's when I moved into a flat opposite some baths and decided to take full advantage. I soon got my completely unfit, twenty-something, beer guzzling one-pack of Gitanes a day, body up to 100 lengths a week and felt very proud.
I got out of the regular swimming baths habit when I moved to London in 1986 although I always swam and snorkelled enthusiastically when I was near warm seas. It was about ten years, when I my sons were old enough to start swimming lessons and I could go and do a few lengths while they being taught, before I got back into swimming regularly again. And I'm immensely proud of the fact that both my sons are now regular, strong swimmers, competing for their local club, Anaconda, in countless galas. Both have many medals to their names . Leo is club boys captain, has competed at regional level and is now also a qualified lifeguard. He trains, when not studying for exams, up to six nights a week - sometimes competing in a gala on the seventh. When I boast I can still swim 50 lengths in under 35 mins he scoffs, pointing out that he does that in half the time. For a warm up.
But Leo and I both get grumpy if we go a few days without a swim. Which I was I was determined to do a few lengths on Friday night. I managed 18, rather stately lengths, with some pauses at either end. It was blissful. I would have done more, but wanted to see what effect it had on my body. I had a good session in the steam room afterwards, which helps sore muscles and felt fine.
Saturday however, as I said, I felt quite tired and a bit stiff all over. I certainly don't feel like another walk today, although I might tackle the other hedge. I've spoken to two people this week (you get to compare this kind of thing) who told me how long it took them to get over major operations. So, I have to resign myself to the fact that its a longer road than I might imagine. But I'm looking forward to Monday night's dinner and then Tuesday night back in the swimming baths again. And I'm determined to get up to the 50 lengths mark again - no matter how long it takes.

stomach pains and taste buds

2009-05-07T10:14:00.000+01:00

I should be updating this blog more often, but the last few months have been terribly busy, so that writing in any personal way has had to take a back seat to the demands of work. I see now that the last time I wrote was in December, when Fifi, my cat died, which was terribly sad and cast a real pall over Christmas. We all still miss her terribly. Sometimes I still think I hear the sound of the bell on her collar, which tinkled as she padded around the house. Her ashes, in a nice little wooden casket, sit on the mantlepiece in the front room. Yes, I know. But there they are.

So...where where we? Sitting next to my keyboard is a little plastic bottle contained four brownish stones, gleaming and polished. They could be waiting to be made up into some kind of jewellery -drop earrings or a nice broach. Perhaps that's what I will do with them. They are just some of the forty-plus gallstones I'd been carrying around inside me, my gall bladder acting as a kind of bag of marbles, and which were taken out of me in an emergency operation more than two weeks ago now and from which I'm still recovering.
I'd been having intermittent gallstones over the past few years: as the stone passed down the bile duct, a brief period of spasmodic, intense pain in the righthand side of the stomach, just below the rib cage, followed by 24 hours of feeling a bit grotty and then perfectly alright the next day. My consultant said not to bother about having the gall bladder out unless the attacks became more frequent. Two weeks ago, on a Saturday night, I had the first attack for almost two years. This time the pain didnt abate after a couple of hours. This time it went on and on, reaching peaks I just didn't know how to endure. After about three hours, desperate for help, I went to the casualty department where I was pumped full of pain-killers. When it began to ease, they sent me home. The next day, as previously, I had a slight fever. But this time, it didnt go away and the pain in my stomach stayed. After two days of rising temperature, I went back to the hospital, where to cut a long story short, I had an emergency op to take out the by now infected gall bladder the next afternoon. Which is when things really began to go wrong.
Firstly, the gall bladder was so big and bad, they could not use the normal keyhole surgery techniques to get it out and had to go to full slice me open mode, so the whole operation took two and a half hours. Secondly, as I was going under the aneasthetic, as I later learnt, I choked, bringing up some of my stomach contents, when then went down the pipe into my lungs, causing aspirational pneumonia, as its called. Thirdly, when they brought me to consciousness, my lungs suffered a reactive spasm and I couldn't get any air into them. I was put back under anaesthetic and woke up six hours later in intensive care, attached to every monitor, drip and drain you could imagine. And still with a bloody great tube down my throat.
After a very uncomfortable night under heavy sedation, they took the tube out the following morning. I spent two days in intensive care and a week on a main ward. It was three days before I could survive without the morphine drip, four days before I could walk unaided and five days before my lungs were strong enough to breath without oxygen. On the sixth day, I developed candidias in my throat, which was due to the anti-biotics that were being inject into my veins every few hours. Candidiasis is basically thrush and is the worst, driest sore throat you could imagine, causes a terrible tickling cough - not v good if you have stitches -and severe pains every time you swallow. Cue more drugs to cure that.
I came out last thursday, after ten days. My surgeon, who's poked around an open stomach or two, said my gall bladder was one of the worst he had seen. There's still pain around the stitches and deep in my lungs and the candidiasis is taking a long time to go. I can't sleep in any other position than flat on my back. Which means I dont sleep, much. I feel pretty weak most of the time. It will, I'm told, be several weeks before I can resume proper exercise or swimming, which puts paid to my ambition to take part in the Crouch End 10k later this month. My taste buds are mostly fucked for a while - wine and coffee taste terrible - my appetite is a bit lacking, although I eat once food is put in front of me. And I cant bend over or stretch very much. I'm not complaining about this, it just happened.
The good thing is that I dont have to worry about changing my diet. We can, it seems do without these troublesome organs. Neither, according to my surgeon, can I attribute what happened in any way to lifestyle factors. Gall bladders just go wrong, no-one quite knows why.
And like everyone else who experiences the NHS from the er, consumers' point of view, I came away utterly in awe of some of the nurses - their expertise (don't ever, ever, let a junior doctor starting poking around trying to get a needle into the veins on the back of your hand) their endless patience with difficult and demanding patients and their ability to work incredibly long hours and remain alert and cheerful. It made some of my twelve hour shifts as night editor of the Independent seem child's play. As for hospital food, well, I'll get back to that another day.
As I said, stuff happens. I'm not whining, just getting it all down while its still fresh and to help me keep my writing hand in. And although I was far from being in a seriously life threatening situation, I'm aware that sometimes we get forced out of of our comfort zones. Just a tad more aware of some of the realities of life. So that's why I'm particularly relishing the bursting, vibrant greener-than-green leaves of this spring, the remaining blossom, the sunshine, and, most of all, the birdsong in my garden in the early evening. I'm going to try and have a good summer.

Fifi - an obituary

2008-12-23T15:20:00.008Z

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.

2008-09-09T14:42:00.006+01:00

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.

2008-07-17T11:34:00.004+01:00

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.

2008-07-14T12:19:00.003+01:00

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

2008-07-02T19:14:00.005+01:00

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.

2008-06-26T09:55:00.007+01:00

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.

2008-06-24T13:02:00.004+01:00

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.

2008-06-13T10:28:00.005+01:00

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.

2008-06-04T10:59:00.010+01:00

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.

2008-05-28T10:17:00.007+01:00

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?

2008-05-26T11:08:00.004+01:00

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.

2008-05-24T15:28:00.009+01:00

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.

2008-05-22T15:20:00.010+01:00

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.

2008-05-19T18:42:00.006+01:00

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...

2008-05-14T16:35:00.001+01:00

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.

2008-05-13T13:33:00.011+01:00

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.

2008-05-12T10:47:00.000+01:00

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...'

2008-05-08T11:36:00.001+01:00

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….

2008-05-04T10:48:00.000+01:00

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.

2008-05-01T19:39:00.000+01:00

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….