When Too Much Choice is a Bad Thing

On Saturday morning, as T was curled up in bed grumbling with a headache brought on by one too many glasses of fizzy pop the previous night, I decided to take myself off for breakfast. As is my wont I ended up at The Breakfast Club, a cafe with trendy pretensions in Soho. It may be faux scruffy chic but it does do the best fry-up in those parts and reliably so. I was delighted to see, upon my arrival, that only one couple stood between me and the counter. It did however take me ten minutes to get served. The reason for this was that said couple, well half of the couple at any rate, were ordering by the following method, "We'd like a Full Monty breakfast but can I have a bagel not bread and can I have poached eggs and can I swap the sausage for another piece of bacon and don't make the eggs too runny and can I have this yogurt smoothie but can I have banana rather than yogurt?" and on and on. The poor guy entering the order on the gizmo that tells the kitchen what to cook seemed almost at the end of his tether by the time they finished up. "She's so particular" said the, until this moment, silent party in the couple. Particular? Ye gods and little fishes that's not particular that's insane.

We are all aware, I imagine, of the idea that the customer should get what he or she wants, that the customer is right and that the role of the server and establishment is merely to serve. The idea above all that more choice is always better. But is it I ask myself? I had much opportunity to ponder this question and asked it of myself many times as I stood in line behind this prattling half-wit. No, I decided, sometimes more choice is not better.

It is not always better for several reasons. Firstly it is rude. If it takes you ten minutes to order breakfast how long must it take you to do anything important and how many hungry people must you make wait whilst you do? This is the same rudeness as those who like to order eight coffees in tiny coffee shops at rush hour, just as the queue is already stretching out of the door. It shows an astonishing level of arrogance and a total inability to behave sociably to those around you. "Do unto others" and so on.

The second reason why choice isn't always better is because you probably don't know best. When I see someone in, say an award-winning coffee shop, telling the barista that they'd like "An extra hot cappuccino with extra foam" I think ill of them. Are they seriously doing this because they know how to create a better tasting cup of coffee than someone who makes coffee for a living and who has carved out, through hard work, a serious reputation for them self? No. They do it because they are a pseud and they think it shows they are sophisticated. This is not the case. The sophisticate is the person who takes the trouble to find the best people at any given task and goes to them and allows them to work their magic. To return to Saturday's example, I appreciate that a basic fry-up is not an extravagant work of gastronomic sophistication but it is easy to screw up, it is a dish that requires balance to work well, and some pimply trustafarian with a whole host of imagined allergies and intolerances which are actually just fey fickleness does not know better than a battle hardened short order cook how best this might be achieved. In short it is insulting to crafts-people. In even shorter short, why do these people keep finding the few remaining places where there are people who care about how things should be done and then mock these good people with their imbecility?

If you want to choose from 87000 possible coffee combinations to make your soya moccha frappuccino individual then Starbucks would seem to be ideal and their billboards now advertise this feature of their operation. If, on the other hand, you would rather have a good cup of coffee then ask a barista in a proper coffee shop to make you a cappuccino or latte or flat white and let them do their magic.

And don't, for Christ's sake, take ten minutes over it.

The Omnivore's Hundred

It seems like a scarcely disguised attempt to raise interest in their site but the Very Good Taste blog has a list of one hundred items every omnivore should at least try. It's an odd list to say the least, for example there's no raw tuna or Iberian cured ham and wine is entirely absent. Anyways, it's a Friday, why not spend a few minutes seeing how many you've had.

Here's the cut and pasted blurb and then my answers:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you've eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore's Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs' legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost <- is filthy
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

T Party

This weekend has been Tinsetroos Birthday Festival. She began the celebration on Thursday with dinner with her folks whilst I was at home with the flat to myself wrapping her presents. The main social event was karaoke on Friday night. Everyone knows that T likes to sing and so twelve of us packed into a wee room at Cousin Jills to belt out a few standards.

In a slight break with tradition I opted to sing Money for Nothing rather than my usual Johnny Cash numbers as I felt me and Mr Knopfler have similar vocal range (not a lot). I didn't manage the Sting parts though as they well beyond my limited range. I was quite pleased with my "Hoola moola that's the way you do, money for nothing and your chicks for free" complete with hint of geordie accent. As is traditional there was also a rendition of Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do with highly exaggerated welsh accents later on. T and her school-chum KG put everyone else to shame by actually being able to sing really well. It took a collective chorus of Europe's The Final Countdown to takes us back to the ridiculous from the sublime. This part of the evening is immortalised on video though I don't think it's really suitable for public consumption. It does prove that we'd all drunk a lot more than I remember though. Further evidence for this may be viewed below:

Yesterday T opened her presents from me which included some crazy Japanese socks, a T-shirt I designed and printed for her, Guitar Hero - Aerosmith, and a few other treats. The weather was filthy all day so we only went out for brunch and then scuttled back to Schossadlerflug until the evening when we got all dressed up and went out for dinner to Rasoi Vineet Bhatia which is a superb Indian restaurant in Mayfair. It was astonishingly good, certainly in my top ten meals I've had. Amongst the delights I had included tandoori salmon, minted chicken, duck confit with a coconut sauce and a, and this is no lie, fois gras crême brulée which was barmy but brilliant. Two and half happy hours later we rolled out back into the night and made our way home holding our contented fat bellies.

Today we've bummed around the flat as, once again, the weather has been shitty all day. As I write this T is shredding on Guitar Hero and showing Joe Perry and Brad Whitford how it's done. Metaaaaaaal!

The Gaucho Grill or An Object Lesson in How Not to Do It

Last night, as part of the ongoing "T-fest", a series of drinks and dinners my chum T is having to commemorate her imminent departure from this Sceptred Isle back across the Atlantic to the Land of the Brave, a group of us went to The Gaucho Grill, an upmarket Argentinian steak house in Piccadilly. I had been twice before, both at lunchtimes with a buddy, and both times I had eaten in the bar on the ground floor which still has pretensions to grandeur. The walls are covered in large gilt framed cow hides, the wall paper is very dark as are the floors, furnishings and tables. I think the desired effect is to make city banking types feel like they're somewhere special and perhaps a little naughty.

Last night we had a table in the main restaurant which makes the bar look tawdry. In addition to all the paraphernalia mentioned above there were large glass chandeliers and brass candle holders rounding out the overall effect of the apartment of a 1980s stockbroker who made his money trading in cattle and wished to celebrate this fact wherever possible. We were escorted to our table in a polite if not very friendly manner by one of a number of identikit generically pretty waitresses who seemed to hover in profusion without actually doing anything. They, however, would have been vastly preferable, due their bland inoffensiveness, to our actual waiter who I shall call Simon.

Simon would be difficult to age as he has spent so much time on the sunbeds that his skin has the quality of parched vellum. I will guess late 20s and leave it at that. Simon is possibly Spanish, possibly Argentinian and clearly thought, ten years ago, that he was going to make it big as a model when he came to London. He has that toned body that serves no practical use and is merely designed to serve as a fleshy coat hanger when prancing down a cat-walk. Unfortunately for Simon there are many, many much prettier, and these days far younger boys around who also want to make it big as a model, so Simon was not prancing down a runway, he was serving us dinner, in as rude and condescending a manner as he could muster. The permanently fixed rictus smile was ghastly enough but behind the eyes burned a cold loathing of everyone else that was frankly a little disturbing to behold. Had he been good at his job none of this would have mattered. Good service is an art-form. I have the utmost respect for waiting staff who are good at their job as it's bloody hard work and there is real skill to it. Sadly, whatever the knack, Simon doesn't have it.

He began by showing us the cuts of steak and telling us how we may have them cooked. This kind of thing annoys me. It is wonderful when waiters are knowledgeable and helpful if asked but I know what fillet, sirloin and rib-eye steaks look like thank you and I don't need some preening twit talking down to me as if I were five. In fairness to Simon all the staff do this, I assume it is company policy which perhaps begins to give you some idea of what kind of place The Gaucho Grill is. After this Simon really began to irritate. Firstly he insulted my friend AJ who had been chosen to pick the wine. Simon felt that the wine she had chosen wasn't of a "good enough quality" to go with the steak. Two things: one, if the wine is not good enough to go with steak, what is it doing on the wine list of a steak restaurant? Second, let's not kid ourselves, what he was actually saying was "I would like you to choose a more expensive wine so I make more money out of the compulsory service charge". This angered me immensely as it is rude, shows ignorance and tells you yet more about The Gaucho Grill's modus operandi. He followed up this exercise in charm and manners by asking at what temperature I would like my steak. I arched an eyebrow in confusion. Temperature? Well I'd like it cooked over a very high temperature and then have it served at a warm temperature. He clearly thought that you cook a blue steak by cooking it for the same amount of time as a well done steak but at a much lower temperature. Jesus H Christ. This really made me roll my eyes. Thankfully, aside from Simon's inability to get our order right, which we discovered when the side dishes arrived, that was his final contribution to spoiling my evening.

Onto the food. The food is expensive; a piece of steak is twenty quid. That's just for the meat; side dishes are extra, quite a lot extra in fact. I ordered grilled vegetables as my side order, priced at seven pounds and fifty pence. For nearly a tenner you get one slice of anonymous tasting aubergine, two slices of courgette, one piece of pepper and two fingers of out of season tasteless asparagus. These vegetables, I assume in order to save time in cooking, had clearly been boiled first and then just given thirty seconds on the grill at the end before being dumped on a plate. They were all bland and lacked flavour or texture. The steak itself was served medium rare. I opted for sirloin because it should be more flavoursome but was told I couldn't have it rare because the fat down the sides needed to be cooked to medium rare at minimum to be properly done. I could have pointed out that in places where they care about such things you cook the steak by holding it in a pair of tongs sideways so just the fat is touching the pan for a minute to cook it, then you can do the meat itself to whatever degree you like. But that takes effort and The Gaucho Grill doesn't do effort, it does lazy and rude indifference. My steak would have been fine had I bought it from a super market and it had cost about six quid. For more than three times the price I expected a lot better. My colleague who had fillet steak, of which I had a little taste, fared much better than I, for his steak was pretty good. However in a steak house, and especially one that takes itself as seriously as The Gaucho Grill clearly does I expect very good steak every time. Oh, and The Gaucho Grill doesn't even give you a steak knife to eat with. You have to hack your way through your disappointing meal with a regular dining knife.

Puddings were uninspired. Amongst the nonsense you could choose was a "carpaccio of fruit", I kid you not. All this was of course were a few thinly sliced pieces of raw fruit. Here, actually, is the dish which best sums up the restaurant and its attitude toward, and expectations of, its customers. "Carpaccio of fruit": let's take this apart. First can you have a carpaccio of fruit? No. Carpaccio is thinly sliced raw beef or tuna and it got its name from the Italian painter, Vittore Carpaccio, who was noted for his use of bloody red pigments in his paintings. The very etymology of the name itself implies rawness and blood, most emphatically not a couple of slices of apple. So it's an oxymoron and an oxymoron from an establishment whose sole aim, one would think, would be to understand at the deepest level the blood and the rawness: the very essence of the steak experience. Roland Barthes' essay, "Steak and Chips" in his book Mythologies takes pages to dismantle and analyse the deep relationship between us and steak, how we claim the strength of the bull from eating it, the ceremony of its acquisition, its preparation and its ingestion. Steak is a profoundly symbolic food with a massive history and mythology that gets right to the core of the human hunter gatherer turned sophisticated farmer turned connoisseur experience...

"Carpaccio of fruit".

That's what this place thinks of its customers. It sounds posh and fancy but it's a nonsense, a plain, poorly executed dish that has ideas and pretensions far beyond what it can deliver.

My pudding was an ordinary chocolate mousse cake served on a base of something that had the consistency of shoe insole and tasted little better. I paid forty five pounds for all this, including a compulsory service charge for some of the rudest and most ignorant service I have ever received. I haven't been so angry at a restaurant since this experience nearly three years back.

One More for the Road?

I've been quite the society darling this week. As always happens at the end of films quite a few people leave for pastures new. There's a mixture of things at work there. First of all because the talent pool for this type of work is relatively small people tend to travel the world over to work. At the end of a show they often want to try another country or return home. The other reason people drift away is the attritional nature of the work. People can and do burn out and have to take a few months or a year off to recuperate. This happened to me after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so I know how the current crop of escapees feels.

On Tuesday we said good bye to our overall supervisor for the last show who's now returning to spend time with his girlfriend who he hasn't seen in three months in L.A. I don't think he's seen anything other than inside of our studio offices in those three months either. I only wanted to stay for one because I had a cold and was feeling pretty tired but I ended up having a couple but still managed to be home before ten and slept like a baby.

On Wednesday was the latest in a series of good-bye drinks/dinners/what-have-yous for my friend TR. She's in the latter camp of wanting time not working so I think she's off travelling and after that who knows. She'd heard me, and others, rant about the virtues of the fillet steak at The French House, a legendary restaurant and bar in Soho so on Wednesday she decided to book a table and a few us were asked to join. I met up with her, The Berg and Dr H for a pre-dinner cocktail straight out of work at seven o'clock and suitably relaxed we went up to the restaurant and took our table. The steak was, predictably and reassuringly, excellent as always. As an extra bonus I even got a couple of slices of the chateaubriand that The Berg and Dr H were sharing after they declared themselves full. I couldn't bear to see such deliciousness go to waste. Also I'd only had a smoothie for lunch and was ravenous by the time we sat down to eat so I didn't really feel gluttonously guilty either.

Last night Tinseltroos and I worked on fancy dress. We measured out, cut and stitched a rough-hewn waistcoat/jerkin out of fake suede for my outfit. It needs buttons and a collar but it looks pretty good already. I was very pleased to be able to rely on Tinseltroos' clothing construction experience as although I can sew and hem and such I don't have much experience beyond hemming the odd pair of trousers and so on and this was a step beyond that.

Tonight is another of TR's dos. This time our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to help her dispose of the collection of tequila that she's amassed in her flat over the last couple of years. We can only do our best of course but I think we'll be able to help out.

Please Let the Crust Defy Gravity

Tinseltroos and I had an invitation to our friend Heg's for dinner last night. Heg had invited us and two other of her friends over as we'd expressed our interest in the pickled herring of her native Norway. I've always liked pickled herring and, via other Scandinavian friends, have had Danish and Swedish herring but Norway was a new one on me. As I didn't have to work on Saturday I asked Heg if I might make a pudding, she acquiesced and I set to reading through my cookery books on the lookout for something new. I decided, eventually, to do a tarte tatin which I have made many times before, but just to make it interesting for myself, I decided to make my own puff pastry. You can call this either bravery or plain foolishness as you please. I make a pretty decent shortcrust pastry but I have not tried puff pastry before. Before getting my hands covered in flour I consulted youTube for any helpful tutorials and found this one, by the wonderful Ms. Glaze who also writes this blog. She is a professional chef and therefore rather intimidatingly competent. Nonetheless I was adamant I would have a go. Here's a photo of the pastry after its final turn before it went back into the fridge to rest (again):

The rest of the tarte tatin preparation was very straightforward and once the pastry was rolled out and had covered the apples and caramel there was nothing to do but put it into the oven and then let it cook. I think I returned to peep through the oven door window about once every two minutes so worried was I that it would sit there, unmoving, and cook into an unappealing pastry brick. The gods must have been on my side as it did rise and actually looked quite presentable when it came out. Tinseltroos wondered what the little yelps of glee coming from the kitchen were. This was the cause:

After allowing it to cool for a couple of minutes it was ready to turn out and, ta da - the finished dish:

We had a lovely evening of Norwegian ham, elk sausage, pickled herring with boiled egg and rye bread. Tinseltroos looked disgustedly at the plate of sausage and egg. As a vegetarian who finds eggs creepy this was probably her worst nightmare on a plate. She seemed happy enough with her cheese and mushrooms though. After dinner came my pudding which seemed to go down well and following food came a couple of vodka martinis to finish the night off. Normally I am resolutely a gin man, especially in a martini, but Heg had tracked down a bottle of 42 Below, a vodka from New Zealand which was actually delicious. Probably the nicest vodka I've had. They have an irritatingly faux hip website here if you're interested. And so we said our goodbyes, wandered down the canal tow path back into Bethnal Green, got on the tube and trundled home.

Lucky Me

Yesterday after work I'd arranged to meet Tommy Dog for a cheeky couple of pints and a catch-up in The George pub just over London Bridge. When the current version of The George was built (1677) St Paul's Cathedral had only just begun construction and the only bridge over the Thames was London Bridge. Which is, of course, why The George is where it is: it was a coaching inn until such things became obsolete as the industrial revolution inexorably made transport quicker.

It's a beautiful old building with many smallish rooms, nooks and crannies. They also have their own microbrewery which does produce a fine pint of bitter. After a couple of these Tommy and I had put the world to rights so he headed south, back to his bachelor pad, and I headed back over the river to wend my way home. As I walked past St Paul's it struck me that it's a pretty good life when you get to walk past one of the most beautiful and iconic buildings in the world on your way home from the boozer.

I had an extra surprise waiting for me when I got home. Tinseltroos had, earlier in the day, asked if I would need anything when I got home in terms of dinner. My plan was to finish up the bacon I'd got at the weekend and fry that and an egg and make myself a sandwich to soak up the booze. Tinseltroos didn't buy me some bread, she baked me a loaf of bread. Imagine my delight when I got back to Schossadlerflug to find a freshly baked loaf of bread waiting. So I had my sandwich and took stock on how fortunate I am.

My Idea of Perfection

My Idea of Perfection, originally uploaded by Mr Atrocity.

Haddock in lovely crispy batter? Check.
Delicious golden chips? Check.
Malt vinegar? Check.
Ketchup? Check.
Sea Salt? Check.
Black pepper? Check.
Cup of tea? Check.

Nom nom nom.

Cake or Death?

We had a charity raffle and cake sale at work yesterday. I decided to try my hand at a receipt I hadn't done before as I usually do a ginger cake but fancied a change. I plumped for a chocolate cake and then hit the internet looking for the perfect one. Strangely putting terms like "best chocolate cake" into Google returns more than one result, which is a logical impossibility but there we are. I finally settled on this receipt, which claimed the lofty status of "Ultimate Chocolate Cake". Well I could hardly refuse, now could I? Here are a few photos of the construction:

This is the pan I melted my own bodyweight in dark chocolate in.

The cake as it appeared, naked straight from the oven. This was getting on for midnight so I had to let it cool overnight before making the ganache after breakfast on the following morning. It ended up looking like this:

I ended up, after having licked the spoon I used to mix the ganache, like this:

At 32 years of age you'd have thought I'd be able to eat without smearing my food all around my mouth wouldn't you? You'd be wrong.

Veggie Shepherd's Pie

One of my favourite winter warmer dishes is shepherd's pie and for years I've made my mum's recipe with beef mince and lots of Worcestershire Sauce. Living with Tinseltroos has meant that I needed to find a veggie alternative and I may have now done that. I cooked the recipe described below last night and am finishing it off for my lunch right now.

For the filling:

3 largish carrots, peeled and finely chopped
2 large parsnips, peeled and finely chopped
1 large red onion, finely chopped
1 pack of Quorn veggie mince substitute protein stuff
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and sliced
Slug of chipotle sauce
Slug of mushroom ketchup
Handful of parsely and oregano, chopped


For the topping:

6 potatoes (King Edwards are good) peeled and chopped
Grated cheese
Crème fraîche

Heat some olive oil and a knob of butter in a large pan. Fry the garlic and onion until they just start to colour. Add the carrots, parsnips, mince-stuff and the herbs. Stir until it's all well mixed. Add the mushroom ketchup and chipotl sauce, season and put the lid on the pan and allow to cook over a medium heat for 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally and adding a little water if it looks like it's needed.

Meanwhile boil the spuds until mashable. Strain the water off the potatoes and mash them with the crème fraîche and half the cheese.

Pour the filling into an ovenproof dish, seasoning more if needed, and cover with the potato. Use a fork to score the topping into the pattern of your choosing. I favour a sort of check but each to their own and then sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top. Put into an oven at 180°C until the cheese has gone golden on top.

The success of this is down to the mushroom ketchup and chipotl sauce combination I think. The mushroom ketchup helps to add a bit of depth to the flavour plus some of that umami protein flavour that I find most veggie food lacks and the chipotle sauce adds some spice that traditionally would have come from the Worcestershire sauce.

Pancake

I worked all day Saturday but yesterday was Fake Pancake Day at my old house-mate, Tommy Dog's, flat. The clan gathered from far and wide to abuse the traditional beginning of Lent. The tradition is that all fatty food is eaten up prior to Lent so all good Christians can then spend Lent being extra devout (and hungry). As regular readers will know I am not in the slightest bit religious but I do like pancakes. So yesterday became a feast of pancakes and booze. Here are some photos:

Dictionary Corner

I heard a lovely neologism on the radio this morning. As is normal I awoke to the dulcet tones of Radio 4 and as it's a Sunday the show was Broadcasting House. During a piece about a new website which aims to help those who grow their own veg swap excess produce with like-minded souls they interviewed a fine fellow who chairs a South London Allotment Association. He concurred that such a scheme was probably a good idea as most gardeners end up with a surplus of produce at some time or other which they become increasingly desperate to offload. He describe the process of foisting unwanted extra veg on unsuspecting friends and relatives as "aggressive hospitality". I love this term. I have been guilty of a bit of this in the past, mostly with excessive baking and my mother certainly really likes to make sure I take some marmalade with me whenever I visit.

So when a neighbour fixes you with a steely gaze before pushing a carrier bag full of wind-fallen apples into your chest you at least have a term to describe what just happened.

Suffolk Pie

Yum, originally uploaded by Beverly Sutphin.

It's recipe time again folks. Here's something that Tinseltroos and I created whilst on holiday the weekend before last. In the manner of Danny's Camberwell Carrot from Withnail and I we have named our dish Suffolk Pie because it is the shape of a pie and we created it in Suffolk.

Here's what you do. Slice up three leeks, a red onion, a red and a green pepper and two courgettes (zucchini). Fry the leeks and onion in olive oil for a few minutes until they begin to go translucent then add the rest of the veg and cook for another ten minutes or so. Season to taste. Add some chopped parsley and take off the heat and spoon into a shallow ceramic dish. Make a Mornay sauce or if you can't be bothered with that just heat some créme frâiche in a pan and add the cheese to that. We used mature cheddar for a good strong flavour. Pour this mixture over the vegetables. Sprinkle bread cut into half inch cubes over the top and then sprinkle a little more grated cheese on top. Put the pie into a hot oven until the bread/cheese looks golden and delicious.

Eat.

Dinner and a Why-oh-why

Last night, as it had been cold and rainy all day I made veggie burgers for T and me. Having made it up as I went and as I was quite pleased with the result, I'm recording it here for the benefit of my sieve like memory. I finely chopped a medium sized onion, half an aubergine and a red pepper and combined this with 2 burger buns worth of bread crumbs, a good sprinkling of smoked paprika, cumin and a large beaten egg to bind the whole shebang. Season to taste. I then pan fried them in olive oil before serving in a bun with salad, mozzarella, mayonnaise, basil and sliced tomato. I'll definitely be doing those again.

In other news, as I've begun the search for the replacement Atrocity Axe I've been reading a couple of guitar magazines, trawling some fora and so on to glean as much information as I can on the guitar state-of-the-union before making any purchases. I've been a little out of the loop in electric guitar and the dazzling array of shiny planks on offer has had me shaking my head a few times in disbelief. Here is my non-exhaustive list of "Things that an electric guitar does not need":

1. LEDs (anywhere).
2. A digital display (for anything).
3. A USB socket (Why, Gibson, why?)
4. More than two cutaways (Yes B.C. Rich, I'm still looking at you).
5. More than 24 frets (only dogs can hear those notes).
6. Automatic self-tuning (You again Gibson?)
7. More than 4 knobs.
8. More than 2 toggle switches.
9. More than 6 strings (Mr Vai, this means you).
10. Non-standard pickup shapes.
    

The Best Food in the World

Allow me to make something clear. I adore steak. I don't like it, I don't enjoy it. These terms are insufficient to describe my relationship with the king of the meats. I adore steak. I eat it fairly regularly, at home if Tinseltroos is out for the evening or occasionally some work buddies and I will head out for a steak frites lunch at The French House. The French House fillet steak has to be tasted to be believed. Their chateaubriand is also beyond compare though as I like my meaty steaks cooked blue I have to go with a similarly minded chum if I am to have this rarest (pun intended) and choicest of treats.

What is it about steak that has this hold over me? Well I think it's partly the simplicity and it's partly the mystique. Steak is like sushi in its total reliance on the quality of the source material (a cow). Crappy cows make for crappy steaks, although I've learned a few tricks for pepping up almost any steak but we'll come to that in a bit. The mystique of steak is the real hook that gets you. What cut do you get? I favour porterhouse when I can get it, rump when I can't. Both of these are very beefy flavoured cuts which suit being cooked little and hard. Tonight Waitrose only had rib-eye but when it is a good cut that really does me fine. I always try and get organic meat that's been allowed to hang a good while to develop its flavours. Too much meat is whisked out onto the chiller cabinets before it has had a chance to mature. Once you've chosen your cut, how will you have it done? Blue? Rare? Medium rare? Well done? This last option is not recommended if you wish to remain friends with me. For me it depends on the cut. For thick steaks with little fat I go for blue. It preserves the meat at its most natural and juiciest. Roland Barthes once wrote a lovely essay on the joys of steak frites in Mythologies where he deconstructed the whole steak experience. He describes the emotion of eating steak as taking the strength of the bull and I know what he means. The simple uncluttered joy of a piece of blue steak is as close as we pampered monkeys really get to the nature red in tooth and claw way of dining that our ancestors relied upon. There is something very grounding about eating steak, it connects you to the past and to the natural world in a way that a heavily prepared and flavoured meat or vegetable dish never can. It provides a deep sensual pleasure, something deeper than and more profound than just appreciating good cooking, it reminds us of our roots as predatory omnivores, it takes us back to the thrill of the hunt.

One also has to then choose what to serve your steak with. Again I favour simplicity. For me a steak is best accompanied by some form of potato and a green salad (with no bloody rocket in it) - just plain old round leaf lettuce. When I'm eating out, the lure of frites is generally too great to resist, but at Schossadlerflug there is no deep-fat fryer so alternative potato recipes must be called upon. I generally do potatoes the Italian way. You par-boil whole small potatoes in salted water, drain them and finish off cooking them by shallow frying in olive oil with chopped rosemary and black pepper. The final element is the sauce. There are many classics, bearnaise, pepper or garlic butter sauces are popular but I like a little one of my own devising. Once the steak is resting (a vital and oft forgotten step in cooking a good steak) I slosh a little red wine if I have any into the steak pan to deglaze it. Once it's calmed down from boiling the alcohol off I mix in a good dollop of crème fraîche and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. And that's it. A simple, but utterly delicious dinner: one that feeds both spirit and the body.

Over the years of cooking steak I have learned a few things that, I feel, improve your chances of cooking something special. You're always at the mercy of your butcher of course, so once you've found a good one keep them close, they're a dying breed. But assuming your butcher does know what they're doing these are the things I've found that get results:

1) Make sure the meat is at room temperature. If you're refrigerating it, take it out an hour before you plan to cook it.
2) Thirty minutes before I cook the steak I absolutely cover it in sea-salt. And I do mean cover it - covered to the point of not seeing any pink. Do this on both sides and let it sit like that until you're ready to cook. It has to be sea-salt too. If you use regular table salt everything will taste of iodine.
3) Heat up your pan for at least 10 minutes over a high heat. I find heavy bottomed cast iron pans cook steaks better than thinner, non-stick pans but that may just be me and my reactionary ways.
4) Just before the steak is to go into the pan rinse the salt off and pat it dry with a paper towel.
5) Into the pan goes the steak.
6) Leave it alone until it's time to turn it. Don't be tempted to move it round the pan, turn it before it's ready or any other act of impatience. How long you cook it for depends on how you like you steak of course. Any more than four minutes a side and you are no longer my friend.
7) Once both sides are done take the steak out of the pan and place it on a warmed plate. Let it rest for five to ten minutes before eating. This gives the meat time to relax and will taste better and have better texture.
8) Bon appétit.

Autumn is Here

It seems like the weird topsy-turvy on-off-on-again summer is finally over and autumn is upon us again. The cricket season is over, the footie and rugby seasons are upon us. The mornings are crisp and slippers must be worn indoors to prevent a chill. The nights are seriously drawing in all of a sudden. Partially this is because I am working late again thanks to project complications but it really is very noticeable when I step out of the office that it is dusk. It's also got a little cooler, which I don't mind a bit. In fact it meant I got to wear my eBay Buzz Rickson jacket for the first time in anger. I think it's going to see me through the winter no problem.

I am a fan of autumn. It means that the season of weddings and constant social engagements is over and I can crawl, bear-like back into my den and enjoy more domestic pursuits like reading, cooking, watching movies and shooting zombies without that nagging "I'm sure someone I know is doing a fun outdoor thing right now. Dammit, I should be there" feeling. It also means that big hearty stews, soups and solid pasta dishes can come back onto the menu. I am very fond of delicate cooking but if truth be told a big steak and kidney pie wins out for me any day of the week and summer ain't the season to be taking one of those bad boys on. Incidentally, my dad's cousin, Jean, has written down her "recipe" for steak and kidney pie. Here it is and you'll see why recipe is in quotes - the quantities are sketchy, you do it by eye:

For 2

Take:

One good round of shin of beef – about 6 ounces

Ox [or other good ] kidney – about 3 to 4 oz

A medium onion

Beef stock or one OXO cube and some Bisto and water

Cornflour to thicken

Potatoes

Salt and pepper to season.

Method:

Cut the meat and kidney into pieces. Cut up the onion very finely. Place these in a casserole and cover with the stock [or water mixture] and cornflour. Cover* and cook in an oven at 150o C for 2 ½ - 3 hours. Then cut up the potatoes and par boil for 10 mins. Add them to the meat. Season – bear in mind OXO and Bisto contain salt and seasoning - to taste and leave overnight to infuse.

Next day cover with short crust pastry and reheat to cook both – or cook the pastry separately and cover afterwards.

* Jean does not say cover – it will be necessary to ensure that the liquid does not evaporate but thickens nicely.

This is a bit of a family treat. My gran used to make it and my mother still does. I may have to make myself some individual ones as it's of no interest to the very vegetarian Tinseltroos.

The other big treat of autumn is that the leaves are starting to come off the trees and because it hasn't really rained for a while they're gathering, all dry and crunchy in drifts along walls and fences just waiting for me to run through them kicking them hither and thither. Tinseltroos says she cannot face doing this as she has fear that a stealth dog turd awaits her under every leaf pile. I say that as far as my ability to resist the temptation of a leaf pile goes it's like telling a junkie that heroin isn't very good for them. It's true but isn't going to stop me, I cannot help myself.

Today as I wandered into work, coffee in hand, smelling of Bois du Portugal (a very autumnal scent which I can't really wear during the hot months) wearing my warm new jacket I could feel myself easing into the fall mindset and it felt pretty good.

Stinks and Smells

For the first time in I forget how long, Tinseltroos and I had a whole weekend to ourselves, to do with as we pleased. In order to maximise the pleasure we started yesterday comparatively early by wandering into Soho at about 9.45 for breakfast at Balans, a great cafe/restaurant on Old Compton Street. They do a great blueberry pancake with bacon and maple syrup, a dish I developed a real taste for in New York having sworn to all and sundry beforehand that I thought the idea of mixing bacon and syrup disgusting. Shows how much I know.

After a leisurely breakfast we jumped on a bus to just beyond Buckingham Palace. There, on Elizabeth Street, is a fantastic perfume shop called Les Senteurs. Its stock is amazing, the staff knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. In fact it's one of those places that is a true pleasure to buy things from. Tinseltroos and I both bought a couple of bottles. I needed to replenish my Green Irish Tweed and I was persuaded to buy Parfums d'Empire's "Cuir Ottoman" which I am currently wearing and is making me smell wonderfully leathery and a touch talcum powdery. Look out for a post on this on Tinseltroos' new blog, Smellbound to which I will be the (thus far) only male contributor. We walked back from Mayfair through Covent Garden to pick up the last items we needed for our stencil bleaching experiment. En route I was accosted by one of the staff of the legendary Neal's Yard Dairy who proffered a small piece of Stilton to try. It was sensational and so I was lured by their lactic tractor beam into the shop. It is a well known fact about me that I cannot enter a deli or cheese shop and come out with less than three cheeses. And so it was yesterday. In addition to the Stilton I got a slice of old favourite Montgomery's Cheddar of which I am apparently not the only fan and also a chunk of Cheshire Cheese made in Whitchurch, a village about 5 miles from where I was born. We ate big chunks of these along with English apples and sourdough bread upon our return to Schossadlerflug.

And then the real fun began. As I wrote at the arse end of last week we had planned to do some stencil bleach printing and I'd come up with a Green Man design that I liked and planned to use.

It was however an absolute bastard to cut out and use because of the filigree detail and I was nervous that I'd make a mistake cutting the stencil and ruin it, that the bleach wouldn't resolve the detail very well and that I'd tear the damn thing the first time I lifted it of the fabric. Tinseltroos, being more sensible, opted for simpler designs and she cut three different patterns in the time it took me to swear and grump my way through one. Still I was pretty damn pleased with how it turned out.

And so we got on with the bleaching itself. We made sure every window was open and that we'd covered all the surfaces in bin liner to avoid flat-deposit-voiding accidents and stuck our stencils onto our newly acquired garments. We mixed up some cheap household bleach with water (about 50/50 mostly) and, using a small atomiser, sprayed bleach onto the cloth. Most of our designs had two stencils, one for detail and one for an outer "glow" so once one layer had been done we pulled the first stencil, then dropped the second in place and applied more bleach. We stuck the stencils down with Spraymount which made them a lot trickier to get off the cloth once finished but did mean that we got quite crisp lines on the designs because the bleach didn't bleed under the edges. It was a very magical experience to watch the bleach do its chemistry on the cloth and for the image to appear in its new colour gave me exactly the same thrill that I used to get when I printed my own black and white photographs. Once the bleaching was done we put each item in the tumble drier for a few minutes before really soaking them in the bath.

As one batch soaked we sprayed the next. Needless to say we got better the more we experimented so my second batch was better than my first. After the last batch had soaked for a while we put the whole lot into the washing machine and gave them a gentle wash on the 30 degree delicates cycle before hanging them up to dry and going to bed. Here's a selection of what we did:

And here's me wearing one of my creations today:

I'm so pleased with how these turned out and it was so much fun to do (apart from the hours of stencil cutting, but that's my own stupid fault for coming up with such a convoluted design).


Today we went round the British Museum and plotted what we are going to put in the fruit crumble we're going to prepare for supper. It's been a perfect weekend and with crumble to round it off it'll end as well as it began.

Salad Days Are Over

I've been out and about for the last few days hence the lack of keyboard presence. Thursday saw myself, Tinseltroos and Sisoftroos at London Zoo to see Golden Lion Tamarins, the amazing gorillas in their new enclosure, tigers and of course, the penguins:

On Friday Tinseltroos and I boarded a train up the North to visit my mum. We had a lovely weekend visiting Hawksmoor, my favourite place on Earth as well as venturing into Nantwich to get local small brewery beer from the fantastic Barleycorns. Otherwise we just took it easy.

Mama Atrocity took great delight in digging out all my baby photos to embarrass me with in front of my beloved who I think swung between amusement and thinking me cute when little. I took the opportunity to make copies of a few so that I can have records of my formative years to hand. I won a beautiful baby competition in the local newspaper with this shot. What went so wrong after that?

Today, after a delicious fried breakfast cooked by Mama Atrocity which allowed Tinseltroos to taste her first North Staffordshire oatcake (I'm so proud) we got the slow train back to London which enabled me to do some reading, play a little Mario Kart and listen to some backed up podcasts. This afternoon I finished removing the paint from my bike frame and began sanding the little patches of surface rust off. I sorted through the DVDs downstairs, the majority of which belong to me in order to separate mine out to be boxed later in the week. That done I've started shredding my old financial papers. This moving house business is a lot of work. Still it'll be well worth it; I can't wait to set up a little home with Tinseltroos. It will be almost like we're grown-ups or something.

Tomorrow I start back at work following my month long hiatus. It's been exciting, relaxing and I've got a lot of stuff sorted out ready for the move. I think I'm in good shape to work and to pack up my belongings. It's going to be a frantic fortnight. Bring it on.

New York - Part The Third

Sunday we took extremely leisurely. We left the hotel late and went off to find brunch before exploring the West Village. I had the largest pile of pancakes, bacon, scrambled egg and maple syrup of the whole trip. I didn't think that the bacon/syrup combination would appeal but I ate it a few times a developed a bit of a penchant for it although no-one seems able to cook scrambled egg in New York, it's always too cooked.

After failing to finish my breakfast - there were just too many pancakes, we wandered through the West Village past Le Petit Puppy, a puppy shop. Pet shops like this are now illegal in the UK and have been for nearly 20 years but there were a couple we saw with tired little pups crammed into a window display. It's possible that the dogs were on rotation for window duty but they didn't seem happy and the experience upset both Tinseltroos and myself. Fortunately once we'd got beyond the village down to the river we saw many happy dogs out and about playing. We even stumbled across a specifically doggy playground.

One of the best aspects of New York compared with London is what a dog-friendly city it is. T and I are mad-keen on dogs and one day intend to own a Tibetan Terrier whom we plan to name Sprocket, but that's a digression. The number of dogs on the streets of New York was a constant delight. I think we annoyed a few locals by asking to play with their dogs and quizzing them generally about their furry friend.

After our walk we retreated back our favourite watering hole Fanelli's for a beer or two.

Fanelli's is the second oldest restaurant in New York apparently and it's wonderful. The burgers are superb, the beer very good and the waiting staff friendly. They began to recognise us eventually due to the frequency of our visits. From what I saw, bars in New York are generally full of either preppy types who seem too uptight to have fun or serious poseurs. What I liked about Fanelli's was how laid back it was - an atmosphere like a British pub, whilst still remaining a very New York cafe.

Monday was MoMA day and it didn't disappoint. It was a delight to see Les Demoiselles D'Avignon in its centenary year; it certainly lived up to the hype and one of the most amazing paintings it has ever been my pleasure to stand in front of. We were also able to catch the Jeff Wall show which is on tour. I'd seen it at Tate Modern last year but T hadn't so it was good to be offered a second chance and I wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to see one of the best shows of last year in London. The other delight of the MoMA was that it had floors devoted to design and architecture as well as fine art. The exhibit on 50 years of Helvetica, probably my favourite type-face, was lovely to see.

On Monday night we once again opened ourselves up to the wisdom of the concierge and asked for a table to be booked at a very American restaurant as it was our final night in the city. He got us a table at a superb restaurant on 10th Avenue called Cookshop. It billed itself as "modern American" which seemed to me very akin to the "modern British" school of taking some traditional national dishes and mixing them with influences of other cultures a little but with the focus on good quality ingredients. It was a delicious meal, I had a fish bisque, a New Jersey rabbit and an apricot baked alaska. This was washed down with a bottle of Napa Valley Semillon from Ruston Vines. Well worth tracking down the 2003 vintage.

Tuesday post checking out was spent mooching around Soho until the shops opened so that Tinseltroos could go to Miss Sixty and get some jeans.

This was followed by more mooching, a final beer at Fanelli's to get out of the 87 degree heat and then at 4 o'clock we went back to Lombardi's for a late lunch to fortify us against having to eat any airport food.

The cab back through rush-hour was pretty exciting with our cabbie diving down the back streets of Queens to try and beat the rush and he got us to JFK with plenty of time to spare.

After a bit of a panic at check-in when we found that our flight had been cancelled we were allocated to another flight that took off at almost the time we'd been supposed to leave anyway so all was good. I slept from the coast of Canada to due south of Iceland and we landed back at Heathrow, safe and sound at 9 a.m. BST.

Wonderful.