Bring Me The Head Of Runty Garcia

Sweet in the sty and even sweeter in the freezer

This week I have discovered some deeply disturbing details about the minds of the inhabitants of the islands commonly known as New Zealand.  The Government of NZ have, over the last few weeks, updated the list of names they deem unacceptable to name babies in their country.  As of this week the names Prince, Queen Victoria and (god forbid) 4Real are all off limits along with a further 74 names.  At present though you can call your New Zealand baby either Adolf Hitler, Mr Mucky Flap Flap or Fanny Pong, although I suspect the authorities would take a very dim view of the last one. 

I was musing on the subject of names this week because the pigs that we have been looking after for the last eight months went off on their holidays to the mystical island of abattoir.  They are currently residing in the freezers of a dozen unnamed families in the Aylesbury Vale area awaiting roasting, mincing, frying and BBQing.  Now, one of the golden rules of keeping animals for meat is that you do NOT, under any circumstances, despite how funny it may seem, name them.  We made a big mistake a few years ago with a sheep called Minty.  Anyone who has seen the episode of The Simpsons where Homer raises Pinchy (a lobster) and then cries through every delicious mouthful will know what I’m talking about.

So this year, no names no attachments.  This time it was going to be ruthless, professional and clean.  However, despite out best efforts one of the ten pigs managed to worm its way into our affections.  It was a runt, much smaller than the rest but with the kind of kick-ass, go-getting attitude you’d expect from a Jackie Chan hero.  This runty porker would muscle its way around the sty like it owned the joint (Mmmmmmmm pig joint).  It was top pig and made sure the rest of the herd knew about it.  So, naturally the runt became the most talked about pig, the one we would give a few extra scraps to, the porker who got the most pats and scratches.  Unnamed but very much loved.  My wife, in particular, became very attached to Runty and would often pepper our evening conversations with tales of their exploits. 

And so we come to the horns of my dilemma.  Each time we have pigs I always ask for a head so that I can make brawn and some amazing stock for gravies and stews.  This time I was told that the head I had been given was, yes you’ve guessed, the head of Runty.  I haven’t told my wife yet as I think she would find it all a bit upsetting.  In fact, the first she knows about it will be when she reads this column.  That’s right my darling, the gravy we had a week last Sunday was made from Runty and my god, wasn’t it wonderful?

My Mum's Toasted Cheese

Check this out and tell me it doesn't look like the most delicious thing you've ever seen with your own pair of eyeballs...

The other good news apart from the fact that it looks so damn good and tastes like Jesus and Santa have just butterfly-kissed your tongue is that there is absolutely no horse in it... whatsoever.

Now, when I say Mum’s Toasted Cheese I really mean Granny’s toasted cheese as my mum was given this to eat by her mum.  It’s a real teatime classic, the kind we used to eat in front of saturday telly when the final scores were rolling in but I think you could do it easily as a dinner party starter. 

Due to it's unbelievably high cheese content and the enormous wall of 40 that my life is hurtling toward I probably only have a few years left of eating this before my cholesterol level and furring arteries scream for me to stop.  This is not diet food.  Here's how you work this piece of culinary magic.

Ingredients

1 onion

A lot of a hard strong cheese like cheddar or Lancashire Tasty

Parmesan

Milk

Chop the onion and soften gently in butter, you don’t want to colour the onion but fry it until it takes on a glistening translucent quality.  Grate the cheddar or Lancashire Tasty and then layer in an oven dish alternating the cheese and onion.  Pour in a little milk, enough to come a quarter the way up the cheese.  Season with pepper and then grate the Parmesan over the top.  Put in a hot oven for about twenty minutes or until the cheese has melted and the top is lovely and brown.  Cut up a French loaf or grab some hunks of bread, dip in the fondue-y, melting, deliciousness and enjoy.

One family variation is to top the Toasted Cheese with sliced tomatoes before you place in the oven.  My family likes a green salad with it just to give some relief to the relentless richness.  My mum says that she even remembers having crispy, grilled streaky bacon with it, although how she is still alive if she ate this I do not know.  Enjoy.

They Eat Horses Don't They..?

One of these fillets used to be a horse and one used to be a cow.

This is an article I wrote a few weeks ago for Vale Life magazine.  I didn't imagine then that it would still be so topical...

You must forgive me if I’m not my usual self but I have just come out of the Seven Stages of Early Jan.  The first stage is ‘shock and denial’ (OMG did I really eat that much over Christmas?  There’s no way I ate that much over Christmas!).  Stage two is ‘pain and guilt’ (My stomach hurts bad, why did I eat three tins of Quality Street?).  Third stage is ‘anger and bargaining’ (Christmas pudding makes me mad! Please please please give me some more of that sweet, sweet Christmas pudding).  Next comes ‘depression’ (I can’t believe I’ve got to wait 348 days until I eat turkey again).  The fifth stage is ‘reflection’ (Boy we had us some good times at Christmas didn’t we?  Remember that slice of brie?).  Next is ‘acceptance’ (So I ate a lot this Christmas.  What are you gonna do?).  And lastly in the Seven Stages of Early Jan we come to ‘hope’ (Hey is that an Easter Egg?).

Well, in this post Christmas, post New Year, post turkey and all the trimmings, post staying up all night drinking kind of world we find that THE hot food topic of 2013 so far is… horses.  In case you missed it, certain burgers in certain supermarkets contained certain traces of certain horse DNA.  Not wanting to go into the “ifs” and the “whats” and the “d’you mind if I don’ts” of feeding things to people they don’t know they’re eating, I thought I would devote the first column of the year to the hidden hippophagist in all of us carnivores.  Why is it that we are happy to eat some mammals but not some others?  Cows, pigs, goats, sheep, deer and rabbits are all eaten happily by millions of people.  However, mention that a haunch of horse is on the menu for Sunday lunch and you’ll find yourself as popular as, well as popular as some horse DNA in a supermarket beefburger.

Equine or bovine.  So, do you feel lucky punk..?  Well..?  Do you..?

In talking to people about eating horse I heard the same story from virtually everyone.  Most people seem to think that they have (a) eaten horse (b) in France and (c) without knowing that they were eating horse.  Given these unusual set of facts I did what any self respecting food writer would do.  I bought a horse steak on the internet and cooked it up for lunch.  The horsemeat in question was lean and dark, a little like venison.  When fried up for a few minutes it was quite tasty with a firm texture and a distinctive ‘gamey’ flavour.  I also cooked a fillet steak for comparison and I am happy to report that despite looking very similar the beef won hands down for flavour and texture.  Would I eat horse again?  Yes, I don’t see why not.  Would I choose it on a menu over beef?  I don’t think I would.  Buckinghamshire horses can rest easy, they are simply not delicious enough for this hungry gent.

Camping Sucks Less When Drinking Beer

That's my son.  Not me.

On my eighth birthday I had an epiphany so vivid that even now, thirty years later, I am able to bring it to my mind with crystal clear, Betamax clarity.  It was the heady summer of 1980 and the musical stylings of Freddie Mercury and Randy Crawford were battling for my affections.  For weeks I had pestered my mum and dad for a tent and finally I was granted my wish. 

The tent was a small, two-person vision in red and green manmade fibres.  It took six grown men four hours to assemble and that night, the night of my birthday, I was allowed to take a friend and sleep out until morning.  Needless to say it was a sobering early lesson in how disappointing life can be.  There really is nothing in the world like being woken up dry mouthed and sweaty, zipped inside a nylon sleeping bag that is itself locked within another and much larger sheet of nylon.  At that tender and impressionable age the names Mr. & Mrs. Smith meant a slightly dotty old couple who lived down the road but it was definitely within the confines of my first tent that my lifelong love of luxurious boutique hotels was formed.  My parents must have been very disappointed by my reluctance to ever use my birthday tent again but in that early morning sunrise, among the ants and spiders and biscuit crumbs and the terrible, terrible smells I made a solemn vow that I would never go camping again.

That was a vow I kept until two weeks ago when under relentless pressure from my two sons we bought a tent and went with friends to an Oxfordshire campsite not far from where I live.  In order to minimize the pain of the early morning wake up I decided that I would turn to nature in the form of old mother alcohol to see me through.  There has been a good deal of column inches devoted recently to the rise in sales of real ale so being the contentious food writer I thought I’d merge my need for booze and my approaching deadline by arranging a local beer tasting for my fellow campers. 

The rules for the tasting were simple.  I wanted beers from Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire that I could get from a supermarket.  The tasting itself would be done blind with no one knowing what the beers were while they tasted.  The beers were as follows... Pride Of Oxford (£2), Hook Norton Twelve Days (£2.05), Rebellion (£2.15) and John Hampden from the Chiltern Brewery (£2.40).

So far, so good.  One note of caution for any budding food writers though is don't do it when your drunk.  Or at least if you do get drunk don't expect to be able to read your notes, or find your notes, or make any notes.  The upshot of all this is that the winner of the contest is lost in the mists of time and the haze of being a bit pissed.

As a footnote I would add that from what I can remember all the beers were delicious and an excellent way of alleviating the awfulness of the early morning campsite wake-up.  I slept soundly that night and woke refreshed and ready for what the day had in store.  I was reminded of the wisdom of bar owner and drunk Doug Coughlin, as played by the excellent Bryan Brown in the movie Cocktail, whose life motto was, “beer is for breakfast drink or begone".

Shallow Grave Cooking

Warning - this blog contains a picture of a severed pig's head (although it's not as bad as I've made that sound).

Spare the axe spoil the child

OK, this is going to get grisly.  For those of a weak or sensitive constitution I'm going to begin with the good stuff.  The picture below is pure porn.  Brawn porn.

And this little piggy went all wobbly

The problem is that to get to that deliciousness you have to start with this 

It all began in those far off, crisp and cold days that history will record as ‘just before Christmas’ when we acquired a pig at a party.  I want to make it absolutely clear that this is not a countryside version of throwing car keys into a bowl.  It was a perfectly normal and straightforward party celebrating the festive season where you take a bottle of wine and bring home some livestock. 

So, we tended and fed the pigs until the beginning of April and now, after some slightly more brutal ‘tending’ by the butcher, have a freezer full of sausages, bacon, chops, offal, trotters, roasting joints and, as you can see, the head.  The head I was particularly keen on getting because stock from a pig's head opens up a world of possiblities.

My one note of caution surrounding the making of a batch of pigs' head stock is to make sure you have a pan big enough to take the head.  Even though the head was split it was still a little too big for my pans and so it required a bit more *ahem* trimming.  Now the thing about the head of a mammal is that it is full of bone and teeth and so cutting it is a little bit tricky.  My knives were inadequate so I took to the shed and had my pick of tools.  I narrowed the choice down to an axe, a small saw and the hedge trimmers before settling on the axe ( a wise move I think).

My other problem was that while I was making the stock I was also looking after my kids on a sunny, summer afternoon.  Now, whilst I want my children to be aware of the realities of what goes into a plate of meat, I also recognise that the image of their father smashing an axe through a pig's jaw could result in a good deal of therapy later in life.  

So, to recap.  

1. Pig's head, carrots, celery, onion, bay leaf, peppercorns and salt boiled together for a couple of hours make a delicious stock for soup and the perfect base for brawn.

2. On balance, a paddling pool is a better way for a six year old to spend the afternoon than being the Ewan McGregor to your Christopher Ecclestone (Pig = Keith Allen in the Shallow Grave metaphor BTW)

In Search Of Perfection

The bunting is down, the complaints to the BBC sent off and my red, white and blue knickers washed and folded away.  The Diamond Jubilee has come and gone and the conveyor belt of this year’s events trundles on, bringing the Olympics into view.  I’m not going to lie to you, we’ve been pals too long for that, but I’m not much of a royalist.  However, I did enjoy the spirit of  friendliness and community that seemed to break out across the four corners of the Isle.  People in towns and villages tipped their caps to neighbours and strangers alike, grown men were allowed to paint the faces of small children they didn’t know without social services getting involved but if there was a more fitting tribute to Her Maj than Zoo magazine’s “Topless Diamond Boobilee” then I don’t want to know about it.

During the celebrations I heard a story about a certain member of the royal family and a certain foodstuff.  Don’t worry though, it’s not like the story about the certain member of the royal family and the glass-topped coffee table.  I can’t be entirely sure of the truth of the story so I will change names to protect the innocent.  Let’s just call this royal personage “Prince C” (a.k.a The Welshman a.k.a Grumpy Architect).  Actually, whether or not the story is true is unimportant because like all stories it leads us to a bigger truth.

Apparently, “Prince C” (a.k.a FA Cup Head a.k.a The Kilt) loves a boiled egg for breakfast.  And who can blame him?  A boiled egg can be a perfectly wonderful breakfast if the white is set just so and the yolk warm and runny.  Personally I also favour a few buttered soldiers that, when dipped push the yolk up and over the lip of the cracked shell like a teensy, non life-threatening volcano.

In my life, this morning perfection happens rarely.  What with using eggs that are a bit old, or making sure the kids have got their breakfast, by the time I sit down to eat, my eggs are usually a bit under or over done.  I would contest though that it is the memory of these crappy eggs that makes the moment I get it spot on all the more delicious. 

Here’s the deal with the prince.  His staff are so keen that he should have his every whim attended to that every time “Prince C” (a.k.a The Polo Prince a.k.a Baldychops) wants a boiled egg for breakers his cook makes him six.  Each egg is then cut open and inspected, five are discarded and the one that most matches the prince’s idea of eggy perfection is served to him.

So, just in case you missed it, each time Prince C (a.k.a Veg Talker a.k.a Overpriced Biscuits) has a boiled egg for breakfast it is perfect.  My question is this.  If the only time you have a boiled egg it is perfect, can you truly appreciate the perfect boiled egg?

My Favourite Apple Pie Recipe...

that reveals a truth about the universe...

Recipe To Create Universe

65 tbsp dark energy
30 tbsp dark matter
4 tbsp free hydrogen and helium
1/2 tbsp stars
1/3 tbsp ghostly neutrinos
0.03 tbsp heavy elements

Coffee & Some Danish.

Over recentweeks, I have become the weeniest bit obsessed with coffee.  Personally, I blame the time ofyear.  Gazing, bleary-eyed into mymorning mug, the darkness of the winter is reflected perfectly in the slowblack sloe black pitch of my early cuppa Joe (incidentally did you know that itIS a ‘cuppa’ Joe and not a ‘cup of’ Joe as the GIs stationed in Britain adoptedour slangy way of saying ‘cuppa’ tea and used it for their coffee).  It seems perverse given theassociations of speed that we give to a shot of caffeine but I think thatslowness and coffee are made for each other.  I had a wonderful lesson in the benefits of slowcoffee-making given to me a couple of months ago by Elliot Wallis fromMonkshood Coffee. 

This is notthe only reason for my coffee compulsion. I was recently bought the box set of first series of The Killing.  If you haven’t seen it then you mustbecause it is a brilliant Danish drama about a murder investigation.  It was made a bit famous because of thelead detective’s love of knitwear. However, the series really should be made famous for it’s infatuationwith the Arabica bean because if there’s one thing that they do a lot of in TheKilling,it’s drink coffee.  If you thoughtwe love coffee what with all our Costa this and Starbucks that then you need tohave a word with yourself.  TheDanes drink coffee like we stand in queues, except they do it better.  Hardly anyone in The Killing has any alcohol, thereare only a couple of times in the 24 hour-long episodes where we see peopledrinking booze but coffee is consumed all the time. It is the blood that pumpsthrough the arteries of Copenhagen and is used as a plot driver, a prop for theaction and a metaphor all at once. One of the lead characters is a politician who drinks coffee withglorious delight as he fires half of his cabinet, each sacking punctuatedanother ruthless sip.  Each tablein The Killing, whether corporate or family, has another shiny devicefor warming coffee, or blending coffee or enjoying coffee in some new andwondrous way.

I apologise here and now to anyonewho comes into contact with me over the next few weeks because this coffeefixation is not going anywhere.  Ihave just received season two of The Killing and am currently wading through series one of the Danish political drama, Borgen.  Then after that there’s a new series called The Bridge and after thatthere’ll be time for Borgen 2.  Then Borgen 3. Right now I talk about not much else and I am aware how boring it hasbecome.  I am truly, truly sorry.  Tak.

The Best Soup In The World

Everyone is going mad for chicken soup at the moment so I thought I'd share my fave.  This is a recipe I wrote for a friend's cookbook.

For the stock:

A free-range chicken

2 onions

2 sticks celery

2 carrots

Black peppercorns

Salt

For the soup:

Fish sauce

Lemons

Chilli flakes

1 tin of coconut milk

A bunch of coriander

Some spinach leaves

Dried noodles

This is absolutely my favourite meal in the world.  This would be my desert island dish and is the one that I dream about most.  It is, in short, the most kick-ass bowl of food you’ll ever make.

I use a whole chicken for the stock simply because you get a wonderful, rich flavour that you just don’t get from a stock made from a roasted carcass.  It might sound a bit extravagant but it is totally worth it.  You can siphon off and freeze some to make a risotto with so you’ll get at least two meals out of this.

So, first things first and make the stock.  Put your chicken in a big pan with a tight fitting lid, chop the onions, carrots and celery into quarters and add them to the chicken.  Then cover the whole lot with water.  Season with salt and add a few pinches of black peppercorns.  Bring to the boil then simmer with the lid on for about an hour and a half.  Remove from the heat, take out the chicken and set aside then strain the stock and discard the flavouring vegetables.

When you make the soup remember that you’re trying to get a balance of the four S’s; sweet (coconut milk), sour (lemons), salty (fish sauce) and spicy (chilli).  The balance is totally down to your taste so my advice is loosely follow the recipe but keep tasting it and adapt it to your own preference.

So, return the stock to a medium heat and to it add about a teaspoon and a half of chilli flakes, the juice of three lemons (or more or less if you like), about ten shakes of fish sauce and a tin of coconut milk.  Give it about 15 minutes, taste and adjust these flavours to your taste.  When you’re happy, chop up the coriander leaves and add to the soup then give it a blitz with a hand blender.  After you’ve done this, rehydrate the noodles as per the instructions on the packet and take all the meat off the chicken.  Then serve by placing some noodles in a deep bowl, then on top of these put some raw spinach leaves (the heat of the soup will wilt them just so), place some shredded chicken on the spinach and ladle over some of the soup.  Serve with a spoon and some chopsticks and enjoy the best bowl of soup you’ll ever have.  

Drinkie..? Nibbles..? Pig..?

Just before Christmas I went to a party and bought a pig.  I would like to make it clear that this wasn't a 'buying a pig' party.  I merely happened to get chatting to someone who had a pig to sell and if there's one thing I am always in the market for it's a bit of livestock.  

Last year we had a sheep that we lovingly called Minty before we lovingly took him to a slaughterhouse, lovingly paid someone else to kill and butcher him before we lovingly ate every delicious bit of him, lovingly.  I have been banned from naming the pig (although secretly I call him Ian).  I'm already dreaming of making my own cured ham, sausages, black pudding and brawn.

Ian

This is my favourite picture of Minty.  Isn't he lovely..?

Brain Food: GCHQ

I received an email from my contact at GCHQ a few days ago.  He (I think he's a he) gave me such sensitive and highly secret information that he begged me to keep his identity anonymous.  I agreed to his demand but before I share this information with you let me take you back to the beginning.  It all began innocently enough while I was listening to the radio one rainy September afternoon.  The programme was a documentary that went inside GCHQ, Britain’s ultra secret listening station.  You can listen to it here.

About three minutes in to the piece we first hear mention of ‘The Street’.  This would appear to be the main thoroughfare of the building and provides an opportunity for workers to take a break from listening to super secret things and meet up with co-workers and moan about Val in accounts or chat about the sexy new worker down the hall (for security reasons, GCHQ have asked me to point out that I don’t actually know if there is a Val in accounts or anyone sexy who works there).  Listening to it I was struck by the phrase that the guide utters at about 6’15, where she provides some tantalising detail about the amenities on offer at GCHQ.  She says that workers can visit “different coffee shops, restaurants etc”.  Imagine that.  Not just normal coffee shops but “different” coffee shops and not just one restaurant but “restaurants etc”.  I had to know more.  The people who work at GCHQ are the best of the best of the best so what is it that fuels them?  What the hell do they eat?  What is their favourite food?  Is fish on the menu or do they only eat Government sanctioned, super-secret food created in laboratories by robots?  The GCHQ website doesn’t help much either.  It adds the most meagre flesh to the bones.

I knew that if I wanted answers to my questions I would have to go undercover, deep undercover, maybe even more deeply undercover than Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop 2.  I knew that I needed an informer, a mole, a human being so sneaky and low-down that they would provide me with the information I needed, no questions asked.  I needed a Deep Mouth and he wasn’t hard to find.  From his email I was able to ascertain that there is a main restaurant, a continental café, a deli bar, coffee shops (number unspecified) and numerous vending machines and tuck shops.  I also discovered that the main restaurant served “anything and everything” and had “a range of homemade soups, trattoria, a 'global theatre', chef's classics, salads and jacket potatoes, homemade hot and cold desserts, and of course, vegetarian choices”.  And then he dropped the bomb (once again I would like to point out that this is a metaphor) when he mentioned that the breakfast menu served in the restaurant included “standard fare that you would find in most good hotels”.  It was there that the email ended.

I was in shock for days afterwards, my head swimming with thoughts of brainy people enjoying “global theatres”, adult tuck shops and breakfasting to the level of a good hotel.  I needed more information so chanced my arm and got in touch with Deep Mouth one more time.  What he told me nearly blew my mind so brace yourself because once you know what I am about to tell you, you will never be able to unknow it.

Far from being Peruvian mime or Italian puppetry, Global Theatre is “a range of natural healthy options cooked fresh to order while you watch. They tend to include food with olive oil, no dressings or seasonings. Typical dishes include; salmon, chicken, plain pasta and salads”.  But what of the GCHQ worker’s favourite food?  Well, “this appears to be pepperoni pizzas, fish & chips, burgers, chicken tikka masala, steak and kidney pie and curries. Full English breakfast is very popular (especially on a Friday morning) and porridge is always up there with the biggest sellers”.  

So there we go.  The elite brains of GCHQ like having plain pasta cooked while they watch, fish (but only in batter) and most require a fry-up on a Friday morning.  On Thursday nights, the bars and pubs of Cheltenham must be full of very clever people getting squiffy and not being allowed to say anything much at all.  That, in itself, is very, very impressive.

Fire & Knives: Some Salt With A Deadly Weapon

Here is a multimedia version of an article I wrote for the excellent Fire & Knives magazine.  

Warning: Some of the videos in this blog show scenes of violent death by food.  Definitely 18s only.  You have been warned.

When I was eight years old I saw a woman kill her husband with a frozen leg of lamb.  Once the woman had dispatched her fella she cooked the lamb and, in a scene reminiscent of an episode of Tales Of The Unexpected, served it up for the unsuspecting, scene-of-crime police officers.  It was, of course, from an episode of Tales Of The Unexpected called ‘Lamb To The Slaughter’.  It was a sight that had such an effect on my young mind that even now I find it difficult to watch a lady of a certain age rummage in the deep freeze.

As crazy, foodie murder weapons go, I wasn’t sure that I’d see the like of a frozen leg of lamb again.  Oh sure, there have been plenty of movies that have placed kitchen tools in the hands of the desperate psychopath, but killing with food itself is a much rarer delight.  Take True Romance’s Alabama, played by Patricia Arquette.  Alabama is a hooker with a heart and, dare one say, plenty of spunk as well.  In one memorable scene she stabs a brutal gangster with a cork-screw.  Not just the waiters’ friend but the prostitute-getting-her-head-kicked-ins’ friend too. 

Once the tool of molecular gastronomists, the meat thermometer is now as ubiqitious as stacked Cuban heels in Tom Cruise’s closet.  So it was only a matter of time before an inventive filmmaker used one to bump someone off.  Step forward Robert Rodriguez and his B-movie, The Machete.  A henchman gets a meat thermometer stabbed in his neck and later, when a bomb explodes, it pops out to indicate he’s ready to eat.  Heston would be so proud.

To find some food used to do some damage we have to turn to the ever-creative Jackie Chan and his 1987 cracker, Jackie Chan's Project A2 (it’s the sequel to Jackie Chan’s Project A in case you’re wondering).  Being chased through a village by a gang of ne’er-do-wells, JC sees a huge basket of small red chillis. He stuffs handfuls of the chillis in his mouth, chews them and spits the seeds into his hands.  The pepper fumes on his karate chops blind his assailants allowing The Chan to throw them from rooftops into handily positioned baskets below.  However, with a body count of zero, I’m afraid that as inventive as this is it is no match for a frozen hunk of meat.

For similar reasons we must also ignore the ‘wafer thin mint’ that ends Mr. Creosote’s days in The Meaning Of Life.  It’s true that he dies by overeating to the point of explosion but I’m afraid no court in the land would convict the waiter of murder.  Manslaughter maybe but murder?  No.

We get a full-on food assisted murder, or FAM, in the 2009 movie, Law Abiding Citizen. In one scene Gerard Butler’s character Clyde uses the T-bone of a Porterhouse steak to stab his cellmate to death.  The murder whilst perfectly effective and marvelously bloody is completely without flair.  I mean, if you’re going to go to the trouble of killing someone with a morcel of deliciousness then I really must insist on a cheeky one-liner.

And so we find ourselves in the company of Clive Owen in the film Shoot ‘Em Up.  He’s a man who loves killing people, and his weapon of choice?  Nature’s humble carrot.  He kills one enemy by shoving one through his eyeball and another by ramming a carrot down his throat so hard that it comes out the back of his head.  Each kill is wonderfully gory and accompanied by a sizzling one-liner like “what’s up doc?” or “eat your vegetables”.  In Clive’s hands the carrot becomes a more than worthy deadly successor to the frozen leg of lamb. 

Now, if we can just find someone to do a murder with a potato we’ll have ourselves the makings of a lethal Lancashire Hotpot.

Always On My Mind (And When I Say Mind I Mean Stomach)

'You know Pauline, I'm not hungry.  I just feel tired.  I just want to rest.'  These words spoken at about 7am on August 16, 1977 were the last that Elvis Presley would utter to another human's face.  A few hours later he was found dead on his bathroom floor, a victim of both the gargantuan cocktail of drugs that had become part of his daily routine and his one true love, food.

Elvis's love of food ultimately destroyed him and left him virtually bedridden at the end of his life.  He would spend his time flat on his back watching the TVs at the foot of his bed and eating the food he loved best.  If you try and picture it you can imagine what a challenge that would be to most people.  Lying flat and eating poses certain logistical and safety problems.  Elvis though, an ingenious man when it came to satisfying his hungers, created the TV glasses.  These were glasses with a mirror inside positioned at an angle of 45 degrees, which allowed him to watch the TV with his head flat on the bed.

The last chapter of one of my favourite cookbooks, 'Eating The Elvis Presley Way' by David Adler, chronicles Elvis's last day from the point of view of the kitchen at Gracelands.  Here's what the King's ate just before he died.  It was one of his favourites and as is typical of the kind of food Elvis loved.  It is enormous, unhealthy and betrays an almost childish love for flavour.  I should point out that the recipe below is a modest version of the dish as Elvis's cook was so worried about his health.

                                                     Elvis's Last Supper

2 scoops Peach ice-cream (Sealtest was the preferred brand)
2 scoops of your favourite flavour (the actual second flavour is lost in the mists of time)
6-8 chocolate chip cookies (Chips Ahoy brand)

Mix together the two flavours of ice-cream until soft then use the cookies to dip.

Such A Silly Sausage

My most dearest of darlings and loveliest of lovelies, I do hope the autumn finds you in snorting good form.  Now, I have been neglecting my duties as a blogger, which is totally unacceptable.  Please feel free when you see me to take a paddle to my botty.  I, in turn, will offer a tiny moan.

moan

I love sausage and I don't care who knows.  I love them with creamy mash or in a sandwich.  I love cutting off the skin and frying them until the edges go golden and crispy then sprinkling the porky croutons over a fried egg on toast.  

At this time of year there's nothing like a fabulous English Dog (i.e. a hotdog with a proper banger) However, I am a teensy bit sick of having lovely sausages accompanied by greasy onions black around the edges and raw in the middle.  So, I thought I'd share my foolproof way to cook the perfect onions for sausages.

Put an inch wedge of butter and a couple of tablespoons of oil into a heavy bottomed saucepan that has a tight-fitting lid and put it over a medium heat.  I have one of those enamel, French named casseroles for this, which is perfect.  They are expensive but I’ve had mine for twelve years and it is still as good as new so they are a good investment.  Next add to the pan about four large onions that you have skinned and thinly sliced.  Coat them in the melted butter and oil, put the lid back on and leave it alone.  Check every ten minutes or so and give them a stir but don’t stir too much.  What will happen is that the onions will soften and start to go a deep, dark caramel brown.  As they colour they lose their harsh flavour and begin to develop an incredible sweetness that will bring out the salty, porkiness of the sausage.  The onions will take about 40 minutes to cook so leave plenty of time.

By the by, when the onions are cooked you can serve them with the sausages in an English Dog or you could do a couple of other things.  

1.  After 40 mins you could add some chopped garlic and cook that for a couple of minutes.  Then add a tablespoon of flour and stir until the flour has been incorporated with the butter.  Cook that for a couple of minutes and add a wineglass of whatever wine you have to hand (red or white) or beer or cider and cook again until it bubbles away nicely.  Then add a bit of stock and salt and pepper and you have the perfect gravy for sausage and mash.  

2. Do the above but keep adding stock for an easy onion soup.

And don't say I don't do anything for you.

The East End Sarnie

Stuff You'll Need:

About 50g butter

A tablespoon of vegetable oil

Two slices of bread

Lots of your favourite cheddar

Some of the most delicious ham you can get hold of

Dijon mustard

What You Need To Do:

We British are a funny old bunch, we get through over 11 billion sandwiches a year and yet we seem to lavish almost no thought, love or care on something we seemingly adore so much.  I suffer enormous envy when I think how well other countries do the sandwich.  Picture the perfection of a medium rare burger, a Friday night kebab delight, or even an oozing quesadilla.  Yet despite it forming the basis of most of our lunches, we seem content with mealy-mouthed squares of plastic bread spread thinly with meat paste, or canned tuna or (my own personal nemesis) stinky over-boiled egg.

Well, I for one want to reclaim the sarnie as a thing of beauty.  No longer should a sandwich be something to be ashamed of.  Make these babies and I promise you will fall in love with the sandwich all over again.  Also, your family will want to kiss the ground you walk on.

I would say that pound for pound this is one of my favourite recipes in the world.  Essentially all you do is make a cheese and ham sandwich and then shallow fry it in butter but like all the great things in life, the devil is in the detail.  I absolutely insist that you use white bread of whatever kind you like but somehow brown bread just won’t do for this.  The cheese should be one that you love but I find the hit of some Snowdonia Black Bomber or really hits the spot.  Get some ham from a decent deli or butcher and watch them carve it for you.  Remember that the thing with simple recipes is that the ingredients you use need to be as good as you can get because if you skimp the only one who loses will be you.

Put the butter and oil into a nonstick pan and place on a high heat.  Smear a side of each slice of bread with the mustard then place the cheese and ham on one slice and place the second slice of bread on the ham, mustard side down.  When the butter is hot and bubbly put the sandwich in the pan and leave for a couple of minutes.  When the first side is golden turn it over.  Place on a warmed plate and serve with a green salad, some chips if you can be bothered, and a beer.

I have also made this with strawberry jam and peanut butter to bring out my inner Elvis.  It was the devil in disguise (in a good way).

The Gilbert Scott

Restaurant review: The Gilbert Scott, London NW1

You should have seen the instructions next to the toilet

My mother would hate The Gilbert Scott.  The miniature tie worn by the waitress would have had her tutting and fussing from the get-go.  One look at the house chardonnay would have caused her a mischief.  It was 13 percent proof, you see, and her one rule about wine is that any bottle that exceeds 11 percent is just showing off.  What would have had her reaching for the smelling salts though was the little printed sign in the toilet that gave instructions on how to use the taps.

Happily, I am my own man and am able to turn a blind eye to such lamentable lapses of lunching good form.  So despite the fact that my mother reads everything I write, photocopies it, then pins it to the church noticeboard (for all her friends to see how well I’m doing), I’m going to risk the eye-rolling of my life and say that I really like The Gilbert Scott.

When the restaurant opened in May it marked the end of the £800 million St Pancras regeneration project.  And what a regeneration it is.  The elegance and style that must have dripped from every chandelier when it first opened 138 years ago has been beautifully recaptured and yet this is an eating space that doesn’t feel unwelcoming or exclusive.  The space is big and flooded with natural light, the staff helpful and the Marcus Wareing designed food was so British that I had 1970’s nostalgia flashbacks for hours.

The starter, a porky, livery, sagey Haslet, was as good as any I’ve had in Lincolnshire.  A salty and firm rectangle bound by a quivering ribbon of pork fat, like a porcine birthday parcel.  I would say that I could have done with a bit more toast to go with it but then I’m a pig when I eat pig.

The sea bream was pretty well perfect; white flesh hidden beneath a crisp and slightly blackened skin.  I confess that I did experience a touch of food envy when I saw the chicken and snail pie emerge from the kitchen.  All the food at our table was accompanied with sides that no British table should be without; new potatoes, greens and carrots.  It would appear that some things never change no matter how many Michelin stars the creative has.

Mrs. Beeton’s Snow Eggs turned out not to be a euphemism but rather a splendid egg white and toffee concoction, slightly salty and mouth-tighteningly sweet. 

Most definitely not a euphemism

I have no idea whether the near billion pounds will make the trains from St. Pancras run any smoother but I’d be happy to while away a few hours of delays in The Gilbert Scott any day.  I just won’t take my mother. Come to think of it though, if I wanted to get my hands on the family silver a bit early I could so worse than set her sat nav to NW1 2AR.  She’d be dead before the starter arrived.