Sunday 27 March 2011

Bloody Brilliant

Last Sunday I bought some smooth black pudding at Totnes Good Food market.


Company: Native Breeds curers and charcutiers
Lydney Park Estate
info@nativebreeds.co.uk


Provenance: Rare breed free-range pork, Ragmans Lane organic apple juice, Sainthill Farm organic Jersey milk


Ingredients: Pork Blood, Pork Fat, Oats, Milk, Onions, Apple Juice, Water, Spices, Preservatives (s.ascorbate, s.metabisulphate)


Price: £1.66 (£12 per kg)





With it sitting in my fridge all week, the black beauty has been on my mind like a congealed blood clot in my brain. This morning I released the bleeding beast from its vacuum pack and gave it a new lease  of life in the frying pan. The cooking instructions on the packet suggested I poach it gently in the sealed packaging, but I wanted the texture of crispy charred edges from  it hanging out in a sizzling hot frying pan, so I invented my own rules.


To accompany the Boudin noir I fried a scoffy egg and slowly cooked some plum tomatoes with some tabasco & worcestershire sauce thrown in (bloody mary style to go with the bloody sausage). The bludding (made up word) itself was so big on flavour and richness, almost gamey with a serious sweetness going on (likely coming from the apple juice). Probably not the best thing to eat for breakfast as it's so epic in every way, but certainly the best black pudding I've ever had. Now I'm counting down the days til I can get my blood soaked hands on more of this elusive black barbarian. Next time I'll cook it as an evening meal, maybe with Puy lentils and a little orange zest (from a blood orange of course).

Saturday 26 March 2011

Cunting Corks

I think it's time to fuck tradition and get rid of cocking corks. 


About five years ago I took a little road trip down to Avignon with my sister and her family. We decided to take a detour to the famous wine village of Châteauneuf du Pape. Being English tourists, we seemed to get the cold French shoulder from everyone and found it very difficult to buy the wine, so we said "fuck you frogs" and left. On our way out of the village we saw a little shop and thought we'd give it one last try. The owner of the vineyard welcomed us in cracked open many bottles of amazing wine and we drank away. With me being a poor student I could only afford to buy a few bottles, my sister bought a few crates, but I decided to buy one very expensive 2003, which I've been saving for what seems to be a lifetime. This bottle has moved house with me four times now and I've carefully laid it down in a cool dark place on every occasion.






Because I upset my girlfriend last night I'm making it up to her by cooking a ribeye steak and thought I'd open this cherished bottle of 2003 Châteauneuf du Pape. The cunt was fucking corked. This has happened to me far to many times. Apparently 1-15% of bottles that use corks become corked to some degree. There is no advantage to using a cork, apart from in sparkling wines. So why bother?


If you do have the answer please let me know.

Sunday 20 March 2011

Jerky Off

This morning, I took a trip into my old home town of Totnes, as I'd heard there was a food market on. Actually it's called Totnes Good Food Sunday, which is a monthly market selling fine foods and it certainly isn't one of those god awful continental markets where you buy over priced stale bread, this market in like a mini Borough only without the cunts. Ok there are still cunts, just a different breed. While on the subject of breed, i bought some smooth black pudding (£1.60), which is made from rare breed pork and needs to be gently poached when cooking, should be interesting. Check out this market if you are in Totters on the 3rd Sunday of the month. Don't get me wrong, there is still the usual shit that you find at farmers markets, but this one is different, because I say so.


I can highly recommend the chorizo sausage wrap for £3, which is made with a barbecued sausage and tons of salad. This stall is always in Totnes and I've had it before, so I looked for something new. The market was small enough for me to do a loop and see everything before making my paramount selection of scoff. The Cockleshell Deli caught my eye, so I bought a brace of filo pastry pies(£2.50 each). One pork & one goats cheese, both had great flavor and were filled to the brim.


I also picked up a cheeky scotch egg from the Red Earth Kitchen (£1.75), which I'm going to eat later tonight when watching Wonders of the Universe, so I can't comment yet. Although I bet there is a planet that looks like a giant scotch egg and has a magma core made of egg yolk.






The star of the show was some spiced Beef Biltong from Howton Farm (Pictured above), it's basically a type of cured/dried meat similar to jerky. Afterwards I walked down Totnes high street in search of a pub where the biltong accompanied my pint of Admiral's Ale (Officially the best beer in the world) in the Royal Seven Stars. I sat by the roaring fire reading the Sunday papers, chomping & swigging away. Great stuff.

Sunday 13 March 2011

Coffee



Firstly, you need to download this zip file and listen to the episode of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour on the subject of coffee - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22454607/TTRH%20Season%201%20-%2005%20-%20Coffee.zip

This will help you get into the right frame of mind.


Ready?

I never really liked the flavour of coffee until about eight years ago when I tried a overly milky latte made with Monmouth coffee. It was pretty good, mainly because there was so much milk, the bitterness of the espresso was drowned in the creamy sweetness.

Where I work now sells Monmouth coffee and last Wednesday I went to Monmouth HQ to have barista training. Three and a half hours of intense teaching has given me the ability to produce a seriously good espresso.

Probably the most important aspect of the whole process is to grind the beans to the correct consistency, too course and the coffee will taste acidic and sharp, too fine and the coffee will taste bitter and burnt. When the grind is correct the coffee will be sweet and smooth. If you don't get the exact grind, you will never make a great espresso.

The second most important part is to stretch the milk correctly and get the bubbles to the perfect size. Always use full fat milk and never serve a coffee in a cup bigger than 8oz (I've heard Starbucks now sell a coffee larger the human stomach).


There are so many aspects to making good espresso I can't mention all of them, but the details are immense. For example the water should be exactly 91 degrees when passing through the coffee. But once you master the two points I've highlighted, grind and milk, you're on the road to making great stuff.




I was given a stove-top espresso pot for my birthday, but unfortunately it's impossible to produce a great coffee from these devices. You might as well use instant coffee and fuck off.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Fish & Chips

On a cold & wet February day what could be more depressing than visiting the seaside town of Paignton? Going to the 99p shop? Eating some greasy comfort food? Well, combining all three actually creates a fun day out.



We decided to go to the award winning Squires of Paignton for the best fish & chips in town. They probably are the best in town, although the establishment is far from stylish. My girlfriend and I both ordered the standard meal - Cod or Haddock, chips, mushy peas, bread and any 500ml soft drink, all for £5.95. Our food was served with cheap white sliced bread with Flora spread all over it (they advertised it was Flora, no cheap rubbish at Squires, award winning shit). I wasn't quite sure what to do with the bread, but because I'd paid for it, I was going to eat it and therefore made a chip sandwich laced with mushy peas (proper CHD). For a laugh my girlfriend sneakily ordered me a pickled egg, again, in proper northerner mentality I ate it because we'd paid for it. Deliciously sulfurous vinegary weirdness washed down with a Dr Pepper. Not much point in eating a pickled egg, unless it's battered and deep fried.

Actually Squires is pretty good and I shouldn't take the piss, they offer things like wheat free batter, which I assume is made from chickpea flour, and the quality of the meal was really good. But there are a few things which stop this place being good and the main problem is the clientele, at one point we over heard a chav scum-bag say in reference to the problems in Libya - "I don't know any of them, I'm not related to them, so why should I fucking care, I especially don't care when they're fucking darkies", this comment wasn't because the group of social lowlifes were having a political discussion, not that it would justify such ignorance, but the bloke was simply commenting on the BBC news which was being broadcast on a 50 inch plasma screen. I suppose the clientele can't eat unless there is a 50 inch screen in front of them. The other massive disappointment was to see 4 optics behind the counter serving some average spirits like Bells whisky and Tia Maria, again this is probably to service those lovely people who have such thoughtful opinions on global politics and come to Paignton for their holiday, because they don't own a passport.

I was also annoyed not to see any information or posters on Hugh's Fish Fight, as surely any fish shop is effected by the idiotic EU law on discards. I feel really hypocritical saying that as I had Cod, but that's not the point.

For the best fish & chips, Rick Stein's wins my award because the fish is always fresh and coated in beer batter, they fry in beef dripping, it's served with a slice of lemon and with homemade tartar sauce. That's award winning in my opinion and it cost no more than the average chippy, but best of all, you don't have to endure a 50 inch screen and the idiots which come with it.