Nose to Tail

In this year’s list of the world’s top 50 restaurants, there were a few surprises with Gordon Ramsay dropping out altogether, France not having a single eaterie in the top 6, whilst Spain had 4 in the top 8. The best USA restaurant came in at number 6 and The Fat Duck retained it’s number 2 position behind El Bulli of Spain.

Of particular interest to a number of commentators was the two place rise of St John, a restaurant in London’s Smithfield (Meat) Market, rising from number 14 to number 12 in the list. Much of the interest was around the fact that many had not even known it had been on the list at number 12 the year before.

St John has got one Michelin Star which was a complete surprise to the owner when it was awarded, as was its inclusion on the list of the world’s best restaurants when the guide was published.

I must know St John although I’m pretty sure I haven’t eaten there. It’s just round the corner from my old BT office and since Smithfield started its gastronomic journey several years ago with fancy restaurants popping up everywhere, it has been a favourite for BT people whose office is within a 5 minute walk of that famous square, where the English put William Wallace, the leader of the Scottish independence movement, to death in 1305.

Despite that slight against the Scots, I have spent the last 17 years eating in and around Smithfield and given that St John opened in 1994, I must have passed it even if I’ve not eaten there. Thinking about it, given what they serve, it’s quite likely that I refused any invitation to dine there – maybe the title of the blog gives it away.

Nose to Tail refers both to a book which the owner of the restaurant (Fergus Henderson) has written as well as the use they make of the daily delivery of four suckling pigs and this is where I start to think and favour the other, more ‘conventional’ restaurants in Smithfield.

Grilled Bone Marrow. Grilled Chiterlings. Pigs Head & Potato Pie. Apparently, and I apologise here, the only things they have not found a recipe for are the pigs’ 'naughty bits', but they’re probably working on it! Yuck!

Now before you think all they do is pig, you’re wrong. They get fresh fish from Essex and strangely, don’t get their meat from the meat market in the same square, preferring to use favoured suppliers who provide exactly the type of produce they’re after. They make all their own bread and choose their veggies the night before in the London fruit & veg market. It all smacks of a very low-key,  small-scale operation and, I suppose to some extent it is, but it’s reported to be delicious and the comments from other famous chefs are glowing in their praise about both its simplicity (the simplicity of the cooking is reflected in the unadorned décor, paper tablecloths and blunt menu - Brown Shrimp and White Cabbage, Ox Heart and Chips), and its cooking. Probably the most descriptive is the following; ‘Reading and dreaming of all these recipes makes me want to torch my own Babbo restaurant and move to London to heed the master's call." - New York chef Mario Batali.

Looking at the menus, the prices are not too bad either. £6.00 ish for a starter and maybe around £20 for a main course – typical London prices for anything other than a local, side-street restaurant.

So, here’s to St John. A success from a relatively modest background and which has catapulted them to number 12 in the world.

Link to the restaurant below.

 http://www.stjohnrestaurant.co.uk/

 

Another YouTube Star

I make no apologies for this short blog which points to a You Tube video of, yes you’ve guessed it, another Scottish star in the making.

Not only are the tricks breathtaking (you must watch to the end) but the music is great also, as is the amateur direction of the video.

I guess both boys will not be riding the streets of Edinburgh for long.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o

The Storm Before The Calm

There’s only about 5 weeks to go of the football season and Tan and I have been comparing notes about what we’ve said to our respective spouses re the amount of footie on the telly right now.

It’s along the lines of ……. ‘look I know there’s a lot of football on right now but there’s a lot of key games which will decide the whole season so I need to watch them’.  Pretty feeble I know but it seems to work, although occasionally I have to go to Tan’s to watch a game or even descend into the bowels of the house to watch a match in the den.

Luckily there are no summer tournaments this year so the girls will get about six weeks off before it starts all over again.

Very, very occasionally I watch a game on the telly and think why am I watching 22 men kicking a ball about? It’s the same as golf – watching 60 men hitting a little white ball with a stick, or tennis where 2 men hit a ball at each other but then a football game comes on which is so exciting, it rekindles any marginal loss of enthusiasm. We’ve had two 4-4 draws recently and both games were an advert for all that is good about the game.  Thrilling, end-to-end matches with the result of the game swinging one way then the other. Magnificent.

So girls, there’s only about five weeks to go – maybe six, so please bear with us. We’ve got the European Champions League semis and then the final. We’ve got the FA and Scottish Cup Finals. We’ve got the UEFA Cup Final and the last 4 weeks of the various leagues.

So, as I said, please bear with us for these last few exciting weeks – we don’t complain about your endless ‘home improvement’ programmes or ’10 years younger’ works of fiction or even the endless soaps. But I have to stop now as there’s a game on! C’mon the Reds.

Lunch At Caussoles

Nine adults and little Violet headed up into the mountains to have lunch at the Auberge Du Caussoles on Saturday and everything went perfectly. With three groups making up the party there was always the chance that someone would get lost or a car would start to misbehave, but no, everything went ok and we all arrived at Caussoles at the same time having driven up the gorge and over the mountains whilst dodging hordes of cyclists en route.

The Auberge was packed when we arrived with several large tables full of noisy French enjoying their lunch. Drinks were ordered and the menus arrived. Given the mountainous size of the portions on offer, the trick at the Auberge is to have one €30 menu which includes a wide range of starters and a cheese course, and one lower priced €23 menu (which doesn’t), and then mix and match between two people.

The first items in the food marathon to arrive are large baskets of rustic country bread and a wooden bucket from which you spoon your own shavings of delicious butter. Then the paté arrives – a one kilo block from which you slice off your own serving. The problem here is that if you don’t take care, you’re full before the real starters arrive but the bread and paté are so delicious it’s very difficult to stop nibbling.

Then the platter of roasted vegetables is placed on the table. Aubergine, courgettes, onions, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes – all absolutely scrummy and drizzled in olive oil.

Main courses are huge, particularly the roast lamb, which we couldn’t finish, but the stars of the show are the side dishes – a humungous platter of ravioli in a daube (meat) sauce,  plates of frites and roast potatoes as well as other vegetables.

Thankfully, and because the place is so busy, service is slow which it gives you plenty of time to eat the huge plates of food and drink gallons of wine. And then the cheese plate arrives for those who ordered the €30 menu – enough to feed a small army but actually only for 3 people.

By the time the desserts were ordered people were struggling but I still managed to wolf down my hot chocolate fudge cake and vanilla ice cream.

Then the killer – the waitress placed a complimentary bottle of lemon cello on the table and that was it. We headed home, the cars now struggling to get up and over the mountain.

The day ended with everybody in Tan and Angie’s watching Tan go through the full range of emotions as his team (Spurs) went 2-0 up against my team (Manchester United) only to lose 5-2. Needless to say there was more wine and I’m afraid to say, I cannot remember anything more until J kicked me out of bed at 6am. Apparently I was fidgeting!

Oh and I forgot to say that some French lothario, who must have been 70 years old, grabbed J for a dance in the restaurant as the place took off in a flurry of napkin waving (some obscure French custom) and clapping.

It was a great lunch.  

Boys Toys

I was in my garage the other day. It’s quite a big garage, situated underneath the kitchen and it’s never had a car in it and it’s unlikely to ever do so. Don’t know why we made it a garage as the drive is a bit steep and if we used the garage to house the cars their clutches would undoubtedly burn out within weeks. But all new houses have integral garages so we got one. I can’t even remember asking for one but I got it anyway. Of course, as soon as we moved into the house, even before the builders had vacated the premises, I was down there fixing up shelves, making a work bench, rigging up extension sockets for my electric bench grinder which I use about once a year and putting hooks on the wall so all my tools could be kept off the floor. It’s a bugger when you’re walking through the garage at night in the pitch black and you fall over the car vacuum cleaner or the aluminium step ladders – so everything which can be hung up is hung up.

By now you should be forming the impression that my garage is full of every conceivable man gadget. It is. I’ve got grinders and shavers, lamps and amp testers, plungers and pluggers. I’ve got boxes of nuts, bolts, screws, springs and washers. I’ve got every type of glue known to man as well as every type of oil. It’s a veritable treasure trove of things – man things. And the best ones were bought for me by my darling wife (there – I’ve said something nice about her!).

It started quite a few years ago on my 50^th birthday which was not that long after I’d moved over. I’d had a big party up in the mountains and the next day we all decamped back to our house to continue the festivities (the hotel had run out of booze so we had to move somewhere). During the afternoon J called us all out to the front drive to present what was quite obviously my birthday gift. It was just sitting there, all wrapped up in gold shiny paper. How she’d managed to get so much wrapping paper and wrap it up with a big ribbon so that you couldn’t even see the wheels was quite a feat. It was quite obvious what it was. The shape was unmistakeable and as soon as I started ripping the paper off and I saw the beautiful orange paintwork, I was nearly overcome. The crowd of friends broke into spontaneous applause and I just looked at my ……………. electric cement mixer. I’d obviously mentioned, probably in a drunken moment, that I’d quite like one – so I got one!

A couple of years later, and I forget if this one was for a birthday or a Xmas, I got a bush-cutter, or debrousiage as they call them out here. It’s like a huge strimmer only it’s so big and heavy that you need to lower it onto you with a block and tackle and hope that it clicks into the full body harness you have to wear to use it. Come to think of it, I’d probably been complaining of a bad back and hay fever so what better gift for the man who has everything, than a 200lb bush-cutter which kicks up so much grass that I look like Edward Scissorhands when he’s trimming the bushes?

And then there was the time that I mentioned J’s car was looking a trifle dirty. In fact it was so dirty, so often that I was tempted to get the official colour changed to ‘metallic mud’, but again, it must’ve been near Xmas cause there, under the tree, in fact, propping up the tree was my pressie. It was a Karcher – one of those yellow pressure hoses which most people buy to clean their cars! You can’t say she’s not imaginative.

And that was followed by a large janitor’s brush because I’d stupidly mentioned that cleaning the terraces with the normal, small brooms took too long. It was difficult for her to disguise that one with gift wrapping paper!

So – maybe you’ve all noticed that there’s a trend here. If I mention it, and it cleans, sweeps, sucks or cuts, and it’s near Xmas or February, then there ‘s a good chance I’ll get it. Strangely, the Porsche Boxter I mention every year never arrives, but then if it did, I wouldn’t be able to get it in the garage!