In Britain, we tend to think of American cheese, if we think of it at all, as less of a dairy product, more of a low-level human rights abuse. Although there presumably must be some nice bits of cheese dotted about in obscure areas of the US, lovingly handmade by salt-of-the-earth organic hippies, we never see any of it, so to us it does not exist. Most folk here are only familiar with three kinds of American cheese: orange plastic, yellow plastic, and if they’ve really been living life on the edge, yellow plastic with little coloured bits of confetti in it.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself eating an American cheese on Independence Day, and most shocking of all, really enjoying it.

This is Rogue River Blue, made by the brilliantly named Rogue Creamery in Oregon. (The name refers to the Rogue River, rather than implying that the cheese is made by a bunch of lawless desperados, which is a bit of a shame.) Apparently there’s a ton of red tape that prevents the US from exporting raw milk cheeses to Europe, but this was one of the first cheeses to jump through all the necessary hoops, and is now available in the UK courtesy of our very favourite cheese pimps at Neal’s Yard Dairy.

So what’s it like? Well, it’s reminiscent of a really good Bleu d’Auvergne, leaning towards Roquefortian levels of richness, and has a fruity edge - quite literally, in fact, because the outside of the cheese is wrapped in grape leaves that have been soaked in pear brandy, which can be tasted along the outer edge. It’s not cheap, at £4.90 per 100 grams, but it is very yummy indeed. I enjoyed it with some rye bread (vaguely continuing the American theme) and quince jelly (not very American, I just happen to like quince jelly).

Well worth seeking out if you’re feeling flush and looking for something a little different to spice up your crackers this summer. Try it and you may well find yourself asserting that you *heart* NYC. But hey, what’s not to love about Neal’s Yard Cheeses?

Cheese | No Comments »

A little Taste of London addendum from me; I’m not a big fan of Cobra beer - it may well be less gassy, but it’s also a too sweet for my liking - but I’d be more than happy to have this Cobra PR guy’s brilliant beer-dispensing backpack. But I’d fill it with Polish Tyskie.

Perfect for picnics! And for fighting off marauding hordes of zombie teetotallers! And perhaps First Responders could carry them in case of really hot curry emergencies? I was going to suggest devising an Indian equivalent to a St Bernard, but all native Indian dog breeds look like whippets, so they’d probably struggle a bit under the weight. (And the story about St Bernard’s toting tots around the mountains is, of course, apocryphal.) Still, this is one bulky backpack that might actually be welcomed on London Underground during these sticky summer months.

Booze, Events | 1 Comment »

Gino D’Acampo, he say; “You putta de pasta inna de sowse, notta de sowse inna de pasta.”

When not stalking B-list celebrity chefs with comedy Italian accents during the Taste of London event, Jill and I were eating still more portion-controlled specialities from London’s top restaurants in what may be the world’s most extravagant tapas experience. Here’s what else I ate:

Braised pig’s head, from Arbutus

Having already eaten a pig’s foot at Taste of London, it seemed sensible to move on to eating the head. What could be more natural than eating a pig from top to bottom? Usually I find the look of brawn a little off-putting - just where exactly did all those different coloured bits of meat really come from, and why must there be so much jelly? But this dark little cake of pork was a wonder, a soft fatty pig fudge with a Brie-like savour. This was most definitely the best thing I tasted at the event. I think a trip to Arbutus may well lie in my future.

Braised brisket beef and bun, from Kai Mayfair

A nice bit of buccleuch beef in a white turnip stew with star anise and cinnamon - but you’ll notice from the picture that there’s also quite a lot of sesame in there, which is quite a strong flavour to douse your beef with. What let this down for me, though, was the steamed mantao bun. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed a steamed bun. What in the world is the point of the steamed bun? It’s like eating a bath sponge, except that at least a bath sponge might offer up a few mild traces of Radox to fascinate the palate with.

Wagyu beef on hot rocks with Champagne teriyaki, from Cocoon

I’ve never had wagyu beef before - it’s the heavily marbled Japanese beef of which Kobe is a variety. Because I’ve never had it before, I’ve no idea how it’s normally served, but serving it cold on some hot black pebbles seems very odd to me. The beef, marinated in soy and sesame, is sublimely tender. I wouldn’t advise eating the rocks, unless you’re an otter. You can probably also live without the Champagne teriyaki, which, as nice as it sounds, actually looks and tastes a lot like pre-fried onion scraps from a packet.

Butter-poached lobster and prawn salad, from Skylon

For my final course, an excellent fresh, light seafood salad, with lots of crunchy cashews and a few big swet meaty chunks of buttery lobster. And the prawns, but who cares about prawns when you’re eating lobster? I probably would have eaten this as a starter if only I’d been approaching all this a little more strategically.

Coupe Liégeoise of dark Manjari brownie with salt caramel ice cream, from One-O-One

All right, I did promise only eight dishes, but having worked my way through eight savoury courses, my poor pudding stomach was pining for some attention, so as dusk descended on Regent’s Park and the attendants started ushering people towards the gates, Jill and I spent the last of our bogus currency on a couple of cups of rich chocolate pudding with too much coffee and not enough caramel.

We sat on some plastic garden furniture to enjoy it while impossibly skinny women who have never touched anything liégeoise danced badly to the Afro-Caribbean band on the bandstand in that hopelessly arrhythmic and unsexy way that all skinny women dance, like wet string sliding down a windowpane.

Taste of London is an interesting way to scout new places to eat in London, but it’s not for the shallow of pocket, and it really doesn’t represent good value for money. Even casting aside matters of moolah, I probably won’t go again, and for one very important reason: We couldn’t find any cheese. I went to Taste of London once before, in 2006, and there was a whole great big tent full of cheese, and it could all be sampled, and it was wonderful.

This year we found precisely one little cheese stall in the whole place, and it wasn’t even very good cheese. Even the stall selling port had run out of Stilton, and the people at the Fudge’s cheese cracker stall couldn’t help us either. A food festival without cheese is like a carnival without music. A food festival without cheese is a festival I can’t in good conscience ever go back to.

Is this really what they mean to tell us London tastes like? Dairy-free? As Samuel Johnson might once have said, when a man is tired of cheese, he is tired of life.

Cafés & Restaurants, Events | 2 Comments »

Jill and I recently attended Taste of London, a festival of food in Regent’s Park bringing together the best of London’s restaurants. Or so it is billed. On closer analysis it may actually be an exercise in lifting cash from the wallets of London’s skinny aspirational media-wannabe Boujis, amphetamines and home-delivered organic mizuna set.

All right, there are some nice middle class people there as well - well-intentioned happy hippy different-bins-for-every-recyclable types. We spotted one Tony Robinson for every Richard Bacon at the event. (Literally; we spotted one Tony Robinson, and one Richard Bacon.)

Here’s how it works; you pay for a ticket, and you pay for some fake currency. London’s top restaurants set up stalls where they offer fun-size versions of three of their signature dishes, which can be bought with the aforementioned fake currency. The fake currency is mainly there to soften the blow when you realise you just spent five quid on a single piece of scampi. (Again, yes, literally.)

So it isn’t cheap. But for about the same amount of money that you might spend on a meal at a good restaurant, you do get to fill yourself up on paper-plated samples of some of London’s finest dining experiences.

Want to know what I ate? I do hope so. I took photos and everything!

Pig’s trotters, crackling and pain poilane, from Trinity

I have to admit, I was hoping for an actual pig’s trotter to gnaw on, but I wasn’t the least bit unhappy with this wonderfully jammy little spoonful of rich pulled-pork rillettes, with a side of something that tasted like mashed caper and a crispy roof of perfect crackling. Very good indeed.

Langoustine en papillote croustillante au basilic, from L’Atelier du Robuchon

If you’re wondering what a langoustine en paillote croustillante is, well, here’s that £5 piece of scampi - with a smear of pesto. Now, I know scampi is expensive, but this seems a little cheeky. I’ve always wanted to eat at a Joël Robuchon restaurant - who doesn’t? The man has 17 Michelin stars! - but this paltry offering slightly put me off, not because there wasn’t enough of it, but because scampi and basil simply don’t go very well together.

L’Atelier was also offering baby burgers with foie gras, but demand for these was predictably high. It was all I could do to get through the burger-crazed scrum to order my langoustine from the unusually rowdy waiters and chefs, who cheered like football fans every time another burger emerged from the kitchen. I assume they don’t behave like this in Robuchon’s actual restaurants. Tsk tsk.

Xacutti de Cabrito, from Café Spice Namasté

The lure here was all in the pitch; “Renaissance Herdwick mutton cooked in the world’s greatest, most complicated and intricate curry made using twenty-two ingredients”. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? And it’s certainly an excellent curry, but twenty two ingredients seems so unnecessary. Once you get past seven they all start merging together - and to be honest this sauce mostly tasted of chilli and cinnamon. Hype over substance, I’m afraid.

Terrine de volaille fumée et foie gras aux lentilles, from Le Gavroche

This was one of the real hits of the day, a beautiful thick stained glass chunk of tasty, tasty meat. The limitations of the Taste of London event - small kitchens serving thousands of hungry people - make terrines an easy choice, since all you have to do is cut them up (and, in this case, drizzle some truffle vinaigrette on the side), but you’ll never hear me complaining when the terrine is this good - rich, smoky and lingeringly delicious. Foie gras and truffle in the same mouthful? Who needs some stinkin’ mini-burger?

To be continued…

Cafés & Restaurants, Events | No Comments »

The little grocery shop downstairs used to be a terrible place to get food. We’d buy bottles of milk there and they’d seem to go off before I’d even made it back up the stairs. Fortunately I think the shop has changed hands in the last year or so, and is now in the hands of Tamils. The first sign of this was when a secret miniature Sri Lankan fishmonger’s opened up in a little room out the back, like a little piscine Narnia tucked in between the packet soups and the Sugar Puffs.

Then a fruit stall appeared out front selling galangal and yams. But most exciting of all - for me, at least - was the day I discovered they were selling little boxes of homemade hopper and pol sambol for £2.25 a pop.

The man behind the counter seemed almost as excited that I knew what hoppers and sambol were as I was to see them there, but I must confess, I only recently learned about them. A friend who used to live in Sri Lanka introduced me to Sekara, an excellent Sri Lankan restaurant in Belgravia, and she has sold me and many others on the delights of rice hoppers and sambol.

Rice hoppers are like little rice noodle discs that you use to scoop up curry with your hands. Pol sambol is - at its most basic - a dry mix of salt, chili and coconut. The heat of chili and the sweetness of coconut make for a startlingly good - and intense - flavour combination.

The hoppers at the local shop are not rice, but wheat - fat white dumplings with long lacy skirts, like pregnant doilies. After heating them for a few seconds in a dry pan I discovered that they’re actually a little more practical than rice hoppers for scooping up the sambol, and when you’re eating mouthfuls of chili all that fluffy dough is quite welcome on the palat - it tames the fire and compliments the coconut.

I must admit, I didn’t think the apricot-sized packet of sambol that came with my hoppers would be enough, but a little sambol goes a very long way. If you ever come across a shop selling sambol, I recommend it even without hoppers - it’s one of the tastiest ways to add heat to a curry. (Use it as a table seasoning, not as a cooking ingredient.)

The other Tamil delicacy I’ve found in the Sri Lankan shop is beeda:

If you’re ever in any South Asian shop and see boxes of small folded leaves pinned shut with a clove, do buy one and pop it in your mouth, but be prepared for something extraordinary.

Beeda (the Tamil name) or paan (the Indian name) is a betel leaf filled with an extraordinary mix of spices, used as an end-of-meal digestive. Inside the leaf is a mix of coconut, fennel, cardamom, nuts, sugar, and heaven knows what else. You eat the whole thing, leaf and all - but it might be adivsable to take the clove out before you do (and you don’t have to eat it in one).

The flavour is quite unique, and a little overpowering - and probably not to everyone’s taste. It’s intensely fresh and spicy, with the aniseed notes of the fennel perhaps the strongest sensation. It is reminiscent of perfume, or even soap, but it’s best to put such thoughts out of your mind and indulge in the exotic strangeness of the duelling flavours. Beeda is well outside the range of traditional Western tastes- and for that reason, it’s well worth giving it a try, if you can find a shop that sells it. Try looking downstairs. Well, you never know, do you?

Food Thoughts, Shops & Shopping | 3 Comments »

I am a tea drinker by nature - by which I mean actual tea, the black stuff, served in a mug with a spot of milk. And when I say ‘by nature’, I mean that it’s a deeply ingrained genetic imperative, essential to my existence, as necessary as air and water. (Both of which, incidentally, are also necessary to make tea. It’s a beautiful thing.) Even when dolphins have tools and fire and opposable thumbs, they still won’t get the vote if they can’t make tea. That’s a fact.

Still, I’ve tried to diversify my cuppa in my adult years. I’ve dabbled with fruit infusions, but I find that most of them smell like perfume and taste like sweetener. Fresh mint tea is my preferred after-dinner drink, and I’ve developed a taste for green tea and even chamomile - almost in spite of the actual flavour, in the latter’s case. I even - whisper it - drink a little coffee once in a while. Not often. It’s basically ditchwater, isn’t it? But it sometimes smells quite nice.

Last year I added a hot new hot beverage to my repertoire; yerba mate.

If you’ve ever been to South America you may be familiar with this drink, which is made from a type of holly, and is served over there in a hollow gourd and sipped through a metal straw - which sounds utterly impractical. You can also make it in a mug or a pot, with water just below boiling.

Yerba mate is now gaining in popularity in the rest of the world, probably in part because the rest of the world thinks that anything that grows in South America is a miracle plant capable of turning you into an anti-oxidized superhuman overnight. (At the same time, we’re slowly destroying South America’s natural vegetation because all we really want to eat is distinctly un-miraculous soya beans. Oh, the irony!)

Naturally yerba mate makes its own health claims; yes, it’s full of antioxidants, and it’s said to fight cancer (like everything else these days, from carpet tacks to the city of Bangor), and more uniquely it can allegedly stimulate the mind while simultaneously relaxing the body. It contains caffeine, but is widely reported not to have the same jitter-inducing side-effects as coffee.

Is any of this true? Who knows. Food science is a scurrilous business reserved for witch doctors and shamans. I will attest, however, that it is a very pleasant drink. When dry, it looks and smells like straw mixed with rabbit food. When brewed it produces a light green liquor with a similarly outdoorsy smell, and a flavour like a dry, grassy, autumnal green tea - sometimes slightly but pleasantly bitter.

I confess, I have become quite a fan. I also confess that I will add my name to the ranks of people who claim it peps them up without getting them wired. If you’re looking for a new cuppa to get you uppa, I recommend giving it a try.

Food Thoughts | 1 Comment »

I’ve been greatly enjoying the BBC’s Supersizers series, in which restaurant critic Giles Coren and comedian Sue Perkins spend a week (or a period of time televisually edited to appear like a week) dining in the fashion of a previous era. So far they’ve gone Edwardian, Wartime, Restoration, Victorian and Seventies. The last two episodes will see them explore the Elizabethan and Regency diets.

This week’s Seventies episode (available on iPlayer for a few more days as of this writing) saw them gamely eating their way through Findus Crispy Pancakes, Swiss fondue, ‘wine cup’ and Fanny Craddock’s green mashed potatoes. Coren also enjoyed a typically boozy 70s working lunch that included duck a l’orange, prompting him to claim that, as nice as the dish was, it would probably be a criminal offense to serve such a cliché in France. Having eaten an excellent duck a l’orange in France only last year, I can attest that this is most certainly not the case (and it’s long past time the dish was properly reappraised and revived).

The most interesting part of the show for me, though, was when the two diners enjoyed what was billed as the ‘perfect’ 70s menu. In 1973, Gallup conducted a poll for the Telegraph asking people, “If expense were no object and you could have absolutely anything you wanted, what would you choose for your perfect meal?”

The result was rather strikingly prosaic:

Sherry
Tomato Soup
Prawn Cocktail
Steak
with Chipped Potatoes, Peas, Sprouts and Mushrooms
Red or White Wine
Trifle or Apple Pie
Cheese and Biscuits
Coffee
Liqeurs or Brandy

I’ve done a little digging and discovered that Gallup posed the same question back in 1947, and in those more parsimonious times the results weren’t actually much different. Respondents were still very fond of tomato soup and trifle, but the fish course was sole, and roast chicken took the headliner slot. Peas and sprouts were still a feature, but there was no brandy on the table.

I’d like to think that the same question posed today might net more exciting results, but who knows? Tomato soup must have a deeply enduring appeal - and steak or trifle could as easily feature today as they did thirty years ago - after all, there’s nothing wrong with steak or trifle. Then again, maybe today’s list would involve a glass of cold lager and a tikka masala?

As it happens, a friend was asking me what my own perfect meal would be earlier this week, so I’ve given the idea some thought. Assuming a four course limit (plus cheese course), but no other limitations (the second course ought to be fish, but I’m simply not that piscatorially inclined), I came up with the following very personal mix of the sacred and the profane:

Aperitif:
Martini (Tanqueray)
Bella di Cerignola olives stuffed with Gorgonzola Piccante
Salted macadamias

First Course:
Buttery scrambled egg on granary toast
Glass of Prosecco

Second Course:
Sauteed foie gras de canard entier on tarte tatin
Bottle of full-bodied Graves Bordeaux

Third Course:
Roast gammon with pineapple
Gratin dauphinois, butter-fried turnip greens, peas, parsley sauce, English mustard

Dessert:
Rhubarb crumble with custard

Cheese course:
Stinkling Bishop, Colston Bassett Stilton,
Comté, Brie de Meaux, St Tola
Coarse oatcakes
Blueberries

Fresh mint tea

Cognac, salted caramel chocolates, and a Cuban cigar

I can’t speak to the balance of all that, but I know I’d enjoy it. I realise that scrambled egg on toast is not generally regarded as a starter, but I happen to love scrambled egg on toast and I see no reason why it shouldn’t be. I also realise that gammon rates some distance below steak on the glamour scale, so by that standard I suppose I’m no better than a tomato soup lovers of yore, but I happen to think there are few things better in life than a few thick slices of hot, pink, juicy, salty gammon.

I had something very like the foie gras and tarte tatin described here at The Ivy, and I could conceivably eat it every day, at least for as long as eating it every day allowed me to live. The cheese course ignores my own rules about sticking to a single region and just brings together all my favourites.

So that’s my perfect menu. Now the same question goes to you, dear reader; If expense were no object and you could have absolutely anything you wanted, what would you choose for your perfect meal? Your answers, please, in the comments section below!

Food Thoughts | 3 Comments »

Palm Court at The Ritz
The Ritz Hotel, 150 Piccadilly, London W1J
Website

I’ve just this evening returned from tea at the Ritz with my friend Pix, who is moving to Singapore. (Rather her than me; I don’t think I could live in a country that has outlawed poppy seed crackers.)

Tea at the Ritz is one of those quintessentially London things that no-one in London ever does, like visiting the Tower or spending money in Harrods. It’s strictly for tourists, who seemingly book the place up weeks in advance.

Even so, the Ritz remains a byword for luxury and elegance, and tea at the Ritz is one of the few ways most of us will ever get to experience it (and that’s surely why visiting Americans love it so). Yet is the reputation well earned, or solely the nostalgic legacy of a bygone age?

The Palm Court, where tea is served, is certainly strikingly opulent, with all its cream and gold finery. One might even be tempted to call it a little garish - but of course, one wouldn’t want anything less. Tea comes in silver pots, waiters whizz around in splendidly laundered white jackets and bow ties, and even the guests are obliged to wear a tie and jacket.

This, in fact, was a sore point for me. I gamely wore my tie and jacket, then tried to take my jacket off when I was seated - it was a hot summer day, and the court is surprisingly stuffy - but the waiter quickly told me that my jacket had to remain on at all times.

This strict dress code suggests to me of a certain desperation to hold on to the pretence of class, balanced against an inability to properly embody it. It’s like those awful provincial nightclubs that won’t let you in if you’re wearing jeans or trainers. Come to think of it, the Ritz also won’t let you in if you’re wearing jeans or trainers, even if you are wearing a tie and jacket. The redoubtable Wolseley has none of the Ritz’s insecurities, but one would simply be too ashamed to go to the Wolseley without making an effort.

The Ritz also won’t allow you to take photographs, which is always a sore point for a food blogger. (The photos here come from booking sites.) I do understand the impulse to protect a place from endless party-paparazzi clicks and flashes, but people pay a fair whack to establish these memories, and ought to be allowed to have something to show for it.

Just how much is that fair whack? It’s £37 per person, or more if you’re having champagne. For all that you get as much tea as you care to drink and a conveyor belt of finger sandwiches, fresh baked scones and fancy little cakes.

All of this, I will admit, is excellent. I had a pot of Ritz Royal English - an Assam and Ceylon blend that tasted like thoroughly proper delicate malty tea - followed by a pot of Lapsang Souchong Imperial - as perfectly rich and fragrantly smoky a Lapsang as I’ve ever enjoyed. Pix had an excellent first flush Darjeeling, followed by A L’Opera, a fruity green tea that tasted like a sweetshop.

The sandwiches were great - some of the nicest ham I’ve ever tasted, and an unbeatable egg mayonnaise. The cakes were terrific too, but we left them until last and found them too much to manage; between the two of us we barely made a dent in two inches of Ritz chocolate cake. The scones were merely good, not great - a little too dense, a little too doughy.

Both being too stuffed to finish our cakes, I inquired if it was possible to get a box to take them away. The waiter replied with a perfect withering gaze of condescension that they did not. By comparison, when I had tea at the Berkeley they not only gladly packed our cakes up in several little take-away boxes designed for the purpose, they also generously threw in a few extra cakes so that there were enough to go around. The Berkeley also lets you take photographs, and would let you take off your jacket if you’d bothered to wear one.

Oh, and they also let you loiter as long as you like at the Berkeley, whereas at the Ritz we were brought our bill unsolicited after ninety minutes, and they then stopped offering us extra tea and sandwiches. Once again this demonstrated a certain lack of actual class beneath the gilded glamour of projected class - this in a place where the pianist plays Celine Dion and Abba songs.

We made a point of lingering a further hour, nibbling our remaining scones and making our tea last as long as possible. After all, it would be terribly gauche to rush.

Cafés & Restaurants | 5 Comments »

Today I wish to celebrate a snack food that divides the world, and one that has fallen far out of fashion; the pork scratching. As I write this it’s Wednesday night, and I’ve just enjoyed a bag-full while reading the new Bond novel and sipping a Rangpur Martini. The height of sophistication, me.

Pork scratchings used to be the definitive pub snack, back in the days before small Pringle tubs and aspirational jars of olives became the norm. Back when every packet of peanuts you purchased revealed a little more of the busty babe pictured on the backing board, pork scratchings were everywhere, and it was a better time (apart from those misogynistic peanuts, of course).

Now scratchings increasingly seem to be a rarity, though they have enjoyed a small revival thanks to the horrible Atkins diet, because they’re perhaps the only salty snack with zero carbohydrates. That doesn’t make them healthy, of course; they’re made from fried fat, and only slightly less salty than salted salt.

Pork scratchings are not to be confused with pork rinds, by the way - not in my experience, anyway. Pork rinds are light and puffy, a little like piggy corn snacks. I like pork rinds very much (especially hot and fresh), but pork scratchings are a class apart; A truly proper bag of pork scratchings should be as irregular as possible, with some giant curling rinds that almost break the teeth, some small fatty nubbins of richly salted fat, and plenty of thick golden strips that are crunchy on the top and soft, fresh and melty underneath.

The bags you get from the supermarket (or some decent pubs) are generally all right to satisfy a craving, but they aren’t the real deal. It’s the scratchings you buy from the butcher (or some truly phenomenal pubs) that are best. I’m told the finest of this sort come from Wakefield, but I’ve yet to experience these first hand. You know you’ve got a really good bag when you can’t stop eating them even when you get that ’sock down the back of the throat’ feeling, and you know you’re going to spend the rest of the night looking to crack a fire hydrant so you can quench your titanic thirst.

So, the pork scratching; are you for or against? Do the occasional small hairs put you off, or does the siren song of salted pig lure you in? And is there anywhere in the world that you think might do a better scratching than Wakefield?

Food Thoughts | 5 Comments »

The shelves of a good bakery should always read like an atlas of Great Britain; there are cakes, tarts and buns named for towns as far afield as Chelsea, Chorley, Dundee, Bakewell, Bath and Eccles. One that I’d never heard of until recently, though, is the Chester cake.

Mention Chester to most Britons and I fear the first thing that will come to mind is youth soap Hollyoaks, Britain’s answer to shows like Days of Our Lives, which is supposedly set there. Interestingly, the characters never seem to visit the city’s famous Roman ruins. They never walk its Medieval walls or visit its historic canals. They mainly look cross at each other and do a bit of shagging. I suspect they also never partake of the Chester cake. If they did, they wouldn’t sell as many copies of those annual Hollyoaks Hunks and Hollyoaks Babes calendars.

What is a Chester cake? The woman in the bakery I visited described it as a bit like bread pudding, which I happen to be very fond of, so that was enough to sell me on it. The heart of the beast is indeed much like bread pudding - it’s leftover cake that’s been mixed with raisins and treacle and turned into an Arthur C Clarke style monolith of lightly spiced dense and sticky uber-cake. The whole thing is then sandwiched between two layers of biscuit, presumably to stop your limbs from being sucked into the cake’s infinite dark centre.

It’s very good. The lady in the bakery said that I wouldn’t be able to eat it in one sitting, then looked at me again and said, ‘Well, perhaps you will’. I suspect I may need to review my gym membership. Still, she was right the first time, as it turns out. I wasn’t able to eat it in one sitting, or even in three. It seems to keep forever, though. There’s a likely looking recipe for it here, if you’re interested.

I confess, I didn’t buy my Chester Cake in Chester at all, but across the border in Wales during my recent holiday. I also picked up a couple of other local baked delicacies - a loaf of bara brith (fruit loaf) and a bag of Welsh cakes.

When I wrote my recent book on great British tastes, everyone who read it generously volunteered a suggestion or two for things I might have left out - none more ardently than my own dear Ma, who was quite insistent that I had left out Welsh cakes. Having tasted the Welsh cakes of Llangollen I’m prepared to admit that perhaps they might make it if there’s ever a second edition. The Welsh cakes I bought there were some of the finest I’ve ever enjoyed.

Welsh cakes are a little like raisin shortbread, but so much better thanks to the important distinction that they are cooked on a griddle. Your average supermarket Welsh cake is going to be a dense, dull, tough little puck, but a good Welsh cake is just sweet enough, just fruity enough, and quite divinely soft, light and buttery.

Being Welsh on my distaff side, I shall have to do a little dabbling with a frying pan to see if I can replicate the pride of Llangollen in my own home. I’ll be sure to let you know if I hit upon the perfect recipe. I may have to give Ma a call to see if she has one.

Food Thoughts, Travel | 5 Comments »