A summer round-up

I've been too lazy/busy (delete as appropriate) over this summer to blog about everything liked I used to. This is probably a good thing in many respects, fewer boring posts about nothing much of interest being the outcome, although it does mean that I've tended to focus only on the positive, lacking the enthusiasm to write about the mediocre or downright bad experiences.

To redress the balance a bit, here's a round up of some recent eating and drinking. Some of it good, most of it not very. A theme if there is one: why put something on the menu if you don't know what it is or can't be bothered making it properly.

Stay tuned for the next thrilling instalment, in which I dine at Noma, go on a pintxo crawl around the backstreets of assorted small Basque towns, cook barbecue in Kentucky, hang out in Dalston's latest dens of vice/burgers, and buy a sausage roll from Gregg's in Stockport on the way home. Only some of this is true.

Baked, Derby

A bakery with café in Derby city centre. The bread is certainly worth another look....

..but the coffee was just ok. The flat white wasn't a flat white.

Soup, half a sandwich and slaw for about six quid. Half a sandwich isn't an unreasonable idea, but it seems a bit stingy to stick to it rigidly when it's cut from a very small loaf. a lovely nutty wholemeal loaf by the way, but nothing to write home about otherwise.

6/10

http://www.baked-derby.com/


The Swan, West Malling, Kent

Hi friends from work, this one's for you! The Swan was the dinner venue for our team meeting at the end of June. As with the previous dinner back in April we chose from the early bird set menu, but unlike on that occasion it was evident throughout that we'd gone for the budget option.

An asparagus starter was notable only for having hardly any asparagus in it. Three spears or thereabouts. Of the mains neither cooked to grey burgers nor a dry pork dish impressed much.

And Eton Mess for pudding was fine but had blueberries in it. Why put the only non-native berry in a dish that's supposed to show off the best of the English summer?

On a more positive note they have Curious Brew lager on draft, which is a wonderful beer. Beautifully clean, crisp and balanced. A glance at the website suggests the people in charge of the Swan and the people brewing Curious are one and the same; their core business being the Chapel Down Winery that arguably produces Britain's finest wines.

Maybe we were just unlucky at the Swan, the undoubted booze pedigree of the business might suggest they know a thing or two about food as well.

5/10

http://www.loveswan.co.uk/westmalling/bar/index.html


Smythson's Deli, Nottingham

A load of old rubbish.

The espresso in the coffee was good, potent yet smooth. Shame the milk was a mess. And it wasn't a flat white either (it was supposed to be, I'm not laying into a latte for not being a flat white).

A poor excuse for a sandwich. One word sums it up: meagre. I can't be arsed elaborating.

3/10

https://www.facebook.com/smythsons


Queen's Park Gelateria and Café, Chesterfield

This place is run by Frederick's, the dominant force in the ice cream world around these parts. Their vans are all over the place, which is no bad thing as their ice cream is good stuff.

They run the park caff in Chesterfield, which is also no bad thing. Instead of the tea and cakes set up you might expect in a park it's more of a pizza and ice cream and beer arrangement.

Pizza and ice cream and beer in the park? Don't mind if I do. A shared ham, pepperoni and mushroom (good chewy crust, surprisingly good pepperoni) and a double scoop pistachio sugar cone makes a very fine lunch. Pizzas 6-7 quid, ice creams 2-3.

7/10

http://www.fredericksicecreams.co.uk/page/queens-park-cafe-and-gelataria/


Harvest Moon Espresso Bar, Chester

A coffee that meets its description! About bloody time.

The flat white here was properly made and properly proportioned, so I'll excuse them serving it in a glass (maybe they've been to Manchester, they do that there).

I'm not really sure what to say about the food though. I can't work out what they were thinking. A not really a Reuben sandwich was still quite nice in spite of not really being a Reuben. The bread was top notch and it was as stacked as you could reasonably expect for the modest price tag.

Why smearing the inside of very good bread with cheap sunflower spread seemed like a good plan is beyond me, and why serving it with stale tortilla chips and a completely undressed salad of lollo rosso, bits of cucumber and carrot and some damp cous cous seemed like a good plan is even further beyond me.

6/10

https://www.facebook.com/HarvestMoonEspressoBar

Cool River Cafe, Matlock

A recent opening in Matlock, could this be the local coffee shop of my dreams?

In a word, no. A moist, walnut-packed wodge of carrot cake with a pleasingly cheesy icing was spot on, but the coffee was crap, the advertised flat white turning out to be an oversized bucket of weak latte. 

They're still finding their feet so I'll give this one another try. The savouries looked on a par with the cakes, but the coffee needs some serious work.

6/10 (8 for the cake, 4 for the coffee)

http://coolrivercafe.co.uk/

Six of the best salads of summer

It's petered out somewhat over the last fortnight, but at least we can't moan that there's been no summer at all this year. July was a corker, and although August has been cooler and damper so far it's hardly been a monsoon style washout like some of those in recent years, and for that we should be thankful.

The return of prolonged warmth for the first time in a while has given me a new found interest in all things salad-y. If it's cold (or possibly warm, but definitely not hot) and you can mix it up and bung it on a plate with the minimum of fuss, that's the dish for me.

Easy, colourful, refreshing, no hot ovens necessary, only grilled meat needed by way of accompaniment, these are my six favourite salads of the summer.

Pickled carrots and beets, mozzarella. A Nigel Slater idea this, and a very good one. Give strips of root veg a light pickling in lemon juice and wine vinegar, then serve with mozzarella and dress with olive oil and the pickling juices. Quite subtle this, mild and tangy with a great contrast in textures.

Peas, cucumber, feta, mint, spring onion. Lovely mix of gently sweet and sharp in this one. Any fresh, lactic cheese would do the job. Fresh peas are essential, don't use frozen.

Bread Salad. Read about it here. Still my favourite discovery of the summer.

Watermelon, feta and mint. Make sure you chill the melon before making it and you'll end up with the sweetest, juiciest salad imaginable. Save this for a genuinely hot day.

Peaches and Parma ham. Discounting the black pepper and olive oil this only has two ingredients so I'm not sure it really counts as a salad. Is it just a meal? An assemblage? Who cares when it tastes this good. The contrasts here are the thing, so make sure your fruit is chilled and your meat isn't. Cold, sweet peach flesh and warm, salty pig flesh is a match made in heaven.

Grilled onions and pomegranate. More of a relish than a full blown salad, but an excellent accompaniment to any sort of barbecued lamb. Toss a thinly sliced red onion in a teaspoon of sugar and the same of sunflower oil, then sweat down under a hot grill until you get some lovely caramelised bits. Throw in the pips and any juices from half a pomegranate. Sweet, sharp and slightly bitter, it cuts through fatty meat beautifully.

Pizza

It was time to put my locally windmilled flour to the test with a batch of pizza dough, the first I've made in ages. I was impressed, it made a good strong dough with plenty of elasticity and a crust with a noticeably more pronounced bready flavour than you get with a mainstream commercial flour.

Margherita

The tricky thing with home made pizza is how best to bake it. I've had the most success with a pizza stone heated in an oven on the highest setting for a good half hour, but I've mislaid the bloody thing so had to make do with a thick baking sheet.

English summer pizza bianco - Jersey Royals, asparagus, Lincolnshire Poacher

The results weren't half bad, a few nice bubbles in the crusts and even a hint of charring in parts. Crunchy edges but a little bit soft and chewy inside. Perfect pizza is pretty much impossible with a domestic oven, but these were still far better than a bought in supermarket effort.

Spicy pork (leftover meatball mix), peppers, chillies

Photos of my topping choices are scattered through this post. I usually keep it simple with pizza but don't mind getting slightly experimental on occasion, as long as I don't break the three golden rules:

1. Don't overdo it.There is such thing as too much cheese. Soggy pizza is not a good thing.
2. Don't go Asian. Duck and hoi sin sauce is not a pizza topping.
3. No pineapple.

This is a fairly standard pizza dough recipe, essentially basic white bread plus a little olive oil and sugar.

For the dough
500g strong white bread flour
1 x 7g sachet of fast action yeast
1 scant teaspoon salt
2 level tablespoons olive oil
1 dessertspoon sugar
a pint of lukewarm water

Thyme butter flatbread

What to do
Mix the yeast, olive oil and sugar in a jug with the water and leave it for a few minutes. Sieve the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl and make a well in the middle. Pour the wet stuff into the flour well then steadily mix it all together with a fork or spoon to form a dough. You might need more water or more flour depending on whether it's too wet or too dry.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface then knead it for at least ten minutes. Put the dough into a bowl, cover it with cling film or a clean tea towel and leave somewhere warm for at least an hour. After an hour it should have doubled in size.

Pull off chunks of dough and roll or stretch out into thin pizza-ish shapes, about 2 or 3 millimetres thick. Top with whatever tickles your fancy and bake in your super-hot oven. They were taking around 7 minutes in mine.

This much dough should make around 5-7 pizzas depending on how big they are. It will keep in the fridge for a day or two if you don't use it all at once.

Northern Food on tour: Munchin' in München

Firstly an apology: I know the title of this post is atrocious, but I couldn't resist it. Sorry.

Munich, in common with every other German city I've had the pleasure of visiting, is great. Sausages, beer, attractive parks and squares, a super-efficient transport system with a kiosk selling Jägermeister in every station, friendly locals, and generally pleasant weather. What more could you want from a weekend break?

I was lying about one of the above. The weather. Rarely have I seen so much rain. It chucked it down almost constantly from our arrival on Thursday afternoon to our departure on Sunday night. I'm not talking drizzle here, but genuine soaked through in minutes pissing rain. So a stag weekend of loafing around in biergarten swiftly became a stag weekend loafing around in bierhallen. Not a great deal of difference really, and the news pictures of major flooding in cities less than an hour away made us realise that the persistent damp was little more than a minor inconvenience to our weekend of boozing.

This was my fifth visit to Germany, and let's just say it wasn't the first to have a rather beery focus. As a consequence I haven't got the slightest clue about more refined dining in the country, but I can tell you a thing or two about cheap eats, booze and fast food. Before I waffle on about Munich for a bit, here are my top five tips for cheap eats in Germany:

1) Eat in pubs (or beer gardens, halls or cellars). Entirely stereotypical I know, but you can't beat a good sausage and sauerkraut-fest. The quality is generally high and the prices low.

2) Go Turkish. There are at least 2.5 million people of Turkish origin in Germany, meaning that Turkish is by far the most prevalent non-native cuisine. Turkish food is everywhere, and usually good.

3) If you've risen too late our your lodgings don't provide one, look out for bars or cafes specialising in breakfast. Many of them serve set breakfasts of some generosity. If you go for the works you could be looking at juice, coffee and a colossal basket full of ham, salami, cheeses, bread rolls, pastries, jam, fruit, honey, yoghurt, smoked salmon, rye bread and whatever the hell else they can shoehorn in there.

4) Drink beer on the go. There's no stigma attached to drinking beer anywhere and everywhere in Germany. On the tube, in the streets, at the swimming baths (I kid ye not). May as well get a round in then. Just remember there's probably no stigma attached to it as people tend to behave themselves. High spirits and good cheer are fine. Fighting and puking are not.

5) Of other foreign foodstuffs commonly found, south-east Asian is worth a look (I've had decent Thai and Vietnamese) as is African (Ethiopian seems quite popular). As for Indian, if my sole experience is anything to go by, don't do it. Wait until you get home.

So what of Munich? It generally holds true to the five tips above, though there are clearly some local differences. Beer and sausages are even more popular here than in northern Germany.

The whole Bavarian oompah bands, litres of beer and lederhosen thing isn't just tourist schtick, the locals really seem to love this stuff too. On the weekend that Bayern sealed the treble the city's traditional boozers were heaving, so we kicked things off in true style with bratwurst, sauerkraut (around 7 euros) and a few litres of finest. 

As an aside, don't expect Munich to be full of currywurst, that's more of a Berlin thing, and is certainly more popular in other northern cities than down south. This very closed stall in the Olympic park was the only evidence I saw of the infamous dish.

With your sausages, you'll be needing beer, served here by the half or full litre (6-8 euros for the full, known as ein mass). A litre seems like far too much at first, but you soon get into the swing of things. These were snapped in the Hofbrauhaus, tourist central for all things Bavarian, and home to probably my least favourite of the local beers we tried. My vote goes to Augustiner, whose classic pale lager (Helles) is a thing of crisp, clean beauty.

Munich sells itself as the beer capital of the world (amongst other claimants including Prague and Huddersfield), which may be fair if we're talking in terms of volumes of the stuff drunk, but is rubbish if you're into variety and innovation. There are six breweries in the city, all of whom have been brewing the same four beers (in accordance with the purity laws, the Reinheitsgebot) for the last thousand years, and who between them control the entire drinking market in the city. 

I may have some of the detail wrong there, but you get the gist of it. The ethos is very much 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', so don't come here expecting to drink third pints of super-hopped black IPA. Order up a litre of top quality lager and go with the flow. 

Beer snacks of a non-sausage variety are also available; I'd go for a platter of meats, cheeses and a few giant dough pretzels (around 9 euros a platter, 90 cents a pretzel). If you're lucky the meat platter will include something I can only describe as black pudding haslet. The pretzels are possibly the saltiest thing you'll ever eat, but don't worry you'll have a litre of beer at hand to refresh the palate.

On Friday night we dined at the also touristy but surprisingly good Ratskeller, a huge warren of a place under the Town Hall. This being the full blown traditional German meal of the trip, it had to be Schweinshaxe, or pork knuckle, an enormous great hunk of slow roasted pig, replete with tender meat and crackling (around 18 euros). 

Meat and gravy were splendid, separately served kraut cut the fat a little, but the potato dumplings were the most pointless food stuff ever. Why you'd take some nice mash-able potatoes and work them into something more suited to a round of golf I have no idea.

Fast food time! The döner kebabs in Germany are really quite nice. Honest! Usually served on thicker Turkish bread rather than pitta, and with actual shreds of meat rather than foot long strands of processed elephant leg, you could almost eat one sober. Almost. 3 or 4 euros a pop in Munich.

A pizza and pasta place fifty yards from our hotel proved to be a lifesaver, being near enough to obtain sustenance without getting wet again if you legged it. The quality was genuinely high for the ridiculously low prices. This mushroom stuffed calzone, with a proper chew and char to the dough, cost a mere 3 euros.

Sunday afternoon, almost time for home and the excess is starting to bite. Is there a cuisine better suited to soothing sore heads than Vietnamese? Salty broths, herbs, chilli heat; it's all pure tonic. This little place down the road from the Hauptbahnhof did us proud. Pots of jasmine tea all round.

Vietnamese spring rolls and a couple of salads to start. This shrimp salad was the pick of the bunch, bright and balanced.

Noodle soups to follow. Bun bo was absolutely unbeatable hangover fodder. Savoury broth with some depth, springy noodles, herbal notes. A platter of herbs wouldn't have gone amiss, but at less than 15 euros each for tea, noodles and a bunch of shared starters this was great.

That was Munich, a successful send off for Mr Farrar who weds in July. In summary, the historic beer places are well worth a visit. Go to the Hofbrauhaus once for the experience then head elsewhere. I liked the Augustiner places best. The pubs close early, after which time it's clubs and bars (mostly quite dodgy sports bars on the face of it). The area around Hauptbahnhof (central station) is where most of the cheap hotels are, and is where you'll find good fast food and ethnic eats. I've heard that the parks, squares and beer gardens are delightful, but can't verify this as it never stopped raining. If you suffer the same fate and all else fails you can always go drink Jägermeister on the tube. Prost!

Northern Food on tour: New Year in London part 1

Mega-post alert. We spent three nights in London over the new year festivities, you might not be surprised to discover that eating was a very important part of the trip. By very important I mean that's mostly what we did, alongside the drinking of course.

I'll never get round to writing up each meal individually, so here's a warts and all round-up, good and bad, in mostly chronological order, of the whole lot.

To make things a little more manageable I've split the post into two, this first one covers the casual and the unplanned, the second post will be of the two slightly more upmarket places we ate at.

Ikea, Milton Keynes

You'll probably be aware that Scandinavian food is the hot ticket right now. The Nordic dining revolution has made the short voyage across the sea to our shores, and is making waves in London and the South-east. It's an intriguing mix, connecting food to culture with an almost palpable sense of place, ground-breaking in its sourcing and preparation of foraged ingredients, terroir on the plate in the most literal way.

What better way, we thought, than to introduce ourselves to this cuisine with a trip to a restaurant run by an organisation that's done more than any other to bring Scandinavian food to the people of Britain. So we went to Ikea in Milton Keynes for lunch. As you do.

I'm not quite sure how it came about, but it was something like this: no breakfast + bored on the M1 + traffic jam + discussion about meatballs + pouring rain making original outdoor plans unlikely = sod it let's go to Ikea for lunch.

The meatballs are an experience. Nice in a rubbery, filthy sort of way, but I'm not convinced by the weird milky gravy. And the lingonberry stuff is just crap jam. Crap jam with weird milky gravy isn't a great combination I don't think. Next time I might have my meatballs unadorned.

We had apple cake with vanilla sauce for pudding. I really enjoyed the cake, it was moist with good fat chunks of tart apple in. Scan-delicious! The sauce was rubbish again though. It had the taste and texture of Bird's custard after you've mixed the powder into the milk but before you've cooked it. Weird.

Would I go again? Yes, it's inevitable. Avoid the weird sauces. Cheap.

5/10

Bletcham Way
Milton Keynes
MK1 1QB

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/store/milton_keynes


Baozi Inn Takeaway, Chinatown

Baozi Inn is a little Sichuan cafe in Chinatown, I've eaten there a couple of times but not for a few years. The good news is they've opened a little takeaway next door that sells nothing but skewers and buns.

The skewers (£1.00-£1.20 each) are boiled to order in a dirty great vat of spicy broth laced with salt, chilli and Sichuan pepper. The result is stonkingly good: tender morsels of meat or veg intensely flavoured from the broth. There are loads of varieties, I only got as far as lamb and enoki mushroom, both of which were great.

The buns (bao) are big fat steamed dough monsters stuffed with pork and onion, sturdy and filling for the harsh winters in Northern China (or to fill a 15 Ikea meatball sized space before a trip to theatre). Two quid each.

8/10

27 Newport Court
Chinatown
London
WC2H 7JS


Princi, Soho

Princi is the sort of place I wish existed elsewhere in the UK, but just doesn't. This sort of thing only seems to work with the critical mass of London.

It's a big bustling Italian bakery-cafeteria-bar-takeaway. You shove your way to a space at the counter, shout out your order from an impressive display of baked goods, pizza, filled focaccia, salads, pasta, meat dishes and god knows what else, collect your drinks from the bar then elbow your way to any vacant space on the communal tables. Not the place for peace and quiet, but for a lively drink or two accompanied by some quality snacks (or a three course dinner if you feel like it) it's an excellent choice.

Pasta pesto and mozzarella and tomato salad were both very good. Beautiful milky cheese, tomatoes with some semblance of taste (which will do for me at the end of December) and grassy, herbal pesto. The pizza was just ok though, I'm never a fan of the thick rectangles of pizza a taglio stuff, not even in Italy.

Given the central location prices are reasonable. We paid just over a tenner for the food and a bottle of water.

7/10

135 Wardour Street
Soho
London
W1F 0UT

http://www.princi.com/




Full Stop Cafe, Brick Lane

A pleasant coffee shop with a few comfy sofas. The coffee, when it eventually arrived after nigh on twenty minutes, was satisfyingly robust. Yes I know that quality coffee isn't made in an instant, but twenty minutes is still too long in a not very busy place.

Still, at least we got to amuse ourselves eavesdropping on the conversation at the neighbouring table during the wait. This being East London hipster central it was mostly about their unbridled talent going unrecognised, this being the fault of others, his issues with anger and hers with Tatiana, ya? The joy.

£2.70 for a flat white. A bit much but probably par for the course in these parts. And still cheaper than Costa so on second thoughts that's good value.

7/10

202 Brick Lane
London
E1 6SA


The Breakfast Club, Spitalfields

We only ended up at the Breakfast Club as our original brunch choice was closed over Christmas and New Year. It was good enough to entice us back on New Year's Day for a hangover cure before the journey home.

It was an infuriating place though, with the makings of excellence being let down by shoddy execution in parts. The coffee was just ok, too milky and not very well made.

The bacon sandwich was also a misfire, but I shan't bang on about it having already done so here.

But the cinnamon French toast with roasted apples and syrup was bloody lovely, so much so that I voted it my breakfast of the year (and shared a plateful the day after, making it a contender for the 2013 award too!).

The half monty breakfast continued the trend. Beautifully poached eggs of unusually high quality (dark yellow yolks that actually tasted of something) balanced out by everything else on the plate being mediocre.

Breakfast plates are priced from around six quid up to a tenner, fair enough, but drinks are a little pricey. Service is brisk and the atmosphere verging on raucous, busy with loud music. Depending on your level of delicacy this could be a good or bad thing.

7/10

12-16 Artillery Lane
Spitalfields
London
E1 7LS

http://www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com/

Bragazzi's, Abbeydale Road, Sheffield

I discovered Bragazzi's completely by accident while checking out what Abbeydale Road had to offer. The original plan was a dosa lunch at either Dhanistha's or East and West, but both were deserted and I wasn't in the mood for completely solitary dining. The south Indian fix will have to wait for another day.

It turned out to be a very happy accident, Bragazzi's is an Italian deli and café of unusually high quality. A small cappuccino was easily the equal of anything I've had in the recent influx of independent coffee shops, beautifully made with a complex, roasted flavour.

A mortadella, mozzarella, pesto, olive and tomato sandwich was also marvellous. I did wonder whether having it toasted was going to be a mistake, I always instinctively say yes when offered but toasting a good sandwich can be a bad idea when it ends up overdone; - the bread dessicated and the filling too hot to taste. 

I needn't have worried, this was just gently pressed so the cheese had melted. Layers of paper thin sliced meat with mild, milky, stringy cheese, salty olives and bright, herbal pesto. The best sandwich I've had in ages.

The café would be a great place to while away a few hours with the papers, or you can takeaway. Prices are more than reasonable for the quality, the coffee was £1.80 and the sandwich £3.60. Highly recommended.

9/10

220-226 Abbeydale Road
Sheffield
S7 1FL

http://www.bragazzis.co.uk

SoLIta, Manchester

A celebratory dinner in anticipation of the Blog North Awards (congratulations to Around the World in Eighty Bakes, which won in the food and drink category) was required on Wednesday, so I thought it high time we ate at one of the multitude of new restaurants that have opened in Manchester over the last year or so.

SoLIta got the nod primarily as it's an easy stroll from Piccadilly station, but also because of an American influenced menu filled with interesting sounding deep-fried stuff and meat cooked on an Inka grill, a super high temperature charcoal burning piece of kit presumably similar to the more well-known Josper.

Starters (or small plates if you prefer) of bacon jam on sourdough toast and rooster scratchings were a mixed bag. The scratchings, being deep-fried chicken skin, were bloody marvellous, but the bacon jam didn't really do it for me. It seems strange to criticise jam for being too sweet, but it was just a bit too one-dimensionally sugary and not bacon-y enough. Not unpleasant but just a bit boring.

My tribute burger was the best part of the meal. I've read some early reviews of this place where the burgers were overcooked and weirdly textured. They've certainly addressed this as mine had quite an open, loose texture and was a lovely even pink inside with a thin, blackened, savoury crust. That grill is working just fine.

Classic accompaniments (hence the tribute name) of cheese, pickles, onions, ketchup and mustard complimented the meat well and the bread was up to the task but a bit oversized relative to the patty. Chips were of the bought in frozen variety.

AS went a little more experimental, choosing the deep fried mac'n'cheese with pulled pork. Anyone who's ever been to New Zealand and ordered lasagne from a chip shop will be familiar with this. Slice up cold pasta in a bechamel based sauce, breadcrumb it and fry it. What could possibly go wrong?

In this case, nothing, at least not with the macaroni fritter itself. The crumb was greaseless and the macaroni cheese within smooth and peppery how I like it. The down side was a smear of teeth-itchingly sweet barbecue sauce dolloped on top that didn't do it any favours at all. The pulled pork had the same problem, the flavour of well cooked shreds of moist meat drowned out by the overly sweet sauce.

Service was very good throughout our meal, the front of house guy was friendly and eager to please. Prices are fair, some of the smaller things are a bit steep (£2.90 for a bit of chicken skin) but that's countered by the booze which is great value (£3.95 for a large glass of wine, £3.20 for a pint of well-kept beer). We paid around £36 including service.

I liked SoLIta, my burger lived up to expectations so I'd definitely return to see what that grill could do with a good steak. If they cut back on the sugar and made their own chips I'd probably love the place.

7/10


Turner Street
Manchester
M4 1DW

http://www.solita.co.uk/