Tastes of 2013

Happy New Year everyone, I'm still here! The blog has gone down the pan for the last couple of months for one reason, and one reason only. Here she is:

I'll resist the temptation to start writing blog posts about my baby, this is a food blog after all, and she's a bit rubbish at eating (milk>vomit>milk>repeat being the general scheme of things), so I'll just say that I'm a very proud Dad and leave it at that.

I was going to write a review of last year in the same vein as the previous two years, but there were too few contenders in half of the categories to make it worthwhile bothering. So instead here are twenty things I ate in 2013, from January through to December.

1. Falafel wrap from Cafe Moor in Leeds market. Nice guys, breathing life into the market, and most importantly serving exemplary middle eastern snack food, the best I've eaten outside that region.

2. The cheeseburger toastie at Home Sweet Home in Manchester. Twee place, gimmicky food was what I suspected. I couldn't have been more wrong. Great place, very good coffee, and that toastie is a work of genius (it's the gherkins that make it).

3. The Iskender kebab at Zeugma in Sheffield. A divine mix of tender, charred lamb, spicy tomato sauce, buttery bread and thick, sharp super-creamy yoghurt. Everything else is excellent too at this proper Turkish grill house.

4. The perfect pint, at the Stag's Head in Sheffield. More unusual and exciting styles have their place but for ultimate beery satisfaction I keep returning to a pint of cask bitter (or did months ago the last time I spent any time in the pub). Maybe I'm getting old or maybe this sort of beer is criminally underrated by beery trendsetters. My favourite examples: Ilkley Brewery Best, Marble Pint, Thornbridge Lord Marples.

5. The Crich Square, from the Loaf Bakery (branches in Crich and Matlock). Like a denser, yeastier toasted teacake. Toasted buttery heaven.

6. 2013 brought two Red Chill feasts, both at the Leeds branch. Excellent food and excellent value as always. The highlight: the shallow fried pork dumplings. The aftermath of one of those feasts is pictured.

7. A Sunday roast with a difference, rather than serve up the usual dessicated topside in gravy or whatever, the Wig and Pen in Sheffield came up with this beef cheek offering. Dense moist strands of cowface, cooked for an eternity, reformed into a cricket ball sized lump of joy and served with the darkest most marmitey gravy known to man. Ace.

8. Our tapas crawl in Malaga back in April wasn't a gourmet affair, but these pintxos were simple perfection.

9. The only curry of any real interest that I ate all year was this chicken chettinad at a South Indian caff in Reading. Dark, roasted spice rich and very more-ish.

10. I can't think of a city that conforms to stereotype more than Munich. The locals really do love the whole giant beers, sausages and singing thing. Skip the overtouristed Hofbrauhaus and head to the Augustiner Keller where the beer is better and whopping great plates of bratwurst and sauerkraut mit senf go down a treat.

11. The flat white at Bold Street Coffee in Liverpool. Faultless.

12. Fools, lovely fools. Cold, smooth whipped cream and tart English fruit. Easy peasy puddings for a genuinely warm summer (at least the first half of it). Gooseberry was my favourite, closely followed by rhubarb.

13. Another summer addiction, bread salad. I'd never realised how good panzanella and the like could be. They know what they're doing those Italians.

14. The final of my home made summer successes: watermelon, mint and feta salad. Served chilled on the hottest day of the year.

15. Iberico presa at Bar 44 in South Wales. The high point of an excellent tapas dinner. Pig of dreams.

16. Roast belly pork in soup noodles at Noodle Inn in Sheffield. Decent broth and bouncy noodles in support of beautiful roast meat; tender flesh, rendered melting fat, snappy crackling.

17. Rillettes, cornichons, bread, a glass of local plonk. I loved it in France.

18. Sticky toffee baked apples. A successful alternative to mincemeat, I stuffed these apples with dates and a quick butter and demerara sugar caramel. They were lovely.

19. The most memorable thing I ate in Amsterdam? The Flemish style chips. Best eaten from a cone bigger than your head, after a few ales, with a ridiculous combination of sauces (cheese and chilli pictured).

20. Christmas dinner sandwich. Christmas dinner itself was really the memorable occasion, eaten at home with my new family, just the three of us.

Food-wise I'll opt for the leftovers sarnie though, as I really cracked that this year. Use crusty white bread (I used ciabatta), butttered, then heat up your fillings and add them in this order: Sliced turkey, crispy bacon, bubble and squeak made from all the leftover veg (ideally roast spuds, cabbage, sprouts and carrots), bread sauce and gravy.

Good things to eat (volume 8): A Christmas Special

This is going to be mostly about cheese. I've written very little about cheese, not through a lack of love for the stuff, but rather because I don't actually eat it that often. The occasional block of mature cheddar for toasting purposes, the odd hunk of stilton with a glass of red, parmesan for pasta and that's about it.

For reasons I'm not quite sure about cheese has turned into a special occasion food for me, a celebratory treat rather than an everyday fridge staple. Christmas is inevitably the big one. Time to hit the cheese.

Continuing a recent theme of untraditional Christmases this year, for the second in succession (last year was curry) I avoided a roast dinner entirely, instead feasting on a sort of über-buffet at my Sister's house. My brother-in-law and I compiled a list of pretty much everything we like to eat and drink the most, and that were suitable for grazing and snacking, and made or bought the lot.

We ate jamon iberico, gordal olives and sherry. There was paté, and wonderful sourdough bread, and cured salmon.

We ate fat wedges of pork pie (my first ever pork pie - a success!) with cornichons. Fresh, sweet scallops were enjoyed au gratin and sautéed in herb butter, as were garlicky prawns. We ate buffalo wings and drank beer, rich, dark porter and also fragrant, fruity pale ale.

And we ate cheese. Lots of lovely cheese. It's the cheese that I want to talk about, because I haven't said much about cheese, and these are some of the finest cheeses I know, and I really would recommend that you seek any of them out if you want to assemble the ultimate cheeseboard. Cheese heaven. Really.

Montgomery's Cheddar

Photo credit: Forman and Field

The King of Cheddar as far as I'm concerned. It has a hard, craggy almost crystalline texture that breaks down into creaminess in the mouth. The flavour is almost parmesan-like in it's umami depth, intensely savoury but also with bursts of fruitiness. This is perfect on its own but when blended with Comté it makes the best Cheese on toast I think I've ever tasted. I had it for lunch two days running and now there is none left.

Comté

One of the wonders of cheese is its infinite variety. Comté is a hard cheese made with unpasteurised cow's milk, just like Montgomery's Cheddar. They also share some flavour characteristics, fruitiness and depth. But in other ways they're completely different. Comté has a smooth dense texture, and tastes rich and buttery with a lingering sweetness. Wonderful alone, or as I said before, blended to make the cheese-on-toast-of-the-gods. I'm salivating obscenely just thinking about it. There is also none of this left. Boo hoo.

Tunworth

Photo credit: Tasty Treats

A sweaty-French English cheese, Tunworth is reminiscent of a good Brie or Camembert. Ours was quite a ripe specimen, and oozed a rather cabbagey stench that was slightly too much for my nose. I can't always handle the riper of French cheeses. On tasting any reservations were waylaid. It's wonderful. The stronger, funkier notes rapidly give way to a long lasting sweet, nutty, slightly tangy taste as the soft paste dissolves in your mouth. I like this one with oatcakes.

Cardo

Photo Credit: Cartmel Cheeses

This was the curveball. The only cheese I'd never eaten before. It's a washed rind goats cheese. Deceptively subtle as the strong flavour of the rind gives way to quite a mild, herbal goaty interior. Really delicious and one I'd definitely try again. I think this would be best eaten entirely on its own to appreciate it fully.

Stichelton

Last but certainly not least, Stichelton. This is quite possibly my favourite cheese of all time. It's essentially a Stilton, but Stilton has protected designation of origin status, and must be made with pasteurised milk. Stichelton is the unpasteurised gatecrasher at the party. A welcome gatecrasher though, replete with fine wine and witty repartee, not a four pack of Carling and a tendency to vomit.

I still have some of this left, so I'm going to eat some now and write down the sensation immediately. I'll apologise now, it will probably be gibberish. Here goes: Smooth, sharp and salty. Saltiness rising into intensely savoury filling the whole mouth, metallic but with milkiness in the background. Slightly acidic. Fading into creamy, sweet, mellow as it dissolves and disappears.

Er yes, told you it might be gibberish. Detailed description of taste is not my strong point, but you get the idea. It's complex and delicious and beautiful. Personally I think you should bin the crackers and chutney and just eat this on its own, maybe with a glass of red wine. But not port which I find too sweet, the sugar killing the flavour of the cheese. In short, it's amazing. Get some.