Robin Hood Fisheries, Robin Hood, nr Rothwell

The first chip shop visit of 2012. In some ways highly impressive, in others a touch disappointing.

I'm slowly working my way through the multitude of chippies strung out along the A61 between Leeds and Wakefield. If you're not familiar with the area, it's mostly one long stretch of nondescript suburbia lacking anything particularly interesting (although maybe pit wheels and whale jawbones deserve a mention). What it doesn't lack is Chinese takeaways and fish and chip shops.

Of the latter I've already been here and here, and last Thursday night after football it was the turn of Robin Hood's finest.

I didn't have enough cash on me for peas, having to copper up just to reach the magical £4.50 necessary for fish and chips. So there it is, plain and simple.

Good points first: the fish was freshly fried and absolutely gargantuan. And I mean huge. Extensive in length but I think it was also the thickest fried fillet of haddock I've ever eaten. I'm actually a bit worried because at £4.50 it's doubtful it came from sustainable stocks and if not I think I might have eaten the Queen Haddock. The Mother Haddock, the progenitor of the species. Haddocks are doomed on account of my moment of greed.

Fingers crossed that's not the case, but either way it tasted great. Flaking away into lovely pearlescent slivers, fresh and sweet.

Onto the bad points: the batter was a smidgen too thick. Lovely crunch and bite at the edges, just a little soggy towards the surface of the fish. The chips were past their best, being rather chewy and aged. I was so full of fish I didn't really care about this much though.

I'll have to rate this one highly, purely on account of that fish. I haven't a clue whether they're regularly serving up such colossal portions but I somehow doubt it. I've a sneaking suspicion they bunged me in a special by mistake.

8/10

Robin Hood Fisheries
Leeds Road
Robin Hood
WF3 3AJ

Trying to cook the perfect steak (volume 4)

I know barely a month has passed since last time, but I'm going to write about cooking large slabs of cow again. Vegetarians and those bored of beefsteaks look away now.

I had to write about this steak, because it was the best yet. I've almost cracked it. Without the use of charcoal I don't think I can do much better.

This was an unplanned steak night. I was at the excellent Welbeck Farm Shop buying some cheese and inadvertently wandered over to the butcher's counter, drawn in by some mysterious form of meat magnetism. And there it was, some very fine looking rib on the bone, priced most temptingly at £9.99 per kilo.

I ended up with this. A one rib steak, a good two and a half inches thick, weighing in at around 1.25 kgs. Here it is just after salting. I should note at this point that I shared this one with a friend and her daughter. I do have limits.

The cooking method was the same as last time, for details see here. The gist is this: salt generously at least an hour before cooking, very hot pan, plain oil, turn it regularly, add butter for the last minute or so, give it a good rest.

Prior to cooking I also tried Heston's extra ageing method, essentially leaving the steak uncovered in the fridge for a couple of days. The theory is that this dries the steak a little, tenderising it and concentrating the flavour. I've no idea whether this made any difference, but we'll assume Blumenthal has done his homework.

The steak being such a whopper I salted 90 minutes before cooking this time. Here it is after the salt has been absorbed, just before it went in the pan. The only other improvement I could think of was keeping better control of the temperature, so I bought myself a new toy:

Meat thermometer at the ready. Hot pan at the ready. Impending fat splattered smoke choked kitchen at the ready. In it goes!

Two minutes in, the first signs of a crust start to appear.

Seven minutes in, the char is coming along nicely, and the fat is starting to render and crisp.

Fourteen minutes in, almost there. The butter has just gone in and the crust looks lovely. I was keeping a close watch on the internal temperature at this point. 130 degrees fahrenheit was the target point, which is just on the cusp of medium rare. This was the only mistake I made. The temperature rose slowly and steadily throughout the cooking time, but then suddenly started to shoot up rapidly towards the end. I missed the cut-off point by a couple of degrees, removing it from the pan at 132.

Here we are, post-rest, resplendent and ready for slicing.

It was wonderful. See how the thin, dark crust gives way to tender pink juicy flesh. It was a beautiful piece of meat too, with a powerful savoury beefy flavour and delicious fat.

I always think you can spot quality, well aged beef by the fat. It should be yellow-ish in colour and smell a bit buttery. It should be rich in flavour and entice you to eat it, even the thick wobbly bits. This was all those things.

Served with sautéed potatoes, green salad, and mushrooms fried in smoked garlic this was one of the best Sunday dinners I've had in a long time. It even went down well with my friend's two year old daughter (who will eat anything as long as you tell her it's sausages).

Dock Street Market, Leeds

This place has changed a bit since last time I was there. A year ago it was very much a work in progress, now things are finished I really like it. There's a proper bar with a very good beer selection, plenty of seating some of which is perfectly suited to a proper loafing session, and there are also plenty of books and board games with which to while away the hours.

There's a hot food menu in addition to the sandwiches (I'm keen to try the feijoada), with bread still provided by the Riverside Sourdough Bakery and coffee by La Bottega Milanese.

I opted for the hot salt beef sandwich, a steal at only £3.50 as it was a monster. A good monster. It was generously packed with salty, juicy chunks of well-flavoured meat, gherkins, salad and rather a lot of hot mustard.

A little too much mustard for my tastes, I like the stuff but I'm just not in love with mustard heat in the same way as chilli heat. It makes my nose go weird and doesn't make me happy like chillies do. Maybe that's just me though.

All in all though a very good sandwich and excellent value. I'd like to see them do a classic American version, with about twice as much meat and on rye bread. It would cost twice the price and be exceedingly gluttonous, but it would be worth it.

I'll be returning here for beer, feijoada and more cracking sandwiches!

8/10

28 Dock Street
Leeds
LS10 1JF

http://www.dockstreetmarket.com/

Baltic Café Bar, Gateshead

I'm stuck in a bit of a restaurant routine at the moment. If it's not Thai Aroy Dee it's Red Chilli. I went to the former last Saturday, the latter the Saturday before, and I'll be back to the latter this weekend. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it doesn't give me much to write about on here, not without a tedious amount of repetition anyway.

Lunches and recipes it is then. I try and go somewhere interesting for lunch once or twice a week to liven things up a bit between the dull home-made sandwiches, tetra pak soups and such-like.

This morning I was in Newcastle so I thought I'd pay a visit to the Baltic. A twenty minute glance round the galleries followed by twenty minutes for lunch would do nicely, then back on the road to Leeds.

As it turned out I was short of time so lunch took precedence. The galleries will have to wait.

Soup of the day (£3.50) was broccoli, chestnut and mascarpone. It was pleasant if a little unexciting. A more generous hand with the barely detectable chestnuts would have been an improvement. The hunk of baguette on the side was good quality though.

I also spotted these (£2 each), and couldn't resist ordering one. I'm not normally into pretzels, big lumps of boring dough that they are. Cover them in melted cheese though and everyone's a winner. Why has no-one thought of this before? Maybe they have and I wasn't paying attention. Anyway it was warm and soft and chewy and cheesy and a bit greasy and delicious.

The café has big picture windows framing the Tyne, with it's wonderful bridges and backdrop of Newcastle city centre, so it's a nice place to sit for a while. The service was great too, friendly and efficient.

I'll return when I have time to visit the gallery, and will probably eat here again. The food was good, nothing special but better than you'd get at many other cultural venues, and it's also worth it for the view.

7/10

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays
South Shore Road
Gateshead
NE8 3BA

http://www.balticmill.com/visit/Eating.php

Lime House Café (and Welbeck Farm Shop), Welbeck Estate, Nottinghamshire

I've been planning a visit to the Welbeck Estate ever since I discovered it was the home of Stichelton. I struggle to find some of my favourite cheeses outside London, so when I found out that the cheese I love perhaps more than any other is made less than an hour away from home it was only a matter of time before I made the trip.

Friday was the day. I was in Nottingham for work and it's not too much of a detour off the M1 on the way home. Welbeck is one of those great big whopping country estates that's been turned over to tourism, a slightly less famous Chatsworth if you like (perhaps because it's half way between Mansfield and Worksop rather than in the middle of the Peak District). There's an art gallery, a school of artisan food, a working farm, a garden centre, a café and a very good farm shop, of which more later.

After a visit to the farm shop to pick up a few goodies I stopped off at the café for a quick afternoon tea.

A fat scone (£2.25) was fresh and light, and came served with very good raspberry jam. A pot of good tea was a reasonable £1.35. I didn't have anything else, but the sandwiches arriving on other tables looked excellent.

The room is also lovely, a spacious, airy modern conversion of a building that formerly housed part of a Victorian gasworks. The staff were nice too.

First impressions of what I've bought from the farm shop are also very good. I have a lovely looking piece of beef, a bulb of smoked garlic and some cheese. The cheese selection is exemplary, as you'd expect when it's all sourced from the Kings of British cheese at Neal's Yard.

I don't think it'll be long before I start thinking of reasons to visit Worksop more often.


8/10

Welbeck Estate
Worksop
Nottinghamshire
S80 3LL


http://www.harleygallery.co.uk/index.php?pg_id=20

http://www.welbeck.co.uk/experience/visit/farm-shop/home

Larb / Laab / Lahb / Larp / Laap

Don't worry I haven't gone mad. The title of this post does make sense. Larb is a Laotian or Isarn (Northeastern Thai) meat salad that you'll probably have seen on Thai restaurant menus spelled in any of the various ways listed above. It's all down to the difficulties of transliterating Thai or Lao script into the Roman alphabet.

Linguistic challenges aside, laab is a wonderful dish that I've been meaning to try and make for some time. It's got all the best qualities of Thai food, the strong yet balanced tastes, the spice, the freshness, the herbal fragrance. And it's a salad made from meat. Just about any meat can be used by the way, though chicken is most common.

Rather bizarrely it was turkey that spurred me into action. Yes, turkey as in Christmas turkey. Morrison's was selling packs of diced turkey thigh at a ridiculously low price, so I bought some thinking there must be something good I could cook with it. More out of hope than expectation to be honest.

Then I thought about lahb. The turkey meat would work well chopped into very small pieces and cooked very briefly, no chance for it go tough or stringy. The flavour would also suit, meaty enough to standard up to the strong seasoning and still lend something to the dish.

I'm not going to recreate the recipe in full here, because the one I used can be found here on the She Simmers blog which I've found to be an excellent resource for Thai food info and recipes since I discovered it a while back. It was this blog's author who kindly translated the Thai Aroy Dee menu for me.

I deviated a little from the original recipe, using spring onions in place of shallots, the turkey in place of chicken and missing out the galangal powder. Apart from that and halving each ingredient for a smaller batch it was faithful.

I also had a go at making the toasted rice powder, but had to cheat and use basmati rice in place of Thai sticky rice. It was still worth it though, perfectly simple to do and the final dish had a subtle but distinctive nutty flavour in the background.

The resulting salad was a great success. The first taste gives the forward freshness and fragrance of the herbs which then gives way to salty, sour and spicy, all assertive but balanced. The savour of the meat and toasty rice flavour round things out nicely.

I served mine with rice as a main dish, but its probably more commonly served alone as a starter or a side dish, scooped up with lettuce leaves.

I'll make this again and will probably change just one thing. I should have chopped the meat a little bit finer, you don't want mince but some of my chunks were a little too hefty and went a bit chewy as the meat cooled.

Philo's, West Bridgford, Nottingham

I wasn't supposed to be having lunch here. I was supposed to be going to Nando's with my sister. Nando's you say? Yes. I like Nando's. Crispy, charred skinned chicken with hot sauce. What's not to like? The sides are crap though.

Anyway now I've got that confession off my chest I didn't make it to Nando's. The M1 intervened and spoiled my plans. A two and a half hour drive to Nottingham and a cancelled lunch later I still needed to eat, and West Bridgford is handier for work than Nottingham city centre.

Philo's looked like the pick of the casual coffee shops in town, and lunch there turned out pretty well despite the lack of spicy chicken.

A big wedge of frittata was moist, light and well seasoned and the salad was properly dressed. Not sure what the little grape buttons were doing though, but they didn't harm anyone.

£3.75 for the frittata and salad meal, prompt service and good coffee too. Philo's is a nice little place.

7/10

22 Tudor Square
West Bridgford
Notts
NG2 6BT