Welcome to Ask Mario's November 06 Newsletter
It's astonishing to realise how the British food scene has matured.over the last 20 years - not just restaurants, but food in general. At our sausage tasting Phil Harris of the Sportsman, Seasalter tripped straight down memory lane when he tasted a classic Walls banger - the sausage of choice to most of Britain a couple of decades ago. We tasted 13 brands - see the Great British Sausage for our findings. And it was twenty years ago when Peter Kromberg appeared on a seminal TV programme - Take Six Chefs - which also launched Marco Pierre White. Kromberg's now retired, but it's wonderful to see in the update below that Theo Randall has taken over the former Le Soufflé and made it his own. Now there are changes at the Which? Good Food Guide. I've just been made the consultant editor - the seventh in 55 years and the first woman in the job. But I won't be disappearing from Ask Mario. I'm joining Clarissa Hyman as a contributing editor, and a new Ask Mario editor will be in place next month - who I'm sure will be far more punctual with this newsletter. It's been enormous fun seeing Mario's idea become a reality and such a success. I'll be popping up from time to time with the odd feature or taking part in a tasting session - champagne perhaps? Cheers.
Elizabeth Carter, Editor
November's
features: |
Quebec restaurants
Clarissa Hyman discovers a world of exquisite produce and fabulous restaurants in Quebec - the New France....
Read Clarissa Hyman's feature
Sausage
tasting notes November 2006 Following National Sausage Week (Oct 30th-Nov 3rd), and contact from a sausage manufacturer we decided to hold a sausage tasting of local and nationally available bangers to discover which in our opinion is the best...
Read Ask Mario's tasting notes
Vive la France at the Wallace Collection (London)
Restaurateur Oliver Peyton seems to be adding more and more central London restaurants to his portfolio. Among the more recent openings is that of the National Café, a café de luxe open 8am-11pm, at the St Martin's Lane end of the National Gallery while across in Marylebone at The Wallace Collection, one of London's most beautiful galleries, the Wallace Restaurant offers modern French brasserie food in a dramatic atrium inspired by a typical Parisian courtyard. It's a laid-back, genteel, and quite romantic space. The food's not over ambitious but neither is it always quite up to the mark – we ordered warm octopus, with chick peas and lemon confit, which was fine, except that the octopus turned out to be breaded squid, an experience shared on another visit by a broad sheet restaurant reviewer. While this was perfectly enjoyable there was no explanation or apology. Poulet bio ‘Wallace' was a whole roasted black leg chicken, which was a tad dry and the skin lacked crispiness. Instead of being stuffed with foie gras as per the description, it had a couple of deliciously melting lobes laid across the ready-portioned bird. It's still a place we'll return to, as there's so much more to try, including a great choice of shellfish. About £80 for 2.
The Wallace Restaurant, The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN, tel: 020 7563 9505 www.thewallacerestaurant.com
Mayfair's newest and hippest Italian (London)
Le Soufflé at the Hotel InterContinetal was, from the 70s, and well into the 90s, the domain of Peter Kromberg, a chef of extraordinary ability – the only chef I've ever come across capable of delivering a banquet for 200 people with the food at a consistent and amazing 2-star level (the restaurant itself was awarded 2 Egon Ronay stars in the mid 80s and retained them until Kromberg's retirement). The location on Hyde Park Corner was always a little off-the-beaten-track, known and loved by its habitués as almost their little secret, and despite the décor gradually declining in the latter years, it remained a place of pilgrimage for cognoscenti as Kromberg continued to excite and enthral with his culinary skills. The space formerly occupied by Le Soufflé has been totally revamped and is now the new home of Theo Randall. True to his River Café roots the menu is now firmly modern Italian - very simple and rustic in style with dishes like polenta with pan-fried fresh French porcini, parsley and garlic to begin followed by slow-cooked shin of veal with celery, carrots, tomato, risotto alla Milanese and gremolata, and Amalfi lemon tart for dessert. This is a less expensive more relaxed, and informal set up and will no doubt prove popular. About £100 for 2.
Theo Randall at The InterContinental, The InterContinental London Park Lane, 1 Hamilton Place W1J QT, tel: 020 7409 3131, www.theorandall.com
Simple country style food in Notting Hill
Bumpkin (and WHO decided on that cringe-worthy name?) is a three storey concept dedicated to home from home wholesome cooking in the heart of Notting Hill. The ground floor has a casual all day brasserie-style dining room with shared tables and rustic furniture. The menu takes in ploughman's, pies, gourmet salads, grilled fish and meats, (and a kids' menu). Expect squash, pistachio and Cashel Blue risotto, peppered rib of beef with mashed potatoes and creamed horseradish, and for dessert hot chocolate fondant and warm poached stone fruits with honey madeleines. The first floor is a tad more refined and has a seasonally-changing menu of similar style. The top floors are dedicated to private dining and drinking. About £80 for 2.
Bumpkin, 209 Westbourne Park Road, London W11 1EA, tel: 020 7589 1200 www.bumpkinuk.com
French joie de vivre in Southsea (Hampshire)
A former Victorian banking hall (yes, another one!) has been converted into an elegant French restaurant, that's a welcome addition to the local dining scene. Classical techniques and use of seasonal British and European produce go into the creations on offer. Typical dishes are: grouse, armagnac and prune terrine with sloe jelly; or foie gras with honeycomb, black truffle and grapes to begin; then monkfish with samphire, clams and saffron, or pork with savoy cabbage. For afters there's cinnamon apple, with chocolate mousse and almond anglaise, and poached plums with pain d'epices and red wine. About £90 for 2.
No 8 Kings Road, 8 Kings Road, Southsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO5 3AH, tel: 08451 30 32 34 www.8kingsroad.co.uk
One to watch (Leicestershire)
Double celebrations at the excellent Horse & Trumpet, Medbourne. Not only have they bagged the 2006 Leicester and Rutland Restaurant of the Year award, but their Nick Stuart has won the 2006 Leicestershire and Rutland Young Chef of the Year competition. Nick's winning menu included a main course of scallops in a caramelised cauliflower purée with fennel panna cotta, baby carrots and cauliflower crisps, and summer berry soufflé with rhubarb chutney for dessert.
Horse & Trumpet, Medbourne, Leicestershire, LE16 8DX, tel: 01858 565000 www.horseandtrumpet.com
Tom Aikens Cooking (Ask Mario Book Review)
Be afraid, be very afraid. Tom Aikens stares out intensely from the cover of his new book holding the blade of a very serious kitchen knife. The message is unambiguous: this man is dedicated and dangerous.
Indeed, the image plays to Aikens' reputation as ‘a flawed genius' and ‘enfant terrible'. He writes of long hours, ambition, obsession and anger as he takes us through his career from Tante Claire to the ‘madhouse' of Pied à Terre, to Paris under Joël Robuchon and back to Pied à Terre as head chef and to two Michelin stars at the age of 26 before leaving ‘under a cloud'.
That cloud, to be more specific, was that Aikens was sacked in 1999, allegedly for ‘branding' a trainee chef with a hot knife. Then in 2003 at his own restaurant, ‘Tom Aikens', he wrongly accused a customer, who had just paid £600 for a meal, of walking off with a silver coffee spoon. Happily, when it was reported this year that one of his sous chefs had been stabbed in the buttock,the health and safety officer's report concluded the chef had slipped on a wet floor and fallen against another chef holding a knife.
Aikens does not elaborate here on such excitements: “They say that creative minds are a little on the edge of madness... yes, perhaps I am a little strange in the head. But it is truly great to be different and to be capable of creating something that is original and unique'. Which he undoubtedly can. The restaurant guide ‘Square Meal' describes him as one of the most technically accomplished chefs in the country with the caveat that ‘his dishes increasingly contain at least one clever twist too many leaving diners feeling overwhelmed.'
Cooking from this book you might also feel overwhelmed unless you are a professional chef with a kitchen brigade to hand. What you get are 250 solid pages of recipes, some colour photographs of the dishes and moody black and white shots of Aikens at work. Chapters cover vegetables, fish, meat, desserts and baking.‘ Dishes are marked as 'easy, medium or challenging'.
For challenging, read truly daunting. His recipe for cured and marinated venison with quince and currants invites you to start preparing a week and a half ahead. His braised veal shin ravioli and caramelised onion requires white chicken stock, brown chicken stock, a veal shin ragout and caramelised onions. Only then can you begin making the pasta. Even the ‘medium' beetroot puree requires the peeling, chopping, juicing and sieving of ten raw beetroots, which are then mixed with more cooked beetroots, before reducing, blending and sieving. To be fair, there are some genuinely easy dishes: coq au vin, beef and ginger salad, some pies, soups and desserts.
Essentially, this is less a book to cook from than to admire. It certainly assumes a fair degree of skill in the kitchen so it's a bit patronising to be told buy fresh, seasonal, organic ingredients. We know, Tom, we know.
Tom Aikens Cooking
Tom Aikens
£25
Pub: Ebury Press
ISBN 00919100313
Leaves from our Tuscan Kitchen (Ask Mario Book Review)
Leaves from Our Tuscan Kitchen by Janet Ross, was first published in 1899. It is a collection of straightforward but beautifully conceived recipes from the kitchens of Poggio Gherardo her Tuscan villa on the outskirts of Florence.
Janet Ross was a celebrated author and prominent member of the Anglo-American community in Florence. According to Harold Acton in his introduction she was ‘handsome, practical and forthright with piercing, beetle-browed eyes. She was said to swear like a trooper'. But while her other literary works have long been out of print this slim volume of recipes has become a classic, reprinted eleven times and revised in 1973 by her great great nephew Michael Waterfield.
This latest edition, published by Grub Street has been updated, adapted and added to, once again by Michael Waterfield, himself a much respected chef. In the 1960s he worked with George Perry Smith at the Hole in the Wall in Bath and in his own restaurant the Wife of Bath in Wye, Kent and later Waterfields in Canterbury, which he ran until 1989.
The recipes are quirkily set out without a separate list of ingredients but rather with the method and ingredients side by side. They were inspired by the produce from the garden Janet Ross created at Poggia Gherardo out of 'sad disorder… digging deep ditches for vines and gigantic holes for olives'. As well as vegetables she grew figs and melons, reared poultry and exotic pheasants, She produced her own olive oil and made her own wine and vermouth.
But it was Guiseppe Volpi, her cook of thirty years, who transformed these vegetables into simple, elegant dishes: peas cooked with shredded lettuce, cabbage sautéed with vinegar and juniper berries or five different tomato salads.
Skilled in both Tuscan and classical cooking, Michael Waterfield gives Volpi due credit while acknowledging Janet Ross's careful recording of the recipes. Together, he says, they 'elevated the status of the humble pea and cabbage' to a level of refined simplicity'.
Written at a time when vegetables in Britain were seen merely as a tolerable accompaniment to the main dish this must have been a remarkable book. It reads as fresh today as it must have done 107 years ago. At a time when we are pre-occupied with provenance, freshness and seasonality, this book couldn't be more prescient.
Leaves from our Tuscan Kitchen
Janet Ross & Michael Waterfield
£12.99
Pub: Grub Street
ISBN 1 904943 62 4
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