Category: Fodderblog

Fodderblog: Seven Wonders

We could spend hours discussing the seven wonders of the modern world. The Burj Khalifa Tower in Abu Dhabi, up which Tom Cruise so famously glove-walked. The Øresund Bridge connecting Sweden to Denmark, home of so many angst-driven murders.

But we foodies have our places of worship, too: those parts of the globe where grub is god, where our senses and greedy tums can be fulfilled. These are the culinary Seven Wonders of the world… as least, as far as I'm concerned.

 

Sukiyobashi Jiro, Tokyo, Japan.

Perhaps the most famous sushi joint in the world, and rightly so. When President Obama visited Japan recently, he made darn sure that he stopped off at Jiro's for lunch. Looking at the place, you might wonder why. It's a tiny box in the basement of an office building in the Ginza district, with room for perhaps ten diners at a time. Jiro serves one menu, and offers only beer or sake to drink. If you can get a reservation to Jiro's (and it's not easy–the booking office is currently closed until June) you're there to eat sushi.

The food is prepared and served with an attention to detail that's obsessive even by Japanese standards. Jiro will watch as you eat, the better to guage what to serve you next, and even where on the plate the next piece will sit. You will pay on average £400 for a meal, and there's a good chance you could be in and out in 20 minutes. But this is food with a purity and rigour that's worth making the effort. The award-winning documentary on Jiro and his life will tell you more–like the food, it's a perfectly presented, tasty little jewel.

 

Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, Loch Fyne, Scotland.

Not, I hasten to add, anything to do with the ubiquitous seafood restaurants (nice as they are). The tiny, woodlined restaurant on the banks of beautiful Loch Fyne serves a small, perfectly formed menu. But really, you should be going for the oysters. Grown and harvested within yards of your table, Loch Fyne oysters are among the best in the world, and eating them with some good bread (baked on the premises) while gazing out over the loch is a very distinct pleasure. I speak from experience on this one: TLC and I went to Scotland on our honeymoon, and the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar was a very smart stop-off for lunch. A place of peace and beauty, and a very fond memory.

 

The Cordon Bleu School Of Cookery, Paris, France.

No truly great chef is self-taught, and many of the giants are alumni of the Cordon Bleu. It's an international concern these days, with campuses worldwide. But Paris was the first and, for many, the heart of the French school of cookery that still has such a hold on our preconceptions of culinary excellence.

Let's face it: no chef can consider to have arrived without at least one Michelin star, and that reward comes from cleaving to a model of service and food preparation that springs directly out of the Cordon Bleu. Sure, there are outliers: Jiro's place is Michelin-starred, for example. But for the most part an apparance in the blue book means that a restaurant has achieved a certain level in a certain way. France is, for many, still the home of fine cuisine, and the Cordon Bleu is where you go to learn the skills to make it.

 

Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark

A list like this would not be complete without including the restaurant that many believe to be the best in the world. That honour can change over time, of course: Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck is currently closed for refurbishment, Ferran Adria's El Bulli shuttered years ago. Nowadays, the place to be is Denmark, and the place to eat is Noma. Recently returned to the No. 1 spot of Restaurant Magazine's Top 50, Noma is the creative home of chef René Redzepi. His food is deeply connected to the Nordic terroir–that is, the food, ingredients and flavours most typical of the region. Fellow chef Niklas Ekstedt joked recently that you can tell if something's Swedish by the amount of dill on it, but Redzepi's food is far more open to experimentation and adventure than that. There aren't many places that can get away with a dish of beef tartare and ants.

It's said that to get a true feel of a country you need to eat its food. Noma's food is earthy, humorous and full of surprises. If you can get a reservation, and you can afford it (both increasingly unlikely following Noma's return to the top spot, but no harm in trying, eh?) then this is one place to put on your bucket list.

 

Soi Rumbuttri, Bangkok, Thailand

If your tastes or your bank balance don't run to Noma's level, then there's always street food. Here's where you can get a true sense of a country, with the food that people are lunching, breakfasting or simply snacking on every day of the week. From Mexico to Marrakech, there are plenty of hubs where people gather for their fix of noodles or deep-fried goodies.

The place to be though, at least according to the well-travelled trencherperson, is Bangkok. More precisely, Soi Rumbuttri, a U-shaped street off the Khao San Road (in other words, away from the backpackers) that is home to over a hundred food stalls. Here's where you can track down your food fix from a wild mix of Asian cuisines, prepared on the spot for pennies. OK, you don't get the refinement and service of a place like Noma. But you are getting a jolt of culture and flavour straight off the main grid. The nightlife in this buzzing, active area is amazing too. If you're hungry for the real Thailand, this is where to head.

 

 

Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne, Australia

Any foodie worth his or her salt will want to track down a local market. Again, if food is a mirror to a nation's soul, then the raw ingredients that a market supplies are the frame on which that mirror is built. There are a ton of truly great markets for the adventurous food fan to seek out, from London's own Borough Market to La Boqueria in Barcelona–the only place to buy jamon. I'll admit to a soft spot for Oxford's covered market, which has some great food stalls amongst the clothes shops.

But for sheer dizzying size and spectacle, you'll have to take a trip to the antipodes. Queen Vic Market is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, with over 700 stalls selling… well, you name it. The place takes up two whole city blocks, so if it's food related, you'll probably find what tickles your taste buds. The Meat Hall is the place for curious carnivores, with stalls selling everything from chicken to crocodile. If you're peckish, the Food Court seats 400, so you can probably snag a table. The problem, I feel, is going to be lugging all your goodies home at the end of the day.

 

Quayside, Whitby, England

We've talked about food reflecting the soul of a country, so let's finish off by bringing it all back home. There's nothing more English than fish and chips, and those in the know agree that the best in the country are found on the north-east coast. Although my mate Rev Sherlock has always bigged up the fish suppers in Grimsby (a little local bias, perhaps: he's from there) the place to be, at least according to the Fish And Chip Awards, is a little way up the coast at Whitby.

Quayside, run by Stuart Fusco since 1999, is housed in a historic building right on the quay. Stuart fries his fish and chips the traditional way: in beef dripping, with a special-recipe batter. There's no better way to enjoy them then out on the quayside, watching the waves. To my mind seafood doesn't get any simpler are more tasty than that.

 

 

Those are my picks–where have I gone wrong? Hit me up in the comments, Readership!

 

 

(a tip of the toque to Edible Reading, who set me on this road in the first place).

 

Pizza Is Like Shakespeare: The Stable, Bristol

Bristol isn't ever going to struggle for good places to eat. From gastro to pub grub, the city is stuffed with nice spaces to tie on a nose-bag. On our visits to the city by the sea, I've always been impressed by the range of fab eateries on offer and their increasing focus on local provenance. One of the best recent examples of that philosophy has been, of all places, a pizza joint.

The Stable is part of a small chain of restaurants dotted around the south-west with a pretty unique USP. They've come up with a food and drink pairing that I'd never considered–pizza and cider. After a lunchtime visit, I'm a convert to the cause.

I mentioned provenance, and The Stable is dead serious about sourcing locally. The all-important crust is a sourdough made from organic British wheat. The meat and seafood falls well within locavore metrics, and the huge range of ciders and perries is all from the lower left of the country. They offer drinks by draft, bottle and mini-keg with a limited range of beers and wines and softies. The staff are friendly and knowledgable, affably offering me a couple of tasters to help me make up my mind.

Cider and pizza? Well, yeah, think about it. A beer with your margherita is a big wallop of wheatiness that'll leave you with a fat dose of bloat. Cider doesn't give you that, and you consequently find the food much more digestable. The lighter, crisper flavour just seems to cut through the richness of the toppings with a cleanliness that beer or wine simply can't. It's a deliciously logical pairing.

Pictured, my Longhorn Jim, approximately 15 seconds after it hit the table.

The pizzas are thin-crust and loaded with goodies, firing out with admirable speed from a brace of hefty wood-fired ovens. The generosity of the topppings means the most sensible option from getting the pizza into your feed hole is American-style: grab a slice, fold the pointy end over towards the crust and munch away. With my Longhorn Jim, heavy with ground beef, chorizo and ham (I'm a lapsed vegetarian, can you tell?) the crust was just strong enough to take the moisure from the tomato sauce and copious amounts of paprika-spiked oil to make it from wooden paddle to gob. TLC's Avonmouth Angler, though, was so heaped with smoked salmon and mackeral that she had to resort to a knife and fork. Mean while, DocoDom's Portishead Porker was every Englishman's dream: bacon, mushroom, tomato and a fried egg, breakfast on a pizza base.

Already hugely popular of an evening, The Stable seems well on its way to becoming a bit of a Bristol favourite, calmly buzzy at half twelve on a Sunday afternoon. Unflappable service and great grub in a spot that puts you right in the middle of Bristol's shopping and cultural hub? Bit of a no-brainer, frankly. The four of us were more than happy: sipping, nibbling and considering how The Stable were putting a wryly British spin on the Italian classic. Much like Shakespeare, pizza stands up to pretty much any setting into which you care to place it.

The Stable

 

Red Rags

Cold, wet weather needs some warm, robust cooking. While my love for the one-pot stew knows no bounds, there are times when a shank, steak, chop or pile of sausages are the only thing that will do. Sure, there's nothing wrong with some steamed veg on the side. But I think we can do a little better than that.

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p>I've been cooking red rags for a while now, and it's a dish that came out of experiment and necessity–that is, the need to use up tired veg that are lurking in the fridge and giving me guilt-trips. And while we're at it, one of those ingredients that seemed like a good idea over Christmas, but is now seriously outstaying its welcome.

It couldn't be simpler, really. The base is half a red cabbage and a whole red onion, which you cook down gently in a heavy, lidded pan with a knob of butter. They're shredded to the same sort of size, probably a bit chunkier than if you grated them. A mandolin does the job in seconds, but watch your fingers. If you have a couple of carrots, throw them in as well. If you have raw beetroot, even better.

Give your veg 15 minutes or so under a low heat, until it's softened but still has texture and bite. Now for the magic. It's two months after Christmas, and I bet you still have a half bottle of ready-mulled red wine knocking around. You know, that spiced, sugery stuff that never quite tastes as good as you think it's going to. It's not the greatest drink in the world, but when added to slow-cooked braises the sugar and spices mellow and transform into something with a lot more character. A glass or so of that over the veg, please, enough to cover. If you were sensible enough to steer clear of the ready-made, use normal red and chuck in a cinnamon stick. I haven't tried the muslin parcels of mulling spice, but I'd imagine you could use those at a pinch.

With the lid off now, bring the pot up to a fast simmer and let the liquid cook down to a sweet coating for the veg. Check the flavouring. If it's all a bit too sugary for your taste, throw in a little lemon juice or vinegar to balance things out.

The end result is a shining tangle of rich red deliciousness that's perfect sitting next to sausage and mash, a lamb shank, a pork chop, maybe even a hunk of monkfish. It's fantastic with game, of course. It'll keep in the fridge for a week or so. Cold, it makes a brilliant relish with strong cheeses and a good slice of ham. I'm thinking about making a pickled version just for that purpose. And of course, if you assemble the raw vegetables and bind them with a mix of mayo and creme fraiche, you have a fresh, crunchy ruby slaw, the uses of which are nearly endless.

In winter months I always have a red cabbage in the fridge just to make red rags. It's possibly my favourite vegetable dish for this end of the year. Easy to make, and with flavour to spare, it's going to brighten up your winter plates no end.