Mashed: Rene Redzepi and the Joyless Division

John Banville's sombre fizzog stares up at me from the pages of the Independent on Sunday. He seems to be saying 'Don't fuck with me, I'm a heavyweight writer.' He certainly seems to be carrying a few extra pounds. I wonder if he practices the look in the mirror at home before photo shoots, while mouthing the words 'I, author' quietly to himself. Po-faced is not the word. Mother-Po-fucking fa-fucking-ced perhaps.   

Banville at least has the excuse of dealing with serious subject matter in his work. Ancient Light, the book under review by the Indy tells the fictional story of Cass Cleave who uncovers anti-Semitic articles by an acclaimed literary theorist who also happens to be the father of her unborn child. Suffering from a 'schizophrenic-like condition', Cleave kills herself. With hilarious consequences.

When it comes to the world of food world however, there really is no excuse for taking yourself too seriously. Yes, being a chef is a stressful job, it's hard work and kitchens can be dangerous places, what with all the testosterone, sharpened blades and illegal aliens around the place. 


But they're not artist's studios, or chemist's labs or philosophical summits. They are places of work and at their best, highly efficient businesses geared to extract as much money from as many people in as short a period of time using as few resources as possible. Simply adjust the variables to make the model work for selling hundreds of 99p burgers or a few dozen £180 tasting menus.    

There are however a band of chefs who would have you believe otherwise. They have taken the ludicrous hype surrounding the annual World's 50 BestRestaurants list (compiled it should be noted by a judging panel that includes chefs and restaurateurs who can vote for any establishment without having to prove they've actually eaten there) at face value and appear to believe they can heal the world with a nice bit of scran.

In 2011, a group of oh-so-serious minded chefs featured in that year's list issued a manifesto - not a recipe, not a cookery book, not a 10% off a main course on a Tuesday night if booking before 7.30pm voucher but a mani-sodding-festo - in the form of an 'Open Letter to Future Chefs'  saying among other things that chefs could' serve as an important bridge to other cultures'. The stunt was eloquently parsed at the time by Jay Rayner. 

The gang of nine (later reduced to eight when Heston Blumenthal, who hadn't even turned up for the public signing distanced himself from the document saying 'I'm just a cook' )  included Rene Redzepi, chef proprietor of Noma, Copenhagen which has famously topped the list for three years running. 

At the time of writing, Redzepi is in residence at Claridges, touting 'A Taste of Noma' for £200 a pop plus wine and service. According to Harden's, the event sold out within 2.5 hours and was over subscribed by a factor of 10. However, early reports on Trip Advisor seemed to indicate that not everyone feels like they've got a good deal, including one reporter who said 'This was without a shadow of a doubt the worst meal I have ever had in a Michelin starred restaurant , much of the food was totally under seasoned and tasteless and all of it was uninspired and dull.'    

I met Redzepi in 2010 when I joined the media scrum on Hampstead Heath that accompanied the diminutive chef's staged foraging trip. I was editing the Metro newspaper's food and drink pages at the time and wrote a double page spread covering the event and the lunch held at the Bull and Last pub where I sat next to Redzepi. I included quotes from my brief interview with him on the day and found him to be enthusiastic, eager to share his knowledge and unfailingly polite.

His media profile continued to build until the following summer when the hoopla surrounding Redzepi's first Mad Symposium food congress in Copenhagen reached fever pitch. Tweets from the event were hyperbolic to say the least and the whole thing took on the cultish air of a White Night in Jonestown.

Having endured a number of similar arse-achingly tedious events in Italy and London, I tweeted that I'd like to see 'a little less chin stroking and a little more cooking' from modern chefs. I would have forgotten all about it the second I'd pressed the send button, had Redzepi not responded directly on twitter, telling me to 'fuck off, and that's from all 300 chefs here.'

Was this really the same sweet-natured man who had patiently explained to how he used the various foraged plants we came across on Hampstead Heath in his cooking? I was shocked but was soon reassured by people in the know that Redzepi was no different from many of his peers and had a raging temper and ego to match.

But being a haute cuisine cook hasn't always equated with solemn preciousness.  Redzepi's humourless approach (summed up neatly in this tweet by Giles Coren. The celebrity journalist's outburst is explained by Redzepi calling Coren 'a really really nasty bastard' in an interview with American food website Eater ) is in stark contrast, for example, to the demeanour of legendary French chef Fernand Point.

Running the epoch defining La Pyramide restaurant in Vienne near Lyon between 1923 until his death in 1955, where he invented nouvelle cuisine and trained the likes of Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel and Jean and Pierre Troisgros must have kept him pretty busy, but he still found plenty of time to indulge himself.

According to Ma Gastronomie, his cookbook and biography, Point would rise at 4.30am everyday to phone is suppliers at Les Halles in Paris and then spend a few hours in his kitchen. At 9.00am, he'd crack open a nicely chilled magnum of champagne and be shaved by his barber. By the time his stubble had disappeared, so had the magnum. 

A lover to practical jokes, he would regularly transport a friend's fishing boat from its moorings to the branches of a tree or to the inside of a church; put a raw egg among hard boiled ones in customer's picnic baskets, and tease the tinker who relined the kitchen's copper pans by hiding his tools and getting him drunk on champagne.    

During the World War Two, Point fed refugees in his restaurant without payment but refused to serve Nazi army officers and received the Cross of the Chevalier and the Distinguished Service Medal for his efforts. As well as entertaining everyone from Jean Cocteau to the Aga Khan, he insisted that two truck drivers who had simply come to look around La Pyramide dined as his guests.

Renowned for his sense of humour, Ma Gastronomie includes witty aphorisms like 'Before judging a thin man, one must get some information. Perhaps he was once fat' (at six foot three and weighing in at over 300 pounds, Point once said of himself, 'My weight is confidential but if you wish to obtain my volume, you only have to multiply the surface of my base by my height and divide by three').

If Point, called 'Le Roi' by his peers and recognised during his lifetime as the best chef of his generation was able to retain a sense of humour and humility while simultaneously redefining an entire cuisine, it surely can't be beyond the current crop of top chefs to find a scintilla of self awareness and perspective about their day jobs. A picture from this years Mad symposium of Redzepi pushing an ice cream cart along Copenhagen's waterfront offers some hope, even if the chef's scowling expression makes him the most miserable Mr Whippy in history.

Why fun appears to be off the haute cuisine menu is anyone's guess. The relentlessly earnest food bloggers who justify the enormous sums they drop in expensive restaurants by pretending to themselves that they've had a life changing experience? The maelstrom of media bullshit surrounding the World's 50 Best? The self-aggrandising antics of Ferran 'I-invented-molecular-gastronomy-me' Adria whose ludicrously over the top cookery tomes cataloguing the great man's every culinary burp and fart have launched a thousand imitators (such as the recently released Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking by Andoni Luis Aduriz which, hilariously, includes a dish called 'Evoking the Work of Richard Serra' -  Pretentious, moi?) and have now hit the big screen in the documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress.  

Whatever the reason, it must have dear old Fernand spinning in his grave albeit, given his bulk, at a fairly sedate RPM.  I'm sure he'd tell them to relax and open a magnum or two of champagne; an idea that might even force John Banville to crack a smile.  


Mashed was a regular column created for egullet.org's The Daily Gullet webzine in the early noughties and will now appear from time to time on Kitchen Person. 

Simon Hopkinson interview from Great British Food

Simon Hopkinson 1

Simon Hopkinson Interview 2

Turkey, gammon and leek pie

There are few things more satisfying than a properly made pie, requiring the basic but core skills of meat cookery, pastry and sauce making to produce something homely yet impressive.

This is an great way to use up Christmas leftovers but is excellent any time of the year-just substitute chicken for the turkey meat. I usually remove the legs of the turkey and just roast the crown. I confit the legs in goose fat in a slow cooker and make stock from the remaining turkey carcass which comes in particularly handy for this recipe.

The mix of roast breast meat and rich confit leg works very well and the stock is perfect for the veloute sauce. If you're cooking a gammon especially for this recipe, you can use the cooking liquor to make the veloute instead, otherwise a stock cube will also do just fine.

Ingredients
(serves 4-6)

500g cooked turkey meat, diced
200g cooked gammon, diced

For the pastry
300g plain flour
150g butter, cut into small chunks
1 egg yolk
water to bind
pinch of salt

For the poached leek
1 large leek
25g butter
250ml turkey or chicken stock to cover
salt and pepper

For the tarragon veloute
50g butter
35g plain flour
500ml turkey or chicken stock or gammon poaching liquor
100ml cream
1 dssp chopped tarragon
salt and pepper

Egg wash made with 1 egg and 1 tbsp milk whisked together

1. In a large bowl, rub the butter into the flour and salt until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the egg yolk and enough water to bind into a dough. Work lightly with the dough but make sure its well combined, otherwise it will crumble when you try to roll it out. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least 30 minutes.
2. Trim the leek by cutting off the green leaves and removing the first layer of skin. Slice into 1cm rounds and soak in cold water for 20 minutes to remove any dirt.
3. Melt the butter in pan and add the drained leeks in one layer. Cover with stock, season with salt and pepper and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover the leeks with a butter paper or cartouche and poach until tender. Drain, retaining the cooking liquid and set aside.
4. Make the veloute by melting the butter in a pan and stirring in the flour. Cook for a minute or two, stirring continuously. Add the stock a ladle at a time, stirring all the time. Bring to the boil , reduce the heat and add the cream. Simmer over a low heat for 20 minutes. Add the tarragon and season with salt and pepper.
5. Add the turkey, gammon and leeks to the veloute and stir well to combine and set aside.
6. Butter a deep sided 22cm pie tin.
7. Remove the rested pastry from the fridge and set aside one third. Roll out the remaining two thirds on a well floured work surface to a 3mm thickness. Line the pie tin with the rolled pastry, trimming the edges with the back of a knife. Egg wash the lip of the pie base
8. Pour the filling into the pie and place a pie funnel in the centre. Roll out the remaining pastry and cover the pie. Using a fork, press the the two layers of pastry together, trimming the excess with the back of a knife.
9. Cut a small X in the centre of the top of the pie to allow the funnel to protrude and egg wash the top of the pie. Bake in the oven at 180ºC for 40 minutes or until golden brown.
10. Serve with boiled new potatoes and green beans, both tossed in the reserved leek cooking liquor.

Rye and beer bread

I developed this recipe after interviewing butcher George McCartney about his hand made corned beef which was named Supreme Champion in this year's Guild of Fine Food Awards.

He was kind enough to ship me some over from his shop on the outskirts of Belfast, mentioning that his favourite way to eat the beef was with homemade rye bread. Its such a delicious, special and painstakingly made product that I thought the very least I could do to honour it would be to make some rye bread of my own to go with it.

Barry Hawthorne of the Isle of Skye Baking Co. had also be kind enough to send me off with a parting gift of some ales from the Isle of Skye Brewery when I visited him earlier this year and it seemed the ideal opportunity to put one bottle of it to good use. The results were spectacular even if I do say so myself. I hope when you try making this bread that you agree. Just make sure you’ve got some of that corned beef to enjoy with it (list of stockists here ).

Rye and beer bread
(Makes two loaves)

Ingredients

500ml Isle of Skye Brewery Hebridean Gold porridge oat and malt ale or beer of your choice
200ml water
20g fresh yeast/10g dried active yeast
500g rye flour
250g wholegrain seeded flour
250g strong white flour
20g lard
10g sea salt
10g smoked sea salt
10g caster sugar

Method
1. Heat the ale and water in a microwave for 30 secs or until tepid. Alternatively heat gently in a pan.
2. Measure the remaining ingredients into the bowl of a Kitchenaid mixer. Afix the dough hook attachment and mix at the lowest setting to combine.
3. Slowly pour in the liquid and mix for 5 minutes on the lowest setting. Turn the machine off and scrape down the hook with a flexible spatula. Mix for a further 5 minutes or until the dough has come together and looks bouncy and alive.
4. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently but firmly into a ball. Set aside in the cleaned bowl, covered, in warm draft-free place for an hour or until doubled in size.
5. Knock back the dough, divide into two and form into a loaf shape. Cover and allow to rise again for an hour or until nearly doubled in size.
6. Bake in a hot oven (about 200 to 220°C for a fan oven or 240°C for a normal oven) until nicely coloured. Cool fully on a rack before slicing and serving with McCartney’s of Moira’s corned beef.

The return of Clock DVA

This is primarily a food blog, but this post has nothing to do with food - we all need a break from our obsessions once in a while. The reason for this temporary detour is the return to performance and hopefully recording of Clock DVA. You can read more about them here and there's a recent interview with founder and former member of an early incarnation of The Human League Adi Newton here.

If you can find them, buy Thirst, Advantage and Buried Dreams - three of the greatest alternative/experimental records made by a British group in the last 30 years. Although the highly polished, melodic and slightly over produced Advantage flirted with the mainstream, they are a severely under-appreciated outfit. Clock DVA is rarely if ever heard on radio and I don't think they've ever been on TV in the UK, although Newton was interviewed for The Beat is the Law documentary about the Sheffield music scene. They are never going to be everyone's cup of tea, but they deserve to be better known.

Here's one of my all time favourite DVA tracks, Velvet Realm from Buried Dreams:



And here's the performance recently uploaded to youtube that features the first new DVA material for over 15 years, and it sounds cracking:

Recipe: crushed and roasted potatoes

I created this recipe by accident and as far as I know it's original. A few weeks ago, I overcooked the potatoes for the Sunday roast without realising it. I drained them and following the sainted Delia Smith method, shook the pan as I usually do in order to rough up the edges of the spuds which creates the lovely crispy finish that Delia's roasties are famous for.

When I took the lid off I realised my mistake; about half the potatoes were reduced to chunks too small to roast. Rather than waste them, I piled them into a poaching ring to create fat discs of potato and roasted them along with the surviving potatoes. The result was a revelation - they were beautifully crisp, better in fact than the traditional roasties and had a very pleasing texture, somewhere between a roast potato and a hash brown. I've since made them for the family instead of roast potatoes to great approval.

This simple recipe could be embellished with the addition of parsley, rosemary or thyme and garlic mixed into the potato before it's moulded, but I think it works fine as it is.


Ingredients
(serves 4)
800g main crop potatoes e.g. Maris Piper
800ml cold water
8g salt
50g lard or fat or oil of your choice

Pre-heat your oven to 180C. Peel and chop the potatoes into large chunks. Rinse well, then cover with the cold water and bring to the boil. Add the salt and simmer for 5-7 minutes until par-boiled. Meanwhile, heat the lard in a roasting tin in the oven.

Drain then crush the potatoes using the back of a spoon. You want a chunky mixture and not mash. Spoon the potato into a 9cm by 3cm poaching ring, pressing down gently to compoact the potato so that it holds its shape. Repeat three times so that you have four discs.

Place the discs in the roasting tin and baste with the hot oil. Roast for 25-30 minutes or until golden and cooked through, turning halfway to ensure even cooking. Serve with roast meat and all the trimmings.

Vote for this recipe at LoveTheGarden.com

Rojano's in the Square

On the square with chef Paul Ainsworth

Paul Ainsworth is probably best known for his wildly over the top 'Trip to the Fairground' dessert he created for the BBC's Great British menu series this year. You can try it for your self at Ainsworth's smart No 6 restaurant in Padstow if you've got the odd £21 burning a hole in your pocket. As that feeds two, and the prices on the rest of the menu are hardly greedy, you can't begrudge the chef cashing in just a little bit on his telly fame.

However, if you're after a more relaxed, affordable and family friendly experience, then his new venture, Rojano's on the Square just around the corner from No 6 might better fit the bill. Ainsworth has taken over a Padstow institution that's been around for three decades and bought it bang up to date. The smart, modern interior is decked out with black and white Rome-themed photos and Warhol-style screen prints of Lambrettas.

The menu is somewhat in the tradition of Jamie's Italian-olives are 'the best', tomato bread is 'really garlicky' and fries with garlic and parsley are 'funky'- but Ainsworth beats Oliver at his own game. Presentation, quality of ingredients and portion size are all a notch above the famous high street chain. But that's as it should be - this is a one off after all, although the price point is very close. Service is utterly charming and attentive.

Nearly everything delights, with only some lower quality pitted black olives on a 'rustico sottile' ultra thin pizza and an overly-large and less than thrilling accompaniment of peppers, chorizo and potato with some beautifully cooked fillets of lemon sole falling short of the mark.

An antipasto of parma ham, salami milano, spianata calabrese, bresáola, salami napoli, baked cheese, porcini relish, pickles, olives and rosemary toasts sounds expensive at £20 but would easily satisfy four as a starter or two as a light lunch.

Ainsworth has filled a gap in the Padstow market for high quality, casual Italian dining with the sort of easy style that could happily translate to the high steet; the first floor 'grazing bar' is a nice on-trend metropolitan touch. Watch out Jamie?



Calamari, garlic mayo (in the bucket) sweet chilli tomato salad



Mozzarella arancini with Arrabiata sauce



Antipasto



Capricossa pizza - ultra thin crispy base but what's with the cheap pitted olives?



Linguini al gamberi e rucola


Burger Italiano



Rock fries with truffle and parmesan

Fish of the day - lemon sole with potatoes, chorizo and peppers


Gelatio mostro


White chocolate pannacotta, berry compote and honeycomb

Rojano's in the Square
9 Mill Square
Padstow
Cornwall
01841 532 796; rojanos.co.uk