An Irish Interlude

The Larder

8, Parliament Street,

Dublin 2

Calling your ‘café bistro’ The Larder might be thought to be asking for trouble. In the hands of the punny people, it could invite all sorts of jokes about old Eastern-bloc cars that hardly get going. Or, if items from their small menu were not available, the critic could talk of the Larder being bare. Or a venomous pen could just drop the last syllable and describe it as as appetising as – you get the idea. But, either Dublin’s foodies are more generous in spirit than inventive in prose, or they really have found a Larder they like to raid early and often. As the clippings pinned up at the bottom of the restaurant’s stairs, next to the loos, testify, the reviews have rhapsodied rather than wrapped the place over the knuckles.

I was there alone on a Sunday evening, so I was digesting the scene as well as the food. The room was only half-full, and the clientele, enjoying a relaxed end of the weekend, seem mainly to be intent on comfort food, with rib-eye steak being the most frequent order. I chose instead from the day’s specials and started with sautéed duck’s liver. There was something uncompromising about how the meat was cooked: it had both its crumbly texture but also its natural bitterness, with no attempt to downplay it. The sharpness, though, was off-set by the subtle sweetness of the brioche on which it sat, and the accompaniment of pear chutney pleasingly rounded out and rounded off the taste.

For the main course, there was what was termed beef cheek – a demonstration of how between the two sides of the Irish Sea English changes its lilt and phrasing. A theme emerged: as with the starter, the delight of the taste came not with the meat – the ox cheek was tender to disintegration but had little depth – but with its accoutrements. In this case, the classic addition of a well-judged horseradish sauce made the dish. The one false step was the vegetable: crushed baby potato with black olives, where olives had been steeped too long in brine, and perhaps as compensation the potato had been cooked unsalted. Coming shaped like a small rugby ball, the result was less successful than the national team’s recent performance in the Six Nations.

My meal, with two glasses of wine, came to €40. It was undoubtedly reasonable, but was expensive in comparison to some of the offers. Steak proved a best-seller not just because it provided comfort food but because it was going for €10. My timing meant I missed the possibility of having the ‘early bird’ special menu, which allows diners to have a meal consisting, for instance, of smoked salmon salad and pork belly for €15 (€18 for three courses). With possibilities like that, the food at The Larder was not just understated, it could be positively underpriced. No wonder the reviewers keep their punitive puns to themselves.

Lancashire Hotpot with Black Pudding

Is it sacrilege at a Burns’ Night Supper to think about members of the pudding-race other than the ‘great chieftain’? If it is, I’m a damned heretic. Last month, attending a haggis-fest, I was sat next to a Lancastrian grandmother — this was a cosmopolitan Burns’ Night, you see — who described her childhood memories of the making of hotpot that included black pudding.

Hotpot is hot again, and there are many recipes around for it. The classic version includes kidneys with the lamb, but replacing the offal with the pudding also makes for a satisfying dish. The secret is that the black pudding melts during the long, slow cooking, disintegrating and enriching the sauce.

Recipes divide over whether to cook the meat before putting it in the oven. In my experience, it certainly doesn’t need frying first. My preference is to place the raw pieces of neck of lamb in the pot, with the pudding, onions and slices of carrot, layering them with slices of potato, and using lamb stock as part of the liquid, combined with water (or, in my case, white wine). The liquid should reach two-thirds of the way up the pot, but should not cover all the food. Into the oven, with a little butter on the top layer of the potato, at a high heat for half an hour, , then a low heat for two hours, followed by another 30 minutes at the same temperature but with the lid off and, if necessary, a couple more knobs of butter so that the top potatoes brown. It is a heart-warming dish.

Fino’s Fine

I should explain my terms first. At the end of a talk I gave a couple of years back, a well-coiffured English lady came up to me and said: ‘that was fine’. I was about to ask her why, in her opinion, it had not risen even to the level of ‘good’ when she qualified herself: ‘quite fine’. A delight of English English (in contrast to, say, its American cousin) is its potential ambiguity, latent in both ‘quite’ and ‘fine’; the two words together – a rare combination nowadays – provide high praise, the adjective on its own something less. When I use ‘fine’ for Fino, I mean it in the more frequently used sense.

Don’t get me wrong: my companion for the evening (and, readers, I’ll admit it, for life) and I had an enjoyable time. We went away nourished and content. We were well looked after and the one out-and-out mistake of the cooking was met with apologies, concern and a refund. All was fine.

Quite.

I realise that the Hart brothers are the toast of London town, that the words on everyone’s lips is ‘where next’ for their empire (or rather, ‘quo vadis’). And they deserve success: after all, they have provided the capital with tapas of far higher quality than is usually available in this country. The dishes rarely disappoint: the one instance in our experience were the veal sweetbreads, served in an inviting sherry and lentil sauce but with the offal itself cooked unpeeled; the result is a closed texture, firmer than ideal, that refuses to allow the flavour to ooze out of them. The one real mistake I have alluded to was, all in all, a venal sin: the metal clip still on the end of the chorizo which, in a brighter light, would have been easily noticeable. But I did not choke or crack my teeth (sorry to dismay). Sometimes the food does not quite hit the mark: a combination of quail eggs, pimentos and morcilla mingled together enticing flavours, only to be undone by the heftiness of the black pudding that overwhelmed its dainty accompaniments. But, just as often, the cooking is masterful: the perfectly formed tortilla, the ridiculously rich croquetas, or the dish of white beans, chorizo and morcilla curada, where the dark sausage melts. The wine list should leave no one in doubt of the gifts the Spanish peoples have beneficently bestowed on European viticulture, from the generous portions of fine sherry, via the wonders of the reds – we had an Arrocal with a complex, floral bouquet and a gentle richness in the mouth – to the delights of port and brandy.

I have, in short, nothing against the Harts and their success. But what I wish is that there was more heart to Messers Harts’ Fino. It is busy and bustling, but then so is Euston station. The waiting staff are knowledgeable and attentive when they have a moment, much like my GP (actually, that depends on which GP I visit). This is undoubtedly a well-run business, but that exactly is the problem: the spirit of business is what Fino exudes. There is no passion, and passion surely needs to be there when tapas is what you serve. Somewhere like Fino is just too large, too damned successful to be anything other than – grave insult – corporate. It is the sort of place that could only achieve in a megalopolis like London. But if this is what Londoners want, then, well, fine.

The Virtues of a Reformed Fallen Woman

In the Year of Our Lord 2009, He bestowed two blessings on the gastronomic life of His city of Oxford. One of them is the outstanding Michael’s Kitchen — of which more another time — while the other is the Magdalen Arms. Do not be fooled by this public house’s dedication to Christ’s fallen lady companion: her name is pronounced the same maudlin way, but the pub is a mile away from the eponymous College and Bridge.

They said it could never work: a gastro-pub in the nineteenth-century suburb of Oxford that surrounds the Iffley Road. They probably recalled the watering hole it had been, boasting — it is said — ‘more pool tables than you’ve ever likely to have seen’ at such a venue and wondered both how and for whom it would function when the old attractions had gone. Fortunately, ‘they’ can get it wrong (and do, more often than not). They may not have calculated with the changed nature of the area, one of those parts of the city where dons whose salary can not pack a Jeremy Paxman punch and so can not live in North Oxford choose now to reside. They may also have underestimated the ability of the new owners — Florence Fowler and Tony Abrano — to provide both inventive dishes and a relaxed dining environment.

The Magdalen is still a pub, a discreet diaphanous divide separating the front drinking section from the food tables at the back. But, in my experience, it is to the back that most people head. No wonder: this place can not be faulted for stinting on ambition. Its menu changes daily. Game like venison and rabbit are regulars on the list, while faggots are something of a signature dish. Previously, the only eatery on Magdalen Road was a vegetarian cafe; all those starved of fresh flesh are thankfully now provided with a place that can sate their sanguineous appetites.

Not that the meatless would fail to enjoy a meal there. Indeed, the most memorable dish I have tasted there makes a humble vegetable so ridiculously delicious it is nearly criminal. You can hardly get more humble than a starter of purple sprouting, but in this concoction with shavings of ricotta on garlic bread, it was transformed as miraculously as water into wine. Try the lightly-steamed purple greens, with the cheese, on their own, and your tastebuds are assailed by a freshness heightened by a slightly spicy undertone. Try them again, this time with the bread included, and there is a quite different but no less beguiling sensation, a more complex, salty combination.

Besides this, perhaps any other starter would have struggled to compete. The breaded duck hearts with sauce gribiche, a sort of offal schnitzel, exemplifies the adventurous content of the menu. But this adventure was more Scott of the Antarctic than Hilary of Everest. The coating was slightly too thick and dry, the hearts so thin, that it was like listening to an unbalanced recording of some lieder: the accompaniment drowns out the delicate voice. The finely concocted gribiche certainly did help tease out the tender taste of the meat and perhaps on another occasion the balance would be perfect. You certainly would not want the chef to tone down his ambition.

In comparison to the starters, the main courses are less showy than they are warming and filling. If that makes them sound like comfort food, then it is the comfort of cashmere or satin: there is a fine sense of detail and wise understanding of pairings. The meat is, quite rightly and with adequate warning, served rare: a roast saddle of hare comes nearly tuna-like in colour, a beautiful red, and it takes the taste to an understated place far from the musty game style that is the animal’s usual guise. Combined with a faggot and wine sauce, this dish — to be shared between two — would satisfy the most carnivorous. A pot-roasted veal breast is so understated it is nearly brazen about it: the soft texture peeling away, the richness of this food comes less from the meat itself than from the accompanying vegetables, the kale (again, humility made sublime), carrots and, adding extra depth, chopped porcini.

Alongside the food, there is a small but well-chosen wine list: a bottle of Douro, for instance, is not cheap at £20 but it provides a mildly fruity, medium-bodied companion suitable for much of the menu. It is difficult not to leave this restaurant content — and looking forward to the next visit. It might not seem propitious to have inherited a pub-name associated with the second Biblical Mary, the fallen woman, since prostitutes are not commonly celebrated for the sort of subtlety and refinement that is on display here. But the Magdalen did reform, just as this pub has done, and it deserves our blessing for that.

Making an understatement

Chapel Street Brasserie

12 – 13 Chapel Street

Penzance

Cornwall, TR18 4AW

First, the confessions. I visited this brasserie in the centre of Penzance on a Sunday night, never the best time to judge the quality of a restaurant. I also committed the sin of raising my own hopes of a memorable dinner, and so perhaps my disappointment was unavoidable. And, if the words before you were by the person who was sitting opposite me rather than by myself, then the review would be all the more glowing.

Penzance has not surfed the crest of the gastronomic wave that the north Cornish resorts like Padstow or St Ives have enjoyed. Meals out are mainly provided by the town’s pubs, some of which, like the Navy Inn, certainly have a very good reputation, particularly for their seafood. There is one town-centre restaurant, Harris’s, that gains plaudits but it comes as highly priced as it is recommended. So, situated just down from the polychromatic 1830s Egyptian House (a testament to the quirkiness of a decade more readily associated with sober achievements like the Great Reform Act) on Chapel Street, the eponymous brasserie is a refreshing alternative. You wish the place well.

It is fairly small, a  single long room of what must once have been shop frontage. The space is made to appear larger by that ruse which is the interior designer’s equivalent of the padded bra: wall-long mirrors which, placed opposite the street windows, help provide a relaxed and light-filled ambience. You want it to be good. The menu offers a wise balance between fish and meat, and promises intelligent combinations of tastes. You have high hopes that the food will be better than good.

The two starters gave a sense of the range of the kitchen. I had pan-fried scallops and black pudding, a twinning which is becoming familiar in the way that prawn cocktails were in the 1970s. The best rendition of this type of dish I have savoured was at The Trout at Tadople Bridge in Oxfordshire, where it was a case not of twins but of triplets: the scallops and the pudding accompanied by lamb’s sweetbreads, providing a graduation of tastes summa cum laude. But that dish has long been wiped off from the blackboard. Cornwall, rather than land-locked Oxfordshire, is a more natural location for this sort of dish, with its seafood and its own contribution to the culture of the boudin. The West Country local speciality is hog’s pudding, white and fairly light-tasting; in some butchers, like Courtneys in Exeter, there is also a blooded version on sale. Up from the brasserie, at the top of Chapel Street, the Penzance butcher, Ian Lentern, can provide a superlative hog’s pudding but the dark equivalent is made to a different recipe, more of a Lancashire-style black pudding. It is that sort of sausage that lay beneath the two plump scallops of my starter. Both components, on their own, were a pleasure to the palate but together they made for a failed marriage, the boudin simply too forthright for the more demure sea-food.

The pigeon salad opposite me had a wealth of tastes but the meat at its core, like my scallops, was understated. Lightly fried and sprinkled with citrus juice, its flavour spoke quietly, hardly audible above the noise of its accompaniments. I, but not the person to whom it was served, had the same response to the main course of lamb shank. It melted off the bone and had a gentle taste befitting, perhaps, of the innocent young animal from which it had come, but not as rounded in sensations as such a dish can be.

If my main course had similarly made an understatement, maybe I would have left marvelling at the courageous ‘less is more’ feel of the food. You would have imagined that such an approach could be a real virtue with a main course of calves liver, that noble cousin of other livestock’s innards, contrasting to them in its subtlety and its latent sweetness that can be brought out by sensitive cooking. If so, on this occasion, your imagination would have fooled youo. There was no problem with the mash, or the gravy. The smoked bacon was rich, perhaps overly so for the liver at the best of times. But this was not the best of times. The liver looked the part – thinly cut, lightly browned on the outside, juicy red on the inside – but it should have failed the audition. The taste was so overpoweringly bitter it could have turned a delicate stomach vegetarian. I am made of stronger stuff and, reader, I soldier on, hoping that each mouthful would improve on the last. It did not.

On reflection, when a dish is that wrong and that out of kilter with what else is on offer, it should have been sent back from whence it came. It would be best to write it up as a freak accident, untypical of kitchen. Indeed, it would be unfair to judge a restaurant on this single outing. Would I go again? I probably would, but when it came to choosing my main course, I might prove lily-livered.

Brains on the Brain

The British BSE crisis was at its height eight years ago now, but one part of the fallout from ‘mad cow’ disease continues. The UK government’s response to the crisis included a ban on the sale of animal brains for cooking  — a ban which is still in place. For many, this might seem nothing other than a step forward for civilisation. But for those of us who worship a food which defies the the law of physics that divides solid from liquid and which transubstantiates the form of meat into something altogether more heavenly — for us true believers, it is one more modern woe of the world. Give us the chance, and we will explain to you how the logic of the ban is flawed — BSE was scrapie jumping the species barrier to cows, and BSE, in turn, was transferable to humans, but it was the spinal cord that caused the transfer, not the innocuous brains themselves. We will reminisce about experiences we can no longer savour: I still remember well the nkha’at pane of lambs’ brains simply but perfectly fried at my favourite British Lebanese restaurant. And we will tell you (if you are still reading) of where elsewhere in Europe you should now travel to enjoy such a delicacy.

There is nothing delicate about the bistro in the Cheuca barrio of Madrid known as  El Comunista. Crammed into its small space, sitting on the wall-long benches, the future revolutionaries (and bourgeois fellow-travellers)  prepare themselves for battle with hearty — and cheap — meals. Refined it is not, but delicious the food can be. It is over a decade since I have been there, but I learn that they still serve sesos, calves’ brains, a steal at a price well under ten Euros.

It is only one of two places I have tried the grey (actually quite white) matter of cow. The other is Ristorante Greppia, in the centre of Verona, a place worth visiting for so much of its menu, not just the golden cervella di vitello. More usual — and perhaps less frightening for those brought up on fears of BSE — is the slightly lighter taste of lambs’ brains. All the places I would recommend for those devoted to such cerebral gastronomy are, like Greppia, in Italy. Two are close to each other in the old ghetto of Rome. Perhaps the more famous is Da Giggetto, hard by the Portico d’Ottavio, but my own preference is for Al Pompiere, nearer to Largo Argentina. But, if you find yourself further north than the Eternal City, in Tuscany, there is the restaurant where I have indulged in the most impressive cooking of lambs brains, fried with a crisp exterior that contrasts superbly with the melting texture of the wonders within. It is Osteria il Ghibellino, right in the centre of Siena, near the cathedral. The medieval wars between the eponymous Ghibellines and their rivals, the Guelfs, may be long gone, their cause hardly remember, but you sometimes have to fight for a table at this restaurant and, believe me, it is worth it.

Marinade for Wild Boar

Summer may have not really icomen in this year, but it is certainly a-going out now. One advantage of the sun’s descent into the season of mellow fruitfulness is the game meats that are on sale in England. The other weekend I roasted a rolled piece of wild boar. Here is an Italian tip which really does enrich the subtle flavours of pork’s noble cousin.

The revered Hugh, whose Meat cookbook is my vademecum when it comes to roasts, advises against marinating a joint, and quite understandably. For most animals, it can drown the taste rather than enhance. But not with boar. Days of wallowing in liquid make a happy piece of meat. Heat a generous amount of olive oil, add to it (being careful of its spitting) a couple of bay leaves, some cloves and some crushed juniper berries. After a couple of minutes allowing their taste to suffice the oil, turn off the heat and let it cool. When cold, pour it over the boar, and put it in the fridge. Leave it for three days or more — I think the longest I have done is six — every half-day or so turning over the meat so another part of it is immersed in the oil. You will not regret the space it takes up in your fridge when it comes to cooking and eating it.

The Cat and the Alchemist

One the Cat didn't get: an owl, from the Oldham Chapel, Exeter Cathedral

Cat in the Hat

29, Magdalen Road,
Exeter, EX2 4TA
(01392) 211700

Chef: Phil Picton

Exeter is a city where to fine-dine is to go to a hotel. In many urban settings, hotels tend to be for breakfast the morning after, and certainly not for a meal the night before; eating in a hotel restaurant can be to sup on the very spirit of inadventure. But, in Devon’s cathedral town, the gastronomic throne goes to Michael Caine’s at the (typographically-challenged) ABode Hotel, a success emulated by the Treasury at St Olave’s, and the Olive Tree at the Queen’s Court. To step out beyond their cosy interiors is wilfully to sign up to the chain-gang. Like nearly every other city centre, Exeter is dominated by the familiar, in some cases improbably transported into the most historic of surroundings. Top of the location list must be Ask, as in ask yourself how a mid-range pizza/pasta joint could take over medieval ecclesiastical buildings at the heart of the city’s Cathedral Close. To which the answer, of course, is capitalism.

Capitalism has not been kind recently to small, independent restaurants. Blue Fish, nearly opposite Exeter’s Central Train Station, had a red-hot reputation, but, when the credit crunch bit, it had its chips. Others have also gone to the wall, but outside the city walls, there is one establishment still standing which is well worth a visit. It is a very different experience from the hotel haunts. All pine and primary colours, it goes by a cartoon name that for any reviewer would make wordplay child’s play. With just over thirty covers – and a full house only achievable by demanding a level of physical proximity alien to the English even at moments of private intimacy – one might wonder how the grim reapers of capitalism have been kept from this door. Best not, though, to worry about profit margins and financial viability, and wallow instead in the chef’s attention to each dish that the small numbers allow.

The quality of this bistro can be summed up in one dish: a wood pigeon salad, on the menu as a starter. The succulent thin slices are impressively off-set by the complexity of the sauce, the earthiness of cubed beetroot combining with the sweetness of balsamic in unexpected harmony. There is an alchemy to taking disparate elements and moulding them into one richer substance. It is a mythical art that the chef has mastered.

Not all dishes rose to this standard. Some were simply very good. Our other starter partnered seared scallops with a red risotto and a green sauce, where the support acts were selflessly understated, letting the headline performers stand out on their own. The alchemist’s touch returned with the main courses. We were not asked how we wanted the lamb cooked, which was good, as it came too brown for any hard-core carnivore. But that could not detract from the infusion of taste provided by the thick and, once again, complex herb crust, complemented by the rich olive gravy. It was a dish that worked particularly well with the Cote du Rousillon, recommended by the kitchen from the small, well-selected list of house wines. It was a wise choice. The depth of forest tastes it poured into the glass matched what was on our plates.

Any carnivore, worried by the browning of the lamb, will be reassured when they realise that this restaurant does not stint on its meat: it comes in what are technically called big chunks. That worked for the lamb, but less well for the duck breast, so beautifully pink it could have been on an outing to a Pride festival. Here, the thickness of the cut masked rather than heightened the flavours which had to stand up to a welter of other sensations, led by a fine example of the vegetable preparation now known as Mandelson guacamole. Who would have imagined that the ever-so-’umble mashed pea could taste so good or work so well with the more regal morel mushrooms and artichokes that graced this dish.

This restaurant is lowly like its tasty mushy peas, when compared with the refined ambience of Exeter’s city-centre hotel dining rooms. This is not a place for those impressed by context more than content of their meal, and if you want to slope off upstairs afterwards to sleep straightaway, you can’t. But it provides food to remember at at a price that is reasonable, proof that a Cat can look at a king, without even doffing its hat.