Eat father eat.

When I was growing up we didn't eat out all that much, well, not unless we were on holiday, but that's a different topic all together. There were a few places that we'd get take aways from, fish and chips after swimming or trampolining of an evening and very occasionally a Chinese from the Golden Coin. However the restaurant that figures strongest in my childhood eating memories is Ye Bambam Ye at Cemetery Junction (nothing at all like the execrable film presents it to be). This was a Turkish place, split between a take away on one side and a smallish traditionally decorated restaurant on the other. Dark carpets, shishas and tapestries were the order of the day as far as decoration was concerned and for us Edwards children it was the nec plus ultra of dining sophistication. It's funny thinking back to the sorts of dishes I remember, platters of rice, grilled meats and vegetables, chilli and garlic dips, flat bread, actually all the things that I love to find in restaurants now.

The restaurant was to the left, what is now sadly the Up The Junction bar

Moving swiftly through the wilderness years of living in Glasgow where despite BBQ Kings' best efforts, their chicken shish was really only a sideline to their bread winners of large doners and chips'n'cheese (both yellow and orange cheese if memory serves), I found myself travelling to Turkey with my sister to visit various Anatolian Greek sites as part of her degree. This naturally meant we would spend several days in Istanbul, where from a hotel in the Beyoglu we did all of the touristy things and ate quite a few kebabs. Sadly, beyond a couple of slightly disappointing fish dishes I don't have any great recollections of the food, slightly odd given that even at that time I was beginning to pay undue attention to whatever it was I shovelled into my mouth.

25th birthday dinner somewhere in Istanbul

Several years later I was in Izmir for a wine conference, the European wine bloggers conference to be precise, hold oddly in the Asian side of Turkey, but I'll drop my geographic pedantry and get back to the food, which with one exception was pretty awful. Large banqueting style dinners are never the way to get under the skin of a countries eating culture. Thankfully my desire to avoid paying extortionate hotel fees had seen me book a place in the centre of the town some twenty minutes walk from the conference site, a walk that took me down the back lanes of Izmir and right past the lines of outdoor kebab stalls, intoxicating would be one way of describing the smell. Rickety white plastic tables and chairs, seemingly snaffled from a children's party (the only way I could explain their diminutive size) would be swiftly wiped down while I drank sweet black tea. For the record I favour half a sugar cube per glass, yes I concede that over the course of a day one edges into diabetes threatening levels of sugar consumption, but it is only on holiday that this happens. Then the unshaven chap in the filthy white apron would bring me my wrap. The small round flat bread wrapped ice cream cone like round freshly sliced beef (I know it was beef because when I queried what it was he put his hands to the side of his head like horns and proceeded to moo, who needs to speak the language) that had been grilled on a horizontal spit in front of wooden embers. A small amount of lettuce, tomato, cucumber and yoghurt completed the snack. I returned every day of my stay. I was hands down the best food I'd ever eaten in Turkey, smokey, succulent, tantalisingly fatty and just the right size to allow me to eat a modicum of whatever rubbish was going to be put in front of me later in the day.

How it's done properly

I now live in South London, disgustingly close to the palace of joy that is FM Mangal and as such have lamb shish and adana wraps mere moments from my door, it's no surprise that they now know me by name.

Ragu and authenticity

I think about authenticity quite a lot. It tends to haunt me when I'm thinking about wine lists, I want the wines I list to speak of the places from which they come. I want to show grapes that belong, made by people that understand them. I feel similarly about cooking, I've been to so many wonderful places and eaten food made by people who've lived there for generations cooking the things that they grew up with. It's while eating food like this that one tastes the authenticity that comes from the marriage of product and place, season and style, and yes I'll accept that much of this may well be entirely of my own imagining it's still very satisfying.

This tends to cause me concern when cooking at home. How ever can one hope to emulate this on a daily basis? Instead, I fall back on the kinds of dishes I like. No I don't live in the Eastern Med, however I'm quite happy to get very liberal with my sumac application. Nope I'm not in Dhaka (never been, sadly) but that's not going to stop me playing with panch phoron when I'm grilling a chicken, however that lack of authenticity does still linger in the back of my mind.

Anyway, Sam, one of my old friends from Pony Club (yes I did write that, and yes you can fuck right off if you have an issue with it) posted to facebook that they were slaughtering some of their one year old sheep. I was actually slightly slow off the mark as my sister had already bagsied one, needless to say several weeks later we were in possession of about half a hogget and a bag of offal bits because 'I figured you'd find something to do with them'. Nothing quite like a fun challenge based around somewhat unidentifiable frozen bits of sheep in plastic bags.

Now I'm quite an adventurous cook, though this does come with a degree of worry. I guess I'm consciously torn between my principles and what I've actually had experience cooking with. Suffice to say I didn't really know what I was going to do with several lamb hearts. I've cooked with ox heart before, but I didn't really know to what extent lamb's heart was going to be a) tough, b) gamey, c) tasty. So I went for the easy option and decided (courtesy of a suggestion by @siepert) to make a ragu with it.

It was here that I hit against the issue of authenticity, ragu is essentially an Italian peasants dish, I'm guessing made from whatever was around with the glut of ripe tomatoes that arrived in the summer. I'm neither Italian, nor is it the height of summer in my groaning kitchen garden (I don't have one) so this left me with several options. I could find the best ragu recipe I knew of and follow it word for word (with obvious offaly substitutions) or I could wing it. Naturally I started with the best intentions, did all sorts of research, then drank half a bottle of cheap white wine, went shopping, forgot to pick up various things and ended up winging it.

A ragu starts with a good soffritto, that is finely diced onion, carrot and celery, two parts of the first, to one part each of the second and third. I forgot to buy celery so my aromatic base was left to resemble a castrated Toulouse Lautrec. Still, I added a shit load of garlic instead, after all I like garlic and for various reasons there's a sack of it in my hall way. This was left to sweat and turn all tanned and golden while I fortified myself with the remaining half bottle of cheap white and turned my attentions to the lamb offal.

What I had thought was going to be two lamb hearts turned out to be one lamb heart and a lamb's liver, no harm no foul I figured, liver's got great flavour and will be equally delicious if somewhat more frustrating to dice finely and neatly. The heart was actually quite beautiful, much more human in scale than that of an ox and oddly reminded me of something one might see in a piece of devotional stained glass, the fat around the top appearing almost like mother of pearl or loosely applied cake icing. On slicing it in half I was stuck by the mechanical functionality of it, something you don't really see when cutting more prosaic pieces of meat. Ventricles and atria, muscles stretched at angles ready to pump. I was genuinely quite taken aback by it's elegance. Still it was nothing that a couple of minutes with a sharp blade couldn't reduce to neatish chunks.

Offal sorted, and by this time my veg base approaching readiness, it was browned off in a hot pan, added to the soffritto, swiftly followed by similarly browned beef and pork mince and five cans of plum tomatoes (aisle three of Morisson's being Camberwell's equivalent of a bounteous tomato crop),  several bay leaves, two smallish sprigs of rosemary, some water, some soy sauce and fish sauce for authenticity (to any raised eye brows I counter you with several texts pertaining to garum and its ubiquity in Roman cuisine) and a healthy slug of wine.

This was then left for a period of time, roughly equivalent to the time it took me to get on a bus to Euston, meet several friends from Manchester to catch up over a few pints before catching a somewhat delayed bus back home.

Duly fortified with both grape and grain I arrived back at my house to be welcomed by the scent of long slow cooking, whatever it was I'd made had worked to some degree, indeed on tasting it'd acquired the umami richness of long cooked tomatoes and meat and I'd go so far as to say it was delicious. Also, possibly as a result of my hearty fortification I felt able to pronounce on its authenticity. I'd made a version of a classic dish, without any particular adhesion to instruction in a way that I felt at least matched the spirit of someone needing to feed a family whilst faced with a set of basic ingredients and a source of heat. In which I found at least a temporary respite from nagging doubts as to my worthiness to cook/play with other cultures heritages.

Indeed I'm happy to say that it was magnificent with linguine and a gremolata (@foodstories suggestion, and one that really completed the dish by adding the requisite freshness and top notes that its bass heavy meatiness required). Also, the four tubs that I froze sated my latent desire to attempt some sort of frugality with regards to my food expenditure.
An all round success.

Quite possibly the lamb whose heart and liver I cooked, if not then one of its kin.

John Dory starter

John Dory is an exceptionally ugly fish, however it makes up for this by being quite gorgeous. It's a trifle more expensive than my usual fish purchases, so I decided to cook it such that one could really focus on the fish.

Concasse tomatoes, finely chopped white onion, garlic, some mild green pepper, salt, pepper and red wine vinegar to balance the sharpness.

Gently cooked in some olive oil.

Two fillets, skin side down on a hot pan, they'll contract somewhat, when it looks like the right sort of time, kill the heat and flip the filets over, the residual pan heat will finish them nicely and make it less likely that you'll over cook them.

Bad Ramen

I don’t really understand noodles. They’re rather like rice, not anything I grew up with. Yep I know how to make them, I’ve cooked them, I’ve followed detailed recipes from Harold McGee to make proper alkaline noodles to go in Tonkotsu broth lovingly distilled from a shit load of bones. This doesn’t mean I get them; it doesn’t confer upon me an appreciation of their finer subtleties.

Many moons ago I when I worked at Oddbins people would come in and ask for Champagne for special celebrations and the like, they’d ask about Dom Perignon or Krug, and I’d question them as to whether they thought it’d be money well spent? Did they drink Champagne enough to really justify all that extra cost, wouldn’t they prefer to buy a couple of bottles of Bollinger Grande Annee for the same price? I wasn’t trying to make people feel foolish, I was just worried that as we get to the higher price points the law of diminishing returns starts to gnaw away at the obvious differences, leaving subtleties. And the one thing I do know about subtleties, is how easy they are to miss. Just talk to me about interpersonal relations for a pretty swift demonstration of that.

So anyway, I’ve read loads about Ramen noodles, pretty much the whole of the first issue of Lucky Peach was one long soggy love letter to them. They sounded awesome. David Chang outlined their sheer wondrous brilliance in many a third person piece, and I wanted in on all this good stuff. But where was I to cut my teeth?

A full day’s worth of boiling, kneading, chopping and, well actually more boiling again, supplied me with a bowl of steaming porky, fatty broth. Rustically cut noodles curled around my fork (I didn’t have any chop sticks), the still ever so viscous yolk of my soft boiled egg leaked dangerously into the soup whiule scattered herbs and spring onions gleamed emerald round the puddles of fat languorously coalescing on the surface. Yet still I didn’t really feel that I’d got it. It was nice, I had a glorious sense of satisfaction over a dish well made, but it didn’t feel like it was mine to love. There was no tugging at heartstrings, no moments of wistful reminiscence; I just didn’t have any context. Not having grown up eating noodles, I didn’t really have a backlog of flavour memories with which to compare what I’d made. It was frustrating; deep down I knew that if it had been roast potatoes, I’d have had an opinion. Fuck yes I would have done, and I’d not have been backward about coming forward with it. You’d have known, because I’d have told you, how much better, or indeed worse, I could have done the potatoes. But with these noodles I was silent.

When you’re mighty geeky like I am, there’s a certain helplessness about being confronted by things that you can’t judge flavour wise. It’s sad, but I’ll admit to liking to know about what I’m eating, I feel a little lost at sea when I don’t, that little boy lost in China town not knowing what in the world to order.

Btw, read into this whatever you will….

Fabulous lady chef twins

So whilst eating at Mandari in Tblisi we were introduced to the head Chef Tekuna Gachechiladze, who not only was cooking some pretty stunning food also bore a striking resemblance to Kristen from @lecamionquifume.

Thanks to @msmarmitelover for the photo of Tekuna.

Les Enfants qui a perdu son politesse

Quite apart from how difficult it can be to secure a table reservation for five people on a Saturday in Paris when you’ve restricted yourself to choosing places where the wine list focus is what one would call natural. There are other issues involved with trying to have a celebratory evening out in France’s capital city.

T&C had hopped on the Eurostar, somewhat on a whim and we were planning a good solid evening of wine consumption, accessorized with a few plates of decent food and lots of catching up.

Meeting them off the Eurostar we ducked into a nearby bar to sort out plans for the evening. Of course this necessitated the usual rigmarole of catching the proprietors eye, taking a table, then waiting for him to see fit to come over and take an order, nothing out of the ordinary there.

We hopped in a taxi to the hotel, which was a neat 9.5 euros. T&C nipped up to their room to drop bags, then we asked the hotel to order us a taxi to the restaurant, essentially back where we’d come from.

It was here that I started to get a trifle annoyed, after repeating the name of the restaurant, the road name and the quarter 1eme a couple of times, while the driver queried the 10eme (all in French). He finally shook his head, asked again, I offered to show him the address as written, he then repeated it word for word as I had told him, before shrugging and driving us there. For 19.50 euros. Cunt. Now my French accent is pretty good, and I was being very clear, I can only assume that his view was as English folk we wouldn’t really know what we were doing.

Les Enfants Perdus, on arrival to an empty restaurant. (In French)

Me – Hi, we’ve got a reservation for 5 in the name Edwards.

Waiter – OK, where are the rest of your party?

Me – Oh, they might already be here, they left before us from the 18^th.

(bear in mind the restaurant is empty, it’s 7.30pm before most people eat in France)

Waiter – Nope, please can you wait at the bar.

Me – Sorry, is it ok to go to the table.

Waiter – Well, sometimes the rest of a party can take some time to arrive, so it’s better at the bar.

What the fuck, it’s a tiny little restaurant bar, there are three stalls, the table is empty and we’re on time. What did they think they were going to squeeze another sitting into the time we were waiting for the rest of the party. Did they hope that making us feel like three out of place cunts was going to make us order more? No fucking clue.

(a couple of minutes later)

Waiter – You can go to your table now.

Ahh we’d served our penance for arriving at different times and now we were being given the privilege of our table. E&E, the rest of the party arrived moments later.

I’d considered posting about what we ate, it was all pretty good, the wine list was about 6.5/10. A nice Alex Bain Pouilly Fume 010 (though I was a bit uncertain of the storage as it wasn’t as fresh as the last couple of bottles I’ve had), a non-descript Savennieres and Ermitage Pic St Loup, were our choices.

The service carried on its theme of incompetence and misplaced hauteur, so we left after mains.

Les Enfants Perdus, 9 rue des récollets 75010 Paris

I understand that this reeks of first world issues, but I've spent a large part of my life working in hospitality, and there is no need for this odd need that a lot of French waiting staff seem to have to ensure the guest knows his place.

Bistrot Paul Bert

The underground walkway between the line 4 and line 12 of the metro at Marcadet Poisonnieres is interminable, throw in a trip that took three changes an empty stomach and a slight hangover, you’ll understand why I was a bit jittery by the time I arrived at Faidherbe Chaligny to meet my friend Juel (@winewomansong).

Lunch was to be at the storied Bistrot Paul Bert, an old school place down a little side street. They were middling busy when we arrived, 1pm on a Tuesday in February possibly not being their busiest service.

Service was gloriously French in that it had that charming inattentiveness that only the French seen to quite manage. They had their own pace for feeding and watering us and little I could do seemed to change it. Mind you aside from the quibbles over getting a jug of tap water and a basket of bread there was little for which we wanted.

2007 Overnoy Arbois Pupillan: Savoury and salty with some neatly delineated dusky oxidative lowlights, but nothing too outré. This was all about the coiled acidity and tightly wound minerality.  

Turning established gender menu choice stereotypes neatly on their head I opted for the red mullet carpaccio followed by the brill, while Juel took the agricultural laborers option of terrine de campagne de la maison and tete de veau avec sauce gribiche.

The mullet was a beautifully arranged carpaccio of luminescent stained glass like slices decorated with milky white disks of daikon and lightly pickled spring onion. The slices came slightly thicker than at Au Passage, and though the plate was marginally more cluttered both dishes were astonishing in the freshness and quality of fish presented.

In contrast to the carpaccio, the terrine was a veritable doorstep of country bluster. An edible cliché of traditional peasant directness and honesty, it’s muscular porky depth bristling like stable boys stubble on a ladies cheek.

Jean-Francois Ganevat, Cuvee de l’enfant terrible Poulsard 2010 was almost schiller wein in colour, being fresh and like a deep rose. Light carbonic style tannins came with fresh Jura alpine influenced acidity. Some faintly cherry like fruit notes, but really this was about restrained site specific expression.

I have long held that there is nary a dish that cannot be improved with the measured addition of pork product. The Brill with Puy lentils (aux lard) was a prime example, marvelously cooked brill, seemingly needing no more than a shrug of the knife to come away from the bones, the flesh still juicy in it’s chunks. The flesh had been crowned with two perfectly crisp rashers of bacon that neatly proved a flavour bridge to the slick of creamy lentils, their lovely earthiness grounding the dish.

I didn’t try any of Juel’s tete de veau, but there was very little attempt to gussy it up for the restaurant table, indeed the waiter congratulated her on her order and left with a wry grin on his face. A pile of fatty, meaty head was topped with a pile of sauce gribiche, there were a couple of boiled vegetables added as an afterthought and a surprise treat of a largish morsel of wobble brain. Judging from the heroic amount that Juel ate and the entirely positive noises I kept hearing it was rather good.

 

I’m always less impressed with desserts that I feel I ought to be, it’s probably related to my tendency to work my way through the bread basket at the start of the meal. That said the desserts were great examples of Parisian classics, my Paris Brest coming liberally decorated with bits of nut and fair bulging with praline cream. Juel’s Baba aux rhum looked like a particularly extravagant mediaeval hat with it’s towering spiral of cream at its centre. As usual the bottle of rum was left on the table in the off chance that we’d need to add more.

I loved Bistrot Paul Bert, it was exactly what I imagine of a French bistro, bold traditional flavours where necessary, delicacy if called for. A stunning wine list of natural wines, though taking the more liberal French interpretation of the term means that there are wines for everyone here.

I will be back

Bistrot Paul Bert, 18 rue Paul Bert, 11eme Paris
+33 1 43 72 24 01

what do you call

What do you call a pile of Vietnamese baguettes?

A Bahn Micelle…

Shockingly bad jokes aside, I was at a slight loss as to what to do for lunch yesterday. A week in Paris was leaving me with no great desire for more French food, quite apart from the ease with which 50 or 60 Euros can be dropped on a couple of plates and a glass or two of wine.

One slightly joking suggestion from @LoveLELUU later I was on the Metro to the Vietnamese part of town. I’d seen a review of the Bahn Mi from Hoa Nam on rue de l’Ivry and it looked pretty much exactly what I was after.

The area around rue de l’Ivry is shockingly similar to bits of east London, Vietnamese restaurants and supermarkets, high rise tower blocks and loads of students.

2.80 euros later I had a baguette stuffed with pork belly, lacquered pork, cucumber, shredded marinated carrot, persil Chinoise (Chinese Parsley?) and lots of spicy sauce.

Fuck me it was good, I very nearly was back five minutes later for a second.

I think I want to move to the 13^th district….