A Tale of Turbot

One of the fish that appears like the Holy Grail for us midwesterners is turbot, a flat fish that is totally unknown in our markets and inappropriately distant from our Chicago restaurants.  But the fish markets in London are not unacquainted with this specimen.

Compare life to art:

This is a sculpture in the German university town of Göttingen by Günter Grass.  Here is the more conventional view of the turbot:

Our method was to roast some root vegetables: fennel, leek, and carrot.

Then add the turbot on top, and roast for another 15 or so minutes in our anemic oven:

Meanwhile, boil some potatoes. Not just any potatoes, but first of the season Jersey Royals.  The Bentley of potatoes, or so they say.

Fillet the turbot and serve on top of the vegetables, with potato on the side.

Accompany with the excellent Sancerre earlier purchased from HG wines. Simple. Elegant. Fresh fish. What a concept!

There was no dessert on record, but breakfast on the morning of the purchase of the turbot (at Furness Fish at Borough Market) was the magnificent St John donut (purveyed by Neal's Yard Cheese) and an espresso macchiato from Monmouth Coffee.

Other culinary outings included a spontaneous Sunday lunch at Les Deux Salons, following a session at the National Gallery and prior to a showing of the Japanese film Norwegian Wood (outstanding).  We each had two starters:  sardines and beetroot salad; and both of us had "ravioli" with veal and cavalo nero and goat cheese. The "ravioli" was in fact thinly thinly sliced veal, the filling the veg and cheese.  The combination was truly outstanding. Great taste, and not too much food.   This was followed in the evening by our own meal of Ginger Pig beef, coriander and red wine sausage, along with risotto with broad beans (first of the season).  Alas, we think that pork makes the best sausage.  And the best broad beans are yet to come.
Other restaurant adventures included Giaconda Dining Room, very near by on guitar-intensive Denmark Street.  On our way, our dining companion pointed out the studio where the Rolling Stones recorded their first tunes.  Giaconda is very small, about 8 tables, but with outstanding and not expensive cuisine. We shall return!

Wine and Cheese

Shopping for wine in London ought to offer a cornucopia of choices and a huge range of wines from the empire (Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia) to Europe (Italy, etc.)  In fact, there are relatively few retail shops in our Bloomsbury neighborhood.  According to the press, local retailers are being squeezed by the big grocery chains, like Waitrose and Sainsburys.   In particular, Oddbins, which began as a kind of quirky antepodal shop trading on their choices of a few unusual wines, is in receivership, and a few of the shops around us are closing down. Another chain, Nicolas, features French wines, but there are none close to us.  Our closest Oddbins on Southampton Row has a very limited range of wines.  There is a larger scale shop, Majestic Wines, further away, but they sell only in quantities of 6 bottles or more, with the ambience of Binny's Beverage Mart in Chicago.  Our wine consumption has been limited by the number of bottles we can carry from Waitrose in a day's shopping.  Their selection is broader than at Oddbins, but not as broad or interesting as our own Corkscrew in Urbana.
Enter HG Wines, the wine purveyor associated with St John Restaurant. They specialize in finding out small scale producers of interesting French wines that they can make available at their restaurants for reasonable prices.  We have now purchased two shipments of wine from them: they too require a minimum of a case for free delivery, but the wines are interesting and well chosen by people we should be able to trust.   Here is our most recent assortment (chablis, muscadet, a couple of no-name reds, and the Roussillon we enjoyed at R's birthday dinner.)

Also for the birthday celebration was a cheese tasting at Neal's Yard Dairy.  We signed up for "A Vintage Every Day: Variations in Handmade Cheese."  The tastings are held in the evening at the Borough Market location (in fact, in the "tutor's" apartment, above the shop), and include a basic introduction to the hows of cheese-making in Britain.  We were fortunate in that the regular tasting guy, Chris George, on his way to New York, and his replacement, James Rutter, were both on hand to provide anecdotes (shooting cheese*) and instruction.  There were just a few of us at this tasting ("because it sounded too academic, unlike 'beer and cheese'") so we got to ask lots of questions.  Here is our cheese plate:

Clockwise, from high noon:
Perroche (made by Charlie Westhead. Pasteurised. Goats milk. Vegetable rennet.) Very fresh. Great.
Golden Cross (made by Mary Holbrook at Sleight Farm near Bath. Unpasteurised. Goats milk. Animal rennet.) Greater.
Innes Log (made by Joe and Stella Bennet at Highfields Farm, Staffordshire. Unpasteurised. Goats milk. Animal rennet.) Greatest. (Lucky we had bought our own log a couple of days before.)
Gubbeen (made by Tom and Gina Ferguson near Schull,  Co. Cork, Ireland. Unpasteurised cows milk. Animal rennet.) Soft and interesting rind, but...
St Tola (made by Siobhan Ni Ghairbith near Inah, Co. Claire, Ireland. Unpasteurised Goats milk. Animal rennet.  Also interesting introduction to "terroir" in cheese.
Denhay Farmhouse cheddar (made by Mike Reave at Denhay Farms, Broadoak, Dorset. Pasteurised. Cows milk. Vegetable rennet. [purchased at Waitrose - not available at Neal's Yard]  Not very good.
Montgomery's Cheddar (made by James "Jamie" Montgomery at Manor Farm near Cadbury, Somerset. Unpasteurised. Cows Milk. Animal Rennet). Our favorite, then and now.
Long Clawson Stilton (made at Long Clawson Dairy, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Pasteurised Cows Milk. Vegetable rennet).  Ugh.
Colston Bassett Stilton (made by Richard Rowlett and Billy Kevan at Colston Bassett District Dairy. Nottinghamshire. Pasteurised. Cows Milk. Vegetable rennet) Creamy, rich, flavorsome.
Stichelton (made by Joe Schneider and Team at Collingthwaite Farm, Nottinghamshire. Unpasteurised, Cows milke, Animal Rennet.)  One of us felt this was not as good as the Stilton or as previous tastings of Stichelton. But pretty good all the same.

Wines were provided by Laithwaite's at Vinopolis, another firm that seems to seek out unusual and small producers.  They included La Fontaine Aux Enfants, a pinot blanc from Alsace (2008), and La Font del Bosc, a fortified wine bottled at Chai au Quai, Maury, 2005.  Both very good with cheese. Red wine with cheese -- most experts say not to do it.

What we learned:  animal rennet and unpasteurised milk are superior.  But the big chains need to use vegetable rennet (some of which comes from cardoon thistles!) for their least common denominators.  We learned about different molds and bacterias that are applied to the cheeses to produce the crust that helps to ripen them.  We learned that each batch of cheese, even from the "bigger" producers like Montgomerys, is different. In this case, Jamie must use three different starters on successive days to keep from inbreeding, and some starters are better than others. So always taste before you buy.  We learned that making goat cheese is easier because the maturation period is short enough to be able to adjust the ingredients along the way.  With an 18 month cheddar, it's more like turning an oil tanker at sea.

*Shooting cheese. A certain proportion of the cheddars are not edible at all, so they are saved, and then the cheesemaker and friends hoist them up and shoot them with their shotguns at holidays. "Pull!"

And unfortunately, Neal's Yard saves its best cheeses for local sales, so even though you can buy Montgomery's and Stichelton at Whole Foods Chicago (and elsewhere), it is not the same as buying in Covent Garden. So we need to gather our rosebuds while we may.

Marylebone Farmers' Market

Borough Market is one of our favorite places in London, for shopping early on a Saturday morning before the crowds arrive.  It's not a farmer's market, although some of the stalls represent single producers.  Others are importing their fruit and veg from all over.  For a real farmers' market, there is the Sunday market at Marylebone High Street, featuring, among others, the Izzard (of Cambridgeshire) stall of fresh greens.  In two trips so far, I've failed to take any other pictures here, alas.

This Saturday we missed Borough Market, so we shopped for the week at Marylebone (the market runs at civilized hours from 10 am to 2 pm).  We had our eyes on things for a cod recipe, and on wood pigeon, that we'd seen before.  So for Sunday night, we managed to accumulate the ingredients for cod and endive with blood orange sauce, a recipe sent to us from our friends at Arbutus.

For the cod
4 pieces of cod, 160g per piece
100g butter
100ml olive oil


For the chicory
2 chicory, split lengthways
1 orange zest and juice
50g butter
splash of olive oil
5 juniper berries, crushed
sprig of thyme
salt and pepper
50ml water
knob of butter

A fishmonger from Kent sold us a nice piece of cod. But endive is not a farmer product, so we had to buy some imported endive (aka chicory) from the Marylebone Waitrose, which is much fancier than our Bloomsbury Waitrose (more and better fish and meat, for example). Meanwhile, split the endive in half lengthwise,  and sauté in olive oil and butter until nicely browned.  Then add the other ingredients: (except the butter) and bring to the boil.  Bake in a 130 degree (C) oven for about 35-40 minutes, until the endive is soft. (As usual, our oven takes a bit longer.)   Take the endive out, and boil down the juice. Close to the finish, prepare the fish:  heat butter and olive oil in a "non-stick" pan (aka our Le Creuset casserole), with some chopped garlic, and sauté gently, basting frequently.  The fish should be a nice golden brown: Squeeze the lemon juice over the fish, and serve together with the endive and its reduced juices, enriched with butter, on the side.   The orange flavoring with the garlic and butter was very delicious, and the fish was tender and moist.  Bravo, Arbutus! Thanks for the recipe. Tonight was for the wood pigeon.  We'd had our eyes on these particular small birds for some time, but it seems that they are always in season, so there was no rush.  One of Hopkinson's recipes calls for preparing them with Little Gem lettuce and fresh peas, which are not yet in season.  But on Sunday, we decided to purchase some boneless pigeon breasts anyway, and find a recipe later.   From ITV came an excellent one for pigeon breast with Savoy cabbage and lentils.  We had bought a  cabbage at the market, and we had Le Puy lentils in our cupboard. The recipe was actually much more complex and we couldn't make the whole thing -- lacking, for example, Madeira and port.  But here is what we did. For the lentils, we sauteed some onion, garlic, and carrot, added the lentils, covered with water, and simmered with some thyme sprigs for about 40 minutes.  Meanwhile, we sautéed about 100 grams of smoked streaky bacon from the Ginger Pig: And we shredded the Savoy cabbage, wilted it for a few minutes in some olive oil, then added some water almost to cover and simmered covered for about 5-8 minutes.  To the cooked bacon, we added a couple of tablespoons of honey,

and some wine vinegar, and then we combined them with the cabbage. Meanwhile, we made a sauce by reducing some red wine with chopped mushrooms and shallots, then added some prepared beef stock we'd bought at Waitrose.  The actual recipe wanted us to make a stock from the pigeon carcasses, but we'd forfeited this opportunity by buying only the breasts.  The sauce is then finished with butter. Finally, the breasts are sautéed for a couple of minutes on each side.  They plump up nicely. Finally assembly: on the platter, pile the lentils on one side, the cabbage with bacon on the other, and top the cabbage with the sliced pigeon breast.  The vegetables were sweet and savory at the same time (all that honey); the pigeon was gamey, a little like liver, but tender. And the flavors all melted together brilliantly.

Excellent with a bottle of Corbieres merlot. (And plenty of leftover for cold pigeon salad.  If we were really on top of the game, we'd make deep fried soft boiled eggs a la Glasshouse.  But we won't.)

Tune in next time for adventures in wine shopping in London.

The Rolls Royce of Chicken

Part two of our weekend of "traditional" eating revolved around chicken.  The Borough Market is full of chicken choices: free-range chickens of all colors and breeds and provenances, organic and non-organic; and of course smaller birds that we have been already sampling.  But it was time to put one of these larger chickens to the test of a simple roast chicken recipe.  We had settled finally on a "Label Anglais" from the Wyndham Farms stall, and as we were trying to decide between one with more breast (yellow label) and with more leg (green label), a fellow shopper who was there to purchase a stewing chicken and a duck, assured us that these were the "Rolls Royce of chicken," all the great chefs including Gordon Ramsay used them in their restaurants. He was very enthusiastic.  How could we resist? So we opted for a 5-pound (with two packets of giblets) yellow label bird (costing 12 pounds and fifty pence. The Rolls Royce is not your everyday car, and the Label Anglais Special Reserve is not your everyday bird!)

Following Simon Hopkinson, we decided on a classic and simple roast chicken, its cavity stuffed with sprigs of thyme and two squeezed lemon halves.  The breast is slathered with butter.

The chicken is then roasted, first at high temperature (425) for 15-20 minutes, and then for another hour at 375. Hopkinson claims the whole process for a 4-pound chicken should take only an hour; Julia Child calculates an hour and twenty minutes.  There are of course many variables, but Julia usually turns out to be more helpful.   Once roasted, the skin nice and brown, the chicken should rest for 15 minutes to allow the juices to relax into the bird and make carving easier.

For the rest of the meal, we cooked some carrots Vichy style with water and butter, but instead of sugar or honey, we sliced up some of our stem ginger and added that plus its syrup to the cooking mix.  An excellent variation on an old favorite.

And in what may be a first for this blog, dessert!  We bought some early season, forced rhubarb from "Turnips," one of the large vegetable stands at Borough Market (known especially for their large variety of mushrooms, but featuring vegetables from all over.)  The yellow leaves, we assume, were the result of the forcing.

We decided to make our usual rhubarb crisp a la Chez Panisse, but with variations based on our larder.  We still had hazel nuts from an earlier dish, so we toasted and chopped a half cup of these.

Meanwhile, we macerated the rhubarb in sugar and flour, and then combined it with more slivered stem ginger.  The topping consisted of butter, dark brown Madagascar sugar (the Brits stock an amazing variety of sugar, even Sainsburys), white sugar, flour, cinnamon, and the chopped hazelnuts.  Bake in the oven until bubbly, and it's done.  The rhubarb did not exactly get as bubbly as usual:  is early forced rhubarb less liquid than our Urbana varieties?  Was there too much flour?  Or was the oven temperature again inaccurate?   The all-important test of taste rendered these questions rhetorical.  But perhaps we should try again later in the season.

Meals out: Sardo, the neighborhood Sardinian restaurant on Friday (and again Monday!), and a "Bombay Cafe," Dishoom, meant to recapture the ubiquitous casual all-day eating spots of 1960s Bombay.  Small plates, quick plates, nice flavors, especially the calamari and vegetable samosas. Right next door to Jamie's Italian, and a good place to go after the theatre, especially if the theatre is 5 minutes away.