Last Wednesday, January 25th was the day of the Andy Roberts featured evening at Haverfolk, formerly known as Havering Folk Club. Why did they change the name? I don’t really get it, you’d have to ask Simon or Peter. Anyway, after a recent period of not playing guitar so much really, I managed to get in just about the right amount of rehearsal time in the days before and decided to go ahead with the plan of doing three new songs and basing the rest of the entire setlist on my own material, much as I had done so for the guest night at Romford Folk Club, nearly a year earlier. The full set list for the night as actually played is viewable with links to each of the songs on my own wiki, here at : January 2012 setlist and any upcoming gigs are on the Main page, such as the one at Loughton on Thursday April 19th, 2012. Setting off for the venue was a bit traumatic, as an electrical fault had caused a series of cancellations on the main from Liverpool Street Station to Romford, so we went to see what the buses were looking like, just missed one, and saw that the traffic on the main road was choc a block. So we went back to the station and waited for the next train due, which should have been a half hour wait under the abnormal circumstances but then that one was cancelled too. There was nothing for it but to lug the two guitar cases and ourselves onto a busy number 86 bus and just sit it out as we chugged our way up along the occupied bus lanes and through the congested area around Ilford. We would arrive late for the start of the evening perhaps, but not late for my own appearance due around 9 O’clock which in the event we turned up well in time for. So that’s the transport news, then. A bit of a preoccupation with people who live in the London area I’m afraid. The gig itself went well, I thought, I was reasonably happy with the performances and the guitars stayed mostly in tune. The turn out was good, and people said they enjoyed the music, so that’s a big result, and one of the best things is that Linda’s front row video recording managed to capture the full setlist with no problems, so we have a decent audio and visual of all 21 original tunes. There’s a possibility of bringing that out as a DVD which will become the latest release from me to replace the few copies of the “Sampler” EP I’ve been carrying around for almost three years now! I think I ‘ll be turning the soundtrack into three episodes for the podcast series, and uploading a few songs to youTube as well, but the first one I’ve got processed is the finale song where I managed to get two violinists up on stage with me, namely John Foxen and Richie Barratt with Pep on Banjo and I think you can just hear Bernie on concertina and Mickie Brown on harmonica as well. Here’s Cajun Music Cajun Food live at Haverfolk
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I posted to andyroberts.me
Haverfolk January 25th
http://andyroberts.me/andy-roberts-youtube/haverfolk-january-25th
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February 1 2012, 11:42am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Cooking Monkfish with Cider in Galicia
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/09/28/cooking-monkfish-with-cider-in-galicia
Hello, I’m cooking fresh fish with cider over a trangia camping stove in sunny Galicia, northern Spain. With videography by Evan Roberts, this youTube is pretty self explanatory.
The actual location is a campsite at Camping Moreiras, O Grove, Pontevedra, Galicia. The fish, a whole monkfish, came from the fish market on the harbour at O Grove itself, as did the vegetables and the cider is an Asturian Sidra Natural obtaine en route from one of many Eroski supermarkets. Just a bit of fun really, but it captures one of many happy mealtimes from a memorable holiday touring Asturias and Galicia in September 2011. There are loads of photos online at both my collection and Linda’s Flickr photostreams. Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogCooking Monkfish with Cider in Galicia
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September 28 2011, 7:13am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
Cooking Monkfish with Cider
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCs5-w2k8a4&feature=youtube_gdata
September 27 2011, 8:05am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Supermarkets kill free markets as well as our communities
Across the country local shops have been wiped out by supermarkets.
This article titled “Supermarkets kill free markets as well as our communities” was written by Peter Wilby, for The Guardian on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 20.00 UTC A few weeks ago our last local butcher closed. When we moved to this suburban Essex town 40 years ago, it had six specialist shops selling fresh meat. The last independent greengrocer disappeared nearly two decades ago. Happily, we still have an independent baker close by, and even a fishmonger a brisk 25-minute walk away. But for how long? Across the country the small retailer is being wiped out. In the whole of Britain there are fewer than 1,000 specialist fishmongers, 7,000 butchers and 4,000 greengrocers, and barely 3,000 independent bakeries. In all these categories, the number of specialists has fallen by 90% since the 1950s, and at least 40% in the last decade alone. They have been driven out by supermarkets, which now sell 97% of our food, with four chains accounting for 76%. Next to the motor car, nothing else has so radically changed the look and texture of our environment over the last half-century – creating what the New Economics Foundation calls “clone-town Britain” where every high street has the same shops. Until now politicians have had almost nothing to say about it. However, last Sunday the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was asked about the “Tesco-isation” of high streets – a subject prompted by two riots in Bristol over a Tesco store – and said: “I think that is an issue, yes, and it is something that we’re looking at.” Hardly a rallying cry, but an encouraging change from the standard political response, endorsed by the Competition Commission in 2008, that consumers like the low prices, range of goods and quality offered by supermarkets. An advance too from Labour’s position in Scotland: in February it helped defeat the SNP minority government’s proposal to impose a “supermarket tax” on retail premises worth £750,000 or more. Even the “good for consumers” defence of the big stores requires scrutiny. Supermarkets may offer mangoes and kiwi fruit as a blessed relief to generations who recall the surly greengrocer grunting “no demand for it” when asked for anything out of the ordinary. But the option to buy locally grown produce is increasingly closed off; many varieties of English fruit disappeared long ago. Supermarkets stock food not for its taste, but for its longevity and appearance. Conventional economists count numbers, assuming that a huge increase in toilet roll colours represents an unqualified gain to the consumer. They neglect more subtle dimensions of choice. The central issue, however, is whether “what the consumer wants” should close down the argument. What people want as consumers may not be what they want as householders, community members, producers, employees or entrepreneurs. The loss of small shops drains a locality’s economic and social capital. Money spent in independent retail outlets tends to stay in the community, providing work for local lawyers and accountants, plumbers and decorators, window cleaners and builders. US research finds that every $100 spent at a local store generates 60% more local economic activity than $100 spent in a chain store down the road. It also finds that, after the arrival of a big supermarket, participation in local charities, churches, campaign groups and even voting declines sharply. As Jane Jacobs argued in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1960), communities are created by myriad small daily encounters: getting cooking tips from the greengrocer, hearing about a job from the butcher, recommending a good plumber at the bakery, exchanging opinions in the pub. “The sum of such casual, public contact at the local level,” wrote Jacobs, “…is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust.” Supermarkets minimise human contact in the interests of efficiency and convenience, most recently by introducing self-service lanes for payment. As one critic put it, they “cut the threads that hold an engaged community together”. Such issues should concern the right as much as the left: indeed, the most hard-hitting recent report on supermarkets came from ResPublica, the “red Tory” thinktank, and points out that only 12% of Britons hold business assets – and that, when monopoly goes unchecked and a sector of the economy is in effect closed to new entrants (as the grocery sector largely is), we start to “practise capitalism without capitalists”. Becoming a small retailer once allowed an ordinary working man or woman, and particularly an Asian migrant, to aspire – often after redundancy – to independence, self-reliance and upward social mobility. Moreover, supermarkets have become not only a monopoly, giving consumers a diminishing choice of food outlets, but also a monopsony, giving suppliers little choice of buyers for their produce. They have used this power ruthlessly, forcing down prices and increasingly dictating to suppliers what they produce, where they produce it and how they package it. The casualty rate for small producers, unable to survive on the supermarkets’ terms, is almost as great as for small shops. The effect on wages and working conditions in the food industry is well known, but the effect on what is supposed to be a free market is less often considered. Eastern European regimes, dictating from remote, central offices who could grow how much of what, were once regarded with horror. Even western governments were denounced when they adopted industrial policies to choose “winners” and “losers”. Tesco does that every day, and its suppliers have as little recourse to legal or political redress as a Soviet peasant.
The supermarkets are classic examples of what has been called the tyranny of small choices. Any rational individual will buy most of his or her food and household goods from a big store because prices are lower, choice greater, quality more consistent, and service speedier. I may have the time and money to tour smaller shops. My neighbour, while recognising he may get something better from a specialist retailer, may judge that it will not be so reliably better (for my parents’ generation, supermarkets were liberators from the risks of mouldy cheddar and maggoty apples) as to justify the extra cost and time. Neither of us will take much account of community cohesion or local employment, still less of the dangers of monopoly and monopsony. This is where we should look to politicians for a larger view. They need not confront supermarkets directly, which clearly terrifies them. But they can partially re-create, and preserve what is left of, the independent retail sector through, for example, tax concessions; a community right to take over or find buyers for threatened businesses; and enhanced powers for local councils to protect retail competitiveness. This is an issue – straddling political and ideological boundaries and putting flesh on the abstractions of communities, big societies and social mobility – that Miliband and the Labour leadership, encouraged by the stirrings in Bristol, should seize.
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May 3 2011, 5:17pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Best in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/03/best-in-dough-french-bakers-best-baguette-paris
Paris bakers competition. With a punishing criteria and several entries stakes are high at a Parisian contest seeking to identify best stick of bread
This article titled “Best in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty” was written by Agnes Poirier in Paris, for The Guardian on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 21.00 UTC They are hot, golden and crispy. Their makers hold them like saints’ relics and the judges in charge of inspecting them wear white gloves. These are the prized entries competing to be named Paris’s best baguette. At the head office of the bakers and pâtissiers’ union in the heart of Paris, young and old bakers queue up to enter the competition, first held in 1994. Pascal Guenard, a baker and pâtissier for more than 20 years is entering a baguette in the contest for the first time. He wears his white uniform and has flour in his hair; his pair of baguettes smell divine. “It’s the first time I’ve competed for best baguette but I came fourth once in the best croissant competition,” he said. “This award is very important for us and for our clients. I want them to be proud and be able to say that their baker makes the best baguette in Paris. It’s also a way for us artisans to fight the big supermarkets which sell crap baguettes for 50 cents. At €1.10, our baguette had better be good.” On the second floor, white-gloved ladies give a number to each pair of baguettes, register every baker’s name and address, and wish them “bonne chance”. Each baguette is then measured and weighed. This is the guillotine moment. Baguettes must measure between 55 and 70cm and weigh between 240g and 310g, criteria that were established 20 years ago. “We had to set up rules,” said Jacques Mabille, president of the bakers union. “During the war, baguette’s crumb was grey. The French grew to hate it. “So after the war, the whiter the crumb, the happier the people were. However, to get a very white crumb, you must compromise on the overall quality of the bread and on its taste. So we chose to return to a more balanced baguette and set up a few rules. … Today, a good baguette has a creamy-looking crumb, a crispy crust, a distinctive flavour and a delicious smell of wheat. And it shouldn’t have more than 18g of salt.” Each year, a third of baguettes are disqualified, usually because they are too heavy and too long. At the end of the queue stands Lahoussaine Damer, 26, a baker and pâtissier since the age of 18. “It’s the third time I’ve competed but I’ve never got into the top 10. This time, I have tried to perfect the cooking. Also, I was careful with the measurement and weight. They are ruthless. My baguette was disqualified last year for one centimetre.” Which French baker does he admire most? “Djibril Bodian.” Bodian, a member of the jury this year, was the winner of last year’s competition. He came to France from Senegal at the age of six, and fell in love with bread through his father, who set up a boulangerie in the Paris suburb of Pantin. After he won, Bodian became the French president’s personal baker, delivering his baguettes every day to the Elysée Palace. “We were never complimented by the Elysée Palace but were told that if nothing was said then it was a good sign, that they liked it” he says. “We have today a whole new generation of bakers in Paris, of African origin, from the Maghreb but also many Japanese and Cambodians,” said Mabille. “Baguettes have universal appeal. Besides, bakers are usually trained in French schools with traditional recipes and savoir faire.” A total of 174 baguettes were entered for the prize, with 38 disqualified. Among the 15 judges was a fromager, a teacher at the boulangerie school of Paris, and a food critic, as well as six Parisians chosen randomly after they entered a lottery. They touched, stroked, chewed, smelled, and even listened to the baguettes, inspecting their backs and bellies. Their colour and holes were closely inspected and intensely debated. Some judges spat out their samples . Three hours later, the verdict was given: after competing for the eighth time, Pascal Barillon, from Montmartre has won the best baguette accolade. As of Wednesday, he will be Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s official supplier.
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May 3 2011, 5:06pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Angela Hartnett’s roasted pollack with crushed new potatoes and chorizo recipe
This is a wonderful recipe combination of spicy chorizo sausage and meaty sustainable fish. The vinaigrette could be made with apple cider vinegar.
This article titled “Angela Hartnett’s roasted pollack with crushed new potatoes and chorizo recipe” was written by Angela Hartnett, for The Guardian on Wednesday 20th April 2011 16.30 UTC Pollack is a member of the cod family – a greeny-brown carnivore that can grow up to a metre long. It is common off the coast of Britain and Ireland, especially around wrecks, where it is popular with amateur anglers. It has traditionally been less of a hit with cooks, but with the push to eat more sustainable fish, pollack has emerged as a viable alternative to cod and haddock. Most supermarkets stock it, though you may find it labelled, French-style, as colin. Not only is it cheaper than cod; as far as I’m concerned it’s just as tasty. Like all flaky fish, pollack can break up during cooking; a quick solution is to salt it beforehand. Just cover the fish with rock salt and leave it to firm up for 30 minutes, before giving it a quick rinse and patting it dry. If you do this, remember not to salt the fish again before cooking. I love this combination of spicy sausage and meaty fish, but you can leave out the chorizo and finish the dish with extra vinaigrette. Ingredients (Serves 4) 4 100g portions of pollack fillet 12 large new potatoes, washed, with skin on 1tbsp diced black olives ½tbsp chopped basil 50ml vinaigrette 100g chorizo, chopped into lozenges 3tbsp olive oil Rock salt Method Fill a pan with cold water, a little rock salt and the potatoes, and bring to the boil. Cook for about 15 minutes, until just done. Drain the potatoes well, crush with a fork, and mix while still warm with the vinaigrette and olives. This ensures that they take on the full flavour of the vinaigrette. Set aside. Season the pollack with salt (unless you have previously salted it to firm up the flesh). Heat the oil in a non-stick pan (medium heat) and add the pollack, skin side down. Give the pan a quick shake to prevent the fish from sticking. To cook it should take about two minutes each side, depending on the thickness of the fillets. The fish is ready when you can easily push the handle of a spoon through it. Remove the fillets from the pan and place them somewhere warm. Add the chorizo to the now-empty pan and lightly sauté until it starts to release its oil. To serve, dress the potatoes with the chopped basil. Place the fish on top and finish with the chorizo lozenges and the oil from the pan. Any extra potato can be served on the side.
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April 22 2011, 10:23am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
MasterChef: have things gone stale?
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/14/masterchef-have-things-gone-stale
Masterchef is no longer very interesting at all and there are also far too many cooking programmed and celebrity chefs on tv at present. Jamie Oliver’s dream school wasn’t exactly a success so I expect he’ll be back in the kitchen soon as well. Then there are all of the hybrid programmed that try to combine the most audience engaging aspects from across several genres. They never work very well either. Relocation cookery, gardening talent, animal casting and so on.
This article titled “MasterChef: have things gone stale?” was written by Vicky Frost, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 14th April 2011 10.44 UTC Sometimes I wonder if I’m stuck in a kind of MasterChef vortex. First there was Loyd Grossman. Then there was John and Gregg bellowing and sucking their forks on BBC2. Next came the celebrities, the professionals and the juniors. Followed by the Australians, and their version of the UK show. And now? Now we’re apparently watching the UK version of the Australian version of the UK update of the Loyd Grossman original, on primetime BBC1. Who knows where it will all end? Or indeed who will still be watching? Because while previous incarnations of MasterChef might have been stuffed with ridiculous declarations, surplus rounds that appeared to have no bearing on the result, and more passion and determination than even Lord Sugar might think totally necessary, the show was rarely boring. This series, however, I’m finding it hard to summon up the energy to last a whole episode. The problems started with the auditions. John cried in one of them. Nobody cooked a playdafoo that looked like a child had made it unsupervised, wearing a blindfold, while having a tantrum. John and Gregg didn’t patrol the aisles rolling their eyes wildly and grimacing at anyone daring to experiment like they were actually going to be poisoned. Cocky competitors weren’t totally shamed in front of each other. Things haven’t really improved since. The set seems to have quadrupled in size so that the competitors could feasibly source entirely different sets of local ingredients, and the invention test box has morphed into a whole deli. Worse are the challenges. Fair dos to Gregg for trying to ramp up the tension of cooking for a circus on Peckham Rye – PECKHAM RYE! — or making a buffet for the cast of Merlin – THE CAST OF MERLIN! – or just some students – ERM STUDENTS! – but why aren’t the contestants doing more cooking in actual restaurants with actual chefs? That used to be most of the show, now it seems to be all field kitchens and mass catering. Things got a little better on last night’s show with the arrival of Michel Roux’s croque-en-bouche and a trolleyload of cakes – although it possibly wasn’t entirely wise to draw parallels between flying for the RAF and making some sodding sandwiches, Gregg – but I still feel that I’m seeing the series out to the bitter end, rather than actively enjoying it. Even old Toorude and Gregg the Egg appear to have changed their ways. I have heard not one metallic basil; merely a sprinkle of deep, velvety, iron-rich descriptions; absolutely no threats to de-robe and dive into a pudding. Only one proper, ridiculous moment has lodged in my brain: John doing some kind of uber-camp panto hiss of “Don’t bite off more than you can chew!” at Miss Swansea. Now that’s why I watch MasterChef. Instead we’ve had a few guest chefs to liven things up. But largely we’ve been meant to be caring about the contestants and their journeys and the challenges they’ve overcome. Sadly I haven’t, and I don’t. This year’s contestants are largely oddly unappealing – perhaps because they were whittled down to a final bunch astonishingly quickly. All I’m really interested in is their best two courses, which we get to see surprisingly infrequently. It seems strange, really, that MasterChef Australia, from which the new UK show borrows heavily, can combine many of the same elements and come up trumps. But then it also does everything the British show does, just 50 times bigger. So the judges are more flamboyant, more ridiculous; the contestants live in a house together and vote each other off; they have cook-offs against real chefs; they cater amazing weddings on boats. Against that background, setting the whole thing in a vast, sunlit warehouse feels vaguely reasonable. On BBC1, it doesn’t. So: how are you getting on? Are you looking forward to the final couple of weeks in a state of slight outrage after this blog? Or have you lost interest already? And can anyone explain why, when MasterChef was on seemingly every night for increasingly idiosyncratic lengths of time, we all moaned it was too much, but now we have it once a week for an hour, it seems it’s too little – even though it’s also completely boring? A quandry no?
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April 14 2011, 6:02am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Turkey eggs make UK supermarket debut
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/10/turkey-eggs-make-uk-supermarket-debut
I like duck eggs myself, but not necessarily from Waitrose.
This article titled “Turkey eggs make UK supermarket debut” was written by Rebecca Smithers, for The Guardian on Sunday 10th April 2011 14.14 UTC They are one of the best-kept secrets of the baking world, but shoppers have never before been able to buy them on the UK high street. Next week, however, turkey eggs will go on sale in supermarkets for the first time in response to demand from consumers keen to cook with a growing range of speciality eggs. Retailers report healthy year-on-year sales of duck, goose, quail and even ostrich eggs as a more interesting and distinctive-tasting alternative to traditional hens’ eggs. Turkey eggs – which will make their debut in Waitrose – have never been sold by retailers because turkeys lay fewer eggs than hens and most of them are used for breeding the Christmas birds. The chef Jamie Oliver has used turkey eggs in his test kitchens. They are about one and a half times the size of large hens’ eggs and are strongly recommended for baking, giving cakes a light and fluffy texture. They are also suitable for soft boiling, scrambling and poaching. The Waitrose eggs buyer, Frances Westerman, said the supermarket had decided to stock the eggs in response to customer demand “Turkey eggs are the most asked-for speciality eggs amongst our customers,” she said. “They have excellent cooking qualities and, because they are they’re bigger than hens’ eggs, you need two instead of three to make a really light sponge cake.” The eggs will be on sale in selected Waitrose stores until late August, when the laying season ends, and will cost £1.99 for a pack of two. Later this month, the chain will also stock rhea eggs – 10 times the size of medium hens’ eggs, which take roughly 90 minutes to hard boil – costing £25 each. Selfridges sells the full range of eggs supplied by the Cornwall-based speciality breeders Clarence Court – goose, ostrich, hens, guinea fowl, quail and duck – endorsed by chefs and restaurateurs such as Mark Hix, who is keen to show the potential of eggs beyond boiling and scrambling. The store will be stocking gulls’ eggs when they come into season later this month, and says its food halls attract a high number of customers looking for speciality goods. The Selfridges chilled goods buyer, Elizabeth Hastrip said: “We’re also seeing a big spike for quail’s eggs at present – up 20% on this time last year. Goose eggs have only just come into store, but they’re performing about 20% above expectation at the moment.” Of other supermarkets, Sainsbury’s stocks duck and quail eggs and reports a year-on-year rise in sales of 10.9% and 1% respectively. Overall, sales of eggs in the UK grew by 2.6% last year, according to TNS Superpanel data, but Britons still lagged behind many other countries in egg consumption.
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April 10 2011, 12:41pm | Comments »
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I posted to andyroberts.me
Podcast 40
http://andyroberts.me/podcast/podcast-40
Podcast 40 is from part 2 of last Sunday’s afternoon session with more rehearsals of old songs as a trial for April 12th and a cover of Bob Dylan’s Hurricane – just because there’s time enough. Here’s the download and play link etc: Subscribe to the podcast RSS or get it from iTunes Download MP3 to save – 32.1 Mb in size, playtime 22 minutes 15 seconds :- 40 Andy Roberts Podcast Episode 40.mp3 Andy Roberts Podcast #40 Shownotes Show Notes for Podcast 40
Hurricane – Bob Dylan Living Here – Andy Roberts Joan of Arc – Andy Roberts Mazet – Andy Roberts Cajun Cooking – Andy Roberts
Orbit Tower
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April 10 2011, 8:24am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Bordeaux uncorked
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/bordeaux-uncorked
The city of Bordeaux is gleaming after a makeover and the region’s conservative vineyards are casting off their haughty image and welcoming visitors for city breaks in Europe.
This article titled “Bordeaux uncorked” was written by Oliver Thring, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 12.30 UTC The English have always liked Bordeaux. It presents them with a neat and nifty range of familiar French staples: old patissiers, echoey churches, pretty cafes with unsmiling waiters, old cobbled streets, and women who swoosh past, helmetless, on bicycles. For a couple of hundred years, this land, Aquitaine, was English, a chivalrous region roamed by troubadours and ravaged by plague and perpetual war. And it’s near the sea, of course, just a few miles over the dunes from the chilly Atlantic breakers. Or perhaps the English see something of themselves in the proud, reserved character of the Bordelais. This is a town that never bothered with tourism, that didn’t have to: it had already made its money on spices, slaves and grapes. In 1855, Napoleon III oversaw a list classifying the “best” Bordeaux estates, a census of allegedly top “growths” that still dictates the hierarchy and prices of specific wines. Twelve bottles of Chateau Lafite 2009, a “premier cru”, are yours today for around £14,000. Whatever else, the 1855 classification was a shrewd piece of marketing. It cemented Bordeaux’s entitled, Gallic haughtiness even as the town itself went to seed. A decade ago, Bordeaux’s buildings were soiled by age and neglect, the town a shabby sump of rotting docks and stagnant industry. Things are visibly changing. Modern trams now purr and whine through scrubbed boulevards; in the main square, the Corinthian columns of Victor Louis’s Grand Théâtre seem to glisten. Over at the Place de la Bourse, they’ve installed the “miroir d’eau” or water mirror, the most beautiful puddle in Europe. We stayed at the renovated Hôtel de Normandie (7 cours du XXX Juillet, +33 (0)5 56 52 16 80, hotel-de-normandie-bordeaux.com, rooms from €95, breakfast €15pp), brilliantly placed in the city centre and near the successful, funky wine school, Ecole du Vin de Bordeaux (3 cours du XXX Juillet, +33 (0)5 56 00 22 85, bordeaux.com, two-day course on Bordeaux wine from €218pp). The city is cleaning up the knackered old cathedral, too, which the Pope consecrated in 1096 in an early example of urban planning. Sweaty local students pedal tourists around the town in flimsy plastic rickshaws, pointing out the sights in broken, demotic English. Food But parts of Bordeaux still seem timeless. The old city is spliced by rue St Catherine, one of the longest shopping streets in Europe, flanked by boutiques and shoe shops. Near the big clock, one of the few surviving landmarks from the medieval period, a spice shop called Dock des Epices (20 rue Saint-James, +33 (0)5 56 44 41 57, dockdesepices.com) fugs the street with the smell of cumin and cassia. I bought some livid purple salt flavoured with local wine – it goes beautifully with fish. A rather grand cafe, Baillardran (55 cours de l’Intendance, +33 (0)5 56 52 92 64, other branches at baillardran.com), serves exquisite canelés, the local delicacy of tiny cakes of caramelised custard. La Tupina (6 rue Porte de la Monnaie, +33 (0)5 56 91 56 37, latupina.com, lunchtime menu from €16, evening tasting menu €60) is a stalwart side-street bistro that’s been open for almost 40 years. It was one of food writer Jonathan Meades‘s favourite restaurants, and it appeals to a very English ideal of French hospitality. Inside, a huge hearth roars and spits, roasting chickens and braising lamb, and there’s a vast board of pink, fat-studded charcuterie. The restaurant is famous for the heavy cooking of south-western France, but my starter was a huge slice of beef tomato, thick as a pack of cards, criss-crossed with padrón peppers, while a main of roast veal with vegetables was similarly light. They play birdsong in the loos, which is somehow a very French conceit. Another fabulous restaurant is Le Petit Commerce (22 rue du Parlement Saint-Pierre, + 33 (0)5 56 79 76 58, le-petit-commerce.com, two-course lunch menu €12), a bijou fish place with rickety tables, brusque service and a refreshing lack of tourists. Wine Bordeaux’s wine industry has been typically slow to welcome visitors. Max Bordeaux (14 cours de l’Intendance, +33 (0)5 57 29 23 81, maxbordeaux.com) is a wine shop with a couple of spartan black and white rooms and almost nowhere to sit down. But you can drink some of the most expensive vintages in the world here on a relative budget: they serve it in 2.5cl thimblefuls. A scant sip of Mouton Rothschild is €15, and Lynch Bages and Château Margaux’s second wine are both only €4. It’s a cracking idea – borne, perhaps, of a sudden realisation that the world is threatening to overtake Bordeaux, that lazy reliance on history and standoffish tradition might no longer do in a future of cheap long-haul and boxed Rioja. Driving through the gnarled and corrugated vineyards of the Médoc, you can feel Bordeaux’s persistent sense of entitlement or noblesse oblige. Prim, privileged chateaux sit like dowager aunts behind forbidding iron railings and old stone walls, staring with miserly joy at the writhing lucre of the vines. Billboards of the most famous names in the wine world flick past: Latour, Lafite, Margaux, Pichon Longueville. The signs could just as easily say “Keep Out: visiting these places is almost impossible for ordinary people”. So it’s exciting that a few of the younger chateau owners are beginning to open up to visitors. The “tasting room” of Château La Tour de Bessan (Route d’Arsac 33460 Cantenac, +33 (0)5 56 58 22 01, marielaurelurton.com) is a rusty old telegraph building that somehow Tardises into a sleek, elegant space. They teach people how wine is blended here, letting visitors mix tannic and complex cabernet sauvignon with hot, boozy merlot. One rather grand chateau, Gruaud-Larose (33250 St-Julien-Beychevelle, +33 (0)5 56 73 15 20, gruaud-larose.com), even holds cookery courses alongside its wine tastings, while a wing of Château Marojallia (marojallia.com) is now a comfortable hotel. Perhaps the most innovative recent development is a place called, in bolshy Franglais, La Winery (Rond-Point des Vendangeurs 33460 Arsac, +33 (0)5 56 39 04 90, winery.fr). It’s run by a family of Algerian winemakers who came to Bordeaux in the 1960s. La Winery is a gigantic greenhouse branded in Trainspotting orange, its crystal panes in stark, intentional contrast with its forbiddingly opaque neighbours. They sit you in a bright room and you answer a series of questions to determine the wines you might prefer. The quiz asks whether you prefer pizza or curry, for instance, or the smell of “honey and apricot” over “loose tobacco and undergrowth”. A person working there told me, rather unsurprisingly, that they faced scepticism and hostility from the old Bordelais winemakers. La Winery’s approach might seem dumbed-down or gimmicky, but it makes a refreshing change from the esoteric babble of much of the wine world, and its very existence signals a partial shift from the reactionary model of the established Bordeaux wine industry. Outside the ludicrous prices of its most famous wines, Bordeaux faces a difficult task: how to retain its relevance against increasing competition from the rest of the world, a currency situation making export difficult, and a perception that it’s fusty and overpriced. But most Bordelais know they can ill afford to jettison the heritage that is the source of their fame. The true winners in this debate are visitors to the region, who can both experience a newly gleaming city and inspect those few vineyards that have opened their gates. Getting there
By plane: Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies to Bordeaux from Bristol, Gatwick, Liverpool and Luton; British Airways (ba.com) flies from Gatwick. By train: Eurostar (eurostar.com) from London to Bordeaux starts at £109 return.
Further information: Bordeaux Office de Tourisme (bordeaux-tourisme.com/uk)
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March 23 2011, 3:16pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
The ultimate Cornish pasty recipe
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/03/the-ultimate-cornish-pasty-recipe
Cornish pasty recipes have always been controversial, and now there’s an EU Protected Geographical Indication status to content with as well. Better get it right for St Piran’s Day on March 5th. I support the top crimped pasty myself, currently outlawed, but not the Cornish Vegetarian Pasty which is a contradiction in terms.
This article titled “The ultimate Cornish pasty recipe” was written by Felicity Cloake, for The Guardian on Wednesday 23rd February 2011 19.59 UTC Now the Cornish pasty finally has its legal protection from the pretenders across the water (that’s Devon), you’d think there wasn’t much debate as to how to make the things; even the position of the crimping is firmly enshrined in EU law (down the side, never at the top, if you’re wondering). But much is still up for debate. For a start, the ruling is puzzlingly vague on the subject of pastry: it must be golden, savoury, and robust, but as long as it fulfils those criteria, it could be anything from filo to flaky. In practice, a pasty is always made with shortcrust, the simplest sort, and, romantics allege, the only one hardy enough to survive being dropped down a mine shaft – although who’d want to eat it afterwards is questionable, given the high levels of arsenic in many of the county’s tin mines. This shortcrust can be made with butter, but lard will give a crisper, more authentically plain result, and using bread flour, as suggested by the Chough Bakery in Padstow, helps to make it even stronger. Then there’s the filling: forget lamb or cheese or even (St Petroc forbid) tandoori chicken. From now on, a Cornish pasty must be made from beef, and hearty chunks of it too, not the minced stuff favoured upcountry. The Cornish Pasty Association, which submitted the PGI bid, suggests skirt, a flavourful cut that stands up well to relatively slow cooking – Mark Hix recommends rump or rib, but I think they’re too fancy for this historically thrifty dish. Because skirt has very little fat on it, it makes the pasty pleasantly juicy, rather than greasy. Carrots are a definite no-no: instead a hearty mixture of potato, swede and onion forms the backbone of the filling – although a Cornish pasty must be no less than 12.5% beef, it’s important not to overdo the meat at the expense of the more traditional root veg. A waxy variety of potato, such as maris peer, is vital if the chunks are to maintain their shape during cooking, Both meat and vegetables should be raw – any attempt at a fancy gravy is heresy, although seasoning is permitted. You may however, on high days and holidays, add a dollop of clotted cream or knob of butter before crimping together the pastry in the time-honoured fashion. Oh, and of course you must be baking west of the Tamar. Otherwise you may as well not bother.
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March 3 2011, 4:05pm | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
Cajun Cooking Song - Andy Roberts Original Song
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February 8 2011, 5:16am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
cooking gurnard with cider
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February 1 2008, 5:14pm | Comments »
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Minute by Minute - Preparation of couscous recipe with fish
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September 19 2006, 3:44am | Comments »
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