The Eclectic Elephant

Chateau Trebiac Graves 2000

2008-09-22T05:40:00.000+01:00

The Pretty Lady, her mother, and I paid a Sunday visit to Galvin for dinner about a week ago. I always enjoy my visits to Galvin - the food is exactly what I like, simple and well-executed, and the wine list is pretty interesting to peruse. I'll blog about our visit, and Galvin in general later (suffice to say that it ranks pretty high on my restaurant scoring scheme). Here, I want to say a little about the wine I chose.

The Pretty Lady and her mother don't really drink very much, so I ordered a glass of Chateau Trebiac Graves 2000. 2000 isn't really a great vintage for Bordeaux as far as I know, so I was a little curious to see it on the list. But what the heck - if you don't try, you don't know, so I ordered it.

Chateau Trebiac Graves 2000
Red wine
France (Graves, Bordeaux)
60% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon

Nosing: Oak, blueberries, pine, hints of soy sauce.
Mouthfeel: Velvety, slightly watery, quite light.
Tasting: Sweet, oaky, cherries, peach, bread, white pepper.

I found this wine slightly savoury, very fruity, and good with the type of food available at Galvin. On this visit, for me it was offal, richly spiced, salty and meaty. Lovely.

Chateau Trebiac is dates back to about 1868, where the property was donated to a community of Franciscan nuns. The nuns cleared some wood to plant grape vines, one thing led to another and here we are. There are about 25 hectares under cultivation. There's also a white wine made of 70% Semillion and 30% Sauvignon Blanc.

Gold Mine

2008-09-20T01:12:00.001+01:00

It's now a matter of debate which Chinese restaurant serves the best roast duck in London. 2 or 3 years ago, the answer was easy - the Four Seasons, in Bayswater Road, of course. It was (and probably still is) famous to the point that people would fly in from the Far East to sample the roast duck. It was perfectly cooked, the sauce was perfectly spiced, and the duck was fattier than most ducks available in Asia, creating perfectly crispy skin, with a perfect degree of succulence.

About 2 years ago, however, the chef from Four Seasons, whom many people, including myself, assume was responsible for the roast duck, left. He then opened a restaurant, Gold Mine, a few doors down from the Four Seasons. Ever since then, roast duck aficionados have been trying to come to a consensus over which is better.

Gold Mine
102 Bayswater Road
London W2 3RR
+44 20 7792 8331

My personal opinion is that Gold Mine's roast duck is better - it's exactly as the Four Seasons' roast duck used to be in the late 90s, when I was still in university and a plate of roast duck rice was the epitome of budget-busting hot meals. It's everything I described above, dry, yet succulent underneath the crispy skin. The Four Seasons' duck, on the other hand has less crispy skin and is more oily, with more of the fat rendered out into the sauce.

As far as the wider community is concerned though, the jury is still out.

No matter. Gold Mine has pretty decent food, other than the roast duck. Here, I also believe that the quality is better than that of the Four Seasons'. My favourite dishes include spinach with fermented bean curd, aubergine hotpot, and stewed yam and belly pork. The Pretty Lady is always well served by the plethora of bean curd dishes on the menu. There's braised, fried and stewed, including that old staple, red-cooked bean curd.

The roast meats also pass the test. Roast char siu pork is as good as the Four Seasons', if not noticeably better. The roast belly pork is also fairly decent, with a nice thick layer of pork fat and suitably crispy crackling. One thing I've not tried is the soya roast chicken, but it definitely looks good.

Gold Mine is almost exactly what it says on the tin - decent, well-executed Cantonese cooking. And there's the added bonus of great roast duck.

Scores:

20 September 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 24, S = 10, AD = 6, VfM = 8. Total = 72 points.

Okapis, magic invisible giraffes (not really)

2008-09-13T14:59:00.001+01:00

There's a big brouhaha in the natural history world at the moment. The Zoological Society of London released new pictures of the okapi, the giraffe's closest living relative, in the wild. Apparently these are the first pictures ever taken of the okapi in the wild using camera traps, and confirm that, in Virunga at least, okapi have not been wiped out by the civil war in the Congo.

It's a big deal because okapis are very hard to find, as their striped rumps allow them to blend in very well in the undergrowth of the forests in which they dwell. They are extremely quiet when moving, and do not vocalise any cries normally. This is inferred because the other semi-plausible hypothesis is that they possess the power of invisibility.

There are a couple of okapis at London Zoo. They're pretty big as I recall, about 6 feet at the shoulder, and about 8 feet long. They certainly stimulate the cuteness reflex, with big eyes, spindly legs and large, flexible lips.

More pictures here.

More links:

Greg Laden, who's eaten okapi, and thinks it tastes like elephant.
Brian Switek, on the history of the discovery of the okapi.
Science & Soul, with some information on the significance of okapis to cryptozoology.

Blair Athol 12 yo 1993/2006

2008-09-08T21:20:00.000+01:00

Blair Athol is one of those over-looked Diageo distilleries, known officially only from a Flora & Fauna bottling, and perhaps the odd Rare Malts bottling. Thank goodness there are independent bottlers who can bring the produce of a great distillery to a wider audience.

One of these independent bottlers has had a great idea. I reckon (and hopefully other whisky enthusiasts agree with me) that both 70cl bottles and little 5cl sampler bottles are inefficient sizes for those of us who want to get to know as many single malts as possible. One's too large, and it's difficult to get through it quickly so that I can move on to the next one. The other's too small, and there's not enough whisky to really get to grips with the malt.

Step forward Douglas Laing. They've bottled little 20cl bottles as part of their Old Malt Cask range, and there's a fairly wide selection of distilleries as well. I managed to get this Blair Athol beauty, as well as a couple of other single malts in this bottle size.

I thought I might test this one out with in combination with cheeses. Why? Well, there's no reason why whisky shouldn't go with cheese; it's a matter of choosing the right whisky. This one might well be it - it's got a fair amount of fruit in it, it's got the right level of sweetness to go with strong and savoury cheeses, while not being too overpowering for milder cheeses.

Anyway, the tasting note:

Blair Athol 12 yo 1993/2006 (Douglas Laing OMC)
Single malt - Central Highlands
Amber
50% ABV

Nose: Oak, banana, oranges, malty beer, brandy, rubber bands, hints of brown paper.
Mouthfeel: Medium body, syrupy, smooth, thickens in the mouth.
Tasting: Sweet sour. Blackcurrants (Ribena), orange peel, prunes, sherry, hints of mushroom.
Finish: Medium. Peanuts, white grapes, hints of melon.

And so on to the experiments:

1. Mons Beaufort d'Alpage

The cheese is hazelnutty and mild on its own. Savoury and slightly pungent. With the whisky, big notes of smoked ham and smoked chicken appear, with hints of armagnac soaked prunes wreathed throughout. Not half bad.

2. Danish Blue

Classic blue cheese available in supermarkets here in Britain. Milder than Stilton. Again, with the whisky big savoury notes appear, but this time, it's Marmite rather than meat of any description. The fruit is still apparent, although this time it's overripe raisins more than brandy and prunes. Not as good as the Beaufort d'Alpage.

3. Manchego

This particular Manchego was wine-washed, and had a very tasty nutty flavour. The whisky softened the taste of the cheese, bringing up notes of butter and milk, with curious surprising hints of vanilla. These were quickly followed by soy sauce flavours. The whisky itself tasted a little more like brandy, with the rubber band flavours that I associate with brandy beginning to appear. Sounds nice, but the combination doesn't really work.

4. Reblochon

Unfortunately, this Reblochon was a little mild, although wonderfully nutty and creamy. There was only a slight hint of pungency, and so it got rather lost in the whisky. Some interesting buttery hints of vanilla emerged, along with a little bit of black pepper in the finish, but other than that, it was a little boring.

5. Stinking Bishop

Made famous in Wallace and Gromit, this cheese is legendarily smelly. It's also delicious, with lovely hints of pear and beer (it's washed with perry). With the whisky, it's a little cardboardy, but that gives way to waves of sweet sherry, roast ham, and then the cheese takes over. Excellent.

And the winner is... Stinking Bishop! It's the cheese that preserved the sweet sherry / brandy character of this Blair Athol best. I do think though, that perhaps I shouldn't have tampered with this whisky. It's lovely on its own.

The Holly Bush

2008-09-03T07:08:00.000+01:00

I've had a lot of favourite pubs in my time in the UK. They change every so often depending on where I've lived and also whether or not I've been thirsty or hungry. Pubs rarely met both needs well, until the advent of the gastropub a few years ago. But then, there are also good gastropubs and bad gastropubs.

This little beauty, called the Holly Bush in Hampstead, has been my favourite for the last 5 or 6 years. I like it best because of the atmosphere - it's homely and welcoming, and a nice place to sit and drink (and eat, too). It's not only got a great menu, it also has real ales as well as draft Hoegaarden and Leffe. It's also got many little nooks and crannies downstairs where parties of 2 to 6 could fit easily with a modicum of privacy, as well as sofas and chairs upstairs for those people who only want drinks. There's even a legend about a resident ghost - the pub has no table service, but for some years, customers used to give their orders to a waitress who would promptly disappear. The orders never reached the kitchen of course...

Holly Bush
22 Holly Mount
Hampstead
London NW3 6SG
+44 20 7435 2892

There are a number of things that are usually on the menu here. For starters there's a pint of prawns and quail eggs. The pint of prawns is standard - the prawns are no fresher than anywhere else. The quail eggs though, are fresh and simple - boiled just set, and you sprinkle them yourself with black pepper and salt. I also recommend the salads. The Pretty Lady has occasionally had them - smoked mackerel and roast duck on our last two visits.

Veal shank is great whenever it's been on the menu - usually stewed until it melts off the bone, accompanied by mash or fondant potato and whatever vegetables are in season. Other than that, it's something of a potluck, as the menu changes weekly (or even daily), and there are occasionally gems available. As a guide the chef is very good at red meat, less good at poultry, but I think there's been some turnover over the years, so it's a rule of thumb, no more.

Puddings are a bit hit and miss. To be honest I'd go for the stickies, the brandies, whiskies and dessert wines. This pub has an excellent selection, ranging from Italian sweet wines to 3 varieties of cognac. And an interesting Benrinnes which I have yet to try...

Scores:

3 September 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 23, S = 15, AD = 10, VfM = 6. Total = 76 points.

Chateau de Lassalle Hors d'Age

2008-09-02T07:12:00.000+01:00

The Pretty Lady, her mother and I went to the Holly Bush Inn for lunch. I hadn't been there for a while, and they've now put their digestifs and stickies on the back of their food menu. There were several whiskies, including a Benrinnes 1973 that I might just go back specially to try, several cognacs and a single armagnac. That sold me. If it wasn't the armagnac, it was going to be the Benrinnes.

Anyway, the bottle of armagnac behind the counter did catch my eye, so I decided to try it. Good thing I did too - I got the last of the bottle. I do like that when that happens, because I get a slightly bigger dram (or portion, in this case).

Chateau de Lassalle Hors d'Age (Marquisat?)
Single producer armagnac - Bas Armagnac (Gers)
44% ABV
Amber rose

Nose: Mint, rose, white grape, brown paper, hints of white wine.
Mouthfeel: Light body, slightly oily.
Tasting: Sweet salty. Vanilla, caramel, toffee, butter, smoked ham, hints of apple.
Finish: Short. Caramel, earl grey tea, chocolate.

This one gave me a little bit of trouble, and I'm not sure if I've correctly identified the producer. In Armagnac, by Charles Neal, the property Marquisat, run by the Mao family, is identified as owning the Lassalle distillery and distilling under the name Lassalle of Gondrin. This is as close as I can get - there isn't a producer listed as Chateau de Lassalle. Anyway, Marquisat is located in the town of Gondrin, as is the Domaine des Cassagnoles, and the current proprietor, Corentin Mao, has been bottling his own armagnacs since 1969.

There isn't a great deal of information about this producer. Besides the Hors d'Age (minimum age is 10 years old for this designation), they also produce several vintages. There's definitely a 1979, and my reference books say that there's also 1977, 1976 and 1972.

Vineyard size: 50 hectares
Chai: Organised, cement floor, dry.
Soil: sables, boulbenes (sand, sand with clay pieces).
Barrels: Gascon.
Grapes: Ugni Blanc (60%), Columbard (40%).

- from Armagnac by Charles Neal

Domaine du Chardonnay Chablis 2006

2008-09-01T08:13:00.002+01:00

On a recent visit to the Capital, we had half a bottle of a strangely named wine - Chablis, from Domaine du Chardonnay. It turns out that the wine is made from 100% chardonnay grapes, but the vineyard happens to be in the province and appellation of Chablis.

It was recommended by the Capital's sommelier as quite drinkable. We tried the tasting menu. I think it's quite hard to match a wine to a varied list of foods, but the sommelier tried his best and probably succeeded quite well.

Domaine du Chardonnay Chablis 2006
White wine
France (Chablis, Burgundy)
100% Chardonnay

Nosing: Peach, kiwi, new plastic.
Mouthfeel: Thin, light and watery. Very drinkable.
Tasting: Sweet sour, jasmine, peach, lemons.

The vineyard was created fairly recently, in 1987. It's is in the Chablis appellation, but for all that, they use 100% Chardonnay grapes for all their wines. They make Petit Chablis, a table wine, this Chablis, and 5 premier crus.

It was young and drinkable, but it matched the food by virtue of not being very interesting. I suppose taking this approach to its logical extension means that I should have drunk tap water to match the food. From that perspective it was slightly disappointing.

UEFA Player of the Year Awards 2008

2008-08-29T07:40:00.000+01:00

I don't usually pay attention to these awards, but I was watching the Champions League draw for this season, so I saw them being awarded. The winners were:

Goalkeeper: Petr Cech (Czech Republic and Chelsea)
Defender: John Terry (England and Chelsea)
Midfielder: Frank Lampard (England and Chelsea)
Forward: Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal and Manchester United).

Player of the Year: Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal and Manchester United)

Beyond laughable. Whoever voted for these either received a big cheque from Roman Abramovich or didn't watch football last season.

Cech had a poor to average season (Iker Casillas should have won, but he didn't even get nominated).
Terry isn't even the best defender at Chelsea, since Ricardo Carvalho was more crucial to the team. Rio Ferdinand, who lifted the European Cup as joint captain, blows them both out of the water, unless the award is for narcissistic crying after losing the biggest match of one's career.
Lampard probably got the award because of one match against Liverpool, and his emotional salute to his late mother. Alex Hleb should have taken the midfielder award, but didn't get nominated, I believe. Even Paul Scholes, who's in the twilight of his career, eclipsed Lampard last season.
Cristiano Ronaldo is the only deserving winner.

What a joke. I'm sure Rio Ferdinand's European Cup winner's medal goes some way to repairing the injustice though.

On a happier note, United face Villareal, Celtic and Aalborg in the Champions League group stages. Let's make it 18-4. Come on you Reds!

Pommery Brut Royal Apanage

2008-08-26T23:05:00.001+01:00

This is a pretty old bottle, bought in 2001 for my graduation by mum and dad. The Pretty Lady and I finally got around to drinking it, but not on the Heath for our picnic as we had hoped. The weather was dire, so we had it in our living room instead.

The image shows the new packaging. We took so long over this one that the company had revamped the box and the colour scheme. We thought that the champagne might have suffered from the long storage, but we weren't going to improve matters by continuing to leave the bottle on the shelf. So what the heck - sometimes you get a dud bottle, and you deal with it.

But it wasn't a dud at all - 7 years of bottle aging didn't seem to have hurt it much. Still quite tasty, thank goodness.

Pommery Brut Royal Apanage
Champagne
France (Champagne)
45% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot Noir, 20% Pinot Meunier

Nosing: Papaya, toast, hints of white grape.
Mouthfeel: Slightly syrupy, a little flatter than I thought it would be. Must be the long storage time.
Tasting: Bitter sweet with honey notes. Peach, white pepper, slight tonic water-like bitterness.

Pommery is one of the premier champagne brands. It started out as Dubois-Gosset in 1836, but was taken over by one Louis Alexandre Pommery, who died and left his widow in charge. Madame Pommery laid the foundations for today's modern champagne house - she streamlined production, expanded the facilities and sorted out the succession planning.

In addition to the flagship Cuvee Louise, they make Brut Royal (non-vintage), Brut Royal Apanage (non-vintage, 1 step up) and Brut Rose. There are a number of other expressions sourced from specific vineyards, notably Brut Millésime, sourced from 7 Grand Cru vineyards.

Dopey horses

2008-08-22T12:42:00.000+01:00

A couple of amusing things about horses have surfaced at the Olympics.

First, some of them tested positive for performance enhancing drugs at the equestrian drugs. The drug in question was capsiacin - the same stuff found in chillies - and its effect on the horses is similar to that of mentholated muscle creams in humans. It relieves aches and pains, and is applied topically. Strange that it's banned for horses and not for humans.

Second, in the modern pentathlon, the competitors need to ride an unfamiliar horse in the equestrian leg of the event. They are paired with the horse in a draw just before the event kicks off. Some of the horses in the Olympics were practically donkeys, refusing to jump fences, falling over and throwing their riders. Much fun for the viewer.

The Garrison

2008-08-21T20:10:00.000+01:00

For me, visits to gastropubs are sometimes an exercise in frustration. The reason is because the best ones, like the Anchor & Hope, tend to operate a no-booking policy, which is never good for people who don't normally have an afternoon to spare to wait around for a table.

Last week though, the Pretty Lady, FY and I went to the Garrison, a crowded, cluttered sort of place in Bermondsey. FY's suggestion. The decor is bare wood walls and floor, but cluttered by all sorts of paraphernalia. In addition to food and drink, there's a cinema in the basement has nightly screenings, so most entertainment options are well-covered.

The Garrison

99-101 Bermondsey St

London SE1 3XB

+44 20 7089 9355

The Pretty Lady and FY got there first, and started off with some aperitifs. There was an interesting Pedro Ximenez sherry on the table when I got there - just like the Pretty Lady to start a meal with dessert. I demurred on the booze though, since I'd already started with some whiskies at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society's tasting rooms earlier.

I started with sauteed chicken livers and caramelised onions on toast, and found them very enjoyable indeed. The livers were done just right (still pink in the middle, and yes, I know about salmonella), and slightly sour from the browned glaze on the outside (probably balsamic vinegar?). Lots of gravy for the bread too. Offal on toast - classic dish in many forms, all of which are delicious.

The Pretty Lady had truffled cauliflower soup, which was quite delicious, if slightly over-truffled for my taste. That could be seen as a virtue - they're not stingy with the truffle oil! Good and distinct flavour of cauliflower too. FY had orechiette (shell pasta) with ricotta and tomato sauce - great flavours, and the tomato sauce was fresh. Huge helping too.

I had liver again for mains - calf's liver this time, with chorizo mashed potatoes and greens. Again, the liver was perfectly done, seared on the outside and pink in the middle. Chorizo mashed potatoes were well done too, but nothing special. Lots of gravy though, which was quickly soaked up by the mash. The Pretty Lady had roast duck with asparagus, which was excellent, but there didn't seem to be enough sauce to go around.

FY had the vegetarian meatloaf, which was intriguing - what was it made of? Lentils? FY and I agreed that there were lentils in there, but couldn't decide what else. I said potatoes, she said swedes. Anyway, it came with a lot of roast vegetables too, and was quite delicious. Never let it be said that vegetarians don't have it good at the Garrison.

We then ducked dessert, as we were all filled up to the brim. I decided on a Chateau de Lacquy XO 15 ans armagnac, while the Pretty Lady and FY had an armagnac liqueur. Unfortunately I didn't note that particular one down, but to be honest I found it over-sweet. I much preferred mine.

Scores:

21 August 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 25, S = 15, AD = 8, VfM = 7. Total = 79 points.

10 offal dishes that aren't awful

2008-08-20T19:25:00.001+01:00

Offal isn't awful. Instead it's downright delicious. I was reminded of this when I considered what kinds of meat I'd rather eat at a restaurant. If there's something that's not muscle, I usually order it in preference to muscle tissue. While muscle is nice when cooked well, it somehow lacks flavour compared to organ meat. I've listed a selection of my favourites below:

1. Seared calf's liver

Delicate, tender and rich, I think seared calf's liver goes best with something sweet sour and tangy - caramelised onions in balsamic vinegar, maybe. And with some mashed potato (hold the butter). I like mine browned on the outside and pink in the middle. Given that the stuff is generally sliced quite thin, it's hard to get it done perfectly.

2. Devilled kidneys

My favourite starter at Canteen. This is lamb kidneys in a spicy sauce, a dish created by the Victorians before they deigned to eat chillis. The heat comes from cayenne pepper and grain mustard, and can be very hot indeed. Of course you can add double cream in to temper the spiciness, making the dish richer and more decadent. The kidneys need to be slightly pink on the inside to preserve their flavour.

3. Haggis

Robert Burns called this the "grand chieftain o' the pudden race". Goes great with whisky (as to which one, maybe I'll do a special set of tasting experiments to find out. Sheeps heart, lungs and liver, mixed with onion, oatmeal and fat, boiled in the sheep's stomach. Very peppery and gamey, as offal should be. Not too keen on the neeps and tatties though, the ones I've had don't have enough butter. In fact, they could be improved by the addition of double cream and Reblochon.

4. Beef tripe noodles

It's been so long since I've had these it's not funny. There are as many versions of this dish as there are beef eating cultures in Asia, but my favourite comes from Soong Kee, a famous noodle stall in Kuala Lumpur (it used to be a treat when I was a kid, despite the horrifically filthy state of the shop). Wantans, minced beef, beef balls, and slices of beef stomach on just scalded, soft flat rice noodles. Yum. But for some reason, no one else seems to like the version with tripe...

5. Tête de veau

Calf's head in French. I've had it twice, and Racine's version was better. Consists of the brain and the pieces of the head (some versions substitute the sweetbreads - thymus gland - and / or the tongue), gently poached in broth for 5 hours, then served with sauce ravigote (Dijon mustard, roux and capers). I've decided not to eat this any more, as it's probably a bad idea to eat bovine- and sheep-derived nervous tissue. It was good though.

6. Pressed pig's ears

I first had these in Shanghai. In the Shanghainese version the ears are de-haired, flattened out, braised in wine and stock, then pressed into a sort of terrine. Once set (from the gelatine in the ears), the terrine is sliced into attractive stripey pieces. Fergus Henderson of St John in London does a Western version, but I've not been to his restaurant yet.

7. Heart churrasco - beef and chicken

Brazilian churrasco is one of the great barbecue traditions of the world. There are a number of churrascarias in London which I find quite tasty, although those in the know say that they're terrible. My favourite is beef or chicken heart, especially done in rodizio style where the waiter turns up at the table with a huge skewer and slices off portions. Heart is very very tasty and tender, because heart muscle fibres are shorter, and are interconnected with each other. The striations in heart are much smaller, and the meat is more pleasantly textured.

8. Tripe Oporto style

More stomach, simmered with chourico (Portuguese chorizo) and beans. The helpings in Portugal are huge, and the restaurant we visited bulked out the dish with veal shank. Needless to say, we couldn't finish it. Unfortunately, London lacks a large-enough community of tripeiros (tripe-eaters, natives of Oporto) for this dish to be easily available.

9. Pig stomach soup

Hokkien comfort food, something to strengthen my constitution while growing up. It's closely related to pig innards congee, given to invalids and hungry children by my very unhealth-conscious grandmother. The intestines and stomach are boiled with pork and lots of white pepper to create a spicy offally liquid (see here for a namby-pamby version using chicken, not intestines). For the congee, you put the boiled offal into the congee and accentuate with cubes of deep-fried lard and / or fried intestines. Excellent stuff.

10. Chicken offal yakitori

One of the best uses of chicken guts ever! Gizzard, liver, sometimes tongue (or even testicles), grilled on bamboo skewers. Much more tasty than the standard chicken breast yakitori, which requires addition of onion to make it worth eating. This is my favourite yakitori bar (unfortunately, it's not really an izakaya).

There are so many other offal dishes I haven't mentioned, so I will here: pig's blood soup, fish head curry, duck's tongue, ox tongue, Chinese liver sausage on rice, sup gearbox (warning, spinal cord tissue!), Sicilian guasteddi (beef spleen sandwiches), brawn, fried duck intestines etc etc.

Don't waste meat. Eat offal whenever you can. Muscle is boring, except when it's cardiac muscle.

Chateau de Lacquy XO 15 yo

2008-08-18T07:11:00.001+01:00

I've not bought a bottle of armagnac for myself yet. This is for several reasons - I have no idea what to buy when it comes to value for money, I have a limited number of liver cells which I prefer to spend on whisky, and most importantly, brandy needs to be enjoyed after a meal (or with a cigar, but I've not found one that needs a good Cuban). For all these reasons, it's probably better for me to order an armagnac in a restaurant, depending on what they have.

So, with this newly formulated policy in mind, I ordered a Chateau de Lacquy "Reference" XO 15 yo at the Garrison (a pretty good gastropub which I'll review soon). I originally wanted their VSOP (it was cheaper) but they'd run out, and the marginal cost wasn't that big. Image from Cave Elzevir.

Chateau de Lacquy "Reference" XO 15 yo
Single producer armagnac - Bas Armagnac (Lacquy)
42% ABV
Amber rose

Nose: Mint, prunes, Japanese ume, hints of coffee.
Mouthfeel: Light body, slightly syrupy.
Tasting: Bitter sweet. Oaky, white grapes, white pepper, raisins, chocolate, orange peel, hints of coffee.
Finish: Long. Honey, raisins, kiwi fruit.

This is supposed to be a "great" producer, and the XO "Reference" expression is certainly very interesting and complex. There are quite a lot of flavours here, and I must say that it's a lot easier to find the fruit in armagnac than in whisky.

The vineyard is located in the town of Lacquy, in the Bas Armagnac producing region, and is run by the de Boisseson family. They do 4 main expressions, a VSOP 6 yo (which I couldn't try), a Hors d'Age 12 yo, this "Reference" XO 15 yo and a Reserve Exceptionelle (20-25 yo). This vineyard has been producing armagnac for centuries.

Vineyard size: 15 hectares
Chai: Well-organised, humid barn, dirt floor.
Soil: sables limoneux, sables fauves (sand and iron-rich sand, with some ocean sediment).
Barrels: Gascon, Limousin.
Grapes: Ugni Blanc (50%), Bacco (50%).

- from Armagnac, by Charles Neal.

Delisserie

2008-08-13T08:26:00.000+01:00

Golders Green, Finchley and Temple Fortune form the backbone of a slightly spread out Jewish community in North London. This is where some of the English Jewish community settled after they moved on from their initial village in the East End. Leafy North London is much more conducive to a thriving restaurant scene. In food terms, there are 2 main types of restaurants, places that do kosher interpretations of ethnic food (kosher Chinese, kosher Indian), and ethnic kosher restaurants (places that showcase regional Jewish cuisine).

Delisserie
1 Belmont Parade
Temple Fortune
London NW11 6XP
+44 (0) 20 8458 8777

or

Delisserie
88 The Broadway
Mill Hill
London NW7 3TB
+44 (0) 20 8959 0330

Delisserie is New York's representative. There are 2 outlets - one in Mill Hill and the other in Temple Fortune. I frequent the Temple Fortune outlet, and these comments apply to there. It does New York Jewish deli food, and in a comforting homely sort of way. It serves a mix of traditional Eastern European Jewish and New York Jewish food (a lot of which, in fairness, originates from Eastern Europe in the first place) in a deli / diner restaurant atmosphere.

Typical starters include chicken soup (yes, the famous "Jewish penicillin") with lockshen and kneidel (noodles and dumplings) or a salad. The salads are par for the course, although I can report that their coleslaw is made with home-made mayonnaise, not the stuff out of a jar.

The sandwiches are the best bit. You can choose from a Reuben (pastrami and sauerkraut), Bronx (chopped liver, salt beef and caramelised onions) or a New York (rare roast beef and caramelised onions). And you can also have latka, chips or the aforementioned coleslaw. I particularly like the Bronx and the latka, but, in deference to my ever expanding waistline, not together. There are also grills, bagels and Jewish versions of the full English breakfast. The Pretty Lady likes the bagel and lox.

They also do a selection of non-Jewish dishes. For example, there are merguez sausages, wraps of many descriptions and burgers. Everything's kosher though, so no cream sauce pastas. Drinks are also fairly international, with fresh pear juice available.

I generally come here with the Pretty Lady for Sunday brunch. We should really book, but we've only ever had to wait for a table once. It's quite noisy and lively usually, with teenagers having lunch with their grandparents, and families with young children adding to the atmosphere. Helpings are big, the food is comforting, and it's Sunday. It's hard to beat.

Scores:

13 August 2008: TFQ = 21, CS = 22, S = 16, AD = 6, VfM = 7. Total = 72 points.

Baron de Sigognac 10 yo

2008-08-12T08:12:00.002+01:00

I had a half measure of this armagnac at Mango Room. It was a little strange having brandy as a digestif to close an Afro-Caribbean meal, but it went very well with my dessert of Caribbean fruit cake. Not too sweet, slightly citrusy and refreshing. I really lucked out here.

Part of the pleasure of drinking brandy is that I've usually done no research beforehand When I drink whisky I usually know a little about the distillery style, the bottler and what to expect. With brandy it's a voyage of discovery - I just note down the name of the brandy and the colour, write the tasting note and fill in the details later using the internet. Quite often I discover new and interesting things - like the fact that this particular armagnac is sometimes a blend, and sometimes a single producer armagnac labelled as a blend. In all probability though, this one is blended.

Baron de Sigognac 10 yo
Blended armagnac - Bas Armagnac
40% ABV
Dark gold

Nose: Brown paper, vanilla, orange peel, orange blossom.
Mouthfeel: Medium body, watery around the edges.
Tasting: Sour. Lemon, grapefruit, vanilla, prunes, butter, cream.
Finish: Long. Vanilla, cream, walnut skins.

Baron de Sigognac is a blended brand sold by ADEX, a firm that also owns the producer Chateau de Bordeneuve. Some of the vintages under these brands are entirely from the Chateau de Bordeneuve vineyard. However, I believe (but can't confirm) that the 10 yo is a blend from more than one vineyard. Tasty nonetheless, although I think it suffers from being diluted to 40%.

Mango Room

2008-08-11T19:16:00.004+01:00

London is a great place for ethnic food, probably among the best 2 places in the world. I think the likely closest challenger would probably be New York, but since I've never been there I can't definitively say. Anyway, one of the pleasures of eating in London is Afro-Caribbean food, which is fantastic, courtesy of the large local community.

Unfortunately good restaurants are quite rare. The best Afro-Caribbean food I've tasted is available only once a year at the end of August, during the Notting Hill Carnival. If I'm away during that particular bank holiday weekend, that's it until the next year - no ackee and saltfish inna dumpling, no freshly grilled jerk chicken. Fortunately, there's at least one place which does the cuisine to a decent standard - Mango Room.

Mango Room
10-12 Kentish Town Road
Camden
London NW1 9NX
+44 (0) 20 7482 5065

The Pretty Lady and I have been coming here since 2001. We stopped for a bit a couple of years back because they had raised the prices and the food had deteriorated a little in quality. When we came back here a few days ago though, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that not only had the prices remained the same (and thus become quite reasonable now) but that the food had improved a great deal.

It was a 6 person dinner meet-up, with AL, TL, KY and FZ plus the Pretty Lady and myself. We shared starters - ackee and saltfish, duck and apple skewer, scallops and melon salsa and tiger prawns on pineapple. The ackee and saltfish was as good as I remembered it, ackee as thick as scrambled egg, large chunks of salt cod, only with a tinge more scotch bonnet pepper. The duck and apple skewer was surprisingly tasty, chunks of grilled duck and apple drizzled with a red wine reduction on toasted gingerbread. Not particularly Caribbean, but who cares? The other seafood dishes passed muster, with the scallops and melon a fairly tasty combination.

On to the main courses - I had roast duck breast marinated in honey and ginger, with sweet potato and juniper berry jus, while the Pretty Lady had kingfish in jerk sauce. My duck breast was delicious, with the ginger cutting through the rich meat, and the juniper berries providing a peppery fragrant counterpoint to the sweet potato. The Pretty Lady's kingfish in jerk sauce proved to be too spicy for her liking, but I thought it was great - the addition of more scotch bonnet pepper to the spicy dishes has definitely improved both the taste and the authenticity of the dishes here. Good fresh fish too.

On previous occasions the Pretty Lady and I have enjoyed the curry goat - this restaurant's signature dish. Even when the food here was less good 2 years ago, the curry goat remained delicious. Boneless, sweet spicy, and coconutty. Yum yum. Perfect with the great side dishes available here - plantain, breadfruit and rice and peas are the best.

For dessert, I had Caribbean fruit cake with warm cream. Lovely and moist, with crystallised pineapple and my favourite glace cherries in - I always have this when I come here, and never anything else for dessert. This time I paired it with a glass of Baron de Sigognac armagnac. The Pretty Lady had passionfruit cheesecake, which seemed a nice idea in theory, but somehow didn't quite come off. The passionfruit jelly layer on top of the cheese had a harsh, slightly metallic taste.

We didn't have wine, opting instead for the extensive cocktail list. I particularly recommend a Jamaican mule - Appleton rum, ginger ale, and mint. I don't believe I've ever had wine here. My usual tipple of choice is Red Stripe.

Much better food than when we were here last. The kitchen staff must have changed, and the best dishes are just as good as they always were, while the so-so dishes are now a lot better. I'm definitely going to come here more often.

Scores:

11 August 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 23, S = 15, AD = 7, VfM = 7. Total = 76 points.

Pedro Ximenéz Cardenal Cisneros (Sweet raisins and smoky toast)

2008-08-09T05:15:00.002+01:00

The Pretty Lady loves sweet dessert wines, and Pedro Ximenéz is one of her favourites. We picked this bottle up at Madrid-Barajas duty-free on our way back from Peru, and have been dipping into it ever since. It's very good indeed, although not the best we've ever tasted.

Besides the taste, the great thing about Pedro Ximenéz is that deep brown raisiny colour. It looks and tastes sweet, grapey and gorgeous (of course, some taste more gorgeous than others). This particular one is very dark brown, almost black, with little hints of gold near the surface.

There's a whole wide world of this varietal sherry to explore, especially now that wineries in Australia and Argentina have started to grow the grape. The Pretty Lady and I look forward to it.

Pedro Ximenéz Cardenal Cisneros
Sherry
Spain (Jerez)
Pedro Ximenéz

Nosing: Raisins, brown paper, honey, cane sugar, grape seeds.
Mouthfeel: Sticky, smooth, very thick, mouth-coating.
Tasting: Sweet and silky, nutmeg and honey, massive hit of raisins, caramel and burnt toast.

This particular wine is made by Bodega Sanchez Romate, founded in 1781 and still family-owned. It's located in Jerez de la Frontera, the home of sherry, and has a large ageing complex where the winemakers mature their wines.

The bodega makes a range of brandies, wines, sherries and vinegars. They have house styles of Amontillado, Manzanilla, Fino, cream, and Oloroso, in addition to Pedro Ximenéz of course. The Cardenal Cisneros label denotes a sweeter wine, where the grapes are left to ripen longer than the regular Pedro Ximenéz . It's a mid-range option - there are cheaper sherries, branded Romate, and old solera matured ones (some very old indeed), branded La Sacristia. They also make 2 Spanish brandies, Cardenal Mendoza and Romate. The former is their marquee brand, while the latter is solera-matured.

Cragganmore 12 yo ('Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life)

2008-08-08T08:08:00.000+01:00

Diageo owns 17 whisky distilleries, and have done a lot to market single malt whisky as a drink. This has had the effect of creating lots of different expressions of malt - single, blended and vatted - where once there were just mostly blends. I suppose Diageo deserve congratulations and thanks for this, but then they've closed Brora, Port Ellen and Rosebank. Big sins, and I'm not sure they're forgivable...

Anyway, Diageo's single malt marketing effort focuses on representing each whisky producing region by one or more "typical" ("Classic") malts. There are 12 Classic Malts, and Cragganmore is one of 4 representatives of the Speyside region.

The 12 yo is Cragganmore's flagship official bottling. It's nice and complex, and I think of it as somewhat atypical of Speyside malts. It's got a lot going on in it, for one thing, and to my palate there's an unfamiliar bitter thread running through it. Sometimes it's chocolate, sometimes it's coffee. It's also less fruity and creamy than many other Speysides. I thought it would be interesting therefore to try to offset the lack of creaminess by tasting this whisky alongside sweet milk-based products (which excludes cheese, unless someone is willing to give me some Norwegian gjetost?).

The Tasting Notebook says:

Cragganmore 12 yo (OB)

Single malt - Speyside

Golden

40% ABV

Nose: Chocolate, walnuts, malty beer, iodine, hints of apples, hints of raisins, hints of oak.

Mouthfeel: Light body, thin, quite watery.

Tasting: Bitter sweet. Peat, apples, glace cherries, leather, coffee, hints of metal polish, hints of smoke.

Finish: Long. Pineapples, spicy.

Here we go:

1. Yakult

Lactobacillus, fermented milk and whisky. The nutty, apple notes in the whisky change to orange and coc0nut. Hints of wet stones appear. The mouthfeel becomes harsh and hard, very chewy.

2. La Fermiere Yoghurt with Orange Flower Honey

These little pots are great for desserts. The Pretty Lady gets them at work. The combination is fantastic - the whisky displays notes of salt caramel, and the slight bitterness goes away, replaced by apples and honey. Very creamy and milky as you'd expect, but the tanginess of the yoghurt is surprisingly quite muted.

3. Hot milk toddy

This is something I've known about for ages but first had in China in 2004. Hot milk, honey and spirit - in this case Cragganmore 12 yo - a good night drink. Maybe it's the steamed milk, but the whisky suddenly tastes salty, and the bitterness comes through more clearly. Big whiffs of artificial scents now - new plastic, brown paper, tyre rubber. Very strange.

4. Dulce de leche

I'm doing something I used to get told off for when I was a kid - eating stuff straight out of a jar on a spoon. In this case it's milk toffee. Strange. I get the same saltiness as I did with the hot milk, but this time there's no bitterness. Instead I get coffee (very good with salt in it - like the stuff I once tasted in Egypt courtesy of a diver from Her Majesty's Navy), and a big hit of magic marker. It's not unpleasant.

The clear winner, of course, is the La Fermiere yoghurt pot. Light and tangy, with orange blossom honey in it, it complements the whisky perfectly. It's actually improved the spirit by replacing the slight bitter note with a milky, creamy taste and texture. Very nice indeed.

Worms in your sushi

2008-08-06T03:40:00.005+01:00

Carl Zimmer, of the very excellent blog the Loom, has a post about Anisakiosis, a type of food poisoning caused by a parasitic worm, Anisaki, and contracted by eating raw fish. In addition to plenty of fascinating information on Anisaki and the symptoms that it causes, there's a video of a colony of Anisaki wriggling in a box of fish. Has my chirashizushi been contaminated by unwanted parasitic worm proteins?

In the comments, someone asserts that freezing kills Anisaki, and sushi fish in the UK generally has been frozen before (at least in the sushi lunch bar - Wasabi - near work). This is probably true of cheap inferior restaurants, but perhaps not of good ones. I wonder if my usual haunts serve frozen fish?

Disclaimer - I've never been poisoned by seafood, raw, cooked, shellfish or fish. Mum, unfortunately, contracted food poisoning last weekend from eating her first two cockles in years. Maybe I've built up a tolerance from eating the following:

Uni sushi (sea urchin roe on rice and seaweed) - sea urchins are spiky because they taste good. Non-spiky urchins got slurped up by discerning piscine palates millions of years ago. Fish love them. I do too.

Chirashizushi (sashimi on a bed of rice) - salmon, o-toro, shiro maguro, lots of variations. Raw fish and rice. Yum yum.

Steamed cockles (semi-raw and dripping with juice) - last had them in Newton Hawker Centre, Singapore in December 2007. Get your Hepatitis A vaccinations first.

O chien (oyster omelette) - the nice man in Taman Sri Tebrau Hawker Centre, Johor Bahru, Malaysia, serves up nice and fat ones, still juicy and raw, in a greasy yummy bed of flour and egg. This is the best way to eat oysters. The second best is raw with a squeeze of lemon and shallot vinegar.

Baigai snails (fried with XO sauce and garlic) - there's a live seafood place in KL that does these. They are white and come from Japan. Little sweet morsels of pale juicy flesh. They aren't actually supposed to be raw, but like all seafood underdone is better than overdone, and they are still full of salty seawater goodness.

Warning: Do NOT eat the "o chien" at Newton in Singapore - it's terrible. The reason why people say it's good is because they haven't been across the border.

Jom Makan

2008-08-05T06:43:00.001+01:00

Chain restaurants are all the rage these days. They're themed too, and are a good way to create awareness about an underappreciated cuisine. Few in London knew anything about ramen before Wagamama (and arguably few still do, but at least they know ramen is noodles in soup. I know, it's like saying Manchester United is just a sports team...).

So to take advantage of this, the Malaysian government has backed Jom Makan ("Let's eat"? "Let's go eat"?), a Wagamama-ish venture, serving what one would normally get in Malaysian hawker centres. The flagship restaurant opened about a month ago near Trafalgar Square.

Of course I was dubious when the Pretty Lady suggested trying it - it's too much to ask that such a place would serve anything close to the standard of Gurney Drive, Wai Sek Kai, or even Jalan Alor. I changed my mind though. It wouldn't be as good, but what if it were good? It's not as if Malaysian restaurants are thick on the ground here in London (which on reflection is probably the point). Beggars can't be choosers.

Jom Makan

5-7 Pall Mall East

London SW1Y 5BA

+44 (0) 20 7925 2402

The place has clean and minimalist lines. Slate grey floors, large red lampshades evoking lanterns hanging from the ceiling and wooden chairs and tables greet you. Not quite authentic, but it's an improvement, since authenticity means greasy sticky floors, a random worker slopping grey water around with a mop, and little land prawns gambolling across the tiles.

Where I have a real problem is with the menu. The dishes are named in Malay then described in English, and it's patently obvious that the food is almost entirely Malay. There are a few nods in the direction of Chinese and Indian food - Hainanese chicken rice, but described as steamed chicken rice, char koay teow and roti canai. What happened to other dishes - o chien, sar hor fun, banana leaf rice, thosai are all halal!

It's a restaurant funded by the Malaysian government, for goodness sake. I know that there are lots of Chinese and Indian restaurants in London, but we're talking about Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indian food here. It's another small but niggling sign that Malaysia is going to be for the Malays and not Malaysians, and it annoyed me a great deal.

Anyway, the teh tarik is authentic, if less sweet than what you get in Malaysia. I usually have it kurang manis anyway, so it's great for me. At £2.60 a glass it better be I suppose, but there's even real tea dust in the dregs! That's it though - no teh halia, no kopi-C, no soya bean, no rasam.

The Pretty Lady and I tried the tauhu sumbat, the satay, the nasi lemak and the mee bandung. All were surprisingly decent, if slightly off in some respects. The tauhu is reasonably substantial, with decent sized pieces of fried bean curd, generous portions of chopped stuffing, and big dollops of peanut sauce on top. Only gripe - the bean curd was cold, obviously recently taken out of the fridge. The satay was authentic and properly spiced with the right amount of lemongrass, and the ketupat the right consistency (a review in the Metro called it "horrible and puddingy", which was the point).

My nasi lemak was mostly alright - the rice could have done with a little more pandan, and there cold have been a lot more ikan bilis, but those ingredients are expensive. The real disappointment was the squid sambal. It was salty and spicy, when it should have had some sweetness. Either they're not using imported chilli boh or they just forgot to add sugar. The rendang was pretty good though.

The Pretty Lady's mee bandung was a revelation. It wasn't great mee bandung, but it was a good facsimile of what you might get at a mid-standard mamak stall in Malaysia. It was even based on a Maggi instant noodle packet, and I could taste the assam laksa flavour. Anyway, it was spicy enough, and oddly satisfying, as it brought back memories of eating cheap nosh in the school canteen.

My verdict overall - Jom Makan needs more Malaysian stuff, not just Malay stuff. And arguably, it needs non-halal food. I'd pay a lot for good bak kut teh. What there is though, is alright, worth going to after a night out, say. For a good meal of Malaysian food, I'll still go to Singapore Garden.

Scores:

5 August 2008: TFQ = 22, CS = 21, S = 15, AD = 6, VfM = 7. Total = 71 points.

Terras Gauda 2007 (Chewy flowers and peach)

2008-08-04T03:23:00.002+01:00

I've been neglecting Spanish vintages lately. I find they're great value, and have big bold flavours that ram their way through to my (ever more) uneducated unsubtle palate. Could it be that whisky kills your olfactory senses?

This one is a Galician albariño blend, the eponymous label from Bodega Terras Gauda in the Rías Baixas. The Pretty Lady and I shared a couple of carafes at Wild Honey recently, pairing it with veal and fish. It seemed to work better with the veal. Adjacent image from Vinissimus (shows the 2005 bottling instead of the 2007).

Terras Gauda 2007
White wine
Spain (Rías Baixas, Galicia)
Albariño (70%), caiño, loureiro

Nosing: Pine (floor cleaner?), peach, faint hints of musk.
Mouthfeel: Chewy and hard, medium body, quite sticky in the mouth.
Tasting: Apples, apricots, lemons, floral notes.

The winery itself is located in the O Rosal valley close to the Portuguese border. It was founded in 1991 by Jose Maria Fonseca. They make wine from 2 vineyards, Terras Gauda and Abadia de San Campio. Both vineyards contribute grapes to their own labels. It seems that Terras Gauda is their marquee label, with a premium Terras Gauda Black Label expression available. I'm off to go forth and find them.

Wild Honey

2008-08-03T09:45:00.002+01:00

This place is one of 2 sister restaurants, both of which have Michelin stars now. The other restaurant is Arbutus, and both restaurants are owned and run by Anthony Demetre and Will Smith. The restaurants share some common dishes, but Wild Honey is supposed to be a little more down to earth, less "hedge fundey" and more focused on the food. Even though it's located in Mayfair, I think the restaurant succeeds. I like the wood-panel decor, and the staff are always very helpful, especially when it comes to last minute reservations.

Wild Honey
12 St George Street
London W1S 2FB
+44 (0) 20 7758 9160

The Pretty Lady and I have been here a number of times, just by ourselves and in groups of up to 4 people. The food is French Provencal with a smattering of Modern European, and I've always enjoyed it.

There is no better starter than the pig's head, a dish which is also available at Arbutus. It consists of a gelatinous slice of brawn, mostly pig's jowl, fatty and salty and full of offal flavour, with caramelised onion marmalade. The Pretty Lady likes the smoked eel here - it's been available in combination with salad or mashed potatoes.

For mains, the Elwy Valley lamb is always a winner. I love Welsh lamb - it's almost pre-flavoured. At Wild Honey, they've served it with samphire and roast vegetables, or simply with roast potatoes. Simple, and absolutely delicious. Sometimes there's also Limousin veal available, milk-fed and tender, and recently I've had a delicious John Dory and clam. Combinations of fish and shellfish are quite common here - the Pretty Lady has also enjoyed razor clam and seared halibut.

For dessert, try the wild honey ice cream with honeycomb - finest, best-textured honeycomb available anywhere. The Yogababe likes the cheese plate here, while on a recent visit the Pretty Lady had chocolate soup and milk ice cream, a delicious combination of soft mousse and cold ice cream.

Wines are decent here - not too pricey, and there's a wide selection. Domaine Gerovassiliou is available here, but the Assyrtiko, not the Malagousia. Recently we had a good Albarino, which I'll blog about separately as usual. There's usually also a pre-theatre cocktail, which is generally champagne-based.

I enjoy the food here, but I think that from a value standpoint there are better places to go. I think of Wild Honey as an occasional treat - it's a good place to go for good food once in a while.

Scores:

3 August 2008: TFQ = 26, CS = 26, S = 16, AD = 8, VfM = 6. Total = 82 points.

10 good chain restaurants

2008-08-01T07:00:00.005+01:00

The term "fast food" conjures up fairly negative connotations for me. It evokes memories of munching through a grey, carboard-like meat patty and drinking flat Coke at McDonalds in the late 1990s. However, there are a number of chains in London that now serve fare that sits between the 3 pound burger and the restaurant, making for cheap, tasty meals. Here are some that are worth going to:

1. Gourmet Burger Kitchen

First and best of the upmarket burger chains. Located all over the place now, but I first tried it in one of the first restaurants in Fulham. Most of the burgers are good (three quarter inch thick patties done medium - mmm...), but my favourites are the Kiwiburger (beetroot, pineapple and a fried egg) and the Blue Cheese Burger (mayonnaise with blue cheese). Get a side of fries with smoked chilli mayo.

2. Masala Zone

One of a couple of Indian food chains that emerged in recent years. This is to my mind (and stomach) the better one - the curries are more varied and taste more authentic, the menu changes fairly often too. Get the thali meals (but not the grand thali), and try the lime pickle.

3. Carluccio's

Oldie but goodie. I've not been here for a while now, because Italian food is something which I've had quite a lot over the years and because there's a great Italian restaurant close enough to home in order get takeaway every night. But when here, do have the arancini (rice balls), the vongole, and the affogato (espresso over vanilla ice cream).

4. Le Pain Quotidien

A Belgian chain that specialises in breads and salads. Very healthy, and I outsmarted myself once when I decided not to be healthy and had the chicken pot pie (I'm not giving any details). Anyway, ignore the pot pie and have the salads - they come with freshly baked bread. Try the tuna nicoise.

5. Ed's Easy Diner

Sadly, an institution that now only exists in 3 places - Covent Garden, Soho and Bluewater in Kent. There used to be one near me that closed down. Don't leave without trying the milkshakes - peanut butter and banana is usually a failsafe option. Also, the Original burger and the chilli cheese fries are staples whenever I visit.

6. Gaucho Grill

One of the most expensive chains around! A meal here regularly sets myself and the Pretty Lady back as much as a three course meal in some fancier restaurants would. It's worth it of course - the steaks are prime Argentine (sometimes Uruguayan) beef, are aged 21 days, cut the Latin American style (always more tasty), and grilled whichever way you want. Get the ribeye slightly more done than normal - I think South American beef is a little fattier than Antipodean or European beef. Also for dessert try Banana Tres Leches.

7. Wagamama

Another oldie but goodie. Restauranteur Alan Yau's first major venture, it's a decent place for ramen or faux Japanese noodle bar food. I like the chilli chicken ramen and the duck gyozas. Unfortunately recent price rises mean that it's not as good value as it used to be.

8. Nusa Kitchen

While this isn't really a restaurant, it's a great place to have lunch. The latest and best in a long line of soup bars, this place does 8-10 soups daily, all great value, most great-tasting. Even a glutton like me only needs one bowl. Best soups so far are Jamaican Jerk Chicken, Chilli con Carne, South Indian Rasam and Keema.

9. Ping Pong

Dim sum joint. Not as good as Royal China, but the dim sum is fairly authentic. Most things are okay, but I like the drinks best - the tea selection and the cocktails are pretty interesting and unusual. Try the sticky rice and the jasmine chicken spring roll. Yes yes, I know it sounds dubious, but I was sceptical too.

10. Tiffin Bites

The second of the Indian food chains. This one has a more Pakistani / North Indian bent, with a focus on tandoori foods. I like the bhel puri (Indian street food - puffed rice, chutney, potatoes), the boti kebab (tandoor roasted lamb) and the keema naans.

Honourable mentions go to Busaba Eathai and Pizza Express, for bringing cheap good (well, some of the dishes) Thai food and pizza to the masses. I've also been meaning to try Shish and the Real Greek; maybe in the future they'll make it to the top 10 list.

Malapascua trip

2008-07-28T19:57:00.002+01:00

I've just returned from a very enjoyable diving trip in Malapascua, the Philippines with the Pretty Lady and some other friends (CW, KY, FZ and the Divernator). I saw thresher sharks (ticking one item off my shark to-see list), a blue ringed octopus, sea snakes, decorator crabs, some sort of (big) moray buried in the sand, filefish displaying, mandarin fish mating and mantis shrimp.

Less enjoyably, I got stung by jellyfish 6 times, missed a mola-mola and a manta ray by 2 minutes on 2 separate dives, and was given a nasty shock when someone went dynamite fishing nearby. More conservation, eat less seafood please.

It's happening again...

2008-07-19T09:00:00.000+01:00

Last time, I saw this:

Now, I'm hoping to see this...:

...and this:

I'm going to dive Malapascua (in the Philippines) and visit the thresher sharks and manta rays at Monad Shoal!

(Great hammerhead and manta ray from Elasmodiver, and the thresher shark from Dive Phillipines).

Pinhead Gunpowder

2008-07-18T03:31:00.001+01:00

I'm still working my way through the teas that the Pretty Lady bought for me from a shop she still hasn't taken me to yet. This one took a little while to grow on me, simply because I couldn't find a good time to drink it. Eventually I realised that since it had a real food-like quality to it, some savour that isn't normally present in tea, it was best drunk when I was quite hungry. Works too - lines the stomach until I can get to the kebab shop.

The tea comes in little black beads, exactly as described - pinheads (large ones) that look and smell like they are made of gunpowder. They're not really very appetising - someone I showed them too remarked that they looked like hamster droppings. No matter.

Pinhead Gunpowder
Oolong tea
China (Zhejiang province)
Golden brown, slightly cloudy

Preparation: About thirty or forty pinheads. Got to have a lot of tea in order to get the flavour. More is more, and first steeping is best. This is a tea that does indeed benefit from slightly cooler water.
Nose: Bitter, vegetal, smoky.
Tasting: Bitter salty, herbal smoke, minerally, slightly metallic, hints of smoked ham.
When to drink: When hungry so that I can last that bit longer before stuffing my face. It's quite substantial, funnily enough.

This tea is also known as Pingshui Gunpowder (平水珠茶). Although some websites claim that it's a type of green tea, mine definitely tastes oxidised. I think it's oolong tea prepared gunpowder style. Apparently Morocco is a major consumer - they brew the tea with mint and serve it up as such. Given the tight rolling into little beads, it's no surprise that the tea expands as it sinks to the bottom of the cup. Quite the show.

Dalwhinnie 15 yo (Rock you gently)

2008-07-17T05:03:00.001+01:00

My cousin FY was kind enough to give me this bottle. I've tasted Dalwhinnie 15 yo before, at FM's tasting party, but it was great to have the chance to enjoy a whole bottle and really explore what this whisky had to offer (Answer: quite a lot!).

It's a Highlander, which in my mind usually equates to big bold flavours. However, I found this particular expression to be quite restrained, not very 'bouncy', but jiggling / rocking just a little, if that makes sense. It was best enjoyed when I was in a reflective mood. Which just goes to show how much variety there is in the world of whisky, and how little I know.

Anyway, we'll start with the usual tasting notes:

Dalwhinnie 15 yo (OB)
Single malt - Highlands
Golden
43% ABV

Nose: Sherry, beer, coconut, salted butter, vanilla and mint. Some very slight smokiness.
Mouthfeel: Medium body, thickens in the mouth. Egg white, mouth coating.
Tasting: Sweet. Cookie dough, vanilla, sherry, cream. Hints of smoke and tobacco leaf.
Finish: Medium length. Peanuts, some tamarind, slightly astringent.

I found this whisky interesting because it lacked barley. It was very subdued, and so I thought: why not add back some cereal flavours? So I'm going to try this whisky in combination with breakfast cereals. Early drinking? Why not.

1. Marks and Spencer Deliciously Nutty Crunch

The Pretty Lady eats this for breakfast most days (I'm not a regular cereal eater, as I miss my 2 thosais, coconut chutney and lamb curry with coffee made with fresh milk - best breakfast in the world). Anyway, the toffee and caramel in the cereal stand out, and all of a sudden it tastes like granola. The whisky has enhanced the oat and nut flavours, with a big hit of cream. Raisins too, where there were none before. The influence of the oak is more apparent.

2. Honey Loops

Oof. Cardboard, brown paper, marker pen. Lots of rice and wheat notes from the loops, but there's precious little else. Not even honey. The non-food smells and flavours aren't very enticing, although on occasion I do find them interesting when tasting whiskies. Not with my breakfast cereal though.

3. Cocoa Pops Mega Munchers

My favourite cereal as a kid. Not that mum let me eat a lot of it. Coffee, cocoa notes (not surprising). The whisky becomes medicinal, iodine-laden stuff. Bitter and herbal, but some pear flavours do appear. Not a great combination - I miss the sweetness of the whisky here.

4. Kellogg's Frosties

My second favourite cereal, and something mum let me eat a little bit more of growing up. The cookie dough notes in the whisky metamorphose to bubble gum and cotton candy. Lots of artificial strawberry and grape flavours. Like a visit to a fairground. Some oaty notes do appear in the whisky.

The Marks and Spencer's cereal takes the prize by a long way. I think the lesson is that Dalwhinnie 15 yo needs nuts (probably unsalted) to be enjoyed properly. I look forward to working my way through the rest of my bottle with some walnuts or almonds.

The Brickhouse

2008-07-16T03:48:00.000+01:00

Continuing the theme of restaurants found in out of the way places, the Brickhouse is certainly a venue that doesn't keep in touch with its surroundings. It's in Banglatown, that warren of streets east of Bishopsgate that includes Brick Lane. Among the curry houses and sub-continental supermarkets sits the Truman Brewery, an exhibition space that also shelters natty pubs, a South African barbecue joint and the Brickhouse.

It is a combination nightclub, cabaret and restaurant. The entrance is whitewashed walls and formica counter, but once you get through the plain white door, there's a dance floor, mood lighting, an interesting bar, and wait staff dressed all in black. The booths on the second floor are great for viewing the little stage, where anything from jazz to Cirque du Soleil style mid-air acrobatics is staged.

I visited while on a stag night. There were 6 of us and we took a booth on the second floor. If you're seated on the edge of the booth though, like I was, it's a little difficult to see the performance. It's a startlingly intimate venue; we witnessed a cabaret show, where the androgynous performer twirled on a rope a'la Cirque du Soleil at second floor level. She would have smacked the watching diners in the head if she had extended her foot just a little further.

The Brickhouse

152c Brick Lane

London E1 6RU

+44 (0) 20 7247 0005

The food is served as a set menu of three courses. I started with tomato consomme, which was probably the most innovative dish I've eaten outside the Fat Duck so far. The idea of a tomato consomme is unusual enough in itself - it's the distillation of essence of tomato into a pale pink clear broth. The chef (the kitchen is headed by Matthew Reuther) had paired it with diced cucumber and a scoop of goat's cheese sorbet topped with a deep-fried, crispy basil leaf. The flavours went very well together, refreshing and unusual (if slightly unattractive in appearance after the sorbet melted).

I then had lamb done 2 ways - roasted chops encrusted with bacon bits and breadcrumbs, and poached pieces of what tasted like the rib eye on samphire. Accompanying these were semolina dumplings, a single roast cherry tomato, and a balsamic reduction of jus. The chops were perfectly done and perfectly enjoyable, but the samphire seemed to be a tad overcooked. But just a tad.

At this point I was starting to get more than a little annoyed at the service. We had waited about an hour for our main course, and told our waiter so. He apologised and was kind enough to put the side dishes (mash, roast carrots and green beans) as well as another round of drinks on the house. So we decided to order our desserts.

For dessert, I was very interested in the Eccles cake with Stilton ice cream, but as it took too long I decided to opt for the cappucino creme brulee instead. It came in a cappucino cup, milk foam sprinkled with cocoa powder overlaying a coffee-flavoured creme brulee. The sugar shell was nice and thick the way I like it, but I think overall it was too sweet. I would probably have preferred the Eccles cakes.

The hens then joined the stags after dessert, and everyone went down to the dance floor. Round about midnight, they had cleared away the tables from the dance floor, switching from restaurant to nightclub. The music was a mixture of contemporary hip-hop and dance, not quite to my taste, and anyway the Pretty Lady was waiting at home, so I said goodbye to both groom- and bride-to-be, and left.

Would I go back? Yes - for the tomato consomme alone, if nothing else. The chef is talented and creative, and I enjoyed his food very much. I think the Pretty Lady would too.

Scores:

16 July 2008: TFQ = 26, CS = 27, S = 10, AD = 8, VfM = 6. Total = 77 points.

*but only because of the poor service.

What does this mean?

Erben Kabinett 2002 (sugary stewed apricots)

2008-07-15T03:34:00.000+01:00

This bottle was given to me by YY and CL for my birthday this year. I decided to open it when we had SY, JY and the Yogababe for pizza. SY is leaving London soon, so this was sort of a farewell lunch. It turned out to be fairly popular, especially among the ladies.

The reason was the sweetness - I'm more used to the dry Rieslings, so this one was something of a surprise. Since we were having pizza from Lupa, the wine, while starting off cloying, was able to compete with the strong flavours we were getting from the garlic bread, Italian sausage, pepperoni, chilli flakes etc etc. Not a bad combination, even if it was stumbled upon by chance.

Erben Kabinett 2002
White wine
Germany (Rheinhessen)
Unknown grape blend - probably a fair amount of Riesling

Nosing: Lychees, apricots, prunes, overripe grapes (no surprise!).
Mouthfeel: Lush, sugary and syrupy, like concentrated Ribena.
Tasting: Cooked apricots, pineapples, pears, hints of grapefruit and more lychees.

It's made from early harvest grapes, hence the Kabinett designation. The Spatleses, much beloved of Red Hare's mum and dad, are of the next stage in harvesting (more than 25% sugar, apparently). The stages, in order of early to late, are Kabinett, Spatlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Eiswein, and Trockenbeerenauslese. The last is for grapes afflicted by noble rot.

The wine is made by a largish German producer, Franz Wilhelm Langguth. They also make the (in)famous Blue Nun range. They are the product of a merger between 2 German wine firms - Sichel, from Mainz, and Langguth, from a town in Rheinland Pfalz. Besides Blue Nun (several wines here, including an eiswein) and Erben Kabinett, they also make an Erben Spatlese and and Erben Auslese.

Eyre Brothers

2008-07-14T06:02:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, restaurants survive in the strangest places. A few months ago, on my way to a meeting in Shoreditch (of all places...) I stumbled across Eyre Brothers on Leonard Street, near Old Street tube station.

Hmm, I thought to myself. This place looks interesting - but why isn't it crowded? After walking back and forth across the front door at several different times of the day, including lunch and early dinner (I had a lot of meetings), and discovering that it was never really very crowded, I decided to give it a try. And I'm really glad that I did.

Eyre Brothers
70 Leonard Street
London EC2A 4QX
+44 (0) 20 7613 5346

The restaurant is split into a dining area and a drinking area. A long bar stretches the length of the room. You can eat a full three course meal in the dining area, or sit in the drinking area, drink a lot and nibble a choice of tapas from the menu scrawled in chalk on the boards above the bar. I've done both, and both times I had a lot of fun.

First, full-scale dining. The food is Iberian in conception, and yes, that includes Portuguese. No surprise, as the eponymous chef and front of house, David and Robert Eyre, grew up in Mozambique. The co-head chef is João Cleto.

On my visit with the Pretty Lady, I had sliced octopus drizzled with paprika and olive oil to start, grilled lomo de pata negra (loin of a very tasty breed of pig) with roast potatoes as a mains, and a saffron creme brulee. All were extremely tasty, although I felt very guilty eating the octopus (they're amazingly cute and intelligent when alive, and you can actually play with them underwater if you don't frighten them away). There was a great deal of paprika in both the octopus and the lomo, but the sweet heat of Spanish pimenton is something I can't get enough of anyway. Perfectly boiled and thinly sliced octopus and soft, slightly rare, flavourful iberico - what could be better?

I can't remember what the Pretty Lady had to eat, as she actually enjoyed my choices a lot more, especially the saffron creme brulee. It was another one of those "aha!" ideas - simple, yet utterly delicious. Saffron and vanilla together are extremely tasty.

On another visit, we started by swigging sherry at the drinking area (they have several bottles, ranging from dry Inocente and Tio Pepe to sweet Pedro Ximenez, with every shade of dryness in between). Then we moved on to tapas - chorizos de picantes, prawns sizzled with garlic and chilli, fried peppers (pimentos de padron) and a salt cod tortilla. The tortilla was the best I've ever tasted, much better than the stuff available even at Barrafina, or even in Spain. Light, just holding together, the egg just set and flavourful from the salt cod. Perfection.

Eyre Brothers isn't usually very crowded, even on Friday nights at 7 pm. The staff tell me that it's due to the slightly out of the way location, but people in the know do turn up here and enjoy the food, the wine and the friendly staff. As I will in the future.

Scores:

14 July 2008: TFQ = 26, CS = 27, S = 16, AD = 8, VfM = 6. Total = 83 points.

What does this mean?

Domaine des Cassagnoles 5 yo

2008-07-13T14:43:00.009+01:00

I had this little tipple at Eyre Brothers, and having read quite a bit about armagnac in recent weeks, decided that it was worth writing a full tasting note about. Now I'll have to go back to the East Room and taste my birth year armagnac again - properly.

This is one of the cheaper armagnacs. It retails for about £29 a bottle at the Whisky Exchange (yes, buy your spirits from them please - they really care about the quality of alcohol). Like whisky though, quite often the cheap ones are still good ones. I enjoyed a snifter of this quite a bit, partly because it suited the food (simple but good tapas) I was eating quite well. It was listed on the menu as 6 year old (VSOP), but I'm fairly sure this vineyard doesn't do a 6 year old expression.

Domaine des Cassagnoles 5 yo
Single producer armagnac - Ténarèze (Gondrin)
41% ABV
Red brown

Nose: Chocolate cake, white grape, salt caramel.
Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, clingy like a good port.
Tasting: Sweet. Limes, green tea, prunes, apricots.
Finish: Medium length. Lime peel, orange blossom.

My trusty reference book (Armagnac, by Charles Neal) rates Domaine des Cassagnoles as a "average producer", and their 5 year old expression as "commercially correct". Talk about damning with faint praise. I suppose that this could well be true when rating it in comparison to great armagnacs, but on its own merits it's quite enjoyable.

The producer, Domaine des Cassagnoles, is in a small town called Gondrin in the Ténarèze producing region. It's run by Janine and Gilles Baumann, who've been making armagnac since 1974. The sole grape used is Ugni Blanc, the same grape they use to make Cotes des Gascogne white wine, their vineyard's main produce. On their website, they list 4 armagnacs available - 5 years, 10 years, Hors d'Age (20 years) and a "blanche" eau de vie, for cocktails.

Vineyard size: 65 hectares
Chai: Organised, cement and dirt floor, humid.
Soil: argilo-calcaires (clay with a high proportion of limestone).
Barrels: Gascon, Vosges, Limousin.
Grapes: Ugni Blanc (100%)

- from Armagnac, by Charles Neal.

Pacha Papa

2008-07-11T03:42:00.002+01:00

On our recent trip to Peru, the Pretty Lady and I were often at a slight loss in Cusco when it came to meal times. We were on a relaxed holiday, electing to play it by ear, so we couldn't eat at restaurants where we needed to make a reservation at (we missed eating at Cusco's best restaurant, Cafe MAP, because of this). No matter - Cusco is full of eateries, ranging from tourist traps that haul in unsuspecting gringos (or chinos like us) to homestyle joints that serve local food for cheap prices to locals and the odd tourist venturing off the beaten path.

Pacha Papa veers more towards the tourist trap end of the spectrum, but one that is good value for money and serves local specialities with more than a hint of authenticity. We went there twice over 5 days. Adjacent image from foodite at flickr, because we didn't happen to take any holiday snaps. More at his flickr photostream.

Pacha Papa
Plazoleta San Blas 120
Cusco, Peru
+51 (84) 241 318

The restaurant is located in San Blas, the artist's quarter, slightly bohemian, and a 5-10 minute climb up the hill behind the Plaza des Armas. It's a slightly uncomfortable walk for us sea-level dwellers. However, once there, it's a little square with a church in the middle, with the restaurant located in the courtyard of a Spanish colonial house.

The tables are wooden, the chairs are just a step above benches, but the service is good and the food tasty. There is a large earthen oven (almost tandoori-like) where the meats are grilled and the pizzas baked. Also available is "pachamanca", a meal where the food is placed in a pit and grilled under hot stones (we didn't get this of course).

The menu has the usual gringo fare of pizzas and pasta, but in the section entitled "menu tipical" in the menu, there's a selection of Andean grilled meats (including alpaca and guinea pig), well-known Peruvian dishes such as pork adobo and lomo saltado, as well as three or four Peruvian stews. There's also the Peruvian corn beer, chicha de jora, and corn lemonade, chicha morada.

On our first trip there, I had a mug of chicha de jora - it came with a massive head on top, with cinnamon sprinkled over. The beer itself is malty, sweet and tangy, more like a soft drink than a beer. It's not very strong - about 4% I think - and it's very thirst quenching. Unfortunately I was suffering from a cough that restricted me to a single mug.

I also had olluquito con charqui - olluco tubers, potatoes, onions, dried alpaca meat stewed with aji pepper. The alpaca didn't really taste of much, because of the sweet-sour heat from the aji. It's spicy, even to my cast-iron tongue and stomach, and quite insidious because there's a delayed timelag. The first few spoonfuls were mild and flavourful, then the heat smacked me in the back of the throat. Whew! The Pretty Lady had a variation thereof, with grilled beef and no aji pepper. I thought that tasted better, as there was more flavour to the meat.

On our second visit, I had a sort of mixed grill - roast beef and roast alpaca with quinoa, plantain and vegetables, grilled in the earthen oven. The alpaca was the standout part of the dish - roasted perfectly medium, sweet and rich, and a horsey gaminess that put it just this side of exotic. No wonder people like eating it. The Pretty Lady decided to go for whole mountain trout (yes, fish at 3,000m!) which was roasted with fennel. Fish and fennel is always a great combination, and this did not disappoint - the trout was oily and rich, offset by the fennel's aniseedy flavour.

We also had rocutos rellenos (chile pepper stuffed with minced beef and cheese) and papas rellenos (mashed potato molded around a filling of minced beef, onions and what tasted suspiciously like olives, then fried). Both were pretty tasty, and came in reasonably sized portions too. The latter was often a problem in Peru, because neither myself or the Pretty Lady are used to the American-sized mega-helpings that the restaurants served to gringos.

Total cost for each visit was around 80-90 soles, or about £18 for two people. It's expensive in Peru, but cheap in comparison to a London night out. In any case Pacha Papa is a great place to experience traditional Andean cuisine made with local ingredients, and a decent drinking den, especially if like me, you like corn beer.

Scores:

11 July 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 23, S = 14, AD = 6, VfM = 8. Total = 75 points.

What does this mean?

Sea serpent week!

2008-07-10T10:20:00.001+01:00

It's sea serpent week at the ever-entertaining, quirky and knowledge-enhancing Tetrapod Zoology!

Hook Island tadpole
Moore's Beach monster
Something no one seems to know anything about
Tecolutla monster
Where are all the dead sea monsters?

It would be fantastic if there were still plesiosaurs and pliosaurs swimming around in the oceans today. Given that mankind has fished out just about every tasty aquatic creature though, it's extremely unlikely, and getting more unlikely by the day...

Albannach

2008-07-09T22:39:00.001+01:00

Good whisky bars are thin on the ground in London. I know of a couple, Albannach in Trafalgar Square and the Salt Bar near Edgware Road, while there's a new place called Whisky Mist that opened with great fanfare recently (although this seems to be the kind of place that serves Monkey Shoulder cocktails rather than good malts...). I'm going to be visiting all of them eventually, and if anyone knows of others, please drop me a line in the comments. Remember, more whisky = good thing.

Recently, the Yogababe and I got together with some friends, LS, SY and KY, for a little farewell meal (LS is leaving London for pastures new). The Pretty Lady couldn't join us. We decided on Albannach, since there was a Top Table offer, and I'd been itching to try the restaurant for some time. I've been to Albannach a couple of times previously, but mainly for the whisky.

Albannach spreads itself over 3 floors. There's a lounge / nightclub in the basement, called Doon (inside joke for Scotsmen), a bar with sofas and tables on the ground floor (as well as a chandelier made out of stag antlers), and a restaurant on a mezzanine level, where whisky tastings are also held. The bar is where I've generally tended to loiter, sipping and tasting whiskies while propping up a little round table.

Albannach

66 Trafalgar Square

London WC2N 5DS

020 7930 0066

First off, the whisky. The selection is extensive, although some of the bottles seen on the website have since been finished. Au revoir to the Port Ellen 24 yo and the Laphroaig 10 yo Cask Strength - they had run out when I asked for them. Nevertheless, I've tasted a number of beauties there - Aberlour a'bunadh Batch #22, Caol Ila Cask Strength, and a Talisker 20 yo 1982 among them. The great thing about Albannach versus the Salt Bar is that at Albannach you get your whisky in 50ml measures. The Salt Bar apparently (as it says on their website) serves its whisky in 35ml measures, which is neither here nor there of course.

The restaurant is small, seating perhaps 30 people. The menu is short and to the point - starters, main courses, and desserts, perhaps 5 or 6 of each. There's also a set menu that's pretty good value, £12 for 2 courses and £18 for 3 courses. I chose to order a'la carte, ordering a rabbit terrine with piccalilli and quail scotch egg to start, a ribeye of Buccleuch beef with dauphinois potatoes, cavalo nero and wild mushrooms for a mains, and a Scottish cranachan and shortbread for dessert. The Yogababe had a trio of cured fish, a wild mushroom risotto with Inverloch cheddar crisp. The others had various other items, with KY's and SY's a loin of venison, thyme potato cake and parsnip puree worth mentioning.

As always, good produce tends to end up in good food. After all, most chefs are at least reasonably skilled. I enjoyed my starter, although I thought the rabbit terrine was a little under-seasoned. No matter - the typical gaminess of the rabbit came to the surface, offset by the tart picalilli (shame about the fact that there was just a dab of it). The scotch quail egg was interesting - somehow the yolk was still liquid!

My rib eye steak was delicious, but it was Buccleuch beef after all. It was perfectly cooked, and the dauphinoise potato was very well done. The mushrooms didn't taste wild though, and I would have been a lot happier if they had included some morels. However, I was very happy with my cranachan - whipped double cream on top of a mixture of whisky, honey, and raspberries (with a little bit of shortbread on the side). There was supposed to be oatmeal on top, but there wasn't - not that I think it would have improved the dish much.

I also liked the Yogababe's trio of cured fish - whisky cured salmon (but of course!), smoked mackerel pate and sardine escabeche. Great little idea for a dish - tasty, simple and keeping in with the Scottish theme.

Unfortunately, the service left something to be desired. Despite the small number of diners, the two wait staff could not seem to keep up with requests. I asked for a tasting glass a few times, for example, because they kept serving me whisky in tumblers. Nevertheless, I thought the food was of a decent standard, although slightly expensive. I guess the diners do cross-subsidise the whisky drinkers, because the whisky is fairly priced and quite worthwhile.

Scores:

9 July 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 25, S = 10, AD = 9, VfM = 6. Total = 74 points.

What does this mean?

Como te llamas, alpaca?

2008-07-05T03:12:00.000+01:00

There are 4 species of South American camelids, the llama, the alpaca, the vicuña and the guanaco. On our trip to Peru, the Pretty Lady and I saw all 4 species (the guanaco took some finding). The llama and the alpaca are the two domesticated species, while the vicuña and the guanaco are wild. It's not clear whether or not the llama and the alpaca are domesticated versions of the vicuña and the guanaco. As can be told from their family name, they are closely related to camels, and form a clade, Camelidae.

First up, the llama. We saw many camelids in the company of locals, but not all of them were llamas - in fact a large number of them were alpacas. Llamas are beasts of burden in Peru, much like the donkey or the horse, and we saw several laden with packs. However, llamas can only carry approximately 30kg a day (according to our Inca Trail guide) and are thus less useful than a human porter.

The adjacent picture shows a herd of llamas at Machu Picchu. Their job is to crop the grass growing on the terraces, living lawnmowers if you will. There was a baby llama born just 4 days before we arrived at Machu Picchu, but there were so many tourists surrounding it that we couldn't snap a picture.

Next up, the alpaca. They are very similar to llamas, but are slightly smaller, and are prized for their wool and their meat more than llamas are. We couldn't tell llamas from alpacas, so we got some tips from one of our guides, Emilio in Puno. According to him, the key is to look at the ears. Llamas have straight ears, while alpacas have slightly curved ears. It's not very clear from the adjacent image what shape the alpaca's ears are, but Emilio assured me that they were definitely, incontrovertibly, alpacas. The hotel we stayed at in Puno had a herd of alpacas on the grounds, all used to tourists standing around cooing over them.

Alpaca meat is gamey and rich, like a cross between aged beef and venison. It takes on smokey flavours very well, and I loved the grilled alpaca steaks that so many restaurants served. I also had alpaca in a stew, with onions, rice and aji pepper, but the rich sweet gaminess that characterises the meat was lost in the stew. Shame.

On to the vicuña, a wild species of camelid very much prized for its soft wool. Vicuña wool is at least as good quality as cashmere, and very much rarer, as the animal is heavily hunted and poached to get at the valuable wool. They can be distinguished from the alpaca and llama by the spindly deer-like legs, a feature that also makes the baby vicuña look like Bambi. The adjacent image is of a baby vicuña that a Quechua woman near Sillustani. She was selling photo-ops to tourists.

Also near Sillustani is a large lake with an island in the middle. On that island live a herd of 2,000 vicuñas, protected and managed sustainably for their fur. There is only a single gamekeeper, and he's responsible for keeping away poachers.

Last, and hardest to find in Peru, is the guanaco. The guanaco occupies a slightly different habitat compared to the other 3 camelids - it lives further south, in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. To see one, we had to go to Lima zoo. But we managed to take a picture, and that's the adjacent image. It's got the vicuña's spindly legs, but is much larger, comparable in size to the llama.

It's not easy to tell the 4 species apart. Clearly, the wild animals have spindlier legs, and resemble deer more. The llama is also slightly larger than the alpaca, as is the guanaco compared to the vicuña, but for the domesticated species at least, large alpacas overlap in size with small llamas. There's the ear test, as described above, but it's hard to tell. I also suspect that alpacas have a slightly shorter muzzle compared to llamas, but the guide wouldn't confirm this. I wonder if you could tell by taste?

Guinea pigs

2008-07-04T00:39:00.004+01:00

Ah, guinea pigs. They're illegal to eat in the UK, since there's apparently a law that prohibits animals classified as pets from being consumed as food. So Peruvian restaurants in the UK aren't allowed to serve guinea pigs, even though it's their national dish (I know, I asked a few).

No matter - on our trip to Peru, I was determined to partake of their national dish. So I did - I had cuy al horno, or roasted guinea pig. It turned out that they weren't that easy to find. At Pacha Papa, a (slightly touristy) restaurant the Pretty Lady and I visited twice, the cuy needed to be ordered a day ahead. Not ideal for my random walk derived restaurant choosing strategy. All in all, I think I only visited 3 places where cuy was available instantly, and two of them were the simple roast in the oven.

Anyway, guinea pig has really sweet meat - a bit like Chinese char siu, except that the sweetness is in the flesh itself rather than derived from a barbecue marinade. I can see why the Peruvians like it. It tastes like I thought rabbit char siu would taste like. The adjacent image shows a guinea pig roast I had in Cusco. As you can see, the kitchen has removed the head, and divided the body into 3 segments. I've eaten one segment, so the guinea pig is actually slightly longer than the portions on the plate suggest.

The one problem about guinea pig roast is the skin. It's rubbery, hard and tasteless, and I suspect is not really edible. Maybe it was left on as a test - what Terry Pratchett calls the Sheep's Eye test. That is, what the most disgusting thing that you can leave on a tourist's plate and have him still eat it? Unfortunately I only caught on after I ate most of the skin...

Never mind. The other reason why Peruvians eat guinea pig is probably because they are quite abundant. In Puno, near Lake Titicaca, we stayed at a hotel that had their guinea pig farm (maybe) in the lakeside garden. The adjacent image is of a denizen of the garden. And it wasn't easy to get either - those guinea pigs were slippery buggers and difficult to sneak up on. Hardly surprising, as the guinea pigs that were friendly to humans in Peru were probably eaten long ago.

So, guinea pig has sweet and tasty meat (shame they don't allow them to be eaten in the UK). This probably applies to most members of the rodent family. In any case in South America they make a habit of eating rodents - the capybara, largest rodent in the world, is a popular delicacy. Not least because they are semi-aquatic and considered to be fish by the Catholic church, hence eligible for consumption on fasting Fridays.

Four o nine

2008-07-03T05:49:00.000+01:00

The Pretty Lady's cousin, SY, lives in Clapham. She invited both of us, Yogababe (her classmate - yes, the world's a little small) and her brother JY for dinner in Clapham one evening at Four o nine. It was a interesting little place - leather sofas, leather-upholstered chairs, wooden floors, walls stencilled with images of Clapham High Street. The restaurant is reached by means of a private entrance in Landor Road. You reserve, pitch up, ring the bell and ask to be let in.

Four o nine
409 Clapham Road
London SW9 9BT
020 7737 0722

We sat by the window, which was a slight mistake because of the setting sun shining onto the table, but after the sun set it was cosy and comfortable, despite the full restaurant. It was an unexpected little gem. The chef used to work at Chez Bruce before branching out on his own, and while I discovered this after we ate at the restaurant, it definitely showed. The food was quite delicious.

It was pretty early, so we had the restaurant pretty much to ourselves. We began with cocktails - I had Tommy's margarita (not sure how this differs from a normal margarita, but it was less sweet than the usual ones, and therefore that much refreshing). The Pretty Lady had a pineapple caipirinha which seemed a magnificent idea when I saw it in the menu, and worked really well too. It's the kind of drink that makes you go "Now why didn't I think about that?"

Anyway, SY, JY and I started with a pork dish. It was a medallion of pork belly on a bed of salad dressed with sweet mustard and topped with a poached egg. The pork was slightly underdone, which normally would be a little unpleasant (given the taste of British pigs), but the slight raw taste went well with the mustard and the smooth egginess of the poachie. It was quite brilliant.

The Pretty Lady and the Yogababe had chilled mint pea soup with truffled mascarpone. It was almost the consistency of mushy peas, but was cool, refreshing, and sweet. I couldn't taste the truffles, but the mascarpone dotted in the soup gave it a light dairy tang that cut through the sweet peas. Very good indeed.

JY and SY had sliced roasted lamb shoulder on a bed of summer beans (looked like ratatouille, but done with beans) and pesto. It looked very good indeed, but I didn't manage to steal a forkful. The expressions on their faces seemed to say they enjoyed it though. I do regret not tasting it, but it's another excuse to go back.

The Pretty Lady and I had spatchcocked roast chicken with morels, spring onions and new potatoes. The chicken was good - moist, slightly crisped skin with give - and the morels were bursting with jus. The spring onions were done just al dente, and the new potatoes had been browned in what tasted like chicken fat. Great execution, although I'm minded of Tyler Cowen's advice to never order roast chicken in restaurants (why? because it's popular, and hence easily survives the competitive process to get on the menu without necessarily tasting great). It wasn't half bad though, and I couldn't cook this myself.

The Yogababe had a cheese plate for mains (she's now a social animal eater, and we're not really that social, we're just family). Decent selection of Neal's Yard cheeses - I particularly liked the Stilton. It was slightly overripe, more to my taste than the 'Babe's.

We moved on elsewhere for pudding though, so I didn't get to sample the fresh ginger ice cream that I was eyeing earlier. Oh well. Plenty of excuses to go back now. The Pretty Lady thought the food was slightly overpriced, and that may well be the case. But the decor is quirky, the location a little out of the way, the food is tasty, and the cocktails aren't too sweet. A little more expensive seemed okay to me.

Scores:

3 July 2008: TFQ = 25, CS = 25, S = 12, AD = 8, VfM = 6. Total = 76 points.

What does this mean?

Slyrs, the German whisky

2008-07-02T07:00:00.001+01:00

During a recent trip to Munich, I was mooching around airport duty-free with the Pretty Lady when I spotted this:

Bavarian single malt whisky, distilled at Slyrs distillery in Schliersee, Bavaria. It was a 3 year whisky, distilled 2004. According to Celtic Malts, the barley is wood-smoked, not peat-smoked. I wonder what it tastes like.

Unfortunately I didn't buy it (I was toting a 1 litre bottle of Lagavulin Distillers' Edition at that time), due to space constraints on my little whisky shelf at home. Maybe I can find a little sample bottle somewhere. Or I could wait till they release their 12 year old expression in 2015...

The Waterside Inn

2008-06-30T07:12:00.001+01:00

A week after the Pretty Lady and I visited the Fat Duck, we were back in Bray, this time to visit the other 3 Michelin-starred restaurant in town, the Waterside Inn. Yes, it was extravagant, but Yumchia had invited us to go along with KY. The company was great, the food was supposed to be spectacular, and we could (just about) afford it, so why not? After all, it's 3 Michelin stars, the chef is Michel Roux, and it's got a long and distinguished track record. We couldn't wait.

The Waterside Inn
Ferry Road
Bray SL6 2AT
Berkshire
01628 620 691

The Waterside Inn is so called because it's located on the side of a pretty lake. The restaurant itself opens out onto the lakeside, and we enjoyed our amuse bouches together with some pre-lunch drinks on the terrace. A family of 6 got onto a little motorised boat, apparently to sail out into the lake and have their champagne and amuse bouches while watching the swans and ducks.

As far as the amuse-bouches went, they were tasty, but I've got a pretty poor memory, so I only remember one - a small heap of steak tartare on a little biscuit. That was spiced with coriander and parsley, and very tasty indeed.

After opening a bottle of Chablis (a Van Volxelm) We decided to order the tasting menus or Menu Exceptionnel, as it was called on the card. Since there were 4 of us, it was pretty easy to order, and we agreed beforehand that we would switch dishes halfway. That way, all 4 of us would get to taste everything. It's great eating out with other foodies.

The first courses were flaked Cornish crab with langoustine tails, served on a bed of mango and mint salsa

and

terrine of foie gras and chicken breast coated in pistachio nuts, served with grapes marinated in ratafia.

I started with the terrine. It was very well-made, but simple (and the pistachio nuts were embedded in the terrine, not coating it). There was more foie gras than I expected, and it went well with the slightly caramelised grapes that were bursting with ratafia flavour. In contrast, I found the crab pretty run-of-the-mill. Though very tasty and well-executed, the mango / mint / crab combination is quite common and I've had it before. The crab was fresh and flaked just right, but I think if the chef had used Alphonse mangoes the dish would have been perfect.

We then moved on to the fish course. The choices were pan fried scallop "a'la minute" with an einkorn risotto flavoured with sorrel and truffle

and

pan-fried lobster medallion with a white port sauce and ginger flavoured vegetable julienne.

I had the lobster first. As with all the dishes so far, it was well-executed and perfectly cooked. Unfortunately it lacked a twist, something unusual that would elevate it beyond good to great. In my opinion, the portion size was also a little small, with just 3 pieces of lobster. The white port sauce was delicious, but I feel the ginger and vegetable julienne didn't add anything to the dish. The scallops however, were a different story. They were slightly browned on the outside, yet tender inside - I was amazed, as this is very difficult to achieve. The risotto came in dabs on the plate, with slices of truffle that were so strongly flavoured that they cut through everything, offsetting the fish. Wonderful.

Then came the palate cleanser, which was rose petal sorbet. It was lovely, and reminded me of air bandung, the Malaysian drink of rose syrup and condensed milk. The Pretty Lady thought this was her favourite dish.

We moved on to the main course. The choices were roasted loin of lamb stuffed with aubergine confit and grilled pine kernels, gateau of moussaka and a light saffron flavoured jus

and

roasted Challandais duck with a lemon and thyme jus, potato and garlic mousseline.

The duck was absolutely fantastic. The waitresses brought the duck to the table, and carved off slices of breast, layering them on a plate. They then added a surprise, slices of grilled pickled lemon. We had asked for medium to well done, and on reflection this may have been a mistake. The duck would have been better rare. Nevertheless, it was delicious. The mousseline flavoured the sweet salty pickled lemon with a garlicky tang, and went well with the gamey duck. The lamb in contrast was delicious, but less good. The aubergine seemed to be slightly underflavoured, although the meat itself was roasted well. The saffron jus brought everything together however, just the right level of sweetness and spice.

Dessert was a choice of 3 dishes, a cheese plate, 3 individual desserts, and a warm raspberry souffle. The raspberry souffles were the best I've ever tasted, both in terms of texture and flavour, and were improved by the flavourful coulis they drizzled in the middle. The cheese plate was memorable for a tangy Reblochon and a strongly flavoured Morbier, but the choice of 3 individual desserts was disappointing. I can't even remember what they were, beyond some combination of strawberry ice cream on a biscuit.

After lunch, we retired back to the terrace to enjoy coffee and petit fours. I partook of the choices of whiskies, which come in a large trolley! I chose a Brora. However, the sommelier slipped 2 ice cubes into my dram without first checking with me, which was unfortunate. I had to fish the ice cubes out, luckily, the dram hadn't suffered from the extra water. We enjoyed the late afternoon sun and chatted for a couple of hours by the lake side, before taking a cab back to Maidstone station to catch the train back to London. The sommelier made up a little for his faux pas with the whisky by showing me and KY round the "cave", which held around 8,000 bottles in a very small space.

Overall, I found the food at the Waterside Inn well-executed, indeed, almost perfect. There was no sense of surprise though, no twists, which in my mind make this place a little undeserving of their 3 stars. Oh well. It was a very good meal nevertheless, just not great.

Scores:

30 June 2008: TFQ = 27, CS = 26, S = 19, AD = 8, VfM = 6. Total = 86 points.

What does this mean?

Glenfarclas 10 yo (Welcome to the family, we're glad that you have come to share)

2008-06-29T05:43:00.003+01:00

Glenfarclas is an interesting distillery. It is still family run, and it recently released 43 bottlings from casks dating from every consecutive year from 1952 onwards (known as the Family Casks). These whiskies are on my to-taste list, although the pricing ensures that I'm only drinking a few of the 43. But what a fantastic thing it would be to try each whisky in turn!

Anyway, Glenfarclas whiskies tend to be sherry beasts, classic Speyside. This one is their official 10 year old flagship bottling, and given the dark sweet spiciness of the whisky, I decided I would pair this whisky with cakes and pastries. Something like fruitcake ought to go particularly well with this one.

Extract from my tasting notebook:

Glenfarclas 10 yo (OB)
Single malt - Speyside
Amber, tinge of pink
43% ABV

Nose: Sherry sweet, clotted cream and fresh milk, oranges and dried apricots. A little oak underneath.
Mouthfeel: Watery. Very liquid but not thin.
Tasting: Sweet. Big hit of spice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Strawberry jam, vanilla cream, tannin. Cream tea!
Finish: Medium to long. Loses intensity quickly, but hangs around. Spice cake and orange peel.

And so on to the experiments.

1. Welsh cakes (butter scones with raisins and nutmeg)

Very fragrant; the cream notes in the whisky combine well with the butter in the cake. The raisins are rounded out and made more intense by the fruit notes in the whisky. I've lost the strawberry jam though, as well as the spiciness in the finish. Not bad, but here the equation is simply raisins + fruit = raisins. A bit one-dimensional.

2. Waitrose tropical fruit cake (contains walnuts, glace cherries and pineapple)

The cake is very sweet, and hence cancels out all the sweet fruity notes in the whisky. The whisky begins to taste of cream and milk, with undertones of salted butter and black tea. Some bitter flavours also appear. The whisky takes on some maritime character, a bit like an Old Pulteney.

3. Dutch syrup waffles (caramel in a thin pastry shell)

The milky creamy notes in the whisky combine well with the caramel. Something fruity remains - spiced apple, cherries? Definitely some dark fruit in there. There's a slight textural change. The whisky becomes thicker somehow, like syrup, as it mixes with the caramel. The fruity notes really come out with this one.

4. Marks and Spencer Belgian chocolate brownies

The chocolate in the brownie has changed. Instead of being sweet, it's now salty and bitter, something like dark unprocessed cocoa brick. The whisky becomes salty sweet, like the Old Pulteney I mentioned in (2). Not a great combination, although the brownie and whisky are quite tasty on their own.

I think the fruitcake worked best with the Glenfarclas. It was complex, nuanced, and the whisky changed character into something else entirely. A real education for my (untrained) palate.

The worst job in the world...

2008-06-28T03:25:00.000+01:00

... but it's a noble one.

There are many things one can do to earn a living. Some are absolutely horrible (and funny). The people in these videos though, are heroes, because they are doing what they are doing for conservation (taken from a post on Darren Naish's blog, the entertaining and extremely interesting Tetrapod Zoology).

Apparently when you want to collect semen from a bull elephant for conservation, you need to stimulate the prostate gland, for efficacy and safety reasons. Here's how.

Not only is it messy, it's dangerous too, and not just because an aroused elephant is a big and feisty creature. Check this video out.

Anyway, I applaud the efforts of all these people who try to get elephants to breed. In the long run, this means more elephants, which, like more whisky, is a good thing.

Lazarus distilleries (2) - Rosebank renaissance?

2008-06-27T12:00:00.000+01:00

I blogged about several distilleries coming back to life here. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the malts from those distilleries, so while happy (more whisky = good) I wasn't really too excited. There are certainly a number of others which I would love to see start producing again - more than any other. They are Rosebank, Brora and Port Ellen.

I blogged about Rosebank here. As the site has been demolished and there's no sign of Diageo wanting to revive the brand (beyond securing a good price for the remaining stock), I thought that was pretty much it for the king of Lowlands whiskies.

Until now... maybe. Yesterday I was trawling some whisky forums and found this and this. Apparently a company called The Falkirk Distillery Company has lodged a planning application to built a distillery outside Falkirk near a place called Laurieston. Some posters on the Whiskymag forum assert that this is near the original site of the Rosebank distillery before it moved to its last home on the other side of Falkirk.

So maybe Diageo has decided to release the Rosebank name (and its remaining stocks) after all. Maybe Rosebank is coming back to life. Here's hoping that this is so. And may Brora and Port Ellen be resurrected too.

The Fat Duck

2008-06-26T07:15:00.003+01:00

I think this restaurant needs little introduction to UK residents. After all, the chef Heston Blumenthal used to write a weekly column in the Sunday Times, and appeared on TV showing how to cook his version ("perfected" according to the blurb) of various favourites - spaghetti bolognese, pizza, steak, Peking duck etc. Adjacent image from the Daily Mail, who recently reported that the Fat Duck's application for an extension is annoying local residents. I don't think they've ever reported anything positive about the restaurant, or the cooking, which is a bit of a shame. Why can't good food be populist and right wing?

The Pretty Lady and I went there with CL and her husband YY, who kindly drove us to Bray. Thanks YY. We went for lunch, and had the tasting menu, which blew us all away. The Fat Duck's dining room is unpretentious, white walls with some abstract art painted directly onto the plaster, and exposed wooden beams. There are only 15 tables, and they were all full, and having the tasting menu as far as I could tell.

The Fat Duck
1 High Street
Bray SL6 2AQ
Berkshire
01628 580 333

This is the menu we had (the Fat Duck kindly provided copies!).

Nitro-poached green tea and lime mousse
The first bit of theatre. A waitress came over with a jug of liquid nitrogen and a mixing bowl. She squirted some lime mousse into a spoon and dipped it in the nitrogen for about 15 seconds, hardening the mousse into something approaching a meringue. She then dusted it with green tea powder and presented it to a diner on a plate, followed by a spritz of lime essence from a little perfume bottle over the table. The mousse had vodka in it, which created an astringent tingly feeling on the palate, leaving it... clean.

Oyster, passionfruit jelly, and lavender

The oyster came shucked in its shell, drizzled with passionfruit jelly and lavender petals. Sweet, floral and savoury all at the same time. The Pretty Lady and CL were wondering how many experiments were required to get the proportions absolutely right.

Pommery grain mustard ice cream and red cabbage gazpacho

This was absolutely delicious. A dab of mustard ice cream no larger than the first joint of my thumb, unsweetened and fragrant, sitting in a little saucer of bright purple borscht. Except that it wasn't! It was pureed red cabbage of course, with little trace of beetroot sweetness. Garlicky and bitter, it combined well with the natural savouriness of the mustard ice cream. One of our favourites, leaving CL and me wanting more. A lot more.

Jelly of quail, langoustine cream, parfait of foie gras, oak moss and truffle toast

More theatre. The waiter served the jelly, cream and parfait in a soup bowl, accompanied by the truffle toast on the side. He then brought a tray of moss to the table. We were instructed to place an oak moss film into our mouths. He poured a moss infusion onto the tray, which contained dry ice. It evaporated immediately, flooding the table with an impressive mist which smelt strongly of forest floor. We then ate the contents of the soup bowl and the toast, which combined very well, although I'm not sure the oak moss scent added much to it. In any case I think that Sketch serves a better version of enhanced truffle toast - their Toast Pierre Gagnaire dish outdoes the Fat Duck's I think.

Snail porridge with jabugo ham and shaved fennel

This was the first of the main courses. The porridge was oats, coloured green (probably from a spinach infusion) with slivers of ham and fennel mixed in. It was then topped by three stewed juicy snails. Innovative, and actually quite tasty, with the musty snails going well with the savoury ham. The others didn't like this though.

Roast foie gras "benzaldehyde", with almond fluid gel, cherry and chamomile

This was absolutely delicious. A slice of foie gras drizzled with sauce (which must have contained the camomile), with a kirsch soaked cherry on the side. There were three little cubes of almond jelly on the side. The Perfect Bite (creating a forkful from all the components of the dish) worked extremely well here, with the almond offsetting the rich foie gras and sweet cherry.

"Sound of the sea"

I enjoyed this dish best of all. There was a gimmick, which involved listening to an iPod loaded with a soundtrack of seagulls and waves crashing on a shore. The actual dish itself was beautiful, looking exactly like a stretch of beach, complete with sand, sea foam, seaweed and driftwood, as if a wave had just washed across. But the sand was elver flavoured tapioca flour, the seaweed was edible kelp, the sea foam was a shellfish infusion, and the driftwood was sliced scallops, clams, a type of root common in Japanese cooking (stewed). Beautiful, and delicious too.

Salmon poached in liquorice gel, with asparagus, vanilla mayonnaise and "manni" olive oil

I can't imagine how this dish was made. It consisted of a cube of salmon, sheathed in a liquorice layer a couple of millimetres thick, surrounded by asparagus, a dollop of vanilla mayonnaise, and individual grapefruit sacs. Yes, sacs. Someone had gone to the trouble of separating each sac from its neighbour. "A" for effort, but tastewise I'm not sure the vanilla and liquorice worked well with an oily fish, fresh though it was. YY enjoyed this though, so maybe it's just me.

Ballotine of Anjou pigeon, with black pudding "made to order", pickling brine, spiced juices, and pigeon cracker

I was running out of superlatives by this point, but this dish deserved them. The pigeon was perfectly tender, drenched in spiced jus (not sure about the pickling brine), with a dollop of smooth, almost liquid black pudding on the side and a pigeon cracker (think prawn cracker, but made of pigeon) on the top. It was a close contest between this dish and the foie gras for best dish in my opinion, with the foie gras winning out.

Hot and iced tea

This was another palate cleanser. We were hoping to get another nitrogen poached mousse meringue, but instead they served a cup of tea. It was however, warm on one side and cold on the other. I believe the effect was achieved by adding a little gelatin to the warm side, making it slightly more viscous and preventing the two sides from mixing together - at least for a little while.

Mrs Marshall's margaret cornet

After the tea, the waiters left some pamphlets on the table. They were a write up of Mrs Marshall, apparently the inventor of the most efficient ice cream making machine ever. She did it in Victorian times, and it remains superior to anything available today. It could whip up a batch in 3 minutes (beating my record, 5 hours, by some distance). I can't actually remember what flavour the ice cream cornets were, but they were good - creamy texture, biscuity cone of the right crispness, and cutely small. Derivative of the French Laundry's famous salmon mousse cornets, perhaps?

Pine sherbet fountain

I've not experienced the sherbet fizzers that kids in Britain seemed to have enjoyed. This was clearly a reference to that though. The waiters placed a little tube in front of each of us, with a little segment of vanilla pod sticking out. The idea was to either suck up the sherbet in the tube through the pod, or use it as a sort of spoon. Ingenious, and altogether enjoyable, although I couldn't make the pine flavour out. The vanilla in the pod overwhelmed it...

Mango and Douglas fir puree with bavarois of lychee and mango and blackcurrant sorbet

...but only until this dish came along! The Douglas fir puree is pretty piney, but in a good way, since it didn't remind me of floor cleaner, but rather a room with pine flooring. It was a refreshing counterpoint to a fairly sweet bavarois and a tart sorbet. All the flavours were fresh, clean and clear, which must have been quite hard to achieve for such a complex dish.

Parsnip cereal

Shortly after the last dish, the waitress sauntered by and wished us good morning. She then set down a little cereal packet in front of each diner. It contained parsnip flakes (think cornflakes, but slightly paler). They are much sweeter than cornflakes though, and we ate them with milk. An exciting twist on the familiar!

Nitro-scrambled egg and bacon ice cream with pain perdu and tea jelly

The last and best bit of theatre, according to YY. The chef had already filled eggshells with the scrambled egg and bacon mixture. The waitress cracked 2 such filled eggs into a deep pot, added liquid nitrogen and stirred. The resulting "ice cream" was spooned onto triangles of pain perdu and accompanied with a slightly frothy dollop of tea infused jelly. The pain perdu was extremely well done - crispy all around the outside to a uniform thickness, and gooey and soft on the inside. I've never been able to even approach this texture in the kitchen! It was a delicious combination, with the smokey ice cream perfect with the sweet and caramelised bread.

Petit fours

They were carrot and orange lollies, mandarin aerated chocolates, violet tartlets and apple caramels in an edible wrapper (think White Rabbit sweets). None of the famous whisky gums unfortunately. The Pretty Lady and I shared a pot of Red Robe (Da Hong Pao) tea with these. I liked the violet tarts best.

It was quite possibly the best meal I've ever had. Not just in terms of how interesting the flavour combinations were, but also because of the element of theatre. YY put it best: "It's not just a meal, it's an adventure!" Also, based on the raw materials (we must have consumed a litre of liquid nitrogen just for the 4 of us) and the labour involved, the meal was pretty decent value for money. One thing's for sure, such cooking is not available elsewhere in Britain. Practically speaking, I think it's not available to such a standard anywhere else. After all, I've been asking El Bulli for a table for several years now with no success.

Scores:

26 June 2008: TFQ = 29, CS = 30, S = 19, AD = 8, VfM = 9. Total = 95 points.

What does this mean?

Chateau Talbot 1999 (weirdly smoky)

2008-06-25T20:10:00.000+01:00

One of the people I have a work relationship with was nice enough to take me out to lunch and order a good bottle of wine to boot. I'm grateful, I really am, when I get treated to lunch, but I do often feel that I'm not worth it. Don't tell them though, otherwise I won't often have a gem of a wine to blog about.

My colleague likes French wines (naturellement, being French), and he asked if I would like a Burgundy or a Bordeaux. I don't usually drink at lunch, so I thought I would go for something lighter, and so requested a Bordeaux. So he ordered this interesting specimen.

Chateau Talbot 1999
Red wine
France (Bordeaux, St Julien)
30% Merlot, 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Petit Verdot

Nosing: Smoky, meaty and fruity. Lagavulin and blackberries.
Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, smooth, astringent. Lots of sediment in the bottle.
Tasting: Melon, herbs, oak, caramel, and underlying fruit. More blackberries

Chateau Talbot is a fourth growth vineyard in St Julien. It's named after John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, an English warrior who died in the Battle of Castillon in 1453. The vineyard has 102 hectares of red wine grapes and 5 hectares of white wine grapes under cultivation, so reds predominate in their product mix. This particular marque has a long pedigree - see here, for instance. In addition to Chateau Talbot, the vineyard produces a cheaper, younger version, Connetable Talbot, as well as Caillou Blanc, a dry white wine.

Highland Park 18 yo (sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea, distill the whisky just for me)

2008-06-13T15:00:00.002+01:00

I think that island whisky should always taste of nature. Peat and smoke mostly, as with the Islay style, but peat and fruit is also a great combination. The new Highland Park 18 year old official bottling works very well, combining fruit, peat and a bit of chocolate lurking in the background. It's not as natural as some other islanders, but it's very tasty indeed.

I found this bottle 40% cheaper than the UK regular retail price at Changi Airport duty free. It's definitely worth nosing around the spirit sections at airports - occasionally there's something available for a very decent price. The UK airports have World of Whisky, where the staff know their stuff and it's very difficult to find something unusual that hasn't been repriced, but outside the UK, there's occasionally something.

Highland Park 18 yo (OB)
Single malt - Islands
Amber
43% ABV

Nose: Rose, guava, malty beer, peat and a little smoke. Some iodine and sea salt, lurking underneath, pungent to the nose.
Mouthfeel: Medium body, syrupy, a little watery around the edges.
Tasting: Sweet sour. Barley, chocolate, melon and pear. Hints of coffee.
Finish: Long, sour, citrusy tang.

I'm going to try this out with some Chinese teas. Floral and fruit flavours, mixed with slightly chemical bitter notes - there are some similarities between the whisky and the tea. Maybe there are some good flavour combinations. I tasted the whisky by sipping it, then chasing with a mouthful of tea, letting the whisky and tea mix.

1. Pinhead gunpowder.

The tea comes in little rolled up balls of black tea leaf, and has a pungent smoky smell, hence the name. Mixing the whisky and the tea created something earthy and vegetal, with sweet oaky smoke (no longer peaty). The heat from the tea helped release aromas, but the sweet chocolaty and fruity notes were transformed into something more resembling beefsteak tomato and matcha, Japanese green tea.

2. White monkey.

I've reviewed this tea before. It's a green tea, and has a light vegetal taste. Combined with the whisky, notes of cedar and sandalwood appear. It reminds me of incense, the fragrant kind burnt outside Thai Buddhist temples. With more tea, notes of coconut and synthetic grape flavour appear. Very interesting.

3. Dragon pearl.

I've also reviewed this tea before (fragrant jasmine scented, slightly sweet). It seems too light for the whisky, with the delicate floral notes overwhelmed by the peaty sweet flavours. But as the whisky goes down, and the finish fades, there's a faint jasmine scent that lingers in the mouth. Ethereal, makes me think of playing the flute in moonlight, somehow. Maybe I have an overactive imagination.

4. Biluochun.

This is a green tea rolled into pinhead pearls, which expand a great deal in boiling water. The tea has a salty chlorophylly taste, with more than a hint of Japanese dried seaweed (nori). The whisky seems to take on a salty, fermented taste in combination with the tea. Rather like soya sauce, slightly unpleasant. Um. I don't think this works very well.

And the winner is Dragon Pearl tea! Awarded the prize for surviving such a robust whisky and still managing to gently reach the nose with refreshing jasmine fragrance at the end of every sip.

10 Peruvian discoveries

2008-06-01T11:41:00.003+01:00

Just got back from Peru, where the Pretty Lady and I had a belated honeymoon. I found many many interesting things. Here are a few:

1. Mario Vargas Llosa.

We bought his book Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter for the flight back. It's quirky, funny, and the translation we got was very readable.

2. Guinea pig.

Sweet and gamey, a bit like how I imagined rabbit char siew would taste. Remember to peel off the rubbery skin.

3. Coca tea.

Herby and earthy, refreshing in the cool mountain weather. Supposedly helps altitude sickness. Can't disagree.

4. Pisco sours.

Peruvian bartenders don't water down their cocktails. I'm pretty sure every pisco sour I had contained a 50ml measure of pisco, at 46%. We got wrecked after one particularly memorable drink, a Peruvian double pisco sour. Yes, 100ml of spirit.

5. Machu Picchu.

Everything that's been written about it is true. And more. Stay at the Inkaterra Hotel in Aguas Calientes at the bottom of the hill, luxurious little rooms set in an orchid garden.

6. Sol coins.

They look like euros. I'm pretty sure I paid for some things with euros instead of sols.

7. Inca economic history.

Notable for state-sponsored indentured labour. They built all those amazing buildings out of stone because everyone had to volunteer 2-3 months of labour time each year for the construction of public projects. Usually meaning royal palaces, government buildings and infrastructure.

8. The Catholic compromise.

Peruvian Catholicism seems to be a mish-mash of Quechua / Aymara beliefs and real Roman Catholicism. In Cusco, Jesus Christ is the Lord of Earthquakes, for example, and many saints have their mountain god equivalents. Could this be the case across Latin America?

9. Alpacas, llamas, guanacos and vicunas.

It's really hard to tell the difference. Alpacas have straight ears (apparently), llamas have curved ears, vicunas look like deer, and guanacos look like they're quite fat. Or at least the single guanaco I saw did.

10. Loads more ruins.

There are so many other ruined places, both Inca and pre-Inca, that don't show up in the normal trips. Choquequirao, Kuelap, the Nasca Lines and Kotosh, just to name 4 that I want to go to.

More on all these in June!

White Monkey

2008-05-10T16:36:00.000+01:00

This is a tea that the Pretty Lady bought for me a little while back. It's green tea from Fujian province in China, not white tea, the name notwithstanding. White tea is a stage more oxidised than green tea, and White Monkey has just been dried, not oxidised. It comes in fluffy long tea leaves, a little like the crispy "seaweed" served at Chinese restaurants in the West, or like bamboo shavings.

White Monkey
Green tea
China (Fujian province)
Pale yellow, slightly cloudy

Preparation: 2 big pinches of the fluffy tea. I usually pinch up less than I think. Second steeping is best.
Nose: Vegetal, slightly salty, a little musty, very faint.
Tasting: Sweet salty, hints of broccoli, green vegetables. Bitter at the dregs.
When to drink: Like Silver Needle, best for rehydrating after exercise.

Not much action in the cup unfortunately, unlike the rolled teas that expand. I usually use a largish pinch, because as usual, I don't like using a teapot. The tea comes from mountainsides in Fujian province, and is so named because it is picked as 2 leaves and a bud, which supposedly resembles a monkey's paw.

Glen Grant 30 yo 1976/2007 (They call me mellow fellow...)

2008-05-08T00:25:00.001+01:00

The Pretty Lady bought this whisky for my birthday. It's not quite the same age as I am (in fact it's slightly older) but it did spend a fairly long time in the barrel. It was the second whisky I've tasted from the Douglas Laing Old Malt Cask series (or at least, the first bottle I've opened - I've got a bottle of 25 yo Port Ellen which I tasted at Whisky Live), and I loved it. Perfect drinking strength at 50%, no water needed, not that I like to add water anyway. They have some good casks at Douglas Laing.

Anyway, this whisky is almost a brandy, it's spent so long in the barrel. I think it's what they had in mind when they coined the term "sherry monster". It's oaky, sherry sweet, fruity and slightly floral, and has the slightly sharp smell that I associate with a really good armagnac. In fact, the first time I tasted it I actually checked the bottle to make sure that I had gotten the right one.

Glen Grant 30 yo 1976/2007 (Douglas Laing Old Malt Cask)
Single malt - Speyside
Mahogany
50% ABV

Nose: Sweet sherry, walnuts, oak, raisins and malt. Hints of blackberry and cherry.
Mouthfeel: Medium body, syrupy, a little astringent. Great drinking strength!
Tasting: Sweet. Raisins, cherries, oak and beer. Tastes almost exactly like a cognac. Hints of 'rubber band', an astringent sharp taste that all brandies have.
Finish: Long. White wine, dry and cooling. Fades to malty beer - the cognac is gone.

I'll match it with the king of sweets - jelly beans. Why? Well, several reasons - we have a big bag lying around on the table, disturbing such a delicious whisky is best done in concentrated hits of flavour, and lastly, why not jelly beans?

1. Root beer

A biggish sip of whisky overpowers the jelly bean completely. Maybe a little less - ah, the flavours are combining, but in a strange way. Oak, no sweetness at all. It's like biting an oak beam. Other woody flavours become apparent - cedar, a bit of sandalwood, maybe a little pine. And the finish has hints of liquorice. Interesting but not great.

2. Watermelon

Small sips are the order of the day. Becomes buttery, creamy even. The watermelon fruit fades to caramel, with some popcorn on the side. Green beans, something vegetal. And through it all, lots of oak. Interesting, but not great.

3. Pineapple

Hmm... the whisky pares back the artificial pineapple flavour, creating something that tastes more natural. A little smoke emerges. Coconut, a bit like pina colada with a dash of whisky. More oak. This is far more pleasant than the previous two.

4. Caramel popcorn

The oak is gone! More caramel, this time tinged with sherry from the whisky. Fades very quickly. Very buttery with the second sip of whisky. The corn flavour added into the mix creates something that tastes a little like bourbon.

5. Jalapeno pepper

The whisky is more obvious here. I can still taste the raisins, the brandy-like spike in the mouth. But it's all overlaid with a vegetal, slightly sour spicy hit. Quite peppery, like a sherried Talisker, but with far more heat. I like this combination.

6. Strawberry shortcake

The fruit has been transformed by the whisky into something more cherry-like. There's a little milk, butter and honey. More oak, lots of oak. Nothing much else - quite boring.

The jalapeno pepper jelly bean combo is the best. However, I think both whisky and bean might be better on their own, unless there's a craving for some Talisker-like kick.

Feudo di Maria 2005

2008-05-07T03:00:00.001+01:00

I really like Nero d'Avola, a red Sicilian grape, native to the island, and to my knowledge grown nowhere else. The spiciness and the chocolatey flavours really hit the spot for me where red wine is concerned. The wines are that common either, making them quite a lot of fun when I encounter them on a wine list. Familiarity hasn't yet bred contempt.

I had this bottle (or actually a 1/3 bottle) at Hereford Road. It was pretty good value for money as well as I remember, and they decanted the wine for us, which is something fairly unusual. Well worth having.

Feudo di Maria 2005
Red wine
Italy (Sicily)
Syrah / Nero d'Avola

Nose: Fruity - pear and blue berry. Oak spiciness quite apparent.
Mouthfeel: Medium body, a little syrupy. Good drinking texture with red meat.
Tasting: Sweet, spicy - discernible cinnamon and nutmeg. Vanilla appears after aeration, with hints of milk chocolate.

Unfortunately there isn't much on the internet about this winemaker, the di Maria family. Apparently they have teamed up with the Biscardo family, another Sicilian winemaker, to innovate and experiment on young vineyards, new grapes and the like. Also available from the same winemaker is Feudo di Maria Cataratto Lucido 2005, a dry white wine made from the Sicilian Cataratto grape.

Hereford Road

2008-05-06T17:00:00.001+01:00

The Pretty Lady and I had our first anniversary recently. Among the things we decided to do to celebrate was the obligatory slap-up meal. I chose Hereford Road, a new restaurant near Notting Hill (but was really in Bayswater). Hereford Road was opened in October 2007, by Tom Pemberton, formerly head chef of St John Bread and Wine. It serves much the same kind of food - simple recipes, good seasonal produce, letting the food speak for itself.

Hereford Road
3 Hereford Road
London W2 4AB
020 7727 1144

The interior is a cross between minimalist chic and 1960s diner. There's a line of small tables each seating two opposite the kitchen. Leather seats, round tables, tiled floors marry well with a row of booths along the main dining room at the back. The Pretty Lady and I sat there, under a large round window in the roof, which allowed us to look up at the ceiling of someone's living room. Great natural light.

It was a plain 3 course meal, and the Pretty Lady had decided not to drink too much, so we had a 1/3 bottle of a Syrah / Nero d'Avola blend (blogged about separately as usual). I started with black pudding and poached duck egg. It came with stalks of salad leaf with salt and olive oil, and was very satisfying. There's something about the gamey flavour of fried black pudding, oozing with fat, that goes well with egg yolk. I then moved on to roast forerib of beef, green beans, roast garlic, which came pink and juicy, but was very tasty. It's hard to roast beef to the point where the beef fat is almost rendered and crispy yet retain the pinkness. Very well done, if you'll pardon the pun.

The Pretty Lady enjoyed her fish soup, which came with big wings of skate. I think I tasted saffron and some tomato in the stock, but it was mainly a riff on bouillabaisse that worked quite well. For her mains she had roast leg of duck, grilled chicory and buttered lentils. I think the chicory tasted more of butter, with the lentils a slightly bland counterpoint. The duck was roasted slightly too well done, and therefore dry for me, but right for the Pretty Lady. She did mention that she preferred the duck at Angelus though.

Dessert was the high point. I had buttermilk pudding (a panna cotta really, but sans vanilla and sightly tangy from the buttermilk) with stewed prunes. Well, 2 stewed prunes, but they were enough. The slightly caramelised prune juice was a nice touch, as were the shortbread biscuits. The Pretty Lady had brown bread ice cream, which was vanilla ice cream with little crumbs of brown bread to provide a texture contrast and slivers of caramel to provide a flavour contrast. That was by far the best dish of the night.

I'll definitely be back. Hereford Road is a neighbourhood and family restaurant - welcoming and personal, familiar and comforting. It's a shame it's so far from my own neighbourhood though.

Scores:

6 May 2008: TFQ = 26, CS = 25, S = 15, AD = 6, VfM = 7. Total = 79 points.

What does this mean?

Aloxe-Corton Domaine Chevalier 2002

2008-05-05T16:36:00.000+01:00

I had this wine at Angelus, on the recommendation of the sommelier. It was pretty good as a match to the food - it's quite hard to find a wine to match a diverse selection of main courses for the whole table. Nevertheless I think this worked, with my veal as well as with other people's fish.

The wine (adjacent image is from majestic.co.uk, but is of the 2005 instead of the 2002 that I had) is from the appellation of Aloxe-Corton, a Burgundy. It's a small commune along the northern end of the Côte de Beaune, containing the village of Aloxe, where the vineyards are located. There are a number of winemakers in the village, among which is Domaine Chevalier.

Aloxe-Corton, Domaine Chevalier 2002
Red wine
France (Burgundy)
Pinot Noir

Nose: Oaky, but not intense. Notes of rose and berry.
Mouthfeel: Velvety and smooth. Light for a red.
Tasting: Tangy, quite oaky, lemon dryness. Still floral - rose and orange blossom, slight tobacco. Hints of dark chocolate.

Domaine Chevalier (Pere et Fils, not the first one that comes up on Google - that's a Bordeaux vineyard) was founded by Emile Dubois in 1850. The vineyard was eventually inherited by the Chevalier family, descended from Emile Dubois through his daughter. The current winemaker is Claude Chevalier.

They make both red and white wines. The reds include Aloxe Corton and Aloxe Corton Premier Cru (both 100% Pinots), Bourgogne Passetoutgrain (50% Gamay and 50% Pinot) and 2 marques of Ladoix Premier Cru. The whites include Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru and Bourgogne Blanc (both chardonnays) and Bourgogne Aligote (Aligote grapes).

Angelus

2008-05-03T00:20:00.001+01:00

I recently had dinner with EC, her boyfriend JB, CL and YY, and one of EC's friends at the recently opened Angelus. The owner, Thierry Tomasin, used to be chief sommelier at Le Gavroche, and then manager at Aubergine. The chef is Olivier Duret in his first gig as head chef, and in his first gig in London.

The restaurant is located in Lancaster Gate, in the Bayswater area that's starting to get gentrification spillover from Notting Hill. It only took 9 years. I believe the restaurant used to be a pub, but it has been entirely redecorated to an Art Deco style. When the Pretty Lady and I arrived, we were waved through to the lounge, which smelt strongly of jasmine and lavender, which was nice but not great for drinking wine. I thought about having an aperitif, but the whiskies were run of the mill official bottlings, although the armagnacs looked interesting. However, the rest arrived and we were soon shown to our table downstairs.

Angelus
4 Bathurst Street
London W2 2SD
020 7402 0083

No amuse-bouches or petit fours unfortunately. I don't agree with this - after all while representing a cost to the restaurant they are an opportunity for the chef to show off his talents. Maybe it's teething pains.

Having said that, the sommelier was helpful. While our table of seven had a variety of main courses, from fish to duck to veal, he was able to select a red wine to suit. The wine was served in large balloon goblets, almost resembling brandy glasses, but with a more rounded bottom. My friends were less inclined to drink than I was, and so (sadly), we only ordered a single bottle.

I found the menu quite interesting, but because my system is to order what everyone else isn't ordering (so that I can try as many dishes as possible), I ordered fairly regular stuff. Unfortunately I only tried the Pretty Lady's food, as conversation was flowing all around, and it would have been rude to interrupt. I regretted missing the foie gras creme brulee, which seemed to be the most interesting and popular dish.

Anyway, I started off with foie gras and veal terrine. The menu on the website insists it comes with celeriac remoulade, but mine came with a salad of mixed leaves - slightly disappointing, although the terrine was impeccably excuted and the toast fingers were perfect. I then had parsley crusted veal fillet, stewed girolle mushrooms and parmesan cream. Again, the menu on the website asserts that there was bacon "lou capou", but I have to confess that I don't know what that is, much less if it involves mushrooms. The veal was slightly disappointing - tough, a little stringy, and flavourless, like a poor cut of pork. I then ended with the cheese plate. It had 4 cheeses, roquefort, comte vache and 2 others which I can't remember - the best dish of the night really. Superb quality, loads of flavour, and raisin bread! Overall, good, but not great.

The Pretty Lady fared better. She started out with scallops with watercress veloute and avruga caviar. The scallops were sliced thin (slightly more done than I prefer, but just the way the Pretty Lady likes it), layered in a plate, drizzled with the bright green veloute, and each slice topped with a sprinkling of caviar. Fresh, clean tasting seafood accented by the watercress and with a burst of flavour from the caviar.

She then moved on to duck l'orange, minced leg of duck and herb salad, which was done to her taste (less pink). I couldn't taste the orange, and the herb salad was run of the mill, but she liked it. Again, the verdict seemed to be good, but not great. For dessert she had 2 chocolate mousses, a brownie and caramel ice cream. The caramel ice cream was excellent - caramel in the ice cream itself, not a swirl or in chunks. That's quite unusual.

Good but not great sums Angelus up nicely for me. There were splashes of brilliance, like the wine, and the Pretty Lady's starter, but they were balanced out by disappointments, like my veal. I thought the meal was expensive at the price, especially when there were few of the little touches that make restaurant dining enjoyable.

Scores:

3 May 2008: TFQ = 21, CS = 24, S = 16, AD = 7, VfM = 5. Total = 73 points.

What does this mean?

Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir 2005

2008-05-02T09:00:00.000+01:00

I had this wine at the Capital, and it's excellent. Very good balance, oddly refreshing despite the nourishing flavours, smooth with a little acidity coming through. Of course the price matches - it's from the famous Cloudy Bay winery, which almost single-handedly popularised New Zealand wine in the UK.

The wine was a match for the food at the Capital, but I think it should be drunk alone, perhaps on a summer day, with the aroma of flower blossom in the air. It's hard to find - certainly not to be had on any of the usual websites for love or money. In general Cloudy Bay, red or white, tends to sell out very quickly.

Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir 2005
Red wine
New Zealand (Marlborough)
Pinot Noir

Nose: Oak, plums, gamey flavours, pear, leather. Reminds me of an oak panelled room with leather sofas.
Mouthfeel: Velvety and smooth, a little watery.
Tasting: Sweet and spicy. Pepper, oak, leather, cedar wood, black cherries. Hints of mint and incense.

The Cloudy Bay winery was established in 1985 by Cape Mentelle Vineyards, an Australian company. The vineyards span 200 hectares in the Wairau Valley, near Rapaura on the northeast of New Zealand's South Island. The chief winemaker is Kevin Judd.

Cloudy Bay is more well known for its Sauvignon Blanc, which is supposed to be fruity and rounded, the Merlot of white wines. I've never tasted it, so I couldn't say for sure. In addition to the Sauvignon Blanc and the Pinot Noir described here, they also make Pelorus (a sparkling wine), a Riesling made from botrytic grapes, Te Koko (another Sauvignon Blanc expression) and a Chardonnay.

Here is an account of how the Pinot Noir 2005 was made.

The Capital

2008-04-30T21:14:00.000+01:00

The second meal over my birthday weekend was at the Capital, a hotel restaurant in Knightsbridge that has 2 Michelin stars. That's not unusual - Gordon Ramsay at Claridges and the Savoy Grill had stars at some point - but the Capital is a boutique hotel. It's only got 49 rooms, but given the location, they are probably all luxuriously appointed. They have to be, to match the standard of the food. The chef at the Capital is Eric Chavot, and he's been there since 1999.

The Capital Hotel
22 Basil Street
London SW3 1AT
020 7589 5171

This was the first time I had ever been to the Capital, and only my second time to a 2 star Michelin restaurant (the first was Gidleigh Park). The decor is bright, fresh, functional and comfortable. The staff were very helpful, and the sommelier was kind enough to introduce our sole glass of wine (the Pretty Lady had decided that she had had enough for the weekend) with the same enthusiasm as if we had ordered a full bottle. It was Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir by the way, which I would buy bottles of if they were but a little cheaper...

It's now about 3 weeks after the event, so I don't remember in great detail what we ate, so I'll just summarise the food quickly and dwell on the impressions I've taken away. To start I had a dish of smoked haddock, flaked and topped with a poached egg, that was absolutely delicious. I don't usually go for fish starters, unless they are strongly flavoured, and my intuition was certainly right here. I then had breast of duck, which came presented a little strangely, sliced into three thick blocks, but was roasted perfectly - basted with honey, crispy skin, and just a little pink. It too was delicious. For dessert I had guarani (a type of chocolate) jelly and I think caramel ice cream. The combination worked very well, although the bittersweet rich guarani needed no accompaniment. I also had a cheese plate, an amuse bouche and petit fours, but I can't really remember what they were, nor what the Pretty Lady ate.

The Capital is such a relaxing place to visit. Mingling with lunchers like the Pretty Lady and myself were hotel guests, who more often than not were alone, and reading the newspaper. The Pretty Lady and I found it an extremely quiet lunch, just chatting and relaxing on the morning after a long night out. Since the place had only 12 tables, it's cosy and intimate, and at times we felt as if we were in our own sitting room. It might have been the mythical Starbucks of the TV ad not so long ago: a home away from home, except that the food was of superlative quality and (instead of coffee) the wine was so good I would have ordered a bottle and swigged it all by myself if I wasn't still slightly hung over.

I have to go back. And soon.

Scores:

30 April 2008: TFQ = 28, CS = 27, S = 17, AD = 9, VfM = 9. Total = 90 points.

What does this mean?

Antinoo Casale del Giglio 2005

2008-04-27T10:34:00.000+01:00

The Yogababe chose this wine at Latium at my birthday dinner. It must have gone down well - we polished off 3 bottles. It's very easy drinking, and goes well with Italian food, especially the light, slightly rustic style that Latium serves. It's the type of food that creeps up on you - it feels as though it's a light meal, until the sheer quantity overwhelms. The food needs a wine that washes it down. It went particularly well with my crab tagliolini starter, as that was quite smoky, imposing itself on my palate.

Antinoo Casale del Giglio 2005
White wine
Italy (Lazio)
Chardonnay (66%), Viognier (34%)

Nose: Lychees, cream, oak, tart lemons, pear.
Mouthfeel: Smooth and gluggable. Drink in gulps.
Tasting: Sweet, floral (violets?), lychees, strawberry, clotted cream.

Casale del Giglio is the vineyard. It's owned by the Santarelli family, winemakers since 1914. The Casale del Giglio property is drained marshland in the Agro Pontine, south of Rome. The Santarelli family started growing wine grapes there in the mid-80s. They make about 10 types of wine here, as well as 2 varieties of grappa.

The Antinoo 2000 is supposed to be award winning (whatever that means - there are probably too many awards - but at least they point the way to the vineyard's better produce). In addition, I think I'm going to try to hunt down the Madreselva - a red wine, blended from Petit Verdot, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Sounds really full bodied, fruity and just a little gamey, a combination I really like.

Latium

2008-04-24T21:06:00.000+01:00

I had a good birthday. The Pretty Lady, Yogababe and I started out at Albannach for cocktails (for them) and drams (for me). We then moved on to Latium (adjacent image from restaurantguides.co.uk) where I'd invited some friends for dinner.

I'd been there before with the Pretty Lady, for their Valentine's Day lunch, but wasn't planning to come back here so soon. However, they had a chef's table - which turned out to be too small for my party. However, the staff were extremely kind and were willing to take a large booking, something that many otherwise good restaurants aren't. Bonus points for that.

Latium
21 Berners Street
London W1T 3LP
020 7323 9123

I let Yogababe choose the wine, as I'd come a cropper here the last time I tried. She chose well, better than I did, a white that was fairly neutral food wise and seemed to go with most of my meal (as well as the bits I cadged off others too). As usual, I'll blog about that separately. Latium has a very good selection though, and I reckon it would be possible to drink my way through a selection of Italy's fine and decent wines should I visit often enough. The wine list focuses on Italian grape varieties, although the ubiquitous Pinots, Sauvignon Blancs and Chardonnays make their own appearance.

At Latium, you can choose a starter and / or a pasta, a main course, and a dessert. On both visits I eschewed the four course option, preferring instead to enjoy a dessert and a digestif (there are several ports and dessert wines on the menu). I think it's been the right decision both times.

This time, I had a tagliolini with crab meat and sauteed shredded aubergine to kick off. It was great. Sweet shredded crab meat in cream sauce, tender tagliolini, and the little strands of smoky, sweet aubergine to impart little bursts of flavour here and there. Little sprinkles of chilli and parsley gave it a kick. The Pretty Lady had pappardelle in a wild boar ragu, the twist being that there was no tomato in it - just sage, butter and broth. I found it gamey, almost wild in taste, and while I prefer the sweet tomato paste to offset the game, it was pretty tasty.

The most popular starter round the table seemed to be the fish ravioli. Latium makes ravioli something of a specialty - I had the oyster ravioli the last time, each piece of pasta enclosing a whole oyster, gently poached in fish broth. It wasn't in evidence on this visit, but there were 4 types of fish ravioli, each in a differently flavoured pasta parcel. I particularly recall the spinach ravioli, with firm white fish inside, paired with mild ricotta.

For the main course, I had seared fillet of beef with mashed potato and bok choy in barolo jus. Simple dish - I enjoyed the beef and the potato (which tasted like it had gruyere in it; just a guess, maybe it was a lot of butter and salt), but I felt that the bok choy was a little bitter, with a sour aftertaste that didn't suit the wine-flavoured sauce. The Pretty Lady had the seabass I think, but memory fails me (it would have been rude for me to have whipped out my Blackberry and started taking food notes in detail).

Dessert was a revelation! There were three types of sweet ravioli on the menu. I had the apple and raisin ravioli which came in a cream sauce flavoured with vanilla and sea salt, and sprinkled with cinnamon. It was delicious, the flavours offsetting each other nicely. Think apple pie in a salty crust. Although the chef had dropped a large grain of salt on the edge of the plate, which gave me a surprise with my large spoonful. But never mind.

Latium has great petit fours - biscotti, hazelnut cookies, cinnamon chocolate truffles, all served with very good coffee. It's a great end to the meal, a chance to catch up and chat. And that's exactly what we did. I also had my digestif of course (the Vin Santo), but we had so much fun we moved on to the East Room courtesy of Yogababe.

I'm definitely going back to Latium. Their ravioli selection changes very often, and the chef is a past master. With such variety on the menu, it's a rewarding place to visit - several times over.

Scores:

24 April 2008: TFQ = 27, CS = 26, S = 16, AD = 7, VfM = 7. Total = 83 points.

What does this mean?

Hawkstone Chardonnay 2006

2008-04-23T19:40:00.000+01:00

FM brought this bottle over for lunch. We had roast chicken (marinated in yoghurt and harissa paste) and saffron rice. The wine was remarkably spicy for a white, and had an sweet, overtly alcoholic flavour that I couldn't describe - until I saw my bottle of mead. Very tasty indeed.

Hawkstone Chardonnay 2006 Special Release
White wine
USA (Central Valley, California)
Chardonnay

Nose: Mead, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, heather honey.
Mouthfeel: Smooth, quite thick for a white. The kind of wine you roll around your mouth.
Tasting: Sweet. Kiwi fruit, honeydew melon, vanilla, more mead. Very unusual for a white, almost has red wine flavours.

Not much available on the web about this maker. It's got a one page website, which seems to be a little out of date - the last award winning wine is a 2003, and received the award in 2006. Most of the wines seem to be from the Napa Valley, unlike this one. The Central Valley is a separate region altogether.

La Porte des Indes

2008-04-15T23:32:00.000+01:00

It's not widely remembered that once upon a time, the French had a colonial interest in India too. They established a colony at Pondicherry (now Puducherry), a city in the south of India, on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. With the French colonial administration came French schools, French people, and of course, French food. French culinary influences are evident in Pondicherrian food, creating a sort of rich, spicy Indian cuisine that feels and tastes very decadent. And there's a place in London where it's available.

La Porte des Indes
32 Bryanston Street
London W1H 7EG
020 7224 0055

The Pretty Lady and I pitched up with CY, CL and CL's husband YY. YY had been here before, and had the discount voucher to prove it. The restaurant's entrance is quite unassuming, looking like a normal curry house. Once inside however, the kitschy decor creates a feel and ambience unlike any curry house I've ever been to. Think French colonial opulence with shabby Indian chic and you'll get the picture. The restaurant is also much larger inside than it appears on the outside, with a downstairs bar and space for about 50 tables.

I was quite interested in the list of whiskies - there were three Auchentoshans, a Glen Grant, and some Taliskers among the usual Macallans, Glenmorangies and blends. However, I decided to get a cocktail instead, specifically, a chilli and mango mojito. I don't normally drink mojitos, but this was great - spicy, sweet and refreshing, with both chilli and mango flavours distinct and complementary. Great aperitif.

CL ordered a selection of starters to begin with. As usual I didn't take notes - it's rude unless I'm among other food bloggers - so this list is incomplete. But I do remember demoiselles a Pondicherry (grilled scallops with saffron sauce), beignets d'aubergine (fried aubergine patties filled with paneer), crab Malabar (shredded crab meat with corn, mustard and curry leaves, in the shell), rasoul (lamb and pea pastries) and salad du metis (lettuce, chicken, banana flower and mushrooms dressed with tamarind). The scallops were delicious - I feel that I've always underappreciated saffron, and the sauce here was heavily infused with its flavour. The scallops were a tad underdone but I don't mind that. I also liked the rasoul, with its soft buttery flaky pastry. It was a great riff on a samosa.

We also shared our mains. They came on 2 large round plates, and we were thankful we had chosen a larger table that seated 7. There was magret de canard Pulivaar (duck breast served slightly rare with tamarind sauce and fresh pepper berries), roast black cod (marinated with fennel seed, chilli and tamarind and wrapped in a banana leaf), Xacuti de Galinha (I'm pretty certain this is Goan - chicken curry made with roasted coconut), lamb meatballs and sauteed okra. All this was accompanied by pilau rice, naan and le pain Creole (otherwise known to me as appam, rice pancakes).

The curries were less spicy than I thought they would be, and were sweeter and richer than usual, reflecting the French influence. I particularly liked the duck, with the fresh pepper berries to provide a kick of spice to complement the sour tamarind sauce. The cod was also very good, very different from the usual way of cooking black cod (miso marinated, popularised by Nobu).

We were nearly replete by this time, but I was greedy, so we had dessert. I had an Alphonse mango rice pudding, which was perfect in texture, but overwhelmed by the Mango. The Pretty Lady had lychee sorbet, and CL and YY shared a tandoori mango (yes, it's exactly as it sounds). La Porte des Indes also does desserts matched to wine, the highlight of which (for me) would be the red rice creme brulee. I'm having this on my next visit.

I enjoyed the meal. It was a different take on Indian food, providing variety and amusement among the many Indian restaurants that just do regular North Indian stuff. I'll be going back - at least several times.

Scores:

15 April 2008: TFQ = 25, CS = 24, S = 14, AD = 8, VfM = 6. Total = 77 points.

What does this mean?

The Monty Hall problem, behavioural economics and the painful truth

2008-04-12T12:19:00.000+01:00

Occasionally, the obvious eludes everyone until some bright spark looks at it with fresh eyes, concludes everyone else was wrong all along, and tells it to the world. Everyone then slinks away looking a bit sheepish. This seems to have happened when Keith Chen, a behavioural economist, pointed out that classic demonstrations of cognitive dissonance were an experimental artefact, generated by researchers' misunderstanding of the Monty Hall problem. More here.

The Monty Hall problem is named after a gameshow hosted by someone called Monty Hall. It runs like this:

There are three doors, one of which hides a car, the other two hide goats.
Monty Hall lets you choose a door. If you choose the one which hides the car, you win the car.
Before revealing your choice, Monty Hall opens one of the other two doors, revealing a goat.
Do you stick with your original choice of door, or do you switch?
The answer is that you switch to maximise your chances of winning the car.
The Wikipedia link has the Bayesian analysis, which is quite clear, but in words, you only win the car 1/3 times but select the goat 2/3 times, therefore you should switch, because odds are that you selected the goat the first time.

I then began to wonder if I'd unknowingly been caught by the Monty Hall problem. Have I faced situations where I've not actually recognised it? A painful thought then struck me - I have a habit of "sticking" when investing. That is, I don't change my investments even if other investments in the universe have underperformed by more than my choice, showing that I made the right decision in not picking them.

This is not cognitive dissonance - I am aware that I have that bias and I try to correct for it. It's a conscious recognition that changing my decision has costs - trading costs, opportunity cost, and stress - so I try to minimise portfolio churn. However, Monty Hall logic suggests that expected payoffs on switching are twice as large as expected payoffs from not switching. So have I been fooled by the Monty Hall problem after all?

Here's an example. There are 3 mining stocks which I could buy - BHP Biliton, Anglo American and Xstrata. I choose BHP. Anglo American underperforms, but BHP and Xstrata stay in line with the index. I stick with BHP, as is my wont. The thing is, if Anglo American was a goat, and my research is no better than the average analyst (as is quite likely most of the time), I should switch if I want to go for the car.

If the car was definitely going to be there, I should of course switch. But is it? Probably not. Maybe I should invest in tobacco instead, or defence, if mining stocks are all going to be duds (or goats, according to the analogy). However, working through the combinations gives much the same solution, only this time the probability of picking the outperforming stock if there is a possibility all three stocks are duds is 1/3 when switching, 1/6 when not. Same goes when I increase the number of stocks - it's always better to switch.

Ouch. This is embarrassing - I have been caught out by the Monty Hall problem after all. At least I've realised it though. Another weapon for the investing arsenal.

Gerhard Pittnauer Fuchsenfeld Pinot Noir 2005 (sommelier's recommendation)

2008-04-08T21:42:00.000+01:00

I've rarely been disappointed with sommeliers' recommendations at restaurants. Occasionally, I do dispense with asking the sommelier about the wine, as I feel that sommeliers are under pressure to sell wine, and depending on the restaurant, I would end up paying more than I would want. When I do consult the sommelier, it's because I feel that the food is pretty good and it would be a waste of money to pair the food with less good a wine than it deserves.

With that in mind, I asked the sommelier at Gidleigh Park to recommend a red wine to go with our meal. He was Eastern European, Czech, I believe, and he asked if we would like to try a Pinot Noir. I agreed, and he narrowed down the choice to a New Zealand Pinot and an Austrian Pinot. Intrigued by the idea of Austrian red wine, I chose it. The adjacent image (from weinwerk-burgenland.at) shows a wine from the same winery, but not the wine itself. The bottle looked a lot like this one though, and the label is exactly the same save for the name of the wine.

Gerhard Pittnauer Fuchsenfeld Pinot Noir 2005
Red wine
Austria (Neusiedlersee, Burgenland)
Pinot Noir

Nose: Clotted cream, grape spirit, strawberry, oak.
Mouthfeel: Syrupy and smooth
Tasting: Tannic, faint kiwi, oak, sweet cedar wood, astringent. After heavy aerating, the kiwi becomes strawberry and cherries, and the oak becomes much more prominent. Needs to be decanted about half an hour before drinking.

No, the sommelier did not decant it. Which was a shame, because on first impression the wine was a bit too oaky, and tasted almost corky. Corked wine usually doesn't taste of cork (it smells like my socks after a long workout), so I thought twice about sending it back. Thankfully it woke up.

Gerhard and Brigitte Pittnauer (adjacent image shows Gerhard, from wineanorak.com) run a winery in the Austrian region of Burgenland, on the Hungarian border, on the shores of the Neusiedlersee. Reds (made from St Laurent, Blaufrankisch and Pinot Noir), aren't their only product, as they make Austrian whites with the local Gruner Veltliner varietal, as well as Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. They have 16 hectares under cultivation, with an annual production of 60,000 bottles.

The Pittnauers are members of a society called Pannobile, based in Neusiedlersee. Members each make a wine called Pannobile, using a lot of St Laurent and Blaufrankisch, with the exact recipe varying from member to member. Now that would be an interesting tasting...

Anyway, this wine was a reminder that not all sommeliers are created equal. This wine should really have been decanted prior to drinking - something that is difficult to sell in a restaurant, but in a place with 2 Michelin stars, I would happily have waited.

Gidleigh Park

2008-04-07T22:38:00.001+01:00

Yumchia, the Pretty Lady and I did something crazy for Easter. We drove 250 miles from London to Devon for lunch, and then drove back again. The reason was Gidleigh Park, the hotel in the middle of Dartmoor, with a 2 Michelin star restaurant attached. The executive chef is Michael Caines, who grew up in nearby Exeter. He's a remarkable person who lost his right arm in a car accident, yet went on to gain his stars at Gidleigh Park as head chef. He's now branched out, as the Gidleigh Park group has expanded, planning and cooking for other hotels in the chain, now called ABode.

Gidleigh Park is located in Dartmoor, near the North Teign river, and between the villages of Gidleigh and Chagford. It's a small country house hotel, with 24 rooms (costing a fair amount of dosh, but after we saw the surroundings, and after discovering that the rack rate includes dinner, I decided it was worthwhile). It also has a 2 star Michelin restaurant, which allows diners to eat in the dining room and relax in the drawing room after that, for coffee and petit fours. The dining experience was great fun, and is extremely relaxing.

Gidleigh Park Hotel
Chagford
Devon TQ13 8HH
01647 432 367

We pitched up at about half past twelve, nearly half an hour early. No problem at all - we were shown into the drawing room, where we relaxed after the long drive with some drinks and some hor d'oeuvres. We were served a little spoon of stewed venison (I think with soy), as well as fried "chips" of cod with home made tartare sauce. Very attractive, and certainly a good start to the meal, as the cod was perfectly moist and the tartare sauce delicious, a funny food pun on fish and chips.

After a little while, we moved to the dining room, where we chose our food. The sommelier recommended an Austrian pinot noir, something which piqued my curiosity enough to order it. I'll blog about that separately as usual. The wait for the food wasn't over-long, but our amuse bouche had whetted our appetites. It was white haricot bean soup, creamy, and bursting with truffle (slivers! not oil) and what tasted like celery salt. The Pretty Lady thought it tasted like durian, and Yumchia agreed. We were pretty hungry, so we attacked the bread basket with gusto. The highlight was a sun-dried tomato bread, which had large chunks of sweet and succulent tomatoes, and wasn't overly oily either. Nevertheless eating so much bread proved to be a mistake.

I had ordered a ballotine of foie gras with poached rhubarb. It was delicious - in addition to the poached, compote-like rhubarb, there were little chunks of rhubarb and lemongrass jelly and girolle mushrooms dotted around the plate. They offset wonderfully against the sweet foie gras, both in terms of texture and flavour. The Pretty Lady had langoustine cannelloni with braised fennel, sauce vierge and shellfish sauce. She made me a Perfect Bite which seemed to produce a flavour explosion in my mouth - sweet, lobstery, slight zing from the fennel. Yumchia had quail egg, onion confit and smoked bacon tartlet with roast quail and truffle. Hers was the best of all - sweet and savoury, with the fragrance of the truffle infusing the meat and the egg. Reminded me of a Talisker 18 yo, perhaps without the orange.

For mains I had a slow-cooked sliced venison dish. The venison came arranged on a slice of braised pork belly, with figs and chestnut puree. It was surprising - there was braised red sauerkraut tucked away between the pork belly and the venison. The flavours went very well together, the gamey grilled meat blending perfectly with the sour cabbage and the sweet smoky pork belly. The Pretty Lady had roast duckling with savoy cabbage, turnips and roast garlic. Very sweet due to the honey sauce, and I think it didn't meet the Perfect Bite test, as the sweet sauce fought with the garlic flavours, and the duckling lost. The Pretty Lady and Yumchia disagreed though. Yumchia had roast lamb with fondant potato, and what I believe was a herb puree, although it didn't seem to taste like thyme as stated on the restaurant's website. It was more rosemary, and I think it went better with the lamb than the thyme would have. My main course was my favourite of the three.

We then moved on to the cheese course. By this time the ladies were groaning, but they love cheese, and we hadn't reached dessert yet, so we soldiered on. The waiter, who gave us wonderful service all afternoon, wheeled out the cheese trolley, with was laden with about thirty different types of cheese. I lost count of the number of cheeses we tried, but I think we agreed that the best was an orange Mimolette, which was nutty and hard, and provided a real flavour and texture change from what we had been eating all afternoon.

For dessert, I had a creme brulee with pear sorbet and stewed pear. It was beautiful - the creme brulee came in two discs, one on top of the other, with a nougatine disc on top and in between. There was a perfect fragile spiral of sugar that looked like a spring, nestled on top of the scoop of sorbet. The flavours went really well together, but what impressed me most was the skill it took to assemble the dish. The Pretty Lady had a pistachio souffle with pistachio coulis. It was wonderful - nutty, full of pistachio flavour, and slightly overdone and caramelised, which is exactly how I like my souffle. However, it's generally considered to be a flaw. Yumchia had the apple tart with vanilla ice cream and cider coulis. It wasn't particularly impressive to look at, but the cider coulis gave the caramelised apple a more rounded, fuller flavour. I thought that it was as good as the tarte tatin at the Savoy Grill, although the Pretty Lady disagreed.

After that mammoth meal, we retired to the drawing room for coffee and petit fours. Those were quite tasty too - a passionfruit Jaffa cake, mango foam with chocolate parfait, and a mini cinnamon puff. They tasted like they sound, not particularly impressive, but it was a small weakness to a magnificent experience.

After a while, we climbed back into the car for the long drive back to London, fully replete. It was entirely worth it. If this post sounds a little too much like a paean to gluttony, it's because it is - the food was that good, and we paid a very reasonable price for it.

Scores:

7 April 2008: TFQ = 28, CS = 28, S = 18, AD = 9, VfM = 8. Total = 91 points.

What does this mean?

10 rays I want to see while scuba diving

2008-04-05T11:47:00.000+01:00

Rays are the other big attraction for me when scuba diving. They have been easier to see than sharks - I've already seen a few species. The big ones though, still elude me (and some interesting little ones as well). Rays are less endangered than sharks, although some are still hunted for food. I'm relatively alright with that, as most people eat all of the ray (although not all, as will be shown below). Overfishing is still decimating our oceans though, and if we can't farm rays properly, arguably we shouldn't be fishing for them.

1. Spotted eagle ray

The family of eagle rays is called Myliobatididae. There are between 6 and 8 genera in this family, depending whether or not one counts mantas and cownose rays as members. Spotted eagle rays are up to 2m long, not including the tail, and with a wingspan of up to 2.5m. They can be found all through the Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean. This species is fished heavily, and is endangered. As with most rays, spotted eagle rays dig crustaceans, molluscs and cephalopods out of the ocean floor for food. These rays do not lay eggs, instead giving birth to live young. Image from Sea Saba, a dive operator operating out of Saba in the Dutch Caribbean.

2. Manta ray

Manta birostris, from the family Mobulidae, are the second-best thing I'd ever hope to see on a dive (the first is the whale shark). Their most distinctive feature is the two "horns" around their mouth, which probably serve to direct plankton when feeding. Mantas can grow up to 9m in wingspan, and can weigh several tons. They are found in all oceans, being a true circumoceanic creature. The adjacent image is from National Geographic, and depicts a baby manta born in Japan last year.

3. Cownose ray

Cownose rays, from the family Rhinopteridae, are so named for the distinctive snout that they possess. They use their pectoral fins to dig up molluscs and crustaceans for food, crushing them in heavy dental plates. They are found all over the world, with different species inhabiting different oceans. The Atlantic cownose ray, shown in the image (from the Washington Post, in a story about how cownose rays have decimated an oyster farm) gives birth to live young in mangrove swamps rather than in salt water. They can be up to 1m in wingspan.

4. Shovelnose guitarfish

The shovelnose guitarfish is from the family Rhinobatidae, which contains about 10 genera. They are rays, although they swim as a shark would, and have a similar body plan. This particular species can be found around Australia, and there is one documented case of an attack on a diver. Luckily, guitarfishes have small, blunt teeth, which they use to eat small crustaceans. The shovelnose guitarfish gives birth to live young. Adjacent image from Elasmodiver.

5. Southern stingray

The southern stingray is one of about 70 species in seven genera in the family Dasyatidae. It is found in the Western Atlantic, and can be up to 2m in wingspan. They also give birth to live young. There's a dive site in Grand Cayman called Stingray City where southern stingrays gather. Fishermen used to moor there to sort their catch, and the stingrays were initially attracted by the food. Since then divers have discovered the stingrays, and now dive with and feed them. Adjacent image from Elasmodiver.

6. Brazilian numbfish

The Brazilian numbfish belongs to the family Narcinidae, of which there are about 9 genera. These rays are disc-shaped and have a large caudal fin. They are bottom dwelling, digging for prey with their pectoral fins, and are able to stun their prey by delivering an electric shock using organs in their head. The Brazilian numbfish is found in the Western Atlantic and can grow up to about 30cm in length. Adjacent image from Wikipedia.

7. Masked stingaree

The masked stingaree is a member of the family Urolophidae, which contains 3 genera. Some species are found in brackish water. They have many papillae below their mouth, a feature which is used to distinguish them by species. The masked stingaree is found in Australia, and can grow up to about 50cm in length. The adjacent image is from the very helpful Elasmodiver.

8. California butterfly ray

The California butterfly ray is one of the species hunted for food. It is from the family Gymnuridae, which contains about 14 species in 2 genera. It is found in the Pacific along the coastal regions of North, Central and South America, feeding off bivalves, molluscs and crustaceans. It can grow up to 1.7m in wingspan, and the large pectoral fins make it idea for fishing. The adjacent image shows a discarded California butterfly ray after fishermen have taken the saleable bits - fillets, from mexfish.org.

9. Thornback skate

Skates are defined as members of the family Rajidae. They are small rays, often a metre or less in wingspan. They feed on benthic animals, that is the molluscs and crustaceans that dwell on the ocean floor, like so many other members of the ray family. Thornback skates are found in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean, including around Britain. They have the pointed thorns on the back and tail that give them their name. Adjacent image from Marlin, the Marine Life Information Network for Britain and Ireland.

10. Ornate sleeper ray

Ornate sleeper rays are of the family Narkidae, which has 4 genera and about 10 species. The scientific name for this ray is Electrolux addisoni - and yes, it's named after the company, because of its vigorous sucking action when feeding. It's endemic to South Africa. They are usually found in deep waters, so I'm unlikely to see one. This particular species probably represents my best chance. And it's best to be wary of it, because like the Narcinidae numbfish, it can generate a powerful enough electric shock to deter sharks. Adjacent image from the East Coast Fish Watch Project, with a description of how this species was collected and described.

I've seen an eagle ray, once, on a night dive in the Red Sea. I've also seen many blue-spotted stingrays, about 70cm in wingspan, of the family Dasyatidae, on dives in the Red Sea and in Sipadan. With some luck I'll see the rest, starting with Manta birostris.

And finally, this particular creature doesn't seem to fit with either sharks or rays, so I'd thought I'd squeeze it in at the end of this post. As you can see, it's very unusual.

11. Large toothed sawfish

Sawfishes are related to sharks and rays, but are neither. They belong to the family Pristidae, and are still thought of as elasmobranchs. Their most interesting feature is that saw-toothed snout, called a rostrum. Like the bill of the platypus, the rostrum is electro-sensitive, and enables the sawfish to detect the movements of its prey buried beneath the sand. The saw-teeth aid in digging the prey up. The large-toothed sawfish can be up to 6.5m long, and is found in the Pacific, from southern Africa to Indonesia and Vietnam. It can live in fresh and brackish water, and has been fished to endangered status. Adjacent image from BBC News.

Canteen

2008-04-03T19:09:00.000+01:00

Most of the time, I'm not really interested in haute cuisine or fancy tricks by a chef. I do want big helpings, good quality ingredients, well defined flavours and quick attentive service. So Canteen is one of my favourite places, because it emphasises simple food, good produce, and no-fuss dining. It was even voted Observer Food Monthly's Best Restaurant of 2007. The food is British, with a simple wine list, with a number of old favourites that are hard to get anywhere else.

There are 2 Canteens, one at Spitalfields Market and the other at the Royal Festival Hall in South Bank. Both are equally good, although the original was the Spitalfields branch.

Canteen
2 Crispin Place
Spitalfields
London E1 6DW

or

Canteen
Royal Festival Hall
Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX

Canteen does all day breakfast items and three course meals for lunch and dinner. There's a choice of pie (vegetarian and meat), which comes with greens, mashed potato and gravy, that changes daily. I've had steak and kidney; broccoli, leeks and blue cheese; chicken and mushroom; and duck and chestnut, among others. There's also a daily roast - roast pork with applesauce, roast beef with yorkshire pudding, roast lamb etc etc. I've always found the roast to be the best value for money - the helpings are huge, and for an average price of 12 pounds it can't be beaten. The last choice is the daily fish dish, which ranges from skate to haddock to cod. The regular menu items also change every few months, depending on what's in season I suppose.

My favourite starter, and one I've had on 90% of my visits to Canteen, is the devilled lamb kidneys on toast. On my last visit I even had a double helping as a mains. The dish is basically 5 or 6 lamb kidneys devilled with cayenne pepper, butter and roasting juices heaped on an inch-thick piece of nut bread, swimming in gravy. Very tasty, with the spice level ratcheted up at just below the pain threshold. The kidneys are always fresh and flavourful, which suits an offal lover like me. I usually have this with a bottle of O'Hanlon's Ruby Port Stout, whatever else I'm drinking.

There's also the potted duck and piccalilli with toast - one gets just as much piccalilli as duck, which is helpful when assembling the perfect open top sandwich. Other good starters are hot buttered Arbroath smoky, which also comes with bread, and Cashel blue, chicory, pear and hazelnut salad. All are as simple as they sound, and as tasty.

If the roast, fish and the pies aren't to one's taste, I recommend the following choices on the mains - slow roasted pork belly with apples (no mash - that comes with the roast choice), macaroni and cheese, battered cod with chips and rump steak with mushrooms (also comes with roast tomatoes). Don't have the gammon with potatoes and parsley sauce - the gammon seems to have been boiled rather than fried or grilled, and the parsley sauce is overpowering. But it's a rare miss in what is otherwise a great selection.

Desserts are a treat too. The Pretty Lady and I were very disappointed when they took the treacle tart and cream off the menu for several months. It's highly recommended, because it's clotted cream and the tart is perfectly moist and fresh, so don't delay - order it if it's on the menu! Other recommended choices include Eton mess; jelly, shortbread and ice-cream; and fruit crumbles with custard (try the apple!).

Scores:

3 April 2008: TFQ = 26, CS = 25, S = 14, AD = 6, VfM = 7. Total = 78 points.

What does this mean?

Dragon Pearl (surely dragons don't smell this good?)

2008-04-02T22:08:00.000+01:00

The Pretty Lady bought me several teas recently, from a shop that she can't remember the name of. This was one of them. I think I'll get her to bring me back there at some point, because the teas she got me were really very good. I enjoyed drinking them very much, this one perhaps the most.

Dragon pearl tea comes in individual round balls, about 5 to 7 mm in diameter. They are semi-oxidised, and have a strong jasmine fragrance. They smell absolutely delicious right out of the packet, and can actually make my mouth water.

Dragon Pearl
Oolong tea
China (Fujian province)
Pale golden yellow

Preparation: 6 or 7 pearls, with boiling water. First steeping is best, but still has flavour in up to 4 steepings.
Nose: Strong fragrant jasmine, pineapple jam.
Tasting: Sweet, floral, elusive fruit - sometimes pineapples, sometimes gooseberries. Slightly bitter at the dregs, but only after long steeping
When to drink: When hungry and with food - the strong flavours ease hunger and aren't overwhelmed by food.

Dragon pearls (龙珠) are green tea leaves dried together with jasmine blossom, then hand-rolled into pearls. Each pearl contains two leaves, sometimes with a bud, and some jasmine blossom, accounting for the strong jasmine scent. Upon steeping, each pearl expands and loses its shape as the leaves straighten out.

The tea comes from Fujian province in China. The drying process takes a long time, with unopened jasmine blossoms mixed with the tea as it dries. The blossoms open at night, and infuse the tea with jasmine fragrance. In the morning, the blossoms are changed for new unopened ones. With the best grades, the process can take up to 12 nights. Since the tea is dried for a fairly long time, it's not a green tea. Instead, it's really an oolong tea, albeit with a fairly light degree of oxidation.

I prefer a lower number of pearls than recommended - 6-7 instead of 8-10. This is because I don't use a teapot - the tea sits at the bottom of my large glass, allowing me to gulp rather than just sip. And I can refill quickly. It's an idiosyncratic way to drink, and the purists will hate it, but that's fine by me.

Cafe Japan

2008-04-01T00:18:00.000+01:00

Cafe Japan is a Golders Green institution. It's universally thought of as one of the best Japanese restaurants in London, and was the best in the late 1990s when the Japanese restaurant scene wasn't as varied as it is now. It serves a limited menu, with only certain warm dishes, and with the selection of sushi determined by the availability of produce, but what it serves, it does very well.

And they know it too. Cafe Japan has very short opening hours. They close on Monday and Tuesday, open only for dinner from 6.30pm to 9.45pm on Wednesday to Friday, and open for lunch (12.00pm to 2.00pm) as well as dinner on Saturday and Sunday. Covers are at a premium, and without a booking, the best time to go is lunch on weekends at 12.00 sharp.

Cafe Japan
626 Finchley Road
London NW11 7RR
020 8455 6854

The decor is spartan - as one enters, one is greeted by a chorus of "iraisemase" from behind the wooden sushi bar (image from trustedplaces.com). There is a table for 3 by the window, with seating for another 22 people in the back of the restaurant. Total seating capacity = 33 people including the seating at the sushi bar.

Lunch is cheaper than dinner, although with fewer things available. For lunch, there's a choice of various sushi rolls (makizushi) or the usual pressed sushi (nigirizushi). I like the inside-out rolls. There's a choice of fried salmon, fried tuna or yellow-tail (sometimes I have all three). Also recommended are the eel and cucumber rolls and the salmon roe with oba leaf roll. There's also some chirashizushi (sashimi over a bowl of rice) for those with a serious rice and fish craving.

I also usually order a uni nigiri. There aren't many Japanese restaurants who have reliable supplies of sufficient fresh sea urchin roe to be able to offer this nigiri on a regular basis, but Cafe Japan seems to be one of them. The uni has always been fresh and delicious, reminding me of the sea and scuba diving. There are other nigirizushi available of course - tamago (egg) has about 20 layers, far more than the usual Japanese restaurant in London, as well as the usual salmon, tuna and mackerel.

I also order a set meal occasionally. Choices range from roast unagi, salmon teriyaki and chicken karaage. The set comes with salad, rice, and an appetiser, which is either stewed salmon neck or fried age tofu.

Sashimi selections are available both at lunch and dinner. The types of sashimi vary with the availability of produce, but there's usually o-toro or chu-toro (prized cuts of tuna) and salmon. For dinner, there are also usually more elaborate dishes. There's grilled black cod with miso, a snip at 12 pounds. It's a fraction of the price that one pays at Nobu, and more tasty in my opinion. There's occasionally something special, like grilled spider crab. Grab these whenever possible - they aren't often repeated.

Cafe Japan accepts cards for dinner, but lunch is cash only! Normally I would complain about this, but the place is my local Japanese diner, and they are always so friendly that they've long since made up for the inconvenience. The staff are lovely, the service is great (even if they are sometimes a little rushed), and the food is delicious.

Scores:

1 April 2008: TFQ = 25, CS = 25, S = 15, AD = 6, VfM = 8. Total = 79 points.

What does this mean?

10 interesting facts about animals mating

2008-03-29T13:00:00.000Z

This post is a result of a conversation Yumchia, the Pretty Lady and I had over lunch at Gidleigh Park. We continued the discussion on the drive back to London, and Yumchia asked me to do a post on the subject of chickens and eggs. So I tried, but I couldn't find enough stuff to make a full post, so I thought I'd do a list post. It's more interesting and has far more detail, although in this case it may be excessive. Here goes.

1. Chickens and eggs.

Most of the eggs available in supermarkets are unfertilised ova. That is, the cockerel has not fertilised the egg by mating with a hen. Cockerels have no penis - instead the hen inverts her cloaca to receive sperm from the cockerel's cloaca. Video embedded below (it's about 1 minute in).

2. Duck penises and wrong turns.

Female ducks are devious. Their cloacas (the avian and reptilian version of a vagina) curve, twist, branch and have dead ends. This is thought to enable the female duck to select sperm from the male she likes best to fertilise her eggs. The male duck has also evolved some impressive equipment in order to get around the female's defences. See here, for some impressive images.

3. Gorillas, harems, and effort.

Among primates, gorillas have the smallest testes and penis relative to the size of their body. Gorillas' penises measure a length of just 2 inches on average, compared to a human's 5-7 inches on average. The reason is thought to be because gorillas live in harem-like family groups, where a single male silverback has sole access to several females (adjacent image is from the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund site). He can therefore be certain that any sperm that fertilise the females in his harem are his, and so he can get away with producing less sperm than, say, a chimpanzee. The chimp needs to produce more sperm and has bigger testes to do so, since his sperm needs to contest with other chimps' sperm. In case you were wondering, humans have medium size testes (because humans are mostly monogamous) and big penises (because size really does matter and female primates pick males with bigger penises).

4. Boars and the perils of experimentation.

Pigs' penises curve, ending in a spiral, and are between 45 and 60cm long. The boar's penis engages with the sow's cervix (not vagina), which is also spiral shaped. So the boar needs to be fairly adept and manipulating it in order to fertilise the sow. More details here. And for an eye-watering story, see here.

5. Humans and axolotls - reproducing without growing up.

Axolotls are interesting creatures. They are thought to be a type of salamander, and indeed are very similar to the larval stage of some species of salamanders. However, they become sexually mature, mate and reproduce while still in this larval stage (the technical term for it is "neotenous"). It's possible to turn an axolotl into a salamander with hormone injections. All well and good - except that the same is hypothesised to apply to humans too! Humans are similar to chimpanzee babies. They share hairless, flat faced, small teeth, thin skull bones and a number of other characteristics. It's possible that humans are apes that never grew up. More here.

6. Anglerfish and their deep attachment to each other.

Anglerfish are a deep sea fish with lures hanging off their foreheads, often with a bioluminescent tip, which they use to lure unsuspecting prey into their jaws. The fish of the family Ceratiidae are solitary, and males and females rarely meet. To perpetuate their species, the male, which is much smaller than the female, fuses himself to the female, becoming nothing more than a pair of sperm producing organs. More here, and the adjacent image is from Te Ara. This leads nicely to...

7. Polychaete worms and sexual dimorphism.

...polychaete worms of the genus Osedax, which live on whale falls (occurring whenever the corpse of a whale falls to the ocean floor). Males live inside the female, never developing past the larval stage, producing lots and lots of sperm. This looks quite close to asexual reproduction, with the only gene shuffling occurring during meiosis.

8. Dolphins, whales, and keeping it hidden.

Dolphins and whales need to swim to find food, and by and large, they need to swim fast. External genitalia, therefore, are a hindrance, creating drag and reducing top speed. So male dolphins and whales have evolved a way to keep their genitalia in a pouch, extruding them only when mating. It's actually quite impressive.

9. The Iberian minnow and complete, total male lib.

There's a species of freshwater fish, Squalius alburnoides, that consists entirely of males. Species that consist of females are known, and even hammerhead sharks can reproduce by parthenogenesis. However, this species of fish reproduces by mating with females of another species. They produce female and female hybrids (triploid) and male pure breds (diploid). So these minnows don't need females. Emile of The World We Don't Live In explains it better than I ever could here.

10. Snakes - how?

Apparently it's quite complicated. Video here. The male snake needs to join his cloaca to the female snake. He has two penises, and only needs to insert one into her cloaca. Flexible spines on it then expand, preventing it from getting dislodged. He can then deposit his sperm. The female sometimes pulls the male along during mating, and he will try to mate with her again after a few hours. Another video below:

So there you have it. This blog is no longer family friendly, and should only be viewed after the watershed, when any young children should be fast asleep in bed.

Cantina Bernardi Frizzante 2005 (dry yet fruity and light)

2008-03-26T22:11:00.001Z

I'm not really a great fan of sparkling wine. I prefer fruity robust reds, and often I feel that appreciation of something delicate, light and airy comes less easily as a result. Nevertheless a good champagne or prosecco can have enough layers in it to entertain my inexperienced palate, if I can sit still enough to drink it. It's a little like getting whacked on the head by a teacher to hammer home a message.

This is a bottle of prosecco a group of us had to while away the afternoon at the Anchor and Hope. It was a great facilitator of conversation. Then again, sparkling wine often is - the bubbles aerate the wine and ease absorption of alcohol in the upper intestine, and people become convivial more quickly. It helps if the bubbly is as easy drinking as this prosecco of course.

Cantina Bernardi Frizzante 2005
Sparkling white wine
Italy (Prosecco Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, Veneto)
Prosecco

Nose: Sour grapes (yes, they do have a flavour, not just of envy), orange juice.
Mouthfeel: Light and refreshing. Slightly astringent on the tongue, the first mouthful made me want to pucker up a little.
Tasting: Dry, plum skin, a bitterness suggesting hard fruit skin, something nutty (almonds?), strawberries.

Prosecco, made from the grape of the same name, is the Veneto's answer to Champagne's champagne. Real prosecco should be made only around the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, and bottles from these regions carry the official appellation (or DOC). I find prosecco to be drier than champagne of the same grade, with more nutty flavours and (I'm going to get skewered for this) more fruit. Champagne is more bready and oaty, more likely to have that elusive "structure" than prosecco.

This prosecco did have structure, despite being very dry. It was a little confusing for me, as I don't normally associate dryness with a lot of fruit. I also fancied that I could taste something slightly camphoraceous after the bottle had been open for a while, but that could just be my thinking about chasing the prosecco with a dram of Lagavulin 16 yo...

Anyway, the Cantina Bernardi vineyard is in the right place to produce the stuff, being located between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, near the village of Refrontolo. It's run by the brothers Adriano and Pierluigi, and was founded in 1960. They make 5 types of Prosecco, with the prime label being Prosecco "Arnere", a wine made with grapes from a certain portion of their vineyard. There are 2 other sparkling wines made with Manzoni grapes, as well as some dessert wines and some reds.

So many vineyards, so little time.

The Theory of the Perfect Bite

2008-03-25T19:12:00.000Z

This is something thought up by the Pretty Lady, and it's turned out to be a very good way to test a chef's skill. The theory runs thus:

A Perfect Bite is when all elements in a dish are assembled onto a single forkful or spoonful.
If a Perfect Bite tastes, well, perfect, the chef has executed the dish well.
If one of the ingredients is off, or doesn't match the others, then it will show up in the Perfect Bite test.

As one might imagine, it works best for haute cuisine, Modern European, or fusion food, where the chef assembles components on a plate. The principle can be applied to dishes from most other cuisines too - I've tried it on a thali meal, for example.

Chateau de Javernand Chiroubles 2005 (wakey wakey sleepyhead)

2008-03-24T09:12:00.002Z

I got this wine for dinner at the Anchor and Hope not too long ago, to accompany a slow-cooked lamb shoulder and potato gratin. The Yogababe and I disagreed over whether to get a 2003, a 2005 or a 2002 vintage from the wine list, but eventually we decided to go for the 2005 as it seemed to be the best value for money. We were also getting 2 bottles for a table of 8, and I believe that younger wine drinks better in large quantities. I've not tested that theory, but this particular vintage seemed to go down well. Adjacent image from www.javernand.com, the vineyard's website.

Chateau de Javernand Chiroubles 2005
Red wine
French (Chiroubles, Beaujolais-cru)
Gamay

Nose: Kiwi, flowers, red fruits, tart plums, something savoury - cheese.
Mouthfeel: Smooth, not over-rich, medium body.
Tasting: Oak, apples, meat drippings, cherries, sandalwood. Pushes right up through the nose, very agressive once properly aerated.

I felt it complemented the meat quite well. It took some time to wake up though - for about half an hour after opening, effectively all the way through my starter, the wine simply tasted of plain fruit and oak. Only when the meat came did it open up with savoury and sandalwood notes appearing. Vigorous swirling helped a bit, but I was afraid of over-oxidising the wine. Yogababe felt that it didn't really wake up for her until she was well into her mains, and she was quite disappointed.

Chiroubles is one of the Beaujolais-cru appellations, that is, one of 10 appellations (located near villages of the same names, usually) in the foothills of the Beaujolais mountains. The Chiroubles appellation is one of those synonymous with a village, and is located at a high altitude for a vineyard. The wines are supposed to display aromas of cut violets, and are supposed to be best when young.

Chateau de Javernand is one of more than 70 vineyards in the Chiroubles appellation. It was started in 1917 by Auguste Faye, who bought the vineyard and the chateau. The vineyard is run today by Pierre Forneau. The vineyard produces 2 marques, Chateau de Javernand, their cuvee selection, and Les Gatilles (I think this means "the geckos", but my French is very basic). Les Gatilles is supposed to be a truer representation of what the vineyard's characteristics are: refreshing and fruity.

I found this particular Beaujolais to be pretty good, but as an accompaniment to a meal in a restaurant, it was a little deficient. The wine needs to breathe for quite a long time before more interesting aromas appear, so it probably suits being served at home better. Now that I know, I suppose I could also get them to decant it for a bit before our meal.

The Anchor and Hope

2008-03-22T11:24:00.001Z

After watching a play at the Old Vic, some friends and I were looking for a place in order to get out of the impending rain and have something to eat. There's a choice of several restaurants around Southwark tube station - Baltic, the Anchor and Hope, Tas, Livebait and another pub that serves Thai food next to Baltic. All reach a reasonably good minimum standard, but in my mind only the Anchor and Hope and Baltic are great.

We chose the Anchor and Hope because we left the Old Vic in mid-afternoon, which was a fairly convenient time to pitch up at the pub. The Anchor and Hope takes no reservations except for one seating on Sunday afternoon at 2pm, for which one needs to reserve a table on Monday without knowing the menu in advance. Given the popularity of the place, it's always best to go if one happens to have 2 spare hours to wait for a table, as we did. Adjacent image from thisislondon.co.uk.

The Anchor and Hope
36 The Cut
London SE1 8LP
020 7928 9898

The Anchor and Hope was one of Britain's first gastropubs when it opened way back in 1991. Numerous chefs, critics and regular diners have heaped praise on it, and it's deserved praise too. The pub won a Best Gastropub in the UK award in 2004, and serves unreconstructed, traditional British food. The chef is Jonathon Jones, who served me at the bar on this visit (I didn't know until I came to write this post). He was fairly patient when I asked for a wine glass to have my dram of Lagavulin 16 yo in - they don't serve wine in wine glasses at the bar, only in tumblers. Shame.

For what it's worth, the wine list has a lot of French and Italian stuff, with some good vintages available. We chose a Chiroubles 2005 which I will blog about separately. As far as whisky goes, the selection was alright - Macallan 10 yo, Lagavulin 16 yo, Cragganmore 12 yo and Maker's Mark, plus J&B and Jameson.

Anyway, my party of 8 had several drinks, until at 6pm they seated us in the main restaurant. The menu was interesting, to say the least. For starters, I had snail, bacon and watercress salad, which consisted of milk-fed snails with warm bacon, croutons, and watercress leaves - very savoury, with the snails full of snail flavour rather than garlic flavour as is usually the case when one orders escargots. The Pretty Lady had potato soup with foie gras, smooth, rich and full of cream. The foie gras was a slice that had been seared gently and was floated on top of the rich white soup (almost a veloute). Yogababe had crab on toast, fulfilling her obligations as a social animal eater. I thought the crab was a little overdone on the mayonnaise and lemon, with the toast a little too burnt. Other starters included a bolito misto and beetroot, ragstone cheese and orange.

For starters 5 of us, including myself, decided to go for a slow-cooked lamb shoulder with potato gratin, one of the Anchor and Hope's signature dishes. It was massive, and would have fed at least 7 of us. The gratin was wet and cheesy, with a little too much milk added for some. It was certainly wetter than what's available at La Bouchee, but I view it as a different style which is just as tasty. The lamb was pretty tender and soft, having been cooked for seven hours, but I feel that it would have benefited from being braised with more root vegetables for extra sweetness. Tasty nevertheless.

Other mains on the menu included rib of beef with chips for two, English lop (a breed of pig) with celeriac and beetroot, spinach and ricotta rotollo with green beans and aioli, which Yogababe had. She liked the rotollo, a pasta swiss roll filled with the beetroot, spinach and ricotta, but the aioli was a little too garlicky for her taste.

For dessert, CY asked for marmalade ice cream, another signature dish. Upon being informed that there was one scoop left, she pounced on it and was kind enough to share it around. It was lovely - bittersweet orange peel-flavoured ice cream, perfect texture and taste. I had a rhubarb and buttermilk pudding, which I shared with the Pretty Lady. It turned out to be a vanilla panna cotta with poached rhubarb on the side, a riff on rhubarb and custard. Very clever and tasty, even if the buttermilk pudding was a tad on the fragile side. CY also had a pistachio cake which was the best dessert in my opinion - warm, buttery and nutty, chockfull of pistachios with fresh cream and blood orange on the side.

I do dislike the no-bookings system that the Anchor and Hope operates. Intensely. However, when I do have a free afternoon, a meal there is not only enjoyable but very rewarding, especially in a large group of people. It's a great gastropub, but a no-bookings policy only serves to irritate customers.

Scores:

22 March 2008: TFQ = 26, CS = 25, S = 10, AD = 6, VfM = 8. Total = 75 points.

Note that I've taken away 12 points for the no-bookings system, and added 2 points for the good service.

What does this mean?

Silver Needle (glittery and shimmering)

2008-03-21T17:53:00.000Z

I like tasting stuff. I've written posts on whisky, brandy and wine so far, and I'm about to broaden my horizon to tea. Why tea? Well, why not? Drinking tea is just as pleasant as drinking alcohol, and probably far healthier. Especially when I've got several interesting ones to try. I might even be able to make this into a series of posts.

We'll start off with Silver Needle. I found a bag of this in a Whittard of Chelsea shop. It was on clearance sale. Despite the fact that the tea was probably about a year old, the resulting brew was delicious, pleasant and refreshing. Since then, Whittard have discontinued selling this, so I count myself lucky to have found it. It looks like Zhenhe Silver Needle, as I found on Wikipedia (see adjacent image).

Silver Needle
White tea
China (Fujian province)
Pale silvery yellow

Preparation: Boiling water with a large pinch of tea gives the best results. Rewards up to 3 steepings before losing flavour. Second steeping is the best.
Nose: Fragrant orchids, thin and subtle, very elusive.
Tasting: Slightly sweet, nutty flavours, straw. Bitter only at the dregs, and then only after long steeping.
When to drink: For thinking, reading, blogging, or rehydrating after exercise.

The highest grade of Silver Needle tea leaves are long and thin, with small fine hairs on each leaf. After brewing, the hairs detach and become suspended in the tea, which accounts for its shimmering, silvery look upon first brew. I don't think they contribute to the taste much though - my silver needle tea is usually better upon second brew, and sometimes third brew too. The tea I have is probably a slightly lower grade, as there aren't that many hairs still attached to the leaf. Upon brewing, some tea leaves will be temporarily suspended upright at the bottom of the cup, giving the tea its name.

The tea is grown in the Zhenhe and Fuding districts of Fujian province, and should only be picked in March and April when it is not raining. The best grade is Baihao Yinzhen (白毫银针), which is made from the buds near the top of the plant.

While the prescribed method of brewing is to use off-boil water (about 75-80 degrees Celsius), I feel that this gives a flavour which is too delicate and elusive. The tea is much more flavourful (although it lacks the shimmering silver colour) when brewed with 90-100 degree water. Call me a Philistine, but why waste such delicious tea?

Asadal

2008-03-21T13:43:00.000Z

Korean food is sometimes the poor cousin of Chinese and Japanese food. They've been elevated to the status of haute cuisine, after Alan Yau's ventures (Hakkasan and Yauatcha), Nobu Matsuhisa's eponymous chain of restaurants and the revelation that Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city in the world. Korean food is still waiting for its rethinker to take it into the "fine dining" leagues. Not that it's not fantastic now.

In the meantime though, Korean restaurants continue to offer good, wholesome, traditional meals that fill one up at a reasonable price with great pleasure. One such place is Asadal, which is the sister restaurant of a similarly named place in New Malden, Surrey. Asadal London (adjacent image from londontown.com) is located beside Holborn tube station, underground. The entrance is quite plain, and doesn't give any hint of the delicious meal waiting below. I held off trying this place for nearly 2 years, as it seemed uninteresting and there were other places that scratched my Korean food itch - Ran and Arang among others. Since I first visited about a year ago, it's become my favourite Korean restaurant.

Asadal
227 High Holborn
London WC1V 7DA
020 7430 9006

There are several varieties of kimchi available here, but go for the regular varieties - pickled Chinese leaf and daikon radish. Simple is best when it comes to Asadal, and the Chinese leaf comes rolled up into a wad, ready to be peeled apart with metal chopsticks. There's ginger mixed in with the chilli too, for an interesting twist.

The usual dishes are well prepared and of decent quality - bibimbap (rice, meat, egg and vegetables in a heated stone bowl) is almost perfect, with the bowl heated just so, such that the egg is just set after being mixed in with the rice. My only gripe was that there was not enough Korean hot bean sauce. Japche, glass noodles fried with beef and vegetables, is flavourful and moist, with the flavour penetrating the noodles - with many other Korean restaurants, the japche noodles are relatively tasteless. Barbecue here is good as well - the meat is well marinated and seasoned, and they will cook it in the kitchen for any customer who prefers to go home smelling relatively unsmoky. All the usuals are available - bulgogi, spicy chicken and seafood.

Pajeon (fried seafood pancake) is a little better than average here, with enough shellfish and vegetables such that the fried dough doesn't dominate the dish. It's not fantastic though. Instead, go for the kam poong gi - fried chicken in a sweet and sour sauce. Korean fried chicken is fast gaining a great reputation in the US, but is relatively unknown here in the UK. The chefs at Asadal know how to fry chicken - the pieces are crisp and moist inside, and there's lots of nooks and crannies on the surface of the batter for the sauce to soak into.

Now for the more unusual dishes. Pork fans should try the bo ssam, slices of fat belly pork steamed and served with a spicy salty sauce. The Pretty Lady isn't a fan of this, but it's great for anyone who loves pork fat, as I do. Another dish that the Pretty Lady won't eat is yuk hwe, minced raw beef, julienned pear and a raw egg yolk - the Korean version of steak tartare. The Asadal version has the beef defrosted sufficiently to be tender, unlike one or two other places. Highly recommended.

As for drinks, they aren't the point. The wine list is unremarkable save for a Gewurztraminer which would be sweet enough to withstand all the strong flavours. I order either tea or OB (Oriental Brewery) beer - the food is perfect to go with them (no shikhye - Korean rice punch - though). Don't bother with desserts either - the cinnamon ginger tea is good enough.

Scores:

21 March 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 24, S = 12, AD = 6, VfM = 7. Total = 73 points.

What does this mean?

Bureaucrats create more champagne

2008-03-19T19:50:00.001Z

On 13 March, the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine (the French agency charged with controlling the labelling of wine, cheese and a whole host of other food products) announced an expansion of the French region of Champagne. Now, 357 villages (up from 317) will have the right to make sparkling wine and label it champagne, from 87,000 acres of vines (up from 84,000 plus). This was done in order to meet growing demand for champagne.

More here and here.

Now for some Fermi estimation:

Maximum champagne yield from the old territorial delineation was about 300m bottles a year, about 3,500 bottles an acre, as it says here.
The new acreage will add some 10m bottles to current production at current yields.
But annual sales were already exceeding that by some 40m bottles - 338m bottles in 2007!
By 2020, assuming champagne demand grows at a rate of 5% per annum - not outlandish if you believe China and India are nascent luxury demanding economies - then annual demand will be more like 600m bottles.
That's about 81,500 extra acres - a doubling in size of the champagne region...

Clearly, the price of champagne is going to go up by a lot in the future. Best drink more (good champagne) now. The Pretty Lady is nodding as I write this. Better go and get a few bottles.

Rosebank 17 yo 1990/2007 Cask Strength (Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey)

2008-03-18T21:29:00.003Z

Sadly, Rosebank, a wonderful Lowlands distillery, is no more. Nevertheless, Diageo has a large stash from which they release stocks from time to time, and there are a number of independent bottlers that also have good casks. The Whisky Exchange is one of them, and they have a number of Rosebank releases which are very good. This whisky though, is from one of their casks from which they bottle to order at their Vinopolis shop. I believe it's from the same stock as one of their bottlings, but because it was bottled later it has a little more aging in it.

I love this whisky. It's a quintessentially summery whisky, with the refreshing light Lowlands character, and it puts me in mind of summer fruits, sweets and English (and Scottish) market towns. Light and airy is the impression I'm trying to convey here - boiled sweets, some Earl Grey tea with no milk, daffodils and daisies. I thought I would try to pair this whisky with some really good quality, classic English sweets.

Rosebank 17 yo 1990/2007 Cask Strength (from the cask, The Whisky Exchange)
Single malt - Lowlands
Straw gold
55.2% ABV

Nose: Spring grass, lemons, fresh orange juice, not the peel. Rhubarb and custard sweets. Slightly medicinal from the high ABV.
Mouthfeel: Light body. Evaporates quickly. Like getting poked in the mouth.
Tasting: Salty sweet. Jam doughnuts, lemon curd on toast. Magic marker and pear drop lurking underneath.
Finish: Medium long and warm. Something sweet and spicy, like mulled wine (although that's not very summery). Fades to sweet.

I've tried to get sweets of reasonably quality, as I try with all these pairings. They are from Mrs Kibble's Sweet Shop. There's no point in wasting a good whisky by pairing it with something that wouldn't be worth eating on its own. Both food and whisky are supposed to complement each other, after all. Here we go.

1. Lemon sherberts

Start with the simple easy one first. Swishing the whisky around the sherbert creates something very spirity, barley-ey and mashy. The Rosebank reminds me of bourbon whiskey now, with underlying tones of magic marker. The rhubarb and custard edge is still there, with hints of cheap estery Wrigley's chewing gum, and soft peaches. A bitter finish, with some slight whiffs of compost. Rather interestingly, the high ABV seems to stop the sherbert filling from fizzing in the mouth. Don't know why.

2. Rhubarb and custard sweets

My favourite sweet of all, followed by a contender for my favourite whisky so far. In goes the sweet, sip of whisky - lemony tart, with barley sugar overtones, as the sweet makes the whisky sweeter (duh!). Followed closely by a big hit of banana, which is warm and hot. Slight savoury note, almost like a banana fritter. It fades quickly, finishing with bitter oaty notes at the end. Not bad - the only problem is that the rhubarb and custard sweet is kind of big, and I can't swish the whisky around my mouth like I'm used to.

3. Soor plooms

Scottish sweets for Scottish whisky! Soor plooms are from Galashiels, which is in the Lowlands too. The whisky make the sweet's flavours taste coconutty, and more creamy. There's a slightly milky flavour which is very attractive. Some bitterness towards the end, and tartness as the whisky's rhubarb and custard character reasserts itself. Quite interesting.

4. Pear drops

Pear drops have a queer chemical taste that reminds me of magic marker. I occasionally find this in some whiskies. It's not unpleasant, it just gives me the vague feeling that I'm doing something I shouldn't, like sniffing glue. Anyhow... oh wow. Barley and corn mash, followed by peanuts and bitter walnuts, wreathed with the magic marker flavour. The whisky isn't sweet at all, very maritime, but it's too light to resemble a big-hitting coastal Highlander. Is there more? Unfortunately not - that's all the depth there is. Shame.

I thought the pear drops would have won it from the impression given by the first sip. Unfortunately the magic marker taste overwhelmed whatever finish there was, which was a little disappointing. So the honours go to the soor plooms, which is poetically appropriate - Scottish Lowlands sweet with a Scottish Lowlands whisky!

Birth-year Armagnacs

2008-03-17T20:32:00.000Z

At the East Room, the Pretty Lady, Yogababe and I ordered Armagnac brandies bottled in the years of our birth. It's not a great idea to reveal which years those are on the internet though, so unfortunately I'll have to hide them when posting these tasting notes. Those that know us will know which years they are.

1. Red Hare's Chateau de Ravignan

Nose: Grappa, myrrh, lemon thyme and raisins. Very Middle Eastern combination - doesn't smell like brandy normally does.
Tasting: Sweet and smooth, sultanas, hard fruits, a tinge of camphor.

2. The Pretty Lady's Marcel Trepout

Nose: Raisins, herby and buttery. I thought I tasted salted popcorn at first, but got a bit confused after that. More Italian than Middle Eastern, if I'm selecting foods as my reference points.
Tasting: Sweet sour and tangy. Sultanas and hard fruits, perhaps more pear than the Chateau de Ravignan.

3. Yogababe's Laberdolive

Nose: Dark chocolate and figs. Creamy, reminded me of a dairy, but the milk was somehow quite separate from the chocolate. Yogababe disagreed.
Tasting: Sweet, but not as sweet as the Chateau de Ravignan. Spicy cinnamon, some apple. I think the nose was more interesting than the tasting, but by this time my palate was fairly tired.

The armagnacs were delicious, and I enjoyed the novelty of testing out the distillate produced in one's birth year. Nevertheless, some armagnacs are so much better than others - Yogababe's was the most expensive, and all of us agreed that it was the best, with more flavours and aromas than the other two.

A great digestif - who needs dessert anyway?

The East Room

2008-03-16T10:23:00.000Z

My sister, the Yogababe, decided to join a private members-only club. So she chose the East Room in Shoreditch, a newly opened, buzzy little bar / restaurant that is linked to 2 other venues in London (Milk and Honey and the Player), another in New York and another in Chamonix. Since the launch of the East Room, the club has decided to open membership once again, with a marketing drive aimed at ladies. From this promotion, Yogababe managed to snaffle membership at a very decent price indeed. To celebrate, she asked the Pretty Lady and myself along to have a look.

The place itself is actually quite hard to find. As befits a private club, there is no signage. The only indication is a discreet little strip above the buzzer in the doorway. Get past that, go up a flight of stairs, and the door opens into a maroon carpeted room with an interesting whisky collection in a cupboard on the right. Go forward past some booths, and the room widens to reveal wooden tables, leather sofas, comfy leather chairs and a bar on the left. The whole impression is of an '80s lounge, especially when the room is dimly lit.

The East Room
2a Tabernacle Street
London EC2A 4LU
07000 THSTRM

The food menu is short. One can either choose the salad bar ("DIY Dining" on the menu), which serves several salads along with a large pan of prawns and a slab of roast beef, or go for the a'la carte. Among the starters served are olives, jamon serrano and oysters, while you can size your main of tuna carpaccio or crab linguine to starter size. For mains (that only come in one size) there is capon, rib eye steak, or lamb cutlets. Desserts range from a cheese plate to lemon tarte to chocolate torte (although we didn't try them). The food is simple but well done, and is great value for money.

The drinks are by far the more impressive. There's an Enomatic machine, dispensing New Zealand Pinot and South American merlot. Ordering wine from the bar involves examining a useful grid system - choose a price range, cross reference it to a grape and begin. There are a large number of whiskies, a cut above the normal range available in a bar - I noticed an Oban 1992 Distiller's Edition, a Rosebank 20 yo and a Dalmore Gran Reserva, not to mention several Compass Boxes. The tequila and rum ranges are almost as extensive. The cocktail list is almost an afterthought after all this, but the house cocktails are fairly interesting and original.

Best of all, they have a range of Armagnacs, some fairly rare, ranging from 1955 to 1985. The idea is to have the Armagnac bottled in one's year of birth. Yogababe, the Pretty Lady and I eschewed dessert to try and see if any of birth-year Armagnacs were any good. They were, and I'll be blogging about them in a separate post.

The place is a private club after all, and attracts a buzzy media / advertising crowd, with the occasional City worker. I didn't like it enough to join (particularly since I'm male, and can't take advantage of the great ladies' discount), but I suppose I'll be back occasionally with Yogababe. The whisky range is definitely worth a trip or two.

Scores:

16 March 2008: TFQ = 22, CS = 19, S = 10, AD = 8, VfM = 9. Total = 68 points.

* poor service - they lost Yogababe's reservation by confusing her with someone else and marked her as a no show. I suppose it's still early days and they've got time to iron things out.

What does this mean?

La Vieille Ferme Red 2004 (surprisingly spicy)

2008-03-15T10:41:00.001Z

We went to KN's place for dinner one Sunday night recently. Yogababe was there, and she had brought a bottle of wine for our kind hostess. It was this one, and I opened it when KN asked me if I wanted red wine. Despite 2004 not being a great year, this one was surprisingly spicy, full of flavour and sunshine, if a little lacking in fruit.

La Vieille Ferme Rouge 2004
Red wine
French (Cotes du Ventoux, Rhone)
50% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 15% Carignan, 15% Cinsaut

Nose: Pear, musty fruit, red peppers, hints of meat drippings and magic marker.
Mouthfeel: Smooth and thick - big gulps required.
Tasting: Oak, blackberries, hard fruits, spice, and surprisingly, pencil leads.

KN served spicy chicken stew to go with this - lots of ginger, chilli and spices, with roast carrots, sweet potato and parsnips on the side. Surprisingly, the wine more than held its own, with some interesting flavour notes appearing. The lack of fruit I mentioned earlier could well be because of the chicken, but the wine was enjoyable enough. For a food-wine pairing where the wine was basically chosen at random, they went well together.

La Vieille Ferme is one of the marquees of the Perrin brothers, vintners at the Chateau de Beaucastel. It was established more than 35 years ago, and the grape blend is the same as for their flagship marquee Chateau de Beaucastel, a Chateauneuf du Pape.

The wine is marked Cotes du Ventoux, which is not quite Cotes du Rhone, but is close enough. It's meant to be an affordable alternative to the Chateauneuf du Pape, and the Perrin brothers have concentrated on marketing this marquee in the US in recent years, if the number of US based review on their blog is anything to go by. Some quick googling revealed that La Vieille Ferme is extremely popular due to its perceived value for money - I agree. It's a good wine. However, it's not a great wine, and if fireworks in the mouth is what one wants, one must pay more.

The Old Bull and Bush

2008-03-13T20:57:00.001Z

There are a number of great pubs in and around Hampstead in North London. Some qualify as gastropubs, although the label is misplaced - gastropub implies that the food is much better than the drink, and that the purpose of the pub is to serve food, not to serve drink. This is not true with most of these "gastropubs", particularly not the Old Bull and Bush. Here, the food is one facet of an establishment that serves those interested in a good meal, those interested in a good pint, or both. I fall into the last category most of the time.

The Old Bull and Bush is located on North End Road east of Golders Green tube station. It's not easily accessible by public transport, but it doesn't need to be - most of its patrons live in the area. Nevertheless, it's well worth a visit even if one is coming from further afield. Across the road from the pub is Golders Hill Park, which is a treat to walk around in summer (there's the obligatory pond with ducks, as well as an interesting aviary). The pub was originally supposed to be the site of a tube station (to be known as Bull and Bush station, of course) between Hampstead and Golders Green. The station exists underground, and one can see it on the tube journey between Hampstead and Golders Green, but shafts were never sunk down from the surface.

The Old Bull and Bush
North End Road
Golders Green
London NW3 7HE
020 8905 5456

At the Old Bull and Bush, one has a choice of 3 areas, the restaurant, the pub or the beer garden in front. The restaurant serves slightly more expensive, more elaborate food, while the pub serves simpler salads and pizzas (as does the beer garden). The pizzas and salads are also available in the restaurant.

As far as drinks go, the wine list is fairly interesting, although I haven't actually drank wine at the Old Bull and Bush. The highlight is Mad Fish from Mad Fish Bay, a white with which I was impressed when I tried it elsewhere. The beers aren't bad either - there are a list of 10 (with many of the familiar options), and the highlight is draught Edelweiss, which I usually have.

The menu has changed over the last 6 months, and sadly, I don't think it was for the better. Two of my favourites have been taken off - the crab linguine (which was also a favourite of the Pretty Lady's) and the Turkish aubergine and lamb pizza. Nevertheless, there remains enough good hearty food on the menu to make this place worth visiting.

Pride of place on the starter menu should go to the eggs benedict. They used to make this dish with salmon, which was tasty enough, but they've gone back to the original and best version - with smoked ham. Other starters include chicken liver parfait and scallops with chorizo.

For mains, one can't do better than the lamb rack, chorizo and vegetables. The chorizo has been deep fried in cubes, and scattered like pancetta over the roast rack of lamb. If that is too heavy, the duck salad with watercress is a reasonably healthy alternative. Some of the new options on the menu are pretty good too - venison and pancetta hot pot with roast vegetables is decent cold weather comfort food. There are also the comforts of grilled steak and chips, or well done pizza.

Desserts are where the Old Bull and Bush is weak - there aren't any. Still, it's nice place to enjoy a glass of wine, or another beer, or just a coffee.

Scores:

13 March 2008: TFQ = 22, CS = 22, S = 14, AD = 6, VfM = 7. Total = 71 points.

What does this mean?

Crocodylian phylogeny

2008-03-13T20:40:00.001Z

This is a follow-up to the last post, where I described 10 crocodylians. Again, the lengths of the branches of the cladogram don't mean anything. There you have it - 3 extant lineages, gharials, alligators and crocodiles.

10 crocodylians, scariest beasts around

2008-03-12T22:19:00.001Z

Watching crocodylians, live or on TV, hits something deep in your gut (or maybe just my gut). Watching them move, stalk and pounce seems to activate some deep-seated flight instinct that says, "You'd better get out of here if you don't want to end up in someone's belly". I don't get this when I see a shark, but even a smallish gharial or caiman can induce alarm bells in my head (and gut, as it happens). But I can't stop watching - crocodylians have survived on Planet Earth for 220m years, since the Triassic period, and roughly as long as the dinosaurs, and as such, are inordinately interesting creatures. Why do they work so well?

That's not really a question I can answer in a post, or even a question that I'm actually qualified to answer. What's clear though, is that the basic crocodylian bodyplan has remained the same for a very long time, through a plethora of shapes and sizes - long snout, lots of teeth, long muscular tail, short legs, long body, semi-erect posture. Oh, and scales.

First, some phylogeny. In this post, I want to focus on members of the order Crocodylia (hence crocodylians - crocodilians include earlier species which placed in different orders). There are 3 extant lineages in this order, Gavialoidea, Alligatoroidea and Crocodyloidea. Each branch has the obvious candidates, and Alligatoroidea includes the caimans as well.

1. Rhamphosuchus

Rhamphosuchus ("beaked crocodile") lived from about 25m years ago in what is now the Indian sub-continent. It was a member of Gavialoidea, and was probably a relative of extant gharials, as can be seen from the beaked snout. The species is poorly known from fossils, but was probably between 15-18m long. The beak is indicative of a fish diet (although not exclusively). Adjacent image from Wikipedia.

Some recent work done has reinterpreted Rhamphosuchus as a member of Tomistoma, the taxon that includes false gharials. False gharials have the same thin beaked snouts as true gharials, but were thought to be members of the clade Crocodyloidea. This has now changed due to DNA analysis - false gharials are really members of Gavialoidea.

2. Gharial

Adjacent image from Laelaps, an excellent zoological blog well worth reading. Gharials are found on the Indian sub-continent, and are one of 2 extant species in Gavialoidea. The other is the false gharial (of course). The long thin snout is an evolutionary adaptation to facilitate a diet of small fish. They can be up to 6m in length. Gharials are currently endangered, and are being pushed to extinction as the sub-continent develops and grows in population. They are already extinct in Bhutan, Nepal and Myanmar, and are only found in very small numbers in Pakistan and in small numbers in India.

3. Pristichampsus

Pristichampsus belonged to a genus of entirely terrestrial crocodiles that preyed on land mammals. It was about 10m long, and lived about 6om years ago. It had long legs, and was well adapted to a running lifestyle, as it had hooves on its toes. Adjacent image from this University of Bristol website. Pristichampsus is thought to predate the split between Alligatoroidea and Crocodyloidea. It's not a member of Gavialoidea though.

4. Ceratosuchus

Ceratosuchus is thought to be a basal member of Alligatoroidea, and lived in the Palaeocene, maybe about 65m years ago. Adjacent image from Wikipedia. The main unusual feature of this creature is the 2 triangular plates on its skull, and indeed its name means "horned crocodile". Ceratosuchus lived in what is now North America.

5. Chinese alligator

There are 2 extant species of alligator, the Chinese alligator and the American alligator. The Chinese alligator is smaller, about 1.5m in length, and has an armoured belly, which is quite rare among crocodylians. What's left of their wild population can be found along the lower reaches of the Yangtze, and there are fewer than 200 wild individuals left. There are approximately 10,000 animals in captivity though. Adjacent image from danmex.org.

6. Purussaurus

Purussaurus was a giant caiman found in South America in the Miocene, about 20m years ago (caimans are members of Alligatoroidea). Adjacent image from Tetrapod Zoology, and shows the scale of this animal - it was more than 15m in length, making it a very large crocodylian indeed, one of the largest to have ever existed. Darren Naish at Tet Zoo states that it was probably aquatic at that size, and would most likely have preyed on large mammals as well as other prey. His post on Purussaurus is here.

7. Spectacled caiman

The spectacled caiman is one of 5 extant species. All are found in Latin America. The difference between a caiman and an alligator lies in the septum between the nostrils - caimans have a bony one, alligators don't. The spectacled caiman is further distinguished by a bony ridge around the eye, which makes it look as if it is wearing spectacles. They grow to 2.5m in length, and are found from southern Mexico to Argentina. Adjacent image from US Geological Survey website.

8. Mekosuchus

Mekosuchus is a genus of crocodylians (4 species) that inhabited Australasia until quite recently, with remains discovered that are less than 4,000 years old. They were entirely terrestrial, and may well have been hunted to extinction by humans. One species, mekosuchus inexpectatus, was around 2m long, and had specialised back teeth that indicated a diet of molluscs. Adjacent image from Tetrapod Zoology, which has more information.

9. Baru

Crocodyloids of the genus Baru are thought to be mekosuchines, part of the same Australasian radiation. Adjacent image from Paul Willis's site - he does reconstructions of extinct crocodilians. As can be seen from the image (of a species called baru darrowi), baru mekosuchines had short broad snouts with long curved teeth. The fossils were found in Australia, and indicate that b. darrowi reached about 5m in length. It lived about 8m years ago, and is thought to have had a mostly terrestrial predatory lifestyle. According to this site, the first baru skull to be found had part of a marsupial lion's skull in its jaws.

10. Salt water crocodile

The largest crocodyloids (as well as crocodylians) alive today, salt water crocodiles are found in Australia and throughout South East Asia. They are ocean-going, and are up to 5m long. I have a video of a salt water crocodile underwater which I'm told was taken off Sipadan Island in Borneo, so they certainly get around. It is an ambush predator, and drowns its prey rather than tear it apart (although the famous "death roll" will rip off some flesh). There are documented cases of attacks on humans.

There are 13 species of crocodyloids extant today, across 2 genuses. The dwarf crocodile sits in its own genus, all the others are more closely related.

There are more interesting species of crocodylians I haven't yet discussed, although this post gives a quick run-through of the 3 main lineages and one of the extinct out-groups. Many so-called supercrocodile fossils discovered recently actually belong to the crocodylomorphs, a more basal group. More later perhaps. In the meantime, enjoy these beasties.

Glenrothes 20 yo 1985/2005 (Happiness, is a warm bun...)

2008-03-10T20:15:00.005Z

50ml samplers are not a great size of bottle. For me, the ideal size of a bottle is 20-35ml, a half bottle here in the UK (Americans have larger bottles at 750ml, and Asian duty free sells a lot of 1l bottles). The reason is because if the whisky is good, I usually want more than a couple of drams. Nevertheless, they are a cost effective way to try as many whiskies as possible, as well as to get to know new distilleries better.

As little sampler bottles go though, Glenrothes has got it right. Instead of 50ml bottles, they sell 100ml bottles, attractively shaped like a little round ball of goodness. The whisky character is very Speyside, sweet, fruity and wholesome, and leaves me wanting more, which is great because there is more. There is also sufficient whisky in a sampler for a food pairing, which is what I tried to do here. The food of choice is Ladurée macaroons (or macaron - the French version of a Scottish biscuit), a great Parisian sweet, lovely with coffee and tea, and hopefully with whisky too.

First, tasting notes:

Glenrothes 20 yo 1985/2005 (OB)
Single malt - Speyside
Warm amber
43% ABV

Nose: Raisins, vanilla, malty beer. Oat bread and hot cross buns. Dried cranberries.
Mouthfeel: Thick, full-bodied, creamy, very static, no expansion.
Tasting: Sweet salty, pepper and cloves, Sultanas, honey and banana. Rich, deep and complex.
Finish: Short but intense. Malty beer, raisin bun, hint of marmite on toast.

And on to the tasting. Ladurée sells about 20 flavours of macaroon in London. I've picked 5 of my favourites to see how they go with the whisky.

1. Chestnut

Ladurée's chestnut macaroons have nice chunks of chestnuts in the cream filling. It's certainly a textural and flavour surprise. The whisky seems to bring out bready, oaty notes, while the chestnut chunks taste sweeter. The creamy filling and the creamy mouthfeel seem to go very well together, although this would be a characteristic of all the macaroons. There's not much enhancement of the chestnut flavours though.

2. Chocolate and passionfruit

This macaroon is a thick layer of dark chocolate cream between 2 passionfruit flavoured meringue halves. It's a new flavour which I haven't tried before, so I'd selected it pretty much on a whim. The whisky seemed to bring out a savoury note - soya sauce, perhaps. The chocolate flavours were muted by the whisky, with a rich fruitiness appearing which jarred slightly with the savoury hints.

3. Orange blossom

Ladurée's orange blossom macaroon is cream with orange blossom water between 2 vanilla meringue halves. The whisky intensified the orange notes, turning it very orangey and very floral indeed. There was also a faint hint of butterscotch, perfumed and creamy. The whisky itself also tasted much saltier than when unaccompanied. Very tasty indeed.

4. Salt caramel

This is my favourite of Ladurée's macaroons. The salt caramel is in the filling, and it gives a savoury counterpoint to the sweet meringue. That was on its own though - the whisky brought out some bitter oaty notes which weren't particularly pleasant. The whisky also tasted sweeter than when unaccompanied, with the sultana and raisin notes very muted. Not particularly interesting.

5. Rose

Rose is a little like orange blossom - the floral flavouring is in the cream filling rather than in the meringue, which is probably vanilla. Like with orange blossom, the whisky enhanced the floral notes, but unlike orange blossom, also introduced a yeasty beery flavour that didn't quite go. Fruity raisins at the end too, but it was a little too late. Interesting, but not great.

Overall, I think orange blossom macaroons shade it. It would probably have been even better had the Glenrothes been bottled at a higher ABV - more flavour compounds would have dissolved with more alcohol, and been released into my mouth. Maybe I'll try to pair a stronger whisky with macaroons in a later post.

10 Gilbert and Sullivan operettas

2008-03-08T15:53:00.002Z

I'm not in the main an opera fan, as I find the stories a little trite, although the music can ofttimes be fantastic. Gilbert and Sullivan operettas though, are quite interesting, as I particularly enjoy the plotting and the stories in addition to the music. Gilbert and Sullivan put their characters into situations quite difficult to get out of, unless they applied a little logical reasoning. Some of the resolutions are fairly funny, as well as intriguing. So I'm going to share the plots of 10 operettas (Gilbert and Sullivan only wrote 14 or 15, if you count the lost one, Thespis).

1. Ruddigore

Ruddigore tells the story of the Murgatroyd family, the baron of whom, due to the indiscretions of an ancestor, is cursed to commit a crime each day, or die a horrible death. All previous barons have eventually succumbed. Through various shenanigans, a reluctant heir takes up the baronetcy, and has to face his curse. After experimenting with committing silly crimes (e.g. forging his own will) he has a bright idea, and reasons that if he were to intentionally not commit a crime, he would be attempting suicide. Since that is a crime in itself, he is therefore fulfilling the conditions of the curse, and all his ancestors need never have died.

2. The Pirates of Penzance

This one is slightly confusing. Frederic, an orphan pirate boy, is nearing the end of his apprenticeship as a pirate, which finishes on his 21st birthday. He happens upon some young women and captures them, but releases them when their father, the Major-General, pleads with him, for he has no family except the girls. This is a lie, and the Major-General wrestles with his conscience while the police attempt to capture the pirates. Frederic then discovers that since he was born on 29 February, his 21st birthday does not occur until he is in his eighties, and that he is to be a pirate all his life. The police burst in but the Major-General and the women plead for the pirates. Asked to yield in the name of the queen, the pirates do so, and are pardoned, for they are orphan noblemen one and all.

3. The Sorceror

Isaac Asimov wrote a short story with the premise that this particular operetta should have had a different ending. A sorceror arrives in a village where a young couple are to be married, and brews a batch of love potion which works on everyone except married people. A series of mishaps ensue, which culminates in the bride falling in love with the vicar, the vicar in love with someone else, and so on. The distraught groom appeals to the sorceror, who reveals that either the groom or the sorceror will have to die. In the end, it is the sorceror who chooses to die, and all is then well. A better resolution of the paradox would have been to have everyone marry, and the ones not already in love would then be free from the effects of the potion, and could then get divorced and pair off again.

4. The Mikado

This is an operetta about love, set in Japan. Nanki-Poo, a prince in disguise, wants to marry Yum-Yum, ward of Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner of Titipu. He almost succeeds, when Ko-Ko decides that he needs to forge Nanki-Poo's death to avoid being sacked as Lord High Executioner (for not executing anyone). So Ko-Ko reports to the Mikado that Nanki-Poo has been executed. Unfortunately, Nanki-Poo is the son of the Mikado, and his betrothed at court, elderly Katisha, is distraught at his execution. How to resolve this? Why everyone pairs off - Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum, and Ko-Ko and Katisha, and everything is right as rain again.

5. HMS Pinafore

A love story, based on class distinctions. Josephine is in love with Ralph, a common sea hand, but is due to marry Sir Joseph, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Ralph serves on the HMS Pinafore under the command of Captain Corcoran. The marriage cannot happen, for Ralph is of common stock. In the end, Little Buttercup, a "bumboat woman", confesses that years before, she had 2 charges, a commoner and a patrician. She mixed them up, and Ralph was the patrician that became a sailor and Captain Corcoran was the commoner who became a captain. The two men swap uniforms, and Captain Ralph is free to marry Josephine.

6. The Gondoliers

This one cheats a little when it comes to the resolution of the impasse. Two humble Venetian gondoliers choose two women and happily get married. At the same time, a princess arrives in Venice, married to the king of Baratravia as a child, but secretly in love with her drummer boy. It transpires that one of the gondoliers is the king of Baratravia, raised incognito when he was a little boy by the Venetian Grand Inquisitor, who got him from his wet nurse. Unfortunately he, whichever gondolier he is, is a bigamist. It is all resolved when the wet nurse appears, and announces that she raised the prince herself, giving him over eventually to service with a royal family as - you guessed it - a drummer boy.

7. Utopia, Limited

This one is quite clever, satirically speaking. King Paramount of Utopia sends his daughter, Zara, to Cambridge University to learn civilised behaviour. He does this against the wishes of 2 wise men, Scaphio and Phantis, who with the Public Exploder, have power over the king's life. Zara returns with 5 gentlemen, and together they recommend that Utopia be turned into a limited liability company. It is a great success. Scaphio, Phantis and the Public Exploder are furious at the threat to their power, but they cannot blow up a limited liability company. Instead, they convince the people of Utopia that unemployment is high - sanitation is so good that doctors have no work, there is no war so soldiers are jobless etc. Zara then decides that government by party is best. 2 parties will stymie each other so much that no progress is possible. Scaphio and Phantis are thrown into prison and everyone rejoices.

8. Iolanthe

Iolanthe, a fairy, has incurred the punishment of banishment from Faerie for marrying a mortal and having a son. The other fairies miss her, and petition the Faerie Queen to allow her back. When they meet her, they find that her son, Strephon, has grown, and is in love with Phyllis, a mortal, but is unable to marry her because the Lord Chancellor has forbade it. Phyllis bumps into Iolanthe, and because she is immortal and young looking, jumps to the conclusion that Strephon is having an affair, and chooses instead to marry one of the peers of the realm. The fairies try to help Strephon, and end up making him leader of both parties in the House of Peers. In the meantime, the fairies decide that the peers of the realm are quite attractive. Iolanthe also discovers that the Lord Chancellor is her long lost husband, and decides to marry him again. The Faerie Queen condemns her to death, only to discover that all the other faeries have married peers. She therefore changes faerie legislation to avoid killing all the faeries.

9. Patience

Bunthorne, an ascetic poet, is in love with Patience, but she loves Grosvenor, another ascetic poet. Both of them have lots of female admirers. Patience decides that she cannot marry Grosvenor, because he is so perfect that to marry him would be a selfish act. She offers herself to Bunthorne instead, who accepts happily. Later though, Patience confesses that she still loves Grosvenor instead. Bunthorne, furious, threatens Grosvenor unless he renounces ascetism and becomes an ordinary young man. Grosvenor does, but then Patience decides that it wouldn't be so selfish to marry him after all, and does. Bunthorne is left alone.

10. Trial by Jury

This one is relatively easy to resolve. Edwin is in love with someone other than his bride Angelina, and is prosecuted in the court of the Exchequer, by jury. Everyone's sympathies lie with the beautiful Angelina. The jury finds in her favour, and she asks for large damages, as Edwin's love was worth much to her. Edwin retorts that he is a drunk and a scoundrel, and that the damages should therefore be small, as he is no big loss to her. Given the impasse, the judge announces that he will marry Angelina, and everyone goes away happy.

I've only seen the Mikado so far. Many of these operettas are not performed often, the exceptions being the Mikado, the Pirates of Penzance, and probably the Gondoliers. Still, once in a long while, one may come along. Hopefully it will be Ruddigore or Utopia, Limited.

Domaine Yannick Amirault Les Malgagnes 2003 (more fun without the air)

2008-03-07T19:43:00.000Z

The name is something of a mouthful, but then so is the wine.

Yannick Amirault Les Malgagnes 2003 was the red wine I had at Le Cercle. Le Cercle's menu has individual wine recommendations for each dish, and this one seemed to go well with a large variety of food - from red meat to vegetables to monkfish - so I thought that this would be appropriate to share among 4 people.

Domaine Yannick Amirault Les Malgagnes 2003
Red wine
French (Saint Nicolas de Bourgeuil, Loire Valley)
Cabernet Franc

Nose: A little yeasty - I thought that this was corked, but there was still some fruit left that convinced me not to send this back. Red fruits, quite musty, bready and nutty once it gets to the back of the nose.
Mouthfeel: Thick and syrupy, quite slurpable.
Tasting: Gamey and leathery at first, quite oaky. Aeration brought more fruits - kiwi and raspberry overlaying lots and lots of ripe fruit.

The wine was very much more interesting before aeration. I did like the game of deciding whether or not this was corked to say the least - the bready yeasty flavours at the beginning were intriguing, and weren't unpleasant at all. That said, I was very surprised to taste that, and I contemplated asking the sommelier to have a sniff. But I'm glad I didn't, because the fruit eventually woke up. With some air in it, it became less interesting but was a very well made wine that did indeed go well with a wide variety of food. I particularly enjoyed it with my aligot and smoked chestnut soup.

Saint Nicolas de Bourgeuil is one of the 87 official appellations of wine in the Loire Valley. Bourgeuil is in the north of the Loire Valley, near the city of Tours. There are 2 official appellations here - Saint Nicolas de Bourgeuil, and Borgeuil. Both appellations are made from about 1,200 hectares of cultivation. The heat wave in France in 2003 made this one of the best vintages of recent years in the Loire, and many of the Cabernet Franc wines from the Bourgeuil region are very good.

Yannick Amirault is a well known winemaker in the Bourgeuil region. He makes several designations of red wine - Les Malgagnes, La Coudraye, La Petite Cave, Le Grand Clos, La Mine and Les Graviers, to name a few. All are Cabernet Franc wines, and stem from different corners of his vineyard. I have found the 2003 vintage available for La Coudraye and La Petite Cave, as well as Le Grand Clos. Le Grand Clos is apparently the best in the range according to reviews on the internet. If it's better than Les Malgagnes, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

This was a good wine. I've rarely encountered such good pairing of wine and food as I did at Le Cercle. It was an educational experience, and I'm really looking forward to going back and trying some of their other combinations. Maybe I'll be able to unearth another gem.