Last month, in my home town of Manchester, saw the National Winter Ales Festival. Having missed it last year I really couldn’t pass on the invitation this time around. So I hopped on a train out of Glasgow, met up with pals and, “Put my drinking trousers on,” as one friend put it.

The four-day event is organised annually by CAMRA, the ‘Campaign for Real Ale.’ Think of them as the Abu Hamza of the beer world, except without the hooks and the wonky eye. I jest of course, CAMRA laid on another top-notch event in the same format as previous years but in a new location, The Sheridan Suite at ‘The Venue’ on Oldham Road. The new site seemed to draw mixed reactions from the punters but the vital components were there, namely wall-to-wall casks of beers, ciders and perrys.

The festival also awards important accolades to the brewers. A panel of judges blind-taste all of the competition ales and present a regional award, medals by beer category and overall prizes for the ‘Champion Beer of Britain.’ The 2010 overall winners were…

• Gold medal: 1872 Porter, The Elland Brewery, W.Yorkshire
• Silver medal: Ramblers Ruin, The Breconshire Brewery, Powys
• Bronze medal: Gorlovka Imperial Stout, Acorn Brewery, S.Yorkshire

My personal stand-out ales this year came from Wapping Beers in Liverpool. Their Wapping Smoked Porter (one of my favourite beer styles) has an excellent roasted malt and smoke aroma which is maintained in the taste, with a wonderful tang as it hits the palate. Their Tabley Mild is equally as tasty. Again, a roasty brew and with more body than you might expect from a mild, even a winter one. I do envy those Baltic Fleet drinkers, even if their cars are up on bricks in the car park! (Hey, I’m a Mancunian, Scouse bashing is in the contract!)

Other stars of the show for me were Staffordshire’s Beowulf and their Dragon Smoke Stout, the Arran Brewery’s Arran Ale and, of course, habitual festival attendees Bank Top of Bolton and their Port O Call, which simply must remain one of my desert island beers and I couldn’t resist having myself a swift third for the road at the end of the night.

Beer festivals are, without doubt, 100% guaranteed fun and aren’t just the haunt of old beardy beer types. All ages and genders were present and suitably revelling! Many thanks to CAMRA for laying on the event and being such a cheery bunch of very helpful folk. See you again next year!

Don’t know who those clowns are. They’re no friends of mine!

GDave

I was chatting with a good friend a few weeks back and was told of a recent argument discussion she had about the confounding names of our British mealtimes. The essence of it being, “Do we eat lunch or dinner at midday, is it called dinner, tea or supper in the evening? Why do some call it one thing while others call it another?” At the time she and I were eating brunch at about 2.30pm which might have confused the matter even further.

Now I had thought that this long-running misunderstanding was caused by past conventions of the upper classes and aristocracy, the Georgian and Victorian regencies enjoying their afternoon teas of cucumber sandwiches and dainty cakes. I’d assumed that use of the word ‘tea’ as an afternoon meal had simply stuck or become misused over time, and while that does hold a grain of truth there’s quite a bit more to it as I found out.

The confusion really arises because the times at which Britons ate their meals changed significantly over the more recent centuries. In and before the 17th Century everyone knew where they stood, there being just three meals each day regardless of class, station or profession. Breakfast speaks for itself, eaten in morning after rising. Next came dinner, the main meal of the day, eaten around midday and finally an evening supper before bed, which could be as early as 4pm on short winter days for those rising early the next day.

In the 18th Century, however, differing social behaviour in the upper-classes and economic changes for the working man (think Industrial Revolution) pushed the main dinner meal later and later into the afternoon and early evening. The previously less common ‘luncheon’ became a more permanent fixture at midday to fill the gap left behind. For the Lords and Ladies who could afford such extravagances as paraffin lamps, dinner could even be eaten after dark as late as 8pm, but again this left hunger pangs to be satisfied in the afternoon, so it became the fashion to take ‘afternoon tea.’

Afternoon tea (aka ‘low tea’) is something we’re still pretty familiar with. We might not treat it as quite the ritual we once did but it’s still possible to enjoy afternoon tea of scones, pastries and other fancifuls at English restaurants and tea shops. The UK Tea Council and others attribute the concept of afternoon tea to Anna Maria Stanhope, the 7th Duchess of Bedford. The Duchess, a friend and senior Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria, decided upon this late afternoon meal to fill the increasing interval between lunch and dinner. Inviting her fellow courtesans (it was considered a bit limp for men to take afternoon tea) to partake, it soon became very fashionable amongst the socialites.

The middle and lower classes also began to take a late afternoon teatime, becoming known as ‘high tea.’ By contrast a high tea, the name quite often wrongly used interchangeably with afternoon tea, would not contain the pastries, cakes and triangular sandwiches enjoyed at a Lady Stanhope gathering, but a selection of cold meats, pickles, cheese and bread. It was a much more substantial meal and would replace a later dinner altogether.

And so, taking all of this into account, is it even possible to say there are right ways and wrong ways to call our meals? Besides, it has much more to do with geography than class these days, but if we’re using history as a yardstick then I say we’re all correct! Tea and supper, at some point in history, have both been eaten in the early evening. Dinner, during one period or another, was eaten at midday, afternoon, evening and night. So whatever you personally call these mealtimes, someone in history has called them the same.

There is just one little fly in the teapot with that conclusion. Dinner, no matter what time of day it was eaten, was always the main meal of the day. At no instant in history was it followed by a later, larger meal. If your main evening meal of tea or supper is preceded by a snack-sized, midday dinner, then you’re probably getting it wro…. Well, just leave this last part out if you’re winning the argument!

GDave

Devonshire cream tea recipe: (as pictured above) is by Angela Nilsen at the BBC Good Food website. Top notch scones, perfect first time.

Sources and good further reading: An excerpt from Food & Cooking in 17th Century Britain by Peter Brears & English Heritage, and an excellent article by Sherrie McMillan for History Magazine.

Oatcakes take various forms depending on which side of the Anglo-Scottish border you call home. The Scots make theirs as baked, savoury biscuits which can be served on a cheeseboard or with smoked salmon, but the English have a very different take on the oatcake. Even these vary from region-to-region but the ones I’ve taken on hail from Staffordshire in the English West Midlands.

Staffordshire Oatcakes are very much like English pancakes, except they contain oatmeal and some use wholemeal flour either instead of plain flour or a combination of the two, and they’re no eggs in there, oh and they’ve got yeast in. But apart from this they are very much like English pancakes. Okay, so they look a bit like English pancakes… if you’re standing quite far away. Sheesh!

My good friend DrMike, who resides only a stone’s throw from North Staffordshire, gave me a fascinating bit of insight into the Staffy Oatcake. For many folks around there, oatcakes have replaced (or more likely were never displaced by) today’s fashionable fast food items; grilled paninis, deli wraps and the like. Why have your lunch-on-the-fly filling stuffed into a corn tortilla when you can have it rolled up in an oaty pancake? The traditional filling would be practically any combination of ingredients from an ‘all-day breakfast’ but anything goes these days. Chicken tikka, chilli con carne and coronation chicken are now quite the norm amongst the oatcake avant-garde.

As for my filling, well I had a bit of an epiphany. There’s a breakfast dish from Southern India called Masala Dosa which consists of pancakes made from ground daal or rice and stuffed with mildly spiced potatoes. Why not bring the taste of Chennai to The Potteries? So I fried some finely chopped onion, garlic and ginger in oil with cumin and mustard seeds for a few minutes before adding some chopped, deseeded green chillis. I mixed a spoonful of tamarind paste with a little hot water and added this to the pan along with turmeric and brown sugar. Finally, I stirred in plenty of cooked, diced potatoes coating them well with the spices and aromatics before finishing with chopped coriander leaves.

I rolled up a good portion of the spicy potatoes in my Staffy Oatcake, sat back and enjoyed my tasty, East-meets-West Midlands lunch. Here’s an oatcake recipe… > > Read on > >

Last week we learned the sad news that Cockney rockers Chas ‘n’ Dave have split up. As an homage to these perennial crowd pleasers I’ve decided to move the blog down to London, figuratively speaking, for a bit of Tommy Tucker (slang for supper). But it’s not jellied eels, pie and mash or even rabbit that caught my attention on this day, but ‘London Particular,’ or pea soup.

A ‘pea-souper’ is an expression that came to refer to the recurrent, smoke-laden fog (or smog) that affected London for hundreds of years right up until the latter half of the 20th century. Lasting for days on end, the smog was a combination of smoke from coal burning in the densely populated city with the frequent fog that time and again brought a noxious, yellow cloud down across the capital. Smog is not something unique to London, but these were, “a London particular,” and, while adding an air of mystery and suspense in Basil Rathbone movies, were morbidly treacherous.

Smog had caused many fatalities in London over the years, especially during the modern industrial era, but culminated with what became known as ‘The Great Smog of 1952.’ A bitterly cold day in December saw tens of thousands of London homes billowing smoke from their coal fires to stave off near freezing temperatures, but weather conditions conspired to keep the smog hanging over the city for 4 incessant days and nights. Fatalities due to smog-related respiratory failure at the height of the event were estimated at 4075 people, but the number of premature deaths owing to the Great Smog is now believed to be many thousands more. Quite staggering numbers when you consider this was not even 60 years ago. The tragedy sparked legislation to improve air quality throughout the city and eventually the last was seen of the London smog.

Of course this, “death-dealing genie,” (Samuel Johnson’s ‘The Idler’) wasn’t enough to quell the black humour of the British. The name ‘London Particular’ was taken by a recipe for yellow split pea soup because of its resemblance to the thick, yellow smog, and still popular in London restaurants to this day.

London Particular is a soup made from yellow split peas in a ham (or bacon) stock. I’ve gone for a smoked ham hock (or hough as it’s known where I am) which gives a deliciously rich, smoky flavour. I’m sure the irony of using smoked meat doesn’t escape either. London Particular doesn’t really differ from any other pea and ham soup, but very fitting that it be adopted and named by a city that knows all there is to know about pea-soupers. Here’s the recipe… > > Read on > >

I’m a huge fan of offal and have been for as long as I can remember. Back when I was very young, liver and kidney would feature frequently on the family menu and I thoroughly loved it, not a claim that the majority of children would make, I suspect. Offal remains a firm favourite to this day but now that I’m all big and growed up I’ve learned to appreciate the more social elements that come with being an offal eater. I can’t claim to be a nose-to-tail diner but there’s something ultimately satisfying about eating more than just the prime cuts of a beast. Besides which there’s a thrifty element that can leave you pleasingly smug as well as pleasingly fed.

Faggots are an ideal example of this. They are essentially meatballs made from offal and offcuts, anything that is either left over or to hand, and well within the means of the frugal housekeeper whether by want or necessity. Here, I’ve chosen ‘Ffagod a Pys,’ a Welsh variation of the dish, but faggots reach far wider across many English regions too, such as Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire, and are particularly fondly regarded in the Black Country where they are also served with peas.

And not to ignore the elephant in the room entirely, the origins of the modern, more derogatory use of the word swim in an entirely different etymological fish pond. ‘Faggot’ is a word we stole from the French meaning ‘bundle.’ You may have seen the term ‘faggot of herbs’ in older cookery books, referring to what we nowadays call a bouquet garni, but centuries ago it was the term given to the bundle of sticks, twigs and branches used to burn heretics at the stake! Given the choice I would certainly choose Ffagod a Pys over a torch-wielding Cardinal.

I served my faggots sliced on English potato cakes known as bacon floddies, (a much daintier version this time) crunchy roasted parsnips and sautéed spinach. I boiled frozen garden peas until they were cooked through, drained them and made a rough purée with a stick blender, adding a few mint leaves to lift its freshness. Finally the gravy was reduced to my liking and spooned over the top and round about.

The faggots themselves were made to own preference, still getting plenty of richness of liver and heart but using belly pork to keep the offal from overpowering the dish. Here are the ratios I used. > > Read on > >

About 4 years ago I decided to take up brewing my own beer as a serious hobby. By ‘serious’ I’m not talking about the 12% ABV gut-rotting death ale that many associate with homebrew, but brewing beers with faithful attention to style, strength, flavour and aroma. Beers that would stand up to my favourite commercial bitters, pale ales and stouts in terms of both taste and finish.

An early decision I made was that I wanted to brew straight from malted grains (barley, wheat, etc) rather than using tinned or powdered malt extracts. Extract brewing is perfectly respectable and a great entry-level way to start, but I felt it suited me more to dive straight in at the complicated end. However, choosing the all-grain route left me with an important requirement, I needed a ‘mash tun.’

‘Mashing’ is the term that brewers give to the process of steeping malted grains in water at a specific temperature, activating enzymes that convert the starch in the grain into fermentable sugars. The ‘mash tun’ is the vessel in which this steeping takes place for a duration of 90 minutes, so to hold a body of liquid at such a defined temperature for this length of time would obviously require something with significant insulation. What better vessel than a picnic cool box? Just as suitable for keeping a mash at a stable 64°C as it is for keeping sandwiches and salads chilled. My cool box is a Thermos 32 litre ‘Weekender’ - the Rolls Royce of cool boxes - easily capable of mashing 5 kilos of grain, enough for a 25 litre batch of the good stuff.

A couple of modifications are needed before she’s ready to go. A keg tap is core-drilled into the wall of the cool box, behind which a run-off manifold is fitted. The manifold’s job is to allow the wort (brewspeak for unfermented beer) to pass freely through the 5 kilos of grain to the tap without getting bunged up along the way, an unfortunate event known as a ’stuck mash.’ It’s made from standard copper plumbing pipe and the elbows and T-joint are solder fittings so a quick blast with a blow torch was all it took to fix it together. The crossbeam is there to increase the surface area of the manifold and the outward-turned T-joint attaches to the back of the keg tap via a hosepipe fitting and a short length of syphon tube. Finally, slots are sawed into the bottom of the manifold at 10mm intervals, at a depth of just less than half the pipe’s width. My Dad and I worked up a hell of a sweat with our junior hacksaws that day, I can tell you. Good thing we each had a bottle of Deuchars IPA to hand.

And so, tap and manifold firmly in place, (slots facing downward) the mash can begin. Water is heated in the boiler to ‘strike temperature’ (calculated to several degrees higher than the intended mash temperature, accounting for the loss of heat when the grain is added) and the grains are stirred in well to avoid clumping. If the mash temperature hasn’t been hit then either more hot or more cold water can be added to adjust. With the room already filling with a malty aroma like a cow biscuit dunked in a mug of Horlicks, the mash tun lid goes on and the whole thing is wrapped up in a thick sleeping bag for extra insulation. An hour-and-a-half later and the mash tun will be full of sweet liquid maltose (and other sugars) that the brewer’s yeast can go to town on. Mashing is only the first step along the way, of course, but one made so easy by this little DIY gem.

The bottom line is that you can mash in anything, but this set-up is extremely efficient (I’ll barely lose 2 or 3°C over the 90 minutes) and is ideal for the batch sizes I like to brew. Ladies and Gents, the cool box mash tun. Its inventor, whoe’er you may be, I salute you!

GDave

Go back to the 1980s and you’ll find me, knee-high to a grasshopper, attending a small primary school in South Manchester. It was a faith school of only about 120 pupils but it was by no means exclusive. We still had our ubiquitous, ‘girl who smelled of Spam,’ (thank Lee & Herring for that one) and none of us were from particularly affluent families. We all enjoyed our mid-morning bottle of free milk - quite how that survived the clutches of Thatcher the milk snatcher I’m not 100% sure - and we all enjoyed our school dinners.

It was a very simple affair, a two-course set meal usually consisting of sliced pork or beef with gravy and some boiled veggies followed by a sponge pudding or a crumble. There was no menu, no buffet to choose from and come to think of it I can’t even remember there being a vegetarian option. But it was good hearty stuff, not exciting I’ll be the first to admit, but a balanced diet. We were eating what we needed, not necessarily what we wanted. I wolfed it down anyway, of course. (This blog isn’t called Pernicketydave!)

In recent years school dinners have rarely been out of the newspapers. It took a celebrity chef back in 2005 to embarrass the authorities into improving what had become shockingly low standards. The budget per child that schools were being asked to work with was so low that their only option was to provide cheap, processed foods that were alarmingly unhealthy. The government’s response to the problem? As always, to appear on television and say they’ll throw money at it - money it was later reported they didn’t actually have. The ‘quango’ that was set up to deliver reform, the School Food Trust, was initially criticised for having a conflict of interests due to many of its board members having links to large catering firms that already supply to schools. These concerns do appear largely to have been redressed and the School Food Trust have compiled new guidelines for food standards which are now mandatory in English primary schools, with a looming deadline for the same in secondary schools. Of course, it wouldn’t be a quango if there weren’t conflicting reports on its success so far, but it’s early days. Let’s hope the shame that kicked this whole thing off is matched by an ongoing sense of responsibility to our kids.

Here’s a dessert from yesteryear, though one which is unlikely to appear in the SFT’s guidelines.

Gypsy Tart is a fondly remembered school dinner dessert, particularly in the South of England. A sweet pastry tart with a filling made from whipped evaporated milk and muscovado sugar, very basic ingredients for essentially a very basic pudding. It might be a little on the calorific side but nothing that can’t be worked off by shinnying up a rope in the school gym afterwards…
> > Read on > >

A former work colleague of mine, native to Nandyal in Southern India, would jump at every opportunity to remind me that the food in our British curry houses isn’t truly authentic fayre. I think we’ve all known this for quite some time, deep down, not least because two of the most popular dishes on every menu are commonly known to have been created over here! Still, this has always been the furthest thing from my mind whilst enjoying a slap-up meal down the Curry Mile. One thing that can’t be ignored, however, is that the majority of food on the curry house menu does at least have its roots in the Subcontinent, although perhaps in name alone.

Bhuna would be a good example. Order one in your local Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi restaurant or takeaway and you know exactly what you’re getting; the meat of your choice swimming in a spiced gravy. But what of the bhunas served at bazaars, by street vendors and by ‘homemakers’ in these countries? Not an easy answer to track down by any stretch, but many accounts describe the dish in a different light. Bhuna, meaning ‘brown’ in Hindi/Urdu, is a cooking method by which a masala of spices are browned in a karahi pan before the dish’s other ingredients are added to receive the same treatment. Instead of a thin gravy, the cooking liquor is heavily reduced down to coat the meat, ultimately creating quite a dry dish, ideal for eating with flatbreads such as my personal favourite, chapatis. As for the bhuna’s origins, I suspect that might be a leap too far into history, although I was quite taken by a suggestion that it was influenced by the Tibetan/Chinese method of stir-frying. Geographically, that appears to hold water with China’s proximity to Bangladesh and Punjab (seemingly bhuna central) although it is a dish enjoyed far wider than in just these territories.

This Bhuna Gosht recipe has been a firm favourite of mine for the best part of a decade. The ‘gosht’ (or meat) that I’d normally use would be shoulder of lamb but on this occasion I had the opportunity to use mutton from a reputable Lakeland farm. The depth of the dish is just astounding, with the fennel seed and fenugreek flavours so far removed from those that you would shovel down with several pints of Cobra beer at the nearest balti tavern… not that I’m promising to give up the latter! Here’s the skinny… > > Read on > >

Industry holidays in Britain, known as ‘Wakes Weeks’ in parts of Northern England, were one week in the year during the latter part of the Industrial Revolution when whole mills and factories would down tools and its employees would flock to the seaside and other resorts for a week of well deserved vacation. And flock is an understatement, with literally millions of people descending on seaside resorts such as Blackpool and Llandudno. Trains had to be chartered especially to accommodate the summer madness. The term ‘Wakes Week’ was probably coined from religious celebrations held a few centuries earlier but was adopted by this summertime coastal migration. Wakes (also known as Fairs in many parts) still take place to this day. Indeed, my own town in Scotland had its annual Fair last month, although this has been trimmed down from a week’s holiday to just a single day, shame! Even so, the extent to which the town closes down is simply astonishing. Not a car on the road, not a person in the street.

Hindle Wakes is a dish from Lancashire eaten to celebrate this holiday. A whole chicken is stuffed with black pudding, prunes, bacon and other goodies before being braised, then roasted and served with a creamy lemon sauce. Its origin is accredited to 16th century Flemish immigrants but its name is a little more uncertain. I did see a couple of naughty websites describing it as being, “A dish eaten in Hindle, Lancashire during the annual Wakes.” No gold stars I’m afraid. Hindle is a fictional town dreamt up by playwright Stanley Houghton in his 1912 play which shares its name with (or possibly lends its name to) this dish. One credible explanation is that it derives from, ‘Hen de la Wakes,’ owing to its Flemish origins, but I favour that the dish simply adopted its name from Houghton’s play as there seems to be no documentary evidence that this name existed before his controversial tale of scandal and tragedy took to the stage.

Traditionally, Hindle Wakes would be served as a whole poached and roasted bird, liberally stuffed, smeared head-to-toe with sauce and served as a centrepiece. However, I’ve pulled it apart somewhat and used only the legs of my chuck, quite simply because I have other plans for the breasts and carcass, but using a good slug of my chicken stock in the stuffing to preserve its integrity. It’s quite an alien palate of flavours; chicken, prunes and lemon are a combination that time has forgotten and undoubtedly this does smack of history. But are the flavours wrong? Well, no, and it was quite a pleasure to taste something a little out of, what we might call, the ordinary. Here’s how it goes… > > Read on > >

Okay, so this one’s really going to separate the kids from the grown-ups, the wheat from the chaff, the Transformers from the GoBots.  There’s probably no greater litmus test for food loves and loathes than Marmite. If you’re not familiar with this foreboding brown spread, Marmite is a strong-flavoured spread for toast and sandwiches first produced in 1902, taking advantage of German chemist Justus Liebig’s discovery that the cells of brewer’s yeast could be extracted and concentrated. Using these techniques the Marmite Food Extract Company set about creating something that would have turned Robert Oppenheimer into a Buddhist monk.

The company, understandably, set up their factory in Burton-on-Trent, a town in Britain that every beer-lover knows is the Mecca of beer. In fact, it surprises me that beer drinkers don’t hold an annual pilgrimage to Burton akin to the Muslim Hajj. I myself have never visited the town, although I do turn to face Staffordshire when I sip my first pint. A great little snippet of fact I often regurgitate is that brewers in Bavaria and elsewhere treat their water with minerals and salts to mimic the properties of Burton’s mineral water, a process known as ‘Burtonization.’ But it was, of course, the perfect place for Marmite to set up their brewer’s yeast-based base of operations.

And so, for more than 100 years, Marmite have given us a product that has firmly cemented itself on the British psyche, despite people’s opinions of it truly ranging to the polar opposites. Marmite themselves ran an advertising campaign over several years declaring that we will either love it or hate it. You might imagine that a company declaring that 50% of people will hate their product is commercial suicide but in Marmite’s case it is very shrewd thinking, being true beyond argument.

One of my oldest friends, Bowlhead, (not his real name, you understand) delivered me a Marmite recipe. He swears that a diamond cubic zirconium in the rough was served up to him by his grandparents on Merseyside, back then a part of Lancashire. A dish, very aptly titled, ‘Cheesy Frizzles,’ might well resemble Cheese & Marmite Eggy Bread, which is essentially what it is. No matter what the name, I gave it a go by sandwiching a slice of cheddar cheese between two slices of white bread, a thin pellicle of Marmite smeared upon one, cut into neat triangles and dipped into beaten egg and cream before pan frying on both sides until golden brown. What the hey, a perfectly decent snack. Actually, I think I overestimated my manliness by spreading both slices of bread with Marmite making the whole thing a little too, Marmitey?

I’m sure I’ve managed to wholly throw the dogs off the scent with this post, so I’ll leave you with Paul Martin of the BBC smash hit, ‘Flog It!’ to tidy things up for me. He takes us to the Burton factory and has a very interesting discussion with Robert Opie, an expert on brand history. It took me an eternity to figure out how to edit and upload a video to Youtube, so you will bloody-well enjoy it!

Nutritional info: Marmite is not gluten-free and may contain traces of evil.

GDave