Sam's Kitchen

Block you ears, I can feel a rant coming on. 

Apparently, a group of 20 so called ‘industry specialists’ have gotten their heads together and believe the idea to enforce all restaurants to put the exact calorific and nutritional value of each dish on every menu is a jolly good one. As you might expect, I beg to differ….

Mandatory nutritional labelling on menus would be the death toll to fresh food restaurants. Not putting a finer point on it but I have on average 16 individual dishes on my menu most which change every lunchtime and evening dependent on local produce.  Said produce, such as a whole lemon sole, don’t actually come in identical weights. Secondly, I cook to order and, shockingly, there are occasions when I put down my micrometer and add ingredients by eye.  Ok, so I could trim each lobster down to the same weight – sorry madam, I had to cut the last two fifths off as it was oversized -and yes, I suppose if a customer requested additional tartare sauce we could ring the food police so the offending person gets struck off the NHS for inciting obesity.

If I was required by law to quote calorific values with the threat of prosecution if it were incorrect, there are only two options open to me.  Continue to produce individual meals but with a nutritionalist and testing unit next to me to monitor each dish, then inform each individual customer of the nutritional content in return for a signed decloration of acceptance,  or, buy it all in vac packed portioned controlled mass produced packets with a longer ambient shelf life than my own and use it’s wraper as the menu. 

Even the Americans have taken this on board and have limited it to chain restaurants.  The likes of the burger giants, tavern steak houses and supermarket canteens, all of which have multiple outlets sourcing their food from one central mass food producer.  The sorts of places that we’re advised not to eat in too often and yet the government now want to turn every restaurant into. If I was a cynic, I’d wonder if this isn’t just a ploy to get us to all die young thereby ending the pension problem and the euthanasia issue with one well aimed frozen vegi nugget, whilst outwardly appearing to actually care about our health.

Surely, as customers we don’t need this.  If you have a dietary requirement, tell the waiting staff to tell the chef!  He/she, having made the dish, should be able to tell you not only what is in it, but might just be able to adapt to suit.  If they can’t, don’t eat there.  Where does it stop?  Do you really want your pint of beer to have a calorific label on it or your cream liqueur to admit the number of stabilisers contained within it?  At the end of the day we all know the chocolate cream gateaux is probably going to be more fattening then the fresh fruit salad – and if it isn’t, I for one wouldn’t want to know the amount of  chemical sweeteners I’d be shovelling down my throat!!!  

So, if you are still with me after reading the tirade, I suspect you might be interested in who the ‘industry specialists’ are.  Well, every single one of them are huge catering outlets all of which have central processing units.  Hmmm, I wonder, could they possibly be biased?

No 3 child

When No 3 was born last August I vowed I wasn’t having anymore children.  That was until we decided to start making bread from scratch.  Sourdough to be precise, made from a wild yeast starter that once established you have to feed and nurture.

Nicknamed ‘the kids’ I’ve suddenly found I’ve four additional mouths to feed and, quite frankly, they are almost as demanding as our brood.  At least with the children I can put them to bed before evening service and more often than not I’m not disturbed until ohh, at least 5.30 in the morning.

No3 Yeast

The ‘kids’ on the other hand need attention from the moment we enter the kitchen. Firstly, there’s the weighing out of the first batch of yeast to make bread. Then there the 1st feed and a small drink after which it does little other than mooch about in a bowl in the cosiest part of the kitchen for 8 hours whilst it contemplates rising a bit for the 1st prove. Feeding time again, a light massage (otherwise known as kneading) and then another little lounge whilst it proves a second time at which point it suns itself in the oven. Out again, it needs to cool for a couple of hours before the baker might actually get to eat something – well after you’ve feed the starter it’s evening snackette that is….

Taking on board that the bread is now flying out the door with a fair amount of repeat custom – seems quite a lot of people like it – we’re having to go through this process twice daily with all 4 of our starters.

Admittedly, we’ve kind of got into the swing of it now and the next step is to try and make bread from some beer.  I’m trying to find a brew that’s made from a wild rather than processed yeast which is proving hard to come by so we may well have to make our own (Ok, ok chaps I can here your groans from the office!)  In the meantime, Pete over at the Hopdaemon brewery is helpfully giving it a go for us with some wort  so we’re waiting with baited bread for the results…..

The finished product

It’s not often I give up a cry for help in the old food history stakes – in fact never – but in this instance no amount of googling or old fashioned page turning seems to be coming up with the answer.

Now I realise that there probably isn’t anyone left in the world I haven’t bored rigid about our bread project but just in case here is the précis…  We’re making bread from a wild yeast culture we have grown from scratch.  Well, in researching the whole sour dough starter thing I came up with a comment about a bread and beer connection I hadn’t thought of.

We’re currently growing yeast from grapes (which, apparently, is how our warmer European cousins would have done it) along with a simple flour and water version that just relies on being exposed to oxygen.  However, the Gauls and Iberians apparently made a jolly nice bread from using the froth for the top of their beer.

This makes absolute sense because it would have sped up the bread making process immensely as well as making a lighter loaf than the usual brick type affair.  Anyway, it got me thinking and, digging further, I came across notes that the Babylonians in 6000BC wrote the first known beer recipe which used under baked bread to serve as the live yeast culture added to make beer.

Which brings me to my question…. Does anyone out there know either how to speak ancient Babylonian OR, possibly more helpfully, could advise me how to make a beer using our simple sour-dough starter (eg the one without the grapes)?

Nigel is muttering darkly about duty so I guess I need so say I only want to brew a few pints so I can use the froth to make bread – we’ll probably have to throw the actually alcohol away (never thought I’d ever write that…) in any case,  I think I’ll leave the drinkable beer brewing to the experts!!!

Answers on a postcard please or to thecoastguard@talk21.com

Many years ago, before Tesco’s took over the world, the village of St Margaret’s at Cliffe had its own bakery. Sadly, it’s long since gone and a combination of listening to the village and his wife moaning that the supermarkets are empty due to panic buying and bemoaning the demise of the local bakery, set me thinking. It was thus we found ourselves one snow bound evening hatching a plan.

Beer and bread have always been associated with one another which is odd considering nowadays commercial brewing yeast and baking yeast are literally two different animals. We’ve been making our own bread since opening 9 years ago, but always with conventional yeast, and the idea of making our own bread from a wild yeast that we had cultivated ourselves not only appealed to my masochistic side of doing things the hard way, but also my love of making something out of not a lot!

Basically, for the uninitiated or anyone with a life, the starter (otherwise known as a mother) is basically made by placing some grapes in a muslin bag and popping them into a sterilised bucket with some flour and water, leaving it for ten days and hoping for the best. After this time, you should have a pot of unpromising guck. To this you add more flour and water (known as er… feeding it) and after a few more weeks of plying it with food and water you eventually have a fizzy substance from which you can make bread. Each time you make a loaf you feed more local Crabble mill flour to the mother and she sits in her bucket ready for the next time you knead her (knead…need…., get it? Ok so I’m recycling a backlog of cracker jokes from Christmas….) Anyway, the good points of making bread this way is that it lasts for a good few days before you have to resort to a toaster, plus it should taste amazing.

Admittedly, it’s likely to be a denser loaf (the sort you know you’ve eaten!) and if you are gluten free, chances are you shouldn’t even look at it but hey, this real bread man….

So anyway, IF it works and that’s a big if, the idea is to sell locally made bread to local people and bring a semblance of a bakery back to the village. It’s unlikely that we’ll threatened Tesco’s monopoly in anyway, but if you fancy something a little less corporate all you’ll have to do is give us a call the day before baking day and, for a small fee, a nice old fashioned loaf will have your name on it (literally if you so wish!!).

No doubt there will be updates on this whole project – can’t believe it’s going to be simple otherwise the rest of the world would be doing it. Will keep you informed of all you knead to dough…. sorry couldn’t resist.

Every now and then we have tastings here at The Coastguard, however, it occurred to me in these days of political correctness we weren’t being particularly inclusive to our virtual regulars.  Whilst the ‘in body’ type locals are happily sipping away, those stuck at the end of a computer a million miles away from being stuck to the end of our bar, were somewhat at a disadvantage.  That is until now.  No, I haven’t found a way of sending ether down the ether so to speak but in these days where aspiration lifestyles are more important than taste itself, I thought we’d go about it by picking on a few good old fashioned bottles of mother’s ruin and deciding which was the best based on their history, drinking partners and circumstance (marketing or otherwise!!)

We’ve four different gins behind the bar so let’s start with the infamous Gordon’s.  Apart from being linked to an alleged adulterer, it’s probably the best known of the lot and certainly one of the oldest, made by a chap by the name of Alexander Gordon in 1769.  Distilled no less than 3 times, it’s made with a secret recipe of botanical herbs and the bottle cap bears the symbol of a boar’s head.  Apparently, whilst out hunting, one of the original Gordon clan saved the King of Scotland from a wild boar and in reward the king gave permission to use the head as the family symbol.  Jolly generous too, considering the Scots! 

Now, Tanqueray, first made in 1830 by the son of a vicar, is distilled even more times, four to be exact. Along with the ever present secret recipe gimmick beloved by all drinks manufactures, it also sports a crest; this time two battle axes and a pineapple – yep, you heard.  Obviously, the pineapple is the universal symbol of hospitality (no, really apparently it is!!) and the axes come from the family’s adventures with Richard the Loin Heart.   Tanqueray is also associated with famous seducers – it was allegedly the gin of choice at Rat Pack parties and at the White House were it was used in the first Martini made to celebrate the end of prohibition.  For some reason, I always think of James Bond when I drink Tanqueray – no idea why as I’m sure if there was a connection the marketing bods would have jumped on it…. 

Beefeater is the less assuming of the lot, it doesn’t enter the distillation race and is fairly straight laced in it’s claim to fame, namely being the only gin available on the maiden voyage of the QE2 to New York (it doesn’t mention anything about coming back!).  There’s no mystery to it’s bottle other than being named after the guards at the Tower of London and it’s even open about it’s ingredients – botanicals as everyone else seem to call them – bitter almonds, coriander seeds, orange peel, juniper…. The list goes on.  They don’t seem to give quantities though, so a tad difficult to replicate in the kitchen sink.

We’re back to secret recipes again with the last gin – Hendricks – the relatively new kid on the block – although it does give cucumber and rose petals, (Bulgarian to be precise) as some of it’s more usual ingredients.  A small batched gin, it’s made in a Carter Head Still, one of only 4 in the world (don’t tell me, the others are owned by Gordon’s, Beefeater……) which is looked after by a team of full time coppersmiths no less.  Apparently, the drink of the season was a tea time martini made with Hendricks, rose petal jam, lemon and mint served in a teacup martini glass (a ceramic tea cup stuck on a glass martini stem).  It doesn’t have a crest or a symbol but…. The bottle is based on an old apothecary’s jar to make you feel it will cure all ills. 

So, there you have it.  Only you can decide.  Should you transport yourself to the QE2, rub shoulders with the Rat Pack, sip it in a teacup or have it handy in your hipflask should you happen upon a wild pig.  Let your imagination run wild and before you know it you’ll have a favourite gin without even tasting a drop.  Surely that’s taking responsible drinking just a tad too far…..

In my never ending search for the perfect menu, I’ve reached a bit of an epiphany, which is fairly apt considering the time of year.  Guess it is partly the New Year cold light of morning feeling plus that peculiar stage of having just got over having a baby and reality kicking back that I’ve gone a bit nostalgic. 

Glancing over the shelves of my cookery library – I say shelves advisedly.  I have well over 300 cookery books plus an entire filing system of recipes cut from magazines.  Some call it a hobby, others mutter about obsession that has structural implications on the house.  Anyway, I happened across an adopted grandmother’s (another hobby of mine is collecting random people and adopting them as relatives…) set of 1960’s Cordon Bleu books. 

Now apart from the bizarre adverts and the odd advice column to encourage husbands how to boil and egg (both of which deserve a chapter all to themselves!) it got me thinking.  Many of the recipes contained rang little bells in my head in much the same way that current trendy Italian and Spanish ‘childhood’ food books must remind natives of happy al fesco meals en famile.  Admittedly, I don’t remember sitting eating Chicken a la king on a big table in the garden surrounded by siblings and a grandpa called Don something, but I do remember desserts inexplicably called Charlotte and Steaks called Diane. 

Deciding that 72 copies of the Cordon Bleu monthly just wasn’t enough, I ventured onto Amazon to see what other culinary gems where to be had.  Now, I’m not sure exactly why or even how people sell books at 1p (£2.75 for P&P but even so!) but thank the lord they do, as several days later books by the likes of Robert Carrier, The Family Circle and a Daily Telegraph book by someone called the Bon Viveur, drop onto the potwash table that poses as our letterbox.   

The Telegraph book was a revelation and if it wasn’t out of print, Tesco’s would be putting an injunction on it.  This delightful little tome wasn’t really a cookbook at all but a diatribe of how to select produce (and indeed grow it yourself which is bang on trend 60 years later), how to harang merchants who won’t let you handle their goods, a ‘you should value yourself more’ psychobabble section, how to brew the perfect cup of coffee without any ‘new fangled’ machinery, a glossary of terms and finally, a bit on cooking itself. 

The very best part was the passion in which it was written.  Take Delia, add a lot more than a soupcon of  Margaret Thatcher and a pinch of John Humphries and you might be partly there.  I finally went back to the introduction in the hope of finding a clue to the author this Bon Viveur of the late 50’s….

It was thus I found myself back in my kitchen making a ‘beche’  from scratch with dried bay leaves from our garden, fresh milk, black peppercorns thickened in the age old way with homemade butter, local flour and a lot of arm aching beating to avoid lumps  It was amazing.  I hate béchamel with a vengeance but this book, with it’s authoritarian instruction and it’s total self belief, had not only inspired me to make it but actual appreciate it’s lightness, buttery more-ishness and bayleafyness in a way I’d not tasted it before. 

Just a simple white sauce but it just forced me to pull the facial expression usually reserved for a really good pint.  Ok, so  I spoiled the moment and added some 1000 year old comte I happened to have lying in wait for such a moment and it ended up on the menu as a very proper old fashioned cauliflower cheese.   I did however steal some to feed the children the following day and for once actually felt like I’d reached omnipresent earth mother status. 

Oh and the author?  If Fanny had been looking down I’m sure she would have expected nothing less!

Our normal humdrum view from the kitchen window was somewhat obsured by some fluffy white stuff …..

No, this isn’t me – just one of the regulars that happened to have his trunks in his back pocket.

Some poor chap misjudged his bearings whilst tunneling out from the Eurotunnel…. 

Some of our suppliers go to great lengths to ensure we don’t run out of beer (well in this case, cider and wine!)  Sadly he couldn’t quite make it back up without the assistance of the only two staff members that made it in and several shovels!

Now it’s a well known fact that I don’t get out much.  This has nothing to do with not being able to manage the so called steep hill behind us; much to the surprise of the general masses at the top of said hill (also known as the St Margaret’s bay mountain!!) in the nearly 9 years of being here, we’ve never once been stuck at the bottom of it, nor indeed, marooned at the top.  With Nigel coming from Scotland – where they really do have mountains, snow poles and impassable passes and myself a hardy West Country lass, our little Kentish ‘hillet’ has never been more than a mere pimple on an otherwise flat horizon and certainly  isn’t a valid excuse for not attempting to reach a decent beer! 

No, my main problem is the inherent buzzer I have in my head whenever more than 20 strides away from my kitchen/children/computer – please note this is in no particular order as all three can cause just as much angst as the other!  So if I actually manage to escape passed the St Margaret’s Bay Sign at the top without coming out in rash or my head exploding in excitement/anxiety it’s a major achievement. 

Thus it was at Dover Station with an excited sense of escapism (not sure that Dover and escapism are two words generally associated with one another…) I was almost bowled over by the cost of a small bag of minstrels.  69p to be exact for a mere 40 odd grams whilst the larger ‘Family’ pack at 225g was £1.99.  Now for a start I’m beginning to think I need to up my children’s pocket money a touch.  I remember back in the old days being given 10p by my granny for some one penny two penny sweets, well, at a single minstrel working out at about 3.5p each depending on which packet you buy, perhaps 20p for a weeks worth of sweeties isn’t really feasible even for a 4 year old!  Aside from that, I was now faced with a dilemma.  Clearly at £1.99 the fatso bag was a far better deal seeing as by my dodgy long division you get about 5.3 bags in a big one for not much more than the cost of 2 so you’d be mad not to.

The thing is – and again this might be down to me being stuck in my nice cosy kitchen for too long – what makes the small bag so expensive in comparison? It can’t be solely the packaging, transportation and don’t tell me it costs more to market the smaller one coz that’s just silly.  I reckon it’s a stealth tax on the parents of small children, small children and anyone that’s watching their weight!  Hey, I thought avoiding being Porker was current Government advice.  Ok, so perhaps suggesting that there should be a financial incentive to eat smaller packs is going a bit far but you can start to see what I mean….

Anyway, at decision time (the train pulling onto the platform) I succumbed and the big mega bag was purchased on the self understanding that I’d only eat a few and leave the rest for the girls (thereby not having to up the pocket money this week at least!).  Sadly, while puzzling out all of the maths in my head it was at about Tonbridge I realised I’d eaten the lot.  Do you have ANY idea how many calories a single minstrel has……..

Don’t know about you, but I’ve long been the antichrist to the godlike creationary chefs with their squeezie bottles, foam accelerators and aerosol cans – hey if I wanted foam with my meal I’d have ordered a cappuccino and life is way too short for peach dust and apple caviar.  In any case I’ve always thought of myself as a tasty chef rather than a drizzly one.  So this whole current trend to ‘deconstruct’ everything drives me mad.

Take the old black forest gateaux for example.  It was a dark sumptuous sponge laced with kirsch marinated cherries, thick fresh cream and real chocolate until Sarah Lee got hold of it and turned it into the plastic frozen glace fake chocolate face flannel that we all know and hate.  But wait… that was before the deconstructed version…  Now, should you take your sanity into your own hands and dare to order there’s every likelihood you’ll end up with a pool of deconstructed chocolate (eg melted) with a deconstructed marinated cherry (eg a fresh one and an unopened bottle of kirsch – useful should you be short at home), a pile of flour, cocoa powder and a quails egg (cooked of course– we don’t want you suing for salmonella or something nasty again now do we?).

For Christ sake it’s a cake – the clue is in the title Black Forest Gateaux – honest look it up , it means CAKE!   And that’s another thing – some of them have even  deconstructed the name to BFG.  Sorry, but in my household that stands for Big Friendly Giant which when teamed with Black Forest Gateaux gives me nightmares similar to that of my first hearing of Peter and the Wolf.

Ok, so many of you out there will say I’m just jealous being a small unknown little pub restaurant chef with only a few gongs to my name, oh and a girl to boot (Once the face of one of our customers fell when after several meals she finally met me – Oh, I thought you were a proper man chef!), but I’m going to stick by my pans on this one.  There’s nothing wrong with extreme experimental cooking; of course you’re never going to eat it everyday and it’s great for special occasions, but why does it have to be a deconstruction?  Why not just take the responsibly for creating a new dish, admittedly based on flavour combinations that are well proven, rather than trying to say it’s something you clearly don’t want it to be recognised as being anyway?  Is it that as customers we are so out of our depth that if we don’t see some scrap of wording we recognise we just won’t try it.  Sort of a sneaky way of getting us to try out a dish and so educate our taste buds to new unexplored flavours… er sorry no, these are old tried and tasted flavour combinations….  So in fact a sneaky way of getting us to try eating new presentations and revelling in the artistry.  Not unlike munching on a prawn cocktail deconstructed into a sandwich whilst reading Elle Decoration….