The Eclectic Table #7

Part 1

APOLOGIES FOR THE SILENCE…

This instalment of The Eclectic Table was delayed by my emergency admission to hospital after endoscopy and a subsequent bleed. I lost a lot of blood, came very close to having a transfusion, and am still rather low in iron and in my Hb level. Add to that a magnesium deficiency and you will understand that I have not been in tip-top form. However, I am now firmly back in harness, cooking and buying wine (and consuming a bit too), and trying to keep abreast of the garden as it accelerates into high summer.

A part of my Eclectic Table posts will remain free to read but some will be paywalled at Substack’s minimum annual fee. The part that may actually pay you to subscribe is a new feature that I’m calling Inside Track Wines, covering both Ireland and the UK. I’m scouring the supermarkets, the wine merchants and other sources of interesting stuff and reporting back with recommendations (and occasional warnings as to what avoid).

TRAVELS WITH MY APPETITE

I’m just back from a week in the Larger Island and series of good, occasionally excellent, meals. In Edinburgh I didn’t manage to get a place at the bar in The Palmerston (where I have eaten very well in the past) and hoofed it back into the culinary desert that is the touristy city centre. However, I have to say I had just what I wanted in Mowgli on Hanover Street (a few metres from Prince’s Street). It’s in an old and very grand Clydesdale Bank and I suppose is all about Indian street food and home cooking. Founded by a barrister in Liverpool, it’s now a chain of 25 restaurants. The crunchy, refreshing bel puri was excellent and the gunpowder chicken wings were fine, while the staff were a delight. I tend to avoid chains but I was hungry and it was getting late. Well done, Mowgli.

Next day, after first class eggs Benedict in The New Town Fox (proper ham, loose leaf tea), there was an excellent lunch in Sotto in the lovely urban village of Stockbridge with my daughter and still pretty new grandson. They have very friendly staff and a super selection of mainly Italian wines

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Then to London by train. I managed to get an upgrade to first class for £23 by using the Seatfrog app and as the train was delayed by more than 30 minutes, my initial fare was refunded by LNER so I travelled from Waverley to King’s Cross for less than it costs to take the overnight bus that I was last on in 1973, aged fourteen. First class is reasonably spacious and quiet but I do think the food needs a rethink. I managed half of my “Mumbai Chicken Toastie” and a few glasses of Spanish rosé.

London kicked off with a trip to Café François beside Borough Market. Arriving not long after noon, I got a seat at the bar and enjoyed perfect grilled chicken, jus, fines herbes sauce and a properly dressed green salad, a great deal of water and a glass of rosé. This is exactly what I wanted and needed. Café François has never let me down. A trip to the Ginger Pig in the Market seemed like a good idea in the morning but the reality of Borough Market in the height of Summer - tourists ambling at a glacial pace and not buying anything, rather like Cork’s English Market but much, much bigger - suggested that I’d have to get supper in Waitrose.

Next day I was off to South Kensington and Daquise, one of London’s oldest restaurants (but with good air conditioning) and one with a certain white-tiled period Polish charm. It was a relief to find that it has had a reprieve and will not be demolished by Transport for London - at least not yet - to accommodate their redevelopment of South Ken tube station. Chilled beetroot soup, in Barbara Cartland pink and fortified with chopped dill pickles, was a delight. Stuffed cabbage leaves and hunter’s pork less so. There was a touch of stock cube but neither was any hardship to eat.

I was surprised and delighted to be able to eat at Jackson Boxer’s Vesper on Exmouth Market. Only a month old at the time, it is one of the hottest tickets in town, a bright, small corner site with a central zinc-topped bar at which I was given a seat, having turned up a little after noon. You see the pattern? It worked, too, on my first visit to Bouchon Racine. Tim Hayward has written: “It does my heart good to see an opening that isn’t another cynical, corporate five-knuckle-shuffle. He’s making great, innovative food, he’s hung out a shingle; and he’s keeping his prices low while he pays his dues and earns a reputation. It’s so old-school I could weep.” Well, Tim is a man of taste that was good enough for me.

As I had skipped breakfast, bar a flat white outside Carharrt in King’s Cross, I was unable to start proceedings with Vesper’s… er vesper martini nor their intriguing dirty negroni, which involves red pepper and olive.

Much as I enjoyed my main course, I was astonished at my starter, a combination of barretiere or carosello cucumber and galia melon anointed with Vesper’s own crisp Cascabel chilli oil and rich, smooth cashew cream. The barretiere is actually a melon but it’s usually eaten immature when it is much more cucumbery than otherwise. The woman sitting next to me, already a regular after just four weeks, told me that the melon is marinated in caper pickle liquid and this is something I’m definitely going to do. All I can say is that this dish was, in its perhaps eccentric way, was perfect. There was sweetness, sourness, saltiness, spiciness, crispness and something more yielding. It was a small tour de force of flavours and textures. Above all, to use a phrase that my 13-year old great-nephew and I sometimes employ when eating out, it was far from fecky.

My main course was wonderfully simple. Al dente rigatoni with a creamy, silky combination of peas and pistachios, the richness cut by burnt lemon, contrasting texture provided by a top dressing of toasted breadcrumbs.

With two bottles of wild ferment perry from Herefordshire and an Americano in the sun outside, the bill for this perfect lunch - in that it did exactly what I wanted at the time - came to €58.50, including exemplary service.

Next day, after a false start at the lovely Sessions Arts Club in Clerkenwell, where I had forgotten that Sundays, even at 30ºC, means a selection of roasts, something that I couldn’t face in that heat, I hopped on a bus to the further reaches of Shoreditch and lunched very well at the faintly NYC-themed One Club Row. It’s not easy to find but it’s as an open book compared to Margot Henderson’s deeply hidden Rochelle Canteen, just around the corner.

Crisp pickled jalapeño gougères, creamy and spicy in the centre, topped with fluffy Parmesan accompanied a straightforward negroni, then tuna crudo in thin slices laid over smoked aubergine and crème fraîche with an Amalfi lemon dressing which was good but I couldn’t detect any smokiness, finally a hamburger au poivre with house-pickled gherkins its sauce in a little boat, with some the finest skinny chips I’ve had in quite a while. I was unable to finish, which is not a complaint. Irishman Patrick Powell is no longer in the kitchen but remains culinary director.

On my final day, there was a memorial service and afterwards a catered light lunch at the Chelsea Physic Garden and, afterwards, a catch-up with Richard Corrigan at Bentley’s where I met Jon Spiteri of St John fame and had a long chat with Olivier Meissonave of Dax and his wife Sinéad.

KITCHEN DISPATCH

At home, we have been eating outside every evening and there has been much Greek salad (the latest entirely homegrown, apart from the olives and the feta), burrata and tomatoes and courgette flowers, either stuffed or dipped in batter (90% cornflour, 10% plain flour) and deep-fried in olive oil, then dished up liberally sprinkled with sea salt flakes and lemon juice.

Claudia Roden’s recipe for chicken with walnuts and figs from her lovely book Arabesque was good but even better next day when the meat was separated from the bones and the rich gravy, so to speak, spiked with preserved lemon.