Graeme Jolly

On the Gulf Coast

The Ligurian town of Ventimiglia is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Genoa just about 4 miles before the French border.

I ate recently in a restaurant on the seafront, called, Marco Polo. It was an alpine chalet style building decorated with a maritime theme with a terrace overlooking the sea which would be perfect for summer eating.

The Michelin guide 2017 gives it a good rating (The Michelin Plate) and overall my impression was of good food beautifully presented. The whole experience however wasn’t perfect by any means.

The welcome was friendly and we were given the last available table for lunch. We weren’t offered drinks to start so we insisted that we wanted a glass of prosecco each. The waiter didn’t seem to understand this simple request but eventually by speaking a mixture of French, English and Italian the message was conveyed. The prosecco failed to arrive so it was necessary to prompt another waiter. This precipitated the start of a blame game between two members of staff.

In the meantime an amuse bouche was served. It was a shallow drinking glass with something akin to caesar dressing in the bottom and a few fresh, crisp salad leaves and a carrot button standing in it. It looked faintly odd but in fact was a refreshing way to start the meal – something I might copy at home. The prosecco eventually arrived…

For my starter I had fresh anchovies that had been coated in chopped hazlenuts and then deep fried and served with crisp purple artichokes, thin slivers of lemon and orange peel and coleslaw. It was fresh tasting with a pleasing citrus zing to it.

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The main course was Lobster with pan-fried fresh foie gras. Now these are two of my favourite things and in this instance they were very well cooked and presented, being served with crispy slivers of deep-fried sweet potatoes and a few spinach leaves. Delicious and colourful!

Whilst the food was lovely there is something strange about how the place is run. In short it doesn’t seem like a happy ship and that can spoil the entire effect. At one point an almighty argument broke out in the kitchen which could be clearly heard throughout the room we were in. Those with better Italian than I, described the language as being very colourful indeed. None of the waiting staff looked shocked by this so I can only assume its a fairly regular occurrence. I stopped eating Gordon Ramsey’s food years ago because of his nasty temper and I don’t want it anywhere else either.

December 13, 2016 0

Taffy Grub!

There follows a guest post by my friend Alex Lane – he’s Welsh (Taffy), as you might guess from the article and I’m happy that I once taught him to enjoy rabbit kidneys.

It is often erroneously said that Britain has no national dish or that all the food we eat is brown. I think that it is rather damning and unfair to say so, as there are some wonderful regional dishes which deserve to be mentioned.

For the purposes of this wander through some of my favourite eats I am going to confine myself to the food of what could more strictly called my Motherland of Wales (the women are strong minded and usually the boss there).

There are many dishes that could be considered welsh because of their ingredients or because of historic connections. I am thinking here of Welsh cakes, Bara brith, Caerphili Cheese, Glamorgan Sausages, Welsh Rabbit (Rarebit) and so on.

Three Dishes stand out as icons of y bwyd cymru (the food of Wales). Cawl, Cockles and Laverbread.

CAWL
Every culture has a variation of this hearty winter dish. But what makes this very welsh is the Lamb or Mutton that is used in its preparation. Receipts for Cawl stretch back as far as the 14th Century. It consists of Lamb (welsh of course) or mutton cooked with leeks, carrots, turnips or more likely sweed, and potato, all cut into similar sizes and slowly simmered in water. At the end it is thickened with either oatmeal or flour.

There are some suggestions that it was eaten in two courses, the Stock first and then the meat and vegetables, but I have never experienced it this way, just eating it as it is with large chunks of Bread and Butter. Of course it is better eaten the second or even third day.

“Cawl cennin”, or leek cawl, can be made without meat but using meat stock. In some areas this is often served with bread and cheese.

LAVERBREAD
Laverbread or bara lawr is an important traditional food. A national delicacy made from seaweed, it is washed and then cooked to a soft greenish black paste. Made from laver, one of the most nutritious varieties of seaweed, laverbread is full of health benefits. Rich in minerals and vitamins, full of protein and low in calories, this is a real superfood. A rare plant source of vitamin B12, it is also full of iron and iodine.

It is especially found in South Wales around the Swansea and Gower peninsula area. Traditionally eaten as a breakfast dish eaten with fatty bacon and cooked in the Bacon fat, and often eaten with fried eggs and Cockles. Having said all this it is a very acquired taste!

COCKLES
On the northern coast of the Gower peninsula in South Wales, you will find the coastal village of Penclawdd. In this area of rugged beauty, you can stand at the shoreline and feel the ancients calling as strongly as the pull of the unpredictable tides. not so very long ago, you would have seen the cockle-women of Penclawdd bent to their arduous task. As the ebbing tide retreated they would populate these sands, scraping away at the sand to expose the burrowing molluscs they would work at gathering the cockles until the tide decided to turn. The waters in these parts show no mercy and the exhausted women needed their wits about them should the tide begin to advance.

Cockles as I have said formed part of a traditional welsh breakfast. One of my earliest memories of eating cockles is in Swansea market in the pram eating a ¼ of a gill with pepper and vinegar – bliss.

Many welsh restaurants will serve cockles and bacon with a salad garnish and brown bread and butter as a starter, again a very good way to serve them.

Since the 1970s, the number of restaurants and gastropubs in Wales has increased significantly there are currently seven Michelin starred restaurants located in the country.

November 30, 2016 1

How do you eat an elephant?

The Trebbia flows into the great River Po not far from Piacenza and was, in 1799, the site of one of Napoleon’s battles. A little before then, in December 218BC to be precise, there was another Battle of Trebbia when Hannibal (with his elephants) and the forces of Carthage, fought the Romans in the second Punic War.

The river itself meanders through the Colli Piacentini (the Piacenza Hills) and the area features a number of small, pretty, villages, some with Castles, such as the Castello Rivalta, belonging to the family of the Dukes of Parma and Piacenza. The family still lives in this imposing building and in 1993 it played host to their friend, HRH The Princess Margaret, sister of the Queen Elizabeth II.

To the question ‘how do you eat an elephant?’, one can answer, ‘bit by bit’ (poco a poco is to my mind at the heart of the Italian philosophy of life). So it was that after a ‘bit’ of tourism by visiting the castle, the other day, it came time for a ‘bit’ of lunch. By happy coincidence Antica Trattoria Giovanelli, in the Borgo of Sarturano di Agazzano, was just a short car ride away.

I’d heard of this restaurant (which has been going since 1937) many years ago from a colleague who used to visit Piacenza on a regular basis and loved eating there. When I came to live in Italy three years ago I was particularly happy to be taken there for the first time and even happier to return a couple of days ago.

Naturally, a good restaurant should serve good food and deliver good service (to say the least) but a really good restaurant adds a secret ingredient to that mix – a sense of well-being and contentment that comes from eating good food in a comfortable and convivial setting. Giovanelli delivers this in spades! As well as the food, about which more in a moment, it was wonderful to chat amiably with the family about mutual friends and English regional accents and to discuss, in immense detail, not only what food we wanted to order but how we wanted it served. That doesn’t happen very often in fine-dining establishments!

And so to the food. First and foremost this a restuarant which serves local specialities, that is, dishes that are traditional in the Piacenza area of Emilia Romagna.

We were three people for lunch and decided to share the antipasto and pasta courses and choose our own mains. The anti-pasto was a generous plate of cured meats (salumi) with a few sweet pickled onions and cold frittata. This selection was delicious, consisting of pancetta, coppa, salami and 36 month old culaccia. The healthy-food facists might condemn all of this stuff as ‘processed food’ and therefore evil but for me it’s processed, not only with salt but with love and dedication and is heavenly! In this case its all matured in the cellars of the restaurant and much of it made following the recipes handed down from grand parents.

We ordered two pasta dishes to share among the three of us. Piserei e faso, are little dumplings (tiny gnocchi, the size of peas) made with flour and bread crumbs, served with a sauce of white beans and tomato. It is a typical dish of Emilia Romagna and was soft, comforting and warming on a cold day. Secondly and beyond description in its loveliness, was Toretelli di erbette e ricotta al sugo di porcini. Now the porcini season is all but finished and for that reason I hesitated for a moment before ordering it. In fact the porcini used had been dried, a way of preserving these rich tasting mushrooms that preserves their deep, complex and meaty flavour. The top chefs of the world try, and sometimes succeed, in producing an element on a dish which they might call a foam or an air, that delivers an intense flavour and then almost as quickly vanishes in the mouth. In this case the tortelli, stuffed with fresh ricotta and herbs were so soft and thin that when you put them in the mouth there was the briefest sensation of a bubble bursting, followed by an intense flavour rush and the after taste of that slowly braised porcini mushroom ragu. Wow! Amazing!

Next up was one of my favourite birds, Faraona al Forno (roasted Guinea Fowl). I love them so much because they remind me of the taste of chicken when I was a boy – not the bland taste of today’s intensively farmed varieties but something with flavour! In the finest traditions of the Italian kitchens the meat dish was just that, meat, nothing else. We opted, in discussion with the waiter, to add a sauce of sweet peppers and Mostarda di Cremona, a northern Italian accompaniment to meat or cheese, made from large chunks of candied fruit in a mustard flavoured syrup. It’s something I’m coming to appreciate the value of more and more as these Italian years roll by but despite its popularity I generally prefer the English style chutneys and other tracklements. In this case though, the mostarda, made by Ditta Augusto Fieschi which has been in operation since 1867, was very good. The guinea fowl itself was perfectly cooked with a crispy brown skin and moist white flesh.

I’m not usually one for puddings but in this case I was determined to try something and chose a semi-freddo, crunchy with nuts. As with everything else we’d eaten it was excellent but with hindsight I would have preferred to finish with a piece of Parmesan.

Another thing to note about Giovanelli is that it serves wine in ceramic bowls rather than glasses, following the tradition of the area. It’s quirky and gives the wine a lot of air but they will provide glasses for the timid!

November 28, 2016 4

Great Expectations

The weather here in Lombardy has been wet of late but as a break in the rain yesterday coincided with a completely free day for me, a friend and I drove to Reggio Emiglia, the county-town, as it were, of the Province of Emilia-Romagna. It’s a pretty city of some 170,000 inhabitants and sits firmly in the agricultural zone where such delights as Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Lambrusco wine come from. A lot of the architecture is baroque, with attractive squares and arcaded streets. On the road in from the autostrada there are three very modern road bridges by the renowned architect, Santiago Calatrava.The railway station, by the same architect is equally striking.

This blog though is about food, not buildings, so let’s get back to the main subject. I wrote here about the importance of expectations when it comes to defining my kind of food. It’s not acceptable to lead me to expect one thing and then deliver another.

We found a nice looking place to eat lunch yesterday, called Cadauno. It had the appearance of a wine shop with bottles adorning the walls and stacks of wine cases everywhere. The menu was posted in the window and I was particularly attracted by a couple of interesting dishes. Chianina (a type of beef) Hamburger with foie gras sounded appealing as did the Kobe beef sausage spiedini (skewers) in a spicy sauce. They also had Loch Fyne salmon tartar on the list. I was looking forward to engaging the waiter in conversation about where they source their Kobe beef in the hope of being able to lay my hands on some myself.

The welcome was somewhat muted but leaving that aside we found a table and ordered some water while we waited to choose food and wine. The menu arrived on a blackboard and I searched it in vain for the dishes which had so attracted me only a couple of minutes before. On enquiry of the glum waitress we were told that the menu in the window is for evening service and lunch should be chosen from the blackboard. The allure of Kobe beef, even if only in the form of a sausage had seized me and I was very disappointed that it now seemed very unlikely that I would get to try it. The things on the blackboard were fine and if that’s all I’d seen I would’ve been happy enough but my expectations of eating either Kobe or foie gras were raised.

We explained the problem. The waitress, without hesitation, brought us the full menu so once again my gastric juices flowed in anticipation. We ordered starters and mains, including the two previously mentioned dishes, they were written on the pad, the menus were gathered up and the waitress plunged into the depths of the kitchen only to return a few minutes later to tell us we couldn’t have the main courses.

We had tried and failed to order the food they’d advertised on their window menu; now was the time to admit defeat. We left with our expectations unfulfilled and somewhat let down but still with the sneaking suspicion that we might’ve missed a notice on the menu in the window saying it was only available in the evenings (there was no such notice). The staff apologised and suggested we might like to come back in the evening…

Our second and successful attempt to find food led us to Cantina del Carbone nearby. Here the menu was a mix of Italian and mexican food – this seemed unusual and I guess it may be something to do with the personal preferences of the chef, or perhaps his or her nationality.

In any case there were plenty of interesting sounding things to choose from and the staff were welcoming enough. We ordered pasta dishes to start. For me it was spaghetti del carbone which included anchovies, mushrooms, tomatoes and parmesan. The anchovies were the salted type and there were lots of them resulting in a really robust taste – too much for some I should think but I loved it its deep and salty flavour.

My friend had casarecci ( a new pasta shape to me) in a creamy saffron sauce with rocket and torn bits of speck ham sprinkled on top.

My companion, for his second course, choose Sandwich Cubano, which had originally interested me too. The menu told us it would be a sandwich consisting of mojo pork (mojo being a spicy sauce from Cuba and other Spanish cultures), swiss cheese, smoked ham and tomatoes all served with ranch potatoes.

The bread was quite well grilled (burned?) on the outside which ought to have indicated that it was nice and crunchy but apparently it was soft and ‘wet’ both inside and out. He thought the pork a bit dry and certainly the potatoes were cold. This dish was not the picture of loveliness of the other things we ate. It’s a shame because I think it had the makings of something quite delicious but it simply didn’t deliver.

My second course was much nicer and was described as Gamberi al sale picante affumicato. Big fat juicy prawns in a smokey, salty and spicy coating – they were messy to eat but absolutely delicious. They were served with a little salad of fennel and melted cheese, which I’m going to try cooking myself but I’ll served it warm not cold.

I will go back to Reggio Emiglia one day and try to find other interesting places to eat. Many bars seem to offer nibbles of parmesan cheese and the wonderful local hams and salamis so I think it’ll be a great place for an aperitivo too.

November 24, 2016 0

Who ate all the pies?

Melton Mowbray, is a small town in rural Leicestershire, UK and is the centre of the production of Stilton Cheese. Whey as a bi-product of cheese production is beloved by pigs and so the area also became renowned for raising pigs and creating pork meat products.

The king of these is the famous Melton Mowbray pork pie. It was originally created in the 1700s as a convenient portable food for those involved in fox-hunting which was a popular sport in the area. The popularity of the pie spread as a result of visitors to the area who came to follow the hunt.

The pie developed from being baked in a clay pot covered with a pastry lid, to what it is today; a portion of chopped fresh pork meat, seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked inside a ‘hand raised’ hot water crust pastry case. It has a particular pot-belly shape which is created as the pie cooks and the pastry case takes on that distinctive shape.

Similar pies from other areas have straight sides because they are cooked in containers rather than freestanding. Another hallmark of the authentic Melton Mowbray pie is the colour of the cooked meat, which should be grey not pink. Pink meat indicates that the pie is made from cured meat rather than fresh. The pie should also contain a decent amount of clear jelly which is created when stock, made from bones and poured into the pie after cooking, cools and coagulates.

It is that unique combination of well seasoned meat, a pot-belly shape, unctuous jelly and crispy pastry that is the sign of a good pork pie from Melton Mowbray. These days, mini versions are very popular as snacks and picnic food. Whatever there size, they are undoubtedly one of my favourite English foods.

November 14, 2016 2

Trans-alpine excess

Memories of Sunday lunch, when I was a child living in the North-east of England, include large plates piled high with roasted meat, potatoes (maybe even two types), two or three other vegetables and Yorkshire puddings all moistened with rich dark gravy. I enjoyed it a lot but as I’ve grown older, even though my stomach has grown bigger, my preference these days is for more proportionate plates of food. Don’t get me wrong I can still work my way through a large portion of stew and dumplings, sausages and mash or very large fish and chips! But, not every day.

The problem with the food on my recent trip to Bavaria was two-fold. On the one hand the portions were generally enormous and on the other, eating out each evening, it was almost impossible to find a satisfactory lighter dish to break up the monotony of a very large pieces of meat accompanied by two very large bread dumplings, a pile of boiled potatoes and a mountain of sauerkraut.

I couldn’t fault the hospitality in the restaurants I used in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Munich and the warm feel of them was comforting in a deeply homely way, but after the first meal I really felt as though I was set-up for the next 48 hours – sleep in this state came easily, followed soon afterwards by indigestion!

Some relative respite was found by substituting sausage and chips for meat, dumplings and potatoes. I recall one particular dish in Munich which consisted of a range of different sausages, (including bratwurst, blutwurst and bockwurst) each of which was delicious (and frankly a meal in itself). I didn’t get to try the (in)famous Currywurst, which I believe to be a German sausage smothered in a tomato and curry sauce – next time.

To be fair, I know little of the cuisine of the rest of Germany, except for having once eaten at a restaurant in Berlin (Margaux) where one tiny element of dish has remained in my memory for what must be at least 10 years. It was the intense salty taste of a small cube of jelly made from Badoit mineral water – the antithesis of the Bavarian carb overload.

I took no pictures of the food in Bavaria as I was too occupied with the herculean task of trying to clear my plate but trying to find some examples of these gargantuan dishes on -line as I write this is proving difficult Maybe the German tourist authorities have edited all of the images to make the portion sizes seem smaller and more elegant.

The Apple Strudel of course was delightful but was impossible for me to eat at the end of a large meal – better with a mug of hot chocolate for a mid morning snack!

November 11, 2016 0

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!

…well not when it comes to ‘my kind of food’, it’s not!

There’s been a bit of a hiatus in posting on the blog because I’ve been away, initially for a few lovely relaxing days in Bavaria and then two days in Tuscany. Travelling is usually a fantastic opportunity to experience good food in great locations but alas that wasn’t the case in Germany and when I’ve had a chance to work out why that might be the case, I will share my reflections here.

On the other hand, Tuscany never disappoints. Yesterday, three of us had Sunday lunch in a restaurant, called Ristorante Da Nilo in Cetona, south of Siena.

In fact we had meant not to eat there, having consulted TripAdvisor first and found a smattering of negative reviews that had been apparently rudely countered by the owner/chef, including the remark, ‘you don’t give sugar to donkeys’. Confusion in organising the reservation, however, meant that we in fact booked into Da Nilo rather than the alternative we’d chosen in the same town.

Once before, I chose to eat in restaurant that had poor reviews because the chef had answered them with supreme confidence in the quality of his own products and style of cooking and in that case I was not disappointed. I have to say that was also true in this case too.

It was a cosy dining room, perhaps with more a provincial French feel to it than Italian and despite the initial welcome being less than enthusiastic, the vibe was good.

I choose the onion soup to start, which was deliciously sweet from the beautifully cooked white onions topped with a piece of fontina cheese, a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese from the Val d’Aosta, and a very fine bread crisp. It wasn’t a runny onion soup, like the French do, but really thick with very little liquid discernible at all and could easily have been eaten with a fork instead of a spoon.

Next up was Nodino di maialino al forno con arance caramellate e cuori di finocchi. This was a nice chunk of suckling pig with the subtle taste of caramelised oranges in the ‘gravy’ and a tiny portion of fennel and orange salad on the side. The salad was so small I wondered if it was really necessary, but in fact it added so much to the dish in terms of contrast to the meat, that without it, the whole dish wouldn’t have been half so nice. The meat was perfectly cooked, soft and juicy with a lovely crisp, salty crust. I’d gladly eat this dish again.

I’d say, if you’re in the area, this place is worth seeking out, despite some of the TripAdvisor comments. As for Bavarian food, more later…..

November 7, 2016 0

Mama knows best

They say, if you ask any Italian to name the best chef in the world, the answer from everyone will be the same, “mama”. Home cooking is held in very high esteem here, its the pinnacle of culinary experiences.

There must be a reason why, in a country with some of the best ingredients in world and a population that lives and breathers food, there are relatively few so-called top class restaurants. If you look in the Michelin guide (2016), there are only eight three star restaurants listed in the whole nation. Of those only one is in the capital and none are in Milan, the business heart of Italy, where many of the richest Italians have homes.

I recently watched a documentary about the chef, Massimo Bottura, who owns Osteria Francescana in Modena (named this year as the best restaurant in the world in the San Pellegrino awards). The programme showed that his early days in the restaurant were very much touch and go as Italians, perhaps especially the Modenese, were not that interested in eating what chefs today refer to as ‘elevated’ food. Fine dining and Italian food were not natural bed-fellows. If the inhabitants of my adopted homeland can’t eat Mamma’s food they seem to prefer eat at a local trattoria rather than a posh restaurant. Tagliatelle al ragu depends on the quality of the pasta and the flavour of the rich sauce rather than on how it was re-intrepreted by the chef and refined beyond all recognition.

Don’t get me wrong, I once had the pleasure of eating at Osteria Francescana and I loved it. What Bottura does with local food is very exciting to me – but I’m not Italian. My immersion into the culture of Northern Italy occasionally requires me to stop and take stock of things like, why there are so few posh eateries.

I also frequently wonder why there are some many Asian restaurants, usually serving a fusion of Chinese and Japanese dishes. There are three or four even in our little city of Lodi and two of them I know quite well. I ate the other evening in Kokoro, which has recently changed its menu to focus more on Japanese rather than Chinese dishes. I know very little about Japanese food but I really enjoyed what I had. They’ve really managed to pack flavour into their food and combine a whole range of textures into every mouthful. It’s clean tasting food and as different from Italian as you could imagine.

The restaurant was full, even on a Wednesday, and not only full, but full of Italians. These were people choosing to eat Asian cuisine, in a relatively smart restaurant, certainly ‘posher’ looking than most local Italian places. You’d never see the same people in an equally smart Italian restaurant, even if you could find one. It’s been suggested to me that the locals prefer mama’s cooking and when that’s not available they’ll go the trattoria. When they want something a bit different they eat Asian food or McDonalds; all of this in preference to Italian fine dining. Only in Italy!

October 28, 2016 1

Aldi’s Artisan British Cheese Range – something from our friends at Fromage Homage blog

First, a confession. When I received an initial email from Aldi’s PR people, telling me that they were launching a new British cheese range, my first thought was along the lines of ‘Euw…

Source: Aldi’s Artisan British Cheese Range

October 26, 2016 0

My Kind of Food

Sharing stories about the kind of food I like to eat

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