Alison

Here is my blow by blow account of Claridges London…

We arrived early at Bond Street and went into the hotel entrance (revolving door). Huge marbled reception and they directed us to the Gordon Ramsey restaurant and 1920s style cocktail bar. There were a few black and white pictures of famous 1920s actresses, smoking cigarettes.

To start I had a sparkling water, Will had a Ricard on ice. He then asked if we would like some nibbles which we did. They were 4 cube glass bowls with a combination of sweetened nuts, parmesan cheese crisps, sesame wafer thin crackers, rice crackers.

At 12.15 we were shown to our table. The waiter was chatting and asking us if it was a special occasion etc, then the main French Maitre d’ told us that our table was Paul McCartney’s favourite table and always asks for it.

The bread was a warm long cigar of olive oil bread and a round wholemeal roll each. The butter was served on a square of slate one salted (crushed black pepper on top) and one unsalted.

Before our starters arrived they gave us ‘compliments from the chef’ a carrot and coriander  soup with wild mushrooms in a little bowl with a lid.

Then our starters arrived I had carpaccio of beef with blood orange cress salad, radicchio, parmesan crumbs with a honey and grain mustard dressing. Will had froi gras smoked and braised duck with a toasted bread, pear sorbet, rocket salad.

I went for John Dory fish dish with small herbed pasta bows, passion fruit jus, tiny onion rings in a tempura, lemon/butter sauce, cress.

Will had the lemon sole and crab on spinach with a sauce.

WOW. All presented so cleverly, piping hot.

At this point a group of 8-10 welsh rugby guys came in and I heard one say to another diner that his friend was an ex captain of the team and he was lunching with Prince William yesterday. They all had thick necks and broad welsh accents. So could have been famous rugby players?

The waiter then served us another ‘compliments from the chef’ saffron rice pudding topped with blood orange sorbet sprinkled with pistachio nuts served in small glasses.

Then the pudding I ordered was a chocolate wafer tower, pear and vanilla sorbet, poached pear and toffee sauce, served on a large square of slate. Will had a Granny smith apple ice cream, biscuit, shaved red and green apple layered like scales and then cut into a perfect square, black currant sauce and  a cider apple sorbet. WOW WOW, the desserts were amazing.

The waiter then came over with a white oval plate with Happy Birthday written in chocolate and a tiny cake with one candle. Nearly in tears at this point.

We were then invited into the kitchen to meet the chefs and ask any questions. I must be getting old because they were all so young, probably in their 20s. The Maitre’d came in and asked the chef for something special for a customer and the Head Chef started talking to us say it was a f ing cheek. We saw the Chef’s table (seats 7 people and you dine in the kitchen, each meal is explained and you talk throughout to the chefs). The photo is of us at the main pass – got the lingo now. Really friendly, everyone spoke to us as if they were old friends.

And theres more…..

We were then shown back to the bar area and our coffees were poured, served from a lovely old silver coffee pot, cubes of sugar etc. Again they gave us a complimentary chocolate with mango sorbet inside. It was served with a small pot with about 6 chocolate liquid toffee balls sitting on coffee beans.

Beautiful meal, lovely relaxing atmosphere, service was superb, building and decor is amazing, felt absolutely totally spoilt!!!!

I would highly recommend it.

 by Lois Davey.

There are a number of things I won’t eat including everything which falls into the bracket of “smallgoods”. I distrust any meat-based item which may or may not include bits of this, shavings of that, and handfuls of heaven knows what – the whole concoction masked by herbs and spices which may or may not be of an entirely natural provenence.

In short, neither salami nor sausages will pass my lips.

Despite this personal aversion I am obliged to purchase a six-pack of snarlers each fortnight for His Lordship who eschews all varieties in favour of those labelled “Alpine Pork” (you know where I’m going with this, don’t you?).

NZ sausage varietals are nothing if not plentiful and inventive. But for the most part their names reflect something imaginable in terms of animal and flavouring used except for the “Alpine Pork” which tells me nothing, yet manages to comprehensively imply pig farms perched atop snowy mountain peaks…..could this possibly be the case?

I donned my deeerstalker, polished the magnifying glass, sucked on my pipe and began the investigation by phoning the head butcher at my usual supermarket (Woolworths). I explained my mission – Russell guffawed. As this jolly outburst descended to a staggered chortle he admitted he had no idea why they were called “Alpine Pork” (but made a few amusing references to touristy antics in Queenstown).

Apparently he orders them in from Heller’s.

Righto – off to Heller’s website which colourfully describes their range of “Sensational Sausages” yet makes no mention of the elusive mountain pig variety. Via an 0800 number on their website I questioned a woman who clearly thought I was a time-waster, and wasted no time tersely informing me that “Alpine Pork” sausages were made by them exclusively for Progressive Enterprises who had chosen their name.

(By the way, Heller’s “Angus Pure” sausages boast they are made from meat from “NZ’s richest grazing grounds from Cape Reinga to Stewart Island …” Just a small point here:  there’s been no cattle on Stewart Island since 2000 and even before then merely for personal use.)
The Progressive (encompasses Woolworths, Countdown and Foodtown supermarket chains) website vouchsafes no contacts save those of “Corporate Affairs” and Penny Newbiggin/Media Enquiries. As my budget doesn’t run to phoning mobile numbers I chose to email Ms Newbiggin. After a week she has chosen not to reply.

I therefore hand over my investigations (or suppositions) as to the provenence of “Alpine Pork” to fellow Foodlover’s.

Paella on a Sunday

I have been dying to make paella for ever so long. Every cooking show you watch seems to do a paella at some point. A lot of restaurants have a seafood one on the menu.

I love the massive paella pans they use to make a whole village paella, that looks a lot of fun!

But it does seem though this dish can be at risk of being snooty.

Every recipe I have come across says you must use calasparra rice.

This rice has DOP status and is from Spain. This is the rice they use for paella. It is a unique rice and has very special properties. It is super absorbant so it absorbs all the liquid in your paella, it stays whole and separate so your paella doesn’t go all creamy like a risotto.

My problem is that in New Zealand calasparra rice is not cheap.

Paella as I understand it was a dish created by peasants using whatever was handy and growing around them, so using a flashy, highly priced product seems to go against the very essence of the dish! I wanted to try it, so I used the Calasparra. I made my paella with very good Spanish Chorizo (though this apparently is a modern thing and wouldn’t be in an original paella) and of course saffron as well as chopped tomatoes. We had it for Sunday dinner. It was delicious and you could definitely see how the Southern US dish of jambalaya using long grain rice, evolved from a paella. But to be honest the calasparra rice didn’t knock my taste buds over.

My unanswered question was can you make a paella using a plain non DOP status short grain rice or would this end in disaster? I have bought the rice, now I just need to make the dish to test my theory.

This time I will use chicken since this is more in keeping with the original paella.

It just makes me wonder what is more authentic buying all the ingredients exactly as is used (although for any dish this is usually hotly contested) or making the dish in the spirit of the original – using ingredients easily to hand.

In my various makings of risotto, it definitely benefits from good quality arborio or carnaroli rice because it just makes it so creamy and I can tell the difference, maybe I will find the same with paella.

PS Well I attempted paella with generic short grain rice. In short don’t bother – always use calasparra for paella!

The dish came out not quite as creamy as a risotto but not with clearly distinct grains like a paella.

It was edible and the flavours were nice but definitely not as tasty as the paella with calasparra rice.

— Fiona

Cheers

Fiona Summerfield
Summerfields Foods
207 Waimairi Road, Ilam, Christchurch
open 11am-7pm Tues – Sat
[email protected]
ph 03 357 0067
www.summerfieldsfoods.co.nz
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Lois Davey

I’m getting to be what some might call a bit of a cranky old crock who’s going to pot so guess what I want to rant about … that’s right:crockpots. Crockpot recipe cookbooks to be precise.

I’ve just spotted yet another new crockpot recipe book collated (no doubt in some haste) by an author keen to leap on the bandwagon of this hyped-up fad.

My faithful old crockpot has been with me for thirty-odd years and often comes in handy for those times when I’m not able to be darting back and forth to the kitchen to monitor pots on the stove or in the oven. Or, for when I have a piece of meat I suspect might be a tad on the tough side.

That is the reason they were invented.

Crockpot cooking is not fun – it’s aim is convenience. If you haven’t the time to spend lovingly tending a stove-top meal (tasting, adding, fiddling, modifying etc) you chuck everything in the crockpot, flick the switch and go about your other more boring business.

But about a year or so ago someone, somewhere in a marketing division of a crockpot manufacturer’s head office was charged with the task of boosting ailing crockpot sales.

It was a crafty and stealthy operation and, looking back, it’s hard to decipher where they actually began it.

Did the promotion of the crockpots come first, or the appearance on supermarket shelves of packets of slow-cooker recipe mixes. Or did they persuade a food writer to come up with a book first in order to trigger demand. It’s all a bit of a chicken and egg conundrum, albeit a money-spinning one.

A while ago I was sent a few packets of slow-cooker recipe bases. I viewed these up, down and sideways and for the life of me could not see why they should be so specifically labelled for crockpot use. The “beef and red wine casserole”

and “beef with onion gravy” sachets were nought but variants on Maggi’s range of “Cook in the Pots” (any pot will suffice). The minestrone recipe base merely contained a flavour sachet and a handful of dried kidney and borlotti beans.

I guess it is the words “slow-cooker” on these packets that persuade people to rush out and buy one of these gadgets because they are under the impression that a minestrone cannot be successfully created in anything other than a plug-in pot left to its own devices for several hours.

But I rant in vain. The damage has been done, pockets have been lined. Thousands (of the culinary gullible) have raided stores for a “slow-cooker” and, with one of those many specific cookbooks at their side and a pantry full of “slow-cooker recipe bases”, now fervently believe. Seven days a week probably, until someone, somewhere in the marketing division of the head office of a pressure-cooker manufacturer…..

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Summerfields

It sounds weird and just plain wrong. Chicken and steak are two different things, and shouldn’t really be combined. The suspicion and weirdness are only enhanced when you throw the words “American” and “deep-fried” in there as well [shudder]. Can anything good be said of chicken fried steak?

Well, yes! Actually.

We’re going to have a go at converting any squeamish Kiwis we meet to the idea of chicken fried steak and encourage them to give it a go.

It’s pretty good!

First things first. What is it? Basically, it’s steak, cooked in the style of Southern Fried Chicken. A cow meets KFC kind of thing. While there is no real consensus, it is likely that CFS(chicken fried steak) was invented by German and Austrian settlers in the southern US. This makes sense when you think of Wiener Schnitzel—a very similar dish that hails from Austria. Wiener Schnitzel is pretty well loved by Kiwis too. You can even buy crumbed schnitzel in the supermarket (though you probably shouldn’t—it’s horrible). So if we’re happy to coat thinly sliced steak in bread-crumbs and deep fry it, who are we to criticise when slightly thicker steak is instead coated with flavourful, seasoned flour and deep fried? Not us, now.

Once we had the Wiener Schnitzel thing pointed out to us, and after we stopped feeling sheepish for bagging something we had never tried, we decided to make CFS and give it a fair go.

Starting our research we realised that methods vary and—as with all these iconic dishes—there are regional variations and recipe rivalry.

We went with a middle of the road hybrid using some porterhouse steak that was on special at our local butcher. Firstly, it’s very important to tenderise the steak using the knobbly side of a meat hammer. This breaks up the meat fibres and results in a more tender steak, but also gives a rough surface for the coating to cling to. We probably didn’t need to use porterhouse steak. A cut with more flavour would have been even nicer. Next time we’d probably go for rump or something (sorry to anyone from the US if we’re describing a heinous bastardised version of your beloved dish, but we have to go with Kiwi cuts of meat).

Next we had to soak the meat in buttermilk and egg for a bit. We don’t really have buttermilk in easy supply in New Zealand, so we improvised using milk with a little yoghurt to give it a tang. While the steak was soaking in the “buttermilk” we made our seasoned flour.

We used plain flour, salt, black pepper, thyme, cayenne pepper and a small sprinkle of cumin. We shook all the ingredients together in a bag before pouring our seasoned flour out onto a plate.

Cooking the steak is easy. You fish it out of the egg/buttermilk mixture, dredge it in the flour until it is well covered and then back through the egg/buttermilk mixture and back through the flour.

Fry the steak in a centimetre mix of hot oil and butter for about 3 minutes a side. The flour and egg almost instantly form a forcefield- like barrier against the oil, and the result is decidedly less greasy than Weiner Schnitzel. We removed the steak from the pan onto some paper towels and they hardly left a mark.

CFS is traditionally served with white gravy and it’s easy to make too. Once you have fried your steak you keep it warm in a low oven, pour away all but a tablespoon or so of the fat. Add a tablespoon or two of the yummy seasoned flour to the crispy bits in the pan and mix into a roux. Slowly add milk whisking up a storm until you have a smooth, thickened gravy. We added some more black pepper too.

Serve the CFS with green beans and corn, or with a coleslaw.

Traditionally you have mashed potatoes, and you make a little well in the top of your pile of mash to take some of the gravy. Pour the gravy over the steak too (cover about a third of the steak and it looks really classy). It went down a treat!

If you’re happy cooking Weiner Schnitzel at home, then we urge you to give this a try sometime. It’s really very yummy. We’d love to try it now in its natural home, made by someone who really cares about their Chicken Fried Steak. We bet it would be a very nice meal indeed!

www.summerfieldsfoods.co.nz

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