Requiem for the guac – why I’m smashing avocado out of my life

Breaking up is so hard to do, but I’ve made my decision. Tonight’s guacamole will be the last I ever prepare. In future my signature fish tacos may have to make do with just a piquant pico de gallo pairing. I chop up (not too finely) chunks of avocado to a soundtrack of Radiohead – In The Right Place and Kid A from a newly exhumed double album of early Noughties new directions. The definition of bereft.

The avocado’s detrimental impact on the environment and global communities has long plagued my conscience, but I’ve put it on the back burner since cafe brunches with obligatory avo on sourdough are hardly my natural habitat and I regard this veg-come-fruit as special treat, not a staple. Especially given the supermarket lottery of rock hard stuck to the stone or brown mushy surprises after all those air miles.

The tipping point has been a week’s worth of besuited fossils dithering away at Cop26. The planet in safe hands; you’re having a laugh. Combine this with my recent reading list of ethical books on food and farming – James Rebanks’ English Pastoral, Julian Baggini’s The Virtues of the Table and Wendell Berry’s The World-ending Fire – and it’s become Adios Avocado.

So what’s the environmental case against the big A? Let’s start with the carbon footprint. The bulk of the production is in their native Central and South America, so they travel over 5,000 miles to reach Europe and on top of that require temperature-controlled storage en route. It also takes an awful lot of precious water to cultivate them originally – at the extreme end as much as 320 litres to grow just one avocado.

And then there’s the monopoly of Mexico, which now produces over a third of the world’s 11 billion avos, eight out of ten from the state of Michoacán alone, a huge amount of which are destined for the USA. There was never a Wall against them. Amazingly, thanks to the power of television advertising, seven per cent of the annual US consumption takes place on the day of the Super Bowl.

With the huge demand comes all the downsides of intensive, industrial scale agriculture – agrichemical overload, the exploitation of labour and deleterious soil degradation. And, of course, in Mexico criminal gangs are omnipresent to follow the money – exports from Michoacán pre-Pandemic totalled $2.4bn. Check out a Guardian piece from 2019 that details the battle for control of this ‘Green Gold’:

“The 19 mutilated bodies, nine hanging semi-naked from a bridge in the Mexican city of Uruapan, were initially thought to be the result of a clash between rival drug gangs. But the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which claimed the murders in August, is believed to be fighting for more than drugs. It wants dominance over the local avocado trade.”

Meanwhile, the environment is being criminally abused, too. Forest lands with diverse wildlife have been destroyed to create the brighter sun conditions to produce avocado, thus contributing to global warming.

Yet we all know how willing we are to ignore what’s happening on the other side of the world when a food import is as creamily delicious as an avocado, especially when the ‘sustainable’ word is wheeled out.

Whatever their sustainability claims, I still feel The Avocado Show is an irresponsible venture. The  avocado-centric restaurant brand that started in Amsterdam finally opened permanently In London this autumn, with indications they have an eye on other UK cities, including Manchester. There’s a vapid client base waiting, beguiled by Intagram pictures of beautiful green dishes, apparently. I despair. What’s not to like about the ‘infamous’ avocado burger that uses a whole avocado cut in half as a bread bun alternative? Everything.

Fortunately, elsewhere some thought is being given to creating guacamole substitutes minus the avocado. It’s a start. I’ve never been the hugest fan of Thomasina Miers’ Wahaca chain but, while understandably retaining sustainable avocado on her Mexican-influenced menu she has sought a guacamole alternative. Step forward the Wahacamole – a dip made from fava beans, green chilli, lime and coriander.

Over in Toronto the Mexican chef Aldo Camarena has put forward a version made with courgette and pumpkin seed paste. Frozen peas and broccoli have also become part of the ethicl equation. I’ve tried both takes without enthusiasm. I can’t even get my head around a new guacamole from Kol, a high-end Mexican restaurant in London, that’s a blend of pistachios, pine oil, cucumber juice and fermented gooseberries.

And so to my requiem for the One True Guacamole tonight. Once I recall a Manchester restaurant pairing guac with lobster. Tonight’s home-made fish tacos are done with halibut. Is that really a sustainable fish choice? The eating life used to be so much simpler.

/by
,

Nigel Haworth: why the reborn Three Fishes will not be living in the past

A wet Wednesday morning in Mitton, Lancashire and I am admiring a tub of saffron milkcaps. Or to give this delectable wild mushroom its even more exotic Latin tag: Lactarius deliciosus. Not to be confused with the Woolly Milkcap (Lactarius torminosus), which is poisonous.

I ask the mycophile (edible mushroom gather) I’ve just met, Matt Rivers, if he every gets jittery about fungi identifications. There have been moments, he admits. He works a carefully chosen woodland patch to the east of Blackburn. He’d love to locate morels, a valuable restaurant staple, but so far no luck.

Matt is here at The Three Fishes, groundbreaking gastropub being brought back from the dead, because he has done business before with its chef/patron Nigel Haworth. In his days fronting Michelin-starred Northcote down the road Nigel – along with arch-rival Paul Heathcote – forged the gastronomic reputation of the Ribble Valley. 

But it was the collection of pubs, trading under the name Ribble Valley Inns, that spread the image of a terroir rich in raw materials and artisan providers. The Three Fishes was the first of these food-centric inns, back in 2004. There were five in total across the North West by the time RVI was bought by big bucks chain Brunning & Price in 2018. Nigel admits the final venture down into deepest Cheshire had been a step too far.

The new owners, with a strong presence in that county, chose not to add the Nag’s Head, Haughton to their 62-strong pub portfolio. Out of the four they did purchase Three Fishes was shut down within year. Bizarrely B&P already owned The Aspinall Arms a third of a mile away. Big money had been lavished on its refurb and consequently the Fishes languished in its shadow.

Nigel and his young staff have taken possession of the shiny new kitchen in the build up to November 12

All this is in the past, as is Nigel Haworth’s involvement with Northcote, now owned by the group behind London’s Stafford Hotel and Norma restaurant (read my review). In an act of of fate his current resurgence stems from a chance meeting at his beloved Obsession chef festival (the last one held, in 2020). Martin Aspinall’s family have been Ribble Valley grandees for centuries and he agreed to go 50:50 to fund The Three Fishes rebirth. 

As we negotiate a hectic construction work in progress Nigel tells me: “It was always in the back of my mind that I’d go back, though even I didn’t realise what a sorry state the building was in. New electrics, windows, a new kitchen and so much more, but we are getting there.”

The reopening was scheduled for the end of October but after “unexpected hurdles” the official opening date has now shifted to Wednesday November 17. Such is the popularity of Haworth and the Fishes’ reputation they have already been inundated with enquiries. Christmas should be sold out.

So what should returning devotees and a new generation of customers expect? “An offering somewhere between gastropub and fine dining with an emphasis on farm to fork sustainability,  new beginning” says Nigel.

Back in the day the pub’s walls were festooned with arty monochrome images of its suppliers, moody poses with pigs or cabbages and there was a map charting North West suppliers. Many of these veteran supporters are rallying to the new venture but Nigel’s new focus is growing on site with an acre of veg plot, a 30m x 10m poly tunnel and an emphasis on permaculture. “We’ll be composting all our own waste, aiming eventually at zero waste. For long term we are creating our own orchard, too. Giving back to the land. We are not looking back, we are looking forward.”

The food offering will concentrate on four course seasonal set menus – £50 at lunch, £65 in the evening. Mains will be in the £20-£30 bracket, puddings around an £8 price point. There will be a selection of 60 wines and beers will be local. A 16-capacity private dining room, with baronial sliding door symbolises the aspiration to transcend the old Fishes, which occasionally felt formulaic and canteen-like (in my opinion) despite the quality of the food.

The legendary Haworth hotpot, star of the BBC’s Great British Menu that has even been an upmarket ready meal

Lancashire hotpot is the dish synonymous with Nigel Haworth after his refined version, using local Lonk lamb, went all the way to the Banquet in Great British Menu a decade ago. Would it feature on the new Three Fishes Menu? I forgot to ask in the makeover tumult. Thanks to Nigel for mailing me a specimen menu later. No sign of the hotpot, but there’s grilled turbot, roasted red leg partridge and a fascinating Herdwick lamb combo – loin, liver, sticky belly, turnip gratin and pat choi. The whole menu goes up on the website by midday on Sunday, October 31 when bookings go live.

Behind schedule, having just lost a key member of his kitchen brigade, with the price of that favoured Herdwick lamb going through the roof, yet you sense it is not just The Three Fishes that is being reinvigorated. “Why am I doing this? Well, I just love to cook, that’s what I do.”

/by

My Italian Food Trail: Tiramisù, the aphrodisiac?

Darkness at noon, torrential rain battering the skylight of my attic office. Can’t get out of my head how many private jets flew in the world leaders to that climate change summit in Glasgow and how ironic that doomsday weather has crippled the rail line up from London.

My antidote to all this gloom? Make a Tiramisù, obviously. In honour of Ado Campeol, whose Treviso restaurant, in North East Italy, was the birthplace of this modern Italian ‘classic’. If Neil Young is the ‘Godfather of Grunge’, Ado, who has died at the age of 93, is the ‘Godfather of Claggy Chill Cabinet Desserts in Restaurants With Checkered Plastic Tablecloths’.

Retro flashbacks. It doesn’t have to be like this, as I rally my tiramisù resources. Rum? Check. Marsala? Check. Eggs and sugar? Check. Dark (but not too dark) chocolate? Check. But just a small amount, augmented by cocoa powder. No espresso machine, but I’ll concoct a wired-up batch of dark roast Monsoon Malabar. OK, it will require a trip out, dodging the toppling trees, to garner a couple of tubs of mascarpone and some boudoir finger biscuits (or their equivalent. I’m tempted to factor in too, some Amaretti that have been a store cupboard fixture for too long, but would that be sacrilege?

Not really. Even a dish less of a parvenu than tiramisù, which dates back to those checkered seventies, is not set in stone (check out various versions below). It’s why every nonna across Italy treasures her own special ragu recipe. 

How many of those ragus, mind, have claims to aphrodisiac effects? This promotable urban myth stems from the word tiramisù, literally translated as “lift me up”, from the Treviso dialect’s “tireme su”. There’s a quite wonderful ‘heavy breathing’ Australian article, tracing the dish back to Treviso’s historic warren of brothels.

“For centuries, up until 1958 when brothels were shut by the government, the cake was served to reinvigorate exhausted clients inside so-called “casinos” (closed whorehouses) non-stop: Before, during and after heavy and multiple sex sessions to keep them going and the money flowing.”

The Campeols are sticking by their more edifying version of tiramisù’s origin. Aldo’s son Carlo, who now runs the Campeol family restaurant, has recalled: “When my mother Alba was breastfeeding me a few years earlier, she had turned to mascarpone mixed with sugar and biscuits soaked in coffee to keep her energy up, which is traditional in Treviso. Then, with her chef, she turned those elements into a pudding.”

According to that chef, Roberto Linguanotto, it was all down to an inspired accident while making vanilla ice cream. He dropped some mascarpone cheese into a bowl of eggs and sugar and, wowed by the pleasant taste, he told Alba. The pair then perfected the dessert by adding ladyfinger sponges soaked in coffee, and sprinkling it with cocoa.

The dish was never patented, pressure to win EU certification to validate (or ossify) the original recipe has been in vain and rival claimants have occasionally surfaced. That’s alway the case with these Eureka! moments in popular cuisine. Take universally revered ‘Indian speciality’ Chicken Tikka Masala. Tikkipedia (sorry Wikipedia) dates its creation back to the start of the Seventies and Glasgow’s Shish Mahal restaurant, where proprietor Ali Ahmed Aslam improvised a sauce made from yogurt, cream and spices after a customer complained his Tikka was too dry. Apocryphal? Definitive?” Who knows?

Similarly, in my travel memories of Berlin I name checked Kadir Nurman as the creator of the donner kebab (again in those fertile early seventies), but other Turkish immigrants to Germany have also staked their claim, apparently), while the invention of Berlin fast food rival Currywurst is attributed to one Herta Heuwer way back in 1949. She was a dab hand with ketchup and curry powder sourced from British squaddie stationed there.

But back to my tiramisù, which has been chilling nicely while I have meandered through this maze of modern culinary classics. Alcohol wasn’t originally included in this family friendly recipe; now it inevitably features. My version, which I’m sampling contentedly, does. Laced with rum and marsala (oh and there was an inch of brandy to use up), it turned our really well. Now the sun has even come out. Saluti! 

/by