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Off with its leaves – how I finally executed a recipe using Good King Henry

In Patience Gray’s classic Honey from a Weed (1986),her account of culinary subsistence living in Puglia during the Seventies, she writes of the annual known as fat hen: ‘I was astonished to find that in the Salento people call this plant ‘la saponara’ and use it to clean their hands after working in the fields, rather than eating it. It is often found in cultivated ground next to deadly nightshade. The shape of their leaves is similar, but those of the nightshade are dark green; so study both plants before gathering fat hen.”

All rather insouciant and I’d rather take the frisson out of foraging unless I’m dead certain what I’m picking is not toxic. So I’m not in the “that’s probably not fly agaric” camp. Yet this is a land today where the likes of sea buckthorn and wild garlic prop up restaurant menus in season and at the wonderful The Riverside, in Herfordshire’s Lugg valley I didn’t feel I was being stung when chef patron Andy Link served up a nettle cake as pud. Local snails and sweet cicely parfait also featured in a memorable meal.

Andy Link in his Riverside Aymestrey kitchen garden

Behind this 16th century sheep drovers’ inn rise veg terraces steepling into wooded hills. And there among the brassicas and edible flowers we stumbled upon the bane of my summer, Good King Henry. Now we all Know who Bad King Henry was; recent polls have awarded ‘Worst Monarch’ label to the VIII. But The Good? 

The name of this species of goosefoot (and close relative of fat hen/white goosefoot) doesn’t reference royalty. It comes from the German Guter Heinrich (Good Henry) to distinguish it from Böser Heinrich (Bad Henry) a name for the poisonous plant Mercurialis perennis. Brits adde the King bit later. No that it has ever ruled our tables. It is still much cherished by home cooks in Alpine regions for its spinach like qualities. I wanted to join their number when accepting a sturdy specimen as a gift from Andy Link. Then my wobbles began.

Safely replanted at home next to the Charlemagne horseradish and the research began into a wild plant whose Latin name is Chenopodium bonus-henricus but goes under a variety of monickers – perennial or oak-leaved goosefoot, poor man’s asparagus, mercury, common orache, long-stalked orache, spear-leaved orache and, notably in this country, Lincolnshire spinach. Until the 19thy century Good King Henry was regularly  been used in British kitchens, possibly first introduced by the Romans; pollen from it has been found been found on sites even before then,

Good King Henry
Its cousin fat hen

Like the fat hen (Chenopodium album) it is semi-wild and can grow up to 75cm tall. It has large, triangular leaves with powdery surfaces and wavy edges. The first green leaves emerge in April and are available for picking until August. From May through August, the small flower spikes are visible. 

The leaves, stalks, and blossom buds can all be eaten, but the flavour of the leaves becomes bitterer as the season goes on Which is why, now it is September have I left my harvesting too late. Already the leaves at the back are turning ruddy and sere.

From the star those large triangular leaves share with sorrel (a favourite of mine) acidic traces of oxalic acid. OK, it is proof of valuable iron but bad for you if you suffer from rheumatism or gout, apparently. I’m working on the later.

Surely, it’s no bitterer than kale. Should I just lightly steam it as I make my belated effort to cook with Henry? Or perhaps go down the salsa verde route? Blending it with vinegar, salt and capers?

Quiche Ingredients
The final dish

In the end I aim for a more substantial dish, a quiche with a touch of honey – to counter the ouch factor – ricotta and honey. I had first soaked the leaves for an hour in a salty solution to leach out the bitterness and then rinsed them. How did it turn out? Dandelionish, the hint of honey didn’t detract from a sharpness, quelled by the eggs. I accompanied it with steamed Swiss chard, scattered with toasted pine nuts.

My harvest left very little foliage on my Good King Henry, but it’s a perennial and famously pest-resistant, so I expect it will be back sturdier than ever; and it hardly seems invasive. Famous last words not quite. Further research reveal it is also a host plant to several moths: death’s-head hawkmoth, nutmeg, orache, dark spinach and plain pug moth. What does this mean for my little plot?

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The Book of Pintxos – inside story of Basque small plates

In a recent The Rest Is History, on the build-up to the Great War, podcast pals Tom and Dominic reached a quirky consensus on their dislike of Russian Salad… a view I share. You’ll have to listen to episode 3 to discover the context. Clue – a Serbian ultimatum that was hard to stomach,


This digression just happened to coincide with my perusal of The Book of Pintxos (Artisan, £30), Marti Buckley’s wonderful, San Sebastián-heavy follow-up to Basque Country, her indispensable guide to that great foodie region. I have to believe her when she writes: “Ensaladilla rusa is, after tortilla española, the most ubiquitous and popular pintxo in Spain.” For pintxo also read tapa, that small plate rival across the rest of the Iberian peninsula. Indeed it remains a restaurant mainstay in (its disputed birthplace) Russia and in old school diners across the globe.

Russian salad – a mutual bete noire

Marti, raised in Alabama, schooled in Louisiana, has spent well over a decade as the adopted daughter of Donastia (local name for San Sebastián). She’s the go-to gal to message the States that Italian and French are not innately superior cuisines to Spanish and her beloved Basque. But, as witness for the defence, Russian salad? Albeit, it HAS to be made with home-made mayo and hopefully the tuna might be canned ventresca in escabeche. Which still doesn’t in my eyes excuse a salad combining cooked potatoes, carrots and canned peas.
The author adapts her recipe from one of San Sebastián’s most acclaimed pintxos spots, the Bar Ezkurra, dating back to 1933 and physically little changed. It shifts, from its dark wooden counter, 175 pounds of rusa on busy days.

The joy of The Book of Pintxos is its depth of historical research, and pen pictures of the folk who keep the legacy alive, some by radically ‘elevating it’. A spin-off perhaps from a region boasting the highest per capita concentration of Michelin-star restaurants in the world. There’s a place for many approaches.
What unites many dishes is the toothpick. Pintxos was first promoted properly in North West England by Ramsbottom’s sadly missed Baratxuri, where at the end of a night full of bar snacks they tallied the bill according to the number of little sticks collected.
Before pintxos evolved to knife and fork this was the standard serving of simple snacks such as my old favourite to accompany a glass of tzakoli wine – Gilda. Arguably the original pintxo, this is just an anchovy fillet, pitted manzanilla olives and sharp pickled guindilla peppers threaded onto a toothpick. Hardly molecular gastronomy but at its core pintxos remain bar food.

The simple guilda
Burnt Basque cheesecake

Some of the 70 recipes are more complex as Marti traces the historical evolution, interviewing all the key players. Take Santi Rivera. In 1988 he took over the kitchen at his parent’s San Sebastián Old Town bar, La Viña, and perfected the one Donostian dish recognisable worldwide – Burnt Basque Cheesecake. Since then he has won a Pintxos Oscar’ in 1998 for his anchovy and cheese stuffed cone, but it is the cheesecake that shifts in vast numbers to this day – pan-burn crust on the outside transitioning into the creamiest of soft cheese custards, “the interior all jiggly and loose” in Marti’s words.
The author spreads her net beyond San Sebastián (or Donastia as the Basques call it) and covers my favourite places in Bilbao, a city I know better and have more affection for. One of my home page images was taken in Bilbao’s Plaza Nueva.

Certainly the Gure Toki’s truffled eggs and mi-cuit foie gras nougat are a step up from th humble guilda. Quality of ingredients has a role to play in the bar scene. La Vina Del Ensanche in Bilbao’s Old Town offers not just an encyclopaedic wine list but majors in the the world’s best jamon, Joselito Bellota.

If you must – Ensaladilla rusa recipe from The Book of Pintxos

Ingredients
Salt
3 large Yukon Gold potatoes peeled
1 medium peeled carrot, ends trimmed
7 large eggs
3 cups mayonnaise, preferably homemade*, divided
¼ cup drained canned green peas
¼ cup drained canned tuna ventresca in escabeche, or any good-quality oil-packed tuna, flaked
1 baguette, sliced on the bias into 15 pieces

Method
Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and carrot and cook for eight minutes, then add the eggs and boil for 12 minutes more. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the eggs to an ice bath. Pierce one of the potatoes with a fork; if it slides in easily, drain along with the carrot and transfer to a cutting board. (Alternatively, continue boiling until the potatoes are fork-tender.) 
Peel the eggs and finely chop five of them (set aside the remaining two whole eggs). Cut the potatoes into ½-inch pieces and the carrot into ¼-inch pieces; transfer the chopped eggs, potatoes, and carrots to a large bowl. Add 1½ cups of the mayonnaise, the peas, tuna, and ½ teaspoon of salt and use a silicone spatula to gently combine. Fold in more mayonnaise (up to ½ cup) until the mixture is creamy and soft. Season to taste with more salt if needed. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. 
To serve, scoop generous portions of the salad atop the baguette slices, using a butter knife to form little mountains. Remove the yolks from the remaining two eggs (reserve them for another use), then use the small holes of a box grater to grate the whites over the pintxos. Using a pastry bag fitted with a decorative tip or a zip-top bag with a corner snipped off, squeeze a generous teaspoon of mayonnaise onto each pintxo.  

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Begone the travails of trembling madness – York’s Skosh really is a wizard restaurant

Turned away from the House of Trembling Madness. It’s enough to turn you into a palsied leper begging for alms. It was to have been my debut at the newer, Lendal outlet of York’s quirkily monikered craft beer emporium. Like the original in Stonegate, the building dates  back hundreds of years and promises a refuge from the tourist hordes thronging the Harry Potter-haunted Shambles (or Hogwarts on Ouse, as I call it).

Back to H of TM. “Sorry we’re not allowing anyone in at the moment.” ”But there’s lots of room at the inn,” I splutter, surveying a handful of couples cradling cappuccinos. “Sorry, medical emergency upstairs.” 

House of Trembling Madness
Hogwarts on Ouse

Yes, I’ve failed to register the two ambulance responders outside (hope all turned out well), so instead I decamp to Trembling Madness I and its plethora of half timber and animal heads. Here I swiftly recover my equipoise over a pint and pork pie after a fraught rail journey across.
Fortunately I‘d booked the real object of my York visit for 5.30pm. Aiming for lunch, I might not have made it to Skosh. Broken Britain and all that. Still the day got better and better, culminating in that meal at the destination on Micklegate Observer critic Jay Rayner praised as “the ideal of what an ambitious, independent restaurant should be.”
That was back in 2017 when Skosh had barely been open a year. Last December it shut in order to knock through into next door – a former solicitors, also Grade II listed. The expanded Skosh looks a seamless treat, the open kitchen enlarged and room for walk-ins at the front (not that I was ever taking that chance). I eschewed the offered seat at the pass, but my solo diner’s corner table still offered a prime view of chef/patron Neil Bentinck (blow) and his team in action.

Micklegate has always been my happy place in York and an exemplary parade of small dishes has made it happier. Small plates with a generosity of invention behind them. Fusion is a tired term, so let’s call the Skosh menu ‘global melange’. Korean, Japanese, South Indian influences are all present, intriguingly yoked to some beautifully sourced UK raw materials (listed on the back of a menu that redefines eclectic.
Does it all work? Mostly. I’m still unsure of my final savoury course of tandoori octopus with lime pickle (£18). InItially brash in a smoky way, it won me over, sort of. It was a far remove from the delicate freshness of my snack opener – a sea trout papad packed with avocado, fennel and green strawberry (£4.50). The standard wine list is fine value and the carafe of Grüner Veltliner I ordered worked well with most of the dishes (a later glass of South African Grenache had work on its hands with the spiced up cephalopod).

Tandoori octopus
Sea trout papad

Next up was an odd hybrid called ‘uthapam waffles’ (£8) – substituting for the South Indian semolina crepes a pair of Western style waffles. Light and friable, the conceit worked: sole caveat I would have liked larger portions of the delicious green tomato chutney and fresh coconut. But then the restaurant’s name derives from the Japanese sukoshi for “a little” or “small amount”.
Aguachile verde (£8) is Bentinck’s veggie version of the Mexican ceviche rival, featuring a kind of iced feta slush plus spring peas and broad beans. It was a verdant, tangy treat that acted as a kind of prelude to a bbq spring lamb tartare (£12), dotted with peas, heady with mint and wasabi. Almost a raw ringer for the keemas I’m sure the chef’s food-mad Indian dad used to prepare. Bentinck’s major influence without doubt is his travels in Australia, that melting pot of Pacific Rim cooking and South Eastern Asian influences, restaurants majoring in casual dining and the freshest produce.

Aguachile verde
Lamb tartare

My stand-out dish at Skosh couldn’t have been fresher. The ‘sashimi’ of day boat red sea bream paddled in a fragrant dressing of elderflower and rhubarb with a punch of green peppercorn. It was among the best dishes I have eaten across Yorkshire in the past 12 months and my gastronomic journey has taken in Mýse, the Abbey Inn at Byland, Pignut, Prashad and Bavette (do check out my reviews).
None of these have a kitchen as well-stocked with furikake, ponzu, nahm pla, xo sauce, miso pesto, gunpowder salt, gochujang and sichuan pepper. It’s OK to have access to such a broad spectrum of flavourings; it’s another thing to use them with discretion.Which the brave Bentinck mostly does. On my next visit I hope to discover how he seasons a Tokyo turnip.

Lime leaf is also a Skosh, spawning a collab can on their interesting beer list. Yet I really didn’t know what to expect from my closer of lime leaf cream, pineapple, lychee and shiso (£10). It arrived topped with what looked like a prawn cracker standing in for the clichéd tuile. It added crunch to a delightful combo.The citrussy bitterness of the shiso leaves was a beguiling counterpoint to the slightly caramelised pineapple and the muskiness of the lychee. A memorable, easeful meal for this solo diner.

Skosh, 98 Micklegate, York YO1 6JX.

And while you’re up on Micklegate…

Skosh’s neighbour, The Falcon, is effectively the city tap for Turning Point Brewery of Knaresbough, but it also offers beers from other indie operations. It has been an ale house since 1715 and is decidedly smart. Micklegate Social, at the top of the drag near medieval Micklegate Bar, has a more shabby chic vibe, as befits a music venue. A decent cask selection and surprisingly good cocktails.

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Blossoming Perry – ‘the best examples are the match of anything ever fermented’

Hellens, a Tudor manor house outside Much Marcle, has much to offer. One day I plan to take in its annual spring music festival, perhaps mooching around the knot and cloister gardens or the yew labyrinth on this verdant private estate. But most of all it’s their pear trees that top my bucket list. Imagine – in full bloom – an avenue of them, some dating back to 1706, planted to celebrate the coronation of Queen Anne. A stone mill and two large presses survive in the barn. In those days the perry from such saplings was as esteemed as fine wine.

Time has since taken its toll on this Herefordshire heartland (and the neighbouring counties of Gloucesterhire and Worcestershire). Perry sank out of mainstream fashion. Changing agricultural priorities saw orchards and hedgerows ripped out. Now when artisanal fermented pear juice is enjoying a critical resurgence, fireblight threatens to ravage the trees of this unique terroir. There appears to be no protection against this deadly bacteria.

Bittersweet musings then as I neck a bottle of Newton Court Black Mountain Sparkling Perry while I digest Adam Wells’ Perry: A Drinker’s Guide (CAMRA Books £17.99) – a hugely evocative beacon of hope that manages to be more celebration than elegy. It’s a wonderful, revelatory read.

I accompanied it with a digital peek at the Herefordshire Pomona, a 19th century illustrated compendium of apple and pears. Very rare, just 600 copies. Buy one and it might set you back £5,000. So beautiful, though. Alongside small producer standard bearers Oliver’s, Little Pomona, Ross-on-Wye, Gregg’s Pit, Artistraw and Newton Court are all, the true heroes are the trees. 

In Adam’s words: “Perry pear varieties grow on trees that can age over 300 years and grow 60ft tall with 50ft canopies, that at their largest hold over a tonne of fruit. Their drink is harder to make, takes more care, than cider—but the best examples are the match of anything ever fermented. You can make it from any pears but most of the best is made from vicious, tannic, acidic, misshapen fruits called ‘perry pears,’ some so inedible that even pigs reject them. Each has a different flavour.”

Here’s a trio of hero trees which typify the fragile survival of the species. Their continuing existence is down to the sheer bloody-mindedness of their discoverers and protectors…

Flakey Bark

Thought to be extinct until Charles Martell (of Stinking Bishop cheese and Gloucester Old Spot pigs fame) happened to spot six trees on the slope of May Hill as he passed by on a horse and cart. These were the only Flakey Barks in existence, over a century old. The revival began. Adam Wells describes the taste of the perry they make as “an earthy, big-boned, hugely tannic bruiser whose flavours and aromas bellow of the land; a textural, visceral medley of petrichor, warm earth, pear skin, dried leaves, lanolin and smokiness, richened by dried pear fruit and peach pits. Try the Flakey Bark single varietal from Ross on Wye Cider & Perry Company.

Gregg’s Pit

That’s the name of one of the stalwart cider and perry makers of Herefordshire, 30 years and counting, with 14 champion Perrymaker trophies under their belt. It’s also the name of the 250 year old ‘mother tree’ of the pear variety of that name. Perry calls their bottled and draught perries “amongst the most pristine, elegant and pure of fruit in the world.”

Coppy

Now here hangs a tale. I first encountered it as a chapter in Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction (Jonathan Cape, £25), his exploration of the world’s rarest foods and their importance. I was lucky enough to taste a work in progress sample in the barrel store of Tom Oliver, arguably the most famous cider and perry maker on the planet (and veteran road manager of The Proclaimers). 20 years ago he tracked down the last remaining tree in a remote spot. DNA testing took years but eventually it was conformed as the real deal. The core range at Oliver’s Cider and Perry, near the delightfully bucolic sounding hamlet of Ocle Pychard, is blends, but he makes an exception for the scant amount of Coppy available. It was sharp and sherbety with the promise of great thongs to come. Another of those magical perry moments Wells celebrates.

Tom Oliver
James and Susanna Forbes

Alongside Tom Oliver, I was also lucky enough to meet James and Susanna Forbes from Cutting edge Little Pomona and Paul Stephens from Newton Court on a recent visit to Herefordshire. All were amazing folk, passionate about their perry mission. Here’s the Herefordshire travel article I wrote for the Confidentials.

Perry – I put the the big questions to Adam Wells

Adam is a very busy man at the moment. It’s not just the launch of his book, the first definitive guide devoted solely to perry; he has also been shortlisted in the Drink Writer category of the Fortnum and Mason Awards for his work editing Cider Review. Somehow he found time to answer the questions of a serious perry convert.

Why is it important to produce such a comprehensive book on perry at this time?

I think perry has deserved its own dedicated resource for centuries really. It’s an ancient, fascinating, idiosyncratic, unique product and its best examples are the equal of any drink ever fermented. But in the last six years, whilst macro perry and pear cider have nosedived there has been a resurgence of interest in what I call ‘aspirational perry’ – perries of craft and care made with high juice content, with reverence towards orchards and varieties, in a range of exciting styles and in countries and regions all around the world. It’s these perries that the book exists to unpack and champion – and it’s a world that’s difficult to fully explore without insider knowledge. I hope that Perry: A Drinker’s Guide helps make that exploration easier.

After centuries of decline is today a golden age for perry? Or a final flowering of a niche drink?

I think it’s a really special time for perry. Not only in the UK, but all over the world – indeed the UK is arguably just catching up with the international renaissance that perry has seen for a couple of decades now in France, Austria and increasingly the USA. So I’d certainly hope it isn’t a final flowering. There are challenges, sure – they’re outlined in the book and there’s certainly no room for complacency – but almost certainly the best perries that have ever been bottled are sitting on shelves around the world right now. And in my optimistic opinion they’re only going to keep getting better.

Tasting Coppy with Tom
Barrel tapping at Little Pomona

From your evocative prose you are deeply in love with everything around pears and perry. As are so many determined small producers. What makes it so special? Compared, say, with higher profile cider. Does it really offer such a breadth of individual styles and why? What should we look out for? 

I’m a big subscriber to what Rachel Hendry has brilliantly described as ‘compound drinking’. I worked in the wine industry for eight years, and am now in the spirits industry. Before I wrote a word on cider and perry I’d written about whisky for six years. And my love and understanding of all of those drinks directly feeds into and informs my love of perry – and indeed gives me context for how special and distinct perry is in its own right. 

So I don’t know that I’d say that perry is more or less special than any of the other drinks that I love. What I would say is that it is comfortably the most undersung and overlooked of all those drinks. Arguably aspirational cider is itself a niche – and perry has only ever really been written about as almost a subcategory of that niche rather than a beautiful, dazzling thing in its own right, with its own flavours, textures, history, stories, characters, trees, messiness and excitement. 

There’s so much that makes it special and unique – my book is hopefully a starting point for a broad and comprehensive celebration of all that. And of course my book merely builds on the work done by makers, campaigners and advocates worldwide for decades before I even knew what perry was.

A breadth of styles and varieties? Well there are over 100 distinct varieties of perry pear in the UK alone, probably even more in France and maybe more again in Central Europe alone, each with their own flavours and characteristics. There are perries at every stop along the sweetness spectrum, sparkling perries made through the pét nat method, the traditional (champagne) method, the charmat (prosecco method). There are fortified perries, there are mistelles – blends of unfermented juice with pear spirit. And, of course, there are simply beautiful still, dry perries. And these are being made by hundreds of producers in dozens of countries globally. So yes, there’s quite a breadth!

Are terroir and vintages important? Can perry improve with age or is it better fresh?

Lots of good questions there! I’d say that the answers to all of them are just the same as in wine. Terroir and vintage are absolutely critical, though producers will look to emphasise them to a greater or lesser extent depending on what they’re looking to achieve – just as in wine. There are blazing hot, super-ripe years like 2018 and 2023 which massively impact flavours, and vintages like 2020 (a personal favourite vintage, if a rather grim year) where phenolic and sugar ripenesses have achieved a beautiful balance. 

Terroir has been written about in perry since at least the 5th century AD, and can be as ultra-granular as a single tree. Since perry comes from a plant – the pear tree – it can of course be impacted by terroir, just as literally every plant, be it barley or grapes or apples or hops is. How much any given producer wants to showcase, that is another matter.

Ageing? It’s like wine again. Some – probably most – perry is best drunk young and fresh, when it’s all about those lovely juicy or zingy primary fruit characteristics, just as most wine is drunk in its youth for the same reason. But pears which have the structural properties to maintain freshness through long ageing – acidity, tannins, complex flavour compounds – can mature beautifully. I recently drank a Ross-on-Wye Flakey Bark 2017 which was as vivid as the day it was bottled. I was lucky enough to try a 2001 Moorcroft from Kevin Minchew in 2022 which was absolutely firing with flavour and far from at the end of its life. And I’ve even had a 1991 Schweizer Wasserbirne – a variety which I absolutely wouldn’t have thought of as a long-ageing candidate – which still had plenty left to give. So very little is known about the potential for maturing perry. But can certain perries age? Absolutely.

Perry’s is obviously a romantic story – from the precarious survival of ancient trees to the personal characteristics of individual pears. But producing it looks fraught with peril from harvesting to pressing. Why is this?

‘Peril’ might be overselling it, but certainly perry is almost uniquely challenging to make. Most of that comes down to the pears themselves. The challenges of harvesting from a 60-foot tall tree are pretty obvious – if the fruit doesn’t splat when it hits the ground you’ve about a tonne’s worth to pick up from the biggest examples, which doesn’t always ripen evenly. There are pears like Yellow Huffcap that refuse to drop their full fruit load and start rotting from the inside out whilst still on the branch. There are varieties like Thorn or Moorcroft which have painfully short ripeness windows – sometimes just 24 hours. 

The physical make-up of pears mean they clog presses far more than apples do. Most of them are higher-ph than apples, so they’re more susceptible to bacterial infection. Their tannic structure means you can put them through a filter and they’ll still throw sediment on the other side and you can blend two perfectly clear perries together and end up with milk. 

And that probably isn’t the half of it. So absolutely – great perry takes consummate care and attention. Which is all the more reason to celebrate the remarkable fact that it even exists.

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Yakima Valley dreaming! C’mon smell the hops – and the cilantro

Hoppiest days of the year? Definitely harvest time in Yakima, USA. Confession: I’d been pronouncing it ‘Yah-KEE-mah’ all this time, when it should be ‘YACK-i-maw’. Unfamiliar with Yakima? The name does crop up on craft beer cans, the contents of which increasingly rely on its prime product, hops. Oh, and it’s a lovely laid-back place to hang out in – preferably with a beer or two.

Yet it’s not a monoculture this super fertile agricultural valley in Washington State, irrigated by the Yakima River. It abounds in fruit, in particular apples, and its grapes produce some of America’s most thrilling wines, but there’s no escaping the hop in all its varieties – Cascade, Chinook, Centennial and the rest, now globally familiar. Some 75 per cent of US hops are grown hereabouts in ideally suited volcanic soil.

American Hop Museum
Key beer ingredient pinned down

So it seemed a good idea while passing through the region to drop in on the American Hop Museum in the township of Toppenish, whose major claim to fame is the 70 hand-painted murals, of recent origin, evoking its Wild West past. They are more vivid than the museum, which is as dry as last year’s hop pellets. Still this project of local pride, assembling the rusty machinery and fading pictures of yore, sets the scene for the hopfest to come.

Of all the stop-offs on our San Francisco to Seattle road trip this wasn’t the most obviously touristic and yet we found it fascinating from the moment post-museum when we lunched in a pizza place where a dab of Cascade hoppiness joins tomato and mozzarella as the prime toppings, nibbles are called hoppetisers and the merchandise includes hop-branded babygros. 

Hey! Elote! adds spice
Hops on your pizza, guys?

Hop Town Wood Fired Pizza, was our recommended lunch stop. It used to be a street food operation before taking over the folksy tasting room of the former Piety Winery, Donald Wapato Road (there’s now a second branch down the road in Sunnyside). 

A house IPA, naturally, accompanied our $12 Porky Pine Prosciutto nine-incher, where pesto, parmesan, pecorino, prosciutto, pine nuts (all the Ps), tomato, hops and a balsamic reduction smothered the charred, springy crust.  

We also shared a Hey! Elote!, a spicy corn dip  with chicken broth, lime, cholula hot sauce, salty cotija cheese and cilantro (coriander). Testimony to the Hispanic presence in hop country. A third of the population in Yakima, at home in its sunny desert climate, is Hispanic. It’s an area full of tacos trucks and shacks. Locals’ pick? Tacos Los Primos 2 at 404 N 4th St in the city proper. If you’re adventurous go for the tripe filling.

Generations of Mexican hop harvest pickers are celebrated in liquid form by Yakima’s brewing trailblazers Bale Breaker. Each year, cocking a snook at Trump and his Border Wall bigotry, they are a major player in Sesiones del Migrante, a series of beers brewed in collaboration with Mexican and American breweries. Co-founder Meggan Quinn poured us the latest, a Mango IPA that defines ‘tropical’, in the brewery’s garden, sheltered by tall bines, for this is a working hop farm (its 1,000 acres have even even suppled the likes of BrewDog in the UK). 

The operation’s roots run deep. Megann’s great-grandparents planted the first nine rows of hops on the family farm back in 1932, a year before the end of Prohibition. Just a decade ago she, her husband and siblings persuaded initially sceptical parents a custom-built brewery on site might just work and it has. The beer are so popular across the Pacific North-West they don’t need to export. Topcutter IPA and Field 41 pale ale are their flagship beers.

Bale Breaker’s Meggan Quinn
Chris Baum, Varietal co-founder

What astonished us about one of the world’s premier hop-growing regions was the lack until recently of local breweries tapping into the resource… or speciality beer bars. That’s all changing fast on the back of Bale Breaker’s impetus. One of their brewers, former wildlife biologist Chris Baum, and four buddies set up their own brewing operation, Varietal with the premise of wild yeasts, sours, fruit beers and barrel-ageing – the fun, cutting edge stuff.

Check out the Hop Country Beer Trail or sniff around the taprooms of the Old North Yakima Historic District, where the closure of the Northern Pacific Railroad once hit the town hard. Now, as in so many other similar places, this is where the cool fight back begins. Highly recommended is Single Hill with its attractive taproom and terrace, serving the like of Cerveza blonde ale or or Island Reverie, a benchmark guava and passionfruit sour.    

Landmark Capitol Theatre
Top chef Dan Koomoo

Cider, or what they call hard cider, is a refreshing alternative to beer. The custom-built Tieton Cider Works on the edge of town offers sampling tours. With apples and other fruit sourced from the family’s own organic orchards it’s a clean tasting product, a world away from our own trad scrumpy; we loved the smoked pumpkin cider.

The best restaurant in town is Crafted on North 1st Street. Dan Koommoo is in the kitchen and his wife Mollie front of house. The couple chose Yakima because Mollie’s family is from these parts; Thai-born Dan is a James Beard-nominated Cordon Bleu chef with a glittering cv. Together they have created a casual contemporary dining space, from oysters to cocktails a total delight.

Essencia Bakery…
…serves beer with its bagels

Sunday mornings are for mooching around town. We kicked off with excellent coffee and double fudge brownies at the Essencia Artisan Bakery, a short walk from the historic Capitol Theater. Rebuilt after a fire in 1975, it allegedly hosts the ghost of Shorty McCall, a technician during the 1930s, who hanged himself there after an ill-fated love affair. 

Dating back to 1912, the Sports Center – so-called because of a hunting theme not because it’s a place to play basketball – is equally haunted with staff reporting eerie chills and the sound of clinking glassware. All this dates back to the days when it was a brothel with Mafia connections.

Our Yakima base, the Hotel Maison
Green flash burns up Downtown

Our Downtown Yakima lodging, the Hotel Maison has a more benign but equally striking history. Six storeys high, it was built in 1911 during the boom times by prosperous Freemasons as their club. Crowning glory was the hugely ornate Masonic ceremonial temple on the top floor, designed to replicate the throne room of King Solomon’s Temple. Long mothballed, it has survived the building’s conversion to a hotel, 

Elsewhere the comfortable hotel’s decor playfully celebrates its Masonic past and, of course, the pre-eminence of the hop. On our Saturday night there we sipped complimentary Tieton cider and watched the weekly ‘paseo’ of vintage automobiles, all adding to the period charm of the place.

The best place to sample Washington wine Downtown is the Gilbert Cellars, showcasing the family’s wines such as Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon. It saves having to trek out to their vineyard tasting room, but when in wine country it would be wrong not to sample in the wineries, all within easy reach of Yakima town.

I’d recommend the folksy Owen Roe Winery, an organically farmed estate whose reds are particularly impressive, the nearby Treveri Cellars, (tours for $50) sparkling wine specialists run by a German winemaker, whose top bottles have been served at White House receptions. 

Green hops at Bale Breaker
The freshest of end products

Still the hop remains king hereabouts. A quintessential time to visit Yakima (fly into Seattle two and a half hours’ drive away) is autumn when the valley hosts its annual Fresh Hop Festival. This year’s date is October 5. A unique array of beers made with newly harvested ‘green’ hops showcases the individual character of each variety. Now that’s not to be sniffed at!

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Butter chicken and mutton keema conjure up memories of the Old Delhi maze

Monsoon season in Old Delhi. The day before we arrived the city had come to a standstill as storms vented their fury. And you think the UK is cursed with potholes. Our taxi, destination the spectacular Jama Masjid Mosque, had clattered and bounced. After which, we splashed our way on foot to the equally iconic Karim’s restaurant in the labyrinth of Chandni Chowk. The original North Indian food benchmark.

Delhi’s Jama Masjid
Original Karim’s

Monsoon season in Manchester’s ‘Medieval Quarter’. Well, almost. Haven’t the last 18 months been the wettest period in the UK since records began? Rain abated as we crossed the threshold of the decidedly dry and welcoming Corn Exchange atrium. I can’t remember the last time I visited; there are so few places in there whose food attracts me. Mostly bland brands. With the exception of local Italian standard bearers Salvi’s and Mowgli which, though now part of a 20-strong chain, still reflects the ‘Indian home cooking’ ethos of founder/driving force Nisha Katona. Now an addition to that short list as I belatedly discover a family-run outpost of Delhi cuisine (with concessions to our own casual dining culture). 

The Delhi House Cafe is quite a different beast to the aforementioned Karim’s. Can it  match it in ‘authenticity’, whatever that means? After all, that mecca for Mughal-centred foodies has been in existence for a century, the formica tables only slightly less. And guess what, it has spawned 15 further Karims around Delhi.

The DHC project is much more modest, open just a couple of years. Its founders, the Lamba family, hail from a Delhi textile dynasty and their venue reflects their swish style sense. It’s the kind of restaurant/bar you might find in New Delhi’s ultra modern, hi-tech satellite city Gurgaon, which I have also visited, cannabis plants growing wild on the roadside in the shadow of start-up company high rises.  A far cry from the view across Cathedral Gardens to venerable Chethams.

I was there to sample chef/patron Sherry Lamba’s new menu. It ticks boxes I have been exploring on how UK Asian cuisine, notably second generation, evolves. Check out this link. In truth, here it is just tweaks on an established formula, but tasty ones. The receptacle for a spicy mutton keema taco is a paratha, while brioche buns host ghee roasted chicken sliders with mint chutney. More leftfield/fusion is their Monster Chicken Lollipop, a fried chicken leg with Indo-Chinese flavoured sweet and sour sauce and house salad, their take on a sub-continent street favourite. The Delhi imprimatur is not unbending. Witness the menu presence of Alleppey fish curry and Goan prawn curry from the South.

And while Mom’s Buttered Chicken, Tikka Masala style, deservedly remains their most popular dish it also reappears as a topping on a cheese naan base with pizza toppings for the same price, £13.95.

I’d already veered from the Indian restaurant taste template by not ordering a pint of Cobra, opting instead for a bottle of IPA from White Rhino, the country’s first craft brewers, based in the Chambal region, once known as bandit country. It’s surprisingly impressive.

As I ordered a second I discussed my penchant for pooris with Varendra, Sherry’s dad, who works front of house in this close-knit family enterprise. Were their dahi pooris better than Mowgli’s across the court? You know the style – whole wheat puffs with a potato and chickpea/tamarind and mint chutney filling. Let them pop whole in your mouth or risk dousing your chin. I passed the test after Varendra supplied. His further extra was simply sublime. Palak patta chaat consists of battered spinach leaves with mint, tamarind & yoghurt. It called for a third rush of Rhino. A series of dishes like this is my favourite way to eat Indian. OK, I wouldn’t a helping of butter chicken with a basket of breads. Delhi House’s naans are exemplary. Better than Karim’s? The jury’s out.

Delhi House Cafe, Unit 10, Corn Exchange, Manchester, M4 3TR. 0161 834 3333

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Hokkaidō comes to Didsbury – meeting the creative couple behind Midori at Wine and Wallop

This Easter Weekend an extraordinary Japanese home cooking project found a permanent base. Its tangled global roots encompass the northern island of Hokkaidō, Hong Kong, Australia and Scotland. Affluent Manchester suburb Didsbury took Midori to its heart and arguably its finest bar, Wine and Wallop, is now the prime outlet for gyoza, glass noodles, daikon pickles and other quietly challenging dishes that subvert that tired culinary template of sushi rolls, commercial ramen and crude katsu curry.

A long lunchtime pre-launch road-testing convinced me that the food put out by Claire ‘Midori’ Cassidy and her partner Ruari Anderson lives up to the almost Studio Ghibli back story evoked on their website.

Claire trained as a journalist and it shows. Let me quote: “Unbeknownst at the time to founder and creator Midori (the name means green), her appreciation for soulful Japanese home cooking was born one autumn afternoon in the early ’90s, as she watched her late grandmother Reiko chop fresh vegetables picked that very morning from the ‘hatake’ (communal allotment) down the road. There, in Reiko’s humble kitchen, Midori’s mother, aunt and grandmother sat cross-legged on cushioned mats, skilfully wrapping gyozas whilst chatting, laughing and bickering…

Otaru in winter
Northernmost Japanese region

“During the long and harsh Hokkaidō winters, temperatures would typically plummet to -10°C, house-bounding the citizens of Otaru, a rural fishing village situated on the west coast of Japan’s northernmost island. In anticipation of these looming conditions, the ritual of preparing food in bulk – from pickling and fermenting vegetables to wrapping gyoza – would take place annually with the combined efforts of family members and neighbours.”  

Flash forward to Lapwing Lane on a decidedly unsettled Bank Holiday Weekend in 2024 Britain. The Midori menu at Wine and Wallop will be available here (not at W&W Prestwich or Knutsford) 12pm-9pm daily. Claire won’t obviously be at the stove all the time. She and Ruari have to supply their amazing gyozas to cherished local stockists and promote the brand online, too. With all the pressure I was pleased she found time to answer a questionnaire I put to them…

Tell me about yourselves. Your Japanese background, Claire? Your grandmother in Hokkaidō was a major influence, I believe? The Hong Kong connection? The Scottish connection? Where did you both first meet?

“I am Hong Kong born and (for the most part) bred Japanese/Scottish “halfie”, though I’ve attended schooling in various other cities like Vancouver, Edinburgh and Melbourne due to my Dad’s basings as a commercial pilot. Ruari and I met in Hong Kong in 2013 when I’d returned home from Oz (uni), and discovered we had lived mirrored lives – he too had attended the same secondary school in HK and had completed his sixth form at a boarding school in Scotland and university in Australia – all eight years apart (Claire is 34, Ruari 42). 

“My summer holidays were typically spent at my grandparents’ in Otaru (a port city not far from Sapporo) where the women in the family were big foodies – as you may know, Hokkaido is a hot spot for tourists from other prefectures and SE/East Asian countries for its fruit, seafood and artisan offerings. 

“Ruari was born in Stirling to Scottish parents and subsequently spent his childhood in Dubai and Bahrain until the Gulf War, then 25 years in HK. We believe our international upbringing and being ’third culture kids’ has been the reason behind our strong foundation and adventurous appetites. Also, my first job as a flight attendant opened my tastebuds to new flavours and intensified my obsession with food.”

Glorious platter of gyozas
Tangy glass noodles

How was the Midori brand born? How does it differ from the sushi/ramen offering that is everywhere in the city now? Explain the secrets of gyozo making. Why are yours so much better than the commercial frozen variety?

“The brand was born out of a lack of options in Manchester for home-style Japanese cooking; dishes I’d consider to be ‘comfort food’ and off the beaten track of westernised sushi rolls, ramen and katsu curry. We moved to the UK in 2016 and being homesick for quite some time, I really craved these familiar flavours. During lockdown, Ruari (day job care sector worker) and I ordered dumplings from a dim sum house in the city centre and with delivery fees, it was extortionate – and not very tasty! 

“Becoming disillusioned with the rat race and the absence of nearby East Asian grocers (other than in town) were the main triggers behind the decision to make my own and launch our product, using my grandmother’s recipes and wrapping techniques. Thankfully, this was well received in Didsbury and from there, we grew into serving at local festivals in the summer and pop-ups.

“There are obviously other frozen gyoza brands that are much cheaper and contain more per pack, and we have tried and tested them all, but they lack flavour and contain many preservatives. Aside from that, they have a 30:70 filling to wrapper ratio – mine are packed to the brim with only high quality, locally-sourced meat and allotment-grown veg where possible with strictly NO dodgy additives. 

“As I’ve learned through this journey, there are many tips to creating the perfect gyoza, from removing moisture from veg (like cabbage and mushroom) with high water content to intensify the flavour, using meat with a 15-20 per cent fat content to ensure maximum juiciness and keeping the filling and dough below room temperature. In regards to wrapping, each gyoza must be fully sealed with no air pockets to retain meat juices and uniform in weight to ensure even cooking. As it turns out, this skill has proven difficult to teach part-time in an economically efficient manner as it’s all down to speed and muscle memory!” 

Check out Midori’s gyoza cooking tips here.

Natto gohan
Pickled daikon

Is what you do essentially Japanese home cooking? Are authentic ingredients the key? How important are local suppliers such as your Didsbury butchers?

“It is paramount that we use authentic ingredients to capture that true, recognisable flavour of Japanese cooking and we have a great relationship with Axons (who as you know, supply our meat and stock our products). Since starting this venture in July 2022, we’ve been so impressed with the support we received from Didsbury’s ever-growing community of grassroots businesses – something that simply doesn’t exist in Hong Kong’s ‘dog eat dog’  corporate mentality. Up until fairly recently, it’s been a struggle to source certain ingredients like daikon radish and sashimi-grade fish locally – lucky for us, neighbourhood greengrocers like Fresh Save and Family Mart have started stocking Asian veg and fishmongers like Evans and Out of the Blue offer sushi ingredients.”

Explain the Wine and Wallop/Didsbury connection?

“We kind of found Didsbury by accident. We first moved from HK to Cuddington in deepest Cheshire and it was simply too rural for us there. Being five minutes down the road from ours, W&W was my go-to whenever I got cabin fever while WFH. How we came to collaborate with them was down to pure luck; I walked in one day for a coffee and Rachael (the previous manager) offered me a one-off pop up. It was a success so that led to monthly events, supper clubs and private sushi and gyoza making workshops. We’d even go as far to say it has become our second home.”

Adding to the W&W buzz
Kaiki Gesshoku and meatballs

My favourite Midori dishes (and matching cocktails)?

The gyoza are the stand-out. Pork, lamb, miso mushroom, fanned out on a sharing platter (£28 for 15 pieces), a wonderfully soft, creamy offering. That’s not to diss the tsukune, teriyaki-glazed chicken meatballs (four pieces for £7.50). Changing tack, more challenging were sunomono (£5), slithery, sharp cucumber and glass noodles in tangy umezushi plum vinaigrette and natto gohan (£6), which tops rice with whipped fermented soy and cured egg yolk shavings. I liked both dishes but maybe marmite for bar punters?

I relish a Japanese pickle and the tsukemono take on daikon radish (£7.50) is glorious, while similar perfect bar food is the renkon (£4) lotus root crisps and the absurdly moreish wafu fries (£5.50), which are topped with Worcester-like okonomi sauce, kewpie mayo and roasted seaweed and bonito flakes. Beer fodder for me, but don’t neglect barman Jack’s appropriate cocktails – the Bloody Mary equivalent, Blood Moon/Kaiki Gesshoku featuring gochujang, and the Martini based on bisongrass vodka and yuzu and topped with a shisho leaf, called River Tiger/Kawatora.

Wine and Wallop, 97 Lapwing Lane, West Didsbury, Manchester M60 6UR.

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Feed the kids’ bodies and minds – Dishoom hits 20m charity meal milestone

A boon in life to have always been well fed. The same goes for my extended family. Far too many are not so lucky. It has been on my mind a lot of late as, at my stove, I enjoy the privilege of cooking for pleasure, not for hard-pressed subsistence. I’ve just prepared a herb-fragrant keema pau of minced mutton with a kachumber salad. It’s a favourite recipe from the ravishing Dishoom: From Bombay With Love cookbook, celebrating the Irani cafes of Old Mumbai and promoting the nine-strong Dishoom UK restaurant brand.

Dishoom recreates the feel of old Bombay…
…with dishes such as this rich dal

This huge success story is the creation of cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar, whom I first met on a press trip to their London bases in advance of their branching out to Manchester in late 2018. It proved to be more than just the usual junket.

What struck me in their establishments was their mastery of authentic style alongside an accessible menu that still felt a refreshing antidote to curry house cliché. Also, thanks to a kind invitation to a family gathering in the presence of Shamil’s mother Rekha, I began to understand the ethical undertow to all they do. It was most evident in their determination to run their restaurants without barriers of prejudice. 

Their website offers a mission statement: ”We get Muslims and non-Muslims to celebrate Eid, and Hindus and non-Hindus to celebrate Diwali. We tie Knots of Protection on each other. We bring people from all cultures and all walks of life together in our restaurants, and we feed millions of children.”

Feeding the girls
Feeding the boys

That last commitment sounds staggering, but it is true. So far, they have donated the cost of 20 MILLION meals for charities – supporting in the UK Magic Breakfast, dedicated to providing meals so children don’t go hungry before school starts, and in their Indian homeland the The Akshaya Patra Foundation. This is a behemoth of an operation that has so far served up a staggering 3.5 BILLION free school meals. That’s healthy hot nourishment to 2.2 million children in 20,000 schools daily, dished in tiffin boxes out from 68 mega kitchens across the sub-continent. This remarkable video shows how they do it, mass producing sambar and rice for southern states, dal and roti for northern. 

Since 2020, separate from the Dishoom tie-in, Akshaya’s remit has also covered meals to children and vulnerable groups in North London The reason? 800,000 children in the capital alone are at risk from food poverty, while across the UK 1.7 million children of low income families are not eligible for free school meals. The figures I’m quoting are from Akshaya Patra’s own annual report, but I have no reason to doubt they are true. This is Marcus Rashford territory.

Their London hub is based, with unconscious irony, on Imperial Way, Watford, but a new pilot venture also takes in Nottingham, providing a hot meal for after school clubs. These are aimed at youngsters who have no surface at home where they can do homework and, possibly, parents with no educational confidence.

The importance of food charities for education

‘Akshaya’ means limitless and ‘Patra’ means a bowl of food. The guiding principle in India is to encourage kids to continue in education rather than forced to go to work too young or even beg. Across the sub-continent at least 35 million children aged 6-14 years do not attend school. And for those who do lack of nutrition seriously hinders their attention in class.

Let Ashkata UK Ceo Daniel Adams explain: “When hunger is a barrier to education it also becomes a barrier to social mobility. A child that is not fed can become a teenager that did not learn and an adult that stays in poverty. We care deeply about breaking down these barriers. It’s a social justice issue with long term benefits. To quote Nelson Mandela: ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’.

“Dishoom are an extremely generous corporate patron who help power our programme. We make natural bedfellows through a love of for and nutrition with shared Indian roots. We are so grateful to them.”

Stalwart campaigner Jamie Oliver is on the case, too: “I truly believe that if every child had access to good, nutritious food, they would concentrate better in school, giving them a far greater chance at a better education, which in turn helps create a much stronger future generation. Akshaya Patra  is an incredible organisation, and their dedication, passion to make this happen is inspiring.” 

Dishoom’s pact with them came into being at Ramadan 2015. The Muslims have a name for it: Zakat. It’s a form of obligatory charity that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions. The literal meaning of the word is ‘to cleanse’; the belief is that paying Zakat purifies, increases and blesses the remainder of their wealth. The Thakrar family fortune originally sprung from their Tilda rice empire. For their Zakat Dishoom chose Akshaya and Magic Breakfast. At the Hindu Diwali the same year they made this joint partnership permanent.

For every meal (or home meal kit) Dishoom serves, they donate a meal to a child who would otherwise go hungry. More recently in Manchester they have also contributed handsomely to Eat Well, the restaurant and chef collective that delivers up to 1,000 meals a week to support people sidelined by poverty. 

Dishoom, Manchester Hall, 32 Bridge St, Manchester M3 3BT. 0161 537 3737. To donate to Akshaya Patra visit this link.

All the images are courtesy of Akshaya Patra, except for the two for Dishoom.

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Tarte Tatin – quest for the golden apples in the Galeries Lafayette

There is a thesis to be written on the key role railway hotels have played in the development of French cuisine. Sometimes at the exalted level of the 3-star La Maison Troisgros in Roanne. Legendary ‘nouvelle cuisine’ dishes such as ‘salmon in sorrel sauce’ were created by the brothers Jean and Pierre Troigros in the family hotel opposite the sleepy town station.
In 2017, under Pierre’s son Michel, it moved to a more luxurious site. Another culinary birthplace, though, will still be in situ to greet you three hours to the north in the Sologne. Get off the SNCF at even sleepier Lamotte-Beuvron and cross to the Hotel Tatin, home of the caramelised apple pastry that turned the dessert world upside down. You can also file the now ubiquitous Tarte Tatin under ‘dishes created by happy accident’.

The legend goes that the tart was fortuitously invented at the turn of the 20th century by chef Stéphanie Tatin (b 1838), who ran the hotel with her sister Caroline (b 1847). It was the opening Sunday of the hunting season and a traditional apple pie was expected by the hungry chasseurs. In the kitchen a flustered Stéphanie left the apples cooking in butter and sugar for too long. In a bid to rescue the scrape (sic) she was in she opted to simply chuck the pastry base on top and stick it in the oven. 

Voilà, the succulent, caramelised apples soaked into the pastry, the lunch party loved it and it has never been off the menu since… here and in countless places around the world.

A major boost for it originally was its adoption by Maxim’s on the Rue Royale – one of the great Parisian celeb restaurants of the Belle Époque and beyond. Recently restored to its previous glory, it charges 18 euros for its tarte tatin (compared with 10 at the humbler Hotel Tatin). On a frugal pre-Christmas visit to the French capital I never got to eat it there, but I did BAKE MY OWN at another Parisian institution, the Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, a 15 minute walk away.

The Galeries were in full Dream Before Christmas mode, from an awesome twinkling tree soaring into the department store’s dome and animated window displays from fashion designer Charles de Vilmorin showcasing his “epic story of the little girl and the magic paintbrush who travel to an imaginary land.”

I went one step further, and checked into the Ferrandi’s Kitchen cookery school on the third floor of the Lafayette Maison and Gourmet Store. At the end of my own rainbow a pot of goldenly caramelised apples, no less. There to guide me into not burning the fruit or rolling out the wrong texture of pastry was chef/tutor Lucie Lafontaine.

We were an eight-strong group, so, if necessary I could hide among teamwork. Still, I had made tatins before at home, using apples, plums, quinces and pears, and, less successfully rhubarb and gooseberry, which turned to mush. Pineapple, though, was a success. An apple that holds its shape during caramelisation, such as a Cox, is best. Lucie introduced to us a rival French one that was equally perfect. I‘ve seen instances in restaurants of savoury tarte tatins, but that seems just wrong. As does using puff pastry. 

At the end of our two and a half hour stint all our efforts tasted like the real thing. We had well earned our signed certificate, chef’s toque and goodie bag and got to keep our posh monogrammed apron. 130 euros is the cost of such a course, where savoury dishes are also on the changing roster on offer. Book here.

So, if you can’t make it to Paris or Lamotte-Beuvron, what’s the secret to a true tarte tatin?

Best leave it to the indefatigable Felicity Cloake in her ‘How to cook perfect…” series in The Guardian. Even her researches barely scratch the upside down surface with so many chefs tweaking their own versions.

This is her distillation, which I have employed since returning from Paris and it gets it spot on: “Toffee apples for grown-ups, the tarte tatin is all about the flavour of the fruit – crisp pastry, firm, juicy apples and that sweet, buttery caramel topping, holding the whole lot together. We may have the best apples, but the French really know what to do with them.”

Ingredients

7 medium apples: 4 Cox, 3 Granny Smith
200g white sugar
50g butter
175g ready-made shortcrust pastry 

OR
225g plain flour
2 tbsp caster sugar
120g cold butter
1 medium egg, beaten

Method

Peel, halve and core the apples, then put in the fridge, uncovered, for 24 hours. Put the sugar into a 20cm heavy-based ovenproof frying pan along with 50ml water and leave to soak for a couple of minutes, then cook over a medium heat until golden and fudgy. Take off the heat and stir in the butter, and a pinch of salt, until well combined, then carefully arrange the apples in the pan, round-side down, bearing in mind the caramel will be very hot, and put back on the heat – you may need to cut some of the apples into smaller pieces to fill in the gaps. Cook for 5 minutes, then take off the heat and allow to cool completely.

If making the pastry, sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the sugar and a pinch of salt. Grate in the butter, then rub together until it is coarse crumbs. Mix the egg with 2 tsp cold water and sprinkle over the mixture. Mix together into a soft but not sticky dough, adding more water (if required) very gradually. Shape into a ball, and then cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes before rolling out.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Roll out the pastry (you’ll probably have some left over if you’ve made your own) to 5mm thick, and cut out a circle slightly larger than your pan. Put back into the fridge to rest.

Put the pastry on top of the pan and tuck in the edges around the fruit. Bake for about 30 minutes until the pastry is golden, then remove from the oven. Allow to cool for five  minutes, then place a plate, slightly larger than the pan, on top and then, very carefully, using oven gloves, invert the tart on to the plate. Best served warm, with crème fraîche. Serves 6.

• To discover what else I got up to in Paris visit this link.

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My Italian Food Trail: Lampredotto in Florence

RIP restaurateur Russell Norman, who has died at just 57. After walking away from his over-extended Polpo empire he re-emerged post-Covid with a fresh Italian venture, trading in one small plate concept (Venetian cicchetti) for another (Florentine trattoria staples) at Brutto in London’s Clerkenwell. Brutto means “ugly” as in “ugly but good”, brutto ma buono. Instagrammers, look away now.

Reviewing it for The Observer in 2021 Jay Rayner wrote: “There are drapes of linen over the lights and sweet red and white checked tablecloths. Just as he did for his cookbook about Venice, Norman spent a lot of time in Florence in preparation for this opening, alongside his head chef Oliver Diver.”

Happily Russell’s wife Julie and son Ollie will continue this solo comeback project from this genuine hospitality ground breaker (Polpo, his take on a traditional bacaró, was a laid-back revelation when it launched in 2009… two years before the San Carlo Group got in on the act with their own Cicchetti chain).

Russell Norman loved Italian produce
Brutto was a homage to tratttorie

But will 70 cover Brutto ever major in the great Florentine staple it promised to put on the  menu? Jay Rayner again: “I’ve come and gone from Florence many times over the years and I swooned when I learned the menu would include a crusty Lampredotto, or tripe roll of the sort they serve in the Central Market there. It is one of the world’s great sandwiches. They have had problems getting hold of the right tripe from the fourth stomach, but he promises it’s coming. The correct rolls have been commissioned.”

A stickler for authenticity, Russell had despaired of locating in London the exact kind of bread roll to encase the beige strewed tripe ‘elevated’ (sic) by the punch of salsa verde. Our recent visit to the cradle of the Renaissance had me swooning over this plebeian culinary work of art. The legendary lampredotto is not hard to find in a city whose markets bulge with tripe. Unlike the UK’s, where these days you’ll struggle to find even a tranche of honeycomb lurking in the chill cabinet.

Well-researched in all things edible Tuscan, Russell  has his own specific supply problems, as he revealed to one of those exhaustive Guardian long reads – a 2022 focus on the difficulties in opening a new restaurant after the Pandemic and Brexit. “The bread supplier was unable to offer a crusty white roll of the kind typically used in a sandwich stuffed with lampredotto; the lampredottoitself had to be shipped in from France. Except the French suppliers only sold it 20kg at time, so Brutto also had to buy a separate freezer, purely to store the vast slabs of offal.”

So what exactly is this difficult to recreate ‘offal holy grail’?

Russell again: “There are four stomachs to the cow, the feathery one, then the honeycomb one, then a third, bleached white tripe. The fourth and final stomach is the slightly brown lampredotto, the most tender and, it turns out, the most difficult to get hold of. Every UK butcher we’ve spoken to says our guys just throw it away.”

That’s never been the case in Florence in over 500 years of lampredotto as the ultimate ‘cibo da strada’ (street food). The name comes from lampreda, the Italian word for the eel-like ‘vampire fish’ the stomach is said to resemble in shape and colour.

The lamprey was a popular Florentine  treat in Renaissance times, up there with cibrèo, a stew of a stew of rooster testicles, crests and wattle so loved by Catherine de’ Medici she even tried, unsuccessfully, to export it to France when she became Queen. Even in the eponymous Cibrèo ristorante in the Sant’ Ambrogio neighbourhood this dish is near impossible to find these days, Not so the lampredotto. Our first encounter was close to the Sant’ Ambrogio produce market (where prices are cheaper than the Mercato Central mentioned by Rayner). 

Tripe, testicles and trotters at the Mercato Central
Abomasum is the fourth and final stomach

The slightly latrine-like smell of the stewing delicacy wafted across the cobbled square from Sergio Pollini’s traditional tripa van. Lampredotto is typically slow-cooked in a vegetable broth of tomato, onion, parsley, and celery, seasoned with herbs. When its is plucked from the cauldron for slicing it is an unappealing beige hue, but it is disguised by the spicy green salsa topping when encased in its crusty bread roll – the panino co i’ lampredotto – and I found it tender and moreish, in taste and texture not far from ox tongue..

The first chomp did take some courage, though. Superficially it resembles the street food of downtown Palermo in Sicily where, I admit, I gagged on specialities such ‘pane con la milza’ – gristly spleen in a similar bun.

Researching the fourth stomach (or to give its anatomical moniker, the abomasum) I was fascinated to discover it’s the source of rennet, the complex set of enzymes that helps separate curds and whey to create cheese, Further findings are more arcane. It is also fried and eaten with onions as part of the Korean dish Makchang Gui and features alongside chickpeas, onion, garlic and saffron in the Persian delicacy Sirabi-Shirdan (thanks, Wiki).

Alla Vecchia Bettola is hugely popular with locals
Da’ Vinattieri is my fave

A roam around the realm of lampredotto

Our first meal in Florence after a very early flight into Pisa was lunch at the legendary Alla Vecchia Bettola, one of the trattorie that inspired Russell Norman with its looks, atmosphere, food and giant Chianti fiascos. The menu offered Tuscan classics such as  ribollita, chestnut flour paat with a porcini sauce, bistecca alla fiorentina naturally, salsiccie con fagioli, stuffed rabbit, tripe, but you won’t find lampredotto. You have to seek out the stalls and sandwich shops scattered about the beautiful city. My favourite during our stay was undoubtedly Da’ Vinattieri, tucked away along the narrow Via Santa Margherita close to the Piazza Repubblica.

European food tour specialists Devour, who offer a three Sant’ Ambrogio exploration, also list on the blog the five best lampredotto outlets. Oh, and do remember Italians frown on snacking on the move. Prop up a counter with your treat; grab a tumbler of rough Sangiovese to accompany.

As Russell Norman’s Tratttoria Brutto has aspired to offer, this is democratic food. Let Saveur magazine have the last word: “That a cow’s stomach chamber can be morphed into a triumph of the culinary arts is a quintessentially Florentine phenomenon… In the same way that Dante argued for vernacular Italian to be accorded equal respect and literary legitimacy as Latin, Florence seems to have understood that expensive food isn’t necessarily better food.”

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