Tag Archive for: Moorcock

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Crispy Smoked Potatoes – edible legacy of the mighty Moorcock

It’s well over a year now since that ‘miracle on the moors’, The Moorcock Norland, closed its doors for good. Chef patron Al Brooke-Taylor is back in his adopted home of Australia pursuing his passion for pottery. I follow him from afar via @natural.ceramics on Instagram.   Yet, while I respect the ceramic side of his complex creativity, I do miss the food he put on the plate. Well even from the start it arrived on his own rustic bowls, crafted in part with the ashes from the wood-fired grill central to his culinary vision.

Back in April 2018 I wrote the first ever review of that groundbreaking menu, chalked up on a board alongside what remained a proper Yorkshire pub bar in the hills above Sowerby Bridge. Look beyond the hand-pulled Taylor’s Landlord to the printed drinks list and you discovered treats that set it way apart from any normal local – rare Belgian beers and cutting edge natural wines, curated by e[ic sommelier Aimee Tufford, Al’s then partner.

Aimee remains a presence in the north, still promoting the drinks she loves, sometimes in conjunction with natural wine pioneers Buon Vino, but she is also running supper clubs and tasting events with the talented Tom McManus, Al’s kitchen sidekick. For more details visit her Curve Wine website.

The Moorcock looked like any old country pub
The giant grill that fuelled the menu

Through Aimee I discovered a lifeline back to my favourite Moorcock dishes. The Brooke-Taylor Natural Ceramics blog now features a handful of his signature recipes. He started on New Year’s Eve with his general philosophy on a well-stocked pantry, since when he has posted a sequence of recipes and, fascinatingly the reasons behind them. Yeast mayo was one, but that is forever bound in my mind with its accompanying the Moorcock’s incomparable Crispy Smoked Potatoes and, yes, that recipe is its blog neighbour. Apparently this longest running dish on the menu (the deep-fried herring bone debuted and then disappeared forever) sparked poems, even an erotic short story, from fans desperate to know the recipe’s secrets.

Chef Al and that famous board
Our late great Captain Smidge was a fan

I have a print-out to go on but also a mole from the Moorcock camp. My daughter Emily was part of the kitchen brigade for a while. She was at my elbow as this week I attempted to recreate the dish. I bought the very suitable pink fir apple spuds and pre-roasted them in the Aga, but she was the one who gave each the squidgy massage to gently tear them before I smoked them with my Camerons stovetop device. A poor substitute for the Moorcock grill embers she once helped stoke, but it worked. Then a swift deep-frying and Voilà! as they say in these parts. In place of the yeast mayo or cultured butter I served them with wild garlic mayo and sprinkled with smoked sea salt. Did my spuds match up? Not quite. They lacked the deep wildness of the original. I shall pursue.

Genesis of the Crispy Smoked Potatoes

The idea was to mimic triple fried chips without all the repeated deep frying, explains the blog entry…

“In the first year I took them off the menu for 2 weeks when the variety of potatoes I liked to use went out of season, which came with a hard boycott. One of the few times my stubbornness in the kitchen was over-ruled. 

“The dish relies on the variety of the potato used, not all are created equal. We were constantly testing through out the year to find the perfect spud. Varieties we had the best success with were Mayan Gold, Pink Fir Apple, Wilja, Carolus, Maris Pipers and Russets. The key is finding a potato with earthy flavour with as little sugar and moisture as possible. Once the potatoes decide its time to get ready to sprout they convert to sugar, then they burn before they crisp and the search for the next talented variety continues. The same for a wet or waxy potato, they just stay soggy. The wild card in that list of potato varieties is the pink fir apple. They are a waxy potato, strong flavoured. Usually good for boiling and using in salads. Surprisingly they do make wonderful crispy smokes…

“So there are four stages – baking, massaging, smoking, frying. The baking stage gelatinises the starch, the massaging makes the centre of the potato fluffy and soft to mimic the over cooking second fry in triple cooked chips, the smoking dries the outside of the potato thickening the starch layer on the outside and frying crisps the potato.”

For a further deep dip into the whole process do visit the website. It’s a fascinating journey through what is now past, though young Tom ‘keeps the fires burning’ with his projects. On the shelves of the Moorcock one cookbook stood out – the mission statement of Kobe Desramualts, Al’s mentor at Michelin-starred In de Wulf in Flanders.

If the Moorcock had survived past its five year span who knows if a cookbook of its own might have sprung from such a fertile kitchen? There may yet be time.

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Toasting Aaron’s landmark gospel of natural wine with a plate of whitebait on the moors

Just a tiny shoal of fried whitebait tossed with house-grown Sichuan pepper, crisped garlic and coriander – snack prelude to another fascinating Moorcock at Norland lunch. In three months it will be no more, taking with it not only one of the UK’s great food experiences but also a rarely equalled adventurous drinks offering.

On this occasion it is the latter that has lured us to the squally hilltop above Sowerby Bridge. I’ve spent the weekend engrossed in Aaron Ayscough’s The World of Natural Wine (Artisan, £31.99), thus impressionable me can’t resist the prospect of tasting a clutch of minimal intervention reds and whites from France’s Jura and Savoie regions. They don’t disappoint.

Surprisingly Les Dolomies, profiled at length in Wink Lorch’s definitive Jura Wine (Wine Travel Media, £25pb), doesn’t get a mention in the comprehensive, France-centric new book from Not Drinking Poison blogger Ayscough. But then my beloved Jura is a maverick stronghold of natural wine and 15 pages only scratches the surface.

Savoie and neighbouring Bugey are more under the radar, but Domaine Partagé does get a glowing mention as one of five individual profiles. The author, a US expat, is based in Beaujolais, the crucible of the natural wine movement thanks to certain key figures over the past four decades. He traces that timeline in depth, exhaustively explaining what make this   alternative ethos superior to mainstream ‘manipulative’ winemaking. It certainly opened my eyes to the myriad dodgy practices employed in commercial production.

What you get is over 400 pages of (copiously illustrated) polemic. Ayscough pulls no punches in naming and shaming one-time natural crusaders, who have deviated from the true path. Sulfites anyone? The rest of Europe gets only a cursory over-view at the end, but that doesn’t detract from the most comprehensive exploration of a millennial phenomenon. Still the proof is in the pudding… or rather the glass. So back to the Moorcock, where any trepidation about haziness, excess brett and funk, vinegary volatile acidity, nail polish remover stinks or the dreaded ‘mouse breath are dispelled as quickly as the whitebait are despatched.

Jura and Savoie
Aimee Tufford

The four wines (above) we taste are exemplary. Yet each is no comfort blanket. Purity of fruit dominates with a certain attractive wildness. There’s acidity aplenty in the two whites that copes with the whitebait spice and later both the house nduja with roast Jerusalem artichokes and a smoked mackerel tartare. Both the Premice from Les Dolomies and Domaine Partagé’s Cricri were available by the glass at £8 all weekend.

The first uses the characteristic Jura grape, Savagnin, which here is hand harvested, whole bunch pressed and fermented in large tanks, taking advantage of wild yeasts. Terroir in abundance – Les Dolomies is named after the local salty, magnesium-rich limestone rock. Apricot, gooseberries and a white pepper tingle on the tongue.

The Cricri is quite a contrast, almondy, preserved lemony with a decidedly creamy aftertaste that I love. Tech stuff: direct press of whole cluster Jacquere grapes fermented and aged in fibreglass eggs. 

Mackerel
Jerusalem artichokes

Both reds, at £12.50, are equally contrasting. Le Dolomie’s Bordel C’est Bon is from the Trousseau grape and translates loosely as ‘God that’s good!’. Grapes, de-stalked by hand, are fermented in stainless steel before being given 10 months’ élevage in old Burgundy barrels. For Jura it’s quite a substantial red, definitely damson and smoke on the nose, and  a plummy roundness to the palate.

Bibi from Domaine Partagé was served chilled, appropriate for a lighter carbonic macreation blend of Gamay and Savoie speciality Mondeuse that reeks of cherries and violets. Thanks to Moorcock co-founder and sommelier Aimee Tufford for the tip-off about lingering liquorice notes.

Domaine Partagé

Partagé’s World of Natural Wine profile adds a human dimension. Vigneron Gilles Berlioz is “a fanatic for vineyard work with immense sideburns and a permanent suntan.” In 2016 he and his wife Christine (who work their land with a horse) “took the curious step of changing the name of their estate to Domaine Partagé (‘The Shared Estate’) to honour the co-operative input of all their employees and interns.”

Apologies then if I’ve given the impression of a rather earnest gospel to the converted. There are lots of diversions along the way from Ayscough. It’s wonderful to discover another Jura producer, Philippe Bornard, is “actually more famous outside the wine scene thanks to his 2012 appearance on L’Amour est dans le Pré (love is in the Field), long-running French dating show featuring farmers.” Just one of many eccentricities that go with the territory. 

Some of the author’s analogies are equally quirky. Take Loire producer Patrick Desplats, whose “output since he and Patrick Dervieux parted ways is like that of Andre 3000 since leaving Outkast; slim, indulgent and wildly inconsistent.” Elsewhere one vigneron’s early releases are compared with Cat Power’s – “shrill” – but the later output is as compelling as hers!

Imaginary Wines
Wayward Wines

Where to buy natural wine in the north…

For the Confidentials website series I have written extensively about the best places to source minimum intervention bottles in the North and explained what constitutes unregulated ‘natural wine’. Follow these links: Manchester Part 1, Manchester Part 2 and Yorkshire. The latter piece profiled the wonderful Kwas in Huddersfield. Alas, it has since folded.

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Heuvelland to Norland – imperial porter meets kabucha gnocchi at the Moorcock

It’s a 30 mile meander across the West Flanders fields from Dranouter in Heuvelland to Dottignies in French-speaking Wallonia. You’re always just in Belgium but aware that this is border country, in the hinterland of France’s fifth largest city, Lille. On a squally Saturday afternoon up on the Pennine Moors there’s a decided gustatory ley line connecting us to both these distant municipalities.

It’s all about food rooted in the Tyke terroir but with an undertow of new wave Belgian influences forging a bond with a powerful dark beer that similarly reflects the zest of a groundbreaking generation in that country.

In the bar of the Moorcock Inn at Norland there’s a well-thumbed copy of Kobe Desramaults’ eponymous cookbook. Moorcock co-owner Alisdair Brooke-Taylor was Kobe’s right hand man at his Michelin-starred In de Wulf at Dranouter, in a region poignantly dotted with Great War cemeteries.

When In de Wulf closed in 2105 Al and his sommelier partner, Aimee Tufford, brought back to the UK – among much else – an affinity with Belgian beer. That’s why if you look beyond hand pulls dispensing Yorkshire cask ales from Timothy Taylor and Vocation you’ll find a bottled beer list of dubbels and trippels, saisons, geuzes and lambics. Even different ages of Orval, if you’re lucky.

The Brouwerij De Ranke XX is on of my go-to beers in my quest for a true bitter finish. The hop freaks of contemporary Belgian brewing Nino Bacelle and Guido Devos have been brewing this 6.2 per cent pale ale since 1996. Unfiltered, unpasteurised, using only whole hops, not pellets. The only compromise is in the address. Dottignies, site of the brewery they built in 2004, is in Wallonia but the De Ranke official HQ is a mile or two away in Flemish territory.

• Listen to a Belgiansmaak podcast interview with De Ranke co-founder Nino Bacelle.

The XX is not on the Moorcock beer list but, to our surprise, there’s a limited edition 750ml sharing bottle of a De Ranke Back To Black, originally brewed for the 10th anniversary of another forward-thinking Belgian brewery, lambic specialists Moeder. Remarkable value at £16, it is billed as an imperial porter and it pours almost black. Brewed with seven different malts and aged in barrel for nine months, it is as complex as you’d expect, with a nose of oak (obviously), dark chocolate and figs/raisins, yet its smooth cherryish taste combines sourness and bitterness in perfect balance.

 Not quite what you’d expect but a Eureka moment. It is a quite perfect match for the Moorcock menu de jour (as they don’t say in the hills above Sowerby Bridge). When Kobe Desramault moved from farmhouse-based In de Wulf  to open Chambre Séparée in Ghent he took foraging and fire with him to an urban setting. The five-ton smokehouse and industrial-grade grill in the Moorcock car park seems a better fit here. So too, as the website proclaims, “250 acres of productive moorland, providing plenty of plants, berries, mushrooms and game”…. and an onsite organic kitchen garden.

Pick of the dishes off the blackboard were both fish-led. A mackerel tartare with preserved chestnuts and radish (£8), a combo I’ve never encountered before, tasted as distinctive as it looked – autumn on a plate, while the under-rated grey mullet becomes a star in treatment Al calls a ‘bouillabaisse’ that is a remove from the Provencal stereotype. Chunks of the line-caught fish are cooked en papillote with fennel and preserved lemon, both of which scent it marvellously. At £18 it is the second most expensive dish on a menu that usually contains only a couple of meat ‘mains’ these days. My companion is a vegetarian/pescatarian, so we veered in that direction.

The porter had a particular affinity with wood-roast kabucha (Japanese) pumpkin gnocchi (£13.50), strewn with a walnut pesto and curls of house ricotta. Not the prettiest dish and as substantial as it sounds, it felt a proper antidote to the inclemency of the weather.

Perhaps we were being greedy ordering the crispy smoked potatoes that are a Moorcock constant as well as a confit Jerusalem artichokes, wood-roast mushrooms in another intriguing marriage with laverbread and miso-pickled beans. I’m not quite sure this gelled, but then where else for miles around would you find any chef as consistently inventive. The drinks list put together by Aimee is equally special. 

Do make the trip up. On foot’s best for the sheer adventure. But definitely choose the right day! Captain Smidge (below) was the very definition of ‘wet dog’.

Moorcock Inn, Moor Bottom Lane, Norland, Sowerby Bridge HX6 3RP. 01422 832103.

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No end to my sizzling love affair with the Moorcock

Spring 2018 and I’m besotted. The venue a rough and ready moorland pub high above Sowerby Bridge. Not an obvious honeytrap for a tryst and there was precious little flesh on the bones of the object of my desire. A deep-fried herring skeleton on the debut menu was a mission statement for the reinvention of the Moorcock Inn at Norland.

That challenging herring bone that kickstarted the Moorcock experience

Penning the first UK review of Alisdair Brooke-Taylor’s daring fresh take on the UK gastropub I wrote: “North Sea herring season is upon us. All those Dutch and Flemish trenchermen salivating at the prospect of fatty raw fish soused in vinegar or brine. A Yorkshireman’s penchant for pickles stops at onions; herring bone to him is tweed or twill.”

Not real bones, constituting the second course in a £35 tasting menu. One that started weird and became ever more wonderful. They resembled a seahorse or a fossil shape in ammonite. Three winters (and herring seasons) have passed and this take on a Japanese omakase snack has never reappeared.

Mangalitza chop and wild greens – so very Moorcock

The rare breed Hungarian Mangalitza pork that provided the 11 week dry-aged chops that followed has remained on the radar, though. It contributes to the house-cured charcuterie sharing board that is a star attraction in the post-lockdown food offering. Some component have been two years in the making.

This outstanding home cured charcuterie plate is my favourite contemporary snack

It is made up of pork rillettes, hot smoked rare breed ham, Gloucester Old Spot coppa, chicken liver parfait, jellied pork terrine, smoked prunes and toast. All for just £18 a platter. Inevitably you add on a £4.50 portion of their own wholemeal sourdough and cultured butter – like the extensive employment of a huge wood-fired barbecue, a constant since day one (main image).

You can purchase the Moorcock sourdough and cultured butter to take home

Pandemic caution means that tasting menus are shelved for the moment; attention focuses on the daily shifting boards that constitute the bar menu.

There is a walk-in capacity, mind, as Alisdair and drinks-savvy partner Aimee Tufford continue to encourage the pubby (and dog-friendly) side of their now acclaimed foodie destination. I celebrated a recent birthday there with a pint of cask Vocation Bread and Butter Ale from fellow local heroes Vocation and then drank a series of Belgian beers, culminating in an old favourite, Westmalle Tripel (in the proper glass).

Alongside natural wines, the couple are devotees of Belgium’s astonishing beer culture after cutting their culinary teeth at the Michelin-starred In de Wulf restaurant, close to the border with Northern France.

In this unlikely spot legendary chef Kobe Desramualts, with Alisdair as his right hand man, had created a very special place. Just before it closed in 2016 influential website Opinionated About Dining named it third best restaurant in Europe after L’Arpège in Paris and the Basque Country’s Azurmendi.

The kitchen garden in its early day being hewn from the surrounding moorland

Norland may seem an equally unlikely spot but over three years it has developed a similar ‘forage and ferment, cure and preserve’ ethos, utilising their own two acre organic kitchen garden and the surrounding moorlands, which yield mushrooms and wild herbs aplenty.

Alastair’s kipper ties – coming upon a batch of herring smoking merrily away

The garden has evolved spectacularly and the other centrepiece of the Moorcock, the expansive outdoor barbecue is used to increasing effect for cooking with fire or smoking. Lots of chefs – Tomas Parry at Brat notably – have bragging rights here but few do it as well as Alistair and his small team.

The chef’s talents don’t stop here. The various lockdowns gave Alistair the opportunity to hone his talent for ceramics, making glazes with the ash from the burnt charcoal. Now he’s not just providing for the restaurant. From ramen bowls to platters and jugs these have pride of place in an upstairs shop (open during pub hours) that offers gift packs of foodie goodies and, naturally, classic Belgian beers.

This ceramic plate complements this leek, potato and smoked poulet egg pie, topped with Baron Bigod and a radish salad

Lauded in the early days by national critics such as the Observer’s Jay Rayner and  Marina O’Loughlin of the Sunday Times, the Moorcock became a hot ticket. Twisting the metaphor hot tickets get cooler as as fickle critical attention shifts to newer ventures.

The extra pressure of Covid must have been immense. Potter’s kiln aside, Alasdair and Aimee tackled it with a defiant playfulness. I recall their take on a Chinese menu, featuring th likes of their in-house XO sauce and the kind of wild Yorkshire greens you don’t usually find in a black bean stir-fry.

Ever resourceful, the Moorcock turned into a community grocer during lockdown

More straightforwardly they diversified into quality foodie groceries – from Yorkshire asparagus to mixed bags of Cornish sea vegetables to over-wintered jars of their own produce. I recall with fondness Aimee’s rather lovely house Negroni made from a ‘Campari’ she crafted from rosehip, hogweed and clementine, mixed with rose petal wine and Yorkshire gin. It all helped to keep them afloat.

Crucially they kept their core staff together. Sustainable, ethical, pleasurable. What’s not to fall in love with all over again?

Moorcock Inn, Moor Bottom Lane, Norland Moor, Sowerby Bridge HX6 3RP. 01422 832103. Thanks to Joby Catto for the main barbecue picture and other image help.

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