Restaurant Reviewing when Mature

I'm old-ish, I 'm European, I 'm gobby and I ruffle up the wrong way very easily. Would anything I say influence a) the restaurant or b) a diner's choice and experience? I'm not so sure. So I couldn't help but wonder, is restaurant reviewing in a small city like Perth something I should touch?

Cantina 663, Mount Lawley, Last night.



Tappas bars in Spain have the dishes on the counter near where the money changes hands ergo, well-lit and simply easy to see. That's why they work. Take a pawful and your glass of vino tinto to the corner of the bar and stand with your friends in the dark because you got to see the goods at point of sale. That's why they work.

I don't like waiters to hang their buttocks over my food when serving the adjacent table because the dining room designer has left such a narrow gulley between tables that the waiters are forced to stand sideways. - what can you do?#

I don't like it when the waiter drags his knuckles over my cutlery on my plate when he puts down new dishes - what can you do?#

I don't like it that the lovingly executed presentation of the poletna-crusted sweetbreads, the jamon croquettes ( not a good idea to serve them on oily pimento alioli, there is enough oily sweetness in side the well-flavoured croquettes which I am over-joyed to notice are just as wet and fragile as the ones I make) nor the gremolata prawns is obscured by the dreary gloom of the ill-lit dining room. - what can you do?*

I don't like it that the lighting is so dim I can't read the menu nor see the food from the feeble rays of the single tealight on the table - what can you do?*
The wait staff can't see the food either:- I am told that the mound of deliciousness accompanying the excellent duck liver parfait is quince paste when it is onion confit. Clarity in the dining room is needed, clearly

# answer - absolutley bugger-all: If you don't know you're doing this and you're still working then fergeddaboutit.

* answer - when you (well me, blogs are all me, me, me right?)bump in to the head chef on the way back from the powder room you can, because you are older and have more insurance (Thelma and Louise - do keep up) can tell him that his food is wonderful and much appreciated but he needs to tell the precious interior designer to spit out the style dummy and bite the common sense bullet and put some more light in the dining room.

Sorted.


I shall not be reviewing restaurants any more. Impossible to even put a toe in the shadow of Giles Coren and AA Gill. Plus these guys are doing a fine job here in Perth
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Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Cake

A friend of mine who lives an idyllic Famous Five meets Cranford lifestyle deep in the English countryside is taking her family on a picnic tomorrow. She will pack nice ham, cheeses, chicken, salad leaves, tomatoes and nice crisps. Clearly her children will pick at these items and indicate loudly that they wish they'd stopped at Gregg's on the way and why is that man in the bushes over there taking such a long time to do his buttons up. However, my friend is trying her best to complete the picnic idyll and she has requested the following recipe for the sweet finish:

She needs to, oh hell let's use her name: Edith....
Edith needs to set her oven to 180 degrees, oh hang on I know for a fact she's got a shonky aga, well I guess the bottom oven but to be honest I dunno. Slow oven I would imagine.

Edith needs to line a loaf tin with baking parchment.

Right, she's ready to go.

75g good plain chocolate
100g soft butter
150g caster sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract - none of your imitation nonsense
3 eggs
1 teaspoon of grated lemon zest
150g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
50mls milk

1. Melt the chocolate in a small bowl set over a pan of simmering water
2. In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add the eggs one at a time beating well inbetween eggs
4. Add the vanilla and lemon zest
5. Sieve in the flour and baking powder and fold it in well. You may need to add the milk because you, sorry how impersonal, Edith wants a good dropping consistency so quite a wet batter.
6. Get another bowl
7. Put a third of the mix in this nice new bowl and mix in the chocolate.
8. Drop large dollops of the two mixtures (I have another friend called Joanne who physically shudders when she hears that word, mixture. And another friend called Julian who exhibits the same phobias over the words "fret" and "holler")into the cake
9. Give them a little smoothing spread with a spatula to get the marbling effect. Pick up the tin and drop it on the work top to knock out any air pockets and bake in your proper 180 degree oven or, Edith, your trial and error shonky aga. About 35 minutes, but poke it with a skewer. You know the drill

Bon chance, Edith.
I hope your picnic is bucolic in the extreme and you spend the balmy summer evening galloping with stallions.

Influenced by Idris

Well, they turned out bulky. Robust, smooth with chocolate sheen and lipsmackingly delicious.


An exquisite, dainty confection they were not. Guess I 'll have play Amelie in the background if I want that kind of effect

Ann Willan's instructions were most informative: Add the flour in one hit to avoid lumps, remember drying time in the oven is just as important as baking time.
She should know what she's talking about. She ran La Varenne http://www.lavarenne.com/ for many years and is a luminary in the American Culinary Scene. I feel a piece about Ann and women like her coming on. What are they made of? Why are they Home Economists not chefs? Are they the women who would have been Cooks in large households pre-1939?

Any how.....next from the Sainsbury's Masterclass volume is Sarah Nop's Cold Lemon Souffle.

Poor neglected Creature. Or "I only call you when I want something"

Did you miss me? Did you? Huh?

No of course not.
There are legions of other food blogs out there and besides, you have Your Own Life.
I didn't miss me/it/this either to be frank. However, I was under the impression that the remaining months of my year would be taken up with a foundation science course at uni as a prerequisite to a Masters in Food Science but that is not the case: course postponed for re-grouping and starting in 2011.
So I have decided to immerse my 60s born self in the second decade of the 21st Century and blog in earnest for 6 months; to see what comes of it, to leave proof that I Was Here (the archeologists of the future will not recreate salient citizens of yore with brooche fragments or arrowheads but by numbers of comments and links to uber-bloggers.

I do not know where this blog is going, to whom it would be remotely useful or interesting. But every other fecker seems to have one and so shall I. (put that on the fly-jacket of the ensuing book version, at least it's honest)
Although I am somewhat aimless, charmingly or irritatingly, I have a morning free in front of me and in order to kick-start Crackling I shall learn to make profiteroles from The Sainsbury's Masterclass cookery book - a step-by-step to classic dishes published in Full Colour in 1988. I shall also have episode 11 season 1 of The Wire on in the background. Idris Elba. Mmmmmmmm.

Ann Willans, Home Economist, will be guiding me through profiteroles.

Home Economists - a much neglected and seemingly pedestrian breed, however I feel a renaissance coming on.:strokes beard and ponders.

Black Forest Gateau - Happy Birthday Norwegian Internet Sprite

Well the Angel Food cake was polished off and the plate licked by the ladies in the school canteen. I can take off my hair shirt now.

I know an internet sprite in Norway who may be tempted to make Black Forest Gateau for her own birthday cake:

N.B. you really need to make this a day or a morning at the very least in advance. And make sure the kids are not underfoot you will need to give it your full attention but it is so very worth it.

Cake:
175g butter or margarine
175g caster sugar
3 eggs separated
150g self raising flour
75g best quality cocoa powder
1 tsp coffee powder
a little milk to bind
Method:
preheat oven to 170 degrees
line a 7 inch cake tin with a loose bottom
beat the sugar and fat until pale and fluffy and beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Sieve dry ingredients on to baking paper and set aside.
In a large spotlessly clean bowl beat the egg whites until stiff. In a third bowl mix in alternate spoonfuls of the two (start with the sugar and butter and spoon in a big metal spoon's worth of egg white and fold gently). Use a little milk to bind until the mix is wet but not runny - what they used to call a soft dropping consistency in Home Economical Days. Turn in to the cake tin and bake for about 35 minutes or until risen and springy and just starting to come away from the edge of the tin. It is best to leave it to cool in the tin, cover with plastic and chill overnight but not a hanging offence if you don't have time.

Cherry filling:
250g fresh cherries
125ml water
100g caster sugar
dash of vanilla essence
vodka

OR a 400ml or thereabouts jar of morrello cherries.

Method:
Pit the cherries and put in a pan. Add the sugar and water and dissolve over gentle heat. Give them a poke and splash in the vanilla stew them for 10 minutes. Strain them reserving the syrup. Rinse the cherries in a sieve. Reunite with the syrup and lace liberally with vodka.

Filling and decoration:
600ml double cream
50g chopped toasted hazelnuts
150g very dark chocolate
gelatine

Assemblage:
In a small pan bring 200ml of cream to a gentle simmer. Stir in 50g chopped chocolate and chill.
Dissolve a teaspoon of gelatine powder in a little hat water and mix it in to the chocolate cream and chill again for 20 minut
Clear the decks, you will need lots of space. Slice the cold cake in to three horizontally and put on to three plates, one of which will be your serving plate because once this baby is assembled it ain't going nowhere prettily. Drain cherries dousing each cake with the syrup * if you are using bottled cherries do the same but use no more than 100ml of their juice and don't forget the vodka. *
Stack the cake layers ending with the plain cake.
Beat 400ml of the cream til stiff. Spread half of it on one cake and top with half the cherries, repeat. That gives two cakes spread with cream and cherries. Don't eat it yet. Spoon a little chocolate cream on the the top of the cake and sprinkle with nuts.
Make chocolate shards or curls - I am too cack-handed to do the curls - and stick them round the side of the cake into the cream. There Will Be Gaps.
Using a piping bag pipe rosettes of chocolate cream on to the top, I suggest 10 of them to give a cutting guide.
Put a cover on and chill for 2 hours.
Ta -Daaaaaaaaaa!

It's no Angel

I am certain Angel Food Cake served in any smart town-house on the Eastern Seaboard, no let's narrow it down to the genteel cafes of North Carolina, does NOT come out like this: Further south the ladies of Maycomb county would hide this disgrace in the cleft of an oak rather than send it round to Boo Radley.

Marshmallowy. A stench of sugar on the burn-turn and the leathery yet oozing and sticky surface of Jabba the Hutt. What went wrong? Does anyone know? There must be a perfect alchemic formula, a golden proportion of egg white, sugar and flour. And then of course there is the final piece of the perfect cake puzzle: Know Thine Oven Like The Back Of Thine Hand. I am between ovens at present, waiting for a new one to be fitted. I used my Mother-in-Law's fan-forced electric. Only I now know it to be a fan-fettered electric. My Mother-in-Law likes to cover fans with tin foil; the one in her oven, the top of the outside air-con unit. Dunno why. Maybe she got spooked by Angelheart.

However, never wishing to miss an opportunity to experiment I filled the two layers with what I fancy is a butterscotch pastry cream: Butter and raw sugar cooked together for some minutes and finished off the heat with milk and cream. Back on the heat with cornflour stirred through until it is cohesive and set.

My word, it is delicious. Not pretty or easy to serve. Delicious.

Hmm..... trial and error is the only way to learn. I shall pursue my quest for the right recipe and right method (and very likely right mood) for this American Classic. Watch this space.

Now American Chocolate Fudge Brownies, the type that Alicia Keys' PA vetoed, now those I CAN DO.

Pleasant

The Beach Boys, the two remaining members Bruce and Mike (oh yes first name terms) and their band, are extremely pleasant.
They clear their own plates, they eat white bread and candy and they laugh a lot. However, backstage at King's Park on a balmy summer afternoon it's pretty hard not to be. I'm not mentioning no names or nothing.


I have a lot of cookery books. Many of them snaffled from my bibliophile mother's formidable collection. I don't know where to start. In a fit of unoriginality I go with A to Z. So this week it's Patricia Lousada's American Sampler, A Sainsbury Cookbook from 1982. 75p.

I 'm going with the big classics for all the family: Chef's salad, New York spinach and bacon salad with hot dressing, chicken tamale pie, tuna noodle casserole, popovers, Angel food cake.

You may notice Chocolate Brownies are not on the list. You may be aware I have already mistressed those squashy brown squares of gooey goodness. But that's another story.

Now the kids are back at school I shall be able to give attention to learning how to drive this blogging contraption put in some direction and plot to it all.

What's for your dinner?