The pink pound of sausages

Have you ever met a homosexual pig? I was introduced to one recently and, I must admit, I had my doubts. It didn’t look any different from the other pigs. It wasn’t dressed in a flamboyant fashion, didn’t seem to demonstrate a greater sensitivity to what was going on around it and I’m sure, if there had been a TV, would have shown as much interest in Sky Sports as the next pig.

But its owners, soon to be suppliers of fine rare-breed pork to our restaurant, were convinced it was gay. Why? Because this male pig wasn’t – how do I put this? – doing its job when it came to the lady pigs. He didn’t seem to show any interest in the procreation department. While they fluttered their eyelashes and pouted, the females in the field couldn’t even muster a wolf whistle from the boar.

Now, the subject of animal homosexuality has interested animal and wildlife experts for some time but it seems there are very conflicting views on it. On one side of this major, world-changing debate are those who are convinced that there’s no reason why a pig shouldn’t be attracted to members of its own sex. After all, it happens with humans. But I’m not so sure.

First of all, just because a creature of one sex doesn’t actually fancy the opposite sex, preferring to hang out with members of its own sex, without actually having sex, does that make that creature gay or simply a golfer?

But there’s a danger in treating animals like people; giving them human qualities. We’ve got a cat at home who, due to years of conditioning, knows that it’ll get fed immediately it sees someone first thing in the morning and again at approximately nine in the evening. When friends come around, that 9pm can slide to midnight and the cat plays up by meowing louder than the background music and rolling on the floor, making throat-cutting gestures. Of course our friends accuse us of being cruel to the cat and depriving it of food. “Look at its little face,” they say, “it’s starving and begging you”.

No it’s not starving. It’s been out depleting the vole population all day and, to be totally honest, doesn’t actually need an expensive sachet of kitty fodder. But it’s been conditioned by us, the superior race, to expect free food at set times. We’ve trained it. Cats are not humans. Neither are dogs and pigs certainly aren’t.

Despite what people might suggest, they don’t train you. They haven’t got the same reasoning abilities that we have. But they do have intuitive skills that have been developed in the wild that enable them to focus on the important things in life: food, warmth, sleep, procreation. Don’t confuse those with intelligence. Otherwise, why have cats not invented a vole killing machine yet so that they can sleep even more hours of the day?

I believe this is one of the reasons that some people hate the idea of naming animals when they know that they’re being reared for food. A name encourages the already susceptible human to consider the animal even more like him or her self.

So if they’re not really like humans, can they be homosexual? Maybe our boy pig just wasn’t too turned on by nooky. So, in the real world of farming, this young - possibly gay - pig ended up as sausages. Which, of course, were pink.

Pan-fried Coley, tomato and fennel salad

Coley is one of the least expensive fish in the cod family and is generally regarded as a sustainable fish, unlike everyone’s favourite cod. On the fishmonger’s slab, the flesh appears a little pinky/grey but turns white when it’s cooked. Also sometimes known as saithe and coalfish, coley can be used in any recipe calling for cod. For reasons of speed and ease of cooking, thrift and the welfare of the cod itself, it really is worth a try. And if coley’s not available, hake is a great alternative.

Serves two

Two 200gm coley fillets – skin on, scaled and pin-boned by the fishmonger

One head of fennel

Two tomatoes

Six cherry tomatoes - halved

Extra virgin rapeseed or olive oil

A few mixed salad leaves

Lemon juice

Salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Butter

Flour for dusting the fish

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C , gas mark 6

Cut the fennel in half length-ways, remove the core and cut the remainder into 5mm-thick slices. Heat an oven-proof pan, pour in two or three tablespoons of oil, add the fennel slices and allow them to brown a little over a medium heat, stirring occasionally as you add a little salt and pepper and a few drops of lemon juice. Meanwhile, remove the eye from the two large tomatoes, cut them into wedges and add them to the saucepan. Give a further stir and place the pan, uncovered, in the oven for around ten minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Heat a frying pan and add a little oil. Dust the skin of the fish fillets with flour, shaking off any excess, and place in the frying pan, skin side down, over a medium heat. Season with a little salt and pepper but don’t move the fish. After four or five minutes of frying, add a walnut-sized knob of butter to the pan and carefully lift the fish to see if the skin appears golden and crisp. When it is, carefully turn the fillets over to cook for another three minutes.

While the fish finishes cooking, drain the oil from the fennel and tomato mix but make sure you reserve it as it makes the perfect dressing for the salad. Place the salad leaves and cherry tomatoes in a bowl together, pour over the reserved oil and toss. Pile onto plates and place the fish fillets on top or alongside.

Wooly logic

The girl who cuts my hair is called Trish Brown. When I say girl, she’s more of a woman these days as I’ve known her a long time; time she’s spent gaining experience with one of the best hairdressing chains in the land before, a couple of years ago, opening her own salon in Darlington and charging realistic prices. She’s become a successful business person in her own right and that’s in part because she knows what she’s doing and, therefore, gives her customers confidence.

What she doesn’t do is cook up her own shampoos and other hair treatments. Apart from being extremely time-consuming – what with crushing the eye of newt and mixing it with Himalayan spring water – she’d be rubbish at it. I know that because we can’t all be good at everything. She’s good at styling your hair so leaves making hair products to the experts.

But it’s taken me a good few decades to discover the same thing for myself. Never mind the choice between Jack of all trades or master of none. I always thought, though maybe not admitted, that I could be the master of anything I put my hand to. For instance, I didn’t headline at Glastonbury this year but only because I didn’t get around to it.

So, sheep shearing should be a doddle then, shouldn’t it? I mean, it’s only an addendum to farming; a service that’s contracted in every now and then. A bit like the Pick Your Own malarkey, anybody must be able to do it. Yeah, right.

In my quest to be able to talk on a level with all the farmers that supply Oldfields Eating House directly, I’ve convinced myself that whatever they can do, I can do it too – albeit on a much smaller scale. The theory being that if I have a little knowledge of what they have a lot, we’ve some common ground for conversation and the prospect of a smidgen of respect from those with generations of experience to someone who’s spent the last few years learning at speed.

So, rearing my own animals for supply to our own restaurant is part of that plan. And cutting the woolly stuff off the back of some recalcitrant adolescent castrated sheep should easily be within my ability. And I’m sure I can make them look as good as if they’d been sent to Trish Brown.

Sometimes I think I must have the mind of an 18 year old because the confidence of youth seems to run through my veins while the evidence of my efforts demonstrates how useless I am. I’m now the proud possessor of a flock of punk sheep. While commensurate with my adolescence, punk is not my favourite era but the sheep don’t know that. They’ve even got the safety pins in the form of ear tags to complement the disaster of a haircut I gave them. They’ve had the tags a while; long before the makeover from the Malcolm McLaren of the smallholding world.

Ok. While this has been an interesting experience – for both me and the sheep, it demonstrates that in my ambition to understand the whole process, there’s a necessity to leave certain things to the experts. However, I’ll always argue that it helps to have some knowledge or experience of all the necessary processes in life. And the whole food chain thing is one of those.

So the theory is that by if one does things like shearing ones own sheep, rearing animals for food in general and butchering ones own meat, confidence is given to everybody that eats the result; because there’s a resultant faith in the quality of the raw materials and the ability that’s gone into the food.

That’s why we go to such lengths at the restaurant. Now, can my hairdresser say the same?

Broken biscuit cake

I’m sorry to admit this – but I’m a bit of a fraud. The editor of the Newcastle Journal employs me to provide him with a recipe every other week on the basis that a lot of people consider cooking difficult and appreciate a little guidance. Therefore, one assumes that the recipes are sophisticated and provide an insight into the years of learning and research that the average restaurateur experiences over his or her lifetime. Well, the truth is, a lot of cooking’s not that difficult. In fact, anyone can make a cake out of broken biscuits. So, here’s a short recipe that makes enough for a few dozen biscuits, depending on their size.

One kg of a good quality dark chocolate

500g of butter

100g shredded or desiccated coconut

150g walnuts - roughly chopped

Three tablespoons of honey or golden syrup

One packet of Hobnobs – broken into 1cm pieces

Three balls of stem ginger – finely chopped

Choose a pan of the right size that a heat-proof, such as Pyrex, bowl sits neatly and securely on top. Bring an inch or so of water to the boil in the pan and place the bowl on top, making sure the water cannot touch the bowl. Lower the heat until the water’s simmering. Add the butter, honey and chocolate to the bowl and allow to melt, stirring occasionally.

When fully melted and combined, mix with the coconut, walnuts, stem ginger and broken hobnobs. Spoon into a greaseproof paper-lined cake tin and smooth until flat. Place in the fridge to set, removing halfway through to cut into pieces so as to make it easy to break once fully set.

Lovely served with ice-cream and fruit.

Soap of the day

I’d so like to write a book. I did write one a year or two back but that’s a cookbook (called, as it happens, The Passion for Real Food, essential for your bookshelf, a great present for anybody who likes cooking or, indeed, anybody who’d like to learn to cook, and available from the restaurant or, if you can’t get there, all good book shops).

But next I’d like to write a story about the life of a restaurant and that’d be so much easier. Because a cookbook demands work and pictures and lots of recipe testing even before you get to the writing bit. And then the proof reading is so hard, believe me. It’s amazing how many mistakes you make when writing recipes and it takes the services of a professional proof reader to spot them. Well, at least, most of them.

But the story of the life of a restaurant would be easy as there’s so much material and it’s begging to be captured and turned into a Hotel Babylon-style soap opera. I always assumed that your Corrie and Eastenders dramas were daft because so many things happened to so few people. But, actually, real life’s much more interesting and so much funnier.

Of course a lot of it’s a touch too racy to include in a family-orientated article but a book allows you to use all the gory detail, sexual shenanigans and, above all, swear words. Not that we utter that many swear words while working – no, honestly - but it’s funny how the funny things so frequently seem to involve them.

But the life of a restaurant includes love affairs and relationship drama; illness and life-changing moments; young staff finding their feet on the emotional rollercoaster of life; and, of course, customers.

For instance, we invite comments from guests on cards we deliver with the bill. One a few days ago said that she’d enjoyed everything about her food and the service. Her only complaint was the miserable woman at the next table who found fault with everything. In retrospect, I guess it was a legitimate complaint. Maybe we could have dealt with the miserable woman better. Or maybe, using the original customer’s situation as justification, thrown her out.

I’ve seen punch-ups at wedding celebrations; a storming out of the restaurant by a woman soon after she’d accepted a proposal of marriage (I wouldn’t have minded but I’d bought them both a glass of Champagne to celebrate. Who knows, the extra alcohol may have contributed to their argument); a regular visit by a ménage à trois that finally exploded after the third bottle of bubbly one Valentine’s night; the posh lady who always dined with her family in the window but in the rear of the restaurant when with her lover; frequent visits by a married couple where the husband always drank too much before falling asleep, leaving his wife to repeatedly proposition me (the staff took to staying behind for my protection).

 

And what on earth had been happening to result in a bra, one night, being left under a table?

 

But while customers provide a rich vein of entertainment, the loves and lives of our staff are the real stuff of the book. I mean, how much stick do you think the kitchen gave one of our supervisors when, on behalf of a customer, she burst in and asked if the sea bass was a freshwater fish? It’s the staff; they’re my pension.

Yes, real life’s much more interesting and so much funnier. Coronation Street eat your heart out.

Whisky-cured fillet of beef Carpaccio with radishes

If you think this sounds posh and very much a restaurant dish you’d be wrong. It’s a terribly simple starter or, maybe when served with a little crusty bread, light meal that’s essentially very thinly-sliced raw beef. It’s hardly cooking at all.

The name Carpaccio allegedly comes from the fact that the colour of the meat is similar to a particular red used in the paintings of the Italian master Vittore Carpaccio (whose real name, I understand, was Scarpazza which, if used by the artist, would have changed the name of this recipe).

The beef’s marinated for an hour or so in whisky. Therefore, depending on the whisky you choose will affect the flavour. I particularly like using a peaty Islay malt.

Serves four

400g of best beef fillet – trimmed of any sinew

Two teaspoons of black peppercorns

Flaked sea salt

Sugar

Some good whisky – preferably a malt

Six to eight radishes - washed with stems and roots left on

A couple of handfuls of watercress

Wholegrain mustard

Oil for sealing the meat

Crack open the peppercorns using a mortar and pestle or, if you don’t have one, use freshly-ground black pepper. Place the pepper in a bowl along with a teaspoon of the flaked salt, a teaspoon of sugar and two tablespoons of whisky. Mix well and add the fillet of beef; coating all sides with the mixture. Cover with clingfilm and allow to marinate for an hour or two, turning or shaking occasionally. Remove and allow to drain but don’t remove the pepper coating.

Heat a frying pan, add a little oil and seal the fillet on all sides. Remove, allow to cool a little and then roll it up in a square of clingfilm and twist up the ends tightly until it resembles a firm sausage. Place in the fridge for an hour or so to set.

Make a dressing by combining a teaspoon of the mustard with a little more whisky, a little salt and pepper and a couple of pinches of sugar. Slice the radishes, roots and stems included, as thinly as possible. We use a mandolin but you could use the thinnest slicing blade of a food processor or even a very sharp knife.

To serve, slice the beef as thinly as possible, arrange on plates and season lightly with a little flaked sea salt and black pepper. Place watercress and radishes on top and dribble over the dressing.

Music to your deers

I’ve been to Glastonbury for the last three years running. Not because I’m trying to stay young (that’d surely be an effort in vain) but because I love it. I go for the music of course. There are approaching 40 stages or places where you can hear music being played and there are 200,000 people there appreciating it in an area measuring  20 square kilometres. It’s a massive festival that’s extraordinarily well organised. The reaction of most people when you tell them you’re going is to laugh and mention the mud but, in the same way you rarely hear of any other stage than the Pyramid, it’s more often than not sunny. “No mud seen at Glastonbury” is not exactly an exciting headline so you only hear about it when it rains and that becomes the abiding memory.

Of course, feeding 200,000 people over four or five days is a massive task and it’s provided by hundreds of independent caterers. And what they do has always fascinated me. How they do it and why some succeed more than others is like seeing a microcosm of the restaurant industry; hundreds of kitchens and serveries, working flat-out, all in one place.

And some of them are very good but, also, a lot are rubbish. I guess it reflects the wider industry in that the signs on the outside offer much but the eating leaves you wanting. Of course, being Glastonbury, there are a lot of veggie places and it’s often there that you’re likely to find a better tasting meal. I put it down to the fact that vegetarians are, by nature, people who think more about what they’re eating and that goes for the people providing a purely vegetarian menu. More often than not, on the high street, it’s difficult to make a vegetarian restaurant make money because of the fact that fewer than 10% of the population are vegetarian. Making a living out of a restaurant is difficult enough if you have the choice of 100% of people. But at Glastonbury, the chances of success must be multiplied five-fold.

Anyway, this last weekend, we, at Oldfields, decided to conduct a little experiment and built and manned a catering stall at a small family-orientated affair called the Deer Shed Festival down in North Yorkshire. It was only its second year but attracted around six thousand parents and children; the majority of the latter under twelve. It was brilliant, the music was great and the sunny weather a bonus.

In line with our traditionally British approach, we decided to serve sausage and mash, all sourced locally. With a choice of mustard or plain mash as well as a choice of gravy, we had a great time chatting with the festival-goers, learning a lot about catering in such an environment and, hopefully, covering our costs.

We know our approach went down well because we got so much repeat business over the 48 hours we were there. But, along with getting some time to listen to the music, we also got the opportunity to sample other caterers’ wares and, with our new–found experience, compare methods.

And what surprised, and disappointed, me was the quality of a lot of the offerings. Again, large signs with tempting pictures and words but when it came to satisfaction, the proof of the pudding was in the eating and I couldn’t wait to get home to get a meal with properly balanced flavours. I enjoyed our sausage and mash but, with variety being the spice of life, there’s only so many times you can repeat a meal.

The festival was brilliantly organised with a great atmosphere but foodies like me want something nice to eat, and I can’t have been alone. However, it’s difficult to know what else the organisers could have done. They could have let us be the sole caterers but man cannot live by sausage alone.

And what sort of sausages did we serve? Well what else would you expect at the Deer Shed Festival other than venison? With meat sourced from the Raby Castle deer herd, those sausages, when eaten in the sunshine with great music and thousands of happy families, were the best sausages in the world. Lovely.