value for money for old rope to hang yourself

I went to an FSA whisky tasting on the Wharf last night - one of the more civilized after-work activities I've attended over the years, it has to be said - and it got me thinking. Not just about whisky either.

Unfortunately there wasn't anything at the really extremely peaty end of the spectrum that I'd normally go for, but one of the drams we sampled was at the 'bloody lovely' end of a different scale altogether - the cask strength 37 year old bourbon cask Caperdonich. which was fruity, toffeeish and ever so smooth.

Very, very good stuff.

I can count the number of times I've drunk liquids older than me on my fingers and toes, and the older I get the less likely it is to happen, so I savoured every bourbon-casked moment.

To my palette, it made every other malt we sampled taste a bit ordinary, though the 12 year old Springtown with three years in claret casks deserves a mention for it's medicinal berry vapours.

Oh go on then, I'll even plug the shop that hosted the tasting. The Dufftown whisky shop. OK, run along now.

Anyway, the Caperdonich was by far the nicest, and it was, predictably, also by far the most expensive. But is it bad value for money?

If you enjoy a £150/bottle whisky more than three times as much as you enjoy a £50/bottle whisky, doesn't that actually make it better value?

Outlay divided by pleasure equals value

The answer of course is 'Yes. Yes it does'.

There is good-value stuff and poor-value stuff out there, and it doesn't always correlate with the price.

If you read the little blogpipe where I posited the Satiety Index you'll know that I likes me little systems, and statistics and indices'n'shit. I also think there aren't enough ways of easily quantifying complicated stuff in this world.

Yeah, I know, I probably should do more to repress my autistic tendencies, but my creative side doesn't do repression.

Relative to the subjectivity of our individual compasses, food and drink, like most other things, covers a scale from the execrable to the divine. Generally the price range for food and drink is as vast, ranging normally from 'free' to 'literally unaffordable'.

The real question of value is most poignant when something isn't literally unaffordable, but is so expensive as to impact on what else one can do with ones money, and consequently affects your lifestyle accordingly - e.g. you might technically be able to afford a bottle of 37 year old Caperdonich every day, but you'd be drinking it on the streets because you wouldn't be able to pay your mortgage; that kind of thing.

Cheap/Expensive does not equal Bad/Good

I said some disparaging things about cheap sandwich outlet Bene Bene the other day, and indeed some positive things about places where sandwiches cost three times as much - but there's a danger of reading an overly simplistic message into that.

One of the tasters yesterday mentioned Johnnie Walker Blue label, which is more expensive than the 37 year old Caperdonich, and was informed rather sneeringly (and rightly so, in my view) that all Johnnie Walker products are just mass-market blended whiskeys of dubious quality, and the high price of their 'premium' brands has little to do with quality and everything to do with marketing.

There are single malts that cost a quarter of the price that will always be superior. 

Likewise in a pub, the most expensive draft beer available will probably be something like Stella Artois. Does that mean it's the highest-quality beer on tap? Of course not. Any decent pub will have real ales that are a damn sight tastier, and they'll typically be 20-30% cheaper too.

Two kinds of snobbery

The problem is that some people are so lacking in confidence in their own tastebuds that they let the pricetag do the talking. They drink the Stella and the Johnnie Walker blue not really because they particularly enjoy it (though they might) but because they think the price positioning makes it good, and they want to be seen to be appreciating good stuff. Yes, they're the same people that bought the Mercedes A-class and the new Mini. And Mac computers.

I guess as a free market Libertarian I shouldn't be that comfortable with the triumphs of marketing ploys and in a free world, people are free to sell not very much for an inflated price and equally free to buy it. Mugs.

Personally I like to feel I've got good value for me pennies. Fish and chip shops are incredibly good value. Where else can you buy such a filling takeaway for a few quid? The huge bags of bombay mix that sell for 99p in some newsagents. They're good value too.

Some cunts call me a snob from time to time. I'm OK with that, so long as they mean the kind of snob that is fussy about quality and authenticity, rather than the kind that just only buys expensive or 'branded' things.

The person next to me at last nights tasting failed to turn up but a place had been set for them and their glasses filled. 

I craftily drank their measure of Caperdonich before leaving! Anything is value for money when it's free!

If you only learn how to cook one dish, learn this!

You’ll have noticed, or possibly not, that I recently customised the design of Ben Viveur to include a background image that looks like a never-ending portion of chilli.

Mmm, infinite chilli. Feel free to salivate for there are few mental images more alluring than this.

A good chilli is, it has to be said, one of my favouritestever foods. So long as the guiding principles are right, it's a hugely flexible dish, and if you only teach yourself how to cook one thing, chilli would be a pretty good choice because a few variations can turn it into something that's more like a curry or a Bolognaise sauce or a cottage pie filling.

Not all chilli is good though. Rubbishcunt chilli makes me shudder, and there are so many ways in which chilli can be substandard – too bland, too mindlessly hot, too full of the wrong things - it’s a minefield out there, so it is.

 

Not that you'll ever find anything approaching consensus on what a chilli should contain, mind. A heated debate has been raging for a great many years - for some, kidney beans are a defining feature, but to some purists in certain parts of the US, beans of any kind are strictly verboten. Personally I like them, but they’re not mandatory.

In fact, almost no one ingredient is essential in my chili recipe, though if you left out too many of them, it might cease to resemble a chili.

There are, however, a few things that I’ve encountered in some unfortunate chillis over the years, which I really don’t think ever have a place –  prawns, peas, carrot, quorn… and a chilli should never EVER contain sweetcorn in my view. Not even a veggie one.

The only thing a chilli really definitely ought to contain is, I guess, some actual chillis, although I’ve tried some that seemed notably bereft!

Generally I’ll cook my chilli using either minced beef or chopped stewing steak, but I’ve made chicken chilli and an all-veggie version (with extra mushrooms, chopped celery and a variety of beans) too.

It’s satisfying and nourishing, and if you use extra-lean meat and low fat sour cream, it can be an extremely healthy dish.

This recipe is the classic – you can figure out your own variations – and it’ll keep well for a couple of days, improving over time.

My chilli, what I done made

I cooked one the other night. We ate with garlic bread balls, and finished it the following evening with rice. I'd have happily tucked into it a third night running if it weren't all polished off. Chilli be good.

Chilli

Ingredients

Minced beef, extra lean ( ¼ to ½ half a pound or so per serving)

Onion, finely chopped (roughly 1 small onion per serving)

Fresh chillies, finely chopped (either green or red, to taste)

Red peppers, finely chopped the long sweet twisty ones are best

Shitake mushrooms, finely chopped

Kidney beans, (¼ to ½ a tin per serving, depending on how beany you like your chilli). Get a tin that doesn’t have extra sugar or salt or anything else added to it, obviously.

Tomatoes, finely chopped, lots

Garlic, finely chopped, lots

Cumin, lots

Paprika

Black pepper

Cayenne pepper

Celery salt

Ground Ginger, a little

Chives

Fresh lime juice

Dark chocolate, a little

Dark (but not heavy) beer – dark lager is best, but a mild or porter will do

Worcestershire sauce

Olive oil

Butter

Sour cream

Method

Set a big sautee pan upon an high heat. The pan will need to have a lid for use later on.

Fry the chopped onion, chilli and garlic in a small amount of oil for a few minutes, then add a knob of butter and throw in your mushrooms.

Now put your beef in there, along with a big splash of Worcestershire sauce and generous quantities of cumin, black pepper, cayenne, and celery salt and a little ginger, and cook until almost browned, adding the peppers along the way.

Chuck in your kidney beans and a few squares of dark chocolate. Don’t drain the beans – the juices will enrich the sauce, as will the chocolate.

When the meat is brown, add the old tomatoes and cook for a few more minutes on maximum heat, then pour in a little beer for liquidity, whack the lid on the pan and turn the temperature right down.

Allow to simmer for an hour, stirring periodically if it makes you feel better about yourself. Midway through, chuck in some chives and the juice of a lime or two.

You might want to taste the sauce and see if it needs any more cumin or cayenne or whatever – just make sure it’s to your taste.

The longer you cook it on a low heat, the better it will get. If it looks dry, feed it with some beer.  

You can transfer it to a casserole and continue cooking it in an oven if you prefer - I have no strong argument for doing this, unless you need your hob for other purposes.

Serve it when you want to eat! And swirl some sour cream on top before so doing.

Chilli goes well with bread, garlic bread, green salad leaves, rice, baked potatoes, burgers, well pretty much anything really.

To drink? Dry, fruity whites or dry, fruity beers would seem to be the order of the day.

Cordon Bleug

Today's Menu

 

To Start

Pickled Cloves (v)

Whole cloves, steeped in Spirit vinegar, just the way you like 'em.


Double Foie Gras

What could be more delicious than the liver of a force-fed goose? The liver of a goose that's been force-fed with Foie Gras, that's what!


Baked Toast (v)

Slices of finest toast, with figs, hand-baked until dawn. Tastier than watching a film.

Main Courses

Braised Tusk

A whole Walrus tusk, slow cooked in poo wine and garnished mit curds.

Served with your choice of fries, baked potato or Arctic Roll.


Pork Wombs in Brine

Three succulent, tender young pork wombs, stuffed with bletted quince and hand-cured in a spicy brine.

Comes with a big hunk of stale granary bread - perfect for mopping up the briney amniotic juices!


Arse Pie (v)

Our house speciality - a bigger slice than you can comfortably manage, with a salad of deadly vines.


Mashed potato with rice all mashed up together (v)

Served with chips, pasta and chips.

Dessertines

A lime (v)

Nothing more; nothing less.


Choco-nutty-toffee-coffee-fruity-mallow slice

With skipjack tuna chunks and cream.

For parties of one or more a discretionary charge of 12.5% will be added to your bill.

... And relax!

You see, the thing is that a lot of top chefs today are preoccupied with making their food unique rather than making it tasty.

If it can be radical and different and delicious than that's all well and good, but the loss of touch with ones diners is a cardinal sin that a select few can get away with purely because of their fame.

It's a similar pitfall faced by artists and musicians - where originality ceases to be useful in itself and exists purely for novelty value. Everyone can sit around talking about how worthy and unique Steve Reich's music is, without wanting to admit even to themselves that they'd rather be listening to Teh Quo.

How many people actually order Heston's famous Snail Porridge at the Fat Duck? And of those how many actually thought 'hmm, this is delicious; I'd like to eat it on a regular basis'?

I admit that I haven't tried it, and I'm in no hurry to do so, being no huge fan of either snails nor porridge, but I'd hazard that a more prominent reaction might be 'hmm, well, it was interesting... I'm glad I tried it... such a novel idea, isn't it?' - that sort of thing.

Maybe it's fantastic. I don't know. But it doesn't need to be, because the novelty value and fame element ensures a waiting list at the Duck, even in these austere times.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who I admire greatly, took several steps up the ladder of fame by cooking a human placenta and making it into paté. In some circles, this is what he's most famous for, and to some, all he will ever be, which is a great shame.

Celebrity chefs have, I've no doubt, spent most of their careers cooking fantastic dishes, and the creativity and flair for experimentation should be encouraged. (Heston, I want the credit if you steal my pork wombs recipe, I know you read my blog!)

But when radical foods succeed solely because of the reputation of their creator, and the repute itself feeds off controversy rather than quality, we're living in a dangerously hypocritical place.

If the snail porridge had been served up by some anonymous arthritic crone at the Bray parish church fete, the reaction would, surely, have been one of unanimous disgust and few would even have sampled its escargian oatiness.

Cooking shouldn't be conservative, and it shouldn't have boundaries and constraints. Last night, on a mad whim, I fried shards of apple in with my sausages. Never done it before like that. Yeah, I know, really radical.

But it tasted good, which is the important thing.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to start braising my walrus tusk and brining my pork wombs, because that's far more radical, and therefore will taste even gooder, obviously.

Or possibly not.

Sandwich Course

They say that a man in Canary Wharf can live a hundred lives and eat a hundred different lunches every day.

Actually, nobody has ever said that as far as I'm aware, since I just made it up, but it's true that there are so many places to grab lunch around here, the choice is almost too much.

With the weather turning colder, salads and sushi are becoming less appealing, and hearty steaming soups rather more so, but what of that evergreen favourite, the humble sandwich?

At a conservative estimate, there are probably some 50 different sandwich outlets on The Wharf, with each offering maybe 20-30 different sandwiches - that's at least a thousand to choose from, without taking into account individual customisations ('extra mayo, hold the butter... Because it's actually margarine and I don't like it, fuckwit, that's why.')

The Satiety Index

The scare tactics began a few years ago.

‘Traffic lights’ on foods, telling us all, in a bright red, amber or green way, just how bad things were for us. Number of calories, amount of fat, amount of salt, that kind of thing.

Strangely enough there were very few all-green items on sale in the supermarkets, and lots that mixed amber and red, with maybe one token green column. (Ready salted crisps, for example, which score low in sugar and high in everything else.)

I do wonder just how they can accurately calculate exactly how much saturated fat or how many calories is in something anyway?  And does the figure quoted apply to the entire contents of the packet or the amount a person is reasonably expected to eat, disregarding any crumbs or sauce that gets left behind?

(I think an apple (probably all green except in the sugar department) contains about 50 calories, but is that if you eat everything including the core, which I normally don’t? In fact I don’t even usually get close to the core, so I’m probably only eating just over half the mass of the apple)

Anyway, whatever the inherent ambiguities in the system, it has stuck, and now the Food Standards Agency, in its final throes before likely Coalition dissolution, has been actively persuading the food industry to roll out such systems out beyond the chiller cabinet in the house of Sainsbury, extending it to fast food outlets.

The art of the possible - Murgh Keema Masala

When I eat at a Pizza/Pasta type restaurant (a real Italian one as opposed to a Pizza Hut, obviously), I’ll almost always choose a pizza from the menu, rather than a pasta or risotto or tuscan bean stew or anything else. Probably 95% of the time. In fact the only time I wouldn’t would be if I’d had pizza the day before or something.

That’s not because I’m a huge pizza aficionado, or because I don’t believe the other dishes on the menu would be fantastic. It’s because a stone-baked pizza or wood-fired pizza is one of those dishes that it’s almost impossible to adequately recreate at home without the requisite stone-baking or wood-firing malarkey.

I know I can cook more-than-acceptable Italian-style dishes -  My pancetta and parma ham linguine and seafood risotto rock like a bastardino. I also know that any attempt to make pizza will result in something rather half-hearted and uninspiring.

Same with fish and chips. Leave it to the experts. They can do something unique that the home chef without the specialist knowledge and equipment will struggle to achieve. Kebabs too, I suppose.

And, thinking about it, it’s the reason why I usually drink real ale in pubs, rather than a bottle of beer (or wine or cider etc.) which would taste exactly the same at home.

Anyway, Indian (or, rather, South Asian) food is diverse enough that it falls between two stools of thought here. (It’s also diverse enough to accommodate mixed metaphors, thank you very much.)

Sometimes I’ll make a curry at home and it’ll taste as good as any similar dish in a restaurant, but I’ve also enjoyed some fantastic dishes in Indian restaurants that I know I’ll never be able to cook myself. 

No, I don't own one either



I guess using a proper Tandoor (which I don’t own and wouldn’t have space for) makes the difference here, just as an authentic pizza oven hides the secret behind great pizza. I do occasionally muse upon this reality, without much further analysis, admittedly, because food that I can and do actually cook and eat seems to be rather more worthy of earnest consideration than that which I can't and don't!

So, this week, I decided to cook a curry or two, and my girlfriend suggested in a fit of adventurousness, that it might contain boiled egg(!) and my mind immediately turned to a dish I’d enjoyed many years ago.

It not only worked out amazingly well, it has the added bonus that the ingredients can also produce a delicious starter by way of a side product.

It takes a little while, but the result is a luxurious dish of the kind you’d normally find on the ‘chef’s specials’ section of the menu.

More importantly, you'd never know that the tandoori components hadn't been cooked in a real tandoor, so you get the warm fuzzy feeling of cheating and getting away with it.

These three recipes should be within the capability of any decent home chef.

Keema Murgh Massala

Seekh Kebabs

Chicken Tikka will never taste as good in a regular oven, but just because the tikka you're in a position to make isn't authentic enough to eat on it's own, there's no reason not to include it in a thrice-cooked feast where the tikka pieces end up in a flavoursome sauce, giving you the best of both worlds.

This is one such dish, with the tikka pieces eventually finding their home in a spicy keema (minced lamb) sauce, and as a by-product there will be tasty lamb kebabs to enjoy as a first course!

Ingredients:

Chicken fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces

Minced lamb, half for the kebabs, half for the keema sauce.

Hard boiled eggs, shelled, whole, one per serving

Onion, finely chopped, roughly one medium onion per serving

Tomatoes, at least 1 ½ medium tomatoes per serving, a mixture of finely chopped and cut into quarters

Plain yoghurt, quite a lot

A lemon or two, for juice and segments

Red pepper, finely chopped

Garlic, plenty, chopped

Fresh coriander leaves, roughly torn

Tandoori spice mix (red spice powder)

Black pepper

Black onion seeds

Asafoetida

Chilli powder

Ginger

Butter

Method:

The first thing is to marinate your chicken, and if you can do this a day before eating and keep it marinating in the fridge then even better.

Just whack some of your tandoori spices into some yoghurt with a smidge of lemon juice and as much chilli powder as you choose, stir it all up, then coat your chicken pieces all over and leave for a while,

It’s a good idea to marinate it in the big oven dish you plan on cooking the curry in, because all the marinade left behind can become part of the curry eventually anyway.

When you’re ready to cook, you’ll need to allow a couple of hours, though there will be seekh kebabs to enjoy in the mean time.

Take roughly half your minced lamb and add some spice mix and chilli powder with maybe a tiny drop of lemon juice.

Work it in thoroughly with your hands (it should be red rather than ‘lamby’ in colour) and form solid little turd-shaped kebabs.

You can put these on a baking tray with the chicken tikka pieces and cook it all at the same time – it goes into a medium oven for about half an hour, turning everything over half way through cooking, and draining off the juices (into your main curry pan).

You should remove the chicken from the oven a little earlier than if you were just cooking chicken tikka, because it’s going to be cooked two times more!

The kebabs can go back in for a little longer, until red-brown and slightly crispy - or do this later when you're ready to serve them as your starter.

Serve with a little yoghurt and a wedge of lemon, and maybe some salad.

You can also search them cold in a naan wrap if there are some left over.

While that little lot is in the oven, you can begin making the curry.

Heat some butter in a big sautee pan with a lid, and add the chopped garlic (not the slices), and most (but not all) of the onion.

After a few minutes, when it’s simmering nicely, add some black pepper, chilli powder, black onion seeds, asafoetida and ginger, and a minute or two later, whack in the minced lamb and chopped peppers, making sure everything gets coated nicely with the spices and the lamb is properly cooked. If it starts to disintegrate that's not really a problem.

At some point you’ll be able to add the excess juices from the tikka and kebabs that are cooking in the oven, and this would be a good time to put in the chopped tomatoes (but not the tomato quarters) and keep it cooking gently until the chicken in the oven is ready.

OK, so you've cooked your chicken tikka and kebabs, so the time to make it all come together is almost at hand.


Add the cooked chicken tikka to your curry, along with the quartered tomatoes and a big fistful of fresh coriander.

Cook it on a low heat with the lid down for 15-20 minutes - the aromas should be lovely by now.

Now, go back to the dish where it all started (where you marinated the chicken) and transfer everything back into that, adding the boiled eggs at this time. Everything should be mixed up nicely and the keema sauce should be lovely and thick and moist.

If it’s too dry, add a little more yoghurt, maybe diluted with a spoon or two of boiling water. But bear in mind that the tomatoes will add liquid and the lamb juices richness.

It’s now time for the final phase – put the lid on the dish and return it to the oven, where it will improve on a low heat for 30 minutes or so, during which time you can cook the rice or nan bread or whatever you want, or possibly a garlic mushroom bhaji.

When you serve it, make sure everyone gets an egg and a few big bits of tomato.

Garlic Mushroom Bhaji

This is a really easy side dish and contrasts nicely with the Murgh Keema Masala.

Ingredients:

Chestnut mushrooms, chopped

Garlic, thinly sliced, lots

Onion, a small amount, chopped

Turmeric

Cumin

Butter

Method:

Take a regular frying pan and fry the onion and garlic in butter, then add the spices – don’t be afraid to be generous.

After a few minutes, add the chopped mushrooms and cook on a medium heat until the mushrooms start to soften and the garlic slivers turn brown. That's it. Serve it with your main curry.


A simple naan bread or basmati rice completes the meal, and you might want to drink an appropriate beer with it. Cobra is fine, King Cobra better, and Wolverhampton & Dudley brew an 'Ultimate Curry Beer', but my preferred option would be a chilled bottle of Brewdog Punk IPA, which I find an excellent accompaniment to spicy food.