Lockdown Lunches #2: 24 Hour Carnitas

My birthday last week was the first one for 20 years in which I haven't been to the pub.

And even in 2000 I did manage a quick birthday pint with my Sports coverage colleagues in the BBC Club at Television Centre, where I was working at the time.

I used to commute there every day - imagine that! On buses and tubes! To work in a big, doughnutty building with hundreds of people!


Anyway, as promised, here a few further thoughts on Lockdown and this whole COVID-19 thing. Some of these opinions will be controversial. If you can't handle that, skip straight to the Carnitas recipe, or fuck off back to your videos of kittens or whatever you're doing to pass the time.

So, this rather peculiar, locked-down birthday reminded me of how much I miss going to the pub. Going to the pub to socialise and drink cask beer is one of my things. Like going to church to sing in the choir, going to football matches to support the mighty CCFC, going to gigs to complain that the band isn't as good as they used to be, and so on.

All gone from my life.

Ten of your Five a Day

If you read enough articles filed under 'health' you will, eventually, explode in a befuzzled ball of contradiction and confusion, and that's only if you haven't already starved yourself to death through abstemious fear.

According to the papers and newswebs, almost everything is bad for us - there are all studies that prove it'n'shit - and yet, according to someone somewhere else, the very same stuff is good for us. Because there are all studies that prove it'n'shit.

So for years and years, we were all told that fruit juices and smoothies were really healthy, but now that message is the sole preserve of the manufacturers of fruit juices and smoothies. Every other nutritiocunt bangs on about how much sugar is in them and how they're as bad as cola-type drinks, which are, of course, the number one cause of obesity on planet obesity.

Capital Breakfasts

You might remember, way, way back at the very dawn of the year, I enjoyed a rather fine breakfast at Duke's Brew and Que and resolved to seek out London's other great breakfasts to see if the Duke could be matched or perhaps even bested...

It went the way of most resolutions made at that time of year, obviously.

Yes, I know. I've let my readers down, I've let myself down, but most of all, I've let breakfast down.

It's the-most-important-meal-of-the-day, so it is, and I've done gone and let it down by utterly failing to stick to my pledge.

Well, until now that is.

Look, I'm not really a morning person. It's a lot of effort getting up and leaving the house before I've even properly woken up. It's hard enough on work days. And I don't even have an appetite until lunchtime usually.

But enough excuses. You've had to wait a long while, so, to celebrate Ben Viveur post No. 150,  here's a double review of the breakfast fayre from two of London's big meaty heavyweights: Simpson's in the Strand and the Hawksmoor Guildhall.

Can silly money buy the best breakfast in London or just the most expensive?

The Duke of Pork (and Beef)

I've been having a tough time lately - mostly work-related stuff, though there is an end in sight, but also my ongoing health issues - and so I frequently need cheering up.

Fortunately I'm quite easy to cheer up. Good food. Good beer. Indulgent treats. (Although these probably don't do anything for the health issues, admittedly - the doctors in their infinite medical wisdom have decided now that my calcium channels need blocking, as well as my ACEs inhibiting!)

So the other night we opted for one such indulgent treat. Several pints of excellent beer (including Arbor 'Goo Goo G'Joob' at a hefty 11%) and a few bags of Pitta Chips at the Craft Beer Company, and then on to Duke's Brew & Que.

Baltic Birthday

Nobody likes getting old much, do they?

I spoke to a 101-year-old recently whose refreshing and darkly candid take on her longevity was 'I hate being old. All my friends are dead!'

I've a comparatively long way to go, not that I'm likely to make it that far, but I did 'celebrate' my 35th last week, and to add insult to injury, I was accosted by not one but two market research people the very next day, and had to select, for the first time, the '35-44' box in which I shall be stuck for the next decade!

I'm now officially part of the target audience for Radio 2, The Spectator and Guy Clapperton's LifeOver35 blog, although in preperation I've been reading the latter for a few months, the Speccie for several years, and I actually like to think I've outgrown the Light Programme!

In recent months I've been acquiring new ailments left, right and centre, and a spell of extended stress at work (it would be less depressing working at a children's hospice) is taking its toll on my blood pressure. 

All I need now to trigger the textbook midlife crisis is a bad marriage - though, fortunately, I'm very happy being married to Mrs B-V who surprised me with a unique birthday present in the form of a trip to Latvia!

Beer

Chronophobia aside, the big day itself was quite enjoyable, with several beers at the Craft Beer Company to numb the pain, some of which were very good indeed. Highlights included Summer Wine Diablo, 6% and bursting with Citra hops, and a Black IPA from Arbor, though the 7.5% Breakfast Stout from the same brewery was a long and sickly struggle from the first sip to the bottom of the glass.

Birthday beer

Fortunately our flight to Riga the following day wasn't until late afternoon, so I didn't pay too heavy a price for overindulgence in strong ale. My system probably needed to stock up too, as Latvia isn't known for it's beer. Or, indeed, anything much.

Firstly, a few recommendations for anybody thinking of visiting Riga:


1. You can realistically 'do' Riga in a single day, so it's probably a bad idea to book a stay of more than two nights. We had two nights and were getting bored.

Being 35+ I'm never happier than when sitting down, but Riga is one of these 'old towns' that you have to walk around, with manky cobbled streets. Never been my kind of destination, and probably never will. Some things don't change as you get older. 



2. Try to avoid ever flying Ryanair. To anywhere. They are cheap, but their planes are cramped and unpleasant and we got stung with 'security charges' at the airport which they had deliberately not included in the upfront price to keep it cheap. Wankers.

There wasn't even a bus to take people from the gate to the plane, despite the plane being further from the gate than I've ever seen before - probably around 400 yards, which is a long way to dash in torrential rain with other aircraft moving disconcertingly around as you run across the tarmac.


3. Avoid using the strangely-named Terravision coach service to Stansted. It's bad enough having to fly from fucking Stansted in the first place, without this total shower of incompetence. 

Rather than running to timetables, they seem to depart only when there are enough bodies to completely fill the thing up, which for us meant standing in the aforementioned rain at Stratford worrying that we'd miss our flight on the way out, and standing around at Stansted late at night, knowing that we'd miss the last DLR on the way home.

It's the Ryanair of coaches.


4. In fact, don't fucking fly at all. There's too much hanging around, too much hassle getting to and from airports, too much turbulence and fearing for your life, and too few people in passport control at British airports. 

It's the Terravision of travel. Except that that's already Terravision.



5 (and back on the actual subject of Latvia rather than general whinging about shit). Don't take too much money. Riga is cheap and it's hard to spend. You can get a half-litre of beer in a bar in the centre for about £1.30 and a plate of food for the same price. I bought the best spoon ever for about a fiver. No, really. It's a great spoon.
 

The important stuff

So, what about the food and drink?


Well, with so little to do we spent quite a lot of time eating and drinking, and I noticed some similarities to Lithuania and Estonia, both of which I've previously visited. 

Grey peas; Steak with liquor

The national dish is grey peas, which thankfully aren't like peas as we know them, but a sort of cross between split peas and black-eyed beans, cooked with onion and bacon. It's not unpleasant and widely available (for a couple of quid).

What was unpleasant, however, was lunch on our first day. Somehow we seemed to find ourselves in a workers cafe in the basement of some government offices and not knowing about the food, just pointed to something behind the glass which we ascertained was a sort of potato pancake with meat inside.

The 'meat' was some kind of reconstituted pulp, almost entirely unseasoned apart from the sour cream which they seem to serve with everything in this part of the world. Maybe it was pink slime? I couldn't eat much of it without gagging, whatever it was.

Oh for some beer to cleanse my mouth...

Riga has a brewpub, Lido, located in some suburban shopping mall away from the old town that we didn't get to visit, but their beers are available fairly widely, and their old town outpost, Alus Seta offered an opportunity to try the closest thing to proper beer in the area (and some grey peas!)

This lot cost about £2.80

As expected, it's nothing to write home about. I tried their regular light lager, a honey beer which was a bit more interesting, and an amber which was darker and maltier. All of it was very fizzy and none of it was particularly hoppy.

Alus Seta is also well known for it's traditional Latvian food, though slightly disconcertingly, you have to queue up, canteen-style, with a tray and point to everything you want.

Suck it and see

Again we didn't know exactly what we were getting, but most of the stuff here was indeed very good. Skewers of moist chicken, garlic roast potatoes, thick garlic-infused steak with a parsley sauce a bit like the 'liquor' dispensed by our very own pie'n'mash shops. 

Clearly if you choose the right thing, there is some tasty food to be had here.

Garlic Bread? Garlic? Bread? Queens?

While some of the food can be bland, garlic features heavily and, as is common in this region, the garlic bread is something rather special - black rye bread deep fried in thin slices, probably in garlic-infused oil, and liberally coated with smushed garlic. 

Served with blue cheese sauce in the Queens pub, they were particularly good, though perhaps not the healthiest snack ever.


There was unfiltered wheat beer on here (passable), as well as Latvian 'Kiss' cider, which is a lot like the Scandinavian ciders that have taken off over here in recent years - horribly, horribly sweet and synthetic-tasting.

But as we were staying for a few (and some vodka, balsam and cream liquers) we were able to eat our way through the food menu, which was at odds with the 'English pub' theme.

After the garlic bread, smoky hunters sausages and slow-roasted pork belly in chilli were good accompaniments for an afternoon's drinking before we had to catch the plane home, and if I'd known how long and manky the journey home would be (we didn't get back until 2:30 AM) I'd have had more to drink!

'City of contrasts' is a cliche that's been done to death, but it's probably a fair reflection on Riga. Some of the food was very tasty, but there's not a lot to see or do (a 35 minute ride on a little cart seems to cover everything) and there are other, more interesting parts of the former USSR. Like Ukraine. And Estonia.

Am I glad I've been? Yes.

Was it a good birthday present? Yes. Thank you, Mrs B-V.

Would I want to go back, or go through the experience again? Fuck, no!

Doing stuff in the wrong order

When I was a child, my primary hobby was probably collecting Star Wars figures. Han, Luke, Leia; Ree Yees, Bib Fortuna, The Gamorrean Guard. I had them all. Well, most of them.

The hunt to find them all excited me to such an extent that until relatively recently I still purchased vintage figures on Ebay in an attempt to complete my collection, and even now I occasionally have dreams that I’ve found a shop with a rare, new figure I haven’t seen before.

Yeah, I know. Victim of commercialism. At such a tender age. Tragic.

All my childhood hopes and dreams!

What is surprising though is that I was a bit of a late arrival on the scene, only having been born in 1977.

That was the year that the first of the three Star Wars films was released (there are only three Star Wars films and if you think otherwise you are a Stormtrooper's cock) and the first that I saw was actually the final part of the trilogy: Return of the Jedi.

This was 1983. In the Streatham Odeon back when it had three proper, big auditoria instead of 138 micro screens. Good times.

It opens with the resolution of a cliffhanger from Empire Strikes Back, but, being six, this didn’t bother me in the slightest. I got to see Ree Yees, Bib Fortuna and the Gamorrean Guard brought to life and so, to me, ROTJ was Star Wars, at least until we rented the first and second instalments from the video shop and I got to see the earlier portion of the trilogy.

I was also fascinated by the first series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus by virtue of not having seen it. When I was about eight they showed series 2 and 3 on TV and I was addicted. Utterly.

But in those days there was a very strange policy that the BBC could or would not repeat programmes more than three times, which is why the first series wasn’t shown in my lifetime until the rules were relaxed in the late 1980s, by which time I was 12 and Python was 20!

It’s hard to imagine this kind of reality these days, when channels like UK Gold and Dave show the same episodes of the same programmes ad infinitium, and you can watch them on Youtube whenever you feel like it.

I swear, every time I notice that an episode of Fawlty Towers is on, it’s always The Anniversary – Series 2, Episode 5 – which includes memorable appearances from the late Ken Campbell, and strident comic actress Pat Keen who used to live in the flat above me in Ipswich!

Why am I banging on about this shit?

Anyway, one thing I concluded from all this is that there isn’t necessarily any harm in ‘doing stuff in the wrong order’. Except when there is, obviously.

This lunchtime - following a pint or three in the consistently excellent Craft Beer Company - I finally made it to Daddy Donkey in Leather Lane. And given my enthusiasm for the Craft, I must have walked past the self-styled 'Kick Ass Mexican Grill' more times than I've seen Polly pretending to be Sybil Fawlty. Which, UK Gold and Dave, is a lot of times!

There are perhaps two reasons why the order of events could be said to be 'wrong' in this instance:

a) I’d already been a couple of times to their spin-off Burger van, ‘Boom’, which appeared on the scene far more recently and;

b) Daddy Donkey actually pre-empted all the other conveyer-belt Mexican food chains, like Tortilla, which I’ve previously favourably reviewed.

The twin towers of takeaway street

Boom Burger was never going to win any prizes in my search for the best burger in London.

It's fast and cheap (£4.95 for a burger with a couple of toppings and £6.50 for the deluxe version with fries and 'slaw - toppings extra) but the quality of beef just isn't up to the mark, and the char-grilled meat has a strange, burnt, shish-kebab-like flavour.

Whack that in a bog-standard toasted sesame bun and you've got a burger that tastes like it's come from a kebab shop late at night, and if you were in a kebab shop late at night you would, surely, have a kebab, no?

Also, food that might be acceptable late at night, when everywhere else is closed and you're staggering pissed, seldom hits the spot in the cold light of lunchtime, which is the only time that Boom is open.

Burr(it)o!

But I can probably forgive Daddy Donkey his lacklustre beef offspring for the simple reason that the 'Kick Ass Mexican Grill' does indeed kick ass and I really wish I'd sampled it earlier.

The formula is the same as that which has been copied by Tortilla. You choose your meat and rice and veg and salsa and they wrap it up in a big, err, wrap, and you're tucking in within seconds. Simple.

Fresh, fresh, fresh

It's classic street food and fairly good value at £5.95 - certainly given the choice between a substandard burger and a good buritto at a similar price, I know which one I'd plump for, and that might explain why Daddy Donkey typically sports a lengthy queue, while Boom Burger can serve you straight away.

 
Sometimes when things are assembled 'fresh', the components taste anything but, having been lying around all day, but this isn't the case here. The charcoally flavour in the burgers is nowhere to be found, and the grilled beef here is lean, tender and nicely seasoned. 

It would be tasty enough on it's own, but it's even better with the accoutrements of sour cream and salsa - which comes at a temperature of your choosing, though even the 'medium' version is actually fairly hot. 


While the beef is probably best, you can also choose from pork or chicken, and the number of possible combinations available, depending on what exactly you want on it, is almost beyond calculation.

Beany Breakfast burritos are available from 7 to 11 AM, when the lunch service takes over. They pack up at 4 PM, sometimes earlier.

That'll do, Donkey, that'll do

For my money the quality of the food is superior to the Tortilla chain and the portion is a tad more generous. Then again, Boom burger is a one off, run by the same people, and yet it's notably inferior to chains like Byron and Haché, so there are no hard and fast rules.

I could admit now that 'Jedi' is actually my favourite Star Wars film, but then I'd probably get beaten up by somebody, or force-fed Boom Burgers or something...

Where to find it

Daddy Donkey
Leather Lane

Clerkenwell,
EC1N 7TE
*********
Boom Burger

Leather Lane

Clerkenwell,
EC1N 7TE
********* 

Ben's Boston Baked Beans - a recipe to try before it's too late

I’m sure it’s frightfully un-English, but I don’t go in for much of this ‘fretting about the weather’ nonsense.

Sometimes it’s hot, sometimes it’s cold, sometimes it rains, occasionally it snows. Big fucking deal. And it annoys me when people start faffing about with different clothing’n’shit according to the season, which are approximate guidelines at best anyway. 

'Ooh, I've got to take some long sleeves just in case it gets nippy'... 'I'll put it in my bag because they say it's going to be hot on Sunday'... 'I can't wear those shoes, it's only March!'... Silly, faffing twats.

No, I just wear the same clothes all year round, just with a jacket on top between about October and April. Easy.

I have no strong preference for either rain or shine or hot or cold climates (apart from an enjoyment of brisk, overcast mornings when the heavenly canvas is a consistent off-white as far as the eye can see, and it feels like the world has fallen out of the sky, obviously) but food is a slightly different beast.

'Tis the season

There are, it has to be said, some sorts of food that do just taste better when it’s cold, and others that are cut out for balmy, Summer days.

There aren’t many, mind. Most dishes can be happily consumed all year round, and don’t let anybody tell you any different, but in the case of rich, hearty stews and casseroles, and indeed Ben’s Boston Baked Beans, what I done cooked last night, you really want to be enjoying them now, before the cold weather runs out!

I first published my BBB recipe on the anchovy fans Facebook group, which remains to this day the only food group I’ve set up whose membership has actually expanded significantly.

In goes the beer - only a few hours to go!

Yes, it contains anchovies. Baked beans with anchovies, pork, maple syrup and various other seemingly incongruous ingredients.

Like most stew recipes, it's incredibly flexible. I used haricot and borlotti beans last night, but you can substitute with maybe cannelini or black-eyed beans if you prefer. You could even use a tin of normal 'baked beans' in an emergency, though the results aren't as good and you don't want to dilute your sauce with Mr. Heinz variety.

Be aware that to enjoy this dish at it's best, you need to cook it for a minimum of two hours, ideally substantially longer!

Ben's Boston Baked Beans

Ingredients - makes four decent servings

Haricot Beans, one tin, drained
Borlotti Beans, one tin, drained
Belly of pork, about half a pound or 4-5 big rashers, cut into bite-sized chunks

Smoked bacon, about 6 rashers, as above

Anchovy fillets, a few

Onions, a couple large or a few small, chopped

Tomatoes, about 6 average size, chopped

Red Pepper, a large one, chopped
Chestnut mushrooms, a few, chopped

Garlic

Cumin

Chilli Powder 

Wholegrain Mustard 
Worcestershire Sauce

Tabasco  

Maple Syrup  

Black pepper 

Paprika

Dark Beer - old ale, stout or porter

Method

Take a big pan with a lid, and heat the excess oil from your anchovy fillets (not the fish, just the oil), and use it to brown your pork. After a few minutes add the bacon, onions, garlic and cumin - you want the pork fat to go crispy and the onions to start caramelising. Towards the end of this process, put your peppers and anchovies in there too.

Once it's all basically cooked (though not overcooked), you chuck in the beans and everything else and mix it all up. The quantities will depend on your personal taste - for a sweeter sauce, more maple syrup, for a hotter version, more tabasco etc.

The important thing is that you put the lid on and cook the whole thing on a very low heat for at least a couple of hours. If it ever gets too dry, add a little more beer.

If you've got the balance right, it will all reduce to a delicious thick, sticky sauce that's sweet and salty and hot in just the right ratios (which, to some extent, you can determine). The beans and pork will have absorbed the flavours, and you've got some fucking excellent food right there.

You could transfer the whole thing to a casserole and cook in the oven if you prefer. Or even cook in a straw box, or underground, or whatever slow-cooking method you prefer.

Once it's done, you can eat it on it's own, or maybe with a large baked potato, or some fresh sourdough bread. It's all good. If you've got some left over the next day it will still be nice when re-heated, so buy some chips from the chip shop and pour the beans on top, why don't you?

To drink with it - almost anything. Maybe some of the beer you used?

No place like home - my Romania and Hungary-moon

Well, she didn't abandon me at the altar, nor did our plane explode on take-off whilst whisking us away on our honeymoon (both of which are things I actually worried about, being the neurotic slice of toast that I frequently am) so I've returned alive to these shores, and this blog, a married gentleman.

The second cake we cut that day!

Yes, yes, I accept your well-wishes. Gifts in the post please. Thank you.

If you like beer, champagne and curry, you'll have loved our wedding. And wedding cake too. We managed to wangle not one but two of them.

Every guest I've spoken to has remarked that the quality of the food from Premier Rouge was simply fantastic, and it was a fitting menu for a brilliant day.

Brilliant and exhausting, mind, and I don't know whose bright idea it was to book a 9 AM flight the very next morning to take us away on our honeymoon to the Far East. Of Europe.

Ro-Mania

Romania is part of Eastern Europe that really hasn’t opened up much to Anglican tourism yet, particularly in early February when it's several degrees below freezing and everywhere is covered in snow and ice. Few natives speak English, even in central Bucharest, and the ski resorts to the North, and the whole place still feels surprisingly Soviet, which all adds up to an interesting destination for honeymoonal adventures...

Traditional Romanian food isn’t exactly reknowned as one of the world’s great cuisines, and some of the stuff we ate while exploring the streets of Bucharest and castles of Transylvania was indeed pretty ropey, especially the plain fried fish dishes, and the tendency to serve gloopy polenta with almost everything.

But there were some highlights; Caru cu bere is a decent restaurant in central Bucharest, ornate and cavernous, and specialising in their native food,  and we enjoyed a couple of meals there both before and after our mini tour around the region.

March of the kitchen staff

A quite bizarre event happened there on our first night when, at 9 PM, all the waiters, chefs and everybody else working at the place suddenly downed tools and paraded around the restaurant to marching band music, while the regular diners applauded and visitors like us looked on, utterly bemused!

One of the staples of Romanian menus is the bacon and bean soup, often served in a bread bowl, though it has to be said that the bread itself was often pretty manky and perhaps not as freshly baked as it might be.

It's a pity, because soups and stews feature strongly on the menus of Romania, and some nice soft bread to mop them up would have gone down a treat. Part of the joy was the surprise when ordering a traditional Romanian stew and never knowing exactly what it would contain, though it's usually some combination of beef, pork, bacon and sometimes bits of sausage, in a tomatoey or mushroomy sauce. Which makes for perfectly acceptable food.

Also prominent are cheese and and cold meat platters, ideal for snacking on and a good accompaniment to an evening of drinking and smoking Sobranies, smoking in bars and restaurants still very much a part of life over there, of course.

The most interesting cheeses are the Blue Rocfort (the good news is that it's pretty much the same as Roquefort, and every bit as tasty) and the bark-smoked Brânza de burduf. Meat products include pigs intestine sausages, various pates, and cured lard, which lacks the heavy spicing of Northern European versions and therefore seems like a not particularly pleasant way to ingest high proportions of fat!

A little observation: Chicken is almost non-existent on Romanian menus, with the notable exception of their livers which are widely available - sauteéd, deep-fried, and served as a thin paté with cheeses and salads - which rather makes you wonder what they do with the remainder of the creatures!

We froze our cocks off

Pretty, but chilly

The Ice Hotel at Balea Lake seemed like a nice Romantic idea for a honeymoon at the time, but the reality is that it’s extremely cold and once you’ve got over the novelty of everything being made from ice, and half-way up an inescapable mountainside, there really isn’t a whole lot to do, other than go inside the non-Ice hotel owned by the same people to eat, drink and warm up.  



We were the only people staying, and thank God we were only spending one night of the tour there!

Outside of the vaguely happening Bucharest, their food is, for the most part, rather bland and indifferent, though the hot smoked sausage did the job when it was cold outside, which was all the time, and I experienced for the first time, the surprising joys of Rum Tea, which is, as one might expect, just hot black tea with a tot of rum in it.

Smoky and Sausagey

But leaving the Ice Hotel behind was a relief, and Romania itself isn't a place we'd hurry back to, though it was a brilliant experience.

It's not really a country for serious drinking. The nation's domestic beer is largely limited to a few brands (Silva, Ursus and Ciuc are the most widespread) and these are brewed by multinationals anyway. Go for the porterish 'dark' or 'black' versions if you can, or Ciuc unfiltered as these have more flavour than the fizzy pale lagers.

Around Bran Castle, home to Vlad Dracule, you can buy 'Transylvanian' wine, only it's actually imported from neighbouring Bulgaria, which is probably a good thing, but it's not a Romanian thing.


Fly Malev

Incidentally, my fear of flying notwithstanding, if you’re planning on going somewhere in Europe and using Budapest as a hub, you can do a lot worse than flying Malev Hungarian Airlines.

No, really.

Zero queuing time for check-in and baggage-drop at every stage of the journey meant more time spent eating and drinking before the flight, and that’s got to be a good thing.

(If you do fly Malev, be sure to choose the ‘peanuts’ snack option on the plane rather than the ‘chocolate’, which turned out to be a gruesome Hungarian wafer thing, like an old stale Taxi or Blue Riband bar, thinly coated in dark cooking chocolate!)

Hungry in Hungary?

So, anyway, having survived the Arctic conditions in Romania, and been wise enough to eschew 'chocolate' in favour of peanuts on the flight this time, we stopped off in Budapest for a couple of nights on the way back and found it an altogether more Westernised and civilised place – with the possible exemption of Memento Park which is just, well, weird!

At a mere one degree below freezing and with no snow on the ground, Hungary is a tropical paradise compared to Romania. We found a couple of restaurants near our hotel which were outstanding, and though I have no Hungarian benchmark to compare them against, never having been to the country before, I’d highly recommend both

It’s worth noting that prices in Budapest are close to those in London, whereas Romania is still quite reminiscent of the golden days when everything in Eastern Europe cost peanuts to us – you can have a beer in a bar for little more than one of the King’s pounds, and substantial main dishes in restaurants are about £4. But the food in Budapest was also vastly superior and worth the price differential, it has to be said, and Hungarian portions are notably larger to boot.

Arany Bárány (the Golden Sheep) is a cosy and intimate place, classy and unassuming, apart from the resident fiddler who assumes that you’ll buy his CD if he serenades you for long enough.

(Which we did, largely because I tried to catch him out by asking him to play Bartók then Lizst then Kodály, which he did, and I couldn’t think of any more Hungarian composers after that!)

The food seems to be pretty authentic and traditional Hungarian and damn good at that. As in Romania, they’re big on soups, and I had to try a genuine goulash, which was thinner, soupier and more startery than I expected, but with a good hit of paprika. Mrs. Ben Viveur’s pheasant and quails egg soup was meaty and flavoursome too.

Arany Bárány’s main courses, at least the ones that we sampled, are superb too. The stag stew with potato doughnuts was less gamey than one might expect; rich and flavoursome with the meat oh so tender.

Rustic lamb dishes are the speciality of the house, and my meatballs stuffed with Ewes’ cheese were gooey and well spiced, almost kofte-like, with a hearty tomato and onion sauce, rice and a few slices of fresh orange.

Given these generous platefuls we really needn’t have ordered the side of rosemary potatoes, but they were so perfectly cooked and seasoned, we’re glad that we did.

As if things couldn’t get any better, the chocolate crepe dessert was incredible – with an intense, dark cocoa sauce on top, and a moussy hazelnut butter filling inside the pancake.

All in all, one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, and that’s high praise indeed from me.

Boom & Brass

Of course, the temptation was go right back to Arany Bárány again the following night – our last in Budapest – but there are so many other places to try in this delicious world of ours and only so many evenings in which to try them.

A big fuck-off pan of Hungarian meat

Just a few minutes walk away, right by Vorosmarty Ter. Station on Budapest’s historic first metro line, is Boom & Brass, a thoroughly modern brasserie offering a contemporary take on traditional Hungarian cuisine.

This was perhaps the silver or bronze to the previous evening’s Golden Sheep, but the food was good nonetheless.

The fish goulash offered an interesting twist on Hungary’s national dish, and their garlic spinach was a scrummy side, but the real talking point was the conspicuously huge set plate for two, which included duck leg, pork medallions, various skewers of meat, and velvety, melt-in-the-mouth duck foie grois, along with whole roast potatoes and a medley of vegetables, all presented in a giant pan.

Deeply satisfying, all of it, and proof surely that there are many worse places in the world to eat out than Budapest.

If you really must, you can even round off your meal with a small glass of Unicum (and, trust me, you’ll only want a small glass) which purports to be Hungary’s national drink. An astringent, herbal concoction, it’s almost revolting enough to make your palette forget how delicious the dinner was. Almost.

We brought some back as a souvenir, just so people would think we had a less enjoyable honeymoon than we actually did!

And so, it’s back to real world, and my new life as a married Ben Viveur. Now, if you’ll excuse me, this has been a long, long post, and I suspect it’s time to go and prepare some pancetta and sweet pepper linguine for my wife. Coming, dear...

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.