London's Burning (but dinner's OK)

Last week's beery adventures at the GBBF became hard work after a while, but it will go down as one of the greatest beer festivals of all time - I just needed a weekend to recover and take it easy on the alcohol front.

Well you would too if you'd spend four successive days relentlessly downing pint after pint, especially big Transatlantic fuckers like Clipper City Big DIPA (10%) and Amnesia Wonka Porter (?%).

But now it's back to normal - although a 'normal' where rioters are mindlessly setting fire to the capital so they can steal trainers - and I have to start cooking my own food rather than just picking up a tub of olives or a 20 inch bratwurst or a pork and stilton pie when I feel like it. 

Your starter for ten. Minutes.

The other day somebody pointed out that I rarely do recipes for starters, so to shut them the fuck up, here's a starter. Nah nah na-nah nah. You're wrong, WRONG I say. Go and loot Bejams or something, Sonny Jim. And relax...

GBBF 2011 - the BV Review

Little tip to everyone with murderous intent who has been offended by my controversial brand of journalism over the years - if you're looking for an opportunity to bump me off, this is the week when my movements will be utterly predictable.

 

The most exciting few days in the beer calendar are finally upon us, and I'll be spending every day at the GBBF. And if you like beer and are anywhere near London between now and Saturday, so should you!

Outside...

Last night's first night began with the Champion Beer of Britain announcement, which coincided with the beautiful feeling of putting my 'out of office' on and hitting the road - and by 'road' I mean 'Jubilee and District lines', obviously.

I won't be partaking of the overall winner, Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde Mild at the festival, simply because I've had it many times before and it was a staple of mine when living in East Anglia, but it's an interesting choice, and the award probably inspired me to incorporate some mild into my opening night's drinking.

It begins

With thirsty enthusiasm coarsing through my veins, I grabbed a pint from the bar nearest the entrance, recognising Rudgate Jorvik Blonde as a beer I'd seen at festivals previously but not got around to trying.

A low strength but fruity pale bitter seemed instinctively to be the best thing for quenching ones thirst and attaining instant refreshment, and I wasn't disappointed. An eminantly quaffable starter for ten, and I began to wander around the festival, 'casing the joint' as it were. (People planning to kill me - you'll need to do this too, so pay attention!) 

Inside!

Having been sceptical when the event moved from Olympia to Earl's Court, I have to admit that the new venue has grown on me, and it's sad to think that this will be the last GBBF here before the vast hall in all its concretey glory is demolished. I've got used to the layout, and will miss it not being like this.

I like the interesting, triangley shape of the venue too - a little like a Ram's Head (which would have been useful free advertising for Youngs before they pretty much abandoned the Ram motif) or perhaps even a taperingly thick cock and balls.

I went to one of the bars in the 'left testicle' to get my next pint, and successfully concluded some unfinished business.

At last year's GBBF I was drinking silver award winner, Amber Chocolate Orange Stout and very tasty it was too. Like a chocolate orange in a glass of beer.

Trouble is, I spilled my pint half-way through, and when I went back to the bar to get another half, they had sold out. Arggh.

Chocolate Orange Stout

I should explain at this point that for a beer to count, I feel I need to drink at least one pint, or whatever the largest available measure is, so without the rest of my drink, I couldn't count it as a tick. I'd been waiting a full year to enjoy the chocolatey, orangey goodness again and finally be able to say I've had full measure.

Yeah, I know. I'm a sad, anal twat who gets hung up on self-imposed rules'n'shit. The beer is delicious though.

As a 'ticker', the event for me is largely about drinking as many new beers as I possibly can, so I hit the CAMRA member's lounge to enjoy the stout and check the festival programme against my records to identify beers I fancied and make sure I hadn't had them before. A Tweet from Fuller's brewery gave me some food for thought too.

I tried Sadler's 'The Spig' which is another tasty and easy-drinking blonde ale, and grabbed some of the legendary pork scratchings from the crusty pie company - surely the best-tasting and most natural pig fat snacks in the world (and their pies are damn good too).

My fourth beer was a bit special, not least because it's extremely rare and very strong. As the tweet explained, Fuller's 'Brewer's Reserve No. 3 - Whisky cask' was only available for a limited period of an hour or so, and was only sold in third-of-a-pint measures, which means I only had to drink a third to count it, but I'd have happily drunk more - the whisky notes were incredible.

Food

One of my plans this year was also to check out as much of the huge range of food as I possibly could, and the seafood stall intrigued me, offering a range of cockles, mussels, prawns, squid etc. with seafood sauce - the kind of stuff that you used to get from a van outside pubs but now hardly ever see, except by the seaside.

I had a little snack-sized tub of the mixed seafood cocktail and it brought back memories of eating seafood and drinking beer in old Leigh on Sea. Obviously, it had to be a dark beer to accompany this, and White Dog 'Born to be Mild' didn't disappoint. 

Interestingly though, the White Dog brewery is actually in Italy, and is the only Italian brewery that regularly produces real ales - another rarity on the tick list. Roasty and strong (for a mild) it drank more like a stout, which made it a natural bedfellow for the seafood.

Brewdog might have lost their brewery stand, but nobody would have noticed - and one of the more intriguing brewery stands was for 'William Worthington' - the Worthington's brand that was run into the ground by Bass during the 90s and 00s but which seems to be set for a revival under the Coors group who have brought Worthington home to Burton on Trent, using the old Bass Museum brewery. 

Some of the beers on the stand haven't existed for many years - Worthington 'E', famous in the 1960s, and a cask version of the famous bottled 'White Shield'. I'll be trying these later in the week, but I went for the Mild, last available regularly in cask form in the 70s I believe.   

It certainly isn't as tasty and complex as the Italian take on the style, or indeed Dark Star's excellent Victorian Ruby Mild (6%) which I had in Wetherspoons the other day, but as a snapshot of the kind of milds our fathers and grandfathers might have drunk in the middle of the last century, it's a classic example.

Wanting something more substantial to eat, I tried the intriguing 'Beef and Scrumpy' pastie from 'Proper Cornish Pasties' and, unlike most of the food and drink at the festival, it was, it has to be said, pretty awful.

Beef and Cider DOES NOT WORK. I've yet to try a single dish in which those flavours have successfully gone together. Beef and Ale, yes. Pork and Cider, yes. But beef just doesn't complement cider any more than it complements white wine.

So I left half my pasty, and though I quite felt like another beer or two, I decided to call it quits and pace myself, knowing that there is a whole week of drinking ahead of me.

That was last night, I'm now off to begin a second day of drinking. and realising that I didn't get around to trying a single American beer last night, I think I know which bar I'll be mostly hanging around today.

So, snipers, come to Earls Court and take your pop shots at me. Just wait until the end of the week so I can down a few more beers, OK? 

The Great British Beer Festival runs until Saturday

Where to find it...

The Great British Beer Festival

Earls Court Exhibition Centre, 

SW5 9TA

*********

Who kept the Dogs out?

I'm still counting the days to the GBBF, and there aren't too many of them remaining now, though judging by the overblown reaction from some to the news that Brewdog won't be there, I'm starting to wonder if I'll have Earl's Court all to myself!

It goes like this: Brewdog, provocatively book bar space at the festival, then get involved in an argument whether the beer they'll be supplying is real or keg, and whether their keg beer can actually technically qualify as real ale anyway. They withhold payment and continue arguing right up until the deadline for getting the floorplan printed, then suddenly stop arguing and pay up - just after the final deadline passes. Possibly deliberately so they can whinge about CAMRA.

But what is this really all about?

Reasons to be cheerful

• Greggs' Helen didn't win The Apprentice and can go back to being a PA to a rubbish pie magnate
• The food at the Lambeth Country Show set new standards for International eclecticness, and
• The beer list for the American cask ale bar at GBBF has been released and it's fucking awesome. And only two weeks away. The GBBF is my favourite event of the beer year, and there will of course be a live(ish) Ben Viveur report comin' atcha from Earl's Court on the opening night, if I'm still standing after drinking 'Palate Wrecker Double IPA' (9.5% ABV!) or 'Brewmaster Flash and the Furious Five Hops' (at a mere 8% a drink suitable only for girls and gays).

Can't. Fucking. Wait.

I'm Fired?

Well, I didn't go along this morning to my interview with Sir Alan - or more likely some fresh-faced Broadcast Assistant, or whatever the BBC calls their junior staff these days - and I don't feel too bad about it.

It became clear a couple of days ago that I really wouldn't be able to muster the energy or inclination to fill out a second, longer application, update my CV, get my hair cut, purchase a new suit, trim my beard, and get up early in the morning just for the privilege of standing around in a studio with an imperial tonne of wannabe executive salescunts, so I spent yesterday evening relaxing and cooking Gnocchi and Pancetta-stuffed peppers rather than frantically preparing for inevitable disappointment. Good decision.

I'm 'leaving the process' earlier than most, I know, and I won't have the honour of being humiliated on TV by the terrier-like Amstrad peer, but will the winning candidate know how to cook this dish? Will they fuck.

It's a tasty little candidate with an impressive resume of ingredients, optimised for today's appetites. The rich tomatoey sauce is a USP that achieves cut-through with key demographics... OK, I'll stop talking twat. Here's the recipe:

Gnocchi and Pancetta-stuffed peppers

Ingredients - per pepper (two with sauce is an ample main course)

A whole pepper, any colour you choose

You're Fried! (The gnocchi, that is)

Pancetta cubes, a handful
Fresh Gnocchi, a handful
Black Pepper

Butter

Grated Fresh Parmesan

(for the tomato sauce)

A tomato, finely chopped

Onion, 1/2 a small one, finely chopped

Garlic, finely chopped

Capers, a few

Mushroom Ketchup, a splash

Black Pepper

Basil

Oregano

Paprika

Red wine

Olive oil

Method

First thing we're gonna do is make the sauce, so heat the oil in a sautee pan, and fry your onion and garlic until they soften, then add in all your other ingredients, cover, and leave to simmer on a low heat. If gets too dry, add more wine.

Once the sauce has had at least half an hour, ideally 45 minutes, you can cut the tops off your peppers, remove the seeds and whack them in an oven at about 150 degrees for 20 minutes or so.

While the sauce and the peppers are coming along nicely, it's time to fry your pancetta cubes in good quality butter until they are pinky-white throughout. Add more butter and throw the gnocchi in. Gnocchi does NOT need to be boiled in water. Frying it in butter gives you a lovely fluffy consistency and it will absorb the pancetta juices too.

Keep stirring the gnocchi around throughout, and once it starts to fluff up, turn the heat off and add a little black pepper and a good sprinkling of fresh Parmesan to the pan. Toss it all around so the Parmesan melts and sticks to the gnocchi, making it all cheesy and gooey.

All that's left to do now is take the peppers out of the oven, fill them with the gnocchi and pancetta, sprinkle a little more parmesan on top, then return them to the oven for exactly 4 minutes, 33 seconds. You can listen to the John Cage piece to ensure you get the timing exactly right.

We're now ready to plate up, so whack a couple of peppers on the plate and serve the rich tomatoey sauce in a generous puddle by the side.

Enjoy!

Lord Sugar rush

There’s something about the pressures of impending deadlines that causes a rush of blood to ones head.

The deadline for applications for the next series of The Apprentice was midnight on Sunday, and so of course, late on Sunday evening the sense of ‘window of opportunity closing’ become unbearable, and Mrs B-V and I both filled in our application forms online in the nick of time a la Indiana Jones.

Much to our amazement, we've both made it to the initial interview stage too. I’ve no idea how many candidates make the shortlist, but we’ve been invited to don suits and show up at some TV studio for three hours next week… and it’s already sounding less appealing.

Thing is, I watch the show, but I do so from the ‘what complete tossers!?!’ perspective. While I’d quite enjoy the opportunity to lend the process a personality that’s a little different to the clones that usually turn out for these things, I’ve been asking myself:

Do I really want to be stuck in a house with a bunch of duplicitous, manipulative backstabbing desperados for eight weeks?

The height of new technology...

Do I really want to be awakened at ridiculous’o’clock in the morning and be forced to wear a suit all day while people use terms like ‘target market’ and ‘bottom line’?

Do I really want to start a new business, in partnership with the man who thought the Amstrad Emailer Plus was a viable technology product, who was pretty much saved from ruin by the extremely fortuitous digibox contract with Sky TV right before they took off, and who has given money to both Tottenham Hotspur and the Labour Party?!?.

Yes, I’m sure I’d be a ‘character’ on the show, and in the unlikely event that I won, I could cobble together some kind of food/drink-oriented business model - possibly a microbrewery for schoolchildren, or some kind of Risotto consultancy, but my passion would to create damn good, tasty stuff no matter what, and that would be a sticking point I’m sure.

Sir Alan, or whatever we’re meant to call him these days, would no doubt insist on all manner of business process, marketing wank, profit margineering and sales tossership that would kill anything inspirationally delicious that I could bring to the business.

The Enemy Without

Current favourite for this series, Helen Milligan works in the ‘food industry’ – what a ghastly term – as an Executive Assistant to a very important Chief Exec, but she’s been notably quiet about the exact identity of the company she works for - probably because it's Greggs.

The same Greggs who have flooded our high streets with the most horrible, unhealthy, margariney pastry products imaginable. The same Greggs who took over and shut down the Bakers Oven chain and replaced them with more Greggs.

Cheap and nasty barely begins to describe them and, by extension, arguably, their people.

I hate the Greggs chain and everything they stand for, for the same reasons I hate InBev and Cadburys and Coca-Cola – it’s all about the business of exploiting stupid people with no taste, with complete disregard for genuine quality.

And I don't rate Greggs Helen all that highly anyway, even if Sir Alan does.

So, I might show up on Tuesday, and I might not. It’ll largely depend on how much effort it will require, and effort is far better spent on achieving a silky consistency in one's roux than in filling out forms and buying new clothes.

If I do get past the next stage, the researchers will read this blog and I’ll be instantly ruled out for online impudence towards Lord Sugar anyway.

‘On the Wharf’ no more

Leaving New York wasn’t easy for REM, and Sheryl crow was indifferent to leaving Las Vegas. Now it’s my turn to muse on an imminent departure. And beer. And pubs named after Prime Ministers. Oh, and hotdogs. 'Gourmet' hotdogs. Hmm...

I can’t pretend I’m ecstatic about the fact that I’ll be leaving Canary Wharf in October when the organisation for whom I work relocates to Holborn. 

Longer, more expensive, more crowded commutes unarguably suck, and the move will have significant ramifications for this little blog. It still feels like I’ve barely licked the outer crust of the myriad food outlets around this place, and I’m always finding new places to eat.

Like the Gourmet Hotdog Company stand that just opened up. Of which more, presently.

At least the after-work drinking opportunities will be better in Holborn. I'll need beer to fortify myself for a long journey home surrounded by suited cocks... and interchanging at Bank. Ugh.