Better beerfests and Big bears in Battersea

Following my comments the other day about Batemans brewery making some great strides forward, I should probably conserve some of the same breath to mention last weeks Battersea Beer Festival, another once sickly patient showing great signs of life and strength.

Because it was the closest one to where I grew up, Battersea was one of the first beer festivals I ever attended, and consequently became one of the first I got a bit disillusioned with.

OK, a lot disillusioned with. And probably with due cause.

Set in a small space within the Battersea Arts Centre, it would often fill to capacity, meaning a lengthy queue outside. And when you got inside there would only be a few beers on, mostly bland, boring, mainstream stuff that you could drink in greater comfort in a pub just down the road anyway.

Sometimes you wouldn't even get in - turned away after 45 minutes standing outside in the cold, because they'd run out of beer. I remember one occasion when they let people in for free because the only beers on were Young's Ordinary and Winter Warmer or something. It really wasn't much of a festival.

And so some years I wouldn't bother with Battersea at all.

This is all going back a few years, mind. I don't know if CAMRA's National Executive put them on special measures or something, but, last week's fest suggested that Battersea have completely turned things around.

Chocolate digestives and black pepper - in beer

When I first started properly drinking beer, Batemans were one of my very favourite breweries. Valiant, XXXB and Salem Porter were all music to my teenaged tastebuds, and the one-off Jawbreaker, brewed with hard toffee, was my favourite beer of 1996.

I even immortalised Batemans XB in a rather ghastly poem I wrote as a student:

"'Quintuple rum and black', said she.
It came to twelve pounds twenty-three
Including, of course, a pint for me
(of Batemans XB)"

The only other verse I remember is:

"Said he, 'this bird's with me tonight.
We'll settle this outside - ALRIGHT?!?'
And out of me he kicked the shite
(I lost the fight)"

I like to think that the quality of both my writing and my nights out have improved since then!

Pepys' cheese on toast

One of the loveliest foodie images of all time is that of Samuel Pepys burying his cheese when the Great Fire of London started.

I'm sure he did his bit helping to evacuate the women and children or whatever, but I just love the idea that his hunk of Parmesan was of such profound importance to him that he was damned if he'd allow it to melt away in some nasty fire.

Truly a man of high principle and considered priority!

Anchovy-fried Crostini with Parmesan shavings

Nobody really knows why Parmesan was so significant in Pepys' day, just that it was. Experts have theorised that Parmesan may have been used as a generic seasoning in place of salt, and added to meals to make them taste, well, nicer.


Our Sammy wouldn't have been sprinkling it on Spag Bol or Risotto which were still centuries away from London's menus, but clearly it was one of the most valuable and treasured imports at the time (some say more expensive than gold).

You can imagine the men of the late Renaissance tucking into big hunks of meat with some gently melting Parmesan on top, giving the flavour an umami boost. I'd hazard that they also whacked a bit in when making soups and stews.

Improved import channels with Parma mean that it's not so expensive these days and possibly not worth burying in the event of fire, but it's remarkable how Parmesan has stood the test of time.

We're still finding new things to sprinkle it on to make them taste even better - and here's a brand new recipe that does just that.

5:2 diet - the 2014 update

Hmm, so it's almost the end of January and I finally get around to blogging my first, err, blog of the year. Pretty lazy, even by my rather languid standards.

Alright, here's what happened:

Putting my life back together, following an unsuccessful Christmas, I disguised myself as a trio of travelling Italian chefs and worked my passage Southwards, wearing only a series of edible loinclothes, until I reached the Andes, having ceded over a quarter of my bodyweight to the elements along the way...

Perfectly convincing story, yes?

You fucking have it your way then. I'm blogging away now, aren't I?

And I promise you, I will be sharing a bunch of new recipes and reviews over the next couple of months. In the meantime though, I thought I'd respond to some of the correspondence I receive occasionally - specifically, all you chaps and chapesses who ask me how the Intermittent Fasting ('5:2') diet is going.

Not that I actually get a lot of correspondence, mind. More would be welcome. Please write to me, please, please, please...

Beer of the Year

So, it's New Years Eve, and given that we're going to be staying in tonight - cooking Boston Baked Beans, drinking champagne and polishing off the last of the Christmas cheese - it would appear that I've supped my last ales of 2013.

Which is possibly for the best, mind. It's certainly been quite a beery year for me, as I managed to tick over 1000 new real ales for the first time ever.

Many of them were passable, many were bland, some were downright unpleasant, and a few were fucking shit. Like liquidised sweaty scrotums and marmoset turds in a glass. Or 'crystal malt', as it's known in the brewing trade.

But what you want to know, I'm sure, is which beers were actually any bloody good. Because, some of them really were rather excellent.

So, these are the cask beers I ticked in 2013, to which I gave my highest possible score of 8/9. (OK, so 9/9 is theoretically achievable but I've only awarded it to two beers in my entire life, so fuck off!)

50% off all naked goose-fat massages - today only

So, it's nearly Christmas then, and I've been feeling like I ought to write some sort of a seasonal bloggette.

You know, festive spirit and snowflakes and goodwill beaming down upon the glans of humankind. That sort of thing.

But the sorry truth is that I haven't really come up with any new Christmassy recipes yet, and I already used the puntastic title 'Yule Blog' a few years back, and can't think of anything anywhere near as clever.

So you'll have to amuse yourselves and just pretend that I said something hilarious about cloves.

Utterly Paphotic

Having an e-Passport is great.

It means you can breeze through immigration at Gatwick in no time, whilst pointing and laughing at the suckers in the lengthy queue with their manual passports.

'So long, losers!' you get to say, as you merrily scan your way across the border and into the Arrivals Wetherspoons.

Of course, as the new e-passports are phased in, the balance will shift. Soon we'll start seeing queues, and then they'll be the same length as the non-e queues. One day the last remaining people with old fashioned documents will be having the last laugh when 99% of us are waiting in line to scan.

But for now, it's the golden age of the electonric passport, and I fully intend to savour the schadenfreude.