La Cage Imaginaire

 It was a dark friday evening when The Critic and I ventured out in search of food.  No tables were free in any of the pubs on the main road so we ducked down a side alley as it began to drizzle.  Light reflecting off the rain-wet cobbled street caught our eye and we looked up to see a small restaurant.  One quick satisfactory perusal of the menu board later and we were inside, finding to our delight that they had a table free.

A small time after sitting down and shaking of coats, umbrellas, gloves etc, we realised that this would be an ideal location for some light romancing: French cuisine; candlelight; a rose on the table; some light classical music..it didn't even feel as cliched as it sounds.  We laughed and moved on with suitably gallic shrugging of shoulders; the only love that was in the air for us was that of a hefty gossipy catch-up over great food and drink.

And so the story of serendipity continues.. The grilled halloumi with fig, pecans, cherry tomatoes and rocket worked so well.  It was the first time in the UK that I have tasted fresh figs that live up to their syrupy, delicately sweet promise.  The halloumi oozed with buttery goodness and provided a good textural contrast to the crunch of the pecans and the vegetables.  Balsamic vinegar may be ubiquitous but there's a reason for that: done properly it really enhances and links together sweet/bitter/fruit/acid tastes.  The Critic's scallops also got a very good review, but memory doesn't serve well enough to expand on this theme.

The house wines were confidently tipped by The Critic as "bound to be good; it's a French Restaurant."  The 2009 Marsanne-Sauvignon we enjoyed with our starters was perfect for a house wine- easy to drink but with enough fruit and mineral edge to keep us focussed on the taste.

We both had goose breast for the Main Course. A potentially dry cut from a potentially very fatty bird, the result was very pleasing, not at all dry with delicious crispy skin and solid dark-meat flavour complemented well by red cabbage with apricots and raisins.  The accompanying potatoes dauphinoise were gloriously rich but with distinct egginess.  It says a lot that both The Critic and I were still content to eat them as neither of us is a particular fan of eggs.  

Throughout the meal our chat was littered with comments about how outrageously good the food was, and two heads (with similar standards) are better judges than one.  It worked well for recession dining too, at £30 per head for two courses with wine. The food was 10/10; with the restaurant scoring 9/10 overall.  The only concrete fault I can comment on was over-attentive service with The Critics empty plate being removed while I was still eating my last mouthful.http://www.la-cage-imaginaire.co.uk/

MasterChef Live: The stand that was in the top 1.

Take the fun of trying a new culinary item, multiply it until it fills a large hall, then add a MasterChef show.   I found there was too much going on to actually concentrate on the live show, but in my quest for the hits, misses and maybes among the stands I could live with that.

My top find of the day wasn’t actually edible (or otherwise imbibable) but scores a perfect 10/10.  Used to using cheap, bendy, cutting-at-bizarrely-unintended-angle type knives, I was keen to try out some knives that worked.  Kin Knives (http://www.kinknives.com) had a stand, with their knives on display and a chance to put them through their paces.  The geek streak in me had a dim recollection from chemistry levels about the use of carbon steel for sharp blades, so after a brief similarly geeky chat with the stall holder about laminated steels vs carbon steel vs other tech specs that I have forgotten,  I tried out their carbon steel vegetable knife.

The knife felt amazingly well balanced in my hand, and I forced myself to stay objective to assess how well it cut.  Having got half a tomato skin side up on a chopping board, I gave the edge of the blade the merest suggestion of pressure, and with none of the slippage or resistance usually experienced cutting tomatoes with a non-serrated knife, the blade whispered through the flesh of the tomato, and a small way into the chopping board too.  Effortlessly perfect.   If I can make a knive perform like that, I can only imagine what someone properly trained in knifemanship could do- dreams of silk scarves being thrown into the air and severed mid-flight with a flick of the wrist…

 In the interests of fairness, I also tried out some ceramic knives.  They were good, exceptional even,  but compared to the Kin knife they were like Ikea’s shoddiest.

Oh I was tempted to invest in that knife, and a beautiful stone on which to sharpen it.  The thought of the practicalities of temporary accommodation intervened, but make no mistake, I have found my dream knife.

G and D Ice Cream cafe Oxford.

Good coffee is always welcome.  Good coffee served in an independent café which bills itself as an Ice Cream Café has me salivating at the world of coffee break opportunities.

I have The Geek God to thank for introducing me to G & D's Ice Cream Café- The Geek God has similar priorities to me when it comes to food and drink so I knew it was going to be good.

The Geek God also tipped me off to the fact that they make Stout flavour ice cream.  Naturally this set my curiosity meter to 'high'- would this work? would it be good? if the stout flavours included coffee, would it be a match made in heaven with an Americano? or would I be disappointed and wish I had gone for chocolate ice cream and an overall mocha taste theme?

The first sensation was unsurprisingly a hit of icy smoothness, followed by a definite hoppy tang, with underlying bitterness, and a pervasive creaminess (again unsurprisingly).  I was impressed, the combination of ice cream and stout worked very well even if it did lack the predicted coffee flavours.  That was amply made up for by my coffee which was obviously made from freshly ground beans and served at my perfect strength. Taking a sip of coffee before the ice cream also left heat in my mouth to help melt the ice cream...mmmm.

I'm also left wondering whether a grown-up ice cream float would work, replacing the lemonade with stout.  I will try this out in miniature on some willing friends and report back!

So 9/10 for G&D's, with their excellent food and drinks complemented by a relaxed yet buzzing atmosphere, complete with the scattering of self-consciously cool/studious people you'd expect in Oxford: essay crises via Jack Wills.

This is the website for G&D's:
http://gdcafe.com/FrontPage/frontPage.htm

Marks and Spencer Salted Caramel Chocolate

Having spotted this by the checkout at M&S I knew I had to buy some to greedily devour taste test and blog about as a purely scientific exercise.  Any sweet food which contains a salty or savoury element immediately fires my imagination and taste buds, so I was already enthusiastic about this before I even tried some.  Being M&S too, I was expecting it to be not just any caramel chocolate, but an M&S caramel chocolate.  It didn't disappoint in this respect, being far removed from what is probably it's nearest mass market relation, Cadbury's Caramel.

The bar was 100g, or 12 generous squares (large squares are probably required for a flattish bar with a liquid filling to work).  The chocolate itself was excellent.  It broke with an agreeably crisp snap and melted very smoothly in my mouth.  It reminded me of swiss chocolate though I am sure if it was it would have been blazoned on the pack.  I will return to the flavour of the chocolate later.  

The caramel was quite runny, although again this may be a practical requirement given the dimensions of the bar.  I feel that a chewier caramel adds more textural interest, and a cube or sphere of caramel is my ideal as it is easier for the caramel to shine and the chocolate to play a supporting role rather than the other way around, which was the case here.  I am aware, however, that my mental archetype of a salted caramel is from Galler (http://www.galler.com/index.php).  That was a definite 10/10 when I tasted it- alas, in pre-blogging days- and has inevitably suffered from mental exaggeration of its awesomeness so I try to remind myself not to compare others to it, but I just can't help it.

Back now to the UK in 2010.  The caramel in the M&S version has a perceptible but subtle amount of salt which works well in highlighting the buttery element of the flavour, and by some kind of synaesthetic trick also enhances the smooth mouth feel of the caramel.  Despite this I can't help but feel that if you're going for a salted caramel it's worth really nailing your colours to the mast and going for a more prominence with the salt. I think I'd have to try an salted caramel that overdid it with the salt before I could specify what the happy medium would be.

The chocolate was sweet, and I wondered if it could do with being a bit darker, before realising that the chocolate does need to be sweet to be able to stand up to all the sugar in the caramel. 

This bar has a beautiful, lingering aftertaste of caramel which I absolutely loved, and thus had to chase by eating another square.  Health warning: the huge sweetness of this bar creeps up slowly but after about 6 squares, wow you are aware of it.  

Verdict: a solid 7/10.

Thinking about both  this bar and about lime-tequila-salt shots, I wonder whether salt a) makes things feel smoother in the mouth and b) prolongs a smooth aftertaste. 

Worcestershire Pearmain Apple

Autumn is here. Summer is wonderful, and I have no complaints when September has Indian Summer weather and the carefree summer vibe can linger on. That said, I do love the cosiness of autumn and find a kind of security in the rhythm of autumn days- the best kind of a back-to-school feeling despite being well past school age, with the added promise of evenings curled around a bottle of red wine and snuggling up against the cold.  Part of this romantic ideal of autumn for me is apple season.  I eat at least one apple every day throughout the year but admit that a fair proportion of these are imported from the reliable sun of South Africa when apples are out of season over here.  Now that it's mid-September, however, there is no excuse for such flagrant disregard of food miles.

I stumbled across several different varieties of English apples in the greengrocer's last week and selected one that appealed visually (and didn't yield to a gentle check of firmness..) This was the Worcestershire Pearmain.  Moderately sized and red and green-skinned, these are known for their strawberry flavour; see http://www.orangepippin.com/apples/worcester-pearmain for more details.

I only found out about the strawberry in the course of researching this post, but I did  taste floral and red fruit elements in this variety of apple.  The flesh was relatively crisp- to give an indication of where it falls in terms of red apples I'd say not as crisp as a Braeburn but crisper than your average Pink Lady.  It wasn't powdery at all which pleased me.  It was moderately juicy and with the tastebuds of faith I'd say I can see why people might describe the flavour as strawberry-like.

It pleased me to find this example of seasonal local produce, or at least produce from this country.  I've decided that I've been quite generous with my ratings and maybe need to be a little harsher, so this is getting 6/10.

Pimp my Mint Tea

Mint tea is pretty damn good, balancing as it does the soothing qualities of a warm cuppa with a refreshing mouth tingling zing.  It is drinkable in teabags from the supermarket and it is more delicate but still drinkable in the form of some leaves from the garden macerated (plus or minus a bit of helpful leaf-directed squishing from a teaspoon) in freshly boiled water.

I don't rate the genuine stuff from Morocco as drinkable; saturated sugar solutions aren't my thing, and I find the stewed mint flavour combined with the sweetness nauseating.  I had to politely sip at the stuff on far too many occasions during a holiday in Marrakech until I realised I could wait until The Photographer and The Bellydancer had finished theirs then discreetly swap our glasses. 

It was therefore with mixed feelings that I received a present from The Fiesta: a bag of Moroccan Mint loose herbal tea from The Cragg Sisters Tearoom in Aldeburgh- it could be good, it could be sickly, which way would it go?

Even just opening the bag released such a stream of minty freshness that my sinuses felt comprehensively invigorated.  It consisted of green gunpowder tea leaves mixed with dried peppermint leaves, and best of all for me, no sugar.

A pot of this tea was made in due course and I was delighted that I'd never imagined mint tea could taste this good.   It was the tea equivalent of the difference between freshly ground quality coffee and mediocre instant stuff.  The green gunpowder tea base gives the tea a strong backbone and staying power on top over which the clean taste of the peppermint can shine without becoming overwhelming.  9/10 for head clearing aromatic freshness.

Poulet au vinagire

Following a decision to expand the range of herbs that I cook with, I went to The Mothership's herb garden for inspiration. I hadn't used much tarragon before so I found a recipe that called for it. This is Delia Smith's adaption of 'poulet au vinaigre'.

The tarragon complemented the chicken well. Its flavour is difficult to describe, I'd say that once cooked it was partly reminiscent of lemon, raw green pepper and maybe a tiny bit of aniseed. I think the tarragon I used was Russian Tarragon which is inferior to French Tarragon. From doing some reading about this it seems like French Tarragon is a very particular plant and needs a fair amount of attention for it to flourish. The tarragon in the garden seems to be growing very happily without any special treatment, plus I think it didn't give as much flavour to the finished dish as French Tarragon should.

This version was 6/10 but I will try it with French Tarragon (and without burning it) and see if this elevates the score.

For anyone who has, or aspires to have, their own vegetable/herb garden, I was interested to read that not many pests like tarragon and growing it amongst other plants helps keep the pests away from these too.

Here is the recipe I used:

From Delia's Summer Collection: Chicken with Sherry Vinegar and Tarragon Sauce

For 4 generous portions

1.75 kg chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
150 ml sherry vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)
425ml medium-dry Amontillado sherry
12 shallots, peeled
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh tarragon leaves plus small sprigs of tarragon to garnish
1 heaped tbsp creme fraiche
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, while doing this season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.
Fry the chicken pieces until golden brown (this is best done in two batches) then remove these to a plate.
Add shallots and garlic to the pan until these are slightly brown.
Turn the heat down, put the chicken pieces back into the pan with the shallots and garlic, scatter the tarragon leaves into the pan and add the sherry vinegar and sherry. Pour glasses of sherry for the people you are cooking for and yourself too, enjoy.
Let the contents of the pan come up to a simmer, then turn the heat down until barely simmering.
Leave for 45 minutes, turning the chicken pieces halfway through this time. The sauce will reduce during this time.
Do keep checking there is still some sauce, don't leave it and go and enjoy a summer's evening in the garden with everyone else and plenty more sherry as I did, or you risk the sauce starting to 'caramelise' and yourself starting to marinade in sherry.
Remove the chicken pieces, shallots and garlic from the pan onto a warmed serving plate. Whisk the creme fraiche into the remaining sauce and season to taste. This still works if the sauce has started to catch a bit, as I found out!

Serve with new potatoes, or rice, or whatever you fancy. As the picture shows, in my slightly inebriated wisdom I had decided to add diced carrots to the rice part way through cooking the rice.

Bakewell Pudding

A camping holiday in the gorgeous surroundings of the Peak District was not going to be complete for me without a pilgrimage to Bakewell.  This was the birthplace of the Bakewell Pudding, made even more famous (particularly to masses of southerners) by Mr Kipling's Bakewell Tart.  I know their pastry tastes of cardboard.  I know you can feel the icing corroding your teeth as you bite through it.  I know the almond flavouring was what Agatha Christie had in mind every time she described that tell-tale almond scent of cyanide.  Despite all this I am quite partial to these, especially the newish Bakewell Slices they do as this equates to more almondy goodness with less pastry. 

Back to Bakewell: The Blonde and I were in an outdoor kit shop when the very friendly shop assistant started chatting to us about our plans.  She explained to us that a Bakewell Tart was the variety topped with icing and a cherry, but that 'pudding' referred to the true Bakewell delicacy.  She also told us where to go to find one, and the story behind the origins of the Bakewell Pudding. 

According to her, there was already a pie which featured a layer of almond filling topped with jam.  A maid at the Rutland Arms hotel in Bakewell once made the mistake of putting the jam into the pastry first and the almond mixture on top.  The resulting pie was serendipitously better than what was intended and the Bakewell Pudding was born.

We were also advised where to go to buy a truly authentic Bakewell Pudding- The Bakewell Pudding Shop is one of these places and off we went to get a pudding.

By the time we ate it, the paper bag it came in had turned translucent which left us in no doubt about the health credentials of this treat!  Aesthetically the pudding wasn't that impressive.  Nicely burnished on top but otherwise all the same shade of pastry beige. 

The crust was flaky pastry, rather than the shortcrust we were anticipating.  I think the jam layer was plum jam, at any rate the sweet fruitiness was complemented by a a hint of a woody/bitter note.  The almond topping was quite custardy, rather than the sponge cake-like affair used by Mr Kipling.

I enjoyed it, and think it merits 7/10.  It was quite aptly less synthetic and more subtle than the tart version.  It was also more filling, due to the fat content no doubt! 

In the course of researching the Bakewell Pudding further for this post, I've discovered that it should be served warm.  As with most pastry dishes this would make the pastry seem lighter; it would also make the filling less dense and I think maybe elevate the Pudding up to 8/10.

Lindt's Sea Salt Dark Chocolate

I was very excited to see a new variety of Lindt chocolate on sale.  It's from their Excellence range and the full name is 'A Touch of Sea Salt.'  Of course I had to buy it and see what it was like.  It's available from Whittard's and from Lindt online.

I'm going to keep this one brief after the white chocolate dissertation.  The bar is presented in the standard Lindt format, big squares.

As with all the Lindt falvoured dark chocolates the cocoa content 47%,  so it hits the balance between sweetness for those who don't like chocolate too dark, and intensity for those who do.  The salt is in evidence as fair sized sea salt crystals throughout the bar.

It definitely one that benefits from savouring rather than chomping, as both the chocolate and the salt melt but at different rates.  The interest came mostly from the fact that I found I was oscillating between tasting the salt and tasting the chocolate, rather than tasting the two simultaneously as a blend of flavours.  I think sea salt would work better with a sweeter, milkier chocolate as this would bring it closer to the idea of a salted caramel, where the flavours do blend.  Another point of note was that I found the salt somehow made the rest of the bar- ie the chocolate- seem oilier than normal by comparison.

This is getting 7/10:  it's interesting to eat, rather than being delicious, and hasn't usurped any of my favourites but Lindt have impressed me by marketing an unsual flavour.

White 'Chocolate'

Recently I went on a chocolate buying spree.  This was mostly because The Mothership's stocks needed topping up/completely replacing after The Geek God and I had done our worst, but I also got inspired by the range of chocolate available, and decided to do some taste testing. 

I thought I'd try something I don't normally buy, white chocolate.  I don't buy it because I don't like it.  Urban myths claim there is a certain number of times one has to try a new food before learning to like it, and it's definitely true that I had to go through a stage of making myself consume certain food and drinks before learning to love them: tea, coffee, wine, beer and ginger (the token food in that list) all spring to mind. 

Back to white chocolate.  I decided that the best quality chocolate was the most likely to introuduce me to what is good about white chocolate, so I bought Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Swiss White Chocolate and Green and Black's White Chocolate.

The 'Taste the Difference' chocolate didn't taste any different.. to milkybar- I subsequently bought a milkybar so I could compare them at the same sitting. 

The difference I did find, however, was that the Taste the Difference chocolate had a very smooth texture whereas the milkybar texture was grainy.  The blurb on the Taste the Difference packet focussed on how the 'mouthfeel' was smoother because the chocolate had been conched for longer.  Usefully it even tells you what a conche is- "a container which grinds the ingredients together."  Looking into this in a bit more detail, it turns out that conching achieves a smooth texture by making the particles very small (so small your tongue doesn't perceive them as individual particles anymore) and evenly distributing the solids within the cocoa butter. Conching also allows flavours to develop because it generates frictional heat which releases volatile compounds in the choclate which we can taste.

So that's the thoery.  In practice no flavours to developed other than sugar, and maybe a hint of cream but this was mostly blugeoned out by the sweetness.  It was also a bit off-putting tasting something so ridiculously sweet yet totally smooth.

Sainsburys did well to focus on the texture for their marketing on the packet because the flavour is so unremarkable.  It gets 3/10, and that's only because if you're after a sugar hit, it would do the job.  It's not revolting, just too sweet.

The rest of the bar got experiemented on- I melted it down then mixed instant coffee granules into it.  This was more of a 5/10 but the amount of coffee granules it took to make it taste good meant you'd have serious caffeine overload if you ate more than a tiny bit!  You could also probably use this chocolate with eggs and coffee to make an easy coffee mousse for friends who like coffee but not dark chocolate.

The Green and Black's effort had a speckly appearance because it contains "fragrant Madasgascan vanilla for a creamy taste."  It was definitely "fragrant", reminding me of what happens when you're baking and you accidentally use way too much vanilla essence.  I'd also argue that it is the whole milk powder and cocoa butter that gives the creamy taste, not the vanilla as they claim.  I was unimpressed with the taste.

The texture was more fudgy than the Taste the Difference chocolate; presumably Green and Black's aren't such big fans of hardcore conching, and I preferred it that way because if you're eating something that is mostly sugar it makes sense if you can tell this from the texture.  Another 3/10.

In conclusion, I still don't like white chocolate, and I have new theory on the 'trying new foods' thing.  This probably works for complex flavours, e.g. getting a toddler to grow into an adult who likes black olives and anchovies and red wine.  But I reckon it doesn't work so much with tastes that are arguably childish to begin with.

An experiment

1989 was one of the best vintages for Crozes-Hermitage.  The Mothership recently discovered that she had a case which had been forgotten about at some point in the last 21 years, so we decided to open some and see what it was like.  It turns out that while I can claim to have tasted this vintage, I am none the wiser about what a good Crozes-Hermitage would be like, because it was very much past its prime.  It smelt like seaweed, all iodine and decomposition, and not in an exciting whisky kind of way, but in a 'yuk, what IS that?' kind of way.  It tasted like vinegar, which is exactly what it is.  The only person to benefit from this is The Geek God, who being an '89 vintage himself can keep some unopened bottles for posterity, safe in the knowledge that none of us will want to drink it.  I might plough through the rest of the case on the very off-chance that there is a bottle that is still ok, it's all going to get poured down the sink anyway.

Raspberry Cheesecake Perfection

This is one of a few blogs about my time working on an island with a group of people as enthusiastic about food as I am.  It was also a time when the workload for the day job was about to significantly increase, so we were all in procrastination mode.  This meant that we were all extra happy to spend a lot of time in the kitchens, preparing food, enjoying what other people had made, plus generally chilling and having some good chats.  There was also an element of raising the stakes, thus "the kettle's on, come over for tea and scones" became "the kettle's on and I've made cheesecake" then naturally progressed to several full-on dinner parties.  Good times.

Returning the focus to the cheesecake, this was made by The Panorama, and I will post the recipe as soon as I have it because the foodlove deserves to be shared.  The picture doesn't really do it justice.  It is a baked cheescake with a biscuit crust.   

I was on my way to the shops to buy ingredients for supper when The Panorama leant out of his kitchen window and asked me if I wanted tea and cheesecake. 2 hours and 3 slices of cheesecake later, it was apparent that I wasn't going to need any supper.  Normally I can only manage one slice of cheesecake but in this case I was aware that a cheesecake this good may never come my way again.  I'm salivating at the memory.  This cheesecake meets the criteria for a perfect 10/10.

Common pitfalls for cheesecakes are: cloyingly sickly, not sweet enough, too rich, too bland, too much vanilla essence and too dry.  The Panorama had deftly navigated his way amongst these and avoided them all.  The filling was rich and sweet with enough sharpness from the cheese to keep it balanced.  It was moist and there was enough grainy texture to stop it from being gooey.  The rapsberries complemented the creaminess well, by adding a slight bitterness from the seeds as well as fruity acidity.  It was definitely a chesecake with raspberries in, rather than becoming fully raspberry flavoured, and it was all the better for it.  The next challenege will be getting the recipe and seeing if I can replicate The Panorama's result.

Teatime

Culturally and genetically I am conditioned to believe that there are very few situations that can't be improved by a cuppa. 

When it comes to black tea I often like it strong with a little milk.  This is something that can be achieved in a mug with PG tips.  For a bit more attention to detail, a single variety teabag can be used, or even tea leaves.  I had tried this once with Assam leaves and found that the tea which resulted had a fuller taste than tea made with an Assam teabag of the same brand (Twinings, for anyone who wants to try this.)  I didn't do a blind tasting, however, so it could just be that I wanted the leaf tea to taste better.

I had forgotten the ways of leaf tea until I spent the past month living on an island with The Teaboy and The Panorama, who are very serious about tea. They use loose leaf tea, and had several varieties of leaves with which they make different blends.

Their English Breakfast blend was 2 parts Assam: 1 part Kenyan: 1 part Ceylon.  It ticked the box of being strong, but managed to retain flavours from the individual components.  The 'best cup' was particularly good.

My 'best cup' of tea is when a teapot is being used, you have drunk half your cup of tea, and then top up your cup from the teapot.  You might think the same effect can be achieved by starting off with less milk in the first cup of tea but for some reason it doesn't seem to work like that.

Also of note from the afternoon teas with The Teaboy and Panorama were the generous provision of biscuits.  Hobnobs with their English Breakfast blend was especially tasty.  I also managed to consume an indecent amount (Teaboy, I apologise) of Lotus caramelised biscuits.  This was partly because I was trying to see if they go as well with tea as they do with coffee- they don't- but also because they are so tasty!

Teaboy's Scones

Another day, another cup of tea at The Teaboy's.

This time the biscuits were usurped by The Teaboy's homemade scones.  He usually uses bicarbonate of soda in his scones, but had not brought any to the island.  What he did have was an egg.  So a trial was made of egg scones.

This experiment had a very happy ending. The scones rose well and were consumed the second they came out of the oven by The Fiesta, The Teaboy, The Panorama, and myself  The egg added a richness and lightness to the scones.

Fantasy spot for post-hiking supper? It's a Shoe Inn

I'm not sure how much, if at all, the name of this establishment is intended to be a pun, but it was definitely exactly what we were looking for.

Last weekend The Whisky Fiend, The Modeller and I took on the South Downs Way between Winchfield and Petersfield.  We camped near Exton, and the owner of the farm where we camped recommended The Shoe Inn for food, and even gave us a lift there.  We were footsore and hot and  appreciated this kindness.

The Shoe Inn is the brilliant kind of pub where you'd feel equally comfortable whether you were in walking boots or dressed more smartly.  It has a beer garden leading down to a river which is where we sat.

A quick glance at the menu was enough to convince me that given our location South Downs Lamb was the only option.  I had a burger made with lamb and feta, which came between two mini flatbreads with rocket, tomato and aioli.  The mix between local and meditteranean/middle eastern influences had flair without being pretentious, mainly because it really did work.  The feta, rocket and aioli enhanced the flavour and sweetness of the lamb, and the flatbread was tasty and also functional in mopping up the  juices that came from the burger (a good one to eat outside as it eliminates the worries of making a mess!) It came with skinny fries and a salsa which were much needed after the day's exertion but totally overshadowed by the burger. 

The Whisky Fiend had a beef and 6X pie with roasted vegetables which was claimed to be excellent- I cheekily sampled it and can happily confirm this.  The Modeller had belly of pork which looked like it had the perfect meat:fat ratio.

We ordered a bottle of Malbec which I admit I can't remember much about except that the expected red fruit and slightly earthy flavours worked well with all of our food selections.  By the time we had explored some more wine and beer, and finished with whisky (what did we expect with The Whisky Fiend on board?) we were prepared for the walk home.  While walking back we saw fireworks being set off, and I also saw a shooting star, the first I have seen in the UK.

I'd love to tell you we navigated back by the stars, but you'd be amazed at what iPhones can do.  A photo of the lamb burger will be posted once The Whisky Fiend has emailled it to me.

Rump

The cow outline in the branding and naming this place 'Rump' is 1 part tacky and 4 parts fun-  I love how explicit it is about the fact that you'll be chowing down on a bovine backside.  It's definitely not for the squeamish, but neither is a steak cooked very much to the blue end of rare.

Lots of places err on the side of overcooking steak, so that rare becomes medium rare and so on.  This was not a problem at Rump, and my steak was mostly underdone for an order of rare.  Happily the quality of the steak was such that I still enjoyed the blue parts of my steak. The Diver's steak was  a more uniform thickness than mine, so ended up perfectly rare throughout; I had a touch of food envy over this.

One drawback of ordering rare steaks is the fact that the steak doesn't stay warm for long if served on cold plates, as it was at Rump.  We went on a sweltering summer evening which meant that this wasn't a problem, but it definitely would be on a colder day when I'd want my steak to be warm.  

The flexibility of the menu is perfect, allowing you to select a steak by cut and weight, but without including so many options that you get a reading-induced headache from trying to decide what to have. 

The steaks were served with salt and ground pepper dishes on the side. I'm a big fan of a light dusting of both on steak and this means that everyone can achieve their perfect seasoning.  The steaks did come with a green chopped harb sprinkled over them which I am 90% sure was basil (the steak itself was dazzling my tastebuds so I was quite distracted) and although not a combination I'd have thought up myself, worked very well.  It also tied in nicely with one of the side dishes we ordered, tomato onion and basil salad.

Other non-food observations about Rump? The wine and cocktail lists looked good though I'd hate to say more having not actually sampled them.  There was an information leaflet on our table about wine tasting nights held there which I liked- it shows enthusiasm on the part of the management and a keeness to share this with others (and yes, a good way to promote yourself and get diners to part with more cash, but from a buisness point of view I applaud this.)  The set-up inside was rustic industrialism: the tables in the bar area were made of irregular planks of wood that were cross sections through a tree trunk, complete with bark, and the chairs were luxury bar stools in cream.  The walls were successfully made to feel like they had been geometrically chiselled out of a rockface somewhere, rather than being part of a building on Putney High Street.

I liked Rump.  The steak itself was nudging 9/10 but it's getting 8/10 for not quite cooking my steak to my specification and the cold plates.

Dream Team Combinations

Just a very quick post about two amazing food combinations I've stumbled across in the last 24hrs:

1. Goats Cheese + Mango Cutney. 

Cheddar cheese and mango chutney is a well-acknowledged good pairing (which I can say with extra certainty after a mindnight snack of these guys with The Fiesta on sunday) so I decided to branch out.  I took mild goats cheese- creamy. slightly sour, slightly salty, chilled from the fridge, and put it on granary toast with the warmly spiced Geeta's Mango Chutney.  I recommend it.

2. Mushy Peas + Chili Flakes

Last night The Panorama hosted a home-made fish and chip party- which will be a post in itself- but equally as impressive as the fish and chips were the mushy peas.  The Panorama had been concerned that the mushy peas weren't spicy enough, so he added some dried chili flakes.  This worked very well, both alone, with the sweetness of the peas and the heat of the pepper, but also with the battered fish as the chili cut through some of the mouth-coating richness from the oil without overwhelming the delicate flavour of the fish.

The Teaboy was as enthusiastic as me about the chili peas, and we fought over eating the last scraps from the saucepan!