Crash of a titan

I watched, with some sadness, the legend that is Anthony Worrall Thompson, interviewed on BBC Breakfast yesterday morning, and today read this link in the Scotsman. It is a sad day when any business has to call in the administrators, however, as much as I respect AWT, I cannot help but be unsurprised by the recent turn of events.

I have visited both The Lamb and The Greyhound on a number of occasions, therefore my comments can only be applied to these two establishments, however on all occasions that I have eaten there, I have been unmoved by the food, not to mention the ambiance.For the sake of this post, I will focus my comments on a couple of occasions I ate at The Lamb at Satwell.

The anticipation of visiting an establishment run by someone of AWTs calibre is, one supposes, always going to be greater than the event itself. The first time I visited was during a lunch break at work. I am fortunate enough to work in relatively close proximity to both The Greyhound and The Lamb. As this was a working lunch, it was short but sweet, and therefore a bar snack was the order of the day, and I chose the Epigrams of Lamb. For the uninitiated, these were goujons of lamb, probably breast from what I could make out, that were then breaded and deep fried, served with mayonnaise. To describe them as greasy was an understatement. Not in the sense that they had been badly executed, for they had not. The breading was beautifully crispy, and they were piping hot when they arrived on my table, however the fat that oozed from the meat itself on crunching through the sandpaper exterior was not entirely appetising. Was breast the right meat to use? The mayo that was served alongside was unremarkable, and only served to add to the cloying nature of the dish. What it actually needed was something sharp and zingy to cut through the fat, and it amazed me that this had not occurred to the dishes creator. I ate this with a cold glass of some cider or other, and the effect only served to encourage the fat to solidify in my stomach. I sat at my desk for the rest of the day with a gall-bladder that ached with indignance at the assault on its very being.

I was willing to concede that perhaps this was perhaps just a blip in the reputation of this establishment, and thus decided some weeks later, on a particularly rainy Sunday afternoon, to attempt lunch. Sunday lunch is amazing when its done right, but is all too easy to get horribly wrong. However surely a chef working under the auspices of AWT would find this a doddle?
We arrived feeling slightly bedraggled, and once we had negotiated our way through the small lake in the badly drained car park, we entered into the warm womb-like interior, greeted by the waft and crackle of a real fire, and the population of a small island. This womb was expecting more than octuplets.

My dining partner, a martyr to the ill-humour of low blood sugar, was palpably irritated by the clinking middle classes that milled about uncomfortably, and I swear at one point was prepared to toss a small, designer clad child onto the large roaring fire that made the temperature in the room a little like sitting in a bakers oven with your anorak on. The child's parents were nowhere to be seen, and I suspect far too pie-eyed to notice their progeny roasting away. This was no fault of their own, I hasten to add. They will have been forced to drink copious quantities to kill time. We arrived at 12.30pm. Not unreasonable on a Sunday lunchtime. We were told that the wait would be an hour and a half. My heart sank as I watched dining partner grow twitchy at the thoughts, however this is where he wanted to eat, so this is where we were staying. 'That's fine', he huffed, and ordered drinks.

After the requisite hour and a half, we were still standing in exactly the same spot, and had downed two drinks each. I could not tell you what they were, mainly because the skill with which we were forced to dodge newly arrived customers, children and dogs without being knocked over took all the concentration we could muster and there was no room for savouring the beverages. Still no table.

By half two, we had some success. We were shown to the table, which was being cleaned as we sat, and allowed to peruse the menu for the first time since we had arrived, though this exercise was slightly pointless as we had had ample opportunity to view each dish as they had been paraded past us, torturing the knots in our stomachs. Had I been on my own, I'd have left long ago, but dining partner had insisted we stayed.

We ordered a drink - dining partners beer was clouded and sent back, and then we made our choices (he had the epigrams again against my advice, and I had an uninspiring basket of bread and dips that looked as though they had seen better days. Mains were the roasts - pork for me, beef for him).

You know when you go to an average pub and you are greeted by a roast that has khaki greens, roast potatoes whose skins don't so much crunch as slither, and gravy that only serves to water down everything else on the plate? That was what it was like. Years ago, I worked in a pub kitchen. We used to sprinkle bisto on the roasties in order to make them 'brown'. Now, I couldn't swear to it, but I had my suspicions. One of my roast potatoes was so large it was still hard in the middle. The crackling was unappetisingly charred where it had been thrust under a rather enthusiastic salamander, and the vegetables were a mix of those that had been sat for too long in the bain marie and those that had been placed in a microwave, and immediately removed.

We ran out of drinks half way through the meal and ordered some more, and they never arrived, though they did appear on the bill. We left, exhausted and full, but in my opinion it was not a good meal. Dining partner insisted it was lovely, and it occurred to me that this was the problem.

The restaurant was rammed, but I wonder whether it was rammed with people who love good food, or people who love to tell you that they ate at AWTs place on Sunday. Did this mans PR machine do a very good job at brainwashing his customers that he served remarkable food, when in fact, it is at best average? There are a number of gastropubs in the vicinity that serve far superior food and yet are less well known. Interestingly, though, these pubs have not had to call last orders on their futures. Could it be that, now money is harder to come by, diners are more discerning and choosing to spend money where they know the food is exemplary? Could it be that a massive PR machine is no longer enough to keep the punters coming?

I like AWT. I feel I know him. Not only does he grace our television screens on a very regular basis, but he lived in the vicinity for some time and regularly took part in local festivals. I have seen him and his wife shopping in Tescos with the kids. I have eaten Machins sausages barbecued by AWT himself at the local Christmas fayre. It tasted like barbecued sausage. I don't know what I was expecting, but the man himself barbecued this sausage and i had so wanted it to be an experience. Maybe this is a problem. Maybe he is not managing expectations. Maybe he is a good business man but an average chef and relies on hiring very good head chefs to make his reputation. I once watched him demo stuffed chicken breasts at one of these local festivals. Would it be churlish to tell you that he set his chicken on fire? Possibly, but he did.

For some time I have suspected that AWT coasts on a reputation that he has, at one point, worked very hard for, and now subconsciously or otherwise, expects to run itself. I am sad for him, because I feel that his establishments could be great once again, with a renewed sense of urgency on his part, and perhaps more honesty from his clientele. After all, how is one to improve if you are never given constructive criticism? On the other hand, perhaps he has appealed for too long to a clientele who dine out on 'eating at AWTs place', and not on 'eating a superb meal at a local restaurant ran by...what's his name - you know who I mean - that fella on the telly'. Maybe the cult of celebrity has permeated even our eating establishments, and in our search for a new authenticity, the inauthentic will be the first to fall?

Rhubarb, rhubarb

Between New Year and Spring, there are few things to look forward to. The weather tends to be grey and forbidding, a mix of frost, rain and snow. Mornings and evenings are dark, damp and depressingly chilling, and more often than not the car requires scraping both before you set out to work and before you leave the office. So nothing warms my heart more than the arrival of that most humble of vegetables masquerading as fruit - rhubarb. Forced rhubarb, to be precise, as though it were made to against its will.





If I am honest, I love rhubarb in all its guises - either pornographically young, pink and nubile, or the later sturdy green petioles. But the blushed fleshiness of the forced rhubarb stalk seems particularly appropriate for February - a nod from nature at that fictitious celebration of love and romance, Valentines day. Combined with a gravelly crumble topping, gritty with demerara, it is an epicurean snub to the inhospitably biting cold of a February evening.

Yesterday, whilst recovering from my recent op, I had the good fortune to spend an entire day watching UK TV Food, where they discussed the virtues of the humble crumble and how it should be done. The consensus appeared to be that each person has their own preference, and the section was finished off by the wonderful Matthew Fort demonstrating his version of rhubarb crumble.
It brought me close to tears.
Not for good reasons either.

There seems to be, amongst certain people in the foodie world, a need to create tastes never before discovered, and in an effort to do so, flavours are combined endlessly in the vague hope that the sum of the whole will be greater than their parts, and a new, synergistic flavour is discovered. In practice, I fear, this rarely happens. The end result is often a cacophony of badly balanced tastes that only serve to mask the subtleties of each part.


Mr Fort, whom I admire greatly and once had the privilege of having dinner along side (to say with would be a stretch - we were in the same oxfordshire gastropub though not together, but that's never how I tell it), decided to add a handful of shards of root ginger and the grated zest of an orange and its juice to a dish of forced rhubarb, along with a crumble topping which contained a squirrel-pleasingly large amount of roasted hazelnuts.
Why?

Root ginger is poky in the extreme, and orange zest has a habit of making everything an approximation of orange - I can only imagine this would have utterly drowned out any of the delicious rhubarby notes. I felt indignant. Possibly one of those flavourings as a subtle note along side the rhubarb could have worked, but I still feel that this is adulteration of the first order. I suspect people who feel the need to add such copious quantities of 'flavourings' actually don't really like the taste of the main player in the dish. To my mind, sullying this delicate winter treat is akin to a 10 year old slapping on make-up and a basque. Its wrong on so many levels.

The only possible exception to this is the addition of vanilla. Rhubarb and vanilla have a true, unquestionable affinity, immortalised in the gorgeous rhubarb and custard boiled sweet of childhood, and as such, is the only acceptable supporting actor to the rosy star of the show. Either scrape out the seeds and add to the crumble mix, or use vanilla sugar, which I believe is the correct method, the bourbon sweetness a duvet of scent and warmth against the sharply puckering, softly yielding pink flesh of the poached rhubarb. Never stew it - it loses its integrity and becomes a stringy mush.

Below is my recipe for a classically beautiful rhubarb crumble. It warms the heart, excites the tongue and dazzles the palate.

800 grams rhubarb (or two packs of Waitrose rhubarb)
8 tbsp vanilla sugar
a sprinkling of water
4 oz butter
4 oz demerara sugar
7 oz flour

Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade or 350 Fahrenheit
Butter a deep ovenproof dish

1. Chop the washed rhubarb into 1 inch pieces and place in a dish with a sprinkling of water and the vanilla sugar.


2. Place in the oven to start cooking for about ten minutes or so.


3. Whilst the rhubarb is cooking, make your crumble mix by rubbing together, or sticking in the magimix, the butter, all but 2 tablespoons of the demerara sugar and the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.


4. Remove the part cooked rhubarb from the oven and sprinkle over all but a handful of the crumble mix and gently pat down.


5. With the leftover handful, squish it together in your hands so as it forms small lumps, and scatter this over the sandy crumble, and finally scatter over the remainder of the demerara sugar.


6. Bake for a further 20-30 minutes, or until golden brown, with the juices bubbling up in a fruity, toffee mass at the edges.
7. Serve with custard, ice cream, cream or, if you are me, all three.