Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | August 2, 2014 | 21
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Smoking night out Every week the founder of Cambridgeshire Wine School seeks out the best wines to go with Living’s recipes. I’LL never forget the day I discovered how well smoked food matches an oaky wine. I happened to be eating a smoked cheddar and sipping a new world Chardonnay. I found if I already had the charred wood and cheese flavour on my tongue, then adding a mouthful of oaky wine massively enhanced it. The smoke ramped up even higher like having a barbecue going on in my mouth. I’ve since found this is very noticeable if you have strongly smoked cheese and a very oaky wine, but it’s probably only a pleasurable effect if you like strong flavours in your food (as I do). The flavours that get into wine from oak ageing depends partly on whether the wine is white or red, but include things like toast, walnut, vanilla, clove, coffee and chocolate. With this week’s smoked cheese recipes I’m tempted to try Vergelegen Chardonnay from South Africa, a very peachy and grapefruity wine with lovely toast flavours. It’s available in Majestic for £10.99 or £8.91 if you buy two. But notice how we are adding barbecue sauce to the pulled brisket making it slightly sweet. With that you will want a full-on, very ripe-flavoured barbecue red like ‘The Schnell’ from Noel Young wines (£12.59). ᔡ FREE M&S Wine Tasting on Aug 14 at 7.30pm in the central Cambridge store. To reserve spaces simply email: cambridge. selling@marks-andspencer.com
food & drink
៑ ELLA WALKER has an ideal date night fighting over sweet potato fries at new barbecue joint SmokeWorks
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ou’ve got to love a meal that consists of lots of nibbly bits. Mini bites to scrabble over; things to dunk and slather and swirl in sauce; last mouthfuls to fight and lunge for, fingers to lick and chins dripping. Basically, new barbecue joint SmokeWorks is not a place to go if you don’t like sharing. Nor is it a place to go if you’re not that fussed by meat, because although there is the odd veggie option (token halloumi burger at the ready), really they are ALL about the meat. We ambled in on a warm and muggy Tuesday night, hoping to nab a table – these guys have done the Shoreditch thing and adopted a no bookings policy – and managed to wrangle a rare window seat. Part of the Cambscuisine stable, the majority of the restaurant – rough wooden surfaces; industrial piping; copper stools bolted down; tints of red and orange shining through American diner-style squeezy bottles of chipotle, barbecue and hot sauces; burning filament bulbs fizzing above you – is underground. But my boyfriend Sam and I, both worrisome and stressed, straight out of work, got to calm down with a view of St Bene’t’s Parish Church, all in a summery haze of flowers and bees. SmokeWorks really do have the best location, tucked away on Free School Lane, we had an excellent people watching vantage point, sipping homemade lemonade (£2.20) – not the rustic, farmhouse stuff that, like us, you might expect – and browsing the short, snappy menu, printed nicely on brown paper.
As I said, this is a caring, sharing kinda place, so we opted for three pork scrumpets with apple sauce (£5), sweet potato fries (£2.20), a smoked and pulled pork bun (£8) and three lamb riblets with house slaw and minted buttermilk dressing (£8.50). The whole lot appeared within minutes, laid out on a tray (more dinerstyle quirks), the wax paper base printed with pig, cow and chicken motifs, just so you remember where your dinner’s come from. The pork scrumpets were a bit disappointing, I thought anything with “scrumpet” in their name would be hilarious to eat and delicious to boot; instead they were just crispy meat parcels with a standard Sunday roast apple sauce that could have jumped straight off the condiments shelf at
Tesco, the rest redeemed them though. The pulled pork bun was gooey and soft from the meat, tart and fresh from being stuffed with bright green gherkins and all wrapped up in a brioche bun. It was practically love – and it was a bargain too. The lamb was tasty but not minty enough, but the pop of purple from the cabbage slaw underneath the three slabs of rendered meat was fantastic. The highlight though was the sweet potato fries… good lord. Doused in barbecue sauce they were crispy and light, sweet but not too sweet and I could have eaten three portions on my own. Easily. Probably the best thing about SmokeWorks – other than the sweet potato fries with barbecue sauce, have I mentioned them? – is the fact the staff don’t judge you in any way for ordering a second round. In fact, they actively encourage you to try everything. To be honest the restaurant itself is designed to make the whole ordering experience a bit of fun: each table (except our pretty little window seat), comes with a red button that you twist to order more. How do you resist that? It was only polite to choose the 14 hour smoked beef on toast (£5) and the chicken thighs and drumsticks with pineapple and mango sauce (£6). Our waitress had warned us that the chicken was salty (it’s brined for several hours before being cooked), but I was not prepared for quite how salty. Our jug of water was quickly emptied. I doubt I’d order that dish again, but I can definitely see myself nipping in repeatedly for the beef toast. Topped
with crunchy rings of pickled red onion, I wish I hadn’t had to go halves with Sam; next time I’ll be having two smoky, moreish slices to myself thank you very much. Overall we could have done with a lot more napkins, (I, classy as ever, got coleslaw and barbecue sauce all over the table and all up my arms), and the individual hand wipes in individual wrappers make me sad, think of the plastic waste! Just give us a finger bowl of water, Chinese-restaurant style, it’d be much simpler and cheaper. But we left full, so full, and much, much happier and more relaxed than when we walked in, taking our two delicious salted caramel shakes to go, down to the Mill Pond (£4.50 each). That’s what you call a date night.
taste test SmokeWorks, 2 Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3QA Email: info@smokew orks.co.uk Website: smokeworks.c o.uk Restaurant opening hours: Monday to Thursday and Sunday: 11.45am-10.30pm Friday and Saturday: 11.45am11pm Cost: Dinner for two peo ple, including drinks, cam e to £48.10. Food: 刀刀刀刀 Service: 刀刀刀刀刀 Atmosphere: 刀刀刀刀 刀 Value: 刀刀刀刀