MENU THE DAILY POST FOOD AND DRINK GUIDE July 09
Arabian delight
Festival is a feast for the senses
Sugar, sugar
Lounging at Liverpool One
Musselling in Dishes that ensure there’s plenty more fish in the sea
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DAILY POST Tuesday, July 14, 2009
fresh
Market’s ninth year ■ WIRRAL Farmers’ Market celebrates its ninth birthday this month, and winners of the producer of the year award will be announced as part of the celebrations. Mary Walton, of Mary’s Cakes, below, a producer who has been selling at the market since its inception, has been baking in honour of its anniversary. The next market is on Saturday, August 8, at the Village Hall, in New Ferry, from 9am to 1pm.
Shrimpers pot top prize ■ HUSBAND and wife team Christian and Mevira Peet have seen their Southport shrimps pot a trophy at the Food North West Awards 2009. They go out in all weathers to catch, cook, peel, spice and pack their crustaceans in butter to create Southport Potted Shrimps. Their product, used by the
likes of 60 Hope Street and the Everyman Bistro, saw off 400 competitors to win the prepared seafood category. Christian, 39, followed his father into the trade, founding Southport Seafoods in 1992. There’s a sunny side to all that peeling. “I just love being out on the beach,” he says. “I’ve seen sunrises and sunsets that have been staggering.”
food facts EGGS contain most of the recognised vitamins, with the exception of Vitamin C
food facts
Heston wants the next great gadget
PARMESAN – parmigiano, left – is a natural source of monosodium glutamate (MSG), giving it the umami taste, found as small white crystals formed during maturation.
■ HE HAS glazed his strawberries in an electric sandwich maker, poached pears in the dishwasher and gives his customers iPods filled with music to accompany their dinners. Heston Blumenthal, left, is famous for his love of cutting-edge cookery technology, and now he’s looking for the next great gadget. Blumenthal says he wants budding inventors to submit ideas for a new innovation that will revolutionise the way we cook.
Fast and fantastic ■ AN IRRESTISTIBLE aroma from yesteryear is to waft around the streets of a Liverpool regeneration area, with the launch of a traditional sitdown fish and chip restaurant. University graduate Chris German has opened a highclass fish and chip restaurant called F&C in Prescot Road, Fairfield, using locally sourced
ingredients and traditional cookery methods. He makes his pies fresh everyday and hopes to attract custom from round the city. "I want to raise the standards of the nation's best-loved dish and how takeaway food is prepared," says Chris.
▼Dinner date Who would you invite to your dream dinner party? Timothy Leary, John Malkovich, Jonathan Ross, Lauren Lavern, Geoff Buckley, Alistair Crawley, Lynda
Benna Harry
"We embrace technology in everything that we do – cars, phones, TV and radio, computers – so why not in the kitchen?" he asks. "Some traditionalists are resistant to this, but it's not the technology that can produce dodgy results, it's how it's used." Entrants to the Finish Diamond Standard Innovation Challenge will be whittled down to a shortlist of 10 finalists, who will then battle it out in a Dragons' Den style final in August.
Benna Harry, 38, owner and director of online boutique, Benna.co.uk la Plante and Ian Brown Who would be your nightmare guest? Lorraine Kelly What would you all drink? Tequila and Moscow Mules What would you serve? Black Cod and Jasmine Rice followed by Sorbet for dessert What would be the topic of
conversation? 2012 – is the world going to end? Who would do the washing up? Me, they would be my guests!
Dream invitations: John Malkovich, left, and Jonathan Ross
■ Don’t miss Thursday’s Liverpool Daily Post for a special offer for all readers – 50% off at the Cafe Rouge restaurants in Liverpool One and the Metquarter
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DAILY POST Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Chef’s Table
A taste of Arabian delight William Leece discovers the Bluecoat team getting to grips with Middle Eastern cookery
B
EN HOUGH is a man on a rapidly rising learning curve. As the acting head chef at the Bluecoat, in Liverpool city centre, he will be part of the team laying on the catering for the Arabic Arts Festival’s Arabic Weekender, starting on Friday. All sorts of Arabic and Middle Eastern delights are promised, from the familiar hoummous and stuffed vine leaves to the intriguing potato harra and chicken tawook. The trademark of a modern chef is his versatility, but Ben has not been afraid to look for advice from wherever he can get it. “Fortunately, a friend of mine lives and works in Bahrain, so he’s given me as much advice as he possibly can, and many of the recipes are quite generic in style.” And there’s even more expertise closer at hand. Liverpool’s Arabic population is mainly Yemeni in background, and there are the beginnings of a thriving restaurant community in the city. Finoon Saleh is typical, born to Yemeni parents, yet as much Liverpudlian as she is Arabic, and co-ordinator of the Arabic Weekend. “My mum said that when she first came in, you couldn’t even get halal meat. You’d have to travel far to get spices and things, yet now everything’s so readily available.” Previous dining events connected with the Arabic Arts Festival have been held at the Palm House, in Sefton Park, but this year the Festival is largely based around the Bluecoat, before a big relaunch as a stand-alone event next year. Hence the teamwork between Arabic cooks and the Bluecoat’s own chefs to keep the food on offer this weekend as authentic as it possibly can be. “Just on Lodge Lane, in Toxteth, there’s about six different Middle Eastern restaurants,” explains Finoon. “Now you can get all the spices and all the meat just as if you were in Yemen; you don’t miss out on anything.” Arabic and Middle Eastern food is famed for the delicacy of its spices, and should not come as too much of a culture shock to those used to dining out at Greek restaurants in Liverpool. Greece was part of the Islamic Ottoman Empire until the mid-19th century, which also took in vast tracts of the Arabic world. The Ottomans left their very distinctive stamp on Greek cooking, and even now some restaurants branded as Greek are actually run
On a learning curve . . . Bluecoat chef Ben Hough, with Finoon Saleh, from the Arabic Arts Festival
Tabouleh salad TABOULEH is a salad like no other. It can be eaten in pita bread, scooped onto pita bread, or traditionally with a fork. In the Middle East, fresh grape leaves are used as a scoop. Ingredients: (1½ cups fresh parsley, chopped, with stems discarded) 2 tablespoons of fresh mint, chopped 1 medium onion, finely chopped 6 medium tomatoes, diced 1 tablespoon salt ½ teaspoon black pepper ½ cup bulgur, medium grade 6 tablespoons lemon juice 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil Romaine lettuce or grape leaves to
by exiles from neighbouring countries like Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. “I think the way in which it is different from other foods is that it’s so many things at once,” says Finoon. “You wouldn’t just have one course on its own, you’d have a plate of olives, salad, meat, all served at once. “That’s as opposed to a western
line servicing bowl (optional) Preparation: Soak bulghur in water for 1½ to 2 hours in cold water until soft. Squeeze out excess water from bulghur, using hands or paper towel. Combine all ingredients, except for salt, pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil. Line serving bowl with grape leaves or romaine lettuce, and add salad. Sprinkle olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper on top. Serve immediately or chill in refrigerator for 2 hours before serving.
meal where, for example, you have a starter on its own, then move on. “There’s a kind of focus to the meat, too, mainly chicken and lamb, and there’s quite a lot of sweet and savoury mixes as well, like the baklava sweets with the nuts and the honey.” Finoon confesses she has developed a taste for date toasties for breakfast, the sweetness of the dates contrasting the savoury
flavours and textures of the bread. Spices and herbs like coriander are a little more subtle than those of India to the East – or at least more subtle than those of the average British curry house. “When I was younger, people at school used to ask me did I eat curry? Not really, it was more tomato-based stews, with quite a lot of cinnamon, garlic and coriander.” The modern Arabic world is
Picture: COLIN LANE/ cl100709chef-3
huge, covering 22 separate states and spanning Asia and North Africa all the way from Morocco in the west, across to Iraq and the Gulf states in the East. Cooking styles can vary, but the overall impression is of a style standing partway between that of central Asia and the Mediterranean. Finoon says: “That’s what we have at home, with the olives, the tabouleh, stuffed vine leaves. “This year at the festival family day, we’re hoping to have a lot of small dishes like muttabel, which is the smoked aubergine dip. “There’s hoummous, fattoush salad and some meat dishes like lamb kofta.” Weather permitting, the Bluecoat’s weekend barbecue will be turned over to the Middle Eastern dishes, with main courses including the Arabic mixed grill chicken tawook, lamb kofta kebabs, and a relatively rare appearance of beef in a beef tikka, plus extra dishes on offer in the main interior restaurant. ■ THE Arabic Weekender is in Liverpool at a variety of venues across Liverpool, from Friday, July 17, to Sunday, July 19. Family day is on Saturday, at the Bluecoat, from 12noon-5pm. williamleece@liverpool.com
DAILY POST Tuesday, July 14, 2009
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There’s a whole ocean o Emma Pinch discovers you can have an endless feast of seafood and still protect the endangered species
Peter O'Callaghan and Simon Buckmaster, of Wards Fish, in Birkenhead Market
Picture: GARETH JONES/ grj080709fish-1
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OD may be off the menu, but there’s plenty more fish in the sea. Most of Britain’s favourite fish are over-caught, according to the Marine Conservation Society, and a wave of recentlylaunched campaigns have urged radical changes to our eating habits. Pret A Manger has taken tuna sandwiches and sashimi off their shelves, and a raft of ethical restaurants have removed it from the specials list. Over-fishing has put cod, tuna (apart from some skipjack and yellowfin stocks), skate, swordfish, and most hake, halibut and haddock on the critical list, according to the MCS’s pocket shopping guide (available from www.www.mcsuk.org). Happily, there are lots of other fish to choose from – and which won’t cost the Earth. Whiting wrapped in fresh batter still sits well with a bag of chips, and grey gurnard, minus a face only its mother could love, is still juicy and firm in a North African terrine. We can also tuck into clams, cold water prawns, mussels, herring, red and grey mullet, mackerel, organically farmed salmon, trout, coley, pouting, pollack, flounder and sea bass with a clear conscience. Julian Davis, who runs Julian’s in Hoylake with his wife, Jackie, and serves up six or seven seasonal fish dishes each night, says a bit of knowledge and the right preparation means less familiar species can be cheaper and as tasty as their endangered counterparts. “Fresh, wild cod, turbot and sole have been rightly regarded as the best fish for eating for centuries,” he says. “But I like to introduce people to fish they might not automatically try. “People tend to look at gurnard for example and scream and throw it back, because it’s such an ugly looking fish. The other reason chefs don’t use it as much is because it’s very spiny. But it’s a very full flavoured fish with firm white meat. Close your eyes and you think you’re eating a really nice fresh plaice.” He reached back to his days in Libya to make a soup called gurnard and clam sherba for the fish celebration weekend he staged last week. “It’s an North African soup that looks like minestrone and contains fish, lamb and mint,” he explains. “I make it with clams and people really love it – even
though they might not choose gurnard if they saw it on the shelf.” Apart from on the wet fish counters, finding out exactly which fisheries supermarket fish has come from and how they’re caught can still be difficult. The Marine Conservation Society recommends looking out for the blue Marine Stewardship Council logo on wild fish, or the Soil Association logo on farmed fish. Best of all, says Julian, is a visit to your knowledgeable local fishmonger. Simon Buckmaster, fishmonger at historic Wards Fish, in Birkenhead Market, and who supplies The London Carriage Works and Julian’s, says cod can be swapped for pollack, pouting, whiting or coley, monkfish for gurnard, halibut and plaice for dab or flounder. Fresh farmed salmon – he gets his from the reputable Loch Duart – is barely distinguishable from the wild variety. But it can be an uphill battle getting customers to be more adventurous in their choices. “We have to sell what people want, so we do import tuna and swordfish,” he says. “People still have prejudices against farmed fish, though most farmed fish is sustainable. “Fish like mackerel and grey mullet have the stigma of being bottom feeders, but in a tagine, or on a barbecue, grey mullet tastes great. But if people don’t know much about the others on offer, they ask for cod. “People don’t have to give up fish like cod and plaice, but varying it with others will help to make a difference.” emma.pinch@liverpool.com
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DAILY POST Tuesday, July 14, 2009
of tasty options
Cupboard love HAVE someone else put the kettle on, or pour you a glass of pink fizz, while you indulge in your own fancy tea. Biscuiteers' Tea For Two collection contains 12 of their delicious handmade biscuits iced with rich vanilla. Available from www.biscuiteers.com priced £37.50. POSH fairy cakes are all the rage! If you can’t do them yourself, try Candy Cakes’ winning formula of sweettopped cakes and yummy shakes. Put the scones aside and dress up your cake stand with some of their favourites: Allsorts, Little Bow Peep, Lemon Poppy Seed and Jelly Berry Burst, from £2.90 each, see www.candycakes.com
COFFEE aficionados will love the new Nespresso CitiZ, a single automatic espresso machine. The 19-bar, high-pressure pump of each CitiZ machine guarantees the release of all the rich flavours and subtle aromas that coffee lovers look for! Priced £129, call 0800 442 442 for stockists or www.Nespresso.com
Julian Davies, from Julian's Restaurant, in Hoylake, with the gurnard and baby clam sherba Picture: PAUL HEAPS/ ph090709ejulians-2
Tasty recipes
1kg fresh Loch Fyne mussels
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What to eat TUNA: Don’t eat: Big Eye Tuna, northern bluefin, Pacific bluefin, southern Bluefin Do eat: (pole, line or troll caught) Albacore from South Pacific or South Atlantic; Skipjack from the West or Central Pacific or the Maldives; Yellowfin from Western or Central Pacific or Atlantic.
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PLAICE: Do eat: Otter trawled from Irish sea or gill/ Seine net from North Sea Don’t eat: Western Channel, Celtic Sea, S W Ireland, W Ireland PRAWNS: Do eat: coldwater, from NE Arctic, organically farmed Tiger prawns, Don’t eat: wild King and Tiger Prawns from the Tropics SEABASS: Do eat: line caught or farmed Don’t eat: palagic trawled SKATE, SWORDFISH: Don’t eat
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Heat the olive oil in a heavy saucepan and fry the onions
Ingredients (serves 2)
Heat the oil over a medium heat, then cook the onion and red pepper for around five minutes. Stir in the tequila, water, lime juice, ground pepper and the jalapenos and simmer before adding the mussels, sprinkle over the coriander then cover and steam for three to four minutes.
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MEXICAN STYLE MUSSELS (supplied by Loch Fyne fish restaurant, in West Kirby – cover picture)
1 tablespoon cooking oil ½ red pepper ½ onion 4 tablespoons water squeeze of lime juice ground black pepper 20g jalapeno peppers some chopped coriander
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Three tbsp olive oil half an onion, chopped two tins of chopped tomatoes dessert spoon of sugar glass red wine two cloves of garlic, crushed several sprigs of fresh thyme 400g filleted gurnard 200g clams or cockles, shelled 200g pearl pasta half a teaspoon of chilli flakes and salt and pepper, to taste litre of fish stock – make it from white fish bones, or head free, from your fishmonger
and garlic then add the tomatoes and sugar, red wine, chilli, salt and pepper, fish stock and pasta. Simmer for half an hour until the pasta is cooked then turn the heat low and add the fish and the thyme. Cook just for a minute or so (the fish needs to be ‘scalded’ rather than cooked) and serve with crusty bread. Diced lamb can be used instead of clam, swapping thyme for mint.
Duke
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JULIAN’S CLAM AND GURNARD SHERBA Ingredients (serves 4)
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DAILY POST Tuesday, July 14, 2009
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Sommelier – Mathew Sloane
O
N A beautiful summer's day, I decided to leave the confines of my executive abode, put myself on a train and join the masses in cavorting around the town throwing up a boozy two fingers to any notion of a recession. Unfortunately, due to about three minutes of rain, my local station was closed due to flooding. When I finally recovered from my state of shock, I turned up the collars on my favourite shouting shirt and took myself on a wild tour of anywhere that would let me in. It was while on this pilgrimage to destruction that I had a special personal moment, my Guinness-addled noggin smiled to itself and attempted to boast to its uninterested cohorts, I remembered that in a few short days a Slovakian maniac was going to let me loose in his excellent restaurant to talk about booze, to boozers, while boozing. Brilliant. The night was to be at Jalon's Bridewell, the man in question is Vlastimil Banetka – a rising star in our city's ever-growing restaurant scene, the booze was to be some heaven-threatening wine from another genius, Rak Jain, from The House of Townend. The set-up was simple – four stunning courses, six brilliant wines, a gang of brilliant punters and executive service from Vlastimil and his crew. The mission went exactly to plan, our guests were treated to wines from all over this mad globe and some absolutely stunning tucker. The star of the show, for me, was a blinding rack of Welsh lamb with which we'd paired an outrageous Chianti – Villa Carfaggio Chianti Classico 2006. Chianti has taken a bit of a battering
Best bar none
over the years –nasty cheap gear served in baskets . . . Lecter banging it down with some poor blighter's kidneys . . . but when it's done right you will enjoy one of the juiciest, sensetingling, rich, flavourful wines this side of Mount Olympus. The dark, brooding liquid from top boys Villa Carfaggio was almost too good with the excellently prepared lamb. There were other great wines and all of the food was of the highest level, but this little pair were like Morecambe and Wise, Reeves and Mortimer, Gervais and Gervais – absolutely made for each other. Vlastimil is planning another evening of executive debauchery in September (check out www.jalonsbridewell.co.uk). After such a fine evening, which had followed five earth-shattering days at Glastonbury, I needed a bit of a break from Bacchus and his wily ways. I had some people invading my house for dinner, for about three seconds I contemplated alcohol-free wine, slapped myself across the chops and asked around for some proper plonk that wouldn't send my liver upstairs, binbags in hand, ready to throw me out of my own house. The word is Riesling, and it must be German. You can pick up a charming German number at a good wine emporium for a decent price and you'll find most of the good, dry stuff will only carry around 9% fighting elixir. Perfect with some grilled chicken, panfried mackerel, all that lovely sunshine fodder. I've mentioned in the past about German juice getting a bit of a pasting. Don't be misled by memories of cheap Liebfraumilch – get yourself into a good wine shop, ask nicely, and, if you've been good, they'll let you saunter off with what is widely regarded as some of the best white wine in the world.
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The interior of the ultra-chic Palm Sugar Lounge BARS with beer gardens are what we thirst for in the summer, and its large al fresco area makes Palm Sugar Lounge one of the sweetest drinking spots around. On the top deck of Liverpool One, Palm Sugar Lounge is the happening sister venue of restaurant Chaophraya and is already firmly establishing itself as a summer hot-spot for all ages. The first thing that strikes you about it is its massive size. There’s one of the longest cocktail bars in Liverpool downstairs and a VIP and Champagne bar upstairs. The sense of spaciousness is augmented by mirrors, huge airy windows and futuristic bubble lights dripping from the ceiling.
The Eastern flavour is carried over from the Thai restaurant in its water features – including a fish tank providing a hide and seek wall between the ladies and gents loos – and intricate wood carvings. The bar offers an exhaustive cocktail list, Export, Moretti and San Miguel on draught. But it’s the outdoor area that draws the crowds. The capacious terrace area, on the fringes of Chavasse Park, makes a nice change from cramped pavement seating or the postage stamp beer gardens usually offered at city bars. All we need is the sizzling Asian sunshine. ■ PALM Sugar Lounge, Kenyon Steps, Liverpool One. Tel 0151 707 6654.
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DAILY POST Tuesday, July 14, 2009
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DAILY POST Tuesday, July 14, 2009