Altamura bread, fresh figs, ricotta and smoked prosciutto

"For water is sold here, though the worst in the world; but their bread is exceeding fine, inasmuch as the weary traveller is used to carry it willingly on his shoulders" ~ Horace


It's dark outside while I'm cooking dinner. I've bought a sexy new pair of black suede ankle boots with a fur trim. My electric blanket is, without fail, switched on every night at 10pm. There are cooking apples, plump and red-tinged, burdening the branches of the apple tree that overhangs our garden. There are even more of them lying, half-rotten, on the lawn, reminding me to get off my backside and do something about drying them into foamy rings, or turning them into jam or crumble. The blackberries have been and gone, leaving crinkled little green stumps where once there were glossy, dark, edible treasures. I feel the need for my favourite pair of thick, lilac knitted socks when I'm just lounging around the house. A new series of Spooks is underway. I've started thinking about my Christmas list and - more excitingly - soaking the fruit to make the Christmas cake a couple of months in advance. My cotton dresses and harem pants have been relegated to the 'summer clothes' bag in the loft, to be replaced with Ugg boots, knitwear and leggings. I have to put my dressing gown on every morning just to survive the journey from bed to bathroom. 

I feel I may soon have to accept that autumn is well and truly underway.



How do people who aren't interested in food cope with the onset of autumn?

I can bear the chill weather and the prospect of long, dark days because partridge and pheasant have started appearing in the butchers. Quinces, some of the most handsome I've ever seen, are piled high in the market. Small but perfectly formed crisp English apples - orange-scented Coxes and my favourite, the flavoursome Russet - bring a welcome change from the ubiquitous (and foreign) Pink Lady. Butternut squash, one of my favourite vegetables, will soon be everywhere, its sweet, sticky, golden flesh promising a plethora of delicious uses. I can finally cook the eight pigs' cheeks sitting in my freezer, braising them for hours in a sticky concoction of orange juice and star anise that will be just the thing to provide some cheer on a dark evening. Fine English pears are abundant, just waiting to be baked in crumbles or cakes, or scattered over my morning porridge with an obscene amount of nutmeg. As are some wonderful varieties of plum, so much juicier and taster than foreign imports, ideal baked with cinnamon and ginger for a warming breakfast or dessert. Earthy wild mushrooms will be somewhere, if I can just find them, ideal for coupling with fresh, zesty lemon thyme for an umami-rich risotto. I can't wait to take my potato ricer to some good old-fashioned floury potatoes, to make a rich mash to accompany a beef and ale stew.

Without all that to look forward to, I think I'd consider hibernation.



If you know anything about anything, or have any sort of taste whatsoever, you will of course have noticed the glaring omission from the above list.

Figs.

I've devoted many words on this blog to the rapturous praise of figs. Every time I find myself bulk-buying them, I try and figure out precisely what it is that makes me so obsessed. I have come up with several answers.

1. Figs are beautiful. There's no fruit quite like them; the closest comparison would be a pomegranate, I think. With their beautiful red-pink interior, bursting with glistening clusters of golden seeds, their delightful deep purple skins, tinged slightly with green, and their curvaceous form, just begging to be held in the palm of one's hand, they are incomparable in their aesthetic appeal.

2. Figs are versatile. My favourite fruits are those that work as well in a savoury context as a sweet. Figs tick all the boxes. Wonderful baked with a little sugar or honey, or tucked into an almond tart for a dessert, they are equally delicious added to the cooking juices of duck, pork or lamb before serving. Juicy warm figs coupled with the rich meat of a slow-cooked lamb shoulder or a pan-fried duck breast is one of the best taste sensations you will ever try. Ditto figs with parma ham or goat's cheese. In fact, most cheeses, and most meats. Like pomegranate seeds, they add a wonderful burst of sweetness that is subtle enough not to overpower other savoury flavours.

3. Figs are elusive. Like a child, I want that which I cannot have. Figs appear for such a sadly brief season, and even then are rarely cheap. However, like the equally elusive Alphonso mango, I justify the cost because I am an epicurean at heart, and fully believe that money spent on good food is money well spent. So what if I spent approximately £60 on Alphonso mangoes over the summer months? (Oh dear...I think it might actually have been closer to £80, and now that I think about it that really does seem obscene). Well, I don't really buy inferior supermarket mangoes at £1-2 each for the rest of the year, so I'm only spending in one go what I'd spent in smaller stages year-round otherwise. Or something. Yes, OK, I concede that maybe that's too much to spend on mangoes. Moving swiftly on...



One of my favourite ways to enjoy figs - though now the season is in full swing I'm going to be experimenting with more - is combined with one, or both, of the following: Parma ham, and goat's cheese. After a delicious bruschetta I had at Polpo recently, I was inspired to try ricotta instead of goat's cheese. I've developed a bit of a fetish for ricotta ever since I started making my own (recipe here). Its crumbly, grainy texture and slight sweetness make it a wonderful match for nearly every fruit. I've been enjoying it with mangoes and peaches on toast for breakfast all summer. 

Sometimes I try to be healthy and enjoy this dashing triumvirate of cheese, figs and ham in salad form, usually with lentils because leaves alone cannot satiate me enough to last until dinner (actually, neither can lentils - I'll always have some sort of mid-afternoon snack...). This was my virtuous plan for the week, until fate undid all my good intentions and supplied me with some of the best bread to ever pass my lips.

Altamura bread is made in Altamura, in the region of Apulia, southern Italy. It's famous within the country as one of the finest and oldest types of bread, so much so that it was the first baking product in Europe to be granted a DOP certificate; it uses yeast, grain, water and salt from within the region only. It's dense, with a thick crust and yellowish interior from the use of durum wheat. It last a surprisingly long time - at least 15 days - given the lack of chemical preservatives. Altamura is famous for this bread, and has been for centuries - the poet Horace described it as "exceeding fine".

Crosta & Mollica, makers of quality regional Italian breads, have brought Altamura bread to the UK (they sell their products in Waitrose, Selfridges and Ocado). Their bread is made using 100% local durum wheat, and has been baked by the Forte family in Altamura for over 50 years. I am eternally grateful to them for giving me my first taste of this incredible bread.


Altamura has quite a lot in common with sourdough. It lasts a long time, toasts well, has a satisfyingly crisp crust and a slightly sour crumb. Crosta & Mollica suggest using it for bruschetta, and I can't think of a bread that would work better. I topped mine, toasted, with ricotta cheese, slices of smoked Parma ham (I found this in M&S and am wondering where it has been all my life - the posh person's bacon, it's rich and deeply flavoured, a substitute for Parma ham with a certain je ne sais quoi), warm halved figs, and a little basil.

Oh, what a lunch. While ricotta, Parma ham and figs are always a good idea, putting them on this bread transformed a good lunch into a great one. The bread had just the right balance between a really crisp, crunchy crust and a yielding crumb with a slight tang to it. It's hard to describe what makes it so good, but I'd really urge you to try it. It's not hugely cheap, at £1.79 for a packet of five slices, but the slices are very large ones. I'd love to see what a full loaf looks like (and by that I mean "I'd love to eat a full loaf of this bread. In one go. With figs and cheese and ham, sitting on an Italian hilltop watching the sun go down, with a good glass of wine"). Each slice would probably constitute one meal for a normal person. I, being greedy, had two slices per lunch (which means, annoyingly, that I now have one slice left in the packet that I don't know what to do with - I personally think packs of six slices would be a better idea, but that I suppose is irrelevant).

I won't insult your intelligence by posting an exact recipe for this combination. Instead I suggest you head down to Waitrose and get a packet of Crosta & Mollica's Altamura bread (or, if you can't find it, some really good sourdough). Put it under the grill until nicely toasted on both sides - put the figs under the grill too, to heat through. Spread with ricotta, then layer over a few slices of smoked Parma ham (or normal Parma ham). Halve the figs with your fingers and place on the ham, using a knife to sort of spread them out so they cover the ham and cheese. Add a few leaves of basil.

Devour, and be glad for the rich bounty of autumn and Italy.


Keep Calm and Cook On

"I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around." ~ James Beard


Ah, the good old 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster. So very classic, so much scope for amusing and facetious variations. A friend of mine has a poster in her room instructing her to "Keep Calm and Drink More Tea". My brother has something, I forget what, bearing the slogan "Now Panic and Freak Out". When I was about halfway through revising for my Finals, and every day was a struggle to avoid either throwing myself under a passing vehicle or bursting into tears in front of strangers, I had the bright idea of making the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster (the original red one) my iPhone wallpaper. As simple as it sounds, it really did have a positive effect on my morale. Every time I checked my phone - which, as you can imagine, happens fairly often on an average day, particularly if I've forgotten to put on my watch - I saw those bold white letters and that dramatic red background, and I reminded myself that life probably could be much worse. After all, there are worse places to be taking your Finals than Oxford, and there are worse crises in life than "Oh my goodness I might not get a First". Unsurprisingly, no one really wanted to hear about my first world problems, so I took my phone's advice. I kept calm and carried on. With the aid of chocolate, tea, and a religious schedule of post-lunch power naps.



Perhaps it's the fond memories of getting through those testing times that has made me so susceptible to this new offering from Quadrille books. Written by experienced food writer and editor Lewis Esson (whose works include Larousse Pratique and Mouthwatering Mediterranean), it arrived in the post a couple of weeks ago, and I have been completely charmed by it. I reckon that 'Keep Calm and Cook On' would have perhaps been an even better slogan to see me through my Finals, as I tend to find that when I'm stressed I go into manic cooking mode, rustling up two- or three-course dinners for friends most nights without ever stopping to realise my strange compulsion to be constantly in the kitchen whenever things start to look a little bleak. You'd think that cooking is the last thing one should be doing if stressed, but I think I like it because it gives me a sense of pride and achievement when I've successfully and deliciously fed people, and reminds me that I can at least do something, even if my dissertation reading isn't going to plan, or I'm having no luck with job applications, or I'm worrying about money/life. You can always tell when I feel stressed out, because the monthly Archive sidebar on this blog stretches down for two screens.

Anyway. After marvelling at its diminutive size, I sat in bed and read this little book from cover to cover. It was a very happy twenty minutes. The idea is to provide 'good advice for cooks', but this good advice is peppered with amusing quotations from all sorts of venerable figures, from Oscar Wilde to Sophia Loren. One of my favourites is at the top of this post and made me chuckle. I also rather liked the poet Horace's "A hungry stomach seldom scorns plain food", which just makes me think of all the times I've planned exotic and labour-intensive dinners only to find that when I come home starving all I want is a bowl of rice, and it tastes just as good. As Cervantes said, "Hunger is the best sauce in the world." 

Other gems include:
  • "Life is a combination of magic and pasta" - Federico Fellini
  • "Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon" - the 14th Dalai Lama (I like to think I do this quite well...)
  • "Life is too short to stuff a mushroom" - Shirley Conran (I don't agree, as this recipe proves)
  • "He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters" - James I (and VI)
  • "My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people" - Orson Welles (which makes me think of all the times I've cooked a recipe that 'serves two' for myself without bothering to scale it down...)
  • "Everything you see I owe to spaghetti" - Sophia Loren (a good advert for a non-carb-free diet)
  • "A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing" - Samuel Johnson
  • "The trouble with eating Italian food is that 5 or 6 days later you're hungry again" - George Miller
  • "The only time to eat diet food is while you are waiting for the steak to cook" - Julia Child

I particularly love the way a lot of the quotations, like Julia Child's, put food into perspective a bit. It's easy - amidst all the warnings these days about too much salt intake and too many carbs being bad for you and why we shouldn't eat so much meat and how sugar is the enemy - to forget that food should primarily be about pleasure. I am the first to admit that I often get a bit silly and paranoid about the way I eat, worrying that I'll put on weight if I have an extra helping of dessert or bake a loaf of bread to go with dinner, worrying that I shouldn't have pasta because carbs are evil and instead should have a bowl of lentils. Then I think of the quotations in this lovely book, and - a bit like during my Finals - tell myself to man up a bit, and just enjoy the damn food, because life's too short. Thank you, Quadrille, for encouraging me to eat more cake.

The handy kitchen tips are both useful and informative. They include: a list of foods to help you sleep better; how to poach eggs properly; how to remove excess salt from a dish; what to look for when buying fish; how to test eggs for freshness; how to lessen the smell of cooking cabbage; how to stop bread going mouldy quickly; how to skin tomatoes. Some of them I knew already, but some surprised me and have already proved useful.

All in all, a lovely little book. No cook should be without this, especially as it only costs £4.99. It would also make a great present for any keen cooks in your life. I think they should produce a matching apron - I for one would definitely buy it.

Finally, a pertinent quotation:

"A man's own dinner is to himself so important that he cannot bring himself to believe that it is a matter utterly indifferent to anyone else", from Anthony Trollope. 

This sounds rather familiar - it's the reason for the existence of food blogs.


Oxford Foodies Festival with Rémy Martin


Aside from the opportunity to hone my writing skills, rant about things that are important or repellent to me, invent new and exciting ways of using ingredients, and challenge myself to come up with new synonyms for "OMGYUMZZZ", one of my favourite things about being a food blogger is that it gives me the chance to try things that I'd never normally consider.

A couple of weeks ago I was very kindly invited by Rémy Martin, producer of fine champagne cognacs, to attend the Oxford Foodies Festival and enjoy a complimentary Coeur de Cognac at their Signature Lounge. Having never to my knowledge imbibed cognac before, I was more than a little intrigued, and pleased by the added bonus that I'd have an excuse to return to my beloved Oxford. Yes, dear readers, I am no longer at Oxford University, surrounded by dreaming spires and glorious revelry, talented minds and meaningful conversation, historic sandstone and ornate libraries. Instead, I have had to make the miserable journey home to...er...Cambridge.



I don't know if the Foodies Festival is an annual event, but I've certainly never heard of it in my four years at Oxford. This could, of course, be due to the fact that I was never in Oxford during the late summer, instead enjoying my shockingly lengthy three-month break that I always attempted to justify to people by emphasising how damn hard I worked for the three eight-week terms (and I did actually work pretty hard, although if you read this blog and don't know me you would be forgiven for thinking that all I did was bake, eat large amounts of fruit, and procure obscure meat and fish products from the Covered Market with which to experiment. While occasionally throwing a dissertation together). 

I have to say, after I remained in Oxford a month longer than usual into the summer this year, I am now extremely glad that I never had the opportunity to experience summer among the dreaming spires. It is absolutely impossible to do anything without having some sort of encounter with a hapless tourist that will leave you entertaining murderous fantasies involving sharpened mortar boards. They are everywhere. They are, in fact, worse than wasps, that other bane of the summer months. They swarm around Broad Street, wandering into cycle lanes brandishing expensive cameras, taking photos of insignificant everyday objects, or jumping straight out in front of you while you're on a bike, trying to get a snapshot of an "archetypal Oxford student" (criteria: young, intelligent gleam in the eye, deep in thought, preferably a glasses-wearer, ideally holding a book, riding a bike and wearing a scholars' gown - I'm sure if they manage to get a snap of someone filling all those criteria at once they get extra points among their tourist friends - it's probably some sort of game). 

You can spot said tourists from miles away, either by their fluorescent matching backpacks and the fact they move in herds like wildebeests, from their 'Oxford University' hoodies (which, needless to say, no one actually attending Oxford University would ever touch with a ten foot bargepole) and plastic bags bearing the Bodleian Library logo, from their highly conspicuous stalking of anyone on a bike or wearing a gown, from their natural habitat right in the middle of the pavement in front of some important landmark making a peace sign, or from the fact that they're about to meet certain death underneath a large bus because they're too busy standing in middle of the road taking a photo of a traffic light to notice.

I am a little ashamed to admit that sometimes I wish buses wouldn't stop for people standing in the middle of the road.

And so, readers, this is why it is a good thing I have never remained in Oxford for the summer vacation. Fortunately, the Foodies Festival took place outside the city centre in South Parks, and involved a large, green open space where large hordes of people wouldn't have been a problem. There was not a fluorescent backpack in sight, nor an Oxford University hoodie. Instead, I entered the festival to be greeted by droves of stalls and vans proffering their wares, the smell of roasting animal flesh, and laughably cold and grey weather. The giant red Pimms tent with its banners proclaiming "PIMMS O'CLOCK" and its swathes of picnic blankets on the floor (presumably for lounging nonchalantly on, Pimms in hand, clad in cricket jumper) seemed a cruel and ironic joke. As did the sheer amount of ice cream on offer. 


Typical English summer weather aside, however, I had a great time. The only other food festival I've attended was the Real Food Festival in London (three years in a row, which I think makes me qualified to term myself a 'foodie' - but I won't, because I loathe and detest that word, possibly even more than I loathe and detest tourists). I realised, wandering around Oxford's offering, that once you've attended a few food festivals, they tend to all blend into one. 

The majority of stalls sell olive oil and balsamic vinegar. These usually have some form of dried ingredient adorning them, preferably some fat, handsome heads of purple garlic or some wrinkled, glossy chillies. Sometimes there is parmesan. Sometimes there is ham. If there are both, even better. There are usually plenty of stalls selling chutney/relish, all slightly different but all generally tasting of the same thing, as most chutneys do (I long ago learned to stop buying chutney just because I liked the sound of the ingredients - it took me a fair few uneaten purchases to realise that "rhubarb and ginger", "apricot and cinnamon" or "plum and raisin" are things that are only delicious when not doused in vinegar and simmered for hours into a brown mush to accompany cold meats). There are lots of retailers offering organic meat boxes, or just tempting, succulent burgers, sausages and steaks. There are always a few wine, ale and cider stalls, but I never bother with those because I don't really drink. 

Then you get the sweet treats - cupcakes, cookies, whoopie pies (please, can someone explain to me what one of these actually is? I have never tried one and whenever I hear the term I think of whoopie cushions and practical jokes, which doesn't really put me in an eating frame of mind). There weren't as many cupcakes here as at the Real Food Festival (probably a good thing, as I find them intensely boring), but instead there were two different stalls selling baklava. For me, comparing a cupcake to  baklava is like comparing Ewan McGregor to Johnny Depp. Both very nice and easy on the eye, but it's only the latter that will make you weak at the knees, salivating slightly. It's possibly the most delicious thing on earth (baklava, I mean, not Johnny Depp. Although...)


After that, you get the occasional gem, like a stall selling pouches of pure alphonso mango purée for use in cooking or smoothies (a delicious idea, but I couldn't quite bring myself to part with the amount they were charging), or some really beautiful hand-crafted wooden chopping boards (ditto), or a weird and wonderful selection of wild meats (springbok, ostrich, buffalo, wildebeest or zebra burger, anyone?) or a wide range of venison cuts vacuum-packed and ready to take away (venison sausages? Yes please), or a stall selling the most exquisite potted crab (butter and seafood? A complete diet).

There are also the stalls selling food to eat there and then. This is often extortionately priced, because they can get away with it - where else are you going to eat? Man cannot live on dried garlic and balsamic vinegar alone. There was a wide range to choose from - Thai noodles, various paellas, sausage rolls, crab sandwiches, burgers derived from half of Africa's wildlife, hog roast, jerk chicken, Moroccan couscous. The paellas did look immensely tempting, huge vats of glistening, marigold-coloured rice bursting with luscious pieces of chicken or seafood. Then again the whole hog with its blistered crackling and juicy pink meat also whetted my appetite. In fact, it all did. Why my boyfriend and I had decided to have a late breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs (or even breakfast at all), I do not know, but it didn't take very long after we entered the festival to start thinking about lunch.


I don't mean to sound jaded. I love food festivals, even if I have sampled approximately a million different balsamic vinegar and olive oil combinations in my lifetime. I procured an exciting bottle of garlic salt from a stall dedicated to the stuff, with chunky golden flakes of dried garlic in among the sea salt crystals. I adore garlic salt; it's an amazing way to perk up almost any ingredient - two of my favourite ways are to rub it on the skin of a chicken before roasting, or to toss oiled potato wedges with garlic salt before cooking in the oven. I've now discovered that it's also brilliant on scrambled eggs.

I bought some very good value venison sausages from some amiable Scottish gentlemen who had driven all the way from Scotland just to be at the festival. They were flipping some incredible-smelling venison burgers on a sizzling griddle. My boyfriend was hooked and devoured one soon after - it was juicy, gamey and delicious, a startling scarlet in the centre. I spent approximately half an hour agonising over the choice between a crab sandwich or a lamb wrap for my lunch, eventually opting for the latter and then, inevitably, wishing I'd gone for the former, after I ended up with a puddle of yoghurt sauce and redcurrant jelly in my lap. We then had some absolutely delicious lemon sorbet and rum and raisin ice cream, and a gorgeous piece of sticky, syrupy baklava that made me remember why I managed to eat five huge pieces of the stuff on my first night in Istanbul and then spend the next couple of hours in a sugar coma.



I had one of those terrifying "I'm turning into my mother" moments when I asked my boyfriend if I could go and look at the plant stall. I'm glad I did, though, because I spent a happy five minutes exclaiming about all the different varieties of herbs on offer. I'd heard of such exotic things as pineapple sage, chocolate mint and lemon verbena before, but I'd never had the chance to actually see or smell them. I probably looked a bit weird as I shuffled guiltily between the plants, rubbing leaves between my finger and thumb and inhaling deeply. It may sound obvious, but pineapple sage actually smells like pineapple. Who'd have thought that was even possible? 

As if that wasn't excitement enough, there was also pineapple mint! Lavender mint! Moroccan mint! African blue basil! Plus - can you believe it - tangerine sage and blackcurrant sage. It was almost as if someone had been given two hats, one with the names of herbs in and the other with the names of fruit in, and they'd just pulled one from each at random and written it on a sign to put on the plants. If only I hadn't had to trek back to Cambridge on the train, I'd have bought one of every plant. I can only begin to imagine the culinary possibilities of herbs that smell and taste like fruit. Lemon verbena is one that I really want to experiment with; it reminds me a little of lemon thyme, with that gorgeous, slightly astringent citrus aroma. I imagine it would be incredible in an ice cream.


Finally, sated with various red meats and frozen dairy, we headed to the Rémy Martin Signature Lounge. Here we were treated to a glass of Coeur de Cognac. Rémy Martin are the world leader in fine champagne cognacs, and the Coeur de Cognac is a blend of eaux-de-vie pressed from grapes grown in Grande and Petite Champagne. The eaux-de-vie are slowly distilled before being aged, to produce a fruity cognac with an apricot flavour. Keen to dispel the illusion that cognac is the preserve of old men clad in slippers and smoking cigars, Rémy Martin are offering Coeur de Cognac as an alternative to dessert wine.

In order to experience this, we were offered the cognac over ice alongside a 'petite delice' created by Rémy Martin's executive chef. This comprised a blackcurrant marshmallow, a square of raspberry jelly, and a delicious pistachio biscuit. 

It was a momentous occasion: the loss of my marshmallow virginity. Yes, I know. I've never eaten a marshmallow. Here's another bombshell: I only tried ketchup for the first time three weeks ago. Off you go now, tutting about how crazy I am, wondering why on earth you read my recipes because I'm clearly not qualified to tell you what to eat if I've never tried one of the staple foodstuffs of our civilisation. It's somewhat amusing to my boyfriend, who understands my aversion to certain foods because they are not "real". It's the reason I don't like fizzy drinks, sweets, or anything remotely processed. Unless you can dig it out of the ground or kill it, treat it with a couple of basic processes and then serve it, I won't eat it. Marshmallows are not real. I don't really understand them. However, I made an exception for this marshmallow as it was designed by a top chef, and was also flavoured with blackcurrants. I like blackcurrants. They are real.


The reason the cognac is served over ice, we were told, is to take away some of the harsh heat of the alcohol, to avoid that burning feeling in the throat as you swallow it. It also releases some of the essential oils in the cognac to maximise its flavour (you could see them swirling about in the glass, like a heat haze on a road in summer).

I'm no expert on liqueurs of any sort, let along cognac, but I did enjoy the pairing of the drink with the 'petite delice'. Had I sampled it on its own, I think I would have found it too strong and overpowering, as I rarely drink and am definitely unaccustomed to anything stronger than wine. However, with something quite sugary to take the edge off, it was quite palatable. I also liked the idea of serving it over ice to remove that burning feeling which, unaccustomed to such things, I tend to find rather unpleasant. It had a lovely aromatic, fruity flavour and a beautiful rich amber colour. I could see the Coeur de Cognac working alongside some sort of dessert, perhaps on an occasion where your average dessert wine would prove too sweet. It certainly opened my eyes to the possibility of pairing stronger alcohol with confectionary, though I think I'd need a few more tasting sessions before I became quite accustomed to the strength of the stuff.

I had a great day. Thanks to Rémy Martin and Joanne from House PR for inviting me to the festival.


Oxford college catering: behind the scenes


Those of you who watched the most recent series of Masterchef may remember the episode where the contestants went to cook for formal hall at New College, Oxford. I certainly do, largely because it was especially dear to my heart, being an Oxford University graduate (twice) who has had formal hall at New College on several occasions, and who has spent the last three years keeping time by the New College bells, my last two houses no more than a stone's throw away from the magnificent building. I was fascinated to see what went on behind the scenes, as I expected catering for over a hundred hungry students and academics to be far more frenetic and far more difficult than a busy service in a top restaurant. This was proven to be the case, if the amount of sweat pouring down the brows of the hapless contestants was anything to go by. I remember in particular Jackie and Tom being presented with an entire vat of rabbit legs that needed stripping of meat, and desperately attempting to calculate in their heads how long each leg would take and whether that would fit within the impossibly short time limit (it didn't, naturally, which of course made for extra-compelling viewing). Perhaps the entire experience was more stressful than your average Masterchef challenge because of the exacting demands of the clientele; I remember a young, coiffured young man pompously lambasting his starter, because it lacked the promised Oxford chutney element. Of course, it was not pointed out to him that the reason said chutney was not present on his plate was because some of the contestants had accidentally got broken glass in it.


We forget, of course, while those Masterchef contestants are jubilantly celebrating their survival of the formal hall service, that for some people such intense pressure is the norm. It can't be easy to cater to a hall full of demanding students every night. And yes, I do mean demanding. Although for most people the stereotypical student subsists on alcohol and refined carbohydrates, sees anything that doesn't bear the label "Tesco Value" as gourmet, and makes pasta in a kettle to serve with cold Dolmio sauce straight from the sachet (or, if they can't be bothered to do that, just has a pot noodle instead), I know for a fact this isn't true of all, or even most, Oxford students. And I'm willing to bet other universities too, though I've had little experience of them. Actually, I do recall an ex-boyfriend of mine from another university once tried to tell me how good tinned strawberries were. The sight of them nearly made me sick.

Certainly the students in my college, at least, are very interested in food - perhaps not enough to moan about the lack of an Oxford chutney garnish, but certainly enough to care about the quality of the food they get served in hall. It's a brave team of chefs that sets out to serve them every night, that attempts to make sure the Sunday roast isn't too try, the vegetarian dishes occasionally feature something other than chickpeas and mushrooms, the hot chocolate waffle makes a frequent appearance on the menu, the vegetables aren't shrivelled and sad after aeons spent under a heat lamp, the lunch provides enough carbohydrate for hungry rowers (lasagne with a side of baked potato? Yep, that'll do it).


Intrigued by the logistics of all this, I was delighted when our head chef at Merton College, Michael Wender, agreed to take me on a tour of the college kitchens. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, having never seen a college kitchen before, apart from the brief glimpses on Masterchef (and even then I was too distracted by 'Vegetarian Jackie' flapping around and crying, or Sara chucking glass into everything, to really admire the polished contours of the New College catering outfit). I had been told by a friend that the kitchen is much smaller than she expected, considering the amount of people they serve every night. I'd never actually known how many people that is - it always seemed like a lot when I was sitting in a fully-booked Sunday formal hall. There would be three long trestle tables packed with students, plus the raised High Table for the tutors, professors and their guests. Find it hard to imagine? Just think of the Hogwarts Hall scenes in the Harry Potter films - they filmed those at Christ Church, but Merton is really very similar, just smaller.

Michael told me that the largest single meal they have catered for comprised around 220 guests - they had to use both Merton's Hall and the Savile Room, usually reserved for functions like subject dinners (an annual affair where students from each subject have a lovely three-course meal with their tutors - some of them turn into rather raucous occasions, though mine never did; the English students and tutors are a fairly tame bunch). Incidentally, I'm fairly certain the New College dinner featured on Masterchef was not your average formal hall - it was probably what they call a 'guest night', which is a special formal dinner to which students (and tutors, I think) are encouraged to invite guests - the food is usually of a much higher standard, hence the pressure of the challenge. At Merton, a full formal hall usually means around 120 students and 60 High Table guests, a dinner in the Savile room around 50 guests, and a smaller private dinner in the Senior Common Room around 25 guests. Fortunately, Michael said, all three don't tend to happen at the same time. Even without all these dinners, college go through 900 eggs a week during term time. That's some serious mass catering.


I've had my fair share of Merton food, though to be honest I haven't eaten there much in the last couple of years because I've become so obsessed with cooking. In my first year, though, there was nowhere else to eat as I had no kitchen. Lunch and dinner would be spent in hall. This was highly dangerous, particularly when it came to lunch - you would just pay a set amount of money, around £2, and then you could eat as much of everything as you wanted (within reason). There'd be several hot food options, a vegetarian option, a hot soup to start, usually a hot pudding, plus a well-stocked salad bar bursting with bread, cheese, pasta salad and cold meats. I'd always want to try a bit of everything, and I figured I may as well get my money's worth. Needless to say, I put on quite a lot of weight. Dinner was either early supper (a two-course informal meal) or formal hall (three courses, table service, formal dress and gowns required - the typical Oxford experience). Again, it was a recipe for weight gain. I remember one day having braised steak and chocolate sponge for lunch, followed by lasagne and crumble for dinner. Even the stress of an Oxford education couldn't burn off all those calories.


Generally, the food at Merton (see above - beautiful, no?) while I did actually eat there was pretty good. Your average formal hall menu comprised a starter, usually soup (though sometimes a salad, or pâté, or eggs mayonnaise), followed by a meat-oriented main course (braised steak, meat pie, lamb shank), followed by dessert (often something hearty and filling like sponge, pie or crumble, though there was also ice cream and cheesecake). My favourites were the hot chocolate waffle (which achieved a sort of cult status, to the point where it appeared on the menu as "THE Merton hot chocolate waffle"), the crumble, the fish pie (in fact, any dish served for lunch on Fish Friday), and the braised steak with mushrooms. I also had a secret soft spot for the fish and chips, when I used to go to early dinner every night - it always seemed to be fish and chips. Another highlight of each term at Merton was the JCR Formal dinner, which cost £5 and comprised five courses - starter, main, dessert, cheese, chocolates and coffee. This was a recipe for stomach ache, as the menu wasn't always planned too well - if you're eating two courses before and two courses after, you probably don't want to be served a thick wodge of sponge and custard for dessert. However, you couldn't deny the value for money, and the cheeseboard was usually my favourite part (I would be extra careful to save room for it, perhaps leaving a pointless piece of courgette on my plate during the main course - why waste valuable stomach space that could be filled with cheese?)

The food served for special dinners was always rather lovely, and I've certainly been to a few of those in my time - Merton love to throw a special dinner for just about anything. Subject dinners, post-Finals dinners, matriculation dinners, Shrove Tuesday dinners (basically a "Oh, your finals are coming up, so here's some nice food to take your mind off the impending doom and pain" dinner), MCR dinners, graduate welcome dinners, graduate supervisor dinners...I've eaten very well on all these occasions. I had some beautiful fish dishes on High Table; a lovely little goat's cheese and beetroot tart; a delicious passionfruit posset with tropical fruit salad; a really excellent steak with béarnaise sauce. There was also a wonderful Graduate Dinner at the beginning of my second term as a Masters student - we had smoked salmon on dark bread to start with, followed by fillet steak with potato dauphinoise, followed by hot chocolate fondant. Possibly the most delectable gastronomic triumvirate on the planet. It was all perfect - the steak was absolutely as I like it, bright pink in the middle, thinly sliced, delicious. How they managed that on such a large scale, I do not know. I was about to find out on my kitchen tour.


The kitchen is, perhaps, smaller than one would expect, though I didn't really know what to expect. As you walk in, there is a central workstation for food prep and plating up, with large containers of storecupboard ingredients (spices, herbs, seasoning) along the middle. To my right chefs were busy slicing vegetables. I immediately felt dwarfed by an enormous oven to my left. Michael showed me some of the many gadgets interspersed throughout the kitchen, one of which was rather trendy - a water bath, for vacuum-packing meat and cooking it slowly at a low temperature to ensure maximum succulence. I normally associate such contraptions with people like Heston Blumenthal; Michael told me Merton are trialling it at the moment (though I'm not sure students are discerning enough to know the difference - if they're being fed a plentiful supply of meat, chances are they're not that bothered how it was cooked). There was an impressively vast induction hob, cleaner and much more efficient than gas. I was intrigued by a giant griddle: a far cry from my pathetic little cast-iron griddle pan, this beast was enormous, roughly the size of my entire hob at home. I was also shocked by how clean it was - mine is encrusted with year-old remnants of steak and chargrilled courgettes, but this was made from non-stick material so it was beautifully shiny. It's good for cooking things like steak or chicken where you want those lovely chargrill marks, though Michael also showed me a set of metal trivets that can be heated up and used for the same effect. There was also a plancha, a flat, non-stick heat plate good for frying things when you don't want them to stick or take on any colour, like eggs. I've seen one of these before, in a Japanese restaurant in Italy (perhaps the only one) - the chef slapped pieces of meat and vegetables onto it and stir-fried them right there in front of your eyes.





Perhaps the most fascinating gadget was what looked like a sunken metal sink (once, of course, I discovered that it wasn't just a metal sink - nothing particularly fascinating about that). Michael explained to me that this is actually a kind of pressure cooker. The kitchen has two - one holds 140 litres and the other 200. Using these, the kitchens can cook around 300 portions of stew at any one time - you wouldn't think so, from looking at the vats, but they are deceptive. The chefs also use them to make stock. I was really quite surprised by this - I always think that making one's own stock is the preserve of home cooks with a lot of time on their hands, and that even top restaurants sometimes cheat by using the cubes or liquid stuff, so a college is definitely not going to bother. However, Michael assured me that all the stock is home-made in the kitchens using the pressure cooker vats. Sometimes, he said, Merton make 600 litres a week. I found that quite astounding - that is a lot of stock, a lot of animal bones, a lot of time spent on attention to detail. "Have you noticed how the gravy always tastes really good?" he asked. I've clearly discovered the secret to one of my favourite Merton dishes - braised steak.



Next, I was shown round the kitchen stores - fridge, freezer and dry stores. We passed other gadgets on the way, like the ovens (one of them a combi oven, that can be used to steam and cook), complete with temperature probe to check the internal temperatures of cooked or cooking food for safety purposes, and a dishwashing area that looked like one of those baggage X-ray machines at an airport - dirty dishes go in, then reappear through strips of plastic spotlessly clean. Michael told me about Merton's waste disposal system that extracts all the water from kitchen waste and disposes of it as hard pellets, saving a lot of space. The dry stores were rather like an Aladdin's cave of weird and wonderful ingredients (some more weird than others). I'm always slightly fascinated by the scale of mass catering supplies - I counted at least thirty bottles of maple syrup (the chef explained that there were going to be some American guests staying at the college, and they like bacon and maple syrup for breakfast - my mind, accustomed to the £5+ price tag of a supermarket bottle of maple syrup, boggled at the sight of these bottles), as well as giant tins of chopped tomatoes and baked beans, big bottles of fruit purées, and sacks of pulses. There were huge containers of stock in the fridge and freezer, as well as assorted fruits, vegetables and meats. Michael told me about a giant wholesale food market he'd recently been to in Paris, and showed me a big crate of beef tomatoes he'd bought. They were like no tomatoes I've ever seen, squat and bulbous with a gorgeous glossy red colouring and ridged along the sides like little pumpkins. Later I saw one of the chefs working with them; he'd sliced the tops off and was going to stuff them. I was also shown a big box of the fuzziest peaches I've ever seen in my life - if I hadn't examined one further, I would have assumed they were just very mouldy. I can confirm they were not, as Michael gave me one to take home, and it was delicious. He said he was planning to poach them as a dessert.



In the equipment stores I marvelled at a gleaming array of giant stockpots and pans, infinitely cleaner than I would ever have suspected. I've done a little bit of mass catering in the kitchen where we have our Navy drill nights, and just assumed all equipment for large-scale catering is generally tarnished and warped - I thought it was inevitable. Not Merton's pans, though - they were spotless. There were serving plates and dishes of every shape and size, along with slightly more unusual props, like these scallop shells. I did actually have scallops in the shell at Merton fairly recently - I love that they keep a box of shells on hand for such occasions.



The kitchen is divided into sections, with chefs rotating through the sections on a weekly basis (there are seven full-time chefs and two part-time which, if you think about the number of covers, is not very many at all). As you walk into the kitchen, the pastry section is immediately on your right. I was taken aback by how tiny it is, especially considering Merton make most of their own desserts (pastries, sponges, etc). The key clearly lies in the impressive industrial stand mixer that dominates one of the pastry worktops - the kind of thing you would get if my KitchenAid mated with a cement mixer. This is where all the Merton cakes are made - they are rather fond of sponges for pudding, and I suppose it must be quite easy to produce traybaked sponge on a mass scale if you have a beast like that to mix it all up for you. I think a large factor in my putting on weight in first year was the sponge served at most meals - raisin sponge, jam sponge, chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce. Who can resist the allure of a nursery-style thick square of sponge, wobbling slightly and emitting comforting wisps of steam, golden on top and fluffy in the middle, perhaps flecked with raisins or chocolate chips? I definitely couldn't, hence my expanded waistline. Another of my all-time favourite puddings is Merton crumble - my friends often complained it was too stodgy, but that is exactly why I liked it. Isn't the point of crumble to be stodgy? I'm so glad I finally got to see the little corner of the kitchen where that beautiful combination of fruit, butter, flour and sugar was whipped up.


It really was fascinating to see all the work and all the processes that go into producing a meal at Merton. I'd never really considered before how the kitchen managed to produce all those plates of food at any one time, but Michael explained that often they would cook the meal in advance, plate it up, then blast chill it on the plates. The plated food would then go into the oven to reheat, before being brought out and served (on a very hot plate!) I'd never have thought of that before. You can see one of their many ingenious plate-stacking devices below. I wish I could do the same when I have friends over - it would certainly take the stress out of cooking if you could just freeze the entire plate of food and reheat it once the guests arrived.

One question I did have for Michael involved the absence of fish from Merton's menus, especially as a fellow Mertonian and I had been discussing this issue recently, both of us ardent piscivores. They do cook salmon quite a lot, and generic 'fish and chips', but apart from an appearance of tuna that later transpired to be an isolated incident, I have rarely found fish on the menu (apart from on High Table, which is another story - I had a beautiful red snapper fillet there once, as well as a gorgeous sea bream). Michael once sent out an email saying "I read somewhere I am obsessed with meat", so perhaps the carnivorous tastes of the chef were the root of this issue. I thought it might be because fish is difficult to cook for a mass audience, as it doesn't take kindly to overcooking and reheating. Apparently the reason is more simple - fish is just too expensive. Even fish like mackerel? I asked. Michael pointed out that mackerel needs to be eaten very fresh, and by the time it's made it to college it's likely to be a day or so old already. I guess that explains the sad dearth of fish on Merton's menus. My solution to this problem was just to eat at High Table as often as I could, because they always had a fish course, and it was always delicious.



I hope any of my fellow Mertonians who are reading this will find it interesting (and others, of course); I certainly was fascinated to discover the amount of work and planning that goes into college catering, particularly the little logistical things, like freezing the meals on the plates, or making stew in a giant pressure cooker. It's no mean feat to plan menus for three meals a day (or more, if there are special functions going on at the same time), seven days a week, especially with the care that Michael and his team put into the food (this year he's been sending regular emails to the student body highlighting particularly notable dinners and ingredients, such as the strawberries grown 6 miles away from college to be served with cream from a village 10 miles away from college, or the formal hall where Label Rouge free-range duck was to be served). I always imagined chefs in charge of mass catering would have become jaded, bored of food, concerned only with mass producing the same old things, but Michael seemed to cherish a genuine passion for food and a real interest in how to do new and interesting things with it. With such a small team and a tight working space, I'm impressed Merton manage it all, especially when they have to cater to the high standards required of special dinners on top of the normal formal hall, and when they have to deal with the likes of me, being super-critical about all my meals.

Eat your heart out, Masterchef contestants. You only had to do it for one service.