Norfolk notes - food
Norfolk, which for so long had a reputation for inbreeding and not producing many mountaineers, now has a reputation for food. The great thing is that you can see so much of it, either eyeing you with mild curiosity from a field, or lying in an mussel bed, blissfully unaware of the existence of garlic. Norfolk is where you come if you want good food, be it fancy dining with proper cutlery and a large selection of glasses for the many wines that will come with the food, or from a roadside stall where you have to brush the dirt from your parsnips before cooking them.
Morston Hall is one of the fanciest restaurants on the coast, it must be posh because the owner is on television, but not over exposed. He has a cook book or two but as all the recipes probably start with 'begin with a young and tireless kitchen staff of no less than a dozen people' I'm not confident that I would be able to adapt to my style of cooking, which rather concentrates on mastering the right defrost setting on the microwave.
But dinner at Morston Hall is an event, and tremendous fun. There's one sitting and one menu, and they suggest what wine you want with it. It's even easier than setting the microwave. I understand that there are two vegetarian options; you can leave by either the front or back door.
The food was sublime, with the starter, pan-fried foai gras (spelling?) on a strip of duck breast with a red wine reduction sauce. What I loved about it, even more than the idea that some genius has at last produced red wine in a handy sauce form that will enliven any meal (fish fingers, bacon butties, all taste better with a red wine sauce), was that somebody thought that foai gras wasn't rich enough. No, what it really needs is to be pan-fried!
Each course was brought to the table by the excellent waiting staff, who then cleared their throat and began; 'so...' and then described the course. This was great, a mini lecture about my food. It was done with such charm that it actually added a lot to the experience.
So much so that it became a feature of the rest of the holiday. Every pic nice began with the ritual unscrewing of the top of the thermos flask and then one of us intoning; 'so...what we have here is a cheese sandwich on white bread, served with a garnish of crinkle cut salt and vinegar flavoured crisps, and to accompany we have flask tea. The tea has been marinading in the flask for about three hours now and should have that special flask tang, tannin with just a hint of alloy. Enjoy!'.
Actually, when you are cooking for others it's not a bad idea to tell them what they're having. I cooked for the family in the evening not just because it meant I could spend an hour on my own in the kitchen getting outside a bottle of decent red before dinner, but also because it relaxes me, it's a nice transition from spending the day walking on a beach and an evening poking the log fire. But it did mean that I was serving up meals that my family had not seen prepared and in retrospect they did ask every evening what was in it. Not because they don't trust me (I hope) but because they were curious. Next time, I shall start with 'so...' while serving up. This is especially important with guests, because if you are able to get to the word 'peanut' before one of your guests swells like a balloon and goes into anaphylactic shock, it can be as much a contribution to the success of the evening as choosing between Dido and Sade as background music.
The best fish and chips in Norfolk, and hence the best fish and chips in the world, is still French's. The fish comes off the boats bobbing a few feet from the front door of the shop and the potatoes probably come from the fields surrounding the area. The freshness must be the secret of the success, either that or they put just the right amount of heroin in the batter. Certainly there's nothing quite like eating fish and chips watching the boats that landed the catch at anchor a few feet away.
Because I'm that sort of person, I couldn't resist taking a photograph of the dish to immortalise it.
But then again what's so terribly wrong about that? Many a house has a still life of a bowl of fruit or a distressed looking game bird hanging over the mantle, so why not a fine study of fish and chips? There are, after al, people who earn a living taking photographs of food for magazines and recipe books. While this may not be as noble as, say, wildlife photography or as important as war photography, it is at least several rungs on the self respect ladder above 'food stylist', that is, the people who are essentially food fluffers. You may be able to do this and keep your self-respect, just, but I think the toughest job of all must be for the menus in fast food joints, where above the counter you can see deliciously plump burgers and crisp golden fries. Compare this with the actual contents of a styrofoam container when opened and you have a sense of disappointment and shock not normally encountered outside a screening of 'the crying game'.
One can also smile wryly at the van parked on the quay bearing the slogan 'DEFRA sucks, but they ain't fishermans friends'. A typically English protest about fishing quotas, a humorous dig at a notably crap government department. If this was France the van would be filled with petrol soaked goat shit, set on fire and driven into the lobby of the department's offices. As it's England the van is used to transport fish and crabs. The slogan used to be hand painted on the side of a van and it's good to see that when the bloke who owns the van traded up, he not only kept the slogan but got a professional sign writer to paint it. That's commitment.
Foodie find of the holiday was The Feathers at Holt. A sprawling pub, restaurant and hotel, it manages to hang on to it's charm by comprising of a warren of rooms and corridors and having the public bar on a couple of levels, the lower half for the drinkers for ease of access, the upper half for the diners who want to have something to soak up the alcohol. Lots of well done pub grub on the menu, the sort of traditional stuff you'd expect to see but also some surprises - like the cod in lime and tequila sauce that was sensational. Nothing quite like the simple addition of strong liquor to lift a fish out of the realms of the ordinary.
Morston Hall is one of the fanciest restaurants on the coast, it must be posh because the owner is on television, but not over exposed. He has a cook book or two but as all the recipes probably start with 'begin with a young and tireless kitchen staff of no less than a dozen people' I'm not confident that I would be able to adapt to my style of cooking, which rather concentrates on mastering the right defrost setting on the microwave.
But dinner at Morston Hall is an event, and tremendous fun. There's one sitting and one menu, and they suggest what wine you want with it. It's even easier than setting the microwave. I understand that there are two vegetarian options; you can leave by either the front or back door.
The food was sublime, with the starter, pan-fried foai gras (spelling?) on a strip of duck breast with a red wine reduction sauce. What I loved about it, even more than the idea that some genius has at last produced red wine in a handy sauce form that will enliven any meal (fish fingers, bacon butties, all taste better with a red wine sauce), was that somebody thought that foai gras wasn't rich enough. No, what it really needs is to be pan-fried!
Each course was brought to the table by the excellent waiting staff, who then cleared their throat and began; 'so...' and then described the course. This was great, a mini lecture about my food. It was done with such charm that it actually added a lot to the experience.
So much so that it became a feature of the rest of the holiday. Every pic nice began with the ritual unscrewing of the top of the thermos flask and then one of us intoning; 'so...what we have here is a cheese sandwich on white bread, served with a garnish of crinkle cut salt and vinegar flavoured crisps, and to accompany we have flask tea. The tea has been marinading in the flask for about three hours now and should have that special flask tang, tannin with just a hint of alloy. Enjoy!'.
Actually, when you are cooking for others it's not a bad idea to tell them what they're having. I cooked for the family in the evening not just because it meant I could spend an hour on my own in the kitchen getting outside a bottle of decent red before dinner, but also because it relaxes me, it's a nice transition from spending the day walking on a beach and an evening poking the log fire. But it did mean that I was serving up meals that my family had not seen prepared and in retrospect they did ask every evening what was in it. Not because they don't trust me (I hope) but because they were curious. Next time, I shall start with 'so...' while serving up. This is especially important with guests, because if you are able to get to the word 'peanut' before one of your guests swells like a balloon and goes into anaphylactic shock, it can be as much a contribution to the success of the evening as choosing between Dido and Sade as background music.
The best fish and chips in Norfolk, and hence the best fish and chips in the world, is still French's. The fish comes off the boats bobbing a few feet from the front door of the shop and the potatoes probably come from the fields surrounding the area. The freshness must be the secret of the success, either that or they put just the right amount of heroin in the batter. Certainly there's nothing quite like eating fish and chips watching the boats that landed the catch at anchor a few feet away.
Because I'm that sort of person, I couldn't resist taking a photograph of the dish to immortalise it.
But then again what's so terribly wrong about that? Many a house has a still life of a bowl of fruit or a distressed looking game bird hanging over the mantle, so why not a fine study of fish and chips? There are, after al, people who earn a living taking photographs of food for magazines and recipe books. While this may not be as noble as, say, wildlife photography or as important as war photography, it is at least several rungs on the self respect ladder above 'food stylist', that is, the people who are essentially food fluffers. You may be able to do this and keep your self-respect, just, but I think the toughest job of all must be for the menus in fast food joints, where above the counter you can see deliciously plump burgers and crisp golden fries. Compare this with the actual contents of a styrofoam container when opened and you have a sense of disappointment and shock not normally encountered outside a screening of 'the crying game'.
One can also smile wryly at the van parked on the quay bearing the slogan 'DEFRA sucks, but they ain't fishermans friends'. A typically English protest about fishing quotas, a humorous dig at a notably crap government department. If this was France the van would be filled with petrol soaked goat shit, set on fire and driven into the lobby of the department's offices. As it's England the van is used to transport fish and crabs. The slogan used to be hand painted on the side of a van and it's good to see that when the bloke who owns the van traded up, he not only kept the slogan but got a professional sign writer to paint it. That's commitment.
Foodie find of the holiday was The Feathers at Holt. A sprawling pub, restaurant and hotel, it manages to hang on to it's charm by comprising of a warren of rooms and corridors and having the public bar on a couple of levels, the lower half for the drinkers for ease of access, the upper half for the diners who want to have something to soak up the alcohol. Lots of well done pub grub on the menu, the sort of traditional stuff you'd expect to see but also some surprises - like the cod in lime and tequila sauce that was sensational. Nothing quite like the simple addition of strong liquor to lift a fish out of the realms of the ordinary.
Labels: DEFRA, Fish and Chips, Food, Norfolk
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home