Suffolk Smoked Sprats

During our Norfolk break we spent half a day over the border in Southwold. The idea had been to fish off the pier, but as the wind was blowing directly from Siberia and we had not taken our sumo suits (far more descriptive than flotation suits) we walked down to the river instead and bought cockles and some smoked sprats. For some reason the latter have never, unless I missed it, enjoyed foodie fame. Pity, they deserve it, though if they came into vogue doubtless the extremely reasonable price would rocket. Like rocket.

The fish can be cooked if you must, but the perfect way to eat them is as they come, with fingers, stripping the oily flesh from bones and if you must from the skin too, only brown bread and butter to accompany the feast. Another entry to our family game of messy menus for pompous prigs. I am sure this has featured in a previous post, so just a recap: imagine you are feeding someone whose dignity exceeds their charm. What do you put on the menu to bring them down a peg or two? Crab from the shell; spaghetti; prawns that need to be peeled; corn-on-the-cob with loads of dripping butter. Add your own ideas at liberty.

We bought about 15 for just over £2, so they're an austerity treat too. And 50 times better value than the sandwiches later in The Lord Nelson, Adnams you should be ashamed: £6.95 for a butty and a handful of chips, and the bread was close to stale. If it hadn't been for the Jocastas, Gileses, Indias and Quentins five-deep at the bar I'd have complained. And I'll take a wild guess that none of those chinless second-homers had a smoked sprat that weekend, especially when there is a lovely little place they know here that sells the most divine olives daaahhling.

Great British Pie II - Mushrooms are the New Meat

I'm defrosting some stewing beef that will be the basis of a pie tonight - my prediction for the food trend of 2013 is indeed the return of the Great British Pie big time, though they will be largely homemade as chef-restaurateurs will not be keen to make something that involves substance more than style. And the effete and fashion conscious crowd that writes restaurant reviews for the Sundays would probably pan them if they did serve something filling and tasty instead of chi-chi platters acceptable to anorexics.

I had to dash to Sainsbury's for some emergency Olbas Oil for my wife, currently suffering with woman-flu, and they had no decent stewing beef in - quelle surprise - to bulk out what I had already, so I opted to buy some mushrooms which weight-for-weight are a fraction of the cost, and will provide a nice difference in textures.

A digression. As with men not being able to multi-task, man-flu is a myth - my last illness was in fact Spanish flu with a touch of Ebola, Malaria, and SARS [whatever happened to SARS btw?] that I was lucky to survive. I nearly had to go to the doctor, that's how serious it was.

The pie tonight may well be cooked in Adnams Tally Ho, though that will be a sacrifice. We decided rather belatedly to do the dry January thing (after a convivial evening on Friday 4th, and a slight rise in weight over Christmas), so that's the closest I'm going to get to a beer for three weeks.

Along with Olbas Oil I picked up some flowers btw, which are probably about as effective.

A Good Butcher is a Pearl Beyond Price

We just got back from visiting my father in rural Norfolk. His village is a sizable one, with two very small supermarkets and a variety of other shops. Happily for him and the rest of the village (or the carnivores at least) that includes two good butchers. A good butcher in my book can be judged on his (or her) sausages and minced beef (ground beef for our American friends). Simple things maybe, but they reflect the care and attitude of a skilled tradesman.

I live in a city, but the only butcher's shop nearby was not very good - mince gristly, sausages when I tried them tasteless - and unsurprisingly it closed some time ago. Strange how in this aspect of retail supply a city should be poorer than a village - maybe the supermarkets here the reason. One strand of my freelance writing work, however, takes me to towns and villages where there are still good craft butchers, a definite perk. A couple of years ago Roy Porter (picture) who has a shop near Clitheroe was very impressive, and recently Riley's in Crawshawbooth was equally good.

The difference between a butcher and the butchery at a supermarket seems to be mainly to do with the cheaper cuts - try to find them in your supermarket, where it appears animals no longer come with innards - rather than at the top end. Doubtless margins are lower on the cheaper bits than the expensive ones. At one butcher in the village I bought some excellent beef shin to make a simple stew for the four of us yesterday. Browned and then stewed for two-and-a-half hours with root veg and onions the meat made its own sauce, and even after seconds there was enough for my father to use as the basis of a meal today after we had gone. It cost about £2 each. There are exceptions to the supermarket butcher rule - Morrison's is good on offal and the tough bits that need slow cooking, and so (at the other end of the social scale perhaps) is Waitrose, where I bought ox cheek on Saturday.

The stew made with shin beef was another dish demonstrated to my son in preparation for his eventual escape into the big wide world as a student. He is learning the easy core skills of the home cook, in that case: brown the meat in small batches so it fries not steams; fry the onions before putting them in the stewpot (nobody likes boiled onions do they?); use some suitable liquid to deglaze the pan in which the meat browned (Adnams Broadside that time); cut the carrots and other root veg in good chunks so they retain their shape rather than disappear into the sauce; stew in a low oven for two hours or more. We sprinkled a bit of flour on the meat and veg before adding the beer from the frying pan and some boiling water. No stock cube, no stupid packets of casserole sauce mix. And it tasted great, because the meat was top notch.