La Tasca, Leadenhall Market

The Tapas Bar, as it is known to the Legatus' friends and contacts, has served as my City office for some years.  It forms the top two floors of 27 Leadenhall Market and has excellent views over the market below.  I have been going there since it was just called the Leadenhall Wine Bar in the eighties. Then it became the Leadenhall Wine & Tapas Bar, then Ortega and is now a branch of the La Tasca tapas bar chain. 

It changed to a La Tasca last year and, of course, endured some poncification but in fact, as Ortega, had been owned by Tragus, who also own Cafe Rouge and Bella Italia, since 2007.  Now it is Britain's only Rioja bar, offering 19 different red, white and rose Riojas from Marques de Morano, at 18.95 a bottle to the Decanter magazine gold medal winning Viña Pomal Alto de la Caseta at £90.00 (which comes in its own wooden case).

As it used to be

For a number of years, in its Ortega incarnation, I went there so often (at least twice a week) that they let me go in there before they opened, to work, charge my phone or have a cup of tea.  I actually got 20% staff discount too!  As a result I introduced it to many other people and it was one of those I had lunch with this week; my Czech friend I.  She is always good to have lunch with as she doesn't stint on the wine or food, unlike the two girls who sat next to us who ate a small salad between them and shared a glass of wine.  Good grief.

Roser

Now the old Ortega was run by Poles.  Most of the waitresses were Poles and there were rather too many waiters for my liking.  Some of them, Agnieszka and Ulla (in particular), were quite lovely but more recently the standard and number of young ladies working there had dropped, much to my friends and my chagrin.  Under La Tasca's control, however, there are many more nice, and largely Spanish, waitresses there again.  I remember taking some Argentinians there once and they were appalled by the fact it had Polish waitresses.  Anyway, we had the cute Roser from Majorca and very friendly and efficient she was too.

Now I was on a diet (not a very serious one) but the sort that means she feels that if she adds vegetable tapas, like green peppers and mushrooms it will be healthier.  Unfortunately, then having a bottle of Faustino V pink Rioja followed by a bottle of  white Rioja rather offset the attempt at healthy eating.  One thing I have to say is that although the Tapas menu is smaller than it used to be, the quality of the food has much improved.

A lot of restaurants in the City are subterranean (such as the nearby rival Barcelona tapas bar) but the good thing about the main floor at La Tasca is that it has windows on two and a half sides so it is nice and bright.  If you get a table by the window you can spy on all the brokers and brochettes from Lloyd's outside the Lamb Tavern opposite.  Very good for people watching!

Leadenhall Market in 1881

Since the fourteenth century Leadenhall Market used to be the main poultry market of London, as Billingsgate was for fish and Smithfield was for meat.  When I first worked in the City many of the shops were boarded up and it was still mainly butchers shops.

At Christmas they used to hang fresh turkeys on hooks outside of the shops (I can remember some American visitors being shocked by this) and while the hooks remain, the butchers have gone.

The  Tapas bar is on the top two floors of this building

Today it is full of trendy restaurants and clothes shops.  It is built on part of the site of the old Roman Forum which was the biggest Roman building north of the Alps.  In the sub basements of some of the buildings you can still see some Roman brickwork.  The current building was erected in 1881 and has been beautifully restored, compared with the rather shoddy look it had back in the nineteen eighties.  Its Victorian splendour is popular with film makers and it appeared in the first Harry Potter and Tomb Raider films, among others.

Cassoulet

To celebrate the fact that I have now had, rather to my surprise, a thousand views on this blog I am posting a piece on the first foreign dish I remember having (or was that B from Rhode Island at college?).   This is a dish I cooked during the Tour de France last year (although it is really a winter dish) but didn't have time to post it on my blog.

As I have related before, I was taught to cook by my father, who was very keen on French food at a time it was still regarded with suspicion by most people in Britain.  We used to holiday in France every year and, from 1965 until 1973, we used to spend the summer in the Languedoc-Roussillion.  This, of course, is prime cassoulet country and after the leisurely three day drive down, from Le Havre to our house not far from the Spanish border, my father would take us out to many different restaurants in the region looking for the perfect cassoulet.  This he eventually found in the town of Castelnaudary.   TV chef Rick Stein (whose programmes I usually don't watch due to his inexplicable fondness for fish) did a whole programme from the town, a few years ago, focussing on cassoulet.  To get to our house you had to drive along the main road which went through Toulouse, Castelnaudary, Carcasonne and at Narbonne we would turn south for the last part of the drive.  All of these places produce excellent cassoulet.  

There is a military link to cassoulet in that the story goes in France that during the Hundred Years War the English laid siege to Castelnaudary and the locals grabbed whatever they could to make a huge stew for their defenders who were so fortified  by the assemblage that they saw off the English.  This is almost certainly French patriotic nonsense, especially as the Black Prince sacked Castelnaudary in 1355 and massacred the inhabitants.  Another story suggests that it evolved from Moorish mutton stew which crossed the Pyrenees from occupied Spain. Certainly the distinctive bean element was more recent as they were brought back from the Americas after Colombus.   Catherine de Medici organised imports of white beans and they were grown extensively in South West France.

The recipe my father used to use back at home was from one of his many sets of Robert Carrier cookery cards.  These wipe clean handy sized cards came out in the late sixties and I think we had them all (I still have them).  Common though it is now to see a recipe paired with an enticing looking photograph of the finished dish, in those days, when cookery books didn't have colour photographs and foreign recipes were not the feature of (still black and white) newspapers as they are now, it was very unusual.

Cassoulet's name comes from the French form of the Occitan word caçòla which is a truncated conical earthenware pot. Like all such dishes, there are arguments about the exact ingredients and this is complicated by the fact that there are regional variations.  Basically the dish is one of white beans, sausages and duck or goose in a tomoato sauce.  In Toulouse, extra mutton and pork is added, in Carcasonne you get more mutton and sometimes partridge and in Castelnaudary duck.  I decided to make the duck version.  This was a quick version and does not involve having to prepare a confit (slow cooked meat preserved in fat).  You used to be able to buy confit d'oie in Waitrose but I haven't seen it for some years, probably because everyone who bought it has died of blocked arteries.  Goose fat is available at Christmas, at least, in most supermarkets but my doctors wouldn't be very impressed if I used it!  The Robert Carrier version uses lamb with the preserved goose but I eschewed that as I think the lamb is too strong for the dish and clashes with the duck.

I can't be doing with all this soaking dried beans overnight nonsense so used tinned white haricots.  First, I gently fried an onion with some thyme (important), a bay leaf and garlic adding the smoked bacon and then the beans once the onions and bacon have cooked.  Then heat them together for a few minutes while seasoning with black pepper. It's a good idea to leave some of the bean liquid in to keep it wet.  I removed the bean, bacon and onion mixture and then sauteed the duck pieces (this is where those without high cholesterol could use goose fat).  I grilled the sausages.  Getting a good approximation of Toulouse sausages is certainly a lot easier now than it was in the sixties and seventies.  I used the Waitrose ones.  Again, you should pan fry them in butter but grilling is much healthier.

Cut up the meat and sausages and put them in a casserole with the beans and onion mixture.  To be really authentic put the duck or other meat at the bottom then add the beans with the sausage on top.  Cover with a tomato sauce, which I made with chopped tinned tomatoes and a couple of big squeezes of tomato puree.  You can put breadcrumbs over the top for an authentic crusty effect.  Cook for at least an hour and a half in a medium oven.  I had it with a Côtes du Roussillon from the region around where we used to stay. Minervois, Corbières and Fitou would be more upmarket regional choices (although not when we used to go down there in the sixties and seventies as the local wine was horrible).

This is the sort of meal you really don't need a lot to accompany it.  Have a salad and pretend that it is healthy.  Across the Pyrenees there is a Spanish version of this dish, which I will look at another time and which I cook much more often.

Warre's Otima 20 year old Tawny Port

Over to my friend A's for dinner this week and so I took her a bottle of Tawny Port which has been lurking at the bottom of my wine rack for some years.  This was a present from Britain's Honorary Consul in Oporto, who was a senior member of the Symington Port family.  Warre's being one of their wines.  

A view across the Douro.  I took this picture from the terrace of a building where we had a meeting with the mayor

The Legatus has been to Portugal a number of times but always just to Lisbon.  However, in 2006 I took the train up to Oporto for the first time.  Waiting for me when I arrived at my hotel was this bottle of Warre's Otima Tawny Port; a welcome gift from our Consul General.  This was very nice and, fortunately, was just before the ban on liquids in hand luggage was introduced.  Later, I was presented with a triple pack of full size bottles of Graham's Port which I got shipped home in the diplomatic bag as it wouldn't fit in my hand luggage.  I gave the triple pack away, sadly, as my doctors don't like me drinking Port even though I really, really like it.  The oldest wine I have ever had was an 1896 Quinta do Noval, during our final law dinner at college.

A visit to Graham's

I had had quite a busy week in Madrid and Lisbon but the two days in Oporto were just a succession of lunches and dinners accompanied by more and more Port.  Lunch at Graham's, outside on their terrace, overlooking the Douro, after a tasting of about twelve Ports  was followed by dinner in the Factory House; the posh club which only Port producers are allowed to be members of.  They have two identical dining rooms next to each other.  After you have finished your main meal you all move from the first room to the one next door so you can have your Port without the scent of the wine being spoiled by food odours.  I sat next to a very beautiful lady whose husband was sat at the other end of the table. She flirted outrageously all through the proceedings in both dining rooms.  I asked her which Port family her husband was from.  "Oh, he isn't from one of the families," she replied, offhandedly,"but I am a Delaforce!"  She sent me half a case of her Port when I got home.

Anyway, Otima was something of a new approach to Port marketing when it appeared ten years ago.  Designed to be served chilled and aimed, in its trendy minimalist bottle, at women and younger people it was a great success.   It is a constant problem for the producers of fortified wines to get them to appeal to the younger market.  I remember a sherry called Tico. from Harvey's. some years ago which was designed to be mixed.  My mother loved it.  Fortunately, this wine didn't compromise on quality, although I admit we didn't drink it chilled.  It was dryer than I expected, quite nutty with some orange scent in there.  Surprisingly fresh it would have been good chilled, although we drank the whole bottle in short order!  It won a silver medal in the 2007 International Wine Challenge.

Lunch at Latium, Berners Street

Out to lunch with one of my former Personal Assistants on Friday for a not quite Valentine's day lunch.  In fact T (who is an American but still appreciates good food) was the first person I ever took to what is my favourite restaurant in London.  We first went there, rather shockingly, back in 2008 at the suggestion of my sister who had been looking for somewhere to provide some absorbent food following an evening of cocktails at the trendy Sanderson Hotel across the road.  When T and I went there first we had been expecting an old-style trattoria, not the stylish modern interior it actually possesses (no straw covered Chianti bottles here). 

Great Grappa selection

Owner-chef Maurizio Morelli is from Lazio and imports many of his ingredients direct from Rome. He specialises in ravioli which are as to the tinned stuff I had to endure when I was small as a Saturn V is to a November 5th rocket.  This really is one of the very best Italian restaurants in London and all the more remarkable because the lunchtime fixed price menu is so reasonable; at just £16.50 for two courses.

For a first course, T had Mozzarella di buffala con pomodorini, zucchini grigliate e basilico.  She said she had never been served the whole unsliced cheese before, but said it was the best Mozzarella she had ever tasted.  The cheese at Latium is never short of sensational.

The Legatus had Bresaola ruccola e Parmigiano regiano.  I spent a lot of time in Italy in the late eighties and early nineties and was introduced to this dish on my first business trip to Rome in about 1984.  I had never had Bresaola and it took me some time to find out that ruccola was called rocket in Britain (neither of which which you could easily get at home then).  Now of course you can get both in any supermarket, although not such meltingly delicious Bresaola as this, ruccola without a trace of bitterness and Parmigiano which is delicate and moist not dry and brittle. High quality  ingredients make high quality food, however simple!

Now the Legatus had given T a taste for Gavi di Gavi, as mentioned in my Poulet Marengo piece, over the years but we had one there which I hadn't had before: Masseria di Carmelitani 2014.  The first 2014 I have had since Beaujolais Nouveau it was crisp, fruity but not cloyingly so, with some mineral like backbone.  Remarkably good for such a new wine.  Unfortunately, it was so good we drank two bottles at £40 a time, thereby negating the good value of the food!

For her main course T had polletto alla griglia con aglio peperoncino e spinaci.  It had none of the stringiness you can get with baby chicken and, fortunately, the garlic was not overpowering either!

I had rigatoni con ragù di agnello e Pecorino.  The pasta is always perfectly cooked here and the sauce always avoids being too liquid but clings to the pasta in what is almost culinary engineering, not just cooking.

We got through three glasses of Grappa afterwards (well, alright, I had two and she had one).  Latium has an excellent selection of top Grappas and Italin liqueurs and this one was a Vuisinâr from my favourite distillery, Nonino.  Its three year ageing in cherry wood barrels gives it a lovely pale gold colour.   So total spend on food £33 and alcohol £113, which is about the right balance for a meal!

I have not only never had a bad meal in Latium I have never had a bad course or a bad wine.  It really is faultless 10/10.

Cafe a Vin - A much better starter...

A couple of months ago I moaned about a very small starter at Browns in the City.  What a contrast was the charcuterie starter at Cafe a Vin in Spitalfields Square on Thursday. Their charcuterie maison came with a celeriac remoulade and cornichons too.  About four times as much food as Brown's for just a pound more!

We had a very nice Languedoc, Les Trois Poules Rouge 2013, from a vineyard about ten miles north of Montpellier for £26.50.  This is a nice City (well just outside, technically) brasserie (pretty waitress, too) with not too outrageous prices.  I'll go there again.

Smoked Mackerel Pate

I just did one of those online tests to see if I was getting Alzheimer's disease which, according to the test I am not (yet).  One of the things that was recommended, after having got my results, was that I should be eating more oily fish.   Now I dislike fish intensely.  I think it is, at best, effete, bland and lacking in texture (white fish, salmon).  At worst it is noxious, putrid tasting and smelly (mackerel, herring, sardines)  How can it be both?  Well it depends on the fish, of course.  However, suffice to say, I would never choose to eat fish if meat was available. The number of times my heart has sunk when abroad and someone tells me that they are taking me to a "nice seafood restaurant" (talk about contradictory terms).  Oddly, I do enjoy crustacea but not molluscs.  I particularly dislike oysters, which, as Sophie once said, is odd given they "taste like your favourite part of a woman's body"  "They taste like bottom?" I replied, receiving a kick as a result. No doubt this is something to do with their reputation as an aphrodisiac. Or is it that girls taste like oysters?  Given I tasted girl well before I tasted oysters, for me, it is the former.

Anyway, given my team of doctors are now banging on about oily fish too, I thought I would dig out what is, oddly, given the above, a favourite recipe.  This is smoked mackerel pate; a recipe as given to me by my Uncle Keith, who was in the Airborne at Arnhem but spent his twilight days living in East Sussex, trout fishing, making game pies, collecting pickelhauben (which sounds, in this context, like some sort of Scandinavian herring dish) and smoking his own fish.  He was the one who left me many, many bottles of classed growth claret in his will. 

This is a tremendously simple but tasty recipe and only has three ingredients: Peppered smoked mackerel fillets, fat free fromage frais and lemon juice.  The peppered fillets give it a bit more bite than the normal ones and avoid fishy blandness.  I use fromage frais because most recipes and ready made mackerel pate are usually high in fat, being made with cream cheese or crème fraîche.  No point in eating oily fish for your health if you bung a load of cheese into it!  

I just put a pack's worth of mackerel fillets in a bowl, broken up with a fork, with about three or four tablespoons of fromage frais and a couple of squeezes of lemon juice and then use my hand held blender on it until it turns into a smooth paste. Then decant it into small pots.  I find that one pack of mackerel gives you enough pate for three pots.  If you put cling film over the top it keeps in the fridge for about two days.  I have mine with wholemeal pitta and/or cucumber and pepper batons.

Full English Breakfast: The Magic Nine at Sainsbury's

I was having breakfast at Sainsbury's on Sunday and noticed that they had all the constituents for the Magic Nine of the Full English Breakfast.  Now although I knew you could pay extra to have additional items added to your big breakfast, as I usually order an extra egg, I hadn't spotted that there was another short list of things you could order on top, which included mushrooms.  So by ordering the big breakfast plus mushrooms and black pudding I could achieve the Full English Breakfast, albeit a rather bargain basement version.  In fact paying 79p for one rather under-cooked mushroom wasn't really good value but it enabled me to record, for the first time, a breakfast featuring the Magic Nine.