Drink » Kavey Eats

The Art of Tea Blending

19 Apr 2012 8 Responses »

Apr 192012

I love tea and I love history. I even love browsing through antiques fairs and admiring beautiful old things such as Georgian wooden tea caddies. But I’ve never thought much about the way in which tea was consumed in the past, though I do know that tea drinkers used to buy loose tea and blended different varieties and styles together themselves to create their perfect brew.

Today, it seems that only the big tea companies retain the art of blending, which is primarily a way for them to ensure consistency of taste for their consumers in the face of differences in the quality and flavours of every harvest.

But of course, tea is also still blended by tea masters – artisans, if you like – looking to create something that is more than the sum of its parts.

Just like in the world of whisky, there is something to be said for blends and there is something to be said for single estate teas. The former allows a master blender to achieve a more complex finished tea, with the best possible aroma, mouthfeel and taste. The latter allows the consumer to enjoy the distinctions that come from different climates and growing techniques, what the French describe as terroir, and appreciate the skills of the individual producer.

I’ve always loved tea, and have been enjoying a wide range of loose leaf teas since I was a teenager, when I used to buy packets of assam and darjeeling and mango tea from an elderly stall holder in Camden Market. But I’ve never thought to combine more than one together to create my own blend.

The Tea Board of Kenya sent me three Kenyan black teas to try just that.

On the left is Kaamba, in the middle Marinyn GFBOP and on the right Kenya Estate Milima.

(GFBOP = Golden Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe, learn more here).

I opt to leave the leaf tea at the bottom of the cups, where it quickly settles during the brewing time.

Before I can do any blending, I need to assess the individual teas.

The Tea Board of Kenya describes Kaamba tea as having “a very malty flavour with light hints of currant“. I find just a hint of malt, and a fair bit of tannin. The overall taste is very one dimensional; it strikes me as a very simple “black tea” kind of taste. The tea liquor is the darkest of the three.

Of the Marinyn GFBOP, they tell me that it’s grown in the highlands at altitudes of up to 9000 feet and is a “strong, brightly flavoured tea with a sweet quality“. Certainly it has a sweetness on the nose and in the taste. It’s a far more complex tea than both the others, with a lovely hint of citrus reminiscent of bergamot. The colour of the tea is a pretty copper or amber.

Apparently the Kenya Estate Milima is a very rare tea with a large loose leaf, has a “full, slightly malty flavour” and is “fruity and spicy with some sweet floral notes”. I do get lots of malt in the aroma but it doesn’t come through on the palate. In fact, this tea has very little flavour at all and I certainly don’t detect malt, fruit, spice or flowers.

My Blend

Because the Kenya Estate Milima tastes of so little, I exclude it from my blend and combine one part Kaamba to two parts Marinyn GFBOP. Immediately, I see that the tea has a rounder flavour. The Kaamba provides a rich backbone onto which the Marinyn GFBOP layers its sweet, floral properties.

With so many loose leaf teas in my cupboard, I’m certainly enthused to try my hand at blending teas from different growing countries and regions and even different types of teas such as black, oolong, green and white.

Have you ever blended two or more loose leaf teas to create your own cuppa? If so, I’d love to hear about it!

Kavey Eats received tea samples courtesy of The Tea Board of Kenya.

Berry Bros & Rudd: Titanic Single Malt Scotch Whisky

11 Apr 2012 4 Responses »

Apr 112012

The First & Last Voyage of RMS Titanic

The RMS Titanic set sail on her maiden voyage from Southampton on the 10th of April 1912. On the 15th of April 1012, she hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean and sunk.

Of the 2,224 passengers and crew, only 710 survived. It remains one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

On board were some of the wealthiest people in the world, and some of the poorest, emigrating to a new life in North America. The passengers travelled in three classes, with those in first class experiencing levels of luxury that had hitherto seldom been seen aboard a cruise ship.

The largest ship afloat at the time, the Titanic was built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, operated by White Star Line and famously touted as virtually unsinkable. With advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, it was thought that a breach to the hull would flood only a single compartment, at worst, which the ship could certainly survive.

It was not the design of the ship alone that lead to the disaster. Message after message from other ships warned of heavy ice in the vicinity, reporting that they had either reduced speed drastically or heaved-to for the night. Between the 11th and the 14th, the Titanic received over 20 such warnings. Although these were all duly logged by the radio operators and passed on to the bridge officers, no order was given to slow down, even as the Titanic entered the region of hazard, and she steamed on at full speed.

Shortly before midnight, the lookouts spotted an iceberg directly ahead. The bridge officer on duty immediately ordered the engines stopped, the wheel turned hard to one side, and the watertight doors below decks to be closed. Though the ship started to turn, it was too little too late, and the huge ice berg scraped down the starboard side of the ship.

The nature of the collision caused hull plates to buckle in multiple locations and opened five out of the ship’s sixteen watertight compartments to the sea.

It took two and a half hours for the ship to sink.

Maritime safety regulations were hopelessly out of date in an era when the size of steamships had increased so much and so quickly. They stipulated that all British vessels over 10,000 tons must carry 16 lifeboats (with exact size also specified). The original plans for the ship included 64 lifeboats, but it was decided that these would not only increase costs unnecessarily, they would also clutter the decks to the detriment of the passenger experience. The Titanic was over 46,000 tons, and in the end, sailed with just 20 lifeboats on board. If each were loaded to full capacity, this would be enough for only 1,178 people, a third of her maximum capacity of passengers and crew. In addition, the ship carried two small cutters, with a capacity of 40 people each, intended to allow for a quick response to man overboard emergencies.

The shortage of lifeboats was compounded by a lack of officer training – the officers didn’t know how many passengers each lifeboat could safely carry – and most were launched barely half full. The crew followed a ‘women and children first’ policy, prioritising those from first and second classes and indeed the 1,514 casualties were predominantly third class passengers, crew and male first and second class passengers.

Those who didn’t make it aboard a lifeboat or cutter drowned on board or died within minutes from hypothermia in the freezing waters.

The 710 survivors were taken aboard from the lifeboats by the RMS Carpathia a few hours later.

A collage of passengers from 1st, 2nd and 3rd classes, some who survived and some who perished

The Human Story of the Sinking of the Titanic

Of course, the other side of the story is the human one, and tales of heroic or romantic behaviour from crew and passengers alike have long been part of the lore surrounding this tragic event.

Some stories are well known and have been represented by semi-fictional accounts in print, on stage and in film. Others are known less widely.

Margaret “Molly” Brown was a well known American socialite, philanthropist and activist. She helped establish the Colorado chapter of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, was a charter member of The Denver Woman’s Club, an organisation dedicated to helping other women through education and philanthropy and campaigned to help destitute children and establish the United States first Juvenile Court. On a tour of Europe, she learned that her eldest grandson was ill and booked first class passage back to the USA on the first ship available, the Titanic. After the collision, she helped many others to board life boats before being bodily forced into one herself. Once in the water, she ensured that crew and women worked together to row and keep spirits raised. When the Titanic finally went down, Brown and one or two others called for the boat to return towards the ship, in an attempt to take on additional survivors. They were overruled by the others in the boat, who were fearful that the boat would be overwhelmed and capsized by the sheer number of passengers in the water. They stayed away, but like the passengers in other boats, they recounted afterwards the harrowing experience of hearing the screams, for almost an hour after the ship went under. On being rescued by the Carpathia, Brown threw her energy into assisting with the care of other survivors and immediately set to work establishing a charitable fund and practical assistance for those who had lost everything they owned in the disaster. Dismissive of the heroine status accorded to her by the media, nonetheless she became one of the most well known survivors of the disaster. Her fame helped her continue to fight for the causes she felt deeply about, from the rights of workers and women, to education and literacy for children to historic preservation.

Probably the story that wrenches most strongly at my heart is that of Isidor and Ida Straus, owners of the famous Macy’s department store. At the time of the sinking, the couple had been married for 41 years and had raised six children. They were almost inseparable, and on the rare occasions when they were apart, they wrote to each other every day. During the sinking, officers pleaded with Ida to board one of the lifeboats, but she refused to leave her husband, ensuring that her maid took a place, as well as Ida’s fur coat, before returning to her husband’s side. She is said to have told him simply, “Where you go, I go”. A Bronx cemetery monument to the couple carries the inscription, “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”

Michel and Edmond Navratil were just 3 and 2 years old, respectively, when their father Michel kidnapped them from his estranged wife Marcelle. On Easter Sunday, on the 7th April, a day he had been accorded to spend with the children, he collected the boys from his mother-in-law, took them to England (from France) and boarded the Titanic under an assumed name. Other passengers reported that Navratil kept himself and the boys isolated during the journey, and rarely let them out of his sight. But after the collision, Navratil knew he must rely on others to save his children, and kissed his sons goodbye, before handing each one into the arms of passengers aboard collapsible lifeboat D. Navratil perished with the ship, but his sons were duly rescued by the Carpathia. Unable to speak any English, and thereby give any clue to their real names, the boys were dubbed the “orphans of the Titanic”, and temporarily taken into care by a first class survivor, Margaret Hays. Initially, the search for relatives centred on the name Hoffman, under which Navratil had booked tickets. Luckily, Marcelle, still in France, read the story of the orphans, and recalled that her husband had a friend by the name of Hoffman. She sent descriptions and pictures which quickly established hers, Michel’s and the children’s identities and White Star Line gave her a ticket on the Oceanic to New York, where she was reunited with the boys, before their return back to France soon after.

Hudson and Bess Allison were successful and hard working young couple who met, fell in love and married against the wishes of Bess’ parents. They had two children, Lorraine and Trevor and owned homes in Montreal, London and Chesterville, Ontario. They were returning home from a European holiday and business trip, and had their children and nannies with them. On the night of the sinking, Trevor’s nanny became aware of the danger, and took it upon herself to evacuate him to a lifeboat. Unfortunately, she was not able to find Hudson and Bess, and they frantically searched the ship, for their son. When crew tried to persuade their daughter Lorraine to get into a lifeboat, her parents refused, wanting to keep the family together. In panic, they waited and waited, until it was too late. Only Trevor and his nanny survived the night. Lorraine was the only first class child to perish in the sinking.

Edvard and Gerda Lindell were third class passengers from Sweden. During the sinking, the couple jumped from the ship into the waters and managed to get to lifeboat A. Edvard managed to clamber aboard, but Gerda could not. Another Swede aboard the boat, August Wennerström, held her hand over the side. The boat was partially filled with cold sea water and those aboard were quickly exhausted by hypothermia. Eventually Gerda slipped from Wennerström’s grip and was lost to sea. Edvard died on board. A month later, a drifting lifeboat was discovered by one of the teams recovering bodies. Within it they discovered a gold wedding ring, later identified as Gerda Lindell’s. It had likely slipped off her hand into the boat, as Wennerström struggled to hold her hand.

The Plucky Little Countess, Lady Rothes

Born on December 25th 1878, Lucy Noel Martha Rothes nee Dyer-Edwardes, was known by her family as Noelle. Refusing all suitors, in her first year after coming of age, she eventually fell for and married Norman-Evelyn Leslie, the 19th Earl of Rothes.

Following their marriage in 1900 the couple settled in Paignton, Devonshire. They were very active on the London social scene, and were presented at the Royal Court where Noelle was received by the Princess of Wales. Indeed, both were later invited to participate in the coronation of Edward VII in 1909.

Their first child, Malcolm, was born in 1902 and their second, John, in 1909. Having her own children inspired Noelle to help those of others, and she became active in charitable works to help poor and sick children, and their families.

In 1904, Norman inherited the Fifeshire estate in Scotland, and they moved into Leslie House, where they quickly became well respected by the local community. As well as her fundraising and philanthropic activities, Noelle was also politically active, a chairman of local Women’s Unionist Associations.

The couple’s pursuits were widely followed by the media, who reported on their horse riding, shooting, cricketing and boating pastimes, though the Rothes didn’t care for the attention they attracted. They had their critics – some members of the rather jaded and amoral Edwardian aristocracy derided them for their affectionate domestic lifestyle and they were described by one journalist as “a most unfashionably devoted couple.” But they remained more popular than not.

In February 1912, Norman left on a business trip to America, on a mission to learn from the privately operated U.S. telegraph service, in comparison to the state-run British system. So enjoyable did he find his tour of the States and Canada, Norman invited Noelle to travel out and join him in California, so that they might celebrate their 12th anniversary together.

Noelle invited one of her closest friends, Norman’s cousin Gladys Cherry, to join her for the voyage, which was booked on the Titanic. Gladys planned to visit her brother Charles, who was living in New York. To journalists before the trip, she said that she and Norman were planning to buy an American orange grove, and would be returning home in July, to take their children over. She was “full of joyful expectation” about the crossing.

Noelle and Gladys took full advantage of the ship’s facilities, and enjoyed socialising with other first class passengers, amongst whom they made many friends. The evening of the sinking, the ladies attended a gala dinner in honour of the captain, Noelle dressed in designer gown and jewels, including a new necklace made from 300-year-old Leslie heirloom pearls.

Shortly after 10 p.m. they retired to their cabin, awakened less than two hours later by the collision. Initially, the women put on their dressing gowns and fur coats, and went up on deck to find out more. Assured that the collision was nothing serious, the atmosphere on deck was calm, with passengers excited about the adventure. However, a short while later, Captain Smith came to the group and asked if they would go quietly to their cabins to retrieve and put on their lifebelts, and then go up to the top deck.

Back in their cabin, the ladies found Cissy, Noelle’s maid who had come up from her E deck cabin to theirs on the C deck. She reported that water was pouring in to the raquet court. A passing steward helped them locate their lifebelts, and advised them to dress warmly. They donned their warmest woollen suits and heaviest furs. Leaving purses and money behind, Noelle grabbed only a hip flask of brandy and the string of Leslie pearls, and all three women headed out onto deck. Noelle recalled that crowds on deck were increasing, and people were milling about wondering what to do. No orders had been given to abandon ship, but passengers were still secure in the ship’s unsinkable strength, so there was not yet any atmosphere of panic.

However, as the ship began to tilt, people began to grow uneasy. Finally, second officer Lightoller gave the command for women and children to board the lifeboats. As has famously been reported, the ship band set up instruments on the deck and began to play. Noelle, Gladys and Cissy boarded lifeboat 8.

There were no officers aboard the boat, and just 4 members of crew including bedroom steward Alfred Crawford and able seaman Thomas Jones. Captain Smith gave both Crawford and Jones clear instructions to make for what appeared to be two masthead lights in the distance, pointing to the ship lights that could be seen from the deck. Assuming, from the clarity of the lights, that the other ship must be only a few miles away, he instructed them to deliver the passengers to the rescue ship before returning for more.

The inexperience of the crewmen showed and squabbling threatened to scupper their efforts to head for the distant ship lights. However, Tom Jones and Noelle quickly developed a strong mutual respect, and Noelle took over the tiller. Retaining her composure, she offered comfort and encouragement to fellow passengers and was later heralded as a heroine and reported to be the cohesive force that kept all aboard focused and in good spirits during the next several hours. Many of the women took their turns at rowing. Gladys took over the tiller, which she manned for more than half of the time spent in the boat.

As they continued to row it seemed that the distant ship lights never grew any closer.

At 2.20 am the ship broke and sank with a roar, which was followed by the shrieks of drowning passengers. Jones insisted they turn back to try and save some, supported by Noelle, Gladys and one or two other passengers. The majority strongly protested, arguing that it would be wrong to risk their lives on the bare chance of finding anyone alive, and also citing the Captain’s orders to head for the ship lights. Jones lamented, “if any of us are saved, remember I wanted to go back. I would rather drown with them than leave them” but accepted the decision of the majority in the boat.

Some hours later, still rowing for the original lights, a new light was spotted in the opposite direction. Lifeboat 8 turned about and headed to the ship they could now see heading full steam in their direction. Having travelled the farthest distance from the spot of the sinking, they had the farthest to travel back but their spirits were raised by the stronger hope of rescue, and they sang as they rowed towards what they eventually discovered to be the RMS Carpathia.

After five hours in the lifeboat, they were eventually taken on board the Carpathia, at which point Noelle fainted, probably from strain and exhaustion, and was taken to the ship’s hospital to recuperate. However, on her recovery, she and Gladys immediately busied themselves with visiting the makeshift hospitals on board, providing what comfort they could to survivors from all classes.

Noelle was a nurse, and was able to assist in bandaging and medicating patients. They also joined a crewman in rounding up spare blankets and linen from which they cut and sewed garments for second class and steerage survivors, some of whom had no clothes at all.

Already, on the journey to New York, Noelle learned of her new nickname, “the plucky little countess” though she dismissed it instantly, insisting that Tom Jones had been the real hero and that the survival of their boat had been very much a team effort.

Just like her more famous fellow survivor, Margaret “Molly” Brown, Noelle did her utmost to ensure that destitute survivors would be taken care of, before disembarking herself and being met by an anxious Norman.

Although Noelle never courted the media, focusing on her husband, family and charitable interests, the papers continued to write about her, fuelled by the reports given by fellow survivors from lifeboat 8 and the Carpathia. When one headline labelled her as brave for taking charge of her boat, she was upset that it overstated her role and overlooked the contributions of Gladys, Jones and others. Though she did try and set the record straight, she soon realised that she could not control what was written.

The moniker given her board the Carpathia stuck, taken up as it was by a world looking for positive stories within such an enormous tragedy.

Norman and Noelle decided against buying property in America and returned to Scotland in the late summer. Over following years, as Britain went to war, Noelle resumed her local campaigns and charitable efforts, throwing herself into providing hospital facilities to wounded soldiers and shelter to European refugees, as well as coordinating fundraising efforts. Norman was called up, and went to serve in France. Wounded once, but quickly recovered and sent back into service, he was eventually invalided out of service after losing an eye when hit by shrapnel.

By the end of the war, the Rothes were struggling financially, and made the sad decision to sell the Leslie estate, much to the upset of their tenants and the local community. They moved down to their Buckinghamshire estate, in England and also spent time in their Chelsea, London residence.

In 1926, Noelle lost her father, and then the following year, Norman also passed away. However, she soon accepted the marriage proposal of a long time friend, and they lived a quiet life his country estate in Gloucestershire. As always, Noelle continued to help those in need.

Noelle didn’t talk much about her experiences in 1912, but did maintain a correspondence with Tom Jones, having presented both him and Alfred Crawford with commemorative watches. Jones, returning her affection, presented her with a plaque on which was mounted the numeral 8, which he had saved from their lifeboat.

Not long before her death, she agreed to share her memories with a young American journalist, Walter Lord, but never lived to see his resulting book, A Night to Remember. It proved to have a big influence on the understanding and perception of the disaster in the decades to follow.

Noelle died in her sleep on September 12, 1956.

Rediscovering the Titanic

Since the wreck was found on the seabed, back in 1985, even more has been learned about the furniture, supplies, passenger luggage and cargo lost when the ship sank.

During a recent visit to Berry Bros & Rudd we (carefully) flicked through an old ledger, covering transactions from March 1912, and saw the entries for orders to be delivered by the Titanic… 2 cases of original yellow Chartreuse, 2 of very fine sherry, 1 of Manzanilla sherry, 18 of dry champagne, 3 of “dry dry” gin and 3 of 10 year old Scotch whisky were loaded as cargo, for delivery to a variety of US-based customers.

On the wall in the Berry Bros & Rudd shop is the insurance advisement letter from White Star Line. It reads, “Referring to your shipment by this steamer, it is with great regret we have to inform you that the Titanic foundered at 2-20 a.m. 15th instant, after colliding with an iceberg, and is a total loss. Details of shipment are shown at foot, Yours faithfully, for White Star Line”.

To commemorate the centennial of the disaster, Berry Bros & Rudd decided to create a limited edition Scotch whisky. With scant information about the style of the whisky they had delivered to the ship, they decided to honour the “plucky little countess” Lady Rothes, with a Glenrothes, Speyside whisky. (BBR own the Glenrothes whisky brand, though not the distillery itself).

Called Titanic, their commemorative bottling was distilled in 1998, aged in sherry casks and bottled this year.

BBR’s Spirits Manager, Douglas McIvor, took us through a tasting of the whisky, sharing his own tasting notes and encouraging us to add our own.

Please click through to Pete Drinks for a more detailed review of Berry’s Titanic single malt scotch whisky.

Pete Drinks and Kavey Eats attending the tasting as guests of Berry Bros & Rudd.

In writing this post, I have relied heavily on internet resources including Titanic Titanic, Wikipedia and Randy Bryan Bigham’s article at Encyclopedia Titanica.

Hawksmoor Spitalfields Bar

03 Apr 2012 6 Responses »

Apr 032012

The new Hawksmoor Spitalfields Bar is both a new venture, for restaurateurs Huw Gott and Will Beckett, and a return to their starting point, located as it is in the basement of their first restaurant, Hawksmoor Spitalfields.

Unlike the bars at their Guildhall and Seven Dials restaurants, the latest bar feels like a much more separate space, and indeed the regular restaurant menu is not available here, due to the small size of the kitchen. (The main restaurant upstairs uses the original kitchen, also pretty small).

Bang on trend, the space is dark and intimate with retro tiling and a simple decor. There are three huge booths, of which we are lucky enough to be seated in one, and a number of tall tables with stool chairs around them.

Some things are familiar though, such as a list of original cocktails and a short sweet list of mainly local beers from brewers such as Meantime and Kernel. A handful of cocktails are on the permanent list. These are joined by the Desert Island five, which will be devised and selected monthly by the large bar team across all three properties.

The menu is short and sweet, split into food, sides and puddings.

We order four items from the sides list, thinking some will work as starters and some as sides to our main order.

I’ve already heard great things about the shortrib nuggets (£6) and they don’t disappoint. Served piping hot with a vibrant and punchy dipping sauce these bread-crumbed beauties contain soft flakes of deeply flavoured meat, chopped pickles and oozing melted cheese. There are 6 in the serving and they don’t last long!

Smashed cucumbers (£3) seem a little steeply priced but are rather good. Very lightly soused in a mild, sweet pickling liquid, they still have the taste and texture of fresh.

The oxtail poutine (£6) comes out with our mains and is not an attractive dish. That’s because it’s all about the eating, and believe me, on that front it definitely delivers. Fantastic chips, fluffy inside but with a decent crunch on the outside, are smothered in gravy, melted cheese and immensely savoury oxtail meat. There’s gravy beneath them too, so the bottom chips get good and soggy by the time you reach them.

I am unable to resist the lobster roll, which is priced at £15 rather than the £20 listed on the online menu. That’s just as well as it’s not very large, though it’s reasonably generously filled. The roll is soft and sweet, which brings out the sweetness in the meat. Although the meat tastes really great, it’s a touch too soft, either overcooked or cooked and left aside for too long, I’m not sure which. In any case, it’s a minor quibble and I enjoy every bite.

Pete’s chilli cheese dog (£10) is also a little expensive though it tastes fantastic, with a lovely smoky dog, punchy chilli, though very little of it and some oozy cheese. However, the roll it’s on is far too small for it, so small that it’s actually not possible to pick it up in the conventional way, as the roll doesn’t extend at all around the sausage. It’s a delicious dog but a tenner ought to buy a big enough roll to hold the thing!

The Tamworth laab (£6) is the one thing on the menu that just doesn’t make sense to me. Laab is a Laotian / Thai ground meat salad and the Spitalfields Bar version is good and tasty – strong flavours and a pleasant but not too strong chilli kick. It could do with a few more lettuce leaves with which to parcel up the meat, I think, but the dish is decent. However, it doesn’t fit with anything else on the menu, and I can’t work out what it’s doing on there.

I am already full but, like a moth drawn to a flame, am unable to resist once again, when I see peanut butter shortbread with salted caramel ice cream (£7) in the puddings list. Served hot out of the oven, this is magnificent! I’d venture to say it’s one of the best desserts I’ve had for ages, and the mix of hot, crumbly pastry, a gooey melted peanut butter filling and the tangy sweet salted caramel ice cream is worth busting a gut for!

So good is my own sweet that I don’t even want to taste Pete’s lemon meringue pie (£6) as it’ll mean one less bite of my own that I’ll be able to manage! He assures me it’s a good example of the dish.

So that’s the food, what about service? We’ve been looked after by Miguel all evening, and he’s enthusiastically helped us with understanding some of the menu items, making our selection, and checked that everything is OK during our meal. Staff seem well trained and on the ball, as they do at all the Hawksmoor venues.

I know that if I worked locally, this is just the kind of casual bar restaurant I’d love to have around the corner, to drag colleagues into for a quick drink and tasty bite after work.

Kavey Eats dined as guests of Hawksmoor Spitalfields Bar.

Cheese & Beer @ Meantime Old Brewery

29 Mar 2012 3 Responses »

Mar 292012

A few weeks ago we were invited to a special cheese and beer matching evening at Meantime’s Brewery’s The Old Brewery bar and restaurant.

Located in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich (just a minute’s walk from the Cutty Sark), the setting is really beautiful. In the bar, exposed brick walls and vaulted brick ceilings create a cosy but modern space. In the enormously high-ceilinged restaurant, walls are decorated with informative flow charts on the beer making process, a modern work of art created from thousands of empty beer bottles hangs above diners’ heads and eyes are drawn to the eight scrupulously polished copper clad brewing tuns ranged in three rows along one of the end walls.

There’s a long history of brewing on the site, so it’s good to know that these are not just for display. This is a working micro-brewery – Meantime’s founder and brew master, Alastair Hook, along with Rod Jones, head brewer at The Old Brewery, experiment with a wide range of beers from trialling potential new lines to creating limited editions and having fun with some unusual styles, including wild beer, brewed using non-conventional yeasts.

For this event, Rod Jones was joined by Jayne Peyton from the School of Booze and Patricia Michaelson from La Fromagerie. Between them they gave us an introduction to beer and cheese matching, presented a cheese and beer menu for the evening meal, and did a more focused beer and cheese tasting after the meal.

The canapés (gougeres, cheese sables and parmesan crisps) were served during the introductory talk before the meal.

Rod’s first point was that, whilst people seem to think beer and food matching is a new and trendy thing, pretentious even, and that wine is the traditional match for cheese and food in general, this is a very recent phenomenon. He said that only a couple of generations ago, it was far more normal to have a beer with the Sunday roast, as his grandfather did, than a bottle of wine. Rod lead us down memory lane, reminding us that this was reflected on telly too – in the 1960s sitcom On The Buses, when bus driver Reg’s mum offered him a cup of tea with his steak and kidney pie, he quickly told her that it was a pint of stout that went best with steak and kidney! In ‘Til Death Do Us Part, it was pale ale that Alf Garnett had with his Christmas dinner.

We also learned that there’s a good reason beer works well with food – the effect of carbonation in our mouth is a mechanical scrubbing or cleansing of the palate. Dry hops do something similar. So beer helps bring out the flavours of the food, rather than disguise them, as wine can sometimes do.

Jayne gave us some advice for matching beer to food and suggested there were three possible ways to go.
1) Choose a beer that cuts through the food – for example a crisp pilsner and fish and chips.
2) Choose a beer that compliments the food – for example cheddar and barley wine, both rich, nutty, grainy flavours.
3) Choose a beer that contrasts with the food – for example creamy, chocolaty stout and salty, slippery oysters.

I also liked Jayne’s aside that the term ‘beer belly’ to describe the peculiarly rounded belly that’s afflicts more men than women is almost universal, in so many languages, the word ‘beer ‘ is involved.

Pete and I didn’t agree with all the matches, but the point of the exercise was to encourage the audience to give beer more of a chance when it comes to food and drinks matching, and to find their own preferred matches.

The first course once we’d transferred to our tables, was grilled Crottin de Chavignol goat’s cheese, orange and thyme honey, hazelnut and oat crunch, dressed baby herbs paired with Saison 1900.

The dish itself was delicious. Creamy, soft and salty goat’s cheese against sweet, crunchy hazelnuts. Gentle but appealing flavours.

Pete’s verdict was that whilst he could see that they’d chosen the Saison 1900 to cut through the distinctive sticky goatiness, he felt a much bigger beer such as a tripel or barley wine would have worked better, or possibly a sweeter, floral beer.

Next came roast Welsh lamb saddle stuffed with ricotta, dried apricots and pine nuts, creamed mash potato, sauteed cepes, buttered spinach and roasting juices which was matched to Meantime IPA.

The flavour of the lamb was absolutely fantastic, rich, sweet and meaty. Unfortunately, the cooking resulted in a thick layer of unpleasant, flabby fat and lots of stringy bits. The cheese aspect of the stuffing didn’t really come through at all in terms of flavour; the ricotta was little more than a binder for the apricot, in my opinion. The mash was oddly grainy, the texture of Smash, but the taste of real potato. The mushrooms were the best thing on the plate.

Pete felt that the IPA was too big a beer for the dish, certainly it didn’t bring out the reticent ricotta cheese, nor did it really enhance the lamb or mushrooms. He posited that it would work better with a more robust and rich dish, such as venison with a dark, fruit sauce.

For dessert, we were served raspberry cheesecake, frozen berries, hot white chocolate sauce. The beer match was Rodenbach Grand Cru.

For me, this felt like two separate desserts, the crunchy frozen berries with hot but quickly setting white chocolate and basil leaves worked on its own, and was the best element on the plate. The cheesecake was OK.

The beer was unusual. For me, it smelled like tomato ketchup. Pete was strongly reminded of cough medicine. How did it go with the pudding? Pete found that it cut through the sweet, rich white chocolate extremely well but that it didn’t really work with the sharper berries or the tanginess of the cheesecake. With a full-on sweet pudding, it would have been a winner, but he wasn’t convinced that it went with this plate.

After the main meal, we had a bit of a wait before the cheese plates and associated beers arrived.

Although I’m not a beer drinker, I thought some of these matches worked very well, in terms of the way the beer modified the taste of the cheese and vice versa. Pete liked the matches less, though again, it got him thinking on which beers he might choose to match with the same cheeses.

Chabichou is a soft but firm goat’s milk cheese with a slightly crumbly rind and had lovely nutty fresh citrus flavours. I liked the Blonde de Bruxelles match; its light, tangy, milk taste complimented the cheese well.

Soumaintrain is a proper smelly feet cheese, with an orange Annatto-washed rind. It’s very rich, creamy, intensely flavoured, very meaty savoury umami. The Williams Brothers Alba was, for me, an excellent match. The cheese brought out a real sweetness in the beer, like toffee apples and treacle.

Fribourg d’Estive Grand Reserve is a classic Gruyere with the familiar salty and sweet nuts and caramel flavour and grainy texture. I absolutely hated the Stone Brewing Old Guardian Barley Wine with it, as I felt it completely overwhelmed the cheese and make everything taste unpleasantly sour and off.

Abbaye de Trois Vaux is one of few cheeses I couldn’t warm to, probably because it has a distinctly bitter taste. Made by nuns at the abbey, the cheese has a dark red-brown rind from washing in local beer. The beer match was Chimay Red, which is hoppy, yeasty and fruity, also with bitter tones. Pete liked how the two bitter flavours complemented each other. For me, I liked neither.

Blue de Causses is what Patricia described as a ‘gutsy’ blue, very salty, very strong, slightly grainy in texture. The 10% ABV Durham Brewery Temptation was way too strong for me, on it’s own, but the blue cheese drew out sweetness and coffee flavours in the beer. I thought this match very interesting, as both the beer and the cheese really changed the flavour of the other.

The Old Brewery runs regular beer and food nights, so check their calendar for upcoming dates.

Kavey Eats dined as guests of Meantime London.

Vietnamese Rice Wine Liqueurs

27 Feb 2012 No Responses »

Feb 272012

Read my guest post at Pete Drinks, about tasting Vietnamese rice wine liqueurs at Pho restaurant.

Popping in for a Coffee: Roasting your own beans at home

19 Jan 2012 5 Responses »

Jan 192012

Another great guest post by Matt Gibson.

The other day, I woke up and realised I had no coffee in the house. The fact that this realisation terrified me might give you some idea of the relationship I have with caffeine. It’s a geek thing.

Luckily, I remembered I *did* actually have some coffee. The only problem was that what I had, tucked away in the back of a cupboard, was a bag of unroasted green beans.

So. Out with the popcorn maker!

Yes, the popcorn maker. I’ve had one hanging around since I read a fellow geek’s blog post about how you could convince a hot-air popcorn maker to roast coffee beans. A week after I read that post, I saw one going on Freecycle. They’re just the kind of appliance that people buy on a whim, use twice, and then relegate to the back of a cupboard until the next clear-out, so Freecycle is a pretty good source for them.

The next bit is more easily shown than told, so, without further ado, here’s me, on a Saturday morning, making a cup of coffee all the way from a handful of green beans to the mug:

The coffee tasted pretty damn good. It helps that green beans last for *ages* compared to roasted beans, which is excellent motivation for home roasting.

If you want to try this at home, (a) see if you can find a friend with a popcorn maker they’ve not used since 1988 and steal it, and (b) look to somewhere like Has Bean for supplies – all their beans are available to buy green.

Enjoy! But do bear these caveats in mind:

The same hot air that’s designed to lift the popped corn out of the machine also blows out the chaff (the papery “skin” of the beans.) The chaff starts floating off soon after you put the beans in the machine, and is much harder to catch in a bowl than popcorn. Be prepared to sweep up afterwards.
You normally roast coffee to somewhere between first and second “crack”. Each coffee bean makes a sharp little cracking sound once, near the beginning of the roasting, and then again, a few minutes later in the case of my popcorn maker. The longer you leave it, the darker the roast, which I like, but it’s a fine line between “French roast” and “burned to a cinder”. This guide may help.
Coffee roasting takes longer than popping popcorn. Be careful your popcorn maker doesn’t overheat! Watch for deforming plastic, etc. Don’t leave it unattended. Basically, don’t try this at home, kids, unless you’re prepared for unexpected consequences.
You can, of course, buy “proper” home coffee roasters, but they’re more expensive. And less fun, in my opinion, than repurposing something orange and plastic from the 1980s and bending it to your will.
If you’re going to point an expensive camera lens into a hot-air popcorn maker’s exhaust port, make sure you do it from a safe distance. I got away with it, luckily.
You probably want your beans to “rest” a while after roasting to “de-gas” them. The typical advice is to wait around a day between roasting and using the beans. In practice, though, the coffee tasted fine to me straight away, but that might have been because I was caffeine-starved :)

Win a Bath Ales Festivity Seasonal Hamper

13 Dec 2011 19 Responses »

Dec 132011

Pete loves Bath Ales‘ beers. You may have seen his brewery tour-at-home blog post over at his new blog, or when it was originally posted, here.

But I’m not much of a beer drinker at all. For me it’s all about the cute Bath Ales hare logo and the friendly Bath Ales team. I’ve interacted with them on twitter for ages, and finally met some of them in person when we visited Bath this summer.

And the food; it’s always about the food. (Remember our visit to the Bath Ales Graze Bar & Chophouse, in Bristol?)

So when I heard tell of a range of food products making use of Bath Ales beers, I perked up. More meerkat than hare, admittedly, but definitely perky!

Bath Ales have put together a seasonal gift hamper including a bottle of Festivity (their winter porter), a pint glass and keyring (both with that lovely hare logo), a jar of Castellano’s Dark Side pâté, a jar of Kitchen Garden‘s Barnstormer chutney, some Sharpham Park spelt and oat biscuits and a bar of Gem beer soap. A hamper cost £24.95 + £6 delivery (£5 for Bristol and Bath postcodes).

I was sent a hamper to review, and a weekend visit to a friend’s seemed the perfect opportunity to delve in.

The Festivity porter disappeared very quickly indeed, though all is not lost as last week, I ordered 30 bottles from Waitrose, who are currently selling Bath Ales beers for a stonkingly good 3 for £5 special offer. Different branches stock different beers from the Bath Ales range, so I had to phone around to find a convenient branch for the Festivity but given the delight on Pete’s face, it was definitely worth the effort!

The Castellano’s Dark Side pâté didn’t wow. There was nothing wrong with the flavour, though we all found it bland with no hint of beer. But the main problem was that it was dry.

The Kitchen Garden’s Barnstormer chutney, on the other hand, was absolutely wonderful. In just 2 lunches, the three of us pretty much polished it off! I’d definitely buy this chutney again, and am certainly tempted to try others from their range.

The good news is that Bath Ales have offered a second hamper as a competition prize for one lucky Kavey Eats reader. The prize includes delivery within the UK and will be sent out after the competition closes, in January.

How to enter

You can enter the competition in 2 ways.

Entry 1 – Sign up to the Bath Ales newsletter
Sign up to the Bath Ales monthly newsletter, by emailing your First Name, Last Name and Email address to me at Kavey Eats. I will pass these along to Bath Ales once the competition closes.

The newsletter is full of information about their ales, brewery and pubs and also includes subscriber-only offers and competitions. Bath Ales never pass subscriber details on to any other company and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Please complete your entry by leaving a comment below, including the email address you emailed me from.

Entry 2 – Tweet
Tweet the (exact) sentence below:
I’d love to win the @bathales Festivity Seasonal Hamper from www.kaveyeats.com #kaveyeatsfestivityhamper

Please complete your entry by leaving a comment below, including your twitter ID.

Rules & Details

The deadline for entries is midnight GMT Saturday 31 December 2011.
The winner will be selected from all valid entries using a random number generator.
One entry per method per person.
The prize cannot be redeemed for cash.
The prize includes delivery, and can be delivered to UK mainland addresses only.
The prize is offered and will be delivered directly by Bath Ales.
The winner will be notified by email or twitter and asked to provide a delivery address. If no response is received by the end of Saturday 7 January 2012, the prize will be forfeit and a new winner will be picked and contacted.

*If you don’t have a secondary email address already and are nervous about sharing your main email address on the internet, why not set up a new free email account on hotmail, gmail or yahoo, that you can use to enter competitions like this?

Thanks to Bath Ales for allowing me to preview their seasonal hamper and for providing this lovely prize.

Pete Bakes: Chocolate & Porter Cake

22 Oct 2011 11 Responses »

Oct 222011

Last week saw me doing more baking than drinking, as I found myself entering the Great Chocolate Cake-Off taking place at Chocolate Unwrapped. Although I thoroughly enjoy baking, in recent years it’s tended to be more bread based, so the prospect of coming up with a chocolate cake worthy of being eaten by anyone other than my nearest and dearest – who are obviously honour-bound to tell me how delicious it is – was a little alarming. As a result, I was a little less than relaxed about the whole affair and even ended up making test cakes to make sure I wasn’t going to embarrass myself too much.

I knew roughly what sort of cake I wanted to make from the start; something along the lines of a Devil’s Food Cake, which is wonderfully chocolaty and dense without being heavy. But I wanted to bring a little something extra to the party and given my day-blog, beer seemed the obvious thing to add. Everything tastes better with beer.

The next problem was the basic Devil’s Food; it turns out that there are more versions of this cake than there are recipe books, none of which quite matched up to how I remember my mum’s version. Having culled all the recipes that involved coffee – which would have been too much with beer as well – I did my normal trick of taking the easiest bits from various sources and normalising it to easier-to-measure quantities. I’m nothing if not a lazy cook.

Having settled on the base recipe, I had to pick my beer. It clearly had to be a dark sweet beer, which really meant a porter. Given that they make the best porters I know, I had initially planned on something from the Kernel Brewery but I have to travel across London to get hold of Kernel beer, so for my first test I made do with some Fuller’s London Porter. My chief taster confirmed that I was on the right path and demanded further cake. One trip to the Beer Boutique later and I had my small supply of Kernel’s Export India Porter. Despite being (in my opinion) a superior beer, it turned out to be less tasty in cake-form than the Fuller’s – sadly I was therefore forced to drink the Kernel instead. Life as a baker is sometimes hard.

When it came to the cake filling, I quickly realised that despite my personal addiction to butter icing, something lighter was required to avoid everything getting too heavy. Clearly it needed to be a bit sweet and beery, which pretty much meant the recipe wrote itself. Having the design talent of an aspidistra, I went for the traditional, village-fete look of ‘cream in the middle, cream on top’, which my less talentless wife suggested improving with some grated chocolate.

I set off to the show feeling pretty good; although the cake hadn’t risen quite as much as the test runs I knew it was tasty and it looked more like a ‘proper’ cake than most of my efforts.

Imagine my state of mind, then, when I walked into the kitchen and saw the other 15 cakes. They had spun sugar. They had frosting. They had tiers. They had cake stands for heaven’s sake. I had what looked like a naked chocolate victoria sponge on a bit of foil board left over from Kavey’s birthday party. I skulked off to wander around the show (well ok, I also popped over the road to The Rake for a swift half) and waited to pick up my 16th place prize.

The results were announce at 4:30 that afternoon, the top five being presented to the audience and discussed by the judges. I think it’s fair to say I was surprised when among the spectacularly crafted things of beauty that appeared on the judging table was my effort – looking, if truth be told, on the amateurish side in such company.

Still, from the kind comments of the judges it seemed my cynical attempt to get them drunk enough to vote me the winner almost paid off even if, in the end, I was beaten by someone who clearly knows how to make spun sugar rather than just how to eat it. Oh, and her sponge was (annoyingly) bloody tasty too.

So, if you want to know how to make my second-prize winning (ok, there wasn’t a second prize as such but you could tell they all secretly liked mine second best) Chocolate Porter Cake, here it is.

Pete’s Chocolate & Porter Cake

Ingredients

For the cake:
125 grams unsalted butter
150 grams granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
225 grams plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
75 grams of very good very dark chocolate *
100 grams dark muscovado sugar
250 ml porter **

For the cream:
100 ml extra thick double cream
4 tablespoons icing sugar
3 tablespoons porter **

To decorate:
10-15 grams grated dark eating chocolate

* I used Willie Harcourt-Cooze Venezualan Black 100% Caranero Superior, which comes in block form.
** I used London Fuller’s Porter.

Method

Cream together the butter and sugar.

Recipes always tell you to use castor sugar. I never have castor sugar in the cupboard, so I always use granulated. It’s all going to end up in a liquid batter anyway, so it’ll probably dissolve and I can’t be messing about with stocking essentially the same product in slightly different crystal sizes.

I actually did this bit by hand (you can see my cake-making fork there in the bowl); I am sure you could use a stand or hand mixer but I’ve always done this bit by hand. It’s part of the cake making ritual, right up there with licking the bowl.

Once that’s done, beat in the eggs one at a time with a spoonful of flour each time.

I think adding the flour a bit at a time is supposed to stop the mixture splitting or something, but I don’t really see why it matters. You’re about to beat the hell out of it anyway, which will mix it all back together again. Again though, it’s how my mum told me to make cakes so it’s what I do. By now I’d put down my cake-making fork and let Intergalactic Unicorn (our KitchenAid) do the heavy labour.

Add in the rest of the flour, the bicarb and the baking powder and turn the machine up to high power for a bit, to mix everything in properly.

In a separate bowl, melt the chocolate.

Once it’s all nicely liquid, mix the dark muscovado sugar into the melted chocolate.

This seems to be the easiest way of evenly distributing the chocolate and breaking down the lumps you inevitably get in dark sugar; it also creates another bowl to lick clean.

Add the chocolate sugar goo into the main mixture, along with the beer. Crank the machine back up to full power and give it a thorough whisking until it looks right.

It’s tricky to describe quite what you’re looking for – the mixture goes a little lighter in colour, and just gets to this perfect, thick cake batter consistency. Or, if in doubt, just give it a couple of minutes.
And that’s it. Scrape what you can bothered off the whisk, and lick it clean.
Divide the mixture evenly between two greased and lined 8” cake tins, and lick the bowl clean.
Pop the tins into a preheated oven at 170C for roughly 30 minutes. Don’t overcook them; the cakes want to be a little moist.
When you take them out, leave them in the tins for 10 minutes, then put them out on a cooling rack.
Wait for the cakes to be completely cool before messing about with the cream – otherwise the warmth just makes the cream melt and go everywhere.
Making the cream filling is properly easy. Chuck all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk until good and thick; properly, almost buttery-thick otherwise it will shoot out of the side of the cake when you cut into it.
Use two thirds of the cream filling to sandwich the two halves of the cake together, and the remaining third to spread evenly(ish) over the top.
Finish it off with grated chocolate to look pretty.
Devour.

above images courtesy of Paul Winch-Furness

When discussing the five finalists, famous pâtissier and chocolatier Paul A Young said of my cake “the porter in this cake was *absolutely* beautiful… really intense, really moist… a cup of tea and a slice of that, a very big slice of that and you’d be on your way.”

Launching PeteDrinks.com with the Great Alcoholic Ginger Beer Taste Test!

20 Oct 2011 1 Response »

Oct 202011

I can hardly believe it was well over a year ago when I first introduced Pete Drinks to Kavey Eats. Since then, Pete’s written fifty posts for the blog, mostly beer reviews such as Finchley Ales IPA, Marble Brewery Tour At Home and Kernel Brewery Tour At Home.

When he first started, he was tentative… not sure whether he’d keep it going very long, just like me when I started Kavey Eats… not sure whether he’d enjoy it or find much to write about. But now he’s definitely “found his voice”, as they say and, in my opinion, his writing gets better and better.

So it’s with very great pleasure that Kavey Eats waves goodbye to Pete Drinks… and introduces you to PeteDrinks.com, where Pete will be posting his content from now on.

As some of you know, we recently held a taste test of Alcoholic Ginger Beers, along the lines of the Christmas Pudding taste test and the Easter Egg Review.

So, without further ado, Pete Drinks: The Great Alcoholic Ginger Beer Taste Test!

Pete Drinks: Hopdaemon Brewery Tour-At-Home

04 Oct 2011 1 Response »

Oct 042011

Today’s collection comes from Hopdaemon, a small brewery based in Kent. They’ve been on my ‘list’ for some time, but somehow I’d never managed to track them down before. Here we have all three of their beers that appear in bottle form – there are a couple of extras that are only available on tap.

I have to say, looking at the bottles side by side I’d have trouble telling that they were from the same brewery; also the label style somehow manages to re-enforce my assumption, from the ‘Hopdaemon’ name and even the Kiwi founder, that these are going to be big, floral, hoppy beasts and about the last thing expected were some very traditionally styled Kentish ales.

Just goes to show how wrong first impressions can be!

Scrimshander is a copper coloured IPA at 4.5%. It has a fine bubbled lingering head which leads into a nice body with a well controlled fizz, and there’s not much nose to it – just a hint of caramel. On the tongue there’s sweet, fairly light malt, with deep hoppy bitterness that lingers long into the finish. It’s quite a classic Kentish bitter, and I like it, but it’s somehow not what I was expecting.

Green Daemon Helles is a slightly stronger golden beer, at 5.0%. A straw colour, with a similarly lingering head on it. There’s more to smell on this, with some distinct floral grapefruit notes. It has another good dose of bitterness, although less pronounced than with the Scrimshander. A light body, gently sweet on the tongue, and very drinkable with pale fruit flavours throughout – delicious!

Lastly we come to Leviathan, a strong ale at 6.0%. A deep red brown in the glass, with a slightly thinner head than it’s stable mates. On the nose there’s dark fruit, treacly, like dates. Surprisingly for it’s strength and sweetness, it doesn’t have a massively big body but it’s wonderfully sweet, sticky and rich, with some bitterness to the end that balances out that sweetness nicely. It’s a great tasting dark beer, with syrupy dried fruit – very nice.

Overall, it’s a great collection of traditional, very tasty Kentish beer – not what I was expecting, but very nice nonetheless. I shall certainly keep an eye out for their cask-only offerings.

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