They Walk Among Us

The word 'foodie' it seems has many different connotations for different people. For some, the word gets right up their noses. They find it pretentious and elitist and anyone who labels themselves as such is deemed to a complacent knob-end with an overinflated sense of superiority. For some, it's the actual phrasing of the word itself with it's pronounced "-ee" at the end that winds them up. It all sounds far too cutesy, nauseating and precious. Witness Sophie Dahl self-proclaim that is she a 'foodie' and you might understand. However, for others it is just a simple way of defining yourself as someone who is interested in food. That you view it as a hobby, a passion, that you like to talk about food, write about food, cook food, photograph food. That you like to dine, entertain, eat in, eat out, explore, experiment and on the odd occasion, are willing to fail in your pursuits (or to have your pursuits fail you). Or you can think like me and believe that 'Foodies' are true believers of a higher culinary authority. When the time comes, we, the greedy but select chosen few will be whisked off in a great apple pie shaped spaceship just before the arrival of Galactus the planet devourer. I can tell you with absolute certainty, when he turns up all Earth will amount to is a mere patty of butter to be spread on a colossal slice of cosmic toast. Meanwhile, the 'Foodies' will bask for all eternity in the galaxy of Gluttonia, which is largely made from butter, anti-matter and marshmallow. I am a Foodie. This is what I believe.

But anyway going back to the meaning of the word, despite its varying resonance, I would say that it is a fairly generic term these days so for the rest of this post I shall continually refer to the word (can you guess that there's been a fair amount of hand wringing going on?)

Ever since writing this blog and my other one, I have been lucky enough to meet a fair number of people who share the same enthusiasm and as time goes past, more and more foodies seem to be coming out of the woodwork. The proliferation of new food blogs that are popping up daily and the growing interaction of foodies on social networking sites are testimony to this. A case in point is Clerkenwell Lunchers or #clerkenwelllunchers as you'll find it trending on Twitter. Via the idle chit chat of tweeting with folk announcing what they are up to for lunch in their area, a collective seems to have evolved out of nowhere. Well not exactly nowhere, out of Clerkenwell of course. Having discovered that they work quite close to each other, you now have a group of people who once a week actively plan a different lunch destination (our High Priest is The Grubworm) where they meet, eat, chat, laugh and be merry. How brilliant is that? It certainly beats sitting in the park on your todd with a lunchbox on your lap. There are other lunch clubs springing up I believe, such as #greenparklunchers and #cgardenlunchers. Which is all fine and dandy so long as they don't stray onto our turf, sparking off some ferocious gang war battle reminiscent of a scene from The Warriors. Except we'd use sharpened mangoes instead.

But what does this explosion really mean to me? Well it's simple, it means that there are more and more foodies out there that I can tap up to take part in WMPC and feed me. I am positively rubbing my hands with glee. Saying that though, upon coaxing a willing victim into my trap, it is strange to find out that they work around the corner from me. This is what happened when I met Mary of Did You Put Garlic? outside St John's Restaurant, just a stone's throw from my office for a food swap.

"Where do you work then?" I asked Mary

"Just a few doors up there" Mary replied, pointing.

I was gobsmacked and I stared back at her as if to say "why didn't you tell me this before?" even though her attendance at some of the Clerkenwell Lunchers get togethers should have suggested that she worked nearby. We only had a brief conversation on the street with Mary giving me the lowdown on her Maltese background, her impending nupituals and of the particular dish she had prepared for me but I have to be honest and say that my mind was on other things. Given the revelation that Mary was a foodie who worked so close to me, I began to wonder just how many where out there and just how could you tell? Mary's lips were moving but speech and sound slowly faded out to silence as my eyes began to dart up and down the street, focusing on passers-by. That old man walking his dog, does he keep charcuterie hanging on his balcony? That woman tottering across the road in high heels, is she into baking cupcakes or does she find them too twee? That young boy in the pram, does he throw a tantrum after his mother has lovingly prepared and served his dinner using an Annabel Karmel recipe? I hope he does. These were the thoughts running through my head when suddenly Mary coughed and announced that she really had to get back to her office. I just dumbly nodded and handed over a bottle of Torres Sangre de Toro in exchange for her contribution. As I watched her walk off, like a broken record I kept muttering to myself over and over again, "how many of us are there? How many?"

And then it hit me.

"My god! We're going to need a bigger ship!"

So what did Mary make for me and does she deserve to get on that apple pie shaped spaceship? Well given her heritage, her blog primarily centres on Maltese food and recipes which pleased me to no end as I have never tried Maltese before. Ha and I call myself a foodie. Her menu consisted of Laħam fuq il-fwar, Torta tat-Tamal and Cisk. Or for the unitiated, Steamed Meat, Date Pastry and Maltese Beer called "Cisk". Mary also provided some very healthy steamed broccoli, cauliflower and Chantenay carrots with hazelnut mash. The steamed meat or Laħam fuq il-fwar sounds like a very efficient and economical dish to make. As most Maltese meals begin with soup, the meat for the main course is often cooked over a large pot as the broth bubbles away underneath. The meat itself is usually beef which has been thinly sliced and sandwiched between two plates, seasoned with garlic and herbs and placed on top on the pot (see I was listening Mary). This sounded amazing and indeed it was, even after reheating in the microwave, the steak was wonderfully tender. Mary had also been very generous with her toppings of parsley and bacon but maybe a little too generous with the garlic but hey, given the name of her blog, I suppose it was to be expected. Mrs FU asked me not to breathe in her general direction in bed that night. The vegetables like I said were very healthy and still had a firm bite, there's nothing worse than soft, boiled beyond submission carrots. The hazelnut mash was a bit of a delicious surprise actually. There are plenty of ways of livening up your Maris Piper but with nuts, well that seemed unusual to me but Mary's mash with just a subtle kick tasted gorgeous. Unfortunately her date pastry didn't fare so well as it was a little bit too dry for my liking. The flavours of clove, aniseed and orange blossom came through well but overall, it did clog up my mouth somewhat. Thank gawd then for the Cisk Maltese Beer she gave me (and by all accounts saved from the clutches of her boss). This beer was really refreshing with lovely floral undertones, quite unusual for a lager really. Now that I know where she works, I shall be putting my orders in. I mean how hard can it be carting a case load over from a small island in the Med? Though after my dissing of her pastry she may feel inclined to throw a full can at my head.

Thanks though Mary, it really was a great WMPC contribution and you certainly have won the right to be on that spaceship.

Laħam fuq il-fwar (Steamed Meat with Steam Vegetables and Hazlenut Mash)

Torta tat-Tamal (Date Pastry with Clove, Aniseed and Orange Blossom Water)

The very refreshing Cisk (posing with empty can the next day)

And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire

You know when you've been out on the razz with the lads and consumed half your body weight in beer and spirits, smoked 40 Rothmans, eaten 12 packets of pork scratchings, laughed, jeered and snogged each other and rolled around on the floor and then been kicked out of the pub not for fighting but for suggesting that Wendy Richards (RIP) is prettier than the barmaid after which you'll make your way home, falling through numerous hedges on the way and then narrowly escape arrest for swinging from a lamppost. Yeah you know when that happens..............ok you might not but I do have to ask, why oh why does the curry house at that point seem so appealing. Actually that is a silly question. Of course it's going to be appealing. You're starving but you're drunker than 10 sailors who've taken on Ollie Reed (RIP) in a drinking competition and the Raj of India is the only option available because they're the only ones, bless them, who will take you in. No the bigger question is why oh why when surrounded by your mates, do you suggest with drunken bravado that we should go for the hottest things on the menu?

Why?

Because the male mind, thick, languid and blotted with alcohol cannot make reasoned choices and when goaded will happily decide that a phaal is the perfect end to a night out. Created in response to years of abuse from small minded pissed up oiks, the phaal really is a ridiculous dish that will leave you red-faced, sweating, crying with streams of snot running from your nose. Your mouth feels like someone has poured molten lava into it and that a brigade of fire ants are exercising their mandibles on your tongue and no amount of Kingfisher, water or sugar will douse the flames. Worse still, in the morning the pain will revisit but at the other end as you go through your ablutions on the porcelain throne, eyes closed, teeth clenched. If the Spanish Inqusition had the phaal at their disposal, then surely it would have been preferred tool for extracting confession over the red hot poker. After some very dainty wipes and a hurried telephone conversation to your protocologist, you swear later that you will never ever ever do that to yourself again. And I haven't. Not since my single days anyway. I have matured, I know better. But every now and then, the 'ring sting' echo of the past comes back to haunt me. And a certain young man going by the name of Nick and who writes Lost In The Larder was responsible for the most recent one.

Having reread that last sentence, I think I should just clear up that it was Nick's Cochinita Pibil Tacos that caused the last episode, nothing more, nothing less.........filthy gits.

I met Nick a few weeks ago now. He was coming up from his native Bournemouth into the big smoke to collect a huge stash of magazines and to attend a symposium organized by some Danish butter manufacturer. This could be considered as slightly odd behaviour but I was happy to meet Nick again as we had bonded at Bloke's Eat Beef and ever since then he had been eager to take part in WMPC. Nick was over an hour late getting to the arranged meeting point that day but given he that had to drive all the way from Dorset and make his way into Wimbledon before coming into town and was feeding me to boot, I forgave him (do it again though Nick, in the immortal words of Rory Breaker "I'll kill ya!") So we ambled around to Smiths of Smithfield for some brunch (club sandwich) and chat and after a short while it soon became clear that this guy was very passionate about food. Displaying a thorough knowledge of the produce available in his area, Nick earmarked local farms, shops, restaurants and deli's with great enthusiasm and reverence. You know how it goes in conversation when you often want to respond in kind to a subject, I have to say I started to feel like a dork and a fraud. What the bloody hell do I know about stuff grown, sourced and produced in Essex? Not much, I soon realised as we talked further. Nick's main thrust then turned to setting up a network in Dorset similar to the strong food community that exists in London where people engage with producers and restaurateurs at events, eat and drink with each other and write up about it in blogs and the like to get the information out there. That was the reason why he had 100 magazines to collect, he was putting on an event in Poole centering around a screening of Food Inc and was picking them up for goodie bags. Of course it has since happened and was very successful by the sounds of it and at this point in the game I can only feel a personal sense of underachievement. In fact I am the tardy one here. Damn these young go getters is what I say. Hats off to Nick for what he's doing though, it's certainly admirable that someone is making great efforts to showcase local food in it's infinite variety outside the capital.

But what of his contribution is Where's My Pork Chop? And what the hell did he do to my bum?

Actually his Cochinita Pibil Tacos didn't really wreck that much havoc, the initial school boy theme of this post came from Nick's enquiry the next day when he asked did I suffer any side effects to my posterior, making me giggle and think about past misdemeanors. No his meal of traditional Yucatán tacos were indeed delicious. Constructed from 7 hour slow cooked Dorset pork, corn tortillas, shredded cabbage and radishes with a chilli salsa and pink onions and I savoured every last bite. The pork was wonderfully tender and sweet with strong tones of citrus which contrasted well against the chilli salsa. The salsa did have a decent kick to it but it wasn't up the top end of the scoville scale and I was grateful for that. The addition of the plain shredded white cabbage did seem unusual to me but for texture it worked well and the onions which I presume had been marinated in vinegar added a lovely tart flavour. All to be washed down with some chilled, freshing Mexican Modelo lager. By the way if you are thinking of participating in this project and think that I can be won over by some alcohol then you'd be right. If I was to be at all critical with Nick's dish, I would say that he could have done me a favour and drained off some of the juice from the meat as my shirt certainly got a good Pollocking. But then again, that's nothing new.

Thanks again Nick, for a fantastico contribution to WMPC. Keep us posted on further events down in Dorset.

Cochinita Pibil Tacos

Chilli Salsa

Succulent pork

Delicious combination of flavours

Will you respect me in the morning?