The Christmas feasting is slowly drawing to a close and if I wasn't seeing the Festival out in an ancient Warwickshire hotel in the town where Shakespeare was born there would be much to do with the leftovers (traditionally we always had a cockerel for Christmas Day in the time, now unimaginable to those who tell us that they know about food and were born after the mid-1960s, when chicken was a treat and not so common, relatively expensive and hopelessly tasty as few chickens can manage to be in these present times) freshly roasted and served with roast pork and everything else you could want, then cold cuts on Boxing Day and chicken and stuffing sandwiches in the evening and then probably a chicken stew on the day after Boxing Day, or perhaps chicken rissoles, before the family came to know curry. With the coming of curry turkey had already replaced cockerel as the Christmas main element and so the second day after Christmas was a turkey curry day and nothing was wasted (various family cats and dogs saw to that).
The use of the word cockerel is important here and my mother liked to stress that this was no ordinary bird but was as magnificent as could be afforded and not some inadequate clucking creature scooped up from the farmyard. And the Christmas tea times were also not to be taken lightly, there was freshly baked ham and magnificent pork pies sent by a friend in Grantham (there was always a tense couple of days while the pies were awaited lest they did not arrive). Grannie White did all the Christmas baking - weeks before she had had numerous Christmas puddings boiling away and the mince pies and savoury pastries all came from her kitchen as did the Christmas cake. And not a cookbook in sight nor the need to read what a food critic had to say.
So, as I began, with the Christmas feasting drawing to a close what lies ahead in 2019? Well, for me I expect my first gastronomic excursion to be a visit to Alex' Claridge's Nocturnal Animals sited in the same building as Adam Stokes' first pop up restaurant in Bennett's Hill until he moved to Waterloo Street. I shall especially look forward to finding out what the restaurant's real name is. Is it The Wilderness at Nocturnal Animals or is it just Nocturnal Animals? No doubt all will become clear.
Sadly I can't bear visiting twee but scruffy little Moseley with its population of wealthy upper middle class remoaner liberal/socialist/Momentumist elitist coffee bar denizens so it involves a lot of mental struggle on my part to even contemplate visiting one of Birmingham's trendiest one Michelin star restaurants which is located in this near-inner city suburb by which of course I mean Carter's of Moseley. Brad Carter's menus of recent months have embraced the Japanese/far eastern fusion fad which so many other trendy chefs have found their ways to and I would like to go to see what he's making of this oriental intrusion on British cuisine but so far have not managed to summon up the mental vigour to find my way to Moseley. However, just before Christmas he held a one-night-only collaboration with the Original Patty Men at his restaurant where, improbably, the dishes on the menu were burgers. One dreads to think what the vegans of Moseley must have thought about such carryings on in the area. For an instance, when I saw that this was happening, I contemplated dropping temporarily at least my revulsion at the thought of visiting Moseley and setting out to give the burger night a try. But I was unable to rise to the occasion principally because I'm not a great burger fan and certainly not to a degree where I'm prepared to pay £30 for one nor am I keen on being faced with a brioche with an anatomically undisguised soft shell crab seemingly crawling out from it. I'll leave all that sort of stuff to the Corbynists of Moseley. The non-vegan ones that is.
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