197. Another Local Chef In Masterchef The Professionals.

  BBC’s Masterchef The Professionals ploughs on with the appearance of a second Birmingham/West Midlands chef, a mother of four, Yasmine Selwood from Wednesbury who was a Chef de Partie at Adam’s when the filming took place. It’s fair to say that she did not get off to a great start, being asked by Monica Galetti to prepare a chicken kofta with flat bread and cucumber salad. She failed to cook the chicken kofta early enough in the twenty minutes that she was allowed to prepare the dish with the result that it contained inedible raw minced chicken when presented to the judges. But all was not lost as the three other competitors also made a pig’s ear (not literally) of the skills test.

 

 Then it was on to the signature dish round in which Selwood had 90 minutes to prepare two courses and prepared a dish of brill, spring vegetables (asparagus, broad beans and peas) and white wine and cream sauce split by chive oil. The sauce was made using mussels and the bones from the brill and the dish was that which Selwood had prepared in her final college examinations. Marcus Waring, obviously impressed with the dish, described it as, “Good, clean, crisp cookery” and it clearly had the edge over the main course dishes of the other competitors. Her dessert was caramelised white chocolate mousse with blood orange jelly and orange flavours with a sablé Breton biscuit which Waring said should have “a lightness” and be, “crumbly, melt in the mouth, almost buttery”. The dessert indeed was very well received by the judges though Waring felt that the jelly needed to have a more potent orange flavour. But the success of both the main course and the dessert ensured that Yasmine Selwood was the most highly placed chef of the four in that heat and therefore was put through to the quarter-finals. She showed natural Brummie good humour throughout and it was a pleasure to watch her success.

  Here are the latest ‘tweets, not numerous (one, actually), from the stray Michelin Guide inspectors who have ventured into these Mercian borderlands. This gives us an idea of what our region’s representation in the 2022 Guide will look like (see also Blogs 195, 193, 192 and 187).

28 November - About 8 (see Blog 163) - currently has a Michelin plate.

196. Windy Weekend In Ludlow.

 

  During the final weekend of November the dog and I were back at Fishmore Hall near Ludlow. In theory we were there to enjoy the Medieval Fayre which was set up in the grounds of Ludlow Castle but one of those named storms had struck the night before it was due to open and wrecked everything and the event had to be cancelled though a band of medieval-style musicians braved the winds and played music in the Market square, partying like it was 1399. In one respect, we got off lightly as, at the same time, much of the West Midlands had a vast amount of snow dumped on it by the Great Weather God.

  The weekend at least gave me an opportunity to witness how Forelles (Michelin plated) restaurant at Fishmore was faring under the rule of its new Head Chef, Phil Kerry (see Blog175). As well as eating in the ‘Bistro’, I had dinner and Sunday lunch in Forelles. 

  First, Sunday lunch. An excellent starter of pleasingly mildly flavoured smoked mackerel rillette complemented very nicely by pickled cucumber with avocado purée and a little sprinkle of caviar. A fine-looking (and tasting) dish whose elegance was lost by the mildly ungainly positioning of a chunk of toasted bread on the side of the plate. Rustic in appearance also was the main course.

   I chose roast leg of lamb which was very tender but extremely subtley flavoured to the extent that it was completely overwhelmed by a powerfully tasting cauliflower cheese which might have been good as a dish in its own right but which dominated the roast lamb to the point of extinguishing any of the lamb’s flavour. Other accompanying vegetables also piled the pressure on the unfortunate lamb - the red cabbage, again very good in itself, negated the flavour of the lamb. The roast potatoes were very good with some nice crispiness and the mashed swede was pleasing but the mint sauce was very sugary and needed much more acidity. Hmmm … a curate’s egg I think. I think all these accompanying vegetables would have worked very nicely with robust roast beef or pork which were on offer but some thinking is needed as to what is appropriate to be served along with the delicate lamb.

  I thoroughly enjoyed an elegant dessert of excellent vanilla panna cotta served with a delicious strawberry and vanilla shortbread.

 The previous evening I had had dinner in Forelles. I chose the à la carte menu but my appetite was such that I could only manage just two courses (though they came along with an enjoyable amuse gueule, bread and predessert). For the main course I chose a beautifully cooked piece of stone bass with a delightful crispy skin, one of my favourite fish dishes, accompanied by some very nicely textured samphire (though it had less flavour than I might have been expecting), a mesmerisingly delicious crab croquette, perfectly cooked chard, pumpkin and a beurre blanc. This was a very fine dish indeed. 

  I rounded off with what is one of Forelles’ signature dishes, featured in previous Blogs, the immensely enjoyable baked Alaska which quite rightly seems unmutated, unlike the wretched coronavirus, since it was first delivered to an expectant table at Forelles. Little happinesses!

  

   With the Medieval Fayre cancelled, Lucy and I walked around Ludlow town spending far too much on books in the excellent little independent bookshop in the market square. I found a paperback copy of Jane Gregson’s English Food of which more in the next paragraph. We walked past the butchers shop of DW Wall and Son and photographed the virtual flock of pheasants hanging outside waiting to be snapped up by lucky local pheasant eaters. It rather begged the question as to why local eateries are not offering the bird on their menus. Perhaps some are, I haven’t looked at the menus of all the fine local restaurants. How wonderful it would be to be able to capture such a picture in Birmingham.

  I enjoyed perusing Grigson’s book mentioned above which was published first in 1974. The introduction is as pertinent now as it was then, “….There’s an extra special confusion nowadays in talking of good and bad national cooking. The plain fact is that much commercial cooking is bad, or mediocre in any country - it’s easy enough to get a thoroughly disappointing meal even in France where there exists an almost sacred devotion to kitchen and table. The food we get publicly in England isn’t so often bad English cooking as a pretentious and inferior imitation of French cooking or Italian cooking”.

  Grigson’s observations were so spot on. What we eat today, and what smart people ate then, are direct consequences of post-war food history and a few events which happened but might just as easily not have happened. British food doubtlessly deserved a poor reputation during the period of socialist austerity inflicted on the nation by Attlee’s  government, viewed now through rose-coloured spectacles by the reconstructors of modern British history, which inflicted years of unnecessary post-war food rationing from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s on the people who at times were half-starved. You can’t have a brilliant cuisine if the ingredients you have available to make a meal are not available.

 And then rationing ended and people had the ingredients once more but not the experience of cooking them. Boiling, roasting, frying - frequently, if not universally, to the point of near-cremation or disintegration. Along came Elizabeth David, the only British food expert to be featured on a British postage stamp, who, having lived in the sunny Mediterranean area, bemoaned grey post-war and post-socialist Britishness, especially in food, and brought in, for better or worse, the concept that Mediterranean food, Italian or French, was infinitely superior to anything the English could cook up. Suddenly there was a national craving for spaghetti with many being hoodwinked by the perfidious BBC, ever mischievous, into believing that spaghetti grew on trees and was harvested by Italian peasants.

  Of  course, more than half a century before L’Escoffier, with French arrogance, had been plying his trade at the Ritz convincing everyone that French cuisine was the pinnacle of gastronomy and that various sauces with ridiculous names were the must-eat way to dine. The English swallowed this hook, line and sinker and if for no other reason than snobbery, embraced French cuisine with ardour. This conviction that French cuisine was best stayed with them over the coming years and Elizabeth David ensured this postwar culinary Francophilia continued to hold on through the age of never having it so good, of the white heat of technology and the sordidness of the later sixties.

  And then the Roux brothers came to London and French cuisine dug itself in for the coming years. Michelin deigned to recommence publication of  its Great Britain Guide in 1974, and for a long time the only chance a restaurant had of being included in the book was to serve French cuisine. Then Italian cuisine became highly fashionable and Birmingham began to get a mention in the Michelin Guide while scattered restaurants in small towns or rural locations in the West Midlands counties even gained the occasional star though they too usually offered French cuisine.

  We have travelled through various fashions from nouvelle cuisine to modern British with Japanese twists but French cuisine has always been wallowing in the mud at the bottom of the menu and high prices are no guarantee that, as Grigson wrote, it has been done well. How wonderful it would be to have a local restaurant which does fine dining traditional English dishes - and I don’t mean that it just does expensive, pretty, tiny pies (not pithiviers please) or micro-slivers of high quality English beef (not called Wagyu please) with a cubic centimetre of tarted-up batter calling itself Yorkshire pudding.

  Grigson’s book looks rather promising and I think I shall devour it (but not literally of course).

  I completed my stay in Ludlow with a visit to the Assembly Rooms to listen to a concert of mostly traditional English folk music by the master fiddler of our time, Sam Sweeney. Traditional English food/traditional English folk music - so much to feel happy about even as omicron comes bubbling up to the surface. 

195. Up In Smoke.

  At last a trip to Hampton Manor but not to dine at Peel’s restaurant but to pay a visit to Stuart Deeley’s new restaurant there - Smoke. And (I know I shouldn’t start a sentence with ‘and’ but sometimes it just works for me) indeed it has been a long time coming (though that phrase is relative compared with how long it has been since The Good Food Guide has sounded optimistic about what is happening on the gastronomic scene in Stoke-on-Trent - see below). If anyone’s plans were badly affected by the pandemic (pandemic? What pandemic?) then the former Masterchef The Professionals champion is right up there with the unfortunates. After winning the competition, then leaving his job as Head Chef at The Wilderness, there was talk of him opening his own first restaurant in the Jewellery Quarter, then Edgbaston, he ‘popped up’ at Craft, delivering a joint menu with Andrew Sheridan, and then there were pop ups at Simpsons and a spell of devising and preparing home delivery meals during a ‘lockdown’ period also at Simpsons. Then he appeared at Hampton Manor in the role of Development Chef and now he is Head Chef at Smoke. There must have been many trials and tribulations over the past two years (as there have been for almost everyone in the hospitality business).

  I had hoped to stay at Hampton Manor but it is not dog-friendly so instead I was pleased to be back at the very dog-friendly Grand Hotel in Colmore Row where Lucy The Labrador could snooze away the evening while I headed from New Street Station to Hampton in Arden. The return journey is short with Hampton being the next station on from Birmingham International and it is located just 5 to 10 minutes from the restaurant.

  

Smoke was warm and welcoming on a chilly very late autumn evening and the staff were welcoming and professional. After a version of an Old Fashioned cocktail a delightful collection of nibbles was served in the form of three small pieces of charcuterie, vegetables from the restaurant garden served as mini-crudités - a little section of sweet, sweet carrot, halves of firm radish and a little piece of happily crispy deep fried kale - plus two enjoyable slices of sourdough with supremely delicious Ampersand butter and a tasty nasturtium emulsion which I presume was intended as a dip for the crudités.

  There were two dinner options - a very sensible four course à la carte menu for £70 or a surprise menu which was contained in a box which the diner may or may not have chosen to dine from costing £95. There were enough items on the à la carte menu to convince me that I would dine from it but when I opened the box to see what I would have had if the mystery menu had been my choice I was lured into changing my mind by the presence of a scallop dish and a venison main course.

  That said, the first course - cacklebean egg was not what I would have chosen as my starter - I have never been a lover of poached yolk and so many restaurants seem to be serving it in some form or the other at present (like celeriac it’s very à la mode). But if I had to have egg then this was probably the best on offer. It was a fine dish - the egg perfectly cooked but for me very much playing second fiddle to a powerfully flavoured Jerusalem artichoke velouté and crispy hen of the wood mushrooms. The dish was also visually beautiful as can be seen in the photograph.

  The second course was a supremely delicious scallop shockingly enhanced by a furiously tasty smoked carrot and a sweet carrot soup with the added gustatory victory of hazelnuts. A gem of a dish.

  And so to the excellent venison main course, served in a somewhat deconstructed form.The lusciously flavoured meat finely cooked, the venison and port sauce luxurious and unctuous, the boulangère potatoes crispy with the sweetest caramelised onions, a meaty slice of girolle with nasturtium leaves (what would the modern chef do without nasturtiums?) and girolle purée. The dish is described as ‘Highland venison over smoking pine branches’ - I didn’t catch the pine in honesty but this was still a very fine dish and, coupled with what went before, it was enough to start me calculating when I would be staging a repeat visit to Smoke.

 

 Then a carefully considered cheese course with an aptly blended combination of what was effectively an enjoyably gooey slice of Anglicised tarte tatin and a chunk of deeply saline Mrs Bells Blue cheese washed down by a spectacularly well-matched ice cider. I wondered if the apple tart might have been better with a cheesy-flavoured ice cream if one was destined to have a cheese course with a degree of novelty about it but I surrendered myself to Chef’s imagination and skill.

 

 On to dessert proper. Two slices of accurately poached Mouneyrac pear with elements of chocolate and a garden honey ice cream though I should have liked a stronger honey flavour in the ice cream. Still, a very satisfactory end to a very fine meal. The restaurant needs to get its postprandial coffee situation sorted out and when doing so a couple of petits fours might be pleasing. It’s small and trifling elements such as these which raise restaurants to the stars, if you get my drift.

  Deeley has finally arrived on the West Midlands scene and in style. Smoke, both fine and rustic, further increases the number of notable restaurants to be found in our region. It is remarkable how many younger chefs are coming through with their own remarkable new restaurants to add to the local scene and to lure those who feel they know about good food and dining out, who are even paid to pronounce on their feelings about it, to come to our cities, towns and countryside to see what the West Midlands has to offer.

  Coincidently, the latest Michelin Guide tweet appeared a few hours before my visit to Smoke and featured a visit to Peel’s restaurant and showcased the venison on the menu there. It seems the inspector agreed with me about the ‘wonderful’ local venison being served at the Hampton Manor site.

  However only the day before, to paraphrase the latest Michelin Guide monthly tweet - “Another month has passed, which means it’s time to announce that the MICHELIN inspectors again have found no new restaurants in the West Midlands to be their favourite additions to the MICHELIN Guide Great Britain & Ireland”. What? Not even Upstairs By Tom Shepherd? Has no-one yet visited Smoke? Really? 

  Meanwhile in her latest weekly news update, Elizabeth Carter, editor of the resurrected Good Food Guide, draws attention with a certain degree of undisguised excitement to the opening of Niall Keating’s Lunar at the World of Wedgwood Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. She points out that Stoke has rarely found itself featured on the pages of her publication - she identifies that a Stoke hotel was listed in 1951 and a Thai restaurant in Stoke was mentioned from 1993 to 1994. Good for Stoke. See Blog 189.

194. Upstairs To The Stars.

 

 

 It is not unknown for a restaurant to be awarded a Michelin star within months of opening and, though I do not normally feel I should delve into the strange psyche of Michelin inspectors, I can’t help predicting that Upstairs by Tom Shepherd in Lichfield may just be the place to do it. In fact I’m wondering whether this could be the best restaurant in the West Midlands (and I’ve been around this year) at present.

  On a repeat lunchtime visit to this exceptional restaurant (see Blog 188) I sat purring and groaning in delight at the culinary pleasures I consumed - no, basked in would be more apt - there. On my last visit I pleasured myself with the tasting menu but on this second visit I opted for the very modestly priced lunchtime menu of just 3 courses plus amuse gueule and bread. I was drawn to it by the promise of baked plaice, a fish of such loveliness that I could not resist.

  The starter of braised suckling pork belly with celeriac, apple and salsa verde was very fine, finished off as it was by a full bodied, bracing, gorgeously powerfully flavoured dashi broth. I have long grown wearied by the dubious delights of pork belly but few chefs whose establishments I have visited  have produced such an excellent dish as this from that once humble ingredient. The accompanying ingredients were spot on in flavour and texture. 

  And so to the main event. I spent more time purring in delight than I did in the eating. Roasted plaice with a little cylinder of butternut squash, pretty green and purple kale of an utterly optimal texture and, note, an exquisite Bourdelaise sauce (note it was plaice not à la Bourdelaise but with the sauce of that name - what a jolly jape, clever Tom Shepherd). Exceptionally beautifully cooked plaice with great accompaniments, a fabulous dish and all for the casual luncher. 

  

I was too overwhelmed with pleasure to remember to photograph the perfectly judged yoghurt parfait with blackberries, a blackberry ice cream and mint but it looked pretty and it was a delight to eat. 

  

 

 Of course Tom Shepherd is no stranger to Michelin stars as Adam’s continued to hold its one star while he was Head Chef there. The excellence of his food is also evidenced by the recognition this week by the revived Good Food Guide published in its online The Good Food Weekly. But as chefs and punters alike really know, it’s Michelin’s judgement that really counts.

  One final question (repeated from a previous Blog but now asked less whimsically) - is Lichfield the new Ludlow?

193. Birmingham Chef Into Semi-Finals Of Masterchef The Professionals.

  Birmingham chef Dan Lee (see Blog 192) who works as a private chef won through to the semi-finals of BBC1’s Masterchef The Professionals in a programme broadcast on 12 November. After a problematical start where the competing chefs were required to produce a high quality dish from preserved and tinned foods of their choice Lee went on to produce two excellent dishes in the next challenge in which his work was served to professional food critics, including William Sitwell. 

  The first challenge saw him serving up a dish felt to be disappointing and unambitious which was made up of spaghetti, a tomato and basil sauce made from tinned tomatoes, olives, anchovies, preserved lemon and capers and then, with something to prove, his two course meal for the critics started with salmon kinilaw (a Phillipines version of a ceviche), marinated and compressed cucumber served with crispy salmon skin, coconut, kombu sauce and chilli oil. This was warmly appreciated by the critics and judging chefs. His main course was a fine-looking and perhaps too slightly generously portioned soy marinated beef with pak choy in oyster and soy, a spring onion mash, pickled shiitake and crispy lotus root, all of which he felt, reflected his Irish-Chinese heritage. The dish was very well received.

  So Birmingham and the West Midlands has one of the first two chefs through to the semi-finals which seems like a very fine start to this series of Masterchef. I have to say that Dan Lee’s food does indeed look very appealing. There are so many promising chefs in the area that it seems reasonable to conclude that dining round these parts is going to be a continuing pleasure for years to come.

Michelin Guide Twitter watch.

12 November - Upstairs By Tom Shepherd, Lichfield - new restaurant. See Blog 188.

192. English Peasant Food?

 

  Fine dining is all very well but sometimes you just need a good scoff served well in an interesting and pleasing location. A good scoff might be defined as good English peasant food, comforting and delicious, as opposed to French peasant food which is much poorer quality than foodies care to admit. Of course real peasants in olden days would not have scoffed great slices of grand roast beef and a plate weighed down with an array of vegetables but English peasant food probably dates from the Fifties onwards, after the austerity of the Second World War and Attlee’s post-war Labour government whose obsession with rationing virtually starved the working people which Labour claimed to represent. Thus the post-rationing generation, celebrating their release from the threat of fascism and the austerity of socialism, learned to eat good food again and in sensible quantities so that they were slim and healthy as the 1950s drew to a close but enjoying good meat, good fish and a cornucopia of vegetables.

  Then Elizabeth David came along and told them all that their food was disgusting and that the French and the Italians dined much better. And the middle classes believed her and modern English food history began. 

  But the English did not give up without a fight and so the Sunday roast held on and it became an English icon. Of course those who knew no better and guided by the vast greed coming in from across the Atlantic where bulky people consumed gargantuan portions at every meal started to feel it necessary to serve Yorkshire pudding with everything and not just roast beef and some establishments added stuffing and inappropriate sauces to all meats. The urban peasant food of the 1950s became fine-tuned to a vast plate of beef or pork or turkey with all the trimmings and mounds of the more popular vegetables. So am I complaining? To be fair, my gastrointestinal system knows when to warn me that I’m overdoing consumption but sometimes it’s pretty good fun to just let rip and go for it.

  And so Lucy The Labrador and I were back in Birmingham’s seaside resort - Weston super Mare - and I had made reservations for two meals - a dinner and, of course, Sunday lunch at the Ginger Pig Kitchen again (see Blog 186). This was not fine dining - it was just happy eating.

  Under the gaze of the faux Damien Hirst-style pig’s head mounted on the wall scrutinising the visitors to its bistro I was made welcome and seated comfortably and presented, as before, with an amuse gueule in the form of a spoonful of clever melon gazpacho - give us a bowlful of it please for God’s sake, I don’t care if winter is close upon us, and then served with cauliflower and onion barjis with an alluring-sounding mango yoghurt. Sadly the bharjis were heavily over fried - the taste of burnt bharji is not a happy one but putting them behind me I moved on to a dish which seemed to have its day for a longtime now - from hero to zero in recent years - but which is absolutely ideal for a restaurant such as the Ginger Pig - an excellent confit Duck’s leg, moist, tasty, a lesson that even the French ate pleasurable peasant dishes at one time or the other accompanied by sweetly pleasing garlicky potato gratin and perfectly cooked green beans and a deliciously unctionious sauce. Great scoff indeed. All rounded off by a fine vanilla crème caramel served with a perfectly crispy thin biscuit in the delightful shape of what else but a pig.

 

 Back for Sunday lunch and straight to the main course. Having felt it necessary to acknowledge the pig on the wall by having roast pork the last time I had Sunday lunch there I felt free, even obliged, to choose the roast beef of England on my latest visit. I was not disappointed - it came served as a large and rather grand thick slice lying relaxed and tender over its bed of three well-cooked roast potatoes and cosily covered by a duvet of spot-on Yorkshire pudding with a fun bedside table of crispy deep-fried kale and a little moat of gravy. Along came the vegetables - a sweet and tender carrot, cauliflower with a cheese sauce made by someone who knows what they are doing and a generous supply of red cabbage and broccoli. How pleasing it is to be a 21st century English peasant.

  Casting aside the guise of English peasant I opted to combine my dessert with my coffee and chose to finish off with affogato. Well Elizabeth David had to serve some purpose in bringing the Mediterranean to this sceptred isle.

Michelin Guide Twitter watch:- Here are the latest West Midlands restaurants about which a Michelin inspector has tweeted. The first, notably, is in Shropshire (a county much loved by the inspectors in comparison with some of the West Midlands counties and only slightly less visited than the Cotswolds) - 

27 October - The Haughmond, Upton Magna, currently a Michelin Plate holder.

1 November - Opheem, currently a holder of 1 Michelin star.

6 November - The Boat Inn, Lichfield, currently a Michelin plate holder.

 

  

  On the subject of inspectors and food critics there is a very amusing cameo by Adrian Edmondson in the 6th episode of the first series of the BBC’s riotous comedy, Absolutely Fabulous (1992), one of the few very funny programmes it has ever made at a time when offending someone was not considered a crime against humanity. In it Edmondson plays a restaurant critic on the magazine for which Patsy, Joanna Lumley, is ‘Fashion director’ and though his ‘hour upon the stage’ is no more than a matter of seconds it is a very funny lampoon of these critics and it must have had chefs of the time rolling in the aisles if they ever had time to sit down and watch television.

Magda: “Hamish, tell me about this restaurant I’m having lunch at”.

Hamish: “Hmm. Comfortable. In a grand manner. Stuffed with plutocratic goodies and a decent duck. A dining room boudoiresque fin de siècle collection but still fashionably uncomfortable. A mélange. Possibly a post-Orwellian version of an Edwardian eatery. The food ecumenical in flavour; a cosmopolitan adventure of exuberant eclecticism full of amuse gueule and gastrocredibility. Low flashes of bain-marie dish. A tomato rather pulpeuse.

Magda: “Ta”

  More on the BBC and dining out. With the next season of Masterchef The Professionals now beginning, advance publicity identifies that Yasmine Selwood from Wednesbury who was a commis chef at Adam’s from 1920-21 will be one of the featured contestants. She studied at University College Birmingham from 2017 to 2021 and it was during the period of her studies that she worked at Adam’s. She now works as a private chef.

 

  However appearing as the first contestant in the first heat of this new season (screened 8 November) was another Brummie chef, Dan Lee, who also works as a private chef. He was the first to face Marcus Waring’s surprising ‘Skills challenge’ which involved preparing bangers and mash with a rich honeyed onion gravy. At this he was largely successful despite his sausages rupturing during the cooking - which of us hasn’t ruptured our sausages at some time or the other? - and he emerged from the first round as clear winner which was confirmed by the outstanding success of his two course meal in which he served up a beautiful-looking plate of marinated monkfish tail with a tamari and curry sauce, charred okra, Thai aubergines, coriander and crispy shallots. Waring waxed lyrical about the dish describing it as “absolutely delicious”, “texturally beautiful” and “a cracking dish”.

   The dessert was no less successful being, as the narrator Sean Pertwee described it, “a take on mango sticky rice” made up of a coconut and Thai basil panna cotta topped by compressed mango with lime and mango gel, puffed rice and toasted rice powder.

  Lee was the undisputed winner of the heat and it will be fascinating to see what dishes he delivers in upcoming episodes.