The Last of the Rocket

In a snippet from a television show a few years back, I learned that rocket (or arugula, or rucola in the U.S.) can be found growing in the wild in many places across the country, and is little more than a weed. Little more than a tasty, tasty weed. Considering I am very good at growing weeds in the garden anyway, I entered rocket on the list of things to try my hand at in my vegetable patch. Indeed, it grew, and it was good.

Last night, I gathered the last of the spring rocket. It was beginning to bolt and turn to seed, so it was time to harvest it all. It's amazing to me that this salad leaf, which is so expensive to buy, can be grown with such ease and in such abundance. It begins to sprout only a few days after planting, and is ready to have the first leaves picked after only a few weeks. Their are different varieties to grow, but all have been just as easy and full of the wonderful peppery nutty taste that fresh rocket should have.

We shall be having salads with everything for the next few days in order to work our way through the basket-full that was gathered. Then, whenever the rain stops, I'll plant the next batch of seeds so we can be munching on fresh, peppery greens through to the end of summer.

British Honey

I accept it as a universal truth that there should be a place for honey on everyone's shelves. I love the consistency of honey - there is something decadent about how you have to wait for it to fall from the serving spoon - the smell, the golden color, and of course, the taste. I love how you can genuinely taste the difference between different types of honey, and can try to grasp the scent of the flowers that gave you this treat.

I am appalled (yes, outraged and appalled) at how supermarkets fall down when it comes to stocking British honey. There are certainly bees and flowers enough in the country. Heck, it was bees brought over from European settlers of Jamestown that have been credited with shaping the fruit and farming profile of the United States. But most of the honeys on sale are from places more exotic than the UK: Australia, Spain, Greece (although even those are often an amalgam of honeys gathered from around the world, as it says on the label). I have been on the hunt for honey manufactured within the UK in many supermarkets, and I've only consistently found one brand: Duchy Originals.

Friends of ours recently came back from a trip to Norfolk, and they've given us a little pot of gold: locally produced honey. It is, as you'd expect, lovely stuff. Lovely enough to prompt a bit of baking to celebrate our gift. The result was an amazingly moist cake, as if it were thoroughly bathed in a perfect, buttery sweetness. I had 3 slices.

Honey lemon cake (adapted from Nigel Slater's demerara lemon cake)
Oven at 160 C, for about 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 200 g butter
• 200 g demerara sugar
• 90 g flour
• 90 g ground almond
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 large lemon, zested
  
• 4 large eggs

For the syrup:

• 2 Tbsp runny honey
• 1 Tbsp demerara sugar
• 1 large lemon, juiced

Steps

1. Pre-heat the over and line a loaf-shaped tin with parchment paper
2. Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy (best done with a mixer)
3. Combine the dry ingredients (flour, amlonds, baking powder)
4. Add the zest of the lemon to the dry ingredients
5. Lightly beat all 4 eggs, and then add this to the butter and sugar mixture a bit at a time, beating all the while (Nigel says the mixture will probably curdle but you're not to worry)
6. When done adding the eggs, fold in the flour mixture (Nigel stipulates this should be done with a large metal spoon rather than wooden, so it doesn't knock the air out)
7. Scoop the mixture into the tin and bake for around 45 minutes until it's golden and a toothpick comes out clean.
8. When baked, combine the syrup ingredients. The sugar won't fully dissolve.
9. Poke holes in to the top of the cake (use a skewer so you can get right down to the bottom) and spoon the syrup over the top.
10. Leave to cool.
    

Intellectual Property and Recipes

An article in today’s New York Times covers a Chef suing another Chef over intellectual property matters. Chef #1 charges that the restaurant opened by Chef #2 (who used to work under her) is too damn similar to her own, from dishes served to the look and feel of the place. He has stolen her ‘concept’ and recipes tried to pass them off as her own, and she’s attempting to use Intellectual Property law to put a stop to that.

One of the biggest shocks, the Chef #1 says, is that Chef #2 serves a Caesar salad which comes fromChef #1's 'own Caesar salad recipe’. How did she come up with this salad? Through a recipe her mother got from a Chef in L.A., at a restaurant that’s now closed. I see quite a bit of irony in that Chef # 1 is crying foul when another Chef is copying the dish that she didn’t originate herself. I have often wondered about recipes, how ‘original’ most recipes could be said to be since they borrow flavour combinations and processes that are well established, and are sometimes essential to the food being edible (a cake wouldn’t be able to rise if it didn’t have the right balance between fats, flours, and rising agents, for example). It will be interesting to see if Intellectual Property, with its dealings in questions of creation and ownership, can be deemed to apply to things like recipes, or if recipes are often too universal to fall under anything other than the public domain.

Archipelago

In a trip designed for the adventurous, I went with a group of people from Friday Cities to Archipelago, a restaurant that promises ‘the sensuous indulgence of tantalising global cuisine’. The innocent sounding ‘global cuisine’ belies the true nature of what’s on order: kangaroo, gnu, zebra and crocodile, locusts and scorpions and bumblebees – and of course, lentils and chicken. Surely, though, with this edible zoo of the weird on the menu, you’d be tempted to give in to your safari instincts and look beyond the chicken.

In our group of 13, all exotic items on the menu were accounted for. There were a few twinges of guilt, mostly over eating zebra; curiously, the kangaroo was the most popular main dish and didn’t elicit any feelings of regret. The bug salad was also popular to order, although less so when people were facing a lettuce/garlicky-locust mouthful. Chocolate covered scorpion (stinger removed) was an expensive pudding at £7.50, and despite the theatrical crunching noises it made when eaten, the taste was described as a mild ‘rice krispie flavor’.

The food on offer is clearly intended to be a talking point, but it’s not just a triumph of flash over substance. The cooking is genuinely good: my starter was an ordinary seafood and chili stir fry, cooled off with a cucumber tzatziki, and was very good at being what it was. The kangaroo was nicely laced with garlic and spices, with a creamy nutty dipping sauce and vegetables on the side. I did dip into the bug salad and emerged with a locust on my fork, which contained more shock value than anything really worth eating (and the flaked-off legs and abdomen there were resistant to being swallowed were, I admit, on this side of horrid). The dining experience comes at a price, with us paying £32/35 a head for 2/3 courses. But, with that money, you’re buying a meal that is both tasty and a showpiece.