Felicity Cloake

While working diligently today, following an unsolicited cold shower from the heavens during my healthful and invigorating run, and an even less welcome one thanks to a conked-out boiler back home, I found myself straying from the matter in hand (looking over my crumble recipe for the pudding I’m cooking for the hapless winner of the Guardian’s Sunday lunch competition) and drawn into Tony Naylor’s excellent article on the subject of the perfect English breakfast.

This is the kind of thing I love to consider. I can argue for hours in defence of the tattie scone versus the fried slice (ugh), segueing into an impassioned tirade against the land-hungry properties of the baked bean, finishing up with a short encomium on the merits of Irish black pudding. Sadly very few of my friends will engage with me on this subject these days, largely because they’ve heard it all before. So here, recorded for all time, or until I change my mind, are my thoughts on the English breakfast.

1. Fried egg. The lynchpin of the fry up; I can occasionally be tempted into poached or scrambled territory, but in my experience, these are less reliably well executed than the fried egg, so you’ve got to be sure of your venue before straying away from the normal. The white should be cooked through, but the yolk runny enough to provide lubrication for the rest of the breakfast. Breaking into the yolk should not be undertaken lightly, but with due gravitas and ceremony.
2. Bacon. In an ideal world, this should be streaky, thick cut, and heavily smoked, cooked so the fat is golden and crisp, but not, as Tony observes, so desiccated as to double as a bookmark for the Weekend magazine.
3. Sausage. Plump, well browned (see picture above for exemplary colouring, from the Market Cafe on Broadway Market), with the predominant flavour being that of pig, rather than herbs, or (God forbid), garlic. Sometimes, however, the sausage could be considered superfluous to requirements, if the breakfast also has an ample helping of decent:
4. Black pudding. God, I love black pudding. Earthy, slightly sweet, and deliciously rich, my favourite, traitorously (or, looking at it another way, out of loyalty to my Irish quarter) comes from Clonakilty in Co Cork. Unlike the smoother English sort, it’s studded with – I think – barley, which crisps up beautifully when fried. White pudding is also welcome, but in that case, definitely scrap the sausage.
5. Grilled tomato. The one above is excellent, cooked to jammy sweetness. This, unlike the baked bean, adds a token element of freshness to the plate, and has the inestimable benefit of NOT ENCROACHING ON THE EGG. Beany orange egg white makes me all shuddery.
6. Tattie scone (aka potato farl). Fried bread is one of the few unhealthy things I haven’t managed to cultivate a taste for in recent years. I think this may be because it eternally reminds me of the first (and only) portion of French toast I consumed in Vermont at the age of 11, which stayed with me an hour or so before my dad was forced to pull over and let me out of the car to part company with it. Doughy, potatoey scones go much better with slabs of salty yellow butter in any case.
7. English mustard. HP Sauce tastes like Branston Pickle without the bits, and ketchup is strictly reserved for burgers. The morning is a time of day that demands strong flavours – and dolloping enough violently coloured mustard on to every mouthful is enough to wake anyone up.
8. Cup of tea. Actually, two. One to drink while you’re waiting (when, if feeling particularly poorly, one may also order an orange juice, or unlikely North London smoothie of spinach and manuka honey or similar – as long as this is disposed of before the star arrives. To combine the two is a betrayal of all the English breakfast stands for) and one to wash down all that fat. It should be stewed and harshly tannic, but otherwise bland enough not to nobble your palate for the treats enumerated above.
9. Newspaper. Breakfast is not for talking, unless it’s annoying your companions by reading snippets out while they’re enjoying a rare moment of silence.

Good breakfasts I have enjoyed recently:

1. The Market Cafe, Broadway Market (above)
2. Pistachio & Pickle, Liverpool Road N1
3. Hmmm. That might be it, actually. I haven’t been out for breakfast for ages. Best ever was probably Ballymaloe House, although frankly I was so stuffed from dinner that I had to leave most of it, and wept much of the way to Cork in consequence. Highly commended are Le Manoir, and Monachyle Mhor, although both of those also owe much to the setting.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent Saturday at Village East in Bermondsey. All Saturday. Not eating pancakes…

…or chips (although those were seriously excellent). No, I was there for educational purposes, at one of previously-mentioned-photographer-Paul’s food photography classes.

Oh, it was heaven. An entire menu of beauty, right there for the snapping, with no one complaining it was getting cold (or warm)…

or wanting, unreasonably, to actually eat what they’d ordered.

No weird looks, no awkward angles. Just hours and hours gazing lovingly at food through a viewfinder (which, tragically, did spoil – I would still have eaten most of it, but they’d put on a sumptuous lunch for us, which, for once, I didn’t feel the need to photograph).

It was super-fun… and I came away with lots of new ideas to go mad with. Watch out for some irritating perspective, coming to a blog near you. Although, knowing me, probably not any time soon.

As anyone with an eye on twitter will know, I had a little photography lesson from the delightful Paul Winch-Furness last week. It was amazing (see above). And since then I have become absolutely obsessed with instagram. (Always late to the party, me. But sometimes that just means that all the crap wine’s been finished and the good stuff has come out.)

Anyway, I’m absolutely desperate to find out how to upload stuff from instagram automatically on to here, because at the moment, I have to email the pictures to my computer, and that’s a right old faff. I can’t believe WordPress doesn’t have a widget. Why is it ruining my life like this? What am I on this earth for if not to share artlessly bleached and randomly focused pictures of dinner with as many people as possible?

Once I’ve got over this disappointment, I might do a proper post. In the meantime, this is the pork belly with chilli and fennel that I cooked for Sunday lunch.

It’s nearly Christmas (although I won’t feel fully festive until next week – for now my nervous energies are entirely focused on a three-tiered chocolate cake I’m making for a wedding this weekend), and Christmas, as we all know, is a time for sharing. So I thought I’d bring my newest creation to the buffet of bountifulness – a bumper selection pack of all the recipes you need for Christmas Day, in ultra-modern Electronic Form. Yes, this post is a big old plug. Here’s a nice picture of some booze-soaked fruit to make you feel better about it:

If you have a kindle, or an iPad, or any other sort of ebook reader, you can rip open 15 recipes for the rather splendid price of £1.99, some of them based on the ones I did for the Guardian last year – although, taking shameless advantage of my belief that perfection is a fluid and culturally specific concept, somewhat revised (particularly the turkey one: I had a bit of an epiphany on that front after visiting the lovely Paul Kelly, Britain’s actual Turkey King) – and some of them brand spanking new.

• mulled wine
• blini
• Stilton soufflés
• prawn cocktail
• roast turkey
• stuffing
• gravy
• nut roast
• pigs in blankets
• sprouts
• roast potatoes and parsnips
• cranberry and bread sauces
• trifle
• mince pies and brandy butter

I’ve already used them twice myself this year (best to get into practice before the big day), and I ain’t had no complaints, if you get my meaning. Even the Family Cloake claim to be looking forward to sampling it on 25th… although my three-year-old niece has taken charge of the Christmas pudding. No doubt it will be the best bit.

Click here…

I’m working at the very lovely delicious. magazine this week, which is always fun – great magazine, nice people, an almost endless supply of tea (which, to a freelancer, is like a miracle) and more often than not, suitably delicious food to test – but today the shock of eight hours of solid work finally hit me, and I had to cancel the evening’s beer-tasting plans (I know, I know) and scurry straight home. Well, I say straight, although it was the first time I’ve ever been on a bus which attempted a u-turn at a major junction, which gave me ample opportunity to contemplate my dinner.

When a cold lurks, I always reach for intense flavours – chilli oil, fermented black beans, coriander –  but after mandolining half my thumb off last week in pursuit of a stir fry, I was prepared to go for something a bit less labour intensive – kale with chilli and garlic perhaps. But kale not being a Turkish favourite, that meant a trip to Whole Foods which, praise be, brought me into contact with the winter’s first purple sprouting broccoli, all the way from Devon. I love PSB. And I didn’t make the most of it last spring, because I was deprived of anchovies thanks to a muddle-headed decision to go vegetarian for Lent, so I lost no time in making up for it. Nothing complex – some Sharpham Park spelt that I’ve been meaning to try out for a while, tossed with a pungent mixture of sautéed garlic, anchovies and chilli, and of course, lots of broccoli. Followed by too much butterscotch Angel Delight won in the Coach and Horses quiz and saved for just such a miserably eventuality.

§Not really a recipe, but here’s a rough idea of what I’m going to be finishing off for lunch tomorrow…

1 mug of spelt, cooked in boiling water until tender (about 20 minutes), and drained
Generous shake of olive oil
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 anchovies, chopped
3 stalks of purple sprouting broccoli, chopped
Chilli flakes, to serve
Extra virgin olive oil, to serve

1. While the spelt’s cooking, heat the oil in a frying pan over a medium-low heat and soften the garlic and anchovies together until the fish dissolve into the oil (I often add some of the oil from the jar or tin to the pan too).
2. Turn the heat up and add the broccoli. Saute until al dente (or to your particular taste) – I often stick in some of the spelt cooking water once I’ve drained it to help things along – then tip in the spelt and a sprinkle of chilli flakes and stir to mix everything together well. Season (the anchovies are quite salty, but you never know) and scoff in a big bowl in front of Masterchef while feeling a bit sorry for yourself.

A couple of weeks ago, I took Monday afternoon off to travel down to Lyme Regis on a foraging expedition – mainly for whisky. Unfortunately, God punishes those of us who skive off in favour of boozing, and, as we travelled south, the weather took a distinct turn for the worse. Here’s the lovely Helen Lewis-Hasteley of the New Statesman, enjoying all the fun of the seaside. Anyway, undaunted, we set off on a foraging expedition with Mark Hix, heads bent low against the driving gale. We found sea spinach…

rock samphire…

…and sea kale. Amongst other stuff.

Thank God we then returned to Hix Lyme Regis, where I managed to score two helpings of Nick Strangeway’s superb Talisker-sodden sea buckthorn toddy

and steal the ‘recipe’. I’ve come across sea buckthorn before, on a trip to Helsinki a few years ago, where we juiced it and had it for breakfast. It’s pretty common on the east coast of England in particular – I’ve certainly spotted it a few times in Norfolk and Lincolnshire.

Back to those sea veg. Here’s an amuse bouche of a haddock Scotch egg with sea spinach – which could have done with some smoked fish for my taste.

And some tempura rock samphire, which was very good indeed.

After a brief break for hot baths and some quiet personal reflection on the Eurozone, dinner followed: red-leg partridge with elderberries and wood sorrel:

my favourite dish, Torbay silver mullet with Barra cockle and sea vegetables, which was wonderfully buttery – the salty, succulent shoots were excellent with the fish

then a Talisker whisky and walnut tart with local clotted cream, served with some superb cask-strength Talisker 25-year old.

Which Helen, Chris and I naturally dignified with the attention it deserved:

It was a fun evening – which has left me with two new resolutions. Firstly, to revive my long-cherished idea of a whisky dinner party, with matched malts for every course, as once experienced, never forgotten at Royal Lochnagar (a little drop of Talisker in the rock oysters, for example, knocks Tabasco for six) – and secondly, to make it up to Skye and visit the distillery for myself. It’s been a long while since that Patrick’s Day Bushmills trip. Oh, and I might extend my seashore foraging beyond the ice cream van in future.

Also, I somehow managed to come away with a Talisker umbrella. Which makes me very happy indeed.