Mochi

Something of a novelty in the supermarkets hereabouts: mochi ice-cream. According to Wikipedia “Mochi ice cream gained huge popularity in the UK following a viral TikTok trend, which began in January 2021”. That fact that I’ve only begun to notice the things this year goes to demonstrate just how far removed from the virality loop I am. All I can do is add my belated approbation to the phenomenon: I do like them. The contrast in texture and temperature between the ‘shell’ and the ice-cream is pleasing; and the small unit size is ideal for me. The one pictured above contains coconut ice-cream, and came from the local Aldi.

Lincolnshire Poacher

At the cheese counter the lady unwrapped a half-wheel of Lincolnshire Poacher cheese and, with the wire poised over it, asked “this much?” Although at first glance it had seemed like a good amount, by the time she’d finished cutting I realised it was a significantly heftier slab than I’d had in mind. Even so, I said I’d take it, striving not to twitch as much as an eyelid when I learned how much it would cost. At least it did very nearly all get used and I felt like I got something like my money’s worth in the end. A small remnant of it is pictured above.

It’s a mature hard cheese with a firm texture. Devised to combine characteristics of Cheddar and Alpine cheeses like Comté, it is to my palate more obviously reminiscent of the latter. It has variously been described as having “rich herbacious notes” of being “nutty” or “savoury and brothy”. Some can discern a pineapple-like hint in it. I found it worked equally well on a cheeseboard as it did grated and used in cooking. This is one of only a small number of cheeses produced on the east coast of England, in an area much better known for arable farming. Its name derives from the title of a traditional folk song.

Shelf Portrait (Number Eight)

Once upon a time I had about twice as many cookbooks as I do now. The survivors are shown in the picture above. They occupy the bottom shelf in the downstairs bookcase. In recent years I’ve been on something closer to an ‘eat to live’ regime than a ‘live to eat’ one, owing to a variety of food sensitivities and a need to keep my weight under some semblance of control. These books get opened quite seldom now – they’re the remnants of a tastier past.

I came by these volumes by a variety of means. Anjum Anand’s Indian Every Day caught my eye in a Malmö bookshop. I learned of the existence of Eula Mae’s Cajun Kitchen (“Cooking Through the Seasons on Avery Island”) while searching Amazon for On Avery Island, i.e. the debut album by Neutral Milk Hotel. Catalan Cuisine and A Culínaria Paulista Tradicional (the latter featuring recipes from the São Paulo area of Brazil) were sent to me by on-line acquaintances. Welsh Heritage Food & Cooking was a gift from my mother. The Downhome Household Almanac & Cookbook (with its hundreds of recipes from my late wife’s native Newfoundland) was sent to us by our Canadian niece. We already had a copy, albeit a worn & tattered one, that this one replaced.

Some others have seen a great deal of use: The Conran Cookbook, Indian Every Day and The Gastronomy of Italy have all lost their damaged dust-jackets, while the spine of Jaimie Oliver’s first publication The Naked Chef is faded, cracked and stained. On the other hand, Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican and the Sopranos Family Cookbook have seen much less in the way of active service. In the case of the former title, the difficulty of obtaining many of the necessary ingredients in Northern Europe proved too much of an impediment in re-creating its recipes. Even then, it allowed for some tantalizing ‘window-shopping’ onto another cuisine.

Morbier

From a cheese coated in ash, to another with a layer of ash inside it: Morbier. I bought the slice of it shown above at the local Tesco. In most modern Morbier, the ash is no more than a vestigial remnant of the way the cheese was originally made, when an ash-layer served the purpose of protecting a part-filled mould of curds until it could be topped up.

Florence Arnaud, writing in The Oxford Companion to Cheese tells us that Morbier dates at least as far back as the late 18th century, but that only as recently as 2002 was it made subject to AOC rules in an effort to re-associate the cheese with its original terroir in the Haut-Jura region of eastern France. She adds that “It should be left at room temperature for at least thirty minutes before being eaten so that it can reveal all its aromas, with fruity, yoghurt, vanilla, milky, and even fudge being the most notable”. I confess I tend to be too eager to consume the stuff after removing it from the fridge and seldom give those aromas their proper due. I should be more patient.

It’s a mild cheese: pleasantly subtle rather than bold. Earlier this year I tried some Ashcombe – an English cheese modelled on Morbier. It was excellent, with a good deal of depth and complexity, albeit at a considerably higher asking price than the Tesco Morbier. Doubtless in France there’ll be more sophisticated artisanal examples of the style which are at least as good as the Ashcombe.

Milk Oolong

On first hearing about ‘milk oolong’ tea, the idea didn’t much appeal to me. I’ve enjoyed sampling various kinds of oolong over the years, but am firmly of the belief that milk and tea are best kept apart. When placing my last order at What-Cha I thought I’d give the stuff a chance, and thereby acquired 50g of Jin Xuan leaves originating from Anxi in Fujian, China.

The blurb at the site describes it as tasting of ‘mango and milk’. For me it’s an overt fruitiness that dominates its flavour, reminiscent of dried mango rather than fresh. I’ll have to take their word about the advertised milkiness, which doesn’t come across for me, although there’s undoubtedly a certain quality to its mouthfeel which one could construe as milk-like. It’s an interesting drink, and while I do like it, I wonder if something in a similar vein with a subtler flavour might be more to my taste. The cup in the picture is a ‘turquoise crackleglaze’ one made in Japan.

Pastéis de Nata

I’ve only become aware of pastéis de nata within the last couple of years. A friend mentioned seeing them on display in the baked goods section of a small-town Co-Op as evidence of their having become fully mainstream in the UK. Until then I’d been quite oblivious to the things. After that I began to notice these sweet Portuguese egg-custard pastries all over the place.

At my local Lidl I spotted both freshly-baked pastéis and, during one of their weekly international promotions, boxes of frozen ones. The convenience of the latter – made in Portugal – appealed to me, leading to a first purchase. I don’t know how closely they approximate to the real freshly-made thing, but I do enjoy them. I’ve taken to serving them with a scoop of mascarpone (as in the picture above), as if they weren’t quite unhealthy enough already.

Kidderton Ash

One day about six years ago, on my weekly trip to the supermarket, I found the shelves all but bare of milk and bread. There had been a light fall of snow, a relatively uncommon phenomenon hereabouts, but one which awakens an irrepressible urge in my compatriots to stock up on these two essential items at all costs, lest the inch of snow on the ground bring all food distribution to an immediate standstill. A few bottles of goats' milk were about all that remained: I felt the time was right to try some.

My first few sporadic encounters with goats' milk cheeses had not left a positive impression. I found their caprine tang decidedly off-putting. The milk too had an undeniable note of goat which did not appeal at first taste. On trying it a second and third time, however, my initial distaste gave way to tolerance. I wasn’t converted all at once, but this equivocal experience prompted me to start trying the occasional piece of goats' milk cheese with renewed curiosity. One of those that I grew to enjoy was ‘Kidderton Ash’, an opened pack of which is shown in the photo above.

It’s one of the many products sold by Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses, based in Lancashire’s Ribble Valley. The milk apparently comes from their farms, but I gather the cheese is made in Cheshire. The developing cheeses are sprinkled with ash, which reputedly encourages the formation of an edible rind. It’s a fairly mild cheese with just a slight hint of goatiness adding a little depth to its flavour.

Santiago de Cuba

Aside from my old favourite Havana Club, the only other Cuban rum I’ve tried has been the Santiago de Cuba brand. For my 53rd birthday I was given a bottle of the 11-year-old ‘Extra Añejo’ variety. I loved the stuff – I’d say it’s my favourite out of all the rums I’ve sampled in recent years. Last year, the 8-year-old version began to appear on local supermarket shelves, and, in time, I picked up a bottle. I find it very nearly as good as its elder sibling.

This is a brand purportedly “developed to be paired with the finest Cuban cigars”. I can imagine such a combination working very well indeed, but it’s been too long since I smoked my last cigar for me to be tempted to try it. In any case, I greatly enjoy the rum on its own, accompanied only by some good music.

Illy

Many (if not most) kitchens must contain at least one item whose origins are mysterious or forgotten. For example I cannot for the life of me recall when or how I obtained the Illy espresso cup shown above. It’s the only one of its kind I have: there is no matching saucer. My guess would be that someone helped themselves to it from a café or restaurant and passed it on to me: but who? And when?

Appropriately the coffee in it was also made from an Illy product, specifically from their Arabica Selection: Brasile Cerrado Minero beans. I had spent a few months very slowly working my way through a 1kg bag of lesser-quality beans and felt like trying something a little further upmarket for a change. I do enjoy its refined taste – meanwhile slightly missing the breadth of flavour that a good blend can provide.

Pistachios

In my provincial ’70s British working-class childhood, nuts usually meant peanuts: plain salted peanuts, or, less often, in ‘monkey nut’ form. Around Christmastime there would be bowls of mixed nuts in their shells: hazelnuts, walnuts, brazil nuts. And a nutcracker nearby. Occasionally one might have almonds. I daresay pecans and cashews have been available for much longer, but as far as I was concerned they may as well have not been invented until the mid-’80s.

Pistachios likewise weren’t a part of my formative snacking experiences. I don’t recall when I might have first tried them – possibly in my teens. Now they are my favorite of all the commonly-encountered nuts. The ones pictured above are some Tesco own-brand roasted & salted pistachios that I ate while working from home this morning.

Earl Grey

I’m partial to a cup of Earl Grey tea. To my taste, cheap Earl Greys (Earls Grey?) are often unpleasant. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem worth paying too high a premium for a tea where the added flavouring is as important as the accompanying leaves. My preferred point of compromise in recent years has been the loose leaf Earl Grey made by the Brew Tea Co. I’d say their claim that “our Earl Grey Loose Leaf tastes less like hot perfume, and more like proper tea” is well-founded.

It’s my usual choice of drink on those days when I travel in to the office. The cup and saucer shown above are by Yvonne Ellen, and were a gift from my sister.

Cesanese

Cesanese is a grape variety native to the Lazio region of Italy. I came to know it during my time in Rome, as the ingredient in the cheapest local red I found I actively enjoyed. The wine in that blue-labelled bottle seemed to me to be best served slightly chilled. On winter evenings in my inadequately-heated apartment it hit the spot just right. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much in the heat of summer. It formed a significant part of my unhealthy alcohol intake in the winter of ‘96/‘97.

The variety’s lack of renown must be due in part to the difficulties its late-ripening tendencies pose the vintner – so says this article – which continues: “When made well, however, Cesanese can demonstrate rich, ripe cherry flavors with some floral characters and sometimes a touch of red pepper.” On the other hand, in The Oxford Companion to Wine (art. ‘Lazio’) we’re told that “most Cesanese is neither well-made nor interesting.” Well-made or not, it’s a wine that seldom seems to leave Italy.

I’d not had a drop of the stuff in at least twenty-five years when I saw the wine pictured above on the shelves of the local Lidl. For old times’ sake I bought a bottle, consuming a large glass of it on a cold night. No flood of Proustian recollection was forthcoming, and I found it good, but not outstanding. Even with my lacklustre palate I discerned cherry-like notes, if perhaps with a faintly sharp edge of unripeness about them. Even so, on returning to Lidl and seeing the Cesanese had been selling slowly, I picked up a second bottle of the stuff.

Saint André

How is it that I passed the halfway point of my sixth decade before sampling a triple-cream cheese for the first time? That’s a question to haunt my twilit moments. At least now I have done so, thanks to my acquisition, last weekend, of some Saint André cheese from my local Tesco. On first cutting into it I was surprised at how firm was its texture: from its appearance I’d expected something softer. For a French cheese its flavour was decidedly mild, but sumptuously creamy.

On the side of the tub housing the cheese is a boast of its having won ‘super gold’ at the World Cheese Awards, which inclines me more to doubt the value of the Award than to unquestioningly assign merit to the cheese. Why isn’t regular gold enough for a top prize, as it is, for instance, at the Olympics? If gold must be outdone, what’s wrong with platinum? Dubious accolades aside, the cheese is really very good.

In her article on triple-cream cheeses in The Oxford Companion to Cheese, Soyoung Scanlan writes that “many cheese-lovers consider triple-cream cheese to be a somewhat dull entry-level cheese because of its mild flavor and light texture”. I’m not so far advanced in my own cheese journey to have lost a liking for the simple pleasures afforded by plainer, mass-produced examples, and this is one such pleasure I intend to revisit.

Year of Coffee

After a sixteen year period during which I must have consumed fewer than a dozen cups of coffee in total, I enjoyed an espessso almost every day during 2023. With a replacement gasket in my Moka Express pot; with more Lavazza Qualità Oro beans, and with a near-complete set of Tokyo Design Studio crockery (found in a charity shop), I’m ready for another year like it in ‘24!

Single Malt

Is single malt scotch whisky worse than it was when I first started drinking it, or have my tastes just changed? As I more often favour rum these days over whisky, it must to some extent be the latter – but I meanwhile believe that some of my former favourites really aren’t what they once were. I was interested to read this article which corroborated my suspicions about certain former favourites (such as Talisker, Highland Park and Lagavulin) having gone downhill.

Scotch was still emerging from a trough of (relative) unpopularity in 1989/90 when I started sampling it in earnest. I was still a student, and, after having been virtuously frugal during my first two years at university, I succumbed to an inadvisable profligacy in the third. A certain proportion of the debt I racked up was attributable to the couple of dozen single malts I sampled through that year. My provisional conclusion at the end of it: nearly all of them were delicious.

Frugality was thrust back upon me for some time afterwards while I paid off those debts. After belatedly clambering back into the black in the later ’90s I was fortunate to be able to afford some wonderful bottles of defunct malts, such as my very favourite, Port Ellen; before stocks dwindled further, while demand rose, ultimately pushing prices beyond my improved means.

After another lengthy spell when I consumed very little of the stuff, I have in recent years resumed my single malt habit of old in a small way. A counter-example to the whiskies that are worse then they used to be is good old dependable Glenmorangie 10 y.o. This was the first single malt I ever tried (my father had been given some, and let me have a tiny taste) and it’s still his favourite, and one I also enjoy to this day: I’m slowly working my way through a bottle and will be having a glass at the weekend.

Golden Cenarth

At The Marches Delicatessen in Monmouth the other Saturday I continued my haphazard exploration of the world of artisanal cheese with the acquisition of a wedge of Caws Dyfi and a pack of Golden Cenarth, both made here in Wales. The former, a hard sheepsmilk cheese resembling an Italian pecorino, was interesting, with a bold & lingering taste that was a little intense for my liking – but I think I could appreciate it as an addition to richly-flavoured dishes.

The latter is more my style. I’d previously tried the same company’s Perl Wen which I’d also enjoyed, but I like this one better still. It’s a softish cheese, rind-washed with cider, exhibiting what its makers describe as an ‘unique savouryness’ – certainly a full but not overpowering flavour, which, alas, I’m not quite getting in its entirety thanks to a slight head-cold I’ve picked up. Even so, it’s a cheese I’ll be trying again.

Sea Salt & Chardonnay Wine Vinegar

I am in full agreement with the many enthusiasts who rate the ‘Irresistible’ Sea Salt & Chardonnay Wine Vinegar crisps sold at Co-Op as one of the pinnacles of British snack manufacture. Perhaps I wouldn’t go quite as far as the expert author behind the British Crisps blog, who reckons them “not for the lighthearted, but for the more hedonistic crisp aficionados,” adding that “It’s unlikely you would want these on a daily basis, thanks to their consciousness-altering ferocity, but as an occasional reminder of what life can be like, these are perfect.” Hyperbole, perhaps, but they are genuinely very good.

As the packaging rather redundantly states, they are made “With a sea salt and Chardonnay white wine vinegar seasoning”: a simple and savoury combination, which, crucially, is freely enough applied to threaten tongue damage, lending the crisps a highly satisfying salt-and-sour punch. As is commonplace, similar variations on the same theme are sold by competing supermarkets, quite possibly even originating in the same factory–yet none are quite the same. The next best, to my taste, are the Aldi equivalents, which are good enough to be an acceptable alternative at a pinch.

Sencha of the Earth

Having gained a taste for plain, inexpensive green teas, it took me quite a while longer to learn to love some of the subtler or more complex brews, such as from better-quality Japanese sencha. Their flavours, sometimes characterised as ‘grassy’ or ‘sappy’ once struck me as somehow cloying on the palate; whereas now I thoroughly enjoy them.

The one shown above is an Obubu ‘Sencha of the Earth’, bought from What-Cha. I don’t know what makes it qualify as ‘of the Earth’ moreso than any other tea. The producer’s website describes it as “medium-bodied with a smooth quality. It creates a delicate bronze-hued liquor with a hay-like aroma mixed with light notes of chamomile. The taste is decidedly floral with a strong aftertaste evocative of honeysuckles.”

The cup in the picture is also Japanese, one of two survivors of a set of four I bought from John Lewis ten years ago.

Costières de Nîmes

Lately I’ve been enjoying some Rhône wines, most of them courtesy of the local budget supermarkets. One I’ve returned to a few times is the 2021 Chassaux et Fils Costières de Nîmes stocked at Aldi. My last bottle cost me £6.49. I wasn’t sure why this one appealed to me more than, for example, a somewhat costlier Vacqueyras, until, reading a three-sentence review of the wine by Tina Gellie at Decanter, I learned that it’s a blend of 62% Syrah, 26% Grenache and 6% Marselan grapes. As a general rule I slightly prefer Syrah to Grenache, with the latter oftener predominating in southern Rhône wines.

Not that the Costières de Nîmes region is, strictly speaking, actually in the Rhône valley. Wikipedia explains that some ‘redistricting’ in 2004 saw it transferred from the Languedoc-Roussillon wine region to the Rhône one, as “its wines are more reflective of the typical characteristics of Rhône wines than of the Languedoc”. In any event, this wine suits my tastes very well. Gellie attributes it with “a lovely streak of tangy blackberry acidity that really lifts and refreshes the spicy palate, which runs the gamut of crunchy redcurrant to ripe bramble”, while David Williams at The Guardian reckons it “full of satisfying dark fruit and spice”. For myself I appreciate its welcoming warmth & hints of darker depths.

The bottle features an embossed emblem at its neck - a stylized crocodile and palm tree. Wondering about its significance, I gathered that “when the Ancient Romans developed the settlement ‘Colonia Nemausus’, which would become Nîmes, they chose as its emblem a Nile Crocodile chained to a palm tree. The symbol commemorates the Emperor Augustus, who fortified the city, and his victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt. Despite large reptiles not being native to Southern France, the crocodile has remained on the Nîmes coat of arms.”

La Perfetta Sinfonia

After nine months' leisurely sampling of the espresso coffee-bean blends readily-available at the local supermarkets, I have settled on Lavazza Qualità Oro as my preferred default. In my erstwhile coffee phase of the ’90s and ’00s, the same company’s Qualità Rossa was my usual choice - so my tastes haven’t travelled very far in the interim. I’m also partial to Illy’s Classico blend, but that’s somewhat more expensive.

Some Qualità Oro is shown above, in one of a set of four demi-tasse cups from a line called Grand Hotel by Andrew Martin (who don’t seem to be in the crockery business any more). I bought them, apparently unused, & still in their original gift-box from a charity shop in Monmouth for £8 total.

On the coffee’s packaging is the none-too-meaningful slogan “Perfect Symphony”: not the kind of phrase I can imagine any British food or drink supplier using. Then again, I’d been blithely unaware that it was an Ed Sheeran song title: for all I know, perhaps his words appear subliminally on all manner of grocery items. On Lavazza’s Italian website, there is a bit more context: “La perfetta sinfonia del gusto che puoi assaporare ogni giorno” (“the perfect symphony of flavour you can savour every day”).

Garlic Nostalgia

For years I was sporadically troubled by localised skin irritation near the tip of my left index finger, and, less often (and to a lesser extent), on my middle finger and thumb. It came and went; oftener worse in winter than summer. None of the potential causes I could think of explained the peculiar positional specificity of it, until, at length, I realised that the parts affected were those that held the garlic cloves as I chopped them with the knife held in my right hand.

There had meanwhile been an increasing incidence of digestive turmoil, which, on reflection, had oftentimes correlated with meals prominently featuring garlic or other alliums. While I’ve had no formal diagnosis as confirmation, I strongly believe I have developed an allergy or sensitivity of some kind to these very delicious vegetables, and hence, with great regret, I began to forsake them. Perhaps I was lightly bitten at some point by an ineffectual vampire.

Show me a soup or stew made without garlic or onion, and it will be one I don’t want to eat. Removing alliums from my diet has severely cramped my culinary style. I feel better physically, but it makes me sad if I stop to think about it; and walking past a restaurant from which a garlicky aroma emanates will provoke in me a pungent pang of nostalgia for the cloven past.

XO

I was working as a waiter in a cocktail bar when I first sampled an XO cognac. It was late 1991 and I was one of the casual staff helping out during the pre-Christmas rush at the bar at Cardiff’s Holiday Inn (which later became the Marriott). I had to wear black trousers and a white shirt with a name-tag pinned to it, and one of those little fake bow-ties with a velcro fastener. At the end of one particularly gruelling shift, the bar manager told us we could each have one free drink of whatever we wanted from their stock (champagnes excepted). I opted to try one of the costliest spirits on offer - a measure of whichever XO it was they had.

I enjoyed it very much: a rare luxury in what had been a dismal year. Since then, though, I’ve very seldom repeated the experience. Other drinks almost always seemed to offer more appealing value for money. At the local Aldi around the turn of the year, however, their Chevalier XO offering was on sale. Even then it was still the best part of £30 for a 50cl bottle, but with some Yuletide funds left unspent I bought a bottle. It really is remarkably delicious. Alas, I don’t have a dedicated brandy glass so make do with the one in the photo. Naturally one wonders which cognac this is: a well-known brand that likewise begins with ‘C’ and ends with ‘r’?

Single Gloucester

I had never been to Stroud until last week. On my first visit there I was tempted by the wares on offer at Hania Cheeses, who operate out of a van parked outside the Shambles Market on Fridays and Saturdays. From their excellent selection I opted for some Wigmore sheepsmilk cheese from Berkshire and a wedge of Single Gloucester made by local producer Jonathan Crump. Both were thoroughly enjoyable.

In contrast to the ubiquity of Double Gloucester, its Single counterpart is nothing like as widely-available. Its relative rarity can be explained by its humble origins. Historically, the rich and creamy Double cheeses would be made for sale, sent off to the nearby towns and cities, then further circulated and exported, thereby spreading their renown; while the local farmers were left with only the lighter, quickly-made and less-esteemed Single cheeses, whose fame did not increase in the same way.

In the relevant article in The Oxford Companion to Cheese, Charles Martell writes “as late as the mid-twentieth century, there were people who grew up on farms in Gloucestershire who had never eaten Double Gloucester cheese because it was too valuable. It was always sent away, they complained, to provide the farm with its income…” A plain and ‘basic’ foodstuff it may be, but made with care, and in accordance with tradition, it’s still a delicious one.

The cheese revived a dim memory that I’d read something comedic about (nonexistent) Triple Gloucester in one of Thomas Pynchon’s novels. As is often the case with faint recollections it proved not to be entirely correct. I’d been thinking of Chapter 16 in Mason & Dixon: “Twas at the annual cheese-rolling at the parish church in Randwick, a few miles the other side of Stroud. And May-Day as well, in its full English Glory […] Every young woman for miles around would be there, although Mason adopted a more Scientifick motive, that of wishing to see at first hand, a much-rumored Prodigy, styled ‘The Octuple Gloucester’— a giant Cheese, the largest known in the Region, perhaps in the Kingdom…”

Nilgiri

When it comes to black tea from India, not for me the delicacy of a Darjeeling or the brisk astringency of an Assam - my preference is for nice cup of Nilgiri. A small, strong cup of the stuff on a Saturday morning does me the world of good. The tea shown above is an ‘Orchid’ Nilgiri from What Cha. The cup was made by Matthew Jones Ceramics.

My sensory apparatus for flavour & fragrace is by no means the most acute, and my descriptive vocabulary for it correspondingly weak. I’ve seen Nilgiri described as having “bold fruity and floral flavours — with hints of dusk orchid and woody plums” with a “nutty and spicy” aftertaste. I have to say that neither fruit nor flowers come to mind when I drink it. And I can’t recall ever having eaten an orchid. What does come to mind when I taste the stuff is a sense of mellow warmth & breadth, like a comforting embrace in beverage form. However inexact my apprehension of its niceties, it has become a firm favourite.

Etna Rosso

My favoured wine of the moment is the cumbersomely named Generazione Mille898 Etna Rosso 720 (2019) latterly available at Lidl. My experience of wines made from the traditional Sicilian grape varieties Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Capuccio was scant and far from recent. I had once been partial to Corvo Rosso which apparently includes some Nerello Mascalese, but that was decades ago. As it happened, I was delighted to find this Etna Rosso very much to my taste.

The blurb on the back of the bottle promises “a complex and intense nose of red berries, aromatic herbs and spices. On the palate it is robust, well-balanced and persistent [combining] elegance with a strong mineral touch typical for its volcanic origin.” Meanwhile, in a review at Decanter, Amy Wislocki writes of it having “spicy red berry character, some tomato leaf and an attractive earthiness. The minerality and slight tannic grip give a weight and structure that make it a good gastronomic choice…”

Lacking such discernment, I would have been oblivious to the wine’s “minerality” had it not been so prominently mentioned. I can sort of see what they’re saying, but it’s a characteristic so well-integrated into an harmonious blend of flavours that it certainly doesn’t obtrude: this is by no means an austerely “stony” experience. Where I once favoured very full-bodied reds, my preference now is for something a little lighter & subtler, and this is a wine that fits that bill very well indeed.

Farls

A ‘bakestone’ is a type of heavy flat griddle. The one I have is a disc with a cut-out handle 10" in diameter and ⅓" thick. It had been my maternal grandmother’s. After she died, it went to my aunt, who later passed it on to me after I’d started making bara planc, a traditional Welsh style of bread not baked in an oven but cooked on the stove-top. I had at first been making it in a cast-iron pan, but a bakestone, being thicker, provides a more uniform heat better suited to the task. Bara by the way simply means ‘bread’, and planc is one of the Welsh terms for a bakestone.

Back in the mists of time bakestones were actual stones, but in more recent centuries cast iron and mild steel have been the preferred materials. Mine has no kind of maker’s mark or other sign of its origin, and I was for a time curious as to how old it might be. The mystery was solved when, talking to my Dad one day about my bread-making activities, he told me he’d made it ca. 1970. He’d just begun his first post-apprenticeship job as a “maintenance fitter” at a factory. Juniors like him were sometimes given busy-work to keep them out of harm’s way, and one such task he’d been assigned was making bakestones by cutting them out of mild steel plate. Of the several he made, one became a gift to his mother-in-law.

Making bara planc is easy enough but takes a few hours and calls for a certain amount of premeditation. Soda bread on the other hand can be rustled up more spontaneously, and is easier still, with a dough very quickly fashioned by mixing buttermilk into flour with a little salt and a little more baking soda added. Once the dough is pressed on to the stone and cut into ‘farls’ (as depicted above), one’s warm, freshly-cooked bread is soon ready to enjoy.

Blonde Roast

I don’t know that I’ve ever tried the coffee at Starbucks. I do remember visiting at least one of their outlets during my tea-only years, but what I might have ordered there escapes my recollection. I can say, at least, that I’ve lately sampled their espresso coffee beans, such as are stocked at the local Sainsbury’s. I had mixed feelings about the taste of the regular Starbucks® Espresso Roast, which, for me, seemed overcooked (though there were days when I appreciated its brusque robustness). Such charm as it had, however, was counteracted by its tendency to induce headache within half an hour of consumption.

I’m having better success with their Starbucks Blonde® Espresso Roast, which I find very good. Despite being maybe just a tad the other side of my ideal kind of medium-roasted, it has a full yet soft-edged flavour that hits very near the spot. There’s an ample kick of caffeine, and it doesn’t give me headaches. I’d rate it as perhaps my fourth favourite bag of beans since re-commencing my coffee habit. It certainly suits my unsophisticated palate better than the costly Union Revelation Signature Espresso blend I’d been struggling with immediately beforehand.

The Italian-made coffee-cups I started the year with didn’t last the course, with chips of glaze detaching from the underlying earthenware after only a couple of months of use. Pictured above is one of four old Habitat Nil porcelain demi-tasses I’ve been using more recently. They had formed part of a £5 charity-shop purchase. Sadly, they aren’t lasting the course too well either: after some careless breakages, only two remain. I’m still enjoying using my Bialetti Moka Express, despite the lack of crema in the coffee it produces (as illustrated in the image above).

Absolute Black

Having lost my indiscriminate childhood appetite for chocolate I ate relatively little of the stuff until, in my late thirties, I acquired a taste for good-quality dark chocolate. For some time I was happy enough with bars containing 70% or 80% cocoa, then gruadually began to seek out even more intense and bitter confections.

At length I made it to 100%, thanks to Montezuma’s Absolute Black. This has become my chocolate of choice: a couple of small squares of it serve as an excellent pick-me-up on a workday afternoon. It’s not readily available in nearby supermarkets so I’m obliged to order on-line or to stock up on my infrequent visits to Waitrose.

For a change at the weekend I’ll typically switch to something a little more laid-back such as the J. D. Gross Madagascar 70% chocolate from Lidl, or the Peru 85% bars from Co-op.

Black Olive Paté

Amidst the sporadic arrivals of nationally-themed groceries one can sometimes find at Lidl, an item I look for (should I happen to see any ‘Italiamo’-branded stock) is this black olive paté, or Black Olive Patè as the label on the front of the jar has it, deploying a grave accent where an acute one should surely be. While in itself it may not quite qualify as a tapenade, it could readily form the basis for one. In practice, though, I tend to enjoy it as it comes, using it as a spread or a dip.

Havana Club

Last night, while listening to Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Song Book, I reached the bottom of the bottle of Havana Club Selección de Maestros rum I’d been savouring, snit by occasional snit, since last October. It was delicious.

When it comes to spirtuous liquors, my preference has always been for booze (be it whisky, rum or brandy), that has spent a good long while resting in a barrel. I first formed a taste for rums of that ilk between 15-20 years ago, with the Havana Club Anejo 7 Años becoming a firm favourite that consistently offered what was, for me, a particularly appealing quality-to-price ratio. I had better rums; I had cheaper rums; but none that struck me as better and cheaper.

I was tempted last year to try something from the same producer at a higher price-point, hence the now-empty bottle above. It cost about twice as much as the Anejo 7 Años, and, while it afforded fine pleasure, and I’m delighted to have tried it, the extra expense didn’t provide enough extra benefit (for my palate) to justify a repeat purchase.

Oolong

Neither of my parents were tea-drinkers. My first taste of the stuff came when I was maybe nine or ten years old during a family holiday at Butlin’s in Pwllheli. We’d been accompanied there by my cousin and aunt, with the latter one evening taking it upon herself to proffer me a standard British cuppa made with a teabag, with milk and two sugars added. I duly tasted it, but thought it was quite disgusting, and couldn’t fathom why anyone would voluntarily consume the stuff.

About sixteen years later, I related this experience to my then pen-pal, a German student who spent her summers working in a tea-shop in Regensburg. She took it upon herself to send me a package containing some loose-leaf teas. One was a rooibos-based blend; while the other was a green tea with jasmine. These struck me as much more appealing than the ubiquitous paper sachets part-filled with brown leaf-dust I was more familiar with. Having acquired the necessary paraphernalia to try them I was favourably impressed: I did like tea after all.

Another dozen coffee-dominated years elapsed before I turned to tea-drinking in earnest, and tentatively began to explore the world of green, black and white teas, of oolongs and pu’ers. Fluctuating fortunes meant that there were times I was obliged to stick to cheaper options, and thereby learned to appreciate the lesser merits of mass-produced (bagged) English Breakfast teas, though never with milk or sugar added, which to my mind do not belong in a nice cup of tea.

For the last three years I’ve been ordering loose-leaf teas from What-Cha, whose ever-changing selection never fails to intrigue. Today’s brew - shown above - was a simple and relatively inexpensive (but nevertheless delicious) ‘Four Seasons’ Taiwanese oolong. The cup and saucer in the picture are from a partial set of Kokura porcelain I found in a charity shop. Although I’ve lately become re-acquainted with coffee, I remain primarily a tea-drinker.

Brie de Meaux

Round one, 1995: taking some baby steps to ever-so-slightly enlarge my hitherto blinkered view of the world of cheese, I’d discovered the agreeably anodyne pleasures of brie. At a supermarket one day I picked up a portion of ‘premium’ brie without looking closely at the label. What I’d bought was, in fact, some Brie de Meaux, a strongly-flavoured variant whose aroma soon fully pervaded my tiny fridge. It proved too intense for my then-uneducated palate: I didn’t like it.

Round two, 2022: At a gîte in the grounds of a château near Épernay the morning after a wedding, nursing quite the hangover having absorbed a tremendous quantity of fizzy wine, breakfast was served; a simple matter of pastries, bread and cheeses. Among the fromages on offer was some Brie de Meaux. I had a taste and, with my palate better-schooled through exposure to a variety of cheeses over the preceding years, I loved it.

Since then, an occasional morsel of Meaux has become a recurring little luxury. I bought some at Aldi the other day, its AOC designation placing its origin within the Seine et Marne department (which includes Meaux itself). Wikipedia suggests, however, that “there is […] no production close to Meaux, and there is little celebration of the cheese in the town.” Having said that, the existence of a Maison du Brie de Meaux museum indicates at least a modicum of local pride.

Wikipedia intrigues us further by stating that Brie de Meaux “was named the ‘king of cheeses’ in 1815 by Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna.” Not even knowing what the Congress of Vienna entailed, I further learn that it was “a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of […] Napoleon Bonaparte.” Not a dairy products trade show then. I’m informed, however, that the factoid about Talleyrand first came to light in a volume of gossipy memoir printed some twenty-six years after the event, so its historical basis isn’t the soundest.

Blood Oranges

Living at a latitude inhospitable to the cultivation of citrus fruit means I’ve only been exposed to a limited proportion of what the genus has to offer. Of the citrusses I have tried, my favourite sub-variety must be the blood orange.

Although I can recall first getting a taste for them in my teens, it was during my ’90s sojourn in Italy that my preference became fully-formed. Sicilian sanguinello fruit were abundant from the end of January into early or mid March, with many cafes setting up juice dispensers on their counters full of their sharp red-orange juice for the duration.

Nowadays, as with so much other produce, the window of availabilty has been extended, and as well as enlivening the drab month of February, so-called “sweet reds” can now be found until late April: I bought some this morning.

Like a Sculpture in the Glass

Midweek - either Tuesday or Wednesday - I will often have a glass of wine. Only one glass, but quite a large one. It’s a wasteful activity as the rest of the bottle doesn’t get used (I’m determined not to reprise the excesses of my youth). For a time I bought half-bottles, or, closer to my ideal portion size, 25cl ones: but grew frustrated at the limited choice available in those sizes. One has a few more widely-available options in the quarter-bottle format (18.7cl ) but for me that’s too unsatisfyingly small a serving. Perhaps I ought to try the offerings of half-bottle specialists The Little Fine Wine Company, who I’ve only just learned about.

Or perhaps I should just make an effort to find someone else to share the bottles with. Hypotheticals aside, most of my recent wine-buying has been from the shelves of Aldi and Lidl. Last week, for example, I greatly enjoyed the latter’s 2019 Torre de Ferro Reserva from the Dão region of Portugal; while later this evening I’ll be sampling the former’s Chassaux Et Fils Specially Selected Pézenas, from the Languedoc region of France, also a ‘19 vintage. Apparently (though neither the bottle, nor Aldi’s website says as much), it’s a blend of 40% Syrah, 30% Grenache and 20% Mourvèdre - a combination which bodes well - with the balance presumably made up of the likes of Carignan and/or Cinsaut.

There follow a couple of poems mentioning wine:

Your time of wine and roses

Your time of wine and roses
   has gone away
when your beautiful beloved
   leaves you.
When he leaves you
   the rose is so lonely,
the wine, like a sculpture in the glass.

—Sirkka Turkka (translated by Kirsi Simonsuuri).

I imagine the wine (and the roses) to be red in the above, white wine to my mind seeming less sculptural.

Red Ice

The year 1812 in Russia
while the soldiers retreated
among cadavers
of men and horses
the wine froze hard
so the sapper’s axe
had to share out
for everyone likewise the dying
the stout block of wine
in the shape of a cask
no museum
could ever have preserved.

—Jean Follain (translated by Christpopher Middleton).

Moka Express

For about twenty years - from my late teens - I was a coffee-drinker. To begin with, I considered it in utilitarian terms as the least disagreeable of the caffeine delivery methods I knew. At length, though, I came to discover the delights of espresso, and thereafter grew to be more of a devotee, if never a true connoisseur. A gruelling case of the flu in the opening months of 2007 brought that to a halt. Something about the illness made me feel hypersensitive to the effects of caffeine, which I forswore entirely for a while, afterwards switching entirely to tea-drinking once my capacity to tolerate the stimulant had returned.

This year, however, I’ve begun to enjoy a daily coffee again, courtesy of a diminutive one-cup Bialetti Moka Express contraption and a cheap bean grinder. The latter was a new departure as back in the old days I simply bought my coffee ready-ground. I’d also bought a pair of fancy cups from Hot Pottery. Beginning with my old standby Lavazza Qualità Rossa, I’ve branched out to try a number of the more readily-available espresso beans, of which my favourite so far has to be The Bold blend by Roastworks. By an irritating coincidence, mere weeks in to my new coffee regime, I came down with a case of flu (my first since 2007), which temporarily derailed my explorations - but I’m back on track again now.