British Street Food Awards 2010

Tailgating (which is food and drink, served from the tailgate of a car or truck) is an American institution, and every Saturday in the football season you’ll find the haze of portable grill smoke – and the delicious aroma of barbecued foods – over parking lots up and down the USA. It has been called the last great American neighbourhood: where no one locks their door, everyone is happy to see you and all fans come together to share fun, food and football. There is a bit of rivarly with the opposition, but no real violence ever broke out over marinades and rubs. I saw some of the best in the business when I went to Miami earlier this month to watch the Superbowl. I had a blast with an RV full of Miami Saints fans. And a bucket full of beer. Have a listen to my adventure on Radio 4’s Food Programme (use the listen again facility if you miss it live). I found that the finger food worked best, but Charlie’s gumbo and dirty rice were a revelation. Who dat?

I always associate mushrooms with autumn – when the ground is deep with leaves, and the air is filled with the smell of bonfires. It’s the best time – just before nature descends into its Winter sleep. But the farmed varieties are available all year round. Which is just as well for the wonderful Sporeboys team on Broadway Market.

I love their mushroom sandwiches. But then mushrooms on toast would probably be my last meal on earth, so I’m a bit biased. Or, if it was my last meal, maybe I would plump for two mushrooms, vast and baked, with their juices spooned over a thick round of sourdough toast. There’s something primal about the deep, farmyard savour. They are natural fast food. Just brush them gently – never wash – trim off their woody stem-ends and fry them quickly in butter and garlic. But Sporeboys don’t need my advice. The are doing everything just perfectly…….

It was army scientists who first brought us dried egg, freeze-dried coffee and processed cheese. Well, they’ve gone and done it again. With everlasting bread. By lowering its acidity, and by chemically bonding its molecules to water, they have created a loaf (sic) that will stay fresh for up to three years at 26 °C. Our lives will never be the same again. But – thank God – some places are carrying on regardless, like everlasting bread never got invented. And a lot of them are on the streets. Sandwiches are the perfect street food — and a study in creativity, because (and I apologise for sounding like the Sandwich Information Bureau here) there’s no limit to what you can stick between two slices of bread. In Nice, they make the Pan Bagnat; in Paris the croque monsieur; and in New Orleans the Muffaletta and the po-boy. I’ve read about Bedouin tribesmen who make bread from flour, water and salt, which they mix together in an old baby milk tin. They then bake it into a thin pancake, on a car hub-cap straddling the fire, and serve it with meat and rice. My favourite sandwich (this week, anyway) is the Banh Mi. Here it’s made with BBQ pork, by the team from BanhMi11 sandwich from Broadway Market in London. Libby Andrews, a colleague who knows, really rated it. So, for now, let’s call it my ‘Wich Of The Week.

I will always remember Marco Pierre White in the lobby of the Soho Grand, signing for breakfast. He put it on Room 320 – the only problem was that he was in Room 322. He was the worse for wear after a night on the sambuca – ‘the house cocktail’, as he called it. The aniseed spirit was lit, extinguished (with the palm of the hand) and shot – in one. Sure, it was against New York fire regulations, and everything that was good and decent. But it was very Marco Pierre White. And the burns from last night didn’t appear to be bothering him…

White was in Manhattan promoting The Devil In The Kitchen – the American edition of his autobiography. His publicists at Bloomsbury were selling him as the original rock-star chef. The one who made Gordon Ramsay cry – who would string up his kitchen juniors by their aprons before dumping them in the dustbin. He was off to do a live cooking demo on The Martha Stewart Show. If he could keep his breakfast down long enough.

Last night it went wrong. It went wrong when White suggested ‘the house cocktail’. The heat of the shot glass threw one member of the drinking party into a blind panic, and she smashed her hand down onto the table. There was flaming sambuca everywhere. White got burnt, and had to ram his hand into a bucket of ice water, and bandage it up in a table napkin, before somebody – nobody quite remembers who – rolled him into a cab.

But somehow he still managed to look handsome – despite a grey demeanour and a tangle of greasy hair. He hadn’t spent any time at the mirror, but it wouldn’t have hurt – The Martha Stewart Show is, after all, the American standard for gracious domestic living. White’s turbot with citrus and cilantro was due to sit alongside a leaf-covered candleholder how-to, and a tip on using old navigational charts as gift wrap. It was the start of one hell of an adventure……

Marco (alongside the equally brilliant and magnificent Mark Hix, Antony Worrall Thompson and Thomasina Miers) will be judging the British Street Food Awards. And by the look of this Marco Pierre White LIDO feature in the Sunday Times magazine, he’s quite excited about it……

2009 was truly memorable – for many reasons. It was the year I discovered that 1) all Mexican food is the same – it’s just folded in different ways – and 2) ‘naked sushi’ really does exist. I saw it with my own eyes in a Japanese bar in New York. It’s only a matter of time before naked women, covered in cling film, come to a town near you and try and pass themselves off as serving platters for raw fish. Careful with your chopsticks.

Because of the success of grazing foods like sushi, dim sum and tapas, we’ll see more and more chefs learning to be more flexible with their menus. I’ve always had my suspicions that the starter-main-course-dessert structure is actually as much of a bore for the chef as it is for the diner. The only problem with grazing menus that offer lots of small courses is that – whether you like it or not – you’ll be on first name terms with your waiter before you leave the restaurant.

Menus in 2010 will continue to tell us more about the origins of our food. ‘Transparency’ is the buzzword because, these days, we all want to know the farm where our food comes from. We even want to know the name of the farmer. I’m amazed by the number of waiters who have no idea. Admittedly, most of them don’t even know what the soup of the day is, but it seems ridiculous in this day and age that waiters – and even chefs – are working in ignorance.

But the only trend that all critics seem to agree on is the importance of street food in 2010. I read about it first in the wonderful Olive magazine (where I used to be a restaurant reviewer). And now the Guardian are behind the Awards. According to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/31/the-year-ahead-food, we are up there with the London opening of Heston Blumenthal’s new London restaurant. I fully intend to make the most of being a What’s Hot, before I’m a What’s Not. But, in the meantime, here are my thoughts on the foodie year ahead……

Last year
Salt

This year
Pepper. I kid you not. This trend is in response to the fact that many processed foods are high in sodium, and companies are trying to replace the savouriness of salt with pepper. Without salt life would be impossible. Without pepper, it would be impossibly dull.

Last year’s superfood
Pomegranate

This year’s superfood
Spelt – one of the most ancient cereals known to mankind. It fell from grace because the chaff was so difficult to remove, but now it’s back. It is wheat free and has a Glycaemix Index of just 30, making it a natural choice for those with a wheat allergy and on a low-GI diet. And, let’s be honest, isn’t that pretty much everyone these days?

Last year
Dessert to end a meal.

This year
Savouries to end a meal. The Ivy recommend their savouries to diners who are still lingering over a bottle of red which would be spoiled by a pudding. Just don’t show yourself up by ordering one (whether it’s the welsh rarebit or the herring roe) as a starter. So nouveau!

Have a look at it — my first hot dog of the season. Well, frankfurter if you want to be picky. The Frankfurt Butcher’s Guild first introduced spiced and smoked sausages, packed in thin casings, back in the 1850s. They had a slightly curved shape (supposedly due to a butcher who owned a dachshund), which is why they were also known as ”dachshund sausages”. They caught on big time in the USA, where Harry Stevens sold them with a cry of ”Get your red-hot dachshund sausages!” He soon shortened it (well, wouldn’t you?) to “Get your hot dogs!”. Harry would not have been impressed with my frankfurter. The bread was pappy, and the meat was underseasoned. I’ll just have to keep looking for something that does Harry proud. I want the best sausages the world has ever tasted to be sizzling in that Ludlow field in 2010…….

Fashions in food change. In the eighteenth century, Irish apprentices insisted on marking their indenture papers with the number of days on which their masters could feed them salmon. Salmon was deemed the food of the poor. So were oysters. In fact, oysters were so common that they were even made into sausages. In those days, a real delicacy was the tongue of a whale, or even the whole head. I’m so glad, now the Mersea oysters are so amazing, that the whale head is off the menu…..

I love Gascony. It’s where Tony Blair used to go to relaxed. He urged the locals to “m’appellez Tony”. But when the Gascons presented him with a spirited pony called Justin, Blair got confused. As he later confessed to Des O’Connor “I didn’t know whether to ride it or eat it”. Eat it, fool! In Gascony, you won’t offend anyone by eating anything. Confit, anything cooked in goose-fat, prunes – this food is best approached in loose trousers. Especially the cassoulet. A bootmaker used to hang a sign outside his shop that read, simply, “Closed on Account of Cassoulet”. It wasn’t clear if it was the making, the eating, or the recuperation afterwards — or all three — but, even in London, cassoulet is a serious business. There are three types of cassoulet – the Holy Trinity. There’s the ‘Father’ (pork and goose), the ‘Son’ (mutton and partridge), and the ‘Holy Ghost’ (sausage, mutton, and duck). I think this man sold me a Holy Ghost. But his English wasn’t great, and he was trying to deal with a lunchtime rush. If I got it wrong, would that count as blasphemy?

I have just found out that Leon want to get involved with the British Street Food Awards. And I’m excited. You see, I can still remember my first Leon meal – in a busy pedestrianised area behind Libertys. Not like Soho, where diners are never more than, say, three feet away from a car exhaust. Apart from the proximity of the Great Marlborough Street public conveniences (which, to be honest, is a plus rather than a minus at my age), it felt like a nice place to set down a few tables.

At Leon, they serve fast food. As in “food that is fast”. Not “fast food”. Although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Behind the counter was a multi-channelled chute, just like McDonalds. I gave the waitress my order and she turned round to get it, just like McDonalds. But at Leon the chicken is free range, the coffee is fair trade, and – if you sing at the counter – you get a free sticker. Which isn’t just like McDonalds at all.

I decided to eat indoors. Well, even though I love the street, it was raining. The food came in little pots, with no plates. But there was warm pitta to mop up any accidents at the table. The glorious Moroccan meatballs (£2.80) had the taste of grassfed lamb, and the taramasalada (£3) had a clean tang of lemon. But the magic beans (£2.50) were, well, magic. They showed what could be done with just green beans, lemon, rosemary and chilli. And gluten free/lactose free/meat free to boot!

From the two forks the South African waitress gave me, she clearly thought I was expecting company. But I wasn’t. I was just doing my job as a restaurant reviewer. When I ordered two more main courses, she smiled said ‘What you’ve eaten already tonight would feed a family of five for three days where I come from’. She clearly thought I had an eating disorder. I pointed out that I wasn’t finishing every dish I ordered, but she was off serving someone else.

The crunch-coated fish, wrapped in a Lebanese flatbread (£3.90) tasted like a “fast food” fish burger. And I mean that as a compliment. The taste of “fast food” is chemically enhanced, and has more to do with men in lab coats than men in chef’s whites. But the Leon fish burger was cooked in olive oilm and slathered in a tartar sauce, rich with capers. The fact that the fish came from sustainable sources was of secondary importance. This was a really happy meal. I always look out for their entry form when I’m judging the RSPCA Awards http://www.rspcagoodbusinessawards.com/judges.html/.

The Leon idea came from Henry Dimbleby — a former chef at the Michelin-starred Four Seasons Inn On The Park — and John Vincent. The entrepreneurial pair have found a real gap in the market. Their mix of ethical food, that is really big on flavour, has been a huge success. And now they’ve got a chain on their hands. But they still get the whole street food idea, which is why they want to support us instore and online. We are in good company, people……

The chestnut seller on the South Bank got me thinking about Christmas. It wasn’t his welcoming spirit – God no. He was French. And the most miserable mobiler I’ve come across in a long time. But he still got me thinking. At this time of year, when I’m dreaming of long wreaths of sausages, hocks of ham, and seething bowls of punch that make the front room dim with steam, I like to wassail. The English have always “wassailed” rather well at Christmas. In Speculum Stultorum by Nigellus Wireker (an ideal stocking filler, by the way) the English students at the university of Paris were praised for their generosity, but damned for being “addicted to wassail”.

The wassail bowl was as big as a cauldron, and kept warm over the burning yule log. On New Year’s Day, the children would take the bowl to their friends – a practice that became known as ‘wassailing’. If there was any left over (unlikely, given that this was before Diamond White cider was freely available from unscrupulous off-licences) the holiday ale would then get poured over the land – or fed to the livestock – in an attempt to boost fertility for the next season. It was a strong old drink – guaranteed to have you decking the halls whether you want to or not.

In A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, Scrooge proposes that he and Bob Cratchit discuss the future “over a bowl of Smoking Bishop”. This punch, sometimes called ‘purple wine’, earnt the name ‘Bishop’ from its colour. Although a real bishop does give a very particular flavour. It’s made by pouring red wine over ripe, bitter oranges. The liquor is heated (or ‘mulled’) in an old pan which can be pushed back into the fire. Sugar and spices (chiefly cloves, star anise, and cinnamon) are added to taste. Smoking Bishop always gets me donning my gay apparel.

I can’t wait. Champagne for breakfast, sherry with the neighbours, and then dry white wine with lunch. Followed by heavy red wine, sweet white wine, port, brandy and whisky. I never remember the Queen’s speech. In France, their Biere de Noel arrives for a limited season only. A friend of mine was in Normandy on Boxing Day last year, and had the temerity to ask the bar owner for a Biere de Noel. He was met by scenes resembling a Bateman cartoon. “Mais Monsieur, Noel est…parti”. Wonder if the bar owner was related to that chestnut seller on the South Bank?