1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (4 page)

Where:
In London
, Roast, tel 44/84-5034-7300,
roast-restaurant.com
;
in Glasgow
, Redstones Hotel, tel 44/16-9881-3774,
redstoneshotel.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Ploughman’s Lunch and the Miser’s Feast
by Brian Yarvin (2012).

After a two-year renovation, Borough Market reopened in February 2013, drawing eager shoppers.

The time-strapped traveling food lover looking to sample local English fare can do no better than a visit to London’s Borough Market, said to be the city’s oldest. (It has occupied the same site for some 2,500 years, ever since the Romans
built the first London Bridge nearby.) Monday and Tuesday, the market is wholesale-only, except for lunch; but Wednesday through Saturday, it opens its gates to the public, welcoming in a rapacious and food-obsessed crowd.

Although the market features an international array of products, visitors would be wise to stick to an all-British tour. Stands are overflowing with temptations and many a hard-to-resist free sample, so focus is of the essence. Under the watery light filtering through a soaring, glass-covered iron framework, one finds the best of British seafood: cockles, mussels, langoustines, and, perhaps tastiest of all, the oysters of the icy North Sea. (The deliciously steely and salty Colchester oyster in particular is not to be missed.)

In another section you can compare earthily complex farmhouse Cheddars by Keen’s and Quicke’s alongside myriad jams and preserves, buns and biscuits. Rosy-pink hams and bangers from various parts of the British Isles are yours for the tasting, as are hot and crunchy examples of fish and chips, best made with cod or haddock and excellent at the open stand named “fish! kitchen.” For more serious seafood dining, “fish!” has an adjoining restaurant. Also on the market grounds is the stylish Roast, offering a wide range of English food, with a focus on meats.

Most visitors like to eat and walk, but benches throughout the market offer respite to those who tire. Better yet is a picnic on the benches just five minutes across the road in the garden of the Southwark Cathedral, a graceful and romantic charmer of a church whose mixed architectural styles date back to the thirteenth century.

Where:
8 Southwark Street, London, tel 44/20-7407-1002,
boroughmarket.org.uk
.
When:
Wed. and Thurs. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fri. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sat. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

With its tauntingly sharp yet buttery flavor and its subtly lingering overtones of malty sweetness, a well-made and sufficiently aged Cheddar is one of the world’s most satisfying cheeses. Paired with some combination of crackers, bread, pickled onions or gherkins, walnuts, and apples, it makes a wonderfully sustaining snack; its knack for melting qualifies it for a prime spot in various grilled sandwiches and as the star in the savory Welsh rarebit sauce (see
listing
); and it lends that strong pungency and golden
finish to the many cooked and baked dishes in which it appears as an ingredient.

First produced in the Somerset town of Cheddar in South England, it is the most copied cheese in the world—a cheese so common, in fact, that it is rarely regarded as special or distinguished. Too often, it is factory-produced from pasteurized milk, dull-flavored and gummy, and sealed in airtight plastic or coated with thick wax. That is the kind of cheese that is “made to be sold, not eaten,” as accurately diagnosed in Osbert Burdett’s
The Little Book of Cheese
, published in England in 1935. With its pale ivory to orange color (depending on the use of the coloring annatto, a more popular custom in the U.S. than in Britain), Cheddar was the inspiration for waxy, plasticlike processed American cheese. But such sorry imitations should not dissuade one from seeking out the sublime farmhouse Cheddars made of unpasteurized cow’s milk in the British Isles, where varying degrees of aging produce differences in the sharpness. The real stuff derives its firm but gently crumbling texture from the process known as cheddaring, in which the curds are cut several times and then stacked for compression and the draining off of whey. Formed into unwaxed wheels, true farmhouse Cheddars are cloth-wrapped, never sealed in plastic.

Among the most reliable imports are those labeled Keen’s, Montgomery’s, and the pleasantly earthy Mrs. Quicke’s, made in Devon. By far the best and most complex of all, and the rarest in the U.S., is Isle of Mull Cheddar, from the Sgriob-ruadh farm (the Gaelic means “red furrow” and is pronounced “SKEE-brooah”) on the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides.

Both the United States and Canada produce some estimable Cheddars, but none really match the subtle complexities of the British product. Four-to six-year-old Grafton Four Star Cheddar from Vermont and the Forfar or Black Diamond Cheddars from Canada are a couple of the top contenders, although finding sufficiently aged (at least six months) versions of the latter can be difficult.

When shopping for Cheddar, look for a smooth, hard, transparent rind and no streakiness in the color of the cheese itself, and buy cheese cut to order, not in prewrapped sections. Try for a clean, full flavor, with a pleasant but not harsh bite.

Where:
In London
, Neal’s Yard Dairy at three locations,
nealsyarddairy.co.uk
; Paxton & Whitfield, tel 44/20-7930-0259,
paxtonandwhitfield.co.uk
;
in New York
, Murray’s Cheese Shop, tel 888-692-4339,
murrayscheese.com
.
Further information:
farmhousecheesemakers.com
;
britishcheese.com/cheddar
.

A Devonshire-style scone: jam on top of cream.

Strawberries, sugar, and cream indeed. As long as that cream is the clotted ivory specialty of Devon and Cornwall, the spread is sure to be a feast. Only cows grazing on the grasses of these two English regions are said to produce milk rich enough in butterfat and the proper enzymes to result in this sublime dessert cream, much favored for afternoon tea. The dairy delicacy is considered an indispensable
component of a Devonshire cream tea, a treasured regional institution that consists of a hot pot of tea and scones or buns called “Devon splits,” still warm from the oven, cut in half and spread with clotted cream and dollops of fresh strawberry jam. (Cornwall features a similar cream tea but prides itself on its custom of spooning the clotted cream atop the jam on each scone.) Its luscious ripe flavor and satiny clumps or “clots” make it a delectable treat on scones and firm pound cakes, or spooned over ripe berries. It is traditionally prepared with the thick cream that rises to the surface of raw milk left to stand for twelve hours, then scalded. Cornish clotted cream is said to taste more of its scalding than its smoother, firmer rival in Devonshire.

Where:
In London
, the Georgian Restaurant at Harrods, tel 44/20-7225-6800,
harrods.com
;
in New York
, Myers of Keswick, tel 212-691-4194,
myersofkeswick.com
.

Watercress adds a light touch to rich fish cakes.

As appreciated in England as they are in New England, crisply fried codfish cakes offer homey sustenance (as well as an excellent use for leftover fish). Moist, mild, and firm, the snowy flesh of the Atlantic cod is mellowed with mashed potatoes and a hint of onion, dredged in flour and fine white bread crumbs, then crisply fried in butter. The cakes are best accented by pungent, mayonnaise-based dressings such as tartar or rémoulade sauce sprightly with lemon, capers, tarragon, and bits of the tiny vinegar pickles known as cornichons or gherkins. Those who prefer lustier flavor and texture make the cakes with salt-preserved codfish or smoked haddock (Finnan Haddie; see
listing
). Salmon cakes have a lovely blush of coral pink, but cod wins out for its chewier texture. Freshly made and served hot, this is English food at its most basic and comforting and the inspiration for a New England classic.

Where:
In London
, Green’s Restaurant tel 44/20-7930-4566,
greens.org.uk
;
in Boston and environs
, Jasper White’s Summer Shack at multiple locations,
summershackrestaurant.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Ploughman’s Lunch and the Miser’s Feast
by Brian Yarvin (2012);
bbcgoodfood.com
(search crisp crumb fish cakes).

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
, a deliciously over-the-top 1989 British film written and directed by Peter Greenaway, serves up quite a feast. Its setting, Le Hollandais, is an unimaginably grandiose restaurant whose opulent décor calls to mind a baroque ballroom; it is owned by Albert the Thief (Michael Gambon), a man of ugly appetites, and frequented by Georgina, his diffident slut of a wife (a young and lithe Helen Mirren). There, they gorge on parades of presciently nouvelle-cuisine dishes as well as antiquated set pieces such as game birds
en plumage
, lofty frozen puddings, and
pièces montées
based on crimson shellfish, all prepared by the quintessentially laconic French cook (Alan Howard). Between courses the wife ducks out with her lover (Richard Bohringer), a regular diner there, to heat things up in the meat cooler.

In the enormous kitchen recalling those of Henry VIII’s Hampton Court and King Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein Castle, feathers fly as birds are plucked, copper pots are made to gleam, endless foods are chopped and roasted over roaring fires, profiteroles are doused with chocolate, and terrines are glazed with aspic by an exhausted, half-naked kitchen staff suggestive of Dickens’s vassal waifs.

It’s a movie that has everything, from food to murder and cannibalism to wonderful costumes from various real and imagined periods created by the Paris couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier. (For a fun guessing game, try to predict who winds up as the main course.)

“Don’t you realize that a clever cook puts unlikely things together?” Albert asks at one point. To which we all can answer: “We do. We do.”

Mail order:
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
, directed by Peter Greenaway (1989), DVD, barnesandnoble.com.