Rhubodka

It is most definitely forced rhubarb season.

There’s something really funny – almost dirty – about the term ‘forced rhubarb’.  But it’s effectively the luscious, sweet-sour pink stuff that we all really know and love as rhubarb.  It’s in season from December through to February, so we’re kind towards the end of this year’s run – but it’s not too late to still grab some!

For me, each year, that means one thing: Rhubodka, a glorious fusion of vodka and rhubarb, making a delicate liqueur.  It’s spectacularly easy to make, as well (like most infused alcohol drinks, like sloe gin or damson vodka / gin).

Ingredients:

500g forced rhubarb

250g granulated white sugar

1 litre vodka (Doesn’t need to be anything particularly fancy, but stay away from that Tesco’s blue & white stripe stuff, yeah?)

You’re also going to need a 2 litre mason / Kilner jar – something big, and solidly built (this last part is actually essential for this recipe).

Just a quick note on how to buy rhubarb: I could wax lyrical about this stuff all day, but I won’t (count yourself lucky).  It’s fantastic stuff (Is it a fruit? Or a vegetable? Or, even, a salad?) and should be treated well.  Just a follow a few rules: get bring, pink, healthy looking stalks, preferably from Yorkshire, which is the Mecca of rhubarb.  Also, the more spindly the stalk, the more pink there is in proportion to the rest of the fruit – which means the more of a beautiful, delicate pink colour the liqueur will end up.

Oh, one thing: Don’t eat the leaves.  They contain oxalic acid, which is toxic. 

1. First, sterilize your jars – wash them thoroughly in warm, slightly soapy water, then leave them to drip dry for half an hour in the oven at 130-140°.  Get them out (wear oven gloves) and let them cool right down.

2. Wash the rhubarb thoroughly, and then chop it into chunky chunks. 

3. Chuck the chunks into the jar and, using the end of a rolling pin or something similar, roughly crush the rhubarb chunks.  You’re not looking to totally macerate them, just mess them up a bit to release some of the juice and maximize the surface area for the vodka to interact with.

4. Add the sugar, close the jar, and shake like billy-oh.  Make sure that the sugar and the fruit are really combined.

5. Add the vodka, close the jar up tight again, and shake again. 

6. Keep shaking every day for the first week or so.  Then you can take it easy, provided that all of the sugar has dissolved into the liqueur.  Leave the mixture for about 3 months, then strain.  Fortunately, this is one of those mixtures that, because there is no seed or pith in rhubarb, leaving it too long is unlikely to cause a massive issue.  Also, it’s much, much quicker than the sloe or damson mixtures – it can be drunk immediately it’s strained, and can even be strained sooner than 3 months if you’re desperate. 

Drink straight, over ice, or with tonic water in a 3:1 ratio.  You can vary the recipe as well – it works well with a half-thumb-sized bit of peeled root ginger, sliced and mixed in.  Or, alternatively, throw a couple of sprigs of rosemary in there and see how you come out.

But, most of all, enjoy.

- GrubsterBoy -

Borough Market

Borough Market is perhaps the most established part of London's ever-growing food scene. Ten years ago, food in the capital was hardly a huge thing - fifteen years ago British food was synonymous around the world with phrases like 'bland', 'stodgy' and 'boring'.  Today it is anything but, and it is spots like Borough Market that has changed that.

That's not to say that Borough Market is a new addition.  In fact, there has been a market flogging food on that site since at least 1014, which makes it 1,000 years old this year.  Just think about that.  Sure, in the pre-Norman conquest days of yore I rather imagine that there was less flogging of white truffle infused flax oil and more basics like meat and potatoes, but it's great to know that the tradition of food selling has lived that long. 

Borough Market has something for everyone, as well.  Whether it's a present for a friend or relation (the only use that I can think of that white truffle infused flax oil might reasonably be put to) or finding that hard-to-find ingredient, Borough Market is a great first stop.  Even if your quest is ultimately defeated and you have to resort to the internet, I can almost guarantee you'll have found something else worth finding there. 

 - GrubsterBoy -

The Dining Room

That is roast loin of venison, served with roast parsnips, potato dauphine and hazelnuts.  It comes from the Dining Room at 28 Queen Street, Edinburgh, which is the restaurant in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.  This was the main course of one of the very best meals that I have ever eaten in my life.  It was simply stunning.  Hay-smoked lamb, roast venison and a massive cheese board, washed down with a complimentary dram of malt, our bouches amused with peat smoked salmon roulade, kept quietly happy with a bottle of malbec and tucked into bed with coffees and complimentary handmade truffles.  All for less than you'd pay for two courses and a glass of wine in many London joints.  Bloody marvellous. 

Don’t be put off if you're not a whisky drinker – there's no obligatory whisky to drink. Just incredibly good fine dining at less than the usual fine dining prices. 

Sadly, a very, very low battery on the mobile left me unable to capture this meal and blog it.  But, if you're north of the border, please go.  You won’t regret it. 

 - GrubsterBoy -

La Tablita

La Tablita is a very long way to go for a dinner of roast lamb.  But it would be totally worth it if you did go.

 

Set in the town of El Calafate, Patagonia (yes, Argentina), La Tablita has won plaudits around the world for its food – and most of all its roast lamb, which has been described by some as the best in the world, a pretty tall order but not something I feel inclined to question as if it were in some way inaccurate. 

 

It's not just the lamb either – La Tablita is well renowned generally for its parillas – an Argentine speciality of grilling enormous hunks of meet.  Much of the meat is roasted in the traditional manner, arraigned on iron racks around a charcoal fire, to be slowly smoke roasted in the coals' residual heat. 

 

 

The meat is fantastic, and absolutely the star of the show.  We shared a missed meats platter, described as food for two but really providing enough for a small family to be satisfied.  We added to it with rosemary seasoned fries and a salad.  The Argentine thing of having a salad with grilled meats, by the way, is a truly magnificent idea – it totally cuts through all the fatty richness of the meat. 

 

 

All of it washed down with this pretty little number.  GrubsterGirl and I are both fans of malbec, but this was just in another league. 

 

 

We visited about a year ago now, but the experience stays with me.  The restaurant itself has a slightly Alpine feel – but then the whole town of El Calafate does too, as if it were a French ski resort off season (where everyone speaks Spanish).  We went in the Argentine summer, but I imagine in their winter it gets a whole lot colder and snowier. 

 

Patagonia is well worth the effort to get to.  Whether it's its broad, desolate landscapes, its majestic glaciers or its rocky peaks, that make it I don’t know – all I know is that it is just stunning.

 

 - GrubsterBoy -

An Italian Feast

Following our trip to Vallebona, the Italian-deli-in-a-warehouse of South London, we all piled home to whip up a big feast. Generally, I can't recommend that place enough - the difference between what you get there and what you get in the supermarket is like... Well, it's another world - like eating wholly and completely different food, albeit with the names you know and love.

Here we have a variety of fun, starting from the top of the picture and working down: Salame Finocchiona Toscana (with fennel seeds – they also have a delicious picante version, well worth a try); Bresaola (cured, tender beef); Speck (a smoked, cured ham that starts its life wrapped in juniper and garlic – very alpine, which is hardly surprising given that it's cured in the very north of Italy, up in the mountains); Venison Prosciutto (beautifully gamey, lightly smoked Bambi); and Lonza (smoked pork loin). Full marks, this stuff was epic.

We also sampled a little spicy sausage that started out like any other salumi and grew in intensity and flavour as eaten.

Nor did we hold back on the cheese. Starting at the top right and working clockwise, we had: Testun al Barolo (a cow's milk cheese aged in wine barrels and then wrapped in the lees (the crushed grape must) from making wine); Gorgonzola Dulce DOP (a young gorgonzola that's still fresh, gloopy and creamy – like a beautiful half way house between a blue and a stinky cheese); Taleggio DOP (another alpine product, and a beautiful, if quite well known, stinky soft cheese); and Robiola Tre Latti (a cheese made from a gorgeous combination of cow's, sheep's and goat's milks – soft and creamy on the outside, soft and crumbly on the inside).

The cheese - especially the Barolo - ought really to be eaten with Mosto d'Uva - a Sardinian ultra-concentrated grape juice that, like pickle with cheddar or membrillo with manchego, adds a beautiful fruitiness that cannot be equalled.

Nor could we resist the sweets. Seriously, how could anyone? Hard, brittle torrone nougat and panforte (an Italian desert from Tuscany of honey, spices, dried fruits and nuts pressed into a cake).

Also on offer were sunblushed morello cherries cased in rich, dark, bitter chocolate that were just phenomenal. No other words to describe them.

- GrubsterBoy -

Vallebona

In a warehouse in South Wimbledon, tucked away out of sight and almost undiscoverable, there resides a utopia of Italian food: Vallebona.  Hidden on an industrial estate, originally it wasn't open to the public – we only found out about it via my uncle, a native Venetian. 

 

 

Now it's becoming more and more popular, as the word spreads – and with good reason.  It's seriously good stuff, have no doubt of that.  You don’t just need to take my word for it, either – this is the business supplying the top end across the board, from Fortnum & Mason to Paxton & Whitfield, from Bocca di Lupo to The River Café.  This is a seriously good outfit.
 

Inside there's a chilled cheese meat room with all sorts of peculiar and wonderful morsels, all laid out to be sliced and diced to your heart's content by the legion of friendly helpers.

 

More generally the warehouse, now stretching over two rooms, is full of plenty of longer life samples – from the breads and pastas...

 

 

...to countless jarred and bottled treats...

 

 

...grappa (as well as countless varieties of Italian wine)...

 

 

...and, of course, finishing off with magical Italian sweet goodies.

 

 

So, naturally, with all this on offer and on display, a feast back at the Grubster family home was mandatory.  And what a feast it was.  But more on that to come...

 - GrubsterBoy -