Last weekend I rode the excellent Puncheur sportive. It was a cold, blustery day and a challenging course. Whilst the climbs were smaller in stature than those of the previous weekend’s Hell of the Ashdown, they appeared with much greater frequency and the effort required was relentless. I was well psyched for a hard ride, and that’s what I got.

Over the course of the ride I tagged along with a couple of fast groups, and the rest of the time rode on my own, as near to flat out as I could manage. That’s not something I’ve done for a while, and certainly not over a four hour period. I was expecting to blow up at any point, but miraculously escaped that particular ignominy. So, what kept me going? Well, my Puncheur effort was fuelled entirely with a selection of nutritious goodies from Bikefood. Except for a banana at the feedstop, I stuck to orange flavoured Energy Drink, and a selection of Raw Natural Energy Bars.

Now, I’m usually pretty good at refuelling on the move, particularly when I know the going is going to be tough – blowing up is such a bloody nightmare than I’m more than happy to ride with pockets stuffed with bars and gels. I usually use a fairly strong solution of energy drink, and then top up with whatever else seems appropriate to the event – gels being the favourite when exertion levels are going to be constantly high, and bars or bananas when I know I’m going to be able to chew without choking.

The trouble is, the vast majority of the products I’ve tested so far, whilst being efficacious from a carbohydrate delivery point of view, taste almost universally synthetic (which is understandable, seeing as they are) and after a few hours of consumption become harder and harder to stomach. Gels especially suffer from this quality – it’s usually only the recognition that I’m only a short way away from the faltering reserve light of the bonk that allows me to force them down.

Bikefood products on the other hand were a bit of a revelation. The Energy Drink is still based on maltodextrin, but the flavour is quite different to the competition. Much less sweet and sickly, with a more natural tartness that refreshes when other drinks start to cloy. I filled two bottles, and brought another sachet with me that I filled at the halfway feed station. This was perhaps another revelation – on longer rides I often find myself having finished two bottles of drink and this end up riding the final hours with water and solid food. I imagine that it’s the end of the ride when the advantages of liquid-based fuel could be most pronounced.

The Bikefood bars were also tasty in an unconventional way – entirely bereft of sugar, sweeteners or artificial flavours – just varying combinations of fruit and nut, with guarana in one, and raw cacao in another. Even towards the end of the event, when solid food can be a struggle to hold down, the Bikefood bars were still a pleasure to chew on. And that’s possibly the most important point of all – they were pretty much the easiest to chew solid bars I have ever consumed while on the bike. I’ve tried some things in the past which have been so tough and inflexible that the only option is to tear chucks off with your teeth. These bars were entirely the opposite – firm enough to stay in one piece, but very easy to bite and chew.

Of course, my test was not particularly scientific and I might just have been having a good day, with the demons of exhaustion plaguing various other people on the roads of Sussex. But I was nothing but delighted with the Bikefood products, and from now on I will be fuelling my endeavours with their products exclusively.

Bikefood
Puncheur
Hell of the Ashdown

Our local greengrocer has had his shelves piled high with delicious winter vegetables recently, so expect a variety of recipes featuring sprouts, turnips, winter cabbage and parsnips over the next few weeks. His beetroots have ended up in various juices and stews recently, and the pick of the crop has been this universally applauded soup. I freestyled the recipe for a party of 14, and rather than transpose the ingredient quantities I have instead suggested a ratio of ingredients. You’ll need to use your own judgement as far as the quantity of stock required is concerned. Ditto the herbs and garlic. Cooking is all about tasting though, right? So if you’re tasting, thinking and adjusting you shouldn’t have any problems.

Beetroot soup
Onion, carrot and celery, in ratio of 2:1:1 by weight
Beetroot – equal weight to above
Garlic
Thyme
Parsley
Strong vegetable or brown chicken stock
Sunflower oil
Salt and pepper

Horseradish sour cream
Sour cream
Cider vinegar
Fresh horseradish
Salt

Peel and chop the onion and saute in sunflower oil. Peel and chop the carrots, and chop the celery and add to the onion when it starts to darken. Add chopped thyme and garlic. Peel and chop beetroot, then add stock, cover and simmer for 30 – 40 minutes, or until beetroot has nicely softened. Add roughly chopped parsley, then liquidise. Check seasoning.

For the horseradish sour cream, grate fresh horseradish, add a splash of cider vinegar, salt, and then stir in sour cream. Add more horseradish, vinegar or cream depending on your preference.

The image above is once again dedicated to Bikesnob NYC…

A last minute trip to town last week ended very pleasantly with a late dinner at the recently refurbished and re-launched Clapham gastropub The Landor.

Chef Chas Tapaneyasastr previously worked at celebrated meat emporium Hawksmoor and it’s fair to say that, if your predilections are in any way carnivorous then you’ll be in for an extra special treat. The menu runs the whole gastropub gamut from scrumptious bar snacks (including hand cut chips, pork crackling and cheesy garlic bread to stunning puds (White chocolate, lemon and vanilla cheesecake, dark chocolate and fudge brownie, sticky toffee pudding) by way of a profusion of delicious mains, both light and hearty.

The pictures above and below illustrate the lip-smacking deliciousness of the food. Slow roast Kilravok pork belly and crackling (above) is expertly prepared (unlike so many pseudo gastropub attempts) – roasted overnight with beer and honey, and served with a savoury apple tartin, fondant potatoes and buttered greens. 21 day aged Dexter ribeye steak (below) is perfectly cooked to order, with a watercress salad alongside and also Chas’s secret recipe ketchup roasted chips. The Landor Aberdeen Angus burger (also below) is a meaty treat served in a toasted bap with all the trimmings.

Amazingly, especially considering the very reasonable prices, just about everything is made in house, from the ketchup to the ice cream. When so many so-called gastropubs are sourcing their food from the Brakes catalogue, this is pretty inspirational, and the effort that goes into such endeavour is unquestionably evident on the plate and in the eating.

If you’re in the area and hungry and / or thirsty, get yourself down there. You definitely won’t be disappointed…

The Landor
70 Landor Road
London
SW9 9PH
0207 737 3419

Pork scratchings are just the very best cocktail snack. Better than the humble salted peanut. Better even than fat green olives. Even those ethereally green ones they serve at Cecconis.

For some time it has been a medium to long term plan of mine to develop my pork scratching preparation technique to such an advanced level that one day I might be able to leave this green and pleasant land and set up shop on the other side of the world with nothing but a knowledge of how to prepare delicious crunchy pork based treats with which to keep my family in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

However, there are plenty of pork scratching millions to be made, and without spilling all of the beans I think it’s perfectly possible to point any interested parties in the right direction.

Get some pig skin from your butcher. Salt it and stick it in the fridge for a few days. Remove, rinse, pat dry. Render down for a few hours. Scrape fat and flesh off the skin. Place skin side down on a non stick baking tray and cook in medium heat to release any remaining excess fat. Remove, pat dry again. Place skin side up on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Stick in furnace. Remove when the skin is golden and blistered, but before it turns to mahogany/Copper Tone/Cristiano Ronaldo on holiday in Miami (or was it LA?) Twist of salt. Pukka, innit…

And here we have the scratchings juxtaposed with a hefty Dry Martini, in homage to renowned scourge of food stylists, Bike Snob NYC. Keep fucking the idiots dude, and chin chin…

Spiced orange chickpeas and bacon
800g chickpeas
1 red onion
2 cloves garlic
2 small hot red chillies
2 bays leaves
5 juniper berries
1 small bunch of lemon thyme
1 small bunch of flat leaf parsley
5 rashers smoked streaky bacon
1 orange
Olive oil

Finely chop the onion and garlic, and slice the bacon into matchstick-sized pieces. Heat a decent spalsh of olive oil in a pan, add a twist of salt and the onion, garlic and bacon. Sweat down. Add thyme, bay, crushed juniper berries, and stir. Grate zest of the orange into the pan, add chickpeas and stir. Skin and slice half of the orange. Juice the other half. Chop the parsley. Add orange pieces, orange juice and parsley to the pan. Remove bay leaves. Check seasoning and serve.

Chickpea, chicken, pomegranate and walnut salad
800g chickpeas
2 roasted chicken legs and thighs
A decent handful of shelled walnuts
1 pomegranate
Small bunch of mint
Small bunch of flat leaf parsley
2 small hot red chillies
1 lemon
Olive oil
Pomegranate molasses

Chop the mint and parsley, finely slice the chillies, remove the seeds from the pomegranate. Put all of this in a bowl with the chickpeas and walnuts and mix thoroughly. Juice the lemon and add to the bowl with a slug of olive oil, salt and pepper and a tablespoon of pomegranate molasses. Stir well, check seasoning, and smugly present to loving girlfriend, accepting every accolade offered whilst failing to mention the similarity between this recipe and the walnut / pomegranate Ottolenghi thing in the Guardian at the weekend.

I have ignored the foodie aspect of Salted Mackerel of late – something which I have decided to remedy, so you can expect a number of tasty treats over the next few days.

Since my success with the Anzac biscuit recipe a couple of weeks ago I thought I should try to come up with a Salted Mackerel original. Not a mackerel biscuit – that would be obscene and absurd. No, just a new and tasty biscuit recipe. I decided to use the Anzac biscuit as a framework to develop something else, and I think it has worked out rather well!

Almond, orange and cardamom biscuits
170g unsalted butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Dash of boiling water
160g plain flour
120g caster sugar
140g flaked and toasted almonds
5 green cardamon pods – remove the black seeds then crush in a pestle and mortar
zest of 1 orange

Melt the butter and syrup together in a pan. Dissolve the bicarb in a dash of boiling water and stir into the butter mixture. Mix the other ingredients together in a bowl, and then stir into the butter mixture in the pan. Heat your oven to 160deg C. Line your baking tray with greased baking parchment. Use a spoon or your hands to form small balls of the mixture, and place on the tray. Allow room for the biscuits to spread out. Bake for around 15 to 20 minutes.

The biscuits spread out much more than Anzac biscuits and end up much more like a thin French style butter biscuit. As such, make sure you give them ample room on the baking tray. They are delicious and well worth the effort.

I decided a while back that, while out on the bike, it would be good to rely less on commercially produced energy bars and gels and more on home-baked treats. Quite how far I’ll end up taking this admirable manifesto I’m not quite sure, but having already started to investigate the potential of nu skool cooking ingredients like agar, sodium alginate and xanthan gum, I’ll certainly be having a go at some fancy pants high tech “look it’s a strawberry made out of beetroot juice” Hestonesque jellied experiments.

However, I will start off with biscuits. You can’t beat a good biscuit, and Anzac biscuits definitely fit that description. Named after the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (for whom the biscuits were either introduced in tribute or sent to because of their relatively long shelf life meant they didn’t go off in transit, or a bit of both) they are ridiculously easy to make. They also pack a decent helping of oats in every biscuit, although I’m not going to argue that they’re the next big thing in sport fuel. They do taste good though…

Anzac Biscuits
170g unsalted butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Dash of boiling water
115g rolled / jumbo oats (I used Flahaven’s Oats)
115g plain flour
115g caster sugar
60g desiccated coconut

Melt the butter and syrup together in a pan. Dissolve the bicarb in a dash of boiling water and stir into the butter mixture. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl, and then stir into the butter mixture in the pan. Heat your oven to 160deg C. Line your baking tray with greased baking parchment. Use a spoon or your hands to form small balls of the mixture, and place on the tray. Allow room for the biscuits to spread out. Bake for around 15 to 20 minutes. If you cook till the biscuits go a light golden colour they will have a pleasing bendy nature when cool. If you bake further, to a darker gold, the biscuits will develop an equally pleasing crunch. Either way, place the biscuits on a rack to cool and then store in an airtight container.

(Jess and I have our first baby due on Anzac Day – April 25th – and I thought it prudent to perfect the recipe well in advance.)

Last night I went to Fernandez & Wells for the second time, bringing along a couple of chums to sample the delights of this lovely little food and wine bar. Not unlike Polpo around the corner, the emphasis is on quality produce that doesn’t require too much messing around. The charcuterie board is stunning. We also gulped down two servings of fat little morcilla, two more of raclette, olives, and various other things that I’ve forgotten (but shouldn’t have been forgettable). Really, the thing to do it pop down there and try it out yourself. Everything looks and smells so good that you can’t really go wrong.

(We popped into Polpo afterwards, but as I only had 30 minutes before my train left from Charing Cross, we barely had time to gulp down some Gavi and anchovy / chickpea crostini things before racing off. A proper discussion of this great little place will follow sometime soon.)

Fernandez & Wells
43 Lexington Street
London
W1F 9AL
020 7734 1546

Here we have the main course that followed the Sussex Yeoman and crackers.

As you can see, it was verging on a St John style economy of embellishment.

I fried the halibut in bacon fat. A few rashers of green back bacon from Mr Orton were sliced into tiny lardons, and then gently rendered for about 20 minutes to release the fat and crisp the meat. The fat was then strained and used to fry the fish, heightening the meaty quality of the halibut.

I sweated down some spinach, chopped it up and added some butter and local cream (which just so happened to be unpasteurised) along with the bacon lardons.

The only other addition was the lemon mayonnaise. The juice of a small lemon, salt and pepper, two egg yolks, and then half a pint of oil (50% light olive, 50% sunflower) whisked in.

Nice bit of fish that…

And here are the pics of the starter completed. More an exercise in assembly and presentation than anything else. I tried it two ways – with the cheese (Sussex Yeoman comes from Nut Knowle Farm dairy and is a delicious hard-pressed goats cheese) and crackers in a little bowl and the pear with the salad in the first, and then laid out separately in the second. I think I preferred the bowl version, though (as previously discussed) the crackers were a bit fat.

The salad was just lambs lettuce and some lovely fresh walnuts, dressed with olive oil, cider vinegar, salt, pepper and some decent honey.

I served it with a glass of Biddenden cider and also a tiny glass of calvados. The latter was jolly nice, but probably unnecessary. Unless you are the sort of drinker who finds it a struggle to get through a meal without a dose of spirits in which case it’s probably essential.

(And yes, I know the table cloth needs ironing…)