Opus, Birmingham

A recommendation for Opus came, unusually for me, from a collection of online reviews I came across whilst idly browsing the net, all of them very effusive, so as we were considering where to go for dinner in any case it made sense to give it a whirl.

Situated in the business district of Birmingham city centre, spitting distance from Colemore Row, this restaurant was clearly geared towards its neighbourhood market - even the decor felt like you'd just walked into the office of power-dressing executives from the 80s, with a large walnut-effect curved receptionist's desk focusing your attention as you go in, and lots of black faux leather and highly-polished dark wood dotted about the place (which I was incredulous enough to discover has actually won a design award!)

Service was friendly and quite efficient, although we were never quite sure who was meant to be serving us, which caused delays come bill-paying time, with noone seeming to want to take responsibility for proffering our bill (I'm always tempted, in these circumstances, to start to leave - and see how quick they jump into action!). Nonetheless, during the meal itself the level of attention remained good and consistent, despite it having been nearly empty when we arrived, and packed nearly to capacity when we left. The only real staff complaint was that our order-taker seriously pushed us to have some side orders - which it turns out we definitely did not need - and as it is always hard for a customer to judge in advance whether these will be necessary I though this was bordering on naughty of them.

Food was a bit of a mixed bag - a starter of Flaked Ham Roulade comprised wonderfully flavourful tender meat, but was too heavily seasoned, and the lightly lubricated leaves that accompanied it were completely wiped out with a grain mustard dressing overloaded with salt.

The accompaniment of an incredibly bland potato salad went some way towards compensating for the seasoning, but could not save the dish overall, nor could the beautifully cooked 'crisps' which seemed to be something of an afterthought on the side of the plate. In contrast, the Prawn & Crayfish Cocktail (another retro hangover?) was squeakily fresh, with a perfectly balanced mayonnaise-heavy sauce marie rose.

The mains were perfectly acceptable, but perhaps given the size of the bill 'acceptable' isn't good enough. The Tomato Risotto was tasty - although lacking a distinctive tomato flavour which is surely the point - and was lifted by the gorgeously sharp Confit Tomatoes, which worked well with the little dollops of buffalo mozzarella and a single large, oven-dried basil leaf. Any chef who says heat kills basil needs to rethink things - this leaf was a crisp, airy, waft of essential basil-ness, and added a great edge to the mouthfuls it was part of.

Pan-fried Gnocchi with baby vegetables, sweet basil and pecorino cheese was, frankly, a disaster, swimming in a cream sauce (when was that mentioned on the menu?!) turned grey by the inclusion of purple-sprouting broccoli. In the chef's defence, the veg were all cooked perfectly, and the gnocchi was just the right texture, but this dish was more akin to something from a wannabe gastro-pub than fine dining.

Himself's Scottish Fillet of Beef was well cooked (that is to say, done as requested - rare) and the seasoning was spot on (unlike the other mains), and came with an oddly spiced but pleasantly earthy carrot puree, and an unctuous morel sauce.





For dessert, we had a Cinnamon Apple Upside-Down Cake, which was just on the border of too dry, but was feather light and heavy with cinnamon, and came with an 'apple tatin' ice-cream which was beautifully rich with an almost-burnt caramel flavour.

My Passionfruit Delice with mango & anise sorbet was the best dish of the night, dreamily light and creamy, with a wafer-thin jellied sponge layer at the bottom, and the whole thing packed with the concentrated sharp tang of passionfruit. The ice-cream was the perfect accompaniment, the mango flavour would have been too sweet on its own, but with the woody anise flavour it was just right. A simple trio of sorbets was simply divine, pure essence of fruit and all but one was perfectly churned - the apple had the characteristic chunky ice crystals of an ice that has been left out on the side to melt a bit and then clumsily re-frozen. But never mind, the flavour more than made up for it.

All in all - not a restaurant I'll be rushing back to (I choose restaurants based on the quality of their main courses - the desserts are an afterthought), but not one I'd sniff at if told I'd been booked into again. Mind you, next time I'd send the starter back - there's no forgiving coating a beautiful piece of pork in a cloud of salt.

Beef & Purple Sprouting Broccoli Spring Rolls

These little beauties are an absolute delight to make and to eat. Adapted from an Epicurious recipe for beef wonton, they are a wonderful balance of crisp rice pancake casing and tender juicy beef. Making spring rolls is not difficult, and I find the gently repetitive process very relaxing and enjoyable, you just need to make sure the pancakes don't dry out - a damp teatowel is essential! They are best served piping hot with an oriental dipping sauce made from soy, honey and lots of fresh ginger^*, but in fact because the rolls themselves are quite neutral on the spicing front they are also wonderful with more European flavours - try them cold, dipped in some cool creme fraiche spiked with lemon - perfect picnic food!

350g steak mince (best quality please!)
5 large stems of purple sprouting broccoli
1 medium white onion
1 egg, beaten
3 large cloves garlic
¹/₄ packet rice spring roll wrappers
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Oil for frying

Par-fry the beef in a very hot pan just for a minute or two, until it is just half-cooked (some of the meat browned, some still pink) - this allows you to cook the rolls for less time and keeps the meat tender and juicy. Allow to cool.

Finely dice the onion, crush the garlic and chop the broccoli into pieces about the size of your little fingernail. Combine in a bowl with the cooled beef, egg and seasoning.

Now, to assemble the spring rolls. Take a sheet of rice wrapper and lay it out on a spotlessly clean worksurface or chopping board (make sure you cover the remaining sheets with a damp tea towel or they'll dry out quicker than you can say "crispy"). Put two heaped tablespoons of the beef mixture about an inch from the end nearest you and spread it out in a thin line, leaving a border at the sides of about ¹/₂ inch. Brush all the borders with a little water and fold in the left and right sides, to seal the ends. Now gently roll the spring roll up away from you, brushing the edges with water a couple more times to ensure a good seal. Set on a baking tray with the joined end underneath and continue with the rest of the mixture and wrappers.

Preheat the oven to 160^oC (320^oF)Heat a little oil in a high-sided frying pan until very hot and carefully lower a few spring rolls into the oil at a time, and allow to brown on all sides - it should only take a minute or so if the oil's hot enough. As each spring roll is cooked, remove it to a baking tray and keep warm in the oven until you've cooked the whole batch.

Makes around 10 large rolls



*I always keep a bottle of Wagamama's delicious Gyoza dipping sauce in the fridge - the recipe is in the Wagamama Cookbook, and to go with these spring rolls I took 4 tbsp. of gyoza sauce, and mixed it with 2 tbsp. honey, a little-finger-sized knob of ginger, finely chopped, and a splash of rice vinegar.

Simpsons Restaurant - & musings on memory

The memory is a slippery thing, apparently randomly picking various aspects of life or specific moments to file as 'memorable' and seeming to discard the rest almost as though it had never happened. At least that it is how it is for me, but then my poor memory is a subject of long-running family jokes, until you ask me to sing the whole of Mozart's requiem, or quote every lyric from every song on the Now30! album. Music seems to bypass my poor memory functions, which I guess is a blessing since I once really did have to sing the whole of Mozart's requiem from memory (something rather hard to fake), whereas I can usually blag my way through forgetting people's names by extensive use of what I call cute-isms e.g honey, sweetie, darling, duck, bunnykins (and those are just the names I use for my boss! :p).

Even my ultimate passion, food, struggles to stay pinpointed clearly in my memory, especially now I eat out so regularly, and when one has, say, half a dozen or more tasting menus (each of between 5-12 courses) a year, I suppose it would tax even good memories to remember each course exactly, and - more specifically - remember where each meal was eaten. For this reason I am an avid collector of menus from the restaurants I visit, and it needs only the briefest glance at a resume of a meal for me to remember pin-sharp every taste, texture and feeling. Maybe my memory isn't so bad after all - it just requires a little poke to get it started. This need to have a written cue for remembering my gustatory past is another reason I started blogging, so a few pictures and descriptions will not only (hopefully) feed your imaginations, and maybe encourage you to visit some places I've been, but it also means when, in the dead of night, I'm struggling to remember exactly where I had that aaaaammaaaaazing melt-in-mouth lamb 'crackling', it is but the work of a minute to find it and fully recall it in all its gloriousness (it was at Petrus, by the way!)

Simpsons in Birmingham is the grown-up sister to one of the best local restaurants we have here in Warwickshire - Simply Simpsons in Kenilworth, a place that boasts arguably the best mushroom soup and steak tartare in the country, so I was keen to see what they could do with the oomph and power of the Michelin guide behind them (Simpsons in Birmingham has held 1 star for years, which it first won when it was located in Kenilworth originally). Fron the outside it's a very pretty little building, especially around Christmas - as you can see from the pic - with all those fairy lights to dazzle you, and inside it is plush and welcoming - lots of dark wood floors and furniture and high-ceilinged white walls. The staff were a smidge too 'comedy French' to my cynical eye - you know the sort, voices that drip with so much garlic and sneering that you can't help but suspect it of being put on - but once we'd settled down they were helpful and attentive, and the waiter who served us desserts nearly bounced with delight when I started picking out the bluest and strongest cheeses on the board - he'd clearly had me pegged as a Cheddar and Edam kinda girl!

Maybe it was because I had a camera and a notebook (note to other foodies-with-cameras - Simpsons is impeccably well lit), or maybe the Chef was just in a generous mood, but we were positively showered with amuse bouche - much to my delight, as the tasting menu had waaaay too much fish for me to be able to cope with, and I do like lots of little bites to get a good look at what a restaurant can do.

Thick slices of smoked salmon wrapped round dense, smooth cream cheese; little fingers of moulded prawn and crab, dipped in a nutty toffee-batter coating; an obscenely good Beignet of ham hock and roasted chicken, and a superb pearl barley risotto with little bites of artichoke, all nutty and creamy at the same time. A wonderful way to start a meal.

For what I will laughingly call 'starters' after that parade of mini-courses, we shared three dishes between us. Well, I say shared, each of us dominated one plate, pausing occasionally to pass mouthfuls to the others in the spirit of sharing.

My starter was a Terrine of ham hock, roast chicken and foie gras, soft boiled quail’s eggs, sweetcorn purée, truffle dressing - which was a struggle to defend from ravenous attacks, after everyone had got an idea of how good the ham hock would be from the amuse bouche. It was dreamily tender, with layers of silky smooth pate mixed perfectly with soft chunks of meat, and the sweetcorn puree was practically raw and squeakily fresh - oh so good. My friends had a delicious Bonbon of quail, pumpkin purée, cep marmalade, Madeira sauce and a solitary large Lobster and tiger prawn ravioli swimming in a little puddle of lemongrass velouté, both of them beautifully cooked with all the strong flavours carefully balanced.

Main courses came on the generous side, and indeed we all struggled to finish them, delicious though they were. A Duo of Aberdeenshire beef (fillet cooked on the bone & slow cooked cheek), served with bok choi, cauliflower purée, purple potato gnocchi, caper and raisin jus was a hearty and rich dish, with quite a strong offally hit and the beautifully coloured gnocchi were a wonderful sop for the juices. My slow-cooked belly of Wiltshire pork, glazed apple, black pudding and savoy cabbage was a bit hit and miss - the pork had had a serious amount of steam on it, meaning the crackling hadn't crisped up which was a shame, but the black pudding was superb, and although the pork didn't feel like it needed the sweet apple, it was an excellent mix with the dark blood pudding.

Probably the winner of the dishes was the roast loin of Finnebrough venison, pancetta and potato terrine, romanesco, quince purée, red cabbage, juniper berry sauce. The staff at Simpsons really know what they're about when it comes to sauces and vegetables, and the juniper sauce was well reduced but not too sticky, and the romanesco was just perfect, and went amazingly well with the rich but lean venison. For my friend the best part of the dish was the terrine on which the venison rested - wafer thin slices of potato which had been interwoven with slivers of pancetta, which had slowly melted during a long slow cooking - something I feel I will be required to replicate at home sometime soon!

A further amuse bouche arrived in the form of a passionfruit cream with sugared nuts, which was so delicious I nearly shouted for joy when The Housemate announced she was too full to eat her portion, and therefore I got two bites instead of one. A glass of tawny port insinuated its way onto the table, and I felt ready to approach the cheese board, full though I was - and not just cheese, we also had a 'salad' of poached pear with fourme d'ambert and a honey dressing, and some ice cream too!

Relaxing in the lounge after the meal with an aperitif, the evening took on a distinctly decadent feel, and I began to wonder if I should get myself a smoking jacket and order a cigar (they still offer these in the lounge after dinner, although how that works with the new law I'm really not sure!). Sadly, the impeccable service seemed to end the second we were removed from the dining room, and it took nearly half an hour to coax a bill out of anyone - and when it arrived we had been massively overcharged by mistake. I find it such a shame when this sort of thing happens, as it inevitably sticks in the mind and will no doubt make me think twice when I consider going back again, which is rather unfair on the chefs who'd worked so hard. Perhaps it would be just wise to request your bill before retiring from the dining room- and do be sure to check it carefully.

Massacre of the Innocents

Warning! Vegetarians and those of a squeamish disposition should probably not look at the pictures below!

A couple of us clubbed together at Christmas to purchase a suckling pig for a friend (the answer to the question "what do you buy the person who has everything they want?!") It arrived last week, shipped from the wonderful people at Pugh's Piglets who sell these little baby piggies via Forman & Field's gourmet food website.

Now, for some reason people who are perfectly happy to eat lamb get all funny about suckling pigs (and veal), hence the warning at the top of the post, but I have no such qualms, my only concern was whether or not the little baby had had enough time to develop enough flavour - reports from various people who've had suckling pig before have ranged from 'fantastic' to 'bland, not worth the bother', so I was a little nervous - these pigs don't come cheap! I needn't have worried however. The porcine infant took about 3 hours to cook, and after the first 30 minutes the four of us gathered for dinner were hovering ravenously around the oven, desperate for a bite, and when we did get to taste him it was a revelation, with thin crispy crackling and sweet tender meat that just fell apart at the touch of a fork. Divine.

Eating a whole animal has such in innately feast-like feel to it that we didn't bother trying to turn it into a formal roast dinner, but instead served the wee beastie on a huge platter á table, with nothing more than hunks of bread, a bit of salad and some apple sauce. The pan juices were so copious and concentrated they needed nothing more than to have the fat skimmed off (these piggies obvious carry plenty of 'puppy fat') and be plonked on the table for the meat and bread to be dunked into.

1) Take one piglet, unattractively sealed in vacpac plastic

2) Carefully wash him all over and pat dry

3) Season him well inside and out and flavour with your favourite herbs (we used lots of fresh thyme, sea salt, black pepper, and an apple for good measure)

4) Arrange him in your largest roasting dish and score the skin well with a stanley knife (for the best crackling!)

5) Roast him in the oven at 180^oC for 20 minutes per pound

6) Serve him in all his glory........

7) With a few accompaniments

8) Survey the remains

For those of you who are concerned that a 4kg pig costing £100 only fed four of us, I should mention that there was a mountain of leftovers for sandwiches, I made litres of stock from the carcass, and we were all immensely greedy, you could easily feed six, if not eight people with one of these babies.

Product Query

Paton Calvert make fantastic silicone flexible bakeware - cake moulds and tins that can go straight from freezer to oven, and when cooked your goodies just pop straight out without any sticking - very useful! I was therefore thrilled to get their newest bakeware mould for Christmas, but its mid-January now and I still can't work out what to cook with it, look:

It's a 'brickette' mould. Anyone care to suggest a use for it?

Foodie Notebook

Because this blog is mostly a food diary for my own reference, which I happen to enjoy sharing with other people, I hope you'll forgive me if I make a few personal product notes from recent (and not so recent) food experiences. A proper post with recipes will be forthcoming soon, I promise.

• Mimolet (Flandre) [as spelled by the cheese guru at the restaurant]- a delumptious cheese we sampled at the Waterside Inn, Bray. So far I have been utterly unsuccessful in finding it in Britain. Wikipedia lists what I must presume is the same thing here
  
  
• 2006 ORosal/Bodegas Terras Gauda/Rias Baixas (Spain) - The most divine white wine, tasted at Petrus as part of a selection of wines accommpanying the tasting menu. Found at www.terrasgauda.com
  
  
• St-Germain - An elderflower spirit, delicious mixed in the proportionn of 2 shots dry white wine, 1 ¹/₂ shots St-Germain and 2 shots sparkling water. As tasted at BBC Good Food Show '08
  
  
• Savina - 'Basil Paste' - one of the most delicious jarred pestos I've tasted, As tasted at BBC Good Food Show '08 & found at www.savinauk.com
  
  
• Gaymer's Orchard Reserve (cider) - sweet, medium dry and dry - all delicious. As tasted at BBC Good Food Show '08.
  
  
• Aromatic Sweet Lime cordial from www.bottlegreen.co.uk
  
  
• De Bortoli Wine's sweet & fortified wines - Cosa Dolce Syrah Dolcelatto (red) & Noble One (white). Heaven in a bottle. www.debortoli.com.au
  
  
• Clearly my year for dessert wines, also sampled at BBC Good Food Show '08 - Brown Brothers' Moscato and Cienna wines. I'll be making a lightly set jelly from the Moscato with a few white grapes - it's so light and floral I reckon it'll be great!
  
  
• Iberico Foods - delumptious Lomo from www.ibericofoods.com
  
  
• Well Hung Meat Company - this is on here provisionally, I haven't yet sampled the meat I bought, but the rib of beef was beautifully dark and marbelled. Verdict to be delivered. www.wellhungmeat.com

Technorati Tags: good food show, products, producers, food

Hail to the Producers

At the weekend I visited the Great British Cheese Festival in Oxfordshire, and had a whale of a time tasting literally hundreds of fantastic cheeses , plus biccies, ciders, chutneys and all sorts of other cheese-complimenting edibles.

As well as being a taste extravaganza, the Festival was just so fantastic in the incredibly diverse hordes of people attending - from babies to octogenarians, every demographic group was there, tucking into delicious British cheeses and giving voice to a hundred foodie opinions. Superb.

I'd like to take a moment to introduce to you the producers I particularly loved, as small producers (who made up 95% of the stand holders) simply cannot get enough publicity (and bigger producers still deserve it if their products are worth shouting about!). Hopefully one or two of you will be inspired to try their products and spread the word.
Read on....
Somerset cheese-makers Keen's Cheddar make stunning traditional Cheddars which they sell at a variety of ages - but for my money the 12 month cheddar is best, superbly mature and just crumbly enough to be interesting, but not so much that you can't get a proper slice intact. They also make the most creamy, dreamy butter from the whey of their cheeses - slathered on a cracker it's simply divine and so satisfying, you'll regret ever wasting time worrying about calories and eating vegetable-oil butter substitutes.

Goat's Cheese can be an acquired taste (especially the more 'goatey' ones), but if anyone can convert a doubter it's the Innes company, especially with their 'Bosworth Ash' - a lovely firm mature goats' cheese which I love crumbled onto an aubergine and tomato sauce for pasta, it also grills well when cut into little rounds and placed on little pieces of toasted bread.

I'm a bit of a chutney addict, not only for serving with cheese but also as an ingredient in stews and a fabulous lentil dish which I'll get round to writing up one day...The Saffron Kitchen make a fantastically spicey Goan Apple Chutney that's packed with fruit, and with even more punch. Perfect with a crumbly hard goat's cheese like the rich, salty and creamy mature hard goat's cheese from Delamere Dairy. My mother is intolerant of coo juice, and is always on the lookout for something suitable to use in cooking in place of Parmesan or cheddar and here I think it is, yummy as can be. Great nibbled straight from the block as well ;)

A fabulous spreadable cheese from the fantastically-named Two Hoots Cheese company (their logo is a couple of cartoon owls) - called simply, Garlic & Chive Spreadable. Think Boursin, but delicately flavoured, soft and incredibly fresh-tasting. Their website appears to be 'in development' so instead you can email them at twohoots.fc[at]btinternet[dot]com

Two wonderful products from The Gift of Oil. Firstly a wonderfully light but creamy olive oil - their 'Cretan Single Varietal' which has more fruity flavours than grassy (my preference). I'm not normally a fan of flavoured oils (I mean, why bother? If I want lemon in a dressing I'll add juice!) but their Basil oil is simply amazing - it's like sticking your nose into an Italian tomato salad - bags of fresh basil punch, without any hint of chemical or bitter afternote. I'd drizzle this over a salad any time of year and eat a little ray of summer sunshine as a result.

Last in the cheese lowdown,Godsell Cheese have a limited-edition Mature Single Gloster _{(not a mistake - that's how they spell it!)} cheese called 'Singing Granny' which I first mistook for a Parmesan. It's ideal to be grated onto risotto or spaghetti, but also wonderful sliced wafer-thin and served on water biscuits with a dab of chutney.

My alcohol of choice is cider (the dear ole Strongbow company make a fortune out of me), but as well as liking that most tacky pub-drink, my love affair with the fruity tipple began from old fashioned brews made more naturally and less fizzy. Bensons make damn fine juice, and even finer cider - their Archies Strong Cotswold Cider is on the lightly sweet side rather than dry, but is still quite a savoury drink (for something made out of apples) and is eminently quaffable.

And lastly, two non-edible products I wish to mention, also represented at the show:

My new favourite knife - the Taylor's Eye Witness 'Japanese Style Santoku Knife' - beautifully balanced, all-purpose slightly chunky knife with a razor-sharp blade. I'm using it for every possible job in my kitchen now, fantastic.

Mackenzie Hill - Maker of the most exquisite traditional Egg and Cheese storage cages - you know the beautiful wood boxes with mesh walls that allow the food to 'breathe' but keep out pests? Look at the website....soooo beautiful!

P.S. All the above are products I tasted (or used) and adored - there's no sponsorship deal going on here, these are personal endorsements, and not adverts requested or bought by the makers!

Technorati Tags: producers, festival, cheese, cider, chutney, food