No beefing about my olives!

Preparing marinated olives

NOW I like a nice posh olive and always enjoy them in restaurants but I seldom buy them these days. I know, as a foodie, I should but I love marinating olives to fill quiet moments in the kitchen. OK, they may not be as good as fancy kalamatas or whatever but they finish up a lot better than they started. And cheaper.

I first got the idea from Michael Peano when he ran Restaurant Peano in Barnsley (he probably used more superior olives to start with) and I seem to remember Wayne Bosworth at Rafters doing it. He certainly preserved little goats cheeses. In my olive buying days I used to admire the lovely displays when Nonna’s had its deli in Hickmott Road. I’d see olives marinated with little strips of orange or lemon peel and think ‘I can do that.’ And as I did it more and more I bought them less and less. I am sure some of my regular foodie blogging chums will be horrified!

If you fancy having a go, this is what you do. I usually buy jars or tins of brined pitted green olives pitted black ones from the supermarket, drained but not washed so you don’t lose the saltiness. I mix them together in a bowl and pour over a little olive oil (not virgin) then whatever herbs and spices take my fancy. This last time there were chopped rosemary, thyme and chives from the garden, plus black and pink peppercorns, coriander, garlic and twists of peel. Sometimes I add chilli. The oil helps the herbs stick.

Sterilise enough jars and pour a little more plain olive oil in the bottom to avoid air pockets. Then add the olives. When the jars are half full poke a bay leaf or rosemary sprig down the side and fill to the top. Add enough oil to cover and seal. If you have any leftover olives they can be eaten immediately. The jarred olives are ready after about a week.

Then, when you have finished all the olives, strain off the oil which will by now be considerably improved and use it for cooking or in a salad dressing: a case of two things for the price of one.

Provided you sterilise properly and don’t use your fingers but a spoon the olives should not spoil. I’ve only had a couple of occasions when the contents have gone a bilious green. And don’t store them in the fridge because the oil can solidify. Do make sure the olives are always covered in oil.

It’s fun. It’s cheap. You can experiment. I’m thinking of marinating olives in Chinese or Indian spices. And stuffing them with anchovies. Once you start you can’t stop!

The oil will clear!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t trifle with this jelly!

Jelly and ice cream the Rutland way

 

THERE’S always a moment of tension, isn’t there, when you rush to praise a dish to the head chef only to find it was made by someone else in his kitchen?

It happened to me the other day at the Rutland Arms on Brown Street, Sheffield, with a super little dessert of fennel ice cream and cucumber jelly (‘yes really,’ as it said on the blackboard menu). Coming after two classy small plates featuring octopus and duck croquettes I was bowled over by its refreshing qualities.

Unusual flavours of ice cream are not uncommon and as a lover of the aniseedy qualities of fennel I was pleased it came through clearly. As I always find the taste of cucumber elusive (it’s wasted on me in fancy gin and tonics) I was delighted it registered so brightly in the jelly. I fancy there might have been a bit of mint in it. The combination of the two was a delight.

To be fair to the Rutland’s head chef Richard Storer, or Chef Rico as he calls himself on Twitter, he didn’t turn a hair and was keen to give the credit to his assistant Kevin Buccieri. “We were all surprised how well it turned out. He’s excelled himself,” he said.

The Rutland is an enigma wrapped in a chip butty, which seems to be the most popular order, at least at lunchtimes. It’s not what you expect from a city boozer even if it is in the city’s Cultural Quarter. In other cities this inventive, clever, passionate cooking would have them queuing at the door. Here they ask chips. The Slutty Butty is popular here.

I visit it once a month to sample the food and meet old colleagues but I can’t wean them away from their butties even when I eat in front of them. They don’t know what they’re missing. Each small plate costs £4 or three for a tenner. For this you could have a burger but it won’t give your tastebuds such a treat.

Looking sexy – the octopus

The octopus arrived as a brightly coloured tentacle lolling seductively across the plate on chopped up sections of a fellow limb. Octopus scores more for texture than flavour. This was slithery, firm and tender. The tastebuds were treated to three kinds zing: a lemon and caper butter, pickled chilli and XO sauce, a favourite with Rico. “If you see a dish with lots of foreign ingredients, it’s mine. If it looks like something that comes from a chef who does Modern British Cooking, it’s Kevin.”

The duck had been cooked like a confit and shredded into rillettes, combined with Hoisin sauce. Rico has been raiding the oriental supermarkets again.The meat was rolled into balls, given a crunchy coating and fried. They came on a salad, a nod to that classic staple of Chinese restaurants, crispy duck.

For a tenner, it was a pretty memorable lunchtime. And so was that cucumber jelly. Perfect. “Kevin was at Sat Bains’ (the Michelin-starred Nottingham restaurant) the other week. His brain has not quite recovered,” joked Rico. If that’s what it does to your cooking, I’d better book a table!

*86 Brown Street, Sheffield S1 2BS. Web: www.therutlandarmssheffield.co.uk

Duck croquettes with Hoisin sauce

No Name, this is the pack drill

Griddled scallop starter at No Name

IT’S a beautifully made piece of ciabatta, I think, as I bite into it at No Name in Crookes. Look how it almost quivers, the open crumb and the delightfully olivey taste. It’s almost a shame to dunk it into the bowl of balsamic and olive oil.

I can recall when ‘Italian bread’ here was half a breadcake wiped with garlic. Then it was called Franco’s Pizzeria, no great shakes for food but chef patron Franco D’Egido ended the evening singing the Wild Rover while his wife Elaine let off balloons.

We went back 20 years later to find Franco had retired, it was still Italian but in different hands and the head waiter was called Nigel.

I turn to my dining companion, fellow blogger Craig ‘Mr Ciabatta’ Harris, a foodie and Italophile so keen on authenticity he slips out of bed early to make his weekly batch. What does he think? He nods enthusiastically.

Crispy chicken beats KFC

No Name is tiny, a micro bistro. It seats 21 or 24 if you all breathe in. So is the menu with just 3-4-2 choices at each course. The prices aren’t micro, though, so a meal for two would be banging on at around £60 and I get a bit of a grump on when Craig, who books, tells me there are two sittings. If I spend that money I want the table all night, particularly at a weekend. But then again, if you’ve got a place that small, it helps pay the rent.

Happily Crookes hasn’t got the grump because No Name, which opened in June, has been a runaway success in an area which is all pizzas and pakoras and where Modern British Cooking has not previously reared its head. “Simply outstanding,” one diner trilled on TripAdvisor.

The owner-chef is Thomas Samworth, 33, one of Mick Burke’s star pupils at Sheffield College, who won the prestigious Maurice des Ombiaux in Belgium, a junior chefs’ European Cup, back in 2003. After a spell at Gary Rhodes’ W1 in London he came home to head up the kitchen at Rowley’s in Baslow, as well as the village’s Devonshire Arms. We’ve eaten his food at both places as well as at the Schoolrooms in Low Bradfield, although he had fewer tattoos back then.

When I saw the menu (there is no website, just a Facebook page) it looked very safe: butternut squash soup, lamb shank and duck confit. I was proved wrong. It’s the way he cooks them as someone very nearly said.

There is now no Nigel front of house but there is a very expectant Mrs Megan Samworth and the hope skitters across my mind that she won’t give birth between my crispy chicken starter and confit main. “If I drop my food it stays on here,” she laughs, patting her belly.

Megan and Thomas Samworth

I had no idea what crispy chicken (£7) was but it turned out to be a sort of chicken rillettes bound in Bechamel and shaped into a crispy coated lozenge. That’s very modern and also very old, a souped up version of croquettes. What soups it up is a sauce of blitzed sweetcorn and a good helping of fancy micro mushrooms, lightly pickled.

The rest of the table has scallops (£8), three very sweet pieces, seared one side only, with apple caramel, hazelnuts and celeriac. Craig, a celeriac junkie, wished for a bit more oomph with the vegetable.

We men went for the confit (£16), served boned on top of a triangle of wonderfully crisp and starchy rosti potato, so good it threatened to upstage the main ingredient. This was a lovely dish, helped along with earthy kale and an elegant pickled blackberry jus.

My wife had an excellent piece of stone bass, nothing like sea bass but it’s an ugly blighter otherwise known as Atlantic wreckfish, now becoming popular. Craig’s wife Marie enthusiastically offered portions of her ultra-tender lamb shank to share.

In his micro kitchen (just two rings) Thomas said he had got fed up cooking fish and chips and gammon steaks in country pubs and wanted to rustle up the kind of food he liked to eat out. Some pop-up nights at his family home helped establish a following and by early summer the place was open.

And why No Name? “I wanted an air of mystery,” he said. Doubtless he was thinking of The Man Behind the Curtain in Leeds. Well, there’s no mystery why No Name is popular. It’s the good cooking. It’s also BYO so that sort of compensates for speedy eating.

We finish with either spiced plums or a good chocolate mousse with honeycomb. A great night out and we wish Megan and Thomas all the best with the birth. Let’s hope the owners of No Name come up with one for the baby!

#253 Crookes, Sheffield. Tel 0114 266 1520. Open Wed-Sat night. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pg/NO-NAME-Sheffield-1695321363841840/about/?ref=page_internal

 

Tiny but perfectly formed