Cheesed Off: Complaint Letter To A London Cheese Shop

Letter to La Cave a Fromage - a "wonderful cheese retailer" in London...

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to say how disappointed I am with a cheese I bought from your stall at the Thame Food Festival. It was particularly annoying because I’d read somewhere that you were decent cheesemongers and only sold the finest cheeses, and I’d gone there especially to sample your wares and restock my cheese selection for a supper I was hosting that night.

This certainly wasn't the case with the slab of Somerset Blue I had the misfortune to purchase. In short, it tasted and smelled of pear-flavoured ammonia, giving it a disconcerting whiff somewhere between nail varnish and a skate that’s been left in a plastic bag at the back of a broken fridge for two years. Even the wonderful crackers I'd purchased for the occasion couldn't cut the foul flavour.

Let me give you the background. When I examined the cheeses on display at your stall, a very chipper chap quickly directed me to your Somerset Blue - which he described, quite wrongly, as a “luvva-ly stilton we make ourselves”. It certainly looked mature, but I had no idea how much until I was unfortunate enough to try a mouthful. I should have been suspicious because I wasn't offered a sample to try, but at the reassuringly expensive prices foodie outfits like yours confidently charge these days, there is usually an assumed trust between purchaser and fleecer.

Instead, your cheese chap quickly got down to business and no sooner had his back been turned for a second to weigh a slab (was it a switch?), he said: "I tell you what mate, as it's the end of the day, you can have the whole piece for £6." He said it in such a cheery, and as I know now underhand way, that it seemed like he was doing me a favour.

How he wrapped it so tightly that the putrid smell of ammonia didn't seep out into the car, or poison ducks in passing villages, I have no idea. But as soon as I unwrapped it at home, the house was filled with an unearthly stench that reminded me of prahok, a fermented fish paste made in Cambodia, that had been soaked in tramps’ urine for a few days.

Words are useless for occasions like these, and I really can’t do justice to how repulsive it was. In fact, the unpleasantness of the smell was only matched by the revoltingness of the taste I had the misfortune to experience before I promptly spat the offending cracker out. When I checked with a cheese expert friend, a curd nerd if you will, he said it was obvious the cheese hadn't been stored properly, and the best place for it was the bin. Or perhaps an underground nuclear bunker designed for storing such biological abominations?

It is quite obvious that your cheese chap knew quite well how revolting the Somerset Blue was in the invidious tactics he used in disposing of his repulsive produce. But I would expect more from a supplier that immodestly, and unattributably, hails itself as a "wonderful cheese retailer".

On your website, you add: "Cheese is simple, it is mainly made of milk, but, at the same time complex..." Perhaps you mean toxic? Having re-read it a couple of times, you then really do go on to say: "Cheese is totally integrated in nature and based on secular savoir faire and human skills. We simply want to keep up with traditions and bring them into our modern world."

Well, you have certainly done the latter, and created something so contemporaneously hazardous, it warrants its own page in any good modern warfare manual. As for secular savoir faire, I imagine if Saddam Hussein was still around, it’s the sort of thing he’d use to terrorise the Kurds. Or perhaps even he wouldn’t have gone that far?

Yours sincerely,

Alex Watts

When Did Cooking Disappear Up Its Own Arse?

I finally persuaded a friend to lend me his vintage copy of The Art Of Simple French Cookery by the superbly named Alexander Watt, a notorious gourmet who spent much of his life lounging around in bistros - a name he tells us originated around the fall of Napoleon, when ravenous Russians encamped in Paris would wander around shouting “bistro, bistro!” (meaning “quick, quick” in their nasal tongue) as they entered cafes looking for something to eat.

No doubt beginning his day with pastis, moving on to red wine, and then finishing the night on brandy, Watt would gorge himself on bistro classics such as poularde Marie-Louise, boeuf en gelee, rognons a la moutarde, gibelotte de lapin, and always a plate of seasonal cheeses.

The accounts of his “gastronomic peregrinations” are a joy to read, as is his book, Paris Bistro Cookery, which adjoins the back of The Art Of Simple French Cookery like an upside down Siamese twin. As you flick through the pages, noting the splendid simplicity of the dishes, you can picture Watt swaying in the doorway of tiny Parisian kitchens, disrupting service as he scrawls into a grease-spattered notebook.

In one introduction, he quotes Alexandre Dumaine, the celebrated proprietor of the Hotel de la Cote d’Or, at Saulieu, and at the time of writing in the 1950s, a man widely considered to be the greatest chef in France, remarking that “the simplest dishes are often the most difficult to prepare to perfection”. And it got me thinking about when modern cooking finally disappeared, irretrievably, up its own arse.

Talk to chefs and food writers now and they’re obsessed with 480-hour slow-braised pork, moss infusions, locally-picked weeds, ingredient reversals, baby vegetable purees, quintuple-cooked chips, and anything else they can jam into a sous vide bath. When they’re not boring you to death about acidifier particle accelerators or the optimum water bath temperature for mackerel, they’re waffling on about their new £2,000 Swiss gelato machine, or their latest experiment with meat glue.

“I’ve been transglutaminasing duck skin on to chicken legs - it’s wonderful for the barbecue,” I honestly heard one food nerd say the other day.

It was at a highly pretentious food convention I’d been invited along to. Everyone had to bring something. There were the predictable, umami-filled burgers, stacked full of shaved ambergris, sun-crisped tomatoes and parmesan, and vac-packed offerings that had been poaching away since Christmas. All the vegetables were hand cut, the fruit hand picked, there were twin shots of soup, and trifles with fancy labels boasting of Amontillado sherry. The bread was savoury enriched or griddled or both, the cheese shaved, the custard thick set, the apples brandy-stewed, and of course the stilton soufflés were twice-baked and organic. And that was just the less pompous stuff.

Celebrity chef Ted Allen cooks a recipe from his new book Pretentious Foodie Bullshit...

It was a haven of unadulterated pretentiousness, and I would like to have said I felt out of place, but of course I went along with the head-nodding and the nerdy chat about flavour enhancers, emulsifiers, and the mysterious night-time activities of enzymes. When it came to my own offering, I suddenly became quite embarrassed.

“How long did you confit the chicken?” they wanted to know.

“Definitely vac-packed with the marinade,” someone else butted in.

“What, and then flash-seared?” another serious-looking, where’s-my-TV-show, wannabe asked.

How could I tell them I’d knocked up the marinade in the two minutes I had to rush out of the door for a forgotten appointment?

When I’d returned a few hours later, having left instructions for the chicken thighs to be taken out of the fridge after a few hours and then roasted, something magical had happened. The chicken was almost falling apart. The colour was a rich gold, and the jelly left behind made the best dripping sandwiches I’ve had in a long time.

But it was the reaction that was the biggest surprise. The food bores were licking their lips and going back for more, and the hyperboles came so thick and fast, I began to fear it was some sort of cruel joke. But no, the superlatives continued.

How could I tell them the truth? All the meals I’d spent days slaving over, spanking my wallet with expensive, unnecessary ingredients, and I’d never had such praise in my life. And it was for a chicken dish that could hardly have been simpler to make, and one that I hadn’t even cooked myself. I fended off the questions and then wandered off to a corner of the patio to ring my accomplice for the secret. How long had it been in there? What temperature? Top of the oven or bottom?

“Can’t remember, I just put it in the oven,” she slurred.

As people kept pressing me for the recipe, I was too embarrassed to confess its simplicity, and then I stopped myself. I thought about Paris Bistro Cookery, and how the chef Auguste Perrot had taken pleasure in preparing the simplest of dishes for the exclusive gastronomic Club de la Casserole. Dishes like Foies de Volaille Andre (chicken livers fried in butter with finely chopped onions), and Les Tomates Lucien (basically scrambled eggs with tomatoes).

Had cooking skills advanced so much that these lowly dishes are now to be pitied, I thought? I remembered Dumaine’s words: “Cooking is not just a matter of pressing buttons. One should forget the gadgets and the tricks...” So I told them the truth and they quickly became bored and went back to their PacoJets.

Here is my embarrassingly simple recipe with a highly pretentious title, named after the cook who can’t remember how she cooked it...

CHICKEN MARIE-ANNE (serves 4)

8 chicken thighs, with skin

2 Teaspoons Paprika

1 Teaspoon Turmeric

1 Teaspoon Garam Masala

3 Tablespoons Sunflower Oil

2 Cloves Garlic, crushed

1 Teaspoon Salt

Put the salt and garlic cloves in a vintage, hand-crafted pestle and mortar, and bash away for a few seconds. Put in a bowl, add the spices and oil and mix until you’ve got a thick paint. Dip each thigh in the marinade, making sure they are thoroughly coated. Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge for three hours. Pre-heat an oven to an unknown temperature. Put the thighs on a metal tray and get someone to cook them for you. Or as a Russian encamped on the Place de la Concorde might say today: “Simples.”