Bar du Boucher, Bordeaux

By: Mrs Robot

Ever have one of those days when the weather seems to be against you? We had one in Bordeaux; it was chucking down. But in the end we had the last laugh, as it drove us into a little bar we'd probably otherwise not have gone into. We love a bit of rock music, but on holiday tend to look for somewhere a little more traditional feeling, and in Bordeaux we'd been looking for the perfect steak Bordelaise. As it was, it was raining, we needed to hide from the deluge, and a beer plus Guns 'n' Roses seemed like a brilliant idea. I liked this place as soon as we walked through the door; I like a pub that feels well-worn, like it has regular patrons and doesn't give a stuff about being fancy enough to attract finicky types.

We hadn't noticed the name of the bar. Bar du Boucher: Bar of the Butcher. Had we not wandered deeper in we might never have realised what a treasure trove it was. The ceiling's vaulted, and the room itself long and slightly gloomy. The front is tables and bar, like in the photo at the top of this page, then the bar continues, with stools alongside it. We headed for those rather than a table to get a look at the beer pumps and there, by the opposite wall, is the meat counter. Beyond that there's a restaurant area with an amazing light made of pans – a pandelier, if you will – above the tables.

So, picture this: a slightly soggy pair of robots enjoying plenty of rock music and a pleasant beer or two, and right beside us, constantly drawing our eye, was the magnificent meat counter. We couldn't eat anywhere else that day!

You don't just order steak in the Bar du Boucher, or even the cut of the steak. You get a choice of the breed of cow your steak is from. We both had Blond d'Aquitaine, the local breed, and of course we had it bleu. In case you're wondering, it's the middle joint in the front row of meat in the picture above. Both it and the cut to the left of it are entrecotes, but the incredible dark colour of the Blond d'Aquitaine made it an automatic choice. The minimum size for a piece of meat is 200g, and after that the size is up to you. There's also duck breast (stuffed or plain) and andouillette on the counter, but really the cow is the star here.

I had my steak with potatoes dauphinoise, Mr Robot had chips, and the dauphinoise is definitely the way to go. We washed it down with a local wine. If the meat is impressive, the wine list matches it. Several of the bottles on there, vintage wines from some of the best-known chateaux in Bordeaux, were priced in four figures. Ours was nothing like those, so if you're hankering for an old Margaux, it's still there waiting for you.

Oh, and that steak Bordelaise? We never found one, but a charming local couple we met at lunch on another day explained that steak Bordelaise wasn't something the Bordelaise themselves really go for anyhow – a dish of lampreys stewed with leeks is the thing they really consider typical. I don't know if that's my thing. I do know if we're in Bordeaux again, we'll be heading back to Bar du Boucher, rain or shine.

Still greedy...

By: Mrs Robot

Even when our appetites for blogging wane, our appetites for food do not! We've new cookbooks to talk about, and lovely food to share. I shall whet your appetite – and hopefully summon the spirit of my blogging passion – with this little shot of today's lunch. Ma po tofu with rice for me (though I couldn't identify any meat in it, and usually I'd expect pork) and braised beef in udon noodle soup for Mr R, at Chili Family Noodle in Bath.

Chili Family Noodle is always really busy, especially during term times when all the students are back in town. It's an unpretentious little noodle bar at the bus station, and the food is really good. My tofu was packed with the tastes of black bean, chili bean sauce and Szechuan pepper, and I loved every mouthful. That said, I did envy those noods. Maybe we'll have to go back...

Lunch at Chez Dominique, Bath

By: Mrs Robot

Yesterday was my birthday (45 – might not be a 'big one' but it certainly feels big enough) so Mr Robot took me to Chez Dominique in Bath for lunch. Usually we go out in the evening for birthdays, but my workplace gives us our birthdays off so I'd booked a salon appointment in town that morning and we decided to make it a lunch date instead. Chez Dominique's a la carte menu is available all day, and we'd fancied going there for ages. It's just over Pultney Bridge, near our dentist, so we've both looked longingly at the menu on the way back from being savaged by the hygienist.

Mr Robot had booked the afternoon at work and said it felt very much like being on holiday, as we were eating nice food on a lovely day. It also felt a little like bunking off as he'd been in work that morning and then left it all behind.

But you're not here for tales of bunking off, you're here for food! I had smoked eel salad for a starter, and Mr Robot had a ham hock salad. Mine included chicory and apple, and both had a very nice dill dressing on that made us think yes, we really do need to grow some dill in the garden this year. The sweet crunch of the apple and bitter crunch of the chicory contrasted nicely with the soft, smoky eel and crispy smoky bacon.

For our main course we decided to share the chateaubriand from the Specials board. During our meal we heard the manager telling other customers the meat comes from Walter Rose – well, that explains why it was so good. We had it rare, because neither of us sees any point in having steak any other way. It came with fried mushrooms, salad leaves and frites. I'm fussy about mushrooms, only liking them when they're very fresh and very well fried, and these were perfect. (Honestly, stewed mushrooms are the worst.)

Mr Robot had the pear and almond tart for pudding, while I went for the cheese. This was good cheese. For one thing, there was an acceptable cheese-to-biscuit ratio. Too many places load up on (cheaper) fancy biscuits and stinge on the cheese, in my opinion. Chez Dominique makes sure that when you order the cheese, cheese is the star. And every cheese has a decent amount of punch.

I can't tell you how much it all cost as I didn't pay, but Mr Robot seemed to think the price was jolly reasonable, and we both agreed it's somewhere we'd go back to.

Our Thadingyut meal

By: Mrs Robot

We do a meal for Thadingyut each year. We started after visiting my grandfather McDonald's home town in Burma/Myanmar at Thadingyut some years back. We don't celebrate it in any traditional or religious way, we just cook Burmese food for it. (I guess in that way it's like our Christmas, which we also mark but not in any religious fashion.) 

In previous years we've made noodle dishes, but this year I made amethar hnat, a classic Burmese beef curry. I got the recipe from Easy Burmese Recipes, and tested it out in advance. We actually had Emily and Amy's version at their Rangoon Sisters supper club, and theirs was richer. As the writer of Easy Burmese Recipes states her version uses less oil and more onions, when I made our Thadingyut meal I left out an onion and added extra oil, and preferred the flavour, but it's good either way.

Alongside the curry I served boiled rice, two salads (tomato with crispy shallots and bean with toasted peanuts, though they were French beans not long bean, all dressed with fish sauce and lime), and chicken broth flavoured with garlic, coriander and a dab of yellow bean. 

The night I served it I was feeling pretty tired and not really in the mood to do the salads. The temptation to slap the curry on top of some rice and call it a day was strong! But I'm glad I didn't. If you're going to mark an occasion, it's best to make it special. Who knows what special dish I'll whip up next year?

Rangoonies (never say die*)

By: Mr Robot

It's been a busy, exciting time at Casa Robot lately. The other weekend for example we had the great joy of heading to London for a Rangoon Sisters Burmese supper club.

We've been Twitterchums with them for a few years so I'm not going to pretend to be objective here - best consider this more an extended gloat than a review - but while it was lovely to meet up with them, I can honestly say with hand on internal fluid-pump that the food alone was worth the trek.

And it's fair trek at that - from darkest Wiltshire to the big city, out into Zone 3, past Olympic Stratford (and what a corporate hell-hole that looks) to the charming Coffee7 at Forest Gate. Hosted, incidentally, by Masterchef hero Michael Sanders, who turns out to be jolly nice indeed.

Having sufficiently disrupted Emily & Amy's preparations, we settled down with very fine lemongrass-infused G&T's, and gently thudded the table in anticipation, in the manner of spoilt schoolchildren, which we basically are.

First up by way of an amuse, we had some delightful Shan tofu: essentially a chickpea batter that's been set and deep fried, and served with tamarind dipping sauce. This was great because when Mrs R attempted it she completely destroyed the fryer, so we've been waiting years to try the stuff. Unlike her basket-o-goop, these were light and crisp, mildly nutty and went very well with the tamarind. They disappeared in seconds amid the first of my many curses at being forced to share.

What is this "sharing plate" of which you speak?

The first course proper was Nangyi Thoke, a spiced chicken noodle salad with squillions of accompaniments (as is the Burmese wont) that I've had a go at making in the past. Not only was it absolutely delicious, it was gratifyingly close to my own efforts. 10 points to me.

More importantly it set us straight to reminiscing about the food we'd had in Burma: the little cafe on Sule Pagoda Road in Yangon; the breakfast curry in Pyin Oo Lwin; street food at a festival in Mandalay... Now you may say "I should hope so - that's kind of the point" but this was the most familiar dish of the evening and these are such happy memories for us it was wonderful to have them brought back so powerfully.

Nangyi Thoke - humbly suggesting you rethink your idea of chicken salad

In any case, the other guests around us - not familiar with Burmese food - loved it too, so there.

Main course was a three-pronged affair of smoked aubergine, the traditional pickled-tea salad (Laphet Thoke) and a fabulous deep, rich shin of beef curry called Amehnat we'd never had before - heavy with (I think) ginger and turmeric and which I WILL have the recipe for, or we shall have words. It was stunning. I know the photo's dreadful but if you could smell it you'd understand - you don't mess around with that in front of you.

Yes, yes - how could I be so mean to one so lovely?

The tea salad was a proper treat since it's uniquely Burmese and not easily found. To my mind this well exceeded the one we had in Burma (a tourist trap in Bagan - the guide let us down that day), though Mrs Robot managed to get bonus shrimp so struggled a bit. Frankly that just meant one less competitor for me.

More tea, vicar? Laphet Thoke

Pudding isn't really a thing in Burma but we weren't let down with a pavlova riffing on the Burmese favourites of mango and coconut, and the most extraordinary jaggery praline that's now top of my list of Swank Things To Put On Things. Pick any sense you like, it was as beautiful as it looks.

Mangoconut Jaggery-pokery

Amy and Emily popped out from the kitchen afterwards (along with their respective husbands who'd been on waiter duty) so it was great to be able to chat a bit afterwards. If I was a touch over-gushy in my praise, well what are you going to do? Anyway, there had been Wine.

All too soon we had to brave the TfL line and head back to the relative comforts of Zone 1, but given my way I'd still be there now.

I understand the next supperclub is planned for some time in September so keep an eye on their website - if you're even vaguely nearby, it's well worth it. Even in Zone 3.



*Mrs Robot insisted I did that in the hope it would make people watch The Goonies, which seems cruel and unusual. Besides, for all I know "die" could be something really sweary in Burmese, in which case they may well say it quite a lot.

All images (c) PP Gettins

Retro Recipe: corned beef fritters

By Mrs Robot

When you think about it, the only reason people ate a ration book diet during the second world war was because they didn't have any option. Nonetheless, it seems to be a period people have great curiosity about, and when we were in Devon at the start of May I picked up a little book called Favourite Ration Book Recipes. One simple recipe was these corned beef fritters, which mainly consist of mashed potato and corned beef, plus some onion. They were very tasty, but one of the least-appetising-looking things I've cooked in a very long time. Bless him, Mr Robot ate his too.

Making the fritters was a simple matter of mashing everything together, and it's there that I suspect I went wrong: I overworked the mixture so it was very well blended but also extremely soft. (That said, it tasted pretty good at this stage.) The recipe called for a bit of milk, but I didn't add any, and even so the mixture was very moist. Chunkier bits of potato and beef would have had more texture, and might have fried up better. Also, the recipe said nothing about coating the patties with flour, which is something that I think might have improved the frying process, and might have stopped them sticking in the pan. Flour was rationed during the second world war, but bread was not, and breadcrumbs would have made a good alternative coating for the patties. I often turn leftover cottage pie into little mashcakes and they work really well, but these were too soft and attached themselves firmly to the frying pan.

As I had plenty of leftover mash, I fried up another onion with some cumin seeds, and worked it into the mash along with a finely-chopped green chilli, chopped fresh coriander and a little garam masala. This mixture was made into balls, dipped into a batter made of gram (chickpea) flour and water and deep fried. Much more satisfactory - and here's a photo, just to prove I can cook with leftover mash!

Recipe Review: Bun bo Hue

From Noodle! by MiMi Aye

 

by: Mr Robot

For some reason I got it into my head that this beef & lemongrass delight was called Bun ho Hue rather than Bun bo Hue so I fear I've been saying something absolutely dreadful for the last fortnight. So in the finest tradition of men everywhere - I'm deeply sorry for whatever it was I said. 

I wouldn't have persisted with my error quite so long were it not such an involved dish: I'd planned to cook it last week but given the vast array of meat needed, I had to put a special order in with the butcher (who did us proud as always) and try to control my impatience.

Crucial to any good recipe: vast amounts of MEAT

Pork bones, shin of beef, pork hock and oxtail all get simmered together for about 3 hours to make a wondrously rich broth served over noodles. Simple eh?

Well kind of, but there's plenty of other stuff going on - not least 12 stalks of lemongrass (basically clearing out Asda's supply for the week) - along with onion, ginger, garlic and pineapple. Supposedly rock sugar too but all I could find was palm so that had to do.

Lemongrass, and lots of it. Also pineapple, onion, ginger, sugar and shrimp paste

One thing that gave me some concern was the shrimp paste. Four tablespoons of the stuff. It's an ingredient I treat with something between caution and terror being so very pungent and frankly waaaay too fishy for comfort. But if I've learned anything from MiMi's recipes it's to shut the fuck up and do as you're told. So I did.

And of course I needn't have worried. Not only is the shrimp paste distributed in several litres of liquid (I'd kind of over-ordered on the meat!) but the hours of simmering cooked out the fishiness to leave an intense savouriness. A bit like people say anchovies will, only they lie.

In fact it was a fascinating process. Early on the smell (and an unwise tasting) was pretty grim and I feared we'd end up with a horrible waste, in every sense. But as the afternoon wore on it just smelled better and better.

This is a recipe that demands faith of its followers, yea verily and they shalt be rewarded.

A big pot o' love

So after a considerable period of lounging on the sofa saying things like, "Gosh that's starting to smell good" and, "Ooh I just got a big whiff of lemongrass" and, "Bollocks - I've just remembered I meant to save half that oxtail for something else" we eventually haul ourselves up to see what we've got.

Sorry but it actually was pulled

The recipe says to slice up the pork and beef but so very tender was it that I just gave it a Paddington hard stare and it basically dismantled itself. Perhaps that meant I'd overcooked it but it was so delicious I couldn't give a monkeys.

At this stage I did take the opportunity to remove the bigger lumps of fat and strip the oxtail from the bones. I've no doubt this would give any self-respecting Vietnamese person the shudders but I'm still dealing with the trauma of my Grandmother's cookery so believe me, it was for the best.

From there it's very simple - pile noodles, meat, broth and garnishes in a bowl and start grunting.

Do not forget the trimmings

As with so many of these recipes though, the garnish isn't some optional extra - it's vital to the overall balance of the dish. So far we have a bowl of complexity but huge - in fact challenging - richness. You need something to balance that out: in this case lime, blanched onion, chilies and coriander leaves give acidity an freshness and take the whole thing up a level. 

In fact Mrs R commented that my laying thin slices of lime on top of the warm broth caused the lime scent to rise above the bowl making the whole thing more aromatic. Naturally I feel quite smug about that even though I'd only done it to look pretty. Remember that then.

I should also have had beansprouts on there but due to the delay getting my meat in, they'd gone a bit manky, which was a shame because they would have given a nice textural difference. As it was the only crunch was from the onions and of course I didn't want to overdo those.

Overall this is a lengthy operation - a good four hours start to finish - but it's quite undemanding and most of that time is your own. Given the quantity and variety of meats I'd consider this an Occasion dish, for which a 4-hour simmering one-pot is ideal, and could see it making a great alternative for those jaded by the Christmas turkey. Because what you get after all that time and very little effort is something rich, fragrant, complex and comforting - it felt like a real treat on a miserable grey weekend.

 

Update: Mercifully the recipe makes a HUGE quantity and after accidentally losing a whole day to the pub, I can testify that it's a wonderful restorative for the filthily hungover...

 

 

As ever, if you were hoping to blag a free recipe here you’ll be disappointed – we don’t do that. These cooks need to make a living just like anyone else. However you can buy a signed copy of the book direct from MiMi's website, and isn't that much better really?

All images (c) PP Gettins