February 2009 Archives

The Birmingham Mail is supporting the government's Change4Life initiative, which aims to get us all - particularly youngsters - exercising more and eating better.

It's a cause that's close to my heart because I'm appalled by the lack of importance that many people attach to eating well and eating healthily.

Too often mothers and fathers are prepared to serve salty, fatty, sugary junk food to their children rather than well-balanced, home-produced meals.

Too often kids are allowed to eat sweets, crisps and biscuits rather than being encouraged to eat fruit.

Sad as it seems, I've been glued to the television screen as MasterChef progressed this year.

The series started slowly and I don't think the contestants are as accomplished as in previous series, but the three who are left are a decent bunch of chaps.

It's the final bit of the final tonight and I predict beardy Aussie bloke will win.

He's shown the most progress and seems - in the words of one of the unbearable presenters - to turn out generally "exceptional plates of food".

A colleague found an old copy of the Michelin guide from the 1970s and though none of Birmingham's restaurants had stars, several places got a mention.

One was an old favourite of mine - Lorenzo's, which was situated just opposite the Bull Ring and, I seem to remember, was run by a guy who was also a football agent.

I ate there several times, most memorably with the musician Herbie Hancock before attending his gig at Barberella's.

The food, I recall, was good, but pretty typical Italian fare.

Drink's a laugh, right? Going out with your mates and drinking so much that next morning you can't remember what you did. Throwing up. Falling over.

Let's not mince words. Over the years I've enjoyed many booze-fueled nights and still enjoy what a good drink.

Indeed, I never wholly trust people who don't enjoy a tipple. Why are they so worried about drinking? Do they become homicidal maniacs the moment a glass touches their pursed, disapproving lips?

However, an incident at the weekend made me reconsider.

I paid my third visit - and first since it got a Michelin star - to the Harborne restaurant Turner's last night.

My wife and I went with friends and ate from the midweek Auberge menu, which offers three courses at a cost of £17.95.

The food, service and ambience were fantastic and there'll be a full review in the Birmingham Mail's Food + Drink section next week.

If there's a bigger food bargain in Birmingham right now, I'd be very surprised.

Why do so few restaurants feature game on their menu, especially when there is such a trend towards seasonal foods?

At the weekend I bought some wild ducks (dead, plucked and ready to cook rather than feathered, waddling and quaking) and they were fabulous - the breasts briefly fried and the legs poached long and slow in duck fat in a wok.

I've previously bought pheasant, partridge and venison from the same source - Mr Fish in the indoor market at the Bull Ring - and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Yet restaurant menus seldom feature such meats.

Come Dine With Me is the sort of appalling television that is impossible to resist. Celebrity Come Dine With Me even more so.

Last night's edition featured four allegedly famous faces, only two of whom - Edwina Currie and Christopher Biggins - I knew.

The standard of the cooking was truly awful. Milk rather than plain chocolate in a dessert? Ready-cut beans in a microwave? A fish cooked so long it must have been drier than sand?

Does fame involve the surgical removal of it recipients' tastebuds?

A colleague wandering around one of Birmingham's northern suburbs returned asking if I'd ever heard of chitterlings, which he'd seen in a butcher's window.

Not only heard of them, but eaten them.

For the uninitiated, they're intestines - usually from pigs - and were once common fare among working class families.

We lived with my gran in Perry Common until I was five and I remember she used to cook them - and, these being the days when kids finished what they were given, I ate them without question.

Tamarind - used as a souring agent in eastern cookery - is a fabulous thing, giving tang and fruitiness to dishes.

Fresh tamarinds are hard to come by, but pulp and pressed blocks of the fruit are easily to find.

I made a sauce recently, adding lots of honey to counteract the sharpness of the fruit, and it went beautifully with duck breasts.

The plan this weekend is to try making a tamarind-infused gravy to accompany roast venison.

Forget the "credit crunch". There's a much better phrase to describe the predicament of the world's financial institutions.

My wife and I last night went out for dinner at the excellent Lasan with a couple of Spanish lecturers who are involved with the course my wife runs at BCU.

One used the wonderful phrase "bank cramp" when struggling to find the right words to describe the current situation.

Somehow I can't get rid of the mental image of Alistair Darling, physio's bag and wet sponge in hand, rushing into RSB's board room and vigorously massagng the seized-up limbs of the chief executive.