Bonkers Food of the Week

Wuhan Duck Neck

                     This food is a little bit bonkers, but I found it pretty delicious. Me and some work mates were on holiday in Suzhou during mid-Autumn festival last year in Suzhou (China), which is a city just north of Shanghai. The streets were heaving with Chinese holiday makers, taking a break from their tough work ethic to tread the streets of what is, with just a soupcon of poetic license, known as the Venice of the east. I saw there one of the common street food sellers peddling her wares on a pretty little street called Ping Jiang Lu. I couldn’t tell what she was barbecuing, but I thought it looked like sausage-you can imagine my excitement at having found barbecued sausages that didn’t look like the sludgy red little sugar laced Taiwanese nightmares so unfortunately ubiquitous to China. I trundled over and bought some, she asked “la de ma?” (do you want it spicy?), to which I replied “dui” (emphatically yes). I bought the food and took a bite. What’s that? A crunch? Yes, the crunchy resistance of barbecued cartilage, the tasty crispiness of duck skin and the delicious smokiness of the barbecue itself. Not what I was expecting-an extremely common occurrence when getting food in China-but a very tasty snack nevertheless. I can imagine it would be a great spicy accompaniment to a glass of ice cold beer. Having enjoyed Suzhou so much last year I now live there and work at EF with my girlfriend Celia. It was here that one of the Chinese staff named Jojo reliably informed me that the streets of a city called Wuhan in Hubei province are virtually paved with barbecued duck neck. The alleys are nigh on permeated with the neck laced smoke of the multifarious barbecues. I shall endeavour to visit this place one day and chomp upon the necks of many of these unfortunate creatures.

                        I wish now to give a quick explanatory coda to this description. As an Englander and being familiar with breeds such as the Mallard I would expect a duck neck to be disappointingly short. However, the ducks in China have necks more akin to that of a goose, they are good and long and thus are able to provide more than adequate sustenance as a snack. I thought this was a necessary explanation as I did not wish you to denigrate the nutritional capacity of the aforementioned piece of Chinese tapas (or xiao chi if you prefer-pronounced sh-aow chu). 

The Great Full English Breakfast

I’m currently sitting in China being cooked fried eggs and ham by our extremely welcoming housemate Wynand. It reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while. Something that will no doubt make me hanker for that greasy and pleasant land again in a few months’ time. Something that no one else does quite as well as England. Yes, that wonderful symphonic production of morning calorific exuberance, the English breakfast fry up. What follows will be an exposition of my love for the art itself, a quick description of what a good fry up consists of and finally a few reviews of some places I’ve recently tried.

                                 There’s nothing I love more than getting up on a Saturday morning (or any working week equivalent thereof) and not eating breakfast for a long time. This probably sounds a bit odd, especially to those readers who know me. Allow me now to contextualise this a bit. I will patiently wait until my stomach is growling at me a little, lodging a complaint at the lack of sustenance, and at that point start preparations for cooking my own fry up. Either that or I wait until my stomach is behaving more like a pack of angry wolves and then plot a trajectory to my nearest frying emporium. It is then time to set off, minding the vague dizziness arising from the pure desire for pre-noon calories. I often have a partner in this activity and I have to say my personal favourite is my good friend Dan, he simply understands the subtleties and more brazen parts of this wonderful fatty assa(u)lt (sorry-I couldn’t resist). We will walk into the aforementioned purveyor of greasy manna and peruse the plastic menus, on which there’ll be a selection of set breakfasts and single fried items. Dan is a true connoisseur and will therefore inevitably infuriate the short order chef by endlessly customising his order, I will admittedly often accept his wisdom and swiftly copy him.

                                How does the breakfast decision making process proceed? Well, there are the basics. There must be bacon, eggs, beans and a side order of toast as a bare minimum. These are the struts on which this great structure is not so delicately balanced. I then would usually need further pork input in the shape of a sausage. A word about this sausage (me and Dan have held several working committees on the subject, usually over an enormous pile of freshly fried delectation): the sausage should not be of excellent quality. This is not in keeping with the mood of this particular symphony. Neither should it be so bad quality as to taste like offal mixed with shredded wall insulation (you know the ones-the Walls have ears and all that). It should be of medium low quality, so as to provide adequate offal resistance and give your jaw the challenge it needs in the morning, but also not provide too many complex flavours to deal with at this inhuman time of day. The eggs should be fried with a medium amount of yolk-al wobble, so when the toast (or chips) is (or are-I am an English teacher after all) inserted it bursts with a pleasing eruption of golden cholesterol. They should not however risk giving you salmonella, no golden eruption is worth that. The bacon should again not be too fancy and, I believe, should not be crispy but more on the back bacon side of things, arriving with a clear seam of fatty goodness on one side. Ideally the beans should be Heinz, but this is not essential, the main thing is they should be in one self-contained pool, possibly bounded by, to paraphrase Steve Coogan’s Allan Partridge, a breakwater being provided by the sausage. There should on no account be a tomato sauce inundation occurring, we wouldn’t want our wonderful orchestra drowned. The toast again should not be particularly high quality and butter is preferential but alas a rare treat at your average friary. Now the extras, and these are much more up for debate. Dan is not a fan of chips, but I think they have their place from time to time and provide an interesting alternative to soldiers for the eggs-also, a vessel for salt and vinegar is always welcomed by me, a bit of acetic acid could well stop immediate heart failure too at this point. Bubble is another welcome potato based addition, as long as it’s well made with a good golden crust from frying and some shredded cabbage to add some sort of illusion of health to this whole affair. I always like fried mushrooms, but they must be cut up to a good size and fried well (preferably in butter), until the outsides are sealed but the inside still yield a good juicy reaction to one’s ravenous bites. Hash browns are the other alternative and they are of course delicious, though there is not too much to say about them as they are generally from frozen and are thus pretty homogenous in their quality. Essentially the carbohydrate element should provide not just sustenance but also a sponge for all the various liquid like elements of this meal. They should underpin it, they should provide the bass and percussion section to this particular experience. One other thing that is always welcome is a fried tomato-not, I would hasten to add, a gooey pile of tinned plum tomatoes defiling your plate, and this is wholly unacceptable. It should be a half tomato fried so that there is a slight hint of golden crust and a membrane giving way to a delicious vegetable explosion as you bite into it. A word about beverages: I will always get coffee if it looks like it won’t be muddy dishwater (have a quick look at their coffee making devices before ordering), otherwise I will order tea and, because it will probably have all the subtlety of a brick to the face, soften the blow with a sugar or two. Delicate Dragon Well tea this is not.

                                So there we have it, I hope in its entirety, although I may have missed some bits out, I’m sure Dan will comment if so. I couldn’t build up your hunger like this and not give you a few suggestions for where to calm the baying the hounds, so for those of you in London please have a try of the following four places:  The Workers Café (172 Upper Street), Kigi Café (322 Caledonian Road), Nico’s Café (299 Cambridge Heath Road) and Alpino Café (97 Chapel Market). I went to the Workers with a friend I’d lived with in China and essentially did it to reacquaint myself with an old friend called the big breakfast. This breakfast was neat and well-presented and the service was good, but for me it missed the point. I want a wobbling mass delightful fried flavours, what I do not want is lots of white ceramic spaces staring blankly up at me. No, I desire it to be full to the brim and none too neat, although the components should be clearly defined. The quality of the food was reasonable and it was by no means a bad breakfast, just not quite the perfect one for me. The price was pretty reasonable, at about £5.50 for a big breakfast and coffee (and the coffee was pretty good, the real stuff-no unmentionable instant atrocities present), but somehow it lacked the real punch to be a heavyweight breakfast. So, on to Kigi. Kigi has extremely friendly staff and an amazingly effective short order chef who seems to work almost solo in the kitchen. Again, their breakfast was pretty neat, a good size and a good price, this one is a great option by those unfortunate people who are afraid of grease as it was a lot leaner than the usual offerings. Again, it had excellent coffee for a friary and also a wealth of Middle Eastern dishes to choose from-but therein lies the problem for me, they are not devoted to the way of the frying pan and therefore it comes as no surprise that there is something lacking. I feel a little bad if this turns you off eating there, as it is very good value (again, roughly £5.50), the staff were lovely and the beverages hot and strong, so do give it a go if your tastes are on the less greasy side. Alpino is another one of the above types of cafes; good food, nice staff, good coffee, a reasonable price and a big breakfast. Again great, but something lacking. It will always hold a special place in my heart, though, for it was my last fry up before moving to China with my girlfriend Celia, a final punctuation to power me through the challenge of moving eastwards once again.

                                For the real heavyweight you need to go to east London. There, nestling next to Bethnal Green station, hidden on a noisy junction is an unassuming eatery named Nico’s. I’d heard tell of this place through legend as professed by Dan, but I just couldn’t believe such a breakfast could exist. A breakfast that Dan claimed even seasoned eaters such as us would struggle with. It was therefore with some excitement and trepidation that I awaited my friend’s arrival on a drizzly day in this multicultural hub of east London. I’d built myself up for this one-the hounds were no less than howling for blood in my stomach, and anyone who knows me knows this is in no way a hyperbolic description. Dan arrived and we proceeded into the steamy depths of Nico’s. I perused the plastic menu and was initially slightly concerned as the amount of items didn’t look like anything special (apart from the two eggs) and at £6.00 was at the more expensive end of the scale, but if there’s one thing I have faith in it’s Dan’s ability to display well informed gluttony, treating it as a sort of art form. So I ordered the desired breakfast, if my memory serves me correctly it was something like: bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, chips, toast and coffee. I sat down and waited. A tower of steaming buttered toast arrived. This was promising. I waited a bit longer, nibbling on a bit of toast by way of a starter. And there it was. If a plate could groan under the weight of food this one would be. The first thing that pleased me was that, as if having understood my psyche, they had chosen a plate which was a little too small, making sure that this magnum opus was filled to its brim. The sheer quantity was simply amazing, two eggs, a sausage of just the right low quality, a small hillock of chips and all between two jaunty speech marks of beans sitting on either side-a parted sea of beans thus requiring no pork breakwater. “Where is the bacon?” I hear you cry, a note of desperation no doubt creeping involuntarily into your voice. This was probably the best part of it. As I made an excavation (apologies for my mixed metaphors, one simply won’t cover it) down through the outer breakfast crust I probed for the missing pork seam, and there, as I hit the plate and had nearly given up hope, there was a curious spongy resistance. As I parted the top layer of breakfast I discovered that this particular masterpiece was painted on a canvas of bacon. Yes, the whole bottom of the plate was covered in this pork manna. What fabulous idea. Cover the entire plate in bacon and use the bacon to provide structural integrity of the whole thing! A move of pure creative engineering genius-had Brunel run a greasy spoon I feel certain he would have made his breakfasts in such a fashion. What a brilliant conclusion to a perfect breakfast. And here ends my love letter to the fry up.