Note: prepare for a very long read or click here to skip forward to the recipe.

In the same way that there is probably some truth in the Chinese claim to have invented the noodle that became the ubiquitous Italian pasta, the origins of the archetypical British dish of fish n’chips seems to stem from Sephardic Jewish and French Protestant immigrants to the UK. In the mid-18th century, fishing trawlers became large enough to catch significant numbers of North Sea bottom-feeding white fish and domestic railroads expanded so that much of the UK began to have cheap and regular access to this fresh bounty. Also at this time, the potato-cooking skills of French Hugenot immigrants and the fish-frying traditions of Southern European Jews came together in what was to be a lasting and wildly popular marriage.

The French fry had been invented years earlier when the poor had first ventured to cook this new world tuber - originally only thought good enough for animal feed – and these techniques have continued to be refined to this day. Jews immigrating to the UK and other areas of Northern Europe having been expelled from Portugal and Spain brought matza (matzo, matzoh, matsah,) with them, which they knew to be an excellent coating for fish when ground or crumbed. Combining these two techniques with the endemic British passion for beer and deep-frying, resulted in one of the most famous exports from the British Isles since limey sailors began spreading a horrifying variety of VDs in port cities the world over. 

Today’s fish n’chips (depending on where you go) still closely resemble the original ideas found in Portuguese fried fish dishes pescado frito, in which strips of fish are dunked in a light batter of water, matzo flour and salt, then rolled in crumbed matzo before deep-frying in a cauldron of hot oil. In fact, the Portuguese are sometimes credited with having introduced this technique to Japan where it developed into the extremely delicious tempura style. In the UK, beer was often added in place of water to the flour (typically plain flour nowadays, rather than matzo) and salt, with the resulting batter being richer, but somehow lighter, frothier and more golden colored.

The British habit of “chipping” potatoes into larger batons than the continental Europeans, and now the Americans, and only frying them once, appears to just be a local habit. Some have suggested that the UK picked up on an early potato-cooking technique and kept it while the more culinarily-advanced French and Belgians continued to experiment with thinner-cut potatoes and double-frying, so that they perfected the golden and crunchy frites of today. I prefer to think of the British technique to be based not on ignorance, but on textural appreciation. For why have a crispy deep-fried fish and pair it with something else crispy? Why not pair it with something softer and more unctious?

My Life with Fish n’Chips

Anyway, fish n’chips became incredibly popular in the UK and its colonies around the world, with the chip shop still a fixture on virtually every town’s high street in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. For much of my youth, growing up in provincial England, it was one of only two choices for cheap, take-away/out food – the other being the uniformly foul and greasy hole that was the Golden Lantern Chinese take-out, so fish n’chips played an important role in our Friday night social traditions. After choir practice at our local church, we’d often hit the chip shop for a “slap-up” dinner of cod & chips with mushy peas, and bread & scrape (sliced white bread with lard), all washed down with our weekly soda allowance – a can of Lilt (a pineapple and grapefruit flavored soda).

Mr. Chips, the snappily-titled chip shop in my Cheshire town was universally known as just “the chippy” and, correspondingly - demonstrating some terribly enlightened feelings towards the town’s tiny, but most obvious, ethnic population - the Golden Lantern, was referred to as “the Chinky”. Subsequently, this ordinary little town has gentrified virtually beyond recognition, with all manner of ethnic restaurants elbowing aside these two bastions of atherosclerosis. However, echoes of these former times can still be heard in local parlance. Sadly, the Golden Lantern is gone, replaced by Slow Boat and Treasure Village, which now, demonstrating how times have changed for the better, are referred to as “the Chinese”; Mughli, an Indian restaurant, is either ”the curry house” or “the Indian”, and Est! Est! Est! is “the Italian”.

Fish n’chip restaurants still play a significant role in British gastronomic and cultural life. As with many countries, the UK has recently undergone a revolution in its food traditions, returning to basics and local ingredients and striving for sustainability. This has led to a re-evaluation and revival of many traditional dishes, including the hugely devalued fish n’chips. With North Sea cod stocks (like cod almost everywhere) having crashed due to overfishing, some traditions have had to change, and now other white fish are used including hake, halibut and haddock in its place, but the typical methods of beer and matzo batter, quality malt vinegar, fine sea salt and first-class British potatoes cooked in beef tallow (beef lard) are emerging again, much to my delight.

We’re heading to London to visit my new nephew in a couple of weeks, and will be hitting up arguably the finest chip shop in the capital, Fryer’s Delight in Holborn, which you will be the first to hear about right here in these pages. To date though, the best fish n’chips I ever had was at a very dodgy-looking chippy in Fleetwood, Lancashire (NW England, about 1.5hrs north of Manchester). Overlooking the grey and miserable-looking Irish Sea, I ate perfectly fried, golden cod, soft and salty chips and deliciously thick marrowfat mushy peas. It was a glorious, all-English experience.

But don’t think that fish n’chips only comes with mushies – oh no, variations abound in dressings. While the traditional is the simple sea salt and malt vinegar with a side of tartar sauce and M.P’s, others include, parsley sauce, brown gravy, curry sauce, garlic sauce, piccalilli, mayonnaise, Henderson’s relish, Worcestershire sauce, pea wet or pea’s water (liquid strained from peas during the creation of mushy peas) which is often free, baked beans, cheese or cheese curds, coleslaw, ketchup, chilli sauce, thousand island dressing, salad cream, chip spice, brown sauce, and summer savory (turkey stuffing & gravy), to name but a few.

Ever striving for the traditional in our take on the dish, we went with a pale ale batter, beautiful Atlantic cod (yes, i know it’s unsustainable, but our fishmonger doesn’t sell haddock or hake) thick cut chips, homemade mushy peas, homemade tartar sauce and, perhaps excessively, homemade curry sauce – my wife being a huge fan of dipping sauces. In fact, all of them are fiendishly easy to make, but as with most simple dishes, the key is high quality ingredients. Old potatoes and a shitty piece of fish even when perfectly fried will still taste like a turd. Similarly, beautifully fresh potatoes and cod fried in rancid old oil will be a disaster. Make sure you buy everything as fresh as possible. Fresh potatoes have very few “eyes” and yield a nice sheen of liquid when peeled, and fresh cod or haddock (hake is fine also) will have wonderfully shiny skin and nice firm flesh. If it’s already flaky and soft do not buy it, instead sharply reprimand your fishmonger for having the temerity to sell such tat.

Fish n’Chips with Mushy Peas, + Tartar and Curry Sauces (serves 2-3)

The Italian region of Liguria is famous for its dramatic landscape of mountains plunging into crystal clear waters, and narrow terraced fields leading down to tiny, colorful villages precipitously perched on the edges of cliffs of which the Cinque Terre (five lands) of Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore in La Spezia province are the most famous. It’s a region of hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, though the rugged terrain creates many tiny sub-regional micro-climates, and driving through it, you can go from dry scrub oak and wild thyme to olive groves to chestnut forests and back again in half an hours’ journey.

So it is that Ligurian food, like all Italian regional cuisine, reflects the landscape from which it comes, and because of this much of the local food has traditionally come from the few plants that are able to withstand the poor, dry soil, the salty air at low altitudes, and the cold at higher elevations, supplemented by seafood and, occasionally, game and poultry.

**Sorry for interrupting your reading, but I had to find a place to put this picture in. No lie, we passed this goat going about 45 mph in the Ligurian countryside and I thought I was hallucinating. I made Jonny reverse about 1/4 of a mile down a very winding, thin road to find out if I really was on drugs. This Gandolf-looking creature was smiling from behind a very primitive and small barn about 5 inches off the side of the road. I fell in love at that moment. He looked mythical!

In her recent paean to the Liguria of her ancestors, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, author Laura Schenone recalls that while things have changed in modern times, for millenia the fortunes of most of the region’s inhabitants have been directly related to the availability of chestnuts from which many staples were made — including the ubiquitous gnocchi and pasta.

Another plant that grows very successfully in Liguria’s poor soils, as they do a few hundred miles west in the rocky garrigues of Provence where they remain the principle diet of many peasant farmers and, indeed, their livestock, is the chick pea (ceci/garbanzo), and like the chestnut, Ligurians pound the dried cecis into a flour which they use to make a kind of flat bread found nowhere else in Italy save certain parts of Sicily (which is deep fried chickpea dough often used in between bread or as a snack called Panelle – we hope to make this version soon), farinata. The French have their own version of this called Socca, but today we will focus on farinata. Farinata is a kind of street food found in Liguria and can often be treated like pizza as it is often cut into wedges and can come with various toppings like onions.

While we were in Genoa last summer, we saw farinata in bakeries all over the city but, curiously, found that it wasn’t offered in restaurants, though it was probably because of the glut of delicious seafood and various pesto preparations we gorged ourselves on rather than this reason, that we missed out on trying farinata in the region of its origin. Not to be denied though, we sought out some chick pea flour (yes, I know, if weren’t such post-modern bourgeois slacker-tourists we would have pounded our own from dried beans…) at a wonderful gourmet grocers in Park Slope and proceeded to use the wonderful invention that is Babelfish to translate any number of recipes on Italian websites to find out how to make it authentically. If you can not find chickpea flour in your local grocery store, check out some health food shops, Indian and/or Middle Eastern specialty stores. Chickpea flour is a key ingredient to many Indian and Middle Eastern foods.

Regular readers will know that we strive to find and make the most authentic preparations we can, but you will also know that this kind of research often leads to the unfortunate conclusion that there is rarely only one “authentic” version. Referring again to Laura Schenone, who describes farinata as almost like a chick pea flour focaccia – crispy on top and soft and chewy underneath and baked in a wide, shallow pan in a brick pizza oven, we found that this conflicted with our recollections and other recipes we had come across for thinner, almost completely crispy flatbreads. In fact, what we discovered was that the longer the cooking time and the less batter you add to your skillet, the crisper the farinata. Like, duh, right? For a more baked polenta-like consistency underneath with a crisp top, I would recommend pouring enough batter so that it is 1/2-deep and cooking our recipe for 1/2 the time, possibly finishing it off under the broiler for a few minutes. The recipe below will be for a crispy version of farinata – one that almost can crack like a cracker.

**Window shopping in Genoa – check out the farinata being served in the upper right-hand corner

We would like to try the softer version so we can decide which we prefer. Regardless, we thoroughly enjoyed the crispy, thinner and darker bread with its nutty, salty flavor that we made and are enthused to attempt the latter as soon as possible.

Typically, farinata is eaten either alone or dipped in good Ligurian olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, whereas we decided to use it almost as a canvas for a rather overly decorative carpaccio of zucchini (courgette) with pine nuts, shaved pecorino, and lemon juice. We encourage you to make yourself a farinata or two (preferably not in the hot months as we did, unless you have a good AC!) and eat it anyway you like, reminding yourself, yet again, that peasant food made from humble ingredients is almost always good, and because that’s often all there was/is to eat, it has to be.

CRISPY FARINATA (LIGURIAN CHICKPEA FLATBREAD) WITH ZUCCHINI CARPACCIO SALAD – (makes about 1 12-inch farinata)

Ingredients for farinata:

• 1 1/4 cup of chick pea flour
• 1 1/2 cups of water (maybe a bit more to get the consistency somewhere between whole milk and lite cream)
• 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (or enough to cover your pan)
• plenty of freshly ground black pepper
• 6 sage leaves, thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon of chopped rosemary (optional)

Ingredients for zucchini salad:

• 1 large zucchini, sliced into paper-thin slices using a mandoline
• 1 ripe roma tomato, sliced into small dice
• 2 tablespoons pignoli nuts (pine nuts)
• 1 scallion (spring onion), sliced into thin rings
• 3 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon whole grain mustard
• 1 salted anchovy filet
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• pinch of salt and black pepper

What to do:

1. Sift your chickpea flour in a bowl and add your salt, pepper, sage and rosemary. Stir generously.
2. Slowly add your water, whisking the whole time allowing everything to be incorporated (again, you want the batter to be about the consistency of whole milk/light cream).
3. Allow your batter to rest for at least 1 hour or as long as overnight.
4. When you are ready to cook, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. If any foam has surfaced on your chickpea batter, remove with a spoon.
5. Pour olive oil into your 12-inch baking pan – preferably a cast iron skillet. You want the olive oil to generously coat the bottom and sides of your skillet.  Add your batter until it is about 1/4 of an inch  if you want it super crispy or  1/2 inch deep if you want it thicker and possibly softer.
6. For a crispier farinata, bake for about 30 minutes. Check on it, though, as ovens differ and you do not want the batter to burn! If you want it a bit softer, I would recommend baking for about 15-17 minutes and then finishing it under the broiler for a minute. Allow to cool before cutting!
7. Slice zucchini into very thin, long slivers using a mandolin or a very sharp chef’s knife and thinly slice/dice your other veggies. Arrange everything on top of your farinata and sprinkle with pine nuts.
8. Using a mortar and pestle, pound the anchovy and the mustard together and squeeze in the lemon juice and then mix well. Immediately before serving, whisk in the olive oil to make the vinaigrette. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle all over the zucchini carpaccio and farinata.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• BEET AND RICOTTA FILLED RAVIOLI WITH BROWN BUTTER AND POPPY SEEDS
• ITALIAN-STYLE SLOW ROASTED PORK SHOULDER WITH SALSA VERDE
• FUSILLI WITH SALSA DI NOCI AND MUSHROOMS (WALNUT PESTO)
• European Roast…? (Why Coffee Tastes Better There)
• Drink of the Month: Vin Santo (May, 2008)

I feel like we go on and on ad nauseam about our trip to Italy last summer, and I suspect that if it hasn’t happened already, our faithful readers will begin to tire of our constant references to those halcyon days of pastoral bliss, romantic nuptials, and devastatingly good food. So, before your goodwill towards us is exhausted, I want to wring out the last of it with this post on the remarkable dish that is deep-fried lamb rib chops

Perhaps ironically (and this may extend your patience toward us), the only meal, or in this case, part of a meal, that I ate during that trip that was not first-class was the secundi course of the meal in Bologna that included the frankly phenomenal ragu bolognese my wife wrote about recently, namely the deep-fried lamb rib chops. Not that it was bad or even close to bad, it was actually pretty good, but they were slightly overcooked and therefore dry, something I am almost proud to say I could discern even during the intense examination of the final dregs of our third bottle of Barolo.

Crispy exteriors combined with unctious, moist interiors are the holy-grail of almost every fried, grilled or roasted meat dish, where the crispy outer layer insulates the flesh and keeps it moist. However, there is a very fine line between success and failure in these endeavors. Too far one way and you’ve got a crispy outside, but a dry and tough inside. Too far the other, and you’ve got a limp crust and a bloody interior. Lamb rib chops are the beautiful, tender pieces that correspond to the rib-eye (the rib attached to the tenderloin) on a steer, and are frequently served as a rack, medium-rare, with the bones nicely trimmed (Frenched) and often with a garlic & parsley breadcrumb crust that is rarely as crunchy as you want it to be, and I wanted to experiment whether deep-frying could provide the crunch as well as the medium-rareness I had tragically missed out on that night in Bologna.

Indeed, the stakes were further raised by the horrifically high price of lamb in the US. It took this transplanted Englishman a long while to get used to the scarcity of lamb in this country where beef is king (despite there being huge swathes of land that are eminently suitable for sheep-grazing), and the cost has kept us on a steady diet of braised shoulder chops, unable to branch out into the leg or the rack until a fortuitous wander into our local Pathmark store coincided with a virtual giveaway of perfectly Frenched rib chops. Seizing this opportunity with a vigor that may have shocked my wife, I loaded up our shopping cart (yes, the trolley) with rib chops and it was this bounty, as much as anything, that convinced me to try deep-frying them. After all, if it didn’t work and they turned out like hockey pucks, we could still broil or grill ourselves some dinner with the rest.

A little bit of luck, and I prevailed in this experiment and I’m delighted to say that these rib chops were as good as any I’ve eaten anywhere. Assuming you also have the good fortune of finding lamb rib chops at a reasonable price, you should not only grab an armful, but you should try this recipe right away. It would be the perfect thing to impress dinner guests with, and since the chops are fried and therefore quite rich, two per person will suffice, making you appear generous and feel thrifty at the same time. Joy.

Fried Lamb Rib-Chops with Grilled Polenta, Broccoli di Rape and Balsamic Reduction

So, before continuing, I should say that I shallow fried my chops instead of deep frying them as I was nervous about overcooking them. Shallow frying allows you to do the “poke-test” on them (poke the meat with your finger, if it feels soft, it’s rare or very rare, if it is firm, it’s well-done, you want it somewhere between. The trick is knowing when is enough.)

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 4-6 lamb rib chops, frenched
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup panko, or very coarse fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 cup soda water/sparkling mineral water
• 1 tsp salt
• 2-3 cups vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 clove garlic, smashed but with skin-on
• 1 sprig rosemary

Recipe

• Combine salt, water and flour in a mixing bowl into a batter of medium thickness.
• Put oil in a 10inch (20cm) diameter frying pan. Should be about 1/2inch (1cm) deep.
• Heat oil to around 350F (175C)
• dip chops in batter, then dredge in panko (breadcrumbs) and lay them gently in oil. Do not overcrowd pan. We did ours two at a time.
• Fry chops for about three minutes per side, or until slightly darker than golden brown on the outside.
• Use poke test to determine done-ness.
• Place in a warming oven (200F/95C) and allow to rest for five to ten minutes.
• Add balsamic vinegar, garlic and rosemary to your smallest saucepan.
• Over medium heat allow it to come to a boil. Reduce heat to about medium-low and allow to reduce by at least half.
• Keep your eye on it at this stage because it can very quickly go from a perfect consistency to a bitter-tasting molasses.
• Remove garlic and rosemary and serve sparingly over your lamb chops.

Check out these other posts you may enjoy:

• Truffled Butter: A Prince Among Ideas
• San Gennaro Festival, Little Italy, NYC – Ain’t What it Used to Be (Girl’s Version)
• Pork Roll and Scrapple – The Dirty Culinary Pride of South Jersey/Philly
• SHREDDED CHICKEN SOPES WITH TOMATILLO AVOCADO SAUCE
• GRILLED STEAK WITH TARRAGON GARLIC BUTTER
• CHESTNUT CUSTARD TART
• SPANISH (AUSTURIAN) OXTAIL WITH FRIED POTATOES

Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton’s widely-revered nouveau American place on East 1st Street has been called a lot of things since it opened in 1999 – among them, “phenomenal” and “inspired” (NYMagazine), “wonderful food” (BlogSoop.com) and “immediate success” (NYC.com), and rightly so, in my humble opinion. Generally, we aren’t attracted to, can’t afford, and don’t really desire to visit big-name chef’s big-name restaurants and pay big-name prices for big-name signature dishes, all the while praying for the merest glimpse of said big-name chef, and this is precisely why our first review of a well-known (outside of NYC) restaurant is Prune and not Mesa Grill, Babbo, or Jean-Georges.

Owner and chef Gabrielle Hamilton, my wife’s new girl-crush, describes her aim when she started Prune as wanting “…an unassuming way to slip into the shallow end of the pool of New York City restaurants”, and she appears to have achieved this in Prune’s unassuming feel, no more than 10 tables, the austere, French-brasserie-style decor, and the small menu. Of course, Hamilton has also taken the restaurant scene by storm, serving simple, tasty dishes with a gusto that befits their often hearty, gamey ingredients, and in doing so, she has been widely emulated.

In his forward to Fergus Henderson’s St. John Bar and Restaurant cookbook The Whole Beast: Eating Nose to Nail, Anthony Bourdain says that Henderson’s signature dish of roasted veal marrow bones with parsley salad would be his last meal should he find himself moments away from the electric chair, adding that he was delighted upon finding an exact recreation of this in New York because he felt he had found a “kindred-spirit” who “gets it” – namely, Gabrielle Hamilton. This should not imply that Hamilton simply serves excellent knock-offs of other people’s food, but rather that the rediscovery of unpretentious, traditional dishes made from less popular cuts is now a growing trend in the UK and US because of people like Henderson and Hamilton.

Readers of this blog with any sense of our body of work and culinary proclivities will know that while we do not disdain chicken breasts and filet mignons, we are interested in exploring the eating and cooking of other parts of the beast, not because we are food fashion conscious, but rather because we understand that it takes more skill to make offal taste good than it does to present a fat fillet, and, as we said in our first podcast on rabbit, we believe it’s foolish and represents a small-minded snobbery to restrict yourself to prime cuts of the chicken, cow and pig. So, a trip to Prune was long overdue.

Amy chose the deep-fried sweetbreads (described by one peevish restaurant reviewer as Kentucky Fried sweetbreads) with bacon and a caper-lemon butter sauce, while I made like Bourdain and chose the veal marrow bones with parsley salad. The sweetbreads resembled nothing I’ve seen at KFC and, frankly, such a description is insulting. They were crispy, light, and tender inside with a sauce that had the tangy flavor of lemon and capers rounded out with the ineffable goodness that is a lot of butter. The marrow bones initially appeared slightly intimidating, especially when served with a small ramekin of what looked like fleur de sel, but armed with nothing but a teaspoon we bravely attacked them, bringing forth an amazingly translucent animal fat/juice along with the soft, gloopy, simultaneously sweet and savory wonder that is bone-marrow. Sucking the bones proved irresistible so tasty were they, and in the quest for that one last morsel greasy fingers slipped, knocking salt ramekin and contents onto an alarmed, but gracious adjacent diner. “But, what of the parsley salad?”, I hear you say. Well, of course, it was delicious too. A simple dressing of oil and lemon juice over a salad of flat-leaf parsley, thinly-sliced shallot and crunchy bites of cornichons (baby gherkins) complimented the rich and glutinous bone marrow perfectly. I can imagine making this salad with virtually any kind of roasted or grilled red meat or game, and I would guess we’ll be recreating it on these pages very soon.

While we readied ourselves for the arrival of our main courses, we struck up a conversation with two of our fellow diners (on the opposite side to those we had just showered with expensive salt). James, a soon-to-be food journal publisher from London, and his native New Yorker companion, Brian, had eaten at Prune before and while they also had the sweetbreads to start, they had the monkfish liver with warm buttered toasts in place of our marrow bones. “It’s quite oily and, er, liverish.” was James’ assessment of the latter dish, and you can’t argue with that.

As our main dishes arrived, Brian and James were experimenting with a very yellow wine from south-west France that was fermented in open barrels allowing it to oxidize and develop a more astringent flavor. The waiter described it as the “wild-west of wine-making” which, to anyone with the briefest understanding of the American frontier, would have connoted the brawny perfume of unwashed cowboys, saddle-grease and rotting chuck-steak. Happily for our erstwhile companions, it was only rather tart, like a young scrumpy cider, but they found it not to their taste, offering us a go on it, perhaps as a way of getting rid the quicker. I could have drunk a glass of it, but a bottle would likely have turned my mouth inside out.

Amy had ordered the rabbit in vinegar sauce and I the grilled quail with braised escarole and raisins on the vine for our main courses. My quails were perfectly grilled. Crispy-skinned with a hint of heat from red pepper flakes, but beautifully pink and moist inside. They were gamey and delicate, more like squab than any quail I’ve had before. Amy’s rabbit was, well, better than the one we made recently (even though that was very good) perhaps because of the oodles of butter in the sweet and sour vinegar sauce which also contained some warm whole cornichons — an unexpected, but highly successful addition. Our side dish of steamed asparagus tips (which could have used a little salt) came with an egg yolk (the white having been cut away) for dipping which we both thought was ingenious and delicious.

Meanwhile, James and Brian were enjoying their mains, respectively steamed razor clams with an almond-chili picada, and grilled branzino with fennel oil and gros sel. The clams and fish both looked excellent, especially the branzino which was charred to a dark, rich patina on the outside but remained white, flaky and moist on the inside. Their side dish was the particularly unusual boiled fennel shoots, which had a crunchy, wholesomeness rarely found in restaurant side dishes where the flavor of vegetables is usually masked by garlic, spice or a sauce.

As we concluded our meal with a distinctly average chocolate cake that was too dry, but with two excellent digestifs – mine an eaux de vie from Oregon made from pears, and Amy’s, her favorite, sambuca, we chatted some more with James and Brian about food and food culture in Britain and America. James argued that he thought Britain was slightly ahead of the states in terms of regaining its endemic food culture and reviving typical products. Perhaps it’s true that America, as a whole, has yet to rediscover its culinary roots and return to them in the whole-hearted way the British have – though many areas of the East and West coasts have been doing this for some time. But I would argue that any restaurant, chef or restaurateur who wishes to focus on quality local ingredients and traditional techniques should first eat at Prune and see how deliciously it can be done. Emulation is no bad thing if you get it bang on, and, for me, I would be perfectly happy if I never got to eat Fergus Henderson’s original bone-marrow dish at St. John in London, if I could dine on perfect knock-offs like Gabrielle Hamilton’s twenty minutes from my front door.

I think we’ll let the debate about where gastronomy is and should be heading, who’s in the lead, and who’s falling behind rage elsewhere. Our blog is not the forum for food snobs to poke holes in the successes and failures of various chefs, rather it is the place where we honestly appraise meals we’ve eaten whether we’ve cooked them ourselves or enjoyed the work of others. In this case, I cannot speak highly enough of our visit to Prune and I would encourage you all to give it a try if you’re prepared to be a little adventurous in your eating. This isn’t grilled locusts in peri-peri, this is honest-to-goodness food, simply prepared and given the respect it is due.

Although we haven’t made roasted bone marrow yet in our little kitchen, two food-blog friends did and I think they both look absolutely delicious. You can check out the first recipe here and please visit our friend Claudia’s Fergus Henderson recipe here.

Prune, 54 East 1st Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenue, New York. F, V trains to 2nd Avenue/Houston or 6 train to Bleeker/Lafayette. Reservations are recommended. Lunch 11:30 – 3:00 p.m. Mon-Fri; Dinner 6:00 – 11:00 p.m. Mon-Thur, 6:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. Fri-Sat, 5:00 – 10:00 p.m. Sun; Brunch 10:00 – 3:30 p.m. Sat-Sun.

As the final day before Lent, Shrove Tuesday is also traditionally a day of feasting before the Lentern abstinence or fasting that evokes Jesus’ 40 days and nights in the desert. The pancake bit comes from the fact that in order to find it easier to abstain, one should use up all ones flour, milk, sugar and eggs on Shrove Tuesday, and while a lot of things can be made from those basic ingredients, the Brits – long ago – decided pancakes were the thing to make. And, since the combination of these ingredients makes for a high calorie experience, Shrove Tuesday (it’s such a puritanical idea – shriving, isn’t it?) is known as Mardi Gras in French, or literally, fat Tuesday. Those Catholics have all the fun, don’t they?

British pancakes have more in common with the a French-style crepe than they do with the thicker, but smaller pancakes common in America, although the recipe is largely the same. On pancake day it’s quite common to have a mixture of both savory and sweet pancakes, though the sweet versions are the more popular. (We had both savory and sweet – see savory filling recipe below.) Typical fillings are very simple and are often limited to powdered sugar and jam or nutella, or just a squeeze of fresh fruit juice. My family’s favorite filling is granulated (plain, white) sugar and lemon juice. The less stuff you have in the middle, the more pancakes you can have, see…?

Of course, you don’t have to wait another year before making some pancakes, though. They make great desserts, first courses, or even main meals depending on the filling and the size of your pan, and they are dead easy to make. So, go ahead, treat yourselves tonight, unless you’ve given up pancakes for Lent, that is.

Here’s how they’re made.

SWEET AND SAVORY BRITISH PANCAKES

Pancake (or Crepe) Batter Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 egg and 1 egg-yolk
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tbsp melted unsalted butter (optional)
• 1 stick unsalted butter (room temperature)

SAVORY (SMOKED SALMON, ASPARAGUS AND CREAMY TARRAGON MUSHROOMS) BRITISH PANCAKE FILLING

Creamy Tarragon Mushrooms Savory Filling Ingredients:

• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 shallot, finely diced
• 1/2 leek, finely sliced
• 3 button mushrooms, slice thinly
• 2 tbsp tarragon, chopped finely
• 4 tbsp light cream
• 1/2tbsp butter
• salt & black pepper

Other Savory Ingredients:

• 6 oz. smoked salmon
• 6 asparagus spears, cut into 2” pieces and either sauteed or steamed till cooked but still crunchy

SWEET (BLOOD ORANGE, LEMON AND SUGAR) BRITISH PANCAKE FILLING

Sweet Ingredients:

• 1 blood orange (or a regular orange will do)
• 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon white sugar

What to do:

To make batter, combine flour, salt, melted butter and eggs together in a bowl. When well combined add milk slowly, whisking all the time. Continue whisking until mixture is smooth and frothy. Batter is ready. Cover and set aside.

Now it’s time to make the savor filling. Melt butter in small saute pan over medium heat. Add shallots, garlic, leeks and mushrooms and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Saute mixture for 3-4 mins or until mushrooms take on some color and the leeks wilt nicely. Add cream and tarragon and reduce heat to low. Cook for another couple of minutes. Adjust seasoning. Allow to keep warm on low until pancakes are ready to be filled. In another pan saute or grill your asparagus, or just put them in a bowl with a little bit of water, cover with plastic and microwave for 2 to 3 minutes. Slice your smoked salmon.

Time to make the pancakes…

Heat a 12inch non-stick skillet over medium high until the pan is too hot to touch. Toss in a knob of butter and allow to melt almost completely before adding a ladle-full of batter to the pan. Tilt pan in a circular motion so that batter covers bottom of pan. Allow pancake to “solidify” (cook) until almost all of the moisture has gone before tossing it, about 30 seconds – 45 seconds depending on how hot your pan is.

“The Toss”

The toss is the tricky bit and there have been many times when my kitchen ceiling has been festooned with bits of partially-cooked batter on Shrove Tuesday, so be careful with it. In fact, the lower the toss, the easier it is to do it right and have the pancake land without folding over on itself. Alternatively, you could use a non-stick, plastic spatula and give it a quick flip. It’s much easier and safer, though less fun.

Put pancakes on a plate and separate with parchment paper, and keep in a warm oven until you’re ready to eat.

Assemble your savory pancakes…

Spoon in a bit of the creamy tarragon mushroom mixture into the center of your pancake. Add some smoked salmon and asparagus, roll, up and dig in!

Ready for dessert?

After you’ve completed eating your savory crepes, go back to your heated pan and make a few more. When done, sprinkle your crepe with 1/2 a teaspoon (or more if you’d like!) of sugar all over. Squeeze some orange down the center and then some lemon. Roll up or fold into a triangle and enjoy.

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