My
signature dish - the one that I literally use in place of a
handwritten signature to identify myself on legal documentation,
when writing bank cheques, or in the line at passport control - can
be traced back to my early childhood in Lincoln.
It is a
hand-baked artisan cauliflower, centred on a bed of wilted bluebell
stems (curated by the English Woodland Trust), speckled with a
bluebell purée, tented with a triumvirate of heritage ant-sugar
tweals, and cloaked in a nostalgic radish haze.
The dish
is a reinterpretation of a simple meal that I was regularly served as
a young boy, elevated to the exacting standards of fine dining. To
the uninitiated this means that the portion size has been
significantly reduced, everything is deftly piled on top of each
other, and there are weird dabs of sauce dotted all over the place.
Also, you will be expected to drink expensive wine with it.
I grew up
in a poor family. One evening, when I was four years old, my father
announced that he was going to the pub. He never returned home,
although I would sometimes catch glimpses of him, boisterous and
red-cheeked, through the grimy candlelit windows of The Merry
Bargeman.
My mother
was faced with the uphill challenge of feeding seven children on a
limited budget, in a cottage whose ground floor sloped steeply from
the kitchen stove to the small dining nook. It is a testimony to her
thrift, her culinary skills and her experience as a hill walker that
we never went hungry.
The dish
that she cooked most often is called 'Cauliflower served on a
platter'. It is a traditional Lincolnshire recipe with as many
variants as there are residents of the county. Everyone seems to have
their own particular take on it, even newborns and people who have
moved to this area from other parts of the world.
My mother
would visit a local greengrocers where she would purchase the
cheapest cuts of cauliflower, which, at the time, were the haunches.
On her way home she would pass through an area of woodland where she
would pick bluebells. She would blanch the stems in the boiling
torrent of water that gushed from the outflow of a nearby enamel
factory.
Occasionally
she would attempt to manufacture a sauce from the bluebell flower
heads. When this went wrong, as it invariably did, she would fly into
a terrible rage and hurl the cast-iron pan across the room,
splattering the walls in lavender-toned gloop.
In my
Mayfair restaurant, Croissant? Croissant!, staff recreate this
effect by pipetting dots of my bluebell purée onto the walls. To
experience the dish in its entirety, diners must vacate their places
at the table, forgo the cutlery, that has long acted as a barrier
between restaurant patrons and their choice of food, and apply their
tongues directly to the décor.
The
addition of tweals to the dish was my mother's idea. Scattered around
my childhood home were plentiful ant nests. Each of these would yield
long, spiralling filaments of ant-sugar, which had been crudely spun
by the workers of the colonies over successive generations. My mother
would arrange these tweals in a pagan wigwam formation over the baked
cauliflower. This sweetened garnish would sometimes end up impaled in
the roofs of our mouths. Ironically, many years later, my older
brother, William, lost his left eye after it was skewered on a tweal,
while he was backpacking in Thailand.
In my re
imagining of the dish I used heritage sugar tweals. The London
Evening Standard recently claimed that these are the same antique
tweals that were stolen last year from the London Museum of Tweals,
in Rotherhithe. In my defence I would like to point out that, if the
paper had any evidence of my involvement, either in the theft, or in
the trafficking of stolen goods, I would be rotting in jail by now.
The most
important component of the dish is the radish haze:
As a child
my mother was given some radishes by the Duchess of Kent, who had
been served them as part of a salad in a pub lunch. My mother never
forgot the peppery flavour of watery pulp and wanted to pass this
experience on to her children.
After
setting the cauliflower down on the table she would exhale the memory
of the radishes, that burned deep within her soul, as a phantom
seasoning, infusing the dish with the pungent recollection of the small
root vegetables.
To
recreate this effect in the restaurant, I employ a woman, who bears a
striking resemblance to my late mother, to dress in some of her old
clothes, drink gin, and eat radishes all day. Our patrons love the
theatre that arises from an inebriated women blowing invisible
seasoning over a steaming cauliflower. Being subjected to drunken
rant about what a louse my father was, and, every so often, being
walloped around the back of the head for spurious reasons are all
part of the experience!
After my
father left, my mother smashed our china crockery. We could not
afford to replace it. Fortunately she found a job sweeping the local
orchard. The kindly farmer allowed her to bring home the fallen
branches, which were re-purposed as plates. It's why today everything
in Croissant? Croissant! (even
the soup!) is served on branches that I foraged from
Kensington Gardens.
Taken
together, the dishes on my menu at Croissant? Croissant! tell
the story of my life. The time my bike was stolen by older boys and
thrown into a canal, is represented by a miniature pasta bicycle, served
with a clear leek broth made from my own tears. Diners who wish to
experience the mixed emotions I felt the last time I moved house are
presented with a small cake, which is taken from them when it is
half-eaten and replaced by a much larger, nicer cake.
When
people express a fascination for my life journey and ask me when I
will be writing my autobiography I direct them to my restaurant. When
I am on the premises I will happily hand-sign, in biro, the
individual ingredients of any dish, for an additional charge.
(Gavin Neweth will stand trail for tweal theft in May, 2016.)
