May Newsletter

10 REASONS WHY MAY IS THE TIME TO COME TO LE CAFÉ ANGLAIS

1. Jersey Royals. Or Cornish earlies. Because we can’t decide, we’re going to have both since a good new potato is worth every effort. With butter and mint. No frills, no caviar.
2. Asparagus. English green and French white. We will serve them in a variety of ways, including as soldiers with a soft boiled egg, plain with melted butter, grilled with olive oil and Parmesan or in a fricassee with.........
3. .......morels. Just on toast or with asparagus, chicken or fish, these incomparable mushrooms will feature big time.
4. Peas. In our lovely new salad, with Romaine & Parmesan, in risotto and soup, with duck, pigeon and lamb, let me count the ways.....
5. Sea trout and wild salmon. Coracle caught in Wales, netted off the Pentland Firth or caught by rod and line. Served raw with ginger dressing or as an Italian style crudo, simply grilled or ‘confit’: just occasionally, one cannot resist.
6. Spring lamb. Sometimes salt marsh, sometimes just sweet lowland meadow lamb, incredibly tender and usually simply roast.
7. Gariguette strawberries. I know English are supposed to be the best but the bright fresh acidity of these beauties, coupled with gorgeous sweet fruit flavour, give them a real run for their money. Incomparable when coupled with rhubarb: look out for the Rosé Jelly with Rhubarb, Gariguettes and Pannacotta, a properly sophisticated pudding.
8. Broad beans. Podded, peeled and coarsely chopped, stewed in butter and tossed in spaghetti with Pecorino cheese: a great hit from last year brought back by popular demand. Also with burrata, fish, lamb (again) and most other things.
9. Mousserons, or fairy ring mushrooms. Tiny little mushrooms. Not much in the way of texture but a wonderful fragrance, perfect in omelettes or with fish and chicken.
10. Gull’s Eggs. The perfect hors d’oeuvre, served absolutely plain with the option of a dab of mayonnaise and a pinch of rather good celery salt.

WINE DINNERS AT LE CAFÉ ANGLAIS

After a close Chave and a Rhone romp in the acronymious company of the regaling Jonathan Livingstone Learmonth (sure to be rebooked), we have just had a sellout Sancerre dinner on May 11th, in the company of the Delaportes, mere, pere & fils. The next two dinners are equally enticing.

Anjou? Montlouis? Savennières? Chinon? The names don’t mean a lot to many of us. Chef made the faux pas of asking if Montlouis was made with Sauvignon Blanc to a producer from the region not so long ago. He was roundly ticked off by Nick Brooks of Vine Trail, who when he is not chasing losing nags around Britain’s race courses, is a great explorer and evangelist for these little known gems from the Loire.

With many growers converting to Biodynamic principles and producing wines of amazing depthand finesse, the Loire is the new hotspot of French viticulture. ‘Chenin and Cabernet Franc: The Next Generation’ is on June 8th and will be £70.00. Guigi Sesti and his English wife Sarah were roaming around Southern Tuscany in the eighties when he chanced upon an old ruin at Argiano, just South of Montalcino. An academic and intellectual with a distinguished background in the study of the constellations, Guigi became a winemaker almost by accident. His Brunellos and Rossos are distinguished by their supple, elegant characteristics and, like the man, have extraordinary charm. A comprehensive look at the range coupled with chef’s interpretation of a Tuscan menu, ‘Sesti: Guided by the Stars’ is bound to be an immensely popular and highly enjoyable evening. It is on July 6th and tickets are £75.

TASTINGS

As well as the formal dinners, we thought we could have a looser format on other Monday nights. We or a wine merchant will open some bottles. You turn up and see if you like them. Each evening will have a different theme (affordable Burgundy, 2000 Claret, luscious Languedoc, you know the sort of thing) and, should you want dinner afterwards, we will provide a special menu, with wines from or linked to the tasting. Tastings will normally cost £12.50 but you will be refunded when you eat in the restaurant afterwards. Our first tasting evening, in conjunction with Armit wines and focussing on Bordeaux, will be on Monday 18th May. With a string of good vintages, claret has become approachable and affordable again. After a comprehensive tasting, a three course menu featuring spring lamb and beautiful Claret will be available in the restaurant at the bargain price of £60.00. We conduct the same exercise a fortnight later on Monday 1st June with Burgundy in the capable hands of Chris Davey of OWLoeb. Please book at reception or on info@lecafeanglais. A diary of future tastings will be posted on the website.

THE QUIZ

AN OLD FRIEND

The Tropical Forest, the large and throbbing canvas by Glynn Philpot has returned to take its rightful place after a spell in rehab. Normal service has been resumed.

KIDS STUFF:
10 THINGS TO DO WITH THE KIDS AT THE WEEKEND

1. Take them to Le Café Anglais for the fantastic £7.50 kid’s menu. They paint, draw, wander round Whiteleys, you eat and drink.
2. Take them to Kensington Gardens, walk around the Serpentine & then take them back to Le Café Anglais for a whole roast chicken with chips.
3. Take them to the movies and then have an early supper in the bar at Le Café Anglais.
4. Take them to the movies. Leave them there whilst you retire to Le Café Anglais and have a well earned lunch and read the papers.
5. Have an early supper in the bar at Le Café Anglais and then take them to the movies.
6. Take them to brunch on Saturday at Le Café Anglais (they especially like the buttermilk pancakes with bacon and maple syrup) and then take them bowling.
7. Take them skating. They’ll be hungry afterwards.
8. Take them to the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum or the V & A. All a five minute taxi ride through the park from Le Café Anglais.
9. Bring them to le Café Anglais for Sunday lunch. Introduce them to the very best grass fed Scotch beef with horseradish sauce and Yorkshire puddings that need our high ceilings to move around in. Let them meet Nick Crown, our resident magician. Watch their jaws drop as he comes to your table, bends cutlery and performs astounding card tricks.
10. Nothing. Get a babysitter & come and have dinner at Le Café Anglais without them.

MORE WINE STUFF:
FIVE WINES FOR THE TIMES

What with the increase in duty and the collapse of the pound against the Euro, it has been difficult to find good but affordable wines for the list.
Difficult but not impossible; despite adversity we have triumphed and brought some diamonds out of the rough. Here are five wines under £25.00 that we would be happy to drink at any time.
Try the Pico from the Domaine de Poujol. Not an everyday wine by any means: it is made with Vermentino (a.k.a. Rolle in France, but not often) and Carignan Blanc by an English/Californian couple in the Languedoc North West of Montpelier. It is beautifully crisp, peachily aromatic and utterly individual.
The wines of the summer may be the Saumurs from the Vignerons de Saumur. The white is a lovely clean dry Chenin Blanc. It is not only properly refreshing it is a real food wine, perfect for seafood and fish. The red is a Cabernet Franc and absolutely characteristic of the grape, with a hint of mint and eucalyptus, fresh berry flavours and gentle but persistent tannins. Served slightly chilled it is good with just about anything but especially roast chicken. Both of these wines are really simple with no pretensions, which is exactly what makes them so enjoyable.
Another duo features the extraordinary wines from Chateau Fontareche. The white – vielles vignes - is a blend of Roussanne, Bourboulenc (me neither), Grenache Blanc and Macccabeu. It is stonking: rich, creamy flavours but pure clean fruit and with the sort taut, sinewy delivery one would expect from wines twice the price. The vielles vignes red has become a firm favourite and with good reason. A classic Southern blend with Carignan, Mourvedre and Grenache all playing a part, this is a juicy, pleasurable wine with spicy, brambly flavours and a proper tannic structure that makes it an ideal accompaniment to our roast red meats. All these wines will be available by the glass in May and June.

A RECIPE FOR THE RARE NIGHT IN: DUCK WITH PEAS

Nothing could better illustrate the differences between the French and the Anglo Saxon styles of cooking than duck with peas but I cannot for the life of me decide which I prefer. A Frenchman would, or should, cook his duck twice. He will initially cook his bird until the breasts are a lovely rosy pink and then remove the legs from the carcass and cook them some more, either in the oven or on the grill. He will probably serve the breast meat thinly sliced with the peas braised with a little chiffonade of lettuce, some button onions and a few small lardons of bacon. The legs will probably follow, served crisp with a salad or with some potatoes fried in the fat from the roasting. English duck with peas is simply that. The bird is roasted until the legs are slightly pink, the peas are boiled and a little apple sauce is served alongside. Although the breast is somewhat overcooked the fat prevents the meat being dry, the legs are succulent and tender and the sweetness of the peas perfectly offset by the tart apple sauce. Elegantly simple, the dish encapsulates the best things about English cooking, with its emphasis on the simple virtues of the ingredients and relatively unrefined cooking techniques. The problem lies with the peas. Should you be lucky enough to have real petits pois, small and sweet and impeccably fresh, picked an hour before dinner and podded and cooked seconds thereafter, the simple English route will be perfect. Unfortunately, life and peas are not like that. The peas you buy will have knocked around a bit. Some will be small and sweet, some will be large and dry. All will have started, with the passage of time, to convert their sweetness to starch. They will need a bit of help. A la Française, then, it will have to be.

SCRABBLE