The Foodie Link Between Banbury and the Bard?

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Banbury is, as you may know, forever entwined with Banbury cakes – flat-ish oval pastry filled with spiced currants. They’re not unlike Eccles cakes and they’re still available in Banbury though not in the two shops most associated with them in days or yore. I present to you – the days of yore.

E. W. Brown’s Original Cake Shop, 12 Parsons street.

There was some dreadful idea being tossed around about turning that A. Betts High Street space (very much present and in use lately as a pop-up shop) into an arcade.

Betts’s Cake Shop on Banbury High Street in 1878

Yes, a gaming arcade. I am very much hoping the request for the change of use required will be denied. But never mind that now. I will complain about that elsewhere.

Banbury has another eponymous foodstuff lurking in its past and today seems a good time to mention it. Why today? Because today is April 23rd — anniversary of both Shakespeare’s birth and his death.

Banbury Cheese!

“Banbury cheeses, for which the town was noted until the 18th century, were first mentioned in 1430” (*). It was a cow’s milk cheese, yellow in colour and quite strongly flavoured, made in thin (about 1 inch) rounds.

“But wait!” I hear you cry. “What does this have to do with Shakespeare?”

In “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Bardolf addresses Slender as “You Banbury Cheese!” – and this would have been commonly understood by the playgoers as an insult implying there wasn’t much to him (Banbury cheese being only about an inch thick.) That’s not to say Banbury cheese wasn’t popular – it was; in fact, it was better known than Banbury cakes at the time. It was just  … well, thin.

It was made in various places around the area but mostly in Grimsbury and Nethercote – what was then the Northamptonshire end of things (**)

And that’s not the only bardish thing about Banbury. No, there was a Shakespeare Inn on Parsons’ Street and we can still see the bust (sitting over the door at 46 Parsons St) that used to greet visitors to the Shakespeare Inn (1871-1891, I believe). *waves* Hi, Will!

And that is my culinary history trivia for the day. Happy birthday, Will.
_______________

* A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 10, Banbury Hundred

** Boundaries tended to move around a lot and originally Banbury straddled two counties.

Pickled And Baked – No, Not Like That!

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It’s not what you think.

I’m not wallowing in wine or whacked out on weed. (At least not right now.) I do, however, have homemade bread baking in the oven, and I’ve just put up a bunch of pickles.

Again, it’s not what you may think. I haven’t joined a commune in Vermont, delved too far into the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, or taken up extreme right-wing ideologies and moved into a nuclear bunker in Tennessee. I’m just trying to stay hip. And for once, I’ve found I haven’t already aged out of the latest trends.

Both baking and pickling are tres chic here in the UK. That runaway smash tv show The Great British Bakeoff has taken the nation by storm over the last few years.

What was once the province of the WI has now become a national craze. Artisan bakeries are opening across the land, companies are holding their own employee cake contests, and near strangers are getting friendly jabbering about their Genoese sponges.

In the restaurant and television cookery worlds, pickling is equally de rigeur. TV shows like Masterchef: The Professionals are giving us weekly bites of the latest fine dining trends, and along with pistachios, apricots, cauliflower and cured mackerel, pickled vegetables adorn pretty much every plate. In fact, sometimes they’re all on the same plate, which strikes me as a digestive challenge.

Now I don’t, as it happens, have much of a sweet tooth. I’m not a big fan of cakes or pastries. And I’ve never before felt a particular need to knead. Nor do I, living on the third floor of an apartment block as I do, own acres of farmland replete with legumes that need preserving before they rot.

But still, a boy can get to feeling left out. Continue reading “Pickled And Baked – No, Not Like That!” →

Shakespearean Noshes, A Literary Nibble

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It is April 23 – National Cherry Cheesecake Day. Do we really need to expound on the glories of cheesecake? Don’t we all know it already. Instead, let us turn our culinary attention to Shakespeare. Yes, you heard me right. Shakespeare.

Today is the day of Shakespeare birth in 1564 (at best estimate) and his death in 1616. And on both those occasions, I bet food was prepared, served, eaten and shared. But which foods? Continue reading “Shakespearean Noshes, A Literary Nibble” →

August is Coffee Month

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If any drink deserved or required an entire month to do it justice, surely coffee is that drink. It starts the day, finishes up a meal, can wake you up or calm you down. It can be served hot or cold, plain or “enhanced” and while tea has it’s rituals, coffee has a culture.

But at heart is the drink itself and after many years of close study and enjoyment, I’ve reached a few conclusions and found the following things to be helpful:

Water. Use with COLD water. I don’t care whether it’s bottled or tap but it should be cold. It makes the resulting coffee much less bitter.

Keep It Clean. Any coffee maker, regardless of type or brand will work better and produce a better product if it is clean. So clean it.

Bothered by bitterness? Using the cold water to start will help a bit but try adding a pinch of salt to the coffee in the filter. A pinch, people. Not a lot. I know it sounds bizarre but it does work. I did it before stumbling across my current coffee which doesn’t need any such additive and believe me, no one is going to notice or get freaked out.

I know it looks hearty and hale but coffee does have a shelf life. To ensure a decent level of freshness, try getting it from a coffee purveyor and not a grocery store (who knows how old that grocery store stuff is?) and don’t keep more than a 2 months’ worth on hand. It will go stale at some point and you don’t want that point to be on the day you REALLY need a good, solid, happy cup to start your day.

Keep the coffee in an air-tight container and out of the sun. I know some people keep it in the freezer. I happen to keep mine in an opaque container in a cabinet. Either way, it’s out of the sun and that is the key. If I have any issue with the freezer/fridge thing – it is simply that the daily taking out and putting back in messes with the moisture content of the coffee and that can mess with the taste. But then, my father keeps his coffee in the freezer and still produces a very good cup-o-joe every day. So maybe I’m over thinking. I admit to sometimes doing that.

Getting the Right Grind. Listen, I know it sound even more obvious than using decent water but a lot of people get this wrong. Not all coffee makers and coffee making processes need the same grind level. Broadly speaking, if you are using a percolator then you want a coarse grind. Do you have an electric drip/manual drip or do you use a French press? You want a medium grind. Are you using an espresso machine? Get extra fine grind.

The Art of Cooking. Now With Extra Art

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The other day, my friend Alexia (who ought to be writing her own food blog the way she rocks all things cooking and growing of her own produce) sent me a link to some beautiful illustrated recipes. Not illustrated with photos – we’ve all seen that. That’s the most expected thing in the world. No, these recipes were produced by an illustrator – Lucy Eldridge – working in watercolor.

Ms Eldridge not only produced some yummy recipes but some equally scrumptious illustrations to really tempt you into trying them. Well, OK – I don’t know if that’s why she did it. Maybe she just felt like illustrating them. But the artwork makes the whole thing even more tempting to me. I think I’ll try the carrot cake first.

That recipe and others can be seen in larger format on her site. While you’re there, take a look at her other work. Wonderful stuff.

Naturally, I went looking for other illustrators who might have done the same. Boy oh boy – am I happy I did.

I read about Felicita Sala in a post on Design Sponge (one of my favorite design and lifestyle sites). The recipe there was stuffed calamari and while I am a huge fan of calamari, I somehow have never had it stuffed. This situation must be remedied and I think this is the way to do it.

I can’t wait to try the risotto al radicchio as well. Check that one out as well as the others at Ms Sala’s own site  . I’ll tell you something else – the fact that you can purchase prints of these recipes has me rethinking the walls of my own kitchen.

There are even whole sites, dedicated to displaying and sharing the illustrated recipes of illustrators – sites like They Draw & Cook and Recipe Look. I’ve spent ages looking through them and I find it all really inspiring, both culinarily and artistically. I’ll definitely be trying some of these dishes.

What? Oh no – not drawing. The only thing I can draw is a bath. Seriously – I’m not being modest. I really suck eggs at that sort of thing. But these people rock not only the art of cooking but art itself as well. Cheers to them all.