The Aperitif Guy

 " He was a bold man that first ate an oyster." Jonathan Swift I wrote last week about preparing octopus for the table. I'm quite convinced that more people would eat cephalopods like octopus and squid if they knew how to prepare and cook them. I'm less sure that's the case with oysters. For all their aphrodisiac reputation, they're not the prettiest thing; not the sort of thing you would look on and assume to be delicious. I suspect the first person to eat an oyster was not so much bold as hungry, and willing to try anything for the sake of filling their belly. Oysters were once so plentiful in British waters that they were eaten only by the poor, having little or no value. It is only with over-fishing and habitat destruction that they have become rare enough to entice the rich. One mistake people make when they first try oysters is they imagine they must be served raw. We all know this is the popular way to serve them, but there are many delicious recipes fo...

A table set for a St Patrick's night dinner Rain. Something Ireland has in abundance. Soft, constant rain. The Gulf Stream brings warm water up the Atlantic to the west coast of Ireland, ensuring the winters are never truly harsh, but it also ensures that the weather systems making landfall on that coast are well and truly water-laden. Cool air off the mountains condenses the water, which then falls as rain. It’s not great news for tourism, but it makes for fantastic agriculture. Ireland has always been a producer of good food. The rain makes for rich pasture for beef and dairy cattle alike. Milk, butter and cheeses are sweet and plentiful. Beef is firm and flavoursome. Small-scale farming and crofting mean that sheep farming produces high-quality lamb and mutton that is much sought-after throughout Europe. However, it is the pig that dominates the Irish domestic table. You won’t go long in Ireland before being served pork, bacon or ham. Any country that has know...

This time last year, I wrote about living in France as a young man and discovering aperitif culture. ( http://blog.theaperitifguy.co.uk/2018/10/doing-it-la-francaise.html ) I wrote how it was something very different from what I was used to at home and that I have tried to make the aperitif pause before dinner a feature of my own life. In the last few years, I've travelled more regularly in Italy and other countries. I've had a couple of short breaks in Paris, but that's all. With those breaks being so short, I've spoken very little French and not taken time to find really good restaurants, the way I have in other countries. For much of that same time, it would be also fair to say that French cuisine has taken a break from leading the world. The really exciting restaurants have been over the Pyrenees, in Catalunya and Basque Spain. Restaurants in Scandinavia have been getting better and better, too, delivering exciting flavours by using traditional techniques of...

Since the Beloved and I have been together, we’ve always had formal dinner parties around Christmastime. Most years, we will entertain my stepchildren and their partners the weekend between Christmas and New Year. We’ve also had friends over for dinner on New Year’s Eve a couple of times, and often have people to lunch on New Year’s Day. It’s a busy time of year, but surrounding oneself with friends and family is the very essence of Christmas for me. My Godfather once said of my Mum and her family, “they make love to you with food.” It’s a gene I’m happy to have inherited! I love a nice table! Although it’s a great stand-by, I think it’s possible to get a little champagned-out at this time of year. I do serve it before Christmas lunch and open a bottle to let the New Year in, but I usually look to other aperitif drinks for my dinner parties. One drink I learnt to love in my twenties is the Trinity cocktail. I was living and working in a Jesuit retreat house in Merseysid...