Untitled 4 (from his tabletop series) by Jochen Klein.

Orlando Gough.

The highlight of our one and only trip to India was a hilarious, surreal, heart-warming visit to Fort Begu, a sprawling Gormenghast of a fort in the very south of Rajasthan, covered with peacocks, pigeons and pigeon poo. It had been partially restored by the Maharana, Rawat Sawai Hari Singh (M.Sc. Agron., ex-Minister, Rajasthan) and his son Ajay, to make a hotel. We were the only guests, and we were the epicentre of their epic hospitality. They showed us everything, told us everything, asked us everything. It was breathless – and breath-taking.

A memorably bizarre moment: we are in a huge unrestored wing of the fort, with a banyan tree growing through the walls; the Maharana orders up a bucket of water and a mug, chucks water casually at a plaster wall, and reveals some eye-wateringly frisky wall paintings. Religion and sex – there doesn’t seem to be much distinction round here. Another: we have ordered tea in our room, first thing in the morning. The two servants, Suresh and Deja (probably the most handsome man in the universe), tap on the door and bring it in. Two servants, one pot of tea. Wow. They are followed by the Maharana himself, who starts fiddling with the remote control for the air con, muttering ‘ Sixteen degrees, it’s got to be sixteen degrees, like England’. Another: as we are leaving, a protracted negotiation between the Maharana and Ajay about what kind of envelope the final bill should be put into. (They eventually settle on the fully crested version – very flattering.)

The Maharana has a gag of which he is understandably proud: ‘You conquered us with gunpowder; we conquered you with curry powder.’ On the face of it, this is unarguable. But actually I suspect curry powder was a British invention. It was surely a means of taking or sending back a spice mixture to Blighty, so that our empire-builders could continue to enjoy some of the benefits of their great work. The recipes for curry powder in 19^th century cookbooks are often for industrial amounts of the stuff: in Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book, published in Madras in 1850, and presumably written by a Brit (‘the author of Manual of Gardening for Western India’), the quantities are 20lbs coriander seeds, 4lbs turmeric, 2lbs poppy seeds etc, a total of 36lbs. Apparently ‘a tablespoonful is sufficient for a chicken or fowl curry’. That’s about 500 chicken or fowl curries. The stuff would unquestionably have gone stale long before the 500^th curry.

To an Indian cook, curry powder is an anathema. It’s no better than those terrible jars of mixed herbs that have now mercifully disappeared from supermarket shelves. Using curry powder is obviously going to make all dishes taste the same. The trick is to use a different group of spices for each dish, sometimes ground, sometimes whole. Cumin, for example, has at least three distinct possible flavours: roasted, or dry-fried for a short time and then ground, it is dark, sharp and nutty; roasted and used whole, it is strongly licoricey; simply used whole it is delicately licoricey (though noticeably different from fennel seed). And of course it makes a difference when the spices are added; added earlier, the effect permeates the dish; added later, it’s more cosmetic.

If you are obliged to use curry powder (which is of course specified in many recipes), it’s a good idea to make it yourself – dead easy, and the ingredients are readily available.  Make it in small amounts, enough for one or two dishes: say, 20g cardamon seeds, 20g coriander seeds, 10g black peppercorns, 10g cloves, 10g cumin seeds, 10g salt, a pinch of mace, and a pinch of nutmeg. The salt is very important. Grind it in a small coffee grinder. Roast it, or dry-fry it, for a couple of minutes before using – the flavour will develop radically. Don’t use fenugreek, or turmeric, or mustard seed; they’re lethal. Use chillies if you want, but it’s worth bearing in mind that they’re far from essential, and they have a tendency to obliterate everything else. They were only introduced into Indian cookery from America in the 16^th century. Most Moghul dishes, for example, and many of the vegetarian dishes of Southern India are subtle and mild.

But don’t buy it in the shops. If it can be said that we were conquered by curry powder, then we have unquestionably contributed to own downfall.

P.S. Last night, having just finished this diatribe against curry powder, I was rootling around in our spice cupboard and found, as well as a box of the infamous stuff that must have been bought sometime during the previous millennium, a tin of Ras Al Hanout, and a tin of Baharat, both ground spice mixtures. Whoops. Must start practising what I preach.

We’ve published a book of Orlando’s recipes full of similar tales. For more about Orlando Gough Recipe Journal click here.

The Long Road. (A clue to our next catalogue location…)

Seb Emina is the creator and editor of the London Review of Breakfasts blog, where he writes under the brilliant nom de plume of ‘Malcolm Eggs’. Reviews come in the form of poems, political musings and Freudian dreams, dispatched by Malcolm and a host of other contributors (all with equally ingenious aliases such as Tina Beans and Vita Bicks). Nobody knows breakfast quite as well as or is as passionate about the topic as Seb. Here, we present an extract and a recipe from his recently penned his debut book (co-written with himself), The Breakfast Bible:

TOAST

‘There is another kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire and is incomparably good. This is called toast,’ wrote C. P. Moritz, a Swiss pastor, recounting a holiday to England in 1782. What’s surprising about the quote is that he seems to see toast as groundbreaking, when surely cooking bread until hot and crisp is blindingly obvious? Toast is one of the simple foods. This is why ‘toast and cereal’ are forever paired on breakfast menus in hotels, the ever-present footer with a slight air of flippancy. You can imagine a sarcastic hotelier adding, ‘and the rooms will contain beds and doors and stuff’.

When making a cooked breakfast, the simplicity of grilling bread shouldn’t be cause for complacence. Quite the opposite: toast can easily become an afterthought, and with grave consequences. For tragedy value, few things match the moment when toast arrives late, breathless, as the final bead of yolk is mopped up by that reluctant understudy, sausage. Or this: you’ve remembered to shoo it into the toaster and have removed it before it burns. Are you in the clear? No. At the very beginning, before you’d even started on the sausages, you failed to remove the butter from the fridge. Unscheduled minutes are lost as you scrape away despairingly with a knife, wondering where it all went so wrong in the world.

Is there a right way of making toast? A wrong way? Thomas J. Murrey complained in his 1885 book Breakfast Dainties that ‘many seem to think they have made toast when they brown the outside of a piece of bread’. His vision for the stuff (presented as a simple matter of right and wrong) was to both remove the crust and ‘evaporate all moisture’. Murrey is long gone and we can afford to be frank: this was just his personal preference. Toast is an individual matter. Some feel offended by anything that goes beyond warm bread, while others by that which is not only cold, but also burned. Most of us like it triangular, harvest-gold, and served while the butter’s still melting. There may be no wrong way of making toast, but there are wrong breads to make it with. Sun-dried tomato bloomers and squidgy olive breads aren’t right. And fancy Italian loaves – ciabatta, focaccia – have that slight reek, when served with eggs, of the pretentious airport brasserie. The best toast for a fried breakfast is made from bread that is soft (ask yourself honestly, will this mop up yolk?), dense and can be easily cut into stout slices. It’s a spectrum that runs from cheap white sliced at the one end (perfectly fine with real butter – always butter) to artisan sourdough at the other.

An Amazing Toast

Take a piece of rye bread, the dense Prussian kind that comes in those cuboid packets. Cut it down in half and put it in the toaster, on its highest setting. You may have wondered why the toaster goes up to 6 when anything above 3 burns conventional toast: the answer is rye bread. That stuff is so dense! Meanwhile, heat a combination of almonds and sunflower, sesame and pumpkin seeds in a dry pan, removing from the heat when the seeds start to pop. When the toast springs up, spread it with unsalted butter and peanut butter (crunchy) leavened with a little honey. Sprinkle with the nuts and seeds and consume immediately. You will have no need to eat until lunch.

londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com

@sebemina / @malcolmeggs

Purchase a copy of The Breakfast Bible here.

Ski Jacket by Peter Doig.

The first of four Tales of the Wilderness, in anticipation of Wilderness Festival, where Toast will be curating the Lakeside Spa this August.

Extract from Wild: An Elemental Journey by Jay Griffiths.

Wild Earth: Feral Song

The wild. I have drunk it, deep and raw, and heard its primal, unforgettable roar. We know it in ourselves, for we are wild to the core. We know it in our dreams, when the mind is off the leash, running wild. “Outwardly, the equivalent of the unconscious is the wilderness: both of these terms meet, one step even farther on, as one“, wrote Gary Snyder. “It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such,” wrote Thoreau. “It is the bog in our brain and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream.”

And as dreams are essential to the psyche, wildness is to life.

For the Native American O’odham people, the term doajkam, wildness, is etymologically tied to terms for health, wholeness and liveliness. “Life consists with wildness,” wrote Thoreau. “The most alive is the wildest. All good things are wild and free” and “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators but for thunder and mud. More. We are animal not only in body, but in spirit. Our minds are the minds of wild animals. Artists, who remember their wildness better than most, are animal artists, lifting their heads to sniff a quick wild scent in the air, and they know it unmistakably, they know the tug of wildness to be followed though your life is buckled by that strange and absolute obedience. (“You must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star,” wrote Nietzsche.) Children know it as magic and timeless play. Shamans of all sorts and inveterate misbehavers know it; those who cannot trammel themselves into a sensible job and a life in the sterile suburbs know it.

What is wild cannot cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don’t waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary. In wildness, truth. Wildness is the universal songline, sung in green gold, which we recognize the moment we hear it. What is wild is what drives the honeysuckle, what wills the dragonfly, shoves the wind and compels the poem. Wildness is insatiable for life; neither truly knows itself without the other. Wildness is the luminousness of a bluebell wood at twilight, massing clouds boiling up their rain, the weed that cracks the pavement and the river that floods its banks, the creeping jenny run riot. It is the first “fuck” on television, it simmers in the feral intoxication of jazz, it explodes exuberant in carnival, it honks with laughter in the magic-mushroom season, it smashes the clocks above the factory gates and sucks up the now, it blazes in your eyes and it glories in everyone who wilfully goes their own way.

Extract courtesy of Penguin.

Purchase a copy of Wild: An Elemental Journey here.

Today is the first of May: the first day of the bright half of the year, the beginning of summer. Today is a day of life and light, a day of revelry and celebration – a time to gather flowers, a time to laugh, a time to dance…

The third dispatch from author, printer and dealer in ‘Vintage Fishing Tackle for the Soul’ John Andrews (a.k.a Andrews of Arcadia). John is one of the six working men photographed by Neil Gavin for our spring/summer menswear collection.

The coming of spring prompts a changing of the guard, an audit of the kit that has got me through another winter on the floor of the market. Usually, this is nothing more than a list of repairs given to the Empress, the sewing up of ripped sleeves, the re-tying of buttons, the strengthening of pockets and shoulder straps and perhaps the re-heeling of a pair of boots. In one year it was a call to the scrap merchant to tow away the car whose wheels had seized and whose seats had rotten. A ritual as bruising on the heart as the shooting of a horse. This year it was something almost as significant, a change of shoes.

The old skins were a pair of brogues, bought at the end of the last century and whose soles and heels I had changed half a dozen times in the intervening years. My friend the cobbler Mr. Stacey Weeks, ‘Spats’ for short, a sartorial gentleman who wears a bowler hat, standard uniform for Victorian cobblers, and odd shoes to prompt a conversation about his art had done the honours each time in exchange for a favour or a score of good floats. I gave him the brogues in March and a week later received a letter that may as well have been bordered in black,

‘Stripped your Commando soles off and there in quite a state really. The stormwelt is broken around the toe on one shoe and needs rewelting. But the welt is in quite bad condition elsewhere on both. They have been repaired often so gone weak. Also the uppers are splitting and worn. The middles are knackerd which I could replace but honestly, they are beyond it.’

I collected the shoes at an auction a week later, stripped of their soles and stripped of their heels. They had given me good service and taken me more miles than I cared to count. Their replacements would be a pair of boots kindly sent to me by the ladies and gentlemen of Toast, a pair of Modern British ‘Veldtschoen’ in Country grain – The Pennine Boot – made by Joseph Cheaney of Northampton. Spats lifted my heel and gave them an inspection much to the bemusement of passers-by. He insisted I take one off so he could get his hands into it. Then he gave them the nod, which was good enough for me.

During the The Great War, Lotus Ltd made 54, 751 pairs of Veldtschoen Boots which were worn exclusively by Officers on active service overseas and of which, according to their advertising legend, only 76 pairs failed to give complete satisfaction. Even twenty years later when war broke out again the legend of Veldtschoen endured in the form of another strapline, ‘Till Victory is Won the Sale of Lotus Veldtschoen is Reserved to Members of H.M. Forces.’ With their leather upper turned outward rather than tucked under and stitched onto the sole through the welt the Veldtschoen is deemed to be waterproof. A boot fit to march down the spine of Britain if ever there was one and more than adequate for the short walk to the market through the first of the large puddles that collects over the cobbles at the mouth of the Truman Car Park with first heavy shower of April.

View the Pennine Boot here.

View the six working men photographs here.

A Northern Lake by Tom Thomson.

Seb Emina is the creator and editor of the London Review of Breakfasts blog, where he writes under the brilliant nom de plume of ‘Malcolm Eggs’. Reviews come in the form of poems, political musings and Freudian dreams, dispatched by Malcolm and a host of other contributors (all with equally ingenious aliases such as Tina Beans and Vita Bicks). Nobody knows breakfast quite as well as or is as passionate about the topic as Seb. He has recently penned his debut book (co-written with himself), The Breakfast Bible, based on his widely read and much loved blog. We caught up with him to find out what makes a good breakfast… To jam or not to jam?

Coming next week: an exclusive extract and recipe from The Breakfast Bible.

Bacon or sausage?

Yes please.

How and why did you begin reviewing London breakfasts?

It started in 2005, with a string of bad breakfasts (undercooked sausage, unloved egg, missing bacon etc) and a realisation that nobody else was holding the people serving them accountable. It turned out to be a fascinating and often quite funny way of exploring London. This was prehistory in blogging terms: I started a Myspace account not long after starting The London Review of Breakfasts.

If you could have breakfast with anybody (dead or alive), whom would you choose?

My great grandfather Frederick Wingett, who worked at Hammersmith Hospital and whose dining table I recently inherited.

How do you like your eggs in the morning?

I always have them either fried (the yolk lightly basted with oil), scrambled (runny with plenty of butter), poached (using a special trick I learned while researching The Breakfast Bible) or boiled (for the exact duration of Roxette’s ‘Listen to Your Heart’).

Favourite spot for breakfast?

It is always changing. Recently I’ve been enjoying J+A Cafe in Clerkenwell, just a cosy cafe with really delicious Irish-influenced breakfasts. Their fried eggs are perfect.

What do you think is the most underrated breakfast ingredient?

Mushrooms are often there as just a token gesture, which is silly as mushrooms and scrambled eggs on toast is one of the best breakfasts in the world.

How would you go about creating your perfect piece of toast?

Maybe I’d make the bread from scratch. Sourdough is nice and is meant to be the mark of a sophisticated slice of toast but sometimes you can’t get better than an old-fashioned white bloomer. What you make will often not, strictly speaking, be as good as what you’d get from a really good baker, but the main thing is that nothing beats the taste of your own triumph over a lump of sticky, yeasty dough. I’d remove the butter from the fridge well in advance and spread that on with some rindy marmalade, and I’d make sure I ate the whole thing while the toast was still hot. It’s not rocket science but there lies the danger: complacency.

Thoughts on jam?

I like jam, and generally go for the traditional sorts – strawberry or raspberry – but I prefer marmalade. It’s a spread for grown-ups.

The best breakfast you’ve ever had?

People always ask me this and I always avoid giving an answer. It’s like asking me the best song I’ve ever heard. Though I did have a wonderful breakfast when I finished the book including hand-made versions of each of the ‘magic nine’ full English ingredients. A lot of work, but worth it.

The worst breakfast you’ve ever had?

I think it might have been a Hawaiian ‘loco moco’ that I was served in a hotel. It’s a strange mish-mash of ingredients that I suppose are geographically (and historically) fitting, given that it’s halfway between North America and Japan and was once ruled by the British: rice, a burger patty, fried eggs and onion gravy. The name means ‘crazy snot’.

Ketchup, mustard or brown sauce?

No sauce for me please.

What’s your take on breakfast refreshment? Juice/tea/coffee? What sorts?

My beverage order tends to be based on the establishment in which I find myself. As a wise cafe once tweeted, ‘never order coffee in a place that serves jacket potatoes’. You should also never order tea in the Eurozone, and I don’t love the way tea is often served in posh places: either in a glass (evil) or in a pot with dainty cups. I know I’m not alone in preferring my tea, at least at breakfast time, in a mug. If I have a second drink, it will be orange juice. Occasionally, on a weekend, booze enters the picture. We have a brilliant alcohol chapter, written by cocktail expert Richard Godwin.

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper, or so goes the saying. Why is it important to breakfast well?

I’m not a nutritionist but it seems like common sense that it’s better to eat a large meal before you start a whole day’s worth of doing stuff than it is when you are about go to bed. I do know that whatever the science, breakfast is important for inner well-being. You never regret sitting down for half an hour before the proper day begins to enjoy the simple sanctuary that is breakfast.

Is there any breakfast item you can’t tolerate?

Raisins, which are pointless and revolting.

What’s next on the agenda for the London Review of Breakfasts? 

Apart from preaching the gospel of The Breakfast Bible, we are working on a radio station. More on that soon.

londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com

@sebemina / @malcolmeggs

Purchase a copy of The Breakfast Bible here.