Drink
17 November 2009
Introducing CHEESY WOOFER! Finlay the dog has very generously agreed to help me review these cheeses.
Selles sur Cher
A French raw goats cheese, bought from Mons
This little flat round cheese has a greeny-grey charcoal rind, speckled with a white bloom. There’s a soft squishy translucent layer directly underneath the rind, and a putty-like dense bright white layer in the center. The clean white paste inside contrasts really prettily with the dark rind.
The rind tastes prickly and peppery and medicinal; hints of TCP. Inside it’s soft and smooth, and melts in my mouth. It’s very creamy, for a goat’s cheese and has small bursts of thyme and rosemary flavours and a gentle sweet nuttiness.
Cheesy Woofer: Finn eats this cheese after some persuasion. He doesn’t recommend it. (However, I do! It’s very tasty.) more »
marna in FT • 6 Comments
13 November 2009
There are loads of good pubs in Borough, right? Well, sort of. The Lord Clyde and Royal Oak are both a bit fiddly to find to non-regulars and don’t start me on The George. Would you Trust the National Trust to run a pub? So why The Kings Arms? On a small side street just off of Borough High Street, it is not open weekends or holidays and is pretty poky. And yet in 2008 it felt like I spent half the year in there. And it was a lovely half a year.
Basically The Kings Arms was the nearest decent pub to the Resonance FM studios when we were making the second series of Freaky Trigger and The Lollards Of Pop. So every Tuesday night we would meet for swift pre-show pint, desperately try to plan the show and then reconvene an hour later. Occasionally a few extra members of the team might just wait in the pub for the team to come back. Because The Kings Arms is that classic of a type, a dependable, solid boozer which always had OK ale on, always had pork scratchings and seemed to bring out the best in us. more »
Pete Baran in Pumpkin Publog • 13 Comments
10 November 2009
Lists, lists, lists. Its what we do around here, and the end of a decade gives us ample opportunity to look back with fondness over a decade. Music, films, television were all thrown in the mix, and may pop up. But most important to us is the social. From a site that is run by avowed Geezaesthetics, the pub is a sacred space, a space of learning and entertainment. And this colours the list too. And for me, my first blog was the Pumpkin Publog, which was rolled into FT five years ago. It is nice to get back to the pubs sometimes.
So firstly, before we go to far. These are not the 25 best pubs in London if you are a tourist. They are probably not the best if you live and work in London. Hell, some of these pubs no longer exist. But these are the pubs that the core of FreakyTrigger, and lots and lots of friends visited the most, and had the best times in. more »
Pete Baran in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 1 Comment
20 October 2009
St Felicien
Soft raw cow’s cheese from France, bought from Mons
St. Felicien comes in a shallow round wooden box. It has a wrinkled white and cream coloured, softly bloomy rind. When I cut into it I see exactly why it’s sold whole, in a box; it’s entirely liquid, and the creamy cheese puddles out of the rind. It’s the colour and texture of double cream. I fetch a spoon.
Creamy probably goes without saying, but this cheese is also surprisingly sour and bitter. It’s got both a lemonishness and a taste of soured milk. It’s also got a bit of herbal astringency, reminding me of thyme. It’s bitter in the aftertaste, and it leaves my mouth tingling. The rind (I have to fish a lump out of my sea of cheesy ooze) is creamier, if that’s possible, and softer and sweeter; it has nutty fudgey notes. The St Felicien is so oozy and liquid that I was rather expecting a slightly tart and funky cream, but it’s more complex than that, with a big contrast between the sweet creaminess and the bitter and sour ends of the cheese. It’s good!
more »
marna in FT • 6 Comments
28 September 2009
The Dictionary of Drink has the noble aim of being ‘a guide to every type of beverage’ and is the kind of thing one can happily browse for hours during a lazy session in the pub. We found a copy in the very fine King Charles I off Cally Road and signs were initially good as all the seasonal variations of Hooch were accounted for. However, it quickly became apparent that the authors’ research had been somewhat slapdash. more »
Rob Brennan in Pumpkin Publog • 10 Comments
27 August 2009
As you are no doubt very much aware, here at Freaky Trigger we are:
A. very much in favour of the pub
B. quite partial to a festival every now and then
So, hey, what could POSSIBLY GO WRONG with Pub In The Park? I, I don’t really know where to start…
more »
CarsmileSteve in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 6 Comments
19 August 2009
The world of pubs, as we know and have heard, grows ever more homogeneous over the years, as the big chains move in, so surely it’s hardly the time to be mourning the passing of one of them. Farewell then to Ben Crouch’s Tavern, just off Oxford Street, a stalwart of the Eerie Pubs stable.*
It was for the most part a horrible place, filled with ersatz gothick decoration (think thick cobwebs, chains, rusty steel cages, big fake spiders, book cases, and lab testing equipment), a meagre range of drinks and truly awful music played far too loudly which didn’t even conform to the rest of the pub’s decor theme (generally, it was bad AOR rock music).
And yet, and yet, a bit of nostalgia creeps in for the old place. more »
Ewan in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 6 Comments
5 August 2009
Due to my impending trip to Edinburgh (of which more later), I managed to persuade a hardy bunch of FT regulars to accompany me to the GBBF for the opening public session last night, and it was a JOY in comparison to recent Friday visits. Reader, we almost didn’t need to have taken our dad stools with us!
You could get around easily, there was very little rowdiness, and very few bloody part-time tourist lager-drinkers in stupid hats people unused to the joys of ale. There was also a much closer gender balance than I’ve ever seen (we’re not talking 50/50 here, inevitably, but I’d guess 70/30 male to female? maybe 65/35?) and, yes, definitely more couples, rather than just groups of people (and a fair number of the groups were left over from the early afternoon trade session I think).
Also good to see that the Champion Beer of Britain is a Mild, although at 4.4%, it’s pushing it a bit (but then i like my milds subtle to the point of tastelessness). I don’t think any of the group got to try it, but I did have some pretty good (if randomly selected) bouze, nothing made my palate explode* with excitement/difference/wtf (i’ve gone off stunt beers a bit) although the Spire Dark Side Of The Moon (Peak District** bar) and the Holden Black Country Mild (W Midlands bar, obv) were both good chocolately, dense milds, just the sort of thing I like. more »
CarsmileSteve in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 9 Comments
9 July 2009
Facebook asked me to be a fan of women who like beer! I do wonder why. Of course I clicked through, a little concerned it might be a more, ur, specialist site – you know the kind with black bars across the ladies eyes and pixellated bits until you pay a subscription – Oh! Look Out!, I found on two more clickthroughs a page from the brewers? pub company? PR company for a shadowy cabal? for a random pub in Burton on Trent who apparently created the page (? don’t understaaaaand fzbk):
“Every Wednesday evening 2 courses are £11.90 and 3 courses are £14.90 from The Dial Ladies night menu. Visit www.thedial.uk.com to see the full menu.
BEER COCKTAILS ARE JUST £4.95!”
BEER COCKTAILS?!
http://www.bittersweetpartnership.com/experiment/
(Let’s have an example of this beer cocktail then:
Amber Mojito
6 fresh mint leaves / caster sugar / 1/2 lime, cut into wedges / 60ml Havana rum / ice / 100ml ice cold Coors Light / 1 spring mint to garnish)
Well I can’t see WHY you’d want to do this in any way at all but whatever…. for one crazy second I thought this would be like – you know – Black Velvet (guinness and champagne)… but I was wrong. Yet I still don’t know who on earth the Bittersweet Partnership are (I wonder what their name could.. imply…) – ooh and note the “Coors Light”, for the ladies…
More clicking through, and by this time I have developed RSI, I get the “Alfie” page: http://www.bittersweetpartnership.com/whats_it_all_about/. (DYS?). It appears that the main push from the Bittersweet Partnership, via a Facebook intro, is to raise awareness of a super new product. KASTEEL CRU ROSE. You heard. Rose and lager. Rose… and… la…
Rosé lager! All this clicking and we’ve reached the grail. And what a grail! This isn’t just a fruit beer. This is pink wine topped up with Wifebeater!
My Former Boss once poured half a bottle of pink blossom hill into the remnants of his pint of Carling at the end of a boozy lunchtime, and i suspect Kasteel Cru Rose would not at all dissimilar… if you’re reading, Former Boss, perhaps you could sue them? I mean, SOMEONE SHOULD. This hamfisted and bon-bon-bonKERS attempt to get women drinking beer by MAKING IT INTO COCKTAILS is both the worst and best thing ever! Let’s think about the assumption it’s making: women like cocktails. Women don’t like beer. But if it was in a cocktail!! There’s only one problem – and that is that brewed hops plus tequilla plus vermouth plus a maraschino cherry and ideally a sparkler would taste like a Hermesetas addled pig had done his business in your mouth… \o/ \o/ ???
Taking this back to the initial facebook page for “women who like beer” – it’s not surprising that no-one is ‘a fan’, given that by the time we’ve gotten to the crux of this bizarre push, we’re not reeeally talking beer anymore, are we Tonto. It makes me wonder what’s lurking at the bottom of other facebook ads. A fanpage for La Roux will turn out to be advertising Jeremy Vine endorsed stock cubes?!
Oh, and whilst I’m putting “cru” on a beer doesn’t make it any more premium… (hello Kronenboug ‘Premier Cru’ et al, purse, sows ear, springs to mind)…
Full disclosure: you can probably disregard all of this as I myself have been known to sample the power shandy in my younger days (half of budvar, topped up with smirnoff ice). Internet searches give me a whole range of variants on the power shandy – mostly with a “bomb” aspect – i.e drop a shot of midori into a can of Special Brew. One suggestion is for a shot of soju to be chucked in a mug of Hite! Non, mon cher…
Sarah in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 2 Comments
6 July 2009
A cow-orker* informed me of this exciting new Aspall’s product this morning.
Perronelle’s Blush, eh? Now look, we know it’s Cider & Black, you know it’s Cider & Black, CALL IT CIDER & BLACK!!!
Here at FT Towers we are now awaiting the launch of “Serpent’s Kiss”, and Le Petit Tatou…
I’m sure you can think of a few others in the comments box?
*who was also not taken in by this subtle bit of re-branding, to her credit.
CarsmileSteve in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 5 Comments
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