Small pleasures, from good eggs to good books

Della Street and Perry Mason

It’s doubtful that there is any better way to start a working day than a leisurely breakfast with a good book by your side.

If it means getting up a tad earlier and rushing a bit more, the more relaxed minutes that follow make it worth while.

And Albertini, a small, local café just off Euston Road – so just away from the worst of the traffic fumes and noise – is the perfect spot for such indulgence.

Even the simplest foods can be got wrong. On Tuesday, with an appointment elsewhere early in the morning, breakfast was taken in an old-fashioned greasy spoon, where the eggs and baked beans did the job of providing fuel, but nothing more.

But whoever is on duty at Albertini in a morning, be it Albert or Tini, they make a mean fried egg on toast, and it’s one of life’s small pleasures to sit and eat, taking care to avoid any of the rich, golden yolk dripping onto the plate.

And then there’s the coffee: a good old-fashioned, plain white mug – none of that overpriced, absurdly-named stuff so beloved of the endless chains that have invaded these shores in the wake of Friends.

There are no baristas at Albertini, but there is always good coffee, at a decent price.

Once the eggs are consumed, I pull the mug closer and return to whatever my current reading matter is.

It’s all been fiction of late – simply because my non-fiction reading, volume one of John Richardson’s behemoth of a three-volume Life of Picasso (with a fourth volume in the offing) may be brilliant, but it is also far too big and too heavy to lug around in a day-to-day bag.

And as so often, crime fiction is what I turn to when I want something a little lighter to read, but which still doesn’t actually insult the little grey cells.

So here is a brief look at a few recent reads – although that doesn’t mean they’re new books.

Earl Stanley Gardener’s the Case of the Stuttering Bishop is really the odd one out in this batch – it’ll become clear why quite quickly – so I’ll start with that.

There’s not really much to say about the Perry Mason books except that they’re fun in a fairly predictable way, but without the writing itself being too ‘pulpy’.

When I lodged in Bloomsbury some years ago, my landlady had most of them, in lovely old editions, on narrow shelves in the flat’s littlest room. I developed a fondness for them then and it was nice to return to one now.

They remain snappy and twisty, with a strong set of central characters – even though the descriptions are largely irrelevant, because I can’t see Mason as anyone other than the late Raymond Burr and Della Street as anyone other than Barbara Hale, while William Katt (Hale’s son), who played Paul Drake in the later TV reincarnation, looks nothing like the Drake of the written page.

But no matter, it was good fun.

Arturo Peréz-Reverte is the Spanish author who has given us, among many other works, The Club Dumas, which was subsequently adapted into The Ninth Gate, starring Johnny Depp.

The Flanders Panel starts with the discovery of a hidden clue in an old work of art, hinting at foul deeds.

In a 15th-century Flemish painting, two noblemen are pictured playing chess. Yet two years before it was painted, one of them had been murdered.

Five centuries later, in Madrid, picture restorer Julia is preparing the work for auction and uncovers a hidden inscription in Latin that points to the crime: Quis necavit equitem? Who killed the knight?

But this isn’t just a medieval mystery, because it becomes clear that, even after five centuries, the game isn’t up.

Combining art and chess, Peréz-Reverte spins a tale that possesses a genuinely creepy quality. And he writes so convincingly that you do find yourself wondering if the painting and the painter really existed.

Thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying, and with a conclusion that surprises – well, it surprised me.

Montalbano and Catarella

Having discovered that another Spanish writer, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, influenced Andrea Camilleri to the extent that the latter named his own protagonist after him, I decided to chase down some of the books that are available in translation.

Murder in the Central Committee possibly isn’t the best of the Pepe Carvalho series to begin with, since it uproots the private detective from his usual Barcelona setting and sends him to Madrid to solve an apparent closed-room killing.

In a Spain still recovering from the Franco years, the murder of the general secretary of the country’s communist party causes unrest.

Can Carvalho, drafted in as a former member of the party because he understands its workings, solve the case?

Rather over-wordy on occasion – particularly when he’s illustrating that he does actually know the politics – it’s still an interesting read with a quirky central character, and while Montalbán isn’t in the business of rubbishing communism, he’s good on the way people will argue over the finest imaginable points of what could be described as political theology.

I look forward to reading one of the Carvalho books that’s set in Barcelona.

But this moves us nicely to Camilleri and The Voice of the Violin, the fourth of his series of novels about Sicilian police inspector, Montalbano.

Here, our hero is faced with the murder of a woman that has all the hallmarks of having been the result of a burglary – or was it a rape?

Camilleri can, extraordinarily, create stories of tragedy and horror, highlighting corruption and venality and many another human failing, yet all with a sense of humour underlying the deep cynicism.

Salvo Montalbano is a wonderful protagonist – unorthodox, flawed but humane, and there’s a delightful cast of other regular characters too. In this novel in particular, the well-meaning but woefully inept policeman Catarella offers comic delight, as well as providing a way to comment on ‘modern’ approaches to policing.

And if Montalbano was named in homage to Montalbán, then another common factor is the love of food of both author’s central figures.

Mind, just as with Perry Mason, I can now no longer read about Montalbano without seeing Luca Zingaretti in my mind’s eye. They’re wonderful adaptations, but it leaves you with the question of whether seeing them impinges on the altogether more individual experience of reading the stories.

It’s not as though, however, these a 'bad' performances or examples of casting. And Angelo Russo’s Catarella actually helps read the character's muddled language.

Finally, a new discovery from Italy.

Gianrico Carofiglio is a former anti-Mafia prosecutor-turned author from Bari, and Involuntary Witness serves as his introduction to lawyer Guido Guerrieri, who now features in three further novels.

Guerrieri’s wife is leaving him, he’s hitting an early mid-life crisis and depression that’s only exacerbated by making a living that often involves defending the less-than-innocent.

Then he finds himself defending a Senegalese immigrant who is accused of murdering a nine-year-old boy.

Not only does he have his own demons to contend with, the lawyer faces small-town racism and a judicial system that is going to make any defence difficult.

If all that sounds incredibly heavy going, it’s to Carofiglio’s enormous credit that it simply flies past, leavened as it is with a great deal of dark, self-deprecating humour.

A great onslaught on the idea of Italian machismo, Carofiglio has produced a powerful novel about redemption.

It’s absolutely superb – just don’t read the final pages anywhere in public, whether on a bus or over a plate of eggs on toast in a café anywhere.

Cook – there's a caterpillar in my salad!

Chicken salad with orange and tarragon

This weather is glorious and, after a poor summer last year and a lengthy, demoralising winter that pretty much consumed the spring, nobody should be grumbling.

But, unaccustomed as we are to such soaring temperatures, it can make eating a little more difficult. After all, this is hardly meat-and-two-veg weather.

In which case, it seems the perfect opportunity to look toward the Mediterranean – not simply for holidays to come, but for culinary ideas for the here and now.

Wondering what to start the day with on Sunday, having seen The Other Half off to sunny Castleford for the Rugby League, I came up with a bit of an experiment: feta and strawberries. And it works.

It doesn’t need anything with it – the saltiness of the cheese gives seasoning. The textures are a nice contrast and the sweetness of good strawberries is always a joy.

What I’ve mentioned in the last week about vegetables and simplicity could hardly have been more timely.

For lunch on Sunday, some fine beans and late-season English asparagus, served with a piece of smoked mackerel and gooseberry terrine (Waitrose), and a drizzle of thick Balsamico – I opted for this over virgin oil, as it cuts through the natural sweetness of most of the other ingredients.

Dinner was back to Bruno Loubet terrain and his new book.

This time, a chance to try the grilled mackerel with salted, pressed watermelon and a lime mayonnaise.

I probably over-salted the watermelon, but the dish as a whole was light and fresh – perfect for this weather.

Mind, nothing in this weather, can lay a hand to a fresh gazpacho. There must be plenty of variations – every cook will have their own tweak – but the result is refreshing, nutritious, tasty and, well, simply perfect.

I was introduced to it one summer some years ago, when I was whinging about not knowing what to eat, by m’friend George, whose wife is Spanish. So it’s the real McCoy.

He wouldn’t give people the recipe unless decent tomatoes were available. In those days, I wondered why. Now, I have no doubts. It is a dish that needs good incidents – and a dish that is designed for exactly when they will be available.

It is, in other words, an icon of seasonal eating.

Smoked mackerel terrine and seasonal vegetables

You need properly ripe tomatoes – even better if you are growing your own and can pick them just as you need them. But otherwise, stick some on a plate and under the sun for a short while. That’ll help.

Take six or seven really ripe ones and blitz them. Follow that with a small cucumber – preferably one of those with a rough skin, which you peel first. This is also where using organic, if you can get it, is worth it too.

Next into the blender goes a handful of breadcrumbs.

Then a small onion – or as yesterday, a large shallot – followed by a clove of garlic (or two).

After that, it’s four tablespoons of wine vinegar. Actually, when making this yesterday, I realised that at the back of my great vinegar collection, I had a small bottle of raspberry champagne vinegar, with just about exactly the right amount left, so I used that.

Next, in goes a cup of olive oil and then salt to taste.

Chill. To serve, dilute to taste with either iced water or ice cubes.

And so thanks again to George for Gazpacho Doña Luisa.

It says everything about last summer that I never reached a point of wanting gazpacho: in the last few days, it’s been one of the things that was automatically on my mind.

I’d love to be able to make it in Collioure next month, given the divine tomatoes I can get there, but I don’t know whether there’ll be a blitzing facility. Fingers crossed.

What there will be, however, is a pan and a knife – and that’s all I’ll need for a ratatouille to make the most of local produce that I can find at the village market.

But back to the here and now.

On Sunday, I also roasted a chicken – my preferred River Café method; three and a half hours.

Set the oven to 80˚C (fan).

Stuff your bird – I can’t recall what the book says, as I just use what’s available. In this case, one and a half lemons and half a dozen cloves of garlic, crushed.

Pop the bird the usual way up in the tightest-fitting dish you’ve got. Pour in around 100ml of water and give it an hour. Then turn it over and give it another hour. Then turn it back to how it started – and give it a third hour.

There a caterpillar in here somewhere

Take it out and ratchet the heat up to 170˚C (fan). Message butter into the bird and season. At this point, you can add 200ml of vermouth, but it’s not essential. More water will do. And so give it a final half hour’s cooking.

The flesh will be tender and moist, and the skin will be crisp and brown.

It’s not really roast dinner weather, though, so the bird was then allowed to cool.

Yesterday’s first task was to strip the meat off it and make stock – easy enough, but rather hot for the weather!

The bulk of the stock has gone into the freezer, but a small jar was then further reduced, with the addition of the juice of half an orange and some tarragon leaves.

Strain and allow to cool, and then add some white wine vinegar, some olive oil and seasoning to taste.

Serve as a dressing over cold chicken, on a bed of leaves and garnished (if you feel so inclined) with an odd slice or segment of orange, and some fresh tarragon leaves.

The leaves on my plate were a combination of watercress and young lettuce leaves – the latter, the first crop from the potager.

Lesson one, though: rinse thoroughly before putting them in the salad spinner. That way, you’ll be able to rinse off any insect life that is too large to fall through the basket when you’re spinning it.

Mind, that small green caterpillar must have been dizzy.

The lettuce was a delight and the chicken was spot on.

Light dining that’s just perfect for these wonderful, hot days.

A little taste of Spain in the City

The festive season is almost upon us – so almost upon us, indeed, that the festive eating began yesterday, being entertained at Eyre Brothers in the City of London.

A very pleasant venue – which wasn’t there when I actually worked in the vicinity, but that’s beginning to seem like a very long time ago now – Eyre Brothers is dedicated to Spanish cuisine, but not, as is so trendy these days, just tapas.

As we nibbled olives and bread rolls, I ordered Brandada de bacalao (pictured left), which came with a soft-boiled egg, pimientos de piquillo, olives, capers and grilled bread, to start.

Brandade is an emulsion of salt cod and olive oil that’s also familiar in France as Brandade de Morue.

The only time I’ve eaten it previously was in a poor, touristy place in Paris, where it was only memorable for a bone piercing the roof of my mouth.

There was a single bone here too, but it was fished out in time. Otherwise, this was light and airy and a very soothing taste and texture.

The red pepper, olives and capers added a real burst of gutsy flavour and colour, while the thick piece of chargrilled bread brought texture, and the egg – cooked to perfection, with the yolk just running – seemed to bring the diner full circle to smooth, soothingness once more.

This really was a delightful and very satisfying dish.

Next up was roast Barbary duck with savoy cabbage, chesnuts and smoked pancetta.

It didn’t exactly bode well. Like an echo of last year’s pheasant at Blacks, was a leg and thigh, served in one piece, atop the cabbage mix, in a bowl.

That makes it difficult to cut – and indeed, sharper knives would also have helped.

Confit leg would work nicely like this – where the meat flaked easily away from the bone – but this was harder work although, once I managed to get to the thickest, brownest meat, it was tasty.

And the cabbage, chestnuts and bacon was very pleasant indeed, although the cabbage could possibly have been cooked a tad less.

Side dishes included broccoli – but I’m afraid that was taking the old al dente thing to the extreme of near rawness.

To finish, I opted for dulce de leche ice cream, which was pleasant and light.

Since the entire company was eating dark meat/game, we opted for a 2010 Quinta dos Roques from Portugal, which was bold and fruity and very enjoyable.

The fellow diner who also had duck was of the same opinion as me. But those who had the lamb said that it was excellent – and it certainly looked so.

It was good to see an eatery that hadn’t gone all insanely festive with the menu as soon as Advent had dawned, but was sticking with what it does normally.

Service was friendly and very pleasantly unrushed.

For all the small qualms, I’d be happy to eat at Eyre Brothers again.

Rugby League changed my life

I like Rugby League. No, it isn't my favourite sport, but it's one I enjoy – and I've certainly got a lot to be grateful to it for.

It was three years ago Easter just gone that St Helens and Castleford Tigers played their first Super League matches against the then newcomers to the competition, the Catalans Dragons. And since there was barely more than a week between those two visits to the south of France, The Other Half and I decided to arrange our main holiday of the year around the games.

Travel on the Friday, watch the Dragons v Cas in Carcassonne on the Saturday, then travel to Barcelona for a week on the Sunday and back to Perpignan on the Easter Sunday for Saints' visit on the Monday, followed by a TGV journey to Paris and then home 36 hours later via the Eurostar.

It was to be a revelation of a trip – possibly even a trip that was life-changing.

Rugby League is, in essence, a working class sport. It split from 'rugby' in 1895, after the powers that be, based in the south of England, created a by-law to stop northern clubs in working-class districts paying their players 'broken-time' money, to compensate them for the wages that they lost when they took breaks from their jobs in the mills and mines to play.

Outside the north, players came from a different background and didn't suffer financially through playing. Thus was born Rugby League – the other code is Rugby Union, which only became openly professional around 15 years ago. They found plenty of ways to pay players via the back door over the years – thus it was known as 'shamateurism'.

But it's also an illustration, generally, of why amateurism in sport is elistist.

In France, the sport suffered miserably at the hands of the ruling elite – not least during the war years, when the Vichy government actually banned it and stripped clubs of all their assets. The French RL is still campaigning for official recognition of the wrongs done to the sport – and for some sort of compensation.

The introduction of the Dragons into Super League was not without controversy – plenty of fans in England didn't want them. But it was a major chance to help build RL in the part of France that had once been the heartland of the country's game.

And so we made our first trip to southern Europe.

Downside? Having to fly out by Ryan Air. Which I hate. But Perpignan airport is a small one and you have that wonderful experience of walking across the tarmac to the airport buildings themselves. Heat welcomed us, together with the sight of the Pyrenees, rearing up on the horizon.

That night, we joined other fans in a short bus trip to nearby St Esteve. A small town, we'd been invited to visit the Rugby League clubhouse, where a barbeque had been arranged. It was a most convivial evening.

Saturday's match was an evening one, to which we would travel by coach. In the morning, therefore, we joined a minibus to take a tour of the coast. As we headed down the motorway, toward the mountains, the conversation from our fellow explorers was most illuminating.

"We got to the hotel yesterday," said a male Yorkshire voice. "And the receptionist said: 'Bonjour'. And I said: 'Hello'. And she said: 'Bonjour'. And I said: 'Hello'. And eventually she got the idea and said: 'Hello'."

Oh, what a victory for perfidious Albion.

Then one of the women traveling in their little group: "I mean, it's very nice, but it's not a real Rugby League town."

No – it's not in the bleak industrial north of England, where manufacturing is all but dead and the towns are dying dumps.

Our first stop, winding down a hairpin road, was Collioure. We had an hour – and in that time, we were well on the way to falling in love, wandering along the seafront, gaping at the menus of all the restaurants and at the view in general.

Our fellow travelers, it should be noted, didn't bother looking around, but simply headed to the first bar that was open.

Then on to Argelès sur Mer, slightly further back up the coast. We had a little longer and, while the others headed straight for another bar, we ambled to the seafront, dipped our feet in the Mediterranean for the first time and basked in the spring sunshine. A couple of the seafront restaurants were already open for business and, while looking at the menu of one, the waiter drew us in. Not that there was much "in". The tables were set out on a deck, but the canopy overhead had been drawn back and we sat with the sun burnishing our skin and penetrating to cold, northern bones, drinking sangrias that came compliments of the restaurant for being two of the very first customers of the new season.

The Other Half had a spaghetti carbonara. I had huge gambas, shells blackened on the fire and served in warmed olive oil, infused with garlic. Within seconds, I'd given up any remote efforts to be 'ladylike', getting my fingers as greasy as possible as I tore off the shells and relished the firm, tasty meat of the vast prawns, and the flavour of the oil. TV chef Rick Stein, on a culinary trip through France, once commented that, in England, he'd seen people try to eat such food with a knife and fork. You can't. It demands to be handled – and such an earthy approach is wonderfully sensual.

The third and final stop on our little tour was Canet. It took us only a very few moments to decide that we won't bother going back there: an artificial creation of high-rise, concrete hotels and 'trendy' bars, it was far from the sort of place that we like. The others thought it brilliant – and found a bar straight away.

The next day, after a match that had seen Cas lose, we caught a train south. It was a long, slow journey in a very basic train, and by the time we reached Barcelona, it was evening and we didn't feel like venturing far from the hotel.

The next day, however, was a peach, with visits to Sagrada Família and then on to Las Ramblas, where we peeked just inside La Boqueria, one of the most famous markets in the world, and then relished a sumptuous lunch in a restaurant right next to the market. I had deep fried squid to start, followed by bacalao, cooked in a an unbelievable amount of olive oil, with peppers and garlic by the ton, and all served in the pan. Wonderful. And accompanied by a gutsy Tempranillo – The Other Half asked for the house red and the waiter brought a bottle and poured us each a little, with his towel obscuring the label.

"Tempranillo, si?" I managed. He was impressed. The Other Half was even more impressed. It's possibly the only wine in the world that I can recognise. I felt chuffed.

But that gives you an idea of what was to become one of the dominant features of that week – the food. A wonderful restaurant down the road from our hotel, Els Barrils, specialised in Galacian-style fish. I had padron peppers as a starter – lovely little jewels of green peppers, around 4.5cm long; they're fried very quickly and then served with a garnish of course sea salt. You pick them up by the stem to eat, and about one in 10 packs a serious pepper punch. They're delicious. I followed that with my very first lobster, and then a lovely chocolate and orange icecream for dessert.

Moon became a regular late-evening venue after walking off dinner, with good beers and tapas for the really hungry.

There was another restaurant where the young waiter was trying to open our bottle of wine and the cork broke inside the bottle. The maître d came over, and in a dumb show of pure comic genius, rolled his eyes, gave us complimentary tapas as a starter (little black puddings) and then, when he'd produced a new bottle of wine, rolled it slowly and with great drama on our table to help him ease the cork out. Later, he insisted on my having a complimentary dessert too – as though they had anything to apologise for. And the food itself ...

I had bacalao again, but this time in a sauce of honey and pine nuts. Fabulous.

At yet another restaurant – a very smart and modern one – I had the mesclun salad, with strawberries and nuts, followed by caramcitas – baby squid, perfectly cooked, the ivory pockets arranged like a star on my plate, and dressed with warmed olive oil, infused with garlic.

A few days later, in Paris for the first time, I had a wonderful pave of salmon, served with a small ratatouille and new potatoes, and followed by a dreamy crème brûlée that had me oozing 'tres bons' to the waiter.

Just over three years have since that expedition, but I remember those meals as though it were yesterday. I don't have to think hard to recall them or even refer to the diary in which I noted them in detail at the time. In Barcelona in particular, I found the most wonderful food that I had ever eaten.

Food that was full of colour, bursting with freshness and flavour. Perfect ingredients, wonderful simplicity. Meals that were so balanced and perfectly proportioned that even I – who normally can hardly manage two courses in the UK – could eat a full three. Eating had drama about it, and pleasure and pride for those who cooked and served it as well as the pleasure of those who ate.

We've spent a further week in Barcelona since, and visited at least three of those eateries again (Els Barrils twice more, while I ate exactly the same salad and squid at that restaurant as 18 months earlier). And then last year, in desperate need of a total break, we spent 10 days in Collioure. The food, again, was bliss.

We will return this September for a fortnight, staying not in a hotel this time, but in a cottage. I have always derided self-catering – my mother could turn it into a nightmare. But now – now, I am going to be able to shop and to cook in France. I'm already excited.

So no, given my tastes and how they've developed even since then, I don't think it's too much to say that that trip was a life changer.

So thank you Rugby League.