Date: Thursday 20th February
Venue: Edgbaston Golf Club
Sponsor: Anissa Helou assisted by Elliott O’Mara
Lebanese Dinner
Buckland Club members and guests were treated to a real feast when they met in late February at EGC. For many it came as no surprise, since Feast is the title of award winning author and chef Anissa Helou’s latest cookbook. This hefty volume is a gastronomic masterpiece of the Islamic world.
Anissa is well known to the Club, as she sponsored the impressive Moroccan Dinner at the turn of the millennium. It was delightful to welcome her back to Birmingham, where she was joined by Elliott O’Mara the UK representative of the Ghazir winery of Chateau Musar. Both spoke with a passion and knowledge that was greatly appreciated by all. It was unanimously agreed afterwards that the eager pre dinner expectations had been well and truly surpassed.
The full minutes of the evening will be published after they have been presented at the autumn 2020 dinner. A selection of recipes from the dinner will be published in due course on this website.
Andrew P. Morris
Chairman
March 2020
Sponsor Anissa Helou
The Club survived the Covid-19 pandemic that engulfed the world from spring 2020 intact, and at the Supper with D H Lawrence of October 2021 the Dinner Minutes Secretary, Dave Travis, delivered the now infamous Pandemic Minutes. They appear, in full below:
The Pandemic Minutes
Back in the primordial mists of time the Buckland club used to meet in person and all together at the same time and in the same place.
Due to a global plague the brave and innovative Bucklanders embraced modern technology and traded in their cathode ray tube televisual receivers and invested in the future – lap top personal computer devices and Macintosh books.
This enabled the new-fangled Buckland Zoom meetings and presentations to take place.
These were a great success and we stared in disbelief and wonderment at the screen images of dozens of puzzled looking faces and the seeming impossibility of muting microphones; and some bloke just giving up on everything and playing a trumpet.
We furrowed our brows and tried to remember the good old days of Edgbaston Golf Club get togethers, the aperitifs in the bar before dinners, Roger Brown butchering a sheep whilst we nibbled brains on toast, David London’s excellent dinner speeches … sadly all a thing of the past.
It was decided that in the absence of physical dinners that The Buckland Club would keep the pot bubbling by engaging members in these Zoom masterclasses and the search for suitable candidates commenced.
-o0o-
The Buckland Club was treated to several Zoom cookeries, starting with the Lajina Masala Masterclass, we were sent an enticing and fragrant package in advance and a to do list, glancing at this list I realised it looked like more preparation and cooking time would be needed on the day so I wisely ditched the dessert course straight off sticking to the main event.
I feel that several of the Buckland Club would have been wise to do the same as I smugly sat back with my large glass of Lidl Malbec (£4.49 a bottle – goes down and stays down as I like to say) watching the mild panic, but out of the ordered chaos we could see delicious aloo tikkas, butter chicken and ‘speedy’ yoghurt naans appear, although most looked a little different to Lajina’s. I wisely kept my camera turned off, partly because I ate the hearty meal for four all to myself.
Butter Chicken is a relatively modern dish having originated in Delhi in the 1950s at the Moti Mahal restaurant. It was discovered by chance in an effort to save leftover tandoori chicken by mixing it with tomato gravy.
Amazingly Moti Mahal restaurant is still going – rating of 3.5 on TripAdvisor, although Gordon Ramsay rates it very highly.
Legend has it that there are three types of people in the world. Those who love Butter Chicken, those who think Butter Chicken is overrated and those who have never tasted Butter Chicken
Despite the rollercoaster ride of preparation our efforts looked and tasted first class.
Lajina and her various family members kept the masterclass whizzing along at a lively pace, sometimes slightly too lively but Lajina kept us all more or less on track to produce some mouth watering dishes.
Lajina’s specially blended spices were a big hit and I kept the remainder to lob into my own curry creations willy nilly, they were so expertly blended that everything tasted delicious no matter what order or quantities I used.
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Emboldened by this success and with the country still locked away from a surprise pandemic that pops up to surprise people every 100 years or so we moved onto another potential winner with Reem Abuwaarda from Café Reem in Harborne presenting a Palestinian Cookalong.
‘Reem’ is an Arabic name for Gazelle with characteristics of elegance, beauty and liveliness … so perfectly suited to The Buckland Club.
Thankfully this cookalong proved a little less stressful and everyone seemed to produce mouth watering Palestinian Chicken, flatbreads and Tzatziki; again, I deffed out the dessert course as we say in Birmingham, simply out of laziness.
I’ll gloss over the filo pastry shortage which was akin to pandemic panic buying over toilet rolls and pasta amongst what I like to call ‘the general public’
Waitrose in Harborne saw a massive spike in filo pastry sales and predicting a new trend now has several hundredweight sat in their storeroom.
The Chicken Musakhan served on flatbreads was succulent and beautifully spiced, the rest of my family had caught onto my previous gluttony and snapped it all up like labradors with worms.
Traditionally Chicken Musakhan is cooked in October or November to celebrate and gauge the quality of the freshly pressed Palestinian oil, although it is generally cooked all year round these days. I was happy to share this dish with my family as I think it represents an important social aspect of dining together pulling the meat off a large central platter with chunks of flatbread whilst chatting about the day’s events and life in general. That sets an idyllic image although in my house it more closely resembled a family of Hyenas ripping the internal organs out of a dead wildebeest.
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With still no end to social restrictions in sight yet another Zoom get together was organised and the tantalising Fish Sauce at the Roman Table was scheduled, who doesn’t enjoy glugging down bottles of fermented fish sauce?
As it turned out they were delicious, and preparation was thankfully limited to cutting cucumber sticks and some sour dough bread. It seems the cooking elements are reducing at such a pace that I’m looking forward to the next Pot Noodle masterclass hosted by my mate Barry from the local boozer.
Sponsor Sally Grainger and (husband) Dr Christopher Grocock enlightened us with fascinating facts of the ancient and roman world and the history of Roman fish sauce or garum as it’s known.
These sauces started off as a smelly fish paste and clawed their way up the culinary chain to become an expensive luxury before falling out of favour and back to obscurity as the Roman empire declined, we can only hope that the fish sauce didn’t play a part in this.
-o0o-
Personally, I have little recollection of the last physical dinner, which is a great pity as I have to tell you all about it now.
My guess is that few of you can remember either … although it’s all suddenly coming back to me in great detail now… I remember as I parachuted onto the patio of Edgbaston Golf Club from my helicopter, I saw Roger and Tony arriving on their motorbikes, unusually both dressed as Roman Emporers, maybe my memory of the evening is a little cloudy?
Those among you with better memories will remember the last time that we all met together in real time and full size for the Lebanese dinner, just a few weeks before the first lockdown. Disappointingly, from a Dinner Secretary’s point of view, this meal was close to perfect. Hosted by Anissa Helou, and assisted by Elliot O’Mara, we were treated to the luxury of having food cooked for us instead of the turmoil of squinting at a flour spattered laptop screen and realising we had to clean our own kitchens after.
We certainly had the top host for this meal, award winning chef and author Anissa Helou’s books regularly feature in top food books of the year and her latest book ‘Feast: Food of the Islamic World’ was published in 2018. A real coup for The Buckland Club and the meal lived up to high expectations.
Elliot O’Mara supplied the wine from the Chateau Musar vineyards in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
I’ve looked at the prices on the Chateau Musar website and I feel it might be a good idea to check our financial situation.
Elliot also supplied L’arrack de Musar, which is an Arack made from grape alcohol distilled four times with the addition of anis seeds.
Arack is possibly one of the world’s oldest spirits having originated in India and later distilled from sugar cane. It was an unusual and possibly acquired taste but complimented the meal perfectly.
After grazing on a tasty selection of Olives and Nuts, we settled down to a wonderful selection of treats including Tabuuleh Baida, a delightfully refreshing wheat and parsley salad, wonderfully creamy and flavoursome Houmous and my favourite, Reqaqat Jibneh, crispy on the outside and lovely and gooey and slightly salty on the inside.
This was followed by a Buckland Carnivore pleasing Roast Leg of Lamb served with nut rice and yoghurt, the Lamb was succulent and oozing fatty flavours, although as the old saying goes ‘I like my Lamb to be cooked so as a good vet could revive it’.
I’m not a big dessert lover, but I was intrigued by the Mastic Cookies that followed.
I’ve used mastic sealant in the past and a quick definition of ‘Mastic’ reveals:
‘High grade construction adhesive commonly used to bond ceiling, wall and floor tiles, plywood panels, concrete, leather, fabric and asphalt’
Safe to say the cookies were better than I thought they might be and with a little mastication slipped down like a trout down an otter’s neck.
I appreciate that I’m new to The Buckland Club, having only been a member for 12 years, and I’ve risen up the ranks to be allowed to ruin the dinner speeches, but this meal was in my top five of the 20+ I’ve attended; a most enjoyable and enlightening evening.
To conclude, as dinner secretary, I am afraid to report that there has been a major problem with the last few dinners here at Edgbaston Golf Club, sadly, they have unfortunately been too well thought out, too expertly executed and the shocking outcome of this is that they have been highly successful and pleasant dining experiences.
I have to say my fellow Bucklanders, this is not in the spirit of the Buckland Club and makes it extremely difficult to produce an interesting critique. With this in mind I have spent the day attempting to get the entire kitchen staff drunk beyond comprehension in the vein hope that this D H Lawrence meal is a rich source of comic inspiration. The chef is currently happily asleep with a one-way ticket on a train to Glasgow, I’m only joking, it’s Penzance.
Bon appetite and in the words of D H Lawrence: ‘I love trying things and seeing how I hate them’.
Dave Travis
Dinner Minutes Secretary
October 2021
Reqaqat Jibneh
Hommus
Tabüuleh Baidah
Roast Leg of Lamb
Elliott O’Mara from Château Musar with sponsor Anissa Helou
It was an outstanding evening in every respect: food, wine, … ambience, jollity and company. DL
‘Anissa’s Feast’ was a real treat and we thought the menu and wines were simply delicious. The highlight for us both were the lamb and accompanying Château Musar. Anissa and Elliott spoke with great authority … NH
It was excellent – a proper Buckland occasion with much interest & much pleasure. CF
A fabulous evening … HR
