Anglo-Italian Dinner

The Buckland Club was proud to announce an Anglo-Italian Dinner orchestrated by Dan Sweet. It promised to be an outstanding meal and certainly lived up to expectations. Members and guests sampled some of the very best of Birmingham’s ever blossoming restaurant scene. Dan has not only attracted rave reviews from some of the country’s most prominent food critics and writers but has also earned the considerable praise from the Michelin Guide for his Harborne establishment. It was not difficult to see why.

Members & guests were delighted to meet Dan and his team after the dinner

Anglo-Italian Dinner – Minutes

Sponsor & Chef: Dan Sweet, Cuubo Restaurant, Harborne

We weren’t sure what to expect from the menu, apart from it most likely being Anglo and Italian. Maybe Mushy Pea Arancini or Sausage and Mash Cannelloni or Chicken Tikka Pizzabut hopefully it wouldn’t include fried cow’s head. As our sponsor Dan Sweet from the excellent Cuubo restaurant recounted, “In Italy, my 80-year-old uncle came home with a cow’s head for my nan to cook. She fried it up whole and it was just weird. It’s the only thing my nan has cooked that I haven’t enjoyed. She used to cook pig’s head slowly for 20 hours which was amazing, but fried cow’s head?” I didn’t have Dan down as a fussy eater. There appears to be a degree of squeamishness when it comes to cooking and serving the entire head of an animal, I suppose it brings it all into sharp focus when your dinner is on a plate looking at you. It’s the Swiss Army Knife of edible parts. You’ve got meat packed inside all those crevices, cheeks and, depending on the animal, jowls. You’ve got bones with all those essential nutrients. And last but certainly not least, you’ve got offal: tongue, sometimes skin, eyes and brains … what’s not to like? At least serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer had no such reservations as he kept the heads of his ‘meals’ in his fridge. This is fairly common practice I’m told; New York robber Nicolas McGee was found to have a human head in his fridge when he was arrested, although he wasn’t even a cannibal probably just keeping it in case he got peckish after a trip to the pub. A cursory search on Getty Images reveals 547 stock photographs of human heads in fridges, so it would seem to be fairly normal, in fact I’m surprised some enterprising fridge manufacturer hasn’t marketed a fridge with a human head compartment, similar to the egg holders, although that makes no sense, as unlike a human head, eggs don’t need to be refrigerated.

Anyway, I’m getting “ahead” of myself. Let’s move onto our nibbles for the evening Cheese and Onion Beignets, delightful marble sized flavour bombs, wonderfully crispy and mustardy. The perfect start to the evening and probably my favourite Ben-yeh since Ben-yeh Hill or Ben-yeh from Crossroads.

The Cuubo Sourdough we were served with Whipped Butter & Smoked Yeast Flakes was beautifully soft and fluffy. The butter was incredibly flavoursome I’m sure most people are under the impression that sourdough is a new-fangled bread meddling popular with do-gooders, health fanatics and people that ride penny farthings to their hot yoga classes. This is only partially true as sourdough is humanity’s oldest leavened bread, dating back to ancient Egypt around 1500 BC. Originally discovered by accident when wild yeast and airborne bacteria colonized flour and water, this fermentation method was the only way to bake risen bread for thousands of years until the Mothers Pride factory opened in Slough in 1955.

Our main meal started with Ribollita, an almost glow in the dark vibrant green soup. I’ve had this before, but it’s never looked this spectacular, the veg almost raw with a wonderful bite and beautifully seasoned. Dan Sweet explained that the ingredients were cut extremely thin and then very lightly cooked when boiling broth was added, almost poaching the vegetables. Next up was Barolo Braised Beef Casserole, I thought the mashed potato was delightfully light and flavoursome probably because to turned out to be Polenta. The beef looked slightly overdone on first appearance but was both slightly crispy and wonderfully delicate inside The Carrots were doing a sterling carrotty job as only carrots can do. The beef was braised in Barolo which according to David London is the “Majesty of Italy”; I’ll drink to that. The French later perfected the art and gave it elegant names like boeuf bourguignon, because everything sounds more sophisticated in French. Meanwhile, the British quietly continued braising beef in pubs during terrible weather, which, to be fair, gave them plenty of practice. Braised beef soon became popular and over centuries, recipes evolved. Italians added tomatoes, the French added wine, the Hungarians added paprika and the English added nothing. Today, braised beef appears at winter dinners, Sunday lunches, and restaurants where menus describe carrots as “heritage root vegetables”, also referred to as “heirloom vegetables”, better than nothing but not as good an heirloom as the family silver. More food menu bugbears of mine are: “Dirty” Burgers or fries. “Dirty” food is almost a middle-class fantasy version of grubby food, for people who won’t go to a kebab shop, but still want to feel they’re ‘slumming it’. I would suggest instead of dirty burgers they call them, dropped on the floor fries or oozing anal secretion burgers, see how sales go then. Curated food? Yes, I curated a cup of tea this morning by bringing milk sugar and tea together in a handcrafted heritage mug. I might have a deconstructed cup of tea tomorrow and leave all the ingredients in the jars and just look at them. Foraged – bit of wild garlic found in a truck stop lay by used by Doggers Artisanal – another irritant. You didn’t craft anything. You just dumped a bunch of ingredients into a blender and mixed it. It’s the same people that call sandwiches “handhelds”.

David London’s wine notes informed us that the evenings wine was ‘easy drinking’. Personally, apart from Thunderbird & Night Train Express, I’ve never found this to be a problem and neither did you judging by the quantities consumed. David London informed us that Italy has over 300 varieties of wine making grape, sadly we only managed to taste three of them this evening. As W C Fields once said, “I like cooking with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food”. Cooking with wine has been popular for centuries, as has cooking whilst drinking wine, one of the main exponents of this method being Keith Floyd. He once recollected an evening of Bacchanalian excess; there was bare knuckle boxing, glorious roasts, and endless wine, whisky and port. At the end of the night, after staggering to his room, he asks the people around him, “How did you enjoy the dinner and boxing and the wine?” He is met with completer silence. Floyd looks around and says, ‘How do you manage to have such a place in what appears to me to be a hospital?” … he then noticed the ventilator and tubes coming out of him, turns out it was a hospital. The entire evening had been an hallucination.

A wonderful Sgoppino Sorbet was our dessert. Sorbet originated in Persia around 2,500 years ago, taking around 2,000 years to travel to Italy and France where it was utilised as a palate cleanser and digestive aid. First discovered by adding honey to snow, giving it a lovely glowing yellow colour. It turns out you can eat the yellow snow and it’s a delicious and groundbreaking dessert In the 1970s, Baskin-Robbins was tasked to create new flavours related to Richard Nixon… Two choices were, ‘ImPeachments & Cream’ and a sorbet called ‘Watermelon-Gate’. Neither made it to market. UK versions could include: Keir-a-mel Swirl – unfortunately, surprisingly bland and forgettable, Liz Truss Lemon Fizz – lemon sorbet best eaten quickly as melts to nothing in record time, Gordon Brownie Crunch – wait for years to eat it then find out it’s quite disappointing and Eton Mess – Boris Johnson.

Bread & Butter Pudding is proof that the British looked at stale bread and said, “Absolutely not wasting that.” This was hands down the best bread and butter pudding I’ve ever had. I’ve been put off eating it since my schooldays during the 1940s and subsequent barely adequate homemade attempts, but this was a leagues ahead and goes to show what a culinary master chef can achieve with the humblest of dishes. The earliest bread and butter puddings were called whitepot and used either bone marrow or butter. Whitepots could also be made using rice instead of bread, unfortunately giving rise to rice pudding. Everyone seemed very happy with the beautifully prepared food and there was a highly convivial atmosphere. This was explained when Roger Hale did a wine audit on how much was consumed during the meal.

Many thanks to Dan for putting together such a lovely menu and sharing his expertise with us and insights into how his restaurant is operated.