Page 54 - Phonebox Magazine July 2014

Small Change
WTalking Thai at The Old Shanghai
e’ve been visiting the Old Shanghai in Olney for near on twenty years. It’s a nice Chinese restaurant. Friendly staff, good atmosphere, nice decor. The food is good too, but the menu hadn’t changed over
that twenty years. It makes it difficult to get excited about and even harder to write about.
On our last visit though, things were afoot. It doesn’t take much to make my taste buds prick up. We started with the mixed platter starter. Sesame prawn toast, crispy seaweed, spring rolls, crispy fried chicken and chicken satay. It’s a very pretty spread and all much as expected. But the chicken satay gave a little kick back that I wasn’t anticipating. Less sweetly peanutty than usual. More spice. Not blow your head off hot or anything like that, but just something to get itself noticed. This was followed by Crispy Duck. No change there. Which is a very good thing. Don’t mess with my Crispy Duck. Slightly dry beautifully tasty duck wrapped up in super thin pancakes layered with a thickly cloying plum sauce. Superb. And for our mains? Well, there was a brand new dish on the menu. Thai Green Curry. It’s available as a vegetable side or as a main. And it is really very good. A thick and creamy coconut sauce, laced with chilli and ginger giving it some real fire. We had it as a vegetable accompaniment to a delicate wine soaked drunken fish, a chilli laden Szechuan chicken and a quality beef in black bean sauce. But we’re heading back soon to try it as the star of the show.
So it’s just a tiny change or two. If you weren’t paying attention you might even have missed it. But it was a lovely refreshing change and good enough for me to want to go back for more. Let’s hope it is the start of something bigger and that we don’t have to wait another twenty years for the next new dish. Small change indeed. But if they look after the pennies...HB
Slow shopping
It’s a very relaxed and rather fashionable way to shop just now - pulling the car into an empty carpark, no queues, a friendly, knowledgeable staff who take time to talk to you. This is farm shop shopping. But you do need both time and money on your side to do your weekly shop like this.
I left Pastures Farm Shop recently having paid out over £12 on a chicken and a loaf of bread. Not just any bread of course - but the absolutely gorgeous bread made by Emberton breadmaker Amazing Grains - a large loaf well worth the £3. But what about the chicken? They sell both free-range and barn-reared and carry out the butchery on site. It’s a good feeling knowing exactly where your food comes from, but is it worth the extra pennies? We cooked it with roasted vegetables and white wine (see page 57 for the recipe). It had a really good flavour (they hang the meat for five days) and a decent amount of meat on it - although there was little left over for sandwiches. The biggest difference was the amount of fat that came out of the bird during cooking - hardly any at all - resulting in moist, good textured chicken.
Some swear by farm shopping, they talk about provenance and quality and food miles and start to sound a little self-righteous. Others think it is more like buying a designer label chicken, more style that substance. For me? I don’t turn my nose up at a supermarket chicken, but ‘slow shopping’ is a rather lovely luxury that I am lucky enough to be able to enjoy right now and Pasture’s Farm is a beautiful place to do it. HB
54 Phonebox Magazine
In short:
Didn’t think I was a Turkish Delight fan until I tried the Meli’s version - gorgeous. Try it yourself at their Turkish restaurant in Osborn’s Court, Olney
Great to taste a top form Balti at the Spice Garden, Olney this week. Not too hot, but full of taste, thick, oniony gravy, fall apart chicken. Superb!
p. foodie
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