Browns

Browns
5-11 Woodstock Rd
Oxford, OX2 6HA



Brown's a chain throughout England, and is one of the more upstanding establishments in Oxford, catering to the well heeled populance in search of cooling cocktails on a summer evening, and also the occasional student dressed in the Sunday best, rescued from the usual college gruel by a visiting parent. Not quite as old fuddy-duddy as the Old Parsonage, Browns nevertheless commands a relatively high position in Oxford cuisine, with a price tag to match.



Your intrepid reporter went for a leisurely Friday lunch with four friends in tow. Ordering was fairly swift, without the usual dithering about what to pick.



MH's chicken schnitzel with poached egg was fairly well received, although the chicken was somewhat dry - a recurring theme during the lunch. The egg was perfectly poached, and at just over a tenner, not a bad dish.



L's pappardelle with chicken was... well, dry. The pasta was nice with a tiny bit of bite, but the chicken pieces had been wrung of all juice.



E's chicken baguette arrived with brilliant frites, but was, again, dry. Not one to complain, E seemed content with the whole package.



It looks moist, but it didn't quite deliver.



Y-M's slow braised belly of pork came on a veritable mountain of mash - not to be attempted by the faint of stomach. This was the only dish to pass without negative comment.



Creamed spinach came smothered in fat. Not the most pleasant sight to behold, unless you're training for a heart attack.



The main quibble: my rack of lamb with potato dauphinoise: raw lamb and crunchy potato.



At first glance, it looks fine, although the lamb has been cut in a peculiar way, with uneven bones and somewhat ragged meat.



This is the serving before I had touched it: the ragged cut marks done the rack were performed in the kitchen. The piece to the left was twice as thick as the piece to the right, and the other pieces on the plate were equally irregular. I managed to eat the piece on the right, but the fatter piece on the left came out raw and cold inside, with only marginal grilling penetrating no more than a millimetre of the surface.



Doesn't that look like someone has had a go at my lunch already? So I send back the dish, as it was a thick round of totally raw lamb, and 25 minutes later - after my table had finished eating - I receive the following:



Mysteriously, my four two-bone 'racks' had turned into four very thin lamb chops. The photo doesn't adequately demonstrate how small and thin the pieces were. Upon asking our waiter, I was informed that these were the same pieces of lamb I had sent back (but obviously sans the piece I had cut open to reveal cold meat), reheated and served a second time. The manager came, and told me a contrary story: that on the first plate I had been given 'extra' as the pieces were rather small, and that this is the standard serving. Not a satisfactory answer by any stretch of the imagination.



As a compromise we were offered a free dessert, and the side dishes (chips, and creamed spinach) taken off the bill. L had the Pimms jelly, which although sounding interesting turned out to be a foul tasting blob of rubber. Real rubber would probably have tasted better.



I opted for a cheese board as my freebie, to share with the table.



Grapes with yellowing ends.



Wilting celery, and an extremely watery 'balsamic onion chutney' - that rather resembled bisto gravy gone wrong - were served with some severely under ripe cheeses.



The damage: Around £12-15 each for a main dish, with good service and abysmal food. I would not go back again, despite the gesture to remove some of the items from the bill.

Steak cook off

Sooo, Sainsbury's has a special on rump steak, but rather than spending hard earned cash on inferior steak, we thought we'd put it to the test against some of the best that Oxford has to offer.



Off we rush to M Feller, Son and Daughter, the premium butcher in the local covered market, which serves up organic meats of the highest quality.



M Feller's is the butchery that usually has whole beasts hanging outside its window.

The second butcher (photo soon) that we visited was our usual, and the friendly folk there purvey Old Spot pork, goat and fun foods besides. We'd recently had a delicious pork belly from them, and wanted to try their rump steak as well.



The three pundits: Sainsbury's standard on the left weighs in at £9.69 per kilo, our local butcher at not much more: £11.99 per kilo, and the organic beef on the right at a whopping £18.99 a kilo.



The steak on the left is obviously wetter, exuding some fluid. The middle steak was hung for 21 days, I was told, but was cut from a whole rump straight out of a wet-seal bag. The smallest piece was also 21 days old, but as the organic butcher is frequently seen breaking down half carcasses, this is more believable; it is also the driest steak of the three.



Get close to your meat.



The Sainsbury's steak, in all its glory.



The local butcher's: slightly less wet and a darker colour.



The organic steak almost looks purple here.



My (fairly) new buy: a super-sized cast iron griddle that sits on two hobs on our stove. The reverse side is a flat griddle perfect for bacon and eggs. Tonight, it's all about the grill marks.



The pieces are salted, and put on in order of size.



Flipped.



Flipped again.



The taste test: In a blindfold test, I managed to pick all three steaks on texture and taste.

The Sainsbury's (bottom right) was a distinctively wetter steak, with a juicier bite. Tender enough, but slightly less beefy - although not to the point where this becomes a problem.

The local butcher's (bottom left) was unfortunately very chewy for some reason. Perhaps it's the wet-ageing or the fact that it was cut from the outside of the rump, but it had a distinctively chewier and harder texture.

The organic steak was the best, with a dry grilled surface but juicy thanks to it being served rare.

The damage: The three steaks came to approximately £6 each, but with obvious variance in size. The Sainsbury's was the best value/taste ratio, coming in cheapest but with a perfectly acceptable texture and taste. The local butcher's fared poorly, but this may be an isolated event. The organic steak was tasty, but at twice the cost of the Sainsbury's, one would need to demonstrate that being organic is significantly superior to warrant the price tag. I never thought that I'd say this, but the Sainsbury's standard rump steak comes off incredibly well in a blind cook off.

The Windmill

The Windmill at Badby
Main St
Badby, Daventry, NN11



Before we review the Windmill, just a quick aside about the De Veres in Daventry: After a hard won game of chess in the day (don't ask), we retire to the hotel bar for an aperitif before dinner. Upon asking for a martini, we were asked whether we wanted ice. "Well," I began, "I would like it stirred over ice, but not served with it... if that's what you mean?" Confusion ensues as the waitress asks if I want rosso, bianco or extra dry. "Dry", I stammer, upon which I was served a short of Martini Extra Dry vermouth.

Explaining that we would like some gin with that, we were told firstly that they do not posses a shaker, then no appropriate glass (despite martini glasses being in sight behind the bar, probably gathering dust) and finally that they had no vermouth, despite trying to sell me a shot of the stuff. The manager then took the glass of vermouth out the back, returning five minutes later having not been able to locate a suitable shaking vessel. A high ball glass was finally filled with ice, Gordon's (they didn't try to upsell the Bombay Sapphire, which we would have preferred), and then given to us with an olive bobbing merrily. All this took the best part of a half hour, and we were charged around £8 for the confusing drink. Next time, stick to the pints of Stella.



But I digress. Dinner with the team(s) was at a quaint little pub, in the middle of nowhere, called the Windmill. Having ordered as a group weeks in advance, nobody remembered what they had ordered, so I include a selection of what people had on the night.



The smoked salmon was, I am reliably told, very nice; the portion was certainly extremely generous.



Served with a corn not-quite-relish, all of the entrees were served with buttered sliced bread (of the standard issue supermarket kind). Slightly odd.



My jalapenos stuffed with cheese were very nice - but lacked the fiery kick I had hoped to have. The salsa-ish relish thing was jarred at best, but most likely came out of a 10 gallon caterer's bottle. Again, served with buttered bread.



Goopy cheesiness, yum.



A's prawn cocktail was highly disappointing, with bland, wormy defrosted prawns of the Young's variety, served with a half avocado, some mixed leaves and the ubiquitous bread.



The farmhouse pate was a luscious slab, and decidedly rich. Probably home made, we agreed.



A's steak came smothered with a mushroom sauce. The sauce was gloopy and obviously thickened with starch. The steak was fine, but would have fared much better without the artificial sauce. Whatever happened to some fond, deglaced with brandy and finished with cream? Simple, and tasty.



My brill was somewhat overcooked - which I suppose is to be expected - not served as one piece, it came flaked and looked slightly chewed. Not great presentation, but otherwise ok.



The shared servings of fried potatoes were amazingly crispy with a fluffy centre. Delicious, and we couldn't get enough.



Veges were of the boiled variety.



Desserts were a highlight, with a deliciously tart blackcurrant sorbet in a brandysnap basket.



I believe the puree was mango, adding some sweetness to the sorbet (which was really an ice cream).



A's cheesecake was impeccable, and easily rivaled the one at Portabello's.



Smooth, rich and light, with a sweet ginger biscuit base - this cheesecake was near perfection.



The third option was sticky toffee pudding, which we were assured was sticky and great.



Plenty of custard, and oozing toffee.

The damage: with drinks and three courses, it came to around £35 per head. Not cheap, not great, but certainly a cut above your usual pub meals. Throw in some real English countryside ambiance, and it's well worth a visit if you happen to be passing by.

What we've been eating - goose egg(s)!

The Wednesday market in Oxford has stalls selling fresh fruit and vegetables, meats, a fishmonger in his van, and random bits and bobs.



An elderly man and his wife sell cheeses, bacon and eggs (a glorious mix, for which the couple should win medals), and for the past two weeks they have had goose eggs for sale.



Quite a bit larger than a hen's egg, these monstrosities were an incredible white colour. At £1.50 each, they were quite pricey.



The egg itself is mostly yolk, with an incredibly translucent albumen, quite unlike egg white. The yolk is a dark, bright orange. Can a colour be both dark and bright?



For comparison, the size of the egg compared to a small jar of Colman's mustard. Each egg probably weighs in at around four large hen eggs, or six small.



Aren't they pretty? We blew out one of them for A to paint.



The shell is so incredibly white, and very strong - similar in a way to M&M candy shells, when tapped.



The yolk that was blown out...



And turned into this delicious omelette au fine herbs with the baby parsley and basil that SS provided a few weeks ago. The egg tasted... slightly tougher than hen eggs, although that's unfair, as it was an almost crunchy, bouncy texture rather than the toughness of an over-scrambled egg. Quite delicious, but not for every-day meals!