How to eat: a ploughmans lunch Key components Bread, cheese, ham and some sort of pickled dimension. Traditionalists may question the necessity of ham, but without it this is just bread n cheese, not a ploughmans. The bread needs to function as a platform for teetering piles of ham and cheese. Think: the big, blundering country cousin of canape toasts. Therefore, mid-sections of baguette are ideal. Whatever you go for, though (good rustic white; nutty multigrain), it must be thick-cut and/or toasted to give it backbone. No huge, affected ornamental farmhouse wedges, please; no rolls; no crackers; no (for the love of god) pitta pockets; and – pub chefs – no last-minute microwaving of baguettes so they come out all pappy and steaming. Try and apply hard butter (a separate, unforgivable misdemeanour) to such damp baguette flesh, and it simultaneously melts away and clots, unnaturally. In terms of cheese, the optimum is two or three hard or semi-hard British cheeses, of contrasting flavours and textures, served at room temperature. For example, a rich, lavishly savoury cheddar and a dry, sharp crumbly lancashire. Obviously, if there is a blue on there, it needs isolating like an infectious disease until you have eaten its companions and you are ready to pull on the Hazmat suit, and take it on. This is no place here for soft cheeses on the brie-goat axis. They are both difficult to cut and distribute with the tools at hand and, when smeared on bread, produce a very claggy mouthful. Similarly, there is no place (in life), for the ersatz sophistication of herbed or cranberry-studded cheeses or those weird compressed, supermarket trios of gloucester, cheddar and lancs. You like highly-processed cheese? So do I (Dairylea and Babybel, mainly), but not when it pretends to be something that it isnt, and certainly not on a ploughmans. The ham should be baked, thick-cut, proper pig. You dont want any limp, wet boiled ham on there; no thin, pallid, suspiciously uniform slices. Nor is this any place for charcuterie. A ploughmans is about relatively big, strident, readily understandable flavours which, even if the component ingredients are pretty one-dimensional (sadly, they often are), combine to produce something vibrant. A ploughmans assembled from quality produce of character is a pleasure, but spending big on gourmet ingredients isnt a necessity. In this context, it might even be a waste. People drive-down the pH on a ploughmans to ludicrously acidic levels. You need some sharpness, but pickled gherkins or sweet silverskin onions provide sufficient pep. Authentic pickled onions, those fat little bruisers that ride roughshod over everything and leave your nerves jangling, are, presumably, a throwback to a time when no one could actually taste anything because they were all smoking 60 Capstans a day. I want modest sharpness on my plate, not armageddon. In the same realm, hold the piccalilli. Theoretically, I get it, but the execution invariably produces a sweet, harshly spicy gloop. Go with dark beer/onion chutneys or a tomato one, which is a workable compromise between having tomatoes (questionable on a ploughmans) and none.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 19:03:22 +0000
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