I never set out to write this blog in order to critique meals I'd eaten, or to recommend or damn places you might consider going to. My main reason for this is that there are plenty of people doing this already. If that wasn't reason enough, I might also add there are people doing that particular job very well. I haven't the inclination to go to new restaurants, to follow their PR statements, and to queue around the block for the latest burger joint, and besides, I don't live in Manchester. Sheffield is already a small enough pond with competent noise on social media telling you where to eat, and if you're into 'fine dining' then there are plenty of people with more experience than me of such establishments who are willing to ruin an expensive evening by taking a camera phone along. It just so happens I went to a good restaurant tonight by mistake.

I had planned to go to Yankees, a place that did burgers and fries on the Sundays when, as a child, my parents couldn't be bothered to cook. I'd recently returned from an American holiday where, because I'd spent a week in Vegas spending every available cent on the dinner table as opposed to the roulette, I simplistically thought a dose of meaty Americana would fill the yawning gap in my soul. I'd already heard of Smith & Baker. It occupies the same premises where an earlier version of the Richard Smith business model had attempted eastern no frills and sticky fingers Yankee trash with equal measures of failure. I've already mentioned that gastronomically, Sheffield is a small pond. Clinging to this watery analogy, Smithy is a big fish. 

I don't mean this to come across as faint praise. Few people have stood the test of time in same way, which is in all likelihood down to a mixture of business savvy and being a damn good cook. Most of Sheffield's restaurateurs fall at both hurdles. After a pretty good run, with its pitfalls and failures, it seems to me as though here is a chef who wants to open a small scale bistro style quality restaurant with a small number of diners with an emphasis on fresh gear, a constantly changing menu and solid technique. 

My favourite thing about this place is that it is so hard to say what makes it good. It is not one thing, but it is many things. I can't remember who it was, I think it was Bill Bruffort quoting Paul Bocuse when he said ' it's easy to be a chef, you just have to be perfect and fast'. It's just as easy to run a restaurant, you just have to second guess all your customers, anticipate what they want, serve them with courtesy and be in seven places at once. Easy. I have no idea if the staff at Smith &Baker are capable of this, because it was pretty quiet when I went, but I give them a good chance. Anywhere that has clearly got enough of the details right isn't  likely to fall down when it comes to service, but as I plan to go back, I'll let you know.

As it happens, despite not meaning to go there, I accidentally spent fifty quid on my dinner. I consider this to be a very good sign. I also didn't know that I'd been there for nigh in two hours. For me,the mark of a really good meal is that you forget things. You forget how long you've been there, you forget where you were supposed to be instead. You forget to stop spending money. By far the most endearing thing, certainly for me, is when people forget their table manners. It's a rare kind of joy when you can pick up you soup bowl and drink loudly with liquid running over your chin, or lick your Sunday dinner plate clean. Never trust someone who won't gnaw a pork chop from its bone or eat the fat.

What does this have to do with somewhere I had a good dinner? Well, practically nothing, except this is that sort of place that despite its pricey(ish) menu and decent cocktail list, it's not somewhere you should feel bad about licking butter off the knife, but then again, the more I'm paying, the more entitled I feel to lick the cutlery. Did I mention the cooking? It's really very accomplished. A very good  assiette of raw salmon terrine, accompanied by a very lightly cured gravadlax, with salmon roe and something that looked like caviare (but can't be been)  atop three perfectly cut slices of radish and two very thinly sliced and just al dente slices of pink beetroot. This is the sort of trick only a kitchen on its mettle can turn out.

There was only one glaring error, actually the sort of schoolboy mistake you wouldn't expect from such a menu. On a set prix fixee of three courses, the vegetarian starter and main featured Jerusalem artichoke as a main ingredient. This is cruel and wrong, because I like to order vegetarian things when I know they'll be properly cooked. Delicious as they may be, Jerusalem artichokes (which have about as much to do with Jerusalem as they are artichokes) are a worry to the digestive system at the best of times.  Despite my hatred of this pretender to the vegetable kingdom, it's pathetic pretence, this is still an excellent menu. It's the type of cooking I most admire. Simple bistro cooking with enough bells and whistles, but essentially technically sound execution and flawless service. I couldn't ask more from a restaurant.

Coming to Terms with Tofu

'Village Style' tofu preparations, substituting mushrooms

for pork.

 Like many a lazy little Englander, I grew up with the received notion that tofu was for health freaks. The sort of people who got up early by choice, and ate weird tasteless discs made of bran fortified with fairy dust. This sort of health masochism fares well in Britain. It is the obverse of the national tendency to debase ourselves with kebabs, abattoir effluent sausages, reconstituted frozen meat-like kiddie nuggets, Rustlers Burgers and 'hot' curries. Now that we no longer wear sack cloth and ashes, or self flagellate in public, we choose to cleanse ourselves with a new type of suffering. Witness the preposterous rise of Raw Food Veganism for instance. Anyhow, it is understandable how anyone growing up in such a climate might come to see the favoured foodstuffs of the movement with some disdain. The foodbiz, and this is not particular to veggies or healthies, is ruled by simplistic faddishness. Like tofu, the sandals and yoga crowd adopted quinoa in absentia of recipes or cultural baggage. Nowardays, pretty much everyone has pocketed pulled pork, without taking much of a second glance at the cuisines of barbecue, smoke pit, and southern states creole.

'Ma Po' tofu and rice.

Whilst bean curd is itself vegan, the problem for vegetarians is that pretty much all the best recipes are meat or fish based. In much domestic Chinese cooking for instance, very little meat is used for reasons of economy, but tofu rice and noodles are used in addition, not as a substitute. It would be all too simple to put this type of domestic oriental cuisine on a pedestal, especially as the growing problem of feeding the world's population means that we all need to start figuring out how to eat fewer animals and fast. I personally find restaurant meals, which tend to be skewed in favour of animal protein less satisfying than my home cooking. As an aside, asking China for the answers might not be the best idea. The booming middle class in a country of billions, now demands to eat like the rich, and native land, thick with industrial pollutants cannot sustain the growing population, and besides, if you think the rights of the human animal are meagre, the treatment of livestock would chill any bunny cuddler.

Notwithstanding, I live in Sheffield in the early twenty first century, and if you eat out as often as I do, the chances are you're going to eat a lot of rice and noodles. As luck would have it, Sheffield has cultural links with the capital of Sichuan, Chengdu, a city which has it's own Sheffield United. I promise I'm not making this up: the Chengdu Blades. The important thing is that Chengdu is one of the gastronomic capitals of the East, of a cuisine as reliant on fragrant pepper and fermented chilli as southernmost France is with duck fat. The more I became obsessed by this style of cooking, it became apparent that I was going to have to learn to love certain things. Duck's tongues I can take or leave, and I must learn to appreciate preserved eggs, but it soon became apparent that my childish misapprehensions about tofu couldn't have been more wrong.

One of the finest dishes of the classical repertoire is the fabulous MaPo Tofu, named for the smallpox scarred street vendor who've her name to this particular preparation, now served across the world, albeit often in bastardised forms. Although it is now typical for cooks to use pork, the base is a few grams of minced beef cooked to flavour the oil in the wok, which is then infused with a great dollop of fermented broad bean and chilli paste. This is available in all oriental marts (Hong yo du ban). Buy it. Even if you don't make this recipe, and I implore you to do so), buy it anyway. Put it in soup, beans, burgers, chillis, everything. Once the beef and paste are sizzling away, it's simply a case of adding some stock, spring onions and ground Sichuan pepper, and then letting your cubed tofu simmer and absorb the flavours. Because the bean paste is not particularly hot, chilli powder or oil, or extra pepper allows for tweaking of the flavours to suit your desire for chilli sweats. I haven't given this as an exact recipe because it's something that should come naturally and is easily made in a few minutes while your rice is boiling. Rice cooking water can be substituted for stock, though leftover gravy adds a serious boost. You can eliminate the meat altogether, though I feel this lacks something, so if you want a totally vegan version, start with a good quantity of chopped mushrooms, or better still dried shiitakes, porcini, or such, with a tablespoon of 'olive vegetable' for extra depth of flavour.

These adaptations are unashamedly inauthentic, but then authenticity in food is an ambiguous idea. What matters, with all cooking, is that we have to delve into the past if we want to learn how to do things right. Repeat what others have done before you, and then repeat yourself, again, and again, and again. Jumping aboard the bandwagon of the latest 'super food' may be all the rage, but there is more pleasure and craft to be learned from tradition, and that is how I came to terms with tofu.

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The Tale of Cider Pig

'Cider Pig' is not so much a recipe as a process. It came about during a weekend of unseasonable warmth, which coupled with a cider festival, meant that the pub and somewhat optimistically named beer garden were at full capacity, and I found myself at the end of a busy Saturday with a pork shoulder sitting untouched in the fridge that had to find its way onto the board the next morning. The obvious and simple solution was to use a few pints of the abundant cider, and slowly braise the shoulder overnight. Here's how:

Based on approximate 3kg piece of meat,

Pork shoulder, ideally on the bone (for flavour), skin removed for crackling

A couple of pints of medium to sweetish cider, the more 'farmyardy' the better

An onion and head of garlic, halved

Some or all of the following: star anis, cinnamon bark, black cardamom, sage, thyme, rosemary, oregano

Heat a tray just large enough to hold the meat to a searing intensity, and rub the pork with a little oil and plenty of salt. Lay the meat in the tray, and let it sizzle and brown, turning carefully to ensure as much colour as possible. This not only gives the sauce it's rich dark colour, it gives a roasted flavour to what is essentially a slow braise, and a few nubs of blackened char are ideal. Charring the cut faces of the onion at the same time also helps, but is not essential. 

Once everything is glistening, browned, and smelling delicious, tip in the cider. The shoulder should be partially submerged, with whatever aromatic ingredients you've selected bobbing alongside. To borrow Fergus Henderson's analogy, like an 'alligator in a swamp'. Cover everything tightly in foil, and place in a very low oven, for six to eight hours. This is a recipe that is perfectly suited for the slow cooker, which will achieve the same results.

When the pork is cooked, it should be soft enough to push a wooden spoon through, so carefully lift it from the liquid and allow to cool sufficiently to remove the bone, which should already be falling out. Sieve the liquid, and push the gloopy innards of the garlic through the sieve like a paste.  You will need to skim quite a bit of fat, and the best way to do this is to boil the liquid off centre on a burner, so that it bubbles on one side, and the fat collects adjacent to the convection current. You can then reduce the liquid, and/or thicken it with corn flour, arrowroot, or even gravy granules. There is no shame in adding commercial gravy to a liquid, so long as that liquid is not water. 

That is basically it. We roll the pork and set it in cling film, to make presentation and portioning easier, but this is by no means essential. Simmered in its braising liquid, it is an easy way to do pork sandwiches for numerous guests, and has the added benefit of making its own gravy. It can be used as much as a meat ragu for pasta, as for a Sunday lunch. Use wine instead of cider, add tomatoes and leeks; as I said, this is more a process than a recipe, and if I had one meal that I thought could convince home cooks to purchase a slow cooker, this would be it.