Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

Joe’s Fish Net in Newcastle

May 21, 2006


The ladies of Joe’s Fish Net

This last week I was in Newcastle to meet up with the old and new folks from Dott 07 (Designs of the Time). As part of our getting aquainted with the area we were asked to do some directed wandering and meet some people outside of Newcastle’s shiny centre. I wandered into Joe’s Fish Net, a family owned fish store in Byker and met owners Anica (pictured on the right) and her brother, Richard Grey.


Joe’s Fish Net shop interior

Although I arrived during closing time, the entire place was under suds and chatter. Both Richard and Anica were happy to talk about the fish biz once I assured them I wasn’t from Mark & Spencers or Tescos and therefore about to steal their shop location. Richard and I talked about the effectively extinct cod and he gave me an industry publication titled Fish Update which ended up being completely interesting. Anica talked about the new line of prepared fish dinners that she is about to launch and about how to publish an electronic cookbook. I forgot the names of the other ladies in the shop, maybe they’ll see this and let me know?


Architect Ralph Erskine’s Byker wall


continuation of Byker Wall – beautiful brickwork


street scene in front of Byker Wall with Dutch beer ad somehow communicating to the reader to ‘relax!’ and a poster ad of a puppy

Joe’s Fish Net
9 Denmark Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
Tyne and Wear
NE6 2XF

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If you like fresh leafy greens and pork, you’re going to love kruudmoes

May 14, 2006

First impression: I may have taken an overly Californian approach to making kruudmoes this time, but although I should probably increase the gooeyness to make it just the way the natives do, kruudmoes is just crazy delicious.

If you’re like me and:
– love to chomp away on all sorts of leafy greens, the weedier the better,
– adore all things pork,
– can’t get enough of cultured milk products,
– are nostalgic about barley,
Dutch crude mousse is going to blow your mind.


Normally I don’t eat with a spoon, let alone a teaspoon. But I was tasting the oats and the greens mixture and became so enthusiastic that I couldn’t even stop to set myself up with some sticks.

debra at 22:31 | Comments (49) | post to del.icio.us

Dead nettle
crude mousse for dinner


Kruudmoes leafy green selection from 9 o’clock: white deadnettle (dovenetel), kohlrabi leaves, spring onions, curly leaf parsley, chicory and ground elder (zevenblad).

Ten days before the Here as the Centre of the World dinner and I’m busy testing traditional recipes from Overijssel for the main course. I have decided on a Twentse Kruudmoes, which translates roughly into herb mousse but is in fact a leafy green and pearl barley gruel. Since I wasn’t born in the Middle Ages and am therefore not a huge fan of eating green and glutinous slime, I’m thinking more along the lines of an herbacious and chlorophyl rich, pork-spiked barley risotto. Place the dutch oven with the boiling barley in your Oma’s hay box with some pork fatback, raisins and buttermilk. Stir in the sauce vert at the last minute, and it’s locative food from the Dutch Middle East.

The myriad of kruudmoes recipes offer no consensus as to which greens to use, in the spirit of a true ‘end of hungry gap’ recipe. Yesterday I was thrilled to find dovenetel at the farmer’s market. For English speakers and Latin-lovers, that’s white deadnettle and lamium respectively, a plant wholly unrelated to stinging nettle, thus ‘deadened’, and the vernacular blooms before our very eyes. The flower and leaf taste of snow peas with an afterthought of hemp. The flower markings look like two ants sucking nectar side by side.

Pity, but these recipes for kruudmoes are all in Dutch. When I have settled upon a recipe, I will publish it here but will not guarantee its authenticity, because I see my life as one big mission to eliminate overcooked leafy greens and slimey food.

If you can’t get enough of those hilarious Dutch weblogs, you’ll love the following rough text about kruudmoes by Ilja Gort (Als Gort in Frankrijk and met Gort de Boer Op).
(Please read more… )

debra at 19:29 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us

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