Lance Forman

Monday

Lance Forman

What my cod’s roe saga reveals about British decline

If you want a miniature parable of British decline – a sort of Aesop’s fable for the age of the over-regulated state – allow me to present one and a half tonnes of perfectly good cod’s roe, currently trapped in a bureaucratic purgatory of our own making. My company smokes fish. We have done so for more than a century, which is to say we have some experience in identifying what is edible and what is not. Last October, as we’ve done many times before, we purchased £20,000 worth of Icelandic cod’s roes via our long-standing Norwegian supplier. They were processed in an approved EU plant, stored in an approved EU warehouse, and transported to Britain on an approved EU lorry. No mystery. No irregularity. No risk. The pallets arrived. We placed them in our freezers.

Tuesday

Lance Forman

With Lance Forman

22 min listen

Lance Forman is the owner of H. Forman & Son, Britain's leading salmon smokers and author of Forman's Games. He was elected a Brexit Party MEP for London in the 2019 European election but quit the party to endorse the Conservatives.On the podcast, Lance reflects on his childhood in a traditional Jewish upbringing, eating smoked salmon sandwiches every day for his packed lunch. Lance brings in some of the foods made by his gourmet food delivery company, Forman & Field. This included smoked salmon blinis with cream cheese and their latest creation, a Victoria sponge ahead of the Queen's Jubilee. Come to the East End to learn all about curing and smoking salmon with Lance Forman of H. Forman & Son, suppliers of our celebrated Spectator Winemaker Lunches.

Sunday

Lance Forman

British Food Today

We’ve come a long way since the BSE scandal of the 1990s and the ban on British beef. In fact, the British culinary landscape has changed beyond recognition since the foot and mouth outbreak of 2001, with its spectral images of millions of slaughtered livestock. These, along with other more minor contaminations of the food supply, such as the recent horse meat debacle, have raised permanent questions in consumers’ minds about provenance and health, and the agriculture behind what lands on our plates. As for London, in 2005 it may have been a bustling metropolis with great ethnic cuisine, but it was far from being recognised as a major player on the international restaurant scene. Now even American chefs admit it rivals and perhaps outpaces New York.

Wednesday

Lance Forman

London Cure Smoked Salmon

Most people are unaware that smoked salmon emerged from the East End of London around the turn of the last century, when Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, wistful for the taste of home, started preserving fish in the traditional methods of Poland and Ukraine. When they realised they could buy salmon from Scotland cheaper and fresher than the Baltic, a tradition was born: Scotch salmon cured in London. Initially for enclaves of Eastern Europeans in Stepney Green and the environs, smoked salmon became a prized delicacy, served only at celebrations and special occasions, and not widely available for sale. Until the 1980s a dozen smokehouses thrived in London.