SPORTS DIRECT AND TO THE POINT

CITYAM.COM
WEDNESDAY 8 JUNE 2016
LIFE&STYLE
25
: @city_am
: @cityamlife
Not a natural
born fisher
Our columnist comes up short in the
river but feeds 10 with a single trout
MY FOOD
DIARY
Mark Hix
ADVENTURES IN IRELAND PT. 2...
Well, I’m sure you were
looking forward to finding
out how many
salmon I managed to
land on the river bank
on day two of my Galway salmon fishing
trip? Well I’m going to disappoint
you: between you and me, it was zero.
Both Peter and Andre managed to
hook a couple of fish but sadly lost
them. As usual on these salmon adventures,
you have to book well in ad-
vance: with us foodie types all having
busy schedules, that often means the
fishing itself is pot-luck. Too often you
hear the most miserable sentence
known to man: “You should have been
here last week!”. Of course, that’s not
much help when your rod’s in the
water and you haven’t felt so much as
a wiggle in two days. But that’s fishing,
I’m afraid.
I did, however, manage to land one
decent sized brown trout on Lough
Corrib. Although it wasn’t necessarily
the species I was targeting, I guess
beggars can’t be choosers. So dinner
that night was like Jesus with the
loaves and fishes, attempting to feed
ten people with one little trout.
I decided to rustle up an Asian style
crispy trout broth with a spiced clear
stock, made from the head and bones,
garnished with crispy pieces of deep
fried flesh, coriander and wild garlic
leaves, with ginger and chilli.
Even though the catch was extremely
modest, it just about
stretched to make 10 bowls of tasty
broth (with the help of a slightly
larger fish I found in the fridge). We
also had more of the Glenarm Estate
beef and lamb I mentioned last
week, which I turned into various
Chinese-style dishes made using the
carrier bag of wild garlic leaves, flowers
and bulbs I picked in the nearby
woods.
When I cook at home or I’m entertaining,
I tend to go with Asian
flavours as it’s a tad removed from
what I serve in the restaurants and
you can create all sorts of dishes with
a few simple ingredients (ginger,
chilli, coriander etc).
TROUT STOCK
£ Serves 4-6
Bones from a couple of white fish, washed
1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 small leek, peeled and roughly chopped
10 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1/2 lemon
10 fennel seeds
• Put all of the ingredients into a saucepan
and just cover with water. Bring to the boil
and simmer gently for 30 minutes then
strain through a sieve
LUNCH FOR UNDER £10
AT HIX SOHO, EVERY WEEKDAY
THIS SPRING
Raise a pint for City Beerfest 2016
Don’t miss the City’s
very own beer festival,
with live music, vintage
cars and dray horses
Set in the heart of the City in the elegant
and historic Guildhall Yard, City
Beerfest returns to the Square Mile
for its fourth outing on Wednesday 6
July. The Worshipful Company of
Brewers has attracted an impressive
range of breweries, while the City
Music Foundation (CMF) has
arranged a varied line up of music,
from jazz to folk.
This year, the festival will be raising
money for the CMF, which aims to
turn musical talent into professional
success by providing
workshops,
performance opportunities
and a mentoring
programme
that teams artists
up with senior
business people
from City firms,
and it also supports
the Lord
Mayor’s Appeal.
Jazz musician Giacomo
Smith tells City
A.M. how his CMF mentor,
CEO of Gensler Ian Mulcahey,
helped his Hackney-based bar,
Kansas Smitty’s, become a successful
business.
WHEN DID YOU DECIDE TO AUDITION
FOR THE CMF AND WHY?
It’s been about two years since I was
inducted. I found out about it through a
friend who said that I had to try out for this
thing called the CMF; it’s a very young
organisation and it’s really enthusiastic
about helping musicians realise their
professional goals.
It was really funny because we had the
first audition slot at 7:30 in the morning,
and it’s very weird to play jazz at that time
in the morning... So I got it, and the
rigorous part is that you don’t have to just
play, but you have to then go to a panel of
people and explain to them why you want
their support. I described the project that I
wanted to do, which was found my bar and
record my album with my band, and they
were cool with it.
HOW DID YOU COME TO MEET IAN
MULCAHEY, AND HOW HAS HAVING A
MENTOR BEEN HELPFUL?
CMF introduced the mentoring scheme
about a year ago, and it was like a
blind date session, like ‘Oh now,
you’re going to meet your
mentor, here he is! Yours is
really cool!’ What’s great
about doing artist
programmes like this
where you meet other
people is that you’re
forced out of your
bubble. When you do
things like music, you
kind of go further and
further in on yourself and
what your group is doing. And
then these guys say look, get out of
your bubble and speak to someone who is
in another bubble.
So I met Ian, and we have some
overlapping interests in that he likes jazz
and he’s been to a lot of festivals like Love
Supreme. He was just enough in tune to
my world that we could break the ice. Then
it turns out that he’s a very senior person in
Gensler, which is a hugely interesting
company that’s doing projects all the
Giacomo Smith, left, will be playing City Beerfest with Kansas Smitty’s house band
across the world and major cities. So we
ended up keeping in touch and it was great
to speak to someone who is not in my
immediate circle, who has a completely
outside opinion.
WHAT PRACTICAL ADVICE HAS IAN
BEEN ABLE TO GIVE YOU?
I think I met him the weeks that we were
opening the bar in May last year. And he
came down and gave me a lot of ideas. The
advice that has been really helpful is
something that I, as a manager, quote all
the time, which is about negotiating fees
when we get contacted for jobs.
So, for instance, somebody says they
want music for something, then you quote
them a price and Ian said what you can’t
do is scale back on your offer and say, ‘Well
if you’re only willing to pay £1,000 instead
of £2,000, we’ll just play half as much
music’, because that’s going to burn
bridges and make you look like you’re
nickel-and-diming people. You say, ‘we’ll
play an hour extra, which means that the
band will be there for three hours for
£2,000’, and sometimes they’ll get the
message and go for your offer or not. It’s
just a much more graceful way of dealing
with the money problem. I thought that
was just great, it’s been invaluable advice.
YOU PLAYED CITY BEERFEST LAST
YEAR; WHAT WAS THE ATMOSPHERE
LIKE?
Beerfest is great, it’s like a summer festival
stage in a completely weird location.
People are really nice, and it’s fun to play
out in the sun. We’re doing two concerts
spread out for the Beerfest, which is much
more than last year. We’re really excited
because not only are we playing as a
smaller band, Smitty’s BIg Four, but we’re
bringing our much larger seven-piece
band, the house band at Kansas Smitty’s.
We did the main show at Ronnie Scott’s
in February and we sold it out six weeks in
advance, and that was a really big deal for
us because that doesn’t often happen. So
that’s why we’re really happy to be doing
as much as possible as the house band.
And to collaborate with CMF for Beerfest as
well, who’ve helped me out so much, it’s a
really great chance to give something back.
£ For special offers and advance beer
tokens, visit citybeerfest.org.