Surely this should be in Tower Hamlets...?

A couple of weeks back it was reported on the excellent Londonist website that the City of London will soon be gaining another high-rise office block. This wouldn't be particularly news-worthy anywhere, let alone on this blog, were it not for the current fad for giving new London buildings a nickname based on their shape. We already have the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie, and this new building will give us the "Can of Ham".

Although officially to be known as 60-70 St Mary Axe, the designs by Foggo Architects do indeed bear an uncanny (sorry) resemblance to a tin of ham standing on its end, which as Londonist points out is perhaps a little unfortunate given its proximity to the Bevis Marks Synagogue just across the street. But luckily the nearest tube station will be Aldgate - on the Hammersmith and City Line (sorry again).

New year, not-so-new tins

The trouble with tinned food is that it keeps for ages. That sounds ridiculous, I know - after all, that's the whole point of sealing food into sterilised metal cylinders: to stop it from going off. But it does mean that because you don't have to eat it straight away, it's very easy to forget about the tins you've bought, or not get round to using them. Particularly if you have an unusually large stash of them, as yours truly does.

When I see a new tinned product, I can't help but buy it, with the aim to try and blog about it as soon as I can. But that doesn't always happen. For example, some time ago now, Heinz launched a new range of flavoured baked beans (sorry - Beanz), which were on an introductory offer in most of the supermarkets for a while. I took this opportunity to buy a tin of each of the five different flavours, with the intention of writing a post about the new products when I'd tried them all.

Of course, time flew by, I'd only tried about three of them, and then Heinz went and brought out another new range of Beanz, completely putting me to shame on my tardiness. Likewise, I've bought tins that have sat on my shelf for so long that they've gone out of date, or are no longer sold at the supermarket where I bought them, or even have been discontinued by the manufacturers. And there are a whole load of other tins which I have tried, but not quite got round to writing a blogpost about yet.

So, one of my resolutions for 2015 was to pull my finger out with regards to the blog, updating it far more regularly, if necessary writing the posts as more concise reviews of tins rather than full 'stories' about them. I will be working through my stash, not leaving new tins languishing on my shelves for months, and actually getting round to writing about the ones I've already tried. To start things off in that vein, I now present to you the long-awaited - but no longer new - Heinz Flavoured Beanz family!

The Christmas Special: Part Three

But the meal wasn't over there. I may have been quite full by that point, but there's always room for pudding after a big Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, despite much searching online, it appears that you can't buy Christmas pudding in a tin anymore, although such things did exist, as this amazing Heinz advert from 1917 for tinned Fig and Plum Puddings (and mincemeat) shows. It doesn't hold back at all on its ringing endorsement of the product:

"There is a new dessert among the 57 varieties - Heinz Fig Pudding. It is a treat. Figs, of course, with spices and flavourings, cooked to bring out a taste that will make your mouth water. We cannot tell you how good it is. You must try it."

If only I could - sadly these products, and such emphatic recommendations in advertising, are now confined to history.

An even older tinned Christmas pudding actually still exists, having originally been sent to the Naval Brigade in the Boer War, but it was never opened, and now forms part of the collection at the Historic Dockyards in Portsmouth - this article tells the full story.

But I digress - I wouldn't be finishing my Christmas dinner with a tinned figgy pudding. What about a pudding of tinned figs though? In one of his earlier cookbooks, the great Nigel Slater includes a recipe for figues flambées using tinned figs, which he says "come from a tin relatively unscathed", but also suggests that you "try not to think of fresh figs when you eat them". I had seen tinned figs recently in Waitrose, and the flambé element of the recipe sounded suitably festive, so it seemed like the perfect end to my Christmas meal.

The Christmas Special: Part Two

GAME's 'Christmas Tinner' did get me thinking though - while it wasn't going to be possible for me to try a Christmas dinner all in one tin, what about a Christmas dinner made from tins? Each element of the meal could be a tinned product of some kind. I already had some of the necessary items in my stash of tins, and a quick trip to a couple of local supermarkets (plus a not-so-local shop selling imported American food products) provided the rest of the bill of fare. I should probably point out though that this was a pre-Christmas feast - I didn't attempt to force what follows onto my family on the day itself. That would certainly have made for a memorable Christmas, but for all the wrong reasons...

The Christmas Special: Part One

Near the start of the festive season last year (2013), it was brought to my attention that GAME, the largest high street and online computer games retailer in the UK, was selling an "all-day Christmas feast in a tin" in some of its stores, for gamers who couldn't bear to drag themselves away from their consoles to cook on Christmas Day.

GAME had commissioned design student Chris Godfrey to create the so-called "Christmas Tinner", consisting of nine layers including scrambled egg and bacon, two mince pies, a full roast turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and Christmas pudding at the bottom. Godfrey had previously produced a 12-course meal in a can, with layers including a selection of local cheeses with sourdough bread, halibut poached in truffle butter, and a rib eye steak.

GAME's statement about the Christmas Tinner claimed that:

"According to new research almost half (43 per cent) of the nation’s gamers plan to spend the majority of Christmas day playing on their new consoles and games. That’s why GAME has developed the Christmas Tinner, enabling gamers to get their teeth into GAME play all day without having to miss out on a mouthful of their favourite food or do the washing-up."

It all has more than a whiff of a marketing ploy about it to attract shoppers in the lead up to Christmas, though to be fair that's probably not as bad as the smell that would come from the tin itself. I have no interest in computer games whatsoever, but would of course have been more than willing - keen, even - to give the tin a try. Sadly though, it was only available in a small number of stores, and by the time I heard about it, it had completely sold out online too. I contacted GAME earlier this year to find out if they would be relaunching it for 2014, but alas they said they had no plans to do so. For a tin cannoisseur, such news was as upsetting as the ending of The Snowman.

When is a tin not a tin?

Answer: When it's a tube.

Let me explain. Some time ago, I was browsing the chilled food aisle of my local supermarket (yes, I do occasionally eat things that don't come out of tins) when my attention was caught by a tin on one of the refrigerator shelves. My initial thought was that it was something left there by one of those people who pick up an item, change their mind half way round the shop and then deposit it on a shelf wherever they happen to be at the time, the rogues. But no - there were a number of the same tins on the shelf - the product had clearly been stacked there intentionally. But what reason could there be for keeping tins in a fridge? The whole point of them is that they keep food preserved at ambient temperature.

Rather deer for a tinned ready meal

The A&B Roll wasn't the only tin I brought back from Scotland, or indeed the only interesting Grant's product I found up there. The company portfolio is larger than I initially thought; in addition its various tinned haggis products, it has a 'traditional' range of meat-based ready meals (stews, casseroles, curries and so on), a 'catering' range featuring much larger tins, and a 'gourmet' range of fancier versions of some of the above - "delicious meals produced with the finest quality, locally sourced ingredients", which won 'Top Product Launch' in The Grocer Awards 2011.

The tins retail for around £3, which is certainly high-end pricing for a tinned ready meal. I was lucky enough to find a tin of Venison Casserole reduced to clear down to £1.49 in a Tesco in Edinburgh, which was a little more reasonable. I wondered whether they were trying to get rid of the tins as they weren't selling well; it was only when I got home that I realised that in fact the tin had already passed its best before date by a few months, so shouldn't have been on sale at all.

Still, such a trivial matter as a historical date has never put me off trying tins before, and the idea of a luxury item like venison in a tin appealed to me so much that it there was no question of it doing so this time.

So - to the kitchen! "Lean chunks of venison in a delicious meaty gravy with vegetables", the label promised. Opening the tin, it certainly looked like a rich, unctuous sauce, so I had high hopes as I waited for it to heat through in the pan.