A Taste of My Life

I watched a week’s worth of the Taste of My Life reruns today and as well as really enjoying some of the reminiscences and the ensuing dishes (I am completely in love with Jane Horrocks’ tomato-free Vincigrassi Lasagne); it also got me thinking how I would concoct a similar résumé. Don’t get me wrong I am never going to be in the hallowed presence of one of my food heroes Nigel Slater whilst he recreates some of the seminal foodie moments in my life, but just in case the completely impossible happens, I thought I should put some serious preparation in.
A Taste of Childhood
They always start off at the beginning, lots of sepia-tinged flashbacks of standing on stools carefully stirring large simmering pots, chubby fingers helping mother/grandmother or even a linen clad nanny roll meatballs and pod broad beans, or squabbling with all the other little chubby fingers over who should lick the last vestiges of the butter cream off a wooden spoon. Being entirely sibling free and fairly sure that the vegetable-dodging M would not have ever podded a broad bean or engaged my services in this manner my little vignettes would be entirely different to those I’ve been watching on screen. The following montage of random images mostly tasty, occasionally not quite so delicious, form my fond childhood food memories. There’s the cosy meat and potato pies from the local chippie and kept warm on little gran’s Rayburn and then many years later rushing back from the Grove chippie clutching a plump greased-spotted paper parcel with a meat and potato pie and proper fat chips nestling within. Once home they’d be plates warming by the fire and couple of slices of white bread slathered with butter waited to have the salted and malt vinegar drenched chips thrust between then. I am not supposed to make references to Findus Crispy Pancakes, Goblin meat puddings and similarly Fray Bentos steak & kidney pudding, Angel Delight, and Smash mash potatoes as this list hints of a epicureally deprived upbringing. I should instead wax lyrical about big gran’s fresh baked custard tarts heavily laced with nutmeg, little gran’s fallen Lancashire Hotpot cooked for hours until the potatoes ‘fell’ and melded with the thin meaty juices to thicken them and M’s classic cheesy pastry enrobed Quiche Lorraine, Fish Pie with a delectable and extremely covetable cheesy topped mash potato and that cheesecake topped with tinned mandarin slices (very Family Circle circa 1975). And being a picky child there was a long list of foods I couldn’t abide, some I grew to really enjoy, and some remained on the black list forever like my much documented aversion to all tomato based products. One of the things I really couldn’t face back then was peas, however I would be forced to maybe eat three or four in a single meal. And of course I would exercise every effort to avoid this purgatory. I now will eat peas, but only ever petits pois, I still have to be a traitor to my northern roots and eschew both mushy peas and marrow fat peas – the latter don’t even sound nice!

I think I was feeling nostalgic a few weeks ago, the weather was a little grey around the edges and I craved a little culinary comfort and instead of the usual ‘old reliable’ of sausages and mash I really fancied a steak & kidney pudding. Goblin puddings have thankfully, I believe, disappeared from the face of the earth but I'm fairly sure Fray Bentos are still going strong. But in deference to more grownup taste buds I plumped for the Waitrose version instead, with an enticing butter enriched suet pastry. And it was rather lovely, it didn’t have the slightly San Tropezed colour of a Fray Bentos and even more delightful, I seem the recall the inevitable slight indentation in the top would host a pool of greasy liquid, probably exacerbated by the process of steaming in a punctured can and this Waitrose one is still steamed (either on the hob or in the microwave) but thankfully entirely devoid of this fatty residue. So my memory of steamed steak & kidney pudding has been revitalised with a rather tasty and pleasantly stodge-free exponent and to also prove that I have been reformed, I ate it with sautéed peas and lettuce.

Another distinct barometer of my shifting tastes has been scrambled egg. As a baby apparently I was a huge fan, but then after discovering new foods I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole, dry and tasteless and occasionally rubbery I decided (I've been told to say it wasn't M's scrambled egg that I considered rubbery, as if you were in any doubt that I could remember how it tasted as a baby!). I used to whip it up quite frequently for friends visiting however, and I thought it looked nice but would never eat it myself. And then I had a revelation in Paris at a lovely brunch place. The side order to all the other gorgeous brunchy items, was the tiniest cup of scrambled egg topped with chopped egg and a scatter of chives so then I realised I may have been wrong and decided to revisit it. I then became a huge fan of scrambled egg, but really just my version. I pop a little pat of butter into a small non-stick saucepan. As it melts I crack two eggs directly in the pan (who needs extra washing up?), whip vigorously with a silicon whisk and then douse with a good slug of double cream. As soon as the soft curds begin to form I top with any additions I may have to hand – salmon slivers, shards of smoky bacon and once crab meat or leave 'au natural' like this morning's and tip straight onto a hot plate then dredge with the finest chopped chives and a few whirrs from the electronic black pepper mill. I have since discovered that this is very Bill Granger, but I have always made mine like this. And of course never any toast, I love toast but not made soggy with scrambled egg.

A First Taste for Travelling
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this category on the show but I think it should be included in my little culinary “This is Your Life”. I think my first foodie holiday memory is whilst on a Greek island and being somewhat suspicious of the local fare (what 8 year old wouldn’t be) opted to eat only egg and chips and drink lemonade at every meal. Quite odd because I don’t think I ate egg and chips for many years after that, perhaps a two week stint of relying solely on the ‘egg & chips’ food group had saturated me.

Having a parent in the travel industry gave me a wonderfully different view on holidays, whilst my school friends might have been slurping sticks of rock bundled up on a typically British summer blustery beach within a stones throw of their caravan I was fortunate to be eating Christmas Day turkey sandwiches on a very sunny beach in Perth, Australia. When not on the beach we were drinking Orange Fanta bought from petrol stations and spotting Hungry Jack’s, the Australian equivalent to Burger King. I can’t recall if we ever ate there but I suspect not because we gorged ourselves on fabulously meaty barbecues where even the dogs couldn’t get through the ample leftovers but we liked the name. I also seem to recollect our pre-beach Christmas lunch was my first experience of the eclectic meal of beef, crayfish and garlic snails (the latter due to our French hostess).

We didn’t have many holidays but when we did they were always pretty exotic and far flung. A few years after our forays to Australia I had my first taste of the U.S. And that was diners with a multitude of egg serving choices, the largest sandwiches in the world that M would turn into a moveable picnic and nibble at during the day and a revelation - hamburgers topped with curiously orange squares of cheese. The processed cheese I was familiar with – Dairylea, was considerably more anaemic so American cheese seemed rather racy.

Another special trip was the surprise visit to Amsterdam to celebrate my then upcoming sixteenth birthday, it was such a surprise that I didn’t even know we were leaving the country. You could be on your parents’ passports until you were sixteen then so it was easier to organise such a stealthy mission. Curiously, I didn’t seem to have cottoned on to the fact that picking me up from school to go out for a meal was a little early in the day to go dining. But we did go out for a meal, it was in Amsterdam and it was Italian! Nobody at school on Monday really believed me about our Dutch adventure and even the tulip-shaped lollipops that I bought back didn’t entirely convince them.

A Taste of Success
Obviously the premise of the programme is that the interviewee is successful and well known – often as an actor, sometimes a comedian and very rarely a cookery writer. But I think success is more the moment you feel you’ve made it, suddenly feel very grown-up if you will. You’re earning a wage and the world is literally your oyster. Though I didn’t choose oysters, if I recall, as my first taste of the crazy life of haute cuisine was M&S tuna pâté (M&S being the pinnacle of upmarket food shopping in my mind). And when in those fancy Italian trattorias, which would be my initial experiences of restaurant life, it would always be Pollo alla Valdostana – chicken stuffed with ham and melting cheese, probably fontina (aka Chicken Cordon Bleu if is was actually a French bistro instead). I didn’t really like garlic then; it was a taste I grew to enjoy so Chicken Kiev, the other bistro/trattoria stalwart, wasn’t for me. As you may be aware, I never grew to enjoy tomatoes though and I remember that every time I ordered my beloved Valdostana I would have to verify if it was one of those with the unnecessary tomato sauce suffocating it! And then either ask for this stage to be omitted, or move to plan B.

For my twenty-first birthday I was working very far from home and my then boss and wife took me out to a local fish restaurants and I tasted my first ever whitebait. I was convinced I'd hate the little fishes but actually really enjoyed them. Oh yes, very grown-up now!

A couple of years earlier when I'd just left home I first hosted my own dinner parties and for reasons slightly lost in the mists of time I didn’t have a cooker in my first flat. Instead, I relied solely on my versatile Rima Grill, a precursor to the George Foreman Lean & Mean grilling machine. The plates were interchangeable, you could have the flat ones that I would top with a saucepan or two and use as a hob, ridged for the tiger-striped sandwiches and you could even raise the top plate and slip a baking tray between the two plates. In that well-used baking tray, I would bake pies, chocolates cakes and sausage casseroles. But for my dinner parties I developed a rather curious dish, before the heady tastes of that first M&S tuna pâté, I formulated my own version. This was a béchamel sauce cooked on top of the Rima Grill, thickened with copious mounds of grated cheese and then well-drained tinned tuna. I would then spoon the ensuing mixture in to individual ramekins and serve with French baguette for dunking. And if I didn’t conjure up this ‘treat’, it would be a cheese fondue in my bright red fondue set, clearly I believed that fine dining entertaining was all about melted cheese!

A Taste of Family
This idea of cheese fondues was a bit of a family tradition, I learnt all about the importance of Gruyère and Kirsch from the original D. I may have avoided his gravy (artificially browned sprout water mixed with beef dripping and cornflour anyone?), hated the bananas but he did a mean fondue!

The slideshow of family meals would definitely include fighting for the best parts of the cheesy topping from the cottage pie or fish pie, being showered by flaky pastry eating Gregg’s sausage rolls whilst shopping on a Saturday, the customary lentil soup and loaf in front of Saturday evening television, bacon sandwiches dripping with butter and the incredibly unfair sharing out of the now infamous chocolate gingers. And with a not unexpected lump in my throat as I write this, I now realise that the act of me successfully wheedling more than my allotted portion was all part of the ritual and I was supposed to hone my feminine guile on my ability to snaffle an extra one… or two of these hallowed biscuits – thank you D!

I guess there are shades of little Gran pretending (at least to me) to sneak some Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers into my bag under the eye of M & D. And later when visiting, her bringing me out a slice of fruit cake whilst I was still locking up my bike – as if I could get hungry on the short distance to her sitting room!

But that’s where my inherent feeder tendencies cloaked in the respectability of northern hospitality comes from. Never knowingly under-catered, I can’t bear to think of guests leaving hungry!

And that also goes for the now annual tradition of the extended family ‘around Christmas’ party – where the canapés flow and flow and then there’s the main event of some sort of meat with more vegetables than M ever wants to be in the presence of.

Christmas lunch was another memorable occasion, often held at unusual hours (!) and generally featuring beef as D couldn’t really fathom poultry. I think one of my most requested, which has been recreated more than once, was the hunk of beef fillet spread with pâté and then slices of Parma ham. I first saw this on one of the earlier Jamie Oliver shows fortunately getting the accompanying DVD for Christmas; I could reacquaint myself with how many ‘pukkas’ that dish required before tackling it!

The Final Feast
The finale of the Taste of My Life show is a table generally groaning with the dishes making up your ‘just before you die’ meal. There’s often a huge amount probably because a) like me they find it difficult to narrow it down to a couple dishes and then b) if you’re going to expire tomorrow, who on earth is going to bother about the calories? I am just so torn; I’d have to start with a Kir Imperial (made with my beloved black raspberry liqueur, Chambord) to prepare me for the gluttony ahead. And this photograph depicts a special coordinated with the room raspberry concoction from the bar above Joël Robuchon delicious restaurant - L’Atelier

For a starter I couldn’t choose between a few dream dishes so I’d have to a small spoonful of each. There would have to be some exquisitely perfumed white truffle loaded fresh pasta like that I enjoyed at the now sadly defunct Neal Street Restaurant.

But somewhat controversially I am also a huge fan of foie gras and was in complete hog (or should that be in 'truffle pig') heaven at Divertimenti’s Taste of Perigold evening when amongst many other earth shattering delights we tucked into foie gras filled pasta with a truffle and mascarpone sauce. Simply phénoménal, superbe, formidable and magnifique!

But I also adore a starter topped with a sunshine yolked egg emitting its golden wonder over the rest of the dish. There are so many to choose from but this fabulous crisp soft egg, morel duxelle and Roquefort truffle toasts from Gary Rhodes W1 is a stunner so can represent all those I've enjoyed.

Oh then there's also scallops, asparagus, risotto, globe artichokes and maybe the odd Lobster Thermidor - no I think I will have to draw the line somewhere.

For the main course, they’d have to be rare beef, ideally topped with more foie gras and accompanied by some sublime mash and various bits of greenery. Here’s a perfect example from Addendum of the beef fillet and fat foie gras, though the rösti was lost a little and I said at the time that I fancied more vegetables.

Of course considering a dazzling beef dish, Gary would have to feature again. This would be due to two reasons, firstly I have been lucky enough to dine the most number of times at both Gary Rhodes’ various restaurants and also Blueprint Café. Though I am sorry Jeremy, but as tasty as your food is, and it really is, Gary’s looks a little more beautiful and photographs so very well!

So here is the stunning roast beef fillet with red wine onions, oxtail hash, and poached egg béarnaise that I ate at my last visit. This deserves a special mention as it also had the oozy egg that I adore plus the my favourite béarnaise sauce. And of course, Gary is pretty damned good in the dark art of mash potatoes.

Though really it is my final meal so I am only going to allow some of Joël Robuchon mash nirvana to adorn my plate, I will accept no substitutes!

But one final possibility for the beef dish is Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for beef fillet with a gratin of mushrooms and sautéed new potatoes, which has crowned a few occasion meals at home, and is not too shabby either. But I still want Joël’s mash and whilst I am at it why not go for the whole hog and demand his truffle mash potatoes, oh yes, that is truly the pinnacle of mash mimosa. His ‘everyday’ mash is already like no other and the truffle mash – well when I first tasted this I am sure I heard angels sing!

If I’ve been able to stagger through the truffles, foie gras, pasta, gooey egg, beef fillet and truffled mash without keeling over from a heart attack, I might be able to squeeze in a little dessert. This is a hard choice as I would just probably go for the ooziest chocolate fondant ever but particularly after a rich meal a slice of a tart lemon tart (especially if my favourite raspberries are embellishing it) might be a wise idea. No cream for me though, I'm not savinf on the richness I just don't like it that way.

But perhaps I could have my cake (or tart even) and eat it as these are the tiniest and most lovely chocolate fondants I have ever experienced and yes, it’s at the hands of Gary again but he served them as petits fours so I could have them AND the tart!

I also think I should have little something from our seminal Heston’s Fat Duck theatrical meal and it was a hard, hard decision as it was all so indescribably unique but the hot and cold tea would perhaps aid digestion and take me right back to that very special evening. Though I'd be pretty keen to have Heston recreate that amazing Christmas meal he concocted last year with the gold, frankincense and myrrh etcetera. But I think that was a one-off!

And somehow I'd have to save a small corner for a magnificent gooey cheese board, perhaps another slice of that fabulous ripe truffled Brie and some shards of Grana Padano from Harvey Nix or some 'so difficult to get hold of' Flower Marie from the Cambridge cheese shop or just a fondue made from a whole Camembert baked in the oven. I am being to suspect that my foodie tastes are just all about melted cheese, rare beef and it seems truffles - how very revealing!

I can see why the guests on the Taste of My Life enjoy themselves so, it’s not just about eating all that delicious food (though of course that helps) but it’s been so fabulous tripping down my culinary memory lane and maybe a tad cathartic. Perhaps today being today, I am extra reflective and even though I’ll never get to relive it all again for Nigel Slater, at least I am primed. However now I’m really hungry, I wonder if I can lay my hand on a bit of foie gras and truffle oh and yes, some potatoes and cheese. Hmmmm, sorry it was rather a ‘long’ taste of my life once I'd started it was hard to curtail my deliberations, aren’t you glad I didn’t go for the sixteen courses tasting menu version? Maybe I could have a sudden reprieve from my imminent death that supposedly precipitates all these ponderings and then go for seconds! Well maybe!

Soup at home

Now I actually get to eat the soup I made for the TV show yesterday. I had only tasted it for seasoning yesterday and it wilted so considerably under the harsh studio lights I certainly didn’t intend to try some after the filming. So today I heated up another bowlful and posed it with the original Simon Hopkinson recipe though to be fair he said he got it from the sadly no longer open Walnut Tree near Abergavenny which had been an old favourite of his. However I was delighted to read that Shaun Hill is re-launching it again next month so maybe it will get to shine again.

I think I am recovering from the jetlag but do feel particularly wiped out today, I can’t really believe it was all that clapping yesterday – it is possible to get 'enthusiastic audience' fatigue? So with that in mind a bowl of home-made soothing soup seems just what the doctor ordered. Thankfully all the slaving over a hot stove has already been done and a little gentle re-heating shouldn’t be too taxing.

And I have to admit it is a lovely soup. It is velvety unctuous and flavoursome and thankfully entirely crust free! I would heartily recommend.

This is the recipe as printed in the Independent back in 1998, then Simon Hopkinson used cepes but the version he put in the wonderful book Week in Week Out definitely say porcini. Other than that it is the same simple and oh so tasty recipe. I guess the white truffle flourish was another later addition also, though I think the droplets of white truffle oil did add a little extra luxury and headiness.

Cepe and potato soup, serves 4

200g fresh cepes, thinly sliced or diced
5 medium potatoes
2 cloves of garlic
60g butter (I found that I wanted to use a little more)
200ml single cream
1-2 tbsp chopped parsley
freshly grated Parmesan
salt and pepper

Peel and roughly chop the potatoes, just cover with water, add salt and the garlic. Cook until collapsed. Pass the whole lot (water included) through the fine blade of a mouli-legumes (vegetables mill) - try not to use a food processor as this will make the soup too smooth. Return to the heat. Add half the butter, freshly ground pepper (I like white rather than black here, though can you find to find white peppercorns in any supermarket?), and taste for salt. Beat the mixture well with a balloon whisk; if it is too thick, add some water.

A few minutes before serving, add the cepes, which have been sautéed in the remaining butter, with the cream, parsley and seasoning. Serve with Parmesan sprinkled over the surface.

As seen on TV

Today has been a surreal day by anyone’s standards. It all started a few weeks ago when it was suggested that possibly I was being a little too mysterious on my blog and if someone wanted to contact me they couldn't. I pondered the wisdom of this, though having a pathological hatred of spam I did wonder if I was right to remain email-less. But I did add an email address and a day later I got a lovely missive from someone in New Zealand who'd read about a fledgling chef on my blog and wondered if I knew how they could get in touch with them and with some judicious googling I was able to assist. My second email was an invitation to take part in a new daily cooking show called Cooking the Books on Channel five. My mission, if I chose to accept it, was to choose a favourite cookbook (that in itself proved a momentous task) and then take a dish reproduced from said cookbook into the studio where I could be interviewed briefly about my efforts. The crucial point was that as they were on a very tight schedule they’d be little tinkering time and definitely no way of re-heating the dish. So with that in mind I set to work choosing a cookbook and then the recipe. One of my first ideas had been Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories, as it is indeed a seminal book which I’ve had from probably around the time it was published and several tried and trusted favourite recipes have emerged from these oft-turned pages. But I was also asked to pick a ‘newish’ cookbook as getting clearance from the publishers to show their book would be easier. So as Roast Chicken was published in 1999 I thought I’d better think a little more current. And only recently I’ve been raving about my new preferred bedtime companion of Simon Hopkinson’s Week in Week Out, it has the advantage of being written by one of my ultimate food heroes, has stunning Jason Lowe photography (Roast Chicken is absent in its glossy images) and I even know the publisher – result! Okay now for the recipe, after considerable cogitation and contemplation I opted for the Potato Soup with Porcini, I really wanted a seasonal dish and soup should be easy to transport and keep piping hot in a flask. If anyone wanted to try some I really didn’t want them to have to taste cold soup!

My plans were duly submitted to the production company and I headed for a week across the pond. As soon as I returned on the crest of a jetlagged wave I went on a mushroom hunt and was disappointed to find that they were just no porcinis to be found anywhere. In the end I opted for perfectly formed chestnut mushroom from Harvey Nichols, they’d been my last port of call on the Italian mushroom trail as I really didn’t want to resort to dried ones on this occasion. My jetlag meant that I was wide awake and glassy eyed at 5am so this seemed to be the perfect time to make my soup and decant into the flask for the later trip to the studios. Everything went to plan, I haven’t made this soup before but it was a great recipe. I loved the fact that the potato cooking liquor was used in place of a stock which seemed to give it all an extra creamy texture. And I was religious in following the instructions (almost unheard of for me) and even passed it all through my mouli legumes (actually purchased in Paris) which I hadn’t used for many a year. My only digression was also Bamixing the mixture just a little more to enhance the velvety quality. The chestnut mushrooms were sautéed gently (the recipe said chopped finely which I read as making a mushroom duxelle but I wanted them to retain their form as in the picture, so I sliced them finely instead). I pack the soup, a little bottle of truffle oil (Simon had suggested a few shaving from a white truffle if I had one to hand, regrettably I didn’t), a bunch of fresh parsley, a lump of Grana Padano (a slightly tangier, crumblier Parmesan-style cheese) and the mushrooms tightly wrapped in foil. I was ready for my TV début.

On being assigned a spot to ‘set up’ and a soup bowl I realised that jushing my dish would have to be swift so I borrowed some scissors for some rapid parsley strewing, dotted a little truffle oil on the surface and piled up the still warm mushrooms. So far so good!

However in my jetlagged induced mania I had agreed to film three sessions of Cooking the Books, twice as an enthusiastic clapper in the audience (though apparently I managed to pout and clap!) and then for the third show I’d be interviewed alongside the soup. I wasn’t aware in which of the three sessions I was filming and when I’d need to launch my soup on an unsuspecting public. So even though it looked rather appetizing at 10am when I’d initially poured it from the flask when the large camera mounted on a crane called a Jimmy Jib zoomed in for the ‘beauty shot’ at 4.30 pm I was most alarmed that the soup had formed a thick crust which was now rupturing in front of my eyes and exposing un-soup like cracks in the surface. Surely not how Simon wanted his dish to ever be presented.

Jeremy, the presenter, assured me that it looked better in the dish than it did in the book but I know it could have looked a lot better and in fact it certainly did earlier when I snapped it above. I haven't recorded the crusty round the edges version and I hope it won't be too apparent on the small screen.

It was truly fascinating having a little daylight fall upon the magic of television, I was surprised how compact the studio was, we weren’t suspended up in the cheap seats waving tomatoes or peppers (though I think it has all gone electronic now!) but we were there right in the thick of all the action. We could see the strange expressions from Jeremy Edwards and the various celebrity chefs on to strut their stuff and cook from their own books as the voices in their heads (one assumed the producer else they were all schizophrenic) would request a retake, ask for a certain shot or give further instructions seemingly mainly on where to stand and when. The food the chefs cooked was there in front of us in all its aromatic glory and when a filming segment had ‘wrapped’ the camera men and those who hold the camera cables out of the way of the rapidly panning cameras (is that a gaffer?) having pre-positioned strategic forks and spoons in their jeans back pockets could swoop in for a quick mouthful or two before the kitchen had to be reset for the next shot. There seemed to be so many staff behind the scenes, many with clipboards, walkie talkies, sheaves of scripts and post-it noted cookery books. There were make-up girls (also armed with forks) if anyone got a little too shiny and runners topping us up with glasses of apple or cranberry juice representing the white or red wine we’d probably rather be drinking. Though fortunate for me as my by now incredibly sleep deprived state meant that the merest whiff of a fermented grape would have probably had me dancing on one of their little round tables, and that could have well spilt the soup! The other chief purpose of all the behind-scenes staff was to supplement our meagre applause. We'd been asked by the producer if we could pretend we were in a Jerry Springer audience which I can assure you I never would be so whooping doesn't really come naturally to me. Therefore we had stunt whoopers brought in for the occasion!

Each show had a main chef who featured throughout the show, another chef in the second part for the cook-off and a mystery celebrity who we had seen attempt a recipe at home from a cookbook they’d been sent and it was strategically shot so as not to reveal the identify of the often not terribly accomplished cook. On the first show Bill Granger was the star attraction and he competed against Atul Kochhar. After a break both Jeremy and Bill had changed and the second show was filmed, this time Bill competed against Valentina Harris over a dessert where Valentina drowned hers in lashings of booze and rather astounded the taster with the potency. The final show of the day pitted Bill against Anjum Anand and some spicy treats.

As I was showcasing my endeavour in the third show, we had several discussions about what I would talk about. The initial plan was to discuss this blog and Jeremy was to ask me a searching blog related question – their first question was has anything dramatic happening at the result of blogging like "did I meet my husband through my blog?" This surprised me somewhat as I’m not married so it would have been rather a short conversation but when they realised that I was an inveterate cookbook addict they were keen to announce this proclivity to the world and changed the whole line of questioning. I had to wear a microphone for my slot and being lacking in a waistband that they could just conveniently clip the radio pack to, I had to be supplied with a dinky little pouch and strap it on under my dress (clearly in private). Unfortunately as can always be expected in these situations out of all our radio mics mine was the one that packed up so I had to attempt to wriggle discreetly out of it and then rush off again to strap on a new one, typical! The member of the ‘cookery club’ interview is shot first possibly in a belief it is the bit that’s most likely to go wrong and thus should be gotten over with as quickly as possible. I think mine went okay, though on viewing I don’t believe I either look like that or sound like that so curiously I must have unknowingly been given a stunt double! I have to admit Jeremy was rather charming and seems to possess an extensive wardrobe of stripy jumpers. My only previous encounter of him was in the pages of Heat normally walking along with his dog Molly. We’d been trying to recall where we’d seen him before; apparently he was in Hollyoaks and later Holby City and he also seems to be famous for once going out with Rachel Stevens! He says he loves cooking but admits that his “efforts turn out to be a bit more John Cleese than Jean-Christophe Novelli”, which sounds quite intriguing. We didn’t see him do much cooking though he gets to eat a little. Of most of the dishes he seems to take a delicate mouthful and proclaim it’s deliciousness but he seemed particular taken with Bill Granger’s lamb dish. I first met Bill at the inaugural cook book event at the Blueprint Café back in February 2006 just before I started blogging; he cooked a stunning lamb dish with a Romesco sauce. I am not crazy about peppers so I didn’t really eat much of the sauce but the butterflied lamb was just so succulent and it seemed Jeremy thought the same as me and we saw him tucking into it with gusto after the cameras stopped rolling. I tried some also and it was as tasty as I recalled from Jeremy Lee's interpretation way back when and very weirdly Bill remembered me from this previous meeting. I don't recall doing anything particularly bizarre though as it was their first event they had seated everyone with whom they'd booked with. As I had booked just one place, I was seated thus at a solo table. When Bill did his rounds he was amazed to see me perched there as Billy-no mates flicking through his cook book surrounding by seemingly a wild party. To be fair to Richard et al at the Blueprint have situated me much better at subsequent events. But isn't that so odd that Bill would remember!

So that's my fifteen minutes of fame, starring with a dubiously crusty soup and a dodgy radio mic. I think personally I should stick to the day job! Though saying that they did invite me back for another interview!

A Gordon Ramsay coffee table (book)

I have really been looking forward to this new Gordon Ramsay cookbook to be released since the lovely C told me about this and Simon Hopkinson’s back in May. It’s not that I haven’t found his most recent books interesting and occasionally useful, I really craved to see him flex those Michelin starred muscles, throw a little daylight in on the magic and show us how he got his reputation (and I don’t mean for swearing a lot!). When Play.com confirmed that my order had been posted two days ago, the caveat that was due to the postal strike we are experiencing, it may take longer than usual. And I do know this already, my new Nigel Slater that was posted on the 1^st October has so far eluded me. This didn’t please me as I’m not terribly good at being patient and I really wanted to get my hands on this book. I’m fairly sure I read somewhere that there are two versions, one limited edition at about £200 in a metal case and of course signed by the great man himself and the non-bullet-proof version at a less scary price that I’ve ordered. But even the one that isn’t in a metal case is large and this turned out to be its saving grace as it was seemingly too hefty for currently rather snail-like normal post so a courier had to ship this to me. Result! And it was indeed rather large, my immediate thought was that I was expecting a coffee table book but if they’d sent four legs in the package also I would actually have a coffee table. I don’t really have time to look over it today so it’s a special treat for when I get home.

And it really is a treat; I feel that as I slowly turn over the glossy pages that I should be wearing white cotton gloves and the only sound should be a choir intoning “ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh” in a rather gothic fashion. This is the epitome of food porn, and I love it! It’s like the most gorgeous example of an Argos catalogue in action. If I get to dine at Hospital Road again, and I do so hope I do one day, will I be handed this on a giant silver platter and will I extend one painted nail at the photograph of my chosen dish and say “I want one of those, please”? And after reading the inspirational bon mots and drooling over the pictures (carefully of course and it somehow wouldn’t seem appropriate to mess up these hallowed pages) the recipes are laid out so you can recreate them yourself. Hmmm, just a little bit daunting. I am sure these recipes haven’t been sanitised much for the home cook, the level of difficulty probably should be declared as “do not attempt without at least 2 ½ Michelin stars, just don’t even go there!” instead of “many of the recipes are still challenging and demand skill and precision on the part of the home cook”. But buoyed by the fact that at least I have the matching crockery I am wondering if I am brave enough to tackle the challenge. If I were, and that’s probably a big ‘if’, I might go for ravioli of lobster, langoustine and salmon with a lemongrass and chervil velouté for a starter (no pressure here as I believe this is one of Gordon’s signature dishes) and then for the main maybe an oven-roasted Bresse pigeon wrapped in Parma ham with foie gras, creamed mushrooms and a date sauce. And if I haven’t collapsed under the strain of that performance I could round off the meal with palet d’or with chocolate and hazelnut ice cream and passion fruit ice cream which just has so many stages I’d probably die in the attempt.

It is a truly aspirational and beautiful book; I can only hope that a soupçon of Gordon’s brilliance rubs off onto me.

The gorgeousness of Gary's food

I haven’t had the pleasure of Rhodes24 for a while and I wondering how it would fare against the opulence and sublime food of Rhodes W1. It certainly seems worlds apart from W1, there are no Swarovski chandeliers glittering over our table, the walls aren’t shimmering with eau de nil mother of pearl instead we have wall-to-wall navy pinstripes and pink shirts. Our view is the “erotic gherkin” and the streets below but today swathed in mist as the rain clouds have descended upon us.

There’s no tasty little amuse bouche at 24, which I’ve always lamented about though now I know that W1 more than compensates for this omission I can forgive them. We peruse the menu and as usual it’s a tricky choice, there doesn’t seem to be an option to have the entire menu reduced to tasting portion size and delivered to us so a decision has to be made. Inexplicably I am drawn to the garlic cream potatoes that come with the rack of lamb, mutton with summer vegetable casserole. But this dish is for two and as happy as K is to share it with me I am slightly concerned by the summer vegetable casserole, it could be some horrible ratatouille complete with the dreaded tomatoes or maybe not, but we never did find out. But we do discover that we can order Gary’s famous mash potato on the side so the pressure is off. A-A has been convinced of the stupendous-ness of the Gary mash already and goes for the sculptural seared scallops, shallot mustard sauce and mash potato for a starter. I’ve enjoyed this classic before and try and explain that the conical tower of mash potato is reminiscence of a little anaemic Clanger (the pink whistling creatures that inhabit the moon with the soup dragon!) and am met with very blank looks. I guess the Clangers didn’t really make to in either Australia or France. Clearly they both had deprived childhoods!

K is feeling the need for a healthy starter today and opts for the very Popeye friendly verdant spinach soup with warm garlic toasts.

I am attracted to the rich, unctuous glazed lobster omelette thermidor. Though it is a close call as I dither between the scallops, the lobster or the warm smoked egg with poached egg hollandaise and slow roasted pork belly or the smoked haddock and baby leek fish pie instead. I adore the glazed lobster omelette thermidor, it’s cheesy, lobster-y and delicious.

For our main course both K and A-A select the poached organic chicken with creamy broad beans and wild mushrooms. A-A had originally opted for roasted veal sweetbreads with morel mushrooms and mash potato before realising that it was sweetbreads. Unfortunately even though it looked very pretty they both thought the chicken was a little bland, the vegetables fared better but they said they could have made this at home. Okay that’s a fair point but you could probably say that for all the dishes, if you really had the skill and plenty of time. But the chicken is possibly one of the least complex dishes on the menu and it's such a shame they were a little disappointed.

At least they enjoyed the silky smooth talents in the mash department!

I am, however, delighted with my choice of the roast beef fillet with red wine onions, oxtail hash, and poached egg Béarnaise. Perhaps I could recreate this myself by I’d much rather Gary or his minions conjure this up for me.

This is a transcendent piece of cooking, ever time I’ve encountered Gary’s mastery with eggs (single ravioli containing a perfect poached egg yolk on my first visit to City Rhodes or the awe-inspiring soft boiled egg baked in the finest of breadcrumbs at Rhodes W1) I have been stopped in my tracks with such brilliance. The poached egg released its golden elixir which mingled with the béarnaise then flowed over the oxtail hash and into the rare beef juices. Just truly gorgeous! Gary has done it again! And of the course, the mash is perfection also.

We all are in a bit of a hurry but a few phone calls are made, K unfortunately has to rush off to another commitment but A-A have a small stay of execution so we decided we can squeeze in a spot of dessert. And especially as A-A seemed a little désolé after her chicken and I am keen that they redeen themselves so we see what they on offer. A-A fancies the warm chocolate pudding, with chocolate sauce and lemon sorbet but that requires a 15 minute wait which we can't afford so we have to move to plan b. I am devastated to see that the infamous Jaffa cake puddings have departed from the menu and ask what the Rhodes 24 signature pudding plate would offer us instead. And to my delight I hear bread and butter pudding, crème brûlée and fabulously a Jaffa cake pudding. Well actually I only hear Jaffa Cake Pudding so that clinches it! We are under strict instructions to eat the dessert plate in the designated order – bread and butter pudding, Jaffa cake pudding and then the crème brûlée as a finale. Gary Rhodes’ bread and butter is legendary, it’s his signature dish but when the chocolate mists descends on me I cannot see anything else apart from chocolate and on previous visits the Jaffa pudding had generally lured me in. But I have been denying myself a real pleasure as this bread and butter pudding is blissful. Obviously it originated as a frugal dish to use up yesterday’s stale bread and some milky custard. But this is totally another class, the touch of orange, the melt in the mouth texture, the rich, rich custard, this is a dessert dreams are made of. We both eat in a stunned silence! Then the Jaffa cake pudding, as fabulous as ever and frankly a more manageable size. We just manage to eat some of the crème brûlée , which was soft and lovely but totally eclipsed by the other two stunners.

And then there are the petites fours. Oh my, there isn’t the merest gap to squeeze in the insy winsy lemon meringue pie and teeny weeny chocolate muffin. I know the policy here about letting their food leave the premises in the hands of a careless diner who could leave it languishing somewhere and then eat it past its best and possibly make themselves ill. I am willing to take the risk and if I manage to sneak these out I will be relieved of them the moment I set foot in the office and I am positive no one will suffer in the process. But how will I get them out intact? Fortunately I am persuasive enough to procure a piece of foil and ‘if on my head be it’ and ‘if I am discrete’ I can smuggle them out. A few minutes later after fashioning a bizarre foil tent-shaped handbag the petites fours are nestled on the top on my bag, though frankly I don’t really think ‘discretion’ is really the word!

And surely enough on arrival back to the office these dinky little treats are wolfed down very quickly and were most appreciated by the eager recipients (including K who had a delayed dessert in the shape of a dinky chocolate muffin.)

Gary has done it again, apart from A-A and K's chicken (which fortunately I didn't choose) it was all momentous. I was supposed to have been going out again to eat tonight but I cowardly backed out (sorry E, but Marcus will do us proud next month I promise!) and it's a good job I didn't, I really couldn't eat a whiff of a waffer (sic) thin mint after all this delectableness. Gary, where are all your deserved stars?

Week in, week out always Simon Hopkinson

There is something so intrinsically cosy about Simon Hopkinson, I always imagine him pottering around his rather gadget free kitchen probably in a nice comfy pair of cords calmly putting together a lunch for his friends occasionally slurping a glass of something wonderful and then unceremoniously emerging from the kitchen with a sublime dish served on a vaguely chintzy platter. I can’t see Simon rushing around getting flustered and shouting but instead insouciantly lifting the lid on some aromatic treat, dipping his spoon into the creamy/meaty/winy juices to confirm that perfection has been achieved and with a final sprinkle of just picked herbs from his garden and as he often says – served at once.

I can picture him ambling through the market in Uzès in Avignon in search of a few choice ingredients to whip up a tasty salad to eat later under the shade of an outstretched almond tree or having a sudden culinary epiphany whilst thoughtfully chewing a morsel of lamb that lacked “a little piquancy”. And it’s not surprising as his writing is astonishingly evocative, he weaves a tale around some gastronomic incident and then follows through with a handful of recipes that illustrate his point and totally leap off the page. It is no accident that Simon Hopkinson is an inspiration to so many of the chefs I admire and no surprise his ‘Roast Chicken and other Stories’ was voted as ‘the most useful cookbooks of all time’ by food writers, chefs and restaurateurs. We are so used to his eloquent prose but not being an avid reader of the Independent magazine between December 1994 and the spring of 2002, I haven’t often seen Simon’s recipes brought to life with some stunning photography. But that’s really the whole idea of Week in Week Out as the hugely talented photographer Jason Lowe had captured Simon’s work in his weekly columns and on reviewing this images many years later it became apparent that they wouldn’t look lost in today’s cookbook offerings. I have tried in my slightly obsessive way to identify the original photographs versus the ones that have inevitably supplemented it today but it’s tricky, there’s clearly a different styling to many of the photographs that grace the food magazines and book today but they have such a vibrant jewel-like quality and it can’t just be the super glossiness of the pages.

I am most grateful that the lovely C of Quadrille tipped me off that this brilliant book was coming to fruition way back in May, and I am delighted to see that Simon has credited her in Week in Week Outs acknowledgements, so we are both much obliged it seems!

The only downside perhaps of this magnificent book is that more commonly Simon Hopkinson’s tomes are slightly larger than a novel size, one that I can easily slip into my bag and savour on meandering journeys home but in the case of Week in Week Out I would have to resort to a rucksack to tote it around, and that is never ever going to happen! This is a fabulous book, I know this will be a firm favourite and could well be the next most useful cookbooks of all time but it is way more than just a collection of recipes it is an evocation of a better world, one where the eggs always have the “hue of Kia-Ora”, the Dijon mustard is always “freshly decanted from a Maille brass spigot” and that new potatoes are always the “tender and sweet Cornish nuggets” from Trevonne Farm near Padstow in Cornwall.

There are just too many astounding recipes in this book to single out but I will list a few as an aide-memoire of the ones I really must try first – Potato gnocchi with garlic and basic cream, Tiny new potatoes with caviar and chives, Lapin à la Dijonnaise, Roast duck with cider, cream and apples and the Cold ham soufflé.

Chocolate & Zucchini & Clotilde & me

I was utterly delighted when I heard that Clotilde Dusoulier was planning an evening at Book for Cooks in Notting Hill. We’d get to hear her talk and Chocolate & Zucchini, both her blog and the resultant book. And even better than that, Eric Treuille proprietor and chef would whip us for the chosen 12 a meal from the book itself. When I say chosen 12, I really mean the first 12 who booked a table at this hallowed event. I booked my seat the moment I first stumbled across a reference to Clotilde’s intended visit to London on her wonderful blog. And I have really been looking forward to this.

Eric first delivered us a plate of Mushroom and Cantal Cheese Tartine (p.46 in the British copy of Chocolate & Zucchini) as we heard about Clotilde’s early history discovering food in San Francisco when dot.com work took her there and the local food markets first really opened her taste buds.

After two years in California when Clotilde and Maxence returned to Paris, Clotilde found with her new found enthusiasm for all that was food she started cooking zealously cooking for family and friends initially recording everything in a notebook and then in 2003 after reading other food blogs started her own. As there were few food blogs not been written by food fanatics in the US, Clotilde’s received extra attention and her fame grew and justifiably so.

Eric then reinterpreted her Celeriac Remoulade with Trout Roe (p.119) by substituting the Trout Roe with Smoked Salmon. I can take or leave celeriac, and I am not a missive fan of yoghurt-y dressings so this wasn’t my favourite course but I have to admit that it was a clean zesty taste with the lemon and actually an unusual combination that I am glad I’ve tried.

Next we were able to ask our own burning questions and I have to admit I was intrigued to hear her answers regarding influences and her food heroes, her obviously being one of mine. She mentioned Trish Deseine and her latest book “Nobody Does it Better”, which is a big favourite of mine also. Intriguingly Trish is an Irish woman writing about cooking France.

She also explains the mechanics of recording the delights she serves up for her guests for her blog and her friends are used to waiting patiently for her to snap away before they can pick up a fork (I have to apologise, I am afraid I am very prone to that – "just one second, let me turn on more lights so I can record this before you commence your scoffing…") but Clotilde admits that she often remakes a dish the next day so she can photograph it beautifully for her blog. But then her photographs are rather stunning so I guessed they couldn’t have been all snatched speedily before a fork is plunged into the middle of it.

We next ate a scoop of delicious Tuna and Green Apple Mousse (p. 98) with some pitta bread.

Clotilde talks about her next book which will feature Parisian foodie hangouts. One of the guests is slightly louder and more aggressive (that’s me being polite!) than the rest and asks lots of questions about getting a book published especially the challenges performing this feat in several countries. Methinks she has ulterior motive, perhaps her own book up her sleeve perchance! Eric furnishes us with a plate of delicious Lamb and Prune Meatballs (p. 134) which are lapped up with gusto. This is such a civilised way to meet a cook/chef and enjoy their cookbook and food, very intimate and enjoyable.

We hear how to Clotilde retains her enviable svelte form (swimming if you’re interested) and how her philosophy of Chocolate & Zucchini started. She wanted to exemplify the two facets of her cooking personality, zucchini for her healthy, wholesome love of vegetables and chocolate for her sweet tooth and a penchant for glorious chocolaty loveliness. We accompanied this by a slice of the eponymous Chocolate & Zucchini Cake, it may sound strange but tastes moist and with a little something that you can’t quite identify but stops the chocolate being too rich. It was very good!

It was a fabulous evening, and it was worth the wait. Eric certainly asked us to leave fairly suddenly, Clotilde was actually in the middle of a sentence but maybe out enthusiasm had made the extended the event loner than usual. Clotilde has kindly offered to sign my copy of her book several times but I hadn’t bought my slightly dog-eared and much loved copy with me. In the end I thought I’d buy another copy and take her up on her proposal and donate my somewhat oeuf cocotte splattered version to D. And if you haven't discovered her blog yet, you really should.

Eggstras

There has been some sort of egg renaissance recently. When I check out the egg shelves in Waitrose there are not just stacked with boxes of Clarence Court happy hen eggs like my beloved golden Old Cotswold Legbar and free-to-fly quail eggs but Burford Browns, Gladys May 's Braddock Whites and even mixed variety boxes. I don't think I'd ever tasted a duck's egg before so last weekend D and I thought we'd try the Gladys May's Braddock White duck eggs and see how well they'd poach. They turned out to be slightly milder and of course bigger than a hen's egg and very tasty indeed. We'd intended to impale them with some steamed local spears of asparagus and the fat duck's golden yolk would have been perfect with asparagus, but we had used the rest of the batch the night before. So we went for the simpler option of happy duck eggs and on top of just past blonde toast, that nasty black toast would have spoilt the delicate duck eggy flavour. Well I think so anyway!