It really has been a month of disappointments. Sometime last year my new young assistant Clive read out an email addressed to me (I never touch a computer myself for fear of catching a virus). This was from a company called something like Pumping!the!envelope.com who apparently make television programmes.
Babies in restaurants make Felix spit his dummy
Having brought up sixteen children, fostered three and been a role model to thousands more I think I can say with some degree of confidence that no one loves babies more than I. Delightful, gurgling creatures they are and each time I have been summoned from the drawing room by a servant with the news that I am to be a father once again, I have always made a point of sending my wife my sincerest congratulations, before repairing to my club to stand a round of port.
Felix Hunt – Lack of manners
When I first started to discover food between the wars, it was really not at all fashionable. Indeed in the better country houses it was seen merely as a necessity. Anyone who had the temerity to savour his food, or expressed heresy such as likes or dislikes, was not asked back for weekend parties. My father, the first Earl of Hunt , used to believe that the only sport for a gentleman was hunting or fishing, and in the same vein always harboured suspicions that any man who liked his food was probably a bit of a whoopsy, as he liked to call the chaps we now call Friends of Dorothy. ‘That fellow jumps too low in the leapfrog!” he used to rumble disapprovingly whenever dear old Evelyn came to tea.
Festive Cooking with Chris Staines
After a sorry excuse for a summer this year, the nights are again drawing in and the days are getting seemingly shorter. Equally, the festive season seams to start earlier and earlier each year but what do you do if your cooking skills are more akin to Gordon Brown than Gordon Ramsay?
Alex James says ‘cheese’ in the country
It seems highly likely that Alex James ex Blur will have Alex James ex Blur written on his headstone, it’s the only way that people seem to refer to him. It’s a bit unfair as he has carved out a whole new niche for himself since those heady BritPop days as tweedy countryman, conductor, columnist and now of course cheese maker.
Pudz mean prizes
We knew that he would win. Just watching Sam Greaves work around the Good Housekeeping kitchen along with the other three contestants (one had dropped out with flu) you could see he had the chops.Pro chefs, or even those like Sam just nineteen and studying food at university, have an economy of movement, a calm outer bearing and clear focus that marks them out. When his dish was presented for judging, it had the cheffy look too, one that makes the diner happy before a spoon is raised and which justifies the price on the menu.
Desserts – Mary Berry
Are desserts the forgotten art? So many cookbooks are packed with astounding starters and mains, yet inexplicably tail off when it comes to desserts. Perhaps it’s because we don’t get excited about desserts as we did when children. Today as adults we often prefer cheese, feeling that desserts are bit bad for us or a bit self-indulgent. Once upon a time, though, everyone’s mother could make all kinds of desserts, knocking up trifles in an instant or assembling a fabulous sponge cake in an afternoon. And we lapped them up. Read more
The Beer Book – Edited by Tim Hampson
You’ve got to love a book that has an embossed beer mat on its cover. Well you have to love a book about beer anyway don’t you? In a London where ‘cooking lager’ has become ubiquitous and any request for ‘bitter’ gets you the kind of look you might earn if asking for a Pink Gin, decent beer is having a tough time of it. Indeed breweries that have been around for a hundred years are closing and being turned into flats. So if you ever wanted to live in a brewery, chances are that if you have the cash now you can. Read more
Great British Cheeses – Jenny Lindford
Not so long ago a book of Great British Cheeses would have been a contender for the title of Shortest Book Ever. Stilton, Cheddar, Wenseleydale and errmmmmm does Primula count? Today we are lucky to be in the middle of a British cheese resurgence with more people making cheeses than perhaps ever before. Great cheeses too, ones that can, and often do, appear on the tables at top London restaurants.
British Seasonal Food – Mark Hix
Regional, seasonal. Seasonal.regional. This the mantra most London restaurant chefs are muttering to themselves as they scurry round their kitchens. Vegetables are interrogated harshly. ‘Where do you come from? How did you get here? Show me your papers, bitte.” It has become a commonplace to say both that vegetables taste better the fewer miles they travel to get to the plate, and that the anticipation and consummation of waiting for each vegetable to be in season is a great part of the pleasure of eating them.