AdamLawrence

Gavin - Probably about 15-20 miles if you leave the A1 at Thirsk on the Pickering and Scarborough road. I haven't got there yet, it's on my list of places to try when I'm seeing the folks - as is Winteringham Fields - but friends who've been tell me it's killer. cheers Adam edit full disclosure: I misspelled Thirsk as 'Thirst'. Freudian typo or what? I need a pint of Landlord.

John's post has prompted me to mention a place Lucy and I stayed in while exploring the Loire valley last September. It's a posh B&B in a petit chateau called La Chaussee at Huismes, just north of Chinon. Run by a small but big-personlity French painter and her Dutch husband. Marie-Jose and Hans were both excellent hosts, and steered us to a couple of decent meals and some interesting winery visits. Large and attractive room was about FF400/night, including breakfast, now Eu59 La Chaussee One of the places we ate (and I'm a bit ashamed not to have mentioned this before) was a recommendation, via Bux, from Jacks' Travel site - the Auberge de l'Ile at L'Ile Bouchard, a small island in the Vienne. Nice sandre aux ecrevisses et beurre blanc was the standout. About FF800 with aperitifs, a bottle of Chinon blanc and a glass of Vouvray moelleux with the foie gras. 14/20 in GM I think, and worth a try if you're in the area.

Adam - La Garrigue, that's the one. I recall wandering past, noticing that the place hadn't been there the previous time I'd been past, crossing the road to look at the menu, and one of the staff zooming out to give me a business card (I gave the card to the friends with whom we were staying). I thought it looked good. I'll have to try it next time I'm up that way (probably a couple of months). cheers Adam

If you like Indian food, I had a terrific meal at Kalpna, a vegetarian Indian restaurant on St Patrick's Square, just off Nicholson Street, last time I was in Edinburgh. Cheap too. We tried to get in to Martin Wishart's in Leith - my Edinburgh-based friends say it's fantastic, probably the best restaurant in town - but it was full. Will save it for next time. Adam - while walking around Edinburgh earlier in the year I noticed a new-ish French place, southwestern in outlook, on the street that goes under North Bridge on the Old Town side (Jeffrey Street? Market Street? Can't remember). Do you know the place? Menu looked interesting, but didn't have chance to try it out. cheers Adam cheers Adam

That's interesting, thanks for posting; I tried the Plantagenet for the first time last weekend, and liked it very much. I think I tend to like slightly cooler-climate shiraz, stuff that's a bit more subtle than the big Barossa blockbusters. My absolute favourite Aussie shiraz remains Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 2. I drank a bottle of the '96 a month or so ago, and it was superb. cheers Adam

Believe me, rosemary _is_ winter hardy in the UK. I planted a small rosemary plant when we moved into our current house three years ago, and it's now about two feet across and three wide. I also have marjoram, sage, oregano and three sorts of thyme in my herb plot. Adam

Jay, I've never eaten in a Rhodes restaurant but I would agree with your general opinion. Rhodes treats food seriously: he demonstrates technique clearly, and I've learned a lot from watching him on TV. I don't particularly like his style as a presenter - his voice and vocabulary annoy me - but he is, I think, among the best food broadcasters we have (up there with Hugh F-W to my mind). He doesn't treat the viewer as an idiot who knows nothing; nor does he go way over the head of the amateur cook. Good on you Gary. Adam

I've never seen the Tour in person, but I have watched pro cycling a couple of times. The first thing to note is that the peloton goes past at a hell of a speed, even going up impossibly steep hills. I would guess that the Ventoux would be the biggest set piece hilltop finish of this year's Tour (they aren't going to Alpe d'Huez this time I think) - it has the history, what with Tommy Simpson et al - and consequently be the busiest. If you want to find a decent vantage point somewhere near the top of the hill then I'd guess you're going to have to get there very early in the day. Since I can't imagine they'll let you drive up the hill on race day, that's going to make seeing successive finishes tough, I'd have thought. I think the Tour is maybe my favourite TV sporting event of all, and I imagine the atmosphere on a big climb would be amazing. But I doubt you'd actually _see_ much. Adam

Valentine's day last year we spent two nights at Combe House just outside Honiton in Devon. Combe House Possibly too far for you - though I dare say it wouldn't be that bad a drive from Winchester, or you could go by train to Exeter - but a beautiful spot with excellent food, good wine and great hospitality. Pricey too, but worth it. Honiton is pretty and has interesting antique shops and galleries, Exeter is a beautiful old city, with a nicely-restored dockside district, and the countryside around there is fab. Adam

I love Rat and Mole's picnic on the river in The Wind in the Willows. But then The Wind in the Willows is my favourite book in the world, I have five different editions, and I must have read it over a hundred times. So I may be slightly biased. Adam

I've worked my way through most of the upmarket chicken brands available in UK supermarkets. There's an organic chicken brand available in Sainsbury's called PJ Onions (crazy name, crazy bird?) which is very good. They are typically quite large - I wouldn't want to tangle with a live one - have good flavour and make excellent, very gelatinous stock. Many of the other chicken brands are English-raised but attempt to mimic French products in packaging/naming etc. There is a brand I get from my butcher in Oxford called 'Label Anglais'; these are OK, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to find one. The best I have found up to press (taking the title from the PJ Onions brand) is a chicken available in Waitrose called 'Label Rouge'. These are corn-fed and I think organic. They are typically very large indeed, killed at 81 days IIRC. I roasted one at the weekend; it was about 2.4kg, but another on the shelf weighed in at 3.4kg, the largest supermarket chicken I can recall seeing. Bigger birds I find tend to have a stronger flavour. Anyway, the bird I cooked (upside down, breast rubbed with Maldon salt and my best olive oil, half a lemon up its backside) was superb; probably the best chicken I've had in ages. Recommend them. Adam

There's always the Manoir (interesting interview with RB in the Observer food magazine yesterday BTW), but the accommodation is eye-watering - I think the cheapest room is over two hundred and fifty quid. cheers Adam

Thanks for that. Although it may now all be academic anyway, as the lady wife claims to have foresworn drink for ever and ever after the consumption of two pints of Goff's Lancelot, one large gin and tonic, her share of two bottles of Jackson Estate Pinot Noir (between three of us) and two double Lagavulins on Saturday evening left her unable to rise from her sickbed until 4.30pm yesterday. We shall see how long this lamentable situation endures . But if it does last, what am I bid for an almost untouched bottle of Bowmore 17-year-old, half a bottle of Talisker and about a third of a bottle of Ledaig 25-year-old? cheers Adam

wine-searcher.com (a fantastic resource) lists a number of US-based suppliers with the cheapest being nextwine.com at USD 69. That's the only one under a hundred though. Adam

That's fascinating - that's the signature dish of Fergus Henderson, chef/patron of St John in London - a favourite of many on the UK board. I would never have predicted Henderson's food travelling in this way. Hey, Steve P - does this count as English food in another country? Adam

Definitely try Felton Road. It ain't cheap, but it's v good stuff.

Which NZ pinots have you tried, tommy? My experience is quite the reverse, they are consistently good (although, as I mentioned above, not perhaps as complex as they will be in a few years, as the vines get older). cheers Adam

Shaun, do you know (did you train, perhaps?) a chef called Philip Baker who used to have a restaurant just outside Oxford? I ask because Philip often had a number of dishes on his menu that look similar to some of yours - the panettone bread and butter pudding, for example. cheers Adam

NZ reds - specifically NZ pinot noirs - are pretty hot stuff at the moment. Nice cool climate and some interesting terroirs mean exciting wines. My favourite is Felton Road from Central Otago (www.feltonroad.com) - their base-level pinot is good, but some of their single vineyard wines (I've had the Block 3 and Block 5) are really superb, though in _very_ short supply -but the whole Central Otago region - between Queenstown and Wanaka if you've travelled in NZ - is full of Pinotphiles. Gibbston Valley and Mount Difficulty are another couple of names to watch out for. Central Otago pinots are typically darker than your average burgundy, but have excellent pinot character, and will only get better - the vines are very young. They are boutique wines though, produced only in small quantities, and they are often relatively expensive. Felton Road makes excellent chardonnay and riesling too. Marlborough, at the top of the South Island, is classic sauvignon blanc territory, but is also starting to produce good pinot (much of which was originally planted for sparkling wine - I like Pelorus, the Cloudy Bay fizz, a lot). I've had Jackson Estate (who are renowned as among the top SB producers in NZ nowadays) and Forrest Estate, both good if not worldbeating, and sensibly priced for decent pinot, about GBP 10. Isabel Estate is also well-liked by some judges I trust. In the North Island, Martinborough and Ata Rangi are maybe the two best-known NZ pinot producers. I haven't tried either, but they come highly recommended. NZ is pinot-mad at the moment, and they are really starting to produce some exciting wines. I think it is probably the most promising New World country for pinot noir - most other places where the grape is grown are too hot to make really elegant, complex wines. Try them. So far as the comparison to Aussie wines goes, NZ is much cooler than most of Oz, so the wines will tend to be less about power and more about subtlety. You wouldn't find anything like a Barossa shiraz or a Coonawarra cabernet from NZ. If you've ever tried Tasmanian wine, though, there is some comparability there (On Tassie wine, if you ever get chance to try the Pirie sparkling wine from Pipers Brook, do so - it's fab). cheers Adam

Jordan - about GBP 30/bottle. Thanks for the note. Adam

Shaun, when you first moved to Ludlow and set up on your own, what were your objectives? Were you frustrated with the pressure of leading a large brigade, was it about trying to find a better balance between work and life? Who else is/was there who was running the same kind of small but high standard restaurant/little or no help/live above the shop kind of place? (I'm thinking of Robin and Marion Jones at Croque-en-Bouche in Malvern, but would be interested to hear of anyone else doing this kind of thing). Thanks Adam

Andy, from my experience men seem generally to drink more quickly than women. Oddly that didn't used to be the case with Lucy and me - when we first met, at university, she could drink me under the table any day of the week. Now she drinks perhaps twice as slowly as I, though she still refuses to drink halves. Makes her a cheap date, though. As to your guests, don't you think you're setting yourself up for a fall by investing so much emotional capital in your food? If you provide 'serious' food to people who aren't necessarily 'serious' eaters, is it fair to expect them to savour it in the way someone who had more experience eating food of that quality would do? To that end, I've basically given up cooking complex food when we have guests, though I will often do something a little more fancy for a starter. I don't want to have to gulp my own first course and zoom back into the kitchen to finish and plate the main course. I've rationalised it by telling myself that guests have come to spend time with us, and that the cooking is secondary. If I want to cook something really fancy, I'll just do it for the two of us. Or perhaps with one or two guests, specifically my regular culinary sparring partner, with whom I can share the cooking load (We keep saying we must take a weekend out to butcher and deal with a whole pig - making sausages, brawn, confit, etc - but haven't got round to it yet) Adam

Adam, whereabouts are the Scotch Whisky Society Rooms? The lady wife is a whisky-lover and it'd be a fun thing to take her there next time we're in Embra. cheers Adam PS - my company has a number of whisky distillers among its client base, and we organised a press event recently which featured a tutored tasting. Based on this I can authorititavely ( - I'm not a whisky drinker myself) state that a few drops of spring water does indeed improve the flavour of the whisky.

Nigella Lawson recommends a simple preparation involving breaking your cauliflower up into florets, dusting with cumin and baking until cooked. It's really very, very good indeed. I often make this as a simple side dish if I'm cooking Indian-influenced food or anything that uses aromatic spices Adam

White would be Trimbach. But I haven't a clue what red producer I'd pick. Probably someone from Burgundy, or perhaps a Rhone producer like Guigal which would offer plenty of choice. Adam