culinary bear

okay, this seems to be the more active thread. :) There's an old wives' tale, regularly drummed into potential child miscreants, that swans should never be approached because "they can break your arm, you know". Well, perhaps in Scotland, at least. Wild geese, especially the larger Canada geese, can be agressive - I certainly wouldn't want to mess about with one. So, has anyone actually eaten swan?

This has been discussed to a certain extent recently on the UK and Ireland board, under this thread - it's still an active topic, so perhaps they could be combined? Ta, Allan.

In the UK, the cheese you'd know as Valdeon is sold as Picos de Europa; I've seen it in a few cheese shops throughout the country, and it's always referred to as Picos de Europa. Perhaps there's not the same demand for cabrales or pdT. I appreciate that PdE blues are made with a mix of milks; I thought I made that clear in my original post... since others had mentioned mixed-milk cheeses, I didn't think it unreasonable to mention them myself.

Yes, there's a Asturian dish of paneed and fried veal cutlets with cabrales sauce, amongst others. Cabrales is a blue cheese with more mould than paste - it's the most pungent cheese I've ever tasted, including all the washed rind monsters of lore. I'm surprised no-one's mentione Picos de Europa, sometimes known as Valdeon. Made in the tiny little village of Posada de Valdeon, high in the Picos mountains, it's a mix of cow, sheep and goat milks (depending on season), with a blue-grey mould, wrapped in plane leaves. If I had to describe it with reference to other cheeses, it would be like the centrepoint of a triangle having stilton, roquefort and gorgonzola at the vertices. It's a beautiful cheese. edited to add : Cows don't do well in the extreme heat of the Central and Southern parts of Spain, but in Cantabria, Asturias and to a lesser extent Galicia they do very well; Asturias is the 'dairy' part of Spain.

Fantastic pictures! I've known Eddie for getting on for ten years now; firstly as the fish supplier to a restaurant where I was working, and then latterly when I moved to Marchmont and he became my local fishmonger. I still vividly remember the time when I went in to find about a dozen Chinese guys animatedly haggling over a 12-foot basking shark lying on the tiled floor. He's a really, REALLY nice guy and to all the Edinburgh (or visiting) eGulleteers I'd recommend going - if you can visit a few times you'll soon find yourself being offered the very nice stuff, usually at a bit of a discount. I go no more than three or four times a year due to my being in England, but I still get a) treated like a pasha b) trade discount c) to poke about in the back fridges and see what's good I'm so happy to see the pics up here, thanks Adam. :)

Will the book have a European release, Steven?

I avoid personal injury while chopping chocolate by the simple expedient of getting a commis to do it. :) Seriously though, Annie's leverage method works really well.

It's funny you should mention that... I kept a diary and plan to write it up for the Daily Gullet, if it makes a reappearance. Hilarious anecdotes included, bien sur. Matt is originally from Manchester - perhaps that contributed to his temporary banishment to the northern heat?

Neither he nor I have a Scooby. Someone in charge has a healthy sense of humour. Enjoy the canapes; the main reason I wanted to get through to the nationals. :)

The final six have been announced for the national finals, to be held in London on the 4th of April. Two out of eight chefs progressed from the Northern regional final in Birmingham; four out of eleven from the Southern regional final in London. The press release states that the standard was high this year, and I can certainly assure you that this is no cliche. Robert Thompson, head chef under Germaine Schwab at the 5 AA-rosette / 2* Michelin Winteringham Fields, thoroughly deserved to go through with his crab brochette, and showed a dab hand with the mystery dessert box - his ice-cream was one of the best I've ever tasted. Matt Tomkinson, junior sous at the 3-AA rosette / 1* Michelin Ockenden Manor, cooked a simple crab lasagne with parmesan twists and an avocado salad. I thought it was a brave move to present this as a four-portion single lasagne - memorably referred to by Michel Roux Sr as a 'mama dish' - but it proved a winner. Both these chefs from the Northern final have Roux Scholarship pedigrees. It's Matt's second appearance in the last six, having won through last year, and his group executive chef is Martin Hadden, a Roux Scholar. Robert is the younger brother of Patrick Thompson, a Roux Scholar and sometime eGulleteer. As opposed to both your correspondent and Matt, who become too old to compete again next year, Robert enjoyed his first year of eligibility for the competition; the mind boggles when you realise he has seven further attempts at the scholarship. Coming through from the Southern final are : Gary Chang June Sing, demi CdP at Bank Restaurant Bryn Williams, sous at the Orrery (under Scholar Andre Garrett) Alan Irwin, sous at Chapter One, Ben Webb, sous at Cliveden House. ... but I wasn't there - perhaps another eGulleteer was?

The cognitive ability is there regardless of the 'education'; whether it's much of an advantage to have an outside education, at least in the early to middle stages of a culinary career, is a debatable point. You need a lot of character, or a bloody thick skin, to be the only cook in a kitchen with tertiary education. Either that or I eventually murder the people I have worked with in the past. I see your point, I genuinely do; I just don't agree that there's an automatic connection between education and culinary ability (certainly to the degree that Meades maintains).

So on what basis do you maintain that having two degrees and having been an army officer would affect the food I would cook in my own kitchen? Do you believe an 'outside' education is an unalloyed blessing in a kitchen?

Compo ration stew, anyone? Let me understand you here - the leaders are, or should be educated, the led are uneducated?

I'm too fucking tired, having been in the kitchen for sixteen hours today, to make much of a journey into the land of elucidative language and cultural sensitivities. The article, to me, is the inane ranting of a self-satisfied humbug. I have two degrees, was an army officer, and could have made my way to one extent or another in a few walks of life. None of this makes the slightest fucking difference to whether I can cook. Moby, you know I'm no sycophant, so you'll take me at face value when I say you're pretty much spot-on with what you've said. In Britain, for the greater part, most chefs in the industry, and I'm talking about rank-and-file infantry here, have no greater enthusiasm for their craft than an electrician or a plumber. That will not change until catering gains a wider acceptance in the general community as a worthwhile career. To borrow another martial phrase, there is certainly no field marshal's baton at the bottom of every private soldier's pack - those who attain the heights do so pretty much regardless of nationality or upbringing. There are idle kitchens and disciplined kitchens in France as well as in Britain.

I should have been expecting that... The GP on some of the dishes is obviously better than on others, but given the quality of the ingredients - the venison is from the balmoral estate, the carte quail is from the loire valley, the carte lamb is suffolk black-face, the scallops are hand-dived and the space dust, surely, was of the highest quality money can buy - the price is remarkable. The portion sizes on the tasting menu are never going to be gargantuan, but I saw some of the carte dishes going out and they weren't meagre in the slightest. I'm no sommelier but I have a working knowledge of wine, and the mark-ups were not of the sort that try to make up for lost profit on the food. I would be prepared to put myself through the anguish of another visit to birkenhead in order to act as bodyguard to any national newspaper critics. *cough* One of the things Marc and I talked about as regards the restaurant is that he's trying to gear the front of house up - replace the acrylic Boizel wine buckets with silver, apply a few other glosses, acquire laguiole meat knives - so this is clearly a man who doesn't want to stand still either front or back of house.

Daube provencale is sublime when made with ox cheek.

Moby, is that a rogue apostrophe I see? :) I have not eaten at the Fat Duck, though my head chef has... came back with a silly grin on his face, if that's a positive indication...

"and a chef to boot?" cheeky monkey. :) It all burst forth in textual effluvia from my typing fingers last night, though I really enjoyed writing about the whole experience. You need to go. Everyone does.

First, a caveat... I'm not a restaurant reviewer, and this isn't a review in the strictest sense. In fact, this is the first time I've put figurative pen to paper and actually written an account of a meal I've had in a restaurant, so if this is more than a little rough around the edges, you'll have to bear with me. I don't have a word count to adhere to, so I shall fill you in on as much detail as I can remember - I took some photos, at first surruptitiously, then as I was rumbled as a chef, openly. These were promptly and accidentally wiped from the phone, so this really is by memory alone. Those of you who are paid by the word might have fun extrapolating your income per column and using the resulting figure, applied to this piece, to happily pay off the mortage on your second home. From the outside, Fraiche is unprepossessing. The door is completely level with the outside windows, leading to a small vestibule only just large enough for myself and Karen - Mrs(ish) Bear - to simultaneously occupy before the server opened the inner door. Much like an airlock, this brought us into a light and airy front room from the bitter cold outside. Immediately, a departure from the normal chain of events; I wasn't asked who I was, nor if I had booked. I glanced around in vain for a photoboard next to the waiting station, on which I would no doubt find an ursine mugshot alongside those of Rayner, Durack, and Roger McGough. Not to be; either the server has an uncanny memory for voices or it's assumed that no-one would enter and steal a booked table. A bold move on Merseyside. We were the first table to arrive, and as such, we had the full although not overbearing attention of one Claire Green, who was to slide deliciously into still-respectful informality over the course of our four and a half hour stay. The 'can-I-tempt-you-into-a-glass-of-champagne' was polite and as sincere as I've heard it sound, and when I instead asked for a dry sherry, a choice of manzanilla or fino was offered without recourse to rummaging around in the drinks cupboard. With my manzanilla came the canapes; two light and savoury cheese and chorizo puffs and a small bowl of spiced glazed pecans. The puffs - their word, not mine - were delicate, intelligently constructed warm choux discs, with a squidgy - my word, not theirs - lump of blue cheese melting in the middle; the chorizo was lurking throughout the choux and it worked very well. The pecans combined rosemary and possibly smoked paprika, though I didn't want to risk being rumbled as a chef by asking too many questions too soon. They stuck to my teeth in the same way as the sticky caramelised bits from a very slowly fried sausage. Good. The menus came, functional little folded A5 jobs in a smart black 'and the winner is' sleeve. The premise is simple. Four starters, four mains, four desserts (five if you include the cheeseboard, which can be taken as an extra course). Two courses are £25, three are £30, the Fraiche gourmet menu of 5-6 smaller courses taken from the 4-4-4 a la carte is £35, and Marc Wilkinson's tasting menu, "a collection of signature and new dishes capturing the flavours of fraiche" is £45. I felt a overwhelming duty to eGullet to sample as much as I could, as if I needed an excuse, and the decision to go for the tasting menu wasn't a hard one. Karen, as if she had any choice, went along for the ride. As she was driving, Karen was to be on still water for the evening; I've always felt a bit of a heel drinking on my own, and when I explained that we wouldn't be drinking with the meal this was accepted without comment. The wine list was neither exceptional nor exorbitant, which is precisely what a small restaurant like Fraiche should be offering. Seeing one of your favourite less-well-known wines on a list for the first time is something that always makes me smilethough, and the Clos de l'Obac, an up-front Spanish red from Priorat, was a sign that some thought had gone into the list. I also know how much it costs retail, and the £33 asking price in the restaurant is very fair. So, to the table. Brown plush liners, damask linen and Price cutlery. Clean uncluttered crockery, later to include some interesting teapots and Villeroy and Boch cups and saucers. It was to be a shame that some of the plates weren't as well-polished as they should have been, but with a front-of-house staff of two and presumably a mountain to clean every service, a few watermarks are not a hanging offence. A dropped and replaced lap-napkin, likewise. My sentences will get shorter as we get on to the food. Think of them as mental post-it notes. First course - an ameuse-bouche - of a coffee cup of pea veloute. Very green, very fresh, perfectly seasoned. Scaldingly hot. The foam on top had the right amount of truffle oil in it, which is to say enough to taste of truffle but not to overwhelm the rest. It's been wrong too often, and this was spot-on. I asked Claire about the 'powder on top', and she came back within thirty seconds to say 'dried mushrooms'. I felt a bit bad testing her like that, but I suppose it had to be done. The rest of my questions were genuine, I'm happy to say. Second course - seared scallops, muscavado glazed chicory, mushroom espuma. Unannounced rocket, but went well. Ditto the fried ceps, and even more so. The best chicory I have ever tasted - the muscavado (later found out to be 50:50 with normal sugar) was at once subtle and strident, and the bittersweet flavours brought the mushrooms, rocket and scallop together very well. More please. The scallop - halved to give two thinner discs - was I thought perhaps too lightly coloured, though this is more than likely my preference talking. Espuma - foamy, not too light, as intense as it could be without masking everything else. This was a peach of a dish. Karen, who regards seafood with as much relish as she would do botulism, genuinely liked this. Third course - fillet of sea bream, pistachio pesto, crisp rice, tomato consomme. In an offset glass bowl, rimless. The bream had been cooked skillfully, the pesto smeared on the skin side, topped with the puffed up rice thin rice noodles, and hot tomato consomme poured over from a jug by Claire. An interesting small cube of green jelly that dissolved with the heat of the consomme, but I suspect also with the heat of the room - perhaps frozen to keep it solid before melting away to add a very fresh green herbed liquid to the consomme. Neat touch, and a well-thought-out dish. The naturally jellied seeds from a tomato as a garnish didn't add a terrible amount, but neither did they detract any. Fourth course, or was this the fifth course? To hell with it, I told you there were rough edges here - torchon of foie gras with quince jelly, poached pear. Good foie gras. The best restaurant brioche I have ever had, and produced from the requisite folded napkin (as was all the cutlery this evening - splendidly done). Quince jelly of the standard kind in cubes on the plate, a shard of caramel which I half-suspect included coffee, or possibly the muscavado again, a rectangular wafer of both singular crispness and singular unidentifiability, both sticking out of the disc of foie gras (rolled in brioche crumbs? sitting on a thin ring of poached pear, anyway) like a television aerial. Dressed frisee with tiny cubes of fruity matter. Very good indeed. Tiny little bitter chocolate nibs, too. Memory tries to play tricks by pairing them with the venison but I think they were here, and to good effect. Fifth, er, next course, I think. The first not to come from the carte, anyway - polenta with a fried quail's egg, pomelo compote, boudin noir. I wasn't overly impressed by this, not compared to the rest of the dishes. I love pomelo, but even this small amount of compote was jarringly bitter, and the little disc of boudin was lost against it. More effective as a palate cleanser than anything else, and as a very small tasting portion wasn't going to do much else, but far from my favourite of the night. Sixth, again not on the carte. I know that the non-carte dishes can be experimental and far from completely evolved; this one worked well for me, miles better than the last course. Red mullet, cooked flawlessly, crisped skin, savoury and very juicy. Sitting on tiny cauliflower florets and if I remember rightly, tomato concasse. Good vinaigrette. Unobtrusive, and it let the mullet do the talking. Up there with the best mullet I've had (with red wine sauce and sauce albufera on creamed leeks at Martin Wishart). Seventh, off-carte - rare venison fillet, perigord truffle, celeriac puree, bok choi, potato fondant. Beautiful. The Balmoral estate venison was tender and rich, the bok choi maddeningly resistant to all attempts at cutting it. Terrific fondant, intense sauce. The celeriac puree was the only underseasoned thing I ate all night, but not by much. I had to ask Jerome (the sommelier/runner) the provenance of the small rectangular cube of jelly on top of the fondant. Eighth, back on the carte - the cheeseboard with 'a contrast of flavours'. Each cheese opposite a cheese partner, in an affineur's version of Strip-the-Willow. From left to right we had reblochon, kidderton goat, montgomery cheddar, gorgonzola and munster, enough for four small tastes of each. Partnering, in the same order, a cube of dried fig and nut 'cake', a slice of fig with truffled honey, a cube of Bourne's fruit cake, red wine jelly, and white wine jelly with cumin seeds. The cheeses were in excellent condition save the cheddar, which was drying and cracked around the edges. The munster was especially good, resolutely evil-smelling, but the real star was the truffled honey. A pot for christmas, please. Good wafers, including oatcakes and charcoal wafers, the latter especially useful for deodorising one's intestinal tract from the effects of the munster, presumably. Ninth, a pre-dessert in a shot glass - vanilla cream, rhubarb foam. Like liquidised rhubarb and custard boiled sweets. Heaven for a sweet-toothed bear. Good balance between the liquid rhubarb layer and the two layers it separated - cream on the bottom, foamy syrup on the top. Small sweet biscuit on the interface of the rhubarb layers. Lasted precisely 47 seconds, including at least 15 spent trying to assist the staff in washing the glasses by precleaning every last vestige of cream off with the tip of my spoon. Claire came with the cutlery for the final course, only to stop half-way through, and remember that we were on the tasting menu and had a couple more to come before then. Comedy self-wrist-slapping off to the side, but still deliberately in my view. Grinning all round. Why can't more staff see that some people actually like to have fun and laugh when they're eating out? Some seem stuck in rigid mode... Tenth non-carte, and alongside the pomelo/egg/boudin taster, a disappointment - apple and cranberry crumble. Bland, lacking much in the way of flavour, not even much astringency from the cranberry. A miniscule smear of what might have been something custardy, but it wasn't a big enough sample to run through a mass spectrophotometer. Like the pomelo/egg/boudin mix, a very small tasting sample, I'd say about an ounce and a half, in a dimple on a wavy white plate. Moving on... Eleventh - chocolate spoons, with, I think, orange and passionfruit, and chocolate crisp. Ahoy, space dust. Down in one, and about seven seconds until the popping started. If the rest of the food had been tongue in cheek, this would have failed, but alongside everything else this was perfectly placed; good texture contrast, and nostalgie de boue not only for the mud of childhood but for everything gooey and chocolatey I have ever eaten between the ages of two and ten. Cracking. On asking Jerome again, I got my answer to the seventh-course jelly question, though not before an enjoyable moment where Claire insisted to Jerome the it was sage, Jerome maintaining to Claire it was earl grey. Jerome returned looking sheepish, Claire punched the air in victory, and the matter was settled. Twelfth, accompanied by a glass of Trentham Coonawarra dessert wine at a fiver, and back on the carte - sweet and sour pineapple, poppy seed parfait, red pepper croquant. Fantastic, a real high-note to bring the main food to a close. Warm pineapple, good enhancement of the natural sweet/sour balance of the fruit itself. Watermelon was the least audible element on the plate, but its textural contrast was a contribution. Beautiful poppy seed parfait, and I'm still extracting seeds from between my teeth a day later. Intense gossamer-thin triangle of red pepper croquant, and the sugared nasturtiums on the pineapple were my first encounter with flowers that contributed to the overall effect of a dessert. Warm crisp dried coconut shavings were slightly lost, but when taken with the parfait worked well. Tea - fresh mint for me, and white leaf for Karen, who was sitting with a look of cumulative bliss on her face. Petits fours - oh my. Chocolate coated peanut butter ice-cream balls, the smallest banana muffins in existence, a cinder toffee lollipop and a bitter chocolate counterpart, and two thin squares of white chocolate with black olive fragments running through them - especially nice, and marred only by the inclusion of an eyelash in one of them, spotted by my sharp-eyed companion. The offending square removed with apologies and no fuss. A 1941 Armagnac. I need not say more. Having ascertained my profession about the time of course four by the simple expedient of the question "are you a chef? I thought so" I was asked more and more about how we'd found the dishes. Once it became clear than we were happy and willing to talk shop, Claire and Jerome would ask Karen and I for, to be fair, slightly more feedback than the average customer. We heard them ask other tables, and like all good staff, judge on their response and their tone how much more in the way of enquiry would be welcome. I can't emphasise this enough; they are very good at judging where to pitch their service, because they pay attention to your responses and know what shape you would like them to adopt during your meal. There's always courtesy and efficiency, but I was heartened to see that they were enjoying serving us, genuinely enjoying it, especially Claire. Some mistakes, dropped napkin, but hey, we're none of us perfect. I don't usually ask to see the chef in restaurants. Claire didn't ask either, but said she'd bring him along once the tables had had their mains. Like all good conversations between chefs, this one remains between him and I but I was invited into the kitchen (it's miniscule) and shown the toys (pacojet, water bath, thermomix). Suffice to say that he's a chef for chefs, who seems to revel, as w all do to a certain extent, in the voluntary apartheid of the catering profession, especially the AFD brigade, from the rest of the world. I have rambled too long, and I have missed out whole swathes about the decor (tasteful, minimalist, modern), the acoustics (crafty) and all the other things. Jog my memory if you want to hear more. Oh, and the bill. £90 for two for the food, mineral water at £3 per large bottle, sherry unremembered but reasonable, dessert wine a fiver, tea and petits fours just over three quid each, armagnac a stupidly reasonable £12. £122 all told. I shall be back.

I have a table booked for myself and Mrs Bear on Friday - expect a full report. :)

with lightly whipped horseradish. FaustianBargain - re: language and perception - I have an idea about what MG is. You do too, and probably a good chunk of people on eG and in the culinary realm as a whole. In the same way that 'dog' can be both a specific and relative term depending on your experiences of canines, MG can be a fairly fluid term according to my experiences of it, yours, everyone else's... MG is, of course, a hook on which to hang things, or, as the otterish one rightly pointed out, a pigeonhole. If one was to say Blumenthal's cooking, Rogan's cooking, or Veyrat's cooking, then one is being more specific; nevertheless, pigeonholes are there for convenience and to avoid the need to explain the same thing twenty seven times when one can say 'Molecular Gastronomy' and be done with it. An umbrella term? Certainly, but one which is widely used and which we would be naive to ignore. Personally, I think MG will be tempered by time and will prove to have an important influence on the culinary scene. Does anyone remember the outrageous excesses of the nouvelle cuisine of the 80s?

I agree wholeheartedly... the trick is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. See the thread on Chicago's 'moto' restaurant and their tricks with filling an inkjet printer with essences and printing a photo of sushi on to rice paper. This being a course in your meal, or at least part of it. To my mind, smoke and mirrors, but I digress. With thread digression comes the great entity Andylynes, who will punish the foolish by insisting we move the thread (rightly). We could liken this to art. You may not have liked Warhol, you might have a fondness for Titian or Boticelli, even Michelangelo. When it comes to the food on my plate, 'ars gratia artis' - art for art's sake - repels me. Dali was a sublime draughstman and a superb classical painter before his later creative diversions, though I do agree that not all of those cooking today may have the solid grouding in the classics that I personally think is needed before you can start to creatively fuck around with the food on your plate. Don't worry though - we won't all be eating Mapplethorpe in twenty years.

How did Wittgenstein put it? "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world". An individual's perception of what molecular gastronomy means is probably highly personal and based on their own experiences, or more likely, their own reading. Being a relatively novel term, it is by nature perceived to be more fluid than, for example, 'cuisine de terroir', 'cuisine minceur', 'nouvelle cuisine', all terms of longer standing. Having been both a professional scientist and being a professional cook, it could be said that I have a foot in both camps. My grandmother makes sublime cakes. She knows precisely bugger all about molecular chemistry and the textbook physics of making a victoria sponge. She more than likely thinks that Heston Blumenthal is the Jewish gentleman who spent his time hunting down Josef Mengele and his ilk after the war. The ignorance of science, or at least the ignorance of science as 'scientific knowledge' as an entity in itself, is no crime; it does not mark you down as a modern culinary infidel. My grandmother knows that if you use a copper bowl for beating egg whites, it works better; she has no clue why, nor does she need to know. Arthur C Clarke said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and when I quote him I'm not trying to highlight the shortcomings of those who are either unable or unwilling to understand these new technologies; I am merely saying that those in the vanguard of new (or newly adopted) techniques are worthy of our attempts to try and understand where they're coming from. Dirk : understanding the principles of the combustion engine may not make you a better driver - I would in any case maintain that your analogy is flawed and that a better one would be understanding how your car works overall, from steering wheel to exhaust - but it may one day prevent you from standing at the side of the road, steam belching from your engine, waiting for the mechanic to come as you watch the rest of the world go by.

Horribly, unbelievably overcooked fish - it put me off eating fish for a very long time indeed.

I haven't been there, in fact, I wasn't aware the place existed until recently. I lived in Hoylake for two years (what might be termed the more affluent area of the Wirral, or at least getting on for it). The Wirral has always been a bit odd... on the Dee side it's very affluent, loads of disposable income and the properties are amazing. On the Mersey side, well, Birkenhead. I notice that the word 'Birkenhead' doesn't appear in any articles I've read about Fraiche, even though Oxton 'village' is right in the middle of Birkenhead, not too far away from my still beloved Tranmere Rovers. You're right about the chains - good luck to the man, I hope he does well.