Charlie O

Harrods stocks two of the Calphalon ranges - the Calphalon One range of anodized pans and the Calphalon Contemporary Non-Stick range. See this link for more information on the ranges and stockists. I've noticed Divertimenti are stocking one of All-Clad's ranges in the UK.

err... anoraks?

Link to Konstram thread here. I've only seen half of one show but I quite enjoyed parts of it. I wouldn't call it a cooking show though - I would see it more as entertainment (with the guy hunting for mushrooms with someone who only eats roadkill) with an interesting message behind it. Taken along with the Great British Menu, the BBC have become rather zealous about paying attention to sourcing ingredients but, if you accept that these shows aren't aimed at the serious cook, who can argue with that? (Ok - this one takes it to extremes, and in the GBM series the concept proved better than its execution )

Anthony's thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...235&hl=anthonys

I'm watching the odd episode on UKTV Food so am a few weeks behind the BBC's output. What continues to amaze me is that so many chefs with reputations to maintain have volunteered for this programme and put themselves in a position where the judges can trash their dishes. I agree that a number of elements haven't come off well - and the amount of padding in the prgramme is annoying - but I admire the original, ambitious concept.

The interior is designed by Thomas Heatherwick - designer of the B of the Bang sculpture up in Manchester. He's Oliver Rowe's brother in law apparently. Intrigued by the sourcing - I hope the quality can live up to the great idea.

I dropped in there on Sunday for the first time to pick up some chocolates. They were great - especially the caramel and sea salt ones.

The debate has reached the ears of the UK-based paper The Guardian. An extract:

Near the Arcades (both the one between Bond Street and Albermarle Street and the one between Picadilly and Jermyn Street) are lots of chocolate shops too. There's also Browns which has just re-opened. It offers a similar tea 'deal' to the Ritz. Have a great day.

Is it me or does anyone else think its a coincidence that a fairly easily researched story runs a mere 7 days after it was first discussed here...

The shop in Spitalfields has been open a few weeks now. Sadly, I'm not enough of a chocolate fiend to be able to compare them to some of the chocolate shops around Picadilly. Maybe there's a challenge there...

The Thomas Cubitt is reviewed in today's Telegraph edited to correct spelling

I've got both Seasonal Food by Paul Waddington and the River Cottage Year and like them both. Seasonal Food is more about the ingredients and includes some history - I find it useful when I'm thinking what ingredients I want to cook with, though it has few recipes. Paul Waddington also has a column in the Friday Guardian on seasonal ingredients. The HFW book is like many of his others - full of pictures and no-nonsense recipes. My resolution this year is to start getting an organic box - no all-year strawberries for me...

Congratulations and the best of luck, Gary. I'm sure it will be a great success.

I heard from a friend over the weekend that he was in five countries in five days recording for the programme.

Along with several other books mentioned that I either have or are planning to get, I've been enjoying Seasonal Food by Paul Waddington. Its a British book aimed at the UK audience but is full of useful information about what is in season, what there is to look forward to and what is going out. I've found the information to be clearly presented, month by month with good summary tables. The book is becoming one of my more oft consulted ones.

I also often add pears to my butternut squash soup. A good simple recipe is using curry powder and a cinamon stick as flavouring. An unseasonal garnish that works well is finely diced red peppers.

There's a cluster of Vietnamese restaurants in Hoxton - at the bottom of the Kingsland Road, just by the Shoreditch Junction. Streetmap link Presumably these are the ones you meant when you said Dalston. Of these, my old flatmate, whose Vietnamese parents run a restaurant in Thailand, thought the Tay-Do was pretty good. Not knowing much about Vietnamese cooking (yet), I've always been happy to go with his recommendation.

I got my copy last week and first impressions were that its a fantastic book. I tested the stuffed onions - don't have my notes with me but will dig them out - and remember it being a great dish. Last weekend I had a chance to cook one of the recipes - confit of duck with red cabbage salad. I used some confit that I had made earlier in the year and assembled the salad according to instructions. It was a great meal - easy to prepare but the tastes, textures and colours really worked. Here's a (very fuzzy) picture (obviously my presentation is not as pretty as the one in the book): I expect that I'll be using this book heavily over the next few months as I explore all of the recipes in detail.

I was inspired by this thread to make gnocchi for the first time last night. Having a bit of time on my hands, I tried cooking the potato in two different ways. For the first way I boiled and then peeled them (though I might have left them in a little too long because I was distracted by the cricket). The second way I tried was to bake the and scoop out the insides. This was more work but seemed to give a lighter mixture (though this could just be imagined - I didn't control any of the other variables such as amount of flour etc). For each batch I riced the cooked potato, letting the steam escape by laying it out on a wide board, and then mixing in a small amount of flour and an egg to give a mixture I could roll out. I then rolled them on the back of a fork. While I regularly make pasta, I was surprised how easy this was... and so nice too

I was reading the sous vide equipment thread here. eBay is suggested as a good source in the US. I checked the UK version not expecting to see much but it seems there are various used ones for sale. Nathanm suggests "To find them on eBay, the best method is to go to “see all eBay categories”, then “Business and Industrial”... and search".

According to the Michelin press release this year The Millbank has a Bib Gormand. There's also Casa Mia in the same town that has a similar rating. Would be interested to hear what you and others think of it.

There was a profile of John Mackey - who, I learnt, is the boss of Whole Foods - in the Economist last month. It mentions their expansion plans in a little detail as well as the perception that they could be the Wal-Mart of the health food sector.

Square Meal also does a similar thing. Their website is here.

I felt yesterday's programme (the first one I have bothered to watch in a while - and only because I felt like watching TV and there was nothing else on ) was mainly made up of elements that seemed to entertain the people participating. The impresssion was that if it entertained them, it should entertain us. Thus, we had the pesto segment which could have been so much more informative (and entertaining) but instead all I got out of it was that there's a pesto making festival once a year. The tomato piece had Corrigan tasting and saying this one's ok, this one's better etc. With a bit more time and money thrown at it, this topic could have been really interesting (ie interviews with supermarkets, pictures of the transporting process etc) but as it was it didn't teach me anything new. The children's party cook-off was painful. There seemed to be no point to it - apart from RC and MP joshing each other. When the announcement about the winner was made (in front of the audience - ooohh, the tension) my housemate yawned and said, "who cares?" I appreciate that it's difficult to know your audience and pitch the programme at the right level - and get the budget to justify it - but this whole thing just suffers from a lack of ambition. It seems to be relying on us caring about the presenter's personalities; I'd rather there had been more emphasis on the food.