Jonathan Day

Thanks, Menton1 -- I know Nyons and have bought oil and olives there several times. This time I'd prefer not to travel that far West, so I'm interested in the area between, say, St Trop and Menton. Were we staying over Friday, I would go over to Ventimiglia for the market there. We're based in Mougins, far enough removed from the coast that events like the Grand Prix or even the Film Festival aren't particularly disruptive. The dog is "Milo", 8 month old cocker spaniel. He will go with us to France in August, when we are driving. This is a short trip, by plane.

What is "broken whipped cream"? Is this cream whipped until it begins to turn into butter? Why would you use this rather than ordinary whipped cream?

What kind of dish is a "farce"? Is it like a "fool"? (I forget what that is, though.) A "farce" is a stuffing. From the French "farcir", to stuff; in English, "farce" is sometimes translated "forcemeat". A "fool" is a British dish, a pudding (dessert) usually served in summer. It's a concoction of fruit and sweetened cream. Gooseberry fools, raspberry fools, etc.

We've finally run through our stores of olive oil, including the generous gifts that friends had brought, from Italy, Spain and Turkey. It is time to restock. We'll be in the South in a week's time. We started out buying from Alziari, in Nice; the quality was consistent, and buying in bulk, in the shop, meant that the prices were reasonable. Alziari's oil has a pleasant buttery taste, but it's a bit boring. There's an oil cooperative at Opio, and their product isn't bad, but the quality/price ratio wasn't great. A few years ago we discovered Alain Baussy, whose olives grow at Spéracédes but who has an outlet in Le Cannet; he also sells at local markets. This oil has a nice clean taste, but with flavour. That's what I am looking for: oil that tastes of the fruit, but without a muddied character. Of course it needs to be just at the right level of freshness: some of the oils in the shops are either over the hill (rancid) or too young, with an unpleasant peppery burn. I'm very happy with Baussy's product but also interested in other recommendations. For example, has anyone tried the Moulin Sainte-Anne in Grasse, or the Moulin à huile Lottier in Menton?

Surely there's something tasty that can be done with tofu. There's plenty of organic tofu around. Grilled? Or sauteed with spring onions? Or done with prawns, or crabmeat? My "health food" shop also seeks smoked tofu that can be good, though anything smoked sounds suspicious against Moby's requirements for pure and ethereal foodstuffs...

Aha, so you're on an Atkins-esque diet but without the comfort of red meat to fall back on. Low/no carbohydrates, at least low on refined carbs. I have seen organic ducks at places like Swaddles Green Farm, which delivers in central London. Of course duck meat is sort of "red".... Is organic fish (whatever that means, I guess caught wild) allowed? Good idea about the link to Cooking -- why not plant a link there to this thread?

Moby has thrown down the gauntlet: design a meal that conforms to these horrid specifications yet is gastronomically interesting. So why don't we turn this into a little event? We can post menus that are organic-no-flour-no-alcohol etc. etc. blech; Moby can judge the one he likes best (or assemble one out of components from ours, or make up his own). I'll make our kitchen available to cook the winning meal for Moby and Kate, sometime in June. All welcome to participate. Here's a starter for 10. - "Twenty four carrot" soup (adapted from Thomas Keller idea: carrots, shallots, butter, yoghurt or creme fraiche) - Mushrooms wrapped in vine leaves (an Elizabeth David treatment) - Farro (spelt) done with a risotto-like treatment - Roast chicken (organic of course); Jersey Royals; asparagus - Green salad - Cheeses - Fruit Moby: are you allowed cheese? cream? unsweetened chocolate? Are you allowed to use honey rather than sugar?

I've been puzzled by this as well. I've had a few pleasant dishes there -- potted shrimps, for example, and a Dover sole -- but nothing to write home about, certainly nothing in accord with the image this place has. Service is usually fine, and the atmosphere pleasant, but it can get ugly. And the prices are high. I end up going to Sheekey's because visiting friends hear about it and want to go. I wouldn't go back otherwise.

Vedat, the turbot was from Newland, in Cornwall -- no buttons. I think it weighed 2 kg. Like Shaun I always leave the skin on a turbot when cooking it. This one was roasted, in a hot oven with lots of butter. I love the idea of cooking it in fillets, though -- I'll bet they will be easier to get right. I was pleased with the outcome on this one. The wine was a Palette, Ch. Simone 2001. "Pairing" is generous; I am not at all systematic with food/wine matching.

Yes, but are they sautéed, braised or roasted? Sorry, couldn't resist. I have observed the same thing for many years: French children, sitting quietly through extended meals in fancy restaurants. Like the French dietary paradox (smoke, drink, eat, but be thin and live longer) I find this one elusive. Perhaps it's the little sips of wine that the kiddies receive.

This weekend my fishmonger had some very good looking wild turbot. It's a fish I love to cook, but for some reason I struggle with cooking turbot more than with most fish. Either the center comes up a bit underdone, or the flesh around the edges is overdone. Every now and then I get it precisely right, but I would like to improve my "hit rate". I've done turbot in salt, but this takes several kg of salt and is a bit fussier than I sometimes want. How do you like to cook turbot? And how do you judge its doneness?

A better analogy might be with Fr ville or village. The ls are sounded, but only very lightly.

Chef, thanks for returning for this Q&A. My cooking query concerns green vegetables -- broccoli, green beans and the like. I've tried just about every method of cooking them: roasting, steaming, various microwave techniques; Chinese-frying ... but if the goal is to keep them green and flavourful, I've always come back to bringing a huge pot of water to a furious boil, throwing in a lot of salt, and then putting in the vegetables. Is there a better way? Or is the simple way the best?

Here in the UK there is a long-established tradition, particularly amongst the upper and highly educated classes, of pronouncing French words and place-names in an, er, special manner. Dordogne is pronounced "Door-DOIN" (the first syllable rhymes with "more", the second with "coin"). Boulogne gets a similar treatment and comes out as "Boo-LOIN". I've already noted "fillet". Amongst lawyers (barristers especially) there is a range of words in "legal French", some of which come from mediaeval French but all of which get a special pronunciation; the only one that comes immediately to mind is "puisne", pronounced "puny", but there are many others. To return to the topic: I love Lillet, served with ice and a twist of orange. It is common in the homes of French friends, but for some reason it is rarely offered as an aperitif in restaurants there. I don't know why, because it's a great way to start a meal.

With the Guy Gateau Q&A moving to the Fridge to make room for a cookery clinic with Shaun Hill, we've tried a bit of an experiment: all of the substantive threads from this Q&A have been moved into other forums, where the discussion can continue. Links to these new threads have been preserved, so that anyone who returns to the Q&A in the Fridge can easily reconstruct the conversation -- and so that the conversation can continue.

Don't forget the market on Northcote Road. A combination of shops and stalls, the latter bringing produce from New Covent Garden but good nonetheless. Some exceptional shops: the wonderful Lighthouse Bakery, Dove's, for fine meats and superb pies, some strong independent wine shops. Stefano Cavallini's shop, plus an older "salumeria". And The Hive, a shop devoted to bees and honey -- it even contains its own beehive.

In many restaurants, the construct is not "a salad" but "a salad, with what kinda dressing? French, Thousand Islands, Blue Cheese?". In that case, you aren't really getting one thing, you're getting two: leaves plus dressing. In other restaurants -- and these usually tend to be the more high-end -- the salad can't really be deconstructed into "leaves" plus "dressing" as distinct components. They may be offering salades composées, constructed salads. In those cases, it would be absurd to ask for the dressing on the side, and in any event the restaurant might struggle to comply. But if it's simply "a bowlful of leaves or vegetables, plus any of several pre-made sauces, then I side with those who ask for the sauce separately. You're ordering two things, like chips and ketchup or toast and butter.

Um, I'm not French either but how else would you say it but that way? It's how I've always heard it pronounced even in the US. regards, trillium To rhyme with "skillet", I guess -- the same way many people in the UK pronounce "fillet" (steak, fish, etc.).

European dishwashers tend to be of the "environmentalist" type that FG describes. All I can guess is that plumbing over here is older and often cannot support a disposer/grinder, whether in the sink or in the dishwasher. So dishwashers come with a filter, which traps food particles as the water recirculates, and drains have a filter which you have to empty. It is therefore sensible to scrape plates or at least lightly pre-rinse; otherwise either the filter fills up or bits of food circulate during the wash and get stuck to other dishes during the drying cycle. At some point, in any event, you have to manually remove and clean the filter, which is an unpleasant chore. Our plumbing supports a disposer, so we have one, and the dishwasher empties right into it; this also means that we can rinse straight into the disposer without cleaning a disk filter. But if you want a dishwasher over here, it has to be a filter model, and hence it's easier to rinse the plates. In America we had a KitchenAid; here it's a Miele. Rinsing doesn't take a lot of water -- just a splash to get rid of the big stuff; in fact most of the time we just scrape with a rubber spatula and the plates go into the machine. And the Miele is far quieter than the old KitchenAid. Nonetheless a proper dishwasher setup, like a washing machine that takes less than an hour, is one of those things I miss from the U. S. of A.

On the spur of the moment two of us decided to give this place a try for lunch, without a reservation. It was crowded, but we were seated at a table with two others; the tables were large, and it felt no more crowded than banquette seating in other restaurants. We had: Chinese chive dumplings Prawn and enoki dumplings Spinach cubes Crispy duck rolls Box dumplings Asparagus cheung fun Salt-pepper quails This, plus tomato juice, still water and green tea (drinks came to £10.10) cost £41.70. Service isn't included. So it wasn't cheap, but the two of us ate a lot -- we could have done with one dish less -- and everything was delicious: fresh, hot, with very good ingredients and clean flavours. The quails were outstanding; we could have made a meal of these alone. The dessert menu looked good as well, and the upstairs tea house is now open, with some tempting pastries on display. But we had no room and no time. Service was fine, except that the servers' English (they seemed to be either French or Eastern European) was sometimes hard to understand. But they were knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the food, and very responsive to our requests. Well worth organising an eGullet outing to this place.

Now that it's possible, through the Internet and air shipment, to find and obtain the "original" ingredient (a Bresse chicken, lamb from the Sisteron, etc.), it's easy to fall into a trap of perfection: the dish simply can't be made without "authentic" ingredients, no matter how degraded these have become through shipping or canning. This is a serious error, in my view. At the same time, it is useful for the cook to have tasted and perhaps cooked a classic dish in its original surroundings and with "authentic" ingredients, simply to provide a point of reference, a sense of what the dish might be. On our first trip to Paris, many years ago, we stayed in an apartment rather than a hotel, and I cooked ingredients we had bought in the local market. One of these was a "black legged" chicken, an old hen, which we cooked long and slowly until it was tender. I have found that experience useful, after many decades, in calibrating how such a dish can taste, and adjusting the cooking to accommodate less flavourful birds. There is also a point where ingredients are so bad that they aren't worth preparing. John cites Julia Child, who wrote that her first book might have been subtitled "French Cooking from the American Supermarket". At the time it was published, American supermarkets -- at least where I was -- offered such horrible ingredients that it was a stretch to call anything cooked from them "French", even though French techniques could be used. According to the badly written but reasonably factual biography by Noel Riley Fitch, Julia Child shopped from local vendors in Paris. The military PX was in Germany, where she and Paul Child were subsequently transferred. If I recall the story correctly, one of the primary ingredients available was frozen turkey, and at certain times of the year the base "smelled of rancid turkey fat". Child has been criticised by John and Karen Hess for not paying enough attention, in her writings, to the quality of ingredients available.

Hathor, as your signature line ("these pots are not for people who love to cook, these are for people who are in love with the idea of cooking") suggests, one problem with supermarkets, both in the UK and in the US, is that they are serving customers who may be more in love with the idea of cooking than with the messy business of cooking itself. The Sainsbury's near us (Balham) has just re-opened in a "market" format, similar to the one in Pimlico and the one at the Bluebird. I stopped in, and sure enough it has expanded, set up a number of service counters, and adopted the "market" layout of the other stores. Sadly, the quality didn't follow. Round lettuces (of acceptable quality) were being flogged at 10p apiece, while plastic-packed pre-cut pre-washed salads were being sold for 20 times that. Yet the latter were already brown when I looked at them. At least Sainsbury's have the decency to package them in transparent bags. Mussels were being sold from a machine that continually sprayed water onto them, yet were unpleasantly strong-tasting. Good news, on the other hand: the owner of Moxon's, a restaurant formerly in the space now occupied by Thyme, has opened a fishmonger's near Clapham South tube. On Saturday I had a dressed crab, half a dozen Colchester oysters and some unsoaked scallops: all of them very good. The shop is tiny, and perhaps the range and quality don't rival Steve Hatt's, but it's a big win for this neighbourhood. So it is possible to find good products "here" as well as "there"...

My "here to there" consists of a move, several times a year, between Northern Europe (London) and Southern (France, near Cannes). It is hard to generalise, because the availability of good ingredients in London has changed drastically over the past decade: the quality and range of products is far superior to what it once was. Over the same period, France has seen "improvements" in its supply chain system, meaning that the quality of some supermarket produce has declined -- though prices have come down as well. It is simply not the case that every French consumer is a passionate foodie, spending hours each day in search of the perfect cheese, the most flavourful tomato or the freshest fish. Frozen and prepared dishes seem to sell very well at the supermarkets. Yet my sense is that the average French consumer is a bit more demanding than his or her British counterpart when it comes to fruits and vegetables. You can find excellent produce in London, but you have to search for it. In general, good products are more widely available in France. It takes less travel and less fuss to find them. Even the smallest towns will generally have a couple of butchers, a few bakeries, specialist greengrocers, fishmonger, etc. I have done relatively little shopping or cooking in the US over the last 10 years, and am rarely in one town long enough to get to know the best places to shop. Outside of large cities, it still seems to be difficult to find a specialist butcher. Last December I did find and cook some Peconic Bay scallops that were a marvel of freshness and flavour, and it's clear from reports on these boards that good products can be found in the US. But the supermarkets seem to rule there.

Guy's professional commitments do not permit him to continue participating in this forum, but we're going to leave it open until around the 8th or 9th of May, when the next Q&A begins. After that time, we'll find a way to move most of the topics into other forums, so that the discussion can continue in Guy's absence.

It was an extraordinary discussion. It was great to hear some new voices in the conversation -- welcome, pumpernickel and commander! -- and lots of old friends. Guy's wisdom and his wonderful stories made every day interesting. And we learned how to make carrot purée the right way. Thanks to Guy and to everyone who participated.