magnolia

One factor to remember - unless it has been mentioned here and I've missed it - is that Borough Market is not a farmer's market, where you would always expect to find 'raw' things, ingredients for you to buy, take home, and soup up yourself. It's more like an outdoor deli. I'd wager that many, if not most, of the people are Borough are middlemen - not the butchers, bakers and candlestickmakers - hired just for Fridays and Saturdays, or whatever. This means we shoppers are paying their wages in addition to the cost of the product and its transport. It's a version of a stock market, and the salespeople, brokers - just as in a supermarket (which as you've probably noticed are selling more and more prepared foods too). It's possible that there has been some price creep, but I don't buy a tonne of stuff at Borough. I shop there because like the nostalgia associated with the experience that Borough offers, and the illusion that I am supporting growers/producers a little more directly;the potential - though no guarantee - that the produce is less treated than it would be in a supermarket, and that it hasn't been sitting around as long in a fridge or warehouse somewhere; and that it is indeed from whence the salesperson says it is - not a given at Borough. But the main questions you should be asking, in determining whether to return despite the crowds if you don't like them, and the substitution of finished products for raw materials, is: - is the quality as good as you expect for the price? - can you get things here you can't get in a shop (in terms of quality/price/variety)?

I don't think there's one 'quintessential' dish, everything is pretty seasonal and dishes disappear/reappear based on that and availability of ingredients. While you could say that offal is their thing, in fact they have great fish sometimes, and I've even had an amazing Welsh rarebit there which some would say is sacrilege! By the way some members have managed to polish off an entire pig between two - so it can be done. I haven't been there in a couple of months so I don't know what's on the menu. If you have specific dishes in mind and want recommendations...try posting & maybe people will give their opinions.

Interesting you should have posted your query on June 9, as there was a session on Umami at the Cheltenham Science Festival that evening. After hearing a panel of speakers including Edmond Rolls, an Oxford professor whose expertise is umami and neuroscience; Ichiro Kubota, Chef at Umu; Heston Blumenthal, Chef of The Fat Duck; and a few others...try to describe umami, I was none the wiser. Edmond Rolls showed graphs that demonstrated the effects of satiety on eating behaviour - i.e. when someone's hungry, they want umami-tasting foods - the more they take in, the more sated they become, and the less important umami is to them. Chef Kubota gave his recipe for dashi. Chef Blumenthal described how the sensations and associations of eating various foods could be subverted in surprising but delightful ways, by the use of chemicals - and how our experiences in the future will be increasingly enhanced by technology that tries to recreate these associations. But there was no consensus - and nobody could describe umami in one word or even five or 10. There was a lot of discussion about the role that MSG plays...and a lot about the various combination of taste 'sensations' that make up umami. At first I walked away frustrated, as I'd hoped someone could tell me what to look for. I find that the ability to taste and discern different flavours, sensations, smells, etc. - is becoming increasingly important in my work. If I can't identify umami, am I impaired? I find bonito flakes, marmite and parmesan, salty; ketchup, sweet and salty; pineapple, sweet and sour; good chocolate bitter and sweet. All of these have a high umami quality. But I suppose that even at 100 years old, the concept of describing umami as a 'taste' is quite young. It has taken thousands of years to reach any kind of agreement over what constitutes one-word descriptors like sweet, salty, bitter etc. And even what strikes you as unpleasantly bitter is probably not so bitter to me. So I guess I'll have to be satisfied with "you know it when you taste it" for now.

Kind of the wrong time of year for this if you live in a place where it's about to be summer, but chocolate makes an excellent ingredient in a sauce for pork and venison. Also there's chicken molé, a Mexican dish with unsweetened/minimally sweetened (?) chocolate.

Why [sic] ?

Hmm...I might tied our AA with Winner. And I agree that Durack belongs at the other end of the scale. However - there's a lot of talent, and indeed a lot of arrogance among all the rest - and these two attributes are not inversely proportionate !

Not the good ones. ← Oh, please...I guess you are being facetious?

You know, I wondered why I've seen tortilla makers at some of the Indian supermarkets in London & Southall. Any chance of a group less on making aloo paratha??

Thanks very much for this. It makes me feel a bit better, and I am really learning more and more that recipes are indeed just guidelines. To whit: all the recipes I have for caramel call for adding water to the sugar. I have *never* once succeeded in getting a caramel this way, so I just routinely elminate the water. And now I note your suggestion of heating the pan first, then adding the oil and getting it all sizzly...when the recipe actually says "gently warm the oil in a pan on on medium-low heat until it is very hot" I think it will taste fine as long as I didn't overcook it in my zeal to get it brown rather than grey.

I've been recently for both Sunday lunch, and dinner. Sunday lunch /brunch downstairs is a scene, which can be avoided by booking upstairs in the restaurant. However the upstairs room will be hot, hot, hot (literally) during the summer because it gets full sun. Sunday lunch is also better value in general than dinner, but dinner on a weeknight was nice and quiet. OK wine list, no surprises but not extortionate either.

I agree, porridge rules. But I can never get it as creamy and lovely as the professionals seem to. I have the real thing - porridge oats. They either end up sticky, almost cement-like (maybe not enough milk?) or like hard pebbles in a soup of hot milk (too much milk?) What's the correct milk-to-oats ratio, and the trick to getting the ideal consistency, which to me, resembles polenta or grits?

I've always been advised not to re-freeze something that has been frozen already, for health reasons, and shellfish seems to raise an even louder alarm. To what extent are these health and safety "rules" at worst, myths, or at best, overly cautious?

I found what seemed to be a great recipe for a Sicilian style tuna dish, which calls for browning two tuna steaks, approximately 2 cm thick, in olive oil, for approximately 1-2 minutes each side, then setting them aside and making a sauce out of celery, sultanas, garlic and olives, in which the tuna is then marinaded overnight & served room temp the next day. I am not big on cooking fish at home, so haven't made tuna before. I duly heated up the olive oil to sizzling, and put the tuna steaks in for a minute. The surfaces turned white, not brown. I left them in for longer - more than the requisite two minutes - but the colour didn't change, and the texture of the middle remained unpleasantly jelly-like and uncooked. I was afraid to cook them yet more, as the surface became decidedly dry, but the middle really is still raw. I don't mind raw fish when it's meant to be raw, but I suspect this isn't. Is the recipe wrong - e.g. 2cm is too thick? Or am I doing something wrong?

That is really good to know ! Thanks !

The US and French Saveurs are completely separate, unrelated magazines that just happen to have the same name. I am not an expert / sophisticated cook but I have had great luck with the recipes from the French version, everything I've tried seems to work out perfectly - even when the ingredients to which I have access are not exactly the same (I live in the UK, we don't have 15 different kinds of cream with varying fat content, for example, or all the different kinds of cooking oils) Unfortunately, however, subscribing to the French one, if you live outside France, is a huge hassle. They do not accept credit cards, and there is no website. The only ways to pay are: by cheque in Euros, or by bank-to-bank funds transfer which can be obscenely expensive (depends on your bank). I resorted to paying for my subscription in cash, in person, for two years - by going to their head office in Paris ! After that, however, I basically gave up. I just purchase it when I'm there or get friends to send it to me. As for French wine magazines, the best consumer one used to be RVF (La Revue de Vin de France) - less pretentious, more practical and in many ways more sophisticated than any US equivalent. It was recently bought by the owners of Marie Claire, and the two main editors (Thierry Desseauve & Michel Bettane) have left to do their own thing. But other good writers at RVF still seem to be on staff, so, on va voir...

Threshers stopped selling food from Leaping Salmon (which it bought a little bit less than two years ago, if memory serves) a couple of months ago. I understand they were going to try to sell the LS business. The business model just didn't work for them.

Scotsaute, your best bet is to go straight to the source. Call them between lunch and dinner service, make your reservation and ask them to fax or email you a menu. Also you can look on http://www.gordonramsay.com/site/index.html The menu here is probably just a general indication. If you're really concerned, you might also want to check in with them on the Big Day lest they just don't have anything your wife will eat.

Sort of a corollary to flights...but lots of choices by the glass, and don't be afraid to push the envelope a bit. Naturally you'll have to offer some brands / safe bets. But wines by the glass allow people to experiment without the commitment to a bottle, and a wine bar is the perfect place to do that. Suppliers might even be willing to give you some kind of break if you take some of their more unusual stock. This is a challenge of course because no matter what expensive gadget you get, some wines just *won't* last beyond a day or two. If you ever make it to Dublin, Ely's has one of the largest and most adventurous selections by the glass that I've ever come across - in any country.

Ayu Dag Kagor 1944 from the Massandra Collection, nr. Yalta; The Crimea, Ukraine Ever heard of it? Neither had I until I started doing research on the wines from Massandra, Tsar Nicholas II’s spread in the Crimea. To make a very long and very interesting story short-ish, Tsar Nicholas’s uncle, Prince Golitzin, was an obsessive wine collector and winemaker who went around the world on a buying spree, bringing back everything he could put his hands on – and then had it all copied locally. The cash-strapped Massandra estate, which owns over a million bottles (from the late 18th c. all the way up to the early 21st) - has been selling off its collection over the past 10-15 years. If you’re interested, I can give you rest of the back-story. The bottles are offered at auction periodically, and late last year, both Christie’s & Sotheby’s held sales, almost simultaneously. The pre-sale tasting was one of the weirdest I’ve attended: loads of mobsters, molls and Ukrainian “media” (ahem), practically assaulting the staff, demanding that their glasses be filled (it’s just meant to be a preview after all, so normally only sips are given) with 100+ year old sherry and the like. There was a Crimean-made Pedro Ximenez that had – I kid you not – 400g + residual sugar. I thought the green coating it left would eat away at my glass. As it was, you could turn the glass upside down with little fear of spilling it… Anyway, the wines are fascinating, and it was too good an opportunity to miss, and some people I know just couldn’t resist buying a few bottles… We opened one Ayu Dag Kagor 1944 the other night. Ayu Dag is a monastery, I believe – and Kagor – I’ve heard it’s named after Cahors but that might be apocryphal - is a style of sweet wine made from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. We had to break the seal with a hammer, but the cork was in good condition & came out minus only a few crumbs. In the glass, the wine had a very wide medium-dark mauve-brown rim, with a distinct purple core that turned the same mauve-brown after a few minutes. .The nose was amazing- rich, stewed prunes and leather – fortuitous because the dessert I served it with had Armagnac-soaked prunes . The flavour started out much as the nose – a huge, prune-y attack, with leather and cedar on the mid-palate. Medium finish and surprisingly, decent acidity. The problem with such wines is that they can be extremely syrupy and cloying. I have the biggest sweet tooth, and even I cannot take more than a few sips of some of these styles. But this was good. After about seven minutes, the wine started to change to…black olives.. I am sure that had I closed my eyes, I would have thought someone had put a bowl of wrinkly black Greek olives under my nose. Though the wine itself was clear when poured, when the bottle was nearly empty, there was a huge clump of sediment adhering to the inside – almost like a vinegar mother, which is somehow logical… An incredible experience: not to everyone’s taste, surely, but a piece of history that I’d happily be doomed to repeat … Price: totally arbitrary. I note that Fine and Rare Wines in London have a case of the 1939 on offer for £2550 or so. It's a rare person who'd be able to tell the difference between the various vintages. The bottle of '44 we tried was part of a six-pack that I believe was bought for a few hundred quid, so a HUGE bargain.

Rental flats in London do in general seem to be better equipped than those in Paris, but better to specify exactly what you want in a kitchen - including gas cooker. There are a lot of electric ones out there...

Anyone know where I can find a brand of spice mixes by Moroccan chef/author Fatema Hal?

Well...I can tell you there is an Orrery on display at the restaurant though I've no clue whether Conran sprang for the real deal. As for the enema...I couldn't possibly comment on that either

Maybe your friends could feed their hens blueberries so the eggs come out violet...as in 'Violet, you're turning violet!" [ quote=curlywurlyfi,Mar 18 2005, 11:27 AM] They should have some sort of strapline: Take A Little Bit Of Foutain Violet Home With You Today. (actually that's rubbish, but it's Friday night and I need a drink) ←

Is that like 'no tea please, we're British'?!

S'bury's profits are probably somewhere on their website (under 'investor relations' or some such); I also remember them being splashed throughout the financial press in all their gruesome glory - they are second, possibly third largest behind Tesco and tied with or behind...I want to say Asda. Personally, I can't bring myself to go into any of these places for fear of getting lost and not being able to find my way out. It's a recurring nightmare. Me standing in the middle of the biscuit aisle, or running around looking for someone - anyone - who knows where anything is - or standing in a queue with lights and beeps and loyalty cards all around, screaming "let me out of here!!" Does S-bury's also sell clothes and electronics and CDs and all those other food-related items?