Corinna Dunne

Years ago, I used to do peppered steak with gruyere on top and a dash of white wine in an aluminium foil pouch. There was probably some onion in there too, I can't remember exactly. But my favourite thing to cook in a pouch is cubes of potatoes, with chopped onion, some crushed garlic, salt and pepper and a knob of butter. When you open the pouch, the smell of caramelised onions wafts out. The bits stuck to the foil are the best and well worth the extra effort to remove.

A bit of news on Mackerel. It's closing this coming Sunday. The guy on the phone there had no idea why or whether it is going to open again in the near future. It appears that Cafe Bar Deli downstairs will continue to trade. Shame.

Yes… certainly not one of Ramsay’s most exciting starters, and it didn’t work well on his menu either. The escalope was a nice dish, I thought. Not rocket science… but look at who he had in the kitchen. I still don’t get the point of having civilians “cook” for customers. If the point is that it’s difficult, eh, I think we all know that by now. At least he’s not yelling at them as if they were aspiring chefs, which is an improvement. He just seems exasperated and bewildered… a bit like the viewers. Interesting to note that Ramsay has switched to the assumptive close on his mission to get people back in the kitchen and his new catch-cry is: of course you have enough time to cook. And he proceeded to show a team of builders how easy it is to rustle up a one-pot beef stew using a stove on site. As he generously presented them with an electric stove, you could sense immediately that there was going to be a major change in their eating habits and that Stanley knives would take on a whole new meaning for this team of inspired men. Probably best if they begin with the starter of black pudding and eggs. And the shootin ‘n cookin slot featured Mini Me in training to be the new Jack Bauer. Yes, he’s a perfect shot, and cute too. A chip off the old block, mused proud Daddy, who skilfully whipped the breasts off the rooks and cooked up a great looking lunch. The sheep clocked up their food miles, electric gates were opened, the un-posh welcoming committee appeared, and no, there were no celebs in the house, but Posh talked on the phone from Madrid about children getting lost in the long grass. Gripping. Next week... a problem with one of the sheep. Oh, the suspense.

Apparently it was doing very well on Friday. A friend of mine was there for lunch and was very impressed. It was a business lunch, a table for 11, which Shanahan’s had said that they could only accommodate as a 6 and 5 seater. So top marks to Thornton’s on that, and double the score for serving the whole table the €85 taster menu. Thornton did the rounds of the tables after lunch, but didn’t venture over to their very lively large table. Probably afraid of another "chips” incident!

This is exactly the advice we got from the sommelier last year. But he also included a glass of red for two of the more robust dishes (2 pours but only charged 1 pour per glass). The prices are unbelievably reasonable and there is no attempt to upsell. If you drank water all night, they would be fine with it, and the water is very reasonably priced too.

Hey SD, this is a fantastic idea! And I'm really looking forward to following your progress. I plan to be in Barcelona in October, a pretty good time for mushroom dishes. I can't wait. Do you plan to do ravioli?

Yes... I think Ramsay has found an exciting new angle in food. Forget provenance when it comes to sourcing your lamb. If you want to be achingly now, you need lambs with a back story. And Beckingham Palace is hopefully going to deliver handsomely next week. Max Clifford has probably approached the lambs already.

Narcissus, did you find that the oak fire gave a discernibly different taste to the paella compared to the ones you made before? Cooking it outdoors like that with the ocean nearby certainly looks more appetising.

Ken, we're on the same page. I had truffle oil for the first time six years ago. I bought it in Valette, a foie gras and truffle supplier iin Gourdon, a village in the Lot/Dordogne area of France. BTW, in case you're ever in the area, they also sell simple dishes... like incredible truffle omlettes or plates of foie gras cooked in various ways... and the helpings are huge. Anyway, I used some of the truffle oil on a salad when I got home, and it was really good. I forgot about the bottle, and when I went back to it a few months later, the oil (walnut) had gone rancid and there wasn't the faintest sniff of truffle. This appeared to me to be genuine truffle infused oil, although I have no idea if they are still selling it. So I thought that truffle oil was fine. My next encounter with it was four years later when I had the most hideous risotto I have ever had in my life. There was a screeching stench of truffle oil and the repugnant taste stayed on my palate for a full repulsive 24 hours. Absolute poison. Now, I know that the truffle oil was completely overused in this ignorant excuse of a dish, but it also was quite different from the oil I had bought in Valette. I have experienced sneak attacks of truffle oil since, and regardless of how heavy or light the culinary hand, I can detect it immediately. It may share one chemical component with a truffle, but a truffle does not get you right in the centre of your tongue like a synthetic truffle oil does. It is a lazy ingredient, it's prime objective is to mislead and I question the palates of chefs who use it. It's all over the place these days. I mean, the ubiquitous amuse of pumpkin veloute with truffle oil (yawn)... pancetta works so much better. Synthetic truffle oil should be clearly labeled. The wording I suggest is: THIS PRODUCT DOES NOT CONTAIN TRUFFLES You can buy it in Tesco.

I'm not sure if there are repeats at the moment. And yes... our hero, blindfolded by Janet Street Porter, proved the "superiority of his palate" by immediately identifying le gavage... so much creamier in the mouth; the Spanish acorn and orange fed livers had a "rougher" texture. No surprises. Was the foie gras segment handled sensitively? Listening to JSP was far crueler than watching guzzling geese expand their purpose built gullets to gorge on corn.

Well, the F Word is back. I missed last week’s, but the focus this series is on lamb. So after munching through the green, green grass of Gordie’s home, the little flock was despatched to Sarah Beeny’s for a few bites, and will be hitting some posh nosh when they are moved to Beckingham Palace next week. How’s that for a mixed diet? Presumably portion control won’t apply to the animals. So, when it comes to sourcing locally, it looks like we all got the food miles thing wrong. It seems like these little lambs are going to clock up quite a few miles before they face the inevitable slaughter. Speaking of which, Ramsay found himself overcome with nearly-tears when it came to pulling the trigger on the cutest little deer on his Gordie does hunter gatherer segment. No surprises that he was an expert shot on target practice (you are obviously a highly motivated and driven person noted the completely unscripted, experienced huntsman), but when it came to squeezing the trigger, he knew that you can show geese being force fed, but if you dare shoot Bambi… there’s no going back. Wise man. And in the kitchen, the cheffin ’n shoutin continues… although this time the brigade were making an ‘excellent tv’ contribution themselves, serving up burnt “mandolins” and some seriously good quotes. Gordie was back on top with the cooking competition, showing a man who lives in a very big house in the country how saddle of lamb is so much better when it’s not cooked in hay and the diners/tasters sounded a little less grating and annoying than the last time… I think. So the format is still very much the same, with perhaps a slight softening of the Gordie image… a nice cuddly cardie and quite a few bemused smiles to the camera.

It seems that Tom Doorley is particularly taken with 2,4 dithiapentane these days. It produced “a sense of near ecstasy”. The red snapper dish that Simon mentions sounds interesting:

The finer details are rather sketchy at the moment, but the word is that Simon's second restaurant will be in Henley as PS says above (with rooms), there's no name yet and at the moment it looks like it will open early next year. The menu will build on what he has been doing at L'Enclume (which will remain as it is), but there'll be lots of new ideas incorporated.

Bacchus (click here for thread) has also been making a name for itself using slow cooked eggs: They've been popular for quite some time with the avant garde brigade in Spain. I had one in El Celler de Can Roca two years ago, served with sea urchin and oil of black pudding. The Sat Bains one looked much better, as for some reason, the one I had was not that soft in the middle.

I wonder if he'll be using his K-norr technique on the new Hell's Kitchen. Will it fit in with the three tenets he has outlined? The programme, he says, will be: Inspirational Interesting Educational

Beef stew with Guinness is one of those wonderful winter warming dishes. Also in Ireland, it is traditional to use it in the Christmas plum pudding. Click here for a few more recipes using Guinness or porter.

You can start it off by pan frying it, then finish it in the oven. It is often served with a brown butter. Just warm some butter until it starts to turn a golden brown (be careful not to let it burn) and pour it over the fish when you are serving it. I think it's a delicious fish.

Interesting list minichef. I agree on Mackerel. As it happens, I was there for dinner last night. Which is probably just as well, as Roisin Ingle mentioned it in her column in today’s Irish Times magazine, saying what exceptionally good service it has, so I’m sure the bookings will be rolling in. Being upstairs over Bewleys in Grafton St, it has been a little bit off the radar. In fact her column was mostly a rant about Dublin restaurants, bad service and greedy prices. She mentioned that she had a particularly bad experience in a “newish restaurant that critics have been raging about” which she didn’t name but offered to reveal by email (roisiningle@irish-times.ie), where it took 45 minutess to be served a bottle of sparkling water. The table was booked for 9.30pm, they didn’t get seated until an hour later, so they were eating their main courses at 11pm.

In London, for “fine dining in trainers” and avant garde food, Bacchus is very reasonably priced, you’ll find the thread here. For bistro-style cooking, check the following threads: Arbutus Galvin Bistro Deluxe And Racine here and here

This is the first week that I’ve actually followed this through (with the aid of fast forward of course!), although what I saw of the previous week was very good. Mark Broadbent said at the beginning that it would be a David and Golliath match, with him taking the David role. It's looking that way so far. He’s clearly not as comfortable on TV as media-savvy Marcus Wareing (all that Ramsay training), but I think this gives him a big “hearts and minds” edge from a viewer’s POV. I felt so sorry for him when he was feeling the pressure last night. I really like the way he has thought his menu through… but Wareing certainly won out on the desserts. My money is on Broadbent(click here for menus).

As it happens, there was a very interesting recipe using tea on a British TV show last night. The show is called The Great British Menu and is a competition to see which British chef will cook for a roomfull of leading critics and chefs in the British Embassy in Paris. Marcus Wareing, a protege of Gordon Ramsay's and head chef of Michelin 2* restaurant Petrus in London, came up with a very interesting British inspired dessert, using milk infused with Earl Grey tea to make a baked custard. It was served in a cappuccino cup, finished with a foam and there was a side plate of Eccles cakes (also very British). Click here for the recipe and to see more about the show. BTW, welcome to the Cooking Forum sp1187.

Thanks everyone for the great recommendations. I've been less organised than I hoped, so have only booked Coberg so far. Reigi sounds very interesting too, so hopefully I haven't left it too late to book. I'll report back!

Thanks everyone for the great recommendations. I've been less organised than I hoped, so have only booked Coberg so far. Reigi sounds very interesting too, so hopefully I haven't left it too late to book. I'll report back!

I was thinking along the same lines. It may be worth making direct contact with restaurants that specialise in regional food, which typically (in their home country) feature goat. Spanish restaurants, like Moro, also come to mind. Working some seasonal aspect into it might be good - much like spring lamb - so it is launched first as a seasonal speciality, and building on the “terroir” aspect, how the grazing pastures reflect in the individuality of the taste, might be another angle.

Haloumi has a "rubbery" texture, but when it's served warm and not overcooked it's really good. Cut the haloumi into thin slices, and fry on a nonstick pan until golden each side. Lay them out on a plate and drizzle over some EVOO to which you have added finely chopped red chillies. The chillies give a lovely colour, and a nice little kick to what is basically a fairly bland cheese (I think the recipe is one of Nigella Lawson's).