muichoi

Don't boil them. If you soak in cold water for 15 minutes they will be ready to use.

What a curious reversal given that most modern western presentations derive from the east !

It sounds as though typical British slovenliness has crossed the channel!

He must in that case be more than a little worried.

I wonder who writes Ramsays' imbecilic Times column? I have the awful feeling that it's Delia Smith.

Most posh French places serve bought biscuits, usually stale. I think they are making the point that the French don't approve of cheese and biscuits.

V. poor.Clearly can't get the staff.

Nice report, toufas. You remind me of the insane fashionable pairing of scallops with cauliflower puree. What idiot ever thought this was a good idea?

Agreed, Waaza. My shorthand way of apprehending a recipe always assumes such essential steps, but of course they should be spelt out. It's like the classic western recipe lie saying that the onions should be fried until brown. about five minutes, whereas they really need four hours.

Thanks, goutdelavie, I'll give it a try.

Pretty good, simple recipe. There seems a mistake with the amount of vinegar, and 30 mins is enough for chicken but not most cuts of pork. I like neem leaves in my vindaloo.

Related to this subject, I just made some simple fresh sausage with pork, salt, pepper, garlic and red wine. I had some pork belly which wouldn't go through the mincer/grinder properly so I ended up chopping by hand, not very finely. Rather hard work for 5lbs. The thing is, the result is incredible, so superior that I'll never go back to finely ground meat. Has any one got an idea for a machine to help me?

Your prices fill me with envy.. Why should Beefeater, made in London, be half the price after having gone half way round the world? Enjoy!

The best possible, to make up for the boring company!

I think the menu is rather attractive, but the wines dull. They should have asked for some help from the British embassy, who keep a decent cellar. Olivier Leflaive indeed!

Well, I used it . Certainly no degradation.

This is a good restaurant. Unfortunately in common with many good chinese restaurants they make it as difficult as possible for non-initiates to get the most from it. Stick to the typically sichuanese dishes, ask for extra spicy and then you'll have a great meal-though don't criticise it for being oily, sichuan food is extremely oily but you're not meant to eat the oil. If one's concerned that that means leaving all the sauce on the plate, don't be. That's how it's eaten.

I just found some bags of Bomba rice with a sell by date of 2005. Other rices improve with age. I wondered if this applies to Spanish varieties.

This is an excellent method. Heretically,potatoes cooked and dried out in the microwave give superb results here, and the result can be reheated as long as the potatoes are sieved/riced when hot. I recommend a sieve-two medium sized potatoes easily serve six when cooked by this method, so it's hardly too much work.

It's an extremely big issue. It's becoming clear that the cellars of many collectors of the very grandest wines contain an alarming number of fakes. Wines drunk by people of normal means are unlikely to be affected, though.

Way, way too much yeast, salt and oil. Not enough water.

Exactly so- in old fashioned cooking you may decide to have your sole grilled, meuniere, a la normande, veronique, sur le plat, a l'Anglaise etc. In Aiken's world it seems to have been decided that it would be more fun to have them all at once. Of course imperfections are much easier to hide...

Jumbled, incoherent mess is right, and it strikes me on reflection that there is something specifically English about it in a bad way, as the nation of the Fork Cocktail(putting a little of this and a little of that on the fork then dipping in gravy) and unbridled behaviour at the buffet table.

I should be more specific-an amuse bouche of something with lemon grass foam which tasted like the lemon mousse my mother makes, served in a sort of test-tube. Why? an entirely pointless, unappetising and wine-killing dish which presaged the excessive sweetness of the dishes to come, a dish of mousserons in which the featured item was barely detectable beneath some clumsy pasta which also featured a lot of very old peas and pea puree and a poached egg, not to mention the microgreens you mention which rendered the dish very difficult to deconstruct to the point at which it was possible to put into the mouth, followed by an equally misconceived dish of a tiny portion of John Dory with apricots, a combination as stupid as it sounds. What particularly ruined this dish was a garnish of half-moons of turnip filled with courgettes in something that seemed like hazelnut flavored raw egg yolk, the whole rendered inedible by the extreme quantity of salt. Bread was very poor. Why? the way to bake good bread is no longer a secret. I found the whole thing incomprehensible, it seemed like an eight year old showing off with his new chemistry set, and evidence of a more or less complete lack of gastronomic culture. Maybe it was a bad day. The wine list is quite good but graspingly priced.

I had a shameful lunch at Tom Aikens yesterday. A mess, both literally and conceptually. The cheese and petit fours were good, though.