muichoi

Precisely.

You're in the Chinese forum, Ryan!

What a great country. The fake indian for cantonese place has a great deal in common with fake indian for english places!

True, but this reflects real costs. Why should wine drinkers subsidise the others?

I used to make fish stock but now don't find it useful, except for that made from shellfish-but really, 20 mkins is plenty unless you like the taste of glue, and much of the liquid should be wine.

I absolutely cannot accept the use of dairy products in these cuisines, not only because when these products are used no care is taken with their quality. Unnecessary and disgusting.

Well done that girl. She gets it.

If there's no pork skin,it's not cassoulet. If most people who are going to eat it wouldn't like it, after cooking the tied roll with both the beans and the meat, puree in the blender with some cooking liquid and return. Excellent results.

The worst tip of all is the advice to constantly taste, a surefire way to end up with oversalted food.

Mutton is one of the many local additions (for instance in Carcassonne and Toulouse), not a heresy. Other local variations may or may not include confit and/or sausage, but a good assortment of various meat products (sausage, confit, garlic sausage, pork belly), is constitutive of cassoulet. The essential, basic addition is salted pork rinds. Failing that, what you get is baked beans. ← I agree,in general.Mutton ruins the dish,though.

I have to say that after a lifetime of cassoulet eating and making I find it a far more integrated dish without either confit or sausage, let alone the heresy of mutton.

There's nothing remotely authentic about Kylie Kwong. I don't understand why a kind of make-it-up-as-you-go-along technically extremely maladroit and conceptually infantile attitude is considered suitable for publication.

Well that's just bollocks. ← Not so. Mr.Stevenson knows what he's talking about. ← Mr. Stevenson maybe correct because what he says is true, but he is not correct because it is him who says it's true. ← Agreed.What he says is true.

Well that's just bollocks. Anyway, back to the subject. Places that do the £25 glass of champagne trick are invariably tourist traps, keener to exploit cultural embarrasment than to attract repeat trade. For all his "three stars in my heart" bullshit, I'm afraid this operation looks as cynical as a Soho clip joint. ← Not so. Mr.Stevenson knows what he's talking about.

No, it's because the best wines-which these can sometimes be-should always be appreciated over time with food.

I know it is almost a commodity in Michelin-star restaurants to approach the table with a Champagne trolley carrying anything from a modest house bubbly to a Dom Perignon. At a tasting last week, I heard Champagne authority Tom Stevenson say that it was stupid to drink Prestige Cuvees or even Vintage Champagnes as an aperitif. But then Michael Broadbent said you shouldn't drink Sauternes with your pudding. ← Michael Broadbent is of course right. It's a terrible waste of sauternes and not what it was designed for.

I hope to visit soon. It is a great carte-oddly, remarkabbly similar to what you would have seen in the large eating houses and grand hotels of the seventies. I'm sure the cooking is better-and I think this is what adult palates want to eat, really.

Looks delicious. But 'grilled bed'? have I missed something?

There's nothing wrong with steak and chips, though I agree it's not really what I would order at a grand restaurant. I'd be glad, however, if you could point me to a place in London that does it properly. I know one or two addresses for good meat, but it's many years since I had a genuinely first class chip/french fry.

Damn good wine list.

Actually I think she's pretty good, but good bread should not be served hot, or even warm.

But do we trust someone who thinks hot bread de rigueur?

It's actually easy to debone a duck, no need to slit the backbone, just peel the skin and flesh back cutting through tendons with scissors or a small knife. Great care is needed at the top of the breast bone, though. By the time you do the third duck it doesn't take longer than 10 minutes.

That looks magnificent. No residual soda taste?

Nothing wrong with pressure cooking-like pork fat, a vital part of the mediterranean diet ignored by foolish commentators. Properly done, it keeps freshness in long-cooked dishes, a kind of petit bourgeois sous-vide.