Tim Hayward

I have deal with a mate who has a weekend place down in Dorset and a small flock of chickens. I get a dozen a week in exchange for alcohol - which seems fair. Although they're far and away better than any of the regular organic, free-range ones I can get in town - even at the markets - they are mightily variable. Season, weather, even a recent mite infestation affect flavour. His flock is mixed and includes a few bantams and he also keeps half a dozen ducks. All of the eggs, and I really do mean all, even at their worst, are better than any of the six varieties on offer round the corner at Fresh and Wildly Exorbitant (have to agree though, that Clarence Court are the best they have) which I think may have more to do with freshness than anything else. I guess it's down to the same old marketing problem of creating consistency to build a brand. In order to get Clarence Court eggs consistent they must be preventing some of the things that make my eggs variable. This too often tends toward consistent mediocrity. In answer to your question. Clarence Court for 'widely available' but I reckon you'll find eggs an order of magnitude better by going off-piste but then they'll vary so much that any individual supplier or breed will be impossible to pin as consistently best.

Brilliant. Now I've got it. Now I need to find someone with a Rocky who's prepared to take off their hopper after a grind, disassemble the grinder blades and weigh any residual coffee that didn't drop down into the last shot. The thing that makes sense about the versalab is that, if you measure the beans going in then the blades are, I assume, run until they're ground and any residue has been thrown clear by centrifugal force. If there's a hopper full of fresh beans up above, there will, I'm guessing, always be something left around the burrs. You're right that the doser is a bit pointless for my needs but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be clever to have a sort of cut-down funnel at the top so one could measure in just enough beans - a Versalab effect without the cost. By the way, is one permitted to freeze beans? The advantage of a hopperless grinder would be that you didn't hold a stock of beans in the top of the grinder getting quietly cooked by the radiant heat from the nearby Miss Silvia.

OK, so talk me through 'Doserless'. Does that mean without the socking great cone thing on the top? The squirting issue is fixed now. The basket that came with the Happy Donkey portafilter is deeper than my old Rancilio one but appears to have the holes drilled rougher. Basically, a fine spray was shooting out from a couple of misplaced holes. I replaced it with the spare Marzocco basket which I'd ordered at the same time which immediately cured the spray but, I can hardly bring myself to type this, has tapering sides and an inside diameter about .5mm too small for my gorgeous, expensive custom-made tamper. AAAAAAAARGHHHHH! I've now returned to my original Rancilio double basket and am getting a lovely, tiger-striped cone of crema. It's starting to taste pretty good too

Thanks for that. I'll dive in. The Versalab is an astonishing thing but what do you make of their claim about old grounds in the grinding area? Seems sensible. Strikes me that that might be the a serious consideration when using kit designed for 500 cups a day for three. If that's an even faintly serious consideration then I'd be better off improving my freezing. BTW, once you have your spanky new bottomless portafilter (is it only me that gets faintly aroused every time I type that?) how do you stop it spraying hot coffee all over the bench?

I'm told* that Peter Ackroyd's new book repeats the story that crayfish were first introduced into the Thames by a careless chef working near Bray. Anyone know if there's a grain of truth to that urban myth? (* Can't vouch for this, having not read it yet.) ← Marwood Yeatman's magisterial 'The Last Food of England' blames MAFF/DEFRA for permitting their introduction to the UK in the 80's and for failing to act as they naturally escaped into the wild. As the book could be described as a collection of rural legends for misty-eyed nostalgists and the country-sports crowd, one would sort of expect him to blame central government - that's if he couldn't blame Townies. Ackroyd, though a noted reclusive curmudgeon, never seems to fail to come up with some juicy titbit around launch time. I find it hard to imagine Heston releasing crayfish into the Thames, he'd be too busy trying to teach them to sing arias into an iPod before pureeing their insides with a low-frequency sound pulse.

Meh. The strictures against backflushing are really to guard against idiots who would leave the pump running MUCH too long. For the few seconds required there's no difference between backflushing and pulling a shot (if you think about it, for the first few seconds of a shot the pump is effectively working against a solid blockage). Randy Glass's Pages Point taken. God, that means I have a grubby head.... how gross. It's like publicly admitting you don't floss Believe it or not, there was a time back there, before the bug bit, when I was firmly convinced that the entire business was a geeky time sink. I said to myself, "I'm at Borough every week, I've got an independent roaster at the end of my street - I'm not going to be so much of a sap that I'm going to introduce another variable bit of kit to my already packed bench". So I devised a cunning plan involving ten small plastic freezer boxes, a supply of 100g ziplocs, an air pump, foil and a freezer and went through a kilo a fortnight. I've obsessively read all the stuff on fresh grinding but I figured, at least while I was ironing out the other variables, that getting the beans consistently and professionally ground and roasted then plunging them into cryogenic suspension 20 mins later was a smart move. Of course, now I have the temp right and I'm converting my portafilter into a pressure checker (Oh by the way, thanks you to whichever bastard tipped me off to 'Happy Donkey', thanks a whole bunch. Do you roll cans of Special brew into AA meetings for entertainment? Have you any idea what you've done to my life and marriage? I now own a bottomless portafilter, a Marzocco basket, a pressure gauge, a head brush and, now you've straightened me out on backflushing I'm going to have to go back for a blind basket and cleaner - Dance crack-boy, dance!!!) So, yes, you're right, I obviously have to go that way next. Which, of course, will involve buying a new machine, learning its ways, realising that I just have to upspec the burr grinders, reverse the polarity on the motor, have the hopper Teflon coated and sit weeping and rocking in the corner of the kitchen like the drained, pathetic husk of a man I've become. So. I've accepted that I am powerless over this; I have admitted to you, my friends, the exact nature of my wrongs; I have made a fearless moral inventory and apologised to those whom my coffee obsession has hurt or merely bored witless. It remains only for me to place myself in the hands of a higher power... So what do you recommend Bainesy? The Mazzer or the Rocky?

If I wanted to sell mine, I'm not sure I'd admit to backflushing. It's supposed to be a really bad idea on single boiler machines causing all kinds of problems with the three-way valve.

Just had a most instructive weekend. I've been producing thin, bitter stuff since installing the PID and farting about around the 102C mark, messing with tamp and pack to no avail. I started using a spreadsheet to record temps at the thermocouple throughout the pull... Look. If you're going to laugh, I'm going to get all huffy and walk out As long as the machine had heated for a while (I've had mine on a timer for ages so it wakes up an hour before I do then puts itself to bed, waking only to preheat for a mid morning double and the post lunch livener) temperature at the thermocouple would drop by around 10 degrees during the 22 second pull. Then I worked out the difference between temperature and heat and started using my laser thermometer (stop bloody sniggering at the back!) to check the temperature at the brew face. Crucially, while the PID read out a drop from 102 to 92 near the heating element, the temp at the coffee surface remained a consistent 97. This, I guess, is the advantage of the brassy mass of the Silvia - it holds heat. Anyhoo, I leaped on one of the Baristas at Borough Monmouth on Saturday and asked what the temp was at his brew face. He laughed at my geekiness, pointed me out to his friends, raised his eyebrows and made several humiliating asides before gazing straight into my eye and whispering "87, plus or minus 2" - such is the tragic, secretive cameraderie of the truly afflicted. I immediately dropped my PID temp to 92 and, on first pull, produced the kind of sustained, self-supporting crema that a pornstar would describe as 'Serious Wood' - about 7mm deep, tiger-striped and wouldn't quit after a minute of waiting. Now I'm messing with pack and tamp but, frankly, it's making much less difference - really just refining. Up till now, I've been buying my stuff preground from Monmouth for consistency and freezing it in 100g baggies so it looks like I'm going to be asking Santa for Mazzer to further perfect my life. Why on Earth didn't I start a cheaper habit - like crack

If you think that's bad, read the profile in the new Esquire. The same nauseating, 'I'm just one of the girls' schtick, now with added cheeky porn. According to Nigella, "I know men like the whole strappy thing of suspenders. I've worn them with nothing but a pair of shoes in bed..." But she also casually reveals her inherent all-sisters-under-the-skin authenticity.... her fat bits bulge out over the top. So - and here we witness the rhetorical conceit that will hereinafter be referred to as the Lawson Bait-and-Switch - she prefers "those over-the-knee French schoolgirl socks". There you go, ladies and gentlemen... one of the finest foodwriters operating in the UK today. If you have dinner left to lose, prepare to barf it now.

So, a mere 19 months after I recommended the place as possibly London's best Greek, you made the 5-minute trip from your front door to give it a go? That spirit of adventure could explain why it was empty on a Monday night. ← You think I'm not beating myself up over this? You think I'm not banging my head on the desk at the thought of every Sunday night I've not spent a hundred yards away congenially smashing plates with lovely old Greeks in an octopus sucking frenzy and howling at the walls "Why... WHY do I not follow Naebody's every word like Holy writ? I have failed. I am rubbish. Mea maxima culpa. Now, have you any other suggestions?

Just tried out Cafe Corfu on Monday night. We were the only people in the place at 8.30 and were not joined by anyone else the entire evening except... 1. A random drunk who came reeling in off the street demanding vinegar for his chips and a place to sit. The manager flung him out. 2. A talented and theatrical panhandler who managed to keep up the impression of being tragically both deaf and dumb - until the manager threw him out and he responded with a torrent of invective 3. A 12 yr old waitress who compensated for total and abject incompetence by being utterly sweet, viz. a) explaining that 'Greek people have a big night on Sunday. The place is full, all dancing and plate smashing, but tonight they're all in bed', and b) putting on a tape of electrically amplified bouzuki music before coming over to explain 'I put some music on because you looked a bit bored'. But the food was superb. Big, robust flavours, spanking fresh ingredients and whoever the poor bastards in the kitchen were who'd been woken up for the only table of the night - they knew their stuff and were damn sure we knew it too. What was really weird about the food here was that it was exactly what I wanted it to be. Un-fucked-with, explosive Mediterranean loveliness. Camden is awash with Greek places all of which have been cruising on a reputation since about 1976. Frankly, they're all tired, boring and old. Olive Oil and garlic don't make a lambchop Greek they just make an oily garlicky lambchop. I came out of what was probably the most ill-starred night I have ever spent in a restaurant totally in love with the place and feeling like some poor tired bastard, at the fag end of rationing who'd just had his first taste of 'foreign' cooking. I wove out into the night, zigzagging between the ranting Withnaillian 'Wankers', completely understanding why Elizabeth David got the unseemly horn for Mediterranean food. Go. You must.

Quod have one

Surely, if you follow this logic though, you end up in the kind of self-flagellating knot in which the BBC is tying itself over 'viewer trust'. The show is an entertaining half an hour precisely because the bits they shot about making mayo and choosing the lettuce (with the precise note of crunch which triggered feelings of mild euphoria in lab mice) were judged either too boring or too much. You could make a show with all the ends tied up which explained everything, in real time, including the boring bits and the failures but no one would watch it. What's most entertaining about watching the Beeb disappearing up their collective fundament about 'trust' is that everyone from programme maker to the most debased, knuckle-dragging punter is aware that entertainment is about pretending, about the suspension of disbelief. It's equally important to understand that since Eisenstein made his first jump cut, editing has been about prioritising and making decisions that substantially alter the material gathered. All editing is licensed lying. Heston's show might be badly cut: loose ends might be apparent which, with more time, money and effort might have been tidied up, but it doesn't prove or disprove any idea or agenda he might have. In the end, it can only really be judged by asking questions like 'did I enjoy that?' or 'would I be better off watching celebrity dancing next week?' I rather enjoyed it.

Damn you, Sir! This is getting out of hand My Mother made a similar decision for me at birth This is my morning Java we're talking about, damnit! The only place it's good to share is Sesame Street

I'll try to find some links for this. Marzocco do a basket - that's the insert to the portafilter that looks like a little tin cup with holes in the bottom - that takes slightly more coffee and has, apparently, 'better' holes. How one hole can be better than another.... go figure. In the Miss Silvia, though, a big load for a double espresso tends to bind against the bottom of the machine so, in this case bigger does equal better. The 'bottomless' portafilter is a fashionable new mod wherein the bottom of the portafilter is sliced off so there is nothing between the bottom of the basket and the top of the cup. This gives the ShotJockey the opportunity to obsessively examine the expressed beverage for the characteristic 'Tiger Stripes' of the perfect shot. A more cynical mind than my own would, logically, see this as 'finding yet another F-ing stupid thing to worry about'. I think we'd better just accept that this whole business is getting unhealthy

Sad, sad man that I am, I think of little else. It's only a matter of time before I have at mine with an angle grinder. Messy but effective. I think I might try upgrading to a Marzocco basket first though.

Well so far it's resulted in me forking out for some kind of custom-made tamper - I was getting irregular extraction - then I had to get the stopwatch out again because I realised I wasn't being consistent with time. Problem is, of course, that three of the bastards a day is enough to cause heart palpitations so I reckon I'm now about a week off of a consitent Godshot

The French Butter guys at Borough have started bringing in an unpasteurised butter with socking great lumps of Guerande salt in it. Lovely stuff - damned if I can remember the name though.

Does the coffee taste better? Decidedly not. OTOH I used to be able to pull, on average, about one 'God Shot' in four with all other variables strictly controlled. Fitting the PID means I can invite you round, pull a perfect one for me and follow it with another identical one for you. I can also experiment to improve my shots in .1 of a degree increments As I understand it, a second channel (rather than a second PID) is used to run a second programme which can control the boiler to a second set temperature during steaming. Pics? Apologies in advance but here are some... 1. The parts for the umbilical - thermocouple, wires and heatshrink 2. Three cables prepared for installation - Umbilical, SSR-thermostat power, mains supply. 3. Inner gubbins. The blue and brown cables (damn and blast) spade into to the cables which used to serve the left hand thermostat - that's the little round beige puppy with the brass ears. The thermocouple wire is the thin white looking one looping from top-centre round to the right. It terminates in a copper washer which is tucked neatly under the right-hand thermostat mounting screw (just visible under a yellow cable and connecting block. Hey... I never said I was any good at wiring.... or, come to think of it, photography. As the umbilical passes behind the boiler it's protected/held away from it by a small piece of aluminium shim, tucked into the bottom of the central dividing wall. 4. SSR, mounted behind splashplate 5. PID in position and running test. Splashplate hasn't been reinstalled yet. The PID will be mounted on the left hand side of the casing with ceramic magnets and then, when I'm completely happy that it's running well I'm going to yank off the nameplate and Dremel a sodding great hole in the casing for it, just to piss off the purists.

Well, it's bubbling away nicely downstairs Everything arrived most swiftly from the supplier. I picked up a nice black aluminium enclosure with heatsink fins from RS and invested in a box of assorted crimp on connectors from Maplin and set to work. I measured and made up the various cables first. The two control wires from PID to SSR are heatshrunk together with the thermocouple - this is the umbilical between the Silvia and the PID box. In the short term I've gone with a seperate power cord (I've got plenty of sockets on the bench) and finally a pair of wires with spades at one end and forks at the other to connect the power supply at the brew thermostat to the SSR Each of these was carefully measured, cut, heatshrunk and I even tinned the ends. Sadly, however, I only had blue and brown wire in my toolkit so they all looked a little similar (those of you with electrical engineering experience, rudimentary intelligence or, quite frankly the brains God gave a cactus might realise what's coming and want to look away about now). So I gaily hooked it all up and flicked the switch. Considering I'd just put 240v across the 3v out switching terminals, the 'phut' was reasonably quiet. The destruction however was total. Jez Watson, laughed happily as I described my utter stupidity and sent a replacement unit by courier. That arrived 15 mins ago which means that, allowing for 12mins and 30s of obsessive checking and rechecking of half a dozen connections, fitting the PID takes two and a half minutes. Most of the programming is done at the factory so it's simply a matter of setting the brew temperature and running the autotune function. Three keystrokes and you're away. It's now all running beautifully. I'd say, as long as you know how to use a crimper, wire strippers, a screwdriver and heatshrink, you should be able to do this. If you also have some knowledge of electrical circuitry and a little patience you could also save yourself the £114 it costs to replace a burnt out PID. The other thing I've discovered now I've finished the project is that REAL men, in the coffee world are now fitting two channel PIDs so they can control steaming temp too.... ...Bollocks!

I think anyone getting involved with selling any kind of formal 'kit of parts' would run into every problem from health and safety to manufacturers lawsuits. As far as I know, Jez isn't offering anything that formal. I simply offered his contact details because he's incredibly helpful and managed to talk this particular idiot through the process of specifying parts. IMHO, he's definitely worth the call.

Confirmed coffee geeks amongst you will be aware of the legendary modification to a £300 Rancilio 'Miss Silvia' coffee machine that enables it to temp control to within a degree thus bringing it up to spec with machines costing hundreds of pounds more. Details of how to do the conversion, a fairly elementary bit of screwing together components, are available here, here or at various other places online. Basically the conversion involves using an industrial control device called a PID which reads the operating temp via a thermocouple and switches the heating on and off accordingly. The basic thermostats in the Miss Silvia fix temp to within 40 degrees, he PID can do it to within a degree - removing one more variable from the process of pulling the God Shot. I've been planning to PID my machine for over a year but have been unable to find the kit. Yesterday, however, I located a chap in Sussex with a small company specialising in control kit. He's helpful, friendly and can provide everything I need. His name's Jez Watson of Paragon Alliance Limited on 0845 - 466 6700 I'll try to post pictures of the project once I get started.

The amount of half-baked motivational psycho-cack coming out of the man's mouth bespeaks a more than passing acquaintance with something like the Landmark Forum or that notable mountebank McKenna. Both MPW and Heston are now behaving like mad-eyed cultists - quoting great lumps of unreconstructed 'motivational' horseshit. I realise that many successful/famous chefs are probably emotionally illiterate control freaks and thus a classic fit for this kind of weak-minded charlatanism - but it gives me the creeps.

I don't suppose I ever expect much in the way of food awareness when I go back to my hometown and thus am seldom disappointed. This trip was special though. I can now heartily recommend Cafe Riva at the top of the 'Undercliffe Lift'. (Yes, the supernumerary 'e' is intentional. It's such refained touches that elevate Bournemouth above Blackpool and Filey). This splendid venue, with a view over the Solent, has recently passed from the Municipal Authorities into the hands of entrepreneurs and still boasts a crazy golf course plus a nine hole pitch-and-putt green. Sadly it has yet to manage in-house lavatories and survives on the adjoining Municipal facilities. As with any truly exciting new restaurant though, flash premises are of far less importance than an innovative menu - and the Cafe Riva has innovation to spare. The 'Tapas Menu' (pronounced, disconcertingly, by our waitress as 'tap-arse') kicks off with 'Polish-style Pierogy' (all spellings and punctuation proprietor's own) and continues with a selection of 'Bento boxes (please do NOT take boxes home with you)'. Best of all the bento boxes are offered in a variety of flavours including meat, fish or cheese. I don't know where you guys are going for tap-arse but if you're not getting pierogy and cheese bento, you're clearly missing out on something. Never let it be said that the latest food fashions don't reach the Dorset Riviera. Far from it: they're all here and bang up-to-the-minute. But I kind of agree with the proprietor. Why restrict yourself to a single trend like some blinkered Metropolitan. In this case, more, is most definitely more. (Foodies visiting from abroad should be careful not to mistake the Cafe Riva for the River Cafe. Though the pronunciation is similar and both boast waterside dining, the London operation offers much less variety, in a menu inspired solely by a small corner of Italy)

Yep. If FD is your kind of innovation, Bacchus is the place.