davebrown

You could do worse than starting here. Some useful ilnks to follow as well. Also look west to Wales, and keep an eye out for smoked versions of local cheeses.

It was the other way around! W & G themselves chose Wensleydale as the obvious answer to the question: "More cheese Grommit?". Naturally this publicity did have a positive effect on sales of the cheese. In fact it was so significant that what Dairy Crest (a former UK national milk product sales board) announced that they were stopping production of the cheese in Hawes, North Yorkshire (in the dale or valley known as Wensleydale), local dairy farmers set up their own co-operative to make and market the cheese locally, with W & G's help. So Wensleydale cheese is still made in the dale itself. You can go and look around the creamery in Hawes and taste the cheese too. The latest W & G film "The curse of the Wererabbit" also gave some publicity to Stinking Bishop, which is a superb rind-washed semi-soft cheese from Gloucestershire. I remember reading an interview with the bloke who makes it. The interviewer suggested that all this W & G world-wide publicity would be a perfect trigger for business expansion etc. The Stinking Bishop man pointed out that his was a cheese whose rind was washed with perry, and he only had so many pear trees to make his perry from, so expansion was out of the question. Long may he do what he does well.

You can get these cheeses in the UK but they are generally bought by people misguidedly trying to impress guests at dinner parties. Most cheese bought in the UK by people who like cheese is farmhouse produced and has not been mucked around with: there is a thriving body of small producers. You do though sometimes come across flavoured cheese that works: an example would be Teifi, which is a Gouda-like cheese made in Wales that comes in nettle, seaweed and cumin versions, all of which when tasted seem to have a point. And none of them resemble smiley faces.

Sewin (wild sea trout) is very good at the moment. Freshly boiled cockles fried in bacon fat with bacon and laverbread cakes make a traditional breakfast. Traditional baking is still very common in Wales, especially in smaller towns, Look out for Bara Brith, a fruit loaf made with tea, and yeasted breads cooked on a griddle. Finally there is a lot of good cheese coming out of Wales. Llangofan is a widely available Caerphilly-like cheese. Teifi is made using a Gouda-like process. Perl Las is a lovely blue.

The Great Cornish Pasty Debate is nicely summarised in Wikipedia: diced steak, potato, onion, swede (rutabaga). Start with everything raw. No pudding end in living memory I'm afraid. They taste fantastically of themselves, but are unlikely to qualify as the spiritual cousins of pastels.

You might be better off going to a supermarket: Sainsbury's and Waitrose do Langdale's Rennet Essence.

It is legal to sell unpastuerised milk for the farm gate but not, I believe, through other outlets. How did we come to this? I go camping on a farm in West Wales every year and it it a joy to taste their untreated, organic milk.

← Cake?

I thought the high class chip shops were the ones that offered vinegar. Low class chip shops have non-brewed condiment coloured with E150. ← When I was little you could tell which side of the tracks people came from by whether they vinegared chips fried at home. Posh meant no vinegar. I liked licking my lips.

I thought that vinegar in the poached egg cooking water was supposed to keep the whites together: that's how my dad made them. Now a poached egg without a vinegar whiff just tastes wrong to me.

Spot on. There is something generally great about pulse / acid mixes (like hummous) but the mushy pea and vinegar combination is exemplary. Is there a class thing here when it comes to vinegar on chips?

In practice very many people buy pints of beer in the Dirty Duck, walk outside into the garden at the front of the pub, continue through the gate, turn right and walk down the road for about five yards where there is a gate on the other side of the road into the park. Tell the people in the cheese shop that you will be eating your purchases with beer, but look out for the very local Earlswood cheeses. Hope you have a good time.

If I were you I would buy a couple of pints of Flowers Original from the Dirty Duck, and take them across the road to the park by the river, where they will go nicely with the cheese you have previously selected from Paxton and Whitfield on Wood Street.

The IKEA 365 day range is pretty solid, all metal and strikes the right balance between quality and cheapness.

I went and looked in three supermarkets here in the UK and was unable to find tinned burgers. However if you wanted to recreate that experience for comic or other effect you could try rinsing the gravy from the filling of a tinned Fray Bentos re-formed "meat" pie, or alternatively there is a wide variety of similary inedible tinned hot dogs, readily available and equally disgusting. Afterbirth, though, is better regared,here, at least in some quarters. See http://www.rivercottage.net/askhugh/index.jsp

Every Mothercare in the land stocks muslin squares. Whilst intended for uses further down the food chain, tthey do work for straining things too.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/expert...1779612,00.html

You could put a layer of corned beef in the middle of a potato gratin. Use stock and beer instead of the cream. Onions but no cheese.

Coleman's "white" sauce. Manages to combine both the bland and the revolting, especially when served over boiled turnips weeping their cooking water.

This is a good way of making a chicken sausage: it keeps the flavour in and gives it form.

Who says it leaves no flavour? Lower temperatures mean greater oil absorbtion and I'd rather taste olive than grease.

Use the oil soon, to poach some potatoes, onions and red peppers: drain, use in a Spanish omlette with some of the left over salmon mixed in. Green salad. Job done.

More on the food miles ... In the UK IKEA does some very nice if up-front peppery reindeer sausage. Both the coffee and fish-egg-fake-caviar thing taste better then they should for the money too. Otherwise it's the discus crispbreads and the cakes. I hear some stores stock pre-pack furniture too.

How about tasting?

Wishing to leave my fundament unfavaed I've burnt my passport.