Wilfrid

Ron - weirdly all the food here seems to be ment to be eaten while drinking or with a hangover. Best hangover cure to date: Vodka and Irn Bru (revoltingly sweet Scottish soft drink/soda) and black pudding and egg butty. A scottish friend told me the correct way to eat a Scotch pie: Make hole in lid, tilt to pour off fat, replace drained fat with sauce (brown) eat before it cools/sets. Useful tips. I still remember how I learnt to eat Australian pies - upside down because the hot liquid filling easily leaked through the soggy pastry, and the top was marginally the thickest part of the pie crust. Hmm, looks like another Jamaica patty on the way home (pies being sadly scarce in New York).

Only if you want to be hidebound by the facts. Alberto certainly had a studio in Paris. I don't know much about Diego, except that he was more renowned for the design/furniture stuff, which I thought you were talking about.

Er, Giacometti wasn't French. He was from the Italian speaking part of Switzerland. I assume you are talking about Diego in this context, although obviously the same is true of his brother Alberto. Just like to contradict you once a day, to keep in practice.

There was a band called The Dweebs?

It must be a year since I've been to the Park Avenue location. I used to find it good, just overcrowded. Anyone else noticed a decline?

Parboiling them until they are very nearly cooked but just holding their shape. Apart from the inhrenent difficulty of doing just that, and not overooking them, I just can't imagine them crisping up very well.

I have a problem with the Bud aftertaste too, but I guess millions don't. Russian Imperial Stout lingers in the memory, more than twenty years after I tasted it. Black and bitter. Rather like iced liquid tar would taste, I imagine. Here's an article about it by the renowned Trotskyist real ale freak Roger Protz. Also, does anyone actually like Pumpkin Ale, or is it decorative, like all the cutsey little squash?

I'm sure Heston's a dab hand with that approach, but I do not like the sound of it one bit. His flavorings sounded good though.

] I am going to be critiquing them in some detail but 1st i need to see how the restaurants are doing in the health checks [

And I like the way the Scots took oatmeal and refined and evolved it until they got porridge.

I am surprised the Chinese haven't refined their wind-dried items and taken them to a higher level. For example, by pureeing them into a very soft paste. I think a mixture of the sausages and duck chopped over rice is a very good thing. The meats don't need any further cooking, you understand.

Same as wind dried sausage, only it's duck. It has that sweet, slightly alcoholic tang to it that the Chinese sausages do, so I'm not sure where you'd substitute it for confit. I would cleaver it up and drop it in a congee, or just serve it over rice. It's going to be a little chewy. If you see the wind dried pig faces, consider buying them to use as Hallowe'en masks.

I am very slapdash, probably because I cannot recall any time I have ever got sick from eating at home, except rare occasions when the foodstuff itself was the problem, not kitchen hygiene. On the other hand, I have had food poisoning many times over the years from restaurants. I calculate that if I am going to continue to patronize restaurants, there is not much point being obsessive about my own kitchen.

If the real keeps going the way it's going now, I am heading back down there for a holiday sometime soon.

Not wishing to dwell unduly on bad meals, I think it's worth saying I found dinner at the downtown branch of Les Halles to be significantly less enjoyable than the meals I've had on Park Avenue. The downtown venue does have the advantage of space between the tables, and a big long bar at which to wait. It's a nice looking place altogether. I dined with two "babes" - lucky me- and maybe we should have stuck to the classics - confit, choucroute, and so on - but they were offering some Bordelaise specials which looked interesting. The fish and leek soup, which came to the table with an overpowering smell from the leeks, was judged inedible after two diners had tasted it and sent back. It was just quite nasty - leeks in thin fish stock. Instead of anyone asking if there was a problem, the busboy promptly brought it back in a takeaway plastic container and plonked it on the table. We sent it away again. My entrecote was fatty and stringy, and left a huge slick of oil on the plate. The marrow bone was empty of marrow. I didn't taste the duck, but my Beloved didn't like it. Steak tartare was acceptable, and the pommes frites were okay. Cheese was chilled and uninteresting. Our waitress was harried, but at least seemed to know what was going on. Service at the busboy level was dreadful, from the takeaway soup slapped on the table between courses, through the rudeness of removing plates as each diner finished a course, to the offer of teaspoons with which to eat the cheese. It wasn't a case of someone laying for dessert, not knowing that two people had ordered cheese; no, the teaspoons were dropped noisily onto the cheeseplates. The substitution of serrated steak knives when the error was pointed out did not impress me. There were some fair pirced wines from South West France on the list, and the $28 '95 Malbec was good.

Dr Balic, I am about to post a crustacea question in the Adventures forum, relating to the first course of last night's dinner, which I shall tentatively call: Crayfish mayonnaise *** Lamb shank braised in its own fat, red wine and dried cherry sauce Sweet potato mash *** Forsterkase *** Chateauneuf-du-Pape '98

I am going to be making my annual ration of confit soon - duck legs and rabbit legs stored in an enormous jar of goose fat. Last year, for the first time, the confit went bad on me. I think it was because I inadvertently left some meat sticking out of the grease. I always sterilize the jar as best I can before filling it. Are there any other hygiene tips I should be observing?

I think that's okay because of the apostrophe "s" making it a possessive noun referring to an individual member, isn't it? Whereas "an Egullet affair" wouldn't be? Just so long as we're clear.

Good tip. I like her Great Chefs and their Recipes book, so I should hunt this down.

More than once, the first bad sign was being seated then utterly ignored by the waitstaff. Eventually, I'll wander back to whoever seated me and ask if they want to try it again. Next up is usually inability to get a wine list and place a wine order, knowing all along that your appetizers are about to appear. These aren't walk-outs, though. The early walk-out is usually prompted by being offered an appalling table when it appears that others are or should be available - part of Chefette's mistreatment.

I know it's not what you want, Colonel, but for what it's worth, I find that very careful thickening with flour is the easiest way to get the restaurant-type consistency and silkiness. Two parts to being careful: I mix the flour with some of the liquid in a separate bowl, and then add the roux in tiny increments so as not to overdo it. And I bring the sauce to a boil so the flour's thoroughly cooked. You probably knew all that, but someone might be interested. Such sauces certainly don't have to be floury in any unpleasant sense.

Yeah, I remember. Didn't the waiter ask if you were a hooker, or something?

And I didn't notice nothing. Oh well, have fun.

Lady Ann's Full Moon Saloon it was. Thank you, sir.

A five buck boiling chicken, marinated in home-made sazon - oh, it's a greenish puree of fresh cilantro, lime juice, onion, garlic and god knows what else - and simmered to tenderness. Rice and pink beans.