Wilfrid

Malawry, is Lurpak considered a fancy "yuppie" butter in the States? It's a pretty standard option on UK supermarket shelves - although the flavor is indeed too strong for a lot of people.

Talking of eggs, I got into the goose variety at the weekend. $4 each, and they're massive (I meant to weigh one, but I forgot). They must weigh half a pound each. I nearly "lost my bottle" and went the easy omelette/scrambled route, but in fact managed to cook one over easy without any difficulty. The shell, which is thick, took some breaking. I cracked the egg into a bowl, then tipped it gently into the hot oil. Like duck eggs, only more so, the albumen is dense and sturdy, and once it had become opaque, there was no problem turning the egg with a spatula. The yolk is so large, that I was able to wait until it had set around the outside, yet retaining a soft, liquid, just-done interior. I was anticipating a fishy off-taste from descriptions I'd read before - perhaps diet-determined - but, no, the eggs were just exceptionally eggy. This might be a way of re-capturing one'd toddlerhood - encountering for the first time a huge, very eggy-tasting fried egg. You need plenty of good bread to mop up the yolk, and I helped the ample white out with tomato ketchup. One egg person is ample.

When JLo and Catherine Zeta Jones are offered as examples of "curvy" or even "overweight" celebrities, I raise a sceptical eyebrow. There it goes now

Winona Ryder? Reese Witherspoon? Anna Kournikova?

Well, I don't know that I'm really dying to try them, or I guess I would have, but the obvious restaurants I should have been to, and am embarrassed to admit I haven't, would be: 1. Babbo 2. Peter Luger 3. Nobu I guess you can add Bouley now. Actually, that was a shorter list than I expected - I must be greedy bastard

Oh yes, bourbon in pumpkin pie. And boiled up with just a little brown sugar and a cinnamon stick to be a sauce for ice cream or atholl brose.

I decided to search for and reproduce a duck recipe which I derived from an excellent detective novel by Manuel Vasquez Montalban, The Angst-Ridden executive". Montalban is the Catalonian answer to rex Stout! "Let me just offer the following, from Catalonia: I read it as a way to cook duck, but I think it would serve for just about any game birds, and could be adapted for rabbit and hare. Roast your creature [duck] lightly until it is just done. Meantime, fry chopped onions and mushrooms (by all means add truffles). When the roast has cooled, take off the breast, legs (wings if worth eating) and reserve. Scrape any other meat off the carcass and chop any innards; add these to the onion/mushroom mixture together with juices from the bird, stoned, chopped olives and chopped, good quality bacon (good ham would do, or pancetta - but look out for saltiness) and a few breadcrumbs. The aim of this mixture is to make a kind of slurry to coat the reserved pieces of meat - not a wet sauce to pour over, or a dry paste - you want to moisten the meat and have the tasty bits of mushroom, olive and meat debris evenly scattered. If you were cooking a duck, you would have plenty of juice; with game birds, you may want to add a little white wine to moisten the slurry (too wet, of course add more breadcrumbs). Arrange the reserve meat in a baking dish and cover it with the slurry. Bake in a medium oven until the meat is perfectly tender and infused with all those flavors."

I used to find bourbon too sweet, when my palate was more accustomed to Scotch, but I have grown fond of it since I've been in the States. Makers Mark at home - mint juleps, manhattans and straight up - but I often order Wild Turkey in bars. I always drink Wild Turkey in the bar at Sardi's. Why? Because I am compulsive-obsessive. I have not explored aged bourbons. Is there much merit in moving to old and/or single batch varieties?

I don't suppose anyone wants to move it to the 11th or 12th, on the grounds that I am potentially more interesting than Simon?

A new restaurant in the Ritz Carlton on CPS, with a former Jean Georges chef de cuisine in the kitchen. I griped about an unintelligible review in the New Yorker in the Media forum. I wonder if anyone has tried it yet or heard good things about it?

I have tried several, and find two to be sufficiently un-Bovrilly: Demi Glace Gold (Dean and Deluca and elsewhere: can't remember the manufacture's name) and D'Artagnan's (cheaper, not quite as flavorful). But what is the alternative? I know Steven Shaw's view, and it takes forty eight hours (or do I exaggerate?).

I wonder if it shocks purists on the Board that I sometimes cook with commercial veal demi-glace? I suppose I should spend my weekends laboring over a stockpot, but life just isn't like that. I seared a shell steak last night, and made a very easy portobello mushroom sauce: fried some minced onions, then the sliced portobellos until they started to colour and wilt down. About a glass and a bit of red wine, reduced by half, and while reducing stirred in about a third of a teaspoon of concentrated veal demi-glace. You have to work at it to make sure it dissolves. Seasoning required. A silky, fancy-looking sauce in less than ten minutes.

Letting it sit and dry out is a new tip for me, so thanks Nick. I kind of like the criss-cross scoring of the breast skin - looks pretty once it crisps up.

I'm harmless. I promise.

I restrained my natural melodic gifts once I got into the piano bar. Quite creepy. The trilling tenor voices we had been listening to all evening belonged to these huge, husky 400 lb guys who looked like they could bit my head off between verses. And you told me Murphy's was dangerous!

Why dontcha get back to the Noo Jersey board and talk about huevos rancheros with your pals?

I ordered a white Rioja at lunch today, with some trepidation as far as my companions were concerned. I am fond of white Rioja, and I had sampled the Vina Tondonia Reserva before. But to some tastes, it is very over-oaked - in fact, I am unsure whether it ages in oak barrels or actually in sherry barrels. Certainly, it has an air of sherry about it, and - especially if not chilled - can almost be mistaken for retsina. Not necessarily a good thing. Well, I like it. Anyone else?

You can get that in the Dominican Republic. I say that because a Dominican friend gave me a bottle, and I don't think they went to Haiti to get it.

If it is, I advise serving it with fried rabbit at once!

Not really wanting to open a debate, just to say that I find such a characterization completely unrecognizable, and I've hung around a number of "traditional" Philosophy departments. I guess you are talking about the States rather than the UK, but even so, my experience was an utter dearth of political understanding or engagement in such departments, even when the subject matter they were addressing had clear political implications. And I largely disagree with Oraklet too. Much of the work quietly going on in the humanities has no political consciousness or content whatsoever - whether or not it has political implications. Imagine limitless hordes of scholars checking the punctuation in obscure Ben Jonson folios, trying to decide whether there was a third source for Matthew's gospel, arguing about the recovered fragments of Empedocles, and trying to solve the sorites problem. That's what it's like. The radical chic dudes with the Che tee-shirts planning to build barricades out of second-hand copies of Of Grammatology are a minority. At the same time, there are plenty of political agendas in the sciences, stopping short, for the most part, of altering the data (which is to agree with Shaw and g. johnson at once).

I haven't cooked for days, because no time to shop. I scoured the cupboards last night and made something dead simple. Spaghetti, al dente; when it's drained stir in a knob of butter and an egg yolk per person. The egg shouldn't cook - it's just enough to coat the pasta. Mixed in some fresh grated pecorino, then sprinkled some on top as the dish was served. Plain but soothing.

Is Dalga the place that used to be Deniz a la Turk before a change of management? 57th and 1st if I recall correctly.

Firebellyfrog, if you're posting from New York I can tell you where you can eat the cold duck blood and the fertilized eggs. I have not eaten the latter, but the former has its merits. It's taste and texture are what liver jelly would be like.

The accommodation suited my taste very well. I spend too much time in efficient but faceless modern chain hotels, so I like fireplaces, four-poster beds and unusually shaped rooms. And I thought the service was a distinct step up from what I would expect in a fairly small hotel. I would never have thought of Alexandria if it hadn't been suggested, but it worked fine. The downtown area of DC is about twenty minutes away by subway (add a ten minute walk to that). I didn't have enough time to snoop around the shops, galleries and cafes of the old town. Next time, maybe. I cannot, sadly, give an authoritative opinion on whether the piano bar sounds penetrated my bedroom, as of course I stayed there until it closed! But I shouldn't have thought so - seems a solidly built place.

The last couple of times I have been to the Le Pont, I felt the kitchen was coasting. Quite perfunctory food. A shame, because I remember spectacularly good dinners there when it first opened. But I was struck by Simon's third principle for entertaining clients: "You should probably spend a little more than you would on a meal for yourself." I have found that this has changed with respect to many of my client relationships over the last few years. Increasingly, clients appreciate displays of austerity, not least because they view expensive meals as something they will ultimately end up paying for. It's depressing, but there are very few clients I would take to The Capital, for example. Although I am happy to take myself