Pam Brunning

We know le champignon sauvage well, we are looking for somewhere new. We are running away from an asparagus festival Nick my husband is alergic to the stuff! up to about 60 miles.

Help wanted searching for fine dining north, east or west of Evesham. We will be in Evesham on business in May and are looking for somewhere good, to go on to, for dinner. North, east or west, not south, we know all the good places in that direction! My main problem is that it has to be close to a Travelodge as my other half begrudges paying £10 an hour or more to lay his head down; he says he would rather spend it on the wines. We had planned to go to Ludlow as there is a Travelodge only 1.5 miles out of town but it will be a Tuesday evening and both Mr Underhills and La Bécasse are closed. Any ideas - not a pub or an Indian and not in a city. I see David Goodfellow’s by-line is “So many places, so little time" I am afraid I am getting cynical, mine is “So many places so little good” Every time I go north I am reminded of Marco’s comment “I reckon that for every mile you go out of London you go back a culinary year.” Someone prove him wrong - please!

Since doing the Atkins diet some years ago we try to avoid carbs particularly first thing, I couldn't eat things like muffins for breakfast! This in my take on Eggs Benedict - instead of bacon smoked haddock - on a very small round of toast.

Yes Le Champignon Sauvage is always good. If you want an excellent country pub try Ruchetta at Peppard - it is in the Chiltern Hills north of Reading between Reading and Henley. It is a lovely location for lunch and has an Italian owner and very good Italian chef. We had their set lunch today - two courses for £10 and it was superb. Wild mushroom with devilled kidneys were delicious followed by spaghetti with tomato and basil sauce with crab. Freshly made tomato sauce was made with flavoursome ripe tomatoes with a very fresh taste and not overcooked and stewed as so often is the case. It arrived steaming with a basil fragrance and the crab was all the way through the dish right down to the last delicious drop which I cleared up clean even though I was full to bursting! Their a la cart menu is not cheap but there are some superb dishes on it - it is well worth a visit .

Traditionally Grown Yorkshire Indoor Rhubarb was added to the list on 12/8/2009 I wrote an article about it, which was published last week, and the media have been going mad about it as though it just happened! The article will be on our website shortly in Food & Wine magazine.

When it breaks down water drains out leaving the flesh dryer - I am not saying it is ideal but they do improve. Normaly I am an exponant of the 3F's and two of them are freezing and food and Ramsey will supply the other!

Gary - lemon sole is a soggy fish whatever way you cook it. It is a very poor fish compared to a Dover that is why Dovers are so much more expensive. A good trick you can try at home with lemon sole is to freeze them - it breaks down the flesh and drys it out a bit. They are then a bit less soggy when grilled.

A review of a wine is always a very personal taste. If there is anything obviously wrong with a wine the reviewer should be honest. He should take into account if a wine has been badly cellared or mishandled in any way and say so. Whether reviewing wine or food people’s opinions vary widely, that is why, when I am to be sent a report for publication in Food & Wine magazine, of a tasting, dinner or food and wine matching event I ask the reporter to get a general consensus of opinion from all members present. It is rare that all members agree with the quality or otherwise of the wine or food on offer. If a person is reviewing anything the wording should be understood to be their own opinion - ‘I thought’ the wine was unbalanced - not the wine ‘was’ unbalanced. No one can be sued for giving an opinion.

I have been following this thread for a while - the pictures all look great, I must try something different sometime. Our breakfasts are all rather conventional. Three days poached haddock or cod with poached egg, three days English fried with our own home cured bacon and one day porridge with dem. sugar and cream. Something that always puzzles’ me is why in UK hotels they can’t fry tomatoes properly. You always get half of an, often under ripe tomato, pale and half cooked - yuck! The only fried tomatoes worth eating are ripe ones, sliced and nicely caramelised on the outside. The bacon today was a bit too lean for my taste that is the trouble with not breeding our own pigs these days.

Only met the man once that was enough! It was when I went round to take him a sample of our 'Special Chicken' that we produced locally and lightly cured, they were popular with chefs in the area. He practically threw me out of his kitchen - ‘Get out, I only use chicken from Bresse!!’ I was reminded of the TV pictures of him chasing his staff round the garden with a cleaver - I went!

I wouldn’t think winter in the UK is a good time to eat them fresh. Wait until summer and go to Herefordshire. The best snails I have ever eaten were served to me by Claude Bosi’s brother Cedric, at Claude’s gastropub The Bell Inn at Yarpool. The fare is very French provincial/traditional English and it was good to see plenty of local produce on the menu.

Re crepe maker - I have at least 3 of these, found in charity shops and jumble sales - my kids thought they were wonderful when they were young and so did I. They could get on and make their own pancakes for supper - they used to have great fun!

24 of our members went for a special lunch in October and had a disastrous meal. I have just received copy to publish in our December issue. I also have a copy of their letter in which they agreed things were not right and they refunded two thirds of the cost but the organiser was not very happy!!

Very interesting - we can't stand goat's cheese because it tastes of the billy - we put it down to having worked with animals all our life. Ducks when cooking can smell and sometimes taste disgusting if they have not been kept clean. I love escargot though!

We never got to Miller Howe but John Tovey used to come down to London to the Atheneum to cook for the Society. He was good but his style of food was a bit sweet for my taste. The last I heard of him was from one of our members who visited him at his home in SA after he retired.

Here we are David I did the report for our magazine, it was 2 years ago but a lot of friends have been on our recomendation recently and say it is just as good. Booking three weeks in advance we were unable to get in for dinner, bed and breakfast on a Monday night so had to content ourselves with a quaint B&B just down the road overlooking Morston Quay. A different four course, no-choice menu, is offered each evening and this includes nibbles, appetizers, coffee and petit fours for £44 a head. We were asked when booking if we had any dislikes so that an alternative dish could be offered. Galton trained under John Tovey at Miller Howe and this was very evident in the lightest of pastries and the subtlest of flavours. The wine list is arranged in grape varieties, which is easy on the single varietals but gets a little complicated with the blends. We ordered a half bottle of Menetou Salon Clos de Blanchais Henri Pelle 2004 at £12.00 and a bottle of Mornington Peninsula ‘Ten Minutes by Tractor’ (with a name like that we had to try it!) 2003 Pinot Noir at £25. The Menetou was an excellent example of a French sauvignon blanc, making one wonder why we bother with this grape from anywhere else in the world. We enjoyed a glass with a scrumptious canapé of a tiny cheese pastry case filled with a mushroom duxelles topped with a soft boiled quail’s egg and hollandaise sauce. The pastry was rich and friable and the whole thing just melted in the mouth. I think the comment was, ‘wow, if the rest is as good as this we are in for a superb evening.’ As the first course was a terrine of foie gras with new season grouse we asked the extremely competent young sommelier to serve the Pinot Noir with the starter and the rest of the white with the fish course, this he did with alacrity. The terrine was perfect, meltingly tender grouse breast layered with the best foie gras I have eaten for a long time, served with a dash of blackberry conserve. The Pinot was soft, fruity and a delicious example of the grape. The fish course was Chowder of Stiffkey cockles with Grilled Fillet of Sea Bream. The fillet was perfectly cooked with a lovely crispy skin. It was resting on a bed of just the right number of cockles to give a delicate flavour that would enhance but not overpower the bream. The surrounding chowder was light and velvety. We cleaned our plates with the plentiful home made bread which was the only minor disappointment of the evening. It was a slightly sweet, light (milk?) dough used for both the olive and sea salt loaf and the plain rolls, we found them rather bland. Roast rump of well hung lamb was pink, tender and juicy, accompanied by a ‘rustic ratatouille’ which still had texture and lot of flavour. There were fondant potatoes to soak up ample quantities of tasty lamb jus. The menu said ‘Sable of Norfolk Strawberries’ with blackberry ripple ice cream and custard but we were told that instead of sable there would be strawberry soufflé. I did wonder if, even in this obviously well ordered establishment, that maybe someone had burnt the shortbreads! The hot soufflé was perfect, drizzled with hot cream anglais and an ideal complement to the ice cream. Himself decided to opt for the alternative of the cheese board which I must admit looked very impressive. Seven English cheeses – well that’s what we were told but they had slipped a Vignotte in – presented on individual cheese boards with homemade biscuits and a fruit bread that was very good. With the cheese board we were given a ‘cheese menu’ so that we could look them up as we tasted. Portions were generous so I didn’t get told off when I tried tasting them. They were all top quality cheeses in the peak of condition. The young staff were very competent and unobtrusive but on hand when required. The restaurant was full on a Monday night and without exception the diners were all couples. We spent the evening chatting to a pair on the next table and retired with them to the conservatory, where we spent a very sociable hour chatting over coffee, truffles and some super hot petit fours, crisp on the out side and meltingly delicious inside. The company was so good that we suddenly realised all the lights were out and we were the only ones left. Our companions had a room, they had booked some months before, as they were staying for Galton’s cookery class next day. The front door had to be unlocked for us to stagger out to our B&B across the road.

It is a disgusting herb. It tastes and smells of bad meat. I just assumed that it became popular in the old days in Indian cooking to hide the flavours of rotting meat, so that it could be said that it was the herb that smelt and not the meat. My husband is allergic to it, just the smell wafting off of a hot dish smothered with it makes him feel sick!! Our daughter wholesales herbs and she sells pallet loads of the stuff. We love coriander seeds they are totaly different.

Oh boy don’t you people get knotted up in a word. I was given a deconstructed tiramisu the other day - all the parts spread all over the plate. It would have been much better if someone had bothered to construct it - it is amazing just what some chefs get away with these days and it still cost a fortune!

I started taking Gourmet in the '60's and compared with what was avaliable in the UK at the time it was a brilliant magazine. In recent years its main draw to me was that the recipes were in imperial not metric as we are in the UK now! Eventualy after about two years with Reichl at the helm I cancelled my sub. I got fed up with the high proportion of advertisements and lack of articles of any substance on food and wine. As the editor of a food and wine magazine albeit a very small publication I know how difficualt it is to remain focused particulary as we rely on part of our content being contributions from our members. We rarely carry advertisements as our members subs pay for the publication which means every page of content is relevent. Maybe this is the way magazines will go in future specialist publications for enthusiast.

Delayed in reporting as we have been trying lots of other places around the country, but pleased to report Le C S is still one of the best in my book. We went fishy - the lobster was fantastic, plenty of it with an interesting combination of flavours. The fillet of zander with globe and Jerusalem artichokes and peanuts was subtlety flavoured, the peanuts giving a great texture change. Being a chocoholic I thought t he chocolate and olive tart was a sensation, the only small criticism, it was so rich I could have done with half the size tart and twice as much ice cream to go with it! As usual all the trimmings, from the amuse bouche to the petit fours were of the expected high standard. It says three courses on the menu but here you end up with about 7 if you count everything Helen rules her girls with a rod of iron and service was spot on. A great evening - wish I lived down the road. As I said to Helen, “All I can do is dream of having a husband that can cook like that!”

It is a pity there aren’t more like you in the UK. The dress standard just seems to go down and down over here. Open neck shirts and jeans even when their partners are dressed up. And if I comment about it on the forum it is just considered funny by many. Mind you we did have the staff's kids playing hide and seek under the paino once in a two Michelin star restaurant!

I am finding this post very interesting as I have to give guidelines to our members who review restaurants in the UK, Europe and Africa, for the Society’s Food & Wine magazine. I have two different sections - top restaurants with Michelin stars or equivalent and pub/gastropubs. I point out to reviewers that if the menu is too long the food will doubtlessly be ‘cling & ping’ - freezer to microwave. But above all I ask them be honest and to tell it as it is - warts and all. I expect top expensive restaurants to maintain a certain standard - table linen, side plates etc. Things you won’t often find in pubs/ gastropubs. I think lack of side plates is one of the worst failings - I don’t like spreading my bread on a bare table that has been wiped fifty times with antibacterial wipes. Unfortunately I don’t think a dress code can be a rating factor but personally I do get fed up with scruffy men in quality restaurants and they are nearly always accompanied by smartly dressed partners.

Pigs can get very stroppy en mass - if you have several in a confined space and they decide they don’t like you they put their heads down, all start a low grunting sound and advance together. I have been out of a cottage style pen over the wall very fast before now. We experimented curing lamb but didn’t think much of it. We kept one of our cured hams for a year once - it dried right out but was very strong even with our mild cure.

Sunflower oil is good and an induction hob is best for deep frying. Ultimate temperature control and no danger from naked flame etc.

Big week this week - pilgrimage to Cheltenham on Wednesday - only third visit in as many years. Do hope it once again proves that Le Champignon Sauvage is the top restaurant in the UK. Watch this spot for full report.