Gavin Jones

And remember how that dish turned out.

Words fail me, and indeed some of you.

Stick me down for the Patrick Hamilton fan club. 'Slaves of Solitude' on the way up to Edinburgh to visit Dr. B was a fortnight ago. I believe I even nominated George Bone as my fictional alter ego, in the mists of time.

I'd been contemplating contributing to the bio-thread along the lines of an anti-biography, in the spirit of self-erasure. I'm sure this is much more constructive. I have failed to 'grow up' in some form of deracinated English middle class family. My mother had grown up in a 1950's English boarding school - rationing & lacrosse. My Father had grown up on a mid-western (US) small farm. My mother cooked - I realised much later - as a duty not a pleasure. It was much more important how one ate than what one ate. Exemplified by the annually trying visits to my Mother's parents for christmas where the fact that my sister had tried to eat a banana without using a knife and fork caused endless anguish. Later I realised that they too were only aspirational diners in a world that had slipped away. By then, of course, they were slipping away, endlessly into the past. Meal times were important - from when I can remember - but it depended when my Mother was working, so sometimes it was 8:30 and sometimes it was 6. When I was in my teens they occasioned terrible deja-vu. Like a stuck record we failed to have the same conversation for every evening of the rest of our lives - or at least the early 80's. Having napkins and worcester-pattern china was for a long time more important than what we ate. Roast on sunday, cold on monday, reheated (cootage pie) on tuesday. Chops on wednesday. 'Curry' (with apple and cloves) on thursday. A treat on Friday - briefly I can recall my parents cooking together with laughter on Friday - but this disappeared at some point. It was years later that I discovered that food was more about what it tastes of than how you eat it. When I was in my teens I started cooking. Now I find it impossible to spend time at my parents' house without cooking for them. 'Kiddy table' - since we were supposed to be poorly formed adults this has no relevance. Restaurants - we couldn't afford - except for the occasional trip around friends in Germany or the US where the key issue was embarrassment. i.e. Would we embarrass ourselves. Wine - we started to afford to drink it when I was 12 or 13. It would be another 9 years before I understood how spectacular it could be. And then some more before I found how it interacted with memory. Prayer? what would that be?

I notice Colin Spencer (British Food: A thousand years of pie) suggests the only significant innovation La Varenne provided to the UK was flour-thickened sauces. This was because the French sauces had to sit around for hours at the French court - the British habit was to use butter based saucing. Everything else was pretty much a re-exporting to Britain of what was freely available pre-reformation. Sorry for the use of secondary sources.

But probably not as either it would be less than 3 dimensional and therefore not nutritious or more than 3 dimensional which might cause some problems. Last night I was staying in Bristol with friends as I have had no electricity for 2 weeks. They have a bloody aga. Anyhow I ended up deputed to make steak pudding. Casserole decent braising steak from the Farmers' market for 90 mins. Dump in suet crust lined pudding basin cover and simmer for 2 hours. Needs Kidney (&possibly oyster). I did add some porcini to try and give it the earthiness but it was missing urea. Needed another 30 minutes, too. Tasty pastry. The 3 year old was turning her nose up at the filling but piling through the suet crust. (Also smoked prawns, smoked mack & horseradish, atrociously named 'nanny's nibble' cheese - not bad, and various rare apples). Electricity now back on.

Thankyou. I have recalled ?elsewhere that I dined on Chavot's cuisine only the once - a decade or so ago at interlude de Chavot. Apart from entertaining swearing emanating from the kitchen and an anaemic Pernand-Vergelesses my only memory is of the starter. Now I have just read Colin Spencer pointing out that the occasional addition of 2 eggs and some collops of bacon to pottage would sadly remain, in the form of breakfast, the only whole-heartedly recommendable item of British food. But Chavot is evidently breakfast-obsessed. My starter was a (architecturally) deconstructed fry-up on a plate. I laughed once - but wouldn't again. Surely there's room to move on - high tea or elevenses?

I used to like George Blanc's writing very much & it certainly functioned well as an invitation to haute-cuisine. However I'm less familiar with the more modern chefs. One figure of interest is Nico Ladenis whose 'My Gastronomy' is an extended argument for 3* food against Britfood. Though I found it ultimately ridiculous it is immensely readable and does offer a strong viewpoint - both social and aesthetic.

I don't believe I've ever cooked an all game menu. Much of the attraction with game is the nature morte aspect of the presentation - one encapsulated by the mythology of the ortolan. To escape this totally with the crepinette, or faggot for anglophones, seems to be a little disappointing - where conventionally the innards are the innards - here the partridge would be rendered very flightless. The Teal Wellington I recently had (breasts perfectly cooked rare inside a suet/butter pastry casing, legs crisply roasted on the side was a successful attempt to redo a classical dish. Difficult to get a decent texture/taste contrast with an all game menu - I'm thinking Mark Rothko for the palate here. Is there something with very high contrast one could do with one of the dishes - something very crunchy, or fishy that might work with game? More questions than answers really.

At one point I had though that the doctrinal aspects of the Church of England had been replaced by home-baking. Now I am sure this has been passed over in favour of chutney preparation. These are, for the most part, nothing other than HP sauce in Laura Ashley lingerie. There is a small place for these jars of terror but they hold a totally disproportionate hold over a part of the english culinary psyche.

I'm surprised the restaurant Damian Hirst was involved with (Pharmacy) didn't adopt this approach.

The authentically ur-english prefer all drinks (excluding tea, horlicks) served at the ambient temperature of a seaside boarding house in March i.e. too cold for red wine, too hot for white wine or 'continental lager'. To conspicuously demur on this issue is to mark oneself out as the very worst sort of foreigner.

Habitually served warm out of a 'cut-glass decanter' by a relative who smells of pee is enough to dissuade all but the hardiest. Same goes for sweet - well Harvey's Bristol Cream. (I'm sure this strategy is enough to dissuade one's irritating younger relatives from looking for the bottle in the fridge.)

Perhaps they aren't culinarily relevant to the French.

Good points: decent (not fantastic) food, sensibly priced, dark wood & candles - very well priced winelist. Bad points: cramped - so there is probably a limit to one's romantic ambitions within the restaurant... prefer upstairs to downstairs I'd recommend it - one astonishingly funny evening sitting next to a Brummie property developer & stunna

Feel free - I won't be better spoken for.

Gut it, stuff it, grill it as quickly as possible. the delicate flesh i think can be too easily submerged in other flavours. That said smokey flavours suit trout well so maybe you could grill it over some tea-leaves or somesuch.

Curry Mcflurry?

Surely marriage can't be palling this quickly...

Claret generically is the name for the (mostly red) wine the British (English & Scottish) imported from Aquitaine (Bordeaux) which was formerly part of the English crown (viz. Eleanor of Aquitaine). the key varietals are Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot (to a lesser extent Cabernet Franc). Historically they were vinified to produce fairly tannic wines which repaid lengthy cellaring. They count amongst their number some of the truly historic wines of the world: Petrus, Mouton-Rothschild, Cheval Blanc and so on. This region produces an enormous quantity of wine much of which is uninteresting. Because of the lengthy cellaring period these wines at the higher end have been treated as an asset class with secondary market values & consequent absurd valuations. Sensibly one drinks the (red) clarets as an ordinary red wine. However it is sometimes the custom to circulate claret as an alternative to port at the end of a meal. Any wine designated as claret is liable to be a Cab. Sauv./Merlot mix vinified with some (slight) regard to the historical taste of a Claret (somewhat tannic, at least lightly oaked). Designation of a wine as claret gestures uncertainly to the above. A wine which can more than most benefit from (appropriate) decanting. Coppola's Claret, search me.

duxelles.

I had a rather unexciting spag. with roast plum tomatoes (roast with evoo, anchovy more evoo & parsley, flat) followed by two meaty italian sausages. The reason was I'd bought them from a local salumeria which was selling an astonishing chianti - Giorgio Primo, La Massa, 1997 at around £10 (top of my usual range for wine). This must be way below retail, it has the power of a northern rhone wine & felt like velvet curtains opening over my teeth. Developed in structure and intensity over the evening - almost a struggle to get through - but such a pleasure to find a wine more complicated than myself (& only slightly cheaper).

If I'm reading you right the reason we eGullet is that we hope the laboriously constructed statements about ourselves (lengthy trips to certain sorts of restaurant et al) will finally find an appreciative audience. Or at least one who can decode these absurd statements about ourselves. So as opposed to - I went to ADNY last night - How much did that cost? - XXX$ -Wow, I'd never spend that on food/How come you only spent $XXX you cheapskate we have - I went to ADNY last night - Only because you're unable to appreciate the innovation of Pierre Gagnaire/Exactly so, your appreciation of 3* dining singles you out as one of the cognoscenti (italian so not culinarily relevant).

But very much of a certain tranche of society. I think this food exemplifies a certain phlegmatic attitude - to enjoy it would be as bad as enjoying carnal relations with one's spouse.

I like the social characterizations: The provincial French restaurant allows you to be a member of the provincial French bourgeoisie. If you're very lucky your mistress may murder you after. The classic British restaurant allows you to experience the weight of the class system and you will be treated accordingly (deference/suspicion/contempt). The modern British restaurant nods backwards towards this with an ironic inflection - now you're able to eat innards through pleasure not necessity...