JudyB

I don't know if we have any lawyers on here, but is it actually legal for them to ban it? My understanding is that, apart from any temporary bans on "unsafe" products (such as beef when BSE is a worry), it is not legal for any individual EU country to ban a product that can legally be sold elsewhere in the EU. In other words, neither York nor the UK can ban Foie Gras while it is legal to be sold in a country such as France. I am quite prepared to be told that my understanding is wrong, but this is certainly what I had heard in the context of other goods, such as cycles that do not comply with the relevant British Standard(s).

We are going to a matinee the Saturday after next and I'm pleased to say that we finally got around to booking at Arbutus last weekend. We can find out then how the service is doing - the last (and only) time we ate there the waitress admitted that she was new and was a bit wayward, although the other staff did seem to know what they were doing.

It looks like the problem is that your website is dependent on a newer version of Flash than some of us have installed. When I checked this earlier I was at work. I have now checked this at home and it doesn't work here with Internet Explorer 7. Further checking shows that I have Adobe Flash Player version 7,0,19,0 installed while Duncan has version 8 - and that works fine with your website. The website also works fine with Firefox (2.0.0.1) and Flash version 9,0,28,0 on my system. You might want to rethink the use of Flash - even when it works on my system it is fairly slow to load (on a 2Mbps ADSL connection).

Are you by any chance running Internet Explorer 7? I am running XP SP2 with Internet Explorer 6 and I can view the website properly. However, I am getting an icon at the bottom corner of IE which indicates that there were some errors on the page. Having said this I am currently seeing the same errors on eGullet (but not everywhere I browse to), so this may be a different problem.

A slight correction is needed here. If I understand the government website correctly this was more or less correct (in England and Wales) until the licensing laws were changed a couple of years ago. Historically Scotland has a separate legal system and I don't know exactly what the rules are there. The law has now been tightened up, the full text is on the government website here, but the relevant sections are as follows: In addition to this there are also restrictions on when and whether a child under 16 is allowed in a pub at all. For anyone really interested read the full text on the website, but I won't attempt to summarize it here.

What we have is a Digital Meat Thermometer from Lakeland - see here for the details - from what you have said this is exactly what you want. This is currently £12.99 and works fairly well in our experience (postage extra if the order is under £45 or find a local branch if you can).

We live near Oxford, so I can't really help with your other questions, but you certainly don't need to get a taxi the whole way from London. To get to the Fat Duck, go to Paddington station (bus, underground) and get a train to Maidenhead, then get a taxi to Bray. The last time we did this the taxi to Bray cost less than a similar journey round here, and you should find that the drivers all know how to get there. Have fun there - it's not cheap, but it is certainly an unusual experience.

Duncan says they go in the centre of the diamonds (and I agree). Interesting recipe, particularly since I've been checking pans all day to work out which would hold the bit of gammon that I bought for boiling...

Not that I'm bored or anything... , but the BBC website has a Chicken Cordon Bleu recipe from AWT here. I think that it has mostly gone out of fashion, but I wouldn't have been surprised to find that Waitrose or M&S were selling it alongside such gems as Chicken Kiev.

I take it that you haven't seen the printed paper then? The scoring for the printed quiz was 1 to 3 per question. So you may be correct about the intention, but I suspect that Jay really didn't expect anyone to take it that seriously...

Having read the printed version of this I was a bit disappointed that the range of scores only goes up to 30 - this isn't obvious from the web version. The full set of scores/descriptions in the printed version is: I thought at the time that there should have been an extra category:

Being in the UK I haven't seen this series, but I think that the large back garden seen in previous series was at her London house (or flat). This series probably would be more specifically targetted at America than the earlier ones since it seems to have been made by/for US TV. Her earlier series were made for Channel 4 TV in the UK. I have no idea when or if it will be shown in the US, but she has apparently made a new 3 programme series about cooking for Christmas which is due on the BBC in the UK soon. That one will probably be back onto mainly metric measurements since we supposedly went metric here several years ago.

Is it clear yet whether or not the French smoking ban will apply only to "enclosed" public places? As I understand it the English ban on smoking in restaurants (due sometime next year) is specifically limited to "enclosed" places, although I have not yet heard a clear definition of this. I know that the Scottish pubs (which already have a ban) are reported to be investing in patio heaters to allow the smokers to go outside. Since some of the worst problems we have experienced from other diners' smoking have actually been when eating outside I wonder what impact these new laws will have if eating outside is excluded from the ban?

Yes, it should be interesting. However I think that it is tonight (Thursday) that they will be on the programme, not Friday.

No, you're not the only Guardian reader on here, but we haven't been to the Red Chilli Restaurant and I can't really say that I get much from Matthew Norman's reviews. Although clearly streets ahead of VLS I don't tend to pay much attention to his reviews. P.S. Shaun Hill's review on Saturday (while Matthew Norman is on holiday) of the Bell Inn at Yarpole was much more readable in my view... edited to correct brainstorm over name of restaurant...

According to Amazon the book isn't due out until 1st September, so unless we have anyone with a preview copy lurking here I think you will need to wait for another month to get an answer.

We paid another visit to Christian Etienne during our trip to Provence this year. As on previous trips we gave in and went for the “Menu Tomates”. Although in previous years this has always been very enjoyable this year he seems to have achieved a more balanced menu. Although every course still uses tomatoes somehow the combinations were better and the tomato flavour much less overpowering. This year the menu was as follows (see here for the French rather than my attempt at translation below): We chose a white Châteauneuf-du-Pape (Vieux Télégraphe 2003) to go with this. As on previous visits the service was excellent, with the staff clearly trained to address us in English where possible. There were occasions where the complexity of translating the menu into English was beyond some of the staff, but they certainly tried. The only element of service which was perhaps a bit unusual for such a restaurant was the wine – this was opened and placed in an ice bucket beside the table, but no-one came to serve it. Since this was a lunchtime visit and Duncan had to drive back afterwards we were quite happy with this, but it wasn’t clear if this was a deliberately relaxed lunchtime service or a reflection of the sommelier on duty. (This was a female sommelier instead of the male one we have seen on previous visits).

No, my tame pedant just looked this up in Chambers and "buffaloes" is correct (for UK English) - for an online version see here. I'm not 100% certain that this excludes "buffalo" as a plural, but it isn't really clear.

There is a summary of both the current rules and historical background to the rules about raw milk sales in the UK on the Food Standards Agency website. If I read this correctly in England and Wales you can buy raw cows milk at the farm gate, in a farm "catering operation" or from a milkman. My reading is that this would exclude mail-order, although I don't know what the international issues would be. The restriction to farm gate sales does not apply to raw milk from sheep, goats or buffaloes. Note also that in Scotland you cannot buy raw cows' milk at all and the website also suggests that nowhere in Northen Ireland sells raw cows' milk although the same laws apply as for England and Wales.

The boxed sets of Analon do seem to be the cheapest. We recently wanted to replace both our saute pan and skillet (your frying pan?) and we found a boxed set was definitely the cheapest way to get them. (We also got a stock pot that will be useful too with the set). Unfortunately the Analon pans aren't entirely foolproof - our pans needed to be replaced due to a combination of leaving them empty on the hob with the heat on and using metal spoons. Having said that they are very good and we've had them long enough that I don't think we can complain about having had to replace them.

For anyone interested in seeing the final result, there is a follow-up programme about the banquet itself on Friday 16th June, BBC2 7:00PM to 8:00PM. It will be interesting to see, if we can, how different the dishes are which are actually served on the day...

Does anyone know when the programmes for this final week were actually filmed? I just found a suggestion on one of the BBC Message Boards that Atul Kochhar was in a car accident last week - the details are here. Has anyone else heard anything about this? (I'm assuming that this report is genuine, although I haven't found anything online to confirm this).

I think Jenny wears the same clothes for each week's filming for the same reason as the judges are wearing the same clothes throughout: in a response to a letter in the Radio Times they said the following about the filming and the judges' clothes: My guess is that they may film Jenny on the "final" day of each week and edit it into the Monday to Thursday broadcasts.

I can believe that Gary will win this heat, since I find it hard to believe that the judges, given the prejudices shown so far, will think that the Indian meal is suitable. However, unless the BBC are lying outright, they can't know yet who will win since the final menu will be decided by a viewer vote. Reading next week's Radio Times it seems that the judges will pick the top 3 dishes for each course and the viewers will phone in to choose the final menu. Although they quite possibly will include one of Gary Rhodes' dishes in the top 3 for each course it really is stretching it to assert that he will "win" all four courses. The other oddity of this system is that quite clearly the Radio Times seems to expect that each winning course will be from a different chef and it certainly won't be a complete menu from a single chef. This is totally at odds with the comments all the way through about "of couse, the judges must vote for the whole menu and cannot pick dishes from each menu"...

I don't know what Jamie Oliver eats at home, but it's worth remembering that he is very much more middle class than his (initial) TV persona portrayed him to be. As for the mid-day meal in schools, I have to agree that I never heard it referred to as anything except "dinner" when I was at school (in Bolton, north-west England). As far as lunch goes I think that it was at school in Bolton that I first heard people use the term "lunch" to describe a mid-morning snack - more commonly described as "elevenses" etc. Just to clarify things here: although I went to school in Lancashire (as it was at the time) my parents are from the north-east of England (near Newcastle) so the terms used for meals at home were probably not typical for Lancashire.