MobyP

roast chicken with spring veg, gnocchi, endive foam, jus

lamb, ratatouille, peas

Roux Scholarship winner Matthew Tomkinson has started off well in his new venture at The Goose in Britwell Salome in Oxfordshire. Went yesterday for a nice lunch. Dishes included pigs trotter, lemon sole, guinnea fowl and boudin blanc. Worth keeping an eye on, especially if you're in the area. Pictures here.

roast chicken, baby épine artichokes, treviso and gnocchi

If you live in Cheltenham, you should ask David E-M to teach you. He regularly goes on foraging trips for mushrooms etc. Why not offer an exchange - some dish washing duty for the chance to accompany him? He knows a huge amount and is a very decent bloke. As you're still under 20, he might look kindly on you.

Thanks. The potato idea comes from a flickr pic of an FL meal (probably one of UE's). Otherwise, it was just the stuff i had around, and I felt like fiddling.

Last one from me for a while (back to family cooking) devon red mullet with confit potato, chorizo and italian violet artichokes.

Very simply - as I'm pretty inexperienced with lobsters. I blanched the shell for 2 mins and the claws for 4 mins, then let cool slightly and deshelled. Then a medium hot pan with a load of sizzling butter (and a bit of thyme), basting basting basting until ready. A couple of minutes.

Here's a lunch using the leftovers. (A Degusto rip off) Asparagus with lobster jus and morels.

Thanks. Dorset, Devon and Cornwall are great area along the southern coast for Lobster, shellfish, mackeral etc.

My apologies for the ad hominem. To possibly repeat it, and I don't say this applies to you, I find that many in arguing against Heston argue against the media's portrayal of him rather than his portrayal of himself. It makes any sensible argument for or against his cuisine - or rather, separating the cuisine in isolation and arguing about that (which would be a marvellous and worthwhile thing to do) somewhat difficult. Thanks for this Magnus. I don't agree that HB is the only chef who tweaks and improves stuff on his menu, but he is one of the few who makes a fetish of doing so. ← Very nicely put. In this same paradigm, though from the other side, I am told that Passard is still serving dishes unchanged from 10 or 15 years ago, and several are ubiquitous. His menu is measurably static. But the criticism rarely addresses this (I thnk Francois Simon may have weighed in, but that's all I've heard of). one is reminded of your ad hominem admonition.

Of the three towns that are close to Gatwick, Horley, Crawley and Reigate, only the last might offer anything edible. There are various chains in Crawley.

Percy, the seaweed asparagus is grown on the isle of white, in seaweed. I think it has a a gentle iodine note to it. English asparagus is pretty good generally.

I've had a proper lunch - and it was acceptable. Butter was a over-cultured so it had that unsalted very cheesy slightly rancid quality. Lucky for us they used this in the liver parfait, imparting a - mmm - unsalted very cheesy slightly rancid quality. Otherwise, dishes were fine. Good charcuterie. You could taste the aging in the steak - nothing exceptional in meat quality, but acceptable. The burger, on the other hand, although cooked accurately (med-rare) felt like it came from a poorly trimmed piece of meat; i.e. aged four to six weeks (or however long they do) and then trimmed back, removing (not enough of) the rancid fat and mold. It ended up tasting a little 'high,' which is not what I want in a burger. Chips were perfect. As good as the Hinds Head. Desserts were excellent. Some flaming thing with meringue brought to the table in a copper oval pan. Forget the name. Sunday lunch I had a 'slow roasted pork' which apparently was characterized by it not being roasted particularly slowly. The collagen hadn't even started to break down. Left the meat feeling a bit gummy. Chips less good than before.

Butter roasted Dorset lobster with cabbage, lobster hash, seaweed asparagus and jus.

There is a basic misapprehension here of what Heston is doing. I've written about this on this thread before, and this will probably be the last time for me. If you're looking for Heston to fulfill the Achatz paradigm of twenty dishes a month, or even that of Adria or a new menu each year, then you're not understanding what he's trying to do. As far as these sorts of labels like avant guarde - they're something that get placed on him, they're not something he tends to place on himself, so it's slightly ludicrous to say he isn't living up them. It's not something he aspires to. If you want an analogy, think about Achilles in Zeno's paradox. Heston's menu is constantly changing, but in ways that may not be apparent to you. He puts a huge amount of work into each dish. It's rare that any dish is finished. When there is a change, it's not often something you notice, if eating the dish only once or even twice, because like Achilles, he's still only moving between two points, being the first conception of the dish and that same dish when he thinks it's finished. Which is very very rare. After all, he's built an entire lab for research. I've spent a little time there. It's not as if it's empty when people like me aren't hanging around - they're constantly working, constantly experimenting. Other chefs are traveling from around the world to work with them and share ideas (Albert Adria, Wylie Dufresne, David Kinch). Whether it lives up to a general sense of movement as defined by other chefs is neither here nor there. I'm not here to defend the method, only to point out that there is one. So it goes. (KV - Rip)

Actually, and this might sound silly, but the trick might just be adjusting your expectations of what you're after.

The use of wine causes horror in some more (rather than less) Italian circles (Dean, your family must know all about this). But then much genuine Italian food is very pure of flavour, as Sam says. I make pasta with porcini and I'm adding this herb and that shallot and a touch of the other and blah blah blah. Go to Parma and they'll serve you pasta with oil and porcini. Maybe a little chile. That's it. That's the flavour they're after. Probably the trick is great great clams. However, if you would like another trick, Chiarello adds an anchovy or two to melt in the soffrito at the beginning. Sounds odd, but you barely taste it. I promise. It will make you happy.

I liked the piece. But it's not just food. New Yorker's judge every category of existence by how New York it is. The reason New York is great for food is not just depth, but breadth. It has a massive number of low end, mid-range and aspirational high end places. That's not to say we don't have some edible stuff here. But reasonably you could work your way through it in under a year, for the price of a mid-sized car. New York would take a lifetime and a mortgage on the house, if only to keep up with the sheer number of openings there are.

Veal Cheeks

That looks fantastic, and belongs here!. Do you know anything about the breed of cow/ age/ feed/ length of dry ageing?

Interesting. I think in your list only the monkfish is a Passard dish. I wasn't a fan of the effect of the long cooking on fish when I visited Arpege. I'm pretty sure the lamb is Kinch. The ris de veau served prior to that was Passard I believe. The caviar in seaweed (and turbot) gelee is insanely good.

After my last visit I was thinking he was one of the few haute chefs in London who can actually cook. No, the food isn't innovative, but he's serving high level serious modern cuisine, and sourcing ingredients at a degree above I would say all but one or two in London. Out of interest, who would you rate as better?

Is that true? It's certainly not the impression given here. Not sure I'd agree with your point about Maureen Mills either. Google suggests she only did the PR from around 2001, and she looks after plenty of duds (see: FT). It'd be like saying Jimi Hendrix became famous because he had Max Clifford as an agent. (Edit: and why is it that one in three threads on this board, no matter what subject, descends into an argument about Heston?) ← I believe Monica Brown (the great) was the PR by the time FD got 3 stars. With regards to funds, I think you might be mistaken. They opened with very little. And the night they learned of their 3rd star, Heston was to call his wife to say they couldn't afford to pay the rent that month. Then the third star, and the phones never stopped ringing.

Which he does. His crab soup was the best shellfish bisque I ever expect to have in my life (plenty 'o 3 star Michelin places included). Absolutely spectacular.