MobyP

I defer to my knowledgable companions.

I think it depends on how you think your parents will react. Even if the service and room appealed to them, Chavot's food is fundamentally involved - sometimes 3 or 4 presentation on the same plate, a sauce here, a smear there, a powder, a foam. Perhaps they would prefer something a little more straight ahead - in which case they might enjoy somewhere like Chez Bruce. If they're adventurous though, they might find Capital fun. Also, depending on how you feel about it, it might not be a bad idea to call the chef beforehand and have a word. It's a challenge that many chefs face - educating their parents in what haute cuisine can be. Chavot might understand, and help you out.

I dunno. Whenever I've been with her, I always thought her Jimmy Choos and Manolos with the disco lights were a right give away.

Ah Matt, you might have fallen into his cunning trap. I think he wrote 'Gauloise' but without the 'Blanc.' Us cookie innocents get fooled easy. Still, not casting aspersions - or chickens - inquiring stomachs might be interested.

I'm shocked. I've never seen hock burns on a lable Anglais.

Speaking with Wyndham House Poultry yesterday, with the confirmation of bird flu in India, France, Italy and Iran, it looks like we might be in the last few weeks before all poultry farmers in this country are forced to bring their birds indoors. Will the prices rise or fall? Will the industry die over night like Italy? Will you continue to eat chicken? What about game? Any 'last chance to cook chicken' recipes hanging around out there?

Sure. Sounds good. Show us the way.

sorry to but in, but that makes no sense. why would anyone go cap in hand to someone who doesn't own a shop, begging them to open one? ← Don't follow. Didn't she own La Fromagerie in Islington?

Anyone ever come across this place before? http://www.sausagemaking.org/ They have supplies for all sorts of charcuterie naughtiness.

I think Patricia Michelson is great. I used to live around the corner from the Highbury shop and went there weekly. And she receives a not ungenerous proportion of my annual food allowance today - especially on one product, not cheese, which I shan't mention here, but is I think the best of its kind to be found anywhere in the world and I don't want anyone else buying it so there's always enough for when I show up. That said, there's that great Italian stall in Borough (Matt, help me out) that used to be opposite the pork pie stall. They were importing at one time the most incredible ricotta, still wet in cheese cloth. Fantastic flavour. A single bag cost a Borough Market exorbitant £5. I went straight from there to the Marylebone Fromagerie shop one weekend and saw the exact same ricotta for £9. What's that, an 80% mark-up? I'm very very happy that Patricia is doing well. Truly I am. I just wish it didn't have to go hand in hand with those sorts of prices, and my increasing inability to pay them.

Sorry if it came out sounding like that - and sorry for missing this compliment - I was eSkimming. The point you made wasn't what I meant. Rather, I thought Blumenthal was one of the few people doing his own thing in the admittedly high end of the scene. I didn't mean to sound like I wanted him to be reproduced anywhere else. Similarly Aikens is at least doing his own thing, even if it's some distance away from being mine. The reason I posted about both is that I knew - or thought I knew - that the subtext of Matt's post referred to a certain kind of cooking. The really ambitious, haute stuff. To be honest, there's buckets of good low and low-mid food out there (price be damned), but I almost never get to eat out anymore. A ten month old boy with large gnashers has seen to that. On a wider point, I think Matt was addressing the issue of the board - two or three years ago there were a large number of restaurants of all levels being posted about. Now, it has become pretty quiet. Anyway, enough of this rarified air. If you have anywhere that's of interest, I'd like to live vicariously through your description of it, as there's not much chance of me getting there any time soon!

If the time has finally come when someone calls Ducasse the inexpensive option, then boy, that's me out of the game.

If I paid four times the amount La Fromagerie charged, I'd be bankrupt. The quality is marvellous, but the mark-up is beyond insulting.

I wouldn't hold your breath though. These aren't exactly modest requirements. I don't think my rather more expensive oven could reach reliably that high or that low. Unfortunately with ovens/cookers you tend to get what you pay for, though most of the time it's rather difficult to know exactly what that is.

Jay once propositioned me at a party. But he may have just been after my vol aux vent.

I don't see London reviving as a restaurtant town until someone steps up to lay down the culinary gauntlet, so to speak. It looked for a while like it would be Aikens, but that's gone quiet. Ramsays pottering away, printing money and counting zeros. MPW is dead (in that Paul McCartney sort of way). Simon Hopkins is typing. Atherton is developing a franchise more than he is a culinary following. There are a few journeymen and women chefs who are developing careers, but I can't think of anyone who has made any aesthetic noise since Heston stood up.

I also found that the organisers and press office went to extraorrdinary lengths to be of help. It would be fantastic to see it reproduced, though I don't see where the funding could come from. It was my impression that the Spanish govt really gets behind this event. I couldn't imagine another western govt allocating those kinds of resources.

I'm in that picture too. Standing behind the wall in the front row in a black jacket, looking off to the side.

Matthew Grant - The last of the Gourmand Mohicans. Time to get the head shaved.

Beautiful, Klary. Your husband's a very lucky fella.

for example? ← Sous vide and slow roasting give a more consistent custardy texture that I find a welcome change. I've found that too many seared foie dishes are unnecessarily bitter due to searing and paired with a cloyingly sweet accompaniment. The taste of the foie itself is gone. Don't get me wrong, foie is my "most favoritest" food in the whole world but searing is only the beginning of the story. ← It's slightly strange to say the taste of foie is "gone" from searing. It's like saying the taste of meat is gone from a grilled steak. There are a hundred possible tastes that foie can give you. That is just one of them. Actually most sous vide foie's aren't all that interesting unless you're heading in the direction of a terrine, or you really know what you're doing. Heston Blumenthal is pretty good at this sort of thing. But Bras has been slow cooking his foie for years, giving it a very similar through-texture to the sous vide. High heat searing is only one of a handful of techniques before water baths come into the picture. Low temp confiting and poaching will also take you into this through-texture area, which with a poche-grille method gives you both textures at once. The great David Kinch of Manresa sous vides an entire lobe for 18 mins before roasting the outside on a high temp, which is a sort of upgrade on the older French method of poche-grille.

The ingredients are so (relatively) inexpensive, why not make too much dough, like a kilo, and then either throw out or use the remainder for something else? Better that than not having enough. If you have an electric mixer with a dough hook, then I'd go with that for these sorts of quantities. Alternatively I'd make two batches. 2 other things. If you make a wet filling, i.e. pumpkin or butternut squash, the dough tends to crack in the freezer, and break when you defrost them. The trick with frozen stuffed pastas is to make the filling as dry as possible. So, if you want to use a squash filling, or a soft ricotta etc, let it drain for an hour or so in a sieve before using. Also, consider adding bread crumbs or extra cheese - something to dry them out a bit. Second, make 10% more than you need. With these sorts of quantities, you're bound to have breakages. Also, consider how many pots you'll need to cook them in.

Sixty quid for 2? You jammy northern b'stards! Is it close enough to be a regular? In fact, sod that, does the chef fancy moving to west london?

Pics at Chez Pim

Best - and best written - first post I can think of for an age. Welcome Chakonabe.