endless autumn

Elisha Carter has left Lola's: who's there now? (Morfudd may be lurking...) Anyway, go to Morgan M: I had a nightmare with wine, but the food is very good indeed: do not go for 'matched wines' - thimble-fulls of ill-/non- matched house wines with each course - buy a couple of bottles. M Meunier is also very good at vegetarian stuff, if that's a criterion. And they're open for Sunday lunch.

The average price of a bottle of wine purchased in the off-trade is £4.60 (according to BBC and BBR). I thought it was much lower than this (I'm sure Tim Atkin always rants on about it being sub £4). 88 per cent of Australia's British market costs less than £5 (according to Sydney Morning Herald), so I guess the bogofs and 33% off (esp. on Rosemount/ Lindemans Bin 65) are keeping the prices down.

I think that Mr Wright (if he's the chef from La Gousse d'Ail) has exhausted most of his culinary friends in the UK and is to be found in Hawaii. I don't think he enjoys a very good reputation among employers, but I could be wrong.

If you want to sample a South African chenin Ken Forrester is your man. More direct and significantly less complex then a decent Savennieres but still good wines; also mature rather quicker. Anyone had a decent Jasnieres?

The lamb breast sounds very much like the Elizabeth David's classic 'Breast of Lamb Ste-Menehould' which is gorgeous. Lamb's breast braised with green bacon, carrots, onions, herbs very very slowly, then pressed, cut into strips, coated with mustard and herbed breadcrumbs and grilled with a little clarified butter. unbelievably cheap (a breast will cost you 50p at a farmers market and will feed four) and truly alchemical. also known as 'lamb fingers'.

I've had both Label Anglais and Bresses chickens a number of times. The excellent Fellers & Son & Daughter sells Label Anglais chickens which have a good, dense texture, and a more developed, gamy taste. They are not, I don't think, quite as good as Bresse chickens, though (but I've never cooked a poulet de Bresse myself): they are not quite as packed with flavour. Incidentally, The Ginger Pig is doing P de B for £12.50 at the moment, so you needn't order a whole aviary if you want to do a taste test. (And I thought that Poulet de Bresse was not just a breed but an AOC - can Ellel get away with saying it sells Poulets de Bresse?)

I think Gordon seems much less of a twat on this show than on any others I have seen. At least he seems to realise he is descending into self parody. I didn't find the training part of Kitchen Nightmares particularly enlightening: clean the worksurfaces; learn some basic hygiene; simplify your offer. His approach seemed to be to decapitate the business and push the young, starstruck chefs as hard as he could. They raised their game when he was there; when he left, things regressed. What's interesting about Hell's Kitchen is seeing him confront people with egos as big as his. The 'celebs' get abused (ooh! more swearing) and then consoled: they are too brittle to cope otherwise. Poor old James Dreyfus seemed to spend about half of the programme being crushed against Angela Hartnett's breast being told he was 'brilliant'. I'm out of the country for the next two weeks and am going to miss Gordy's craggy old mug.

Chips are meant to be soggy, aren't they? And the queasy, bilious feeling of your internal organs desperately trying to produce enough acid and bile to emulsify the fat is a necessary part of the experience. What I don't get about Rock & Sole Plaice is why they don't have vinegar but have water/colouring/industrial acetic acid instead. Here's a link to a story about good chippies: Terry Durack I also rather like the North Sea Fish Restaurant in Bloomsbury.

I think the Cotes de Malepere are on the watershed between Atlantic and Mediterranean weather systems/ soil types and so it makes sense, in a way, to grow Atlantic (ie Bordelais) grape varieties. They just happen not to do it very well.

I think pizzocheri are non-white flour based and are often served with cabbage, butter, potatoes, cheese etc. As for vegetables, just stock up at a farmer's market (though of course not everything is organic). I think you're westish aren't you? It would be worth going out to the smaller market in Ealing (Sat am) rather than going into the overpriced central markets, and if you're really keen you could go up to Stoke Newington where there is a biodynamic/organic farmers' market on Saturdays. Box schemes seem ridiculously expensive and leave you without much choice, though Abel & Cole are supposed to be s good one, I think.

had an excellent pigeon and trotter pie for two on Tuesday with a lovely surprise marrow bone to let the steam out. Gamey, livery, sticky, gelationous, delicious. Nice to have big dishes to share as well as small ones like at B&W.

I find that if you freeze octopus, defrost it and cook it covered in 2/3 olive oil, 1/3 water (plus aromatics) in a very low oven (70c/80c) overnight or for about eight hours, it tends to be tender enough.

I thought it had been exposed in the Standard that (at least the first episode of) the show was set up. The scallop was not off; the vegetables which were rotting were outside the back door waiting to be thrown out - Ramsay brought them in; the chef had already been sacked/ left but was brought back in for the show; the town wasn't actually filled with Last of the Summer Wine types (surprise); Ramsay didn't wait for a month to come back: it was within a couple of days etc. etc. I don't dispute that the first chef was rubbish, but in the second show the argument that was staged with the owner was pathetic. I find Ramsay irritating (something to do with the stupid lines on his chin and the way he always insists he is having such a good sex life with his missus: sample quote re: their relationship: 'it's passionate, it's intense, it's oral sex...') but it's the way they put the programme together, with Ms Llewellyn so blatantly urging on from behind the cameras, which really pisses me off. As for an American version of the show with Bourdain in Ramsay's place, it would only truly be worth watching if it were truly in Ramsay's place: Bourdain's kitchen nightmares at GRHR.

l'abandon isn't muscat it's malvoisie; as such i think it is likely to age a little better. It is not as impressive as I had hoped: decent balancing acidity, not cloyingly sweet, but there's something missing, it just doesn't sing.

I wasn't enormously convinced: I felt the programme had a lot of French Leave about it - engineered set pieces which Ramsay wasn't quite a good enough actor to pull off. Was that scallop off? I dunno, but Ramsay certainly wasn't sick (he drank from a bottle of water and then coughed) and thought the pasty little head chef agreed that it was rancid, Ramsay could have convinced him of anything. I just don't like Big Gord as a character; I'm not too bothered about his aggression, it's the pseudo-mateyness which grates (and idiotic things like his penalty celebration, throwing the scallops in the river etc.). In spite of the fact that he has built a reputation as an accomplished swearer, he is remarkably inconsistent in his pronunciation (peripatetic youth, perhaps): Fooking, Fokking, Fucking, Facking... He is trying all too hard and it's a little embarrassing. (But at least not as embarrassing as his constant references to his sex life in interviews.)

This is what I ate at yauatcha: Chilean Seabass Mooli Roll Shiitake and duck roll Chicken Feet in Chilli Black Bean Sauce Spinach Cube with Prawn and Waterchestnut Char Sui Cheung Fun Scallop Cheung Fun Crispy Duck Roll Salt and Pepper Quail Chicken Taro Croquette Baked Venison Puff Pork and century Egg Congee Shanghai Dumpling Chinese Chive Dumpling With three cocktails (Nashi Momo, Chilli Martini, Minnie Mushka) and two bottles of wine, the total bill was £102.70 (though they knocked 50% off the food) Most things are divided into three, some into four, so it is best to go as a three. The food was uniformly excellent, sometimes superb, with the exception of the gruel-slop congee which I knew I'd hate and did. You are able to order as you go along, with 3/4 each about the right amount; dishes are brought as and when they are ready and some, such as scallop cheung fun, are completely impossible to eat with chopsticks, but it would seem a little rude to use your hands. Some highlights: Spinach cube: a ball more than a cube, stuffed with crunchy prawn and waterchestnut and steamed - light, vegetal and extremely clean and fresh; Baked venison puff: a sweetish bread filled with tiny morsels of tender venison; chicken feet: impossible to eat elegantly, full of bones, but soft, sticky, gelatinous, salty and spicy. It would be possible to eat here for only fifteen pounds per head and you would find it hard to eat better elsewhere. Cocktails were hit and miss and service can be overbearing (they straighten your wine glasses/water glasses for you) but it's a beautiful little place very much the baby brother of Hakkasan in feel, though I've only been for a drink in Hakkasan.

Just got back from the Pyrenees where despite intermittent snow flurries, the morels are out in force. I am hampered by colourblindness which extends from reddy-browns to greeny-browns, thus making it almost impossible for me to pick out morels but I found a few decent sized specimens (morchella esculenta, the round variety) beneath the apple tree in our back garden. Our generous neighbours (who have lived in the village for the entirety of their 80 years) are somewhat more successful, however. In one morning they found six pounds of mushrooms - both elata (conical) and esculenta (round). They gave us a few to bump up our catch and we had them in a rich madeira sauce with veal kidneys. Though they like morels, the Catalans in the village prefer St George's mushrooms, which to me seems rather bizarre.

I'm off to Yauatcha tomorrow, Alan Yau's yum cha place. I think the dumplings are being done by the same chef as at Hakkasan and Fay Maschler gave it two slightly podgy thumbs-up last week. Does anyone have first-hand experience of the place?

I think it has stopped: it is no longer listed on the website. (And I think I remember someone who had spoken to Cheryl saying it had now closed.)

Why don't you get in contact with them and see what they can do? If you lobby them, then perhaps something might get going. They did try a market in Palmer's Green for a while, though, which didn't come to anything. Here's the details: Mark Handley and Cheryl Cohen London Farmers' Markets Po Box 37363 London N1 7WB Tel: 020 7704 9659 Fax: 020 7359 1938 Email: info@lfm.org.uk If you are heading as far as Stoke Newington, though, there is a biodynamic/organic farmers' market there: here's some info: click

disgusted - do you really think that reviewers are paid to carry out reviews? and what exactly is wrong with a pr company gaining coverage for a restaurant? isn't that what they're employed for? of course certain chefs 'have a lot of sway': they have reputations, histories, relationships with journalists... why shouldn't they use these as much as possible to squeeze out complimentary copy? if you and/or the restaurants you work(ed) in were/are this paranoid and frosty when dealing with the press it is no wonder that you have been stung in the past. and as for guides, yes, they are relatively independent and do not serve to boost the egos of the (anonymous) reviewers, but they are still susceptible to pr: this is where they get plenty of their information from and it is sometimes with prs that they will be 'reviewing' the restaurants in question.

His tv company, optomen, have gently confirmed that a bid has been made for the Carved Angel. They will presumably be filming him there, then.

The Muntada was a 2001 - way too early for it to be showing off yet. They've just started selling it at Majestic and though it's hefty £50 a bottle, it's about the same as in France (if you can get a bottle - all the Belgians buy it up on release it seems). To tell the truth, I think the Vielles Vignes is just about as good at half the price (much less in France).

thanks chris - I'd had a look at your site but it seemed you were in the process of drinking your way through the roussillon at the moment and hadn't had the time to report back. (Very good suggestions for the Languedoc though - thank you.) I haven't heard of Dom. Vaquer before so I'll have a look while I'm down there. (I'm glad to see that we haven't been going too far wrong, though: Casenove is one of our favourites and we dulled the pain of a particularly depressing family party with an excellent - though unready - Gauby Muntada last weekend.)

if ramps are ramsons/ wild garlic then they're out over in England. Made a wild garlic, bacon and morel (dried, unfortunately) tart this weekend from wild garlic in northumberland and tomorrow am planning to wrap some rabbit saddles in wild garlic and pancetta and roast them, stuffed with shallots and ceps.