John Whiting

A friend with a fine restaurant in Loraine gets his (regretfully) from Australia - alive but a bit jet-lagged.

Unless the bride has been reading Heston Blumenthal.

Thanks for that, I've made a note of it. It's in the new Alastair Sawday Pubs and Inns of England and Wales.

Which is precisely why irradiation as a way of correcting careless handling is a form of russian roulette.

Ramsay swearing: Gordon Bleu?

Shaun, welcome back. Have you tried pressure-cooker braising tough cuts of meat, and do you have an opinion on the subject?

The New American Service: always be sincere, whether you mean it or not.

The Killer Clown

Fascinating. We took over a house in 1976 that had a mixer tap in the kitchen. It was an excellent sink and so we kept it and rebuilt the kitchen around it. Without extensive research, we would be surprised to learn that it was unique.

Foreign produce in the Borough Market does indeed involve a middle-[person? ], but there are stalls at which their personal involvement is as intense as if they were producing their merchandise themselves. There is so much variety among them that it's worth taking the time to learn which of them are tuned to your wavelength.

MobyP, many thanks for this. I'm collecting places that are potentially worth visiting this summer.

The French word for ultra-rare beef -- bleu -- says it neatly. When the interior is still virtually raw, it has a bluish cast to it. Since one of the classic ways of serving steak is tartare; i.e. entirely raw; any degree of doneness whatsoever is permissible if that's the way you like it. With other meats, and with fish, you arrive at your own balance of risk and pleasure. There is a fashion for serving game birds at a degree of rareness that makes the legs virtually impossible either to cut or to eat. That, for me, is a chew too far -- "rare" is for pleasure, not religion.

Where did you get that idea? I said, as has everyone else, that much of their produce is overpriced, especially at Turnips, or whatever the hell it's called. But I regularly buy batavia lettuce at a stall on the south edge, and damn good dirt cheap two-year-old Irish cheddar - I won't say where - and cheeses from the French and Italian stalls, Lincolnshire haslett for my wife, Nunez olive oil, rare breed belly of pork, toulouse sausages -- and a chicken wrap to nibble on while I'm shopping. It's a regular Friday ritual. I like to go pre- or post-lunch when you can actually walk under your own power.

The Farmers' Market website is unnecessarily snooty about the Borough Market. Stick exclusively with the rigorously filtered Farmers' Markets by all means -- if you don't happen to like olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sun-dried tomatos, Spanish/Italian ham, French/Italian cheeses, salt cod...

Le Domaine de Lintillac is a restaurant in the 2nd which I had a negative take on, but which Guardian journalists based in Paris find to be very good value for money. Maybe I hit it unlucky.

What about the husband?

Fine. But I need an awful lot. Such as joie de vivre, a profound but unprentious passion for excellence, an encyclopaedic diligence, an easy eloquence, a wry sense of humor, a crusading spirit and above all, a sense of proportion. To the obvious choices already enumerated, I would add Waverley Root, John & Karen Hess, John Thorne, A.J. Liebling. A relatively small library would keep me happy on my desert island; if I were denied my favorite comestibles, I would learn to make do with their virtual equivalents.

A useful post. Some of the more dogmatic would probably call me a binge drinker; I usually get through a bit less than a bottle of wine with dinner, usually nothing before. Weighing about 200 lbs, I have lots of tissue [i.e. fat ] to absorb it. If my wife, who weighs about 2/3 of that, were to consume a similar amount, she'd be out cold on the floor. (But she doesn't and she isn't. )

It's generally taken to mean drinking as much as possible as often as possible. For those who must work, it's mostly centered on week-ends. As Larry Elliott writes, from his experience on the bench (not the bar), there has been a quantum leap in such drinking in Britain, particularly by the young, bringing them into courts and hospitals in greatly increased numbers.

American all-purpose flour is higher in gluten even than strong plain English flour, usually around 14%. It is much drier than European flour mixtures, so a person using an American recipe and British flour may find the mixture rather "sloppy" and have to add more flour. As for an English recipe with American flour, a British cookery writer in America had an unfortunate experience trying to demonstrate choux paste from her English book, which had not been tested for conversion to American flour. The recipe specified one egg, but she had to use three before she could get the right consistency.

Larry Elliot explains the commercial motivation for turning 'old man's boozers' into wallet laundries for the young.

Did he get a free meal as well? And is there a waiting list for his job?

Jeffrey Steingarten once told me that a manufacturer whose product he had denigrated in a column had pulled about $70,000 worth of advertising. His publisher ordered that he was not to be told and he only found out months later by accident. Not so much a Chinese Wall as a tectonic plate.

Strictly Germ-Proof