John Whiting

There can be a problem with red kidney beans, although the higher temperature in pressure cookers should solve it.

A disheartening footnote to the discussion of English apples: The torching of the orchards. Scroll to the end of the column. Don't take this article too seriously. The Guardian continually plays with these obsessions, which are not class-oriented in the traditional Marxist way, but merely measure what is hip. All newspapers play this game now, which consist of DIY kits for helping readers to place themselves within whatever they conceive to be their peers' fashionable in-group.

If you're losing steam -- any steam -- the amount of water lost (and therefore the amount required) will depend on a variable which is impossible to control with accuracy. Steam may be escaping slowly or quickly, depending on how much heat is applied -- it's like a steam engine, but one with an escape valve acting as a governor.In other words, in order not to run dry, there must be a larger reserve. You'll learn just how much when the steam stops coming out and the food is carbonized.

A point worth emphasizing is that a modern spring-loaded pressure cooker can be used with much less water because steam is not escaping constantly from under a weight. If you can hear it hissing or whistling, you're losing steam and therefore water. With older models that can't hold their liquor , the longer they're under pressure, the larger the back-up water supply must be.

That makes sense to me. I never asked Henry what the name meant; the connection with the tragedian seemed a bit far-fetched, but it had been mentioned elsewhere and I went along with it because it gave me a snappy subtitle. EDIT: My French dictionary confirms that racine's figurative meanings include beginning, principle, origin. I like it.

If it's any excuse, we've had our Demerere for several years, purchased back when it was rather less than half the price it is now. Having used the bobbing weight type, I'm much happier with a spring-loaded valve that elevates through three rings indicating successive pressures and doesn't hiss until it passes ideal maximum. (If you'll using a minumum of liquid, you back it off.) Has anyone ever tried braizing in pure brandy? I can well understand your affection for the tried-and-true. My wife's Honda Civic is 1985 vintage and will see her out -- 70,000 miles thus far -- and my VW Westfalia campervan is 1981 and will almost certainly outlast me. At the moment we're neck-and-neck.

My own excuse is (a) size matters. Mine is big enough to do a good-sized bird in and also to use as a stockpot. I like pressure-cooking stock because it's not necessary to put in extra water to allow for evaporation and because it takes a third of the time. And (b) It has such a heavy base that one can brown meat thoroughly in it without burning.EDIT: I'd love to have my mother's old pressure cooker that she used for canning. It was big enough to hold twelve pint jars in two layers of six (five around one). Sorry, I didn't see the thread. It must have taken place during the time when I had succeeded in quitting eGullet cold turkey [sic] . . . EDIT: Wrong. Just checked the thread; I simply missed it. But I won't miss the course. . . . before Richard Kilgore cruelly lured me back to participate in the Robb Walsh round table. I got hooked again.

Much depends on the particular pressure cooker. We use a Belgian Demeyere 8 1/2 litre cooker that's supurb -- thick well-cored bottom that never burns food unless one is stupid. It holds the steam so well that I can braise with as little as a cup of thin liquid, so that a joint or a bird on a raised tripod cooks entirely in steam under pressure -- wonderful for subduing tough cuts of meat. Intractible game birds can be browned quickly in the oven at high heat, cooked in the pressure cooker, and returned for a quick blast in the oven to crisp the skin. It's not cheap (now about £175 in Britain) but it's a fraction of the cost of a professional steam oven which to a considerable extent it's able to imitate. The great Dutch/American food writer Roy Andries de Groot wrote a useful recipe book, Pressure Cookery Perfected. Most pressure cooker books and recipes assume an unsophisticated palate, but de Groot definitely wasn't in that category. Lorna J. Sass, Cooking Under Pressure is more recent (1989). Much of Jacques Manière's classic Cuisine à la Vapeur (published in English translation as The Art of Cooking with Steam) is adaptable to pressure cooking.

Dried fruits of one sort or another were among mankind's first dependable foods and an easy quick energy source. They also figured prominently in mediaeval meat dishes, as they still do in the Near East. One may like them or not, but it's silly to condemn any of them out of hand as though they were recent inventions of Kellog's or General Mills.

Racine: not a French tragedy! When Henry Harris decided in 2002 to open a traditional French restaurant in London, I got a phone call from him asking what I thought of the name Club des Cent. This was a prestigious Paris dining club whose exclusivity was determined by corporeal as well as social weight – members had to tip the scales at a hundred kilos! I had just read a report that the Club des Cent had recently deserted Maxim’s because of its falling standards, which indicated that it was in fact still meeting. I suggested that it would be a good idea to check out whether they would object to their name being adopted. He reported in due course, And so after further consideration Henry and his front-of-house partner Eric Garnier settled on the classic French tragedian Racine as their patron saint.In the couple of years since Racine opened, Mary and I hadn’t got around to visiting it. Not because the reports were unfavorable – quite the contrary – but because there’s small reason to seek out a French restaurant in London. As I have observed so often, it’s usually cheaper and more reliable to cross the Channel for good bourgeois cooking, including the cost of transportation. But for my birthday dinner this year there just wasn’t time to go where my palate would lead me, and so Racine came to mind and we made a 7 o’clock reservation. We like to eat early and have the restaurant to ourselves, but on a Wednesday evening it was already filling up. The menu offered a possible explanation – the set luncheon was also available in the evening if ordered before 7:30. It happened to include the dishes on the menu that most interested Mary, and so she prudently chose from it, while I determined to pig out from the a la carte – after all, it was my birthday! (Never mind that just a few hours before we had polished off a venison suet pudding at Saint John Bread and Wine.) Racine’s discreet colour scheme is composed of the various shades of brown wood and leather that one encounters in French brasseries of a certain age and class, such as Paris’s venerable Balzar. There was no background music save the quiet early evening murmur of the clientele, as decorous as the décor. There were no brash young stockbrokers shouting at the waiters – they were no doubt incarcerated in some glass-and-steel prison, polishing off their first bottle of Petrus. In short, this was a restaurant where we could talk without raising our voices. It was also possible to eavesdrop with discretion; in the course of the evening a middle aged couple at an adjoining table discussed their grandson’s first year at Eton, while a young pianist on the other side of us was explaining to his companions the challenge he faced in performing the Moszkowski Concerto in E with the CBSO. Our first courses arrived. Feeling devout, I had ordered Jesus de Lyon, a soft fatty sausage whose large overlapping slices were complemented by a dish of vinegary cornichons. They set each other off nicely. Mary’s cream of celeriac soup was more a celeriac of cream soup, with an ineffable richness whose calorie count, if stated on the menu, would have run over onto the back of the page. For my main course, I pushed the boat out with a favorite, tête de veau à la sauce ravigote. (Like the other traditional items on the menu, it was unpretentiously identified in English.) Having eaten it twice within the year at Paris bistros, I was tempting fate; but when the dish arrived it was immediately apparent from the generous slice of brain and the pervasive mustard/caper aroma that it would be in a class with its French rivals. Brain with tête de veau is no longer to be taken for granted, even in Paris. Last year it was lacking even from the outstanding version at the venerable Cave Petrissan. At the bar I made a jesting reference to its absence in the wake of mad cow disease. Madame did not smile, but replied evenly that her mother, who had eaten traditional tête de veau all her life. had died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. As I turned several shades of puce, she added magnanimously, “But you had no way of knowing.” Mary’s simple roast lamb with vegetables proved to be a generous overlapping circle of thick slices concealing richly dark-roasted vegetables into which the meat juices were slowly seeping. Simple fare, but in Mary’s opinion the best roast lamb she had ever eaten. After sharing a generous forkful I could readily empathize. Such a meal called for a return visit. A month later we were back and ready to challenge Henry to equal the best of our Paris memories. Mary’s inevitable first choice was soupe de poissons, a dish we make regularly at home. A glance at its deep brown color and a whiff of its aroma told us that we had been outclassed. The texture was thick enough to coat a spoon, the rouille was generously laced with garlic and cayenne, the croutons were crisp but not jawbreaking, and the gruyere was the sort that satisfactorily dribbles down the chin. These accoutrements can no longer be taken for granted, even in France. There were no garlic cloves to rub on the croutons, but one could “make the boat” as I had been taught by a lovely waitress in Nice – spread a crouton generously with rouille, pile it with gruyere, float it on a sea of soup and sail away to Paradise! For me, an enormous helping of “little gray cells” – a plate of calf’s brain with black butter and capers. A squidgy mass of ecstasy! The Victorian directors of the Regents Park Zoo decimated the creatures under their care in order to up their smarts by dining off the brains of as many living species as possible. For me, as for them, the dietary myth of verisimilitude was roundly disproven. For a main course we shared a double entrecote of veal and creamed spinach with foie gras and wild mushrooms. Was it traditional white veal or animal-friendly pink veal? The young French waiter who took our order didn’t seem to understand the question. But we needn’t have worried – the generous hunks of meat were reassuringly pink. A New Age California restaurant would devote a whole paragraph to outlining the calf’s ancestry and daily diet; Henry merely identifies the major ingredients, assuming that you will credit him with quality sourcing. What fresh springy mushrooms! What rich sauce! What ambrosial spinach! And best of all, what flavorful and tenderly resilient meat! And all washed down with a velevety-smooth and versatile Côte du Rhône which, chameleon-like, subtly altered its savor with each varied mouthful. If I seem carried away, you may credit the fact that Mary rarely gets through as much as a glass of wine, and so I am forced, regretfully, to drink for two. We had had such luck with old familiar classics that Mary decided to finish with a crème caramel. The consistency was firm but yielding in the mouth, the caramel sauce surrounding it rich and creamy. My own final course proved to be the only disappointment. The cheeses from Patricia Michelson’s La Fromagerie were in good condition, but consisted of four narrow strips, each about three inches long. At £6.50 per serving, the mark-up must rival the wine list of a greedy hotel. But how does a restaurant manage its cheeses if it doesn’t serve enough to turn them over smartly? The EU food laws now strangling the artisanal cheese industry require that they be kept refrigerated at a temperature which masks their flavor. For an evening’s service they may be brought up to a warmer temperature, but an individual cheese may only be thus warmed up twice. If it is not consumed by the end of the second exposure, it must be thrown away, even if it is reaching perfection (or so I was told by a catering manager). A butcher once gave me a whole wheel of Grinzola that had arrived unrefrigerated a day late. Sectioned and wrapped, it fed me magnificently from the freezer for a year. My guess is that Racine serves so few cheese orders that they are kept refrigerated at the highest legal temperature and cut for serving into strips narrow enough to warm sufficiently by the time they reach the table. A disappointing end to a very satisfying meal – but today even in France one rarely sees a groaning cheese board whose aroma announces its trundling approach from halfway across the room. If the stern admonitions of the cheese police were justified, there wouldn’t be a dedicated cheddarast left alive! We would have liked to congratulate Henry on the meal, but on both occasions he was out of town. If this had been the venue of a celebrity chef, priced like centre court seats at Wimbledon, I would have felt cheated, but I was content to learn that the kitchen performed reliably in his absence. With its careful balance of quality, authenticity and economy, Racine appears to be getting it about right. The dining room is full, many if not most of the patrons seem to be regulars, and there’s a buzz which reassures strangers that they’ve come to the right place. Even the dreaded Michael Winner has his regular table. Eric Garnier assured us that he was a reasonable and well-behaved diner who ordered with precision and was usually out the door within an hour. Temper tantrums? Apparently just part of the act. Racine, 239 Brompton Road, London SW3, Tel 020 7584 4477. Set lunch, early dinner 3 courses £19.95; a la carte c£30. (plus coffee, wine, 12½% service) ©2004 John Whiting

One thing that you'll find dining with an enthusiastic well-behaved child is how welcoming good French restaurants are to families. Nor will the waiter try to fob her off with an up-market McD Happy Meal.

My wife doesn't hold with such gadgets -- she doesn't need them -- but I think that a preserving/candy thermometer is useful.

My first visit to the KDW Feinschmecker-Etage, it was unequivocally given over to luxury; five years later there were endless shelves of American packaged food. My last visit to Berlin, I didn't bother to return.

I thought a Flexitarian was a Unitarian who sometimes believes in the Trinity.

From my essay on foie gras, "Life depends on the liver":

Alas, too true. For conventional orange marmalade, I haven't tasted better than my wife's; this is her recipe from Entertaining Single-Handed:

Definitely, especially Le Mimosa

Jonathan, precisely correct. These magazine articles are invariably written for tourists, not for the people who actually shop at such markets, week by week. The authors inevitably pick those markets that are the most picturesque; whether they are overrated or overpriced is irrelevant. Borough Market is indeed remarkable, and I shop there for certain items every week, including a stall on the edge that is one of the few places in London to sell batavia lettuce. But everyday vegetables? Only for the rich or the extravagent. My wife does our vegetable shopping in the Chapel Street Market, Islington, for a half to a third of the price. And there's the Berwick Street market, with its "tray for a pound" bargains. And of course there are the ethnic markets on the far-flung edges of London, places I've never heard of, where the ethnic communities that still cook refuse to pay ridiculous prices for the privilege.

No offense taken. I was merely pointing out that the less insane among us can eat oysters wihout taking out a second mortgage.

In most peasant agricultural societies, meat has been a flavoring agent rather than the bulk of the diet, and most often preserved meat. Carnivorous feasts are special occasions, not daily pigouts. But this does not in itself prove that a semi-vegetarian diet is the healthiest; it only conforms to the local conditions imposed by the physical world. The nature that "knows best" gave the Innuit a diet consisting of fish and blubber. It also periodically obliterates life on earth with a passing asteroid.

A Borough Market stall has small oysters at 50p each, which is more like Ile de Re prices.

Stick with your memories. The small native Cox's are now almost impossible to obtain; the commercially available ones are grown abroad, are larger and have lost their intensity. I share your indifference to Marine Ices. They are non-dairy and therefore kosher to eat with meat, which helps to explain their popularity.

I think Monbiot is aware that particular kinds of smaller shops are required. In fact, the "convenience" stores are being rapidly bought out by the supermarket chains, which the monopolies commission seems happy to allow. They have taken the position that the two portions of the market are independent of each other. Meanwhile in London Tesco has bought out Cullen and Europa. Left to market forces, the food suppliers can only become as narrowly controlled as the communications industry.

There is already the Brogdale Horticultural Trust. Ironically, it was set up with government support which has now been largely taken away, so that they are hanging on by the skin of their Knobby Russets.

One of the ironic facts about apples is that every tree grown from seed produces a new variety. Those that are preserved are from cuttings grafted onto root stock. Come Armageddon, some New Age Johnny Appleseed may scatter seeds across the English landscape, so that thousands of new varieties may flourish when there are no humans left to eat them.