Wet mushrooms and John Torode

Firstly, apologies. This is shameless 'sleb piggy backing. Mr Torode only makes the most fleeting of appearances here, and then only by twitter. Secondly, this isn't nearly as funny as I hoped it'd be. Maybe I'm not on form today but this is quite a dry read (and that's pretty much the only gag herein).

John Torode did initiate this post because he scolded a Masterchef contestant for immersing mushrooms, claiming they soak up water 'like a sponge' and wash away flavour. I've always thought this was a piece of kitchen myth so tweeted John Torode and the Masterchef program:

@MasterChefUK @JohnTorode1 if mushrooms absorb water "like a sponge", why don't they swell up and burst when it rains?

He replied:

John Torode @JohnTorode1@NewRiverDining @MasterChefUK .. Because the top ok the underside absorbs the water, which doesn't get wet when it rains .

OK, so even allowing for some strangeness in his language, this still isn't a very satisfactory response. Rain bounces for a start and mushrooms sit in vegetation which gets wet with precipitation and dew. If mushrooms act like sponges wouldn't the moisture be wicked off anything that comes in contact with them? John didn't reply to my further replies with links to debunking websites but someone called @HelenWestern did suddenly launch herself at me "you're clearly no fungi to be with". I can only assume she's his internet minder.

Purists talk of using a stiff, dry brush or wiping with a damp cloth but I prefer to wash mushrooms as I've noticed sizeable pieces of soil (I hope it's soil) can get trapped inside the mushroom gills. Wiping will not remove these. Yes, it's easy to wipe buttons, chestnuts, ceps and portabello but what of delicate oyster, trompette de la mort or pied bleu? There's no way you can wipe the deeply pleached and perforated surface of a morel.

Sod that!

Mushrooms are 90% water anyway so will a little external dampness really make much of a difference to their flavour? Cooking them is about removing water.

McGee debunked this some time ago. As have several others. But I decided to do my own investigation. I do, so you don't have to. No mushrooms were hurt in this process. That's a lie. They all died and were eaten but at least they didn't die in vain. They perished in a perfectly delicious ham hock, rocket and vermouth sauce.

Massacre!

I weighed a supermarket pack of chestnut mushrooms. 324g. I had accounted for the weight of the plastic box.

I washed them. I would normally put them in a colander and give them a blast under a cold tap but this is the nuclear option.

Then I shook off the excess water and weighed them again in their original packing. They were still damp to the touch.

335g. They have taken on 11g of water, that's just over two teaspoonfuls. 11g represents an increase of mass of 3%. This is more than I would have expected but I seriously doubt this is enough to wash away the flavour of the mushrooms. There were about 20 mushrooms in the pack so that's about half a gram of water each. And certainly, much of that was surface water and so would evaporate on contact with a hot pan. A 3% take-up cannot be equated to a sponge. 

I think it's therefore safe to wash mushrooms. See, no jokes.

Redcurrant Jelly (or: SEE! It doesn't always work for me)

Nice colours... but not much else

I've been asking around for a quality redcurrant jelly. I use it a lot, often in beef and lamb gravy. It adds an interesting fruity sweetness. I've never found one with much depth of flavour though. It's all been a bit one dimensional. Anyway, answers there came but one: make your own. 

So I did.

Not good.

I imagine the arse end of an awful winter is not the right time to be buying berries. I did anyway. £4 for two tiny Sainsbury's punnets. Yes sir, we saw you coming from the end of the road, maybe further. Probably raised under glass in the dim, watery, wintery sun. About as effective as being bullied into growth by an asthmatic with a torch.

I boiled the berries gently in just enough water to cover, for about ten minutes, until tender. Then dripped them over a muslin-ed sieve for a few hours. I then added 130g of sugar to the collected liquid and heated it all to 104°C.

The result... It's not much is it? 

Frankly, you disgust me.

Think how much liquid there would be without 130g of sugar. Nice colour? Yes. Expensive? Very. Packed with flavour? No. Interesting? No. Different to shop bought? Only in its lack of flavour.  I think I'll try again in the late summer, maybe pick my own berries.

NEXT!

Even easier focaccia

Look at that texture! I make this bread at least once a week. I've been experimenting and found that if you only prove the dough once you get a lighter texture and no less flavour. This means the want-focaccia-eat-focaccia cycle is now under two hours. I realise there may be purists squeaking with alarm and indignation but I cannot tell the difference between one prove and two. In fact, guests actively seem to prefer this new recipe. I know my children do.

You'll need a small square baking tin. I use this 9" square one. Don't use anything bigger or you won't get as good a rise (too much surface area). Take 100g of plain flour, 200g of strong bread flour and 10g dried yeast. This is more than one of those little packets but you shouldn't be buying them anyway. Buy a little tin. They're next door on the supermarket shelf. If your scales doesn't do 10g then just use a tablespoonful. Mix this up. If you're Popeye, go ahead and do this by hand in a big bowl. Otherwise use a mixer. Don't use the dough hook, use the normal paddle. Add 50ml of good olive oil mixed in with 220ml of cold water. Yes, cold. Beat this in and let the machine run for a few minutes. Now add 5-10g of salt and three inches of rosemary, finely chopped. Let the machine run until the dough starts to look shiny and elastic. It will be sticky. You would struggle to knead this by hand.

From this, lumpy mix...

To this. Smooth, elastic and with a shine. See those long, glutinous strands?
That will give your bread structure.

Splash a little oil in your tin and then Pour/scoop/scrape the dough in also. Press the dough into the corners, working the oil into the dough. You don't need to cover this. The oil will prevent the dough drying out. Let the dough prove in a warm, draft free space for at least an hour, until it's at the top of the tin. 

Bake at 230°C for just 13-15 minutes. You want a good golden colour. While it's still warm, splash the top with good olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt.

When it's cool, I cut mine into squares and griddle (as above). This adds much flavour. Serve with olive oil and balsamic vinegar or a chunky tomato sauce (or a tin of soup).

The group shot - let's make a change

Introducing the new group shot. I'm bored of taking the same photo at the table. It needs a big depth of field for a start and invariably I don't have enough light - unless I turn everything on and have my guests blinking and grimacing into the camera like bug eyed chameleons under the Attenborough torch. No. Let's start the evening with a shot composed by the group. Ideally with some narrative. Maybe with props.

This is the official pic of Sam's group (Sam is front left). I did rather spring the idea on them. They discussed suspending someone at the front but settled for the school photo. Sam is another Palmers Green adventurer in food and has just started up a company called Layla's Pantry (@LaylasPantry) making premium quality comestibles. She's starting with peanut butter but the plan is to have an ever expanding range.

Back to the group shot... I actually think I prefer this picture. It has the disadvantage that you can't see many faces but it does have mystery. What is Graham looking at?

A recipe book. Or not.

Just insert words and pictures

I get asked if I am going to 'do' a recipe book. Well, no. Not really. Why? Because no bugger is offering me any money to do so. Because I am an unknown in a vast field. Because, save for this meagre effort, I am awful at self promotion. But mainly because all my recipes are pinched from other people (just as they pinched before them). Alright, some are original assemblies of elements from other recipes (but also pinched). It's almost impossible to be truly original in cooking. Food is old. Eating is old and really rather popular. If it can be eaten it has been. If it can be pureed, freeze dried, sun dried, sous-vided, desiccated or flock sprayed, it has been. And that's just ONE of Heston's recipes for chips.

However! I have let the notion distract me. If I were to 'do' a book, what would it be? How could I compete for shelf space? What would my spine appeal be? In what manner would dear readers covet my covers?

Well, I finally have my approach.

I am very systematic in my approach to things. If I'm good at one thing, this is it. I like to make molecules; to break parts down to their simplest constituents and then rebuild. It's why I'm good at organising. You cannot cook well if you organise badly. OK, you can make a sandwich without fear of injury but a six course meal might mean you losing a limb.

I also notice that while recipes are obviously necessary they are problematic because they stop you thinking about the various processes involved. Why do you blanch the onion first? Why seal the meat? Worse are the calls to not overwork or overwhip or underbake without testimony or illustration to reveal when you are close to infraction. What are the parameters? I once saw an instruction to use water that was NEARLY boiling. FFS.

Also, and all too often, some recipes merely repeat instruction for reasons unknown., like wipe not wash your mushrooms. (Heston is very good at debunking cooking myths.) Mushrooms don't absorb water you know. Try weighing them before and after a deluge if you don't believe me. The web has been brilliant too at allowing the truly dedicated, fixated and pedantic to flash their wares. The Syrup and Tang site has so many pictures of macarons/macaroons at every stage of the process. BUT  of the mistakes and the successes. They do so you don't have to. I found it invaluable.

Great numbers of people, reticent and querulous as so many are when put before an oven, do just follow the written injunctions. They/you know no better.  It's all very well for Nigel Slater to tell you that recipes are only blueprints and encourage rule breaking but you have to understand them before you can break them and if this the first, and probably last, Mary Berry layered chocolate rum cake you've ever made and it's for Nanny Jones' 80th and Sainsbury's have no more of this good chocolate left... then you sure, as eggs are something Delia taught you to boil, aren't going to branch out on your own. Are you? Does it matter if the cake tin is 12" and not 8"? Where in the oven should it be? Does a fan really change the cooking time? Does opening the door matter? Nanny Jones says it does - but she's off her face on the rum. Your mother did warn you. She may be old but she's sly.

I want a book that's like a Latin Primer. Simple examples that illuminate future complexity. Let's say a dozen recipes that introduce you to all the basic techniques and the chemistry of cooking. Each step would be photographed. Overwhipping and underbaking would be demonstrated. You need to know the verbs and nouns before you approach the sentence  This would definitely include a loaf of bread. There are only four ingredients necessary in bread: flour, water, yeast and salt. So how come so many awful loaves? (For that matter, how come so many appalling martinis - where there's only three,if you include the twist and you really should be*). You need to know about gluten and how this is a matrix to capture the gas the yeast makes. Bread is a gluten foam that is hardened by heat; by baking in an oven. The book would explain all about gluten; when it's good to work it and when it's not. You want it in bread but not in pastry. I think I'd like a simple central recipe with annotations all around. You can read the instructions but also learn the reasons for the instructions. Maybe pages you could fold out? It's as complex as you want. A culinary Talmud if you will. After the simple recipe there would be further, more complex breads with other ingredients. I think this may work well as a tablet app.

There would also be a simple sponge cake recipe. The most basic cake used to be called a pound cake by the Victorians because it used a pound each of fat, flour and sugar. That's all cake is. But it's also what biscuits are... and pastry. What's the difference? What's 'short' mean in a crust? Probably need to know about gluten again. I want the reader to understand exactly why they are adding eggs, or baking powder or ground almonds. If you know WHY it's there, you will be able to remedy situations when you've forgotten to add it. Or if you can leave it out.

We need a little physics too... sorry... but if only to deal with cake tins. How often does the tin in your kitchen match the requirements of the book? I have a deep 8" square not a 10" round but the mix fits. Should I change the cooking time? And why specify 20-25 minutes if you're not to to explain what might happen in the interim? What's meant to be going down - apart from the middle when you take it out too early?

I'd also have a roast chicken (for cooking muscle and making stock), a meat pie (for pastry and slow cooking), some pan fried fish, a white sauce, and custard.

So that's my idea. I don't even have a name for it yet. Anyone fancy financing it? Anyone going to Amazon me a link to just such a book?

*******************

Postscript. My friend Bee (wonderful photographer - she makes the mundane beautiful) suggests this could be a simpler, more practical version of McGee. She's right.


*And the number of times I've seen bartenders lovingly strip off a piece of fresh zest and then twist it AWAY from the glass. Sheesh. It's about the citrus oils! That's the difference between a mediocre Martini and staggering home at 4am with a strange mobile number written on your hand.

Neighbours Ken and Moira and a vegetable terrine

So that's clearly not Ken but it is Moira, in the middle (and let's not joke about who's the vegetable terrine!), flanked by another Moira and a Maria, friends from school (don't anyone use that awful word 'bezzies'. Yuk.) Ken was a little camera shy maybe. They came to us to celebrate their 24th wedding anniversary. They only live two doors down. They are always gregarious and interesting but I always seem to wake up with a sore head. Anyway, Moira is a fish eating vegetarian...

Good colours

This is a vegetable terrine; my first in fact. It's loosely based on a Michel Roux recipe. I used wilted spinach as a casing and a filling of celeriac mousse. It's not complicated or even very fiddly. You line a terrine tin (loaf tin) with cling film and then with spinach, blanched for a few seconds. The case is filled with mousse and layers of vegetables. 

I used celery, beans and asparagus, which were blanched for a few minutes, and roasted carrot and shallots. Why roasted? For more flavour and some sweetness. I managed to find some long thin carrots which was very useful. In retrospect I might prefer more veg and less mousse. The mousse was made by cubing 300g of peeled celeriac (about a half) and simmering this with 500ml of double cream until the root is tender. Season with salt and white pepper. Blend this until very smooth then add three egg yolks and four eggs and pulse a few more times. I then added some finely chopped parsley and lemon thyme.

Blanched and refreshed

Roasted

Top the whole with more blanched spinach and pull in the cling film tightly over the top. Don't worry about cling film in the oven. Cook the terrine at 160°C for around 1 hour and 20 minutes. Cool and then chill in the fridge overnight. Allow the terrine to warm to room temperature before serving. This is for flavour and texture. Cold veg don't taste of much. 

I served the terrine with roasted tomatoes that I'd coated with a mix of salt, sugar and spices. I cooked them for only six minutes or so at 250°C. I wanted a slightly charred exterior. This was plated with lots of parsley and a vinaigrette sweetened with some gooseberry jam (see above). Michel Roux suggests his pear and lime salsa. If I ever manage to find a pear that's somewhere between a rock and mush, I'll make some and try it.

Quite pretty. 

This was the fish dish they had for mains. Pan fried cod with a anchovy and rosemary butter. Accompanied with charred gem and braised (and then fried to colour a little) fennel. This was served with fennel seed roasted 'crash' potatoes - par boiled, crushed and roasted with a drizzle of olive oil.

Toffee apple pudding and Crème fraîche ice cream

No, that's not Branston Pickle on the sponge. But yes, that is a large and rather delicious blackberry tadpole.

One of those happy kitchen accidents. I turned my back for a moment and my apple juice and sugar reduced rather too quickly to a caramel. I managed to catch it before it actually burnt though. There is a gnat's wing between a deep caramel and monstrous sugary tar. I cooled the pan quickly in a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process.

You start with these:

You end up with this:

There are six elements to this dish:

1. Apple sponges
2. Toffee apple sauce
3. Apple crisps
4. Crystallised walnuts
5. Blackberry sauce
6. Crème fraîche ice cream

This dessert is a variation of the apple and rhubarb dish I did last year. That was based on a James Mackenzie recipe. However  this replaces the rhubarb sorbet with Philip Howard's crème fraîche ice cream. I wanted something tangy, and not so creamy to cut against the sticky apple sauce. This is really worth trying. Even if you don't have an ice cream machine. The texture is very silky and there's no annoying, splitty, stir-me-for-an-hour, mother of a custard to make as a base. 

The first four elements are in the original recipe (substituting walnuts for the pistachios). Just take the apple sauce that bit further, heating it until it becomes a caramel. I'm not going to offer any reassurance here. You may well burn it. It is a bugger.

The blackberry sauce is... blackberries and sugar syrup whizzed together then sieved.


Creme Fraiche Ice Cream

About as simple as it gets this. There's very little cooking. A child could do it... if it didn't involve burny, melty sugar.

Combine 110g caster sugar and 35g liquid glucose in a heavy pan with 50g water and gently heat until the mass has dissolved. Off the heat, allow to cool, and then whisk in the 260ml Crème fraîche, 260ml double cream and 15ml of lemon juice. Cool the pan in a bowl of ice water and when very cold, churn in your ice cream maker. 

Now for some reason I can't fathom, Phil calls this a sorbet. There maybe some technical say-so for this but it's escaping me. He also warns against churning more than two hours before eating but I've had this after two hours and after a week. On neither occasion did I complain.

A note on plating up... paste a blob of the sticky apple on the plates to secure the walnut mix as a base for the ice cream.If you don't the whole shebang will skate across the plate like a black and white Buster Keaton, as soon as you pick it up.



While I was looking up things for this post I found this picture on The Square's website.

Golly, doesn't THAT look fantastic. I'm assuming it's a beetroot and goats cheese starter.

I will steal! Philip Howard is an artist indeed.

Michelle and Eme and a Very UnBritish Stew

That's Eme at the end of the table, back for her fourth time. That's Michelle, second on the left. And that's the stew behind the salmon and under the salad. I know, awful shot.

This was largely a congregation of female neighbours, corralled by Eme and Michelle. I wanted to try out the Caponata I'd had in Sicily last year. They agreed. It's simple, one-pot, peasant cooking.

A real departure from my usual slow cooked British fare; this is anything but. Caponata shouldn't work for me, containing as it does many things I don't really like: aubergine, olives, capers, celery. But bizarrely, once combined in this simple tomato sweet and sour (agrodolce) sauce: frickin' loverly. The Italians insist on calling this a stew but you can't clump stew can you? Stew flows... or kludges.

I first tasted it in the Michelin starred La Madia in October 2014. It was a complete revelation. One of those dishes you wouldn't have if you knew the ingredients. But then, I am a little conservative in my food tastes. I know! I wish I could be one of those people who can throw capers on, say, spam and cherries, flash fry them and polish them off while pontificating eloquently and with style; people who can munch through bacon rind, gristle, apple cores. Can't be done.

I served my caponata with a simple piece of pan fried salmon and a dashing of red pepper vinegar. Oh, and that poxy basil leaf.

One of the big differences between cooks casual and keen is the hot pan. That should read HOT PAN. Many seem scared of heat. Lots of people ask me how I get the fish crispy on the outside and soft inside. The secret, you guessed, is the HOT PAN. You should feel the heat on your face. The oil/butter should be turning golden brown and hazing like a childhood summer afternoon. The fish skin should sssssssizzle when it hits the pan. three quarters of the time should be skin side down, then flip for maybe another minute to crisp and brown the other side. Serve quickly. The fish will continue to cook.

Caponata (Sweet & Sour Aubergine Stew)
This is my version of Carluccio's recipe.

Serves 6 as a main or maybe 10 as a starter

1 large onion, diced
 small
4 celery stalks, including leaves, diced like the onion
5 tbsp olive oil
3 aubergines, diced into little regular, half inch chunks.
1 tbsp salted capers, soaked in water for 10 minutes, then drained
20 green olives, stoned
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
50g concentrated tomato paste

Blanche the onion and celery in lightly salted water for three minutes, then drain.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the aubergine chunks and fry until brown and tender. Add the onion, celery and all the remaining ingredients. Stir well, then cover and cook for about 10 minutes. No lid? Make a cartouche. Should the sauce look too dry, add a tablespoon or two of water during cooking. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Maybe add some more vinegar or sugar.

Better pics of the hosts. This is the main course: braised lamb with beetroot, kale and Yorkshires.

Sarah, a new neighbour, and actually from Yorkshire, said these were the best puddings she'd ever had.

How did the lamb go down?

Warm Winter Puddings - Dates and Walnuts

Pudding. PUDDING! For this is no dessert. This is a British pud: warming, sticky, rich with dried fruit (kinda), life-affirming, friendly, hopefully not too heavy. A bit like the cardiganed autodidact at your favourite pub. The one who buys you a pint of dark and lays a reassuring hand on your shoulder. Life's not that bad: he says, in his Falstaffian brogue as he taps out his rough shag on his shoe. And you believe him. OK, enough. No, this is a Northern European creation. This would never have made it in the Med. Try rowing your trireme after eating one. 

Pudding originally meant a small sack of meat, like black pudding (or Michael Gove). The origin is disputed. Maybe from old French: boudin. Or, more convincingly I think, from proto-German. Puddek is Low German sausage. Puduc is an Old English wart. Ew. Anyway, at some point, as with mince pies, the meat disappeared and we were left with cloth bags of sugar, flour, fat and dried fruit to be boiled or steamed... or baked like the one above... which does away with the bag and just uses a pudding mould.

You will need little pudding moulds for this. Disregard the pretentious dariole. There is something very satisfying about that little squat shape. These boys need to be buttered.

OK, so three elements: pud, sauce and cream. Nothing challenging at all in any of this.

Walnut and Date Pudding.
This owes a lot (ahem) to Flicky Cloake's recipe in her Guardian column.

Serves 6.

175g dried dates, stoned and roughly chopped

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

300ml boiling water
 AND/OR water + rum/brandy etc.
50g unsalted butter, softened

80g golden caster sugar

80g dark muscovado sugar

2 eggs, beaten

175g flour

1 tsp baking powder

Big pinch of ground cloves
 and/or allspice and/or cinnamon
75g walnuts pieces (smaller than halves. Smash them up if needs be.)

Put the dates and bicarb in a dish and cover with the boiling water. You can use some rum or brandy too if you like. The alcohol will all burn off in the oven. Well, probably. Try it on your kids. If they get drunk, it didn't. Leave the dates to soften while you prepare the rest of the pudding. 

Beat together the butter and caster sugar until fluffy, beat in the muscovado and then the eggs, a little at a time. Having a food mixer here is a godsend, or be prepared for cramping forearms and flapping bingo wings (Not me obv, I am incredibly lithe). Creaming muscovado is no fun. Stir in the flour, baking powder, cloves (and other spices if using) and a pinch of salt until well combined, and then add the dates and their soaking liquid. Finally add the walnuts. Mix well.

Pour into the BUTTERED moulds. NO MORE than three quarters full. If you do, it'll bubble over and be lost to the oven gods.

Bake at 180°C for around 25 mins, until well risen and springy to the touch. If in doubt go under rather than over. You want these babies moist. No one will mind eating a little undercooked batter. Turn out onto a plate and leave under the mould until required. They stay hot for at least ten minutes. 

Salted Caramel Sauce.

Best to use a pan that doesn't have a dark interior so you can see the colour of your caramel. Even better if the pan is heavy. Thin walled pans can lead to black sugar at the sides that can taint the sauce. But don't worry too much. But if you do worry too much, brush down the sides of the pan with water and a pastry brush.

250g caster sugar

5 tablespoons water

200ml double cream

100g butter

Heat the sugar and water SLOWLY until the sugar has dissolved. Then on a big heat until the mix becomes a golden brown caramel. This is anything over 160°C but closer to 180°C. If you don't have a probe or a sugar thermometer, just keep a close eye. You want deep golden brown. Dark brown is bad here. Black is death.

Carefully! Take the caramel pan off the heat. Let cool for a minute and then whisk in the cream and butter. Carefully, because that sugar will burn like napalm. It will look like everything's gone horrifically wrong for a while but weep not. Return the pan to the heat, have faith and keep stirring. You will be rewarded with a thick, glossy sauce. Now you add as much salt as you want. Or none at all. Warning: this stuff is culinary crack cocaine. You'll be pouring it on everything.

Vanilla Marscapone Cream

Because there's not quite enough fat in double cream. lightly whisk 300ml double cream and then add the same volume of marscapone and a tablespoon of icing sugar. Add some vanilla seeds, either from a pod or two or a paste (I have a half kilo jar in the fridge these days!). Whip this until gently stiff then place in the fridge to firm up.

A word about vanilla. DON'T buy pods from supermarkets. I've seen these selling for as much as £2 per pod. If you are going to use vanilla in any quantity buy it on-line I use the pastes. They keep for months in the fridge.

To Serve. You don't really need me to tell you this? Turn out the puddings. They really shouldn't stick. If they have, try and make it look deliberate. Pour the hot caramel sauce over. Serve the cream on the side. Too close and it will die in the hot sugar lava.

If you're stooopid, you could try making quenelles. See the one in the picture? That took about 20 goes.

This bloke makes it look easy. It's not.

Extraordinary wines but a problem with presentation

Ian and Marion returned with another of their gang of Keble School parents. This time they also brought the finest collection of Grand Cru wines I've ever seen assembled. Now I don't normally drink AT ALL in the kitchen but I have a real weakness for good Burgundy so when they offered me a slurp, I accepted. I've found that even a glass of wine can affect my timings. Invariably there are eight things happening at once during service and a wine mind only allows me to deal with seven of them.

Even more unusually, as the party left around midnight, Rohin asked me to join them for drinks at his place. What a gent. Of course I accepted.

Shocking head the next morning.

I should explain that the TV screen in the corner of this (and many other) pictures is linked to my music system, it shows the track playing - and allows selection of others. It's not Homes Under the Hammer left on by mistake (putting that on at all would be a mistake!).

That's my slow braised lamb shanks in a white port and rosemary gravy with Jerusalem artichoke puree, Yorkshires, kale and creamed leeks, which I made. And a bottle of 2007 Pontet Canet, which I didn't. Parker gave that wine 91-94 points.

But the evening was not without its problems. See below.

The starter was an issue. A new idea of mine: smoked mackerel salad with bitter leaf, grapefruit and home-made sweet pickles. The flavour was excellent but LOOK AT IT! Has someone run over a green hedgehog? And those pickles on the rim? What was I thinking? That wasn't how I pictured it.  I'm really not keen on over-fussing; preferring simple but pretty. But how do you make a fish salad pretty?

Ten Teenagers - or maybe not

Ramsey in the middle. This is just before the lens shattered.

Ramsey is 16 (hooray)... and he wanted to celebrate with a group of friends in the civilised environs of New River Restaurant. Who was I to say no? Especially when his mum is a (slightly scary) friend of the family.

The menu negotiations were fairly simple. There was one nut allergy, but either his friends were very unfussy adolescents or they were under orders to eat their greens (wish that worked for mine).

An actual phone box
This one, unusually,
 without a puddle of urine

The table was booked for ten for 7.30, with all confirmed. However, come 7.45 and our party was still only eight. They didn't even ring to apologise to the host. Grr. Why do kids do this? I blame the endless, turnstile of possibility presented by social networking and mobile phones. When I was little you made an arrangement and bloody stuck to it or missed out. The only slight flexibility afforded by meeting by an actual phone box. Anyway, the eight seemed utterly unfazed and in all honesty, I'm not sure I could have coped with the noise level of ten young adults. I can only assume that Ramsey's mates were all hard of hearing. I know, by evening's end, I was. Ramsey was blameless of course; an angel; an utter delight (honest Pat!).

The amuse bouche was my savoury cheese and onion eclairs. Starters was a new dish, that if I'm honest is more of an amuse bouche itself: corn muffin with bacon toffee (YES!) and tomato chilli jam. I thought I'd try a playful presentation. What do you think?

Mains was beef shin with spinach, Yorkshires and roast carrot puree. I am pleased to report that by the end of the course, at least 50% more of the guests realised they liked carrots. I thank you! Dessert was an orange meringue tart.

 I do love the beef dish, and it's the restaurant's signature, but I must make an effort to develop another cow eat this year. In fact, same with lamb. Currently I only offer shanks. 

In all honesty the food seemed to be the least important element of the evening. My delicious focaccia was ignored and my signature nuts sent floor scattered.  School snogging scandals and intrigue being far more compelling, especially when bellowed and guffawed. However I am now assured that everyone enjoyed the meal and I did notice most plates were clean on their return to the kitchen.

This was the noisier end of the table.