Category: Food and drink

Mining the same vein as the Gallery of Regrettable Food is Wendy McClure’s site devoted to her collection of Weight Watcher’s Recipe Cards. They are said to date from 1974, but I suspect, like apparently much of the food illustrated in them, they have been recycled from a much earlier incarnation…

I had another excuse to enjoy a meal at Dekxels in The Hague last night. I met up with four colleagues from Shell there. The food, as ever, was very good and the service attentive. I do like this restaurant.

The Times food critic reports that Squirrel is back on the menu. Well, I suppose it makes a change from chocolate-covered scorpions. The Times sub-editor also has a sense of humour, judging from the title of the piece.

Having a lazy day today. Have been trying to drum up enthusiasm to continue assigning and correcting keywords on my photos, but without too much success. The weather hasn’t helped, it’s been overcast and miserable for much of the day so far, but there’s some blue opening up now. So I’ll head off on the bike soon in an attempt to blow the cobwebs away.

I also need to think about dinner this evening. I think I’ll do slices of breast of chicken with black pudding in a tarragon and muscat sauce, on a bed of spinach with a few steamed potatoes lightly flavoured with carraway seed.

When I retired from Shell, my colleagues presented me with the cost of a meal at our (Martin and I) favourite restaurant: Can Fabes.

It’s been almost a year, but last week we finally returned to this three Michelin star restaurant in Sant Celoni (a small town about 50 minutes by train out of Barcelona).

Well, folks, I have to tell you that your gift was thoroughly appreciated by us. We took the Menu Primavera – a 10 course (I think, but I lost count!) meal that started with “aromatic eggs” and ended with coffee and petit fours. The aromatic eggs were sublime – a hen’s egg filled with an egg foam flavoured with rosemary, and a quail’s egg filled with a egg foam flavoured with ginger. The quail’s egg in particular made me think I’d died and gone to Heaven. Along the way we had mackerel, a bouillabaisse flavoured with saffron, baby octopus with macaroni, sweetbreads, sorbet (pear, strawberry and mandarin), and peanut icecream with a caramel tart. To accompany this magisterial meal we had a bottle of Cuvée Santamaria Finca Montagut, a bottle of Alíon 2000 and a glass of Moscatel Soleado Colosia with dessert.

Thank you. We really appreciated it.

Over at that very civilised web site: a Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down, Nicey reviews what is claimed to be the World’s very first cookie designed for dunking. His verdict: a definite thumbs-up. It’s a Marks and Spencers product, which is a crying shame, since M&S withdrew from the Dutch market a few years back, so I can’t indulge myself.

If you’re interested, this entry on the Vinography blog has this year’s complete list of the World’s 50 best restaurants as published by The Restaurant magazine. 

I’ve been working on a list of "Wines I have known", which I’ll probably post here as a list. The idea of doing so was prompted by Paul Stamp putting up a similar list on his blog. Not being afraid to steal with pride, where appropriate, I have no qualms about doing something similar.

The ratings system is very simple – from one to five stars:

– Affordable, easy drinking –              
– Good stuff –                                     
– Very good –                                      
– Excellent, for special occasions –      
– I’ve just died and gone to Heaven – 

You can tell I’m no expert of wine, I just know what I like (the cry of the Philistine down the ages, I hear you say). Well tough, it’s my list.

I only have two five star entries, both for dessert wines, interestingly enough, enough though I’m basically a red wine drinker. One is for Chateau d’Yquem (and I still have a half bottle nestling in the cellar – yippee!). The other is for Tokaji Eszencia, which I was lucky enough to be able to taste through the generosity of a friend of mine. He was presented with an exceedingly rare (and it goes without saying, expensive) bottle as a birthday present from his wife, and he poured out a glass for me to try. What’s that expression? Like angels pissing on your tongue… Yep, that comes close…

The list will have hyperlinks in most of the entries, either to the producers own web site, or to writers on the Web who know much more about this stuff than I. I’m finding I’m making quite a lot of links to The Winedoctor, who writes well, but is not afraid to send himself up when the occasion demands. Ah, Blue Nun! I remember it well. And no, it’s not on the list.

…So gushes Dr. Irwin Wolkoff, a Toronto-based psychiatrist.

"Red Burgundy is the goddess of wine. It’s really a lot like the Judeo-Christian God. One does not question the will of pinot noir. It rewards, it punishes and it is ours to follow without ever losing faith. The vast bulk of pinot worshippers are helpless, hopeless (wine) nerds."

Well, I always did view psychiatrists with more than a modicum of suspicion, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at his bizarre theory. At least it’s a step short of oinomancy, so one should be grateful for small mercies.

Yesterday, Martin and I threw a party for the neighbours to celebrate the fact that today marks the official beginning of Spring. We prepared an eclectic array of party food – Thai Indian, French and English. In the event, over twenty people showed up and demolished it. Nigel Slater’s trifle proved to be a big hit – it disappeared in an instant. One neghbour asked if it had alcohol in it – yes, I assured her, lots! Delia Smith’s chocolate ricotta cheesecake came a close second.

Along with the food, large quantities of wine and beer also disappeared, which probably explains the fact that Martin and I are both feeling somewhat fragile today. I tidied up the living room this morning whilst moving very, very slowly.

This weekend, we’re giving a party for the neighbours to celebrate the arrival of Spring. I’ve been trying out recipes to prepare for the onslaught.

One of the tryouts was an Edwardian Trifle from Nigel Slater, published in The Observer newspaper in May 2004. The consensus from the tasting panel (Martin and myself) is that this recipe is a definite winner. It improves with age – we finished the last of it today (Thursday), and it was made last Sunday. Gawd, was it good!

Since it needs to mature, that means I’d better do the trifle for Sunday by starting tomorrow (Friday).

…this one’s for you!

The Gallery of Regrettable Food. Hey, I inherited some of my mother’s cookery books, and they are just like that! I haven’t dared try any of the recipes though. I suspect some will call for powdered eggs.

Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with tradition – I was given a copy of Constance Spry’s Cookery Book many years ago (thanks, Yuki!) and that has recipes from the 1950s – some of which I still use today.