TV dinners

Bad cop, inheritor of Escoffier, and a teddy bear gourmand.

In the dim and distant past, when TV really was the centre of my childhood home's entertainment, I used to yearn for the lowering evenings that brought with them the autumn season.

But for most of my adulthood, television has played a considerably less important role.

There have been exceptions: Babylon 5, West Wing and a few more. But the advent of ‘reality TV’ was enough to make me glad I wasn’t addicted to the box in the corner.

But this autumn, there has been a glut of food scheduling that’s had me glued to my seat – and thankfully it’s not all been Nigella flirting with the camera and wearing white denim to cook beetroot.

Last year, entirely by accident, I happened on a reality show that I was utterly transfixed by – and this time, I was back right at the start: Masterchef: The Professionals.

Now I dislike the version of Masterchef that involves John Torode and Gregg Wallace. First, it isn’t the Masterchef I remember with a certain fondness from years gone by, where Lloyd Grossman hosted, in calming, mid-Atlantic tones, as three amateur cooks competed in a very gentle manner.

It’s odd that I remember that with such fondness, since it was on during a time before I had any real interest in or love of food myself.

But it’s also exactly the sort of thing that I don’t like about reality TV, with its tone of shouty aggression.

This version sees Wallace transformed into a sort of teddy bear gourmand, with Monica Galetti, the senior sous chef at Michel Roux Jr’s Le Gavroche, playing a bad cop role alongside him in the early stages of the competition.

And then, of course, there is Roux Jr himself, for whom all the contestants want to cook.

It’s grown-up telly that doesn’t feel the need to pander to sensationalism.

Criticism is dished out properly and fairly, while Roux Jr can also be seen coaching young chefs, giving tips and being encouraging.

Okay, there’s a bit of gurning from all three presenters, but this is ultimately about real, serious skills.

Which also means that it’s downright educative – and it’s inspirational too. Indeed, last year’s series was exactly what made me want to learn to lay out a plate of food better than a dollop here, a dollop there.

Only last week, I picked up a method of cooking pheasant, sautéing breast very gently in lots of butter. And as I found out last night, it works.

This is top telly, and something that I look forward to for the four nights a week that it currently occupies a slot on the goggle box.

But Masterchef: The Professionals has not been the only foodie programming in recent weeks.

There was also Escoffier: Britain’s first master chef, which was introduced – appropriately – by Michel Roux Jr.

It proved an interesting look at the great man – perhaps particularly in terms of his creation of the brigade system of service in restaurants.

And it was also a reminder of just how much the style of Roux Jr – and his father and uncle – is influenced by that kind of classic French cuisine.

How do you eat your jelly babies?

Nigel Slater’s Life is Sweets was a bittersweet trip down a sticky memory lane for England’s answer to Proust. There is simply nobody else on these shores who so wonderfully writes about food and memory.

Seeing old packets and wrappers brought an instant shot of nostalgia, even though I don’t personally have the same sense of sweets as having been at the heart of my own childhood as Slater clearly does.

But I do have childhood memories around visits to the sweet shop (or primarily the newsagent), and as usual with Slater, it had an emotional power that rang completely true even if you cannot identify 100% with his own experiences.

Calf's Head & Coffee: The Golden Age of English Food, gave Stefan Gates the chance to actually cook a calf’s head – which was interesting, although I won’t be trying it myself any time soon.

But this followed his rather astonishing claim that we are in the midst of a British food renaissance – a claim made, without any hint of his tongue being in his cheek, while standing in a supermarket.

‘Ah,” I thought. ‘Here we go again, with the sort of wild delusions that Joanna Blythman lambasts in Bad Food Britain.’

While it is most certainly true that the restaurant scene – particularly in cities – has improved massively in recent years, it’s difficult to believe in any sort of wholesale improvement when the UK consumes more ready meals than the whole of the rest of Europe put together.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner gave Clarissa Dickson Wright the chance to explore the history of our three main meals across three episodes.

Presumably filmed before she decided that Leicester was frightening and not ‘her’ England, there’s a certain irony then in her discussion of the origins of the cooked breakfast going back to religious rules, given that her beloved Catholic church has, in many parts of the UK, been saved by the arrival of migrants.

A couple of particularly fascinating aspects of this trio of programmes was learning that eggs were, a long time ago, roasted in the shell in the ashes of a fire – and also that the first reference to a soft-boiled egg anywhere in literature is in Jane Austen’s Emma, while Northanger Abbery actually references brioche.

It’s also well worth noting that our habit of drinking beer with breakfast had changed iby the 1620s – replaced by the arrival of coffee. In other words, contrary to what some may imagine, Starbucks did not introduce coffee to these shores.

So, for once, it’s been a delight to sit in front of the television and lap up a mixed menu of foodie treats.

And with iPlayer around, there's still time to watch some of these gems.

Cometh the hour, cometh the cassoulet

It was July. The weather had been mixed as we had trundled from Bordeaux to Carcassonne by train. It was late afternoon when we disembarked, with no obvious method of getting to the hotel other than Shanks's Pony, so we walked, using iPhone 'sat-nav' to guide us.

After checking in, we'd walked over the bridge to the village that lies beneath the plug of rock that bears La Cité itself. Everything was shut. Reluctantly, we adjourned to the hotel restaurant and, expecting nothing to match the view as night descended on the ancient city, ordered cassoulet.

It went way beyond our expectations. We'd had the tinned stuff before, but this was a first 'proper' taste of a treasure of French regional and national cuisine.

Two days later, when we boarded a train for the mountains, we took with us a carefully wrapped cassole, the traditional earthenware cooking pot for the cassoulet.

Back home, in the autumn, I laid in duck confit, but the haricot bean - at the heart of this hearty dish - proved elusive. And then, just as the weather started its dip to the sort of temperatures one could expect in January in northern Europe, I found some.

The moment had arrived.

Cassoulet was, the great cook Prosper Montagné declared, "the god of south-western food" in France.

Initially, it would have been made with fresh broad beans, until white beans arrived from across the border in Spain in the 16th century. And the haricot had since become the established bean for the dish. It remains arguably one of remarkably few absolutely crucial ingredients.

This culinary adventure began in seemingly sensible manner - checking recipes in my own library.

I turned first to the version in Hot Sun Cool Shadow by Angela Murrills; then to one in Goose Fat & Garlic by Jeanne Strang and yet another in Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of South-West France.

Stephanie Alexander had produced her own version in Cooking & Travelling in South-West France, which was the last of my collection of books dedicated to that area - and, as far as I know, the only ones published in English.

If I was getting a little dizzy by now, it was but the start.

In French Country Cooking, the Roux brothers used pork and lamb and no confit. Joël Robuchon's version includes lamb shoulder and lamb neck, and involves topping the final dish with crushed melba toast mixed with parsley, which sounds close to heresy, if you ask me.

Bruno Loubet presents a simplified version in Cooking from l'Odeon, to be cooked not in a traditional earthenware pot, but in something like Le Creuset and presented at table in exactly that.

In The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery, Auguste Escoffier gives instructions for a cassoulet dominated by mutton and with the option of "goose or chicken".

In European Peasant Cookery, Elisabeth Luard's version is informed by her year living in the Languedoc and the instruction of her neighbour there.

And of course, we cannot forget the divine Mrs David, whose French Provincial Cooking goes into some detail about the history of the dish, as well as providing relatively straightforward instructions from a period when Toulouse sausage was something you could only hope to find in a very limited number of shops.

Culinaria France crams it all into a very terse recipe, while The Food of France, like Murrills, simplifies.

Larousse Gastronomique prefers far more detail, and quotes Montagné as having said that cassoulet could be divided into three types - a 'Trinity'.

The 'Father' came from Castelnaudary. The oldest version, it included pork - loin, ham, leg, sausages and fresh rinds - with "perhaps some fresh goose".

The 'Son' of Carcassonne used leg of mutton and, in the shooting season, partridge.

The 'Holy Ghost' of Toulouse uses the same ingredients as in Carcassonne, but in smaller quantities and with the addition of "fresh lard, Toulouse sausage, mutton and duck or goose".

These are the main versions, but as Larousse makes clear, it is far from being a finite list. There is even a salt cod version, with the fish replacing the duck or goose.

But while this so clearly reveals its peasant roots, the French being the French, there has had to be some formalising of what was already a classic - well beyond its home region - into an institution.

In 1966, the États Généraux de la Gastronomie française decreed that a cassoulet had to be made up of at least 30% pork (which could include sausage), mutton or preserved goose, together with 70% haricot beans and stock, fresh rinds, herbs and flavourings.

All of which still leaves things about as clear as mud for the beginner.

So, which path did I follow?

In the end, it was largely Luard, with hints from Robuchon and David.

Prep had started yesterday with the beans. I usually use tinned ones, so I was grateful to read on the packet that 40g of dried haricot would turn into 80g of cooked pulses, which is generally regarded as a 'portion'. Seeing 80g weighed out, I decided to add another 20g for good measure. These was then decanted into a bowl with plenty of cold water and left overnight.

And so to this afternoon.

The pulses were rinsed, drained and popped into a large pan with plenty of cold water, a peeled and sliced carrot, a stick of sliced celery, an onion studded with two cloves, a sachet of bouquet garni, six crushed garlic cloves and the small amount of pork fat Matthew had been able to give me yesterday.

It's heated quickly and then, just before it starts to boil, the temperature is reduced to leave it barely simmering. And so it stays for an hour.

In the meantime, the meats are prepared. Now, this was dinner for two people with smallish appetites, so I'd got a small piece of lean pork, which I diced, plus two Toulouse sausages.

One of the confited duck legs was placed, dripping, into a frying pan, where it gave off all of it's coating of creamy fat, before being removed to a plate. Then the pork and the sausages were fried in this fat, together with another four crushed garlic cloves.

The duck leg was stepped of its flaking meat; the sausages were sliced thickly. A diced onion was cooked in the fat after the meats had all been removed.

Don't throw the fat away - you need it later.

Next up, skin, deseed and chop a large, beefy tomato.

Heat your oven to 120˚C.

When the beans are ready, strain. Get rid of the vegetables and bouquet garni. Keep the pork fat.

Take your pot/casserole and put the fat in the bottom, fat side down. The theory is that, starting with some beans, you layer the ingredients. For just two of us, that meant a layer of beans, then everything else forming on thick layer, to be topped with more beans.

Oops. A problem. There were nowhere near enough haricot to top the dish. It was rather too late to contemplate a minimum four-hour soak for more beans, followed by an hour simmering.

I cheated in the only way possible, rinsing of a tin of cannellini beans and using them to fill in the gaps.

The dish is covered (with foil, if you don't have a lid) and placed in the oven for two hours. Check a couple of times and, if the beans look a little too dry, add a little boiling water.

After two hours, remove from the oven and turn up the heat to 160˚C. Spread a layer of breadcrumbs over the top and drizzle with the melted goose/duck fat from the duck confit that you'd reserved.

Leave the lid off and pop back in the oven. Give it 30 minutes, by which time it should have a nice, golden crust, then remove and stir the breadcrumbs gently into the beans. Back in the oven it goes for at least another half an hour.

The key here is patience. But every 10 to 15 minutes, give it another stir.

This breaking the crust is considered to be really authentique: they do it seven times in Castelnaudary and eight in Toulouse. It's now been set at three times in Hackney.

Remove, serve and eat.

For a first effort, I was very pleased. It wasn't perfect - the shortage of haricot being an obvious point. But I'd also be inclined to increase the initial bean cooking time by 30 minutes, as suggested in at least one recipe, to ensure they're just a little softer.

And the pork and sausages need to be cooked initially for a shorter time but at a higher heat.

But that apart, I was chuffed. My first effort was no insult to the lovely, half-glazed dish that has graced the kitchen since our return last August. And it certainly won't be long before I give it another go.

Good tools can make the job easier

They say that a good workman never blames his tools – but that doesn’t mean that the quality of your tools isn’t important.

And if I had ever been in any doubts about that, it has been brought home to me in the last week.

A fortnight or so ago, I was cooking a casserole dish in one of my stainless steel pots. We bought them at least 15 years ago, ordered from a Sunday supplement.

They weren’t cheap and they were advertised as being of professional standard.

To be honest, I can’t remember why on Earth we opted for such a set: 12 pieces, comprising four saucepans, two casseroles (one with a steamer insert), two frying pans and a large sauté pan, a sauce pan and a colander. It was before I got remotely interested in food, let alone actual cooking.

Still, we invested and they have been used ever since.

But back to the casserole I was cooking. It dawned on me that this was exactly the sort of dish that yearned for one of the curved, shallow casseroles from Le Creuset.

Now, I'm going to make an admission. I’ve been trying to convince myself for some time that an odd piece of the iconic ironware from that French company would be worthwhile – but the attraction was primarily aesthetic.

But finally, I went out and bought the dish mentioned – a seriously solid piece of kit. And then I waited until last weekend and the chicken chasseur that I mentioned the other day.

What struck me then, however, was not simply how nice it was – but it was also a better cooking experience. Where I have struggled to really brown meat for some time – even since learning a lot more about it from Raymond Blanc – suddenly the chicken really did caramelise beautifully.

Either my own technique had enjoyed a blip or had improved overnight – or something else had made a difference.

With exactly this question in mind, I started experimenting.

The following day, when I made a French onion soup, it was in the same casserole – and sure enough, caramelising the onion was easier.

A couple of days later, I used the dish again for a risotto – it didn’t need caramelisation, but it did improve the cooking experience.

The only possible conclusion, by this stage, was that the ability of my piece of cast iron Le Creuset to conduct heat was better than that of the pans I’d been using for years.

That was clarified during a fag-break conversation with the head chef at the office canteen later in the week, who told me that, over time, the steel pans would have changed chemically – and with that, the ability of them to conduct heat would have changed too.

I was delighted to discover that it wasn’t my imagination or some wishful thinking.

And it struck me then that I should already have known this lesson. A few years ago, I bought an omelette pan in France.

It’s a heavy beast and copper coated. A really traditional one – and not cheap. And it transformed my ability to cook an omelette – and also pancakes.

The great chef, Escoffier, couldn’t believe that people tried to make omelettes without a proper pan. So it's not simply a case of gadgets that do jobs that can be done just as effectively with an 'ordinary' pan.

Last night, I used the same casserole to cook some sliced red onion and good butcher's sausages. Again, good results.

While it's true that tools can't make up for sloppiness or lack of technique, it seems that they can also hinder you.

Easy peasy

It’s easy to think, when hearing the words ‘processed food’, of the sort of additive-laden ready meals that you can buy and pop into the microwave, to be ready in a matter of moments.

But processed food also has saving graces, from tinned pulses – a magnificent timesaver – to tinned tomatoes. For the latter, we have one August Escoffier to thank.

Frozen vegetables have a role to play too. Is there a freezer anywhere that doesn’t contain at least a packet of frozen peas?

But as good as frozen veg are and as good as frozen peas are in particular, they’re not the same as the fresh version.

Podding peas goes along with scraping new potatoes as two of summer's kitchen jobs that I find thoroughly pleasant. And the aroma that follows that first pop, before you even start flicking the perfect, emerald spheres into the pan, is wonderfully redolent of growth and plant life.

The taste and texture are different too. And as with so much other spring and summer produce, you don’t need to do much with them. Frankly, you won’t want to most of the time.

It’s simply a question of three to four minutes (depending on size) in boiling water and they’re ready. They’re undemanding in other ways too, only needing a bit of seasoning and some good butter.

As such, they demand equally simple ingredients to make a perfect meal: simple, but the best quality possible.

Since there’s nothing wrong, in culinary terms, with the obvious – there’s usually a reason it is – then today’s pan of peas was served with ivory smooth Jersey Royals and lamb chops, with the meat cooked under a hot grill for around six minutes a side, until the skin was crisp and golden.

The potatoes benefit from a slick of butter too, while whatever the French may say, mint is a wonderful accompaniment to lamb cooked this way.

It was a day for such simplicity.

I was late out for the shopping and, by the time I got home, it was hot and sweaty. The realisation that I’d forgotten a vital ingredient for tomorrow saw me spit a hair or two before heading back up the road.

With the street now utterly rammed, it was hopeless to try to rush. Musing that some good water biscuits would also be nice, I revisited La Bouche, leaving not just with biscuits, but also one of a batch of Saint-Marcellin cheeses that had melted so much that Max had had to put them each in a plastic container and, in entrepreneurial fashion, was offering at a cut price. Although even that wasn't enough for many people, who looked with suspicion on them, as though that state of ripeness was indicative of something bad.

A ciabatta was then sourced before I headed back home and began tearing the bread and scooping up the creamy liquid with it. Utterly gorgeous.

It was an afternoon when the flimsiest of clouds rippled across the sky like the sand on a damp beach. My first melon of the season was perfect refreshment. Just plain slices cut from the globe – another wonderful scent – and consumed greedily, as the juice trickles down the chin.

Food really doesn’t have to be complex to be as voluptuous as this.

A right old kitchen binge

As this week draws to its close, I’ll be in the midst of four days (and nights) in Glasgow for work. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Four days and four nights of no cooking. That’s the sort of very simple stat that makes me realise just how much I enjoy my weekends in the kitchen these days.

And so it was with that at least partly in mind that I planned the weekend just gone to be a downright kitchen binge.

The first thing on the agenda was a spot of preserving. Specifically, since it’s January and the season of Seville oranges, a spot of marmalade making.

My mother used to make marmalade: when very young, I considered it quite clever to alliterate madly and describe it as ‘mummy-made marmalade’, which also flowed rather nicely. Well, as I said – I was very young.

But with it being the time of year for Seville oranges, my mind had been turning that way for some time.

It seems to be some sort of modern seasonal disorder. No, not making marmalade.

But for the last two Januaries at least, someone has been predicting the impending death of marmalade. Put it another way: some supermarket has been predicting the demise of that lovely stuff.

Through various searches, I found Dan Lepard’s 2010 Guardian article on the subject, in which he rather adroitly responds to this annual hysteria – and then offers up a recipe for Seville oranges.

But then my eye was caught by his footnote about other flavours. I have long liked lemon marmalade – even though, as far as I can recall, my sole experience of it has been the mass-produced stuff. My mind started moving in that direction.

So, on Saturday morning, off I went to Broadway Market – a visit that included a lovely chat with Andy at the game stall about Scottish food in general and Glasgow restaurants specifically; a passionate exchange with Richard at Wild Dartmoor Beef about proposed mass factory dairy farms; a conversation with Vicki about the prospect of David Beckham actually playing for Tottenham, and a gab with Max at La Bouche about … well, about all sorts of things.

At the organic stall, the lemons had some pale green splotches, so I asked the man whose stall it is (I’m afraid I don’t know his name, even though we’ve chatted many times and he's been enormously helpful), whether they’d be good for marmalade.

With a stony face, he informed me that they would be wonderful for lemon curd but that if I wanted to make marmalade, then the Seville oranges were there (pointing). Suitably chastised, I bought 540g of the oranges and a large lemon, and made my way home.

It takes little time to peel all the fruit using one of those y-shaped potato peelers. Then the fruit is roughly chopped and bunged in a large pot with a litre of water. Simmer gently for two hours, then pop a colander on top of a bowl, line with muslin and tip all your fruit and liquid into it.

The recipe says to leave for an hour – and not to squeeze. I didn’t squeeze, but I did leave it overnight. Tasting the liquid the following morning – I don’t think I’d realised just how bitter Seville oranges are.

First thing on Sunday (by “first thing”, I do mean when I eventually got up and after I’d had coffee – this was Sunday, after all) I measured the liquid and topped it up to 750ml. I weighed out 800g ordinary granulated sugar, popped this and the liquid into a big pan and brought to the boil.

As per the instructions, I watched for a temperature of 104˚ – oh, the joys of finally having a jam thermometer! – and gave it five minutes. Then, while I was waiting to see if a splodge set on a chilled saucer, it got another five minutes and, using the same method, another five as I tested a second dollop.

It was beginning to wrinkle, so the hob was switched off. You leave the pan for 20 minutes and then decant into sterilised jars. This really isn’t difficult stuff.

By the evening, it had cooled completely and set softly. I spread a bit of bread with some butter and tried a bit. Absolutely scrummy.

But man cannot lived by marmalade-making alone. So on Saturday afternoon, continuing my heavy-duty kitchen weekend theme, I made petits pots de crème. One of that vast range of French set custards, I flavoured this with chocolate.

For our main course in the evening, I’d bought some cod and grilled that: a good 10cm from a hot element and brushed with butter (that had been melted in one of those miniature copper pans – so there, Other Half: they have a use) and given about 10 minutes.

By that time, I’d taken three anchovies from a pack, dried and then blitzed them in my little Cuisinart, then added softened butter, mixed it all together and rolled it in foil to go back in the fridge to chill.

Grilled cod with anchovy butter: sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet the idea was from The Complete Escoffier, which makes it sounds considerably posier! Sticking with Escoffier, I served it with plain boiled potatoes, and then added some sautéed/steamed leeks on the side.

After I’d set the marmalade cooking on Sunday, it was back to desserts. This time, to celebrate the year's first forced rhubarb from Yorkshire’s ‘Rhubarb Triangle’, three sticks were cut into thumb-length pieces and gently cooked in orange juice, with star anise and cardamom pods until soft but still holding together.

These were popped into glasses and the remaining liquid boiled to a syrup, which was poured over. Leave to chill.

Later, some double cream was whipped with caster sugar and a glug of the remaining Banyuls until stiff, then popped on top of the rhubarb mix and put back into the fridge. This is a Sarah Raven recipe from her Garden Cookbook (apart from the Banyuls, fairly obviously), and I’m rather fond of it.

Our main course was shoulder of lamb, roasted with olive oil, garlic and lashings of thyme. When the meat is resting, decant a drained and dried tin of new potatoes (it’s a cheat, I admit – when the real new potatoes are out, I’d use them, par-boiling first), a tin of cannellini beans and four halved artichoke hearts into the oil, lamb fat, garlic and thyme. Pop back into the oven, turn the temperature up a tad and then leave until the meat is rested and carved.

Phew! But before that, there’d been lunch.

Ever since I’d got that batch of Michel Roux books over the festive season, I’d been building myself up to trying one of his pastry dishes. More to the point – trying some of his pastry.

Roux gives details for a flan pastry – but also for a pâte brisée, which he describes as more delicate and slightly harder to use than the other form of shortcrust. But I wanted to give this a go, since it sounded wonderful and was a new challenge: something slightly beyond what I’d done before in the pastry realm.

It was easy enough to mix with the Kenwood (which really is already coming into its own – thanks, Other Half). Plain flour, diced and lightly softened butter, an egg, a little fine salt and a pinch of sugar are creamed, before a very little milk is added to bring it together.

Once that's happened, you use your palms to push it forward just four or five times to smooth it. Then either use – or wrap in cling film and pop in the fridge or freezer. It'll keep for a week in the former and three months in the latter.

I rolled it carefully, nice and thin, and lined my tart dish, carefully pushing the pastry into each indentation on the side. That was then lined with scrunched parchment paper and filled with baking beans, before chilling in the freezer while the oven heated.

Blind baking done, the beads and paper are removed and it’s returned to the oven for a few minutes more for the base to dry out and cook.

At this point, I realised that it had shrunk a little and I had to patch at one point where I had clumsily managed to put my finger through into the space behind caused by the shrinkage. This needs to be remembered for future attempts. I trimmed the excess pastry from the rim of the dish at this point.

For the filling, I thinly sliced a large onion – the mandolin got another workout – and cut up some streaky bacon. These were cooked together and then spread carefully in the pastry case. A couple of eggs and some double cream were mixed up with seasoning and poured over the bacon and onion mix.

It had around 25 minutes in the oven. Tasty in general, the pastry was a dream of buttery crumbliness. Wikipedia may claim that pâte brisée is ‘just’ shortcrust pastry by another name, but on the basis of this, that’s far short of the point.

One thing that the weekend also illustrated was that it’s no wonder that I struggle with my oven at times. I’ve also got an oven thermometer after such a thing was recommended in the Roux brothers’ French Country Cooking.

It made its debut for the lamb – and I discovered that the temperature barely came actually close to what I had set it for.

I’ll keep testing – if only to make sure that I was not misreading something – but it does explain a great deal.

But that was the one ‘downside’ on a weekend that, if it didn’t quite leave me ready for my Glasgow adventure, did leave me with a very great deal of satisfaction and achievement.

Forget the teeth – just chew!

Imagine a food that would make you forget everything else – even the discomfort of eating it. What would that food be for you – what would send you into such raptures that you'd forget anything else but the taste?

This isn't an entirely academic question. I probably wouldn't quite have realised it before yesterday, but blinis, warmed and topped with crème fraîche and lumpfish roe, is the sort of food hit that does it for me.

As explained some time ago, I'm currently in the middle of long process of dental treatment, tackling the results of the undiagnosed (and un-dealt with) gum disease of a couple of decades.

We're at the half-way point now, as I get used to a full set of gnashers up top for the first time in some years. They aren't wonky either – or at least not since I tried some fixative. Having said that, several of my remaining bottom teeth are most definitely wonky – and if anything, that's increasingly obvious.

But hey – we're on the way. And if you asked me, this time last year, whether I'd be this far down the dental road, I don't think I'd have even wanted to have the conversation.

So that has to be one of the most important things that happened to me in the last 12 months. Not just on a food front – although it's going to have a massive impact as the treatment progresses to its logical conclusion – but in other ways too. I'm beginning to be able to smile again, for instance – although if I see myself in the mirror doing it, I barely recognise the face looking back.

But setting all that aside, what have been the big experiences/lessons of the last year?

Well, the Orient Express was certainly an experience – although personally, I think that Venice was more affecting. And of course, to eat in Italy was a revelation.

Grilled sardines on a sailing boat off the Spanish or French (depending on who you believe) coast – perhaps that was culinary nirvana.

Bistrot Bruno Loubet gave me the best eating out experience I've enjoyed in the UK – a quality of food and cooking (and a price, come to that) that I've only experienced previously on the Continent.

Reaching a point where looking at a recipe by the likes of Joël Robuchon or Michel Roux or even Escoffier doesn't frighten the life out of me. I'm not entirely sure when that happened, but it does seem to have taken root. It doesn't mean I'm a good cook, but I think it illustrates progress of some sort, and a learning curve that hasn't ground to a halt a mere few metres after beginning.

My food photography has developed hugely this year – and here's another in the style I've been creating for myself.

Very Dutch Old Master, as someone described the style elsewhere.

The whole black background thing was an accident, but it works rather well, I think. Indeed, it does invoke those wonderful old still life paintings that you can find in the galleries. And I want to explore it much more.

Then again, I didn't start photographing food in a particularly serious way – so what I've done thus far is a real plus, and leaves me a real challenge on building on that.

On the wine front, I started to get a better understanding of what wine is about – and how to taste it. I have a long way to go – but what a pleasant journey lies ahead!

Finally, I think it started to dawn that on me that there is not so much of a divide between what we think of as everyday food and what we see as 'posh' food. The gap continues to narrow for me. How much I can personally bridge that space remains to be seen.

And as my rather light research illustrated toward the end of the year, it's something that has filtered into the mainstream eating life of this country, with many people falling for the con that they cannot afford quality – yet shelling out no small amount of cash for inferior food.

Entirely apropos of nothing that has just gone, I was down at Borough Market earlier today, for my final food shop of the year. Amongst various other things, I got some pressed tongue. It was, as it happens, the first thing I've bought from acclaimed butcher The Ginger Pig.

But 'lunch tongue', as I've always heard it described before, has long been something I've liked. On the other hand, after tasting this – from a stall that had full tongues for sale too – it could become something I love. The quality is just wonderful: moist and flaky and full of flavour. It'll all be gone before I have time to make an actual sandwich.

And so we near the end of 2010.

I'm not, at this stage, going to set myself a specific serious of challenges and tasks for the year ahead. I don't want food and cooking to become Too Serious. It should be fun – and always a pleasure, even a pleasure that you take pretty seriously. If it stops being a joy, though, you might as well just pop something into the microwave and watch the telly while you consume it, ignoring the question of its taste.

So to one and all of you – thank you for reading this blog. I can only assume that you're not a bunch of complete masochists, but that you do find something here to enjoy and amuse!

So have a wonderful 2011 – and the very best of eating to you all!

Ideas from a pile of books

There's no doubt that it has been the most foodie-based festive season I’ve ever had.

First, my birthday produced the Kenwood iMix, plus Roberta Muir’s 500 Cheeses. And following hot on the heels of those came Escoffier: The King of Chefs by Kenneth James, together with the great man’s Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery and Joël’s Complete Robuchon, plus Elisabeth Luard’s European Peasant Cuisine.

That’s not forgetting The Stornaway Black Pudding Bible by Seumas MacInnes and Bob Dewar, plus one of those irresistible Amazon deals to netted me Eggs, Pastry and Sauces by Michel Roux for a ridiculous bargain price.

And then there was the recently arrived Bistro Bruno: Cooking from l’Odeon.

There has not, thus far, been a copy of Why Bible-believing Methodists Shouldn't Eat Black Pudding by Stephen B Dawes. Not that I recall black pudding being proscribed at home.

But anyway, it’s all very well having such books, but I don’t have a coffee table, so now I have to start putting some of the culinary wisdom contained in them into practice. They’re not meant for decoration – and particularly not the Escoffier and Robuchon, which are such serious cookery books that they don’t even have illustrations. Gulp.

First up was an idea for dessert from the Roux Eggs book: a coffee-flavoured custard, baked in a caramel-lined ramekin, chilled, and topped with sugar that’s then burnt with a little cook’s blow torch.

I’ve done custards before, so that wasn’t too daring. And indeed, if anything, the instructions made it seem slightly simpler than some previous ones.

I’ve only done caramel a couple of times and it’s one of those things that astonishes you with the speed at which it sets. I barely had enough time to get the golden liquid spread over the base of three ramekins and a tiny bit up the wall of one, before it had ceased to be liquid.

How experienced cooks do it – and particularly when they have more pots than my meagre three to fill – I’m really not sure.

Anyhow, after the caramel had set and cooled, I made a custard, with a teaspoon of decent coffee granules in it. Once decanted into the ramekins, these were baked in a dish that was lined with baking parchment and had hot (not boiling) water added to half way up the ramekins.

The oven temperatures in the book are apparently for a fan oven – I still needed to give the custards another few minutes over the stated 45 in order to ensure that a sharp knife came away clean after being inserted.

Once they’d cooled, they went into the fridge to chill. Later, to serve, they were topped with sugar and blow-torched. The result was divine – and it’s almost seems like a miracle: that the caramel that I’d seen with my own eyes setting to rock-like hardness on the inside of the ramekins is lusciously liquid once you break beneath the surface.

Not that I was the only one who liked it. I'd left a third one for today, partly to photograph (and then consume, of course). I turned my back for one moment – and there was Otto checking it out. Apparently, it's pretty darned good for discerning cats too.

The next thing I attempted yesterday was from the Robuchon: a gratin of potatoes and leeks to accompany the boiled ham with sour brown shallot sauce.

Perhaps what you expect with Robuchon is extreme cheffiness. Well, it is there – scallops with fresh ginger, for instance, would be in such a bracket, I think. But many of the dishes are really straightforward and not flashy in any way. This was an example.

For two people, I took a medium onion, peeled and sliced it into rounds of approximately 3mm thickness. Then I did the same with a leek and a couple of spuds.

The Other Half rolled his eyes when, reading the recipe, he noted that Robuchon calls for a bouquet garni to be made out of thyme, parsley and bay leaves, wrapped and tied in a piece of leek.

He rolled his eyes even more when I showed him that I’d done exactly that! It might sound posy, but if you’ve got the leek, then why not? Saves using muslin or cheesecloth or something like that.

You soften the onion and leek in a little butter, then add around 700ml of milk, a little grated nutmeg, salt and pepper, the sliced potatoes and the bouquet garni, and cook gently for around 35 minutes – or until a knife glides easily into the potato.

Heat your grill. Pour the milky mix carefully into a buttered dish and pop under the heat for around 10 minutes or until it’s starting to turn golden.

It needed a bit of extra seasoning, but that is a tasty side dish that’s far from difficult or fancy. And it went very nicely with the ham.

So, a good start to life with all my new cookery books. A one that will prompt plenty of further experimentation, I don’t doubt.