A cake yule never forget

There’s an alchemy to what goes on in the kitchen; a mystery that is perhaps particularly relevant at this time of year.

Take egg whites.

Transparent and slippery when they slide from a cracked shell; opaque and white, stiff and yet airy after being whipped. Such a transformation.

The day before Christmas Eve, my cold in full flow after having returned with a vengeance, it was time to finally roll up sleeves and get going with the Yule log I’d long promised The Other Half, since he doesn’t like any cake containing dried fruit.

There’s been a vast Swiss roll tin in the cupboard for a couple of years now, but procrastination is an effective shield against new culinary challenges.

So, after having found flu drugs in the medicine cabinet and with Annie Lennox singing carols in the background, I sat down with caffeine and the recipes and notes I'd printed out last week.

First, there was the Nigella version.

“I can’t promise it’s a doddle,” she had written – words that, in my mind’s eye, I could see being delivered to the accompaniment of a certain look to camera, “but it works easily”.

And it certainly looked far from difficult. Indeed, the main question seems to be the rolling bit.

While searching for general advice, I’d come across Felicity Cloake’s recent article in her Guardian ‘how to make the perfect’ series, where she tests a number of recipes and then comes up with a perfect one.

The key here was the rolling question.

Nigella – like Delia – let’s the cake cool before rolling. Research suggested that this was not best, and Cloake's own tests backed this up.

In the event, I used Nigella’s recipe – with a tweak or two. Besides, her amounts were more realistic for the tin I have than any that Cloake used.

You start by separating half a dozen medium eggs, then whisking those whites until they peak, before adding 50g of caster sugar and mixing a little more. Then a teaspoon of vanilla extract goes in, along with 50g of sifted cocoa powder.

In another bowl, the yolks are whisked up with 100g caster sugar, until they’re the texture of a mousse and a lovely, pale yellow.

A couple of “dollops” of the white mix are added and beaten in, before the rest of the egg white mixture is carefully folded in.

Everything goes into your carefully-lined Swiss roll tin and is popped into an oven (160˚C fan) for 20 minutes.

Once removed, it gets a moment or two to rest – and then comes the bit everyone dreads.

Turn it out onto more baking paper and gently roll up, before leaving to cool.

There are mentions of clean tea towels and dustings of icing sugar. I managed thus: a little icing sugar was sprinkled on the sponge, then it was covered with another large sheet of baking paper.

The inverted cooling rack went on top and then it was quite easy to turn over. The tray came away easily and it was only a matter of taking my time to ease the bottom layer of baking paper away.

It doesn’t matter if you tear or lose a bit of cake – you’re going to cover those.

Using the baking paper that’s now beneath your sponge, you slowly roll the thing away from you. The paper is a great help, because you can use that rather than putting pressure on the warm sponge.

Slip the paper out from underneath and leave on the cooling rack.

Later, it was a case of bashing up 175g of 70% cocoa solids chocolate as the sound of Bing Crosby singing that song drifted through the flat, before melting gently over a pan of hot water.

Butter and icing sugar was beaten together, before the melted chocolate joined them, once it had cooled a little.

Now at this juncture, Nigella calls for another teaspoon of vanilla essence to be added to the mix, but I decided to take a leaf out of Cloake’s book experiments.

I split approximately a third of the mixture into another bowl and added a substantial squeeze of chestnut purée, then spread that over the unrolled cake.

By this time, we’d hit Jingle Bells – in French – on The Other Half’s Christmas playlist. And people imagine he’s all ‘bah humbug’ at this time of year.

Once the filled sponge was rolled back up, I cut off a piece from each end and placed them alongside it, at angles, on a silver cake board.

Then it was a question of plastering over the chocolate buttercream mix – with vanilla now added. There was a massive amount of the mixture and it wasn’t quite as easy as you might imagine, because the sponge is really quite delicate.

Next, take a skewer and try to make it look like a log. A line here; a whorl there. I realised that it’s a long time since I drew cartoon logs, but it sort of came back to me.

Then dust with sieved icing sugar and decorate with whatever you’ve got available. I’d managed, only a few days ago, to get my hands on some sugar flowers, a little Christmas tree and a robin, so on they went (the tree on a sugar-dusted ‘hump’ of extra buttercream to one side of the cake itself.

And there it was – my first Yule log. Looking suitably Yuleish. Even by my standards, this is not health food – but it is Christmas, after all!

Then onto the day’s next task – making orange dust and lemon dust. There was to be no repeat of last year’s debacle, when I misread the temperature as centigrade when it was actually fahrenheit.

A small orange and a lemon were sliced as thinly as possible – oh, the value of a new, really, really sharp Zwilling Henckels paring knife – and went on to a lined baking tray, to spend the hours n the oven at 100˚C (fan).

They’re then blitzed (separately), each with a pinch of sugar and a touch of salt, before being sieved into small containers, where they keep very nicely for some time.

And that was entirely enough prep for one day: there’s still Christmas Eve to go, and plenty more to do. But that can wait.

Apocalypse not

So, what did you do with your last day alive? What do you mean, you didn’t believe that the world would end today?

Whatever was going to happen or not, one thing was certain: today was my first day of the holiday at home, so time was going to be spent in the kitchen.

I'm working on a rather special dessert for Christmas Day and, fortunately, it can be done in stages.

Actually, this Christmas will, as previously, be a four-course meal. But to be honest, I think that doing the big festive dinner this way is easier that doing a big roast bird with all the trimmings.

Doing a traditional roast beef dinner, for instance, sends me crazy – not because any single element is difficult, but because timing everything, all at the same time, is.

And the more I learn, the more I realise that if I plan carefully for a meal like the one I have planned, lots can be done beforehand, leaving me with comparatively little serious cooking to do on the day itself.

So today saw a second attempt at one of the main components of dessert – there are more to come – which has already involved trying new techniques such as making Italian meringue.

Oh, how wonderful an invention is the thermometer!

The final shopping lists have now been written and the post office visited to collect a cake board and sugar decorations for tomorrow’s major project. Prep will continue until Monday evening.

But we still had to eat today and, with a bag of beef mince needing to be used, I decided to baptise my new tagine.

After all, it was only given to me a fortnight ago, so it would be churlish not to use it before all life came to an end.

So, approximately 400g of mince was mixed with four cloves of crushed garlic and some leftover roasted spices that I had from a week or so ago, before being rolled into neat meatballs.

Then, it was back westward, with a mirepoix of finely diced red onion, carrot and celery.

When all the prep was complete, and while the oven was warming to 160˚C (fan), a large sauté pan with a drizzle of olive oil was heating on the hob.

The meatballs were browned first and, after being removed to a plate, were followed into the shimmering oil by the vegetables.

After softening, they were joined by half of my last chilli from this year's harvest, a pinch of sugar, a nip of salt and a generous squeeze of tomato purée.

A dessertspoon of plain flour followed, before a healthy glug of red wine deglazed the pan – and maintained the sense of west meeting east. A little defrosted chicken stock went in too, plus several grinds of black pepper, before it was all decanted into the tagine, the meatballs added, the lid popped on and the whole carefully placed in the oven.

Discovery: it's not easy to lift a tagine lid while wearing big rubber oven gloves.

However, after 40 minutes, it came out and was tested for seasoning. Result – a little more salt added, plus, in a burst of inspiration, a dessertspoon of a honey fig jam I'd picked up on this morning in La Bouche.

And back into the oven for a further 40 minutes, before some basmati rice was set simmering, perfuming the kitchen delightfully.

That wasn’t bad for a last meal.

The mood must have been catching, since Loki chose today to go further than any of our cats has ever gone.

After deciding – all short hair raised in a stripe, from the top of her head to her tail, like a feline Mohican – to chase the considerably larger Reggie from the carpark, she had thought it wise to venture beyond the carpark gates.

It was a while before we realised – on my return from errands – that she was nowhere to be seen. And still longer before The Other Half detected her, hiding in fear under the metal stairs at the converted pub next door.

Once home, she ate as though she’d been starved for days, before we got hold of her and wiped off the worst of the mud she’d been up to her belly in somewhere.

Then she spent the next hour cleaning herself immaculately, before suddenly deciding that she was actually rather traumatised and wasn’t going to shift from beside The Other Half for the foreseeable future.

What an adventure!

But before we laugh easily at those who apparently actually believed that the Mayans had correctly predicted the end of the world as we know it – and knew where France was and where Bugarach in France was – something does occur to me.

Perhaps we might wish to remember, not least at this time of year, that many people still genuinely believe that a god came down from heaven and impregnated a woman – without even a hint of any coitus non-interruptus – and that the offspring was also that same god himself.

And then he later was executed for political crimes – although since his dad (who is also himself) knows everything, sees everything and is all-powerful, this means that his father planned his own/own son’s death.

But it was okay, because the father/son then rose from the dead and returned to heaven, along with their mate, the holy spirit.

And for some, if you eat a bit of bread and drink a sip of wine in the right setting, it will quite literally be a bit of his/their actual body and his/their actual blood – a wow of a cannibalistic idea.

Y’know, I think I was right to spend the last day – hic! – doing something constructive like cooking.

And anyway: Santa is coming and I have to make him a mince pie.

Unheard levels of wrongitude

This is healthier than what he cooks? Really?

Apparently we were wrong. Very wrong. So wrong that it takes wrongness to a whole new level of wrongitude.

Supermarket ready meals are healthier than anything you can make from a book by a TV chef.

See what I mean – how wrong could we be?

Well, that was the headline story across a variety of news outlets yesterday morning, splashed with more relish that Branston could ever produce.

Not, of course, that I would suggest that my brethren in some of the media are less interested in facts than a cheap, sensationalist headline. Oh no.

But while the sensational glee with which some media squealed about TV cooks illustrated the irresponsibility of the same media, it also illustrated the need for enormous care by anyone publishing research, since the research itself, published in the British Medical Journal, was flawed to start with.

First, it seems that the researcher in Newcastle picked a random selection of recipes from the top five cookery books on Amazon in December 2010.

The researcher also picked 100 random ready meals from the UK’s three biggest supermarket chains.

The conclusion is that neither matched World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations for levels of fats, proteins, calories etc – although the chefs’ meals had less salt than the ready meals.

The researcher stuck with WHO recommendations, so he didn’t bother to consider the matter of additives at all, even though you might think that these might well affect health.

As mentioned previously, the traffic light labeling system, which the researcher also used, is inherently flawed, so it follows that sticking with that for such a survey is going to be flawed too.

It’s impossible to discern just what meals and recipes were chosen. Was it like for like – two salads, for instance – or salad versus a bowl of pasta?

If the books were in the charts at Christmas, were they largely concerned with festive food – in which case, hardly everyday eating?

Since one of the books was by a cook who produces primarily desserts and cakes, how was this treated – as comparable with a main course? How many readymade desserts did the researcher find, which still required some preparation (as his report explains)?

The research appears to have missed the point that not everything in the books would have been intended for everyday eating – or even that eating one such meal a day does not mean that you eat three such meals in a day, every day.

If you eat a light breakfast and lunch, then you can still eat a more ‘indulgent’ meal in the evening and be healthy.

In spite of changing opinion and research, the survey also abides with the worn idea that fats in general are to be limited, and saturated fats in particular (this relates to the use of the traffic light system of labeling too and WHO guidelines. Mind, this is the same WHO that only declassified homosexuality from being a ‘disorder’ in 1990, so it doesn’t have a great record on being up to date).

The research also seems to ignore portion size. As I illustrated here, when a ready meal is only 50g more than a normal can of soup – and that’s your main meal of the day – it is not going to fill you up.

You’ll be eating more – possibly in the form of one or more of the snacks and crisps of which the UK consumes more than the rest of Europe out together.

Yet we’re told:

“Practitioners should take care when advising patients on improvements to their diet. Recommendations to cook from scratch rather than eat ready meals needs to be set in the context of detailed nutritional advice.”

Still, the person who wrote it got his MSc in public health and health services research last year, so is doubtless now advising people to eat more ready meals because they’re ‘healthier’.

He either ignored – or perhaps didn’t know – that by 2005, the UK consumed more ready meals than the rest of Europe put together. You’d think we’d be healthier, then, than any other nation, and particularly the French, with all their cream and cheese and natural fats.

Presumably he also imagines that the way forward is to persuade everyone to calculate absolutely every item of food that they stuff joylessly into their mouth to ensure that absolutely nothing deviates even an iota from WHO guidelines and the daft traffic light labeling.

And therein lies the biggest problem.

When, after 26 years, I eventually stopped dieting back in 1999, it was partly because of a realisation of just how joyless the entire issue of food had become: counting every calorie, working out every gram of fat and carbohydrate.

And still putting on weight over time.

Food had become the enemy. Contemplating it was a torture. Eating anything ‘bad’ (butter, for instance) was followed by guilt.

And still the weight went on.

When I stopped dieting and started to learn to enjoy food, and then to cook, an unexpected thing happened. My weight stabilised. Then, a few years ago, it started – very slowly – to fall.

Regular readers here have a few clues about how I eat these days.

I’m a walking illustration of the counterproductive nature of what has been standard diet advice in the UK for 30-odd years. And I am far from unique, even though the tide is slowly turning among doctors.

Apparently the BMJ publishes some light-hearted research in its Christmas edition, but given the crass press furore, didn’t they actually realise that something contradicting the generally-accepted advice that cooking from fresh is better for you than processed food in such a way was bound to attract such sensationalistic headlines?

But whatever the intention, the BMJ has walked into a situation of gifting some media the chance to slate TV cooks and suggest that readymade meals are ‘healthy’. What’s the betting that some of their advertisers will be in dreamland?

And the commentaries continue. In today’s Telegraph, Rowan Pelling was announcing that TV cookery programmes are not for real people to cook from, but are simply a form of porn.

The irony is that high sales of books by TV cooks and chefs may actually indicate that people do want to do more cooking at home.

That fact of UK consumption of ready meals suggests that that is perhaps not happening, but a range of reasons may be at play here.

The general shortage in cooking skills is possibly a factor, as it brings with it a lack of kitchen confidence.

This in turn will mean that cooking things takes longer – or will certainly feel as though it’s longer than a ping meal or ordering a takeaway. And there is a widespread conviction that cooking from fresh just takes too long.

The reality is that food programming is meant to be entertaining. But it can be educational too.

I’ve touched on it before, but this past series of Masterchef: The Professionals alone has shown me how to make a ballotine – and my first attempt was not bad – how to make fondant potatoes (and parsnips work so well too) and how to very simply cook pheasant breasts.

Over the last decade I’ve picked up all sorts of tips and techniques from watching programmes on TV and from books by, among others, by well-known chefs and cooks.

That might, you could be forgiven for imagining, be considered A Good Thing: aspirational, even. Yet Pelling – and others – seem determined to pour scorn on a subject that, quite clearly they know little or nothing about.

Perhaps it’s the shade of that old spirit of Anglo-Saxon puritanism, distrustful of something that might involve ‘too much’ pleasure.

Not that TV cooks aren’t coming in for a kicking from other sources too.

Only last week, environment secretary Owen Paterson suggested that the amount of food that the UK throws away is partly the fault of TV chefs.

He needs to have a word with Pelling then, since she believes nobody ever cooks the recipes of TV chefs.

As various chefs/cooks point out, stupidly conservative use-by dates hardly help, together with that old supermarket ploy of getting people to buy more than they actually need by putting it on special offer.

Only today I heard someone saying that they’d bought double of a particular fresh foodstuff from Tesco because it was on a special offer: if one went off, it didn’t matter.

We throw away vast amounts of bread – how much of that is because it’s utterly crap?

Paterson is right to raise the issue, but the idea that TV chefs and cooks are to blame really is ridiculous.

He suggested that chefs and cooks should pen chapters on using left-overs – as happened in many cookbooks of yore.

On that, he raises an interesting point – possibly without realising it. Education is key.

But should the responsibility for that education be with celebrity chefs?

How about starting such a process in schools, nice and early? How about using such things as Sure Start centres (where they haven’t been closed) to teach parents basic cookery skills?

But that, of course, would mean state intervention. And while, as Paterson shows, the government is quite happy to apportion blame, it is ideologically committed to withdrawing from intervention as much as possible.

Blaming TV chefs is easy. It’s also as idiotic as pretending that TV dinners are healthier than ones made from scratch.

• You can download the full survey here.

Hot to pot

It was arguably another one of those ‘watching too much Masterchef’ moments.

I had headed up to Broadway Market as early as possible on Saturday morning, with little in the way of an idea for that day’s dinner.

But when I spotted that Matthew had a whopping six lamb kidneys on the stall, my mind turned to manners in which to use a bounty.

I settled on a Lancashire hotpot – and Matthew duly obliged by boning a piece of shoulder.

Back at home, an idea started to form. Would it be possible to deconstruct this classic dish?

Well, obviously it would – but would there be a point to doing so?

I thought so.

Allow me to explain. As I’ve been learning more and more about slow cooking, I had tried to do a seriously slow-cooked hotpot., simply taking my usual recipe and slowing down the cooking process.

The dish goes in the oven for around two hours, covered, before the lid is removed for a final 20 minutes to brown up the potato topping.

But when I tried reducing the heat and leaving it longer, the potatoes turned a really dreadful grey.

I don’t know why – mill workers in Lancashire used to take their pots in to the baker on the way to work and, when he’d finished baking, he’d pop them in his cooking oven so that they’d be ready for when the women were coming home from the mill.

So a real slow cook is obviously entirely in keeping.

However, it seemed that cooking the ingredients separately would also do the job.

So, the start, half the lamb and four of the kidneys were cut up (the rest went in the freezer).

The meats were then browned in a little butter, before having around 100ml of lamb stock added (I’d defrosted a small jar).

The stock makes a very thin gravy for the dish – and allows it to steam, so you don’t need a huge amount.

And then it was lidded and left to simmer away on the hob with the addition of some bouquet garni.

Next up, I boiled a large potato and two carrots – all peeled but not cut up – in the remaining stock and boiling water, until barely cooked.

Letting them cool enough to handle, the carrots were then halved lengthwise, and the potato sliced into pieces, approximately half a centimetre thick.

With the oven heated to 180˚C (fan), a baking tray was lined with parchment and then very lightly greased with duck fat before being warmed in the oven.

The slices of potato were laid out on the film of melted fat, together with the carrots; all were brushed with a little of the fat and then given a few good twists of black pepper.

At 20 minutes, everything was turned, given a sprinkle of course salt, and popped back for a further 20 minutes.

The missing aspect at this stage was the onions. Here was another thing I though might be bettered by the deconstruction. Usually, the onion and slices of carrot are placed in the pot around the meats at the bottom, thus partly cooking in the stock and partly in the steam.

On this occasion, the sliced onion was cooked extremely gently in a little duck fat until golden.

Last, but by no means least, when the meats were cooked, most of the stock was ladled into a saucepan to have buerre manié whisked into it to thicken.

And then it was onto the plating up.

Large rings held the meats in place. The onion went on top, with the roasted slices of potato capping the lot.

The carrot halves were served on the side, with the gravy around the meats.

And it works.

The only things I’d be tempted to do in future would be to cut the meats into smaller dice – mostly because it would be neater – and to reduce the roasting time on the potatoes and carrots to 15 minutes after turning.

But as with the deconstructed cottage pie, it was something that was worth doing because of how it allowed the individual flavours to really come through.

The onion is better for cooking this way, I think, while you also have much greater control over the carrot and potato.

And thickening the gravy also really helps to intensify the lamby flavour.

The presentation could have worked better – and would have with less use of the sauce, but I didn't want to risk The Other Half having a Greg Wallace moment and bemoaning a lack of liquid on his plate.

All in all, then, worthwhile experiment and a do-again dish.

Collioure and the birthday connection

Some of you may remember a post, a few months ago, discussing our various art-related experiences in the south of France last summer.

As I wrote then, Collioure’s Museum of Modern Art was staging an exhibition of the work of one Léopold Survage.

Born in 1879, Survage was awarded the French Légion d’Honneur in 1963 and died in 1968.

He had started life destined to work with the pianos his father manufactured, but a serious illness was key, and he decided to dedicate himself to art.

Having trained under Henri Matisse in Paris in 1908, he eventually ended up in Collioure himself in 1925 – and stayed for seven years, and the exhibition covered that specific period.

Now it’s worth a quick recap to simply say that Matisse had, together with André Derain, ‘formed’ the Fauvist movement in 1905, while in Collioure, where they found the light and the colours unlike anywhere else.

So it’s perhaps not unconnected that Survage himself found his way there in 1925.

Anyway, the exhibition was superb. We found ourselves, late in our stay, looking at such a specific period of work by one artist that we came out feeling we knew something of that artists – even though we’d never heard of him before.

Indeed, we actually bought the catalogue.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The next day, sitting inside our holiday cottage as evening rain pattered down outside, we were musing on Survage again, and it crossed our minds to ‘Google it’.

The results were fascinating. An oil painting had had a reserve of around £30,000 at Christies at the beginning of the year.

But more fascinating yet was that, via ebay (of all things), there was a pen and wash from 1928.

It was one of his pecheuse – ‘woman with fish’ – and absolutely from the Collioure period.

We sat and gaped. A mere day earlier, we would not have recognised or understood that picture, but at that moment, we did.

We knew the stamp in the bottom right corner, and the signature.

There was slight water damage, but the nature of the picture itself was that was barely noticeable.

There was a price on it, but two bids were already in. It was being sold by an antique dealer in New York – and there were just seven hours to go; a business day, in other words.

We looked at it and said nothing.

And then we looked at it again.

“I had been thinking of getting you something else,” said The Other Half after a while, “but would you like that for your birthday?”

There was little time to debate. I didn’t really need it though.

Only I could remember ebay login details, so I had to buy it. And then, because I really couldn’t remember Paypal data, I had to ring New York and pay for it.

There we were, sitting in Collioure, where it had been painted, ringing the States to buy it.

It arrived a few weeks later in the UK, when I discovered – because I’m really not used to this sort of thing – that import duty was required.

And then it was here.

The mount was in excellent condition – and worked well with the picture – but the slender frame was broken. The Other Half had it reframed in a simple, plain oak, which compliments it perfectly.

And then it went away until last Saturday, when just before my party, it finally took its place on a designated wall, well lit but also well away from direct sunlight.

It is quite odd – a first piece of art by a dead artist. And one who knew some of the most important figures in western art in the 20^th century.

That in itself is really rather goosebumpy.

Little seems to be available about Survage in English, so it's becoming a little like putting together a jigsaw without knowing how many of the pieces are actually missing.

Courtesy of an unexpected, if not extraordinary, chain of events, a beautiful new – old – picture now hangs on our wall.

But not just something beautiful – something with a real sense of connection for both us, since it is so bound up in our beloved Collioure.

I feel really rather privileged to be the custodian for this work.

Christmas on a plate

As freezing fog descended to shroud even London in shivering winter, the plate in front of me announced, loud and clear, that the festive season is upon us.

The red of venison tartare, the green of Douglas fir and the white of buttercream – Rudolph, wintery forests and snow. It was, as The Other Half put it, “Christmas on a plate”.

After the business of trying my first oyster a few weeks ago, primarily to ensure that I could safely consume some at my birthday dinner, I changed my mind.

After all, an oyster is – in effect – an oyster is an oyster. And I can let them carry the taste of the sea down my throat pretty much any time. But what I wanted on this occasion was to experience the food of Richard Corrigan.

The Michelin-starred Irishman has won Great British Menu on three occasions, and is an ambassador for the Slow Food Movement; in other words, seasonal produce, as locally-sourced as possible, is at the heart of his food philosophy.

What does all that look like on the plate – and more to the point, what does it taste like?

Well, it can be rather surprising. Having discovered that a G&T really benefits from a slice of cucumber, we then found ourselves with a slender dish of deep-fried olives as an amuse-bouche, which stunned us both by being a delight.

Venison tartare.

But then it was on to that venison tartare. Lightly spiced – not spice that suggested the east though, but the north and mulled wine – it was gloriously moist and melted in the mouth. A thin slice of air-light toasted bread added texture.

The quenelle of buttercream was as light as it was rich, while the green oil, infused with the fresh scent of the forest, was a shock – but a welcome one.

Taken together, it was at once complex and simple: a taste of the wintery forest on a crisp night beneath a sparkling sky. And yes, that really was an image that entered my head almost instantly.

The Other Half had picked duck egg and smoked hake: he noted that the egg was perhaps a fraction overcooked, but that it was wonderful to taste, and was followed in his case by a ballotine of wild boar, with curls of crisp crackling and quince on the side, and which had him rhapsodising.

My venison was followed by steamed hake.

The fish was perfectly cooked – firm and yet flakingly moist at the same time – and sat on a bed of sea grass that had a totally unexpected taste (and very pleasant, I might add).

On top of the fish itself were ribbons of salted cucumber – delicate yet crunchy all at once – and above that, a tiny piece of fish in a wafer-light batter, crowned with a garnish of cress. Dotted around, a brunoise of carrot, tender and sweet and, on the side, an oyster velouté with caviar.

Hake – with layers. And texture. And taste.

Goodness; hidden layers of surprises: myriad combinations of flavours and textures. An absolute delight.

And how did we ‘forget’ hake? I remember it vaguely from childhood, yet you rarely see it in shops these days. And the taste is such that it’s little wonder that chefs have been talking it up in recent years.

As a side order, we shared a portion of crushed carrot and swede with pepper and tiny pieces of perfectly crisp bacon.

For dessert, The Other Half opted for a rich chocolate tart with salted caramel ice cream. I selected plums in Marsala, served with a madeline – actually more like a wedge of dense, ginger cake – and a delicate scoop of a lightly-spiced ice cream.

Christmas in a bowl.

There followed coffee and petits four – tiny chocolate treats and slices of a miniature, but utterly perfect lemon tart that was anything but miniature when it came to flavour, packing a massive citrus punch.

And then, just as we leaned back and exhaled slowly and with pleasure, a small cake, topped with two candles, arrived at the table, on a slate that was inscribed, in cream, with the words: ‘Happy Birthday’.

Layers of chocolate, covered in more chocolate and topped with a quenelle of rich chocolate mousse, it was a complete surprise – and an absolute delight.

Now regular readers of this blog will know that, no matter how difficult to believe it might be, I have a very small capacity for food.

But I had, on this occasion, managed to put away, in their entirety, three complete courses – the portion sizes were absolutely perfect for me.

In that situation, there was no chance that I could eat all (or half) of that extra – and oh so special – cake. I did do my best, though.

To drink, we’d chosen a Bourgueil La Coudraye 2010 from the Loire Valley, which was a light enough red to drink alongside the fish – as well as the meat and game.

A very special birthday cake.

Corrigan’s Mayfair is a lovely setting: a low-ceilinged room that is at once classy but yet not remotely intimidating, and with beautiful light. To borrow a phrase from one of my favourite films, Victor/Victoria, the restrooms are almost a religious experience.

And the staff are a delight: at once highly attentive and helpful, but also entirely unobtrusive.

A short while after that cake arrived, we exchanged the warmth of the restaurant for the cold night air, only to discover that the nearby fair in Hyde Park was shrouded by dense mist.

With the waddle of utter stuffedness we made our way around the corner until we were in a condition to hail a taxi home.

But, oh my goodness – what a meal, what a meal.

If anyone suggests to you that expensive restaurants really don’t give you anything much more over far cheaper ones – well, don’t listen to them.

Because at Corrigan’s Mayfair, you get massive culinary bang for your buck with inventive cooking and sublime food.

Did I make that clear? This is utterly divine use of the very best ingredients. It is an art – and don’t let’s pretend otherwise.

And those candles? As I blew them out, I could only wish to dine more often so magnificently and, indeed, to return to Corrigan’s itself.