Wonka is a (Paddington) bear hug of a movie

Paul King has found a formula – and it’s every bit the equal of any chocolate treat that Willy Wonka can confect.

Having hit the jackpot with the Paddington films (Paddington in Peru comes next year), King teamed up with Paddington 2 co-writer Paul Farnaby to create a Willy Wonka origin story. And it’s an absolute joy.

We meet our titular hero as he arrives by sea in an unnamed European city (hints of both France and Germany though mostly filmed in England), armed only with his magical abilities with the cocoa bean and the dreams that his mother, who steered a narrow boat up and down canals, told him were so important.

She herself made wondrous chocolate – this feels reminiscent of Joanne Harris’s iconic novel, Chocolat, not least in a sense of magic being involved – but died before she could impart the secrets to her son.

The problem for Willy though, is that the town he has chosen in which to launch his products on the world is effectively run by a cartel of three unscrupulous chocolatiers who want this threat to their power gone – and that follows having fallen prey to the dreadful Mrs Scrubitt and her henchman Bleacher, after the latter offers a homeless Willy a roof over his head, without mentioning the hidden costs that will drive him into captivity and forced labour.

Calah Lane as Noodle

But Willy makes new friends, including the orphan Noddle, and they all – eventually – engage with his plans of how to free themselves and defeat the cartel.

A few commentators have suggested that Willy is such a nice character, it’s hard to believe that, in his future lies a less charming approach.

But there are hints here that his inherent mischievousness could develop a darker side. And Timothée Chalamet captures both that and the naivety of the character in a completely convincing way.

He also has a very pleasing singing voice that does full justice to the great new songs from Neil ‘The Divine Comedy’ Hannon. It’s also a delight that the film includes new versions of Pure Imagination and The Oompa-Loompa Song from the classic 1971 Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley score.

I’ve already effectively said that Chalamet is very good indeed – he is utterly convincing and has charm by the bucketload, and can sing and hoof brilliantly. Teenager Calah Lane as Noodle is simply wonderful in what is sure to be her breakthrough role.

Everywhere else – as with the Paddington films – is a wonderful ensemble cast. Sally Hawkins as Willy’s mother, Jim Carter, Natasha Rothwell, Farnaby and Rakhee Thakrar as his new friends are all excellent.

Matt Lucas and Mathew John Baynton as two of the triumvirate of the chocolate cartel are also great, but do rather lose out to a wonderful turn from Paterson Joseph as the third of their corrupt number. And this is before we mention Rowan Atkinson as a dodgy priest, Olivia Colman as Mrs Scrubitt, Tom Davis as Bleacher and Keegan-Michael Key as a corrupt chief of police.

Ah… and then there’s Hugh Grant, who risks stealing the entire show with his Oompa-Loompa (left), as he did when playing Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2.

Anything else to add? It looks gorgeous. And after a really tough personal year, it was the hug of a movie that I needed. There is a scene involving flamingos and balloons that had me blubbing for sheer joy.

And that seems to be King’s great skill: he can create films like this, without a shred of cynicism, but always avoiding over sentimentality or mawkishness. A great big (Paddington bear) hug of a film!

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.

Chocolate dreams

Along with beer, there’s one thing you’ll find very difficult to avoid in Brugge, and that’s chocolate.

The city centre alone has at least 48 chocolate shops – which is one for every week of the year except Lent.

Many of them are explicitly aimed at the tourist market, but local people do actually buy chocolate here too – often as a gift to take to a host or hostess, rather than a bottle.

And while there are chains aplenty, the real deal is also represented – artisanal chocolatiers whose products are still made by hand.

But however they’re made, chocolate has come a long way – albeit over a very long time.

Chocolate – or xocolati – had been enjoyed for centuries in South America before Europeans found out about when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs.

The first records showing its use have the Maya drinking it – over 2,000 years ago.

And it was as a drink that its popularity continued throughout the region. Indeed, historians have suggested that Montezuma’s court consumed approximately 2,000 cups a day, with the king himself being responsible for 50 of those.

The Spanish might have disliked plenty of the culture they were destroying, but they took up this habit with relish.

In the 16th century, a Spanish Jesuit missionary to Peru, Jose de Acosta, wrote that his compatriots were “greedy” for it, sometimes even adding chili, and sometimes making it into a paste that was apparently good for the stomach and “against the catarrh”.

The Spanish then introduced it to Europe, where even as they were having it produced on the other side of the world by slave labour, it remained a luxury for royalty and the well-connected. In England, anyone with money could buy it, and the first chocolate house opened in London in 1657.

It was only at the end of the 18th century that the first solid chocolate was made in Turin, and that kick-started the developments that have led to what we recognise today as chocolate.

Belgium is among the European countries where chocolate making has become an art form. And Brugge reflects that.

The city even has a chocolate museum, but I decided against it.

It is also home to Dominique Persoone – Belgium’s self-styled ‘Shock-o-latier’ – who is a sort of Heston Blumenthal of chocolate, only a bit more rock ‘n’ roll. Which in Brugge isn’t easy.

If readers thought it a tad outré when I tried cheese chocolates from Parisian chocolatier Jean-Paul Hévin last year, then what Persoone does with chocolate could give you a serious jolt.

We had first become aware of him via the Hairy Bikers, who visited his Brugge shop in their ‘bakeathon’ series.

The hirsute culinary pair had tried chocolates flavoured with grass – no, not that sort of grass, the green stuff that cows eat.

They’d also tried Persoone’s ‘shooter’, a little device that enables you flick chocolate powder up your nose. It had been created for a Rolling Stones party and is now available to buy, together with the chocolate.

To be honest, I can’t work out why a €10 note wouldn’t do, but there you go. It is, apparently, an really freaky experience.

My Brugge chocolate mission, I had decided, would include visits to a ‘normal’ chocolatier and a visit to Persoone’s Chocolate Line.

As we took our first amble around the city, we found ourselves in a small square – and there, on one side, was the Chocolate Line.

So, having sussed its location, I left this particular little treat for later in the week.

It’s a small shop with a traditional façade; at first glance, there’s nothing to suggest the unconventional nature of Persoone’s work.

There’s nothing that hits you instantly when you walk inside either.


Oh, it was crowded, and we had to wait until a group of young women who had only come in to look had moved on.

There is a large window at the back that enables you see two of Persoone’s staff busy making chocolates – something fascinating in its own right.

And then there’s the produce: cult-of-the-personality stuff – books and mugs with Persoone’s image – and then things like chocolate lipstick. No, not a bar of chocolate made to look like a lipstick, but a lipstick. That’s chocolate. Put it on and then ‘look for a victim to kiss’.

An old-fashioned, dark wood and glass counter ran down one side of the shop, full of trays of different chocolates. They looked delicious; classy but far from unconventional.

And indeed, many of the creations here are far from being wildly outré. There are bites of taste utilising entirely conventional flavours, from mint to orange to coffee.

But then, as I was guided through making my selection by a delightful young woman, I started to encounter the less familiar confections.

Bacon. Fried onion. Olives. Cola. Curry. Tobacco. Vodka.

Actually, vodka may sound strange – but why would it be? After all, booze and chocolate has long gone together.

In Persoone’s case, the ‘apero’ is a green, cubist creation with a bitter ganache of vodka, passion fruit and lime.


One thing's certain: it's a seriously superior chocolate.

I’ve yet to try the cola, the olives and the tobacco. I’m taking my time with these and alternating between the outré and the conventional.

I passed on the curry altogether.

The bacon was the first I tried and it is seriously strange finding chocolate melt away to leave a small piece of – well, bacon. It’s far from offensive, but I wouldn’t go wild for it again.

The fried onion was a revelation and produced a really interesting taste.

It’s worth remembering that chocolate was also used by the Aztecs in cookery. We’re talking about the seriously bitter stuff (70-80% cocoa solids), but it can give a nice final touch to a chilli con carne or, as I’ve used it myself, with a sauce for venison.

So when you view it like that, none of this is quite so strange.

There is, of course a chilli one, but that’s become almost passé these days. Which is not to say that Persoone’s version isn’t top notch: the flavour develops fabulously subtly on the palate.

The ‘shock’ factor of something like this is one thing, but the truth is, I’d very happily eat most of these again.

On a corner in the same square stands Dumon. Another artisanal chocolatier – with a shop that is far more modern than Chocolate Line; almost like a boutique.

They too make their products by hand. We bought a box for colleagues back at work, plus a slab of chocolate with lavender, and then a packet of chocolate asparagus.

No, don’t worry: this wasn’t some sort of Persoone-like affair, but simply chocolate shaped to look like white asparagus, with a truffle filling.

The asparagus were tasty – but very sweet. In fact, one of those made me feel a tad sickly. And the individual chocolates were very sweet too.

My own taste is much more toward Persoone’s creations.

It’s worth pointing out that there is an outlet of Belgian chocolate chain Neuhaus at St Pancras. These chocolates are not hand made.

But in London at least, the prices are noticeably higher than for top-notch, handmade chocolates in Brugge.


I may have to return to Belgium for the chocolate alone.

The sacrifice of the lamb

With Easter now only a couple of days away, it seems like I might actually have to do some proper planning for the festive fodder.

There are some aspects of this that are nice and easy. This afternoon, for instance, I nipped to St Pancras on the way home for the chocolate run.

Nestling under the platforms is a Neuhaus, a premier Belgian chocolate chain with a history going back to 1857. It is a wonderful experience. Not one you do every week - or even every month. But when you do, then even the selection of your chocolates is a wonderfully voluptuous experience.

But the big question is what to eat on Easter Sunday. Roasts are traditional throughout Europe – well, apart from anything else, you want to make a bit of a splash when ending Lent, don’t you?

And lamb is particularly popular. Of course, it’s available at this time of year, but it also works nicely from the Christian symbol point of view.

The Lamb of God, sacrificed for us all – a sacrificed lamb to mark the end of the difficult winter and the beginning of spring.

Like other festivals, the early Christian church purloined a lot of pagan and non-Christian religious pageantry and celebration for itself: good sense, of course – it made selling Christianity to the people as a whole far easier.

Indeed, the word ‘Easter’ comes from Ēostre or Ostara, who was Germanic goddess and also lent her name to Ēosturmōnaþ, which was, in essence, the Anglo-Saxon name for April and which, by Bede’s time, had become ‘Paschal month’.

The centuries since have seen considerable debates about Ēostre, but one train of thinking appears to link her with the Norse goddess of fertility – who gave her name to Friday – Freya (the Germanic version was Ing, which may be where the name Ingham originates – the ‘ham’ bit is ‘home’ – and is the name of one part of my own family).

Both, it seems, have had customs involving hares and rabbits linked to them by some scholars.

For instance, in Leicestershire, “the profits of the land called Harecrop Leys were applied to providing a meal which was thrown on the ground at the ‘Hare-pie Bank’, according to 19th-century scholar Charles Isaac Elton, who went on to suggest that this was a link to the worship of Ēostre.

And in his work of the same period, Charles J Billson lists a number of incidents involving hares around the Easter period in northern Europe.

According to Joseph Bosworth and T Northcote Toller, in their An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898), Ēostre was “the goddess of the rising sun, whose festivities were in April. Hence used by Teutonic Christians for the rising of the sun of righteousness, the feast of the resurrection”.

Of course those great icons of the festival, hares and bunny rabbits, are just there for cuteness – and have nothing whatsoever to do with celebrating the arrival of spring and, in its sidecar, a certain rising of the sap.

But such a thought doesn't really tie in with our rather infantilised incarnation of Easter. We have forgotten, as adults, how to celebrate - beyond a spot of booze - and have delegated most of the pleasure to the children. Christmas, for instance, is 'for children,' we're so often told. Of course, that helps to promote all these festivals as spending opportunities.

Yet the older and uglier and (hopefully) wiser I get, the more I have a sense of the seasons and of the need to celebrate the rise and fall of each year - even if without any specific religious content.

Gradually, I am reconnecting with the Earth - and please, that does not mean I have become or am becoming a hippy or a New Age convert. But there is a real joy I'm discovering to that sense of the cycle of the seasons.

However, let’s get back to the big question. I want to have roast lamb – I love roast lamb. Yes, I love the little springy-wingy fluffy things in the fields too, but most of them wouldn’t even be born were it not that we also love the taste of their roasted flesh after a few months of that gamboling malarky.

With mint sauce.

Or lemon.

Mouths watering yet?

But there is just a slight question mark: in my dentally-challenged state, can I eat roast meat?

Should I, perhaps, make minted lamb meatballs instead? Or even a kleftiko?

The answer may be near – but for that, my loyal readers, you’ll have to wait a day or two to find out!

Fusion confusion

A few weeks ago, in a moment of flighty insanity, I bought a bag of popcorn.

Not just any old popcorn, mind, but one of these trendy new ‘flavoured’ ones. Flavoured, that is, in some way other than salt or sugar.

In this case, it was a bag from a company owned by Julian Metcalfe, who founded Pret a Manger. And the flavouring in question was wasabi.

Mistake.

I took one piece, consumed that – and decided that that was quite enough. I’m quite happy to try things, but that was just wrong.

And then, in the French capital, I came across another potentially intriguing fusion of foods.

A book on gourmet Paris had recommended a chocolatier called Jean-Paul Hévin, who has a number of outlets in the city, including one that’s just around the corner from where we stay.

In the event, we didn’t suss out where it was until our final morning – by which time we’d found a substantial Hévin stall in Galeries Lafayette.

We bought conventional chocolates for ourselves and a box for my mother – before I spotted something that had actually been mentioned in that gourmet guide: cheese chocolates.

Yes, you really did read that correctly. These were small cubes of cheese, covered in chocolate. Me being me, I had to try. There was one small box left, so it came back to London.

What would you expect from such a combination?

One of the four cheeses that Hévin uses is Roquefort – hardly a shrinking violet on the taste and smell front.

My first response then, when I sat down to pay such a confection the time it merits, was pleasant surprise. There wasn’t such a clash as one might have expected. It was as though the chocolate muted the flavour of the cheese, which then only came through later and in a very subtle way.

But the more I thought about it, the more I started to wonder what the point of it actually is. After all, who wants a ‘subtle’ Roquefort?

Perhaps it qualifies as a sort of amuse-bouche – a single-bite appetiser to set the tastebuds tingling? But on that note, I’d suggest that it fails too, simply because it’s too subtle to really excite the palate. It manages to take two wonderful ingredients and render them less exciting than they should be.

And just because something doesn’t taste vile that still doesn’t mean that it really works.

I understand the artistic imperative – the need and desire to experiment and try new things. But I remain unconvinced about the merits of chocolate cheese.

I shall eat the rest – they are, frankly, more chocolate than cheese – and then I shall enjoy Hévin’s proper chocolates over Christmas. And some really good cheese.

Chocolate is good for you – some newspaper reports are not

According to the Telegraph, the NHS has finally decided to recommend some ‘superfoods’ to Joe and Joanna Public.

It seems that there might have been some straws and a camel involved along the route to this new approach, as assorted foods and supplements have been promoted to the public as having benefits close to immortality in some cases – and with varying levels of concomitant profit for their producers.

There certainly seems to be some evidence for some of the supplements that are currently popular, as illustrated by the website Snake Oil – the scientific evidence for popular health supplements, which manages to be lovely to look at too as well as very informative.

Also coming in on the matter, another report in the same paper (and elsewhere) claims that chocolate is good for you.

Not that this is new: see the same Snake Oil site above for there being good scientific foundations to believe that chocolate may be beneficial – and that doesn’t even mention it in terms of a mood enhancer.

Indeed, a few years ago, Dutch (I think) scientists produced research collated from a mass of data that purported to show the ‘perfect’ diet.

It was, in essence, the ‘Mediterranean’ diet – with a glass or two of red wine per day and a square or two of proper chocolate.

Much of the advice on ‘superfoods’ will not come as any great revelation to many of us.

But the Telegraph’s report also suggests that you can find these real ‘super’ foods not in your expensive deli, but in the supermarket.

Yes. Abandon your ‘expensive’ deli – which only sells faddy foods, one might assume – and look to ‘supermarket superfoods’.

Why don’t they just go and give the supermarkets a licence to print more damned money?

Not that that’s what the report itself actually says. Miracle Foods and the Media was first published in January this year – and indeed, is dated in February (the pdf address includes this).

No wonder the Telegraph didn’t want to actually provide a link to the report – it’s hardly news and it doesn’t include the supermarket slant.

Not that aren’t issues with health advice in general.

Part of the difficulty today with so many people apparently not eating well is a combination of things, including food faddiness in general and a food culture and heritage so completely denuded by that faddiness and by the supermarkets themselves.

The original report makes some interesting points – but this is bad journalism from something that once actually had a reputation as a decent newspaper.

And it’s odd too politically, since one might have expected the Telegraph to be supportive of farmers and their struggles against the corporate monopoly that supermarkets are close to holding, given their 80% share of the UK grocery market, and the bullying that that enables them to get away with.

In fact, it all simply serves to illustrate what the NHS report was talking about – careless writing.

And by god, the picture of liver at the top of the article looks as though it’s been overcooked into un-appetising dryness.

Coping with the insanity of London life

I don’t know whether it’s the time of year, the time of the month or the time of life, but there seems to be a great deal of medium-grade irritation around at present.

Much of it involves my morning journey to work. This, when everything is running properly, involves walking around 100 metres to a bus stop, getting a bus, getting off at the penultimate stop on that route, getting any one of a number of other buses that also stop there and getting off just another 100 metres or so from the office.

Some weeks ago, the final stop in that journey was closed for roadworks. Roadworks, of course, take weeks.

Now that the stop is one more open, the stop I leave my first bus at has closed because of roadworks. And this morning, my first bus stop was closed because of … yes, you guessed it.

Add to that a person on each of today’s buses gabbing into their mobile phones. One is a regular: I’ve hardly ever seen her when she doesn’t have a conversation on the go; the device might well be glued to her head.

Today it involved a few ‘well I’d tell him to fuck offs’ before I could leave the bus – only to have her replaced by a far younger woman having another conversation that seemed to revolve around someone’s else’s troubled relationship.

Really, I do not need to and do not want to know. And a mobile phone is not a megaphone.

Off the bus eventually, I hit a shop and bought custard creams and jaffa cakes as therapy for myself and the whole department.

As a slight aside, the main difference I can see with an office that has a large number of women in it is the cake and biscuit frequency. And in the run up to annual conference, this increases.

But that was today. Yesterday was not helped by a trip to try to find some new clothes for conference later this month. As a hackette reporting such an event, I am expected to look smart. As a woman who has been very slowly losing weight in the last couple of years, some of my more formal clothing is being to look rather baggy – or simply fall off me.

Not wanting to spend a great deal, I went to M&S, which has served me admirably on the clothes front for many years. And I know my dress size according to that shop’s sizes

Or I thought I did. I picked out two pairs of trousers and a jacket and took them to the fitting rooms to try. They were all apparently of the same size – a size that, on the basis of what’s in the wardrobe at present could be expected to be on the generous side.

Nothing fitted. Not only that, but while one pair of the trousers could be fastened, the others didn’t come close. So the sizing isn’t remotely consistent. And the jacket was ridiculously small.

I gave up and, since it was either Marks or Tesco, nipped downstairs to get a couple of food bits.

But that was depressing too. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor plastic. Everything covered in it, bagged by it. My mother thinks this is a food heaven. Some of the packets even have the sort of security strips on them that you get on CDs, with the addition of a warning to ‘remove before putting in the microwave’.

For want of anything else, I picked up a pack of dab and then left. Fortunately, there was a rather nice chocolate shop nearby and a selection of truffles improved my mood straight away.

The dab was hardly the freshest fish I’d had. It was well within date, but smelled strongly when I opened it later. That’s not a sign of fresh, fresh fish.

It got done à la sole meuniere: so, dredged in seasoned flour and then cooked carefully in butter. When it’s nice and golden, remove to a warm plate.

Turn up the heat and let the butter start to brown if it hasn't already; then add a really good big squeeze of lemon juice and stir. Serve on top of the fish.

Now I'm not a dab hand at fish, really. I wish I was, but it takes more skill than I have to be a really good fish cook, I think. However, this is a great and easy sauce. I served a very small amount of new potatoes with it, together with asparagus tips and fresh peas and voila!

Simples. And enough to improve my mood. Until this morning’s commute, that was!

High end and low end experiments

After the excitement of Saturday, yesterday was a bit of a double experiment.

First, after around three months, this was the day I'd chosen to see just whether my first attempt at duck confit was edible. I had been worrying that, even though the top of legs were covered completely and safely, somehow I'd have done something wrong and, when they came out, they'd pong to high heaven.

It took some doing, but eventually I was able to haul the pair of big legs out of the thick, creamy fat that has been protecting them for all that time. And protecting them it most certainly had. There was nothing to fret about. I brushed off as much of the liquid fat as possible and then roasted them for half an hour at 170˚C.

Good taste and certainly flaky. Okay, maybe not the best in the world, but darned good, nonetheless – and more so given that it was a first effort.

Served with courgettes and bread, it worked fine.

But in contrast to this wonderful peasant dish, the rest of my cooking day was somewhat more of a culinary challenge.

Taking a couple of ideas from David Everitt-Matthias's Dessert Recipes from Le Champignon Sauvage, I set about a really complicated dessert – in three parts!

The first part, which was my own, was a jelly, made from rhubarb and strawberries, initially cooked in a caster sugar and a little pink grapefruit juice, plus some fresh ginger, before being strained and then having softened gelatine leaves added to it, before it was decanted into a mould and popped in the fridge.

The second part of this dessert was a white chocolate mousse – I had white chocolate with cardamom – which was from the book. It started with cream whipped to ribbon stage (except that my cream was already thicker than that).

Caster sugar and egg yolks are beaten together and then whisked in a bowl over simmering water.

A little more cream is heated and gelatine added.

The white chocolate is melted carefully over more simmering water.

Once everything's been brought together, it goes into the fridge.

Now it's never easy cutting recipe amounts down for just two people, so that may not have helped.

But I found myself suddenly realising just why Raymond Blanc's recipes – and chef's notes – are so bloody good. In this book, there doesn't even seem to be a note about what egg sizes he uses. And it's all very well saying: 'X leaves of gelatine', but gelatine leaves come in different sizes, so one is still left wondering 'how much?'

There's a side of me – the cynical side – that thinks that, if you perhaps skate over such things in a book like this, you won't really be giving away any secrets. I'm sure it wasn't deliberate.

The book will still be of use – and the pictures are pure (so to speak) food porn.

But the point is, the resultant mousse may be far from what it should be. And perhaps that's why I didn't like it much.

At least the third part of the dessert was easy – well, sort of. Dark chocolate is melted gently over simmering water and then spread over a flat, smooth surface. Everitt-Matthias recommends a piece of acetate, but foil over a baking tray, smoothed carefully, does fine.

The theory after that is to cut the thin chocolate slice into geometric shapes to provide a sort of architecture when you assemble the final dessert.

Next lesson – don't try to cut such chocolate with a dry knife. Remember to use a hot, damp one. I didn't get any perfect shapes. Still, you can't go wrong with pieces of chocolate at any time.

It'd didn't look like I'd pictured in my mind's eye – there was so little jelly that that had to be halved rather than cut through horziontally, leaving a thin disc each – but it had a good, intense fruit taste.

The chocolate, as you can see, didn't quite provide the structure I'd hoped for. The drizzle on the plate is Balsamic – good idea, given the strawberry involvement, but it should have been thickened (agar agar or arrowroot?).

So hardly a raving success to the posh bit of the meal. Still, that's how one learns. Next time ...

Plenty of rhubarb, but no custard

It's probably a good thing that The Other Half is returning today from his jaunt to exotic parts – or Cardiff, as it's otherwise known – for the entire first round of matches on the opening weekend of the 2011 Rugby League top flight season.

What could have been a quiet girly weekend turned into something that might have had little volume attached, but was close to frenetic at times. I was knackered by last night, but pleasantly so, I think.

Everything got into serious swing on Saturday morning. An early visit to the market gave me the chance to chat with various people and make at least one intriguing discovery: Andy says that orders for hare have pretty much shot through the roof. It seems to be a trend. But just for once, I was able to offer a possible explanation of such a thing: of course, not huge amounts of people will have been able to taste Bruno Loubet's hare royale, but with it getting mentions all over the place and, indeed, being named main course of 2010 by Jay Rayner, hare has had a big publicity boost.

But my mission of the day was not merely to attempt to cast some light on things. At the Longwood van, I had completely confused Matthew with an email order for five lambs' kidneys and the same weight in braising steak. He obviously had a good idea what was intended for the meat, but would have expected that there would be far more beef.

I explained that this was my chance for a sort of revenge on all those insipid steak & hardly-any-kidney pies – and particularly the steak & just-one-small-piece-of-kidney pud at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese before Christmas: this was going to be the apotheosis of the kidney.

But all that was for Sunday: Saturday had plenty of other things in store.

Now while I might be neither mouse nor man, my well-laid plans still went awry when it became clear that there was no crab to be found on the market. Vicki explained that the weather had stopped a fresh catch. Instead, I opted for a squid and mused over cooking it with red chili and linguine.

Sadly – although not in some ways – Ed will be leaving La Bouche. Sad for us, but not for Ed. Having completed his doctorate (architectural history, if memory serves me right), he's got a brilliant post as a researcher at the National Portrait Gallery. All the best, Ed.

And so back to the kitchen.

First things first involved rhubarb, with Otto helpfully using the sheer force of her feline brain to will the juice to drip through the sieve for an individual syllabub, à la Sarah Raven, for that evening.

That done, a second batch went the same way, although it was six sticks this time, a little sugar and just a very little water. Here was one of the experiments of the weekend. I wanted to make little individual jellies – which promised to be fun, since I'd never used gelatine before. But I'd picked up enough from a video of Michel Roux using it to realise that it wasn't too scary.

Maybe not too "scary", but it still needs a bit of technical sorting out. I calculated half a sheet of the gelatine to my rhubarb juice (there was around 150ml). In the event, it wasn't remotely enough. I put a repeat off until Sunday. And in the evening, browsing through Kitchen Secrets by Raymond Blanc, I came across a dish where he'd used his famous tomato essence in four different ways. It included a jelly. I had the secret in my hands.

Using his calculations, I realised that I'd need 3 1/2-4 sheets of the size of gelatine I had for around 200ml of juice. This is what I tried the following day.

While the cooked fruit drained, I took two metal cook's rings and gave them each a base of cling film, tightly stretched over and up onto the sides. These were placed in a dish.

I wanted the jelly to be a tart compliment to something sweet and savoury, so was careful to taste and not over sweeten. The gelatine sheets need to be soaked in cold water for around 10 minutes. Then you drain them well and add them to warm liquid – but not boiling, as it could make the dish bitter. In this case, I warmed a little of the strained juice, then incorporated the squeezed gelatine, which melts really easily, and then added that back into the rest of the juice.

Blanc also explains how to get a "garnish" in a jelly without it all sinking straight to the bottom: wait for five minutes and then gently stir in whatever you want. It took longer for my jellies, but the eventual outcome was in the right direction, as drained and dried green peppercorns were added.

These were popped into the fridge to wait for use (of which more another time). But at the second time of asking, I'd got them to set and that was a victory.

Back to Saturday and more from the same Blanc book. This time, sugar was melted to a hard crack caramel in a large pan (how a proper thermometer helps!) and 200g of skinned hazelnuts were chucked in, stirred around, and then the whole lot was as quickly as possible spread onto a lined tray and left to set and cool.

When it's reach that point, it gets blasted into a paste in a processor: I have a small one, which just coped over a number of shifts. It didn't get very paste-like, so a little water was added, as per the book. This is a praline paste.

This is then mixed with lightly crushed cornflakes and pressed firmly into a tart tin or rectangular 'ring'. Or, if don't quite have that, use whatever will allow you to spread it quite thinly. Stick in the fridge and leave for at least half an hour.

Next, whisk a couple of eggs lightly. Bring some double cream and full-fat milk just to the boil, and pour onto the eggs, whisking to slightly cook them. Pour in chopped, good-quality chocolate and keep whisking until the chocolate is entirely melted and you have a lovely glossy mixture. Spread on top of the praline and cornflake mix and put back into the fridge.

It needs to be left overnight – and indeed, apart from a tiny taste, is waiting for this evening. A portion can be garnished with grated chocolate and even a single hazelnut that's been roasted and then dipped in caramel and quickly hung up by a cocktail stick from BluTac so that the caramel drips into a lovely, long 'tail'. The Other Half saw this in the book and responded with a comment about posiness. I haven't decided whether I'll try this, but I did buy a packet of BluTac on Saturday.

The point is, though, that the dipped nut aside, this is not difficult.

That was almost that for Saturday – except to prep a starter dough for some bread and actually make myself dinner. I decided to drop the linguine idea, but did the squid pan fried, in a risotto with red chili and actually with some Parmesan cheese (a first, given The Other Half's dislike of cheese).

It was enormously pleasing and soothing.

• For snacking during the day, I picked up some Stichelton from La Bouche, having read about a few days earlier on Raymond Blanc's blog, which is not only interesting on what Stichelton actually is – like 'proper' Stilton was before makers were forced to used pasturised milk – but also on the state of British cheese in general. And the Stichelton is absolutely lovely.

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.

Back down to Earth

When you get a new mixer, you have to use it – and use it quickly. The kMix was calling to me. And if an excuse was actually required, then our office tradition of birthday boys and girls providing cakes for everyone offered me the prefect one.

I had spent some time browsing books, wondering what to make, when I alighted on chocolate cupcakes in Nigella’s Domestic Goddess.

There is something about cupcakes that makes you expect sugary sweetness, that suggests cakes for children. But this recipe provides a satisfyingly bitter chocolate hit – very much a concoction for grown-ups.

The mixer makes life so much easier: creaming sugar and butter together, compared with the old-fashioned bicep-building slog, is a dream. It’s tempting to caress the beautiful machine as it hums away, fluttering your eyelashes at it flirtatiously, à la Nigella herself.

But setting aside such frivolity – it’s just a machine, woman: it doesn’t even vibrate as fetchingly as the washing machine – it makes light work of baking.

Once the brown sugar and unsalted butter are creamed (125g of each), you add two large eggs and beat that all in, before adding 125g of self-raising flour, plus a tablespoon each of cocoa and espresso powder. Then add 50g of melted dark chocolate.

Pre-heat your oven to 200g. Share out the mix into a muffin tray, lined with a dozen cupcake cases, and bake for 15-20 minutes (my notoriously awkward oven required 25).

Leave in the tin for a couple of minutes and then move to a cooling rack. When they’re fully cool, top with a simple chocolate ‘icing’ of 300g dark chocolate, 50g unsalted butter and two teaspoons of espresso powder, melted gently in a bain marie.

I would say that, sticking religiously to Ms Lawson’s measurements, there’s no way you can ‘pour’ the cake mix into the tray. It’s more a matter of plopping the mix in, a spoonful at a time. But that’s a minor complaint. And I didn't do as she suggested and "lop" the top off each little cake to make a flatter surface for the icing – there's no need (and it's wasteful).

The result was very grown-up cakes, with a light sponge and a very adult topping.

I baked two batches, in the full and certain knowledge that the office gannets would descend gleefully. I was not disappointed.

By Monday evening, it was very much a case of getting back down to Earth after the culinary pleasures of the weekend.

I’d picked up smoked haddock from Vicki on Saturday morning and poached it in a mix of water and milk, before letting it cool and then gently flaking the curving, milk-white flesh onto a plate.

I wonder if there’s anything much more soothing than smoked haddock? It has to be properly smoked, though: the stuff that’s dyed a deep colour is pretty much offensive. The only colour should be a slight blush of pinky brown, while the smoky flavour should be subtle and not overwhelming.

On to the risotto itself. Now, I make no pretence at my take being as good as the divine one that I ate at Brasserie Blanc in Bristol last month, but I decided to tweak and play a little this time, and by and large, I think it paid off.

I started by softening a chopped small onion in olive oil as usual, then added some shredded leek and some celery salt, and cooked it a little longer.

The Arborio rice went in and took on the oil, followed by a slug of Vermouth that fizzed away as it hit the pan. Once that was absorbed, it was the turn of the chicken stock that I’d been heating. A ladle of that and then, when that was absorbed, a ladle of the milky poaching liquor, and so on.

I added fresh thyme and, as the cooking neared its conclusion, green peppercorns. On the side, I was sautéing more shredded leeks.

With the rice having absorbed its maximum level of liquid, the flaked fish was added, a lid went on, the heat was turned down and it was left for around 10 minutes. No, that's not what you read in recipe books, but it's the only way I can get the rice to the sort of texture that I've had when I've eaten risotto in a restaurant.

Since The Other Half doesn’t like cheese, I don’t add Parmesan, but finish my risottos with some crème fraiche instead.

In terms of serving, the risotto is topped with the leek.

I liked most of this: there was a depth of subtle flavour to the risotto itself that was very pleasing, although I’d perhaps let it get a tad too sloppy. I was less pleased with the leek topping. I probably need to use less leek and fry it so that it adds a really crispy contrast. I shall have to look into this.

Earlier, I said that it was essentially a case of getting back “down to Earth” after the sophisticated pleasures of Bistrot Bruno Loubet on Saturday.

But while such dining is not an everyday experience, it’s interesting to see how it can inspire and influence. It may not sound like much, but perhaps my ideas of expanding on my usual basic risotto by using some fish-infused milk, adding green peppercorns and leek with the onion at the start was a response to such an experience and a desire to push my cooking a little further.

Whether it all works is, of course, an entirely different matter. But then again, not only is living learning, you learn by your mistakes.

And the culmination of the bake-a-thon ...

It was about 12.25pm when I suddenly realised that my stomach was churning.

It's one thing to bring in to the office some sort of culinary effort as a gift for colleagues – it's entirely another to expect them to pay for something! Would it be good enough that people would genuinely enjoy it and not just pay for it out of a sense of 'duty'?

I was up early to solve the final parts of the puzzle – getting everything organised so that I could carry it into work on the bus.

Four cake and biscuit tins did the basic work – the chocolate cake had spent the night in the fridge, on a plate that had been covered with foil, which had been turned down and folded under the plate. It was then easy enough this morning for me to unfold the excess foil and gently lift the cake off the plate and into the biggest of my tins.

With two large carrier bags weighing me down, plus my camera and a handbag, I was out early to avoid the schoolchildren. It turned out to be an easy journey.

And sure enough, a colleague who, like me, is an early starter most days, bought her chocolate bark early.

But nonetheless, after a morning's work, the nerves kicked in.

I should have realised – if you bake it, they will come. Particularly when you liberally sprinkle the word 'chocolate' around.

And they did come. Slowly but surely, they came.

I'm left with some ginger cake and some bark, but they'll sell in the next couple of days.

The reality is that people enjoy my wares and I'll raise a decent amount for charity.

In the meantime, The Other Half is off at a conference and I'm having a girly night in. So please excuse me if I don't post at length.

This has been a really exciting day. I'm quite chuffed, if the truth be known.

And on that note – I'll talk to you soon.