A cracking new book from Bruno Loubet

Salmon, new potatoes, asparagus and a green gazpacho

There hasn't been much serious cooking taking place at the Voluptuous Villa of late: well okay, that’s perhaps a tad misleading.

There hasn’t been much experimentation or complexity: the long-awaited seasonal ingredients just cry out for the simplest possible treatment.

After all, when the asparagus and the Jersey Royals finally arrive, what else do you really want to do other than serve them simply with a lamb chop and some fresh mint sauce?

But a pre-ordered book arrived in my hands last week that demanded an instant change to this approach.

Bruno Loubet’s new book, Mange Tout, was the inspiration. And a delightful and inspirational collection it is.

With a braai having already been scheduled for Saturday – small steaks, pork and apple patties and Toulouse sausage, with bread and a small salad on the side – Sunday was marked down for a touch of Bruno experimentation.

The starting point with Bruno is the south west of France.

Coming from within the Bordeaux region, Loubet is absolutely an omnivore.

The south west of France is, after all, the home of duck confit and foie gras. Vegetarianism is not high in the menu.

Although Bruno’s new restaurant (which I hope to visit in a few weeks, work allowing) gives a much greater prominence to vegetables.

However, back to this book.

It didn’t take much of a browse before I saw dishes that I wanted to try.

Mackerel with salted and compressed watermelon and a lime mayonnaise is one that most certainly will be done, to give but a single example. And then there's lobster with mango – another pairing that you know, instantly, will work superbly. 

But I have already tried two dishes.

First, I tried a dish of salmon confit with asparagus, new potatoes and a green gazpacho.

Now this really is excellent.

Of course, it’s enormously seasonal – and seriously worships the produce.

The salmon is confited in olive oil – and works wonderfully – while the new potatoes and asparagus are cooked as you would expect.

The difference is in the green gazpacho, which includes avocado, spring onion, green pepper, green chilli, olive oil, basil and mint.

You use that as a sauce – and a delightfully fragrant sauce it is too, with just a little bit of a kick.

It is, on the one hand, very simple dish, but on the other, the gazpacho and the way the fish is cooked makes it a very grown-up dish.

You need a cook's thermometer to maintain the temperature of the oil – and my pesky, unsubtle hob made it close to a nightmare to keep the gauge steady at 50-55˚C, but it would be difficult to completely muck this up.

And it has the wonderful advantage of many aspects of it being able to be prepared well in advance, so the final cook is not difficult.

Bruno concludes the recipe by saying that he garnishes with whatever herbs are available: I finely shredded a few leaves of mint and sorrel from the garden, which worked well.

Next up was a rhubarb Clerkenwell mess – which I have actually eaten at Bistrot Bruno Loubet in, well, err, Clerkenwell.

It meant that, since I hadn’t planned well enough in advance to buy pre-made ones, I had to make my own meringue for the first ever time.

I checked Delia first, assuming simplicity and finding instead, mentions of cornflour and vinegar. So I turned to Michel Roux, where I found the simple directions that guided me through my first ever experience of making meringue.

And I managed it – and I admit to having felt really rather chuffed with myself.

The mess is made with meringue, a rhubarb jelly and a rhubarb compote (in effect), and while the compote is really quite sweet, having been cooked very briskly, with plenty of sugar and also orange juice, the addition of pink grapefruit segments keeps the whole thing very nicely balanced.

Now, I’m afraid I can’t actually read the words ‘mange tout’ without thinking of Del Boy’s glorious mis-pronounciation in an effort to impress in Only Fools and Horses.

But if that was about a misplaced belief in one’s own sophistication, this is the real deal.

Bruno’s new book has serious elements of fusion cookery, but they do not seem to be there for the sake of it.

They’re subtle and seriously considered – not just some excuse to combine a random series of ingredients.

On the basis of what I have cooked from the book, the instructions are clear, but do assume a certain knowledge.

Bruno’s food is wonderful – and that’s exactly why I pre-ordered this book some eight months ago, as soon as it was possible to do so.

Never mind me: suffice it to say that Raymond Blanc rates Bruno very highly (I can see why). And if you buy just one cookery book this year, you won’t go far wrong with this one.

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.

Let's hear it for the lemons

Has anyone else been watching Two Greedy Italians on BBC2 over the last few weeks?

Old friends Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo went back to Italy to visit four areas and talk about the food. Okay, they don’t just talk about it – they cook and eat it.

But the trip is not one where gastronomy is a stand-alone motivation: they meet old friends and family, they share stories of their lives before leaving for the UK.

This is not about food in isolation, but about food as a part of life, of love, of family, of friendship. And what it achieves, starting with the title itself, is a sense of vibrancy and earthiness and sensual pleasure that is an absolute joy to behold. There is poignancy in places, but ultimately, this is a celebration.

And the food is simple and gutsy and full of bold flavours.

There was a scene in the second episode when the pair sat there eating lemons they’d plucked from a tree – peel and all.

Now that could leave a northern European quite shocked.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been drifting toward buying more organic fruit and veg than previously. I noticed with organic Jersey Royals that that the flavour was better.

And then there were the lemons I bought last weekend. A softer yellow, knobblier by far than any you’d find in a supermarket and obviously unwaxed. The aroma when you cut into them absolutely sang.

During the week, we squeezed some on pan-fried tuna and some on grilled lamb chops. Lovely stuff.

And when I opened a bottle of Sicilian-style lemonade (made in France) that I’d picked up as an impulse buy, it was a million miles away from most of what I’ve ever tasted that has been called lemonade.

I have a jar of preserved lemons in to try a couple of Morrocan-style salads from Rick Stein’s Mediterranean – that’ll be different. It might not be eating peel in the same way that Carluccio and Contaldo did in the series, but since I’ve never done it before, it’ll still be a whole new culinary experience.

Natives of Asia, lemons made their European debut near southern Italy, no later than the 1st century AD, during the time of ancient Rome, before being introduced to Persia and Egypt.

The first mentions of lemons in literature are in a 10th century Arabic treatise on farming, and trees were used as an ornamental plant in early Islamic gardens.

But it wasn’t until the middle of the 15th century that the first major cultivation of lemons in Europe began in Genoa.

In recent years, lemons have become something that I always have in the house. But I'm only just discovering that not all lemons are equal.

In a fit of lemony enthusiasm yesterday, I bought a load of the organic ones mentioned above.

First, the juice and zest of three went into a first attempt at gelato, the Italian ice cream that uses an egg custard as its base. It's not perfect: letting concentration slip for mere seconds, I barely saved the custard from boiling, and I need to work on the freezing process; it's a tad too icy. But the taste ...

The other thing I did, while The Other Half was biting his nails over a last-kick Challenge Cup victory for the Castleford Tigers at Wakefield, was to have another go at pasta.

Ravioli again, but this time with proper pasta flour – it's much finer. I used 125g of flour to one egg – and a few drops of chilled water. It was much more elastic – which is how you see it on TV – and seemed a little easier to roll.

The stuffing this time was a mixture of ricotta cheese, pine nuts, Parmesan, a little crème fraïche and lemon zest.

The pasta was thinner this time and I used an off cut to check when it was cooked, throwing that in the pan of boiling water with the ravioli themselves.

The sauce was simple – just some sage leaves fried in good butter and a squeeze of lemon to finish. That was not bad at all. Practice will improve my pasta skills, but it was good to try again so soon, while I still have ideas in my mind about what I did previously.

And if lemon had become an important ingredient for me in the last few years, it might just have moved into a higher pantheon of foods with the experimentation of the last week.

Lessons from Italy

Practise makes perfect, so they say. Well even if doesn’t actually bring about perfection, it’s essential in the kitchen.

For some reason or other, I seem to have an inbuilt belief that, if I follow a recipe closely, it’ll turn out exactly right – even if it’s the first time that I’ve attempted that dish and it requires skills I’ve never learnt.

By now you’d think I’d know better. It wasn’t until I’d actually eaten risotto in a restaurant, for instance, that I could understand what al dente really meant in terms of the rice. And if you don’t understand that, then you really shouldn’t hope to know how to cook this famous dish.

Pasta is the same. I’ve tried making my own pasta in the past – once – but made it too thick. Last weekend, I decided to give it another go.

Now there’s nowt wrong with dried pasta and I’ve no great desire to make little bows: what I want to get into is the flavoured stuff – tagliatelle and pappardelle, for instance – and the filled pastas like ravioli.

Quite apart from anything else, this screams of the opportunity for masses of culinary creativity and experimentation with flavour. Even more so when you remember that The Other Half doesn’t like cheese, so such classic fillings as ricotta and spinach are off the menu.

Browsing through A Taste of Italy, a recipe for ravioli with a traditional meat filling had caught the eye.

We had ravioli at home when I was a child – the tinned stuff from Heinz, in gloopy, orangy tomato sauce.

At the weekend, I’d just minced down the remains of a leg of lamb and decided to adjust the recipe to use some of that. It takes quite some cooking – long and slow – with onion and garlic and tomato purée and stock. After simmering away under cover for nearly an hour, you take the lid off, turn up the heat and reduce the liquid until it’s really quite dry. Let it cool – and then beat an egg into it.

But let’s consider the pasta itself.

Since I now have a good mixer, I decided to use that. So, 250g decent plain flour and two eggs. Mistake number one was in assuming that, since pasta dough is – well, a dough, I’d be best advised to use the dough hook.

Wrong. All that was created was a mess that refused to come together properly (even with chilled water added) and, when I pressed it together by hand, was a grainy lump, with plenty of flour that hadn’t been blended in.

It was back to square one – and using the ordinary beater this time.

Having got that far – and then kneaded by a hand for a couple of minutes – you leave it then to rest in the bowl under a tea towel.

And then comes the rolling out.

There is a picture, in Jamie’s Italy, of Mr Oliver with a group of Italian ladies of indeterminate age, all with their rolling pins, ready for some pasta contest.

Some of the pins were huge. Their muscles must have been like Popeye’s. I’d bought a better rolling pin and this made it a easier to put some real weight behind it. But boy. It’s hard work!

Lesson one is to pay attention to the recipe and not assume that, just because I’d used half quantities, it wouldn’t benefit from being cut in half (or quarters) for rolling (you can keep the rest under a damp, clean tea towel).

I thought perhaps I’d got it thin enough – but I need more practice; and not in a year’s time when I’ve forgotten the lessons of last weekend. Not that I’m short of ideas.

Because The Other Half doesn’t eat cheese, I’ve been trying to think of classic-style ravioli fillings, other than meat ones, that don’t involve cheese. I want to try flaked crab meat, with lemon zest and paprika, bound together with a little crème fraiche, which should also provide some moisture.

But the next question is that of fitting a pasta dish like this into the structure of a meal: do you have to search for some way to add vegetables to it? Does it demand a big sauce?

What I did on Sunday was to try to take lessons from Italy. We started with asparagus, cooked in a slightly different way that I’d just read about: spears lying flat in barely enough water to cover; bring to the boil, give around four minutes (less if they’re very thin – but test).

The smaller amount of water and the lack of a ‘shock’ to the vegetable of starting it in boiling water does seem to help preserve the taste better. I’ve done it this way three times now, with asparagus from different places, and it’s worked well each time.

That was served simply with a drizzle of Balsamico and a sprinkle of course salt – which works a treat. You can add shavings of Parmesan or Pecorino if you like.

I’d made the ravioli in advance – you can leave them on a dish, dusted with cornflour and covered in a tea towel, until you’re ready to cook. Then it was a matter of just a few minutes in salted, boiling water (memo to self – use the largest pan you have next time). Test to make sure it’s cooked.

They were still too thick – but with a decent taste. The meat filling worked. It was served simply with a drizzle of my best virgin oil.

And for dessert, some strawberries, with a first taste of the strawberry ice cream I’d made that morning.

I like the simplicity of such a meal – but it relies on decent ingredients.

Next time, I may be less ambitious and simply try to make some pasta ribbons before moving to the more complex types. It’s as big a business as making puff pastry: rolling into a circle, then folding over and rolling again – a number of times. And you need to allow yourself far more time than I did on Sunday.

But like so many other things in the kitchen, it’s a rewarding feeling to find that you can make something like this on your own – even it needs practice to make it at least better next time around!

Earthy, easy food for a lazy day

A combination of holiday laziness and teeth that are still a bit nightmarish to gnash with has, since Boxing Day, been creating a dual question: what to eat and what can I eat?

I still get a touch of the ‘Protestant work ethic’ about cooking – as though it should feel a lot more like serious toil if I’m Doing It Properly.

Perhaps that’s a widespread British view: cooking – food – as another form of toil and, therefore, something to largely be avoided (except at Christmas, obviously, when it becomes a nightmare.

But today has actually seen two new culinary experiments – experiments for me, at any rate. And both required ‘proper’ cooking and some thought, but also provided an eating experience that wasn’t nearly destroyed by the tentativeness of my new masticatory equipment.

It was another pleasantly relaxed start to the day, with coffee, books and cuddling cats seeing off a grey and damp morning.

Which leaves you with the dilemma of what to open the day’s eating with.

Michel Roux’s Eggs includes a series of recipes for baked eggs, from the most basic version to rather more complex ones. It’s not something I’ve ever done. I don’t know why – we both like eggs – and when you read that basic recipe, it’s hardly complex or time-consuming.

There’s also a recipe for baked eggs in The Stornaway Black Pudding Bible by Seumas MacInnes – with black pudding, of course – but for reasons that will become clear later, I decided not to use that one today.

Not only do I still feel the eyes of that old work ethic watching over the shoulder of my culinary endeavours, there’s also a side of me that is actually rather lazy and wants to know whether there are short cuts to some things. Today, that was a question of wondering whether I could simply grease the ramekins with one of the pieces of butter paper that are stashed in the fridge.

But no. Stop it. After all, melting a little butter in a pan is hardly onerous, is it?

My self-appointed sous chef and food taster in chief was on hand to make sure that no corners were cut. On the basis of last night, when I was getting a bit fraught while doing my predictably last-minute tax return, Otto seems to have decided that she’s my accountant too.

So, melt a little butter and then brush it on the inside of the ramekins, to a centimetre from the top. Then season lightly. Crack the eggs into a saucer, one at a time, and tip each one into the prepared ramekin.

Since this was a brunch, I used a couple of larger ramekins and did two eggs per person.

Finally, drizzle some double cream over the top, avoiding the yolks.

Put the ramekins into a tin or dish, pour boiling water to half way up the side of the little pots and pop into an oven that’s been preheated to 170˚ and cook for around 10 minutes.

That temperature is for a fan-assisted oven, by the way – although mine still takes longer than Monsieur Roux’s.

Check to see how they’re doing: the yolks should be just set. If they’re not – or if you like them a little firmer – just give them another few minutes.

And in the meantime, you can contemplate why something that describes itself as ‘double cream’ on a container is so often barely any thicker than single cream.

It is a long-held and oft-repeated complaint of my mother’s – which is rather odd really, given her puritanical pronouncements on food pleasure. Because proper double cream is about nothing but pleasure.

Not that she’s wrong: even that supposedly classier supermarket, Waitrose, stocks single cream, double cream – and then extra thick double cream.

Fortunately, La Bouche on Broadway Market sells Langley’s double cream, which is seriously thick and utterly gorgeous.

Anyway, the baked eggs (with proper double cream) were delicious. And hardly a difficult prep or cook.

Musing over what to serve for dinner later, my mind drifted back to a browse through that Stornaway book and to a recipe for black pudding dumplings.

Now, there is plenty of black pudding in the fridge for a reason, so it was simply a question of what sort of stew/casserole to make for such dumplings.

I diced an onion and softened that in butter before adding chopped garlic and then a couple each of chopped parsnips and carrots. Then in went some roughly sliced black pudding (about 100g) and some thawed (and heated) beef stock.

Bring to boil, then turn down to a simmer and leave until the veg are getting nice and tender, which is around half an hour.

For two people, the stuffing recipe requires 125g of self-raising flour, sifted with ¼ teaspoon baking powder. Then add 30g of shredded suet and 50g of chopped black pud. The recipe also included a tablespoon full of chopped spring onion, but I didn’t have any in the house, so hard cheese, as they say.

You add as much water as is required to make a stiff dough and then mix into balls. Pop onto the top of your stew for 20 minutes – or into a separate pan of boiling water. This is the only fiddly bit – the instructions suggested using two spoons, as I’ve seen suggested for making quenelles. But not having done anything like that before, it was a tad awkward.

Finally, slice some more black pudding and warm gently in a pan with a little oil. Use this as a sort of garnish. What you’ve effectively got is three different hits of the black pudding: pretty much melted in the stew itself, mingled with the dumpling mix and then the slight crispness of the fried pieces.

And in general, the taste of the whole is good and earthy and warming. Next time, though, I’ll serve it with a dollop of mustard on the side.

So given all that black pudding, that was why I’d not done MacInnes’s baked eggs earlier in the day.

Last night, via the joys of Facebook, Graeme reminded me that MacInnes also runs the famous and award-winning Gandolfi Café in Glasgow, where he has created and continues to cook a lot of his black pudding dishes.

Now, my first work trip of the coming year will be to that city – I’m starting to wonder whether I can squeeze enough time out of a busy schedule to pay a visit – and thank you in advance to Big G for that nudge.

Ideas from a pile of books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of politics, baking and preserves

It was a pleasant morning in London – which was provident, since I did the second leg of my journey to work on foot. Traffic was snarled more than usual as commuters took to their cars, with swathes of the underground closed by strike action.

I don’t like the Tube (and avoid taking it unless absolutely necessary) and I don’t like RMT leader Bob Crow, but looking beyond the usual shrill headlines about how awful it all is, they have a serious case. Anyone who really believes that you can get rid of 800 staff without having an impact on service and safety is naïve in the extreme, I think.

One thing that struck me recently, given all the strikes in France (where they actually have a far lower density of trade union members than we do in the UK), was the explanation of one commentator that the French media in general doesn't play this infantile game of simply shrilling its irritation at the inconvenience. All the media, right across the political spectrum, actually bothers to consider the issues.

They might not agree, but they actually consider the issues.

Oh, to have a public discourse like that.

Anyway, just for once, I wasn’t nearly knocked down as I walked by some cyclist careering along the pavement and then getting aggressive when I challenge them as to why they think they can break the law.

But in general, the day felt as though everything was back to some form of normality after the excitement and work of the bake-a-thon.

As a direct result of my recent decision to join Facebook, Mary popped into the office on her way from Birmingham to a conference in Belgium – and took away her reserved slice of chocolate cake, plus a couple of pieces of bark, to eat on the way to that centre of chocolately excellence.

There is one donation to come in: a couple pieces of the bark remain, together with a little ginger cake, but we’ve already hit £81. So it feels worthwhile. Everyone seems to have enjoyed it too, which was every bit as important to me as raising the money. So a big thank you to anyone reading who helped and dipped into their pockets.

And the good things keep coming: after my medlar and quince jelly had failed to set at the weekend, an internet exchange with George prevented me throwing it away in a frustrated huff. He suggested adding some liquid pectin and bringing it back to the boil very, very gently.

I’d assumed – I don’t know why – that you couldn’t do that and that it was effectively ‘dead’ if it hadn’t successfully set straight away. But now it’s set nicely – not too solid, but with a hint of a wobble, and it’s lovely and clear and pink. So thank you, George.

‘If at first you don’t succeed’ applies to preserving too – and in more ways that I had imagined.

And as George also pointed out, although I’ve been thinking of the jelly accompanying meat, it’ll be perfect to eat with cheese – and as I really should have remembered from Les Trois Moutiers II. Indeed, the Spanish produce a much more strongly set quince jelly called membrillo to eat with cheese.

But much as I love cheese, I’m fascinated by preserves that you can serve with meat (or fish, for that matter). And with a bottle of liquid pectin now opened, I want to use it up before it goes off.

So with that in mind, I may pop to Waitrose this evening or tomorrow – they had some rhubarb in last week. After years of being nigh on impossible to get hold of – except perhaps within a very limited season early in the year, when it’s ‘forced’ it in big, dark sheds in Yorkshire’s ‘Rhubarb Triangle’ – it has been enjoying a revival.

I remain utterly convinced that rhubarb and chili will make a great combination for a savoury jelly. I’ve had a couple of attempts already, but haven’t yet got it right. The problem – which I discovered from Jane Grigson’s English Food – is that chili appears to negate the effect of pectin, so you need to compensate by adding quite a lot more than you would usually.

On the first attempt, I didn’t add anywhere near enough; it didn’t set at all and – not knowing what I know now – I threw it away.

The second attempt went to the other extreme, with a tasty jelly that was way too hard: it almost needs a hammer and chisel to extract it from the jar.

In the meantime, a survey is being sent around the office to see what we would like from the deli bar when we move to a new building next year.

Simples: please not such a preponderance of spicy dishes and please just go for a bit more simplicity!

I can't actually open the survey at present and have let IT know. Is there a plot afoot to prevent this foodie from commenting?

I shall let you know.

In danger in the devil's garden

Taking Wednesday off work, I journeyed into deepest, darkest Surrey – and all by a spanky new train service – to visit my parents.

It was an odd sort of a day; mentally exhausting. No rows or disagreements, but it was such an effort to make any conversation at times, with both of them dozing off at different moments while I wondered what subject could safely be used to fill in the silence.

And then there is also the matter of my mother’s cooking. For our evening meal, she took some chicken breast, diced it and cooked it in the oven in a dish with some broccoli and a ready-made sauce. I saw the empty jar but not the label and, to be honest, I couldn’t tell what the sauce really was – if it was anything much more than the sort of ‘white sauce’ she’d once have served with cauliflower.

On the side were some new potatoes, scrubbed and picked over with a knife for the smallest imperfection. It was bland but inoffensive.

Yet it took her around two hours to prepare. She doesn’t have a chair in the tiny kitchen, so she wasn’t exactly sitting down and secretly quaffing sherry. But every meal, no matter how easy, takes her such a long time.

I keep out of the way, while my father asks me, as though I can explain, why it always takes her so long.

Well, to start with, she’s no youngster any more. She’s slowed down a lot. But perhaps as obvious to me is that cooking has always been a chore for her – never a pleasure.

Oh, she took great care to ensure that her family were fed properly, with a varied diet, but I don’t think that it was ever really a pleasure. Then again, considering her oft-stated belief that: “We eat to live – we don’t live to eat”, this shouldn’t be much of a revelation.

I did manage, between both train journeys and then sitting in bed at night with a soothing cup of camomile tea, to finish reading Stewart Lee Allen’s In the Devil’s Garden: a sinful history of forbidden food, which may sound rather po-faced, but is actually very entertaining and informative.

Talking of the Victorians and their attitude to childhood – they were the first people to view children as inherently different to adults – and of Pye Henry Chavasse, a 19th century Dr Spock who penned that handy 1844 tome, Advice to Mothers on the Management of Their Offspring, Allen notes that the blandest of food was recommended for children.

Developing the theme, he goes on: “This sadistic approach to child nutrition was a perfect match for the theories of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who believed children were ‘natural atheists’ because they enjoyed nature instead of God.

“He recommended bringing this under control by reminding them that ‘they are more ignorant and wicked than they could possibly believe,’ and breaking their spirit at every turn.

“Withholding pleasant food was considered a particularly plum way to do this, because it trained them out of the expectation of ‘natural’ pleasure at the table.”

Now, as readers may know, my father is a (retired) Methodist clergyman – and from the particularly fundamentalist, evangelical end of Methodism (although he’s mellowed over the years). He even claims that, in the early days of his ministry, the aforementioned Mr Wesley appeared to him and gave him some advice on preaching.

My parents were never as intent on delivering a totally pleasure-free a culinary existence for their children as Chavasse or Wesley might have recommended.

Looking back, it was as though they obviously didn’t believe in eating the worst imaginable foodstuffs themselves or foisting such on their children, but it was as though there was a constant battle not to enjoy food ‘too much’.

Clearly, if one follows the logic of Chavasse or Wesley, the highest compliment available to one’s mother, after dinner, would be: ‘Yuk. That was bland and boring’.

Although perhaps that explains partly why my mother has, by and large, eschewed spices in her cookery and food – apart from Christmas cake, mince pies, Christmas pudding and hot cross buns? Although it’s equally true that, in the post-WWII years, British cooking in general was notoriously bland.

But what a way to spend one’s life – waging a perpetual war against experiencing ‘too much’ pleasure. It makes me think of the oh-so-religious guests in Gabriel Axel's film, Babette's Feast, determined to simply eat but not enjoy the feast that Babette cooks for them as a thank you. And how do you define what’s an acceptable level of pleasure and what steps across the culinary rubicon?

Personally, I find the following description by Allen of the Marquis de Sade’s perfect breakfast to be far more up my street: “The marquis recommends a simple breakfast: a plain omelet, served piping hot on the buttocks of a naked woman, and eaten with ‘an exceedingly sharp fork’.”

As I noted, this is a very enjoyable and fascinating book – but it’s also very moving in places, as in Allen’s descriptions of the food aspects of the US state’s genocide against the Native American peoples. After massive attacks on their diet, both in almost entirely wiping out the buffalo and in the onslaught against corn, a government-approved corn was allowed to be grown in the south west. It gave diabetes to a people who had no history of that disease.

His overall conclusion though, is interesting, as he suggests that the current situation in many Western countries, where food taboos have almost entirely died out, is not necessarily a good thing; that our obsession with unrestricted pleasure is not necessarily healthy.

Yet I suspect that there was an element here of trying to find something controversial to say at the end – of playing devil's advocate.

He had already discussed fast food, the culture of not cooking, of not sitting down to eat as a family, of TV dinners etc, and decided that such behaviours are not about pleasure, but quite the reverse, and are essentially part of a massive con by big business. One could argue that the ‘taboo’ for many of these people these days is the idea of spending time cooking and shopping more than once a week at the supermarket to stock the freezer. Such a ‘taboo’ can surely be seen to be not entirely disconnected from the taboo of taking too much pleasure in food?

Further, many people eat constant take-aways in front of the TV etc as a direct consequence of not taking real pleasure in food: the pleasures gained are often the 'artificial' ones of too much salt and sugar, which are added to compensate for poor flavour etc.

But even for real foodies these days, there are plenty of new ‘taboos’ – one might suggest eating fast food, for instance, is a taboo for many foodies.

For the environmentally concerned, there are questions of the carbon footprint of a foodstuff and whether it’s organic or not.

For many others, there is the issue of fair trade – of the actual producers being paid a decent amount and not being ripped off.

And indeed, for many foodies, these ‘taboos’ are also linked directly to greater pleasure: for instance, seasonal food is environmentally sound – but it also tends to be when the ingredients are actually at their best, when they haven’t been flown 6,000 miles between continents.

So it’s rather odd to imply that we have no food taboos any more. We simply have different ones. And as always, these vary according to what group we put ourselves in.

And for many groups who foist taboos onto other groups, they see themselves as above such rules. Class is a perfect illustration as, time and again, Allen reveals how, for instance, the upper classes fretted about what the lower classes ate and whether it would render them either slothful and indolent or overly aggressive. Yet of course they rarely felt inclined to worry about the same matters for themselves.

Now, it could be argued that a certain 'elite' attacks what are often working-class food choices for creating obesity etc.

But all in all, a cracking good read – and dangerously pleasurable.

When the chips are down

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that I was Heston Blumenthal’s greatest fan: any interest I might have entertained in the man frequently described as the country’s ‘best chef’ was pretty much finished off by his Guardian column some years ago, which notoriously included a recipe for fried eggs that involved cooking the white and the yolk separately.

And I cannot claim to be particularly inspired by the sort of dishes that are served at his highly lauded restaurant, The Fat Duck. Snail porridge is one example.

And then there are what I think of as the gimmicks: for instance, serving a scallops dish with an iPod in a conch shell playing sea sounds for the diner.

‘Molecular gastronomy’ is apparently the name for the cooking bit of this – a term coined in the late 1980s by French scientist Herve This and Oxford University professor Nicholas Kurti.

Perhaps the most famous exponent is Ferran Adria, at El Bulli near Barcelona (he spends six months of the year in a laboratory in the city, apparently), while such luminaries as Wylie Dufresne at wd-50 in Manhattan, and Grant Achatz of Alinea and Homaro Cantu of Moto, both of which are in Chicago.

I suspect the thing about the fried egg annoyed me so much because this really is everyday food: I’m quite prepared to spend hours in the kitchen for things that require it, but a fried egg never has been, is not now and never will be haute cuisine: it’s quick, everyday fodder.

Earlier this year, “the UK’s top chef” joined up with Waitrose, a chain of quality supermarkets that are part of John Lewis – in other words, a co-operative. Delia Smith was also part of this big new advertising campaign – Britain’s “best-loved cook”. An intriguing combination.

I was browsing the Waitrose site the other week and came across a Blumenthal recipe for cream of mushroom soup that actually caught my attention.

It caught my attention particularly because of the garnish – dried mushrooms that have been roasted, then blitzed and pressed through a sieve to leave a powder.

The thing is, you look at that and think: ‘Well it’s hardly complicated and I can see that it would add a really intense zing to the final soup’.

So I tried it today. I modified the soup a little – not completely puréeing it, as The Other Half prefers his soups to have some texture – but it had oodles of flavour and the powder really did add something.

For dinner, I’d decided to do chips. Now this might seem a rather strange way to plan a meal, but faith needed to be regained for the humble chip.

Yesterday’s lunchtime had demanded something more substantial than soup or a sandwich since we were meeting a friend for a post-work drink. So I nipped down to the North Sea Fish Bar to pick up chips (one portion between both of us), a chicken and mushroom pie for The Other Half, scampi for me and a pot of mushy peas to share.

As always, I soon wondered why I'd bothered. The art of the hand-cut chip seems to have disappeared and the scampi wasn’t anything to write home about. Yet this has a reputation as a good fish ‘n’ chippy, with an attached restaurant that does good trade (and isn’t cheap).

But frankly, it’s no better or worse than Faulkners in Hackney, which has also somehow acquired the status of being excellent.

The last time I had really good fish and chips was some years ago in Hull, in a really old-fashioned place, with plastic gingham tablecloths, thick sliced bread to make chip butties and tea in white mugs. The fish was sensational; the batter superb. The mushy peas hit the spot exactly and the chips? Well, needless to say, they weren’t out of a freezer.

There used to be a brilliant chippy next to the bus station in Piccadilly, Manchester, but that’s gone the way of all flesh, replaced by characterless glass and polished metal.

My father would sometimes drive to a chippy in Mossley to bring back fish and chips for a Saturday lunch. I remember it as a glorious treat.

But somewhere along the line, the English have gone off fish and chips – or at least lowered their ideas of what is good about it. A world of fast food outlets, with their skinny ‘fries’, has left us with barely even a memory of what good chips are.

Gastro pubs do their bit. But I’d decided to cook my own – something that I probably only do about two or three times a year.

I don’t follow Heston’s recipe – which involves cooking them three times. But I do use Delia’s method, which means cooking them twice.

Peel your potatoes and cut them into chips – not too thick. Pop them in a bowl of cold water and leave for half an hour – this gets rid of some of the starch and also helps plump them up. Drain and dry thoroughly.

Get your vegetable oil (or lard) hot enough that a cube of day-old bread with brown in it in a minute. Put the chips in carefully and cook for around 4-5 minutes. Remove carefully to a plate and then let the oil get back to its previous temperature. Pop the chips back in and cook for another 2-3 minutes – watching that they don’t get over-cooked.

Remove them to a plate with kitchen paper on it and serve as quickly as possible – chips don’t take kindly to being left around.

Lovely – soft and fluffy in the middle, beautifully crisp on the outside.

That meant that this morning’s main shopping question was what to serve with them. Now I didn’t want to deep fry fish too, but was wondering about grilling or roasting some fish.

Then, as I was walking up Broadway Market, Andy waved at me from the new game stall and I popped over for a chat.

Inevitably, I also found myself looking at the produce and, when I spotted venison burgers, the choice was made.

As I mentioned in that post about game, many people believe it's all – and always – expensive. These burgers were four for £4. Two were more than enough for us for a meal, so the others have gone in the freezer.

Now apparently, a spot of Googling informs me that the price of a McDonalds burger meal is nearly a fiver, which people seem to consider is cheap (it comes with ‘fries’, a drink and your bun, after all).

But let’s see: £1 for a meat patty made from top-notch meat, plus a few pennies for the potatoes, a bit more for the oil to cook the chips (about £1.50 per person and assuming it only gets used once) and let’s be generous about the frozen peas I served (it was a generous portion) and say 50p per portion. If I’d wanted, we could have each had a top-brand fizzy drink for 50p (assuming I hadn’t bought in bulk).

So being generous in my estimates, our meal was less than a McDonalds meal and would still have come in cheaper even if I'd added a liquid equivalent – so why do people think that McDonalds is expensive, but that markets such as Broadway Market are insanely expensive?

And that’s without even mentioning the issue of quality – and honesty, I’d back my chips against McDonalds’ ‘fries’ any time!

When and how did this massive con happen?

In his very entertaining and informative In the Devil’s Garden: a sinful history of forbidden food, Stewart Lee Allen discusses (amongst many other things) the issue of ‘appropriate’ foods for the working class. Some were banned because they were seen as likely to produce sloth (although they were fine for the aristocrats, on the grounds that they were entitled to a life of doing nothing – France and white bread is a perfect example of this).

But the thought of the plebs getting the idea that food could be sensual and wonderful was not to be tolerated.

Just as ancient Sparta, with its national dish of ‘black broth’ – pork stock, vinegar, blood and salt – “banished citizens who enjoyed eating”, Allen suggests that “both today’s fast-food outlets and Spartan mess halls are/were designed to discourage lingering over dinner and eliminate the need for people to “waste” time cooking for their family.

“And, like the Spartans’ legendarily bad food, many of these convenience foods are so unpleasant they even make work look good. They’re also immensely profitable for the corporations who produce them.

“Perfect: American workers now pay more money for worse food so they can hurry back to jobs they hate.”

He has a point about the big con at the heart of all this.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard people in my little bit of Hackney complaining about Broadway Market. Local Trotskyists, showing a remarkable lack of interest in actual facts, spent ages shouting about how the council – which had not set it up, had not funded it and doesn’t run it – should have built a community centre instead. ‘Instead of what?’ one asked.

There was no ‘instead’. A group of private individuals and traders and producers got together and got the market going. It didn’t replace anything. Apart from dodgy property dealings by our local council, which saw two long-term shopkeepers pushed out (and which market stallholders helped campaign against), nothing has been lost.

Local people now have more choice than they had six and a half years ago when, as a famous bit of local graffiti had it: "Broadway Market – not so much a sinking ship as a submarine". In those days, if you couldn't get what you wanted at the one butcher, one chain baker, one very limited fruit and veg stall and the one independent general store, you had no choice but to tramp to one of the supermarkets that have taken over the area. Now, we have a realistic choice of where we shop, because we have genuine alternatives.

Yet some continue to believe the myth that it’s all criminally beyond their means. Unlike McDonalds or any other fast-food joint. Obviously.

Why do I bet that the con isn’t as effective across the Channel?

It wasn't all bad

Despite the best efforts of those wretched tarts to leave me feeling that the weekend was a culinary disaster, it was far from all bad.

There were two small tuna steaks in the fridge that had been bought in midweek but then remained unused. They needed eating, so I decided to try something a little different.

Using the basic idea from a recipe in Gordon Ramsay’s A Passion for Flavour, I decanted goose fat into a small pan, heated that and then added the tuna. There was just enough fat to cover. Phew!

You then allow the fish to cook for around seven minutes. In the meantime, I’d taken three large but getting-past-it tomatoes, and skinned, de-seeded and diced them for a concasse.

But on a day that, for the first time this autumn genuinely required the adjective ‘cold’ rather than simply ‘cool’ or ‘chilly’, raw tomato was not really on the menu, so I heated it gently with a little olive oil and some Maldon sea salt, making sure that it's held its shape and texture.

Served simply with bread and a dollop of the confit de thyme that I’d bought from the cheese stall in Collioure – made, as it turned out, by a British ex-pat who had gone to Roussillon to make a new life – it proved a very tasty lunch. The confit de thyme is a clear jelly, with a light taste – rather like apple, I thought. It sometimes seems to me that confit is a word that's used in all sorts of ways, making it really rather confusing: but whatever the etymology, it tasted jolly nice.

As I said, the day was cold. It had started brightly, with the cats all determined that we should get up as soon as it was light so that they could spend some time outside. This involves a concerted effort by all three girls – almost working together – which is never repeated on the following morning. It seems that on Sundays, our felines kindly allow us a lie in.

Given the declining temperature, it seemed entirely appropriate to contemplate the first erwtensoep of the season – a Dutch pea and ham soup, in effect.

As I've become more and more of a foodie, I've started finding it utterly fascinating how different countries have similar dishes. I know it's hardly rocket science when they're similar in terms of climate and produce, but it still intrigues me.

The UK of course has pea and ham soup, the Germans have erbsensuppe: the latter was made as erbswurst during the Franco-Prussian War; one of the very first instant food, invented by Johann Heinrich Grüneberg in 1867. Knorr still make it. Take that, Napoleon III and your infernal margarine!

In a similar vein, the Dutch have a dish called stamppot, which is based around mashed potatoes. Which makes me think of British bubble and squeak or the Irish colcannon. But let's get back to erwtensoep.

There’s actually three sorts of meat in the recipe I’ve got, but since there are only two of us, I skipped the pork chops.

After leaving some dried split peas to soak for a couple of hours, I rinsed them and plopped the lot in a large pot with some water to cover. It’s crucial at that stage to add the water, because the next thing you want to put in is a peeled, diced celeriac, and unless that goes straight into liquid, it’ll start discolouring very quickly.

Add a couple of peeled, diced carrots, some bacon you’ve cut into bite-size pieces and bring slowly to a boil. Then simmer gently for an hour and a quarter. You need to give it a stir occasionally or else the split peas, once they really start turning into mush, will stick to the bottom of the pan and make one hell of a mess.

At that point, add a couple of chopped leeks and some frankfurters that you’ve chopped into bite-size pieces. Leave for 15 minutes and there you have it.

Erwtensoep is wonderful cold-weather food – we almost lived off bowls of the stuff and glasses of gluhwein at New Year in Amsterdam nearly two years ago. With temperatures dipping well below freezing, it finally made me realise the point of mulled wine!

As for the soup itself, it’s traditionally served with an accompaniment of rye bread spread with mustard and topped with smoked bacon. The picture above was taken on that Amsterdam trip.

And after that little effort, there was enough in the pot to ensure an easy lunch for both of us yesterday too.

Which left last night's dinner. In keeping with the sense of darkening, cooler days, I made the first kidney turbigo of the season, crammed full of gorgeous kidney loveliness.

In other words, in spite of the best efforts of those delinquent tarts, it was actually not a bad foodie weekend at all.

Game theory

When I was a child, we never had game at home. No, I don’t mean Monopoly or Snap, but the likes of partridge or grouse or venison or rabbit. I have vague memories of a family Christmas visit to an elderly and frankly, barking, female parishoner for dinner, and I seem to recall that she served pheasant. But I don’t remember anything about it.

Watching cookery programmes in recent years, I’ve become increasingly interested in trying my culinary hand with game. So I’ve had a couple of attempts with rabbit (nothing spectacular) and an odd one of the game birds – including woodpigeon – plus venison and duck.

Thus far, duck is the only game bird that I’ve had real success with. Years ago, The Other Half and I would have a whole duck for Christmas – it was plenty for two. But we bored of that, not least after reaching the conclusion that there’s wasn’t much to duck legs, that you could buy two breasts for a lot less than whole bird and that they were easier to cook too.

It’s only in the last couple of years that we’ve discovered confit de canard – the most perfect way to use duck legs. And I’m currently trying to find a supplier in London of duck legs so that I can do my own (there are apparently as many ways to confit duck legs as there are people who do it) – or if that’s not possible, I’ll settle for a supplier of the ready-made thing, to be taken from their bed of fat and bunged in the oven until piping hot and the meat is simply flaking away from the bone.

Oh, confit de canard, served with potatoes dau-phinoise, may be the most fabulous comfort food in the whole world!
The one pictured was not bad – although not quite flaky enough for my taste – and was served at Café Rouge opposite the Lowry in Manchester just over a week ago.

That's a rather solid slab of potatoes dauphinoise that you can see with it. The glass of house red that went with it was, it should be noted, singularly poor and went unfinished.

That said, I’m also rather fond of magret de canard, where you get a pan scorchingly hot, score the duck skin on a breast, salt it and place, skin side down, in the pan: press down with a palette knife.

You don’t need to add any fat, because that’ll come streaming out of the skin within moments. Indeed, you’ll need to carefully tip some of the fat out after a while, using your palette knife to hold the meat in place while you do so.

Cook them that way for about 10 minutes and then turn and cook until the flesh is just brown, then flip back.

Some instructions say you should pop them in the oven then for around 10-15 minutes. I prefer my duck to be a little pink in the middle – and indeed, that’s the way I’ve always had it in France. But if you prefer it cooked more, then that’s easy enough to do.

To give you more of an idea, the website French Food and Cook gives 10 minutes skin side down, then five to eight minutes on the flesh side, before putting the meat somewhere warm and deglazing the pan with some cognac, which you then flambé, before adding sour cream and then popping the meat back in for two to three minutes.

I’d cut the cognac bit and just serve with something like redcurrant jelly – you really cannot go far wrong.

And then there’s venison. If memory serves, the first time I tried venison was around five years ago, when I did it for Christmas lunch, served with a chocolate sauce from a Gordon Ramsay book, which had to be started a day before when I made a beef stock to serve as the base. The chocolate works really well, by the way – although it does have to be proper chocolate (at least 75% cocoa solids) and not the sugar and dairy fat excuse that we call ‘chocolate’ in the UK.

And venison it will be tonight – fillet, to be seared in a hot pan: again, you want venison pink in the middle.

I’ll be serving it with a blackberry sauce, together with puréed potato and pear, mixed with crème fraîche and watercress, which has previously been warmed and puréed. And there’s probably be a few carrots on the side.

There’ll be good red wine too – possibly a bottle of Chocolate Block, a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Cabernet Sauvignon, with a hint of Viognier, from South Africa’s Western Cape. It’s not available in huge quantities, so I picked up all three remaining bottles in the John Lewis wine hall recently while I had the chance. It will complement the meat beautifully, I think.

A few years ago, we had a game stall on Broadway Market, but that ended tragically when the stall holder killed himself.

Just in time for the start of the new season, Andy Waugh has launched The Wild Game Co on the market, selling produce that’s “fresh from the Highlands”. I picked up the venison on Saturday and am contemplating pheasant in the near future.

But it struck me that, in the UK generally, we still seem to think of game as rather posh food.

Yet in France – and other parts of Europe – la chasse, hunting and then eating what you’ve caught, is still an accepted part of life; and not just life for ‘posh’ people.

So why is there such a difference?

Well, I suppose it’s a very long time since ‘ordinary’ Brits (certainly the English) hunted for food. Working class blood sports were frowned upon for a long time and banned, while aristocratic blood sports continued until relatively recently. It became very much a class thing.

But then too, in France there was never the kind of enclosure of land and the deliberate policy of deforestation to force people into ‘economically productive’ lives. One of the results in the UK has been a paucity of land on which ordinary people could hunt for food.

In the same way, we no longer have any real culture of foraging for food: across the Channel, many pharmacists have a sign in the window telling you that they’re qualified to say whether the mushrooms you’ve picked that morning are safe to eat.

One of the results seems to be a sense of divorce from food production – and from food. Of course it’s always going to be more the case in cities, but it was still something of a surprise (and yet not entirely) to read a survey a couple of years ago that revealed that many inner-city children do not realise that meat comes from an animal.

But then again, I’ve been in supermarkets and seen adults who cannot identify celery or rhubarb.

And then there’s the faddiness of our food culture: rabbit was one game animal that used to be enormously popular up to and through WWII – you’ll still hear older people raving about rabbit pie. Of course, the introduction of myxomatosis into the UK after the war didn’t help, but try getting rabbit from your butcher now.

It’s particularly surprising that game seems to be seen as such an exclusive food when you think that these islands seem to be rather rich in a wide variety of game.

But then again, we have tremendously rich seas with a vast variety of fish and shellfish, yet Britons notoriously eat a very, very limited range of what is available. We export vast amounts of spider crabs and monkfish, for instance, while many people will scarcely move beyond cod, despite its endangered status (until very recently) and the consequent high price.

Mind, herrings used to be popular – until shortages drove them off menus. There has been no return, thus far, in mass popularity in the UK since the humble herring recovered.

There’s cost, of course – or perhaps that’s more a case of perception of cost. I’ve had a pack of diced venison for a casserole that’s cost just £2.50. Nobody can call that expensive.

And then there’s the whole supermarket culture, where you’ll be lucky to find any game outside of Christmas, which if nothing else, belies the real length of the season and adds to a sense that game is an expensive luxury.

Still, whatever the reasons for game being viewed as such a luxury on these shores – and all this is just game theory, if you will – I for one am game for a bit of game!