Along with prescription drugs, internet porn, computer games and dozens of other consumer items, we are forming an intimate relationship with sugary snacks that supplements and complements the “traditional” addictions to alcohol, gambling and illegal drugs. These new objects of desire may not be drugs – though they have a drug-like capacity to stimulate...
There are more experimental pairings available too. Everyone knows that a Bloody Mary goes perfectly with brunch, but Soho restaurant Randall & Aubin has taken the happy marriage a step further. For weekends throughout May, chef-patron Ed Baines has devised a menu of five beautifully executed brunch dishes, each matched with a cocktail based...
We make some of the finest bubbly in the world on this island, albeit in small quantities. Perhaps that’s the problem – there simply isn’t enough of one English fizz to go round 12,000 guests. How about, then, providing more than one, from such top-notch English wineries as Nyetimber, Camel Valley, Ridgeview, Hush Heath,...
You spend most of your time pretending not to notice. You try to fool other people into thinking you don’t think you’re fat. For you, the subject doesn’t exist. As a fat person, you would be upset if somebody else started mocking fat people. But this doesn’t really make sense, because you’re pretending not...
Buffet brunch at the Cookbook Café’s, Intercontinetal London Park Lane hotel The buffet brunch in the Intercontinental hotel’s Cookbook Cafe may not be as lavish and giddy a production as the champagne brunches on offer in Singapore or Las Vegas, but in terms of value and quality it’s a blinder. A buffet usually brings...
I’m not talking about new combinations within each dish; that would count as ‘fusion’. It wasn’t the dishes themselves that were unusual – just the fact that they had nothing in common. It suggested a kitchen that was trying to crowd-please rather than express itself. The charcuterie consisted of rillettes, a very coarse pâté...
Top years include 1990, a year in which eight of the nine regions are given full marks, and 2005, when Loire, Alsace and the reds from Burgundy and Bordeaux are each awarded a ten. Other years are more mixed, while 1984 was a “pretty terrible” vintage in the major European regions – hence its...
Each grape variety brings its own character to the aroma, of course: cabernet sauvignon is blackcurrant, mint, chocolate; carmenère is mocha, soy, cinnamon; malbec is black cherry and damson. Cask-ageing adds vanilla (especially if the barrels are crafted from loose-grain American oak), or cedarwood and cigar-box (more typical of tight-grain French oak). And maturity...
April means spring showers for most of us, but the beginning of the en primeur season for wine-lovers. A few weeks ago, the wine press and the trade descended on Bordeaux in their thousands, and soon after, having sampled the new 2011 vintage, the latter posted comments and scores on their websites. Right now...
July 12 As a working mother who cooks from scratch most nights I thought I was pretty fast at food prep, but the people on my table are putting me to shame. French-trimming my rack of lamb (removing all the fat and tissue from the upper ends of the bones) today takes me almost...
