I’m just reading an article on the Daily Telegraph about the new food strategy that is being cooked up by the loony, control-freak government in Blighty. It is pissing me off no end.

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary who is cooking this up is clearly a nutter in the very worst sense of the word (he is also a vegetarian). By way of demonstration, he thinks that the government has to right to tell shops if they can have ‘buy one get one free’-offers. What the hell do supermarket offers have to do with the bloody government? It is none of their freaking business. Restaurant menus also need health and carbon-footprint labels, we are told. What a pile of overly-bureaucratic toss.

The Labour party think we need ‘big government’ to look after us and tell us what we can and cannot do. They want to meddle in the minute details of our lives and they have no reason for doing so. Most notably under the influence of the odious Gordon Brown, Labour has sought to move us away from the laudable Anglo-Saxon model of ‘all that is not specifically forbidden is permitted’ to a more Continental system of ‘all that is not specifically permitted is forbidden’. As a freedom-loving Englishman this vexes me no end.

As we know, it is a mistake to think that the evils of the world can be cured by legislation. Having legal limits on the size of a packet of crisps is just an overly interfering load of toss that it is worthy of the most worrisome Stalinist five-year plan.

I got an email asking what wine to have with turkey. Bloody hell. I would have the wine that is being served by friends who are cooking goose, duck, a damned good chicken, lamb or grilling a bleeding marvellous (literally) piece of beef. I wouldn’t drink wine with turkey because I hate and despise turkey. It is a fowl curse on the name of meat.

Invariably when we are served this filth one of two things will happen: Normally, the bugger will be totally dried out. it’ll taste of nothing and have the texture of dry cotton wool. All of those dry mountains of flavourless horribleness to hack through; I shudder to think of it.

The second thing that might happen is that you have a bird that has been injected with all the fresh water in Western Europe (jets of pallid fluid gush out when you cut into these) all so some hard of thinking mouth-breather can say, “Oh at least it is moist.” Moist? Is that such an amazing accolade? Sure, it has no taste and the texture of cotton wool, but at least the cotton wool is slightly damp. No.

“Turkey with all the trimmings”, must be one of the most hideously depressing phrases in the whole of the English language. It suggests food on the wrong side of ruined, served artlessly and ploughed through like mush from a trough, all whilst in the company of people who, at best, would all rather be elsewhere.

“Sweaty tests” is what I say to turkey, and so the question about wine with turkey would not work for me. I’d have the wine and not the turkey.

We are off to Hawksmoor (reviews here and here, and some pictures here and here) for the umpty-third time this year. Our first trip was back in February when I was still hilariously insane and took Daniel there as a treat to thank him for his patience with me. Wow, things were so difficult back then. When I think back to how chaotic and frightening my mind was I find myself amazed that I survived it. I was a wreck. But anyway, the excuse for tonight’s meal is my birthday. The day was yesterday but Hawksmoor allow you to take your own wine in on Mondays for a fiver corkage. I’m taking a mag of smart Cornas.

The meat there is really fantastic, clearly the best in London. Indeed, from the macaroni cheese via the ribs to any piece of beef you fancy the food is all really good. The atmosphere is unstuffy and relaxed; charged, I feel, with a hunger for big mouthfuls of meat. When you have made sure you arrive ten minutes before anyone else in your party and head to the bar. Its 1920s themed cocktail list and highly skilled bartenders* make this a destination booze-fount. Those excellent geezers at Embury Cocktails rate the Hawksmoor bar very highly.

The question remains, which steak? The 600g sirloin on the bone can be amazing, with the tenderness of fillet but much more flavour. But then, I haven’t had a rib steak for a while. I remember having an amazing one on one of our first visits. That steak tasted of one hell of a lot. Chateaubriand and fillet from Hawksmoor have also done the taste business in the past. This will be a prickly conundrum for me to cogitate upon as I get dressed for dinner.

*Last time we went there I said to the bartender, “I can have your most hilariously heroic cocktail, please?” She grinned and said, “That is the kind of question I had been dreading getting today, which is my first day. I only started half an hour ago. But don’t worry, I can sort you out.” She made something called an old fashioned, which suited my heroism requirements down to the ground.

You may have read the story about keeping cured and processed meat out of children’s lunchboxes in order to prevent them getting bowel cancer (which is here). What a drivelly pile of scaremongering toss.

“Eating too much over decades can raise the risk of bowel cancer”, say the sponging, self-publicising bastards who only come out with crap like this to try and justify their stinking, whining existence. What is ‘too much’? They certainly don’t know. By how much is the risk raised? They don’t know that either. This story is purest bullshit.

What really pisses me off is that they tell parents not to give children such meat to ‘prevent them from developing a taste for it’. This is so infuriating. We must deny children the pleasure of wonderful, flavourful, interesting food and make them picky eaters just to possibly minimise an unknown risk of developing one particular disease at some unspecified point in the future.

This kind of bollocks makes it into the news pretty much every day. It is rubbish and we must recognise it as such.

Look at that lovely ham! How could anyone deny a child such health-giving pleasure?

I don’t feel the need to rant terribly much about this, as I’ve done so before. However, I thought I would bring you a little video gem from the excellent BBC comedy The Mitchell and Webb Look.

Perhaps next time I go to a vegetarian’s place for dinner I should formulate some ludicrous dietary requirements myself. I like the idea of only eating foie gras and truffles.

The chef Gordon Ramsay is in the news. My opinion of his has dropped somewhat since I first went to his flagship joint in Royal Hospital Road.

My first meal there about nine years ago was exciting, with thrilling, inventive and wonderful food. However, the food pretty much stayed the same over the years. When he expanded into other restaurants the food was pretty similar at those too; shadows of the main establishment’s food. Then his television career took off and he is now better know as that chap who swears a lot than as a chef.

I worked at one of his establishments for the grand total of a week. I spoke to him a couple of times. He complimented me on my shoes (in comparison to someone’s less spiffy footwear). He stuck me as a very focussed and driven businessman. That is all very well and good but people who make good food are amongst my favourite type of people, more so than rude businessmen.

If he had continued to be an inventive chef I’d be frequenting RHR a lot more often. I go to l’Arnsbourg more often now. Now there is wonderful food and it stays up with the game.

I am as English as the day is long and therefore I like little pleasures. When someone offers an English person a cup of tea they will respond with the enthusiasm of someone who has just been given a thousand pounds. I think this is a fine and noble trait; it is good to be happy, even it is only a little thing that cheers you up.

I was thinking about this character of the English when I was so pleased with my lunch. The ‘priced like Harrods’ shop in my development has some really nice bread and so for lunch I made cheese and onion sandwiches. Sandwiches don’t get much simpler than cheese and onion. My mood was just getting better and better as I made them and when I got to eat I bloody loved them. Little pleasures. I feel I am back on top form when I can be made so happy by something as simple as a cheese and onion sandwich.

I love fish and chips, a fantastic meal which suits the requirements for a quick lunch very well. With mushy peas, obviously. Yesterday my local establishment, the Fish and Grill on the market square in Woolwich, shocked and appalled me with the shit they had the temerity to serve.

I've been there before and had some good stuff, but this time there was a new moronic, rancid fool doing the cooking and as soon as I gave him my order for the fifth time I knew things would just be awful.

The bloke before me in the queue ordered kebab meat and chips. Moron food fryer pours the contents of the kebab meat container over the chips, flooding them with filthy water. At this point I just wanted to run.

I got my fish, chips and mushy peas and so impressively bad at cooking was the food fryer that he even managed to cock up the mushy peas. He had over-cooked them so they had a worrying, tough, dry, green layer on top. The fish was so badly over-cooked that it was in dry lumps, with quite terrifyingly greasy, fat-soaked batter. The chips were also soaked with this filthy grease, and had the consistency of something that had been lightly steamed rather than fried.

I wanted to vomit.

I will never go there again. The bastards.

I just had a piece of wonderful Lincolnshire Poacher from Neal's Yard Cheese Shop in Borough Market, this reminded me of the 'Borough Market shopping experience'. It is a great place to get very high quality ingredients and generally marvelous food, but most of the drips who go there generally piss me off.

We shall take as an example what happened in the cheese shop. We had to queue for a few minutes and whilst this was happening I watched the person who was already at the counter. He tasted about half a dozen cheeses and then purchased 80g of Cheddar. What a freaking joke! 80g of cheese, why bother? It was practically transparent there was so little of it.

This is the general shopping experience in Borough Market: there are so many people dripping around after free tastes of nice stuff who, if pressured to buy something, get a microscopic amount of food. I wish they'd just sod off and let those of use who are actually going shopping there have fewer interminable queues and huge crowds of people to deal with. People don't go to the supermarket as a spectator sport, why should London's best market be any different?

Honestly, I've no idea why people complain about foie gras. The geese and ducks bloody love being fed, they run up to to have the grain shoved down their throats. I say 'run', perhaps 'roll' is more accurate

Researchers at Oxford, that home of high-quality science, have new data which supports what all right-thinking people would know anyway. Namely, vegetarians and vegans suffer from greater shrinkage of the brain when they get older compared to people who eat meat.

Of course, Pravda has already had a go at vegetarians, we know that organic vegetables are bad for you and lettuce is the most carcinogenic food per-unit serving.

Vegetables, just say "No! No! Take them away!"

I have railed against the danger of salad in the past: lettuce will give you cancer. Obviously lettuce is to be avoided wherever possible, but there are ways to make it even less healthy.

Leftist-shite sloppy thinkers generally believe that organic fruit and vegetables are more healthy than standard fruit and vegetables. This is, of course, total bullshit. Organic fruit and vegetables are not sprayed to prevent them from rotting, so by the time they reach the supermarket shelf they are laced with carcinogenic fungal metabolic by-products that non-organic offerings do not have.

Now, the hard of thinking may think that the compounds used to preserve non-organic fruit and vegetables would be dangerous. This is really sloppy thinking, who would knowingly lace food with toxins that damage people? Of course, you can wash these preservatives off the surface of non-organic food, where as organic fruit and vegetables contain their carcinogenic compounds all of the way through; they cannot be washed away.

It is only organic fruit and vegetables that are dangerous, organic meat is fine (to be sought out, in fact). So, avoid lettuce, definitely avoid organic lettuce. Not buying organic fruit and vegetables will also save money; cheaper and healthier, hooray!

Pravda is having a go at vegetarians, calling them a freak of nature. I particularly liked the paragraph:

Furthermore, cosmetologists say that a typical vegetarian has dry and fragile hair, dull eyes and unhealthy complexion. They can hardly stand criticism and have a low boiling point. They raise their voice, swing their arms and splutter when arguing. They are weak even in their logic. They exemplify their righteousness with the cow, a herbivorous animal, and say that nature originally made a human being as a vegetarian creature.

Of course, there is something slightly suspect about vegetarians. Anyone who can deny themselves pleasure for completely arbitrary reasons shows they are misguided at the very least. Cooking for vegetarians is always a pain, even vegetable soup needs chicken stock to make it good. Strange people. And if any vegetarians are offended by reading this just remember we have been told that "They can hardly stand criticism and have a low boiling point".

I may have had a shitty time at Quick in France, but that made me more depressed than angry. I've just witnessed the true anger fast food establishments can generate at Doubting Dan's completely hilarious site. There is a man who is in touch with his anger; almost makes me want to go to Burger King with him. Almost... KFC is right out, though.

Dr Wadge of the Food Standards Agency has made the excellent point on his blog that so-called 'detox' diets and supplements are a waste of time and money. They are obviously a pile of toss and anyone who buys them is misguided at the very least. I couldn't agree with his suggestion of spending the money you save not buying them on Neil Young albums, though, perhaps Bent or Lemon Jelly...

At the beginning of October we are travelling to the Basque country. We have been there before and it is one of the best places for eating in the world. Whilst there are the glories of many-starred restaurants there, I have to admit the place I am most looking forward to going is rather more humble. Casa Nicolas in Tolosa is the site of the best piece of beef I have ever eaten. Pedro, the owner who is perhaps the least healthy person I have heard coughing their lungs up in a kitchen, grills stunningly brilliant ox chops slowly over a fire. The meat is incredible; very marbled and meltingly tender. I am greatly looking forward to visiting. It will be great food-a-go-go.

Guest columnist Peter Palmer laments the passing of a good breakfast at English bed and breakfast establishments.

Remember the days when a stay at an English Bed and Breakfast meant a morning feast that would leave you patting your belly with satisfaction, a smile on your face and thoughts of how to work it off in time for the next morning's binge? It's a treat that seems to have largely been consigned to faded memory. Maybe I am just a tired old git with nothing better to do than moan about how the World's going to pot and nothing is as it was in the glorious days of my own youth. But I think I've got a point. I'm now in Cornwall - a wonderful place in almost all respects. But the breakfast has been a bitter disappoint, and brought to my mind other similar experiences of breakfast bliss denied in recent years. Plastic sausages from the bottom of the deepest freezer in cut-price supermarket hell; bacon that tastes of nothing much except salt; eggs that taste of hardly anything at all; and extra-value orange juice at 17 pence a litre (is it really orange juice?). And this is one of the things foreigners once thought we did well. The numerous Germans here in Cornwall will perhaps be thinking that the English breakfast has gone the same way as the British motor industry. Or maybe they are thinking it was a fantasy all along. Anyway, Cornwall is great and well worth visiting. But if you want a good breakfast, opt for self-catering.

I cannot believe how debased the art of baking is in this country. Don't get me wrong, there are a few decent bakeries in London, but if you go into even quite an up-market supermarket they will have a wide selection of breads with all kinds of flours, flavours and seeds all of which are utter shit. Going into a branch of the ubiquitous Gregg's is to suffer a fate worse than death. Somehow, between them this unholy alliance has managed to rid themselves of all other competition thus leaving us with little choice but to accept their pap.

Food can not get any simpler than bread, yet few things are more delightful than sinking one’s teeth into a fresh baguette, bloomer or boule. As the inheritors of 7000 years of civilisation, we have a right to expect fine, properly made bread to be easily available locally, daily and affordably. In Britain this seems to be far too much to ask.

If you you are lucky enough to live near, don't mind either travelling for hours, or eating stale bread I suggest you try the Exeter Street Bakery (15 Exeter Street WC2E, 1b Argyll Road W8, or selected branches of Waitrose). Degustibus is also worth investigating, they have a shop in Borough Market.

Daniel

I really hate salad, they are generally incredibly depressing. Worst of all are those salads one finds in minor English restaurants and pubs: limp iceberg lettuce, half a tomato and a few slices of cucumber all served at fridge temperature with hardly any dressing. Dreadful stuff. Yet, over the past year I have served many salads that have been edible largely thanks to the power of decent salad dressing. My recipe for decent dressing is:

One part balsamic vinegar
Four parts good extra-virgin olive oil
Dijon or English mustard to taste

These can be beaten together with an electric whisk. This combination often goes quite thick when whisked together. Due to the hideous nature of general salad ingredients you need quite a lot of dressing to make them palatable. As I've suggested, bacon bits are a useful improver. Cheese is frequently useful too; I like thin slices of Parmesan.

I should point out that salad is actually incredibly unhealthy. When I was an epidemiologist I attended a lecture that included a mention of carcinogenic (cancer-causing) foods. Apparently, per unit serving lettuce is the most carcinogenic food there is. Cucumber is third most carcinogenic. When I tell people the risks of eating salad they immediately say it is due to the chemicals on supermarket vegetables. Not so, it is due to the Caffeic acid naturally present in lettuce and cucumber. Lettuce is really very carcinogenic and I really should continue to avoid eating it regularly. If you'd like to read more about naturally-occuring carcinogens then this holiday menu has some more information.

David.