This is a slight variation on the traditional recipe, but my minor changes are only designed to add flavour. I have to say I am not sure where one can generally obtain the black beans of Tolosa, we got ours from the restaurant that serves the best bean stew in that town. For this you will need:

500g Tolosan black beans, alubia negra
600g unsmoked streaky bacon in one piece
500ml fresh beef stock
Some minor white wine, Anjou Blanc is good
A large onion
6 cloves of garlic
100ml olive oil

Soak the beans in water overnight. About five hours before you want to eat chop up the onion and fry it in a few millilitres of oil until it begins to soften. Place the fried onion in a large pan. Crush or chop up the garlic and fry until it just begins to change colour, this will not take long. Put the fried garlic in the pan. Drain the beans then add to the pan (discarding the water they were soaked in), along with the beef stock and the rest of the olive oil. Add some of the white wine until the beans are just covered. You then bring the stew to the boil, then reduce the temperature until it is only just simmering. This is very important, the temperature should be such that the surface of the stew just quivers. Stew with a lid on the pan for two hours at this temperature.

When this time has elapsed cut the piece of bacon into 2cm cubes and fry until the bacon fat just begins to run. You then add this to the stew and simmer for another three hours, again with the pan covered. The beans need to be cooked for five hours in total. It'll then be ready to eat.

Ideally, you should serve this with black pudding/blood sausage and pickled peppers. The pickled peppers are not terribly wine-friendly so skip them if you are going to drink something good, I know I am not serving any when I cook this at the weekend.

For the type version of this stew go to Restaurant Fronton in Tolosa, it is freaking delicious there.

David

Last weekend we took some people to La Porchetta. This time we went to the Islington branch. The food was, once again, high quality and I can highly recommend the Messicana pizza; the fresh sausage on it is delicious.

I should point out an omission from my review, whilst people can smoke away happily in La Porchetta there are also no smoking sections in all of the branches.

David

We have a vegetarian coming around for dinner tonight. I am happy to say I have never had to cook for a vegetarian before, so when this challenge was announced to me I felt rather apprehensive. Quite obviously, most recipes would simply be ruined by 'removing the meat'. However, it did occur that one of our regular recipes could be easily adapted. Cambodian Hot and Sour Beef Salad can easily become Hot and Sour Prawn salad with a change in the source of protein. If we get large and suitably meaty prawns on our immanent trip to Borough Market this should work a treat. I do suspect the original recipe may well be the best, though.

David

Last Saturday night we stopped off in Holborn for an early dinner at a branch of La Porchetta; it was quite the best pizza I've had in Town since I last went to one of their establishments.

The restaurants themselves are quite unpretentious, with tables crammed in to bursting point, staff shouting orders about and (until it is banned in a few months) people smoking away happily. But you don't go to La Porchetta for the environment, you go for the food.

They take the food very seriously. Pizza dough is freshly made each day, as is the tomato sauce, pasta and all pasta sauces. If you order pasta they'll bring a large lump of Parmesan to the table and shave off slivers onto your plate. The pasta is good, but the pizzas are out of this world.

Before you order a pizza and a starter have a look around for someone who has already been served; the pizzas are pretty big and garlic bread is the same size. Order both and your stomach will stretch. They are traditional Italian-style pizzas with a thin, crispy base, and a reasonable crust around the outside. They are baked in a very hot oven as decent pizza should be baked.

We ordered two old favourite pizzas, a calzone and an Americana. The calzone is a folded pizza with tomato sauce, cheese, onion and lots of sausage slices; it is a packed pocket of loveliness. So good did I find this pizza that when we lived closer to one of their branches this is all I ordered trip after trip. The Americana had tomato sauce, cheese, green peppers, salami and chillies. I would go as far as saying this was the best pizza I have ever eaten. The ingredients were of the highest quality and the flavours were harmonious.

Don't bother with the wine, it is practically undrinkable, get a beer (the Weiss-bier is nice). We had two pizzas and two beers and got out of their with a bill for less than twenty-five pounds including a tip. For the quality this was extremely good value.

They have branches all over London (check out their website for the addresses) and they all stick to the same principles, so go wherever is convenient for you. Make sure you do go if you like pizza, La Porchetta is the cat's arse. I have to say I am distinctly jealous of Daniel whose office is a brief bus-ride away from the Holborn branch; I'd love to have such a great source of lunch nearby.

David

I met up with my step-father today, we both thought La Gavroche seemed like a good place for lunch so that is where we met up. It was a good move.

The lunch menu was a good buy at £46.50 for three courses including wine and water. The staff were perfectly happy to assist in translating the dishes that were named beyond schoolboy-French ability and we both ended up ordering the same stuff. It sounded good so why not?

There was an amuse-bouche offering of deep-fried tiger prawn with avocado vinaigrette that was quite delicious; a good sharpener to get us both in the mood for the more serious stuff to follow. The prawn was very flavourful as was the avocado vinaigrette, I am pretty sure the vinegar used was balsamic.

We then had a lobster and button mushrooms in a pastry case with a very tasty mushroom-infused cream sauce. There was plenty of lobster and the flavours of lobster and mushroom were perfectly complimentary. I am sure the mushroom sauce used something a bit grander than button mushrooms to obtain its rich flavour. It was terribly good.

The main course was supreme of pheasant with choucrote, carrots, potatoes and slices of sausage. The sausage was quite brilliant, as were the potatoes and carrots in the rich sauce. They didn't over-do the quantity of choucrote, it was all nicely balanced. Perhaps the pheasant was a bit tough, but when isn't pheasant a bit tough?

After scoping the cheese trolley we were tempted to go for cheese, until one of the desserts was translated as chestnut tart, something neither of us could resist. We chose well, for it was delicious.

OK, the wine on offer with the set menu was nothing to write home about (we chose Leon Beyer Pinot Blanc, yawn-a-rama or what?) but the food was terribly good and the atmosphere was most compelling. It was nice to go to an establishment where they knew how to fold napkins when one had to leave the table. I don't think one could find a better lunch served in more pleasing circumstances than this. I admit meals are often made by the company, and my company was terribly good, but I don't think you could go far wrong dining at La Gavroche for lunch, a top address.

Contact: La Gavroche, 43 Upper Brook Street, W1K 7QR. 020 7499 1826.

David

Today we are having grilled baby squid with aioli for lunch. To make aioli you will need:

4 peeled cloves of garlic
Half a teaspoon of salt
A large egg yolk
The juice of half a lemon
150ml extra virgin olive oil

Crush the garlic cloves into a bowl, add the salt and mix into a paste. Add the egg yolk and lemon juice, then start mixing with an electric whisk. Slowly dribble in the olive oil whilst mixing so it is incorporated and finally forms a thick fluid of mayonnaise-like consistency.

This makes a quite delicious aioli that has real garlic heat. Lovely.

After my over-done goose and chicken I have finally realised I should have used one of my Christmas presents, a digital temperature probe. Tonight's meal is roast rib of beef and all I had to do was put it in the oven at the correct temperature (230°C for 25 minutes before turning it down to 160°C) until the alarm on the temperature probe went off. I like pretty rare beef so I set the probe to beep when the centre of the meat reached 50°C. It looks pretty good from the outside:

And on the inside (with pommes dauphinoises and green beans):

For pieces at the edge of the joint that looks just perfect to me. It was delicious.

Lunch today is lobster rolls. We had these twice in New York from the Pearl Oyster Bar and they were quite delicious. To make them you will need:

Two brioche rolls
A reasonable-sized cooked lobster
Mayonnaise
Goose fat or butter

Get all of the meat out of the lobster and chop it into not too small pieces. Mix this with some mayonnaise. Slice the brioche rolls in half and fry the inside in (ideally) goose fat or butter until golden. Fill the now-fried rolls with the lobster and mayonnaise mix. Eat with a lot of pleasure. These are very nice with extremely thin frites.

I roasted a goose for Christmas dinner tonight; it did not work out exactly as I had hoped. Roasting meat in a fan oven is always difficult, but I failed to take enough account of its drying effect, cooked it for too long that resulted in quite a dry bird.

Tip of the day: Don't roast a 4.5kg goose for two hours at 180°C in a fan oven.