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!"

Guest reviewer Jeff Home reports from London's foie gras outpost.

Dan and I booked a table at the Club Gascon for dinner last night - and enjoyed a medley of gastronomic delights in the company of 13 other tables.

We actually started the evening next door at Cellar Gascon and made the mistake of ordering a glass each of the "Red of the Week". I guess we should have known better... vaguely disguised vinegar would be close.

Back to the main event! We perused the menu and decided the degustation menu (5 courses) with matching wines for £70 a head was worth investing in. We were not disappointed at all!

The first course was Pine morels cassoulet (nicely foamed) with smoked oysters and fresh walnuts - matched with an earthy glass of 2006 Bergerac Cuvee de Conti, La Tour des Gendres. They were perfectly matched - the oysters especially tender.

The next dish was a real surprise in pepperiness... cured black cod with fig chutney and citrus caviar - matched with a glass of Gaillac 2006 Dencon, causse. The dry mineral and pepper tones worked so well with this dish that we would both definitely order it a la carte again.

You can see a picture of the baby squid with black polenta and chorizo jus (stuffed into the squids) below - a real treat having been slowly roasted to perfection. We had a glass of chilled 2004 Domaine de la Colombette - Coteaux du Libron. The wine worked because it was heavily chilled and just goes to show how versatile this beverage can be :)

The final main was roast duck with green apple shavings, celery and liquorice - pictured left. Nicely pink meat - not overdone at all, and with the apple/liquorice combination a delight. The matching wine was a glass of Domaine des Desmoiselles, Le Mas - Cotes du Roussillon 2006. The mix of Grenache, Syrah and Carignan spicy enough to compliment, but not over powering. Nothing too special to write home about, however.

Dessert consisted of a foie gras nougat with passion fruit jus and meringue crumbled around the plat in lumps. The meringue was a bit of a weird choice, but the foie didn't disappoint. I wasn't so turned on by the choice of Baileys with this final course, there was so little of it (and so watered down with ice chips) that it hardly mattered I guess.

The staff seemed surprised when we declared the black cod as our favourite dish - for some reason they thought the duck was a better dish. Each to their own.

The place was nicely busy - not overly noisy and we were very well looked after by attentive (and not only personable but knowledgeable) staff dressed all in black. Why don't they have a Michelin star? I've been to places that are nowhere near as good as this who are sporting one.

We're planning the next visit already!

Contact details are on their website.

There are a myriad of cookery books all competing for our attention. I cannot claim I've read all of them, but I have experienced a few which any serious cook will find very useful.

As far as general recipe books go, ones that cover a variety of foods, there are three I can whole-heartedly recommend. Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson is a wonderful little book that has easy recipes and tells interesting stories associated with the ingredients.

Simon Hopkinson is a great chef and an entertaining author, perfectly willing to dabble in more baroque food as presented in the second book I would recommend: The Prawn Cocktail Years. This book is a real hoot, with all kinds of food that are no longer fashionable such as coq au vin, marquise au chocolat and other dishes time has passed by.

The final general recipe book I feel is worth shelling out for is How to Eat: Pleasures and Principles of Good Food by Nigella Lawson. This is a big book packed with easy to follow recipes, with sections including low-fat food and cooking for children. There is plenty of interest in this book.

There are two books I would suggest for dealing with specific ingredients. If you fancy some fishy action then Rick Stein's Seafood is a very useful book. It has plenty of information on how to prepare different types of seafood as well as lots of good recipes.

Of course, meat is what we are all really interested in cooking, and you'll do it justice if you follow the guidance in The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This is probably my favourite cookery book; meat is generally the way forward. Hugh has useful things like roasting time and temperature tables, and even some recipes in which meat is not the main ingredient, such as the utterly delicious Boston baked-beans. This book is the monk's manhood.

Finally, a book I've mentioned a couple of times recently is the key to successful Thai cooking - Thai Food by David Thompson. You cannot go wrong with this book. The recipes are clearly presented and quite delicious. It also gives plenty of information on the history and culture associated with the food. A real gem.

I do own other cookery books, but these six are those I would least like to do without. If you buy these you'll always be able to cook up a storm and impress your dining companions.

When I was involved with the Wine Circle at Oxford we would frequently have to entertain winemakers or wine-merchants. The best place we could take them was to the Chiang Mai kitchen for quality Thai food. Admittedly, since those crazy days I've had better Thai food, both at Addie's Thai Cafe and in our own kitchen (thanks to Thai Food by David Thompson), but nothing in Oxford has come along to eclipse it. The Chiang Mai kitchen still has the best food in Oxford - worth a visit.

The Chiang Mai kitchen is down a back passage just off the High Street in a charming 17th century building with exposed wooden beams and impressively over-blown fireplaces. The restaurant itself is spread over two floors and both are usually full; they do a roaring trade.

The menu is comprehensive and filled with food that is cooked to order from ingredients flown in from every week from Thailand. As usual, in Thai restaurants I couldn't give an epworth for the wine-list; wine just doesn't go with global-thermonuclear war-strength chilli action. Beer is undoubtedly the way forward, but I have to admit that I like the elderflower sparkling drink they have; fruity and refreshing.

I started off with an old favourite, squid salad. They prepare the squid so it is meltingly tender and full of flavour. My dear mother had a starter I've never really seen the point of; spinach leaves with bits of minced chicken and peanuts on them. Yeah, you can eat it, but it is pretty freaking boring.

We had a couple of main courses. I loved my ground beef with Thai basil, chillies and oyster sauce; it was properly chillied to the max and so mind-bendingly hot. Linda and Douglas both had duck curry, and commented on the degree of skill with which it was prepared. The taste I had was certainly impressive. You've got to love duck curry when it is done well.

A meal for three cost £80 with drinks and a generous tip. Once again, the Chiang Mai kitchen delivered the goods and it was a most satisfying lunch. You cannot do better in Oxford.

Contact details are on their website.

Daniel guided us through a bewildering array of back-passages with the promise of serious fishy action at Trattoria Antiche Carampane. We eventually found the right street and were pleased to score the only remaining table for the evening.

The restaurant does not have a menu, instead your waiter will talk you though the seafood they have on offer that day. They were more involved than at previous restaurants, so we were pleased they spoke impeccable English.

The starters brought tears of pleasure to our eyes. Daniel had grilled razor calms with scallops. Here in the Adriatic they are much smaller than elsewhere, but the taste and texture is, if anything, more lewdly pleasurable than anywhere else.

I had a huge plateful of sheets of raw seafood. The fish (John Dory, sea bass, gilt-head bream and mackerel) was the nun's nethers, but it paled into mediocrity when I tried the mind-buggeringly good raw scampi. This was real food porn, I was deeply excited.

The rest of our company had lobster salad with tomatoes, feta and onions. The lobster was out of this world; it kicked the arse of the lobster at Le Bernardin.

Daniel's healthy appetite tempted him to have a pasta course. Spaghetti with spicy seafood ragu; we were told this was a house specialty. When it arrived we were alarmed by its strong smell of curry. Happily, the taste was a lot more balanced with strongly flavoured mussels and small brown shrimp.

I had ordered John Dory fillet with mushrooms for my main course. Once again, this was obscenely good. The fish was perhaps a tad over-done, but the rich mushrooms and the fresh, intense flavour of the fish brought tears of joy to my eyes.

The pinnacle of the meal was Daniel's turbot, poached to perfection, it was served with a orange and grapefruit sauce. The tart, yet slightly sweet, buttery sauce coated the fish and sharpened the flavours. I doubt anyone will ever cook or eat a better piece of fish than this.

Desserts (Panna Cotta two ways, with marsala reduction and strawberry coulis; liquid lemon sorbet in a glass and a sharon fruit bavarois) were nice, but nowhere near the screaming brilliance of the preceding courses.

The wine list was near-all Italian, with many mystery growers. We settled on a Slovenian Malvasia from Klinec, 2006, which provided a degree of interest.

Cost per head: €65 with half a bottle of wine per person and mineral water.

Contact details: Trattoria Antiche Carampane, San Polo 1911, Rio Tera de la Carampane. +39 041 5240165. Do book ahead of time, as we were very lucky to score a table.

After fighting our way through Venice guided by a woefully inaccurate map we finally found Osteria al Portego, an un-assuming neighbourhood bar and kitchen that provided satisfying and un-pretentious food.

Being lunchtime the menu was largely themed on pasta, which is fine for most people but it left me with a limited choice of dishes. I had Bresaola with cherry tomatoes, rocket and Padano cheese. I was very pleased that the tomatoes were at room temperature (rather than being plucked straight from the fridge as is generally the case in Blighty). OK, I may not be so thrilled with vast quantities of rocket, but the dish was well-balanced and quite enjoyable.

Daniel was not so limited on the wheat front, and so ordered spaghetti with mantis shrimps. The latter had been cooked whole in a powerful tomato sauce, and their flavour had infused the entire dish. Honest food, cooked with impeccable ingredients.

This meal cost €17 per head including some vaguely passable Pinot Grigio. You cannot really do much better for that money.

Contact details: Osteria al Portego, Castello 6015, Calle de la Malvasia. +39 041 5229038.

Tonight three of us sallied forth from our place of residence in search of some fishy comestibles; Alle Testiere was a top address for obtaining what we were after.

The menu was short and to the point, it demonstrated that quality seafood was what they were all about. The wine list was also brief and to the point, but it included some interesting wines. We chose some Gewurztraminer from Falkenstein which is a heroically characterful wine as far as Italian white wines go. It was reasonably priced and served us well through the meal.

Our first courses were remarkably good. Steamed mantis shrimps were the freaking cat's rude bits, packed with rich, sweet flavour even if the steaming made the texture a bit awkward. The locals would have us believe that at this time of year a single mantis shrimp is a better thing to eat than a whole chicken. We are certainly agreed that seven of them are better than a chicken.

The other starters were soft shell crabs (see left for what they look like when alive), which were delicious, turned in flour and briefly fried; slightly crunchy little morsels of utter loveliness. Finally there was a selection of raw seafood selected from the market that day. The raw langoustines were truly magical, with a great texture and a mouth-coating richness. The oysters and prawns that came with this were damned good, but not as colourfully delightful as the langoustines.

Daniel was the only one of us to have a pasta course. This was baby squid, tentacles and all, cooked with gnocchi in a squid ink and cinnamon sauce. This was perhaps the least compelling dish of the night, with the cinnamon making it just a bit too weird to be truly satisfying.

The food was certainly back on track with the main courses. Two of us shared a mixture of the day's fish and crustaceans. This turned out to be langoutines, prawns, sea bass and baby sole. The prawns were a tad on the well-cooked side, but the fish was completely compelling. Daniel had prawns sauteed in a very lemony butter sauce, with juicy capers. The prawns were barely cooked and the freshest and most succulent imaginable. They were further improved by the salty butter and lemon sauce.

This was an ultimately pleasing meal, the food, wine and service were all top bunny. It is well worth making a booking should you be lucky enough to find yourself in Venice; you'll have a lot of fun.

Contact details: Alle Testiere, Castello 7801, Calle de Mondo Novo (near the Realto fish market). +39 041 522 7220.

In Venice there are one hell of a lot of tourist trap restaurants whose raison d'etre is to rip off visitors with lunatic pricing of inadequate food. We went into Cannaregio, a quiet area in the North of Venice, and enjoyed a lovely meal at Osteria da Rioba which was a comparative bargain.

From the fish-heavy menu we chose prawns in saor to start with. Saor is a Venitian speciality which is a mixture of oil, white wine vinegar and crushed grapes. The prawns were very juicy and sweet and came with shallots in Balsamic vinegar. Yummy.

We followed this with risotto of scallops and porchini mushrooms. This was cooked to perfection, the rice had a great texture, soft with just a little bit of bite to it. The scallops were small but richly flavoured, and were a good match with the mushrooms.

As an alternative Daniel had the pasta dish of the day. Freshly made pappardelle with more of the lovely scallops and a light butter and honey mushroom sauce. The pasta was cooked perfectly and the scallops were of the same high quality as in the risotto.

Our main course was grilled sea bream on a little salad with golden raisins and pine nuts. The such a simple preparation the fish had to be good: it was. Maybe the thinner of the two pieces was a tad over-done, but I feel I am nit-picking to criticise what was a delicious dish.

The wine list was surprisingly comprehensive. For example, they listed five Soave producers neither of us had heard of. I was particularly pleased they had  a range of Jermann wines, including Pinot Grigio. This is an old favourite from my days dining at Pizza Express in Oxford (when they had a decent wine list). This is a good, quite characterful Pinot Grigio, and two bottles of it slipped down a treat.

Dining by the canal on a glorious October day was very civilised and quite fun, made so much better by the top-quality food. Four of us ate very well and it cost a modest €199 including the two bottles of wine. If you can find it, you'll have a great time eating there.

Contact details: Osteria da Rioba, Cannaregio 2553, Fondamenta della Miseriacordia. +39 041 5244379

Not being able to eat wheat puts a dampener on enjoying food. All prepared food seems to contain wheat. Supermarkets these days have 'free from' aisles, which supposedly have wheat-free treats. Normally 'free from' means free from flavour. Now, the 'priced like Harrods' corner shop in my housing development have started selling wheat-free cakes; if only they were free from flavour.

Mrs Crimble's honey caramel cake is one of the most utterly repulsive foods it has been my displeasure not to have avoided tasting. I didn't even swallow it so totally repellant was it. The texture was dry and powdery and it tasted like the smell of kitchen cleaner; cheap perfume and soap. I am really disgusted that I can still taste it a couple of minutes after I spat it out. The word 'horrible' goes nowhere near far enough to describe this travesty of a cake.

I've never had any other Vietnamese food in London, so I suppose this counts as the best I've had. It is certainly an oasis of pleasure in a run-down location, even if it looks like a squalid take-away.

Cafe East is not terribly large so if you want a table you have to turn up reasonably promptly after they open otherwise you'll have to queue. When we were there it was heaving with Vietnamese people after a taste of home; I don't think they were disappointed.

The menu is short and packed with noodle dishes. They some rice-noodle offerings, which helps those of us with wheat problems. There are a token few non-noodle dishes, like the sliced Vietnamese sausage we ordered, but it is clear these are not the main focus of the cuisine. The sliced sausage was meaty and quite satisfying.

Daniel's noodles with raw beef certainly put a smile on his face, as did my rice noodles with chicken slices on mine. The broth they were served in had clearly seen plenty of bones to make a tasty stock; very powerfully flavoured. The noodles were quite delicious as were the bits of meat; Daniel was enthusiastic about the raw beef. Next time I will wimp out and ask for a fork, eating noodles with chopsticks is a bit of a drag.

Cafe East does not have an alcohol license and we failed to ask about the possibility of BYO for our next visit.

It may look a bit of a dump and be located in a serious dump, but the quality of the food cannot be denied. It is also a bargain noshing experience; it cost us £11 per person.

Contact details: Cafe East, 24 Evelyn Street, London SE8 5DG. 020 8691 7777

Photo by Kake Pugh.

We were in Oxford at the weekend and my step-father cooked a coq au vin; It rivaled even La Ferme de la Ruchotte's effort. So I stole the recipe. You will need:

The very best chicken you can find that weighs about 1kg, get your butcher to joint it into twelve pieces
500ml red wine
1tablespoon olive oil
150g thick-cut bacon, cubed
15 small shallots, peeled
200g button mushrooms
1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
300ml chicken stock
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs of thyme
Sea salt
Freshly ground pepper

Trim the chicken pieces of excess fat. For a really rich flavour, marinate the chicken pieces in the wine over-night. The next day pour off the marinade (keep it to cook with) and dry the chicken well with Kitchen paper to make frying easier.

Heat the oven to 180°C. Put the olive oil and bacon in a large ovenproof casserole dish and cook over a medium heat for three minutes. Add the whole shallots and cook for a further six minutes until browned, then add the mushrooms and garlic and cook for another two minutes, stirring well. Remove the ingredients from the pan and keep them. Place the chicken in the casserole and cook until golden and sealed all over - do this in batches to get a good, even colour, Set the browned chicken to one side.

Reduce the heat. Slowly add the red wine (or marinade) and the chicken stock and bring to boil. Return the chicken, vegetables, and bacon to the casserole, along with the bay leaves, thyme and seasoning. Cover and cook in the oven for 35 minutes.

Whilst my step-father's coq is good as soon as it is ready, it really improves if you cover it up and come back to it the next day. Just warm it through and the flavours will be even more intense.