Sometimes you really need a kebab. We wanted the best Turkish kebab London has to offer, so we trekked to the other side of Town to get one. We were not disappointed.

From the outside Mangal 1 Ocakbasi looks a bit like yet another tatty ‘bab shop, but walk inside and there is a vast charcoal grill and truly epic quantities of meat on skewers ready to be put over the fire. There are tables so you can sit down and enjoy your kebabs, but the idea is to eat and leave without much dallying. This is the general idea of Ocakbasi food, it is stuff you eat whilst you are out not what you go out to eat.

They’ll give you some warm, fresh bread and it is a good idea to get some hummus to eat this with. At two pounds per portion you cannot go wrong with the Turkish pizzas as a starter. They are nicely spiced and quite meaty, with salad provided to wrap up in them. I’ll say at this point beware the pickles, they are the saltiest things in the universe.

Then you’ll want a kebab. We ordered an Adana Kofte (pictured front-most) and a lamb Beyti (in the background). The meat was pretty good quality, so much so that we welcomed it being just on the rare side of cooked. The kebabs were very well seasoned, in the Beyti especially which was studded with green bits of fresh chilli and coriander. That one was rather hot. They were both rather delicious.

Mangal 1 does not have an alcohol license, so you can take your own booze in. I’d go for beer (or cider) here rather than wine.

OK, it is pretty undemanding food, but fast food has its place and good food fast food has a better place. Probably not worth the huge trek across Town on a regular basis, but well worth going to try the best that London can offer in this sphere of fun food.

Contact details: Mangal 1, 10 Arcola Street, E8 2DJ Tel: 020 7275 8981

I’m cooking up some pork with lentils for a dinner party on Saturday. The recipe calls for boiling them in water, but we can do better than that. I’m going to try using a mixture of fresh chicken stock and white wine. I don’t see why it should be worse with more flavour-giving components. If it works I’ll post the recipe. If it doesn’t work I’ll say why not.

Yesterday I made a much-improved version of my chicken in cider recipe. Regular followers of whatinterests.davidstrange.net will have seen some blurry pictures of it cooking and on my plate.

So the first improvements come in the ingredients. You need double the amount of mushrooms and bacon (ie. 500g of each). When I said ‘characterful mushrooms’ I really meant it, OK? Closed-cup boring shite mushrooms are not good enough, we want flavour! The cider has to be dry but also of a serious, flavoursome nature. Quality ingredients lead to quality food.

The next part is the really cunning bit: leaving it to rest. After your leisurely breakfast it’ll be time to start cooking this so it will be ready for a seven o’clock dinner. Follow the instructions I gave in the recipe until you reach the simmering part, you’ll only want to simmer it for an hour before turning the heat off entirely. Stick a lid on the stew pot and leave it to cool down whilst you go and have lunch. Then at quarter past six in the evening bring it gently back to the boil before turning the heat to the lowest setting (so the surface of the stew just quivers) until you serve it at seven o’clock.

This period of cooling and resting intensifies the flavours and makes them more complex. If I make an even more baroque version of this I’ll make it the night before we eat it so it can rest for longer. I’ll also stick a pig’s trotter (with the skin scored with a knife) in it for the initial simmering and resting. Some bits of chicken carcass would also add to it during this stage of the cooking, I feel.

Certainly, this is a good thing to make and a better thing to eat. Just don’t forget you need quality ingredients. If you cannot manage that I suppose you don’t get that much out of this site.

If you get any emails saying you can get swine flu by eating tinned meat don’t worry, it is just spam.

I’ve been invited on a beef butchery course. Wehay! Won’t that just be a real hoot? It is not until October, though, so tales of hacking up cows will not be forthcoming in the immediate future.

Heston Blumenthal’s boozer just next-door to the Fat Duck provides keenly-priced, hearty classics cooked with far more skill and attention to detail than you’ll find in almost any other pub. We left full and happy.

Quite obviously, what you need to drink in a boozer is beer. The Hind’s Head gets real ales in regularly and appeared to take very good care of them. The four different real ales we tried were in top condition. You don’t want to bother with their wine list, whilst not being as scandalously pricy as the Fat Duck’s, it is not cheap. And you want to drink beer in a boozer. Come on, beer!

After getting a pint, you need to instantly order some bar snacks. The only one we tried were the Scotch quail’s eggs, they do others but we like Scotch eggs. I had high hopes, but I was not expecting them to be quite so amazingly delicious. The sausage meat coating was peppery, wonderfully flavoursome and the quail’s eggs in the middle still had runny yolks. Oh yes. You definitely need to order some of them.

With those two important actions sorted out you can start to enjoy your meal properly. I started off with some thin slices of raw Scotch beef with shallots and chives. I love this kind of thing. It was just great, really meaty. Daniel had some lightly-fried ox tongue with fennel salad, which he lapped up. They may not have been as stunningly inventive as the food next-door, but you ate these things with a lot of pleasure, perhaps with your feet more firmly on the ground.

I felt I did terribly well with my main course, shepherd's pie made with lamb shoulder and sweetbreads with flaked lamb breast on top. Much pleasure-fuelled chortling accompanied eating this. Really great to see shepherd’s pie being given serious treatment. Daniel had monkfish with pickled lemons and great mushy broad beans. The monkfish was staggeringly well cooked. By which I mean hardly cooked.

My treacle tart with milk ice cream was a surprisingly lemony interpretation of this dish, but was packed with the required sugary goodness. Daniel’s strawberry trifle was perfectly good, but perhaps a bit too sweet.

We were looking forward to visiting the Hind’s Head and we felt we were not let down. Some of the food is quite amazingly good, you will eat well here. You’ll drink well, too. Just don’t forget the bar snacks.

Contact details: The Hind’s Head, High Street, Bray SL6 2AB Telephone: 01628 626 151

I am not sure I know enough superlatives to write a review of the Fat Duck. Can you just assume that unless I say anything to the contrary each course was a stunning, mind-expanding, roller-coaster ride of super-orgiastic delight.

After copious quantities of their brilliantly tasty bread and raw butters we began the night with a palate-cleanser: liquid nitrogen-frozen green tea and lime mousse. The liquid that will become the mousse is dipped into a bath of liquid nitrogen (at your table). When it is taken out it is dusted with green tea powder and you eat it in one. It has the most amazing texture and, whilst it was a bit cold, the effect is remarkably mouth-watering. It served its purpose exactly as it should.

As each person was served, a small amount of lime-grove scent was misted into the air. This was to set a pattern for the rest of the meal. The dishes tended to be of a quirky, elaborately-presented nature, but it is testament to the sheer, mind-buggering brilliance of the food that it wasn’t ever over-shadowed by the theatrics of the dish construction, stunning table-ware and outlandish decanters.

A gazpacho of red cabbage with pommery grain mustard ice cream followed. After Daniel tried this he announced, “Red cabbage finally has a point!” It was such a little dish and was presented so elegantly. Good job it was so tasty so we didn’t mind destroying it.

The next course clearly demonstrated that the quality of food took precedence over even the most flashy of presentational fireworks. It was supposed to be a treat for the senses. Firstly we were brought a bed of moss on which were little Fat Duck-branded packets each containing a tiny sheet of film. The idea was you let this film dissolve on your tongue and it released a strong flavour of oak. Now this wasn’t the silliest bit. The waiter then poured a jug of water onto the moss causing cascades of thick mist to roll down the table, releasing a powerful smell of forest floor in the process. Finally, we got the food part of this affair and it blew my mind; this was the point in the meal where I started groaning and writhing with pleasure. It shouldn’t have worked, but jelly of quail with langoustine cream and chicken liver parfait was a stunning combination of ever-changing flavours and textures as you worked your way through the different layers of food. A comedically enjoyable course that delivered pleasure from its elegant presentation to when you swallowed the last spoonful. Almost as an after-thought there was a tiny piece of truffled toast at the side; quite lovely.

Now, foie gras is a marvellous thing that we all want to horse down as much as possible, but I’d wager few people have had it as good as we did at the Corpulent Canard. It was roast and based on how awful roast foie gras was when I had it at the Connaught I really was not expecting it to be so delicious. The texture was amazing, served in three bite-sized, amazingly flavourful pieces with a few drips of gooseberry coulis and a crab biscuit. If the last course was top-shelf food porn (and it was) then this was food porn from a shop with blacked-out windows and garish flashing signs on it.

More silliness for the next course called mock turtle soup – mad hatter tea. We were presented with a little cup containing a gold-leaf gilded ‘watch’, with a teabag string and label attached. When the waiter poured water into the cup the watch disintegrated, leaving bits of gold foil floating around and giving out a powerfully stocky flavour. We then had to pour this ‘tea’ into a bowl which contained a ‘mock turtle egg’ (studded with impossibly tiny mushrooms) and a little stack of gelatinous, slow-cooked mystery meat. This dish could have been over-worked and less enjoyable, but as with all the food it had been designed to be eaten first and foremost. I chortled with mirth as I ate my soup.

Next was a Blumenthal classic, “Sound of the sea”. The sound part was provided by conch shells with iPods inside them. We were supposed to be listening to the recording of the sea these played as we ate our tapioca and eel ‘sand’ on which there was edible seaweed and pieces of raw fish. I thought the iPod angle was un-necessary, but the fish was amazing. Served at a perfect temperature the yellowfin, mackerel and halibut pieces had great character; tasty with an appealing texture. Even the sand was rather good.

The next course proved they could cook fish as well as serve it raw, salmon poached in liquorice with artichokes, vanilla mayonnaise, golden trout roe and Manni olive oil. This totally compelled me, I could go on for an age about the construction of the dish, the interplay of flavours and textures, the amazing skill in (hardly) cooking the salmon and many other wonderful rants, but shall we keep it short? OK, this was an inventively prepared, but ultimately really satisfying piece of fish.

Three-star chefs have a bit of a thing for pigeon, it seems; we often have it at l’Arnsbourg and it showed up on the menu here. In what sense the powdered Anjou pigeon was powdered I don’t know, but it was quite staggeringly well-cooked, totally tender and soft. This was pigeon better than I’ve experienced it before. Along with it came some blood pudding, which was in the form of an impossibly rich sauce, and some confit of innards, which is always the kind of thing that amuses. They were actually very tasty, too.

We then moved onto taffaty tart with caramelized apple, fennel, rose and candied lemon. This is a seventeenth century recipe which had been imaginatively reconstructed. It was strongly scented with rose and fennel and served with a spoonful of intensely fruity blackcurrant sorbet. Very refreshing.

A ‘not-so-full English breakfast’ was served next. Again this was a multi-part affair and once again the main idea that was followed was that it should be an enjoyable experience. We laughed when we were given a little box containing dried parsnip flakes much in appearance like cornflakes. We dutifully poured these into our little cereal bowls and were offered some parsnip ‘milk’ to put on them. I’m not sure I know any parsnips well enough to milk them but it was entertaining and tasty. More nitro-action followed. The waiter broke a couple of eggs into a vat of the freezing liquid and pulled them out when they had much the texture of ice cream. We ate this and, as the waiter had promised, in addition to the egg flavours they also tasted of bacon. The final offering in this course was hot and iced tea. The tea had somehow been stabilised into a hot and a cold layer and as you drank this you could feel the two different temperature zones.

One course, alas, was differently edible. If you’ve got this far you’ll probably want some colourful expletives here, but I will limit my outburst to saying that I don’t give an epworth how historically accurate the recipe is, if it tastes like filth don’t serve it. This culinary monstrosity was chocolate wine slush. It was worse than it sounds, red wine with bitter chocolate and icy slush? EEERGH! We were told that such concoctions were thought medicinal in the seventeenth century, with promises of it ‘increasing seed’, but if that is what it takes to increase seed I’d rather be a jaffa*.

For the final course we were each presented with a framed map showing historic wine trade routes to Britain with five wine bottle shaped jellies stuck to it. These ‘wine gums’ were very strongly flavoured of the wines from the appropriate countries. I thought this was not only quite tasty, but also a real hoot. In addition to this we were given a bag of sweets (‘Like a kid in a sweet shop’) to take home with us; these were quite delicious but probably un-necessary.

The Fat Duck provided obscenely exciting, pulsatingly interesting and god-damned delicious food. Some things, like the wine mark-ups and the lack of space between tables, were less than perfect, but the paradigm-shattering quality of everything else completely dwarfed these concerns.

Perhaps this sounds an odd thing to say, but we found ourselves thinking that the cost of the tasting menu was a screaming bargain, given the ideas, ingredients and hard work that have gone into giving us this florid pleasure. We are strongly of the opinion that fine dining is one of the great under-valued experiences of modern life and this meal only affirmed that view. We shall return (as soon as we can get another booking).

Contact details: The Fat Duck, High Street, Bray SL6 2AQ Tel: 01628 580 333. Call two months to the day before you need your reservation.

*Seedless.

Very much in the spirit of Brillat-Savarin, tonight's meal demonstrated that the limits of pleasure are yet to be defined or reached. My first visit to the Fat Duck will forever be etched in my brain with a soldering iron. I'm going to their boozer tomorrow, so I have a few more hours to work out how to convey the brilliance of that meal. I'm given to crazy, hedonistic pleasures, but I wonder how frequently I could have meals that good without my mind melting. This, dare I say it, was a much higher shelf in terms of food porn than l'Arnsbourg.

A review will follow soon.

Supermarket beef burgers. They are not beef burgers in the same sense that they are in the US or the UK; not meat plus filler but pure meat. They are referred to as steak hache rather than beef burgers and are well worth frying up on your barbecue.

They can get even better. Whilst in Burgundy we found that it is quite easy to get steak hache made from properly serious breeds of beef, Charolais specifically. These were super meaty and totally tasty. This is what burgers are all about, and they are all waiting for you in those hypermarkets over the channel.