Hearty pub fare or fine dining restaurant food - what would you rather have on your doorstep?

"I never said the food was 'too poncey'," insists Paul Castle, owner of the troubled Goose in Britwell Salome, which saw its third Michelin-starred chef leave last week, less than a month after being awarded the star. When reports first emerged that 27-year old chef Ryan Simpson and his brigade had "flounced out" of the kitchen after a row with Castle over the direction of the food, it seemed like the curse of the Goose had struck again. What was going on?

Simpson had taken offence because Castle had asked him to change his cooking style, which the owner claims was alienating local clientele and losing him money. The chef, who had offered to lease or buy the restaurant to no avail, left out of frustration. Michelin had just praised his food by awarding a much-coveted star, and Castle's request was a bit like someone asking Donald Draper to leave behind his mistresses, model wife and ad man job and go back to flogging motors. Surely this is an object lesson in looking a gift horse in the mouth? After all, chefs work tirelessly for years trying to gain a star - which can be the making of a business – and many never get there.

The response to the news, however, was mixed. The Jan Moirs of this world used the "too poncey" line as a hook to lament the good old days of "proper cooking" and attack the "fabulous pretension" of chefs like Simpson, while those in the Jay Rayner camp worried about what this sort of back-pedalling and censorship might mean for the evolution of modern British cuisine.

You get the sense that Castle isn't interested in either school of thought. He's a property developer, not a restaurateur – and he's not interested in the symbolism of Michelin stars, either. "I'm interested in people coming into my restaurant. If I get one [a Michelin star] great – but it's not what worries me, what worries me is getting bums on seats. It's a financial thing – it's not an ego trip."

The Goose is not a labour of love him – it's an income, and one dependant on local custom. His message was loud and clear: "Locals don't want a destination Michelin-starred restaurant – they want steak, chunky chips and an atmosphere." Is that not a gross underestimation of the palates of 'local people' throughout the country? There are successful rural Michelin-stared gastro pubs – just look at the Star Inn in Harome.

Clearly the two men had different objectives – Castle's was to run a high-turnover local gastro pub with broad appeal and Simpson's was to put out his brand of refined and accomplished restaurant food to appreciative diners – it was a classic clash of talented young practitioner with businessman. Since gastro pubs started opening up in their droves with bright young chefs emerging from their kitchens, there's been debate about how to strike a balance in terms of the food.

There's a catch-22 here – if a chef gains renown for their cooking like Simpson did, they're going to want to push that further than cooking crowd-pleasing dishes, but then they face being shunned by the "we know what we like" brigade, owners and diners alike. So what do people want from their local gastro pubs - hearty pub fare or fine dining restaurant food? What would you rather have on your doorstep?

• Food & drink

Rosie Birkett
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Ingredients, equipment, vegetarian options and a note on emissions. It's all here

So, in anticipation of next Thursday evening here's the full list of ingredients and a note of a couple of bits of equipment you'll need on hand to make lemon, sage and mascarpone chicken with Jerusalem extra virgin mash and robust greens, with tarte tatin to follow.

Firstly, the main course. Most clickalongers seem to cook in pairs, and for some reason it's always easier to double than halve, so these quantities will serve two. Don't forget to do a piece of chicken for each diner or you'll be fighting over the tarte tatin (which will serve 4-6), and we don't want that (unless you photograph the struggle and post the pictures to for all to see on the WoM Flickr group or elsewhere). In the unlikely event that you don't snarf the entire tarte that night it makes for yummy leftovers.

There's always an elephant in the room when it comes to Jerusalem artichokes, and if you're the sort of person who cares overmuch about a couple of farts you can double the spud quantity, but in the opinion of this chef you'll be missing out.

Ingredients - main course

Serves 2. Double it for 4!

2 free-range chicken supremes (ie breast with wing attached) with skin on – the skin is essential but you don't necessarily need the little bone – mine weigh 250g each
2 lemons, zested
1 clove of garlic, peeled
A nugget of Parmesan, grated
A knob of butter
12 leaves of sage, chopped
3 tablespoons mascarpone
300g Jerusalem artichokes
300g waxy spuds, I'm using Cyprus
1 tablespoon normal olive oil
150g seasonal greens of your choice: purple sprouting broccoli, savoy, brussels sprouts / tops, cavalo nero, romanesco, Swiss chard, kale, spring greens etc.
A few good glugs (around 5 tablespoons) of best extra virgin olive oil
S&P

For the vegetarians who posted asking about a meat-free menu, I've thought hard about it and there isn't really anything that can be cooked in the same time as the chicken and which will also work properly with the flavours of the mash and greens. However, a dish which will go perfectly is ratatouille, so I suggest the vegetarian contingent knock one up in advance - it's one of those dishes which is always nicer the next day, in any case. Then you can have it with the mash and greens, and tarte tatin to follow. When we have the summer clickalong in a few months' time the whole country be awash with wonderful fresh vegetables, and the menu will be wholly veggie.

For the tarte tatin

Serves 4-6

200g caster sugar
100g butter, salted
4 to 5 apples (eating not cooking) about 700g - I'm using russets and braeburns
Flour for dusting the pastry
250g puff pastry
Dairy of your choice to accompany, ie cream or ice-cream

Equipment

Masher / moulis / ricer
2 x ovenproof frying pans (both roughly 25cm diameter, and hopefully not with paper-thin bottoms)
2 saucepans
Rolling pin
Peeler
Zester
Whisk

Get ye to the shops and on the phone to your friends who own a second ovenproof frying pan and are a loose end on Thursday night, and we'll reconvene for an 8pm start. Usual clickalong rules apply - after a flurry of frantic activity we'll all be sitting down to a fantastic meal an hour later.

• Food & drink

Allegra McEvedy
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Venison is the ideal replacement for beef in a Wellington, especially for a smaller group of diners

• Tom Norrington Davies and Trish Hilferty will be live online on Tuesday 18 February to answer your questions on game. Post your questions now

Beef Wellington is a classic, rich dish, also known in France as boeuf en croûte. Venison is the perfect meat to use in place of beef fillet, especially for a smaller group of diners (beef fillets can be a hefty weight, not to mention price!). It's definitely a special occasion meal, but don't be put off if you have never done a 'welly' before – they really aren't hard to put together. The key to success is in the advance preparation.

The pâté and the mushroom duxelles are best made the day before to set properly. Then the actual assembly takes about 20 minutes. This is a seriously rich dish, so your accompaniment should, ideally, be light. Steamed spring greens or a watercress salad would both be perfect.

Serves 4–6

1 length of boned loin or saddle meat of venison, weighing around 1kg, trimmed of any fat or sinew
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the duxelles

600g large black field mushrooms
2 round shallots
2 tablespoons of unsalted butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
A small bunch of tarragon

For the pâté

2 1/2 tablespoons duck fat or soft butter
2 shallots, finely diced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
100ml Madeira wine
1kg free-range chicken livers
2 tablespoons brandy
1 egg yolk
150g cold unsalted butter, chopped into 1cm pieces
500g good butter puff pastry
1 egg, beaten

Mushroom duxelles

Slice the mushrooms as finely as possible, then turn your knife and chop them until you have a fine dice. Dice the shallots as finely as possible, too. Warm the butter in a wide pan. Add the mushrooms and shallots with a good pinch of salt and sauté over a high-ish heat until the mushrooms give off their liquid. Finely chop the tarragon and stir it into the pan.

Reduce the heat to a low flame and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until all of the moisture from the mushrooms has evaporated. This should take around 20 minutes. Cool the mixture to room temperature, then pop it into a container, covering the mix with clingfilm and then into the fridge to set.

Chicken liver pâté

Melt a tablespoon of the fat in a small pan. Add the shallots and garlic with a pinch of sea salt. Sauté until they have become soft and translucent, about 3 minutes, then pour over the Madeira. Simmer until the liquid has reduced by half. Tip the mixture into the bowl of a food processor.

Trim the livers of any sinew and season them with a good pinch of sea salt and pepper. You will probably need to cook the livers in two batches so melt half of the fat or butter in a wide pan over a high heat and, when it starts to bubble, add half of the livers. Fry the livers for 1 minute on either side until they are sealed, and tip them from the pan into the food processor. Repeat with the remaining livers but, after you've cooked the second lot of livers, add them to the food processor and deglaze the pan with the brandy. Let it bubble and then pour the juices into the food processor with the livers. Add the egg yolk, then give everything a good blitz. Feed the butter into the processor one piece at a time while the motor is running and keep going until the mixture is smooth.

Check the seasoning: you might want a touch more salt. Then, scrape the pâté into a container, cover and refrigerate.

The venison

This needs to be done a good couple of hours or so before you put the dish together. Rub the venison all over with the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Heat a heavy-based pan over a high heat and when it is smoking, add the meat. Sear it on all sides for no more than a minute each side. Place the meat onto a cooling rack and let it get completely cold.

Assembly

Preheat the oven to 200°C / Gas Mark 6.

Cut a piece of baking parchment to fit the tray you'll be baking the Wellington on. Halve the pastry and roll out both pieces into rectangles, a good 3cm longer and wider than the venison fillet. Keep all of the trimmings. Place one of the pastry sheets onto the parchment, then brush the edges with some of the beaten egg.

Now spread a third of the pâté onto the middle of the pastry and top that with a third of the mushroom mixture. Sit the venison on the middle of the pastry and smear the top and sides of the fillet with the pâté. Finally, press the mushroom duxelles onto the pâté. Drape the second piece of pastry over the top and crimp the edges, trimming again if necessary.

Roll out the pastry trimmings to create a lattice over the top of the Wellington, like an old-fashioned pie, and brush the pastry with the remaining egg wash.

Bake the Wellington for about 20 minutes, turning the tray 180 degrees half way. It's ready when the pastry is golden and crisp – if not, it might need 5–10 minutes more in the oven. Allow the Wellington to rest for 10 minutes before carving (at the table, of course, where it will wow everyone).

• This recipe is taken from Game by Trish Hilferty and Tom Norrington Davies (Absolute Press, £25)

• Game recipes
• Food & drink

Tom Norrington Davies
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Should children be taught about where meat comes from, or is it better that they come to realise the realities of rearing and slaughter later in life?

Utterly mad and particularly British is this week's story of a Kent head teacher forced from her job because she slaughtered the school farm's lamb.

Andrea Charman had thought it a good way of teaching the children about the agricultural economy and the food cycle, and they agreed. But then some of their parents started social network campaigns to rescue the lamb. It took off. The lamb was duly slaughtered, the threats began and now she has quit. The lamb - Marcus - has had his revenge.

That's what it's like being an animal in Britain - who knows how life will turn out? Some become pets, others become martyrs. Of course, the great majority will end up in cages too small to turn round in and be fed rubbish until they're stunned and slaughtered by machine. Then about half the remains go into landfill. At least head teachers only face evisceration by Facebook.

The story of Mrs Charman and the sentimental parents of Lydd Primary is a perfect picture of the disconnect between the average Briton and the source of their food. If you think I'm exaggerating, ask at any farmers' market about the punters who won't buy the carrots because they've got "filth" on them.

The full story goes like this: At the beginning of 2009 Mrs Charman arrived at Lydd Primary, near Romney Marsh. She set up a school farm, with rabbits, cockerels, guinea pigs and three orphaned lambs which the children helped bottle feed. In September, she asked the pupil-run school council - according what should be done with the maturing lambs. They voted 13-1 to slaughter one of them, a neutered male, and sell the meat by raffle in the town. The money would be used by the school to buy and raise some pigs. The school governors backed the plan.

Eminently sensible, you might think, for a school in a rural area with lots of sheep farming (and even a recognised local breed). "Many children don't realise that animals they probably pass every week end up on their plate in some form or other ... ," said Mrs Charman, when protests first began. "The children chose to send that sheep to market because they want more animals."

But then came the Facebook protests by some parents who said the decision had traumatised their children. Some would need counselling, they told the press. The TV comic Paul O'Grady promised a home to the lamb - (he is a big sheep-lover, he has 11 of them, but we'll let him do his own jokes).

The campaign mushroomed: by the end of September Andrea Charman was receiving personal threats against her and according to the Times some people had called for the school to be burned down - can you believe that animal lovers would be so nasty? Her MP told the paper that the threats had been too much, and so she quit. Yet another Facebook group, set up yesterday, is titled Andrea Charman Will Be Missed At Lydd Primary. It says that harassment played a part in her decision to resign.

I've joined that site. I feel for Mrs Charman. I've been accused - on this very blog and on the Daily Mail's (quite proud of that) - of abusing my own children by exposing them to the realities of animal butchery. We eat meat and we keep a pig - remotely and organically, at Peelham Farm in Berwickshire. In April, my kids and I will go down with some friends to help butcher her and turn her into the things we love to eat - bacon, sausages, salamis and pork roasts.

We did this last year for the first time, having discussed it carefully with the children - then aged four and nine. We wanted to be sure that they were comfortable with the idea - they'd visited the pig several times - but also that they should understand, as meat-eaters, that meat comes from animals, and animals have to die.

The day was a success - here you can see photos of my son working with the butcher to prove it. No tears, no nightmares. Lots of good pork. At the end of it my daughter asked if we could get a lamb next, go visit it - and eventually eat it too.

Some of you will find this creepy, verging on child abuse (you've told me before). But the important thing is that our pig - like Marcus - had had a better life and death than 95% of those we eat in this country - or, you can be sure the cattle and chickens eaten by the parents who forced poor Mrs Charman from office.

What I told my children was that humans who eat meat kill animals. What we - our family - does is treat them as kindly and naturally as we can before we do that - and we don't go to McDonald's or KFC because meat that cheap can only be produced in a way we would find sickening and cruel.

Watching Eric Schlosser's Food Inc (discussed here in this week's Film Weekly podcast) you realise that the big problem with America's industrialised food is not just the nature of unfettered capitalism and the disaster of food that's too cheap - but urbanisation.

Children in rural communities across the world grow up with pigs and chickens: they play with them, they see them die and they eat them. But as the rich nations industrialised and people moved away from the countryside they lost touch with how food is produced. We started sentimentalising animals while ignoring what horrors were being inflicted on them to get eggs, milk and meat into cities on the cheap. The irony is, of course, that industrialised food production, carried on far from our sight, undoubtedly treats animals worse.

Reconnecting parents and schoolchildren with farming is an idea that's gathering steam. There are good schemes, like the Soil Association's Community Supported Agriculture. There won't be better food in Britain until people understand where it's from, and why it's worth insisting it is produced decently.

Meanwhile, where do you stand on the departure of Andrea Charman? And how about a pig or a lamb for every school?

• Food & drink
• Primary schools
• Schools
• Teaching
• Social networking

Alex Renton
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

'Nyotaimori' is the Japanese tradition of eating sushi off a perfectly still, naked woman's body. Just the sort of thing to enrage a diehard feminist

As I booked a ticket for the most expensive meal I have ever eaten, it did ­occur to me that I don't like sushi. But this was not the only problem for someone who has been a lifelong ­feminist campaigner against the sexual exploitation of women: I was about to eat raw fish off a naked woman's body.

I first noticed the publicity for a monthly series of British "nyotaimori" evenings last summer. Nyotaimori, or body sushi, is Japanese, and it isn't normally on offer in London. But periodically temporary operations do pop up in cities around the world, each time sparking newspaper headlines. The word nyotaimori is usually translated as "female body presentation", but a friend who has studied Japanese tells me it means something more like "piling something on top". Which sounds significantly less appetising.

"Flash Sushi will offer a limited number of places to this unique ­experience," the advance publicity for these new British evenings said. "Places are extremely limited and demand is high. Guests will ONLY be informed of the location of the next Flash Sushi dinner once they have paid for their sitting in full."

What did the organisers expect to happen? Hordes of hungry sushi devotees turning up at the venue ­begging for a pair of chopsticks? No, they ­simply wanted to avoid the kind of scenes witnessed in Seattle in 2003 when a group of angry feminists waved placards and shouted as diners made their way in for a nyotaimori dinner.

Anyway, on Wednesday, this angry feminist arrived at the London address she had been sent after shelling out £250. I had to walk through a hippy cafe serving bean stew and carrot salad, and then finally – after going up and down a filthy fire escape and getting lost in a dark corridor smelling of cats – I pushed open a door and found myself in a dark room festooned with purple velvet and filled mostly with men in their 20s sipping champagne.

I was greeted by a Japanese woman in traditional dress and, down a steep set of stairs, caught a glimpse of the dining room. It was 7.05pm, dinner was due to begin in 25 minutes, but the naked women were already in situ, laid out as if in a morgue, ­awaiting a postmortem.

I stood out a little amid the assembled diners. There were two other women, but they were hanging on to the arms of their partners and were dressed to the nines. Soon, however, I was chatting to Ben, a money ­broker, recently divorced and in his 50s. He was at my table with two young ­bankers and their partners. The other table was all male, and, like everyone on my table, all white.

As we sat down, I realised the claims that "demand is high" for such dinners are rubbish: the trestle tables were easily long enough for 24, but there were only 12 diners. In fact, nyotaimori may take place in Japan, but it is stigmatised there and usually only found in seedy sex clubs. But wherever and whenever it is launched overseas, it is marketed as a form of Japanese food culture, and this was, ostensibly, what the meal on Wednesday night was about.

Our human plate was olive skinned, with (as far as I could gather) no body hair and naked except for a few strategically placed banana leaves and rose petals. Her eyes were shut. If it was not for the fact you could see her breathing – and the odd flutter of her eyelid – she could indeed have been a body in a ­mortuary. There was nothing remotely erotic about the sight.

The first course arrived, plus more champagne and sake. Soon the men were getting sloshed. I started to worry about their chopstick use, so much so that I ­offered to serve the salmon sashimi to the banker sitting furthest away from the plate. Loud guffaws from the other table, followed by clapping, came in response to one of the men dropping his piece of sushi on the woman's groin area.

Ben spent most of the evening ­telling me how nyotaimori is not ­demeaning to the women. "So long as they get paid," he argued, it is no different from being an artist's model. "In fact, it is art," he said, warming to his theme.

Our human platter did not look warm. I was dressed for the freezing cold weather outside and was slightly chilly. She had goose bumps, and it was not yet 8pm. The dinner was due to finish at 10.30pm. If it was torture for me being here, what was it like for the plate?

"What I like about her," said Ben, ­indicating our plate – who, playing dead a mere two feet from our mouths, could obviously hear every word we said – "is that ­occasionally she has a very slight smile on her face." I could only imagine that she was fantasising about sticking chopsticks in the eyes of each and every one of us.

At one point I moved my notebook and accidentally knocked the plate's ­fingers. She remained impassive. Andy, one of the bankers, told me a story he had heard the day before about ­nyotaimori. "Some geezer told me you can cop a feel of the birds, you know, slide your hand under the leaves when you are getting the food. So I called the organisers and asked if that goes on, and she tells me, 'No way. It is art.' So I knew it was OK to bring the missus."

Eventually, a break was announced in order for the "models", as our host referred to the human plates, to "stretch their legs". We were led upstairs. I asked how much the plates are paid. "I don't know," said the host. "We hire them through an agency." Do they have any special training? One often reads about how the plates involved in body sushi are "trained" to lie still for hours. "No, but we don't take women with large breasts as the food would slide off."

Were these events usually men-only? "Yes, but when there are ladies present it civilises the men." What ­happens when they are not being ­civilised? "Oh, nothing much, just boys' stuff."

Ben told the host how much he was enjoying himself. "And the presence of these ladies has totally legitimised it – I no longer feel like a dirty old man."

One of the men from the adjoining table approached Ben and the ­bankers. "Can we swap tables with you? Your model is gorgeous." But there was no need. As we were led back downstairs I saw that the plates had swapped already. Our new one had a ­tattoo on her upper arm facing me and her feet were bigger than the previous one's. Her eyes were closed and she too looked dead except for the breathing. I wondered what would happen if she got a terrible itch. More food ­arrived, this time hot, and the banker, in his haste, dropped a piece of hot cod on one thigh. "I wonder if, when she gets home, her husband says, 'Christ, woman, you stink of fish!'" said Ben.

I asked the women at my table what they thought of the evening. "Great," they chorused. "The food is lovely, the candles are beautiful and I love the atmosphere," said one. But what about the human plates? "I'd forgotten about them," she said, unconvincingly.

Not for the first time that evening, I wished I was outside in the freezing cold, shouting and waving a placard.

Names have been changed.

• Food & drink
• Women
• Japanese recipes
• Japan

Julie Bindel
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The empowerment of UK consumers has made wine critics largely redundant

Oliver Thring touched on a subject close to my heart (and stomach): wine and food matching (Unpalatable truth?, 4 February). The hero of Thring's article was the ­American hotel wine consultant Tim Hanni who, in Thring's words, believes that wine critics "utterly misjudge their approach, and that 'matching' wine and food is lazily unchallenged bunk. ­Everyone's palate is different, their tastebuds their only guide."

I cannot argue with the sentiments here. Some wine critics are certainly mediocre judges, most are worse writers, and each of their readers' palates is unquestionably unique (it's in the saliva); but I strongly question the accusation that wine and food matching is, as a concept, lazy or unchallenged – as anyone who read my Saturday Guardian Superplonk wine column could confirm.

Superplonk was dedicated to empowering the reader to drink, think and taste for him or herself (and, further, to appreciate that any food which came recommended to go with any wine was the writer's personal preference). True, I have written three books specifically on wine and food matching, but even here this marriage guidance came with the firm injunction that taste is deeply personal and that a critic is only a single prejudiced palate.

Of course in the United States, where Hanni consults, there are a few wine (and indeed food) critics treated as if they were prophets who, weighed down by tablets of stone, visit mortals with unchallengeable wisdom. His expertise is, therefore, in a country where the citizens prefer to be led by others perceived to be "expert" so they do not do the "wrong" thing and – in areas perceived as exotic and etiquette-ruled like wine – sin against the commandment which says claret is never to be served with fish (utter baloney, of course). In the UK, we began to lose any religious faith we may have had in this regard the day the first Aussie shiraz went on widespread sale, and screwcaps (frowned on in the US) became acceptable.

Thring writes that there is "something undeniably ­invigorating in [­Hanni's] ideas; he gives ­consumers the faith and nerve to trust their own sense of taste and smell". But the fact is that the Saturday Guardian was there long ago.

Thring's article concludes by saying that if Hanni's "individualist approach becomes mainstream, it could constitute a fundamental change in the way we drink wine". Fundamental change? The revolution is 20 years old already! Hanni's ideas, as far as I understand them, are in this country nothing more than the warmed-up leftover crumbs of comfort which some of us have been cooking with for decades.

The empowerment of UK wine consumers has made wine critics largely redundant in anything other than specialist publications (read by nerds who get a thrill from throwing money at status symbols) and, in this country at least, wine drinkers will treat Hanni – if indeed they pay him any heed whatsoever – as one more "expert" who can safely be ignored.

• Wine
• Food & drink

Malcolm Gluck
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Jan Moir says she doesn't like 'poncey food'. Which is strange, because that didn't seem to be the message when she reviewed the restaurants that serve it, says Jay Rayner

Ranting about the ill-informed, bigoted, narrow-minded views expounded in a Daily Mail column is, I grant you, a little like whingeing about the wind for having the temerity to blow. Then again, when the column is by Jan Moir, well, it's irresistible. This one, I grant you, is not a patch on the stomach-churning, assumption-laden grotesquery of her column on the death of Stephen Gateley, which she implied was down to the filthy business of being gay, but it's clear that the ink is running from the very same pen.

Moir, who used to be the restaurant critic for the Daily Telegraph until they dispensed with her services, has picked up the story about the young chef of the Goose pub in the Cotswold village of Britwell Salome, who has just walked out. Just weeks after winning back the Michelin star that the pub held and then lost, the owners of the pub told Ryan Simpson to stop cooking such poncey food, and to produce something more pub-like. Moir is approving, and uses this to rant about what she calls the "creeping poncification" of British restaurant food. Quickly she rattles off her targets: curious flavour combinations, savoury ice creams, foams and froths of all kinds.

It is as tiresome a piece of writing as you could hope to find, for two reasons. Firstly, there is the principle. It is bloody easy to sneer at the new and avant garde, but without the cutting edge nothing moves on. Over the years masters such as Shostakovich, Picasso and Joyce have been denounced for breaking with what went before simply because it was not familiar. For what it's worth I don't place cookery on a par with the greatest of the arts, but it is, at its best, a fine craft and one which has to evolve. The Jan Moirs of their day could have attacked - and probably did attack - Escoffier in a similar way for introducing a brigade system, or the Troisgros brothers for having the temerity to plate their dishes in the kitchen, or Fredy Girardet and his ilk for deciding to take cream out of every sauce on the plate. We would all be the poorer for them.

Moir's is the authentic voice of backward-looking, navel-gazing, circle-the-wagons, middle England. It is the worst kind of petty, snivelling, bloated, myopic rantery. She clearly understands her market perfectly.

But the second reason it's so tiresome is this: it's a completely put-on job. Moir explains in the column how she suffered through her eight long, tiresome years as a restaurant critic. Oh, the agony. What she omits to say is that she hated that job so much, indeed despised it to such a degree that, as soon as she was heaved out of it after a disagreement over pay, she set up her own website called Are You Ready to Order, so she could continue to have an outlet for her fine brand of restaurant criticism.

So let's take a look at that website and see what she really thinks when she isn't pandering to the readers of the Daily Mail. Well, blow me if she doesn't seem to have rather a soft spot for exactly the kind of thing she dismisses in her column as pure ponciness. Here she is, for example, at Claude Bosi's Hibiscus heaping praise on his "beetroot and orange tart with iced feta and herbs" or his "roast venison with smoked chocolate and confit pear". She calls him a "culinary alchemist".

She goes to Sketch and swoons over the combination of beef with caviar, yours for £70 a dish, and another plate of chicken with diced scallop. Most strikingly, she goes to Le Champignon Sauvage, the wonderful restaurant of chef David Everett-Matthias, a man so committed to culinary ponce that he flavours his panna cottas with acorns, and she goes off on one about his chicory cheesecake with chicory ripple ice-cream. All of this elaborate food she adores.

Simpson's food at the Goose, not so much. Oh, hang on a minute. It's not clear that she's actually eaten any of it. Or if she has, she has for some reason chosen not to record the experience on her very regularly updated website.

Of course, what it comes down to is this. Some ambitious restaurant food is indeed poncey and awful and demoralising because the person who created and cooked it doesn't have the good taste and skill to make it work. But some of it, the dishes prepared by skilled cooks like those at Le Champignon Sauvage or Hibiscus, can be absolutely bloody marvellous. There is no principle here, just a simple question of quality. Naturally, Jan Moir knows this but to say so would completely undermine her latest rabid, irrational rant.

And that would never do, would it?

• Restaurants
• Food & drink

Jay Rayner
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

There are so many good reasons to cook and eat game. Whether you've a novice or a seasoned hand Tom Norrington Davies and Trish Hilferty will be live online next Tuesday lunchtime to answer your questions. Post early to avoid disappointment!

Whenever we are asked what kind of food we like to cook most, we are bound to reply, almost in unison, "game". There are many reasons why, but first and foremost, it is the most unbelievably tasty food, naturally. That's not naturally as in "of course" - it is naturally the most tasty.

Next time you find yourself slathering a chicken breast with a marinade to save it from mediocrity, try swapping it for something that has walked on the wild side, and tastes like it. Next time you find yourself worrying about the way your pork chop was treated on the farm, consider the genuinely free-range lifestyle of a rabbit, or a deer, or any number of other critters that roam where they like and eat what they want. Worried about cholesterol? Additives? Cost? Provenance? Game is, by and large, lean, unadulterated, cheap and local.

It isn't the exclusive reserve of tweed-clad hunters, nor is it difficult to prepare. It's easy to cook and more versatile than you might think. If you're considering cooking game for the first time, you are about to discover a wealth of quick, easy, simple and delicious dishes that, despite being staggeringly uncomplicated will thrill the taste buds on several levels at once. Just like a great wine and its terroir, or a spankingly fresh oyster and its riverbed, game has such a close relationship with nature that it manages to surprise and delight on some level every time you cook and eat it.

If you find the extracts from Game: a cookbook inspire you to investigate further and have questions to ask join us for the live session here on this very blogpost on Word of Mouth next Tuesday, 16 February, between 1 and 2pm. A recipe for a raised game pie and a 'how to' regarding preparing and roasting venison and recipe for venison Wellington are already live, and we'll be adding another 'how to' on rabbit and a recipe for rabbit with sherry and wild garlic on Monday.

So why not get started by making this Sunday's roast a nice, simply prepared haunch or saddle of venison, and we'll answer everyone's questions on a first come, first served basis from 1pm on Tuesday - so post your questions below.

• Food & drink

Tom Norrington Davies
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

For Tim Hayward it started with the odd loaf and slowly became a habit. Do you bake your own bread? What's your hottest breadmaking tip?

I just want to say from the outset that it was never my intention to become a bread bore. The web, a natural home for obsessives, hosts a million amiable nutjobs with an exhaustive knowledge of hydration ratios or a personal sourdough culture with a pet name that they grew from their own belly-button fluff. I hope I am not one of those. But in the last few months, with no real effort on my part, it seems that I've slid into making my own bread. It was an occasional thing at first, then suddenly there was no more commercial bread in the house and then, bang; I'm an accidental home baker.

The argument about flour 'improvers' in most supermarket bread is well rehearsed elsewhere (perhaps best, if also most hectoringly, in Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery) so I won't go through it again. Suffice it to say that you've probably noticed how a decent artisanal loaf goes as hard as a rock the second day after you buy it while a loaf of even the most premium supermarket stuff will stay soft until it's covered with a thick pelt of mould. I noticed it a couple of years back and started wondering if I might make the odd loaf instead of joining the rest of the chattering classes in cutting out carbs altogether.

Like a good foodist, I immediately read up, consulted the websites and began struggling with sourdoughs, bigas, poolishes, fresh yeasts and stoneground flours and within a month had decided that being neither a yoghurt-bothering earth mother with forearms like hams nor permanently welded to an AGA this wasn't going to happen. I didn't want to become a baker. I just wanted the family to have some toast in the morning without ingesting the unspecified additives that give a loaf of bread the same half-life as strontium-90. So I bought a breadmaker.

Breadmaker aficionados (believe me, they exist - go Google) are pretty much unanimous in the belief that the Panasonic is the model of choice, but to me it was a gateway drug. Most of the suggested recipes involved adding sugar to increase the rising speed and powdered milk to improve keeping times - all very convenient - but there was also a mysterious setting for 'French' bread. It was just yeast, salt, flour, water and a splash of oil, it took 6 hours to complete the cycle, but it tasted great and for months became the family staple.

Then I started getting antsy. Increasingly I found myself aggrandising the recipes, using the machine to knock up and prove the dough, then whipping it out and shaping it into mounds, batons, batards and bloomers. One evening, like the day they take the stabilisers of your bike, I realised I was doing it myself.

I still, like any other sensible human being, don't think I have time to cook bread, yet I've settled into a routine that seems to make it possible. Just after dinner, I look at the clock. If there's time to spend two hours watching TV before bed, then there's time to make bread. In fact, since Jim Lahey has achieved fame and fortune with his excellent NYT 'no-knead' loaf, I'm going to give it a name: The Glee/Madmen Loaf.

There are only a few of pieces of special equipment you need: a mixer with a dough hook, a portable timer and a really good thick loaf tin. You can do the kneading and mixing by hand, but that's not in the spirit of the thing, this is about cutting corners.

Weigh 500g of strong white bread flour into the mixer bowl. Add one tsp of fast acting yeast, one tbsp of salt, three tbsp of olive oil and 395ml of water. (Every flour absorbs a precise and repeatable amount of water to turn into a workable dough, it's just not consistent between batches and flour types. Start with 390ml, and then slowly add as much more as it takes for the flour to cohere properly. It should be 10ml either side of 400ml.) Let the doughook do its work for four minutes while you grease the loaf tin, then scrape the dough out into it.

Turn the oven up to 220°C, cover the tin with a teatowel, put it on top of the oven and go and watch Glee.

When Glee has finished the dough will have risen to twice its size. Take the teatowel off, put the tin into the hot oven, set your timer for 35 minutes and go back to the telly. The timer will go at an utterly vital moment in the glacially slow story arc of Madmen, but you won't miss much. (I'll fill in for you. Don Draper will be sitting on the edge of his bed looking great in his vest suffering dark, yet fetching anguish rooted in his own terrible, bleak amorality). Drag yourself to the kitchen, take the loaf out and set it to cool balanced across the top of its own tin and covered in the teatowel. Turn off the oven. Go back to the television and look forward to breakfast.

So that's how it happened. I still can't consider myself a baker, but I seem to have got into a routine that consumes seven minutes of otherwise dead time and makes bread occur most mornings. But I'm interested to hear your experiences. Do you bake your own? Do you have a routine that works for you? Do you have any hot tips that might improve mine?

• Food & drink

Tim Hayward
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

When it comes to Valentine's Day meals it's what's on the inside that counts, and frequently that's a very good thing indeed. Have you ever come a cropper dining with a date?

With Valentine's Day just around the bend, every Champagne merchant and oyster fisherman is doing their level best to convince us that the most romantic way to spend that particular Sunday is by force-feeding your significant other yeasted wine and raw molluscs.

I can assure you, as I assured them, of this: there is nothing romantic whatsoever about your sliced hand spilling boudoir-red blood across a pristine white tablecloth like a burst pipe in a dye factory. As was the case from my recent cack-handed attempt at home to shuck an oyster using just a Swiss Army knife and not a little of my own well-seasoned stupidity. But with the flow staunched and my girlfriend placated, goddamn it if that oyster wasn't worth it. It was, if anything, improved by the struggle.

And it's not just oysters which require some effort to enjoy and which are decidedly easier on the palate than they are on the eye, or the hand for that matter. Take Xiaolongbao, also known as Shanghai dumplings. A steamed dim sum dish, these pork balls carry a translucent soup within their dumpling casing which explodes with flavour on the tongue. But they're liable to burst in the bamboo steamer, leaking their prize across the table or over your trousers having been pierced by a clumsy chopstick technique en route to your mouth.

Chinese food might not always look the most appealing, nor be the easiest to eat, but for those who enjoy dim sum on a Sunday the mess is a key part of the experience. But then many Asian foods tend to favour taste over appearance. In the UK, any chef worth their salt will tell you the importance of presentation on the plate. The micro-leaves arranged just so, the roast beef sliced and fanned out to maximise the impression that you're eating pretty much the whole beastie, the copper-bottomed saucing pan dispensing rich jus to cap it all off. Hell, even sheep's-bladder haggis is paraded around on silverware each Burns Night to the shrill of the bagpipes – it's in the presentation, see.

That's why most prospective romantics head to somewhere French like Morgan M rather than noodle-chain Wagamama. Have you tried slurping ramen with chopsticks and a bamboo ladle? It's rarely attractive. My girlfriend did on an early date at Wagamama and soon gave up, her fitted top awash in unseemly broth. I thought she was just one of those people who didn't finish their food, ie a dream date where you pay for both and actually get to consume nigh-on all the food. She isn't, she just couldn't face another blow to the face from an errant noodle.

But then, imagine how we both might have struggled with the food at Dans Le Noir where your meal is served in the pitch dark by blind staff. Their ethos is to dispense with pretensions of presentation to focus on flavours, which is surely what great food is all about. Anyone who's ever collated a top-drawer fajita, complete with griddled chicken, a punchy jalapeño salsa and zesty guacamole only to watch it collapse onto the plate midway to the mouth knows that even enjoyed in pieces, fingers dripping with sauce, it's a sheer joy. One thing it's not, though, is pretty.

With so much of what we eat if the appearance doesn't suck the romance out of a meal then the provenance of the ingredients probably will. There's the obvious extreme exoticism in the form of snake bile from Hong Kong, but even when diners would struggle to pick out the crocodile, peacock or kangaroo from a line-up of more de rigueur meats at restaurants like Archipelago, they still might feel slightly queasy.

What about elegant ingredients which are often ungainly on the plate, but invite handling for that close liaison between you and your food? Snails have a wonderful earthiness to them like the best truffles, and frogs' legs, despite their diminutive size, give a real sense of what it is to eat French. Surely there is romance and intimacy in the handling of food, such as the Ethiopian habit of eating we't (meat or vegetables in hot pepper sauce) without cutlery, scooping it up with an edible tablecloth of a flatbread called injera instead.

The Asian hotpot favoured in countries like China, Korea and Vietnam encourages diners to practically cook their own meal from scratch. Presented with platters of unattractive assorted raw meat, you cook it in heated broth on a gas burner at the table, add herbs and spices and fish it out when it's cooked to your liking. There's the sight of raw meat to contend with and the boiling broth dominates the table, but to my mind there's an intimacy to cooking food like this which is far more romantic than any Michelin-starred straitjacket. And if one of you seems to be doing more of the cooking on your romantic night out, well then it's probably best to know sooner instead of later.

Tell us of your own duels with food. What prize-winningly ugly dish is worth getting to know, which cuisine worth mastering? Have you come a cropper dining with a date?

• Valentine's Day
• Food & drink

Craig Butcher
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Unlike rabbit, venison is usually sold more like farmed meat, in cuts or joints

Tom Norrington Davies and Trish Hilferty will be live online on Tuesday 18 February to answer your questions on game. Post your questions now

A whole venison carcass will be roughly the same size as that of a lamb, and you are unlikely to be buying it wholly intact. If you do buy a whole specimen direct from a game dealer, we recommend asking him or her to cut it into three sections: the fore quarter (shoulders and neck), the loin (or saddle) and the haunches, (or hind legs). The vast majority of us will buy venison by the joint, as we do with beef, lamb and pork. The cuts behave in a similar way to lamb.

The haunch, or back leg, is mainly for roasting on or off the bone. It can also be barbecued like leg of lamb. The saddle is another roasting joint and is usually done on the bone, although the loin can be boned for steaks or noisettes. It can also be cut into chops. The neck and shoulders are strictly for braises and casseroles.

These sections can be cooked whole, or diced for casseroles. It is possible to mince the braising sections for an excellent burger, although it is usually necessary to add fat from another animal (back fat from pork or bone marrow from beef and veal) because of venison's natural tendency towards ultra-leanness.

Larding and marinades

Traditional recipes for cooking venison often call for larding the meat, which is to say, spiking it with the fat from bacon to counteract the meat's very lean nature. Many people are fearful of cooking game because they think it will taste dry. We haven't included any instructions for larding in the following roasts.

We believe that if the meat is cooked simply and swiftly, in a moderately hot oven to begin with, and is then properly rested, it will be tender and juicy. More importantly, it won't taste of bacon! Game and bacon are good partners, but we prefer to include it in the garnishes or side dishes, letting the flavour of the roast shine rather than be dominated.

We do not recommend marinating venison or hare with wine either. Many older recipes call for this as a way of tenderising what was once regarded as a dense and therefore potentially tough meat. We believe that this was probably due to the somewhat erratic temperatures of old ovens, which made it hard for early cookery writers to give readers the requisite cooking times for guaranteed tenderness. Dousing meat in alcohol actually encourages it to lose moisture, so we don't do it.

Classic roasts and suggested trimmings for venison

The two cuts of venison we favour for roasting are saddle (loin) and haunch (back legs). Both are best cooked on the bone for flavour and succulence. When it comes to roasting these joints, you might want to consider roe deer over red, simply because its smaller size is more user-friendly in a domestic setting. With all roasting recipes for larger animals, we highly recommend talking to your butcher and allowing him or her to choose the joint that best suits your needs, depending on how many are coming for dinner.

Saddle of venison for four or six

When it comes to successfully roasting any joint of meat make sure that you get the correct weight. Our cooking times depend on a couple of very simple sums, depending on the weight of the meat. You want to aim to serve about 250g of meat as a portion. The average saddle on a young roe deer is around 2 kilos which, once you have taken into account the weight of the bones, is ideal for four to six people. Leftover venison meat is delicious cold, sliced thinly, or it can be chopped up and used to make a gamey version of shepherd's pie (hunter's pie perhaps?).

1 saddle of venison
5 tablespoons duck fat or butter
125ml (a small glass) of red wine
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C / Gas Mark 7.

Season the saddle generously with salt and pepper. Melt the duck fat or butter in a roasting tray and seal the saddle on all sides over a medium heat. To transfer it to the oven, make sure the saddle is rib side down, which is to say, resting on the short rib bones. Roast at 220°C / Gas Mark 7 for 20 minutes then lower the heat to 150°C / Gas Mark 2, pull out the joint and pour the wine into the roasting tray. Return the saddle to the tray and pop it back into the oven. Now allow another ten minutes per 500g. This will give you medium-rare (i.e. pretty pink) meat. If you prefer medium to well-done meat allow 15 minutes per 500g. Remove the saddle from the oven.

Wrap the joint loosely with a sheet of foil and leave to rest in a warm place for 20 minutes before carving. Use the juices and remnants of wine in the roasting tray as the basis for delicious game gravy.

Roast haunch of venison for six to eight

A haunch of adult roe deer will weigh 2–2.5kg which, taking into account the weight of the bones, is ideal for six to eight people. If you want to feed more, a red deer haunch will weigh about twice as much. It should be possible to get smaller roasting joints cut from the haunch of red deer, like the top and silver side that you find on a leg of beef. Ask your butcher about these (it might even be possible to get them boned and rolled).

1 haunch of venison
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Duck fat, lard or butter

Preheat the oven to 220°C / Gas Mark 7.

Rub the haunch of venison generously with about half a tablespoon of salt and then augment this with a twist of black pepper. Heat the fat in a roasting tray and when it is hot, brown the haunch briskly on all sides. Transfer it to the oven, on a rack over the roasting tray.

Cook the haunch at 220°C / Gas Mark 7 for 20 minutes, then lower the heat to 150°C / Gas Mark 2. Cook it for 10 minutes per 500g if you want the meat to be vividly pink (medium-rare). Cook it for 15 minutes per 500g if you prefer it medium to well-done. If you want it cooked through, stop right there! You want a different joint. Pot-roast a shoulder instead.

Once you remove it from the oven, wrap the haunch loosely in foil and rest it in a warm place for 20–30 minutes before carving.

Recommended trimmings

Venison is incredibly versatile when it comes to the accompaniments because it will take all the traditional, fruity, and slightly sweet embellishments that go so well with most game. It is excellent with quince, and also with Cumberland sauce.

However, like beef, venison loves horseradish, although this is not such a well-known fact. Try serving it with nothing more than a watercress salad and a dollop of horseradish sauce.

• This extract is taken from Game by Trish Hilferty and Tom Norrington Davies (Absolute Press, £25)

• Game recipes
• Food & drink

Tom Norrington Davies
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tasty, cheap – and healthy

Kippers are too often dismissed as breakfast for the war generation – but these cold-smoked herrings are as tasty as you like, cheap and belong to that hallowed shoal of goodness known as Oily Fish. This kedgeree avoids the faffing around – poaching smoked haddock in milk, that the regular recipe calls for and makes a meatier, more robust meal.

Serves two, plus a packed-lunch portion leftover. Takes 30 minutes

2 kippers (mine were 150g each, with head)
40g butter
2 regular white onions, diced
1 tsp curry powder – strength up to you
1 tsp tumeric
180g Basmati rice, rinsed
3 tbsp sour cream or crème fraiche
Plenty of salt and pepper
Handful of watercress, chopped
2 hard-boiled eggs

Pre-heat the grill to high.

Smear a fat knob of butter (about a third of your 40g) over thekippers and put them skin-side down in a baking tray or grill pan. Pour water over them, about 1cm deep, and grill for four to six minutes, until cooked, then take out to cool, keeping the water.

Meanwhile, fry the onion in the rest of the butter for a couple of minutes with a close-fitting lid. Stir in the spices, and a minute later pour in the rice and give it all a thorough mix.

Pour in the liquid from the kipper tray and top up with cold water so there's about 1cm of liquid above the rice.

Boil hard with a lid on for five minutes, then turn the heat off. Let it sit for eight minutes, keeping the lid on – don't stir during this time.

Attend to your cooled kippers: pick up the backbone just below the head, and as you gently tug it up and away from the fillet, the thinner bones should lift up too. Pick out any stubborn ones, then break the fillet into small pieces. Chuck out the skin and bones.

Finish by stirring in the sour cream, kipper chunks and considered amounts of salt and pepper. If it's looking a bit sticky, a splash of water will restore creaminess.

Mix the watercress with the chopped hard-boiled eggs, and serve how you like: in the middle, mixed through, or on the side. I like to boot the whole thing up with a splash of Tabasco.

• Fish recipes
• Food & drink

Allegra McEvedy
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Chef Paul A Young conjures up some tasty recipes for savoury chocolate

It is a self-evident truth that there are things that don't mix: oil and water; God and Mammon; Spurs and Arsenal. There are those – and I have long been among them – convinced that sweet and savoury are equally antipathetic. Put meats and sweets on the same plate and our brains will not process the information. It's against nature!

In the cramped basement kitchen of his north London shop, the chocolatier Paul A Young has an afternoon to convince me I am wrong, that chocolate is about more than a mid-afternoon sugar hit. I have already cast a scornful eye over the shelves upstairs, silently dismissing the savoury truffles – sage and chestnut, Marmite, port and stilton – as so much novelty. I have wondered what madness would possess a man to make salted caramels. I have remembered a previous, disastrous attempt to make a Mexican mole – a chocolate sauce served with chicken – that ended up as burned bird covered with congealed Dairy Milk.

Young identifies the last five years as a period of change in British attitudes to chocolate. When he opened the first of his two shops, five years or so ago, "it was hard to sell weird and wonderful flavours," he says. But now his port and stilton and his Marmite truffles are among his biggest sellers. However, two shops don't make a national market, and Young bemoans the fact that Britain doesn't have a culture of chocolatiers in the manner of France, Belgium or Spain. He's sad that the cocoa content of Green & Blacks' bars has dropped since Cadbury took the company over; he wishes Thorntons hadn't let its standards slip. And he decries the chocolate snobs who think high-quality bars somehow need to be saved from the mouths of the wider public, for fear of lowering standards. "I'm not one of those people who complains when Tesco puts out a single-origin chocolate bar," he says.

However, I explain to him, I am one of those people who complains every time someone mixes sweet with savoury. So he starts by offering me some of his savoury truffles. The prospect of sage and chestnut does not fill me with joy, but in the mouth it is a revelation – subtle and fragrant, the sage complementing rather than overpowering the chocolate. Port and stilton leaves just the faint taste of cheese after the truffle has gone down – it's unexpectedly delicious. Getting the truffles perfect isn't something you can rattle off in an afternoon, though. "The Marmite one took three months to get right," Young says.

If I am to appreciate chocolate, he insists, I must learn how it's made. And so I find myself, sleeves rolled up, apron on, spreading melted chocolate over a marble slab, a process called tempering. Melting the huge tablets of chocolate, then working them over the slab, before making bars or truffles, breaks down the chemical bonds within it and re-forms them, making the stuff more workable and less brittle. I work at around a fifth of Young's speed – "Hurry! It'll set unless you do it quicker," he warns me – but I don't get any on the floor, and make five flavoured bars, including a salted one that – though I say so myself – is just terrific.

As yet, though, I have been dealing only with sweets. So I arm myself with a copy of Young's book, Adventures in Chocolate, and head home. After the pages and pages of truffle recipes, the reader comes to a section on savouries. They're all things he's cooked at home, he says, not novelties shoved in as an afterthought. I opt for something we have often at home, but with a twist. Into the blender go pine nuts, basil, olive oil, pecorino, lemon zest and juice – and some of Young's chocolate, grated. When the chocolate pesto is served, my wife pronounces it delicious.

A couple of nights later, we have some friends round for supper, and I decide to turn again to chocolate. This time it's in sweet form, but unconventional – a chocolate ravioli, filled with a raspberry and Cointreau compote, sprinkled with grated white chocolate and served with orange-infused double cream.

It's a bit of a struggle: should I just replace a proportion of the flour with the cocoa powder? Should I change the quantity of egg? In fact, adding cocoa powder to the pasta dough mix makes it brittle, and I have to keep adding drops of water to it to keep it workable, but eventually it has enough life in it to run through the rollers, coming out in satisfying sheets of rich brown. And, on the plate, the tartness of the raspberries offsets the chocolatey weight of the pasta to perfection. The whole thing is my own recipe, all my own work, and it makes me feel as smugly proud as any long-forgotten childhood triumph once did.

• Chocolate
• Chocolate recipes
• Food & drink
• Health & wellbeing

Paul A YoungMichael Hann
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Rose is among the group of Britons who, while not immediately identifiable as poor, face obstacles that campaigners believe affect both health and life expectancy

Rose and her three sons eat a healthy diet whenever they can, but too often it is a part of their life they have little control over.

"Usually, what we eat is determined by what's on special offer at ­Morrisons," she says. "On Saturday they had ­potatoes for 40p a bag, so I bought two bags. The only time I can buy something like chicken is when there's a special offer. I find fish very, very expensive. Usually we only eat fish if my mother buys it."

Despite the constant economising, the 47-year-old from Brentford in west London says that eating well often proves impossible: "I'm very lucky if I have £5 in my bank account at the end of the month, but usually it's zero. It sounds dramatic, but this is the truth: quite a lot of the time, when it gets to the end of the month, we all live off baked beans on toast."

Rose is among the group of Britons who, while not immediately identifiable as poor – she is university educated and, until her divorce five years ago, enjoyed what she calls "the middle class life" – face obstacles that campaigners believe affect both health and life expectancy.

The same is true of her children. Her eldest son was recently diagnosed as clinically underweight.

The family are in a cruel bind. While the lump sum Rose received from her former husband left them nowhere near able to buy a house, it was sufficient to disqualify her from most state benefits – or will be until it is finally eaten away by the family's £1,350 monthly rent, with council tax and bills on top.

Rose has a part-time sewing job for £6.80 an hour, but only when her mother can help with childcare. Her eldest son occasionally tops up her Oyster travel card from his £30-a-week student allowance so she can get to and from work.

Under such circumstances other accoutrements of healthy living such as swimming, sports equipment or ­bicycles are impossible.

"The way we live has definitely affected our health. There's the mental effect, too. We don't have holidays. It's not something that happens. My sons have hand-me-down clothes. The ­pressure I'm under every month is ­phenomenal," she says.

Socialising and leisure, identified as aids to good health, are also difficult: "I can't remember the last time I went to the cinema.

"My eldest son is quite lucky as he's got a pretty varied group of friends. He's got some very kind, wealthy friends, and when they all meet at his house the mother buys them pizza and they watch a film. But it's not nice for him to have to rely on other people all the time."

• Poverty
• Social exclusion
• Equality
• Health
• Food & drink

Peter Walker
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Can the shouty chef brigade ever be eclipsed by massed ranks of quietness and competence?

We're forever hearing about the snipes and scrapes of the culinary world's more controversial stars, but it's the chefs doing something really positive for British food that should be dominating the column inches.

These are the people who feature in Nigel Haworth's Obsession cookbook, published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the eponymous food festival Haworth holds annually at Northcote Manor in Lancashire. In the book, the 54 chefs who have cooked at the event share recipes and their thoughts on what drives the obsessive pursuit of chefdom.

Fergus Henderson cites the buzz of service: "Genius loci expresses the magic and moment of the place, and never is that stronger than in restaurants – those two moments in the day when wonderful organised chaos takes place." For Eric Chavot, it's very simple: "This is what I do. I wish I could turn it off, but I can't."

The adrenaline, high pressure and inescapable fallouts of top kitchens have always had us hooked. It was these hot, sweaty, shouty and sometimes downright aggressive environments from which rock 'n' roll celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White - and their bully-boy tactics - emerged.

Kitchens and restaurant businesses are conducive to drama (note the recent walkout of the freshly Michelin-anointed brigade at The Goose in Oxfordshire, which has lost its star for the third time), and we've all devoured stories of cheffy disputes with relish, and then fatigue. But more recently it's been the drama on the plate, rather than in the kitchen which has held our interest, as Heston Blumenthal and Ferran Adrià brought us culinary geek chic. The food scene has developed and matured, and I've lost count of the number of calm, quiet and cool kitchens I've had the pleasure of visiting.

Which is why it baffles me that something as worthy and successful as Haworth's Obsession festival - which wrapped up last week with a line-up of guest chefs including Angela Hartnett, Ken Hom, Nathan Outlaw and Dutch two Michelin-star chef Jacob Jan Boerma - doesn't attract more widespread interest. The event has been running for a long time now and acts as an unsurpassed networking opportunity for both bright young chefs and established luminaries such as Michel Roux Junior, Raymond Blanc, and Pierre Koffmann, not to mention giving the public a chance to meet them and taste their food.

This is reflected in the book, which reads like a who's who of the past decade's food scene and also provides an interesting record of developing food styles. Anthony Flinn's risotto of white onion, parmesan air, espresso; Heston Blumenthal's snail porridge and Rowley Leigh's partridge with pig's trotters and lentils – they're all in there. It's a reflection of an impressive achievement, and one which has earned Nigel Haworth an almost heroic status within the industry. But not, it would seem (despite his television appearances on The Great British Menu), in the press.

In a recent post Joe Warwick marvelled at Britain's lack of engaging, well-intentioned food events which aren't so commercial it hurts, yet Obsession, which fits the bill perfectly, is barely on the public radar. This is an event which is about creative talent and hospitality (many of the participants accept an invitation to stay for a week at the hotel), led by a chef with the tenacity and drive to deliver quality to his customers year after year. The Marcos and Gordons of this world may have brought cooking into the public eye with their fiery personalities and hard-line kitchen tactics, but Haworth is providing a space for fledgling chefs and industry stalwarts to mix, learn, inspire and develop – something crucially needed for the food scene's continued growth.

So why the lack of coverage? Aren't we sufficiently grown-up to accept the notion that cooking can be about camaraderie and mutual support rather than competitive back-stabbing? Perish the thought, but are we really still only interested in cooking's bad boys?

• Food & drink

Rosie Birkett
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

While there's still pheasant in the butcher's window and a chill in the air grasp the opportunity to make a delicious seasonal pot roast

Serves 4

5g sugar
500ml warm water
55g yeast
1kg strong flour
25g salt
75ml olive oil

50g duck fat
2 pheasants, trussed with bacon
Salt & pepper

1 carrot, peeled and cut into 8
1 parsnip, peeled and cut into 8
Celeriac, peeled and cut into 8
Swede, peeled and cut into 8
1 medium turnip, peeled and cut into 8
4 chestnuts, peeled
8 button onions, peeled
1 bay leaf
100ml medium dry sherry
200ml brown chicken stock

Dissolve the sugar in the warm water, add the yeast and leave to sit for 20 minutes. Place the flour in the bowl of a food mixer, add the salt, olive oil and water/yeast mix and, using the dough hook, knead to a smooth elastic dough - this will take 3-4 minutes. If doing this by hand you will to have knead the dough for a good 5 minutes.

Turn the dough into a large bowl and move to a warm place to prove. When it has doubled in volume, after about 30 minutes, knock it back, turn it onto a floured surface and briefly knead again. Return to the bowl and set aside in the fridge.

Place a large ovenproof dish over a medium heat and leave for 2 minutes. Add the duck fat, season the pheasants and lightly brown in the pot. Remove the pheasants, move to a medium heat, add all the vegetables and sauté until golden. Add the bay leaf, the sherry and the chicken stock, place the pheasants back into the pot and remove from the heat. Wipe the rim of the pot down with a damp cloth.

Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface into a long sausage so that it can wrap around the entire pot. Press gently around the rim and, while supporting the dough, place the lid on top. Ensure this is a tight, sealed fit. Dust the excess dough around the edges with flour and place the pot in a warm place for hour for the dough to prove. Now bake in the oven at 220C/425F/gas mark 7 for 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for half an hour. Break the lid open, remove the birds and take the breasts and legs off the bone. Keep warm. Gently reduce the liquid by half. Carefully spoon some of the vegetables and some sauce onto each plate and finish with a breast and leg of pheasant. Serve a piece of the bread crust on the side.

• This recipe is taken from Nigel Haworth's Obsession (Network Publishing, £35)

• Game recipes
• Food & drink

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

An impressive centrepiece at any gathering, raised pies may look tricky to make but they are actually rather easy

Tom Norrington Davies and Trish Hilferty will be live online on Tuesday 18 February to answer your questions on game. Post your questions now

Serves 8–10.

500g lean pork shoulder, diced into 1cm cubes
375g minced belly of pork
100g smoked streaky bacon rashers, finely sliced
8 breasts of partridge, or 4 of pheasant or guinea fowl, skinned
2 blades of mace
12 sage leaves, finely sliced
1 egg, beaten

For the hot watercrust pastry

260g lard
1 teaspoon salt
750g of plain flour
1 tablespoon icing sugar
1 egg

Starting with the pastry, pour 300ml of water into a stainless-steel saucepan, add the lard and salt and bring to a simmer over a medium heat. When the lard has completely melted, add the flour and icing sugar and beat it in thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Turn the warm dough out onto a clean surface, make a well in the centre and break in the egg. Knead the egg into the dough by pulling in the sides of the pastry over the eggy surface, pushing down, turning and repeating. It will incorporate quite quickly so continue kneading until the dough is smooth, about 3 minutes.

Remove a quarter of the dough, pat it into a disc and set aside to cool. Form the remaining dough into a large disc, place that into the bottom of a 24cm spring form tin and slowly and carefully work the pastry up the sides of the pan with your finger tips, making sure there are no holes or gaps. Cover and chill for 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 200˚C / Gas Mark 6.

Place the pork, bacon, mace and sage into a large bowl, season with a good pinch each of salt and freshly ground black pepper and mix together until all is well combined.

Place half the meat filling into the pastry shell, but don't pack it in too tightly – leave a little room around the edges. Season the partridge / pheasant / guinea fowl breasts and lay them overlapping the pork and then top them with the remaining filling, dome like, leaving a small gap around the sides to tuck the lid into.

Roll out the remaining pastry into a 25cm disc, and drape it over the top of the filling. Dampen the pastry edges with the beaten egg and pinch together to seal well all around.

Make a hole in the centre of the pie, brush the top with the beaten egg and place onto a baking tray. Bake for 30 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180˚C / Gas Mark 4 and cook for a further 45 minutes. If the pie begins to colour too much, cover it with a sheet of foil.

Remove the pie from the oven and leave to rest for 5 minutes before removing the spring form ring. Brush the sides of the pie with a little more beaten egg and return to the oven for 10 minutes more. It should be crisp and a lovely golden brown all over.

Cool slightly before serving warm, or cold, with a sharp chutney or piccalilli.

• This recipe is taken from Game by Trish Hilferty and Tom Norrington Davies (Absolute Press, £25)

• Game recipes
• Meat recipes
• Food & drink

Tom Norrington Davies
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Two persistent food myths are put under the spotlight: is it necessary to salt aubergines to remove bitterness, and should you cut crosses in sprouts?

Vegetables, you might think, are simple enough things to cook. Now that we've escaped the dread clutches of Mrs Beeton and her 45-minute carrots, there's not much left to learn. After all, just how much culinary mystique can a marrow deliver?

Well, you may be surprised. Marrows, according to Elizabeth David, who delivered such a scolding last week on the subject of the garlic press, "should be prepared for cooking in the same way as aubergines; cut, preferably unpeeled, into rounds or lengthwise, salted, and left to drain for an hour or so." What a lot of fuss for an overgrown courgette.

Now, I regret to admit I don't have much to do with the marrow (my boyfriend hates the things, however cunningly disguised as meat), but I haven't pre-salted an aubergine in years. After all, that would necessitate beginning prep an hour and a half before I wanted to eat, which is usually about the time I'm rushing around the shops grabbing the ingredients for dinner. It just wouldn't work. But is this mere culinary laziness, akin to using teabags or leaving the skin on carrots (more nutritious, I tell myself) – or is the tradition a genuine waste of time and salt?

I'm comforted to learn that Nigel Slater, who is a cook after my own heart (he knows the odd jar of shop-bought pesto isn't the end of the world), never troubles himself with it: he claims not to have tasted a bitter aubergine in years. Larousse Gastronomique concurs: "Traditionally, the slightly bitter taste of the vegetable was minimised by sprinkling the sliced or cut-up flesh with salt and leaving it for 30 minutes to draw out the bitter juices. The aubergine was then rinsed and dried before cooking. The process of degorging is no longer necessary as commercially cultivated aubergines are not as bitter as they used to be."

That should, in theory, be that. The bitterness has been bred out of aubergines since Elizabeth David first introduced this magnificent vegetable (which, to pre-empt all you pedants, is strictly speaking a fruit) to this country, so they no longer require salting. Except that, just to confuse the issue, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall claims that, although degorgement (as it seems to be somewhat saucily known) won't make any difference to the flavour, it will stop the aubergine soaking up as much oil as you can throw at it during cooking.

Delia also salts – but for different reasons: "I do take the point that the modern aubergine has evolved to a state where it does not contain bitter juices," she says reasonably, "but the juices are there, nonetheless, and I find salting and draining gets rid of excess moisture and concentrates the flavour – there's nothing worse than a watery aubergine." Even Skye Gyngell, who, as head chef at the delectable Petersham Nurseries, should know a thing or two about vegetables, is in favour of salting. So who's right?

Two plump aubergines, of roughly the same size and glossy firmness, should settle the matter. I decide to follow Elizabeth David's instructions for a Sauté of Aubergines, as that's the simplest recipe I can find, leaving out the garlic and parsley, so as not to overpower their delicate flavour. One aubergine is diced, sprinkled with salt, and left for an hour as instructed. I'm surprised to discover, on my return, that it's produced a tablespoon and a half of rusty-coloured liquid, which tastes more like seawater than anything bitter.

I chop the other into equally sized pieces, and heat two heavy-based pans with "a good quantity of olive oil" (a couple of tablespoons), then fry them both "rather gently, turning them over from time to time" for 15 minutes. Although the non-salted batch soaks up the oil more rapidly, both pans are equally dry by the end. And the results? I can detect no greater intensity of aubergine flavour in the salted batch – in fact, it just tastes saltier. (David didn't tell me to rinse the salted aubergines before cooking, and, to be fair, Delia or Skye don't either.) The texture of both aubergines, as far as I can tell, is almost exactly the same: neither greasier, nor more watery. So, if it makes so little difference to the oil consumption when frying, I'm not inclined to take up salting again, particularly as I usually grill or bake the things.

Perhaps it's fair enough that we're a bit clueless about aubergines – after all, we haven't been eating them very long. But to be peddling myths about good old brussels sprouts is inexcusable. Step forward, Nigella Lawson, Raymond Blanc and Skye Gyngell: all guilty of advising people to cut a cross in the base of their sprouts to help them cook more evenly.

Hugh, Gordon and the chairman of the Brassica Growers Association, Philip Effingham, are all against the cross on the grounds that it turns the unfortunate vegetables to mush – heck, even Delia's changed her mind since publishing her Complete Cookery Course back in the 1980s, now reassuring the public that there's "no need to make incisions in the stalks".

The thinking behind the cross myth seems to have been to encourage the inside of the sprout to cook more quickly, before the outer leaves disintegrated: a particular problem in the past, when those on sale tended to be larger than they are now. Unfortunately, as recent convert Nigel Slater has observed, whatever the size of the sprout, cutting into them in this way just leaves them waterlogged and soggy. But many Word of Mouthers disagree – quite vocally, as we discovered before Christmas. So I decided to try out the cross again, just in case.

The first thing I noticed was that anointing each sprout with a festive cross, which I had always viewed as a faff, even before deciding it was pointless, is actually not that much trouble. Peeling off those tight outer leaves is much more time-consuming: the cross is the easy bit. The second batch of sprouts, peeled and tailed, but with no cross, took about as long to prepare as the first. I then boiled both lots for six minutes.

The carefully-crossed sprouts brought back memories of canteen Christmas dinners past – yellowing and faintly sulphurous on the outside and slightly pappy at the core, with a ring of bouncy, undercooked flesh in-between. The non-crossed ones were simply overcooked on the outside, and chewy in the middle. Neither were satisfactory examples of this mighty vegetable, which is why I generally cut mine in half, so they're ready before the outer leaves can turn nasty, and remain appetisingly green to boot. I don't often say this, but I'm with Gordon on this one.

What do you think – are salting and crossing a waste of time, or am I missing something? And if you agree, have you got any better advice for stopping your aubergines swimming in oil, or cooking the perfect sprouts?

• Food & drink

Felicity Cloake
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

• One in three American children overweight or obese
• Schools and food industry enlisted in drive

The Obama administration today embarked on a programme to eliminate childhood obesity, one of the biggest health problems in the US, "within a generation".

Launching the initiative at the White House, Michelle Obama spoke about an "epidemic of childhood obesity", saying that over the last three decades childhood obesity rates had tripled, with one in three children now overweight or obese.

Describing it as a moment of truth for America, she announced measures that included the food industry and the federal government working on new labelling for the front of packages about the nutritional value of the contents and soft-drink companies labelling bottles and cans within the next two years, listing the amount of calories in each. Obama said there would also be a push for healthy school meals, given that many children consume about half their daily calories there. School suppliers promised to reduce sugar, fat and salt in their meals, increase whole grains and double fresh produce.

The first lady personalised the issue, saying that while working in Chicago, struggling to balance meetings and deadlines for her children's soccer and ballet, there were nights when "we just went to the drive-thru because it was quick and cheap, or went with one of the less healthy microwave options, because it was easy. And one day, my paediatrician pulled me aside and told me, 'You might want to think about doing things a little bit differently'." The White House has recruited Walt Disney, NBC Universal and Viacom to launch a nationwide public awareness campaign to educate parents and children.

Obama's campaign is called Let's Move and is to be one of her main causes during her time in the White House. She follows a tradition set by other first ladies. Lady Bird Johnson championed a clean-up of DC, Nancy Reagan focused on drug and alcohol abuse, and Laura Bush on bolstering literacy and education.

Obese children and adolescents are more likely than those of lower weight to develop serious problems later in life such as high cholesterol and diabetes. Obesity-related health problems account for 9.1% of the total US health budget, up from 6.5% in 1998.Other obesity-related problems that the Obama administration identified include what it described as "food deserts", areas where there were no supermarkets.

More than 23 million Americans, including 6.5 million children, live in low-income urban and rural neighbourhoods that are more than a mile from a supermarket.

The administration also called for more physical exercise for children, saying they needed 60 minutes of active play a day, but the average American child spent more than 7.5 hours a day watching television and movies, using cell phones and computers, and playing video games.

The White House set up a website – LetsMove.gov – to provide information about healthier eating.

• Michelle Obama
• US healthcare
• United States
• Obesity
• Health
• Children
• Food & drink
• Food & drink industry

Ewen MacAskill
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Environment minister imposes six-month moratorium on launch to allow for further research

The Indian minister for the environment today imposed a six-month moratorium on the launch of a genetically modified variety of aubergine, known locally as brinjal, saying that further scientific research was needed before permission could be given for its commercial cultivation.

Jairam Ramesh said he had taken note of "tremendous opposition" from state governments within India, broad public resistance and the lack of a scientific consensus. "This would be the first GM vegetable crop anywhere in the world so I have been very sensitive and I have arrived at this decision which is responsible to science and responsible to society," he said tonight.

The decision was welcomed by campaigners. "It is an excellent precedent," said the Environment Support Group. "No minister before has ever subjected such an important decision to such public and scientific review."

Opponents had argued that the mass cultivation of the new variety – known as Bt Brinjal after the initials of the bacterium inserted into the plant to boost its resistance to insects – would damage the 2,000 or more existing types of aubergine grown in India. Many also raised concerns about potential human health hazards.

The involvement of the American multinational Monsanto – which part-owns the Indian company that developed the new strain – also stoked the argument over the potential costs and benefits of the new aubergine, with an alliance of left and rightwing politicians arguing that Indian sovereignty was under threat. Activists today hailed the decision as a "victory over American imperialism".

The Indian government found itself in a delicate position after a government panel last year supported the introduction of Bt Brinjal, even though most of the major states in which the 8m-tonne annual aubergine crop in India is grown had said that they would not permit it. The six-month delay for further research is a useful way for Ramesh, a rising reformist minister who played a crucial role in brokering a political accord at the Copenhagen conference on global warming, to sidestep a difficult political battle and to avoid a public row with other ministers who support the launch of Bt Brinjal.

Lobbyists for GM foods were disappointed. "It is unfortunate that India's 1.4 million farmers will not yet be able to enjoy the benefits of biotech brinjal," said Denise Dewar of Croplife, the global industry association for plant biotechnology, which includes Monsanto among its members. "As a staple crop, biotech brinjal could also benefit millions of Indian consumers, who would have improved product quality and greater choice in the marketplace."

India allowed the use of genetically modified seeds for cotton in 2002 after trials found it needed 70% less pesticide and gave 87% more crop than traditional plants. It is now grown in 39% of India's cotton area.

• GM
• India
• Food
• Genetics
• Agriculture
• Food science
• Plants
• Controversies in science
• Food & drink industry
• Food & drink

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds