Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

The Ab Fab French and Saunders have a go at His Gordoness and the Frankenstein of Foam in this week's clip. FeedBlitz subscribers will as usual have to visit the site to view.

Dilly Diner of the Week

If you fancy an arresting food experience then maybe this week's Dilly Diner is for you. Diners can eat at the restuarant inside the prison in Sutton, Surrey, for just £6 for a two-course meal. While the food is cooked up from the freshest ingredients, much from the prison’s own garden, and to the highest standards, diners have to make do with plastic cutlery for security reasons.The chefs, waiters and kitchen porters are all inmates - who could be behind bars for murder or grevious bodily harm.

The Clink is the brainchild of Alberto Crisci, a former chef at Mirabelle, a French restaurant in Mayfair, London, which used to be owned by Marco Pierre White.
Crisci, who moved on to become High Down’s catering manager, said the idea was to rehabilitate prisoners and give them the skills to obtain jobs on release. He stressed discipline was tougher than anything seen on a show like Hell’s Kitchen.

“Prisoners only have to step out of line once and they are out. This is a real restaurant. I expect them to do exactly what I ask them to do.”

Wine is served – but strictly controlled for fear it goes missing – while Crisci said prison staff had to be very careful about yeast, as it could be smuggled out into the cells to be used to brew alcohol. Although the food is very cheap there is one small catch for diners, however: they must book well in advance and obtain Home Office approval and security clearance

That Was The Week That Was

So another week and another high flying Cape Town restaurant closes it’s doors. Nova, the gastronomic palace overseen by South Africa’s very own molecular chef, Richard Carstens, is calling it a day. At first glance it seems that the recession has claimed another victim, that there just aren’t enough well heeled punters around to sustain a restaurant where your bill can come in at R 400 before you have a chance to wet your lips. I think that there aren’t enough punters in Cape Town’s fickle restaurant going jet set who want to pay that sort of money for self indulgent ent chemical experiments. The dishes may have been technically very clever but in this economy the name of the game is recognizable food at value for money prices, that’s why Bruce Robertson is serving Bunny Chows and not foams and essence of lettuce.



Also this week poor old Gordo was also feeling the pinch a little as profits collapsed by over 80% creating his own kitchen nightmare. The man who is so fond of telling other people how to run their restaurants has come face to face with his own F word – Finance! According to Ramsay's latest business accounts for 2007-2008, published yesterday, the Scots business mogul, who has closed several of his restaurants, has seen profits for Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH) fall from £3.05m to £383,325. Ramsay's business model was also damaged by the closure of key London restaurants. The Savoy Grill was shut because of refurbishment at its host hotel, while the Connaught lease expired, which accounted for a £9.5m reduction in revenues. A statement from the firm said that after a restructuring it was confident the group had "successfully undergone change for the better" and was now "well-placed to grow its operation with a more stable capital base and a more manageable overall structure". Since December 2007, Ramsay has closed four of his capital city restaurants, including Petrus and La Noisette. The other closures were The Connaught and the Savoy Grill. Thank heavens for TV eh?



But it’s not all bad news for restaurants in these troubled times. People are turning to chocolate to make things feel a little better and in New York a new restaurant, themed on chocolate, announced it’s opening. Who doesn't love chocolate? Max Brenner certainly does and he is behind a new all-chocolate restaurant opening up next week on Walnut Street called "Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man." Menu items obviously include the best hot chocolate in town along with a chocolate pizza. The restaurant has been described as an adults' Willa Wonka factory, but you can get food too, so you can feel sensible.

Time to leave the playpen

All little boys grow up eventually and put away their childish things and it seems that Heston Blumenthal is no exception. He has signed up to open a new restaurant in London at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge and he has decided emphatically (or perhaps his new bosses have decided for him) that it is not going to be another Fat Duck. Blumenthal has spoken out about the style of food at his new restaurant and says that while there may be versions of dishes from the Fat Duck on the menu, it will not be a larger copy of his Bray restaurant.
He said that food for the new restaurant, due to open in autumn 2010, will be 'challenging, research-driven and inspired by historic British dishes'. Blumenthal dismissed suggestions that would be a larger Fat Duck. “It’s absolutely not another Fat Duck. I’m never going to do another Fat Duck ever. It would break me,” he said. "I’d like to do some gueridon service, maybe some ice cream made at the table with dry ice. There will be an element of theatre, especially if it links in with the historic aspect of the restaurant," he added. With 140 bums to find every night instead of 30 Heston is going in the right direction and anyway he's probably concerned about spending so much time ingesting all those bloody chemicals.

A glance in the mirror

Sometimes it's not such a good idea to glance in the mirror, you might end up seeing something that you really don't want to see. Oh I'm not referring to bulging waistlines or craggy good looks which are slightly weatherbeaten, I learnt to ignore all that nonsense years ago. No, I'm thinking on a more philosophical level here rather than physical.You see I was reading the other day about some new lifestyle trends which were emerging and skimming through these types of futuristic articles is a bit like reading the horoscope columns, you tend to agree with everything that fits in with your view of things and dismiss as utter rubbish anything which you find unsettling. I nodded sagely at the paragrapgh on sensory branding, where the more we try to cut out pop up, in your face, advertising, the experts are seeking out ways to appeal to all the senses like highly designed luxurious hand items such as phones and ladies compacts which seem to open and close effortlessly, smoothly and silently.
Then I got to the bit about Extreme Connoisseurs and it started to read like my horoscope on a great day. Apparently as men find themselves connecting more and more with the kitchen they are becoming Extreme Connoisseurs, viewing food connoisseurship as an indicator of virility, believing that cooking involves concepts such as science, technology, chemistry, rhythm and design. It seems they will smoke their own trout and venison in their own homemade smoke-house, or make sausages from scratch They will bake bread, make artisanal ice cream and seek out specialised food shops that sell smoked chillis, whole grain stone ground flours and complete sausage making kits. Jeez, suddenly I'm a lifestyle trend and there was me just thinking that it was all a bit of a lark !

Baked ice cream

I love ice cream. However one of the little things that really irritates me about ice cream is that it melts. It's very difficult to keep my ice cream in pristine condition. You see, if I've got some guests for dinner and ice cream is on the menu then I've got to get get the timing spot on. It's no good trying to serve the ice cream straight from the freezer, apart from it being very undignified prising chunks from it's icy coffin with a carving fork, the taste will be absolutely lacking.
No, the answer is to remove the container from the deepfreeze about 30 minutes before I have to serve the dessert and then it will be at the perfect temperature for ease of service and flavour appreciation. Problem is that I'm back to that bit that really irritates me - it melts. I can't whip it off the table otherwise my guests will think I'm being a bit stingy and denying them a second scoop but I know that it's going to melt as they waffle on about their last holiday in between taking minuscule spoonfuls of my favourite confection. They other thing I also know only too well, is that I can't put it back in the deepfreeze after it melts for fear of potential food poisoning and also because it's going to be riddled with disgusting little lumps of ice.
But here's the good news, impress your guests with your magnanimity and let the bloody stuff melt. Store it in your fridge overnight and whip up this unbelievably scrumptious dessert the very next day - Baked ice cream ! Oh I know you think I'm off my rocker but just try it out on your friends and they'll want the recipe immediately because it's one of those desserts which it is absolutely impossible to resist.
So here's the scoop (ice cream joke) - place some boudoir biscuits in the bottom of a pie dish, you know the ones they use in Tiramisu, then pour over some very strong espresso, you know like you do for Tiramisu, that's the end of the Tiramisu connection. Now place some sliced bananas on top, the older the better and then smear the contents of a tin of that cooked condensed milk over the bananas. Pour your ice cream over everything to a depth of about 2 inches. I'm presuming that you only serve real ice cream made with eggs but if you have the brass neck to offer your guests that other rubbish made from marine oils (whatever they might be) then whisk a couple of egg yolks into your melted whale''s blubber first. Now here is the most difficult part of the recipe - place the dish in a bain marie and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes at 180 C. This pudding can be served warm ( not hot ) or cold ( not chilled ) and the ideal accompaniment is of course ice cream.
You may note that when you serve the ice cream it tends to melt - so this dessert is the only perpetual motion dessert that I have ever come across.

Sugar coated

I like people who speak their minds, people like Alan Sugar on The Apprentice TV programme. You may not like what they have to say but at least you know where you stand. There's no room for not understanding the message however unpalatable it may be. I'm talking about straight talkers here who are not to be confused with ranters and screamers like Gordon Ramsay who I don't think could be accused of saying many honest things in his life - ask his wife or his mistress! But that's another story. Another straight talker is Michael Winner, the former film producer and erstwhile food critic who has achieved the distinction of being barred from Gordo's restaurants and raised the ire of several well known chefs. Perhaps the following few paragraphs which he wrote in The Sunday Times in the UK may give a clue as to why he is persona non grata.

"Chefs are stupid egomaniacs, vacuous morons. That’s when they’re not going broke, thus denuding their suppliers and staff of millions of pounds. I don’t know why they’re even called chefs. They cook. Why can’t they be called cooks, restrained in the kitchen and just get on with providing food? As any twit can become a celebrity chef, why not have celebrity plumbers and celebrity undertakers? My only interest in chefs is what they serve for me to eat. I don’t need to know who prepared it, peeled the potatoes or swept the floor, who screamed at who or any other details of activity in the kitchen.There are a few exceptions. Giorgio Locatelli for example."

Harsh words ? Perhaps. Untue ? I don't think so.....except for the bit about the Italian greaseball.