Celebrity scallops

Down in the South West of England there’s something fishy going on with trawlermen and celebrity chefs facing up against each other. It seems local resident celeb chefs, Mark Hix and Hugh Fairly Dipstick are upsetting the local scallop fishermen by advocating that freshly diver-caught molluscs are more preferable to their dredged colleagues. The fishermen claim the chefs are helping to scupper the multi-million-pound scallop industry in Lyme Bay and hampering campaign efforts against further fishing restrictions.South West Inshore Fishermen’s Association’s (SWIFA) secretary Jim Portus fired a broadside at the chefs.
He said: “We know that the (dredging) method has come in for criticism in recent years and ‘celebrity chefs’ have extolled the virtues of diver-caught scallops. Scallops should not be exclusively for wealthy clients of the likes of Mark Hix and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall”. However, Mark Hix – who runs the Hix Oyster and Fish House in Lyme Regis – hit back for the chefs, denying they only catered for the well-off. He said: “Who says our clients are wealthy? The whole point of my restaurant is that it’s accessible to everyone as restaurants should be. If you want to eat three oysters and a glass of wine or crab on toast that’s what we are all about. I think some of my customers and Hugh’s would be upset if they thought our restaurants were for wealthy people. Also, I’m not a celebrity chef! ” Hugh, by his silence, implied that he in fact was happy to be considered a celebrity chef! I would be delighted if further restrictions were in fact enforced, not because I favour either argument, but simply because if I see a TV chef cooking another bloody seared scallop I think I’ll throw up.

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

They say that there is no polite way to eat a banana but there certainly is a smart way to peel them. Take a tip from the monkeys and surprise your friends.Feedblitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

I've got no time for the ridiculous circus we see on TV billed as the World Wrestling Federation championships, grotesquely muscular idiots with more oil on them than a packet of slap chips all trying to string a few words together at the top of their voices - what a bunch of tossers. So I'm not really sure how I would approach the regulars of this week's Dilly Diner who are also afficiandos of the noble art of wrestling albeit restricted to the pedantry parts of the body. The Bentley Brook Inn and Fenny's Restaurant is the world headquarters of the fair game of Toe Wrestling it seems.
Every year in the tiny village in the Staffordshire Peak District grown men gather to engage in their chosen sport of toe wrestling. This toe-nement also attracts contestents from all over the world, so called women included, but what is really bizarre for an event of this nature is that it is sponsored by Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream ( don't even think of potential new flavour development ).
Claiming top honours in this strange sport is no mean feet, sorry I mean feat. The "wrestle" consists of raising one foot off the ground, while the toes of the other foot engage the opponent's, and each contender tries to push the other's foot over toward the dreaded line (which, strangely, consists of a wooden board). Winner is the best of 3 toe-downs and contestants experiencing a lot of pain can yield by screaming out "Toe much !" Of course no artificial stimulants are permitted although fortunately beer is considered to be a perfectly natural stimulant.

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That Was The Week That Was

This week saw the release of Harden's guide to London restaurant’s, which collates reports from more than 8,000 diners. Several of Gordo’s restaurant found themselves listed in the top ten – the top ten of the most "overpriced" and "disappointing" restaurants in the capital! However the Guide did offer one glimmer of hope for a Ramsay recovery, with his Italian-influenced Murano in Mayfair being named as the capital's best new restaurant. Murano's chef, Angela Hartnett, was praised by the latest Harden's guide for "simple Italian dishes, beautifully executed". The latest Hardens found that Ramsay's flagship restaurant on Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea – until two years ago unchallenged as London's best top-end restaurant for nearly a decade – had suffered an "unprecedented slide" in approval from individual surveyors. Meanwhile, four Ramsay restaurants – the Chelsea restaurant; Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's; The Warrington pub in Maida Vale; and Maze in Mayfair – were among the top 10 most disappointing for cooking. And three of them – the Chelsea restaurant, Claridge's and Maze – were among the top 10 which diners in the survey found were most overpriced.



It was however a good week for former protégé Marcus Wareing as his restaurant at the Berkeley in London retained the top slot as London's best top-end restaurant. For that ranking, it receives the ultimate accolade – the Rémy Martin XO Excellence Award. Wareing said he was pleased to win recognition in his own right, having topped last year’s poll when his restaurant was called Petrus and was part of the Ramsay stable. “It’s fantastic,” he said. “It was big for me last year, which was at the tail end of Petrus, and now it’s even better. I’m really delighted.”



Meanwhile someone who is more chef than celeb, Paul Gaylor, one of the good guys in the London restaurant scene, was prompted into action after his son was shot in the leg whilst serving in Afghanistan. Paul rounded up his own army of chefs to plan a gala dinner for 2 nd October to raise money for troops wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Chefs for Heroes gala dinner is being spearheaded by The Lanesborough’s chef de cuisine, Paul Gayler, and dished up by an ‘army’ of chefs from the City of London’s top restaurants including Andrew Bennett (Sheraton Park Lane), Gary Klaner (Landmark Hotel), Martyn Nail (Claridges), Paul Bates (Intercontinental, Hyde Park Corner), Simon Young (The Jumeirah Carlton Tower, Knightsbridge) and Matthew Marshall (Chamberlains Events). They will be joined on the night by many of TV’s favourite chefs who will host a limited number of tables including Gordon Ramsay, Raymond Blanc and Heston Blumenthal – all of whom are on the guest list!. Paul’s team of the finest chefs will be serving up the most sumptuous menu to London’s glitterati in a bid to raise £250,000 for Help for Heroes, a charity Paul felt compelled to help after his son Lee was shot in the leg whilst serving with the Territorial Army in Afghanistan.

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Beef and 2 refs

It’s getting towards the end of a hot summer in the UK but the weather is still good enough to get in the last few acts of insanity before the onset of a long cold and wet winter. The Rose 'n' Bowl pub in Stacksteads, Lancashire,has just hosted the World Gravy Wrestling Championships Wrestling competitors have been bidding for a world title in 40,000 portions of out-of-date gravy. I don’t know why so don’t ask me!
Bisto provided 2,000 litres (440 gallons) of gravy past its best before date for the contest. Carol Lowe, 37, landlady of the pub, said: "We normally have to make the gravy ourselves, which is a bit of a nightmare, but this year Bisto stepped in. Joel Hicks, a 30-year-old barrister wrestling under the name of Stone Cold Steve Bisto, won the contest. Mr Hicks said: "It is a bit crazy - it is the third time I have done this event, so to finally win it is fantastic. The final was really tough and it is much more difficult than you think. My technique was really just to grab hold of the guy and hope for the best."
Now here’s the interesting bit. More than 100 people gathered to watch the battle with wrestlers travelling from Devon, Derby, Scarborough and Leicester. ONE hundred people only ? More people stop here to watch a bumper bashing which is really strange because they don’t even get the chance to take home 20 litres of cold gravy (only used once).

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Hot coffee Ja !

It's an everyday irritation: Your coffee's too hot to sip, so you dump in some milk and set it aside for a minute while you answer just one email. Turn back to the coffee, and now it's tepid and unappetizing. The geniuses at the Fraunhofer Institute, just like us regular folks, are fed up with such nonsense. Unlike us, though, they're German engineers, so they've created the Perfect Coffee Mug to exterminate imperfect coffee once and for all.
The hollow walls of the Perfect Coffee Mug (PCM) are filled with Phase Change Material (also PCM), a waxy semi-solid substance that absorbs heat to precise specifications. Isn’t it strange how German engineers name their inventions in English? Depending on the amount of PCM added to the mug during manufacturing, the vessel can be "set" to an ideal target temperature. The Fraunhofer mug is set to 58º Celsius (136.4º Fahrenheit). When coffee is first poured in, the walls of the mug rapidly absorb heat from the coffee, until the liquid is at the pre-set ideal sipping temperature. Then, as needed, the walls gradually release heat back into the coffee, to keep it at the ideal drinking temperature for up to half an hour. Clever buggers.

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Trust me...I'm not a TV chef!

Oh I wish us chefs could get our act together and project a more professional image and then maybe people would start taking us seriously. I know that bozos like Gordo and Marco Pisspot White hardly inspire confidence and viewers giggle at Anthony Wibbly Wobbly and Hugh Fairly Dipstick but it’s about bloody time that we dropped the showbiz and were accepted as trustworthy reliable professionals.
What is it about clients who have watched a few hours of BBC Food and are now suddenly bloody experts? “I’ve seen Jamie do it on the telly so it can’t be that difficult.” Well darling that’s the wonder of modern technology, us mere mortals have to get by with pots and pans, wonky ovens and cranky waiters. I’ve never had need of any type of surgery thank God but I can’t imagine that I would bark out instructions to the surgeon – “ Start at the top here, no, move over a bit” and yet everyone seems to know how to do my job better than me. I don’t even offer a morsel of advice to my surly dentist although I might if only he would get his fat fingers out of my mouth so why do people ask for my valued advice and then do the exact opposite? It’s probably because to them it’s only fuel whereas I still have old fashioned romantic notions of it being a pleasurable experience.

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