I was late for work because I was detained at gunpoint by the police

Although this is not my usual excuse for being late, it is probably one of the more interesting ones I’ve been able to use.

So, I was walking up Southwark Bridge Road, having stopped in at the butcher for a chat on the way in to work (it’s all very Sesame Street in the Borough, baby), and I heard the familiar sirens of a police motorcade escorting prisoners to the Old Bailey. As the motorcade drew up level with me (at the crossing of Union Street), it stopped, because there was construction in the middle of the road. Now, I’ve seen enough action films to know that this is the moment when any would-be assailant would choose to tackle a convoy, and so I was impressed when the armoured Land Rover nearest me pulled diagonally across the intersection and a police officer with an automatic shotgun emerged from the vehicle to keep a close eye on everyone as the motorcade was stalled there. Now, my route would have taken my straight past the armoured people carrier, so I decided to stay put and observe the scene. There were police on all sides of the convoy, diligently scanning the roads, houses, rooftops, for ... er, outraged Somalis? It was a little bit Black Hawk Down, except no one got shot. And there were no helicopters.

Novelties gastronomiques

The title of this blog is a deliberate mix of English and French, to reflect the nature of the subject -- last night's feast (see the menu, left).

I'm back from my travels, and I'm beginning to work my way through a backlog of sibling blogs; but while I'm doing this, I thought I'd tell you about my day yesterday, which was about as unique and as enjoyable as a day can get.

Laura, Julie's cousin (so, kind of my cousin-in-law), needed to be distracted, so we planned to meet up in the afternoon. I decided that the best form of distraction would be to try to cook something extraordinarily difficult involving fish - complicated because I wanted it to be a proper distraction, and fish because I hardly ever cook fish, and I need to learn how to do basic things, like make fresh 'fish fumet' (see - an example of a phrase which uses both English and French), which shows up in almost every single French recipe involving seafood. So I spent the hour before we met up poring over The Silver Spoon (thanks Ben and Jules! but too easy) and Larousse Gastronomique. The latter cookbook is full of recipes which look easy, but which aren't, because each recipe cross refers to a billion other recipes ('poach X using a fish fumet, white wine and the juice of half a lemon, and use the reserved liquid to prepare a simple Mornay sauce' ... 'for Mornay add X, Y and Z to a bechamel' ... 'for bechamel prepare a white roux' ... 'for fish fumet, just take 5 lbs of fish heads and bones' ... anyway, you get the picture).

So I selected a fish recipe called 'fillets of John Dory Palais-Royal' because I've never cooked John Dory, and it involved all of these sauces made from other sauces.

So Laura came over to Borough at 1 pm and we went shopping at the market near me. This market is enormous, and is easily the best all-round food market in London, and it's a 7 minute walk from my flat. You can get just about anything you could possibly want. As we wandered around the market, our plans morphed so that by four pm we were planning a very posh 4-course dinner with 3 different types of wine. Laura begged me not to buy the fish heads (she was worried about getting fish eyes in her Mornay sauce), but the fishmonger was only too happy to hand over a pile of fish carcasses to us for fresh stock. How could I refuse?

We made the fish stock and then went to the pub for good measure, where a sort of blues-y, dixie band was rehearsing for the evening.

We came back and started cooking properly at about 6:30, I think, and finished at about midnight.

Here is the meal in pictures:

Foie gras d'oie with confit de figues au Monbazillac

Fillets of John Dory Palais-Royal with petit pois with Marlborough Reserve Sauvignon Blanc, Brancott Winery, New Zealand








Red partridge with parsnips Vichy and brussel sprouts with Spy Mountain Pinot Noir, Marlborough, New Zealand












Tiramisu with Comte de Bosredon Chateau Belingard Monbazillac