Cook sister!

Leek and smoked haddock chowder

Regard the leek. 

Who would guess by looking at it that it has such a colourful history?  It's been cultivated for thousands of years (nobody knows exactly how long) and was already a well-loved vegetable in the first century AD when Pliny wrote about it.  According to Pliny, the most esteemed leeks were those grown in Egypt and his contemporary, Roman Emperor Nero "to improve his voice, used to eat leeks and oil every month, upon stated days, abstaining from every other kind of food, and not touching so much as a morsel of bread even".  In fact, Nero was such a fan that his leek binges earned him the nickname of Porophagus, or leek-eater.  Which just goes to show that it's a bad idea to call your emperor names because he will probably turn into a bloodthirsty tyrant and play the fiddle (or more historically correct lyre!) as the city burns down around your ears ;-)

The leek is also the national symbol of Wales (together with the daffodil).  Although we can't be certain how this came about, one legend is that in 640 AD the Welsh fought a battle against Saxon invaders in a leek field.  To ensure that the Welsh soldiers could distinguish each other from the enemy, King Cadwaladr ordered them to wear leeks in their hats and they achieved a glorious victory. (Other versions of the story mention the Battle of Agincourt as the scene of this event.) This tale has become further ingrained in folklore after it was mentioned by Shakespeare in Henry V, but whatever the truth is, you will find Welshmen around the world wearing leek pins on their national day, 1 March.

It seems the English are pretty fond of leeks too - the growing of prize, oversize leeks is something of an obsession in the northeast of England.  The tradition that began in the late 19th century among miners, with men competing for cash prizes to grow the largest specimens.  This was the inspiration for the 1997 British TV comedy-drama King Leek in which one grower bets the family home on his leeks. Wives become "leek widows" when husbands sleep in their garden allotments for weeks before the show, guarding their leeks from knife-wielding competitors bent on destruction. No, I am not making this up.

Historical shenanigans aside, leeks are not only the delicous and slightly sweeter cousins to onions - they are also good for you.  Apart from containing B vitamins, vitamin C, folic acid, magnesium and calcium, they are also high in fibre and may lower cholesterol levels. There are any number of fantastic leek recipes out there, from the classics like vichysoisse or cock-a-leekie to the more adventurous - I'm opting for a deliciously creamy and comforting chowder.

LEEK AND SMOKED HADDOCK CHOWDER (serves 4-6)

4 undyed smoked haddock fillets (I used dyed this time - using up leftovers!)
about 200ml milk
5 black peppercorns
4 bay leaves
50g unsalted butter
2 medium onions, diced
1 small sprig of thyme
2 sticks of celery, sliced
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
6 medium leeks, sliced
150ml single cream
1 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley
1 tsp chopped chives

Method

Heat the oven to 180C.  Place the fish fillets in a shallow ovenproof dish with the bay leaves and pepeprcorns.  Almost cover with milk and cook for 10 minutes until just cooked and the fish can be flaked.  Discard the milk, pepeprcorns and bay leaves.  Remove the skin and gently flake the fish, discarding the bones together with the skin.

Warm a large pot over gentle heat and melt the butter.  Add the onion, thyme and celery to the pot and cook gently for about 20 minutes until soft.  Wash the diced potatoes until the water runs clear, drain and add to the pot with the leeks and 850ml water.  Simmer for 45-60 minutes.

Pour the cream into the soup and, when bubbling, add the flaked fish.  Remove from the heat immediately, garnish with chives and serve with crusty bread.

The first picture in this post is my submission to the Snackshots event created and hosted by my friend Michelle at the Greedy Gourmet.  The theme for the month is leeks and the deadline is... today!  So get leek-snapping :)

Cooksister in the media!

Just a quickie to let you all know that CookSister has really been out in the media spotlight this month, so to speak.  First off there was the BBC podcast interview when I attended the Frontline dinner. 

Next I was asked to rework a piece on South African red wine that I blogged a while back, for inclusion in the Winter 2007/8 issue of online publication WE Magazine for Women.   Take a look at the current issue - there's a lot of content to keep the fussiest reader busy.  And, of course, my wine article!

And last but most impressively, both my picture and my recipe review of glorious individual macaroni cheese pots appear in the April 2008 issue of the BBC's Olive magazine - it's still on the shelves as far as I know, so get your copy now!

Clearly, I'm well on my way to total world domination.

:D

Sauteed curly kale with wholegrain mustard

It seems that winter is just not releasing its grip on this little island.  Every time we have a crisp, sunny day, everyone thinks "woo hoo - winter is finally over!".  And then the next day dawns and there are gale force winds, driving rain and even snow.  So despite my longing for broad bean crostini, braais and summery salads, I'm afraid we will still be cooking wintry food for a while. 

One of my favourite discoveries since I've come to England (and one that it now being touted as a superfood, at least in its infancy) is kale.  Seeing as I am an unreserved fan of the entire brassica family, I wasn't hugely surprised to find that this type of cabbage is another member - part of the Acephala group of the Brassica Oleracea family.  The Latin buffs among you (and I like to think there's more than just me!) will have noticed from the name that this is a part of the brassica family distinguished by the fact that its leaves do not form a compact head, making it more closely related to collard greens than, say, Savoy cabbage.  The most likely reason that I didn't realyl know this vegetable when I was growing up is the fact that it likes cooler climates, but that aside it appears to be bullet-proof:  it's untroubled by poor soil and most pests that bother the other brassicas.  Nutritionally speaking, it's a powerhouse, containing high quantities of Vitamins A, K and C as well as lutein and zeaxanthin (both carotenoids which are essential for healthy eyes).  It also contains more Calcium and Magnesium than Brussels sprouts, is high in fibre and low in fat.  And as it's grown right here in England, your meal will have a relatively small carbon footprint!

Until the end of the Middle Ages kale was one of the most widely grown vegetables in Europe and as it was easy to grow it was one of the vegetables that people were encouraged to grow in the Dig for Victory campaign in England during World War II.  Maybe it was this association with times of hardship that made it rather unfashionable in England after the war (although it persisted in the Irish dish of colcannon), but it certainly didn't wane in popularity in Germany.  Around the towns of Bremen and Oldenburg, as well as in Schleswig-Holstein, most communities will have an annual kale festival where large quantities are consumed and a "kale king" is chosen, and "cabbage tours" are organised by social clubs in the springtime.

It was only when I was researching this post that I discovered that kale is thought to have originated as a result of human-aided selective breeding of wild mustard plants, so as to promote plants with larger leaves.  But clearly there was some sort of collective race memory of the plant's mustardy origins at work when I selected to sautee it and then stir in a generous dollop of mustard - the flavour works perfectly with the naturally mustardy kale leaves.  And it wasn't any old mustard either - this was my new favourite mustard in all the world:  Cajun wholegrain mustard from the rather wonderful Hawkshead Relish Company.  Try it once and trust me, you'll be hooked!

SAUTEED CURLY KALE WITH WHOLEGRAIN MUSTARD (serves 3-4)

Ingredients

1 bag of curly kale leaves
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 Tbsp olive oil
salt & pepper to taste
2 Tbsp wholegrain mustard

Method

Wash the kale leaves carefully - dirt, grit and even little critters may be hiding in those curly folds!  Slice the leaves into slices approximately 2.5cm wide. 

In a large frying pan or wok, heat the olive oil.  Add the onion and garlic and sautee over medium heat until translucent but not browned.  Add the kale and sautee until just wilted but not overcooked - the stems should retain some crispness.  Add salt and pepper to taste, remove from heat and stir in the mustard.

I served mine with fish and chips (chips lurking in the background of the picture...) but it would probably work well accompanying almost any meat, or it makes a great basis for a warm salad.

I'm submitting this post as my entry to this week's Weekend Herb Blogging, kindly hosted by Ramona at The Houndstooth Gourmet.  The deadline is today so get moving if you want to take part!

WTSIM deadline extended... and guess where I've been

Phew - here I am at home on a Saturday night for the first time since the 9th of February!  Maybe that will go some way to explaining my woeful record of posting over the past six weeks or so - every time I think I'm getting into my stride, I leave on another trip or another batch of visitors arrive.  Not that I'm complaining.  But I do feel compelled to explain to you what I've been up to and why I've been neglecting you!

First up, to keep you amused, here's a little guessing game.  No prizes I'm afraid, just the prestige of being the first person who can tell me where I have been over the past five weekends (hint: only one weekend was spent in London):

 

Countries will be fairly obvious - but the more specific your answers the more impressed I will be ;-)

And in other not-entirely-unrelated news, I have been too busy with travelling and a sick husband to put anything together for my own event - Waiter, There's Something in My... Pulses.  Mea culpa.  For this reason, I'm extending the deadline to Monday 31 March, giving you two whole more days to get creative with lentils, peas, beans, chickpeas and the like.

What's the point of hosting your own events if you can't bend the rules once in a while?!

**UPDATE**  To put you out of your misery, below you will find the detailed info on where these pics were taken.  The closest to guessing everything correctly with astonishing detail was Herschelian, and hot on her heels was Hande.  Top marks for creativity go to Andrew and Elizabeth (who's not jealous at all!).

Pic 1 - the Beacon Island Hotel in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa (23 Feb 08)

Pic 2 - Lion's Head and Mouille Point, Cape Town, South Africa, as seen from the Robben Island Ferry in Table Bay (1 March 08)

Pic 3 - the lovely Petersham Nurseries restaurant in Richmond, UK (lunch with my sister-in-law on 8 March 08)

Pic 4 - Parma hams hanging in a butcher in Zibello, Italy - it's near Parma and is the village where my sister-in-law's family comes from (15 March 08)

Pic 5 - the roof of Gaudi's Casa Mila (a.k.a. La Pedrera) in Barcelona, Spain (24 March 08)

Thanks to all who played along and took a guess!

A multitude of memes

Memes.  They're like buses.  Nothing for months and then two come along at the same time!  I've actually been quite tardy about completing these, but have now finally got around to it, so if you think you still haven't had enough random info about me (as I've done both of these before), here goes.

The first meme is a slight variation on the Five Things meme and the lovely Anne of Anne's Food tagged me while I was on holiday:

What were you doing 10 years ago?

I was lecturing contract law at the (now renamed) Port Elizabeth Technikon to about 300 1^st year students per year and LOVING it.  I was still living at home, my mom was still alive and I had no intention of leaving my hometown, let alone my homeland.  However… I had just met a young man called Nick and he was about to change all that.

What were you doing 1 year ago?

A year ago I was absolutely livid with my husband for talking me into going skiing against my will.  I had never wanted to go, and the holiday was sold to me as a spa opportunity rather than a ski holiday.  Somehow, almost exactly a year ago and just before departure, he persuaded me that I would always regret it if I went all the way to Andorra and didn’t even try skiing, so I bought a heap of ugly, cheap ski clothes at the last minute and grudgingly signed up for ski school.  Day One was an absolute disaster and I was in tears most of the time, much to the embarrassment of my husband and the consternation of the instructors.  But on the morning of Day Two, when I was in the middle of my first button lift ride, I looked around at the pristine snow and the picture-book pine trees, breathed in the clean mountain air, realised that I was actually succeeding at doing something on skis without killing myself... and something just clicked.  I am now more in love with skiing than probably any other activity ever.

Five snacks you enjoy

- CHEESE!  Any type, from soft to hard, from cheap to expensive.  Bring it on.

- Crisps.  It’s the one snack that the English have seriously got figured out.  I mean, green Thai curry crisps?  Inspired!

- Pistachios

- Carrot sticks with a mayonnaise and cream cheese dip like my mom used to make

- Biltong and droewors

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire

- move closer to my family – or move my family closer to me!

- buy a house by the sea, with a library for my burgeoning book collection; a huge kitchen where I could entertain my friends while cooking; and a private gym so I’d have no excuse not to go

- support all the charities that don’t get publicity in South Africa and are suffering from lack of Government and public support.  The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund gets millions per year.  Most animal charities are struggling along on a shoestring and receive little or no support.

- quit my job and spend all my time writing and taking pictures, regardless of whether I could actually make a living out of it.

- fund research into a cure for polycystic kidney disease, which killed my mom long before her time

Five bad habits

- A very, very short temper which often gets out of control...

- Rampant procrastination

- Watching TV when I should be blogging

- Snacking on cheese and mayonnaise while I’m cooking dinner

- Not exercising

Five things you like doing

- travelling!

- eating out

- cooking (as long as somebody else cleans!)

- walking on sandy beaches

- skiing!

Five things you would never wear again

- footless tights

- coloured denim jeans (or embroidered ones, for that matter!)

- frosted baby pink lipstick

- anything yellow

- miniskirts

Five favorite toys

- My Canon EOS 20D camera

- My Canon 720is compact camera

- My 4gb USB memory stick

- My Sony Ericsson Walkman phone (so that I can listen to My Chemical Romance wherever I am!)

- My wireless enabled laptop

And, finally, five bloggers to tag for this

Maritasays from Marita Says

Michelle from Greedy Gourmet

Katie from Thyme for Cooking

I-Ling from Feed Me! I'm Hungry

Gill from Gill's Jottings

Also while I was away, Loulou of Chez Loulou tagged me for the Too Much Information/Seven Random Things meme, and at the risk of having my husband roll his eyes at the weird things I share on my blog, here are seven MORE random things about me:

1.  I love mango and melon in all its forms, but have always disliked papaya.  Go figure.

2.  I have never taken even one puff of a cigarette - not even as a kid!  And I think the danger of my starting to smoke as a result of peer pressure is prbably now a thing of the past...!

3.  I have touched a real, live, awake cheetah.  In fact, I've touched two!

4.  The two authors whose books I most regularly re-read are Stephen King and John Irving.  But the last book that made me cry was Peter Godwin's Mukiwa.

5.  I have always had a fear of needles, which explains why piercings, tattoos and a heroin habit are clearly NOT on the menu for me in this lifetime!

6.  In my immediate family (parents and siblings) there are two radiographers, a doctor and a nurse.  I was, career-wise,  the black sheep of the family...

7.  Do not play Beat The Intro with me on 1980's British music.  You will NOT win.

The rules to play along are simple:

* Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
* Share seven random and/or weird things about yourself.
* Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs
* Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

So here are my seven taggees:

Jai & Bee from Jugalbandi
Annemarie from Ambrosia & Nectar
Inge of Vanielje Kitchen
Patricia from Technicolour Kitchen
Carolyn from Field to Feast
Robyn from Lick Your Own Bowl
Nina from Nina's Kitchen

Have fun and a very happy Easter to you all!

Marmalade bread & butter pudding

One of the signs that Spring is in the air in this country is the fact that the daffodils start to poke their heads through the frozen earth.  Their arrival is gradual, amost stealthy - just a few slightly more substantial spikes among the spikes of green grass that you hardly notice at first.  And then one day you notice that there are actually sturdy clumps of these green spikes all over the place - in parks, in the middle of traffic roundabouts, and in your very own garden. 

Now you may disagree with me, but I've always thought that TS Eliot got it wrong when he said April is the cruellest month.  To my mind, the cruellest month is in fact March.  March is the point in the year when I want to throw in the towel and emigrate.  It just feels as if you've been cold for ever and ever - or at least 6 or 7 months.  And for somebody who grew up with 9 months of summer weather per year, this is a deeply depressing fact to have to face up to.  And, to make matters worse, the sun is getting higher and higher in the sky with no attendant rise in temperature! 

All that makes life worth living, to my mind, is the daffodils.  All I have to do is look at their bright, bobbing yellow heads and I feel like breaking into a grin.  They are a little symbol of regeneration and life amid a sea of grey leaflessness and give us all hope that summer might actually arrive some day.  So it's fitting, then, that yellow was chosen as the colour of Lance Armstrong's LiveSTRONG foundation.  The foundation aims to provide support to all those living with cancer and it is fitting that its chosen colour perfectly matches the daffodil's floral symbol of regeneration and rebirth. 

The cause of cancer research, awareness and support is one close to my heart.  In 2005, my beautiful friend Christelle succumbed to cervical cancer, not yet 30 years old, and last October I lost one of my oldest friends and my first love, Peter, to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  In addition, Francois, Lizel and Gail have all fought and won their own battles with the disease and thankfully seem to be winning.  So when Barbara of Winos and Foodies announced her Taste of Yellow 2008 event to coincide with this year's LiveSTRONG day on 13 May, I immediately agreed to take part.  All you have to do to participate is post a recipe for yellow food and forward a link to Barbara - see her post for details.  Not only will you get to eat something delicious, you will also be raising awareness of the foundation and all the good work it does.

For my recipe I chose to recreate a dish that I had at Cecil's house (he of the fabulous lamb sosaties) on new year's eve last year.  I have never been overly fond of bread and butter budding - it can be soooo stodgy and is often too sweet for my taste.  But on new year's eve I was in for a treat.  After a lovely dinner at Cecil's flat, we all grabbed our champagne glasses and marched up the (decidedly muddy!) Primrose Hill to see in the new year and watch the spectacular fireworks at the London Eye.  After much toasting and many resolutions, we headed home to be greeted on arrival by the most fabulous sweet citrussy aroma.  Dessert was to be marmalade bread and butter pudding and the pudding had been left in the oven on a very low temperature while we were on the hill.  Cec was slightly worried that it was overdone, but one mouthful confirmed that this was the way God intended bread and butter pudding to be. The recipe is Delia's, but I blame Cecil for making me believe that I could not live another day without making it!  It's light, it has a lovely citrus tang - and, most importantly, it's yellow.

MARMALADE BREAD & BUTTER PUDDING (serves 6-8)

Ingredients

3 generous Tbsp chunky orange marmalade
8-10 slices white bread (or, even better, brioche), about 1 cm thick with crusts left on
60 g softened butter
275 ml milk
60 ml double cream
3 large eggs
75 g sugar
grated zest of 1 large orange
1 Tbsp demerara sugar
25 g candied peel, finely chopped

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC and lightly butter a baking dish of about 18 x 23 cm and 5 cm deep.

Butter the slices of bread on one side - don't stint on the butter!  Do make sure the butter is adequately softened, otherwise you just destroy your bread.  Spread marmalade on half of these slices, and put the remaining slices on top, buttered side down so you've got 4-5 rounds of sandwiches. Spread some butter on the top slice of each sandwich and cut each one into quarters to make little triangles.

Arrange the sandwiches, butter side up, overlapping each other in the baking dish - they should be standing almost upright.  Whisk together the milk, cream, eggs and sugar and pour the mixture over the bread. Scatter the grated orange zest, demerara sugar and candied peel over the surface.

Place the pudding on a high shelf in the oven and bake it for 35-40 minutes until puffy and golden and the top crust is crunchy.  I left mine a bit longer to try and recreate Cecil's inadvertently overcooked effect - makes for crispier toast points, but be careful you don't dry the pudding out!

Serve the pudding straight from the oven while it's still puffy, with either crème fraîche or chilled pouring cream.

Waiter, there's something in my... pulses!

And no, I haven't confused a waiter with a nurse or a kitchen with a consulting room.  This kind of pulse has nothing to do with be still my beating heart... 

No, this is an entirely different kettle of fish (or chickpeas, as the case may be).  A month has flown by since Andrew' seasonal salad edition of the ever-popular Waiter, There's Something in my... event, and now it's my turn to host again.  It's a bit of a weird time of year here in England - you kind of think we've had enough winter now and summer is just around the corner.  But then the entire country is battered by such vicious storms that it feels as if winter has returned.  So I couldn't entirely go with a winter theme, nor could I in all honesty say I felt summery. 

But pulses (or legumes, if yuo will)are your friends, rain, wind or shine.  Think beans, lentils and chickpeas.  Think warming casseroles and colourful salads. In fact, there's no weather that's the wrong weather for pulses.

The rules are simple:

1. Write up your legume recipe and please link back to this announcement in your post. Please note that it MUST be a new post featuring your dish - I will not accept a link to a post you had already put up before this announcement was made - and the post must not be entered into another event as well (photography events like DMBLGiT excluded).

2.  E-mail me.  Please make sure that Waiter there's something in my features in the subject line.

3. In the e-mail please include:

• the URL of your entry
• your blog's name
• the name of the dish
• your approximate location

4.  The deadline for entries is Friday 28 March and I hope to have the roundup posted early the following week.

So let's see if you all have your fingers on the pulse!

Wining and dining on the Frontline

I've never much been one for danger myself.  No, no - I'm far too attached to my limbs and averse to sudden loud noises to want to go and put myself in harm's way.  So how on earth did I find myself dining on the frontline (so to speak) one recent Saturday night? 

Fear not, gentle readers - I certainly wasn't going to put myself in harm's way for the sake of a meal - even a really delicious meal with matching wines picked by Mr Superplonk himself, Malcom Gluck.  Oh no - the frontline I am referring to is the Frontline Club, a club founded by ex-frontline reporters, which exists to promote freedom of expression and support journalists, cameramen and photographers who risk their lives in the course of their work.  The club also run a charity supporting the families of local fixers killed while helping foreign journalists.  As part of their fundraising efforts, they operate a restaurant and a private club, and the latter is where I was invited for dinner by Graham of Noodlepie.  Not a dinner a deux, I hasten to add.  In fact, Graham himself wasn't even able to attend, but in the spirit of blogger self-sacrifice he organised dinner tickets for his fellow-bloggers (me, Andrew and Fraser).

The evening got off to a convival start with glasses of Henri Bourgeois Petit Bourgeois Sauvignon Blanc (2006 -  France).  Not usually a great fan of Sauvignon Blanc, I had no complaints about this one as it was more gooseberries than green peppers, and that's always a plus in my book!  We amused ourselves by playing "spot the other blogger" and I do believe I won the prize when I recognised Fraser from his blog photo ;-)

After being ushered to the table, Andrew and I found ourselves seated beside two couples who appeared to be regulars at these events and who instructed us in the art of tasting notes, Frontline-style.  Apparently Malcom Gluck likes to gather the tasting notes at the end of the evening and choose the best ones - the more outlandish the better. Our first course (courtesy of chef John Taylor) was cock-a-leekie soup, a traditional Scottish dish of leeks and potatoes in chicken broth, with a couple of prunes.  It was the first time I'd had this dish (traditionally the starter for Burns Night dinners) and I really liked the intriguing combinatio of flavours, although it does help if you're a fruit-with-meat person - which I most certainly am.  To accompany the soup we had an Australian 1998 Voyager Estate Margaret River Semillon.  On its own, the wine was fine with a golden colour and the usual notes of dried hay.  But with the food, it was transformed into something altogether lovelier - maybe the prunes brought out some sweeter fruit flavours.  Either way, this was a fantastic pairing and one I'd recommend to anyone.

Less successful was the wine pairing with the main course.  The main course consisted of boiled salt beef with a pearl barley and carrot broth, served with beetroot and parsley dumplings.  The meat was tender (albeit salty... but then that's salt beef for you!) and I really liked the pearl barley and broth.  The dumplings were slightly odd, in a way that made you want to taste them again and again to find out why they were doing such weird things to your tastebuds.  They managed to retain both the earthiness (and colour) of beetroot, and the baking-powder-ish acidity of unbaked scone batter, and like a tongue repeatedly finds a hole in a tooth, your tastebuds felt compelled to return to this odd marriage of tastes.  The wine was a South African 2006 Fairview Estate Agostinelli Barbera and it was amusing to hear how scathing our neighbours were about it.  I do believe "undrinkable" was one word I heard.  Poppycock.  Yes, it was a Big Wine and yes, it had Lots of Fruit and Alcohol.  I'd be willing to go so far as to say it might have been a little over-extracted.  But on a balance I'd have to say that I loved it. I have blogged about the Old World/New World tastebud divide previously and have pinned my colours firmly to the New World mast.  We have a lot of sunshine.  Our grapes develop more sugar and more ripe flavours than yours.  Deal with it!  But what I will say is that it was not a great match for the food.  With the restrained flavours of a lovely rare steak it would have worked beautifully, but with the saltiness of the beef and the fairly agressive flavours of the dumplings, it just felt as if two cats were fighting in a sack. 

At about this stage of the proceedings, Chris Vallance of the BBC's 5Live came sauntering over to us with microphone in hand, as Graham had warned he would.  We were ready (and ready to roll, thanks to a number of glasses of wine!), but our aforementioned neighbours were totally unprepared and suitably flabbergasted.  The conversation ran to "sorry, please excuse us, we have to do our interview now".  "Interview?  What interview?" "Oh nothing, just the BBC."  And so while they were picking their dropped jaws off the table, we did our interview.  I remember very little of the actual event (see reference to glasses of wine!), and was astonished when I heard the recording later that I'd managed to slip in the phrase "cognitive dissonance" in an interview on food blogging.  That's what too much university education will do for you.  You can have the pleasure of hearing our mellifluous voices by visiting the BBC's 5Live website

From there, we moved on to the cheese course which I neglected to make a note of.  From memory, there was a soft cheese from Ireland, a flavoursome Lancashire and an exellent Colton Bassett Stilton.  To accompany the cheeses we had a French 2006 Segna Le Roc des Domaine Anges Cotes du Roussillon, and to me it typified everything I don't like about Old World wines.  The nose was politely described as "feral" but to me it took a turn into the less pleasant end of barnyard aromas.  In a tasting note that Malcom deemed good enough to read out at the end of the night, I believe I described it as "not so much feral as scatological!".  It's not a great introduction to a wine.  If you got past that, there was a lot of dark fruit which was appealing in a Christmas pudding-y sort of way, but the whole thing reminded me far too much of an unfriendly ruby port, and I was not convinced it was the best partner for cheese.   

Dessert was a comfort food favourite - bread and butter pudding.  I liked the way it was served, in little individual towers. (The chef later told us that, rather than baking them in individual moulds, he had baked a large dish of pudding and then cut out these rounds after baking.  Clever.)  The pudding was already heavy and quite sweet, thanks particularly to a layer of quince jam in its depths.  It was matched with a Spanish 2004 Don Pedro Ximenez Toro Albala Dulce de Pasas Montilla-Morales, 2004, Spain. Now as a rule I like PX, but this one was a particularly unctuous and syrupy example of its kind, and togther with the sweet, heavy pudding, it was all just too much.  Something needed to lighten up - my tasting note described the PX as "all treacle and no tart", and tart was something that was sorely lacking.  Still, Andrew didn't complain when he got half my glass of the PX!

All in all it was a fun evening evening - there's not a lot to dislike about good food, interesting wines and lively conversation, and even more so if you know you are supporting a good cause.  The Frontline Club hosts all kind of interesting events, from the kind of wine and food matching dinner that I attended todocumentary film screenings to lectures - see their website for details of forthcoming events. 

All that remains is a great big thank you to Graham for organising this - next time, though, it would be even better if you could join us!