London's best barmen

It's funny that barmen don't have the same reputation as chefs. A great cocktail is just as creative as a dish - often cleverer as they rely on fewer ingredients. The cocktails I've had made for me by three of London's best barmen, two of whom appear in the Independent's feature on New Year cocktails today - have just blown me away.

Salvatore Calabrese who works at the London private members club Fifty, is the ultimate suave Hollywood bartender - the sort of guy you'd want to make you a Martini. He taught me how to make the perfect G & T (crucial tips - fill your glass full of ice and use a freshly opened can of tonic)

Nick Strangeway (above, on right) used to work at my son's steakhouse Hawksmoor and now works at the new basement bar at Hix. He's an absolute genius at reinterpreting cocktail classics. He used to do fabulously kitsch punches in vintage punchbowls at Hawksmoor but I love the sound of his new cocktail Sbagliato, a mixture of Campari, sweet vermouth and Prosecco - easy enough to rustle up for a crowd for New Year's Eve.

And my third is Dick Bradsell, creator of some of the best modern classics - cocktails such as The Cowboy and The Bramble (you can find the recipes and some of his other creations here). I once went on a bizarre bourbon trip to Kentucky with him and Carol Thatcher. I've no idea where he's working now - like most barmen he tends to move around.

Incidentally Salvatore's website has a useful page on hangover cures if you overdo it tonight ;-) A very happy new year to you all.

Do you agree these are London's three best barmen or do you have a favourite of your own?

Vacqueyras - our everyday red

Asking a winewriter what their favourite wine is usually results in a long explanation about how it depends on the mood, the food and the time of year and I'm no exception. But there's one bottle we buy regularly because it pretty well always pleases us and goes with a lot of the food we like to eat (rustic French and Italian)

It's a basic Vacqueyras from the Vignerons de Beaumes de Venise, better known for their sweet wine and sells for £6.99 a bottle in Somerfield. Or at the moment it does. Somerfield converts to the Co-op next Monday so I'm hoping they'll still stock it.

Vacqueyras for those of you who aren't familiar with it is one of the named villages of the Côtes du Rhône appellation which means its quality is generally higher than basic Côtes du Rhône Villages. The splendidly old-fashioned label doesn't indicate the proportions of the grape varieties which are used but it's normally Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre and Cinsault (for more about the area see here) It does however state in rather charming Franglais that it is "perfect with an elaborated cooking such as leg of lamb, games, braised meat and cheese" with which I would concur.

I doubt if it will stay this price beyond the 2008 vintage as it sells direct off the producer's site for 7 euros so get in there quick (but not in my local branch if you don't mind).

What's your favourite everyday drinking?

Cooking with hay

One of the most appealing cookbooks I was sent just before Christmas was Pascal Aussignac’s Cuisinier Gascon so when I caught sight of his Christmas Goose stuffed with Hay (also printed here in the Guardian) I had to give it a try. We’d bought an organic goose from a friend who farms in Somerset so it was easy enough to ask him for the hay too. It was wonderfully sweet-smelling - just like a cut summer meadow - so I was sure the experiment was going to be a success.

I stuffed the hay in the carcass as instructed and put the goose in the Aga. The first sign that anything was amiss was when very little fat emerged from the bird - the hay of course had mopped it all up. Then the goose started smelling of hay but not in a nice way . . . more like a compost heap than a meadow. The Aga was also rebelling against the vast amount of food in it and suddenly dropped its temperature so the goose cooking went on and on, getting more hay-y by the moment.

Eventually we got there. The goose didn’t taste as offputting as it smelt though I can’t say it was a great culinary experience. But worst of all we only had just enough fat to cook a couple of batches of potatoes. I was expecting to be in goose fat for weeks.


It’s possible of course that because it was a free-range, grass fed bird it hadn’t accumulated much fat but I certainly resented the hay having it. Next time I’ll stick to my tried and trusted method of stuffing the goose with potatoes and onions, Simon Hopkinson style.

Did you eat goose for Christmas and if so which way? Have you had any comparable cooking failures? Or ever tried cooking with hay?

The perfect breadknife

I can't say I've ever given a great deal of thought to bread knives. Occasionally I get frustrated because they're not sharp enough to cut through a bigger than average loaf but we've soldiered on with our rather pretty antique knives for years.

Not any more. This week I was sent an Opinel Couteau à Pain no. 116 by Richard and Jo Bertinet of Bertinet Kitchen as a thankyou for doing a cheese and wine tasting for them last week. (To promote my cheese book so I hadn't expected to be paid). It arrived with a large homebaked sourdough loaf so I could immediately try it out and it was just perfect. Wooden-handled, satisfyingly chunky to hold, beautifully balanced and razor sharp it was the most perfect tool for the job you could imagine

Of course it was great business. I was smitten by both the bread and the knife and being a writer they must have known there was a fair chance I'd blog about them. But it was such an imaginative and perfect present that I really wanted to share it with you.

You can buy both from their cookery school and also online. The knife costs £25 and the loaf (which is 1.2kg) £5 (£6.50 by mail order) The bread is also available from several Bath restaurants including Marlborough Tavern, King William and Beaujolais.

That might sound a lot for a loaf - it is - but with this demon knife you can cut it thinly and it has so much taste you don't need to eat a lot (though I undoubtedly will).

What kind of wine to mull

I've been looking out for a wine to mull and think I've found the perfect candidate. Not that it looks or sounds promising. It's called La Maison de Michel and is basically the sort of wine you'd pick up if you went to the local co-op in a French village with a 5 litre 'cubi' and filled up at the pump. It's only 11.5%, quite dry but sufficiently full-flavoured to carry a fair amount of spicing and costs just £10 for 2 bottles in Tesco - or slightly less if you buy a case of six.

For one bottle* I'd add a small glass of inexpensive ruby port (like Vintage character), a couple of tablespoons of soft brown sugar, a cinnamon stick, a piece of star anise, a few cloves and a finely pared slice of orange peel, bring the whole lot slowly to the boil then immediately take the pan off the heat and infuse the spices for 20-30 minutes. Then remove the spices and reheat it carefully without boiling. Makes around 6 cups or glasses.

Other good bets for mulling are inexpensive unoaked Portuguese and Spanish reds (oak aged wines can taste bitter when they're mulled). And as with with cooking with wine never mull a wine you wouldn't be prepared to drink on it's own!

What sort of wine do you like to mull? Do you have a favourite recipe?

* If you use more than one bottle increase the amount of port and sugar proportionately but you don't need to double or treble the spices.

The croissant that thinks it's a pretzel

I don't want you to think I'm fixated by carbs or anything (the truth is I am) but it's hard to avoid them in New York. And my second great find, introduced to me by the wonderful Dorie Greenspan, is the Pretzel croissant at City Bakery.

Actually Dorie's not alone. There are so many people obsessed with this croissant that the City Bakery has a dedicated website for it. (There's also a rather bizarre black and white YouTube video of them making it - or maybe another croissant - inexplicably backed by the soundtrack from My Fair Lady. But persevere through 'The Rain in Spain'. There's a great sequence of them rolling them out.)

Anyway the croissant is just heavenly. Less fatty and flakier than a typical French croissant with salt and sesame seeds sprinkled over the top it has the sweet-salty-crunchy appeal of salted caramels. I also loved their apple sauce cakes with bourbon raisins (below). Dorie and I both felt though that their celebrated chocolate chip cookies were a touch too sweet, an almost heretical view in New York. But Dorie can get away with it because she is a Baking Goddess. You should check out her lovely blog.


City Bakery is at 3 West 18th Street, just off 5th Avenue. If you're visiting New York you must go there for breakfast.

Is this the greatest bread roll in New York?

As those of you who follow me on Twitter will know I've been in New York for the past six days with little time to breathe let alone blog but here's the first of my top New York food finds - the guanciale pecorino rolls at Danny Meyer's new restaurant Maialino in the Gramercy Hotel.

They arrived warm and flaky with something of the consistency of a Bath bun though obviously savoury - dusted with herbs, dotted with bacon and oozing with cheese. (Guanciale is a pancetta-like product made with pigs cheek. You can find a good description on Maialino's rival Babbo's website here)

As former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl tweeted the other day: "Woke up thinking about Maialino rolls: rich little puffs of guanciale and pecorino. Utterly irresistible. Why didn't I bring some home?" Wish I could have done too . . .

Any other rolls you'd like to champion - in New York, London or anywhere else for that matter?