What Not To Drink

If you work in the arts or own a restaurant, chances are you'll live in dread of the critics review. They can, or at least many of them think they can, make or break individuals, openings and performances. Of course, the critics themselves will publicly, with lashings of faux modesty, deny that they themselves believe any such thing. Even among journalists they're a strange breed, still, at least they do criticise. Wine writers rarely lay it on the line.

I can see how it happens. Invited along, say to taste fifty wines from a large supermarket chain, or a nice visit to foreign winemakers in situ, the temptation is to recommend something a reader might enjoy. Why waste space listing duffers and endless bland wines? Well, one danger with this approach is that this gives a false idea of wine 'talent'. Highlighting the few, camouflages the many.

I'd been thinking about this after visiting Marks and Spencer the other night. For me it boasts one of the best supermarket wine ranges. But I tend to steer myself towards certain wines. This time I deliberately picked up a couple of cheaper 'randoms' from the shelf. The average price of wine bought in the UK is still incredibly low.

First up, a dry German wine, down £2 to £3.99. These days the domestic market in Germany is dominated by dry wines so there are some good ones.

This isn't one of them. Quite acidic and tasting of pears. It has a deeply unpleasant pithy bitterness in the mid palate, like a badly peeled grapefruit. The finish is astringent too. Not nice.

I've been enjoying a lot of 'oldskool' Chilean cabernets recently. Lighter, less concentrated not so over extracted and not too expensive. So I went for this at £3.99. Oh dear.

Good colour, nice legs... but not much of a bouquet and it tasted 'dirty', like it'll give you the hangover from hell. Not good.

So don't buy either of these wines. They're rubbish. Instead, buy this:

From Oddbins. A combination of Chianti's main grape with Merlot. It works really well. A great wine for £5.99. All cherries and plums with a lovely earthy, gravelly texture. I was steered towards it by a very knowledgeable chap in the Woodlands Road branch... and have drunk quite a lot of it since.

The picture at the top of this post is called 'The Critic' by Kathy Jo Braceland.

Click here for her website.

Chip Off the Old Block

Spotted this chap while strolling through the park last year. I'd never been so close to a heron... not that I'd ever tried that hard before. This one just sat there, moving his head occasionally. He looked old, possibly ill and unlikely to survive the cold snap. Shame.

Then, a few months later, someone else mentioned seeing a heron by the pond. Apparently he'd become quite a draw. Children were going along with bags of chips to feed him. How very Glasgow.

He was still there last weekend. Hanging around, playing it all nonchalant, the occasional chip being slung his way. And, he's looking good on it...

Positively revived. Maybe I should eat more chips? I took a few photos and headed off. Then, just as I was dwelling on whether this could be some sort of evolutionary tipping point, I spotted this on the other side of the pond...

"Sod fishing for a living!"

So now there are two. If they're a boy and a girl, this could be the beginning of something pivotal. Like farming was for humans.

Freed from the need to chase their feed, who knows what herons could achieve?... Watch this pond.

Chez Splodge

A few people have enquired as to what it's like chez Splodge after tasting one too many wines....

A very long lunch...

I was up very early a few weeks ago, looking for the best from the farmers market. Back home, after a three hours chopping, poaching and frying, I had ten minutes to spare for a gin and tonic before Carol and Michael came for lunch. Or so I thought.

After about an hour, doubt began to set in, so we re-read their email.... "Sounds great, look forward to seeing you... next Saturday"...

Thank god I hadn't phoned them, I nearly did, imagine... "How far away are you?"... "Oh, about a week".

Carol, Michael and baby Isla turned up exactly when they were supposed to. At least the rehearsal meant lunch was a finely honed performance.

First up, squat lobster salad with homemade 'marie rose' sauce. Based on an old Keith Floyd recipe taught to him many years ago by the owner of a hotel in the French Alpes. It's great and I'll pop the simple recipe at the end of this post. The squat lobster tails were cooked in sea strength salted boiling water for about 3 minutes. Drained, left to cool then peeled.

Carol and Michael brought along a couple of cracking wines from an Edinburgh merchant called Peter Green. The Macon was textbook stuff. All buttery chardonnay without any oak. Perfect with the squatties.

Next up, a Catalan fish stew. From the first Moro cookbook and, despite having eaten it twice in a week, I could go it again right now.

The base is long sautéed onion, pepper, bay leaf, rosemary, tomato and lots of saffron. Thickened with blanched almonds that are lightly toasted then roughly ground. When ready to eat, pop in mussels and monkfish- or any other fishy combination- cover with foil and cook for 5 minutes. Bingo. It's seriously, lusciously good.

The other wine from Peter Green was a Tasmanian Pinot Noir. This was a gorgeous drink that smelt of Turkish delight and tasted of cherries.

We finished off with some fascinating chocolates. Carol said they'd picked them up in Heart Buchanan on Byres Road. Flavours included Molasses & Hemp Seed, Strawberry & Black Pepper, and the sit up and pay attention... Smoked Chilli & Mezcal.

Recipe for Floyd inspired Pink Sauce for Prawns:

Ingredients:

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons of fromage frais

2 tablespoons of creme fraiche

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 tablespoon of bland oil (sunflower, groundnut)

2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard

1 - 2 tablespoons of tomato ketchup

splash of Worcester Sauce

salt and pepper

Method:

Put the lot in a blender and whizz. I use a hand blender. You could use a whisk instead.

How to drink wine...

My friend Niven demonstrates the fine art of wine appreciation.

The wine, Le Petit Caboche, comes from Yapp via mail order and is a superb quaffer.

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS.

Freddy Plays Guitar

I've always been fond of inanimate objects. As a child I could form quite close relationships with stuff I'd find out playing... unusual stones, bizarre ornaments and interesting pieces of wood. It didn't get as serious as a 'conversation'... but I may have occasionally spoken to them. It's probably a good thing I grew out of it, but to this day, I still love objects that come with stories.

Take this jar of pickled onions. Brought round by my parents friends Fred and Linda to go with some cheese. Fred's originally from Ross on Wye, just across the Welsh border, cider country, and he prunes a mean apple tree. He's also an accountant. Linda's financial too. I've known them since I was a kid, but that's more or less all I knew about them... until two weeks ago in Wales.

Over dinner... actually before dinner, during dinner and for quite a long time after dinner... we drank too much wine. The chat flowed too. Turns out, in the early 70s Fred worked for Huntsman, the very exclusive Savile Row tailor, as bill chaser to Royalty and some of the eras biggest stars.

Linda used to hang out with the largely forgotten, then huge, Badfinger. Clearly, in the parlance of the times, these kids were rather groovy.

Well, it turns out, one evening at some hip Soho night spot, a young Fred, fresh from rugby practice, got chatting to a very nice young man at the bar. The nice young man made him a proposition...

Which Fred says he declined... Yes, in about 1971, Fred knocked back David Bowie. A year later Ziggy Stardust came out.

So, Bowie never got his hands on Freddy's onions... but I did. We forgot to eat them with the cheese, so I brought them back to Glasgow. In return, here's a song that definitely was written for you Fred... and, by the way, your onions are lovely.

Mash and Thrash

I first tasted Brandade de Morue sitting opposite the Roman Amiptheatre in Nimes. Pretentious, moi? How good could some sloppy salt cod and mash potato be? Erm, unbelievably was the answer. Of course the setting helped. The atmosphere too, heady with anticipation of a bullfight in the 2,000 year old arena. Provence claims the dish, but it was those clever Basques who gave the Med salt cod.

I've had Brandade since, even tried making it a few times. It was never much good. Then, last Saturday, popping into Lupe Pintos for some Crystal Hot Sauce, I spied this hunk of top notch salt cod. It's a good shop for oddities and they play some great music while you're browsing.

Click here for the recipe which came from the New York Times.

Served with roasted vegetables and spring greens. Really good, not quite as good as in Nimes, but I'll definitely make it again. Maybe as the topping for a posh fish pie? Drank a bottle of 'hard to find but worth the effort' Picpoul de Pinet. It comes from the Languedoc, which is more or less Provence, costs £7.49 in Waitrose, and was a perfect match.

Less of a perfect match was the evenings entertainment. After a substantial dinner, went to see Comanechi in a packed Captain's Rest.

The Brandade recipe calls for an entire bulb of garlic. That really helped clear a way through the crowd to a decent vantage point. Amusingly, Akiko spent a lot of time moaning about an enormous curry, made by someone from the other band DIVORCE, that she'd eaten just before the gig. "I feel aw stuffied up", she said, in her sexy Japanese accent. I sympathised... with both of them.

Comanechi were great and according to Eric Ledford's review in The Skinny: "...the duo deconstruct the foundations of rock with desperate abandon, alternating between skeletal riffage and effects-drenched spheres of chaos" ... pretentious, moi?

The Wine Splodge Exercise Plan

It feels like it's time to address the weeks of over eating and drinking, but I'm not big on resolutions. Too much pressure, too much commitment. Far better to have a notion and drift into it. So my notion this year is to get a bit fitter. It shouldn't be too hard given my starting position, but it's not the first time I've tried.

The problem last time was method. My attempts at yoga reduced onlookers to hysterics. I sweat just thinking about gyms, my eyes react badly to chlorine and my bike's long gone. Eventually I settled on jogging, reasoning that I'd get fit while the evenings were still dark and be less of a sight by the summer. Unfortunately, it wasn't dark enough... mothers would grab their children close at my pounding approach and I decided to quit before getting arrested. Actually, their reaction may have had something to do with the trainers. Sports 'gear' is a very good reason to never do sport.

This year though, I've cracked it. It's a stick then carrot approach.

This is the conventional route to The Doublet from my flat. It's one of the few 'traditional' boozers left in the West End, in as much as a pub founded in 1962 sporting a vaguely Alpine themed decor can be.

My breakthrough came with a little route adjustment...

At a fast pace this works a treat and you really work up a thirst. The advantage of The Doublet is that I never fancy staying too long. The place is so brightly lit it must have burnt its own little hole in the ozone layer and frankly, that lighting isn't doing the regulars any favours. So it's one delicious pint of draft Cruzcampo lager - fine bubbled salty tanged refreshment - to replenish my carbohydrates then back home for supper. Job done and so enjoyable that I'll need to take care not to become one of those 'exercise addicts'.

The Doublet

Park Road

Glasgow

G4 9JF

New Years Eve... hazily remembered.

Lining up the troops..

Chaaaaaaarge....

Tasting notes stopped making any sense from about here....

Festive Carry On

Christmas and Hogmanay were rather splendid this year.

Eventually...

My love affair with old machinery ended this Christmas Eve on the hard shoulder between the M6 and the M62. The RAC got us off the motorway to a siding by a land fill site... "You'll be fine here, they're not working tonight. Recovery lorry should be here soon". How soon? "About an hour". Tell us the truth, we can take it. "Well, could be nearer two". It was.

We hadn't been there long when a car pulled in beside us. It lingered then left. Soon after a van pulled in. I became paranoid we were in some Lancashire dogging hotspot and uttered the immortal line... "Quick, start acting normal"... You should try it, in the dark, on Christmas Eve, next to a landfill site. I pretended to read my tattered road atlas, then panicked that this act might be some sort of secret dogging code. I was only able to think of one other 'normal' activity, so got out of the car 'to stretch my legs'.... immediately plunging knee deep into a slushy hole. From inside the car I could hear "Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time" playing on the radio for the 44th time that day.

A succession of drivers called Dave, Nige and Paul took us between service stations, depots and places even locals probably don't know exist.

We picked up someone called Tom from Southport who'd also broken down. Together, on an industrial estate built among the remnants of a World War Two airbase outside Stafford, we watched Stephen Fry cross America without breaking down.

Judging from the sound emitted, I'd say I was the first person to EVER ask for a tea without milk or sugar in the Birmingham Egertons depot. But they obliged.

Our final driver was a bruiser of a guy with a penchant for smoking and Cher. We hurtled towards Wales through freezing fog and black ice to the sound of 'If I Could Turn Back Time'... you couldn't make it up. At five past midnight, amid flashing lights and warning alarms, we made our discreet arrival.

This time the cliche was true. Never has a drink tasted so good...

The wine came from Tanners. It's still a baby and tasted immortal.
The native oysters were bought from Vin Sullivan and tasted divine.


UPDATE: Should probably have mentioned the problem with the car was that one of the wheel bearings went... nothing to do with the exhaust. Age is alas taking it's toll on my 'future classic'.

I'll take the "Last train to Clarkston"

Or not, because 2 inches of snow fell overnight, and as a result, the trains were "off". Al-Qaeda must be kicking themselves. After years of plotting, infiltration and general subterfuge, turns out a few well placed snow machines is all you really need to bring one of the world's biggest economies to it's knees.

Without trains I couldn't leave the garage. Taxis are too expensive and I just don't understand busses. Since I had to be elsewhere, there wasn't time to fit the new exhaust while I waited. (instead I have put the money in a 'special place' so I can pay for it next year and I am definitely not going to use it to go to Rogano for cocktails, followed by dinner at the Loon Fung, more drinks then onto somewhere ropey till the early hours.... no definitely not... err...). The patient was patched up while I played Santa. Brian's not just a great mechanic, he's a musician too. So the wine's name seemed appropriate.

A Christmas haircut is quickly followed by Christmas shopping at the new Hamleys store, then across the road to Che Camille and it's job done..

My Dad will just have to get in touch with his feminine side this year.

Now, after all that hard work, time for the best bit. This years cocktail - The Negroni - the crack cocaine of cocktails. The snow's still on my boots as I'm mixing them.

The initial investment seems steep... but believe me, you're worth it. Easy peasy to make too. Equal measures of about 1 fl oz each. I prefer Dubonnet but you can use any sweet red vermouth. Pour them into a glass with lots of ice, stir vigorously then pop in a slice or two of orange. Novices may want to top up with tonic water or soda... but it's much better straight.

This is a magical drink. Where there is darkness, it will bring light. No matter what is ailing you, it'll be long forgotten by the time you've finished the glass. One word of warning though... one's just right, but two's never enough... (mmm, now where did I put that money)...

Robbed of My Senses

My cold came back to bite me on the arse... or rather, the nose. For a week I've been unable to smell or taste anything. It's a very strange sensation, losing such a fundamental sense. Smell can trigger so many happy memories, but just try remembering a smell when it's no longer there.
Well, Chinon's more than just a smell, it's a town in the Loire. I'm fairly sure it's still there and it's pretty hard to forget.
The attractive vineyards slope gently towards the enormous nuclear power station by the river. In the local Musee du Vin, nestling among the old wine presses and casks, there's a wax effigy of a local poet proclaiming something utterly bizarre about his 'apres toilette' technique. The chap's name is Rabelais.
So, how much pleasure can a wine I know, from a town I've visited, give without it's bouquet?

Charles Joguet trained as an artist in Paris before returning to the family domain after his fathers death in 1957. 40 years later he went back to painting, by then he'd made a big impact in the region and the domain still carries his name. This 'young vines' cuvee often has a piercing streak of blackcurrant fruit with a whiff of green pepper and a nice, complex, mineral taste. This one probably did, I kept trying to remember what it was like a few weeks back. That bottle had too much sulphur on the nose but tasted great. I've no idea if this one did too. Instead of breathing in sweet vapours, I just kept worrying that my sense of smell would never return, while thinking of Chinon and the extract from Rabelais I'd read in the museum...

"Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf's skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney's bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer's lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains." (Gargantua, 1534)

Rabelais didn't mention quail. I decided to eat mine, smeared with a paste made from allspice, crushed garlic, paprika and lemon juice then roasted... they may have tasted divine, they did last time.

Charles Joguet, Les Petit Roches, Chinon 2007, £9.99 Waitrose... probably worth every penny.

Medicine

Is it bad form to take a drink when you're ill? A hot toddy used to be part of the cold landscape... along with soup, pills and limited sympathy. Nowadays people seem to struggle through on a diet of lemsips and nightnurse. That can't be right, so I've been experimenting.

This was the exact moment when I realised I had flu. It was a few months back at a Bo-Concept party and had nothing to do with Micky's chat, honest. Despite consuming quite a few excellent cocktails, I felt exactly the same as when I'd arrived... which was distinctly weird. Afterwards, back home, despite my state, I really fancied a glass of something and cracked open this very nice present from Mr Y.

A velvet textured throat caresser whose gorgeous red fruit flavours made for the perfect medicine, somehow transforming the flu into a positive, warming and mildly psychedelic sensation. It was all rather lovely. Much better than Benylin, if a tad more expensive.

Then, a few weeks later, I woke up unable to put any weight on my left foot. If I did, an excruciating pain shot up to my eyeballs. I'm told it could have had something to do with my boots. Men's shoes are going the way of women's, style over substance. I managed to source a prop, it's always best to look the part.

So I lay around drinking poncy Chinese teas and waiting for my body to "heal itself"... but I'm very impatient and something kept calling me from the fridge.

It was just so much better than tea and pain killers. Within a sip I felt better, a few sips later and I was almost back to normal... talking non stop random nonsense to anyone who'd listen. I still couldn't walk, but that no longer seemed to matter.

Right now I've got a stinking cold. I've had a hot water and lime, a tea, several coffees and an egg... but I know there's something in the fridge again and I'm really craving a glass of it. It feels wrong, but why? Bubbly, chalky, sherbety, lemonyness... ice cold to sooth my coughed out throat. I decide to watch 'The Saint' as a distraction...

He's testing a miniature camera by photographing girls bottoms as they dance... you've got to love the 60s. This is proving a most successful diversion, but of course, I've completely forgotten that Simon Templar's Champagne habit was even heavier than John Steed's. The Saint pops his cork, on average, about three times an episode. Sure enough, five minutes after I sit down Mr Templar's calling room service... and I'm sprinting to the fridge.

"I say, a sharp, cheeky young thing that slips down a treat!".

Social Workers Wine

The rain appears to have stopped. The permanent, torrential rain that is. It's just the normal rain now, and the darkness. It'll be grim till March, it always is. Although I don't often listen to Glasvegas, just now, their 'wall of bleak sound' cheers me up no end. Two negatives make a positive perhaps?

Recently a leaflet came through the door explaining where my considerable Council Tax payments go. In first place, fair enough, came Education. Second though was a big surprise, because last year Glasgow spent a staggering £453,657,300 on Social Work. Staff costs alone were £163 million. That's a lot of social workers. So frankly, that Glasvegas lyric is genius.

Social Workers deal with a lot of seriously bad shit, but there are no TV dramas based on them. They're not the subjects of novels, they don't get featured in lifestyle magazines and any publicity tends to be negative. Yet clearly there are tens of thousands of them out there, working for departments with huge budgets. That's a lot of purchasing power and it got me thinking...

Actually, why stop at social workers? What about bin men, sorry, Refuse Disposal Facilitators, traffic wardens (right enough the Beatles gave them a song and it didn't help), undertakers?

And here's the tune that first tapped into such a potentially lucrative market...

You're Unbelievable

I've mentioned this wine before but fear it may have been undersold. Just to make sure I don't make the same mistake again: this is UNBELIEVABLE value for money.

As the label says, morello cherries, if you don't like them, don't buy it. If you do, or even if you're indifferent, buy it. In fact buy loads of it, because just now M&S are offering 25% off any 6, bringing this one in at the frankly incredible price of £2.99 a bottle.

Tonight it went with Caponata, however, as a result of extensive testing, I can also confirm it goes with: pizza, pasta, crisps, dips, cottage pie, chilli con carne, stuffed vegetables, roast chicken, duck, and mystery fridge stuff on crackers. Cin cin.

One word of caution. M&S do other wines in this range with similar labels. They are definitely NOT in this league.

Elixir D'Amour

A few weeks back a very attractive young lady popped this into my pocket as I was leaving her house. I say...

"Tea? From France?... Tea from France?". It sounds like Peter Kay's garlic bread routine and, as a potion, failed miserably, in the admittedly tall order, of making me irresistible. However, I've fallen head over heels for it.

This morning, smiling away as I caressed the packet, I realised there's only about ten cups left. Panic. I dived online and phew, because there they were.

With three shops in Paris and two in Tokyo 'Mariage Freres' stock an incredible range of over 500 teas.

This one's a blend of black tea with flowers and, I think, oil of bergamot. It's incredible. Enveloping, intoxicating, irresistibly exotic. Never mind love, this tea is pure sex.

CLICK HERE for the MARIAGE FRERES online store.

I ain't yellow, I ain't mellow

I've always hated mellow. Even the sound of the word. It's so wet, stoned, passionless. What use is mellow? "This is your Captain speaking, if there are any mellow passengers on board could they please make themselves known to the cabin crew immediately". I don't think so.

But age distorts so many things and the black dog currently nibbling at my shoulder is the terrifying realisation that I'm mellowing. Take this one time Christmas stocking filler.

Written as a series of letters to a daughter just off to university. Snippets of a family's history intertwined with recipes and signed off 'Mummy'. Excruciating. Everything about this book got me ranting and raging. It seemed the embodiment of conceited middle class smugness writ large. Even the title was embarrassing. So it sat in a darkened cupboard for years, in case anyone thought I'd bought it.

I can't remember when exactly, but gradually, bit by bit, I started dipping in. A pasta recipe here, a risotto recipe there. I still couldn't go the 'letters' but it quickly dawned on me that the food was good. Many books claim to reveal family recipes handed down through generations, most are either lying or their family's food must have been a bit shit. This book was the real deal.

It's the subtlety of the tastes that really impresses. Little techniques that impart so much flavour. Combinations that compliment and never overwhelm. Do not be fooled by the apparent simplicity. One of my favourites is 'Poussin with an Orvieto style stuffing'. I eat it once a week. This is all you need. Plus some rosemary.

First bash two unpeeled garlic cloves with a heavy knife. Let them gently fry while chopping the roasting potatoes and fennel bulb.

Pop them into the pan once the garlic is golden. Fry for 10/15 minutes till they colour a bit. I always find they stick, so just before finishing add a little water and scrape up the tasty brown stuff.

Fish out the garlic and add a tablespoon of chopped olives, the dry 'stone in' ones are best, salt and pepper. Stuff the birds, pop in a sprig of rosemary season and rub with a little olive oil.

Into the preheated oven, 220c for 25 minutes. Remove, baste, pour in a glass of white wine and add any left over stuffing to the roasting pan too. Then put everything back in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes. It's divine.

White wine probably suits this dish best, I guess something from Orvieto would make sense. But I fancied red wine.

£7.99 from Sainsbury's. Made utilising a technique developed in Beaujolais to extract all the nice things from the grape and less of the difficult stuff.

It's now used to great effect in the Languedoc when some of the rougher grapes need, err, mellowing. Oh hell, why fight it? I may even try reading those letters.

'Dear Francesca' by Mary Contini

Ebury Press. First published 2002.

If you see it, buy it.

Or just visit her family's original 'Valvona & Crolla', 19 Elm Row, Edinburgh EH7 4AA

Pricey, but by some way the best Italian deli in Scotland.

The poussins came from Sainsbury's: £4.50 for 2.

Waking the Dead

Working till two in the morning meant I was determined to drive in the evening. If I started to droop, an escape would be easier. Persuasive powers and the pop of a cork melted that resolve in minutes. I'm glad.

Tattinger's Prelude was gorgeous. Honeyed praline reviving juice that bundled me into the cab. We drove towards Paisley in the drizzle and finally found the place. A splendid Victorian villa whose owners put their own art in the basement to make way for art to sell. A proportion of the money raised goes to charity.

Best in the sale for me looked like a fucked up Amelia Earhart. Unfortunately my art purchasing fund couldn't stretch to the £5000 asked. Instead I spent more time gazing upon my favourite piece, it wasn't part of the sale, so I felt better coveting it.

Flaking after the taxi back I was given an elixir to sip. This stuff could wake the dead.

Immense mineral refreshment. It's probably wrong, but I like Grand Cru Chablis young, unfortunately my wine purchasing fund rarely stretches to it's asking price either.

Thank you Jo.

Run rabbit, run rabbit, quick, quick..... oops too late.

Picked up a wild rabbit for £5 in Alan Beveridge, the fishmonger on Byres Road. Jointed then soaked in water with a drop of vinegar for a few hours. This blanches the meat and gets rid of the 'rodenty' flavour.

Used the trimmings to make a stock which cooked while I fannied around making the rest of the dish.

It came with the liver and kidneys intact. Rabbit liver is one of the best and the kidneys, well, if another animal produces a tastier one I'm yet to eat it.

This is what I did:
Cut a piece of pancetta into cubes and fried it gently for 5 mins. Added two cloves of garlic and continued frying until the garlic turned golden. Strained it reserving the pancetta and garlic and keeping the fat.
Put a tablespoon of the fat back in the pan and browned the rabbit. Put the pancetta and garlic back in the pan, poured in a glass of white wine and reduced it to almost nothing. Strained the trimmings stock into the pan to just cover the rabbit. Brought everything to the boil, then simmered very gently with a lid on for about an hour. The simmering could have taken longer if the rabbit was older.
Once the rabbit was tender I poured the juices into another pan and boiled to reduce by a half. Then I added a a few tablespoons of cream and boiled for a few more minutes. Finally I added about a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, some fresh chopped parsley, a minced clove of garlic, salt and pepper. Popped it all to one side while I quickly fried the liver and kidneys in some of the reserved fat. About 2 minutes on each side, no more. Served with potatoes, cut into slices, parboiled, rubbed with olive oil then roasted in an oven @ 200 c for approx. 40 mins.

In my time I've done some serious poncing around with rabbit... marinades, stuffings, waterbaths, boning and wrapping... but I reckon this was the tastiest rabbit dish I've eaten. Next time, if I'm flush, I reckon a few morel mushrooms would really make it.

Drank this with it. The name was so nearly so right...

It came from Sainsbury's and at £5.49 it's a good price for white burgundy. It tastes pretty typical too. But it does have a rustic edge, a touch of rough, a hint of rodent perhaps? Archie the fox terrier was uncontrollably excited after his first bite of rabbit, so I took him out to calm down. Spotted this on the walk and thought it looked a bit like a fossilised dinosaur rodent.

Music & wine: Chew Lips 'Salt Air' & Muscadet

The motorway was dreadful, "Slow for 6 miles" read the sign. I decided to take an early exit, and, as the lights turned green at the top of the slip road, pressed down on the throttle. What followed was the loudest snapping sound ever. The car wouldn't budge. Fellow motorists honked horns, shouted, gesticulated and implied that my parents weren't married when I was conceived. Their initial anger transformed into amusement as I took the warning triangle from the boot and placed it in the road.

I've always wanted an excuse to use it, unfortunately this wasn't an excuse. After that I stood on a traffic island for an hour being ignored by police cars, waiting for the RAC, singing a tune I couldn't get out of my head and imagining what I'd be doing if the car hadn't broken down.

I decided the best bet to go with Chew Lips 'Salt Air' would be a Muscadet. Grown near the ocean and great with seafood. Also, over the past ten years, it has transformed from being one of the most unreliable names in French wine to being one of the most consistent.

To eat with it? After much deliberation I settled on Moules Frites. My thinking was to combine the quintessential elements of being 'seaside' on both sides of the Channel.

Well, the car's still gubbed, but tonight's the night. Moules frites, muscadet and Chew Lips. Can't wait, but whether it goes or not, I'm sure it'll be better than standing on a traffic island.