This perfumed Mendoza blend of two Italian grape varieties with a core of juicy mulberry and plum-like fruitiness the
This perfumed Mendoza blend of two Italian grape varieties with a core of juicy mulberry and plum-like fruitiness, the sole Argentinian wine to win a gold medal, is remarkable for such terrific value in a vintage hit by El Nino.Chile offered value and class. If you’re searching for value (and most of us are), the prune and plum-like 1998 La Palmeria Merlot Cabernet 1998 (pounds 7.99, Oddbins Fine Wines) and the voluptuously spiced 1998 Mont Gras Carmenere Reserva (pounds 5.99, Sainsbury’s), show what Chile has up its sleeve. (Mail order available.)Somerset and Devon: Amode Katiyar of newly-established Monastery Cheese in Nether Stowey, makes washed-rind cheeses using cow, ewe and even buffalo milk Their sticky orange rinds hum with activity as they ripen. The earthy sweet milk, from one of three British herds of water buffalo, lends itself to these frequent washings. The result of all this is a cheese called Bishop Gold, with a smoky, vaguely meaty aroma and taste, and a smooth, dense interior.
Country Cheeses in the Harlequin Shopping Centre, Exeter, 01392 494049, mainly stocks West Country cheeses, all displayed with useful tasting notes. (Mail order available.)The South-East: Cheese-making, unlike wine, rarely attracts interest from the rich or famous. Actor Terence Stamp has proved the exception, bringing his creative skills and humour to the cheese world with two organic cheeses, Troy and Priscilla, made by Sussex High Weald Dairy, near Uckfield. Priscilla is a charming, frothy number, sprinkled with organic rose and marigold petals. Delicate, moist and pure white, it melts like ice-cream on the palate with a lingering sweetness from the ewes’ milk on the finish. Jeff Webb sells cheese from most of the 23 local producers at Harvest Deli, 46 West Street, Alresford, Hants, 01962 733189, an impressively stocked, if chaotic village shop.For information on cheese shops in your area contact the Specialist Cheesemakers Association, PO Box 448, Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire, ST5 0BF or The British Cheese Awards, Old Woolman’s House, Hastings Hill, Oxon OX7 6NA.Juliet Harbutt chairs the British Cheese Awards. Her latest book is `Cheese: a complete guide to over 300 cheeses of distinction’ (Mitchell Beazley pounds 16.99).
In his introduction to Nowhere in Particular (Mitchell Beazley pounds 16.99) Jonathan Miller says: “The photographs which I began taking nearly 30 years ago are unquestionably `pictures of bits’ and like the `rotten banks and slimy posts’ which delighted Constable, they are negligible things to which one would normally pay no attention at all.”
They did catch his attention, though, and despite a “recurrent theme of ruin and disarray” there is little to link them with the selection of notes from his jottings which he accumulated throughout a career spanning Beyond the Fringe, to writing and presenting the BBC’s The Body in Question and directing opera productions around the globe.
What we are left with is an old-fashioned yet beautifully-presented and eclectic commonplace book.Miller gives an illustrated talk at Waterstone’s, 68 Hampstead High Street, London NW3 (0171-794 1098) Tue, 7pm, pounds 3 (redeemable against book purchase). ONE OF the first cookery books I ever bought was a small paperback called The Home Book of Chinese Cookery by Deh-Ta Hsiung. It gave me an intriguing insight into the complexities of Chinese cooking with its friendly prose and simple, authentic-tasting recipes Twenty years on, and Deh- Ta Hsiung has not lost his touch. His latest book, The Chinese Kitchen, is part of a Kyle Cathie series of glossy cookbooks that focus on a chosen country’s ingredients. Although it is ostensibly divided into chapters such as Grains and Staple Foods, and Oils and Liquid Flavourings, it reads like an encyclopaedia of Chinese ingredients.
Each page begins with an ingredient, say sesame seed oil or lotus root. Deh-Ta Hsiung then gives detailed and practical information on the ingredient’s manufacture, appearance and taste, before explaining how to buy, store and use it He concludes with a recipe or two.
The more important the ingredient, the more pages are dedicated to it.The success of such books depends on whether the reader trusts the author. There is no doubt that Deh-Ta Hsiung (an Oxford man) has researched his subject well. It is filled with an extraordinary amount of information on everything from sweet red bean paste to black hair moss (a form of edible land-based algae).If you ever need to identify a weird-looking ingredient in a Chinese supermarket, this is your book. But it is also a good workaday cook book with plenty of dishes that use ordinary store cupboard ingredients. Part of Deh-Ta Hsiung’s appeal is that he writes practical recipes you might well cook for supper.He dispels the timidity of an inexperienced cook, yet he offers much to tempt a proficient chef.
Category: Travel
