Ski food: downhill all the way

Just back from a wonderful week's skiing in Meribel, in the French Alps. The one sour note: the food. Many of the bars and restaurants have been taken over and staffed by Brits and other English speakers and the food has suffered as a result.

Take one of the bars nearest to the slopes, the Cactus. It serves baked potatoes and beans. I don't go to France for that. And though it keeps some French dishes on the menu, they have been anglicised. A chevre chaud salad came with the cheapest goat's cheese on a slice of bullet hard bread. I asked for more dressing. It came in little tubs. Worse, a salade nicoise came without anchovies, with a very few fine slices of one of those tasteless stoned black olives I associate with British pizzas, a huge pile of dry tinned tuna, and green beans that burst to fill the mouth with cold liquid. They don't offer bread, either. And everything comes with sliced raw onion. The staff are charming and helpful, but that's little consolation.

We stayed in nearby Brides-les-Bains, where the food was pretty bad, too. At least they have some sort of excuse: most of the year they play host to people trying to lose weight, so food isn't a priority. A Logis de France meal had something wrong with every course, apart from the cheese, which tells you something. The blueberries on the fromage frais dessert were still frozen. I still don't know where the strand of tinsel I found in my mouth came from. An honourable exception in Brides-les-Bains was La Petite Auberge. I hope they can keep it up.

Pan-fried drizzle

I know it has been said before but there are some ghastly expressions used in food writing and restaurant reviewing. Personally I never find my appetite stimulated by hearing that something has been drizzled on, even by virgin olive oil. What's wrong with sprinkle? And anyone who plumps for something in a restaurant review immediately loses my attention. And what's all this professional cook stuff about steaming off, frying off and cooking off? Is it like concrete or industrial glue that has to be left to 'go off'? It turns me off. And what about pan-fried? Is that to distinguish it from, say, dustbin-fried? I know, I know, it's to distinguish it from deep-fried, maybe. But how much food is actually deep fried? Will you be deep-frying that calve's liver?

But the one that tops it all for me is the review that says: 'We washed it down with a nicely chilled rosé.' Ugh! If you have to wash food down it must be disgusting. Or maybe you forgot to chew.

Fear of frying

If I ever get round to publishing a cookery book, I may call it Fear of Frying. I suspect many people never learn to cook because they are afraid, and others give up after a disaster. But cooking is all about experience, and what is a disaster or two? You can always cook something else quickly if you mess up completely - or send out for a pizza. I would encourage people to cook for themselves first and above all to experiment. Follow recipes but don't be a slave to them. Use what's available or what you already have. There are no rules. You keep trying – and frying – until you get a feel for it.

To take a mundane example: beans on toast. What could go wrong? You burn the toast - you start again. You overheat the beans and they stick to the pan, you scrape them off and eat them. The next time you add some curry spices or herbs, the following time some cut-up sausage. You stir in some cheese. You stir in a different type of cheese. You add Worcester sauce, brown sauce, pickle, peppers. You experiment, you invent. Look in the cupboard, see what you've got. Imagine whether it goes together.

It's a little way from this to making your own cassoulet but you have to start somewhere.

Gudgeon sandwiches

A friend once claimed he took gudgeon sandwiches to school. That was a long time ago and it was pretty unusual even then. Now it seems that nobody eats freshwater fish in England any more, apart from trout and salmon, and that's mostly farmed. But as an occasional angler I was curious. Most old fishing books and cookery books have recipes for river fish, and not just pike. And freshwater fish are eaten in many parts of Europe.

There's a story going round that recent immigrants to England are joining fishing clubs to take expensively stocked carp from club lakes. Immigrants get blamed for everything and I'll bet it's an urban myth, but carp are a delicacy in many countries, from Europe to the far east. I fish in France occasionally and attitudes there are different. Pike and perch are seen as a sort of vermin that take trout and whenever they are caught they are killed. That attitude is nonsense of course, but at least they get eaten.

Anyway, I once caught a carp in France and decided to cook it. I gave it the full treatment with red wine, sweet herbs, garlic, carrots and so on, and it wasn't bad at all. (I have eaten carp in Japan and it was fantastic there).

Another time I caught a chub, which I know used to be eaten in England, though mainly by the poor (see Izaak Walton). Most fishing books say it is inedible, and it is true that it is full of tiny bones. But a big enough fish, upwards of 2lbs, say, is edible with a little care and quite tasty, given the red wine and garlic treatment.

Once when I caught a small chub and it died because the hook was swallowed too deep I felt it would be a shame to waste it (though it would still have provided a meal for a pike). After some thought I realised that it wasn't that different from a herring. So I left it in vinegar for a couple of days, with some peppercorns, a bay leaf and parsley, and other bits and pieces (in the fridge, of course) and it came out not unlike a soused herring. The very fine bones that would be murderous in a cooked fish soften up, and the texture of the flesh improves.

On a trout fishing trip with a neighbour, we caught nothing but perch. I dutifully returned mine and was scorned for putting a predator back into a trout stream. My neighbour took a bag full of perch home. Remembering another neighbour's story, that a perch as big as a hand is good eating, I took one home on an other occasion. I was amazed: it's a very tasty fish, as near to a sea fish in taste as any freshwater fish, with firm white flesh and large bones that are easy to remove. I have since put them on the barbecue, where their thick skins protect them from burning while they cook through. I have also cooked pike, and very good it was too. And of course it appears on many menus, as does Zander, another freshwater fish, which has been introduced to England, but which I don't suppose anyone eats here.

Occasionally in France I have seen bream and tench for sale in a market but I haven't had the courage to eat them yet.

And as for a gudgeon sandwich. Well, first catch your gudgeon.

Golden? Delicious? Oh yes they are

We hate Golden Delicious apples, don't we? Flabby, tasteless, mean little things. And what's more, they're French. But wait a minute. What are these beautiful, crisp, sweet, juicy apples that I have been finding recently at Sainsbury's? Golden Delicious, that's what. The trouble is we have been getting second rate ones. I have suspected this for a long time. I have had delicious Golden Delicious in France, where they are considered a dessert apple (not just an eater). The ones I found recently in England caught my eye because they were bigger than the ones I normally see. Secondly, they were ripe — a golden yellow, not surprisingly. Some even had a pinkish-red blush. Do we blame the French for holding back the best ones or our buyers for not picking the best? My money's on the latter.

There are some cracking Egremont Russets about at the moment, too. But why can't we have more varieties?

Practice makes half perfect

I once shared a flat with an amateur pianist. She was good. Plenty of money had been spent on her lessons. Most days she would play - practice would be the wrong word. It was nearly always the same piece, by Brahms. Off she would go at a terrific rate, impressing me with her technique every time. And just as certainly she would always stop at the same bar. It was like a horse refusing a particularly high fence. Round she would go, starting again at the beginning, only for her hands to refuse at the same bar until, like an unseated rider, she would retire hurt.

Well, we've all done it, we amateur musicians. We start at the beginning and play until we get to a difficult bit, stop, start again at the beginning and stop in precisely the same place. It might almost be the definition of an amateur: someone who knows the beginning of many pieces.

Supposing we get to the end of the first section. Well, that's a repeat, isn't it. So off we go again and maybe we reach the end of the first section again without major mishap. Now for the second section. But first, a cup of tea. Or the phone goes. Eventually we go come back to the guitar and what do we do? Just to get up speed, so to speak - and because we like it and it's familiar - we play the first part again. And then, with a bit of luck, we tackle the second section. But this does not have a repeat so if we have more time we go back to the beginning. The result? The first section has been practised many times and eventually we play it quite well. Could this be a piece to add to a small repertoire suitable for playing to friends? Then we start to dream, perhaps of playing at a small concert somewhere or a summer school. Yes, I'll press on with this piece. Get it just right. I'll just play through that first section again, to see If I really have got it down .… and so it goes on and the second part never gets proper practice.

What can be done about this? It is tempting to say: 'Practise the other bit, stupid.' But I know from years of playing that this does not work. We play, first and foremost, for fun, however much we dream.

The blindingly obvious answer is to divide the music into sections. The less obvious one is: start with the second section. In fact, start at the end. It sounds odd, but it works. Take a chunk from the end, from a phrase to a movement, and play it until you get it right. Then take the preceding chunk and work that through, and so on until you arrive at the beginning.Play though the piece once, by all means, to get the overall idea and structure. On second thoughts, don't. Each time you are tempted just to 'play it through', don't (remember the horse that always refuses the same fence). Surprisingly, this approach can make the structure of the piece clearer, too. We recognise the germ of an idea that is developed later, and can then give it full weight.

We play for fun, and if it is not fun we might as well not do it. But it is so much more fun if we make progress.

Do I stick to this? Do I hell. But I try, and it helps.

The vegetable police

I remember as a child watching my aunt cooking cabbage. Not only did she cook it to within an inch of its life, she also squeezed out the last of its liquid and drained it off. Like many a postwar cook, she was a stranger to butter, so this soggy pulp would be served disgusting and flavourless, quite a feat considering the house would be filled with a strong aroma.

Inevitably there was a backlash against this sort of vegetable cooking. Some time around the 60s or 70s, as I remember it, it became quite the thing to serve vegetables crispy. As in all backlashes, the pendulum swung too far and it was not unusual to be served vegetables that had been barely shown the boiling water. It is a problem that still plagues us today. Terrified of a visit from the vegetable police ('We have reason to believe you 'ave been serving floppy beans'. _ It's a fair cop, guv. I completely forgot about 'em while I was grating me truffles') restaurants have become terrified of being accused of overcooking their vegetables and as a consequence serve them little short of raw. But there is nothing worse than a green bean that needs a lot of chewing. For heaven's sake, if I wanted to eat raw veg, I would ask for them raw (or eat them at home. Why pay somebody not to cook?). Vegetables should have a little bite to them, but that's bite as in a little snappiness, not chewiness.

There is an answer to this, and the French, as usual, have it. It's called à point, and that means the exact moment the vegetable is cooked, and not one moment sooner or later. It is achieved by boiling or steaming the veg and it takes minutes, not seconds. The veg must be tested, because, for instance, carrots may be cut thinner or thicker, green beans may be more or less fine. A good clue is that the vegetable changes colour and aspect. Green beans, for example, lose some of their deep greenness, a shame, but necessary. When they are done they should yield to gentle pressure from a knife (or the front teeth) but still not be soggy or limp.

If they are overcooked, there is still a chance of rescue. Again, I look to France. Many cheap restaurants serve beans, for instance, that I think come from a tin. They are certainly not crisp and may be quite floppy. So what do they do? They fry a little shallot, or better still garlic, in butter, and reheat the beans - almost fry them, in fact. It's simple and delicious, and far better than the mouthful of chewy string that passes for beans in so many British restaurants.

While I'm talking about butter: what's wrong with adding a little to vegetables? The idea seems to terrify restaurants. There are people, it's true, who go funny at the sight of butter - the same people sometimes who stuff their faces with enormous puddings ('I'm a pudding person': 'I'm addicted to chocolate', and other such nonsense). But we are talking tiny amounts of butter. Here's the answer: when the vegetables are à point, you drain them, but not too hard, and add the tiniest knob of butter. You toss the veg around and if there is a little water left, all the better: it helps to spread the butter. You can coat an enormous amount of vegetables with a tiny amount of butter. And what does it do? It makes the vegetables tasty, and it stops them drying out. This is particularly important in the case of potatoes, especially if you are serving a meal to guests at home and not everything is ready at quite the same time (we're not professionals, for heaven's sake).

Talking of potatoes: a friend once asked me why my potatoes always tasted better than his. We discussed varieties and cooking methods and found no obvious difference. Then I mentioned the butter.