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.