I finally got out to the restaurant garden today to do some serious weeding. Have been conscious of the need to do so for some while now, but somehow it just never made it quite high enough on my to do list. Feeling virtuous that I finally got there, and will go back over in the next couple of days to do the front part. In a little of a dilemma with that, cos want to strip out all the rosemary which has got woody and horrible, but know that the kitchen regularly pick it, and we don't have another one over at the house, since ours up and died mysteriously earlier this year.

So not sure yet whether form is going to win out over function...

A customer drove into the carpark while I was sitting in the garden - her daughter had picked some oranges for us. Their orchard is one of the oldest in the Bay and I'm not sure if thats a factor in why the oranges are particullary good, or whether its the variety - but I accepted gleefully, and we'll be making them into orange pickle and hopefully I'll get to candy some of them as well.

The orange pickle is made to accompany our pate, and we serve it that way in the restaurant and sell them as 2 seperate products in the Somerset at Home lineup. I overheard Rick tell someone yesterday who was delving into the fridge looking for pate to buy, that its our biggest selling product. Not sure why its developed such a cult status - I do understand the licorice icecream, but I have to say the pate has taken me by surprise, but its a pleasant surprise none the less.

We pickle the oranges, skin and all - and it is happening less in the restaurant that when we go to clear someones plate, they have methodically picked out and eaten the orange flesh and left the skin. I'm not sure why we are so conditioned into thinking that citrus skin is inedible, but alot of people do have that mindset, and it gives me real pleasure when I get told as I did on Tuesday, that the gentleman in question had discovered that the whole thing was part of the dish and that the skin added a whole new flavour dimension. Exactly!

Thats why we candy the peel for baking, or zest it to add flavour to so many dishes- over the years our cookschools have been responsible for alot of people going out and buying zesters, becos its amazing how many have never seen one before. And in the classes Rick always uses one - in fact I can't think of a series we've done where a zester hasn't come out for an orange or lemon or lime. Its just one of those quintessential flavourings that we use all the time.

Mind you, we are all different. A cookschool attendee from a few weeks back, who had just eaten for the first time in the restaurant the previous week, commented on the amount of orange on our menu which seemed disproportionate to him becos he doesn't like it. A quick check of the menu revealed that theres actually not a huge amount when you study the menu in its entirety but it does crop up in the entrees with the pate, the mains with the duck, and its an orange reduction sauce that we serve with the chocolate fondant pudding, and then straight orange juice with the licorice icecream, so it does most definitely feature. And always curious to be reminded that not everyone likes it as much as we do...

We are well into the current cookschool series - and I'm pleased to see that alot of the attendees are people who, like us, are incorporating more vegetarian style food into their diet, but wouldn't actually call themselves vegetarians. Its simply a nice way of eating, becos its moved on from the somewhat grey and earnest approach of the early seventies.

I was a little concerned that by labelling the classes Vegetarian at the outset, that we would be limiting their appeal. But that doesn't appear to be the case. Our regular attendees are still there, plus we've got a few people coming who I don't think have been to classes before, but who I know to be vegetarian.

We mention during the classes our most favoured sources of ideas, which are Denis Cotter from Cafe Paradiso, a totally vegetarian restaurant in Cork, and Yotam Ottolenghi , from the Ottolenghi cafes in London,  both of whom have written some great cookbooks. And my favourite internet resource is 101 cookbooks, a lady in San Francisco who sends out a regular vegetarian recipe, and writes in a delightfully lyrical fashion. Always good to be inspired.

And the internet is a fantastic resource. I've just taken the dogs down below for their evening run, and in my meandering around, contemplated the fig trees which are striped bare of all leaves. They need pruning, but I'm not sure where to start - so have just been doing a bit of internet research as you do, and now have a better idea of what I should be doing having watched a couple of short videos, or at least I think I do! Another job for the weekend...

But as great as the internet is, I still need books. They comfort and please me in a way that a computor screen can never compensate for - so as much as I appreciate having the extraordinary range of information at my fingertips that the world wide web gives me access too (especially given I'm such an impatient tart who, when she has a query usually doesn't want to wait to have it answered., waiting is my idea of purgatory,) I still relish settling down with a good book, be it a cookbook or otherwise.

But time now to head over to the restaurant. We're not busy tonite, so I'm probably be up in the roof trying to locate boxes of tasting glasses to see if we have the 240 I need for the Jane Skilton tasting. I know we're close but just not sure how close....

Something to smile at on my way to make my early morning coffee....love the bemused smiles on peoples faces!

Matt, one of our kitchen team has just come over to house with a container of strawberry plants that his mother promised me. Kim had split her plants and ended up with a number surplus, and offered them to me.

Delighted to be the recipient of such healthy looking plants and will take them down to one of the raised gardens later today to plant them out.

She has however, given me a whole heap more than I needed, and has suggested that if I know anyone who would like some, then to pass them on, and being me, I will most definitely mention it to likely candidates in the restaurant tonite.

And it did occur to me that if anyone reading this in the next couple of days would like some, then flick me an email,  and I'll save some for you- but I don't suspect they'll be around for long...

David Lebovitz is an American pastry chef, ex of the great Chez Panisse, who now resides in Paris and has written a number of cookbooks, with a definite focus on icecream.

He also writes a regular blog which I get and enjoy reading, becos of his take on living in Paris ( something I dream of doing one day!), and his general take on the French and food.

This particular blog should be compulsory reading for all young qualified chefs who are looking to extend their training overseas. The French understand that cooking is a craft that takes many years to master, and that to learn from someone who is a master at what they do, is in fact an honour. That is why the top European restaurants can afford to have almost as many chefs in their kitchens as they have diners in the restaurant, becos they are not paying the 'stagnaries' - those who have come to do a stage and learn.

As I've pontificated about before, in previous blogs, we have a problem with the attitude of some of the young, recent graduates of the polytech training system here in NZ, who seem to think that having completed the tertiary side of things, that they are now officially a chef.

It would be laughable if some of the repercussions of that attitude that we've observed over the years,  hadn't been so costly  in terms of people employing inexperienced chefs, who can't deliver consistently good food, and then wondering why their investment is going backwards in terms of turnover.

The good ones know that they still have lots to learn - and the holy grail for most is to head for Europe - and this blog pointedly lays out what they should be bearing in mind.

We are not so busy tonite, and I have come back over to the house, having done the initial meet and greet. For reasons I don't fully understand I decided to wear shoes with heels tonite, not my usual flat ones, and while they looked good, their practicalities, especially out the back on the walk to the wine chiller, was seriously dubious.  But sometimes you just do put form ahead of function, just becos the urge takes you!

However, I couldn't have done it on a busier nite, where I needed to pull my weight more...

I got away with it tonite, but have come back over to the house remembering why I have a pair of shoes that I have worn practically ever day for the last couple of years becos they are so eminently comfortable and practical, both of which are important characteristics when you're on your feet as much as I am on a busy nite.

The house feels preternaturally quiet - we're had both daughters home for awhile,  and with their departure, things feel very peaceful,  which is not all bad! So have come home to my computor, to update my reading, without the noise of the TV in the background - although I suspect Rick won't be far away and will be turning on the Tour...

Amazing to think that in a couple of years we might be there somewhere at some stage, watching those guys flash past, but a little more water has to flow under the bridge before that becomes definite.

All of which is a preample for what I wanted to link too, being a blog written by John Thorne, who just happens to be my all time favourite food writer - I have most of the books he's published and I adore his languid and unhyped style.

This link is to a blog that he writes occasionally  - which I check in on periodically to see what he's written. I hope you enjoy his gentle and total esoteric manner. This is food writing as it should be!

We are heading up to Auckland for the day ( and evening - it would be a shame  not to fit a dinner in as well!) later this week, primarily ( apart from the lunch and dinner!) to meet up with Jean-Christophe at Maison Vauron, so as to get help with the French wines that I need to buy for the Jane Skilton tasting that we have coming up in a few weeks.

My knowledge of French wines, is only broadbased at best - and faced with a sea of french labels, I wouldn't really know where to begin, so I am looking forward to the guidance.

By happy chance a website I check out regularly had this delightful short video, of the tale of Two French Winemakers. I have also just started reading the book 'Liquid Memory', written by the same director responsible for the movie Mondovino a few years back. The book is about terroir and why place and personality matters in the crafting of wine, and how, if we are not careful we are going to end up with global and boring brands, that have nothing to distinguish them.

I found it fascinating therefore to listen to the sommalier at the end of this video, discribe the quite different personalites of the 2 wine makers featured, thru a tasting that he did of their wines. Made all the more exceptional by the fact he had never met either of the 2 men, but he could taste the nuance of their personalities in the flavours of their wines.

So terroir still rules I think, and wouldn't I love to have a palate as defined and calibrated as that gentlemans.....

I'm sort of watching the Magic in their final, but they're currently 10 goals down, and I can't quite bear to sit in front of the TV, so have retreated to my computor with one ear cocked to the commentary...

We did a private cookschool today for a local accounting firm, a really nice group of people, who, when I left the restaurant, after coffee had been served,  looked very relaxed, and happy to while away a Sunday afternoon in situ.

Am about to head back over to the restaurant for an hour or so becos unlike the last couple of Sundays, we are reasonably  busy - which I suspect has everything to do with the fact that the All Blacks played the Springboks last nite, and  meant we were only half full, which is not how I like Saturday nites. Oh well - hopefully tonite will go someway toward compensating...

Just flicking thru my inbox and Chris has sent me this link which shows how to open a bottle of wine if you happen to get caught out without a wine knive. The french remain resistant to the idea of screw cap closures on wine, preferring the romance and history of corks, but the reality now in NZ is that as much as 95% of the wine that we open in the restaurant is  screwcap, negating the need for any wine knives.

I have to say that the approach shown in this short video is novel, though perhaps not one I'd be inclined to use on a delicate old wine - but then again, if you really, really needed to get the top off, who knows....

This link has absolutely nothing to do with the restaurant world, but have just come over to the house after working a busy lunch, and clearing emails, and encountered this email that I'd been sent.

The laughing that I did watching it, was something I definitely wanted to share... so clever, succinct and devastating. Well - at least I think so!

I ordered this book thru Amazon a couple of weeks back, and while I waited for the parcel to duly arrive on my doorstep, I happened to read a number of reviews of it, in the various magazines that I get. Most of which were lukewarm at best, and all of which focused on the liberal sprinkling of swear words that Mr Bourdain brings to bear in his narrative.

And in doing so, having now read the book, I feel they somewhat missed the whole point.

Tony Bourdain is a complex character - previously a line cook at an average ( by his summation) bistro in New York, having followed a checqued and unspectacular career path, from one restaurant to another, while acquiring a heroin and cocaine habit, and some other less than pretty social habits along the way.

The publication of his previous book on that life ' Kitchen Confidential", catapulted him into the public eye, and onto TV. He is now well known as the chef who will travel anywhere and eat anything.

But again he is so much more than that. He has watched the evolution of the restaurant scene in the States, and his commentary on the star chefs, and the media commentators - people who he has actually got to know personally,  who thrive thru an almost unhealthy symbiosis with each other is truly, wickedly honest. Spectacularly so in fact. I have got used to the fact the in the blogshere, people seem willing to make vicous and inane comments, protected I guess, by a certain degree of anonymitiy. This man has no such privacy, and is still not at all deterred from calling things exactly the way he sees them.

Personal vendetta's will find much to fester over in this book - but if his chapter on what a particular restaurant critic wrote about the New Orleans restaurant a year on from them being devastated by the hurricane, is even only partially an unbiased account, then the man really is as much a douchebag as Tony claims.  Actually he calls him much worse...

His description of the evolution, and deterioration, of the Food Network, matches exactly my own mutterings, but he has more inside knowledge than I do as to why that has happened. And I love the way he hates anything that is pretenscious or false. Doesn't just hate it, but describes it in such devastating prose, as to completely and utterly demolish it all.

Food critics, wannabe chefs, food network bureaucrats, those types who like to tell as what we should and shouldn't be doing, anything and everything that is mediocre he slams. Totally and utterly annihilates actually.

And I loved it! I loved it becos I get so weary of the amount of selfdellusionment that is out there - the people who haven't done the hard yards, who think they are entitled to sit in judgement; the dangerous dependency that is created by the need for restaurant businesses to win awards to gain visibility. That process empowers the wrong sort of people - its creates a whole seperate universe of ego driven superficiality that I hate, loathe and detest, and to have this man pontificate at length about just why he finds it all abhorrant was indeed delightful for me to read.

He is angry, constantly, and about many things ( must be hell to live with!), but there is much about the approach to food in modern America that bothers him - and he acknowledges that fact saying that ' its more an affliction than the expression of any high minded ideals". But so much makes him angry becos he sees so much in the food world that is blatently wrong and dishonest.

And then he allocates a whole chapter to a man who spends 8 hours every day filleting the various fish ( 700kg ) a day, that come whole to Le Bernardin restaurant in New York. As one of the best restaurants in America, it means that the standards are incredibly high and Tony's description of standing watching this incredibly skilled chef slice and work his way thru all that fish, while ensuring that every single piece of fish will live up to the standard and reputation that the name of the restaurant demands.

That is what Tony Bourdain most respects. Someone with skill, and craft and discipline. Someone who wants to be the very best they can be everyday, and who cares about how, what they do fits with everyone else in the kitchen. Someone who's sense of pride in doing a job well, is more important than their ego. Someone who is real.

Alot of other people comment on the restaurant industry - not many of them have the credentials to do so, but Tony Bourdain most definitely does in my book. Even with all the opportunities that have come his way with the fame and the fortune, he has never forgotten, as Kenny Shopsin so wisely put it '...the pitfalls of loosing your self doubt". His ego has never taken over - and I think he's fabulous!!

We are 2/3rds of the way thru Wine Options for this year, and our team won last nite, whereas the week previous, we'd been bottom of the table - proving perhaps that guesswork and serendipity has rather alot to do with the outcome. Rather than being incredibly clever as we'd prefer to believe!

We're going to have to create an almost perfect scoring record next week to come out on top overall, and with the chances of that happening being almost zilch, I'm resigned to a mid field  placing. The quality of wines we've been tasting in the options this year have been pretty much superb, which has made for an interesting experience, and that is more important to me than where we place.

Wine is a huge subject, which I doubt I will ever be able to profess to be an expert on, and with Wine Options each year, I get to taste wines that wouldn't ordinarily fall in my orbit, and for that reason I consider it a really worthwhile opportunity, becos I'm getting to learn.

Today I got to learn about a whole new subject, becos of the generosity of a customer who I'd approached to help me on the subject of craft beers. I've been meaning for some time to relook at our list of beers in the restaurant, and to move it more towards some of the craft beers that are been made in NZ now.  But not really enjoying the flavour of hops especially, I really didn't know where to start.

I must have mentioned my dilemma at a cookschool for some reason ( discussions at cookschools can go in all sorts of unpredictable directions...), and one of the attendees, mentioned that her husband was an afficiando of beer, and would be delighted to advise.

So today Rick and I went out to Phil's, and taken down to his exqusite cellar ( or man cave as he calls it), where he took us thru an intense tasting session of 6 examples of some of the beers available: a pilsener, wheat beer, Pale ale, bitter ale, porter, and then a vintage ale, which is one aged in barrels.

I fully expected to be a spectator only and to write notes while the men tasted - but Phil poured and had gone to a lot of trouble on our behalf, so in the interests of politeness, I sipped, a pilsener to start, and surprised myself by finding the taste not unpleasant.

As we worked our way thru the various styles, Phil explained what created the differences, and warned about over chilling killing flavour, and UV lights in fridges creating a 'skunky' taste in beers in clear or green bottles.

It was truly fascinating. His passion for the subject was truly infexious, and his knowledge comprehensive. I didn't ask one question that he wasn't able to answer, and I learnt more about beer in the space of 2 hours than I'd ever previously been aware off. My personal favourite was the porter - a Harringtons Wobbly Boot, no less. The malt has been roasted to give more complex flavours, and it was coffee that hit me immediately on first sip. Not at all what I expected to discover in a glass of beer.

Rick thought the Coopers Vintage Ale was the best - but maybe I'm too new to the flavours of beer to appreciate the complexities of that one.

I have read of beer and food pairings happening in restaurants, and never quite been able to get my head around the concept - but now having tasted the variation between the different styles of beer, and the amazing flavours that they have, it is making more sense to me, and I think would be a fascinating exercise. One that Phil has said that he and a brewer friend would be keen  to lead the discussion on.

When we were in Nelson last year, Rick asked for a Steinlager Pure at Hopgoods as his predinner drink, to be told that they only stocked local beer. I was impressed at their sazz. He tried something they recommended, and enjoyed it - something that if they had stocked Steinlager, he wouldn't have got to experience.

I don't think I'll be quite that brave upfront, now that we're going to rejig the beer listings at Somerset though. I will keep on Heineken and Steinlage Pure for now, becos those are what the suits drink, but all the rest of the beers will be craft - from breweries like Tuatara, Epic, Harringtons and Crouchers.

Maybe next Monday, when the guys arrive for Wine Options, we hand them an Epic Pale Ale rather than a Heineken, and then stand back to gauge the reaction. Hmmm....

And we will see how it goes....