Swinbrook Village

Third time back - It is the best value around and the food is excellent.

Go there.

I found this on a blog. Makes me sick to think people are paid to monitor this whilst no one deals with it. This is a sick country and it doesn’t get any better jetting off to the caribbean twice a year.

It's amusing, sometimes, to look out of my window while I'm working (yes, I do work occasionally) to see the odd Golf turn up and park by the green. The lone female driver just sits in it until, a short while later, a company 'Beemer' rolls on behind and stops.

Out she pops, mobile still in hand, and walks to the passenger side, gets in without a word and off it drives. Sometimes she pecks him on the cheek across the Tiptronic and sometimes she doesn't even say a word.

They know each other well, haven't got a dog to walk, and you just wonder where their destination lies and what their business is about.

Some of you might be thinking 'an Al Khaeda cell, IN SWINBROOK!' but somehow my imagination conjours up a married fellow, overweight wife (3 children) and this foolhardy, lurvelost, woman who thinks he's going to leave the family and boat across the Med with her in eternal bliss. She's obviously not studied divorce settlements, yet.

Anyway, as long as they're happy and no one is hurt, I'm all for it. I may be wrong and she is the married one (more likely, really, as he is probably divorced already and that's why they're not in the Med) and she will have to get back to the ironing and drudgery that brought her to the village green in the first place.

They are not the only clandestine operation taking place here. I've even seen someone I knew (not biblically) from around here and she wasn't meeting her partner of many years, that's certain.

Running a blog can turn into quite a harrowing experience. Especially if, like me, you are a conspiracy theorist.

This is all down to webstats. I blame them entirely for putting me in a frame of mind that I really don't like at all.

Why, for example, is someone on an Apple Mac, on a Tiscali connection, looking up Gordon Pearce and Police at 7.35pm on a Friday evening and hitting on my site of all places?

It just makes you wonder, and that is something I hate doing at someone elses instigation as it distracts me from wondering about other, more profound, things like; do Quill's claws need cutting?

So, from now, I intend to ignore webstats and only access, analyse and use them in the event that I should need to. Otherwise, it could drive a reasonable person insane trying to work out the why's & wherefore's.

14 year old, pianist and composer, Jennifer Lin appearing at Ted Talks in 2004. If not all, just watch her improvising on 5 notes selected by Goldie Hawn (about 17 minutes in). Of course, we will live with the consolation that the UK produces Jade Goody.

I'm still hot under the collar over that vacuous programme, so many days later, that I have decided to run a competition (don't have a prize yet but it won't be dinner for 2 at the Fat Duck, for sure).

Your mission, should you wish to accept it, Jim, is to come up with a time-honoured dish prepared in the Blumenthal style.

To set you on your way I will begin with my culinary treat thought up, over lengthy experimentation, as a modern way to prepare an English classic dish that is irresistable to the masses. However, the masses will not get to enjoy my dish as it is plainly assured to be completely unaffordable.

RUSTIC BUTTERED TOAST

Constituents

A slice of white bread
Milk
Aerated Chocolate Mousse

Necessary equipment & ingredients

1. A Boeing aircraft (model irrelevant but must have Rolls Royce engines)
2. A Fork
3. A Ford V8 engine (Unused - cubic capacity is unimportant but please make sure no oil has been through it - try not to pay for it as it will be unusable later)
4. A trip to the furthest destination you can think of to bring back ears of a Wheat that no one has heard of
5. 3 weeks in a County Court
6. Milk from a Campania's buffalo (allow for a week in Italy, Airmed insurance and another week at the Radcliffe)
7. A friend you know who suffers from Thrush
8. 3 Kgs of Olives grown by someone in the Mediterranean who can't speak English but the interpreter says that he grows the tastiest Olives in the world
9. An additional 1 week at the Old Bailey
10. Ice from a part of Antarctica that no one has trod
11. A Kenwood Chef (out of the box - with a dough hook if you can't get the prop from the Peter Pan film set)
12. An Italian hand blown glass mixer bowl (the Kenwood white one doesn't look good enough)
13. The rear bumper (original) off a late 60's Austin Mini (be careful, they're sharp)
14. A fire retardent, heat resistant, fire department suit (maybe 3)
15. A Honda petrol driven generator
16. Salt extracted from a Bedouin's armpits (at the end of his travels)
17. An Ovum (egg, in laymans terms, get it where you like - my preference is Sainsbury's)
18. A room with temperature
19. Almost forgot - an unused vacuum cleaner and a plastic, matress sealing, vacuum bag with appropriate nozzle port

Additionally

A fat head
A fat ego

Let's get down to it

First the ice as it will be a long haul. Unless there are good skiing conditions and a chairlift close to your tent, send a friend.

Frostbite or not, he must ensure that the ice is freshly vacuum packed, so into the matress bag it goes, attached to the vacuum cleaner which will suck out all the air. The Honda generator provides the power for the vacuum (you wondered what that was for, didn't you?).

I cannot stress enough how important it is that the ice not be contaminated on its journey, especially when it lands here. English water won't do - even my dog won't touch it. Keep it in a safe superchilled environment until needed (Pirbright labs are available to anyone, I hear).

The salt is gathered by a friend's kid on gap year on his/hers travels through North Africa. You can cheat and use Dead Sea Salt but this entails 2 weeks at a Spa hotel (£3000) and mud baths. My way is cheaper but you won't get rid of your Psoriasis at the same time.

The Olives are my problem and I'd do anything to be by the Med in the company of people who don't speak English.

Take the Olives to the Old Bailey (by arrangement) and place them in a mortar on an irate Judge's bench. Ask him to aim for it and, if he obliges, by the end of the week you will have Oak smoked Olive oil.

The Wheat you gathered on that farflung trip will need harder attention and about 3 weeks of pounding by a District Judge in a lower Court. If things do not go as planned you'll have to issue a County Court Writ, represent yourself, and really rile him until the Wheat turns to fine Flour (I warn you, he will really resent your suntan from the trip you came back from and the fact that you can cook - you may lose the Case).

Milking anything is a professional's job so I would send Gordon Brown. In the event he is not available, I can recommend some women who pull anything provided their husbands don't find out.

We now have our Milk but some of it must be set aside for the production of the butter. This is where the V8 comes in. You will have to modify the engine so that the Milk, running through the fuel system and entering the cylinders, re-circulates until the critical moment.

After much trial and error, I found that 2300 RPM for 19 minutes produces the goods. You can now throw the engine away having milked the fuel system and produced a truly unique butter.

Place the butter in the mouth of any of the aforementioned women and it will maintain its consistency without melting. How long they can keep it there is purely down to practice so time is now of the essence.

You may now start defrosting the water at room temperature.

I don't need to tell you how to make bread (Google it, if you don't know how - just use the Kenwood and your friend's Yeast - the packet stuff isn't good enough).

Having baked your bread let it cool (again using the room with temperature) and then take an half inch slice from the centre and throw the rest away.

Don your flame retardent suit and head for the nearest airport with your slice of bread and the fork, not forgetting the Mini bumper and your friend with Thrush. I favour Gatwick as security there is not as it should be. If time is going to be a problem take the women with the butter in their mouths with you.

Here is where I can save you purchasing the additional 2 flame retardent suits. After experimentation and the loss of two friends, I have found that the definitive position to stand directly behind the jet exhaust of a Boeing is 139ft. Place your slice on the fork and hold it perpendicular to the jet flow above your head. You may have to follow the jet as it taxis away depending on whether it is being handled by the Captain or Co-pilot. The Captain taking longer to push off, generally, as he is busy chatting up a stewardess.

The first face of the slice (as we call it in the trade) will be ready when it turns the colour of a City banker's bit on the side. That will be somewhere between the shade of Kubota Mower Orange and a freshly combined hayfield. Turn the fork around and give the other face an equal dose of the exhaust.

If you're wondering why I recommend Rolls' engines over Pratt & Witney this is purely subjective as I have found that the fuel/air ratio in the Pratt's exhaust does not impart the richer toasted flavour that the English engines do.

Both faces now evenly toasted, place the slice on a clean part of the tarmac and guillotine the crusts off with the sharp edge of the Mini's bumper.

To finish off, have one of the ladies spit some butter onto one of the faces and serve on a bed of aerated chocolate (recipe can be found in Heston's book) formed for a rustic look into the shape of a cowpat.

Give it to your friend with Thrush as it's their Yeast and they deserve to try it first.

Note:
1. Anyone mad enough to try this recipe does so at their own risk.
2. Anyone who cannot afford Heston's book with the recipe for the aerated chocolate is welcome to pick up a substitute in the fields where I walk the dog.

Above all, enjoy this fatuous gastronomic experience.

Rustic Toast on a bed of Aerated Chocolate Mousse