Lucy and Lucien

the Story of a Gosling

or: Tangled Thoughts on Christmas Dinner

The goose, plucked, unbutchered

Removing the neck and skin

Mummy's delicate technique for removing the feet

the housette, my bedroom, the dining room

Last night we had leftovers and champagne. I think it was my favourite of the Christmas meals. Ham, turkey and goose - with chutneys, pickles, salads. To start we had lentil soup made from the ham stock; to finish, a little Christmas pudding and some beautiful custard. I adore adore adore vanilla custard, cool, soothing, thickened with just the yolks of eggs and very lightly sweetened. It's ambrosial (if not "Ambrosia," I suppose you add). I mean it really is. Gran makes the Christmas pudding from the Eliza Acton recipe which contains no flour, only breadcrumbs for bulk and, far from being stodgy, it is light, aromatic and not in the least cloying. Particularly with custard...

Goose, I now really agree, is better cold. I've read it so often - in Elizabeth David, Matthew Fort among others - and thought No, you want it hot! On Christmas day you must have a whole, roasted bird, and it has to be goose! If only as a note to myself, for next year, I want to say that this is not so.

This year we had a turkey and a goose. I have come round to turkey. When I cooked Christmas dinner at college, we were mostly vegetarians (excepting me and Johan) so I didn't do meat. I didn't do any sort of replacement for it either. Trimmings are substantial enough not really to need the meat that's supposed to be their substance. Certainly they don't need something in pastry, something starchy and oily with nuts. Christmas dinner, let's face it, is the trimmings; otherwise it would just be roast dinner, roast dinner being a celebration of a glorious joint, or a beautiful bird, with a few veg to accompany it. If, for Christmas dinner, you have meat with your trimmings, turkey is not ostentatious. It sits there very happily and its light poultry flavour and thirsty flesh soaks up gravy and this partnership with bread sauce is a holy trinity you can't better. The potatoes, roasted in goose fat so as to be light but rich, are more easily stomached with a less fat bird than the goose itself.

Tentatively I'm saying I hardly wanted the goose. At least with the main course. For starter, I stuffed the goose's neck with its liver, some sausagemeat, some pheasant. It was fabulous, without doubt the best bit of the meal. I'll write the ingredients down in a minute, again if only as a note to myself for next year because I'll do it again. Gamey, richly and strongly flavoured, like one of those French pâtés you can't stop eating, and served with a few pickles, this really got me going for the main course. But then the goose felt a bit superfluous. Turkey alone would have been fine.

And then the goose, quite cold, was so good on Boxing Day. For next year, I'm thinking: do the goose neck as a starter, have turkey for the main - the whole, roasted bird - and then have the goose cold on Boxing Day.

I also think that I'd like to do a confit of the goose legs as a second starter, and just roast the crown to have cold. I wanted to write that I stuffed a goose neck and took the idea unashamedly from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, but everyone wants their Christmas recipes to be their own, so I am a little ashamed. The confit of goose seemed a step too far. That's his idea, too, as a second starter for Christmas dinner. Also it means taking the legs off so you don't get the humble Dickensian glory of a whole, roast goose. But next year I think should be all about these goosey starters. I shouldn't worry about decimating the goose, preserving a wholeness I don't care about by the time I'm into the dinner's fourth bottle of claret (between us all). And anyway there's a turkey.

All I can say is I did make up the recipe for my goose neck stuffing, which was this: the goose liver, chopped; equal quantities of fat sausagemeat and minced pheasant; an onion and an apple softened in goose fat; a handful of breadcrumbs; a glass of red wine; an egg; two fat cloves of garlic, crushed; thyme, sage, salt, pepper. Mixed thoroughly and sewn into the neck, it all simmered very slowly, immersed in goose fat for just over an hour, being turned every ten minutes or so.

Before that we did canopés, which caused a genuine family feud, my uncle to take his wife and say Come on, we're leaving! I made a fennel seed loaf to toast and have with cured salmon, dill sauce, and lump fish roe. I made a pissaladière and cut it into canopé-sized squares. I opened a bottle of Champagne five minutes after everyone arrived. Uncle and Auntie found Skype more fascinating than all this, than talking to us, than taking part. We said how angry we were. Things exploded. Really, I shouldn't have cared less, as they were so impolite, as we took the champagne away into the kitchen, along with all the canopés, and had a marvellous time, cooking and scoffing, downing champagne. I mean: really fab.

Anyway - god isn't it all so dissipated? - having whittled on about the ins and outs of this and that, I think, after all, what I found most satisfying about this Christmas was the goose. I'm thinking again about how to cook it and when to serve it next year; but I'm certain I want to have one we've raised from the beginning again. It felt good knowing how it had been raised, even better to have all its bits: the giblets, the fat, the neck and its skin.

Early this year, out of seven goose eggs, one hatched, and we called the resulting gosling Lucy - Lucy Gosling, becoming Lucy Goosey. Lucy Gosling's fate was to be our Christmas lunch. Lucy Gosling would also be raised as a girl, when in fact she was a gander. Lucy was Lucien, said mum. I argued that this renaming, while hilarious, was gender-normative and took the anthropomorphism too far, but I went along with it. Lucien Goosien was lunch.

Lucy

oysters, fish stew, Dermot O'Leary, Saki

EATING NOTES

Fishy Fishy, East Street, Brighton

Dermot O'Leary opened a Restaurant in Brighton earlier this year. It's called Fishy Fishy. I've been meaning to go for a while, because Brighton is surprisingly ill-provided with good fish restaurants - with any fish restaurants, for that matter. This is a rarity and a must. Loch Fyne, my beloved Loch Fyne, which does so wonderfully in Cambridge, failed miserably here and closed down last year. I never went.

Apparently, the "all round cheery chappie" (that's Dermot) "lives for fish." He has always wanted to open a restaurant, says the website, and as he had two mates in the industry, that's what he did. Cool. Brighton is a good location. It has the happy-go-lucky culture for a Dermot-styled restaurant. This could be successful. This could be more than a celebrity whim.

"We love fish at Fishy Fishy," the website goes on in its blurb, "we love it so much we named it twice." Yes, why did you do that? Fishy always sounds a bit off to me, rotten and bodily. How should good fish smell? Fishy? No, it should smell, aromatically, of the sea. As for bodily - well, I'm sure we all have artistic imaginations. Fishy Fishy really isn't a very good name, annoying and inappropriate twice over.

Still, Fishy Fishy it is, and Fishy Fishy is on East Street, at the bottom of Western Road, so that as you trot round the corner the seafront hives hopefully into view. The derelict Laura Ashley with its mdf boards in the windows does, too, but no matter; there's the seafront and the prospect of a fishy lunch! The Brighton seafront should be lined with fish restaurants. There should be stalls selling jellied eel and oysters, brasseries, bistros, fish and chip shops. There should be Michelin starred places in imitation of Rick Stein, bustling and buzzing. But there aren't, so I don't want to be arch about Fishy Fishy. It's just that its ethos invites arch and I can't help that.

Apart from anything, it's in a lovely, old Grade II listed building. I feel warmly towards it just for that. There's something I find very affirming about old buildings being opened up and eaten and lived and celebrated in.

There's conservatory seating at the front of the restaurant. I'm sure it would be a pleasantly airy, summery place to eat when the weather is right. When I walk in, it's lunchtime. I go through the conservatory glass door, up some steps, but the inner door to the restaurant is locked. I twist the handle, then the other handle. I push the door a little desperately. Nope, it's locked. I can see people eating inside so I wave. Nothing. Embarrassed, I turn away and make my way down the steps. Only now, the door opens and a man says: "Can I help you, sir?"

I'm bad at tables for one anyway. I still find eating alone terribly embarrassing. I'm determined I shouldn't be embarrassed about it but I am. Don't look down on me. I'm not lonely, I just want a good lunch. I'm not paying to be patronised. The drama of the locked door - awkward little events like this I do find very affecting and dramatic; again, I wish I didn't but I do - really doesn't help things.

I get taken upstairs to a little table. The interior is breezy, and, like Derm, it's cheery in here. There are shades of light blue, there are white slats, dark oak and light oak, and splashes of pine. There are mismatching mirrors on the wall and big sash windows which let in wedges of bright seaside light.

There is a very nice waiter serving me who is gratifyingly gangly and stammers telling me the specials. I warm to him and say No, thank you, but I order four oysters and a glass of sparkling wine. The wine is Ridgeview Cavendish and comes from the Ridgeview vineyard in Ditchling, a village five miles away from home and one that so perfectly fits the description sleepy you wouldn't believe it unless you'd been there. It's a fact that all the inhabitants of Ditchling go to church on Sunday mornings. The chalky hills that sweep round the religious little place bless it with the right conditions for the cultivation of Champagne-style grapes. Beatific, you feel. This wine, £5 for a 125ml flute, is very fine. It's quite punchy, but it has complexity with its punch. It makes me think of caremelised pears, vanilla, too, but that's not to say there's not good dry acidity; gooseberries, you'd say, or something like that, with a fragrant, sour hit. Really good.

It should be really good with the oysters, but I'm afraid the oysters themselves are not really very good at all. I'm thinking about the little ones, with their fine sheeny shells, I had in Covent Garden last week, tangy and beguiling, and I'm comparing them to these ones, Channel rock oysters, which are obese, awkward in their thick shells, and, frankly, bland. I'm glad of the tobasco on the table alongside the plate of ice on its stand. They need it. They taste faintly briney, and of the sea, but then you'd be worried if they didn't.

Next, I pass over "Fishy Fishy fish pie" and "Fishy Fishy fish and chips" and settle on "Brightonbaisse". (I'm not saying anything.) The idea of Brightonbaisse is that it's like the Provençal original, but using locally-sourced and in-season fish. This mantra is their constitution. The menu proudly claims that they will not serve lobster at this time of year because it's not the right time for it in the channel. Neither will they import fish like tuna from abroad. We have perfectly good alternatives in Britain.

My Brightonbaisse comes with lots of mussels and a couple of scallops. They're lovely, excellently cooked, and there're no complaints. The white fish is in quite small, flakey chunks so it's rather hard to discern what it is, but it's okay, if a little dry. The sauce has a good, deep flavour; you know there have been shells and bones, onions, garlic and fennel involved in its production. But it lacks an edge of saffron and doesn't quite avoid reminding you of Heinz tomato soup. That's mean of me though; I mop up the juice with pieces of baguette and enjoy it very much. I'd just like a little more finesse, some nicely filleted fish, a couple of turned potatoes.

But maybe that's not in the spirit of the place. It's a happy-go-lucky, cheery brasserie, after all, not the place for finessing sauces and turning potatoes. In an interview the Fishy Fishy website links you to, originally published in Waitrose Food Illustrated, the interviewer talks to Dermot about his cooking. He's not bad, he says. He's experimental. "At the moment, I'm adding smoked paprika to a lot of things... Actually, I've yet to find a recipe for which it's wrong to add it; no doubt it'll happen soon."

I didn't order dessert.

I got the bill: about £25, so that's alright, I suppose. I'd have liked better for my money though, really, a little more quality, a little less groan. But having said that, Fishy Fishy does not overcharge, its prices are fair. The cooking could just be more careful.

This is a bit of an afterthought. I was supposed to be reading Saki because I'm doing my dissertation on it, but at lunch I was reading Saki because I wanted to look nonchalant. You can see the frightful green cover in the photo. I came across this in of one of the Clovis stories. I really did, by the way, I'm not just quoting something I read the other day because I have the urge to. Not that it really matters, but to me it was part of my lunch. Sitting there in Fishy Fishy, I'd rather have been sitting in Saki.

"To think of all the adorable things there are to eat in the world, and then [there are people who] go through life munching sawdust and being proud of it."

"They're like the flagellants of the Middle Ages, who went about mortifying themselves."

"They had some excuse," said Clovis. "They did it to save their immortal souls, didn't they? You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed."

Clovis relapsed for a few golden moments into intimacies with a succession of rapidly disappearing oysters.

"I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," he resumed presently. "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. Do you like my new waistcoat? I'm wearing it for the first time tonight."

oysters, latkes, Stollen, Messiah

Went to see Messiah at the Coliseum yesterday. I'm such a baby about opera. I'm a baby anyway, but about opera I really am one. I have to force myself to enjoy it, tell myself to just keep watching. And stop fidgeting! At least for the first act or so I do. Apart from anything the theatre's all so plush and lulling the desire to sleep overwhelms me, however awake I make sure I am, with caffeine, before I go. After a couple of intervals and as many g&ts though, I feel perky, wide-eyed and mesmerised by the whole experience and come out thinking, It was wonderful really, wasn't it? (Okay, so I'm not cut out to be a critic.) It was just the same last night, and being Messiah it had the Christmassy feel you'd expect Messiah would have, so all in all I felt quite warmly about it, despite its whimsical staging, which, though appealing visually and sometimes conceptually, I couldn't quite buy into.

You have to force yourself to enjoy Covent Garden, too, sometimes, when it's shoved full to the brim with gimmicky stalls full of crap and swarming tourists with ample cash to buy (into) it. I say swarming tourists like I can say it, but I can't, only affect an urbanity over them I don't regrettably have. As I walked to the station from home, endured the train that trundles through Sussex and Surrey and scrapes noisily through South London, I thought how much I'd love to live in town, how tired I am of being outside, how symbolic this journey will be. I came up a bit early so I could wander round, do Covent Garden and the National Gallery for a little bit before heading to the theatre, be the tourist.

There's been a lot of t(w)alk flying round on Twitter about @youngandfoodish's latkes - the Jewish potato cakes somewhere between a rösti and a fritter - being sold on one of several market stalls the ROH/Ben's Cookies end of Covent Garden. Well, I had to have one, not having had one before, but an oyster stall got in my way and I had to have one of those too (or two, or three, or four).

The oysters, gnarly little rocks, were displayed in lovely abundance on a drift of crushed ice with pieces of lemon around, which I found very attractive. I asked for three and a glass of champagne. The lady serving me shucked them deftly; you felt awe and envy watching her do it. An effortless twist of the knife and off comes the top shell, then a swift dip and scrape under the meat to release it, a knowing prod and, with a light seashell clatter, onto the plate. They were really excellent, these oysters; plump meats with a good salty tang, ozoney fragrance and lots of juice to splash a little spoonful of shallot vinegar in.

Champagne came in one of those plastic flutes with the detachable bases we were using on the punts in Cambridge in the summer and I'm rather fond of them for that reason. The wine wasn't bad at all: good and dry. The day was cold, raw and steely, and the icy champagne felt congruous with it. You think you should have something warming when it's dreary, but there was a satisfaction, I suddenly felt, in drinking something that embodied, rather than countered, the feel of the day.

Next latkes: this one came with sour cream and salmon roe, like beautiful gems. Fish-eggs like pomegranate seeds. £3.50 rather than £1.50 for a plain latke or one with sour cream. The potato cake itself was delicious - well-textured but soft inside, crisp and browned outside; a story of potato and onion. They're traditional around Hanukkah, as far as I understand, and so distinctively Jewish. They feel quite eastern European (the sour cream combo); but also quite a lot like the rårakor I'm only familiar with because of the Swedes in my family. I loved it, I have to say, and the way that potato with its subtle edge of allium goes so well with the sour cream and the roe, which bursts its seasalt juice into the mix as you eat it. I mean: really lovely.

To finish, a piece of stollen. I'm annoyed I've forgotten the name this bakery stall was trading under but when I was there yesterday it was the one next to Young and Foodish and their latkes. Oh well. They were selling beautiful almond fruit tarts I was very tempted by, lovely loaves and pastries, but I went for stollen. Keep it Christmassy. No little round of marzipan in the middle, which I like to be there, really, but it had good chunks of mixed peel (why does everyone hate it?) and dried fruit, a buttery crumb and an oddly satisfying, slightly crisp icing, so I'm not complaining. I was going to have a glass of mulled wine with it but the men on the stall looked so dodgy I thought I'd just have coffee. It was probably a wise decision anyway; I'm sure the mulled wine would've been quite vile. It's nice, sometimes, mulled wine, if you're in the mood for something unnecessarily spiced and sweet, and sometimes I am, but really it's a whim of yuletide, when everything has to be spiced and sweet just because it does.

Another glass of champagne would do very well.

chicken curry, cinnamon-heavy

Usually when I get coldy/fluey I want to eat and I want to eat a lot. But this time hasn't been the same. I could hardly stomach a couple of spoonfuls of porridge this morning and a Weetabix at lunchtime (yes, a whole Weetabix) was a bit of a struggle.

I slept all afternoon and woke up feeling empty rather than hungry; I don't know if you know the feeling.

If I was going to eat something, that something would have to be fortifying, appropriate to the mood of a dreary day rather than my appetite. I'd make a chicken curry - nothing strong, harsh, fresh; but something mellow, gently spiced and gently warming.

Along with the chilli, cumin, coriander seed in my masala, I used, for their genial, aromatic qualities, plenty of cinnamon (a good four-inch stick is enough, or you're in medicine territory - which, in a way, would'nt be wholly inappropriate) and cardamom (half a dozen pods). I toasted the spices and crushed them in a pestle and mortar, still hot and smoking from the pan. I added this to softened onions, now tender and translucent in their butter, along with a couple of chopped tomatoes. I cooked it down for ten minutes. Now I added the chicken - thighs with the bones intact - water to cover, and simmered everything together very slowly, with seasoning, and a handful of ground almonds to thicken the sauce.

I had the curry with rice - spiced with cumin, mustard seed and cinnamon - and a salad of grated carrots.

I didn't eat much of it, but it was just the thing.

excess

or, Too Many Things

Is a man travelling light who travels with six varieties of pumpkin?

I've just got home from Cambridge. Coming home from Cambridge is a task not to be underestimated but my trouble is that every term I underestimate it. "It's not going to take me six hours to pack, this time, and - really, really - I do not need a pasta machine." Going up at the end of September, I tried to be judicious when it came to books. I'd only take the ones I couldn't easily get from the Queens' or English libraries and which I would definitely read/use/refer to at least each week. The largest genre in this category was cookery. I had all of Elizabeth David (any self-respecting food-person would do). I had Simon Hopkinson and I had Richard Olney (again). I had Nigella and Hugh (embarassing). I had Rick Stein (I like him). By the end of the term I'd acquired Constance Spry (my friend Alex thought I'd be interested and I am). I'd printed eighteenth century books - by writers like Ann Cook and Richard Bradley - off Eighteenth Century Collections Online (historical interest and my, er, dissertation). The inventory goes on. But you can glean that I had a lot of cookbooks and that I now have even more.

And I credit myself; I referred to them daily.

Besides those I had a few books of poetical/literary reference (where would I be without Terry Eagleton?). I had books with pictures of the Bloomsbury group in (for a would-be dissertation). I had the Symposium and I had James Baldwin (any self-respecting lit-gay would do). I've come home with two different books entitled "Camp" and others with titles like "Another Kind of Love".

My book buying is not only too frequent, it's too much. It has become, like my dissertation on camp, a parody of me.

What's more, my fruit and ornament buying, if not parodic, have become ridiculous. This is partly due to the fact that this term the two became one. Today I had two sacks of fruit to bring home: one of oranges and satsumas and nuts I'd strewn around the room with what I imagined was abandon; the other full of apples and pumpkins I'd ornamented my mantelpiece with for the seasonal colour, and the feeling of laying up stores.

I get huffy with my mum when she looks with ironical eyes at my term's acquisitions. I protest that this time I travelled light - I didn't bring half the stuff I could've - so shut up yeah. It cost me. I've suffered a term without my complete Dickens.

But I hated myself today when, my stuff crammed unceremoniously into the boot of mum's estate, the tires looked set to burst. The weight of my possessions became very real. The image said: you have too many things. But I feel like Cambridge is a place for excess, for pumpkins and marble pestle and mortars and things if they take your fancy. I mention marble pestle and mortars because the one I got with the Divertimenti voucher Johan gave me for my birthday I just adore. Victoria laughed at it when she saw it a couple of days ago. "It's funny the things people get a thrill from," she said. "If someone gave that to me, I'd be, what the fuck?" But I do adore it. I think it's fabulous because it's too much, unnecessary and extremely so - but I also feel that in itself it's a quite beautiful object. Does that make any difference? I don't know.

I just have to hope I haven't falsely associated the idea of having things with significance.

Eight or nine weeks at university isn't travelling. It is, I sometimes like to fancy, living, and I don't want to live my weeks too lightly.

Having said that, I concede it's a shame there was no room in the car for my Christmas tree.

truffle omelette, young Bordeaux

Packing Up

It's my last night in Cambridge before the Christmas vacation. I should be packing up to go home, but I'm not. I've had a truffle omelette and two little glasses of very young Bordeaux. I wasn't good wine, but it went well with the omelette, satisfying for its uncomplicatedness. The truffle I used didn't have a truffle's proper hit. I don't know where the grocer got it from. You flounder for a description of what a truffle's proper hit should be, but funky earth comes close, I think. Its pungent fragrance has, at least, something of sex and of the ground.

Three eggs forked vigorously for half a minute in a hot pan of foaming butter, and the omelette - save its grating of truffle into the still unset centre and good-humoured forward roll onto a warm plate - was done. Good eggs and good butter made up for the bland fungus but I wished it had been better.

With it, I had a salad of walnuts, stilton and little gem lettuce, its leaves torn off into boats, laid attractively on a dish, dressed with olive oil, lemon, a good few flakes of salt: receptacles for the cheese and walnuts.

Toasting the nuts first brings out their fragrance and it's an excellent one, both with truffle and Stilton's salt tang.

affection/eating

When I feel fragile I need a hug or something. Affection is something physical becoming something sentimental. Eating is affection.

I don't like the phrase comfort food.

This morning is grey. I drank strong tea, one sugar. I had a digestive biscuit with it. Then I had porridge with cinnamon in.

beef, Haut-Médoc

or, Too Much

Sometimes relatives are darlings. Altogether I've been sent about hundred pounds so I can "enjoy the Christmas parties" and "have a fab time with my friends" - I hope I do. I now have a little pile of neatly handwritten letters on my desk I'll send tomorrow which say how grateful I am. I am grateful.

I wasn't planning on spending quite that much on Christmas parties; but now, I probably shall. This evening, I walked with Johan to New Hall, where he's in a play at the moment. On the way back I stopped in the Cambridge Wine Merchant on Bridge Street. It's refreshing to go there; I feel I know by rote the King's Parade stocklist of claret. Feeling flushed, I thought I'd get a good bottle. I chose an Haut-Médoc: "Chateau D'Avensan, 2005", £11, so not too extrav. It has some Petit Verdot in the blend. A bit of Petit Verdot or Cabernet Franc seems to make for a more interesting wine than just CabSauv/Merlot - but I don't know.

When I got back I cooked a bit of fillet steak I got from Sainsbury's. What a treat, I thought; and a good thing to eat on my own, especially as J doesn't care for beef. For the sauce I used Elizabeth David's simple little recipe in French Provincial Cooking for champignons à la crème (a few sliced mushrooms and shallots, white wine, a bit of cream and parsley - good on its own with little triangles of fried bread, she says). But the beef wasn't good. So much for Taste the Difference.

Nonetheless the wine's delicious. I made a tomato salad, too; it's good given it's made with winter tomatoes. I'm dying for some baguette to dip in the dressing, now thinned with the clear, vibrant juice of the tomatoes, but I've resolved to stay off bread for a bit. The tomatoes from the market, incidentally, sold on their vines and grown in Britain, are so vastly superior to the Dutch supermarket ones I feel almost belligerent about it. But the avocado, which I bought from Saino's, with a just little vinaigrette - a scrap of garlic crushed in salt, red wine vinegar and good olive oil - was ripe and gorgeous. Perhaps I should have just had a couple of avs, the salad, and a few glasses of the wine. Apart from anything, you feel ED might have approved.

I like the feel of restraint when you have a dinner of that kind. This evening's meal, with its dire beef, and avocado before and square of chocolate after gave me that inexplicable sense of completeness and satisfaction you get from, I think, the simplicity of having "a couple of avs" or "just an omelette" for supper. There's nothing to stuff yourself with; and this has been a term of too much bread and pasta, things I always feel compelled to supply in abundance. You feel pleasantly full but not groaning. My meal's components were rich in themselves, but not stodgy. I like that kind of eating. I feel, perhaps wrongly, that it's quite French, and think, The French appreciate food but aren't fat. I'm worried about eating today; you can probably tell.

There's half a bottle of wine left. I'm not going to drink it. Too much bread and pasta, perhaps - but almost certainly too much wine. For the last week I've been on a bottle a night. It's too much.

mackerel, bass, free oysters

EATING NOTES

Loch Fyne, Trumpington St, Cambridge

Loch Fyne for dinner. It was Victoria's twenty-first birthday.

I've been to LF several times this term and am still not sick of it: its fresh fish counter as you walk in, delicious smell of shellfish, butter and garlic, low oak beams and scrubbed wooden tables. The atmosphere it achieves is really excellent - without wishing to be gushing - and it's not in small part down to very lovely staff. They seemed unfazed by a group of twenty students traipsing in late for the booking, red-faced from the cold, and chatting rowdily. We'd marched from Jesus Lane to Trumpington Street in various states of dress. Lots of high heels; me in my normal slippers.

From the specials I had smoked mackerel pate with onion marmelade. The fish was flaked in a little dish with, I imagine, a very little butter and cream. Although a little dry it was pleasantly salt and retained a good deep flavour of smoked-fish. It needed the marmalade, being sweet and astringent.

Then sea bass - another special. A good-sized fillet was very carefully cooked - crisp, roasted skin, soft, just-set flesh; it lay on good mash (not too restaurant-sickly with butter). There was a slightly mean spoonful of rocket pesto - but it was highly-seasoned and punchy with garlic. The specials I've ordered before at Loch Fyne have been hit and miss. I remember a whole roasted bream/dourade with provencal vegetables - tomatoes, peppers, little shallots - which was rustic but, you felt, in that way that signifies careless. The bass however was accomplished and quite delicious.

A friend of Victoria's ordered a dozen oysters but felt suddenly very sick - why order oysters? - and left half of them. I wasn't complaining. A couple of the others tried them but , offering them to me, said I'd enjoy them more. Which was lovely, I thought. And I did enjoy them - a lot.

Fwoof.

I have just spent Michaelmas term at Cambridge being food editor for TCS, The Cambridge Student. Each week I wrote something I hoped was good, but it often wasn't.

I want to carry on writing about food - so I suppose I shall. Here goes.