Parsley Soup: An Indubitable Hangover Cure

Don’t ask me why, but I find this soup makes a great hangover cure. Perhaps it’s because I associate it with the time I lived in London and would restore my flagging spirits and woollen head when I eventually rose on a Sunday afternoon, all a quiver with shakes and punched kidneys, and a liver a French farmer would be proud of, a dreadful thirst for milk, and vague recollections of the night before and the night before that, and disturbingly-vivid dreams of being captured by cannibals, and shrunken heads, and then I would wander out, and as the pub singer goes have a beer for breakfast and one more for dessert, and then head down to a pie and mash shop in Peckham, and fill myself with mashed potato.

Not the hideously-rich, sauce-like pomme puree stuff Marco Pierre White and a young, podgy Gordon Ramsay would knock out in those Harveys days, with the steaming potatoes straight into the Robot with a hod’s worth of butter and hot milk, and whizzed and topped up with more milk until it came out like pale custard.

But simple mashed spuds with just a suggestion of margarine and a cup of the river water they were cooked in. And soon, but never quite soon enough, everything would be alright with the world, and then I’d have that awful, kick-in-the-stomach start that tomorrow was Monday and I’d have to be somewhere dreadful like Hastings, with a notebook in my hand, braving the sneers and gob from the fag chuffers outside the magistrates’ court.

But it wasn’t the mashed potatoes and the dreadfully cheap and mean, but strangely acceptable Sweeney Todd pies, but the sauce, or liquor, that accompanied them. Made from, or at least claimed to have been made from, the Thames water that the eels were boiled in, with onions and pepper and bay leaves, and a garden of parsley so that there were more green specks than grey. I used to love mixing that parsley liquor with the mash and then covering the whole lot with a clattering of white pepper.

Anyway, they say food reminds you of hangovers, or vice versa. And I can positively posit that this very simple soup really does the job when it comes to banishing the evil-spirits aftermath of the morning after, when you wake feverishly with the taste of rum and lime juice in your throat, and a mint you know didn’t come from toothpaste, as you wake crumpled on the floor, the wood burner long gone out, and your face as ashen as the mound that remains of last night’s logs, and a Robben Island cold in your bones, your head rattling as though filled with dried acorns, and knowing you forgot to eat again.

And despite the hunger, there is very little you can face but parsley and potatoes, and certainly not last night’s hardly-touched kebab sealed with lamb-fat candle wax as it surely will be if the trails down your jacket are anything to go by, and then realising the pie and mash shop closed long ago, and besides you live in the country now and the nearest is a 39-mile drive.

And as you brave opening your eyes once again, and mentally scan the churlishly-empty pantry, and a dim hope ascends with bitter juice humming of rum, as you realise you’ve just about got enough ingredients to make a steaming pot of parsley soup. And an hour or so later, you’re very glad you did as you metal-scrape the last with bread, your spirits restored and last night’s bottles cleared, and a smugness that you remembered to put the bin out for once after tripping over next door’s cat, the apple missing like an England seamer, and then remember that the next day you won’t have to be in Hastings, but somewhere far, far worse.

PARSLEY SOUP

(Serves 2 with seconds)

2 medium onions

3 medium potatoes

Knob of butter

3 garlic cloves

One massive bunch of parsley

One litre of boiling water

Salt, pepper

Natural yoghurt

Cayenne pepper

Chop the onions  and add to a saucepan with the butter, and fry over a medium flame, stirring from time to time. Peel and dice the potatoes and add to the pan. Chop the garlic and add to the pan. Fry for a few minutes until the onions have softened.

Wash the parsley well in a tub of water to ensure any grit sinks to the bottom, then slice off the stalks and chop them finely. Add to the pan and fry for another minute or so. Boil a kettle and add about one litre of water to the pan.

Simmer until the potatoes can be pierced easily with a knife - about 15 minutes, depending on the flame and type of potatoes and what altitude you’re cooking at, and other immeasurables.

Chop the rest of the parsley and put in the pot and simmer for a minute, then blitz in a liquidiser or use one of those blender sticks, or just attack the soup with a potato masher. Season to taste with salt and pepper. It goes very well with a dollop of yoghurt and a generous dusting of cayenne pepper, if your stomach can handle it.

Marco Pierre White Walks Out Of Radio Interview After Being 'Bullied And Insulted'

So what do we know about the cooking genius and dummy-spitting toy hurler Marco Pierre White? He’s a monster to live with and has a terrible temper, according to at least one of his three ex-wives. He was a notorious bully to his kitchen staff when he actually bothered to cook in his own restaurants, and once made Gordon Ramsay cry (I suppose you can’t blame him for the latter).

He peddles stock cubes for Knorr and regularly appears in adverts proclaiming that adding a meaty crumble to a meal will lift it out of a slough of saporific drudgery - words that would have choked the younger version of White when he won his three Michelin stars, working 18-hour days behind the stove, fuelled by strong espressos, red Marlboros, and regular delves into his ingredient drawer.

And it seems that like all bullying celebrity chefs with monstrous egos - Ramsay, James Martin, Gary Rhodes, and the seemingly mild-mannered, rosy-cheeked Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall etc - he is also very good at dishing it out, but painfully sensitive when it comes to tasting his own medicine.

As happened when White walked out of a radio interview in Australia yesterday after being questioned - in his words “bullied” - about his three ex-wives and his cooking skills. The final straw came during the Triple M Adelaide breakfast show when one of the presenters dubbed the TV chef a “rude prick”.

Dale ‘Louie’ Lewis and co-hosts Warren ‘Warrie’ Tredrea, Jon 'Blakey' Blake, and Ali ‘Ali’ Carle were banned by the Austereo-owned radio station, still cowering from the royal prank call scandal, from playing the interview this morning, but were allowed to discuss the controversial exchange, pre-recorded yesterday.

Lewis, a former Sydney Swans AFL player, incurred the celebrity chef’s wrath after raising the question of White's three failed marriages, asking whether his “first wives” had been “dismissed, for want of a better word, cos they can't cook, or didn't like your cooking?” Lewis then quipped: “Cos if you're the rude prick you come across on TV...I wouldn't be there long either.”

White tried to play down the marriage dig, but took offence at the language. He ended the interview, telling Lewis there was “no need for rudeness” before accepting the presenter's apology. “Rudeness is not having fun when it is at the expense of another person. You're a very rude man. And I hope your mother's not listening to this show today because she would not be proud of her son,” he said.

White told reporters later he was deeply offended by the remarks.

“To be honest, I was a bit off balance when it was said to me and I thought why should people get away with this? Why should they be allowed to bully people? It's why I said what I said. What's very sad is this is a radio show where children could be listening and to use that sort of language in front of children is wholly inappropriate.”

If it was for comic purposes, White said “it was scurrilous behaviour.” He added: “This is my third time in Australia in eight months and this is the first time anyone has shown me rudeness or disrespect. I just excused myself and left.”

He added: “To expose listeners and especially children to that kind of language leaves a lot to be desired. I'm not saying I've been a good boy all my life but you get to a stage in your life where you've just got to be corrected. It's called growing up.”

I’m sure the many chefs who suffered in White’s “SAS-style” kitchens, under a constant tyranny of personal abuse and savage aggression, will be amused to hear him complain of being “bullied” and the victim of bad language. Especially the poor chef who was once forced to stand in the corridor all night with his trousers down, telling every waitress that walked past that he had asmall penis. Talk about a case of pot kettle White.

TRANSCRIPT:

DALE LEWIS: Hey mate, married three times, was (sic) the first wives dismissed, for want of a better word, cos they can't cook, or didn't like your cooking? Is that an issue with them?

(Female host giggles)

MARCO: I just think of myself as being a lucky man that I found three women who wanted to marry me.

(More laughing by hosts)

LEWIS: Yeah, cos if you're the rude prick you come across on TV, I wouldn't be there long either. That's just me surmising what I've seen on TV

ALI CARLE: Marco, I wouldn't stand for that

MARCO: All you're doing is giving me insight into you as a person.

LEWIS: (laughing) Now he's analysing me

CARLE: (laughing) He's reading you

LEWIS: He can cook and he's a psychoanalyst

CARLE: Like a book, Marco. Now, you said

MARCO: There's no need for rudeness

LEWIS: No, no, no it was just

MARCO: I think you should say good morning to me, and good bye, because one, I take offense to being called that. I haven't shown you disrespect, I haven't been rude to you. I don't like being called that word. I'm very sorry.

LEWIS: Well, I apologise Marco. I was just trying to have some fun.

MARCO: Your apology is accepted. Rudeness is not having fun when it is at the expense of another person. You're a very rude man. And I hope your mother's not listening to this show today because she would not be proud of her son. Have a nice day, bye bye.

How To Make The Perfect Stock

I’ve been cheffing in restaurants for the past few days trying to get my knife skills back up to speed before I head off on my cooking trip to California.

Although I’ve agreed not to write anything about the place itself (other than it’s a vastly overpriced restaurant in the Chilterns) I thought I’d share some of the techniques I’ve been (relearning) with you.

Some of you will already know all of this already, especially as there are some far more skilled chefs than me who read this blog, but I thought I’d post my thoughts anyway. Besides, isn’t that what blogs are for – to point out the bleeding obvious? And it’s always good to get other people’s slant on a cooking technique.

One of my main duties has been making the beef, chicken, fish and vegetable stocks, and reducing them for the demi-glace sauces, so I thought I’d start with these...

In my opinion, making stocks (not just because I’ve been doing it) is one of the most important jobs in the kitchen (obviously depending on what type of cuisine you’re cooking – in my case English and French).

Once you’ve got some good quality beef, chicken, vegetable or fish stocks you can make all manner of sauces, meat glazes, and jellies very easily. Popping in a few tablespoons of demi-glace to the cooking juices after pan-frying a steak or chop will completely transform the dish, and take your cooking from the perfectly acceptable to the sublime.

Indeed, the success of many famous dishes depends very much on the quality and richness of the stock. But don’t use cubes – they give an unpleasant taste, despite what Marco Pierre White is paid to say. And never buy the pre-made stocks you find on supermarket shelves – they cost a fortune and are as bland as Adrian Chiles.

Oh, and while we are on the subject of naffness, don’t use the words ‘jus’ or ‘nage’ when describing your offerings - they just sound pretentious, and belong solely in the domain of wanky gastropubs.

Every chef has a different method for making stocks, and the complexity varies enormously. Some Michelin-starred restaurants spend days making them, continually skimming, freezing and separating the fat so only an intense, perfectly clear liquid remains (the turbot stock at the Fat Duck takes a week to make for instance, which is why I was so fearful of dropping it when running to and from the prep room). Whereas other restaurants pad out the stock with cubes, gravy mixes, and other poisonous compounds and thicken it with corn flour.

Here is the best method for making a basic veal stock as far as I’m concerned. It will make a couple of litres of well-flavoured stock, or if reduced further, a small tub of rich demi-glace.

4kg of veal bones
1kg stewing or braising beef or veal
3 large or 6 small onions
1 leek
1 large carrot
4 celery stalks
1 garlic head
2 bay leaves
10 black peppercorns
2 tbsps tomato puree
1 star anise
1 bunch of thyme
4 juniper berries
1 bottle red wine

Place the bones in a tray and roast them for about an hour until well-browned. Slice the onions in half and blacken the cut-side over a gas flame until brown – this will release a lovely caramel flavour. Chop the rest of the mirepoix (leek, carrot and celery) into a rough dice and fry gently in a little vegetable oil in a stockpot or large pan.

When the vegetables are soft add the bones. Pour some boiling water into the tray the bones were roasted in to release the sticky brown bits of intensely-flavoured meat and juices stuck to the bottom. Pour into the stockpot, with about four litres of water.

Bring to the boil and skim a couple of times to clear the stock. Cut the garlic head in half horizontally so that all the cloves are exposed. Add this with the rest of the ingredients to the pot and simmer slowly for a few hours, skimming when necessary.

You can add trimmings to the pot – and in kitchens this is a good way of using left-overs, but be very careful what you put in. Never put in vegetables that will make the liquid cloudy - like potatoes, greens or broccoli stalks. But tomato trimmings, mushroom stalks, herbs and the like are all good additions.

Some chefs I’ve worked for never used fish heads when making fish stock, claiming it made it cloudy, but I’ve never found this, and most chefs use the heads, but cut out the gills with scissors because they have a bitter taste. Also never add the liver when adding giblets to chicken or turkey stock as this has the same result.

Other stocks can be made in the same way, by substituting pork bones, chicken carcasses, lamb bones, pheasant and venison bones for game stock etc. depending on the type you’re making. If you want a white chicken stock use uncooked chicken, if you want a brown chicken stock, roast the bones before you put them in, throwing in some onion skins for extra colour.

Then strain the liquid through a fine-meshed sieve, and return to the pan and reduce by a third. Either store in the fridge or freezer as stock to be used in casseroles and soups etc or reduce it by half again to make a demi-glace or meat glaze. This will set to a firm jelly when cool.

For a good meat glaze, you need to get the liquid boiled down so that it becomes syrupy and will coat the back of a spoon. You can then add it to the cooking juices and flavour it with say rosemary if you’re making a sauce for lamb, thyme for chicken, sage for pork, medlar jelly for venison, whisky for grouse and so on. And the glaze freezes well so you can make batches at a time. It’s a good idea to freeze it in an ice-cube tray so you can just pop a couple out when you need them.

That's it. Easy. So come on! Tell me your method...

Old Cheffing Wounds Never Heal

My favourite anecdote about Gordon Ramsay (no, not the one about him being cautioned for gross indecency in a Tube station toilet) was when he was working at Michel Roux Snr’s The Waterside Inn in Bray.

Ramsay was on soufflé duty. And Roux told him to keep the oven door shut, and never to take a peak. But nerves got the better of him, and with a quick scan of the kitchen, he looked in. His soufflés were happily rising and golden. Then an hour later he was strolling past the pass thinking he’d got away with it, when he was kicked by a furious Roux.

“It was so well-timed and accurate, the toe of his shoe actually went up my arse,” remembers Ramsay, still wincing at the memory.

Now the venerated three-Michelin-starred French chef has given him another arse-kicking 20 years on, saying Ramsay’s “not better than anyone else” and people were “mad” to rate him.

“When you've got 5,000 or 10,000 people paying to see him do a demo, I'm thinking the world is mad,” he said. “I find [his behaviour] appalling; totally unacceptable. He never behaved like that when he was with us. He was about 22 or 24 and a docile young man.

“I think it's the media world that made him like that, to use the F-word every minute. Now he is enjoying it, it's bad news.”

And to twist the knife further, the 69-year-old heaped praise on Ramsay’s bitter rival Marco Pierre White.

He added: “Marco was one of ours as well...he is a very good cook, one of the best I've seen. He's got palate, flair — another scale to Ramsay.”

Friends of Ramsay, 43, immediately dismissed the comments as “sour grapes”.

But there are clearly a lot of tart gripes out there. It may have been going on for some time - his fall from grace perhaps finally confirmed by the ‘lesbian pig’ bust-up Down Under (or was it a badly-managed PR stunt as rumoured in the more cynical corners of the Australian media?) – but there appears to be no shortage of people ready to give Ramsay a good drubbing, however long the queue.

The latest is Shaun Hill, who recently won a Michelin star at The Walnut Tree, a Welsh restaurant that was once a favourite among food writers, but went through a distinctly shabby phase, and eventually went bust in 2007 after being featured on Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

In a recent interview, he slammed Ramsay for thinking he “could come in for five minutes” and turn the place around, and attacked his new TV series - which features Ramsay getting away from it all by stomping around India with only a film crew for company - as mainly consisting of footage of “him taking his top off”.

Hill moaned about the way the then owner Francesco Mattoli was made to look on the show. He claims Mattoli came across as a “crook and an idiot”, and had no idea the programme was going to be called Kitchen Nightmares. For some reason, Mattoli was expecting some kind of “Alan Titchmarsh, Ground Force-style ” show. (You can’t really see Ramsay presenting a gardening programme can you? Hopping up and down with his hand round his chin shouting at the flowers, and calling the radishes “lazy fuckers”.)

He might be doing his best to laugh it off. But attacks like these from well-respected chefs couldn’t come at a worse time for Ramsay, whose fortunes are sinking faster than an over-egged soufflé, culminating in him losing a Michelin star at Claridges. Insiders say the bosses are furious, and have demanded Ramsay spend as much “face time” in the kitchen as possible to regain the Precious.

But Ramsay’s clearly not going to go mental. He’s done his time – 20 years at the stove and all that. "With Gordon's other restaurant commitments and TV work,” his spokesman sniffed, “it's impossible for him to be there every night."

Every night?

In fact, perhaps it’s time for Ramsay to forget about the 2011 Michelin guide to Great Britain and Ireland and Cape Town and Melbourne and West Hollywood et al and just concentrate on cashing in on his name while he still has one. Rather than arrogantly pointing out how busy he is all the time, and how many restaurants he’s got, and how Posh likes her sprouts, every time someone asks tiresome questions about why he’s not behind the stove of an expensive restaurant with his name above the door, he should take a leaf out of Pierre White’s book.

There’s a lot to ridicule the stock cube-botherer for, not least his ludicrous fondness for speaking like Yoda. Wearing a tea towel round his head like some strange, demented Rambo. But at least he’s upfront about it.

In an interview with a local paper for the launch of his new restaurant, The Swan in Aughton, Lancashire, he said: “I’ll never cook there, I don’t cook anymore – I’ve retired.

“I’ll be going up around six times a year for a couple of days at a time.”

Defending his decision not to be more hands-on, he waved one hand and added: “Forget let us not, I’m not charging £150 to £200 per head just because my name’s above the door.

“My ambition is to take good eating to the nation at affordable prices. I wouldn’t go up north and start charging £150 per head and not be there – that’s the flaw in that model.

“When you’re paying that amount of money, you would expect the man to be behind the stove.”

He possibly be referring to who could, hmm?

But to be fair to Ramsay, this whole celebrity chef phenomenon has become a complete farce. They’re all on the jus train. Using mind-bending Jedi logic, Pierre White argues that by not charging three Michelin star prices, he’s not cashing in on his stars and legendary cooking skills, and it’s just a humble £30 a head gastro pub, sorry ‘restaurant that serves pints’, selling British classics like shepherd’s pie and fish and chips.

And yet the very first line on The Swan’s classy-looking website says: “As the first British Chef to be awarded 3 Michelin Stars and the youngest Chef in the world to receive them, Marco Pierre White is a name synonymous with quality and a great dining experience.”

I know what you’re thinking. There’s nothing worse than false modesty.

Floyd: In Brief, It's Absolute Rubbish

Keith Floyd's boozy memoirs have been published today, two days after family and friends celebrated his colourful life at a funeral in Bristol, the city where he ran a mini-chain of restaurants and launched his TV cooking career.

His autobiography, Stirred But Not Shaken, deals with his battle with the bottle, his four failed marriages, and a whole host of anecdotes befitting a man who made cheffing the new rock and roll, and changed cooking programmes for ever.

But even though the flamboyant cad had an encyclopaedic knowledge of gastronomy, and once said cooking was the only thing he lived for, he has some stark advice for anyone thinking of following in his footsteps, and taking up the knives.

"Don't ever go into the restaurant business," he says. "It kills marriages, it kills relationships, and it kills life. It kills everything. And I, the man with four ex-wives, should know."

Sadly, Floyd never actually saw the book. He died of a heart attack four days before it was printed.

Writer James Steen, who also penned Marco Pierre White’s fantastic biog White Slave, spent a year with the legendary gastronaut ghosting the book, and recalls how difficult it was at times because of the wine-guzzling cook's aversion to "self-analysis".

"On TV we all saw him as this jolly character, jumping around, funny, witty, and we were all very envious of him,” he said.

"But actually away from the cameras, his personal life was quite tragic in many respects.

"It was a culmination of things; first of all there was the drink, but he was also an insomniac, and a worrier.

"So when he would go away filming, he would be worrying about the next day, and how everything would work out, and how he would get it right.

"And this bottle of whisky - the dreaded Johnnie Walker - really became a crutch for him - it became something he felt helped him through the night and into the next day.

"In the book he admits he was an alcoholic, and he talks about drinking and how it all started...and how it finally took its toll, and he's very open in that respect.

"But he was extremely proud that he had passed on knowledge to his viewers, and that people had derived happiness from watching his programmes."

Steen said the proudest moment of Floyd's life was when he was filming Floyd On France, considered by some to be the best cooking programme ever made.

He said the cook's favourite scene was when he was scolded by an "old dragon" French housewife for ruining a dish of piperade.

Unlike the celebrity chefs Floyd's success spawned, the eccentric entertainer insisted on keeping the criticism in.

He even revels in it (imagine Rhodes or Ramsay doing the same) and translates the drubbing for viewers: "Apparently, she doesn't want to taste it because the way I cooked it was so off-putting that she knows it is going to be awful...

"There's not enough salt, not enough pepper...in brief, it's absolute rubbish."




Steen added: "What wasn't seen afterwards was at the end of that particular scene, David Pritchard (the show's producer) shouted 'that's a rap' and she thought they'd shouted 'that's a rat'.

"And she yelled ' there's not a rat in my kitchen!'"

But even though Floyd was a complete natural on camera, he was a simple cook at heart, and often wondered whether he would have been happier without the fame; a local celebrity bashing out bistro dishes for arty-types in Bristol, but nothing more.

He found the media world pretentious and filled with reprehensible heels ready to jump ship whenever a celebrity’s kudos was about to fade. If you’ve read his first autobiography Floyd In The Soup, it is filled with references to the gruel of motorway service station diets, empty hotel rooms, and endless TV and radio interviews. ‘THEY’ made me get up at 5am etc, is a regular refrain.

Floyd’s almost schizophrenic relationship with TV, as his two halves battled between Floydie, the hard-drinking Oliver Reed of the kitchen that everyone loved, and the simple soul who just wanted to go fishing with his mates, is one of the main themes that came out during Steen’s weeks of taped interviews.

He added: "One thing that comes across in the book is he actually found it all very difficult - he didn't really like telly people, and saw them as a different breed.

"There is a classic line where he says 'I loved David (Pritchard) but I hated him too'. He felt that way about a lot of people who came into his life."

Floyd was cremated in a coffin made from banana leaves on Wednesday. But the celebrity chefs his success spawned were noticeable by their absence.

Despite being quick to fill TV screens and newspapers with tributes to the bow-tied roue over the past two weeks, none of them made it to say a final thank you to the man who’d made them millions.

Floyd’s only two real cheffing friends were both busy. Jean Christophe Novelli was attending a hospice in Hertfordshire (so you can’t knock him for that), and Marco Pierre White had “work commitments”, according to his spokeswoman.

Rick Stein, the only other real sleb chef he could have called a friend, was in Australia, doing interviews, ironically enough, about the pressures of fame and mistresses. Even ‘comedian’ Jim Davidson flew in from Dubai for the funeral. And he’s a right c***.

Floyd To Be Cremated In Banana Leaves

On my last blog, I wrote about the confusion over Keith Floyd's funeral arrangements. Now it turns out he is to be cremated in a banana leaf coffin in Bristol, the city where he ran a string of restaurants and launched his cooking career.

A public memorial service will take place at Ashton Court Mansion at 11.30am this Wednesday before a private service for family at Canford Crematorium.

The humanist funeral is being organised by Floyd's partner Celia Martin, who the wine-quaffing raconteur had been living with as he battled bowel cancer.

Ms Martin has chosen a handmade woven coffin made from banana leaves for the eccentric entertainer - because of its environmentally friendly nature, and partly as a humorous nod to his love of cooking with leaves.

She said: "It will be a sad day. I'm still trying to organise the funeral and it's taking up all my time. But that's probably quite a useful thing isn't it - to take one's mind off things.

"But goodness knows how one will feel after the funeral - I think there will be a sudden drop when everything goes quiet."

She added: "There have been some wonderful tributes to him. The answer phone has been clogged with messages from his old friends."

She said she had received support from Floyd's old friends Marco Pierre White and Jean Christophe Novelli in arranging the funeral.

"Marco was an enormously good friend of Keith's and he and Jean Christophe have been tremendously kind and good after Keith's death too. They have been very supportive," she added.

"The funeral's not going to be sombre, it's going to be musical.

"Keith was hugely fond of music; it played an important part in his life.

"And that's why there will be quite a few bits of music and some very nice tributes paid by some very good friends."

The music is being arranged by music producer and songwriter Bill Padley with the help of Floyd's son Patrick.

Ms Martin's local funeral directors, AG Down, are arranging the humanist service.

A spokesman for the firm said any donations should go to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and the Big Issue magazine.

Floyd passed away while watching TV at Ms Martin's home in Bridport, Dorset, two weeks ago. He was 65.

He had returned to Britain three weeks before to start chemotherapy for bowel cancer, and died just before the publication of his latest autobiography Stirred But Not Shaken.

The pair had celebrated Ms Martin's 65th birthday with a lunch of oysters, potted shrimps and partridge at celebrity chef Mark Hix's fish restaurant in nearby Lyme Regis.

It was to turn out to be the famous cook's last gourmet meal.

Floyd’s autobiography will be launched at Marco Pierre White's Knightsbridge restaurant Frankies on October 6, and will be a tribute of Floyd's life.

Confusion Over Keith Floyd's Funeral

Keith Floyd’s life was a chaotic affair, so perhaps it’s fitting that confusion surrounds his funeral too.

The TV cook parted with his long-term manager Stan Green some 15 month ago, and largely due to ill health, had no-one representing him when he passed away in Bridport, Dorset, last week.

Green says he has had a number of calls from Floyd’s old friends asking about the funeral, but no-one seems to know who is organising the arrangements - or even where or when the service is going to be.

“It’s all up in the air,” Green told Chef Sandwich. “No-one’s got a clue what’s going on. I don’t know if it’s going to be in Dorset or France for that matter.

“Keith was estranged from his children until recently, so I don’t know who’s going to be looking after the funeral. Like a lot of things in Keith’s life, there’s a lot of confusion.”

He said he had had no word from Floyd’s long-term friend Celia Martin, who Floyd had been staying with for the past few weeks, and had no idea whether she would be organising matters.

When we contacted AG Down, her local funeral directors in Bridport, they confirmed they were dealing with some of the arrangements, but that nothing had been decided yet.

“Nothing’s confirmed,” a spokeswoman said. “We don’t know when it’s going to be, but it probably won’t be this week.”

Floyd’s old friend Marco Pierre White said he had also not heard anything about the funeral.

Floyd had returned to Britain three weeks ago to start chemotherapy for bowel cancer, and died just before the publication of his latest autobiography Stirred But Not Shaken.

A book launch had been planned at Pierre White's Knightsbridge restaurant Frankies on October 6, and was due to go ahead as a celebration of Floyd's life.

But when we contacted White’s manager at the restaurant, he had few details. So it doesn’t even look like that’s been confirmed.

Well, I hope they do him proud, and send off the old wine-quaffing gastronaut in the spirit he deserves.

Keith Floyd: Stirred But Not Shaken

I wrote on this blog in July about the tragic news that Keith Floyd – one of my all-time heroes, and the man who inspired me to retrain as a chef - has cancer. The response rather surprised me. I had little idea of the level of feeling involved, and from all corners of the world.

The legendary TV cook had touched so many lives, it seemed, inspired so many people to get their hands dirty in the kitchen, and Delia aside, vanquished those dreary, sterile, studio-set cooking shows to hell in a chicken basket.

Of course, Floyd’s stardom led to the rise of twats like James Martin and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, not to mention Jamie Oliver and Gary Rhodes. But it was worth it, wasn’t it? Just for one show of the bow-tied roue on Floyd on Fish?

Well, the old soak doesn’t think so.

He has described how he would like to “napalm the lot of them”, and his battle against cancer has, if anything, intensified that bile.

But it’s not the Valentine Warners and Hairy Bikers who have really got him down.

It’s the genuinely-talented cooks who swapped kitchen life, and all its treasured pressures and camaraderie, for the plastic, pretentious world of television.

Floyd – clearly pained by the monster he has created - seems far more hurt by the celebrities who actually deserve the title ‘chef’, namely Marco Pierre White and his former protégé Gordon Ramsay.

Okay, Ramsay has wealth and fame far beyond what he would have got if he’d stayed in the kitchen, but what has it got him? His reputation is pretty much now in tatters.

Floyd, 65, savages Ramsay with the highest honour kitchen sledging can muster - the very Château d’Yquem of put-downs - and calls him a “c***”.

He claims that the likes of Ramsay and White have been "seduced" by TV glamour, insisting "television is crap", and that the "w*****s" on programmes do not understand the "language" of food.

“Some of them are terrific guys and some of them are absolute arseholes,” he adds. “Marco Pierre White is an extraordinarily good cook, but Gordon Ramsay, who used to be the pastry chef for Marco, has gone on a celebrity zig-zag, which is why I call them c****.”



He makes the comments, appropriately enough, in a Channel 4 documentary to be shown tomorrow (Monday) night called Keith Meets Keith.

The other Keith is that oh-so-hell-raising actor Keith Allen, in comparison to who the scourge of the celebrity chef is but a flea-bite on the arm of a tattooed giant.

Why they got the Sheriff of Nottingham and not Johnny Vegas to present the show, I have no idea. The roly-poly comic seems to genuinely love Floyd, and often sits for hours watching re-runs with a can in his hand. “It’s like drinking with an old friend,” he once said.

But Allen it is, and after getting nowhere with Floyd’s former agent Stan Green, he eventually tracks down a frail-looking, walking stick-aided Floyd at his farmhouse in rural France.

Fags and booze are to the fore, and Floyd dismisses the modern generation of TV gastronauts as “a bunch of arseholes”.

“The ill-conceived idea that all these w*****s who turn up on TV are chefs is a failure to understand the language. People who cook are cooks, a chef is a head of a restaurant kitchen,” he says.

Although Floyd only mentions Ramsay, pictures are flashed up of the Hairy Bikers, Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein (who his ex-producer David Pritchard formed into a poetry-spilling ‘mini-me’ when Floyd suffered his own zig-zag.)

Floyd tells of his money problems and says his rambling farmhouse in Avignon is being re-possessed by his fourth ex-wife Tess, 42.

Allen, father of pop star Lily Allen, and general all-round gobshite, asks Floyd: “Do you get foxes here?”

Floyd replies: “No, but I’m going to.”

The pair are filmed drunkenly singing, very badly, at a hotel piano, but Floyd is no arse and soon sees Allen for what he is.

The next day over lunch, Floyd tells Allen to “shut up” before being helped away “to go on a sofa”.

Allen, who at another point is called “a prick” by Floyd, said of the wine-glugging cook: “He’s mentally as sharp as ever and just as opinionated.”

Since the filming, Floyd has had chemotherapy and five operations. He has also published Stirred But Not Shaken: The Autobiography by Keith Floyd, which is out next month, and deals with how four marriages went down the pan and the money ran out.

At one point in the book, in true Floydian spirit, he deals with the health problems that have blighted him in recent years...

“The banquet was in honour of some long-deceased French chef — although as far as I could see it was nothing more than an excuse for the mother of all piss-ups,” he writes.

“Soup was served, oysters were gulped and a whole lamb was carved by an ancient maître d’ who looked like a cross between Dr Jekyll and the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sweetmeats and trifles came and went.

“Bon Appetit! Keith Floyd enjoying a meal with a bottle of wine in a typical pose. Bare-knuckle boxing took place, port and whisky flowed as the night turned into dawn and I finally floated along the teak-paneled corridor to my bedroom.

“Later, I don’t know how long afterwards, I reached out a hand to press the bell for a steward.

“My mattress was hard, I needed a glass of water and what with the tubes in my nose, I couldn’t breathe properly. No steward arrived. Just a man in a white jacket with a stethoscope and a briefcase, from which he took a syringe and injected my arm.

“Strange, I thought.

“Morning came — along with a group of people who stood round my bed, talking about me while they pressed their cool fingers over my stomach. ‘How did you enjoy the dinner?’ I asked them, by way of conversation. Silence.

“‘Wasn’t it a great night?’ I said. ‘I mean, there was the port and the boxing, there was the whole baron of lamb, and then there was dawn. How do you manage to have such a place in what appears to me to be a hospital?’

“It was a hospital. ‘Mr Floyd, you have been hallucinating,’ said one of the group. ‘The medication we had to give you in order to keep you alive together with the effects of — how can we say it? — an overindulgence of alcohol. . .’

“It was unreal. The whole banquet thing had been a complete figment of my imagination. ‘You were suffering a nasty case of delirium tremens,’ continued the man, whom I had by now realised was a doctor. ‘DTs, Mr Floyd. We have played our part.

“Now it is for you to play yours. Drink again as you have before and you will die.’ That was a year ago, in the spring of 2008 and I’m thankful to say that somehow or other, I’m still here.”

I do hope he gets better. But even if he doesn’t – what a life!

'Ready Steady Twat' In Chef Attack

I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with Antony Worrall Thompson.

True, I’ve always found him a pretty decent bloke, happy to share a fag out the back with lowly chefs, rather than ponce about with PRs, plus-fours and fake plummy accents like Marco Pierre White for instance.

But I’ve always considered him as someone who’s gone a long way on very little talent.

And he did little to ingratiate himself when he shut down part of his business empire only to open again months later still owing angry creditors thousands.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself whole-heartedly agreeing with his spiteful comments about fellow TV chefs Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal being overrated.

Now we know about his long-standing spat with Ramsay – who described him as a “squashed Bee Gee”, and my favourite, “Ready Steady Twat”.

And I don’t want to waste any further words on the former World Cup-winning footballer, who I think gets more than his fair share of attention already.

But I can see what Wozza means when he calls him a “one-trick pony” without "any depth".

"If it hasn't got an F in it, it doesn't feature in his show," he snipes.

I’m far more interested in his words about Blumenthal, who usually manages to duck out of celebrity chef spats by being nice about everyone in his tediously bland way.

"Heston loves his food, don't get me wrong,” says AWT (and you know there’s a but coming...there’s always a but...)

“But some of those egg-and-bacon ice creams, beetroot jellies where it's coloured orange...it's a gimmick. It's theatrics.

"Everyone will look back in ten years' time and be horrified – even Heston to some extent."

Sadly, I know it will take more than a German chef blowing his hands off to spell the end of molecular gastronomy and nitrogen cooking, or a rant by a squashed Bee Gee. But that’s exactly how I feel...as I’ve blogged about in the past...click here for more.

But one final note. Why can’t Heston - a kick-boxing, former debt collector apparently named after a motorway service station (yeah right) – emerge from Ramsay’s protective cape and put the boot in for once?

Childish, I know, but I can’t wait for someone to call him Willy Wanker.

Tuna-Friendly Dolphin And Other Stories

I arrived at the Fat Duck prep room the next morning, checked the rota, and found they’d put me down for service on the amuse bouche section. I was surprised. After my last performance, I didn’t think I’d get a second chance.

I went across the road, flexing my hands and worrying about whether the oysters would open my wounds again, and found a young US stagier called Eddy in my place.

They told me it was Eddy’s last day, and were trying him out for commis. They told me to come back after lunch service.

I returned to the prep room chores, cutting bags of onions on the slicer. After a few minutes, the larder was smoky with sulphur fumes. A workman arrived to fix the ice cream machine.

“Jesus,” he said, his eyes streaming. “You need bloody goggles to work in here!”

I headed over the road in the afternoon, and got one of those rare moments of kitchen joy - Eddy had opened the oysters I needed for evening service.

My hands were saved, and I was able to concentrate on the other jobs like juicing red cabbage for the gazpacho, and picking chervil leaves for the ice-filtered lamb jelly. Only the top piece of the leaf was used. They were like tiny green footprints dotted over the lamb tongue, cucumber, and tomato confit garnish.

At one point, Danny squeezed past me to borrow a spatula from pastry. After a minute of whining, he stormed back into the main kitchen like a child refused sweets. I could hear him moaning to the head chef Ashley Palmer-Watts. He sounded like he was about to cry.

“Ash, can you tell the pastry section to lend me a spatula! They don’t want to give it to me.”

Ashley came through and mediated calmly.

“Guys, let’s act like adults here,” he said. “Come on - let’s help each other out.”

He nodded a few times as the pastry posse went through a memorised arraignment of unreturned items, and occasions when they’d been refused equipment. Then they mimicked Danny’s whining voice for the rest of service.

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...