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2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Tortilla de Patatas

Ingredients

• 250ml olive oil
• 1 large onion, sliced into half rings
• 1kg potatoes, peeled and cut into thick slices
• Sea salt and black pepper
• 7 large eggs

Method

1. Heat 3 tbsp oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and cook gently for at least 30 minutes until all the water has been drawn out of them and they are soft, golden and very sweet. Lift out with a slotted spoon and drain over a bowl. Leave the oil in the pan.
2. Add the rest of the oil to the pan. It should be 2cm deep and hot enough that a small piece of potato sizzles. Add the potatoes, season and cook very slowly for about 20 minutes, moving them around regularly from the middle to the edges so they cook evenly. It doesn’t matter if a few break.
3. Once the potatoes are a light golden colour and tender, take the pan off the heat, lift out the potatoes with a small sieve and drain. Once drained, put the potatoes in a clean bowl.
4. Measure about 4 tbsp oil from the pan and put in a 28cm nonstick omelette pan.
5. Beat the eggs, season and add to the potatoes together with the onions.
6. Heat the oil in the omelette pan. Pour in the tortilla mixture and cook gently over a medium heat. Move it about to make sure the potatoes are evenly distributed, then leave to cook for 10 minutes. When the base is sealed and light golden, remove from the heat.
7. Place a large plate over the top of the omelette pan. Turn the two over together so the tortilla lands on the plate, cooked side up. Slide the tortilla back into the pan, uncooked side down. Cook gently for 5 minutes. The tortilla should bejust firm but creamy inside. Slide onto a plate to serve.

Going to try this

[Vesper 28,796]

The best ‘own-label’ wines and how to find them

They can be the best value bottles on the high street, but decoding the labelling can be difficult

https://www.thetimes.com/article/62633993-2e07-4ca1-b179-cfe700bad82b

Own-label wines offer some of the best value on the high street, so it is no wonder sales are soaring. But getting to grips with them is the devil’s own job. “Own label” simply means the bottle bears the name of the supermarket or wine merchant that sells it, rather than the producer who made it — but within that, there are often several tiers to negotiate.

At Marks & Spencer the top level is the navy and gold liveried Collection range, with a particular good ’un in the shape of Susana Balbo’s bold, black chocolate-stashed, French oak-aged, Uco Valley 2023 Malbec (£12). The middle-rung bottles are the obvious-sounding Classics, while the brightly labelled, cheaper Expressions collection of unfamiliar single-variety wines brings up the rear. On top of all that, there is also a Found range, full of unexpected varieties.

Confused? I certainly am. And it’s no simpler at Waitrose. “On the QT” is a quirky yet tasty limited-edition top tier followed by No 1, a newish top dog range of “world-class wines” which includes Marcus Huber’s 2023 No 1 Grüner Veltliner (£11.99), a lovely, leafy, white pepper-scented mouthful, best bought on Thursday when it drops to £8.99. The lowest tier here is the Blueprint floral label featuring ordinary, everyday wines, mostly sub £8. Then there is also a Loved & Found range, full of lesser-known grapes and regions.

I’m not certain all these different, confusingly titled wine tiers help drinkers to navigate the wall of wine in supermarkets. The behemoth Tesco has just finished its biggest range review in 15 years, revealing 100 new wines but thankfully just one top tier of its Finest own-label wines, with a brilliant supplier or two such as La Chablisienne co-operative (see star buys). It is the same at Sainsbury’s with its top-tier Taste the Difference selection chugging on, alongside the small-parcel, revolving Discovery collection.

Unsurprisingly the non-profit Wine Society has a cracking own label collection. Take your pick from The Society’s Austrian Red (see star buys), or trade up to one of the finer Exhibition wines. Testimony to the Society’s buying power is the blend made for it by the leading Soave Classico producer Pieropan. The lovely white almond and golden plum-stashed 2023 The Society’s Exhibition Soave is garganega led but topped up with trebbiano di soave and worth every penny of £14.50 (thewinesociety.com). Check out Majestic’s superior Definition range too, especially the fragrant, deliciously dark-hearted 2020 Definition by Majestic Margaux (£27.99), blended from declassified barrels from a top château.

 

From left: Extra Special Crémant de Loire Rosé; Berry Bros & Rudd Bourgogne Côte d’Or Pinot Noir; Finest Chablis Premier Cru; The Society’s Austrian Red

Top own-label bottles

Extra Special Crémant de Loire Rosé, France
12 per cent, Asda, £8.50, down from £11
Cheapest price all year for this elegant, non-vintage, redcurrant and red apple-licked classy, pink Loire fizz.

2022 Berry Bros & Rudd Bourgogne Côte d’Or Pinot Noir, France
13 per cent, bbr.com, £26.50
Gorgeous, gamey, richly fruited Chorey les Beaune pinot noir from burgundy whizz Benjamin Leroux.

• Pinot noir: the best lighter red wines

2021 Finest Chablis Premier Cru, France
12.5 per cent, Tesco, £22
Keenly priced, authentic, steely, stylish, saline, superior 1er cru from the awesome La Chablisienne co-operative.

2022 The Society’s Austrian Red
13.5 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £9.50
The Mantler family’s brilliant, bright, bouncy zweigelt is a scrumptious, spicy, forest floor-fruited mouthful.

From left: Vanita Negroamaro; Setanera Merlot; Muscadet Sèvre & Maine sur Lie; Matusalem Very Old Sherry

This week’s best buys

2023 Vanita Negroamaro, Italy
14 per cent, Co-op, £8
Unoaked yet a wonderfully rich, beefy, warming winter red from hot, arid Puglia’s negroamaro grape.

2022 Setanera Merlot, Italy
11 per cent, Tesco, £5.50
Dirt cheap, ripe, juicy Abruzzo coast merlot with masses of simple but satisfying black and red berry fruit.

2023 Muscadet Sèvre & Maine sur Lie, France
12 per cent, hhandc.co.uk, £12.85
Forget white burgundy, scoop up this tongue-tingling, lemon twist and citrus blossom La Chauvinière charmer.

Matusalem Very Old Sherry, Gonzalez Byass, Spain
20.5 per cent, Booths, £22, down from £24
Start Christmas early with this magnificent, sweet, figgy, spiced black moscatel raisin 30-year-old sticky.

[Vesper 28,796]

Mason’s Arms restaurant review: ‘Cooking out of the top drawer’

Can you tell an urban pub in the country from a country pub in the city? At the end of the day, this is just a gorgeous old building with open fires, nooks and crannies

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/giles-coren-masons-arms-blue-stoops-restaurant-review-g9njm7dwz

Giles Coren; The Mason’s Arms, Oxfordshire: “A bang-on-the-money modern country pub”

 

‘Ooh, I could go a pint of Double Diamond right about now,” said literally nobody, ever. Certainly not since the beer that “works wonders” was discontinued in 1996, long after falling into mockery, shame and disrepute.

First created in 1876 by the Midlands brewery Allsopp & Sons, by 1958 Double Diamond “Burton Pale Ale” had become the bestselling bottled beer in Britain and soon after that started to be served from the keg (a pressurised tin, rather than a beer barrel) in British pubs. This, for people like the Campaign for Real Ale, was the exact moment that everything started to go wrong.

It was a time of fags and darts and men only in the public bar, smoking Woodbines and talking about birds and the Munich air disaster while tanking up on the first of the fizzy mechanical beers, in this case from taps marked with two glowing red and orange Ds. But there was Watney’s Red Barrel too, and Skol (also an Allsopp brand) and Harp, created in 1960, which “stayed sharp to the bottom of the glass”. Like that was a good thing.

The pressed potato, mussel velouté at the Blue Stoops: “A fish-on-carbs construction involving an inch-thick girder of confit potato supporting a row of plump mussels”

 

But then in the 1970s and 1980s came the big European lagers, the Heinekens and the Hofmeisters, and by 1996 it was all over. Last batch of Double Diamond brewed; no tears shed. Except by Prince Philip, whose second favourite pint it was said to be (after a nice Boddingtons).

So it was no surprise to see the late duke’s step-granddaughter Laura propping up the bar (well, sitting in the dining room) when I dropped into the Blue Stoops on Kensington Church Street for a pint of the first Double Diamond to be sold in a pub for 28 years.

It’s here because the five-times great-grandson of the founder, Samuel Allsopp, a former fund manager called Jamie, has decided in his post-City years to get the family beer business out of the deep freezer. He’s been going back to 300-year-old recipes, has a pale ale, an India pale ale (IPA) and a pilsner out, as well as the Double Diamond (reframed as a modern “session” IPA), and has now, obviously, opened a pub, the first new Allsopps boozer in 90 years. It is modelled on the original Blue Stoops in Burton-upon-Trent, where his five-times great-grandfather is said (at least by his own website) to have brewed the first ever IPA, in a teapot, in 1822.

The Blue Stoops: “The vibe was retro, the food was good, the beer and wine were terrific, the bill was modest”

 

This Blue Stoops is not in Burton-upon-Trent, however, it is in Notting-upon-Hill. Because otherwise you wouldn’t get London’s most instantly recognisable chef, Fergus Henderson, and his equally unmissable wife, Margot, dropping in for a jar, as they were when I went in last week. Or Laura Lopes (née Parker Bowles), sister of my mate Tom and daughter of your Queen Camilla, chomping on wild mushroom tagliatelle and Old Spot pork chops with her children (I’ve no idea what they ate, I just said a quick hello, but I’m putting the dishes in for atmosphere). Or even, let’s face it, me.

You wouldn’t have had Charlie McVeigh, founder of the Draft House pub group, consulting on the development either, or Lorcan Spiteri of Caravel (himself scion of a great catering family) devising the menu. And it wouldn’t have been simply heaving with wealthy friends of mine — old school pals, Groucho muckers, hacks, toffs — having an absolutely marvellous time.

The Mason’s Arms, Clanfield

But, crucially, not spending an awful lot of their vast hordes of money on the food. Because the headline on the Blue Stoops for me is that it is very good and not very expensive. After a pint of the Allsopp’s pale ale (delicious) and a pint of the IPA (delicious) and a half of the Double Diamond (delicious — have you noticed that I think all beer is delicious and thus there is no point asking me what I really thought of any of it?), I slopped over to the cosy dining room and flopped into a comfy booth with my old pal Sam Pearman (owner of lots of pubs but not this one) and my cousin Linda Agran — who swiftly flipped the booze focus to an elegant chardonnay — and we got down to ordering.

We had a pile of excellent Carlingford oysters with shallot vinegar (£4 each), anchovies on toast with a very Fergus-y parsley and shallot salad on top (£8) and then a slightly fancier fish-on-carbs construction involving an inch-thick girder of confit potato supporting a row of plump mussels, like those photos of workmen eating their lunch on construction sites high above New York in the 1920s, all drenched in a rich, foaming velouté (the mussels, not the workmen).

Then braised Hereford rib cap, rich and chocolatey, with wet polenta (£22); a nice bit of cod on pepperonata and chickpeas with aïoli (£22); and a really wonderful chicken, leek and black trompette pie, the fungus giving crunch and autumn heft to the filling, the crust brown and mottled and buttery for smashing into the juices, and an absolute steal in this part of town, or anywhere, at £21.

Oysters at the Mason’s Arms

The chat was loud, the music was swing, the vibe was retro, the food was good, the beer and wine were terrific, the bill was modest and the whole thing was, in short, like London pubs never really were, despite what anyone says, until about last Tuesday.

Sam, whose Cubitt House group operates such terrific London pubs as the Barley Mow in Mayfair, the Princess Royal in Westbourne Grove and the Grazing Goat in Marylebone, told me he had a look at this place for himself when it came up. “But it’s a bit small,” he said, leaning back, stretching his own 6ft 4in frame, cracking his knuckles and spreading his wings along the back of our booth. “You know, for the sort of thing we want to do. But it’s perfect for this.”

And he’s right, it is a brilliant little pub trying out great new things and an excellent spot from which to relaunch an empire.

The Mason’s Arms’ half a roast chicken with onions and bacon

And speaking of empires, Sam actually has two. Because there is a Cotswold-based wing as well as the London HQ, consisting of the excellent Double Red Duke in Clanfield, Oxfordshire, and now the 16th-century Mason’s Arms, right across the road from the DRD, which Sam initially bought, “because I had my eye on its car park”, but has also turned into something special, if not entirely unheard-of in these parts: a bang-on-the-money modern country pub which is folksier than the Duke, more muscular in the menu, and thus even more my sort of thing.

Weary satirists might call the style “Notting-Hill-on-the-Wold”, but after a trip to the Stoops (and many others) it’s getting hard to say who is aping whom. Can you tell an urban pub in the country from a country pub in the city? At the end of the day, it’s just a gorgeous old building with open fires, nooks and crannies, young staff, well-dressed punters with small, glossy dogs and cooking right out of the top drawer.

We went after a long local walk which took us quite spookily through the very heart of Downton (nearby Bampton turns out to have been the location for most of the village scenes in Downton Abbey and was full Americans in pastel-coloured rainwear taking photos of themselves in front of the church, shops, trees, cowpats etc), and tucked into a regal Saturday lunch spread.

“The ox cheek pie came with a moat of parsley sauce”

Most of it came from a blackboard propped up for us on an ancient stone windowsill. There were more oysters (natives this time, at £5.50 a pop); half a pint of prawns in a pewter pot (£10); a venison sausage roll (£6); four chipolatas with a grain mustard sauce (£6); lush, dark, sticky fried pig’s head in plum sauce (£8); a firm country pâté studded with cornichons and peppercorns (£9); and ceps on toast with roasted bone marrow (£12). Then an ox cheek pie (£20) with a moat of parsley sauce, half a roast chicken with onions and bacon from the main menu and a couple of brilliant smash burgers.

Alas, when I asked at the bar for a pint of Double Diamond by Allsopp’s, they looked at me kind of funny and said, “What about a pint of Hawkstone by Jeremy Clarkson?”

“Clarkson?” I replied. “Not sure I know the family. Are they new to brewing?”

 

The Blue Stoops
127-129 Kensington Church Street, London W8 (020 7123 7929; thebluestoops.com)
Cooking 7
Beer 8
History 8
Score 7.67
Price Pint and a pie, £30.

The Mason’s Arms
Clanfield, Oxfordshire (01367 604600; masonsarmsinn.com)
Cooking 7
Interior 8
Location 8
Score 7.67
Price Pint and a pie, £30.

[Vesper 28,796]

Is the party over for Berlin’s famed techno clubs?

Berlin’s beat goes quiet as techno clubs close their doors

Watergate will shut for good at new year, and as gentrification erases the city’s gritty appeal, officials are struggling to stop others following suit

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/berlins-beat-goes-quiet-as-techno-clubs-close-their-doors-pk0z3vz99

The Watergate nightclub, on the banks of the River Spree in Berlin, has boomed out the hypnotic beats of drum machines for decades. But in a few weeks the music will fade out for good.

With its views of the river and the Oberbaumbrücke, Berlin’s famous, castle-like bridge, the club could be redeveloped as a luxury apartment block after it permanently closes its doors at the end of the year.

It is not the only nightclub that is struggling in the city known as Europe’s techno capital. Renate, another famous club in Friedrichshain, across the river from Treptower Park, has failed to renew its lease beyond next year.

According to a new survey by the Clubcommission, an association of nightclubs, 46 per cent of Berlin’s 150-plus venues are considering closing down permanently in 2025. That is twice the number recorded in a previous survey in February.

The city’s nightlife is under “enormous pressure” from “falling numbers of visitors, rising costs and a lack of government support”, the association said. Its member survey found that more than half of the clubs had fewer visitors than a year ago and had recorded declining profits.

 

After the advent of techno in the 1980s and early 1990s, Berlin provided ideal conditions for a rampant nightlife. In the period after reunification, abandoned factories and buildings were transformed into party venues and supercharged the blossoming techno scene.

Watergate’s location, just on the East Berlin side of the former border, used to be “completely dead”, one early resident DJ recalled in a promo video for the club’s ten-year jubilee in 2012. Another noted it was “really ghetto, riddled with bullet holes and graffiti everywhere”.

The grittiness became a hallmark of Berlin’s nightlife and made clubs like Berghain, part of a converted power station with a notoriously tough door policy, world-famous. High-profile DJs and cheap flights encouraged party-seekers from across Europe and beyond to flock to the city every weekend.

But as Berlin turned into a glamorous European metropolis, the cheap rents expired as investors began to eye up the lucrative profits from short-term and luxury lets. Clubs have seen their rents increase and some have had their leases cancelled. After the Covid-19 pandemic, many venues struggled further. “Berlin’s tourism has still only recovered to the level of 2015, and changes in consumption behaviour among young people and staff availability make it harder to generate income,” says Lutz Leichsenring of the Clubcommission.

As the music scene suffers, Berlin officials are acutely aware they risk losing an important economic draw. A spokesman for the local culture ministry said nightclubs were still the beating “heart chambers of this city”, enticing three million tourists annually.

Berlin’s culture minister, Joe Chialo, a former musician and record-label boss, is injecting money into initiatives and events, and plans to hold regular round tables with club representatives. But disputes and stand-offs with private landlords are out of the administration’s reach, the ministry said.

Leichsenring is encouraged by the co-operation of officials but notes that cuts to Berlin’s culture budget and a planned motorway extension that could obliterate several nightclubs are big challenges.

Watergate’s management are not convinced that the problems can be solved with money. They may simply mark changes in consumer habits, Ulrich Wombacher, the club’s chief executive, told Berliner Zeitung. “Berlin’s corner pubs no longer exist … Why shouldn’t clubs also be a temporary phenomenon?” he says.

On Friday Watergate will kick off several weeks of farewell club nights, featuring DJs such as Sven Väth and Charlotte de Witte, culminating in a finale on New Year’s Eve.

“The party is over — long live the party,” the venue declared in announcing its closure.

 

Edited Wednesday at 22:08 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,796]

Can Le Veau d’Or Turn Back Time? It’s Trying.

An Upper East Side celebrity hangout of the past has been lovingly recreated by the Frenchette team. But it’s hard to keep the present from intruding.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/dining/restaurant-review-le-veau-dor-nyc.html

 

The new Le Veau d’Or has resurrected many dishes from the old menu, like this homard macédoine, a lobster served in its shell.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

When the writer Robert Gerber moved to New York in 1979, he met an artist named Andy Warhol and a wealthy socialite named James Mellon Curley. The three of them, always looking for a good party, became fast friends.

Their evening routine included a drink in the Plaza hotel, dancing at Studio 54 and dinner at Le Veau d’Or, a jewel box of a French restaurant on the Upper East Side covered in wood panels and a homey painting of a sleeping calf. There were more famous French restaurants nearby, like La Grenouille and La Caravelle, yet this one drew guests like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Orson Welles.

Le Veau d’Or, which opened in 1937, “was much smaller and much less pretentious,” recalled Mr. Gerber, 69. “You could go here and have a great French meal for much less money.”

As the bistro scene moved downtown, Le Veau d’Or became more passé than posh — until this past July, when it was reopened to great fanfare by the chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, best known for their dynamic, perennially packed neo-bistros, Frenchette and Le Rock. I recently met Mr. Gerber at the new Veau d’Or, where he was excited just to be back.

 

Le Veau d’Or opened in 1937 and drew many celebrity guests, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.Credit...Le Veau d’Or

The new owners sought to refurbish the restaurant — restoring its checked tablecloths and wood paneling — but not redesign it.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

It was the same, low-slung dining room, he observed, but with shinier red banquettes, crisper checked tablecloths and cute touches like calf-shaped creamers repurposed as miniature planters. He loved the duck, whose skin crackled like a potato chip and sang with peppercorns, and the lobster, served chilled in its shell with tiny cubes of radish and fennel. But the place somehow felt different, he said. It wasn’t as quiet. He didn’t see many people he knew.

Le Veau d’Or wants to be timeless: a restaurant both for its former regulars and for those who have never heard of it until now. And the owners say they hope to achieve this not by overhauling the place, but by restoring it. The wood panels have been refurbished. The checkered floor pattern from the 1950s is back. Even the food comes from menus past, and includes those classically French dishes that have fallen out of fashion in modern bistros, like tripes à la mode, drenched in a lush Calvados and cider sauce, or tête de veau ravigote, poached calf’s head with a tart, mustardy sauce.

“We wanted to keep it intact but refresh it,” Mr. Nasr told me. “Give it a little buff, a little shine and let it breathe.”

The chefs (from left) Riad Nasr, Charlie Izenstein and Lee Hanson have brought the downtown flair of Mr. Hanson and Mr. Nasr’s other restaurants, like Frenchette.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

How does one measure a restaurant against its predecessor without having visited the original? I tracked down several former patrons, dined with them at the new Veau d’Or, and asked them what made the old one so special.

“It felt like eating in a little bistro in Paris,” said Daniel Halpern, a poet and book publisher. “It didn’t overstep itself.” Louise Grunwald, a former Vogue editor, said she loved the informal, “clubhouse” feel. Graydon Carter, the former editor in chief of Vanity Fair, said the restaurant was “always half-full, in a nice way.”

And the food? “Old-fashioned,” said André Bishop, the producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater. “Good but not fancy, but comforting.”

The new Le Veau d’Or is certainly not the same as the old Le Veau d’Or.

One of the standout dishes is the duck, thickly layered with peppercorns and served with a cherry sauce.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

For starters, thanks to Mr. Hanson and Mr. Nasr’s cachet, the restaurant has become a hot reservation. Tables fill up weeks in advance. Dinner is not cheap: $125 per person for a prix-fixe menu of three courses and a salad (a wonderful one, with plenty of herbs and a sharp vinaigrette).

The food, overseen by the chefs Jeff Teller, Charlie Izenstein and Michelle Palazzo, is more than just good — it’s precise and often fancy, with all the technical finesse these restaurateurs are known for. Your steak will never be overcooked, the béarnaise will always be glossy, and the escargots — bouncy, pastry-topped receptacles for garlic and herbs — will be as satisfying as any you’ll find in a Parisian restaurant. And just try not to be delighted when the lemon butter-soaked frogs’ legs arrive at your table, sizzling like a plate of fajitas. Or when the île flottante, an airy swirl of meringue suspended in cream, tastes like a superlative bowl of Lucky Charms.

The cocktails vary from classic to playful, with plenty of homages to Le Veau d’Or menus past.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

Some dishes, like the oeuf en gélee, an egg suspended in gelatinized consommé, seem more nostalgic than essential to the menu.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

The wines are anything but old-fashioned. All are organic and French, and most are young, and the succinct list by Jorge Riera will make even the wine-clueless feel clued in.

But there’s a palpable tension between the old-school sensibilities of the restaurant and the modern sensibilities of the restaurant group running it. At times, Le Veau d’Or feels too youthful for its older diners, and too old for its younger ones.

Mr. Halpern said the new version “seems stiffer and kind of self-conscious of being the new Le Veau d’Or.” Mr. Carter said he couldn’t stand the noise in the dining room, which was so packed the night we ate together that I had to nudge people out of the way to reach the restroom.

Even as a staunch Francophile, I could have lived without some of the more wistful dishes — like the oeuf en gelée, a soft-boiled egg suspended in a cylinder of gelatinized consommé that seemed more antique than exciting. Or Les Délices “Veau d’Or,” a trio of kidney, liver and sweetbreads saturated in a mustard and Cognac-spiked jus whose overall effect was unrelentingly rich.

The prix-fixe menu — a nod to the old format and an effort to build more financial certainty into dinner service, Mr. Nasr said — allows diners to choose all three courses, but also means that a table of four ends up with 12 sizable and often heavy dishes, not including salad and bread.

The restaurant’s calling card is a painting of a sleeping calf (a play on words — in French, “the calf sleeps” translates to “le veau dort”).Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

The service aims to be as intimate and charming as in a Paris bistro, and it often is. I appreciate how the servers drape napkins over your errant drips and spills on the table, like a playful scolding. But when the staff is really bustling, you may be forgotten. On one visit, we had to ask for our wine glasses to be refilled, and flag a server twice to get ice.

I admire Mr. Hanson and Mr. Nasr’s desire to bring back a restaurant where you can linger leisurely without being hustled out, where the servers remember your name and the atmosphere is both stylish and serene. That restaurant sounds wonderful to me.

Here is the reality: Because of all those lingering guests, the compact dining room often teems with people who have no place to wait. And it might be difficult to become a regular unless you’re willing to camp out on the restaurant’s reservations website.

Le Veau d’Or has all the makings of a joyful and much-needed escape to a bygone era. Maybe when the buzz calms down, it can settle into the role.

Le Veau d’Or

NYT Critic’s Pick★★

129 East 60th Street

(Lexington Avenue)

646-386-7608

lvdnyc.com/

 

[Vesper 28,796]

Business Lessons From Charlie Bigham

 

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Charlie Bigham is the man who gave the nation an alternative to ultra-processed ready meals, building a multi-million-pound business as we all rediscovered our appetite for quality home-cooked food. We sat down with Charlie to find out how he got started and what he’s learnt along the way.

 

https://slman.com/life/interviews-careers/charlie-bigham

 

https://www.charliebighams.com/

 

 

I've been in the food business for 28 years now – almost a lifetime, but I didn’t start out in this industry. My career began in management consulting at Amsterdam Consulting, which is now Accenture. After that, I worked for a smaller specialist firm advising on the development of art galleries, theatres and museums. It wasn’t long before I realised that I wasn’t great at working for other people. I didn’t like being told what to do, so I knew I needed to carve my own path.

I’ve always loved cooking, eating and learning about food. When it came to deciding what kind of business to start, food seemed like a natural choice. My love for food goes way back to when I was 14. That’s when I started cooking.

Back then, the culinary scene in the UK wasn’t as exciting as it is today. I remember cooking lasagna quite a lot – a dish I still make now – and experimenting with different ingredients. Living by the sea, I often caught fish and foraged for things like cockles and mussels, which has become fashionable now, but back then it was just about finding good food.

 When you work in a small company, your impact is much more visible – both the good and the bad. 

 

Starting any business is tough, and mine was no exception. But I always tell people that, while it’s hard, it’s incredibly rewarding if you’ve got the right mindset. One of the early challenges was finding a bank that would work with us, which was surprisingly difficult at the time. Securing premises was another hurdle, and the hardest part – then and now – is finding great people to join the team. When you’re small and unknown, convincing talented people to take a risk on you is tricky, especially if they’re leaving established careers. But I managed it, and I’ve had some amazing team members from day one. Even today, attracting the right talent can sometimes be a challenge.

I think one of the reasons I’ve been able to persuade people to join me is my belief in what we’re doing. From the start, I knew I had a business idea that could grow, and working for a high-growth, independently owned business can be far more interesting than getting stuck in the corporate world. When you work in a small company, your impact is much more visible – both the good and the bad. And I’ve always been drawn to people who aren’t afraid to take a bit of a risk.

There have been a few pivotal moments over the years, but for us, moving premises and scaling up has been a challenge. Because we make all our own food from scratch, space has always been tricky. Each time we’ve outgrown a location, it’s been a huge decision to move into bigger premises. It’s expensive – not just the rent, but fitting it out to meet all the food safety and hygiene standards. Each move required a significant financial stretch, but it’s paid off in the long run. We’ve done it three times now, and every time, it feels like putting everything on the line. But those are the moments that really push the business forward.

We have to be careful not to get too caught up in food trends. Living in London, which is such a melting pot of new ideas, it’s tempting to follow the latest trends like fermented food or South Korean cuisine. However, our job is different. When we develop a recipe, we want it to have broad appeal across the UK. We sell in thousands of shops, so it’s important we focus on familiar dishes that resonate with a wide audience. Two of our most popular dishes are lasagna and fish pie. Our goal is to create the best version of these dishes and never stop improving them.

Word of mouth is our number-one marketing tool. The best marketing we have is when customers recommend our food to friends and family, and then come back to buy it again. That’s why we’re so focused on making great food and constantly improving it. We’ve also done some TV advertising, including a recent cartoon commercial, and it’s been nice to see the positive momentum it’s created. Social media plays a role too, but I see it as part of a larger strategy. It’s not about focusing on just one thing. The most effective campaigns are those that incorporate multiple platforms at once. A 360º approach works best, and I leave that to the talented marketers on my team.

 

 

 

Right now, the hardest thing about running a business is finding and retaining great people. We put a lot of effort into making our company a great place to work, and we’re recognised for it through various surveys. We now have a diverse team of 700 people, and we work hard to ensure everyone feels included and engaged. 

I decided to step down as CEO some years ago. We’ve now got a very good CEO who’s been with us for the last seven or eight years. I did my time, I guess. Now, I describe myself as the founder of the business because, well, no one can argue with that!

My leadership style has changed over the years. Hopefully, I’ve stayed true to who I am, but as the business grows, you’ve got to adapt and stand back a bit – more influencing than directing. I try to listen more, though I could always get better at it. But I think it’s really important that a consistent set of values and behaviours runs through a business over time, so I hope I haven’t changed fundamentally. I’ve probably grown up a bit, learned a lot from mistakes along the way.

Thankfully, I have an excellent work-life balance. The key is not worrying about it too much. I’m fortunate – I find it easy to switch off between work and my personal life. I don’t stick to strict 9-to-5 hours. If something needs doing outside of those hours, I’ll handle it, but it won’t interrupt my life. And since we’re a business that operates 24/7 – someone is always working, even if it’s just engineers keeping things running – you have to delegate and know when to switch off. Otherwise, you’ll go mad.

 If you’re going into the food business, make sure your product tastes fantastic. It’s amazing how often people forget that. 

 

It's vital in business to make mistakes. But it’s even more important to learn from them and move on. I don’t like dwelling on failures; I think it’s negative. My mindset is more, ‘Make the mistake, learn from it, don’t make it again, and move on’.

Our goal for the brand is simple: get a little bit better every day. That’s our mantra. It’s not just about improving the food we make, though that’s crucial. We want everything to improve: our people policies, our technology, our engineering, all of it. We’re constantly working on around 100 different projects to make things better across the board. If we do that, attract and retain brilliant people, and keep improving our food, the results will follow – hopefully sales and profits will increase, but we focus on the inputs not the outputs.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, I have two pieces of advice. First, don’t procrastinate. Just get going – life’s too short to hesitate. Second, if you’re going into the food business, make sure your product tastes fantastic. It’s amazing how often people forget that. And if I could give my younger self any advice, it would be: just get on with it and make sure you have fun along the way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Vesper 28,796]

The Best New London Pubs For Winter

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Long nights, roaring fires, bottles of red – the appeal of a pub in winter never gets old. From Irish boozers out east to food-first places in the west, there’s a bevy of new boozers going big on that timeless allure…

 

https://slman.com/culture/restaurants/new-pubs-london

 

Walmer Castle

Notting Hill

The original Walmer Castle was bought by David Beckham and Guy Ritchie back in 2018 before it was sold on to become a Scottish-themed restaurant and whisky bar. Neither were a success, but husband-and-wife duo Jack and Poppy Greenall (also behind The Surprise in Chelsea) have turned things around with the addition of some smart interiors and a good chef. A top-to-toe refurb also introduced artwork by local up-and-coming artists. Food wise, there are simple but elegantly presented pub classics made with produce from British suppliers like the Ginger Pig and Flying Fish, alongside wines from indie producers. If you don’t fancy a meal, the bar is a great spot for people watching with a pint and glass of prawns – yes, that’s a fancy bar snack.

58 Ledbury Road, Notting Hill, W11 2AJ

Visit WalmerCastle-NottingHill.co.uk

 

The Ox

Clapham

The Rose & Crown in Clapham gets it right with a lively atmosphere, affable landlord and good food. The team has now opened a second site on Clapham High Street. Step inside to be greeted with dark wood panelling and vintage furniture that creates a cosy feel. There’s a mezzanine restaurant, a snug to hunker down in with a pint, and a rooftop terrace for warmer weather. Like at its sister establishment, the menu showcases seasonal British ingredients in inventive dishes like ox cheek toasties and a Japanese smashed burger with bone marrow kewpie. Hitting the retro pudding trend, desserts come from a trolley featuring a sticky toffee pudding topped with stout toffee sauce and clotted-cream ice-cream. Local beers and a tidy list of classic cocktails are further reasons to visit.

50 Clapham High Street, Clapham, SW4 7UL

Visit TheOxClapham.com

 

William IV

Old Street

This 200-year-old pub recently reopened after a refurb by Lee Godwin and Mike Harrington, the duo behind the Starman in Mayfair and Mare Street Market. The upstairs dining room has a contemporary feel with a regularly changing menu to match – look for dishes like mackerel with ravigote sauce and samphire, whipped smoked cod’s roe with tabasco and crisps, and hogget chops with anchovy sauce. Downstairs, you can order pub classics like hearty pies and steak and chips, as well as bar snacks like rarebit crumpets and fried pork belly. The wraparound bar has a selection of European and British beers, fine organic wines and rare spirits from the landlords’ private collection. There’s also a cracking Sunday roast and – we told you it was a trend – sticky toffee pudding to boot.

7 Shepherdess Walk, Old Street, N1 7QE

Visit William-IV.com

 

 

Nancy Spain’s

Shoreditch

Kerry-born brothers Peter and Nicholas O’Halloran opened this Irish pub back in February, and it’s quickly become a buzzy spot, partly thanks to a cool aesthetic and an endless supply of Murphy's – best enjoyed with bar snacks or a couple of dishes from the downstairs kitchen. There’s a small menu of crowd-pleasers, like burgers and steak sandwiches, with a string of resident chefs lined up for takeovers in the new year. There’s also live music every Wednesday to Sunday evening, from Irish folk bands to local talent. Plus, the team are set to open a second site in Monument on 22nd November, with £3 pints of Murphy’s on 26th November to celebrate.

128-130 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, EC2A 3AQ

Visit NancySpains.co.uk

 

The Hound

Chiswick

The Hound is the newest pub from restaurant group JKS – the team behind great London restaurants including Bao, Gymkhana and newcomer Ambassador’s Clubhouse. Over in leafy Chiswick, the team have partnered with publican Dominic Jacobs (whose other projects include The George in Fitzrovia and The Cadogan Arms in Chelsea) to bring an elevated pub experience to west London. Kitchen Table's James Knappett has devised a menu of British classics, including lasagne, venison pie, and flat iron steak with fries – all smartly presented and served with seasonal sides. The Sunday roast is as classic as it gets, while the drinks list is loaded with craft beers.

210 Chiswick High Road, Chiswick, W4 1PD

Visit TheHound.London

 

The Hero

Maida Vale

The group behind Notting Hill’s The Pelican and The Bull in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, opened a third site earlier this year. The Hero in Maida Vale is a four-storey space that makes the most of the building’s 1870s heritage. The pub itself does traditional British comfort food and cask ales, while the Grill Room specialises in sharing dishes cooked over an open fire. The space features high ceilings and an open kitchen with traditional detailing, returning the room to its original grandeur. On the second floor, the Library is the place to enjoy classic cocktails and vinyl DJ nights. From the current menu, we can recommend the huge scotch egg, cheese and pickle toastie, and reasonably priced steak and chips. 

55 Shirland Road, Maida Vale, W9 2JD

Visit TheHeroW9.com

 

 

The Marquee Moon

Dalston

This summer, the team behind east London nightclub The Cause opened an outpost on Stoke Newington Road. Taking over the former Marquis of Lansdowne, the Marquee Moon has the look of a traditional pub and the feel of a Dalston bar. You could spend a while here – eating in the restaurant on the ground floor before moving to the basement with its killer hi-fi system. Here, local DJs and musicians perform until the early hours. Previous selectors have included Mafalda, Floating Points and Giles Smith. Back in the restaurant, there are east Asian-inspired dishes like chicken sandos, and zingy cocktails – try the Pandan Old Fashioned made with bourbon, clarified brown butter, chocolate bitters, and topped with a pandan leaf.

48 Stoke Newington Road, Dalston, N16 7XJ

Visit TheMarqueeMoon.uk

 

 

The Devonshire

Soho

Jason Statham is a regular, Ed Sheeran drops by for lock-ins, and landlord Oisín Rogers’ little black book is a who’s who of London’s coolest crowd. Only if you’ve been living under a rock will you have missed the biggest pub opening of recent times, but this one deserves the hype. Rogers (ex-Guinea Grill) has teamed up with Charlie Carroll (founder of Flat Iron) and chef Ashley Palmer-Watts (ex-Fat Duck) to create a classic London pub that’s warm, welcoming and thrillingly hectic. There’s food from the in-house butcher and bakery, and famously perfect pints of Guinness (the team get through around 200 barrels of the good stuff each week). Upstairs is the smart Grill Room, specialising in Scottish beef – dry-aged and butchered on site – creel-caught langoustines from Oban, day-boat fish, lobster and hand-dived scallops from Devon. If you’re struggling to make a reservation, elbow your way to the bar for pints, scotch eggs and toasties.

17 Denman Street, Soho, W1D 7HW

Visit DevonshireSoho.co.uk

 

The Butcher's Tap & Grill

Chelsea

Rumours swirled for a while about Tom Kerridge opening a second outpost of his popular Marlow pub in London. They were borne out when the celeb chef set up shop in a two-storey Chelsea boozer at the end of last year. Tucked away behind the King’s Road, The Butcher’s Tap & Grill sources its meat from places like Dovecote Farm and HG Walter, before ageing it in-house. Diners can order steaks, as well as other prime cuts of meat, cooked over the grill and served with sauces, seasonal veg and sides like homemade baked beans and chilli beef and cheese fries. There’s a nice selection of beers on tap, as well as wines from small European producers.

27 Tryon Street, Chelsea, SW3 3LG

Visit TheButchersTapAndGrill.co.uk

 

 

The Brave

Islington

Just a few months since closing his Islington restaurant 12:51, James Cochran is about to open a new pub around the corner from his original outpost. He’s teamed up with Seven-Eighths Group (the team behind The Hemingway in Victoria Park) to open The Brave, inspired by his mixed Scottish-Caribbean heritage – so expect some decent whiskies and rums behind the bar. The venue will be home to a dining area and various nooks for settling down with beers and pub snacks. The restaurant will showcase top-quality seasonal produce from around the UK. Look out for dishes like jerk-spiced chicken scotch eggs with scotch bonnet jam; crispy beef-fat hash browns with aged beef tartar; roasted and spiced Orkney scallops; and venison pie with neep-and-tattie hash browns.

340-342 Essex Road, Islington, N1 3PB

Follow @TheBraveLondon

Edited Thursday at 02:57 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,796]

The nature of natural laws

Physicists and philosophers today have formulated three opposing models that explain how laws work. Which is the best?

https://aeon.co/essays/on-seeing-the-laws-of-nature-as-a-recipe-or-a-news-report

The Sun rises every day. Water boils at 100°C. Apples fall to the ground. We live in a world in which objects behave the same given the same circumstances. We can imagine living in a different world: a world that constantly changes, a world in which the Sun does not rise every day, a world in which water one day boils at 50°C, and at 120°C another day, a world in which apples sometimes fall from trees and sometimes rise into the sky. Only because we live in a world that displays stable regularities are we able to reliably shape our environment and plan our lives.

We have an intuition that these regularities are due to laws of nature, but we normally do not interrogate what these laws are and how they work in any basic metaphysical sense. Instead, we assume that science not only provides these laws but also elucidates their structure and metaphysical status, even when the answers seem partial at best. In short, we assume that, thanks to science, there is a recipe of sorts for how the laws of nature work. You take the state of the Universe at a given moment – every single fact about every single aspect of it – and combine it with the laws of nature, then assume that these will reveal, or at least determine, the state of the Universe in the moment that comes next.

I refer to this as the layer-cake model of the Universe, which dates back to the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes. Not long after Descartes embraced the idea of a deterministic universe, Isaac Newton presented a mathematical law for gravitation, which gave the concept a powerful quantitative update. The gravitational force on one body at one time is determined by the location of all the bodies in the Universe at that time; the state of the Universe plus the law of gravitation tells you how all bodies will move: a layer-cake model, indeed.

The influence of Descartes and Newton on how we think about laws of nature is immense – and not without justification. It has helped to unify whole fields of physics, including mechanics, gravitation and electromagnetism. It is still so widespread in the scientific community, and it has such a distinguished pedigree, that scientists may not even realise that they subscribe to the layer-cake model at all.

But the uncomfortable truth is that there are many aspects of modern physics that seem to provide counterexamples to the layer-cake model. To date, some of these alternatives have occupied only a rogue niche in physics. But they should be studied more deeply and understood more widely because they pose major challenges to our fundamental understanding of the Universe – how it began, where it is going, and what kind of entity, if any, is driving it.

 

The first massive challenge to the layer-cake model, Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, appeared in the 20th century. The laws of nature that are core to the theory of general relativity, the Einstein field equations, do not immediately lend themselves to the layer-cake model at all.

The difference can be seen in the structure of the mathematics itself. An equation that adheres to the layer-cake model describes the changes that occur in space in terms of the underlying reasons for these changes. For example, Newton’s equation for his second law of motion describes the acceleration of physical bodies in terms of the underlying forces causing that acceleration. The Einstein field equations, on the other hand, describe the very structure of spacetime as the change agent for moving physical bodies; in fact, most of the solutions to the Einstein field equations yield a spacetime structure that is incompatible with the layer-cake model. When faced with this challenge, physicists do something highly revealing: they specifically search for solutions to the Einstein field equations that comport with the layer-cake model, and they rule out solutions that do not comport with the model as ‘unphysical’ – as artefacts of the mathematics that do not tell us anything about reality, or, at least, not the reality we live in.

Physics has many theories where the future seems to somehow influence the past

In the case of general relativity, there are good reasons for doing this, but in other cases the challenge to the layer-cake model becomes harder to dismiss. In classical mechanics, for example, there is something called the Lagrangian formulation, which holds that, when moving between two separate points, A and B, a physical body will take the most efficient path. This does not look like the layer-cake model because, in order for the physical body to take the path of maximal efficiency, point B, which lies in the future, needs to be determined in advance. It looks, counterintuitively, as if the future is what determines the motion of the body in the past.

As strange as this seems, it turns out that you can derive the familiar Newtonian equations for motion from the Lagrangian formulation. Because of this, scientists often treat the Newtonian version, which comports with the layer-cake theory, as reflecting the true structure of the world. The Lagrangian version is understood to be an interesting and sometimes practical – but never metaphysically accurate – mathematical reformulation.

But the Lagrangian formulation is just the start. Physics has many other theories where the future seems to somehow influence the past. The peculiarities of quantum mechanics have led to the development of so-called retrocausal models. And such midcentury giants of physics as John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman developed a theory of classical electromagnetism that basically says that future charges send light signals into the past.

Ido not claim that any of these alternatives to the layer-cake model of the Universe is correct, but they are worthy of deeper study. The door has been opened for an investigation of alternative ways of how laws act in the Universe.

In current philosophy, the layer-cake model has been defended by the philosopher Tim Maudlin, a professor at New York University. In his book The Metaphysics Within Physics (2007), he lists two key metaphysical features: laws are primitive entities, and laws produce the future from the state of the present. In this context, ‘primitive’ means non-reducible to anything else, or standing on its own. Primitive laws thus exist by themselves, and they exist not as concrete objects, like tables or cars, that we can experience and manipulate with our senses, but rather as abstract entities, similar to numbers. An immediate problem arises: how can laws influence any physical object in the world?

In principle, we face a similar issue with legal laws: how can these abstract laws that are passed by Congress influence our behaviour? But the answer is straightforward: once we get notice of a law and understand it, we can choose to abide by it. The fact that we can choose to follow the law means that we have freedom not to follow the law.

Now it is said that the laws of nature do not influence or produce anything in the world

Laws of nature are different. An electron has no freedom not to follow the laws (even if they are indeterministic), and, more importantly, it is utterly mysterious how laws as primitive abstract entities are able to tell the electron what to do.

In order to mitigate this problem of how electrons are able to obey the laws, another conception of laws was proposed by the philosopher David Lewis, which has been dubbed Humeanism about laws, in reminiscence of David Hume.

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Hume posed the following problem about the notion of causation. He illustrated the problem with the collision of billiard balls. When billiard ball A hits billiard ball B, which was initially at rest, we observe that billiard ball B moves after the collision; we say that billiard ball A caused billiard ball B to move. This seems to be unproblematic. At least, we know that, due to the causal relation between the two billiard balls, whenever billiard ball A hits billiard B, billiard ball B would move. But how does causation bind the motion of billiard ball A to the change of motion in billiard ball B so that billiard ball B always behaves the same when billiard ball A collides with it? For Hume, this question has no answer. We, as human beings, cannot directly observe this causal binding; all that we can observe is the constant motion of billiard ball A and the successive motion of billiard ball B. And that is all that we can be confident of saying about causation.

Lewis took this epistemic conclusion and turned it into an ontological one. Not only do we not experience how exactly laws influence physical objects, now it is said that the laws of nature do not influence or produce anything in the world. The layer-cake model is utter fiction. Instead, laws of nature effectively describe what is happening in the world. They describe the facts in the world, like a newspaper article reports facts in the world. Therefore, to emphasise the main idea of this proposal, I will call it the newspaper model of laws of nature.

The newspaper model is probably the most popular theory of laws of nature among professional philosophers, and it attracts a lot of active research right now. It is so attractive because it is metaphysically thin: there are no mysterious, unexplained relations of production as demanded in the layer-cake model. Laws merely summarise the history of physical objects.

The newspaper model, however, faces its own problem. Since there is no causal relation binding objects in the world, there is no reason why billiard ball B ought to move when being hit by billiard ball A. It may just remain at rest or move without being hit or break into parts or just vanish into thin air. Anything goes. If that were the case, the laws of nature would constantly change because they describe changing facts in the world. And still, billiard ball B always behaves the same way, and the laws remain the same too. How does that happen?

The metaphysical thinness has to be bought with Hume’s principle of the uniformity of nature. It is a primitive unexplained fact within the newspaper model that the world always behaves the same way; billiard ball B always moves the same way when being hit by billiard ball A, even if nothing tells billiard ball B to behave so. Lewis reiterated Hume when he wrote that ‘if nature is kind to us, the problem needn’t arise.’ In other words, just as in the layer-cake model, the laws of nature also remain the same over time and keep their structure in the newspaper model.

Common sense would agree. The past determines the present, and the present determines the future

For example, Newton’s laws remain as they were when written down by Newton, whether interpreted as producing the future or as describing the world. You cannot see from the formulation of the law what the metaphysical underpinning is. At least, not without more information.

All scientific laws are compatible with the newspaper model, including Newton’s laws that tell us that the future state of the world can be calculated and deduced from the present state just as the present state was produced from the past. How can the newspaper model support a formulation of a law that looks like the layer-cake model? This is justified by the idea that Newton’s laws are the most efficient description of the world (within the domain of Newtonian physics), balancing simplicity and informativeness. It might be possible to describe the motion of the planets in a different way. For example, you may create a long list with the exact times and the exact spatial coordinates of the planets; such a list would be very informative (more informative than Newton’s laws are), but it would be too complicated. The best balance between simplicity and informativeness to describe the motion of the planets is exactly how Newton formulated his laws.

Not all scientific laws are, in fact, compatible with the layer-cake model, which requires that the past state produced the present state and the present state produces the future. In order for this to make sense, Maudlin adds a third feature: the stipulation of a primitive flow of time independent from the laws. Common sense would agree. The past determines the present, and the present determines the future.

But in physics and philosophy, a primitive flow of time is highly controversial. Some physical laws do not match this structure. The laws of retrocausal models of quantum mechanics (in which the future determines the past), for example, are clearly incompatible with the layer-cake model and with the idea of a primitive flow of time. The laws of special relativity do not fit the layer-cake model either, because they defy an absolute notion of simultaneity, which is part and parcel of Newtonian mechanics.

As a reaction to this narrow scope of the layer-cake model, the philosopher Eddy Keming Chen and the mathematician Sheldon Goldstein, at the University of California, San Diego and Rutgers University respectively, as well as the philosopher Emily Adlam, at Chapman University, have suggested an alternative. Laws may be primitive, but they nonetheless ‘merely’ constrain the physical possibilities in the world. Call this the straitjacket model of laws of nature. No notion of production and no flow of time is required. All that laws do is to constrain what can happen in the world. In this way, we combine the advantages of the newspaper model with the advantages of the layer-cake model, because we acquire the generality of the newspaper model and a reason for stable regular behaviour from the layer-cake model. Now we have a metaphysical underpinning for retrocausal laws and the laws of special relativity because laws, in the straitjacket model, are primitive and govern the world by constraining what can happen.

Still, the straitjacket model suffers from the same metaphysical issue that plagued the layer-cake model. The layer-cake model was not able to account for how laws produce new states. In a similar vein, the straitjacket model does not specify how laws can constrain what happens in the world. It seems again that abstract laws have to latch on to the real world to tell physical objects how to behave. How laws are able to do so remains unanswered.

We seem to need a metaphysical glue to secure the stable behaviour of our world

The possible implications for any form of law of nature are profound. The layer-cake model seems to be intuitively plausible – the present is determined by the past – but we found out that it requires that laws somehow affect the objects in space and time without being themselves located in space and time.

Since the layer-cake model is too restrictive to capture other formulations of physical laws, like retrocausality and general relativity, the straitjacket model was developed. This model does provide a framework for retrocausality and general relativity, yet it suffers from the same metaphysical problem as the layer-cake model. The newspaper model, on the other hand, tries to introduce laws without any metaphysical baggage, and this seems to be a promising approach. Yet we seem to need a metaphysical glue to secure the stable behaviour of our world.

Given all this, which theory of laws best explains the regularities in our world? If the newspaper model were true, it would be a constant coincidence that the Sun rises every day or that the water in your kettle boils at 100°C, as there is no metaphysical constraint on how objects can behave. In contrast to many of my colleagues, I therefore find the newspaper model pretty unconvincing for explaining stable regularities. The layer-cake model and the straitjacket model fare better in this respect. The advantage of the straitjacket model is that it is general enough to capture unfamiliar laws of nature, like those describing retrocausality. But this virtue comes with a vice: the straitjacket model is so general that any law of nature would fit in.

The metaphysically interesting aspect of nature’s laws is not that they constrain physical possibilities, but how they do that. Even if it is up for debate, the layer-cake model broadly addresses that question best. This works wonderfully with billiard balls. There are conditions where the model just can’t explain how laws of nature produce the future, like retrocausality; but instead of seeking a single new overarching model, perhaps we’d be better off sticking with the layer-cake, after all, and developing a separate tailored account for each type of situation where that model does not fit.

[KEVINAA 92]

This is my account on bluesky - bsky.app

https://bsky.app/profile/kevinaaintl.bsky.social

Android app on Google play - bluesky

This platform was setup by the twitter owners that sold twitter to Elon Musk

Most people have moved over there now because people hate TRUMP + MUSK

Edited Friday at 11:53 by KEVINAA

[Vesper 28,796]

Yes, there’s a taramasalata shortage but it’s not a Greek tragedy

You’re better off without the pink supermarket slop, says Hannah Evans. Plus: the Greek-Cypriot chef Theo Michaels has top tips on how to make your own

 

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/taramasalata-shortage-recipe-ingredients-how-to-make-xrbc70hh5

Middle-class domestic goddesses have been having a tough time of late. To add to the continuing oil crisis — where bottles of extra virgin olive oil have been chained to shelves to prevent desperate foodies from pinching them — and the ordeal of having to queue for hours for cut-price casserole dishes in the recent Great Le Creuset Sale, there was more bad news yesterday. Take your apron off — you might want to sit down for this: Britain is running out of taramasalata.

For weeks shoppers have been struggling to find tubs of the fish roe-based Greek dip in M&S, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco. “There has been no taramasalata at any supermarket for over two weeks now. What’s going on? No fish left?! #taramgate,” one hysterical user of X posted this week.

The shortage, it transpired, is the result of industrial action over workers’ pay at Bakkavor, the leading dip manufacturer in the UK. Unionists at the plant in Spalding, Lincolnshire, have laid down their tools, forcing us to put down our crudités.

• Despair for middle-class diners as taramasalata supplies dip

In many ways it’s a nightmare for dinner party hosts. Taramasalata is part of the holy trinity of dips, along with hummus and tzatziki, served alongside a bed of warm, fluffy pitta. “What the Greek gods give, the Greek gods take away,” lots of you may be thinking. What nibbles are you supposed to serve guests now … cottage cheese?!

Others will see this as a bit of a blessing. Every good cook knows that the putrid pink sauce you buy in the supermarket is nothing like authentic taramasalata. It looks more like Angel Delight than the dip you’d be served by a yiayia in a taverna and tastes far too fishy. And if you’ve swiped a carrot stick through the homemade dip at one of London’s hot new Greek restaurants, Oma in Borough Market or the glitzy Bottarga in Chelsea, you will know that too. So the answer for food purists will simply be: make your own.

“Real taramasalata is not pink,” explains Theo Michaels, the Greek-Cypriot chef and author. “Shocking as it is that the ubiquitous dip is in short supply, I hope aspiring home cooks take a moment to attempt their own creations, which is easier than you think.”

 

Traditionally taramasalata is a frugal dip made with just fish roe (called tarama), usually from cod or mullet. “The hue of this can vary from beige to mild pink,” Michaels says. “The really pink tubs sold in shops are manipulated with colouring from beetroot extract. If this is one of the ingredients on the back of the packet, you know it’s been artificially coloured.”

The other core ingredients are oil, lemon and bread, mixed using a pestle and mortar. Lots of recipes will call for sunflower oil, but Michaels says most Greeks use a mild olive oil, with a splash of extra virgin for a little extra heat and flavour. There is some talk about whether or not you should use mashed potato or stale bread to add texture to the dip. The same goes for whether or not to include onion, which Michaels is a fan of adding.

• What is the best supermarket taramasalata? Six brands, ranked

The main problem with this superior attitude is where on earth do you get your cod roe from? You can buy ghastly tins of it, but if you want to make nice taramasalata then you need top-quality tarama, which costs about a tenner from an online fishmonger — that’s nearly the same price as ten pots of the premade stuff.

I’d like to then point you in the direction of the Great Taste Award-winning taramasalata from the Greek heritage brand Odysea. Sales of this dip — available in Sainsbury’s and, crucially, not manufactured by Bakkavor — have soared since the shortage. It’s pale, has a good, dense texture and it’s not an off-putting pink colour. I gave it five stars in a recent blind taste test. “We’re delighted that more people will be trying an authentic version of a beloved dip, which is still made to my mother’s recipe,” says Panos Manuelides, who founded Odysea in 1991.

But now the secret is out, the risk is that taramasalata superfans will go around stockpiling the remaining supply. Which brings us back to the start of our issue up in Lincolnshire. Maybe Bakkavor should just pay its staff more and save everyone some trouble. Yamas!

Taramasalata

Ingredients

• 70g two-day-old sourdough, crusts removed and cut into large cubes
• 160ml sunflower oil
• 150ml water
• 25g cod’s roe
• 4 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp lemon juice, strained
• Grated zest of ¼ lemon
• ½ garlic clove, finely chopped
• A pinch of salt

Method

1. Place the bread cubes in a bowl. Add the sunflower oil and set aside to soak for 10 min.

2. Transfer the bread and sunflower oil to a blender. Add the water, roe, olive oil, lemon juice and zest, garlic and salt. Blend until the mixture is smooth with a fine texture. Transfer to a bowl and leave in the fridge until cold. Serve with sourdough.

 

OPSO: A Modern Greek Cookbook by Nikos Roussos & Andreas Labridis (Ebury £35). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

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The 50 best red wines for winter — including the £4.99 claret to buy

From bargain Bordeaux to a perfect pinot noir, our expert reveals the best in the supermarkets

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/best-red-wine-uk-supermarkets-drinking-winter-pjh3dz2xw

Great news for those with tight budgets (and whose isn’t?). There has never been a better time to fill your wine racks, especially as epic duty increases land next year. Yes, I still had to kiss a lot of frogs to find these delicious bargains (as I’ve said before, it’s worth remembering that just because a wine is cheap doesn’t mean it’s good value) but having worked my way through everything the high street has to offer, I can report it was easier to find the dozen plum bottles in the £6.50 and under category this winter than it has been for years.

It’s what you might call the German discounter effect: runaway wine sales at Lidl and Aldi have forced the rest of the supermarkets to shape up. Aldi’s juicy £4.99 claret is still the bargain that should be in everyone’s basket, but Tesco has given its budget range a serious boost in direct response. Meanwhile, Marks & Spencer has followed suit by lowering prices on a third of its wine range, which is how its easy-drinking 2022 Paco Real Rioja Tempranillo weighs in at just £6.50.

Over at Waitrose, its Christmas present to the nation lands on December 4, when its ten for £10 (each) offer kicks off. Scoop up the 2020 Saint-Émilion Croix des Coteaux, down from £15.99, before everyone else does.

After a classic red for the big day? Sainsbury’s 2022 Taste the Difference Châteauneuf-du-Pape will be down to £19 from Wednesday, while Asda has pulled its socks up this year and its 2023 Extra Special Zinfandel, just £7.50, would also work beautifully with turkey and all the trimmings.

If you fancy something a little different, my personal pick is Majestic’s 2023 Lyrarakis Liatiko, an unusual Greek gem, £11.99 each for six bottles. If you are pushing the boat out, wine merchants still have the greatest quantities of great wines — Lea & Sandeman’s 2021 Le Macchiole Bolgheri Rosso, £25.25 until November 30, is one of my festive must-buys and The Wine Society’s 2022 Tablas Creek Red from California, £23, is a dream with stilton.

Finally, the post-prandial humdinger is Graham’s gorgeous 2018 Quinta dos Malvedos Port — £6 off at Booths from Wednesday. Mark your calendar!

 

From left: Pierre Jaurant, Merlot-Cabernet Bordeaux; Corte Alle Mura Chianti; J Boulard, Côtes du Rhône, Débat Royal; Vista Castelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo

£6.50 and under

2021 Pierre Jaurant, Merlot-Cabernet Bordeaux, France, 13 per cent, Aldi, £4.99
Less than a fiver to spend on claret? Then this brilliant oak-chipped bargain from beleaguered Bordeaux is what you should buy. It’s a judicious blend of mostly plump, juicy merlot, with a 15 per cent dollop of backbone-building cabernet sauvignon, making for a bright, bay leaf-scented mouthful.

2022 Corte Alle Mura Chianti, Italy, 12.5 per cent, Lidl, £5.29
Lidl is slowly pulling its socks up with new monthly Wine Tour wines but sensibly hanging onto the better bottles from its Core range, including this surprisingly good chianti. What you get is oodles of ripe, savoury, softly spiced and violet-scented fruit, making it a great midweek, meaty pasta partner.

• White mulled wine tipped as this year’s quirky Christmas hit

2022 J Boulard, Côtes du Rhône, Débat Royal, France, 14 per cent, Morrisons, £5.45
Ridiculously cheap, unoaked, stainless steel-aged red rhône as good as you’ll get from this classic French region for under £6. Mostly grenache, with an improving dollop of 20 per cent syrah. It’s a jolly, easy-swigging, fat spiced red plum wallop.

2022 Vista Castelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Italy, 12.5 per cent, Tesco, £5.50
The perfect red party drop made from the Abruzzo coast’s montepulciano grape by mighty Citra, a group of nine different co-ops with some 3,000 members and surprisingly high standards. Tesco’s Italian buyer and I agree it’s the best vintage of this lovely, sweetly fruited, red berry gem since 2015.

From left: Andrew Peace Masterpeace Shiraz; The Whale Caller Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon; M&S Daniel’s Drift Fairtrade Merlot; Lidl Deluxe Argentinian Malbec

2023 Andrew Peace Masterpeace Shiraz, Australia, 13.5 per cent, Tesco, £5.75, down from £6.50 until December 2
Every winter wine rack needs a cockle-warming Aussie shiraz to keep the cold and wet at bay and this tasty, bargain-basement bottle from Victoria is a cut above the rest. What you get is warming, brambly, savoury fruit, with a pump of peppery spice. Steak and chips loves this.

2023 The Whale Caller Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon, South Africa, 13.5 per cent, Waitrose, £5.99, down from £6.99, December 4-January 1
Easy-swigging, rich, fleshy, contemporary, sweetly fruited Western Cape red, with masses of chocolatey charm and an intriguing saline spark. It’s the sort of handy, big comfort food-friendly standby red everyone needs to buy in bulk when the price drops.

2023 Daniel’s Drift Fairtrade Merlot, South Africa, 11 per cent, Marks & Spencer, £6
Eagle-eyed readers will spot the lower-than-expected 11 per cent alcohol content of this drip irrigated Western Cape special made from 20 and 30-year-old vines. This Fairtrader’s light, leafy, yet still plummy merlot is just what alcohol-conscious red wine drinkers need to keep their intake down.

2023 Deluxe Argentinian Malbec, Uco Valley, 13.5 per cent, Lidl, £6.29
It’s worth plundering Lidl’s better Deluxe range (though it’s never easy to find) to pull out the odd plum including this tasty malbec from the high, cool Uco Valley, one of Argentina’s best spots for the grape. Given malbec is our most popular red by far, snap up this excellent earthy, blueberry joy right now.

From left: Castillo Montanez Reserva, Carineña; Lascar Classic Carmenere; Paco Real Rioja Tempranillo; Wine Atlas Bonarda

2020 Castillo Montanez Reserva, Carineña, Spain, 14 per cent, Asda, £6.50
With a year’s ageing in French and American oak casks, this 100 per cent tempranillo from the Carineña region gives you some of rioja’s oaky oomph but with a more sweetly fruited, beefy umami spin. It’s the perfect partner to a spicy stew or roasted red meats.

2023 Lascar Classic Carmenere, Chile, 12.5 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £6.50
Trust the good, old non-profit-making Wine Society to still field a few £6.50 wines. The Society’s members describe this robust, tangy, herby, mocha and green pepper-laced red, made from Chile’s flagship grape, carmenere, as “staggeringly good value for money”. Hear, hear!

2022 Paco Real Rioja Tempranillo, Spain, 13 per cent, Marks & Spencer, £6.50
Marks & Spencer has rerouted a fair few of its prices downwards, which is why this easy-drinking red rioja weighs in at such a low price. Bursting with unoaked easy-over, juicy, red plum jam charisma, plus a firm, ferrous, big food-friendly, grippy finish, it’s the perfect budget festive red.

2024 Wine Atlas Bonarda, Argentina, 13.5 per cent, Asda, £6.50
Asda relaunched its Wine Atlas range in the spring to tempt shoppers to scoop up something new at low, low prices. Time to tuck into this bright, raisiny, cassis-licked bonarda, made from the grape of the same name, it’s a jaunty Argentine alternative to malbec.

From left: Chassaux et Fils Cahors Malbec; Terras de Lisboa Tinto Red; Capeography Cape Red Blend; M&S Tierra y Hombre Pinot Noir

£8.50 and under

2022 Chassaux et Fils Cahors Malbec, France, 13 per cent, Aldi, £6.69
Love malbec but want to ring the changes? Time to dive into the grape’s original southwest France home, Cahors. With less heft than Argentina’s, there’s some juicy, dark-hearted fruit here, coupled with a fine herby finish. Just the ticket with winter’s comfort food.

2023 Terras de Lisboa Tinto Red, Portugal, 13.5 per cent, Co-op, £6.85
Lip-smacking, ripe, plummy, fruit-first unoaked red, a blend of aragonez, better known in Spain as tempranillo, and castelao. Budget drinkers need to put Portugal top of their list as its wines, just like this one, are ridiculously undervalued.

2023 Capeography Cape Red Blend, South Africa, 13.5 per cent, Morrisons, £7, down from £10 until December 1
Dashing Cape blend, based on the country’s very own pinotage grape, topped up with cinsault, grenache and carignan. With a hint of French oak what you get is a truly delicious, vibrant, cinnamon, and wood smoke-scented red that shows how far and how fast South Africa has come.

2023 Tierra y Hombre Pinot Noir, Chile, 13.5 per cent, Marks & Spencer, £7
Chile is still the world’s best source of cheap and cheerful pinot noir as anyone tasting this really rather good 2023 vintage, made from 21-year-old vines, will agree. Overflowing with ripe, fat, cassis and vanilla pod-licked, new-wave fruit, it’s aged in French oak for just six months.

From left: Asda Extra Special Zinfandel; M&S Found Marzemino; Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Gamay; Nero d’Avola, Isola della Fiamma; Ventoux Rémy Ferbras

2023 Extra Special Zinfandel, 14.5 per cent, California, Asda, £7.50, down from £8 until December 15
Lovers of big festive food will need big reds to match and this lovely Lodi zin, topped up with malbec and petit verdot, gets my thumbs-up. Bursting with lush loganberry and rich red cherry jam fruit, plus a dusting of oak chips, this one will even work with turkey and all the trimmings.

2023 Found Marzemino, Italy, 12 per cent, Marks & Spencer, £7.50
M&S’s multiple own-label wines are a muddle. Still, the Found range contains some cracking wines, including this 100 per cent marzemino from Veneto, with its moreish, unoaked and stainless steel-aged, bright, floral, sweet red berry fruit.

2023 Taste the Difference Gamay, France, 12.5 per cent, Sainsbury’s, £7.50, down from £9 until December 10
Not from Beaujolais, the gamay grape’s stronghold, but from Gaillac, further to the southwest. No matter, its tender, melt-in-the-mouth, bright morello cherry and raspberry fruit give you a lot of Beaujolais’ charm for a lot less money.

2023 Nero d’Avola, Isola della Fiamma, Sicily, 13 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £7.95
Get a lot more bang for your buck with a tasty Sicilian red picked in the early morning to avoid the sun, from high, cool vineyards above Marsala at the western end of the island. Crammed with rich, sweet, spiced, baked black plum fruit it’s an Italian star turn.

2022 Ventoux Rémy Ferbras, France, 14.5 per cent, Waitrose, £7.99, down from £9.99, December 4-January 1
Bouquets all round to Waitrose for yet another seductive vintage of Rémy Ferbras’s plump, velvety, cracked black pepper, woodsmoke and sage gem, a canny mix of grenache, syrah, mourvèdre and carignan. It’s the southern Rhône at its heady, scented, sub-£8 best.

From left: M&S Classics No 28 Cabernet Sauvignon; Domaine des Ormes Saumur Rouge; Bolgrad Ukrainian Saperavi; Tesco Finest Zinfandel

2023 Classics No 28 Cabernet Sauvignon, Chile, 14 per cent, Marks & Spencer, £8
Chile’s Maipo valley makes some impressive cabernet sauvignon, including this handsome 2023 finished off with oak chips and in French oak barrels. It’s a vibrant, crimson purple red crammed with bold, cassis, creosote and blackcurrant pastille pizzazz.

2017 Domaine des Ormes Saumur Rouge, Loire, 13.5 per cent, Co-op, £8, down from £10, November 27 – January 3
Gorgeous, ripe yet crunchy redcurrant and cranberry-fruited, herby cabernet franc from the sixth generation of the Champion family to run the Domaine des Ormes in the Loire. If you buy only one £8 red this winter, it’s got to be this starry saumur, the perfect buffet party red.

2023 Bolgrad Ukrainian Saperavi, 14 per cent, Lidl, £8.49
Saperavi is the flagship grape of Georgia and Ukraine and this unusual winter warmer has lashings of bold, spicy, sweetly savoury fruit. Its beefy, smoky style makes it a perfect match for hearty stews and roasted red meats.

2022 Finest Zinfandel, California, 14 per cent, Tesco, £8.50, down from £9.50, December 3-31
Big, bold and beautiful, lovers of plush, spicy, sweetly fruited reds will love this gutsy ’22 from Delicato and some of the oldest vines in Lodi, the fruit bowl of America. With loads of alcohol and fat, briary, blackberry and blueberry oomph, it’s a winner.

From left: Château Jouanin, Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux; Austrian Red Zweigelt; Exceptional New Zealand Pinot Noir; Howard Park Miamup Cabernet Sauvignon; Breganze Pinot Noir

Under £12

2022 Château Jouanin, Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux, France, 14 per cent, Co-op, £8.85, down from £9.85
Hats off to Co-op’s canny buyers for this splendid Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux that has endlessly popped up here. Right bank Castillon, abutting on to St Émilion, is home to the outlying Côtes finest and smartest clarets, including this absolutely delicious rich, meaty, herby, cedary, charmer.

2022 Austrian Red Zweigelt, Niederosterreich, 13.5 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £9.50
If you have yet to taste zweigelt, Austria’s most widely planted red grape, make this winter the moment you do. The Society’s scrumptious, vibrant, forest floor-fruited zweigelt zing, from the Mantler family, copes effortlessly with festive treats from honey-baked ham to cold turkey leftovers.

2023 Exceptional New Zealand Pinot Noir, 13.5 per cent, Asda, £9.25, down from £11.25
Asda’s perky 2023 Kiwi pinot noir comes from the prime spot of North Canterbury and delivers palate-boggling, gamey, tobacco leaf class from partial French oak barrique barrel ageing.

2022 Howard Park Miamup Cabernet Sauvignon, Australia, 14 per cent, Booths, £12, down to £9.50 from Wednesday
Really wish I lived closer to a Booths where the wines are great and the prices keen. Any of you lucky enough to be tucking into this majestic Margaret River cabernet this winter, with layer after layer of rich, curranty, cassis and eucalyptus, will have a whale of a time.

• Crémant, the next best thing to champagne

2022 Breganze Pinot Noir, Veneto, Italy, 12 per cent, Majestic, £9.99 for six, £11.99 a bottle
Italy is a surprising source of tip-top pinot noir but Breganze’s Beato Bartolomeo co-operative in the cool Alpine north of Veneto has made a humdinger. No oak but a cold soak has turned this into a silky, subtle, yet refreshing floral, leafy, faintly cranberry joy.

From left: St Émilion, Croix des Côteaux; eaujolais-Quincié, Louis Jadot; Gaudou Exception Malbec; Warwick The First Lady Pinotage; Lyrarakis Liatiko

2020 St Émilion, Croix des Côteaux, France, 13.5 per cent, Waitrose, £15.99, down to £10 from December 4
Waitrose’s ten for a tenner Christmas present to the nation kicks off on December 4 and none of the wines will hang around. Rush to check out this right bank claret from a highly fancied appellation, with all the rich, rustic, meaty, coffee bean fruit any St Émilion fan could ask for.

2023 Beaujolais-Quincié, Louis Jadot, France, 13.5 per cent, Waitrose, £14.99, down to £10 from December 4
Sometimes, with punchy big food flavours, it’s better to serve an easy-drinking, crowd-pleasing red. This beaujolais certainly fits that bill, bursting with juicy, red and black berried fruit, with velvety tannins and tangy acidity.

2022 Gaudou Exception Malbec, France, 12.5 per cent, leaandsandeman.co.uk, £10.50, down from £11.50 until November 30
Gluggable Côtes du Lot red, made exclusively from the malbec grape but very different from its black wine of Cahors neighbour and Argentine malbec. Instead, it’s all soft, silky tannins with a wonderful floral perfume leading on to delicious black plum and black cherry flavours.

2023 Warwick The First Lady Pinotage, South Africa, 13.5 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £10.95
Surprisingly fruity pinotage, South Africa’s signature grape, a pinot noir and cinsault cross, that is tailor-made for big festive food. Brimming with masses of rich savoury, smoky bacon and sweet loganberry oomph, it’s a Christmas cracker.

2023 Lyrarakis Liatiko, Crete, Greece, 13.5 per cent, Majestic, £11.99 each for 6 bottles, or £13.99
Greek reds are having a moment and Crete’s in particular. I loved this unusual, light but lively, pale liatiko, an indigenous Cretan grape, grown in high, wild, limestone soil vineyards. What you get is waves of floral, basil perfume and a seductive savoury, herby, cherry palate.

From left: Asda Extra Special Rioja Gran Reserva; Chiroubles, Domaine de la Boisselière; Robert Oakley Signature Series Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon; Côtes du Roussillon, Les Sorcières

Under £30

2017 Extra Special Rioja Gran Reserva, Spain, 14 per cent, Asda, £12.50, down from £13.50
Temptingly low price for a tasty gran reserva, from a small, concentrated, frost-affected vintage. Given two years slumbering in small oak barriques and three in bottle, it’s a terrific cockle-warming fig, cinnamon and sandalwood spiced mouthful.

2023 Chiroubles, Domaine de la Boisselière, France, 14 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £12.95
This beaujolais, from the cooler, higher-altitude cru of Chiroubles, has a refreshingly juicy, sweet red fruit core. It’s the perfect superior, standby Christmas red that can cope with everything from baked ham to meaty fish like salmon or tuna.

2020 Robert Oakley Signature Series Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon, Australia, 14 per cent, Majestic, £12.99 each for 6, £14.99 a bottle
Make this majestic Margaret River cabernet, your go-to festive red. Overflowing with fantastic, bold, smoky, curranty, tobacco leaf fruit and partly aged in new oak barrels, it’s more than a match for festive treats such as spiced beef, game and turkey on the big day. Great value.

2023 Côtes du Roussillon, Les Sorcières, France, 13.5 per cent, yapp.co.uk, £17.95
Trust Yapp to sniff out this starry Clos des Fées, a dreamy Roussillon combo of young vine syrah, topped up with old vine grenache, carignan and mourvèdre. It’s a juicy, easy-to-quaff, black forest fruit-spiced Christmassy red, that will woo one and all.

From left: Château Sénéjac, Haut Médoc; Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Châteauneuf-du-Pape; Gigondas La Bastide Saint Vincent; La Réserve de Sociando Mallet

2021 Château Sénéjac, Haut Médoc, Bordeaux, France, 13.5 per cent, Co-op, £19.50, down to £16.50 from December 11 to Jan 3
Toffee-nosed drinkers shun the Co-op, a tragedy when you can hit the Haut-Médoc heights with this compelling old-school claret. Mostly cabernet sauvignon, topped up with merlot, plus cabernet franc and petit verdot, it’s a rich, chewy, new oak-laced, graphite and pipe tobacco gem.

2022 Taste the Difference Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France, 14.5 per cent, Sainsbury’s, £19, down from £22 until December 10
A tasty one-size-fits-all festive red, as happy with a baron of beef or duck with orange sauce as it is with turkey. Bonpas’s warming cuddle of a French oak-aged, grenache-led, syrah and mourvèdre-enhanced 2022 is a smouldering, dried herb, game and spice-box wallop.

2022 Gigondas La Bastide Saint Vincent, France, 14.5 per cent, bbr.com, £19.95
Punching well above its weight, Laurent Daniel and his family’s gorgeous gigondas is as good as this southern Rhône appellation gets. With a heady scent of lavender and sage leading on to a soft, silky, spice-infused palate, it’s a revelation.

2016 La Réserve de Sociando Mallet, Bordeaux, France, 13.5 per cent, Tesco, £23, down from £28 December 3-31
Hats off to Tesco for launching 130 tasty new wines this winter, including this claret from leading Haut Médoc estate, Sociando Mallet. With a dusting of new oak, bold cedar spice and rich mulberry, it’s a cracker of a Christmas claret.

From left: Tablas Creek Patelin de Tablas Red; Le Volte dell’ Ornellaia; Le Macchiole Bolgheri Rosso; Berry Bros Bourgogne Rouge

2022 Tablas Creek Patelin de Tablas Red, California, 13 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £23
California’s answer to Châteauneuf du Pape is this stunning Paso Robles, a blend of five grapes from ten vineyards. It’s syrah-led so what you get is a rich, hearty, spiced summer pudding sip that’s a whizz with game and strong cheeses.

2022 Le Volte dell’ Ornellaia, Tuscany, Italy, 13 per cent, Booths, £25
Excellent earthy, Bordeaux-inspired, super-Tuscan from the revered Bolgheri estate, Ornellaia. Le Volte is a similar rich, savoury, beefy yet red-fruited blend that gives you a little of the grand vin’s star dust for a fraction of its £200-a-pop price.

2021 Le Macchiole Bolgheri Rosso, Tuscany, Italy, 14.5 per cent, leaandsandeman.co.uk, £25.25, down from £27.95 until Nov 23
Another beautiful Bolgheri red, again mostly merlot, with a good dollop each of cabernets sauvignon and franc, plus a dash of syrah. With woodsmoke, savoury spice and black chocolate to the fore, plus wonderful depth and length, it’s a festive must-buy.

2022 Berry Bros Bourgogne Rouge, Côte d’Or Pinot Noir, France, 13 per cent, bbr.com, £26.50
Burgundy wine wizard Benjamin Leroux is the man behind this dreamy Chorey-lès-Beaune old-vine pinot noir blend. The 2022 vintage was tip-top and anyone tasting this gorgeous, gamey and richly fruited star will agree ‒ it’s all red plums, truffle and roses.

From left: Campbell’s Rutherglen Muscat; Fletcher’s 10 Year Old Tawny Port; Graham’s Quinta dos Malvedos Port

Fortified

Campbell’s Rutherglen Muscat, Australia, 17.5 per cent, Waitrose, £14.49, half-bottle, Booths, £14.75
Scrumptious Christmas-in-a-glass sticky. A classic northeast Victorian fortified muscat, it’s an amber-gold, spiced fig, black raisin, nutty caramel-licked triumph and one of the few dessert wines that can cope with plum pudding and brandy butter.

Fletcher’s 10 Year Old Tawny Port, Portugal, 20 per cent, Aldi, £13.99
Not every Aldi port is a winner but this one is a moreish mouthful of rich, smoky, moscatel raisin fruit, with an elegant, grilled almond finish. Have a glass of this with mince pies or Christmas cake and rejoice.

2018 Graham’s Quinta dos Malvedos Port, Portugal, Booths, £31.75, down to £25.75 from Wednesday
Knock it out of the park this year with a brilliant single-quinta vintage port from one of the great houses at a knock-down price. Scented with seductive damask rose, cassis and Christmas spices, Malvedos’s latest vintage is a humdinger. Miss this and you’ll miss out.

All prices correct at time of going to press

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Celeriac, mushroom and chestnut puff pastry pie recipe

This cheesy pie is brown food at its best

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/celeriac-mushroom-and-chestnut-puff-pastry-pie-recipe-nwp2w8cs6

This is beige food at its best and is such an indulgent treat that not even committed carnivores will miss the meat.

Serves
4-6 people

Ingredients
10g dried porcini mushrooms (or mixed dried mushrooms)
A knob of butter
400g celeriac peeled and cut into 2cm cubes
40g unsalted butter
1 medium white onion, peeled and sliced
A big handful of sage leaves
200g chestnut or wild mushrooms, sliced
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
40g plain flour
70ml aromatic white wine
300ml whole milk
2 tbsp crème fraîche
50g comte or cheddar, grated
40g soft blue cheese such as gorgonzola or stichelton
100g cooked chestnuts, quartered
320g all-butter puff pastry sheet, defrosted if frozen
1 egg, beaten

01 Soak the dried mushrooms in 250ml boiling water for 15 min. Meanwhile, heat a knob of butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a high heat. Fry the celeriac cubes with a pinch of salt for about 5 min until softened and coloured, then remove to a plate. Strain the dried mushrooms, reserving the stock, and chop.

02 Melt 40g butter in the same pan, until it’s browning and smells nutty. Then add the onion, sage, fresh mushrooms and a good pinch of salt and fry for 6-8 min, until the onion is softened and the mushrooms have given up their moisture. Add porcini and garlic and fry for a couple more minutes.

03 Mix in the flour to coat the onion and mushrooms. Add the wine, cooking off the raw alcohol, followed by the mushroom stock and milk. Cook, stirring, until smooth and thickened, about 5-6 min. Stir in the crème fraîche, then add the cheeses. Check the sauce for seasoning, adding a squeeze of lemon if you think it needs some acid. Add the chestnuts and celeriac and stir to combine, then transfer the mix to a large pie dish with a pie bird, if you have one, and allow to cool.

04 On a lightly floured surface, roll out the puff pastry to just bigger than your pie dish and carefully drape it over the cooled mix, tucking and pressing it under the edges of the dish and trimming if needed. Crimp the edges with the back of a fork. Make a hole in the middle of the pastry with a sharp knife (or score around the pie bird, if using) to let out the steam. Brush the pastry all over with eggwash, then refrigerate for up to two days until you want to bake it.

05 Glaze once more with eggwash and bake at 170C (190C non-fan) for 30 min until puffed and golden. Serve with a bitter leaf salad and mashed or roast potatoes.