Nothing would have stopped us going to the Fat Duck. Even if you had told me beforehand that it would cost us an outrageous £40 to get back to Reading from Bray, I would still have gone.

B and I got to Bray (via train and feet) about two hours early so that we could do a bit of exploring. The restaurant itself is so unassuming that we walked past it twice before realising. As we were pausing to have a sneak preview inside, there was a couple next to us checking out the menu. They were laughing at the mention of douglas fir and snails, and turned to us, saying that they wouldn’t fancy eating in a place like that, expecting nods of agreement. We replied, grinning, telling them that we were actually eating there that evening, and they laughed again, wishing us good luck. Later we met up with Rod & Clair for pre-dinner drinks at the Hinds Head before the four of us then proceeded across the road.

Visiting the Fat Duck is a bit like going on a theme park ride. Unlike most theme parks, the bathrooms are clean, the food is great, and the staff very polished and knowledgeable (it was our waiter who told us about the mind boggling number of quails that go into making 1 litre of the quail jelly, and of the “meat glue” used to create the invertebrate of mackerel). A few dishes didn’t really work for me – in particular, the salmon poached with licorice. The slimy nature of the licorice gel coating the salmon was actually quite unappealing and the licorice flavour also seemed to overpower that of the fish. My favourites were the nitro-green tea and lime mousse, mustard ice-cream with red cabbage gazpacho and bacon and egg ice-cream with earl grey jelly (along with the hot and cold tea, it was the best earl grey I’d ever encountered – and I’ve tasted quite a few ever since Picard ordered his from the replicator).

Despite this, it isn’t a place that I would return to for repeat visits. The jokes wouldn’t be as funny the second time round, and the surprises, wouldn’t be… surprising, once you already know that they’re coming. But as a dining experience, it made for a very memorable night. And if that couple who stood next to us as we peered through the window, ever decided to book themselves in for a meal, I think they would have been very pleasantly surprised by how the Fat Duck simultaneously meets and confounds all expectations.

The Fat Duck
High Street
Bray
Berkshire SL6 2AQ

The other day I walked right into the corner of a hot oven door. The blow was delivered smack in the middle of my forehead. A red dent gave way to a purple swelling, which then settled on being a bile-yellow colour. Of the resulting mark, Grant pointed out that I now really do resemble Harry Potter (a name the Bangladeshi potwashers once started calling me by – thankfully that never really caught on).

Maybe it was the concussion speaking, but it got me thinking about how things happen so fast – all of a sudden I’m finding myself with a mortgage and my friend from high school, Bec, has just informed us that she’s pregnant (the first in my group of school friends, so congrats and good luck to B and T for leading the way!).

Sitting down to sponge the wound was probably the first time I had ever indulged myself in not doing work while at work. How did it come to this? So at the end of a long week, I woke up the next morning, opened the fridge and pulled out the container of prunes I had macerating in vanilla tea and brandy. Some two weeks ago, the original intention was to make truffles in time for SHF #25. Even though I’m too late to meet the deadline, I resolved to make them anyway as a personal celebration of being able to take a moment to wind down.

The recipe comes from Let It Simmer, the latest book from Sean Moran of Seans Panaroma, home to amazing food and THAT glorious nougat recipe. For the truffles, whole almonds are first roasted, coated in toffeed sugar, then chocolate, stuffed into each soft, boozy prune and the whole dipped in dark chocolate, and rolled in bitter cocoa powder. A bit like turducken if you will. The crunchy almond doubles as an “edible prune kernel”. Soothed by the combination of chocolate, alcohol and vanilla, the scratch on my forehead fades into the distance and a smile plays at the corners of my mouth. Despite what seems like a lengthy process, the effort involved is actually quite minimal, and whatever time you spend making these, is indeed time well spent.