Over the last 10 days we have had great late spring weather where I live. It has been regularly between 20-25°C which has been a great start to May. I found it strange last Saturday morning Mrs Oregano said to me "you know this reminds me of the weather we had when we would cycle to a Biergarten for a Wurstsalat und Radler". Wurstsalat means literally "sausage (cold cut) salat" and Radler means literally cyclist but is basically a lager shandy.

Well, it is a decade since we lived in Bavaria but a few hours earlier I had thought exactly the same. In a decade back in the UK we had only made one attempt to make a Wurstsalat. We then disputed over what we recalled as a "Wurstsalat". I recalled that a Biergarten near my office (in Zamdorf) offered a bayerische Wurstsalat which was a Bavarian salad of cold sausage and vegetables and a schweizer Wurstsalat (Swiss sausage salad) which was essentially the same but with Swiss cheese and a bit less sausage. In both cases I recall there being thinly sliced sausage combined with firm vegetables such as red onion, fennel (and maybe white radish). Both my wife and I recall thinly sliced pickled gherkins in many instances. I also recall the use of a few young sprigs of lovage. There was always a fairly watery salad dressing very evident on the plate.

The idea of "cold sausage salad" is foreign in the UK. However I am convinced that some better-prepared simple but hearty German dishes would find a great resonance in the UK; especially with a beer or cider.

Last Saturday I decided to visit my Lidl to get at least a limited choice of German cooked sausage and made the following. There is absolutely no claim (indeed more like a disclaimer) on authenticity.

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 red onion
half fennel bulb
100 g radishes
half a cucumber
50 g pickled gherkin
100 g bockwurst
100 g thinly sliced garlic sausage or paprika salami
100 g Emmentaler cheese
75 ml vegetable oil
25 ml white wine vinegar
1 tsp whole grain mustard
25 ml water
salt and pepper

Method

1. Slice the red onion, fennel, cucumber and radishes into 1 mm slices
2. Thinly slice the pickled gherkin
3. Slice the bockwurst into 3 mm or thinner slices
4. Slice the cheese into thin strips
5. Toss the sausage, cheese and vegetables thoroughly together
6. Mix the oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper and water as a dressing,
7. Toss the salad with the dressing then serve.

I just wanted to share that spontaneously as most meat-eating people in the UK have not been exposed to the idea.

Now, back to reality of today...I have been in Munich for the last two days on business. Tonight I went to the Weißenfeldenerhof for dinner with old friends. This was opened shortly before we moved back to the UK but seemed a decent restaurant and Biergarten. I have not been there for at least seven years but around 2000 it had a good repuation for food generally but specifically for spare ribs and Flammkuchen. In about 2001 I organised a team meeting in Munich and promised spareribs in Weißenfeld during Winter only to find it was off the menu .

Tonight I met old friends from our time in Bavaria and despite the temptation to go for spareribs or flammkuchen, I thought I should order a Wurstsalat to settle the argument at home.

This was a good Biergarten but despite that the salad was much simpler than what Mrs Oregano or I were proposing. It was simply a cooked sausage - thinly (~1 mm) thick - thinly sliced red onion and a dressing. The remaining garnish was a sprig of lamb's lettuce, a slice of tomato, a lettuce leaf and slice of cucumber. It tasted pretty good with a Weißbier. Guten Appetit!

Now that we are in May we are nearing the end of the wild garlic season. The leaves are still looking good but as more an more flowers appear the leaf quality and growth rate will go down.

I have tried a few wild garlic soup variants and our family likes the vibrant, "in your face", simple watery soup with no cream. This is what it is:

Serves 4-8 (4 if as a main course with bread and cheese, 8 if served as a starter)

Ingredients
100 g wild garlic (rule of thumb is that if I have a 20 cm diameter colander and if I fill it with leaves it works out at very close to 100 grams)
two medium onions
a roughly 2 cm cube of ginger
1 litre vegetable stock
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Method
1. Finely chop the ginger and onions (coarse chopping is fine if you use a large food processor rather than a hand blender) and sweat in the oil at a medium heat for 10 minutes
2. Wash the wild garlic leaves and rougly chop them (set a few smaller leaves aside if you want to use them for garnish)
3. Add the wild garlic, then the vegetable stock to the onions
4. Leave on the heat for about 2 minutes
5. Blend the soup until the wild garlic pieces are fairly fine. The soup will have a vibrant green colour.
6. Heat for a few more minutes then serve
7. Optionally add small leaves or wild garlic flowers as a garnish

NOTE:

While wild garlic leaves are mild if wilted or cooked, the raw flower may have a strong garlic "kick"!

I have been in Finland again recently, this time to Helsinki. I recall about 7 years ago going to the Lappi restaurant in Annankatu and recall a very good starter of fish and roe. As its name suggests the restaurant focuses on a N. Finnish or Lapp theme. I got instructions on how to find it from the hotel reception but had difficulty locating it.

It is pretty unobtrusive with no obviously lit signs. Inside there is a bar with staff wearing Lapp-style costumes.

The interior is mainly wood and stone clad with solid wooden tables and benches. Generally there is quite a rustic appearance. Staff were friendly and there are menus in many languages. Prices were fairly high with starters averaging about €20 and maincourses €30. Staff were friendly and helpful and the place seemed pretty full.

As a game fan I focused on one course which was described as Grilled elk (North American readers would recognise this as moose) fillet, fried deer sausage, reindeer roast, oven baked winter vegetables and thyme potatoes with creamy game sauce.

The dish was served with cowberries (lingonberries according to the menu) which are in the cranberry family but smaller (in the UK, Lidl describes them as "wild cranberries" but they are a different and native European berry). The tartness of the berries complements the venison and elk's gamey taste very well. The elk fillet was tasty and certainly not dry (a fear I have with that sort of gamey meat). The venison sausage was fine - though no better than what I have recently bought in the UK.

The vegetables include a large slice of thyme potato, roast carrots and roast beetroot. (all tasty but not that different from what we do at home in winter) though  I liked the presentation in a sizzle pan. One course was certainly enough to eat  - I am sure the starters and desserts were good though. Although well known the restaurant did not seem to compromise on ingredients.

If you like Nordic-style fish and game then this is a good place to go providing you are happy with the 30 € price level for a single course. It is reasonably centrally located in Helsinki though not on one of the major streets.

I got Jamie Oliver's "My Guide to Making you a Better Cook" as a present a year ago. There are certainly some nice ideas there and I have learned some things that I have not previously known. I was interested in the idea of getting fennel curly as a salad to go with a fish dish. Specifically he states

 Using a speed peeler, a mandolin slicer or pretty good knife skills, slice the fenner bulbs lengthways very, very finely and put in a bowl of iced water for 10 minutes or so until the slices go crispy and curly.

 Mrs O and I like fennel salad with smoked salmon or trout but I normally slice the fennel horizontally across the bulb (on my Siemens slicing machine) as 1 mm slices. I normally do a dressing with 2 parts vegetable oil to one of white wine vinegar or 3 parts walnut oil to 1 part of cider vineger.

I tried Jamie's idea a few times with water and a load of ice cubes and the fennel refused to curl. I ended up trying a bowl of water in the freezer with vertically sliced fennel. However it seemed to take a good 30 minutes to curl.

The result was more visually pleasing than normal, but seemed a real palava. Mrs O said it was a total waste of time and that the crisp chilled fennel had a much weaker taste than normal. However perhaps I made the mistake of using olive oil which tends to overpower more tastes than normal vegetable oil.

This weekend I finished the last of last season's wild garlic oil from my fridge. We had smoked salmon and wild garlic and mustard sauce can provide a good alternative to a dill and mustard sauce. The sauce obviously can be made from fresh leaves but in the following description I use wild garlic oil as the starting point.

Ingredients

4 tbsp mild mustard (French or German)
3 tbsp wild garlic oil
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
100 ml vegetable oil
pinch salt
pinch pepper

Method

1. Put all ingredients into a jug or container suitable for use with a hand blender
2. Blend the ingredients until the sauce has an even consistency
3. Serve with smoked salmon or gravad lax (note wild garlic flowers like the one on the plate are edible).

Note

The sauce can be served neat or in more dilute form by mixing with either mayonaise, yogurt or cream.

This evening I had the pleasure of visiting Tilliholvi again; my last visit was four years ago. Jacques Chirac has been very disparaging about Finnish food but in my experience - like in the UK - there are good and bad eateries. In 2006 Tilliholvi was rated the 25th best restaurant in Finland - and while I am not familiar with the best 24  - I do not doubt that it deserves the accolade.

The restaurant is in a basement of what used to be the headquarters of the Union Bank of Finland. The restaurant has arched brickwork which gives it a real character, much as I have seen for example in Vienna or Montpellier.

It was also the scene of Finland's largest embezzlement as described above. With my youngest son having a similar name I'd better check my piggy bank when I get home!

Coming into the restaurant with its neatly laid tables with lovely large wineglasses and black-dressed waitresses you immediately think that this is a posh joint. Having said that it is quite informal - nobody complained when I arrived with my Finnish colleagues wearing jeans and without ties! It is certainly not stuck up in any way.

There are a couple of smaller siderooms which can be booked for groups. Service was consistently friendly.

The menu is very simple. As I recalled from previous visits there were two set menus (one vegetarian and one non-vegetarian) and a limited choice on the a la carte menu - four starters, four main courses and four desserts. However what the menu lacked in variety it did not lack in quality.

I went for a starter (12€) that was described as "caviar of lavaret, lavaret tatare and cold smoked lavaret". I have never heard of "lavaret" and indeed sometimes question translations into English of Nordic fish and fruit in restaurants. The Finnish word was siika and it was a freshwater fish in the salmon family. According to Wikipedia it is a common whitefish which is not found in the UK but is similar to the powan (a protected species found in Loch Lomond and Loch Eck in Scotland). In Nordic countries there are often wonderful combinations of cold fish and distilled spirits (served from the freezer). This was no exception and the option of 3 schnapps to go with the "lavaret" was quite appropriate. The waitress who explained everything meticulously in both Finnish and English said that we should have the Russian vodka with the smoked lavaret (top left), the Danish aquavit with the roe (bottom right) and a Finnish blended concoction with the tatare (top right). This was a great starter!

For the main course my four Finnish colleagues all went for the filet steak - which looked marvellous. However since I have never seen reindeer (29€) on offer at shops at home I could not resist going for the "tourist choice". Like venison, reindeer can be very dry or tough if mishandled but my medium steak was expertly prepared being black on the outside and tender and red on the inside. The steak was accompanied with a good Australian cabernet shiraz (I do not recall the name).

By this time I had eaten enough so did not attempt the dessert menu. Just rounded it off with an espresso and calvados.

I thoroughly recommend Tiiliholvi!

This is one of the best times of the year for the "green herbs" in my garden. Chives have been good for the last six weeks and are already budding. Wild garlic and welsh onions are growing well and the lovage is just putting up its first stalks. Although not in my herb garden, stinging nettles are also shooting up; they should be eaten before they flower. Yesterday I thought it was time for a simple spring green soup using about half of the herb garden plus some nettles.

The herbs in the picture (from foreground to background) are wild garlic, welsh onions, garlic chives, chives & lovage (on the left in front of the box hedge).

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 medium onions
2 cm cube of ginger
1 tbsp vegetable oil
large handful of wild garlic
handful of welsh onion
handful of garlic chives
handful of chives
1 sprig of lovage (be careful not to use too much otherwise the celery-like lovage taste will totally dominate)
large (gloved) handful of stinging nettles
1 litre chicken stock
salt & pepper

Method

1. Roughly chop the onions and finely chop the ginger and fry gently in a pot for 10 minutes
2. Roughly chop the herbs and add to the pot
3. Add the vegetable stock and heat until the leaves have wilted
4. Put the soup in a food processor and blend until smooth
5. Return the soup to a pot, season and bring to the boil
6. Serve.

The soup comes out bright green which is how my family liked it. Alternatively cream could be added. It should be quite healthy - wild garlic is good for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, nettles are high in vitamins and minerals.

In previous years we made very little soup, however we have been more and more enjoying trying out different sorts of blended vegetable soup. Although we do not roast joints very often we have quite often roasted vegetables to go with meat or fish dishes. Apart from the obvious potato, parsnip or sweet potato we regularly roast roughly chopped aubergine, courgette, peppers and onion. A soup has provided a good way of using up excess roast vegetables if we have had guests round and have roasted too many, alternatively deliberately roasting more than needed for a meat or fish dish means that later in the week an easy soup and bread meal can be prepared. The vegetable quantities are an outline - in practice you take your left over roast vegetables whatever they are.

Serves 4

Ingredients (sufficient for soup only, more will be needed to accompany first day's dish)

One large parsnip
One medium sweet potato or potato
One aubergine
One medium courgette
One large onion
One red/yellow/green pepper
Vegetable oil
1 litre vegetable stock
salt & pepper
4 slices wholemeal bread

Method

First day - when serving roast vegetables to accompany another dish
1. Heat oven to 200 °C (180 °C fan oven)
2. Cut up potatoes for roasting, place in roasting tray with hot oil, baste and put in oven
3. Roughly chop the vegetable, season with salt and pepper and mix in a bowl with enough vegetable oil to coat every piece
4. Put vegetables in a roasting tray and put in oven 30 minutes after the potatoes
5. Roast everything for a further 30 minutes
6. Serve those vegetables needed for the first day. Set aside the rest, cool and refridgerate.

On later day - when wanting soup
1. Make 1 litre of vegetable stock in a pot
2. Add set aside vegetables and boil for 5 minutes
3. Blend soup mixture in food processor
4. Return blended mixture to pot and simmer for further 5 minutes
5. Serve with wholemeal bread or toast

Mrs Oregano and I have just returned from a long weekend in Inverness and the NE Highlands. We decided this time to go by train - one of the reasons being that we could dine at Diwani close to Euston Station before getting the Caledonian Sleeper train to Inverness.

When I worked in Wembley in the 1980s a colleague from Madras said that we should go to Drummond Street near Euston to get "real Southern Indian food" as opposed to the typical "curryhouse fare". At that time I was not disappointed and I wanted my wife to experience it.

We arrived at about seven o'clock which gave us almost two hours before boarding our train. Diwani is a mere five minutes walk away from Euston station.

Inside Diwani looks like a glorified cafe with wooden pine seating. Some of the seats with individual chairs look OK for comfort, such as those shown below.

However quite a large section is of wooden benches and tables that are very cramped indeed. We sat in one of these 4-seater tables, the waiters being very reasonable about the large amount of luggage we took with us for the train; in fact I do not think we were the only people eating before a late night train journey. The cramped conditions are my excuse too for rather poor food photos further on  . Service was helpful and friendly.

For anybody wanting to drink alcohol with food a point to note is that Diwana is unlicensed. However nextdoor is a very good Indian licensed grocer so it is possible to bring your own beer, wine, etc to eat with your food. If - like I do - you live in a town without S. Asian shops, the grocer was a real treat offering rarer spices like asefetida and black cumin.

The Diwana menu is purely vegetarian and combines Gujurati and S Indian dishes; a waiter said that the guv was Gujurati. Unlike most Indian restaurants I have visited outside of Southall or Wembley, a significant proportion of the customers were S Asian which I take to be a positive sign. We were served complimentary popadoms and pickles. Unlike many curry houses near my town the mango chutney looked like it was served out of the jar with good-sized chunks of mango. (I have nothing against restaurants using a blender with pickles but too often water is added too!).

For our starter we ordered the Diwana platter.

This consisted of a "spring roll", a bhaji, a skewer, a potato tube, a hot tomato-based sauce and salad. The potato tube on the bottom left was deep fried. The skewer did not appear to have been used on a grill but merely as a means of displaying the food. About half the skewer items were deep fried potato discs covered with gram flour. The rest was grilled pepper. We shared and enjoyed this combination.

For the main course Mrs Oregano went for the Thali Annupurna Special.

This consisted of a variety of vegetable curries, dall and raita served with puris and rice. The curries were great but the puris seem rather hard.

I went for a paper dosa. I recall these from the trip I did many years ago as they look quite spectacular.

This was served with coconut chutney, a sort of  thin dal (sambar) and mashed potato with mustard and tumeric. It seemed a shame to disturb the dosa as it seemed a work of art. However I succumbed and enjoyed the accompanying dishes very much.

We ordered espressos - which were definitely not the best I have had - but perhaps this was not the smartest choice of drink in this type of restaurant. The bill came to about £27.92 for two of us which we thought was very good value for a central London location and very special food.

I should point out that by eight o'clock the place was completely packed with a queue outside. The waiters were certainly kind to give us benches capable of seating 4 (albeit in a cramped way) for two of us and our luggage.

Summary:

 starters & main course taste & presentation, service, price
 seating & coffee

Yesterday I did this vaguely Iberian fish stew. I love raw fennel in a salad with fish, but have often been disappointed when cooking fennel as the aniseed taste goes if cooked too long. A stew is a good place to combine white fish with oily fish. I had hoped to buy coley (more sustainable than cod) but did not find it at my local fish counter

Serves 4

Ingredients

200 g chorizo
mackerel fillets (about 350 g)
one cod fillet (about 150 g)
two medium onions
one fennel bulb
1 tsp fennel seed
1 large sprig thyme
2 tbsp wild garlic oil (alternatively 3 large cloves of garlic)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp paprika
500 g passata
olive oil
salt & pepper
100 ml water

Method

1. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with sufficient olive oil to just cover it and heat it
2. Finely chop the chorizo and fry gently in the pan
3. Add the fennel seed
4. Once the chorizo fat is released, chop the onions and sweat with the chorizo for 5 minutes
5. Add the passata, bay leaves, paprika, wild garlic oil, water, salt and pepper and simmer for 15 minutes
6. Chop the fennel bulb into thin slices and add to stew
7. Simmer for a further 15 minutes
8. Scale the mackerel and slice into bite size pieces, slice cod into bite size pieces and add both to stew
9. Serve after 5 minutes

The stew could be served with potatoes or couscous but we served it with boiled rice. I boiled 400 g in the rice cooker then just before serving mixed 50 ml white wine, 25 ml white wine vinegar and 1 tsp sugar and folded this through the rice.

Since returning to the UK I often think that we have lost winter. The weather seems to drift into a damp, cool state from October to March without getting very cold. Frosts are much rarer than 20 years ago and snow in S England is almost unknown.

As a result spring seems to come earlier. Chives have been growing again for the last month, welsh onions and wild garlic are above ground already. It seems unnatural for mid February.

Anyway with one clump of chives over 12 cm high, I managed to have my first harvest this afternoon. Made chive oil to go with our bifteki tonight.

When travelling abroad I have often enjoyed visiting food markets. In my town we are blessed with a market twice-weekly but although there is a decent vegetable seller and other food sellers of mixed quality the choice is very much what you can buy in a supermarket. I had read quite a bit about Borough Market being a very interesting one in Mark Hix's column in the Saturday Independent Magazine.

This last Saturday we went there and I got just as much of a thrill from it as markets I have been to in France, Germany or Spain. For me it is unusual in that it is a permanent covered market - not something we see here in smaller towns - and is partly under the railway line between London Bridge and Charing Cross stations. It is also just south of Southwark Cathederal.

There were a number of fishmongers with a much larger variety of fish than I am used to where we live. It was really good to see that people were not just buying cod or haddock! There was a very aromatic stand selling middle eastern food - the smell of the herbs and grilled meat had my mouth watering well before my lunchtime.

There were a number of good cheese stands. Most offered samples - a practice widespread on the Continent but infrequent here - and none of the ones I tried was disappointing. A Welsh stand offered excellent Caerphilly and I was tempted by this stand offering Comté cheese from France.

There were also good vegetable stands offering a wide range of fresh veg, herbs and mushrooms. On one I was pleased to see that some older carrot varieties were sold along with the common orange ones.

In case you are not aware, carrots used to be either white, yellow or purple like some of those above. However, the Dutch managed to breed an orange-coloured variety (orange is the colour of the Dutch royal family) and orange carrots became almost universally grown.

Since we had no means of refridgeration, we left meat and fish alone. However the wild mushrooms were very tempting indeed and made for a good sidedish for our Sunday lunch. Where I live, I have never seen wild mushrooms for sale.

So for anybody living withing a short distance of London Bridge....I certainly recommend Borough Market. The only downside for us was trying to get a coffee. Most cafés had huge queues and the one we went to had very good coffee, not so good pastries and meringues, high prices and poor service (£27 for four of us).

I have been twice to the Sello Palace Hotel in Espoo, Finland in the last 10 days. It is not a bad hotel and is walking distance from our office.

The first time I was there I was surprised to see bear on the menu. I do not recall the details and did not try it that time either. My Finnish colleague explained that some Finnish restaurants buy one bear per year to make their menus a bit more exotic.

The hotel has rebranded their restaurant with a Californian theme - Paul's Bistro - with a larger variety of meals especially burgers.

The choice on the menu is larger but they have an especially expanded burger section to their menu.

At the bottom left you will see that they offer bear burger with some other things which I cannot translate. Since the menu was hard to scan I show a more detailed view below.

I must admit I was a bore and went for a chateaubriand steak. That was well-prepared, but both Finnish and British colleagues have recommended the bear burger...something for another trip!

A few days ago Ranfuchs made a posting "The problem with chicken" raising concerns about how egg-laying chickens were treated and the fact the eggs fron intensively reared birds went into many foods. I must admit that, while I was always aware that battery hens were reared in cruel conditions and that "value" chicken meat often looks an odd colour, I do not know a lot about the subject.

I rarely watch TV but when I got back from Finland my wife said that I would have be interested in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chicken Run series. I did not see the series of 3 programmes, but basically it records how our supermarkets have driven down the price of chicken so much that farmers have little choice but to offer cheap intensively-reared chicken otherwise it will be purchased abroad. He set up two similar chicken sheds: the first raised 2,500 chickens in intensive conditions and the other 1,500 chickens in more humane conditions. There was an inevitable contrast in both the way in which the chickens grew and the quality of the meat after slaughtering. He then went on to try to convince Axminster, Devon to be the first 'free range town' in Britain. However today's Independent in an article entitled Crying Fowl suggests that his way of working and filming with a local chicken farm was less than fair.

Last night Jamie Oliver presented a complementary programme called "Fowl Dinners" which challenged a studio audience about the chicken they ate. A few farms were visited (both egg and meat) and some industry figures were interviewed. While the intensive rearing conditions shown - with a high mortality rate - were shocking, what shocked me most is that intensively reared chickens are sold for 3p per bird at the farm gate! I have previously heard of how lamb prices were incredibly low but this blew me away. So for a £2.50 supermarket bird the farmer just gets 1.2% of the sale price - that is obscene!There are obviously transport, slaughtering, packing and retailing costs but I suspect that the supermarket takes the lion's share of that.

A few years ago I saw a programme showing that a huge number of chicken breasts were imported from Thailand via the Netherlands. In the Netherlands they were injected with protein and water (to max up the weight) then imported here. The commencial threat to British farmers if their goods are not cheap enough that they will lose out to imports is real enough.

I think that our supermarkets and their desire to make huge profits on cheap food are the main driver behind the intensive farming methods used for meat and eggs. However another contributor has been the big change in our cooking habits. Chicken consumption has gone up massively in my lifetime. In my childhood a whole chicken was a typical Sunday lunch choice - like a joint of prime beef or a leg of lamb - a luxury meal that was an infrequent treat. Today chicken consumption is far greater driven by a dramatic reduction in costs in real terms plus a move from red to white meat for health reasons.

From what I recall of the 1970s you could buy whole chickens fresh or frozen and there was little alternative. A typical British family then would probably roast the chicken whole and stuff it. When the chicken was carved you were asked if you preferred the light (breast) or dark (meat) and everybody had their preferences. From what I recall the dark meat was generally regarded as superior. The carcase might then be put into a pressure cooker to make a soup or stock rather than being dumped in the bin.

When I got to university I realised that my Asian fellow-students approached the chicken differently. They would take a whole chicken, chop it up with a meat cleaver into bite size pieces and either put the pieces in a stir fry (Chinese) or in a curry (Indian). The pieces of meat would usually be served on the bone apart from the breast. Since I got to like cooking Chinese and Indian things I too purchased a meat cleaver from the Chinese supermarket.

Around 1980, I became aware of supermarkets selling chicken breasts. I was surprised when a friend's wife served a meal that was just chicken breasts. To be fair, drumsticks and chicken wings were also offered in the supermarkets but this was a big change from whole chickens. However, a huge number of people now only eat chicken breast. This of course leads to problems - if people eat mainly chicken breasts what happens to the rest? Well of course there is machine recovered meat that goes into junk food and horrifyingly some non-breast meat has been sold at a dumping price in West Africa putting local farmers out of business (sorry I cannot find the reference).

Not only do we need to worry about chicken welfare, but we should relearn how to use whole chickens. A well-reared whole chicken ought to supply a family with a few meals without costing a fortune. It is perhaps just at the cost of a little more time - time is precious but many of us waste enough of it in front of a TV or game console!

Hugh's Chicken Run will be repeated (don't know which of the 3 programmes) on Channel 4 tonight at 17:35

I have been a grumpy bloke today! I took the last flight out from London to Helsinki last night in order to maximise time with the family. The flight was very late so I barely made the connecting flight to Tampere. Surprise, surprise... my baggage missed the connection. By the time I filled out the baggage claims forms, all the taxis were gone so had to call one out from the city....checked in to my hotel at 02:00 this morning.

I went to the office today without the benefit of my sponge bag or clean clothes...yuck! It was a long day in the office....hope I did not smell too bad.

I am staying (now reunited with my bag :-) )a few blocks away from Salud restaurant which is where colleagues have taken me several times. There is a very good salad bar (quite typical for Finland since their healthy eating campaign a few decades back) and pretty decent steaks. This was founded by a Finn who loved Spanish food and the story is recorded here. While a good place to eat, the "Spanish" theme is a little loose extending into Texmex and some exotic things like 'Rocky mountain oysters'. Well... I fancied a decent pepper steak tonight and trudged out into the snow only to find out that Bodega Salud was shut.

I couldn't be bothered trudging a kilometre to a really good restaurant on the north side of the river so retreated to the boring but warm choice of the Scandic City hotel restaurant. The setting seemed odd. It was in an atrium, with a pergola with mock vines, yet I could see the door to the street and snow beyond. Sitting on your own in a strange city makes you observe and want to blog the observations...no matter how inane.

For a Finnish hotel, the menu was predictably a combination of steaks, salads & texmex with a little Thai. This seems to be a pretty successful combination as you find it everywhere regardless of whether you are in a Sokos, Scandic or other hotel chain. Finnish home cooking is very N. European and fairly bland. I wonder if Finns need something more exotic and spicy if they want to feel good about eating out. Dunno if it is true but they seem to go for Spanish or Texmex rather than say Indian spicy food. However a fair number of Finns (like Brits and Germans) go to Spain for the Sun.

There are one or two quite classy Finnish restaurants in Tampere but I do not recall the names - and they were on the other side of the river - if I find them again on a future trip I will post the details. There is also junk food - Hesburger is the local burger business that has kept McDonalds at bay and various kebab houses.

Burgers have the reputation of being junk food; probably reasonably so if you buy at a multinational chain or from the supermarket freezer. However they do not have to be unhealthy if you make your own. There is no reason why you cannot control what goes in just as with home-made bolognese sauce or a cottage pie.

Other things:
- You do not need to use an unhealthy tasteless 'burger bun'
- You do not need lashings of mayonaise
- They do not need to be 1/4 pound in weight

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

500 g of good quality beef mince
a small onion or half a medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp soya sauce
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
a little flour

Method

1. Finely chop onion and garlic
2. If you have a food processor put all ingredients together and using a blade pulse the mixture until well blended. Alternatively mix thoroughly in a bowl.
3. Put a dusting of flour on a chopping board
4. Depending on your guests' appetite divide mixture into 4, 5 or 6 equal sized balls (roughly 125, 100 or 85 grams respectively).
5. Dust with flour and flatten to the degree you like.
6. Grill or griddle the burgers

Serving

Try serving with a salad
Or if you want the bread serve in a wholemeal bap or in toasted ciabbata using fresh leaves e.g. rocket
Use your favourite sauce or pickle or chutney
If you insist on chips then make and fry your own with real potatoes

Today there are far more children seem to suffer from hyperactivity than in the past. Obviously the problem has always been there but I can't help thinking that the increased consumption of junk food and sugary fizzy drinks plays a role. Preservatives, food colouring and other additives have been much more widely used in the UK than in neighbouring countries in Europe. Also the UK's consumption of junk food (mainly from US-based multinationals) is much higher than in the rest of Europe.

When we moved from Germany to the UK one of my sons developed a severe allergic reaction in his skin. He suffered with an allergy to pollen every summer but this was something new. After consulting the doctor we concluded that he was exposed to far more additives in the food we were buying than previously. Just as an example UK jams use far more additives than those in Germany; the additives mean that you can store the jam at room temperature but are probably not good for you. From that time on we tried to be more careful with additives.

I have always assumed that burger multinationals use a lot of additives. A burger need not be unhealthy or no more so than other things like meatballs that use minced beef. However I have always been suspicious of the amounts of mayo, the plastic-looking processed cheese and insipid salad leaves used by the big chains. In yesterday's Independent there was an interesting report on McDonalds and additives.

The whole report is worth reading but the following quote covers the key findings.

Analysis by The Independent reveals that Britain's biggest burger company pumps a total of 78 different artificial additives into its food on 578 separate occasions, an average of seven E-numbers per product. Although McDonald's emphasises its burgers are 100 per cent beef, the buns, cheese and sauces that go with them are high in E-numbers.

The Big Mac has 18 separate additives and a cheeseburger 17 separate additives, while a chocolate milkshake has eight different chemicals.

Additives are present in almost everything on the menu, including the grilled chicken and salads.

I am certainly not an expert on additives and know that not all E-numbers are harmful. However some are definitely linked with behavioural side effects in children see Action on Additives website. Junk food is typically high in fat, salt and sugars but additives alone make it worth avoiding - for kids especially!

We decided this year to go for a Christmas Day buffet rather than to try to do one main menu. With 13 people in the house and even my family divided on what they would enjoy it seemed the best compromise.

After a fairly late breakfast we decided to do two rounds of buffet - one early afternoon and the other early evening - with a Dutch "Sinter Klaas" celebration in between (basically a sort of secret Santa accompanied with rhymes about the persons receiving the gifts). We had planned what we would do with the buffet a few weeks back, but the split between the two rounds was decided on the day.

Buffet Round 1

With everybody fairly full after a large breakfast we decided to keep this fairly light. The menu was (from left to right)

Grilled pitta bread with garlic and herb butter (front)
Nürnberger Bratwürste with sweet mustard (back)
Chilli rice crackers
Roast carrot and yogurt dip
Crackers with Canadian sockeye salmon
Fennel salad
Sparkling wine, wine or beer

The next round was heavier. We decided to cook some fish and bake camembert cheese. A few years ago we had monkfish wrapped in bacon at a restaurant and loved it. We have done the same at home but usually used black forest ham rather than bacon; however that has had a divided response. Mrs Oregano and I like the thinness of the black forest ham and the smokey taste. Others, however, do not like the smokey taste and prefer unsmoked bacon.
In the end we compromised and did two monkfish tails one with black forest ham and the other with unsmoked bacon.

A handy tip with monkfish (saw it in a book by Jamie Oliver) is to salt the monkfish for an hour before grilling, then wash off the salt and dry the fish. This avoids the grilling releasing a milky liquid from the fish.

Another easy thing we did was baked camembert (right in the photo). Just cut to top 2 mm of the camembert and place thyme or rosemary on top. Bake in the oven  at about 180 degress until the cheese bubbles up.

So the Christmas buffet round 2 was a bit more substantial. Going left to right it was

Crackers
Roast Scottish smoked salmon
Orkney pickled herring (back)
Deep fried filo prawns (front)
Prawns in cream sauce
Cheese platter with 8 different Dutch and English cheeses, grapes and quince cheese (back)
Grilled monkfish wrapped with black forest ham or bacon
Dip sauce for vegetables
Raw vegetable selection (carrot, cauliflower, red pepper and cucumber)
Bread (back)
Baked camembert (front)
Cold (boiled) quince (back)
Courgette pakora with dip sauce

The food seemed to be enjoyed by everybody and little remained by the end of the evening. However probably doing a turkey and trimmings would have involved less work in the kitchen. There was lots of chopping to be done plus deep fat frying and baking. Nevertheless we felt happy with the end result judging by satisfied guests. I was particularly pleased that the Dutch visitors liked the quince cheese with strong flavoured cheese such as their mature goat cheese.

Now we are looking forward to a relaxing few days...guests have just left.