Tying myself in Windsor (& Eton) knots

If you haven't done so already, I suggest you pick yourself up a copy of the April/May edition of London Drinker magazine.

There's lots of good stuff in there with the latest news on the London (and wider) pub scene, and I've written a piece about cask Altbier in Dusseldorf and an emotional farewell to the gone-but-not-forgotten Brew Wharf.

Oh, and there's an advert that really fucking wound me up something rotten.

I know. I know I should probably be thinking about the victims of the earthquake in Nepal or the grieving relatives of Keith Harris, but it's always the little annoyances that get to me. Partly because I know most people aren't going to be bothered about it.

Bodeans, Bodeans, Bodeans, Bodeans, I'm begging of you please do cook me meat!

I wrote the other day about Masterchef contestants not getting much of an opportunity to slow-cook, and it got me thinking:

What would John and Greg make of Bodeans? A place that smokes and slow-braises meat over many, many hours, if not days. If not years.

'You've got one hour and 15 minutes?' I suspect not, somehow.

MasterChef - give us time, give us beer!

I'm always impressed with the quality of the contestants on MasterChef, and in this latest series the standard seems particularly high. Indeed it's high enough to scare me into not applying for the show myself!

(Particularly the ballsy Lancastrian lass who is my tip to beat the moustachioed twatster in the final!)

What I'm less impressed by is how formulaic the programme has become, with contestants slave to the straitjacket of rigid format as they wield their spatulas of conformity. (And, if anybody asks, I'll probably use that rather florid excuse for not entering rather than admitting my shitting fear!)

Too busy drinking beer to go on MasterChef

My biggest gripes can be summed up thusly. Firstly, the samesome timescales:

Pretty much every challenge involves having an hour (or, quite often, an hour and 15 minutes) to cook something, which rules out any slow-cooked dishes and indeed discriminates against chefs whose speciality happens to be slow-cooking.

(Yes, I'd probably include myself in that category.)

My other complaint, which may well be a by-product of the first, is that there is nowhere near enough cooking with beer on the show.

And we could all use some additional beer, right?!?

A Whale of a time

I wasn't expecting much.

Supercheap Ryanair flights, a swift one-night break somewhere in Norway, and another boring country ticked off the list. Job done.

But life can surprise you. What I actually experienced this week was a peaceful, pleasant stay in delightful little town and one of the very best seafood restaurants I have ever visited. I've been banging on about it for the last few days since we came back.

If you like your fish you have to go there. You just have to.

Who else would find something to moan about in 99p pints?

It's Spoons Bingo time again, and if you're quick, get down to the Wibbas Down Inn in Wimbledon, where you can pick up Wetherspoons festival ales for a mere 99p a pint!

Such a bargain is nothing to be sniffed at, of course, but the reason behind it is going to fuel a bit of a BV rant-a-thon, so feel free to tune out now.

Still there? Good.

Steak & Kidney Anti-Pie

It's British Pie Week, apparently. (Well, it would be, wouldn't it? They have a week for fucking everything these days.)

Thing is, this could just be me getting older'n'shit, but I'm convinced that pies aren't as good as they used to be. Ironically, before we ever had British Pie Week, pies were actually tastier. Weren't they? Is it just me?

I enjoy a good pie as much as the next fat cunt, but all too often these days we seem to settle for disappointing fillings and bland, dry pastry. Yes, you can get some fantastic 'gourmet' pies these days, and pork pies designed to be served cold are probably better than they've ever been, but I'm convinced that your standard everyday hot pie used to be better.

The brewery where everything turns sour

So, this year I've got a bit of a travel bug biting me squarely on the ballsack, and as a consequence I'm metamorphosing into sort of a less amiable version of Michael Palin. One who has to pay his own way to go to places and doesn't have a TV crew in tow.

Essentially, the plan is to try and tick off 12 whole new countries in 2015, and given that I've already visited 30-odd, including most (though not all) of the closer ones, it could be a bit of a challenge, so I'm trying to get off to a flying start. Except that I don't like flying all that much.

Sampling beer at the Cantillon brewery

Last month we had a short break to Marrakech (and I'll blog a Moroccan tagine recipe once I've perfected it) and the other day we had an even shorter trip to the closest country I hadn't done yet - Luxembourg.

A really, really fucking short trip, actually. About 80 minutes. There's not an awful lot to do in Lux.

However, the upside of this is that we got to use Brussels as a base for a couple of nights to break up the 13 hour train journey, and there is plenty to do there. Especially if you like drinking Belgian beer.