I haven’t been updating because I have been really really busy, but I have another guest post to keep my loyal reader(s) occupied until I return in full force. Joyce has been lucky enough to go the Ivy, the new restaurant of Francois Geurds, who is a loyal disciple of Heston Blumenthal. I made her promise she would do a guest post for me, and here it is:

I’ve always enjoyed going out to new restaurants and letting the experience wash over me, but I absolutely adore it when my boss pays and it is called “work”. Yesterday’s meal at Ivy was an absolute delight, if only for watching my bosses and the two chefs (who’ve dined in the finest restaurants all over the world) be deliciously bitchy about every little detail. Which would usually annoy me, but these guys know their stuff. As do the people at Ivy, who bombard you with delightful impressions from the moment you walk in the door.

They sat us down on a lush, fluffy couch in a beautifully styled segment of the restaurant, and immediately presented us with a very modern take on the bread basket, as well as a lovely glas of champagne. The first amuse swiftly followed, and let´s just say it made me happy. Not just because I hadn´t eaten anything all day and would´ve happily wrestled a grizzly for some leftover camp food at that point, but also because I like my food simple, packed with flavour, and beautifully presented, and that´s exactly what the toasted cherry tomato with black olive ice cream was. Next up was a barbecued cucumber and green apple skewer, which were served from a real hand held barbecue, with a garlic mayonaise (aïoli) that we had to squeeze from tiny plastic bags. Tasty, but nothing special.

We were then treated to a swig from a hookah filled with hints of menthol and eucalyptus, which was very refreshing, but a little gimmicky. If they had done it later in the meal, or just left it on the table so we could enjoy it all through dinner it would have made slightly more sense. The best amuse was of course the famous piccalilly icecream, with the tomato and liqourish cone and exploding sugar. A feast in your mouth, although I do think the exploding sugar is very close to cheating (we use it at our restaurant all the time, and it’s more about the element of surprise than actual flavour). We opted for the 7 course menu, with the 5 course wines (which was plenty, believe me!) and we started things off with a beautiful looking shrimp and ginger beer dish, which was served in a miniature fish bowl. Inside was shrimp tartar, fried shrimp and crispy shrimp skin, served on a ginger beer gel and topped with a ginger beer and lime mousse. A little bit too much gel for our taste, but very nice indeed, although the heavily acidic white (almost green) wine wasn’t the best match. Next up was the dish that almost made Holland’s premier culinary reviewer jizz his pants, white asparagus with (duck) foie gras on toast, so expectations were very high indeed. The creamy asparagus and green peas were packed with flavour, but the toast was very salty (and I usually love salty foods) so the thinly spread foie gras couldn’t quite deliver. And the dry croutons used to keep the toast above the cream were just bland. A beautiful dish in principle, but not quite there yet in execution. The next course was amazing though. Panfried seabass with pumpkin toffee. The wow factor was delivered by the pumpkin toffee, created by slowly cooking the pumpkin multiple times, so it’s own natural sugars caramelise to a golden brown, sticky substance, that compliments the seabass beautifully. A tiny piece of toast with salty cured ham to finish it off. Simple, elegant, delicious! And the high continued with the lovely sweatbread in a crispy skin, with vongole and parsnip cream.

The wines got better as the meal progressed, but my memories of them fade as I drank more. I didn’t take notes, or pictures, because A: I didn’t want to look like an amateur (read: tool), and B: I didn’t want to interrupt the carefully constructed flow of the dining experience. Next up was the nitrococktail which was prepared at the table. Fun to watch, and our melon cocktail with mango chunks was quite refreshing, but it wasn’t the mindblowing experience I had hoped for. The lamb that followed was cooked to perfection, but unfortunately the seven courses ended on a low. The blood orange ice cream was good, but dessert was the first dish of the evening that didn’t look fantastic, and the rest of it I can’t even remember. Just meh. However we managed to turn things around by asking for the cheese cart (if you want an extra cheese course you have to ask apparantly, they won’t offer you it) which I had seen rolling around and had my lusty eye on all evening. I literally wanted to climb in and live there. There were too many to choose from, and they were all incredible. Deep and complex in taste, complimented by a lovely ruby port from 2002. The cappuchino was moronically served in a whiskey glass, so it was impossible to drink. But my boss was very impressed with their tea selection. A tiny bit of dark chocolate would’ve been the perfect ending, but no such luck.

Overall it was a great evening. Ivy displays amazing attention to detail, the staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and let’s not forget they’ve only been open for four months.You will have to save your pennies if you want to go there though, the five of us rang up nearly 800 Euros. It wasn’t the best meal I’ve ever had, but there were some excellent dishes, and they will have earned the Michelin star they will no doubt be awarded next year.

(editor’s note: Can you tell how jaded she has become since her return to the restaurant world? Exploding sugar? *yawn* Nitrococktail? Been there, done that. Never mind that I would happily donate my kidneys (I still need the liver) to eat there. But thanks for the great review anyway Joyce! You know I’m just kidding, right?)

This recipe actually combines two things I like to write about: food and wine. A classic example of two birds with one stone! I used Vin Santo (literally: holy wine), a traditional Tuscan dessert wine made from Trebbiano and Malvasia grapes. It is usually eaten with biscotti (also called cantucci), Italian cookies made with almonds and anise. I found this recipe on the BBC Good Food Website, a site I often turn to for inspiration.

I have to warn you in advance: it is a killer dessert, containing both mascarpone and whipped cream, so I would advice you to eat this after a fairly light meal. Hopefully you’ll avoid the food-coma this way!

 You’ll need:

• 250 grams of biscotti/cantucci biscuits
• 100 ml of Vin Santo
• 400 grams of strawberries (make sure they are ripe)
• 50 grams golden caster sugar
• 250 gram tub of mascarpone
• 250 ml of cream, lightly whipped (I added a little bit of sugar to the whipped cream, about 10-15 grams)

First of all, put the biscotti in a plastic bag and crush them slightly with a rolling pin or something heavy. Put the broken biscuits in a bowl and add the Vin Santo. Stir it in and let the biscuits soak. Meanwhile, hull the strawberries (this means you have to remove the crown and slice out the little hard top) and halve them. Take about half of the strawberries, put them in a bowl with the caster sugar and mash them with a fork.

Fold the mascarpone in with the whipped cream. I added a bit of sugar, otherwise it just tastes like cream. If you think the mixture is too thick, add a little bit of milk. In a one-litre bowl, put half of the biscotti on the bottom. Add half of the strawberry mixture and spread half of the mascarpone mixture on top. Repeat until you have used everything up. Scatter the remaining halved strawberries on top. 

After you have finished, put the bowl in the refrigerator. Serve the dessert chilled, accompanied by a glass of Vin Santo.

This post is going to be mean. Mean because I’m using an ingredient that’s very hard to come by fresh: morels. Morels are a type of mushroom usually sold dried or canned, and when sold fresh they are ridiculously expensive (kinda like the elusive truffle). Luckily my mother found a patch of morels near her allotment, decided to tell absolutely nobody about it and brought the stash home. It was then up to me to come up with a recipe which would put the morels to good use. After a little googling I decided to make fresh pasta with a morel-parsley cream sauce, and it turned out pretty great, if I say so myself. (I had to check a couple of times with my mother to find out if there where absoloutely no identical mushrooms which would turn out to be poisonous so we would die a horrible death, but nope. No evil twins!)

I don’t really want to call this a recipe because it is so easy and I didn’t really use measurements, but this is what I used (for 4 persons):

-  about 200 grams of morels, fresh & cleaned (check for insects hiding under the hoods, you don’t want that much extra protein)

- 400 grams of fresh pasta

- 1 onion, diced

- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped

- parsley (I think I used about a quarter of a cup here)

- cream (I’m guessing about 100-150 ml.)

First, make sure you boil the water for the pasta. I used shop-bought fresh pasta, but if you want to go whole hog you can make your own. (And now I find out I haven’t put my own recipe for fresh pasta on this site. Great. I’ll make sure to add it later!) Chop the morels, make sure you get quite chucky bits. That sounds rather dirty, but still. Gently fry the onion and garlic for about 5 minutes, then add the morels. After 2 more minutes, add the parsley and cream. Season with salt and pepper, and heat the cream through. Meanwhile, put the pasta in the boiling water. Drain the pasta when it is al dente, and add the morel-cream sauce. Tadaa! Easy-peasy!

I don’t think this is a great picture of the resulting sauce, but it still makes me hungry:

Update:

This is why you shouldn’t trust me on poisonous mushrooms: (from Wikipedia)

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Early Morels

Verpa Bohemica are also called wrinkled thimble cap, or early morel, and Ptychoverpa Bohemica. Although the early false morels are sometimes eaten without ill effect, they can cause severe gastrointestinal upset and loss of muscular coordination (including cardiac muscle) if eaten in large quantities or over several days in a row. They should be parboiled and dried before use in cooking to break down a gyromitrin-like toxin (an organic, carcinogenic poison) that is produced by the mushroom.

The early false morels can be told apart from the true morels by careful study of how the cap is attached to the stalk. The edge of true morels’ (morchella) caps are intergrown with the stalk, but early morels’ (verpas) caps hang over like a thimble, for which they are sometimes referred to as “thimble morel”. Early false morels are the first morels to fruit in the spring, shortly after leaves begin to form on deciduous trees. Narrow-head morels (morchella angusticeps) fruit next, around May. The last morels to fruit are the yellow or white morels (Morchella esculenta), then crassipes.

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Ok, so the bottom line is that I would probably be dead if I was left to fend for my own in nature, and that you shouldn’t eat morels raw. Other than that, you should probably be fine, but you might want to check if your morels are really morels with someone who knows their mushrooms. Like my mother, for instance…

In my family, we take Easter seriously. This means that no less than 40 eggs are boiled and painted each year, while usually only 5 or 6 people take part in our Easter breakfast. The week after Easter the leftover eggs will seem to glare at you accusingly, daring you to eat them. However, after the egg-extravaganza of Easter Sunday, you’d rather…ehm…not.

In the past, it was my task to hide the eggs in the garden for my siblings to find. It took us a few years before we realised it was smarter to count the eggs before hiding them, because we never knew exactly when we were done with the hunt. Therefore, it was entirely possible to move a wheelbarrow in, say, November, and hear the telltale *splat* of an Easter egg falling down from its hiding place. This was followed by a manic scramble to get away from the offending object as soon as possible, because that egg would resemble a stink bomb very closely. Of course, the first year we did count the eggs beforehand, we ended up with one extra egg anyway, meaning we had to screen each one to see which one looked like it had spent a year in the garden, opposed to half an hour or so. Good times.

This year I decided to try my hand at a traditional crème brulée for dessert on Easter Sunday, to use eggs in a different incarnation. And it was a very good excuse to whip out my fancy crème brulée-torch. Seeing as I like to play with fire, it was a good day all around.

For 4 crème brulées, you’ll need:

• 1 vanilla pod, sliced open
• 200 ml. cream
• 200 ml full fat milk
• 4 egg yolks
• 80 grams of sugar
• white caster sugar, to sprinkle on top
• 4 ramekins

Preheat the oven to 125 degrees Celcius. 

Heat the cream and milk, together with the vanilla pod. When it is boiling, turn the heat low and simmer for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, beat the eggs with the sugar until it resembles a thick pale cream. Remove the vanilla pod from the milk and cream, and add the mixture together with the eggs and sugar. Beat until it thickens a little. Pour the resulting mixture in the ramekins. Place the ramekins in the oven and cook for about 45-50 minutes, until the mixture is fully set. Remove from oven and let them cool. Sprinkle the crème brulée with a generous layer of sugar, and turn on your torch. Burn the top layer until the sugar caramelizes (be careful not to scorch the layer) and turns brown. The sugar will form a hard crust on top, and it is very satisfying to tap that crust with your spoon! Serve immediately. If you don’t have a fancy torch, you can also place the ramekins under a very hot grill in the oven for a few minutes.

I often promise myself I will cut back on eating meat, and that I will start preparing vegetarian meals more often. But apart from some hummus-and-falafel-bingeing, my promises never get me far. After a while I can’t resist the delicious pork sausages, the perfect steak, and the superb lambchops I see at the butcher’s shop. Sigh. I do buy organic meat though, so at least I can feel as if I bought off my guilt, does that count for anything?

But I’m currently on a new vegetarian-streak, and this time I’m using The Cranks Bible by Nadine Abensur. This cookbook is just perfect: the recipes are delicious, she doesn’t just insert tofu everywhere in the hope people won’t notice the meat is missing (a lot of vegetarian cookbooks do that, why?), and she uses a lot of seasonal vegetables. One of the recipes which caught my eye a long time ago was the recipe for a mushroom Wellington, a play on the recipe for beef wrapped in pastry. But since the recipe begins with the ominous words: “There’s no way around this. Mushroom Wellington takes time and you need a good food processor, the blade of which still has some zip to it.”, I put it off for a long time. However, three weeks back I finally conquered my fear, I geared up my trusted Magimix, and I turned out two beautiful loaves!

So, without further ado, the recipe for mushroom Wellington:

(the recipe serves 12 to 16 people, so you can halve it to get less sizeable portions, but the loaves also freeze pretty well)

• 500 g. of puff pastry, defrosted
• 60 ml. sunflower oil
• 675 g. onions, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 450 g. chestnut mushrooms, whole
• 2 tbsp. fresh tarragon
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. Marsala wine (optional)
• 320 g. cashew nuts
• 175 g. fresh breadcrumbs (I used white, but wholemeal can also be used)
• 320 g. almonds
• salt and pepper
• 1 egg, beaten, for glazing

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celcius.

First of all, you’ll need to roll out the puff pastry into two rectangles of about 30×23 cm. I put the rectangles on some baking parchment to prevent it from sticking, and it makes it easier to transfer the final loaves onto a baking sheet. In the meantime, heat the sunflower oil in a large pan and fry the onion with the garlic for about 20-30 minutes, until they are a deep golden-brown colour. Don’t turn the heat too high or they will stick to the pan! Take the mixture out of the pan, and add the mushrooms to the pan with half of the tarragon. Now you’ll have to turn up the heat and cook the hell out of those mushrooms! After about 5-7 minutes, add the soy sauce and the Marsala (if you’re using it), and continue cooking. When the mushrooms are fully cooked, season them with salt and pepper. Use your food processor to crunch the cashew nuts and almonds, and then add the mushrooms (plus the liquid from the pan) to blend it to a very smooth purée. If it is not smooth enough, add a little water. Take this mixture from the bowl and then blend the onion mixture. Add everything together in a large bowl, and add the breadcrumbs and the remaining tarragon. Now comes the fun part: you can use your hand to mix everything together. The mixture should hold its shape when you form it with you hands.

Put the mixture on the pastry rectangles, shaping it with your hands to make a long rectangular shap about 28 cm long, 6 cm wide and 5 cm high. With a sharp knife, make diagonal cuts at a 45 degreea ngle, starting from the left-hand corner of the pastry to the mushroom mixture. Repeat on the other side. You’ll end up with a flap of pastry on the front and back of the loaf: fold this upward, and then fold in the strips on the left and right side one at a time, crossing them over. Do this for both loaves.  If you’ve made two, you can choose to freeze one at this stage, and glaze the other one with the beaten egg. Otherwise, glaze both of them. Put the loaves in the oven for about 35-45 minutes, and check them quite often, because they can cook faster than you expect.

As you can see here, I had some mixture left over and I turned it into some mini-loaves, which would be excellent for a dinner party! I took all the pictures with my iPhone (oooooh, fancy me), so that explains the quality….

Finally, I have to thank my partner in crime Anne, whose hands you see in the pictures. She’s truly excellent in shaping Mushroom Wellington!

The past few days everyone has been calling my attention to the fact that The Fat Duck actually had to close last week due to some customers falling ill after eating there. Thorough investigation of the kitchen yielded no evidence of anything amiss, so now newspapers are speculating about foul play. Well, I just wanted to let you all know that I had absolutely nothing to do with it! Seriously, I just hope the restaurant will be able to open soon without any negative consequences on business.

I was going to be mean and start this post with a whole description of the two days before I had dinner at the Hind’s Head and make you all crazy with anticipation, but I’m in a good mood so I won’t mess with you.

The dinner was in one word: un-freaking-believable. Or is that three words? Anyway, I’ll provide you with a detailed account of our fabulous evening at the Hind’s Head.

Getting to Bray from London wasn’t too difficult: we just boarded a train to Maidenhead from Paddington Station and took a taxi from there. All in all the journey took us about 50 minutes. We arrived far too early for our dinner (around 16.30), so Hester and I took a little stroll around the village. It’s really tiny, full of adorable little cottages and expensive cars, and a small church:

(Did I mention the weather was great that day? Oh yeah, sunny, and not very cold. The Gods were obviously with us)

The grand tour of Bray was finished in about 15 minutes, so we decided to go to the Hind’s Head early and have a pint of Real Ale. Aaaaah, real ale…

Inside,we presented ourselves to the bartender and announced we were the winners of the Menu for Hope-raffle. Unfortunately, she just gave us a blank stare and asked us what we wanted to drink. So much for making a spectacular entrance! We shuffled off with our pints and found a table near the window. The Hind’s Head interior is much like any other English pub: simple wooden furniture, some rowdy locals in a corner and not much light. The one thing that gave its gastro-pub status away were the pristine fluffy towels in the loo.

After Hester and I amused ourselves with our newly purchased books for a whil, a hostess came up to us and asked whether we were the girls who were supposed to meet Heston. Why yes, we are! We were led upstairs to a more private setting, and after about 5 minutes the great man himself made his entrance. By now we were both really nervous and I’m afraid I started babbling a bit, but Heston was very kind and indulged us. We talked for about 20 minutes about all kinds of (culinary) matters. He told us that one of his former sous-chefs, Francois Geurds, would be opening his very own restaurant, Ivy, in Rotterdam that night. For my Dutch readers, he was a guest at De Wereld Draait Door, and you can view the show here. Then Heston enthralled us with stories about Japan, where he ate Fugu-sperm (which apparently doesn’t have much taste), the time Dutch chef Jonnie Boer came to visit the Fat Duck, and why you would probably get shot in Italy if you tried molecular cooking over there (although there are some chefs who are willing to take a risk). He presented me with signed copies of three of his books: the two ‘In Search of Perfection‘-books and his book ‘Family Food‘. I was of course delighted, and I could even reciprocate: I had brought with me a copy of the Rijksmuseum Cookbook, which is about Dutch households in the 17th and 18th century. Something I was sure would fascinate him, seeing as he is a passionate researcher of British cooking at the time, and he could compare the Dutch and British cooking styles. Heston was a bit surprised I had brought him a present, but he seemed pleased enough with it.

Then it was time for Heston to go, and Hester and I were brought to a table in the main dining room of the pub.We could choose anything from the menu. It was very hard to choose because everything looked delicious, but this is what we settled on:

Karen: Pheasant and Bacon Terrine with Spiced Pear Chutney, Aberdeenshire Beef with Bone Marrow Sauce and Triple Cooked Chips, with a side dish of Braised Red Cabbage.

Hester: Raw Scotch Beef with Caper and Shallot Dressing, Sheperds Pie, Lamb Shoulder, Breast and Sweetbreads, with a side dish of Sugar Snap Peas.

Little did we know that before and after our entrées and main courses, we were presented with other dishes as well, such as: Pea & Ham Soup, Roast Onion Tart with Goats Cheese, Soused Herring with Beetroot and Horseradish, and  Scotch Quail Egg, Devils on Horseback (which are prunes stuffed with chutney and wrapped in bacon. Hmmm….bacon!). And after that, dessert. Which was a treacle tart for me, and something with banana and nuts for Hester. Accompanied by something called a Quivering Pudding, which was exactly what it was. I had lots of fun poking it and seeing it wobble. What can I say? I’m easily amused. It tasted a bit like porridge with cinnamon, and was absolutely delicous.

Some smaller impressions of the food:

(I can’t show you pictures of all the dishes because some of them were rather overexposed and others too blurry, but you get the gist of what we ate from these babies. I blame the bad photo’s on the amount of wine I had to drink with dinner)

Needless to say, we were completely stuffed at this point. It was time for a soothing cup of tea, which was promptly brought out together with… more food. Well, just two chocolate truffles to be exact, but it inspired me to take a picture of Hester which I entitled: “Just one tiny mint…”:

They practically had to roll us out the door. I felt more than a passing resemblance to Augustus Gloop, the fat little boy from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Which is not really a bad thing if you have eaten as well as we did that night.

The service was amazing as well. Our fun waitress kept congratulating us and telling us how well we were doing with the food. I think it was the first time I’ve actually witnessed Hester unable to put any more food in her mouth, and that was truly a sight to behold!

We took a taxi back to the Maidenhead station where we boarded a train back to London, and back in our hostel we just fell in our beds from exhaustion. But with great food memories which I’m going to treasure forever…

P.s Yes, I know there’s no picture of Heston and us together, but by the time I thought to ask he was already leaving and then it felt a bit awkward to whip out the camera, so I decided to let it go. But I think the above pictures are proof enough that I actually met him.

This upcoming weekend is going to be very exciting: I’m heading out to London to meet the one and only Heston Blumenthal. Yes, he of the Fat Duck and the brilliant BBC-series ‘In search of perfection’. Why do I get to meet him, you ask? Well, last year I participated in Chez Pim’s Menu For Hope raffle, where all kinds of fabulous prizes could be won. Such as this one:

“A unique historic British menu for two at the Hinds Head from Heston Blumenthal. Heston will meet the winner and present  autographed copies of all his three books. The more public side of Heston Blumenthal is the pre-eminent chef-scientist at the Michelin three-star restaurant The Fat Duck, while  the side lesser known is the passionate researcher and restorer of  historic British dishes.  The lucky winner of this prize (and a guest) will dine on a menu that is literally a representation of British cuisine from the 17th and 18th century.  Heston promise that they will be outstanding, and some of them will never have been tested before!”

At the time, I had rather limited funds and only bought two tickets for the raffle, but that was enough: I was picked as the lucky winner for this prize. Due to some scheduling conflicts it has taken longer than anticipated for us to plan this dinner, but this Saturday it is finally happening!

I have to admit that I’m rather nervous about meeting the big man himself, but I’m sure it’ll be so much fun. I’m bringing my roommate Hester as my compagnion, and we’ll go on a (cook)book-shopping spreebeforehand, so the weekend is bound to be a great one. I’ll make sure to take some pictures and post them here, together with a detailed account of my evening with Heston Blumenthal…

I love salads. However, since we are in the throes of winter, salads are not exactly the food my body is craving. Instead, it is calling out for stews, soups, pasta and other comfort food. By now I’m longing for summer, when I can eat lettuce, tomato and cucumber in abundance, without my body going into starvation mode (it takes its carbs very seriously in winter). Thankfully I’ve found a solution which tricks it into thinking it is getting the aforementioned comfort food, while it is in fact receiving lots and lots of veggies. Victory is mine! And scurvy is once again held at arm’s length. By using winter staple foods such as red cabbage, white cabbage and carrots, all available in abundance at the moment, you are even benefitting the environment and avoiding the waterlogged tomatoes that are currently for sale in the supermarket (which taste like…death. If death was a tomato, of course).

The orginal recipe comes from Kalyn’s Kitchen, but I tweaked it a bit to suit my preferences.

You’ll need (for one large meal salad, or a side salad which can be shared):

• About 100 grams of red cabbage, sliced thinly
• About 100 grams of white cabbage, sliced thinly
• A very large carrot, grated
• One (smoked) chicken breast (optional), diced
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce (I use Kikkoman, since I could drink the stuff)
• half a teaspoon freshly minced garlic
• a squeeze of lemon juice
• A teaspoon of peanut/sunflower oil
• 75 grams of cashew nuts

Mix the red and white cabbage in a bowl, together with the grated carrot. Add the chicken breast and cashew nuts. Mix the peanut butter, soy sauce, lemon juice and oil together in a cup until it forms a smooth mixture. For some extra kick, add some red chili pepper to the dressing. I’m a big wuss, so I can’t stand too much heat, but you might. Pour the dressing over the salad, mix thoroughly, and enjoy! If you think this is not substantial enough, you can also add some bacon bits, which I may or may not have done last night. Please don’t tell anyone…

As George W. Bush was getting ready to depart from the White House, he decided to make one last effort to “stick it to the French” and he raised the tariff on Roquefort over 300 precent, making it virtually impossible for the French to sell their beloved blue-veined cheese in the United States. This means that the price of a kilo of Roquefort will increase from $40 to $130! And while I’m a certified cheese-addict, I think even I would balk at such an outrageous price. The U.S. is apparently at this moment the third largest importer of Roquefort, grossing an annual $8 million in sales, and seeing as the region of Roquefort is entirely dependent on its production of the cheese, this could mean a mayor blow to the village. The reasons behind Bush’s actions? Apparently it’s because the European Union has a ban on beef from hormone-treated animals. Also, the EU has not offered any scientific proof that hormone-treated beef poses a cancer-threat to consumers, and that is why the World Trade Organization has allowed the increased tariff on Roquefort in both America and Canada (because the ban violates trade rules, and that is why America and Canada can sanction it). Meanwhile, the French have stated that they will not be scared into loosening their restrictions on hormone-treated beef. And the Americans? Well, the cheese-lovers are looking pleadingly at their new president in hopes he will improve the French-American relations and eventually bring the price of Roquefort down to an acceptable level. Until then, they will have to either pay the steep price or make do with cheaper and inferior cheeses…