This whole vegetable gratin business is getting out of hand. I am seriously thinking of registering courgettegratin.com or vegetablegratin.com.

This little film (see right) has been sent in by my fan, you need a Quicktime plug in to view it. It demonstrates the version made with smoked salmon and ravioles, which are tiny French raviolis stuffed with cheese and herbs, made in Alsace or somewhere over there near Switzerland.

I went to Switzerland many years ago, the father of a friend of ours had a vineyard up near Vevey. I recall drinking vast amounts of his white wine and then going up into the snowy hills for a snowball fight and fried perch fillets and chips. The restaurant broke a hole in the ice over the frozen lake next door, threw in some explosives and picked up the fresh stunned/dead perch out the hole. It was one of these “as much as you can eat places” – the restaurant must be closed down by now, and catching fish like that must have been banned at least a decade ago (we are talking about Switzerland here). Great day and wonderful memories.

Back here in reality, the builders are moving forward very slowly, I always knew that paying them on a daily basis was a bad idea.