There Are No Holds...
Just watched a lovely encomium to Keith Floyd on YouTube this evening, which made us reflect on the very influence this bloke had on us - food wise - during the 1980s and 90s, a legacy that obtains to this day. I can't begin to count how many thousands of great meals that we and our friends cooked and shared with each other over those decades, but suffice it to say that Floyd's enthusiasms and flamboyance had a very big influence on us all and our cooking. One of the things that stand out about the man was that he was prepared to wing it and improvise, and often to - publicly - fail: jazz, mes enfants! - something that has always been dear to my heart. Very often you've just got to go with the moment and rely on native instinct come hell or high water. I once told my photographer cousin that I could operate a Sony broadcast quality Betacam camera for a video shoot for Toyota, only to get him to stop en route to the shoot so that I could rehearse what I'd only just read...