Giovanni's good, but Figaro's better, as ROH celebrates Mozart and da Ponte

I've decided that opera goers fall into three main categories: aficionados, dilettantes and stranieri.

Piers and I sit in the dilettante middle ground. We enjoy opera and attend four to eight performances a year, but are no experts. Our favourites are limited. Mozart for both, Wagner for him, Verdi and Puccini for me. With limited discretionary income, we buy tickets for what we know we already like, and what we either haven't seen yet on stage, or haven't seen in ages.

The stranieri are either first-time opera goers or people who only make it once in a multiple of years. They are often people dragged along by friends and partners or, at someplace as expensive as the Royal Opera House, guests on corporate hospitality. Maybe not opera fans, but up for a posh evening. Also amongst the stranieri are those whose incomes can't stretch to the expensive tickets very often, or who don't have anyone to go with and don't like going solo. (Me, not so long ago.)

Then there are the regulars. The aficionados go a lot, may have season tickets, and have probably seen most of the classics many times. With so much exposure, they're the ones who can differentiate between one production and another, and get picky about the quality of the singers. They're the ones, I now realise, for whom most opera reviews are written.

I grasped this after coming home from Don Giovanni two weeks ago and looking up the professional reviews. Those said the set was tired, the acting competent and the voices a bit underwhelming with the exception of Mathew Polanzani's Ottavio and Hilda Gerzmava's Anna. If you'd seen many Giovannis, I suppose that makes sense. But I'd only gone to one production before this, an understandably humble attempt at Opera Theater St. Louis, so the spectacle of one of the history's finest operas on one of the world's best stages with world-class voices was, to this dilettante, good fun from start to finish.

Gerard Finley was a Giovanni with serious sex appeal. He looked the part, with flowing long hair and buff body. Giovanni is a fascinating character, leaving a trail of wounded women behind him, but doing it without remorse. One of the funniest bits of the opera is when he explains to his servant how him being constant to just one girl would be unfair to the rest of womankind. In Finley's performance, you sense he really believes it. He delivers enough of the charming rogue that he both repels and appeals to you; exactly what the women involved with him were feeling.

I agree with the reviewers that Ottavio was particularly strong. As the fiance of Donna Anna, whose attempted rape ... followed by the murder of her defending father ... by Giovanni kicks off the whole plot, poor Ottavio spends most of the opera trailing around after the strong willed, revenge-seeking Anna. He has some lovely arias, however, and here they were sung with such exquisite passion that he became a model of poignant, unrequited lover rather than the wimpish also-ran to Giovanni.

Of course the climax of Don Giovanni offers some of the most dramatic staging opportunities in opera. Simply put, the ghost of Donna Anna's father shows up for dinner and drags Giovanni to hell. With a big budget production it's a chance to impress. I remember a televised version from the Met in New York when I was a kid where the entire proscenium arch was filled with doors that opened to reveal devils. In this production, the dining table sprouts some impressive pyrotechnics as the ghost towers above Giovanni as they disappear below the stage. It's a scene that takes your breath away, and leaves you checking for the fire exits.

Giovanni's hellfire paled, however, in comparison to the production of The Marriage of Figaro we saw two weeks later. Most operas have a handful of tunes you know, and a lot of linking music you don't. Figaro is like a greatest hits performance. From the moment its remarkable overture begins, it's rare to have many minutes go buy without another famous piece of music. This production throws you right into the action, with that energetic overture becoming the soundtrack to the servants of the great house scurrying about preparing for the big, and crazy, day to come.

The sets (towering, light-filled rooms of a grand stately home, transformed at times into Figaro's closet-cum-bedroom or a moonlit forest), combine with costume and acting for an immersive, almost film-like experience. Indeed, you can buy an earlier version of this production on video from the ROH. The plot is complicated and, without the benefit of Mozart's music, could have easily fallen into tedious farce. In an aristocratic estate in Spain, senior servant Figaro is to marry lady-in-waiting Susanna, but their employer Count Almaviva is scheming to get Susanna for himself while pretending to support the wedding. Meanwhile there's a girl-crazy page boy (a "breeches role" always played by a woman), who's pining after the countess, who's pining after her unfaithful husband. Add numerous credulity-challenging side plots that threaten the wedding, mix heartfelt serious bits with honest comedy, complete with some of the most remarkable interweaving of multiple voices you've ever heard, and all this madness transforms into one of the greatest achievements of western civilisation.

Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak was perfect in the female lead, so strong in both voice and character the opera could just as easily been named the Marriage of Susanna. She was matched by Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, whose magnificently resonant voice matched swarthy good looks and a comic turn that brought out all the delight in the clever trickster that is Figaro.

A night of pure delight and, unusually, of upbeat joy. In Figaro, Mozart delivers not just magnificent music, but that rarest of all things in opera: a happy ending. Maybe that's one of the reasons we love it so much. If there's one opera I'm willing to see again and again until I reach aficianado status, this is it.

Condemned to French cuisine, I turn out a worthy Valentine's Day meal

We have thus far used Valentine's Day as an excuse to get away, our first year together to a nearby country house hotel called Wokefield Park (see 15.2.10), and last year to Venice (19-25.2.11). We had planned to go to Rome for our first post-marital Valentine's, for the conjunction of Italian culture (makes me happy) and the England v Italy rugby match (his joy), but chemotherapy got in the way. As, frankly, does Valentine's Day on a Tuesday.

Though we both love a good restaurant, neither of us was keen to go out on this night, when the forced conviviality seems to spark the worst in the catering trade. Looking at those old blog entries, I was reminded that two of our worst meals together took place in restaurants, on Valentine's Day. Clearly, time to stay in but do something special in the kitchen.

Since I work from home, cooking duties defaulted to me. (Piers becoming sommelier, sous chef in the evening and sender of a fine spray of red roses.) In an attempt to get more use out of our large but dusty cookbook collection, I told Piers to pick one book, and I'd do a

whole menu out of it. Unfortunately his tastes and my safe cooking territories do not align. He went straight past the well-thumbed stuff ... The Silver Spoon (Italian), The Beautiful Mexico Cookbook, Cooking in Spain and The Sugar Reef Caribbean Cookbook to pull out Raymond Blanc's Cooking for Friends. Damn. French. Fiddly. Heavy. Sauces. But I set the challenge, so I could hardly complain. And I did need to get out of my comfort zone.

Some observations about Blanc's book. First, it's an odd mix of light, spring- and summer-friendly starters and meaty, wintery mains. It was a challenge to get a starter and main that worked well on the palate and into my schedule. Second, even with good local farm shops some basic ingredients were tough to find. Third, even though this book was supposedly written for dinner parties and notes all the stuff you can do in advance, French cuisine is complicated cuisine. Every recipe has sauces, garnishes, multiple steps. I picked what I thought were three easy recipes and I was still scrambling all day and got my first course on the table 40 minutes later than planned.

I started with an asparagus mousse, tempting because you could prepare it in advance and pull it out of the fridge to cook just before dinner. The finished dish has potential, but I was

n't thrilled with it on first attempt. The flavours were delicate, but almost too much so. If I did this again I'd toy with doubling the amount of asparagus. It did make a very pretty plate, with the green disc of mousse surrounded by asparagus tips. The labour-intensive chervil jus seemed pointless, but my own addition of two discs of breaded, baked goat's cheese (a recipe from elsewhere in the book) seemed to complete things, its sharp flavour bringing some punch to the mousse.

On to fillets of beef with a marrow, horseradish and mustard crust. Once you get the marrow, it's a simple preparation, and absolutely delicious. (And a big favourite with the dog. The butcher gave me an entire shin bone from which to get the marrow.) But this being French cuisine, the recipe had two garnishes ... caramelised baby onions and a fricassee of wild mushrooms ... plus another multiple-ingredient, multiple-step sauce. So much for simple. The saffron potatoes I put on the side were super, though probably not worth the cost of the ingredients once the last of my hoard of cheap Tunisian saffron runs out and I actually have to pay market price for the stuff again.

While I can fine tune the dish (reduce the sauce more, skip the potatoes because those garnishes are actually vegetable sides), my Francophile, carnivorous husband was most pleased. To kick things up a notch, when sent to the wine cellar (aka the garage) to get something good, he came back with the bottle of 2004 Smith Haut Lafitte he'd given me the first time he came to my house for dinner. We'd been saving it for something special. And it was. Rich, fruity, dark and smooth ... if I'd needed an explanation of why the good stuff gets better with age, here it was. A web search shows this particular wine is no longer available in the UK, but Americans can get it for around $50 a bottle. Believe me, that's a value for money.

Time for the chocolate and walnut tart. It looked lovely. As a French dessert should. I broke the rules and injected a side of whipped cream with orange marmalade folded in on the side, found nowhere in Blanc's b

ook. Oddly, though every savoury dish had a sauce with it the poor tart recipe had the slice being served naked. It just didn't seem right. Piers and I split on this one. I thought it was a great addition, he opined too many flavours on the plate. I thought the tart itself was average. Even though I used top quality chocolate, it just didn't seem chocolatey enough. It didn't have the gooey, chocoholic satisfying richness of the much more humble devil's food cake, or the even more plebeian brownie.

But that's being picky. On the whole, it was a resounding success. Had I fed this to Mr. B on the night he brought the Smith Haut Lafitte, instead of the Italian food I served up, he might have proposed months earlier.

Speed is critical to the opera experience, and offers simple business lessons

Someone should do a productivity study on the bar staff at the Royal Opera House. In a country not known for its service, the team there is a model of genial efficiency.

Of course, this should be no surprise. The logistics there are challenging. Most performances are sold out. I suspect the vast majority of ticket holders arrive no more than 20 minutes in advance. For the average show, there will be one interval of perhaps 30 minutes. Meaning the staff, scattered across a variety of bars and restaurants on several levels, has no more than an hour to take care of more than 2,000 people, though the reality is that most of the crowd is going to want a drink or snack in their hands within the same 10-minute window. Given the margin on food and drink, and the general affluence of this audience, I have no doubt there's a marketing plan somewhere in that building that's all about getting all those guests to consume as much as possible in that tiny window.

That's a scenario which, in most bars and restaurants in the UK, would leave half the potential business un-done, as irritated punters wait in long queues to be served. Not here. I can't remember waiting more than a few minutes, ever, and last night was a real exemplar of the power of efficiency.

We'd finished dinner in Covent Garden and had 10 minutes to get to our seats. At 7 minutes and counting, we were cutting through the Amphitheatre Bar. "Can I get you anything at the interval?" a cheery waiter called, wine list already in hand. I didn't know that we had time, I worried. All we had to do was tell him what we wanted and settle up later. Add 30 seconds to choose a bottle of wine, a request over my shoulder for "something chocolate" to go with it, and we continued on our path, with the waiter pointing to the table he'd have ready for us.

With magical efficiency, we emerged an hour later to find our name neatly printed on a reserved card on a table, our bottle of picpoul and two gorgeous chocolate brownies waiting. (A surprisingly good combination.) Of course, the cost of this little interval treat was about the same as our whole pre-theatre dinner. But for ROH management, that must be the point. This is entirely discretionary spend, which we made ... or might have skipped ... based completely upon convenience and the approach of that waiter. Many businesses could take note.

Including Chez Gerard across the piazza. It's one of the closest restaurants to the ROH, has a solid fixed price menu and a marvelous atmosphere, tucked into a Victorian-style glass house on top of the north market building. (Its open air balcony is one of the best spots in London to while away a sunny afternoon with wine and people watching.)

We had a perfectly satisfactory though not exceptional meal; steak frites for both of us, preceded by goat's cheese croustade for me and a terrine for him. We had an ample 90 minutes to eat. The starters would have been pre-prepared and taken five minutes to plate up. The mains, especially given my husband's predilection for meat so rare it's simply been scared by a candle at 10 paces, could have taken no more than 10 minutes. We should have had ample time. An enterprising waiter might have even made time to push dessert on us. Saving us from those pricey yet wonderful brownies in the opera house. Yet at 40 minutes before curtain up we had to ask after our absent main courses, then had to push for the bill and pay while we were still eating, dashing off with little time to spare.

Some excuse about the waiter not putting in the mains order until we'd finished our starters. Silly, and avoidable. Surely, it's a safe assumption that anyone eating in this restaurant this early is a pre-theatre diner, and in a hurry? The experience wasn't enough to strike them off my list ... the place is just too convenient ... but it did set up an interesting contrast between average and exemplary.

And what of the opera? Don Giovanni. Wonderful. But I'm going to make you wait for more. It's the Mozart/DaPonte series at the ROH, and we've booked two of the three. (Skipping Cosi Fan Tutti, since we just saw that at Longborough last summer.) We see The Marriage of Figaro in two weeks. Expect a combined review then.

English high tea is still a celebration, though an overpriced one at The Savoy

One of the classic questions in job interviews is: "are you an optimist, or a pessimist?" Journalism school's infusion of cynicism, and 25 years of banging my head against various corporate brick walls, can incline my knee-jerk reactions to the latter. But I think this blog probably gets to the essential, more positive nature of my character.

Since the turn of the year I could have shared my anxiety over the renovation of my mother's house in St. Louis, sucking in enormous amounts of cash to bring the place up to a standard that will sell. Or the even greater worry about what happens if it doesn't sell. Back home, I could tell you how my property woes continue with expensive repairs to my old house in Datchet, now rented out. I could moan "why me" about the complete collapse of my lovely convertible, which now requires a new engine. (You may sense some stress about cash flow here.)

I could whinge quite a bit about being sick; the hair loss, the lack of energy, and the lingering chest cold that morphed into pneumonia, or the horrible pain every time nurses go digging around trying to hit one of my delicate, hard-to-find veins. I could bore you with my panic over my rapid weight gain (the combo of stress eating and no ability to exercise is lethal). I could explore the frustrations of returning to the office, especially during the nightmare of planning and budget battle season (which I will never do, of course, because I don't blog about my work). Or I could consolidate it all and tell you about the stress dreams that are coming every night, usually about being lost, late for an important date, or both.

But such gloom is not what this blog, or Ellen Ferrara, is all about. I far prefer to concentrate on the fun, cheerful, entertaining and glamorous side of life. Must have been that steady Disney diet in childhood. So today, we're going to talk about afternoon tea.

Back when I was just an eager and occasional British tourist, I had a vague idea that just about everyone in the country paused to drink tea and consume a light, sweet snack around 4pm in a civilised prelude to their late dinners. Moving here, I learned that "tea" is an alternate word for dinner for many people (especially northerners), or the evening meal you serve your kids before putting them to bed and having a proper dinner with your partner. The idea of most people, who barely have time to gulp a sandwich at their desk for lunch, stopping for a sophisticated afternoon ritual is ludicrous. The "tea" that Americans expect has been relegated to holiday afternoons or grand hotels. And the latter are usually filled with foreigners trying to capture a ritual that's only flourishing in the England of Downton Abbey and the other historical dramas that shape the rest of the world's perception far more than reality of this country.

All of which brings us to the Savoy. My visiting American had never had the full on ritual. Turns out I was lucky to get a table. Working 10 days out, on a Wednesday in low-season January, the Ritz and Claridges were already booked. (Recession? What recession?) But the Savoy had a table. I hadn't been there since its recent refurbishment, which closed the place for three years and cost the new Fairmont Hotel group owners more than £220 million. Why not?

The restored and updated Thames Foyer, home to the afternoon ritual, is an architectural triumph. They've opened up the ceiling to natural light for the first time since WWII, filling the central space with a gazebo topped with a stained glass dome, all modern but channelling Edwardian elegance. The room is finished with subtle, classic Georgian decor and generous couches and arm chairs with more of a French feel. It's elegant, sophisticated and you can comfortably settle in for hours.

The tea itself is less impressive, both in experience and taste. Even with the finest of ingredients, I figure the per-head wholesale cost for high tea can't be more than £7. We're talking a couple of scoops of gourmet tea with some hot water; a variety of narrow finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off (generally an allowance of one complete sandwich per person, if you joined up the strips); scones with clotted cream and jam (generally

two each); a variety of gorgeous, mini French pastries and thin slices of cake (about four per person). Even adding in a percentage of staff costs, running costs for the building and the salary for the pianist, you're still making a hefty margin. Because tea in any of the grand hotels is around £40. Add a glass of the heavily promoted champagne, and the tip, and you're crossing the £60 mark.

All of which means this is about the experience, not the meal. It's likely to be for a special event. Given those dynamics, I expect perfection, especially from the service. The Savoy tries, but is not up to standard. The food is average. The sandwiches were the traditional fillings, thinly spread, unremarkable ... and I even tasted a few slices of bread that might have been approaching stale. The scones were fine, but I've had far better in many a countryside tea garden, and the pots of both jam and clotted cream were too small. Sure, you can ask for more, but then you have to wait on the staff. (More on them to come.) The pastries and cakes were the best of the offerings, but this quality is easily bought in from a range of French patisseries in London. I must commend them on having a more savoury tea for the less sweet-toothed, which cut out the scones for scrambled eggs and salmon ... though I wondered why they didn't make the substitute for the much sweeter pastries.

Most impressive on the culinary front is the tea menu itself, which featured multiple pages of beautifully-described exotic teas. It's no wonder part of the renovation is a new tea shop, given that most of this stuff isn't generally available.

Service is genial and, as we've come to expect at every level of London establishment, foreign. Everyone's English was excellent, but nobody got any points for speed. Glasses of water requested while perusing the menu took ages to arrive. We ordered champagne, which seemed to be a signal to the staff to hold back the pots of tea until our glasses were empty. Meaning there was still no sign of the tea to go with the scones, which is about the only food on the planet with which this confessed coffee preferrer thinks the stuff actually works well with. We finally had to ask for it, and our different pots arrived and were poured at different times. Sure, there were five of us, but as this variety is the point of high tea and they had plenty of staff, this shouldn't have been a problem. The more savoury tea was a lovely idea, but they didn't coordinate its serving with the traditional one, meaning Piers was lagging far behind the sweet-toothed girls and had to call over the staff to get two of his four courses started.

Since I know the majority of my payment is going to service, I have to put the Savoy far down my value for money scale. Seeing the restoration was worth it, and the company and occasion (a reunion of our bridesmaids) made for a delightful afternoon, but I'm not setting foot back in the place unless someone else is paying. My own cash ... with more extended reservation time ... would go to tea at Claridges, which impressed me when last I indulged and recently won one of the papers' best tea in London award. And I wouldn't mind trying the Ritz, though I expect to be surrounded by Americans and Chinese. I haven't been since my first London trip in '82, when the then-£20 fee (now £42) was a painful sacrifice. But it served as dinner, and it had to be "done" to say I'd had the full London experience. I can't deny it. That early foray into the sophisticated luxury of one side of English life, no doubt, influenced my desire to move here and the entertainment choices I've made since.

Clearly, my tea cup is ... and has always been ... half full.

Locatelli's back on form, while L'Ortolan gives culinary cred to Reading

It's a rare and wonderful thing to hit two Michelin-starred restaurants within a week. Something I haven't done in years, and something quite unexpected while still working quietly from home while dealing with the chemotherapy. But the motivation mounted: I wanted to pamper my visiting friend, I had a coupon and I got a sign from God.

Anne, the closest thing I have to a sister, returned to London after the whirlwind tour of serving as my matron of honour for the wedding. This time, it was to be all about R&R, and her birthday. She wanted to look after me and have a quiet life, reading, watching TV and generally relaxing. A very far cry from the action-packed, pressure-driven life driven heavily by a 3-year-old back in St. Louis. Toddlers, I have been told, aren't really conducive to relaxation. Much less to high-end restaurants. So I thought we'd lay it on thick.

For Anne's birthday, we started at Nirvana Spa, which I've joined since that great outing with my bridesmaids in September. (See 14.9.11) We soaked in the hot jet pool, napped on the heated ceramic lo

ungers in the twilight-lit, Morroccan inspired fountain court and had a dainty ladies' lunch. The virtue of which was undermined by a shared bottle of Pinot G

rigio. Then it was off to the nearby one-starred L'Ortolan, which had sent a five-course for £45 invitation out to all spa members. How could one say no?

L'Ortolan occupies a charming old vicarage house in a village on the outskirts of Reading. It's not the kind of place you'd expect to find such high end cooking. (Reading would never make the "exclusive" list and the village of Shinfield is isolated and otherwise entirely residential.) The restaurant has maintained the feel of a private house; you enter into the staircase hall, turn right for the bar which extends into the conservatory, left for the restaurant that occupies the rest of what were once the lounges. Upstairs are three private dining rooms and I sense from the website that they do a roaring trade in small special events.

The food is solidly in the modern, French-inspired gourmet range, with innovative pairings, exquisite presentation and all the latest cooking trends. We went for matching wine flight, which of course blows the value-for-money curve, but is always my preferred way to do a chef's menu. Especially when you have a good sommelier, as this one was, who's ready to chat about the pairings.

We started with confit salmon (cooked "souvide", of course. Can any chef resist the slow water bath at the moment?) with olive oil jelly, beetroot, pink grapefruit and liquorice oil. I know, it sounds like a bizarre combo, but it worked well. Brought together by an Austrian Grüner Veltliner. Yes, I know this variety. But only as the fruity, somewhat raw stuff you drink in tankards during new wine celebrations in the taverns of Grinzing. Usually at some stage before climbing on top of the table and pretending to be able to sing in German. This one was sophisticated and well balanced, making the grape worthy of further exploration.

Next, the foie gras course, with white wine jelly, raisin puree and smoked duck. Could have had seconds. Served with a gewürztraminer that was drier that the usual foie gras pairing, but held up ... perhaps

because the jelly and the raisins were bringing in the sugar from elsewhere. Next onto skate for a main course, layered with chicken mousse and watercress panna cotta, dressed with samphire, brown shrimp and cockles in their exquisite little shells. An elegant dish, made more so by the white Burgundy from Saint-Veran that gave off a wonderful little hit of peach on the first nose.

Then came a cheese course. Not the traditional cheese trolley wheeling up for your choice (though they have one of those as well), but the chef's selection of a blue cheese and a small goat's cheese parcel rolled in hazelnuts. Served with a very agreeable port that made Piers, the evening's designated driver, quite glum he couldn't indulge. Finally a plate of rhubarb multiple ways for dessert: as compote, ice cream, crisp and poached. Served with an Asti moscato, the first sparking dessert wine I've ever had, but it won't be the last.

At just a 25-minute drive from the house, L'Ortolan is worthy of note as a local "special event" restaurant. The problem, of course, is that it is a drive, meaning one person will always have to forgo the wine. But, unlike its London fellows, they do seem to do more deals to bring in the diners. One to keep an eye on.

That was meant to be the big treat of the visit. But with my chest cold refusing to clear, my oncologist had set up a day of tests, culminating with a visit to a chest specialist, the afternoon of Anne's arrival. The plan was to pick her up at Heathrow, drive into town, do the medical stuff, meet up with

Piers for dinner and drive home. Giorgio Locatelli's new cookbook and series inspired me to call the restaurant, which isn't too far from the medical crowd on Harley Street. He's always booked months in advance, but there might be a cancellation... And sure enough, there was my sign from God that he wanted me to give Giorgio another try: a table available at 6:30.

I'm delighted to report that Locatelli's is back on form, after the disappointment there last year that saw it slip from my No. 1 slot. (See 21.5.11) Anne and I started with the papardelle with wild boar sauce, which really is one of the supreme winter comfort foods of the Italian kitchen and exquisitely done here. Piers went with an equally satisfying pasta with wild mushrooms. It was definitely a winter menu and we all opted for comforting, warming main courses: rabbit, veal, venison. All beautifully cooked, with highly flavoured sauces served atop decorative yet delicious sides. And, unlike most French-based Michelin starred places, these are plates substantial enough that you're challenged to finish them. The sommelier was on hand to recommend an interesting and moderately-priced (for this wine list) Puglian red that had all the deep fruit we needed for our respective meats.

There were no cannoli to tempt me to disappointment on the dessert menu. I went surprisingly simple (and at £5,50, the bargain of Giorgio's menu) and went for the ice cream. The pistachio here is a real standout, made, so I read in the new cookbook, from nuts from Bronte that are considered the best in

the world. If the gelato was anything to go by, it must be true. Anne was duly impressed by the Locatelli classic cheese plate with the matching honey pots. Piers, however, was let down by the tiramisu, which was beautifully served in an oversized martini class but not enough of anything besides delicately flavoured whipped cream to make much of an impact.

Overall, a delicious and deeply satisfying meal. But does it put Giorgio back in my No. 1 spot? Probably not, I must admit. Not because of quality of food or service, but on the value for money scale. Regular readers will know I've increasingly become a fan of the tasting menu. Let the chef direct you, and graze over a variety of five or six smaller courses to experience a complete culinary picture. Locatelli's does not do, and has never done, tasting menus. You are on your own for three courses. Or, if you really wanted to push the boat out, you could do the traditional Italian four, with antipasti, pasta, main and sweet. But the servings here are large enough to make that rather excessive. And expensive. Three courses and with generous wine at Locanda Locatelli will cost you about the same as a tasting menu and wine flight at other places, and while Locatelli's place scores high on the satisfaction and comfort index, it's not the rounded experience that a chef's menu might give you.

I still have to ask myself ... if London had better Italian restaurants overall, would Locatelli's be so exceptional? And able to charge such a premium? While I have not had any better Italian in England, I've had plenty of equivalent meals, for much less, in the Italian countryside. Given the cost and time of travel, however, I suppose Giorgio nets out OK if you consider him not just a meal, but a quick trip to Italy. He's still in my top five.

Random musings from the sick bed

What an odd 11 weeks it's been. Time seems to have flown as quickly as ever, despite the fact that I've spent most of it in bed or on the couch. Free of corporate politics, deadline pressures and a packed social diary, you'd think time would crawl. No. Life continues upon its rapid pace, but with a different focus. A more esoteric focus, perhaps, as my waking hours have mostly drawn in to books, TV and the internet, as anything more active than a short walk is just too much effort.

Here are some random observations from my sedentary life.

I shall be slower to bash the long-term unemployed.

Though few people will be so vocal in front of strangers, get any group of middle class professionals going on the long-term unemployed, or, indeed, on most people on benefits, and the attitude is pretty harsh. Why don't they just get a job? Easier said than done for many reasons, but after 10 weeks off sick I realise it may not be because they're lazy bastards, or because there are no jobs out there. It may be that their minds have atrophied beyond the ability to embrace a work ethic. Work is no different than a tough gym workout. Do it every day, you get used to it. The longer you lay off it, the more alien it seems. I'm back to work this week ... part time, as I have the energy, and on background projects ... and it is HARD.

Concentrating on a tightly-packed, activity-mandated eight hour stretch after weeks of complete freedom is a challenge. The bad bits of the job look worse, and the challenges steeper, after time away. How much more difficult if approached after a long break, when real fear would have built up about whether you could handle such things. The brain is like a muscle, responding best when trained to handle certain tasks. If you've allowed it to go stale for a long time, the re-entry would be difficult, if not impossible. Of course, my brain's far from dead. It just hasn't been thinking about anything modern or corporate. Instead...

Tolkien deserves his reputation, many of his imitators do not.

The first thing on my reading list, with weeks of time stretching before me, was The Lord of the Rings. These are perhaps the most critical books of my husband's formative years, and he still finds joy in re-reading them, and in a role-play version of the world on line. I've always been more of a Chronicles of Narnia girl, never making it past the mid-way point of The Two Towers back in high school. But I've enjoyed Peter Jackson's films and read plenty of fantasy indebted to Middle Earth, most notably George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, of which I am an avid fan. So, in order to fill in a shocking gap in my core reading, and to bond better with my husband, it was time to knock off the whole trilogy.

It deserves its magnificent reputation. I don't think I was old enough on my first attempt, thus got bogged down in the gloom of the second book. But it really is a delight, and so obviously the mother of a genre. The complexity, the depth, the rich characterisation are all so much better than much of what's being written now. I emerged with not only an increased respect for Tolkien, but for Peter Jackson, whose accomplishment of putting together the films is even more obvious after reading the source material. Ditto my admiration for Martin who, on close examination, does indeed deserve all those comparisons to Tolkien. Sadly, modern writer Christopher Paolini doesn't fare so well.

My next book after LOTR was Inheritance, the fourth and concluding book in the series he started with Eragon. Having read the first three, I was compelled to wrap it up, but it was a trial. Maybe I wouldn't have been so hard on it had I not just emerged from Middle Earth. But it was badly in need of editing, far too derivative of Tolkien's original and just plain boring. Why his publishers didn't force him to combine books three and four and wrap things in a traditional trilogy, I'll never know. (Well, yes I do. Profit.) The fantasy genre in the hands of masters like Tolkien and Martin is worthy literature; Inheritance was just painful.

I finally understand Thomas More

I've been balancing my reading with a steady diet of BBC documentaries, fed up on demand on my iPad via iPlayer. One quirky little show was on the education of his daughter, Margaret More, using her as a focal point for looking at the details of a humanist education of the 16th century. (Arguably, one of the best ages for a liberal arts education ever.) The presenter emphasised that Cicero was an almost sacred text. Everyone would be familiar with him, and every lawyer would know him intimately as one of the founding fathers of the profession. Which triggered a revelation for me. I've never been able to fully understand More stubbornly sticking to his principles, leaving his family behind and going to the scaffold in opposition to Henry VIII's marital and church manipulations. But if you're a Cicero worshipper, it all falls into place. Just like the great Roman, you're taking a stand against tyranny. And like him, your stand will take you to a noble death. More was following a historical precedent established and well known by all those who shared his education.

Maybe I do want to visit Jerusalem

The Holy Land has never even approached my top 20 travel destinations. To say I had no desire to go there is an understatement; I'd probably actively avoid it, given how many other destinations in the

world I'd find more interesting. Why, in that area alone Petra, the crusader castles, the ruined city of Palmyra or the beach resorts of the Red Sea all seemed a far better use of time.

I can thank Simon Sebag-Montefiore for getting me to re-think my opinion. His three part history of Jerusalem on the BBC was absolutely fascinating, liberating the city from religious hyperbole and modern strife, instead putting it in a historical context as a city drenched in the culture, stories and architecture of many notable societies. I was so captivated I downloaded the accompanying book and tore through it at high speed. It is an epic story filled with scores of fascinating characters, the majority of whom you've probably never heard of. The Caliph Hakim (aka the Arab Caligula) and the crusader Queen Melisende could both carry their own feature films. Architecturally, Sebag-Montefiore goes beyond the look at the usual religious sites to introduce a layered city where most buildings combine notable architectural elements from a variety of great empires. Of course, it's a tragedy as well, the most illuminating thing in this history being the fact that over 3,000 years more bloodshed ... and far more lost opportunity ... has come from arguments within religious groups than between them.

So if someone wants to drag me to the Holy Land in the future, I won't be so reticent. As long as I have my copy of SS-B's book on my Kindle to lead the way.

Giorgio suggests Sicily has arrived

One of my best Christmas presents was Giorgio Locatelli's new cookbook, entirely devoted to Sicilian food. That a Northern Italian, Michelin-starred chef would write what's essentially a hefty love letter to Sicily is a surprise. One compounded by his new television show on the BBC, where he wanders the island with his mate Andrew Graham-Dixon, art historian and Caravaggio expert. (Two intelligent, sexy, middle aged men wandering around Italy indulging in art and food ... this is pornography for the cultured woman.)

On my first trip to Italy, I spent the summer with a wealthy family outside of Milan, who shared their class' horror of Sicilians. Lazy, useless, a drain on the national economy ... take every bad opinion of ghetto dwelling American blacks, transpose it to Italy and you have the opinion. I kept my mouth shut about my origin. If Europeans went to Sicily at all, it was to get cheap beach villas, ignoring the poor ... and perhaps even dangerous ... inhabitants. The new cookbook and the TV show indicate a sea change. Europeans are looking at Sicily seriously as a cultural destination. The mafia is a spent force and culinary exports are highly prized. Looks like it might be time to be proud to be Sicilian.

PD James brings Austen back to life

Another favourite book of my sick leave was Death Comes to Pemberly, crime writer PD James' homage to Jane Austen. James takes Pride and Prejudice and extends it, with such literary dexterity in the early chapters you'd swear you were reading an actual Austen manuscript someone had just unearthed from her Hampshire attic. Many people have attempted Austen sequels, and I've read a fair number, but I've never read one that captures both the tone and mood of the original so well. Of course, James being James, our plot soon becomes a murder mystery. It's not the trickiest of plots; I'm not sure a fan of the crime genre would be that gripped. But it's enough for any Austen fan to delight. Particularly as James doesn't just bring the former Misses Bennett into the action. References to characters from other Austen classics waft through the plot, giving you a delightful sense that this is a real world, where all of those classic characters co-exist and might, on one eventful night in Bath or London, actually bump into each other at the Assembly Rooms. As with the TV show described above, this was so good, it too can be described as pornography for the cultured woman. Or just the literary equivalent of a very large box of Godiva chocolates. Pure bliss.

The Frette sheets are worth every penny

And finally ... I've always considered bedding to be an important investment. After all, even when you're healthy, you're spending at least a third of your life there. So I've never had an issue investing in the Hungarian goose down pillows and duvets, the high thread count sheets and the best blankets. But, admittedly, over the years I have wondered if the £300 I laid out on my various Frette sheet sets were worth it. I mean ... it seemed reasonable to me at the time, I got all three sets for at least 50% off ... but more than a few people's jaws have dropped at the price tag for sheets. (Not my mother, bless her. Joanlee knew a bargain when she saw it.) The oldest of those sheets is now a decade old, and still like new. And you know what? Given the amount of time I've spent in bed the past three months, that cotton is more than just a sheet. I sink into the crisp, heavy, cool luxury, settle my now chemo-balded head into that hungarian down, and feel like I'm in a 5-star hotel somewhere very far away. Not in suburban Basingstoke, fighting chemo side effects and a chest cold and watching time go by until I finally feel human again. Yup. That's worth the money.

Quiet and full of free time, it's the most organised Christmas ever

The run up to Christmas is, usually, crazed. There's that inevitable surge of work before the holidays, paired with the round of unmissable work related parties and the need to see all your friends before they disappear home for the holidays.

Being off on sick leave transforms things. No mania, no business. Quiet. Enormous stretches of sleep. (The side effects from the first chemo treatment have mostly been exhaustion. Far worse has been a bad cold with chesty cough that settled in on the 12th and is still hanging in there.) I am more organised on the holiday front than at any time in my life.

Decorations were up around the house by the 1st. I bought my last Christmas present on the 15th. I baked eight varieties of Christmas cookies: pignoli (an Italian macaroon-like disk

topped with pine nuts); cherry biscotti; chocolate chip; sugar-free chocolate chip; white

chocolate and macadamia nut; raisin bars

(using the recipe from the Party Pastry Shop in Chesterfield, Mo.); gingerbread; rolled vanilla shaped by cookie cutters. The

last two formed the basis of a cookie decorating evening with my godson Sacha and his siblings, before we settled into a more grown up dinner with his parents.

The cookies formed half of our home-crafted Christmas gifts. The other half was alcoholic. Inspired by those infused rums we tasted in Mauritius, Piers and I decided to play around with infused alcohols. We made apple and cinnamon flavoured vodka, vanilla rum, bramble gin (infused with blackberries, blueberries, damsons and a bit of rhubarb) and Tuscan vodka (infused with sun-dried tomatoes, basil and a bit of lemon).

I also messed about with candle making, but couldn't get those to a quality I was satisfied with giving away. There lies a continuing craft project for the winter. A project, by the way, that already makes me appreciate why good scented candles are so expensive. Unlike the alcohol, the DIY option here is no big cost saver.

Having reached these levels of domestic goddess-dom, I turned to my computer and did something I've been meaning to for years: a detailed Christmas card spreadsheet. Track what's come in, what's gone out. Track annually, eliminating sending cards to anyone from whom you haven't received in two consecutive years despite your mailing to them. Sound theory, though I think I've finally gotten around to this level of organisation as the tradition dies. 68 sent, 27 received. I'll continue the traditional approach for one more year before I consider transitioning yet another aspect of life online.

Christmas Eve brought lows and highs. My hair started coming out in great handfuls. Exactly between two and three weeks after the first treatment, as the books said. Fortunately, Ferrara hair is so thick that we can loose a lot of it before showing any impact, getting me to midnight mass looking normal. Bef0re church, however, we went for a nice meal.

Finding a restaurant open on Christmas Eve is a challenge. My top two options near church were closed, by next booked. We ended up at the Thomas Cubitt, an upscale gastropub I'd enjoyed at a business dinner a couple of years ago. (See 9.12.08) It's a classic English menu, with presentation and fine touches taken up several notches. Highlights were my scallop and black pudding starter and our mains: pork belly for Piers and a succulent venison for me. Piers Mum reported her salmon Wellington good but a bit overcooked. Desserts of chocolate fondant, Christmas pudding and cheese board all looked good and tasted fine, though not exceptional. The upstairs dining room is a beautiful space. Classically Georgian with plaster moulding, fireplace and sash windows overlooking Elizabeth street, it's painted in a soft grey and decorated with black and white photos of the legacy of Thomas Cubitt, architect and master builder of the mid-Victorian age. An fine choice for this area, keeping up the quality I found on my first visit, but not value for money. Three courses, two vegetable sides, one bottle of wine, one glass of house red, three glasses of port ... £70 per person. About £10 past what I thought the meal was worth.

Oh well, it was Christmas. And the five minute dash to church from there meant that we got excellent seats for the spectacle of midnight mass. First, candlelight carols. The golden altar looked magnificent, glittering beneath the brass chandelier and the towering candlesticks. More delightful for me than the carols themselves, which combined several I didn't know with three traditional ones that are sung to different melodies in the UK. A lovely concert but, for me, missing the joyful ability to sing along. The drama kicked it up a notch with the procession of the clergy ... 10 on the altar for the big night ... and a dramatic ringing of hand bells when the main lights were thrown on. The highest of high masses followed, featuring Haydn's St. Nicholas Mass, a ceremonial laying of Christ in the manger and our vicar, Father David, handing out chocolates at the door afterwards. A nice mix of drama and community.

We spent Christmas ... our first together ... at home alone. We exchanged gifts, watched TV, rested and indulged

ourselves. Piers took on cooking duties and serving up a very Danish meal, with home-cured gravad lax followed by duck with bilberry sauce, red cabbage and fondant potatoes. A few luxury cheeses, ending with slices of our wedding cake (which has been preserved in rum since September) and port.

We emerged from our solitude for a family Boxing Day lunch at my brother-in-law's in Putney, for which I got to contribute the dessert.

I opted for Heaven and Hell cake, the signature recipe of Dallas' master chef Stephen Pyles. It's a layered concoction of angel food cake, devil's food

cake and peanut butter mousse, iced with chocolate ganache. Not difficult, but not for the time constrained. I counted no less than six hours of prep time. Another sweet consequence of this season's bonus of free time.