But the Scots didn’t necessarily invent smoked salmon as we know it

But the Scots didn’t necessarily invent smoked salmon as we know it. Jews fleeing the pogroms of late 19th-century Eastern Europe and Russia brought their more subtly flavoured smoked salmon to London. Baltic fish, salted and brought over in barrels, was smoked in home-built brick contraptions in back yards.Then they discovered the superior wild Scottish salmon at Billingsgate. A community industry grew up, until there were 15 salmon smokers in the East End. The last surviving is H Forman (020-8985 0378), although their kilns are now commercially manufactured. The others failed to compete with the subsidised salmon farmers in Scotland and Norway, whose often flabby, greasy fish, industrially smoked in vast electric kilns, would have Harris Forman turning in his grave.

Heaven knows what he would have thought of injecting the raw material with brine to keep the weight up, or of spray-on liquid smoke. Lance Forman, Harris’s great grandson, prides himself on the freshness of their “London cure”, simply salted and then gently smoked overnight, to be delivered to London’s top hotels in time for breakfast. Outdoor fending If you really want to reach your inner caveman, hook up with three guys in the US who have done just that. Grant, Kevin and Scott met at barbecue school in San Diego (only in California…), and can think of no better way of spending a Sunday than cooking big animals, barbecueing, making sausage and jerky or smoking fish.To find out more – even if it’s just their selection of recipes for smoked food – check out their website: . Alternatively, you could don your anorak and peruse Home Smoking and Curing by Keith Erlandson (Ebury Press, £7.99).Those who want to get back to the basics of smoking the fish that they’ve caught (or at least, doing their own smoking of freshly caught fish) can invest in a home smoker. One version made by Brooks consists of a bottomless metal box, in which the food is placed on a rack over sawdust, before a saucer of methylated spirit is lit underneath. These smokers can be bought in angling shops, or off the internet – try and click on game fishing in the products section They cost from about £40. Smoke by post has links to Brown and Forrest and Wyndham Foods, as well as to many other traditional smokeries around the British Isles.

With its in-built preservation, extended by modern refrigeration and vacuum packing, smoked food is perfect for mail order.Award-winning smokeries: Bleikers Smokehouse Ltd (01423 71141) – English beef bresaola, marinated in ale; Denhay Farms (01308 458963) – bacon, sausages; Dunkeld Smoked Salmon (01350 727639) – wild smoked salmon; Inverawe Smokehouses (01866 822 777) – hot-roast salmon, smoked salmon terrine; FW Read & Sons (01507 466987) – Lincolnshire Poacher cheese; The Weald Smokery (01580 879601) – trout, eel, smoked Scottish salmon. Experiments have shown that the carcinogens in wood smoke would have to be consumed in quantities far beyond even the greediest smokie to cause stomach cancers. Those conscious of their salt intake should bear in mind that it almost always features in smoked food.. Ever wondered what the best chardonnay in the world tastes like?” That’s not me asking, it’s Gallo, the Californian giant that has taken three full pages in the national press on the strength of winning the 2001 Chardonnay trophy for its Stefani Ranch Chardonnay. “At the 2001 International Wine & Spirits Competition, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious wine events, 179 judges voted our Stefani Ranch Chardonnay ‘Best Chardonnay in the World’.”

Ever wondered what the best chardonnay in the world tastes like?” That’s not me asking, it’s Gallo, the Californian giant that has taken three full pages in the national press on the strength of winning the 2001 Chardonnay trophy for its Stefani Ranch Chardonnay. Or that “old” doesn’t necessarily mean prestigious when it comes to wine competitions.

One of the very oldest, Ljubljana, in the pretty capital of Slovenia, is notorious for covering practically every entry with medals.Now, Gallo claims it can answer the question it posed in its advert. And having its decisions emblazoned in the national press is important for an organisation with as high a public profile as the Invisible Man. You probably haven’t heard of it, but, as its organisers were at pains to point out at a recent black-tie awards dinner at the Guildhall, the aim of the International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC) is to come out from underneath the barrel where it’s been hiding for so long and put itself in front of the consumer.But if you thought that wine competitions were established for those of us actually trying to decide which bottle to buy, consider the evidence. In Australia, where wine judging has a noble pedigree, the results act as a check on the wine industry, which passes them on to the marketing department to capitalise on gold medals and trophies. In the UK, the biggest wine competition, the International Wine Challenge (IWC) is milked by wine producers and retailers for all they’re worth with ads like: “Garnet point? Goes down well with crocodile steak.. and London judges”. Even normally shy and retiring Waitrose, winner of the IWC supermarket of the year (and, latterly, the IWSC Ernest & Julio Gallo Trophy for the European Retailer of the Year) got the nod for an expensive television campaign to the strains of “Red, red wine…”.It’s a moot point, then, how much the wine-buyer actually benefits from these awards. Medals and trophies provide retailers with a chance to produce leaflets and shelf barkers announcing that Ch?au Cachet or Crooked Creek won a gold or silver.