Q. Some rather flashy new neighbours of ours — I won’t mention their names as his will be familiar to a lot of your readers — asked my wife and me to lunch last week in their new barn as a dummy run for the cook they’ve employed for the shooting season. They were very enthusiastic about her cooking, but the steak and kidney pie was served with a perfect circle of puff pastry beside the meat on our plates. We agreed once back in the car and alone again that this was not the form, as a proper shoot lunch would have had it all cooked together. Were we mean not to mention it to them?
— Name and address withheld
A. You should bear in mind that this deviation from the traditional (and more tasty) norm may be linked to the preponderance of imaginary food intolerances.
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