Lean Rubens show at the RA makes me hungry for more

The new Rubens exhibit at the Royal Academy seems to be based on a very odd premise:  You don't like Rubens.  The curators seem to believe you find him a bombastic lightweight, and don't take him seriously.  Their job is to rehabilitate him in your eyes, and they've decided to do this by making the show all about how he influenced others.

Which is, presumably, why the first paintings you see when you walk into this show are … Constables.

I can't complain of deception, because the exhibit does exactly what the title says.  Rubens and His Legacy:  Van Dyck to Cezanne.  As a piece of art historical education demonstrating how one artist influences others, it's interesting.  And if, perchance, you didn't take Rubens seriously before the exhibit, you'll see a compelling argument about his role.  But I wanted more of the man himself.

He doesn't need any rehabilitation in my eyes; I love Rubens.  I'm besotted by his lush colours, the grandiose stage settings he uses to frame his people and the lavish costumes they wear.  I think there are few better at bringing human flesh to palpable life on a canvas, and have always appreciated the round, fleshy reality of his women.  (I've never found myself on the pages of modern magazines, but I'm there in his 17th c brush strokes.)  I'm fascinated by his career as a diplomat, and how he balanced art and politics.  I've always been smitten by the awe-inspiring scale at which he so often worked.  And I adore him as a storyteller, so many of his works being almost film-like in their scope.

Surely that's enough to put together a blockbuster show just on the man himself?  Perhaps, but you won't get it here.  There are a handful of great paintings, but none that made me think "wow, I've always wanted to see that, I'm so glad they were able to talk Museum X into lending it."  Ironically for an artist who's all about abundance, I came out of the show hungry for more.  There's simply not enough Rubens here.  And far too much average work from others, assembled to pound you over the head with the show's key argument.

There are times the conceit does work well.  Hanging the Constables next to some of Rubens' lesser-known landscape work gives a new appreciation for the Dutch master's skies and does indeed show the English artist's debt.  The section on power makes it obvious how Van Dyck used lessons from his teacher, Rubens, to become the greatest PR man the English monarchy has ever had.  (In fact, I wished the curators had created something more like the Tate's wonderful Van Dyck show in 2009, which I wrote about here.)

In the lust room … which seemed a misnomer for me when it came to collecting the master's lushly sensual nudes … some Renoirs show how the Frenchman brought his women to life using the same approach to layering colour.  But we also have to put up with a lot of other lesser copyists of Rubenesque flesh.

The room centred on the Garden on Love is probably the best in the show (pictured above), with Rubens' beguiling canvas of that name captivating attention for long minutes.  The argument that the 18th c French style depicting nobles cavorting in sylvan landscapes dotted with classical follies comes from this source seems sound.  But all hanging a Watteau next to the Rubenesque original really does is make the French descendant look insipid.  You want to be in Rubens' garden, partying alongside his people.  You look at Watteau's gang, and you understand why the peasants wanted them dragged to the guillotine.

There are other themed rooms where I think they push the argument too far.  We are confronted with the master's Christ on the Straw and told it's an iconic arrangement other artists followed.  Really?  You can find moving scenes of Christ being lowered from the cross in Western art for centuries earlier.  His is beautiful, but hardly unique.  I had the same objection in the violence room, where it seems we're meant to believe that Rubens invented the genre of the lion hunt.  I don't doubt Delecroix and Landseer (both hanging here) looked to the Dutchman for inspiration, but they could have followed an artistic tradition back to ancient Assyrian art.  (The lion hunt from the palace at Nimrud is one of the British Museum's star sights.)  It felt like the curators were belabouring a point.

Meanwhile, they miss a chance to make a more significant one … in my humble opinion … about Rubens as the superlative storyteller.  Tiger, Lion and Leopard Hunt is, with the Garden, the other blockbuster painting here.  It immediately assaults your senses, in the best possible way, with the excitement of seven exotic men twisting, writhing and straining in their struggle against the mixed pack of big cats.  The tiger sinking his teeth into the shoulder of the central rider is horrifying.  The men are fighting for their lives, the horses' eyes are bulging in terror.  Our sympathies are with them.  And yet.  Look deeper.  As your eyes take in the detail, you see the mother tiger crouching over two cubs, a third in her mouth, the trio so young and defenceless their eyes aren't even open yet.  The action shifts, and now you're cheering on a pack defending their young from callous, pompous trophy hunters.  Like so many of Rubens' best scenes, the longer you stare at it, the more variations of stories it tells.

The show is worth seeing, but if you're seeking Rubens, its concept makes it an amuse bouche rather than a full meal.  If you want to feel as sated as a Rubenesque woman, head off to the Banqueting House immediately after and drink in the full glory of his ceiling there.  Then you'll get the great man as he is meant to be seen, without the distraction of others.

Rubens and His Legacy is on at the Royal Academy until 10 April

If at first you don't succeed, make the creme brûlée again. And do remember to put the potatoes in the oven that's actually ON...

It's dinner party season.

For those who love to cook, there's nothing better than spending a dull, cold winter Saturday in a warm kitchen, trying to create a bit of magic.  And then moving to a convivial dining room, filled with friends, to eat and drink the night away.

Our first dinner party of the year came with a couple of triumphs, two near disasters and a new blowtorch.  Since we're trying to pull in the expenses this quarter, there won't be many restaurant reviews.  So here's the rundown of dining chez Bencard instead.

Nibbles before dinner included two home-made dips.  First my roasted garlic hummus which was tasty, though I think I could have used two heads of garlic rather than one to pump up the flavour.  Yotam Ottolenghi's beetroot and zatar dip got raves from the guests, as it always does.  I think this is mostly because it's so unusual.  It's also beautiful, with its vivid fuscia colour, scattered with spring onions (scallions), brown toasted hazelnuts and white goat's cheese.  And it's remarkably easy given its exotic impact.  You can find the recipe here.

I also served some of the air-dried tuna, called mojama in Spanish, we picked up in Barcelona.  This is classically sliced thinly, re-hydrated in olive oil and scattered with toasted almonds.  Next time, I'll improve it with a sliver of fresh jalapeño for a contrasting kick.  It's usually served as tapas on thin slices of bread, but I went carb-free by using our canapé spoons.

Seafood risotto opened things up.  As a dinner party dish, it has the disadvantage of requiring the chef's

undivided attention for half an hour before serving.  But it's sure to impress and a great dish for clearing the freezer out when you have just a little of this, and a little of that on the fish front.  Start with 40g of rice per person for a first course portion.  My secret ingredient is tinned clams which, strangely, are tough to find in the UK.  I stock up when I go to Italian Continental Stores in Maidenhead.  Use the clam juice to add depth to a couple of fish stock cubes for your simmering liquid and put the clams into the rice at the half way point.  The rest of the seafood goes in much closer to the end, as it needs so little cooking.  You have to use common sense, of course, depending on what you're putting in.  In addition to the clams, I used diced-up pollock fillet and prawns.  My other key flavouring ingredient is a good pinch of saffron.  I topped each serving with a couple of pan-fried scallops.

Piers took charge for the main course, which would have been perfection had I not put the potatoes in the wrong (not on) oven.  Which created a 40-minute delay, during which the roast edged past its best to ever-so-slightly overdone.  We've had an abundance of fine leeks in our veg box this winter, which prompted the leek and apricot stuffed pork shoulder.  Recipe here.  We used Michele Roux's potatoes boulangere recipe, which is one of the many delights in his cookbook The French Kitchen.  Carrots and peas with that.  We meant to flame the carrots in Grand Marnier but we forgot in the bustle of the blown timings.

Dessert was beset by troubles.  I anchored my plans on blood oranges, which are in season at the moment and … at least for me … always bring an injection of sunny Sicily into the winter chill.  Though I'd ordered a kilo in my weekly Riverford delivery, the box came on Friday with no oranges.  They'd sold out.  Crisis!  Newlyn's Farm Shop saved the day by not only providing the pork shoulder, but having plenty of the orange beauties for sale.  As long as I was there, I thought I'd splash out on top-quality organic cream and eggs.  All of which was turning a fairly simple dish into a rather pricey one.  Which made it all the more distressing when the custard curdled, separated, bubbled, remained liquid and was generally a disaster.  Piers ran to Tesco … the closest option ... for another round of eggs and double cream.  Fortunately, I had enough blood oranges to start over.  The recipe that worked is here.  The only thing I'd recommend from the disastrous first recipe was the candied blood orange slices.  (Slice two oranges thinly,  candy in a gently-boiling solution of 2 1/4 cups sugar and 1 cup water, then dry on a rack overnight.  You'll end up with some excellent blood orange syrup as a byproduct.)

We used this excuse to finally get a decent blowtorch.  We've been saying this for about a year, since we tried a Tom Kerridge recipe where you're supposed to finish your chicken skin with one, and our dinky kitchen model wasn't up to the task.  When we watched Tom do the dish on TV, of course, he was wielding a canister that wouldn't have been out of place in a ship-welder's hands.  Ours isn't quite so substantial, but it's definitely from a builder's shop rather than a kitchen store.  And the difference it makes is vast:  crackly tops in seconds, cream still cold below.

Thinking the creme brûlée was going to be quick and simple, I'd decided dessert would be a trio of citrus, with my blood orange centrepiece complemented by a lemon madeleine and a square of key lime fudge.  Which made the day more stressful than it needed to be.  But did mean I'd have a fallback position if the creme brûlée failed again.

I used a Roux recipe once again for the madeleines, which you can find here.  I doubled the amount of lemon zest to kick up the citrus flavour, and because my madeleine pan is silicone I don't bother with buttering and flouring it at the start.  (Just make sure you allow the cakes to cook completely before you pop them out.)  

I feared I'd made a mistake as the fudge came off the stove; my taste found it to be almost sickeningly sweet.  But some sort of magic happens as it sets in the fridge.  The sweetness falls back as the sharpness of the lime comes through. I followed this recipe, with the addition of a layer of coconut on the bottom of the pan (thus the top of a piece when serving) to add to the whole tropical feel.

I used the zest of regular limes, as key limes are unknown in the UK, and juice I'd brought from the States.  (This is one of the things I pick up on every American trip.  You can find it by mail order, but it's ridiculously expensive … more than £20 for a 16-oz bottle.)  I'm sure it would be tasty, though a little sweeter, with regular lime juice.  Try using 2/3 lime to 1/3 lemon to get something closer to the key lime's flavour.

I sent all the leftover fudge home with guests to get the temptation out of the house.  Because it is magnificently decadent.  Smooth, creamy, addictive.  I sense this one might become a dinner party staple.

Today, it's back to Weight Watchers and 101 ways with 0 point vegetables.  And now, a very long walk with the dogs to try to counter the indulgence.

Le Gavroche is the stuff of foodie fantasy … AND I got to chat choux pastry with the MasterChef

Le Gavroche … perhaps London's most famous French restaurant … is a culinary time machine.

Descend its stairs and you're peeling back the decades.  Nobody does formality like this any more.  Jackets and ties please, gents.  Dark, traditional interiors are out.  When was the last time you went someplace where only the host got prices on the menu?  And didn't menus in French (unless you're in France) go out with your grandmother?

None of that matters here.  Put the ladies in bustled gowns and the men in white tie, and we'd be eating at The Ritz in the glory days of chef patron Michel Roux Jr's hero Escoffier.  Like so many of the greatest restaurants, the food here is glorious, but it's taken up another level by the surrounding experience.  Which includes M. Roux, now probably the best known and loved of all the UK's TV chefs, taking time across the evening to speak to each table.  No uncouth table turning here … you're settled in for the night, and enjoying every moment.

The formality might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's what the food deserves.  Because this is the kind of grand, elegant stuff you read about in cooking history books.  I started with Artichoke Lucullus,
which I would have ordered based on the name alone, even if I hadn't seen it on TV.  Lucullus was a famous Roman politician and epicurean who lived so well (and wrote copiously about it) that his name has come to mean "lavish, luxurious and gourmet."  Now there's a life ambition.

Any dish making such a wonderful nod to history deserves to be explored.  Roux had used it as one of his classics tests on MasterChef: The Professionals, and I remember dropping my jaw at the complexity of the perfectly prepared artichoke heart, spread with caviar, then topped with foie gras, all encased in a dome of feather-light chicken mousse studded with black truffles, set upon a truffle sauce.  No debate:  this is the starter I'd want for my last meal on the planet.

On to the roast saddle of rabbit with crispy potatoes and parmesan.  Sounds pretty straightforward, right?  Out comes a masterpiece.  A savoury layer cake of the thinnest, crispiest potato pancakes imaginable, separating layers of moist, succulent rabbit, topped with an almost-translucent parmesan wafer.  The accompanying sauce was nectar; as if another serving had been distilled into liquid form.

Dessert here presents a terrible conundrum.  Do you go for one of London's most unabashedly French cheese carts, groaning with arcane local specialities?  Or do you honour the fact that M. Roux started as a pastry chef and let him work his magic?  I did the latter, asking the waiter to guide me to the most chocolately thing on the night's menu.  My husband went for the cheese.  We swapped tastes.  I think I made the right choice.  Because I can buy some very nice cheeses to bring home.  Never in a million years will my skills equal that dark chocolate truffle studded with crispy, sweet rice, accompanied by little morsels of rum and orange jelly.  It's a good thing there's portion control, because I might eat that until my insulin levels went into crisis mode and killed me.

My brother-in-law controlled the wine list, as he was also the unlucky man who had the prices on his
menu.  (It was a belated 50th birthday present for me.)  He picked a stunning Meursault to start, a Burgundian red (can't remember which) for the main and I instructed the sommelier to bring whatever dessert wine worked best with the chocolate.  Which turned out to be a Pedro Ximinez.  All resolutely classic choices for a classic meal.

My delight increased when M. Roux stopped by the table, and we had a little chat about how he inspired me to do choux pastry at Christmas when we saw him at the BBC food show.  I hope I wasn't gushing like a star-struck 12-year-old.  But, frankly, it was tough not to.  The great man complimented my ambition in tackling a croquembouche on my first choux pastry outing, reminded me that the taste is what matters, and encouraged me to try again.  Oui, chef!  I will, I promise.

Le Gavroche is not for everyone.  Obviously, it's very expensive.  (But given the quality of ingredients, the complexity preparation and the levels of service, you can see where your money is going.)  The formality could be overbearing if you didn't get into the overall ethos of the place.  Even I, sucking up the atmosphere, was frustrated at just how low the light levels were.  With food this beautiful, it's a shame we couldn't see more of it.  And, frankly, if you're not seriously into your food, this might all seem completely over the top.  But if you truly love fine dining … not just eating it, but its provenance, preparation and history … then this is the pinnacle of the classic French experience.

Zuma's food remains tops, but the atmosphere makes me wish for take-away

More than three years ago I wrote about Zuma as the best Japanese restaurant I'd experienced, and swore I'd make an effort to go back.  It took a while.  Mostly because it's one of those perpetually sold out places that requires you to call exactly 3 months before you want to dine there to snag a reservation.    If you fail to call within two hours of the tables being released, you miss your window.

Wrapping up a rare visit from my father, and getting him together with the NU girls, seemed like a good excuse.  Thus I marked my diary and booked the table in October. While others were tucking into austerity January, we had one more celebration on the cards.

Was it as good as I remembered?  Absolutely.  It was also far, far more expensive than I recalled.  And the uber-glamorous dinner crowd with their cacophonous buzz left me disenchanted.  I'd return for lunch … which draws more of a business crowd … but probably not dinner.

We pushed the boat out and had the more expensive of the two tasting menus.  This was actually a failure of communication between my husband and myself; I was steering towards the less expensive, but he somehow mis-interpreted that and ordered the luxury level for the table.  Something I didn't realise until the grilled lobster game out.  What the hell.  Who needs to buy groceries in January, anyway?  We'll just work through the Christmas leftovers.

As with my last visit, everything was perfection.  Standouts were that lobster, soft shell crab and the wagyu beef.  The latter turned up cured, cold and very rare in one course, grilled and in a sweet and savoury sauce in another.  Everything was magnificent, from dishes of salmon tartare to platters of succulent sashimi to sushi like little works of art to morsels of perfectly steamed, melt-in-your-mouth black cod.  This is a seafood lover's dream.  Everything is exquisitely fresh and thus you're really able to pick up the distinct differences in taste between the different kinds of fish.  And we ended up, as I did last time, with a chocolate fondant that puts many French places to shame.

Everything comes as sharing platters, which is great fun when you have several people and can all compare tastes and favourites.  Unfortunately, they don't have a matching wine or sake pairing menu. Which, of course, is a good way of keeping costs from spiralling further out of control.  We had their sake sommelier bring us four different little jugs to accompany the four courses.  Three were chilled, one room temperature.  She explained some of the nuances but her English wasn't that good, so this lacked the detailed pairing explanations you'd get from an expert in an equivalent European restaurant.  It was interesting, and the match with the sushi course was particularly good.  But our biggest lesson was that sake, at more than £30 for each of those cute little jugs, makes fine wine look like a value-for-money drink.  Given that the majority of the meal was fish, we would have had a better time getting a single, seafood-friendly white to share.  Live and learn.

My biggest issue with Zuma on this occasion was my fellow diners.  I can't think of another London

restaurant that is so flagrantly, ostentatiously set up for the Super Rich.  Tables of Arabic oil princes jockeyed with Russian oligarchs and their pneumatically enhanced, diamond-draped women.  Asian beauties with piles of shopping bags from nearby luxury brands sat cheek-by-jowl with the rare table of English aristo trust fund babies.  Rare, because Asian, Arabic and Oriental diners outnumbered Anglo-Saxons by two to one.  Couture clothing dominated, as did youth.  As upper middle class professionals with an average age in the mid 50s, we were no doubt amongst the poorest and oldest in the room.  Zuma presented fascinating people watching possibilities, and I'm sure that atmosphere is part of what you pay for.  Problem is, I don't want to pay for that.  I just want London's best Japanese food.

One other small quibble:  With tables so difficult to get, this is one of those places that gives you just two hours for your booking.  Which is fine if you're doing a normal three-course meal, but actually gets quite insulting when you're splashing out on the budget-busting tasting menu with break-the-bank sake rounds.  Eventually, they figured this out, and slowed down to let us take our time after the third round of food (Triggered, no doubt, by the premature delivery of the black cod at the same time as the sushi.  The manager whisked it away in embarrassment and delivered another, later.  It deserves, and later got, solo centre stage.)

So Zuma leaves me with mixed feelings.  It stands head and shoulders above any other Japanese food I've ever had.  I could eat here every day.  The food is exquisite in every way and I'd prefer it not just to every other Japanese place, but to most other restaurants in town.  But the atmosphere is an exclusive, showy, loud morality play of conspicuous consumption, rushed along by waiters who clearly want to turn your table.

For the same price, and the same effort to make the advance booking, you could be sitting in the quiet elegance of Le Gavroche.  Which makes you think.

In fact, that's where we're off to next.

Mary Rose is a magical time capsule in Portsmouth

Tourists flock to Pompeii to drink in that unique sense of history frozen in a single moment in time.  Here in Hampshire, we can get the same experience without leaving the county at the Mary Rose museum.

Henry VIII welcomes you

Granted, there's no Vesuvius looming, and you'll be looking over the Solent rather than the Bay of Naples.  But you have the same extraordinary sense of time travel, and the museum (located within the Portsmouth Historic Dockyards) brings together artefacts, architecture and story in a way that leaves the Italian city in the volcanic dust.

The pride of Henry VIII's navy, the Mary Rose sunk in battle in 1545 and returned to the surface in 1982.  Experts have been conserving her sodden timbers ever since, and the process is nearing completion.  An innovative new museum opened in May 2013 that brings the ship … as she was on her last day … back to glorious life.

A covering of volcanic ash preserved Pompeii's story.  Boarding nets did the same for the Mary Rose.  This netting, strung over the top of all the exposed decks to prevent enemies coming aboard, kept everyone and everything in when she went down.  Meaning archeologists weren't just bringing up a ship.  They had everything from cannons to workmen's tools, skeletons to personal possessions to capture that world, at that moment.

The museum cleverly lays out the artefacts where they would have been on the ship, and invites you to explore through the stories of different crew members.  We don't know their names, but skeletons, possessions and their location on the wreck lead us to the master carpenter, the cook, the physician, etc.

The Mary Rose settled on her starboard side and sunk into the silt, thus half was preserved and half washed away.  She's now sitting up, that starboard side a ghostly skeleton in a vast, glass-enclosed hall.  The displays of artefacts occupy the space that would have been her port side, prow and stern, the building's lines re-creating the rest of the ship.  She's still drying out; in 2016 the glass partition will come down and the galleries will seem even more a part of the wider vessel.

Wander where the officer's quarters were, and see the ship's china, the contents of the officer's personal chests, even the skeleton of the ship's dog.  Elsewhere you can explore the quarters and armaments of the fighting men.  There's an interactive section where you can try your strength against a weighted machine that mimics a longbow.  In the bowels of the ship, see how the kitchen worked and where food was stored.  Throughout, serious commentary and actual artefacts are matched with educational games on video screens:  get your distance calculations right to hit the French ships; stock the galley correctly to feed both officers and men.  This place would be a blast with kids.

We spent about two hours here before we became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of interesting stuff.  And that's not even considering the scientific story of the rescue and preservation, which is worth a visit on its own.  There's so much here, you could go many times before you got bored.

It's a good thing for locals, therefore, that a single entry ticket is good for return visits for a whole year.  I'm embarrassed that it took me 18 months to get here after the new museum opened.  I'm vowing to do back before my return ticket expires.

Icelandic Hotels: Ranga falls a bit below expectations, The Grand above

My interest in Iceland kindled two years ago thanks to a Country Life magazine article about a Northern Lights-viewing trip to Hotel Ranga on the south coast.  The organiser was an Icelandic specialist called Discover the World.  When we decided on Iceland for the 2013 girls' trip, we went for the same organiser and itinerary.

Problem was, after getting our deposits down they told us that Ranga was sold out.  We diverted to the wonderful Hotel Glymur, but the sell-out made Ranga all the more intriguing.  So when Piers and I decided on Iceland for New Year, I tried again.  Discover the World again took my deposit for a Ranga-based itinerary.  And, again, came back a few days later, apologising, to say the hotel was sold out.

I don't often channel my aggressive, the-customer-is-always-right American roots.  But this was one of those times.  After frustrated mentions of the problems on the last trip, treatment of return customers and  a suggestion of bait-and-switch marketing strategies … they found room for us at Ranga.  Was it worth the effort?

The battle to get here might have created unrealistic expectations, because I found Ranga to be a fine but not extraordinary hotel.  Glymur was probably better, and certainly had a more spectacular setting.  Ranga's most notable edge was its cheerful and chatty staff, led by a manager who circulated the dining room getting to know guests and was always on hand to advise on sightseeing routes.

The atmosphere here is wilderness lodge.  Ranga is essentially a giant log cabin.  Check in, bar, restaurant and lounges are in the two-story central block, a corridor stretches in each direction with a single story of rooms.  The taxidermised polar bear, arctic fox and salmon decorating the lobby drive the point home.  The rooms are simple, basic and comfortable, with doors direct to an outside patio.  Those facing south look over sloping fields and a river flowing swiftly to the sea and provide quick access to the hot tubs.  Those on the other side overlook the car park, but would have the advantage of Northern Lights views (when the lights show themselves) without leaving the room.

The rooms have neither the charm nor the space to merit spending much waking time in them.  If you're not enjoying the hot tub or getting a massage (one of the best I've had, ask for Kathrin), there's a lounge filled with oversized leather chairs and sofas above the bar and restaurant.  Windows set into the gabled roof give views of the river lands beyond.

We were on half board (dinner, bed and breakfast), essential when dining prices anywhere in the country are steep and you're a captive audience.  There are basic restaurants in towns 20 minutes in either direction, but I doubt it would be worth the effort.  Dinners at Ranga were excellent.  Adeptly prepared, beautifully presented and concentrating on Icelandic favourites like Arctic Char, lamb and skyr (very similar to sweetened Greek yogurt).  Our biggest complaint … besides them letting the tomato-allergic Piers get a third of the way through some seafood soup before apologising and whisking it away, realising the offending ingredient was in the stock … was repetition.  There's no choice: you get what the chef decides.  Our three nights featured chicken as a main course for dinners two and three (with a different sauce), and skyr for dessert on nights one and three (the exact same dish).  All the food was excellent, actually increasing our irritation about the repeats.  We would have liked to try other things.

Back in the city, the expectations v reality battle went in the other direction.  I wasn't looking forward to the Reykjavic Grand, which looked like a characterless cement office block on the outskirts of town, well beyond walking distance to any tourist sights.  Turns out it's built around an architecturally-striking four-story lobby with water features, a central fire-pit and a cathedral-like glass wall at one end

decorated with modern art echoing medieval stained glass.  It's a comfortable place to congregate, with multiple seating areas and a big bar serving up light dishes, drinks and a variety of Iceland's excellent beer.

There's also an underground garage with stairs leading up to the covered porte cochere; a blessedly welcome feature after three days of risking life and limb to get across ice-slicked car parks.  (And falling badly on one of them.)  Upstairs, the rooms are stereotypical Scandinavian design: sparse, cool and elegant.  But the ceilings and windows are high, the rooms bigger than average, the bathroom generous, while the deep blue textiles brought warmth to all the pale colours.

We ate in both nights we were here.  The first because we attended the hotel's New Year's Eve ball, the second because we couldn't be bothered to make the effort to go out.  The buffet with a selection of carved roasts at one end was tasty, though unexceptional.  The same starters and desserts as we'd had the night before re-appeared.

Does Iceland have a particularly limited repertoire of dishes?  We certainly seemed to be having the same things over and over at both hotels.  Probably not.  I'm sure we would have done better to wander into the tourist district.  But this was one of those times when comfort triumphed over culinary exploration.

Northern Lights are even better than the world's best fireworks night

"Because we live so much of our lives in the dark, we're addicted to bright lights."

That's how the Reykjavic woman explained the mad abundance of bonfires and fireworks on New Year's Eve.  It's a national rebuttal of the weather.  A celebration of resilience and an assurance that they will make it through the darkness to the long, light-filled days of summer.  And it conspires to create what must be one of the best places in the world to celebrate a turn of the year.

Citizens start letting off fireworks from mid-afternoon.  When, of course, it's already grey and gloomy enough for the colours to show up in the sky.  The pace builds steadily as the hours tick by.  On the whole, these aren't official civic or community displays, but private arsenals.  Tradition has every family spending between £200 and £300 on fireworks for the evening.  The fireworks vendors are the charities that run the island's search and rescue organisations; critical infrastructure for this rugged and often dangerous land.  Thus people aren't just funding their display for fun; it's a civic duty.

And we're not talking the usual modest, back-garden stuff here.  These are proper sky-fillers that would

do any professional display proud.  Difference being that at a professional gig, you're looking at one point in the sky.  In Reykjavic, you're surrounded.  As we approached midnight, things built to a crescendo.  At any given second, perhaps 30 large fireworks were lighting up the sky from one horizon to another.  It was impossible to keep track of … better to watch one patch of sky and take in four or five displays.

The illuminations carry on at this pace for a full hour after midnight.  Frankly, you'll get tired of watching them before the citizens stop firing them.  We retreated to our room just after 1, and it sounded like artillery fire in a war zone until 4 or 5am.

You can appreciate the festivities from anywhere in Reykjavic, but we'd bought into a package with Discover the World.  (The same specialist agency that organised my trip in October 2013.)  A formal dinner kicked off with cocktails in our hotel, the Grand, at 6pm.  Then the first two courses of our dinner before getting bundled into buses to take in one of the community bonfires. (pictured at the top.)

In addition to the fireworks, most communities collect massive piles of wood to create towering pyres in the early evening.  This is no mean feat in a country with few trees.  We visited one of the larger ones in the Reykjavic suburbs; a bonfire the size of a generous mansion, flames licking three or four stories in the air, scores of buses bringing tourists in.  But we'd seen the wood stacked in every village we'd visited along the south coast.  It's all part of the quest for illumination.

Back to the Grand for dessert and some music in the ballroom before heading up to the fourth floor, where a balcony wrapped around three sides of the building to give a remarkable panorama.  Viewing fuelled by champagne and platters of dessert canapés, of course.  We could have danced 'til 4am back in the ballroom, but we figured nothing could top the fireworks so turned in.

Not all the fireworks in Iceland are man-made, of course. The main reason for coming here in the winter is the Northern Lights, though there's no guarantee you'll see them.  The skies need to be clear, you must be away from the ambient light of the city, then you need all sorts of other atmospheric conditions to fall into place.  Most country hotels have a wake-up list: they watch, and ring you if anything appears.

Miraculously, the clouds parted for just a few hours in our whole trip, and that happened at midnight when conditions were favourable.  The spectacle is one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in nature.

At first glance, I could have mistaken our sighting for a long cloud illuminated by the moon.  It was a long, wide white smudge across the centre of the sky.  But then it began to move.  The lights dance, shimmer, shift and glow in eerie and unexpected ways.  They come and go in an instant.  At one point, there was just a the thin horizontal track above the horizon.  Moments later, there were three sets of lights all doing different things at different points.

Depending on the gases in the air, the lights can take on all sort of colours.  Ours were primarily white with flashes of green.  They were at their most dramatic when they seemed to drizzle down the sky, like   thin white icing sliding down a chocolate cake.  At the same time, the stars were shining with remarkable clarity.  We're so used to light pollution, we forget that without human intervention, the night sky is pinpricked by thousands of lights.  The only place I've gotten a view of the star-scape this good was on a cruise ship in the South Pacific.  Granted, it was a lot warmer.  But this is closer.

The fireworks were great, but it was this sighting of the Northern Lights that really made the trip.  What man creates is impressive.  What nature rolls out is truly awe inspiring.