He’s back!:

That’s a “chimney pie” with chicken and leeks stewed in a white wine sauce. I love me a nice, warming, comforting pie on a cold winter’s night.

If you wish to taste this — and of course you do — the place to find it is at the Centurion Pub.

Please don’t tell my people in France this, but between James’s food photography from England, marinating my poor head in all things Downton, my wife’s Jane Austen-y Anglophilia, my thinking back fondly to those weeks in summer of ’09 spent in Cambridge, and James’s report that the French are trying to ban VFYTs in their restaurants, I’m hoping to come into some money that would allow me to bring the family to England for a vacation. My daughter Nora, who is seven, is fanatical about tea. When I told her that the English prefer tea to coffee, that made a big impression on her. She’s now all about going to England to drink tea. In fact, such is her love of tea that she delivered the drawing below to us this evening before bedtime:

Yeah, that kid is going to love England. Come on, lottery, let me win you!