Answering your vexing culinary questions

Is it OK to eat food with your at hands at a restaurant? M. Albertelli

Bread? Yes. Soup? No. French fries? Yes. French cheese? No. Ribs? Yes. Steak? No. Unpeeled prawns? Yes. Prawn cocktail? No. It's all about context. Try making a little ball of rice with your fingers and - like an Indian - running it through the curry sauce at your suburban Indian curry house and you'll look ridiculous. Do it at the new breed of cheap Indian cafes serving authentic regional food and catering mainly to students and you'll be just one of the many. Pre-dinner snacks, such as olives and peanuts, should be eaten by hand, as should most small fried appetisers such as croquettes. Street foods, such as satay sticks, that have made their way on to menus can be eaten by hand. Some restaurants create dishes to be eaten by hand and will invite you to do so. It is polite to ask your fellow diners, "would you mind if I ate this with my fingers?" Also consider where one's hands have been before dining. An appalling number of people do not wash their hands before eating.

Why do restaurants serve pre-shucked and rinsed oysters? J. Payneir

If you haven't learnt to shuck an oyster, do so. There is no greater pleasure than sitting at a table with some chums and a bucket of oysters and slowly opening them and enjoying them one by one with perhaps a glass of flinty sauvignon blanc. The briny liquor surrounding the oyster, redolent of iodine, sings of the sea where the oyster was raised. The only downside is as one pierces the tight seal between an oyster's lower and upper shells, small pieces of grit enter into the liquid surrounding the oyster. These can be quickly scraped out with the tip of the knife. A few bits of gritty shell may be acceptable at home but not for many restaurant-goers to whom grit means dirt which means dirty. To steer clear of customer complaints, most restaurants serve oysters that are rinsed either in their own kitchens or in processing plants near the point of production. To me this is a travesty almost as grand as boneless osso buco. Some restaurant kitchens commit the lesser crime of shucking oysters before service and selling them as ''freshly shucked''. I suggest you help raise the oyster bar nationally and accept only oysters that are shucked to order and served in their own liquor.

I have been given the task of cooking a dish to go with a bottle of 1971 Grange Hermitage. What would you suggest? J. Stevens

I suggest you relax and enjoy both the wine and the cooking. Not to put too fine a point on it but food and wine are meant to be enjoyed with family and friends. I have never had the pleasure of cooking a meal to go with Grange. My one and only bottle was stolen from my impromptu cellar under the stairs in a block of flats by the neighbour downstairs. That was 20 years ago and I still feel the anger. I asked my mate Mark Protheroe, sommelier from Grossi Florentino in Melbourne, who has more experience in these matters than I have. Protheroe says that at 40-plus years of age, this wine is at the peak of its ageing potential and you should feel confident serving it with some roasted fine-grain flesh, perhaps some fillet steak, and a sauce made from the pan juices. Protheroe considers this wine to be a time capsule and suggests creating a menu based around dishes popular in 1972, such as Tournedos Rossini - a beef fillet steak pan fried in butter, served on a crouton topped with fried foie gras and perhaps some shaved truffles.

Can I bake bread without salt? B. Monsborough

In bread making, salt helps strengthen the gluten, which leads to more voluminous loaves. Salt also reduces the oxidation of the pigments in flour that give the crust and slows yeast activity, creating consistent proving. In sourdough, it inhibits the bacteria that break down the protein. Anyone who has been to Tuscany and eaten bread made without salt knows these loaves are hard and dense. The point of these loaves is not about soft crumb and golden crust but to make ''la piccola scarpa'', the durable hand-held morsel of bread used to soak up sauces on the plate.