Recipes from cookbooks we review, shared with full permission from publishers.

Lamb Kifta Tagine With Eggs

This delicious recipe for meatballs and baked eggs in a spiced tomato sauce is from Greg & Lucy Malouf’s Malouf: New Middle Eastern Food. We really enjoyed the dish, fniding it a lot like a North Indian tomato-based curry in flavour. Read our review of Malouf: New Middle Eastern Food. This dish is best described ... Read more »

Stew! Lamb Shanks with Red Wine and Balsamic Vinegar

New cook books are great. New cookbooks I won by following the author on twitter are even better! I was delighted to win a copy of Stew! by Genevieve Taylor. I’m a huge fan of a good stew; hearty and comforting, full of warmth and good flavours and often made from inexpensive ingredients. Genevieve Taylor feels ... Read more »

Making Pelmeni (Russian Meat Dumplings)

Russian Pelmeni (meat dumplings)

We made these Russian pelmeni (meat dumplings) alongside vareniki (cheese dumplings) for a Russian vodka and dumplings evening with friends.   (Meat) Pelmeni Unlike vareniki which seem to be made with a wide range of fillings, pelmeni are most commonly filled with meat. Traditionally, they are made by the hundreds and stored outside (where the ... Read more »

Making Cheese Vareniki (Russian Cheese Dumplings)

Russian Vareniki (cheese dumplings)

When twitter friend Sabrina saw my plea for authentic recipes for Russian pelmeni she kindly offered to loan me her copy of a charming Russian cookery book called Please To The Table. Written by Anya Von Bremzen and John Welchman, the book includes 400 recipes from the former Soviet Union, “from the Baltics to Uzbekistan”. ... Read more »

Valentine Warner’s Carne Con Chile

Although I like Valentine Warner’s approach to food and cooking, I have mixed feelings about his telly programmes, mostly stemming from his incessant winking and innuendos (which might be charming in person but don’t translate to TV). I actually had to switch off when he referred to mini lavender meringues as “fairy tits”, though friends would ... Read more »

Ice Cream Wednesday: Jean-Christophe Novelli’s Summer Baked Alaska

Two Wednesdays ago, Pete and I enjoyed a wonderful afternoon at the Novelli Academy, the Cookery School run by handsome French chef Jean-Christophe Novelli. Located in Tea Green, a small village on the outskirts of Luton, not far from the airport, the Academy is located in a beautiful 14th century farmhouse where Novelli also lives ... Read more »

Banana & Cardamom Ice Cream from Scandilicious

It would be easy to dismiss my friend Sig’s new book as jumping on the Scandi band wagon, but it’d be completely wrong to do so. Since June 2008 Sig has been sharing the joy’s of Scandinavian cooking via her blog, Scandilicious. Describing her heritage as Scandinavian-English-American-Irish-German-Jewish-Lithuanian (and born to a Norwegian father and English-American ... Read more »

Jolly Olly’s Chicken Veronique

Olly Smith is well known as a wine writer and presenter, respected for helping the nation to find and appreciate good wine. But he’s also a keen food lover and has written his own cookery book Eat and Drink full of his favourite recipes, with an emphasis on food that’s great to drink with. The ... Read more »

What’s Your Ultimate Burger? Perfect Burger & Ultimate Burger Bun Recipes!

I’ve been thinking about this question recently, not least because I was sent two different burgers to review, and I was also asked to define my ultimate burger. Broadly, there are three aspects to a burger – the meat patty, the bun and the various condiments served inside or with it. The Patty This is ... Read more »

Persian Baked Yoghurt Rice with Chicken (Tahcheen-e morgh)

As I wrote recently, I fell in love with Saraban: A chef’s journey through Persia by Greg & Lucy Malouf, the moment I saw it. In this post, I want to share a most wonderful recipe from the book – tahcheen-e morgh (baked yoghurt rice with chicken). During a talk I attended recently, Greg was ... Read more »