Recipes (my own and from reviewed recipe books), reviews of cookery books and cookery classes, food and kitchen equipment product reviews – if it’s about cooking or eating at home, it’s here!

Chetna’s Indian Feasts: Everyday meals and easy entertaining by Chetna Makan

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Chetna's Indian Feasts: Everyday meals and easy entertaining by Chetna Makan

Chetna Makan burst onto our screens in 2016, participating in and then winning series 5 of The Great British Bake Off. Since then she’s firmly established herself as a popular and successful food writer with a whopping 7 cookbooks under her belt and has amassed over 280,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel. Her seventh book, ... Read more »

Indonesian Makassar Beef Coto (Coto Makassar)

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Indonesian Makassar Beef Coto

Coto (also spelled Soto) is a category an Indonesian soups that are stew-like in nature, and usually feature meat, broth and vegetables. This Makassar Coto, hailing from Sulawesi, combines slow-cooked beef cheeks with herbs, spices and peanuts to create a rich, thick stew that is beautifully tender, delicious and filling. The recipe is from The ... Read more »

Indonesian Spiced Beef Stew (Semur Daging)

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This Indonesian Spiced Beef Stew reminds me of a classic British beef and vegetable stew but in this case there are warming spices, herbs and other additional ingredients that provide an unmistakeably South East Asian flavour profile. Taken from Petty Pandean-Elliott’s The Indonesian Table, traditionally semur daging has a thinner sauce. Pandean-Elliott has added flour ... Read more »

Indonesian Chicken Curry with Pineapple (Gulai Ayam Nanas)

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Indonesian Chicken Curry and Pineapple (Gulai Ayam Nanas)

This quick and delicious chicken curry with pineapple hails from South Sumatra in Indonesia, and is one of the many delicious recipes to be found in Petty Pandean-Elliott’s The Indonesian Table. It’s a mild and soupy curry with delicate flavours and a fragrant aroma. Read my in-depth review of The Indonesian Table by Petty Pandean-Elliott. ... Read more »

The Indonesian Table by Petty Pandean-Elliott

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The Indonesian Table by Petty Pandean-Elliott

I’m a big fan of Phaidon Press’ country-specific cookbooks. Their spring release, The Indonesian Table by Petty Pandean-Elliott is a colourful book sharing 150 recipes from across Indonesia, alongside personal recollections from her childhood and the culinary journeys she has undertaken since. As I explained in my review of Lara Lee’s Coconut & Sambal, Indonesia is ... Read more »

Growing Up In A Nonya Kitchen by Sharon Wee

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Growing Up In A Nonya Kitchen by Sharon Wee

Growing Up In A Nonya Kitchen is an ode to author Sharon Wee’s mother. In it she shares her memories of growing up in a Peranakan Chinese family in Singapore, and a meticulously researched collection of recipes and cooking advice learned not only in her mother’s kitchen but from older relatives and experts in the ... Read more »

Rogge Verdommeke | Bread of the Damned | Rye Bread with Currants or Raisins

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Rogge Verdommeke | Bread of the damned

How can I resist a recipe called ‘bread of the damned’? This simple rye bread with currants or raisins not only has a great story to its name, it’s also delicious in its own right. The recipe and its story come from Regula Ysewijn’s Dark Rye & Honey Cake, full of culinary history and intriguing ... Read more »

Couque de Rins (Honey Cake with Sugar)

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These delicious soft and chewy honey cakes came about, like so many recipes, because of a mistake when a baker named François Rins made a mistake whilst  cooking the much harder couque de Dinant. This story, and the recipe itself, are from Regula Ysewijn’s Dark Rye & Honey Cake, a cookbook focusing on baking from ... Read more »

Savoury Sweet Potato Waffles

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Savoury sweet potato waffles

I adore waffles, and we make all kinds in our waffle maker, from Parmesan & Paprika Potato Waffles and Marmite Waffles to Double Chocolate Brownie-Style Waffles and French Toast Waffles. So we were absolutely on board to try the 14 waffle recipes within Regula Ysewijn’s Dark Rye & Honey Cake including these fabulous Savoury Sweet Potato Waffles. Read more ... Read more »

Dark Rye & Honey Cake by Regula Ysewijn

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Dark Rye & Honey Cake by Regula Ysewijn

After two books focusing on British puddings (Pride & Pudding) and baking (Oats in the North, Wheat from the South), a special interest Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook, and The National Trust Book of Puddings, Dark Rye & Honey Cake is Belgian food writer, culinary historian and photographer Regula Ysewijn’s first cookbook dedicated to ‘festival baking ... Read more »