All recipes, both our own plus those reprinted with permission from cookbook publishers
Why are we eating parsnips in the summer? Well… we grow our own vegetables and, last year, we planted parsnips for the first time. Early January was rainy and miserable and we left much of our winter crop in the ground for longer than we should have. So we urgently harvested a bumper crop of giant ... Read more »
When I heard that Divine had launched a new 85% dark chocolate bar I immediately started thinking about recipes I could use it in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a surprisingly good eating bar – despite the high cocoa content it’s neither unpleasantly bitter nor overly crumbly (due to reduced fat content). But I really ... Read more »
These simply spiced beef empanadas, made from a recipe in the Leith’s Meat Bible, are easy to make and delicious enjoyed hot or cold. Best of all, you can use the recipe as a starting point, and experiment by adjusting the spice mix to suit your personal taste. Being so easily portable, they are great for ... Read more »
I use aspartame. Yes, I’m aware of the many controversial claims about its side effects (one being memory loss, how would I ever tell? 😉 But if I stopped ingesting every food and drink stuff about which I’d heard a scare story, my diet would consist of nothing but potatoes. And wait, aren’t potatoes linked ... Read more »
You know how people sometimes talk about second generation immigrants as slightly lost souls – neither entirely comfortable in the land from whence their parents came nor completely integrated into the land of their birth? Well, that’s not me. I was born in London in the early seventies to two doctors who emigrated from India ... Read more »
I have always loved pickled gherkins. Many’s the time I’ve come to the chagrined realisation, as I munch one straight from the jar, then another and then one more, that I have eaten an entire jar in one sitting! Over the last several years, Pete and I have gradually converted our back garden into what ... Read more »
Vodka has a special place in my affections, so strongly does it feature in my memories of two rather splendid holidays during my youth. the only picture of me I have to hand from 1989 (and I was all dressed up and hadn’t hit the voddie yet) In 1989 I was one of a coach ... Read more »
I adore a good cheese tart. Whether you call it a tart, quiche or flan, I’m a fan, and couldn’t to try Trine Hahnemann’s Swedish Cheese Tart recipe from her book The Scandinavian Cookbook. Read our full review of The Scandinavian Cookbook, here. Hahnemann recommends serving the tart warm with a crisp green salad and slices ... Read more »
Gareth Groves is an ex-Chef turned wine merchant who is now Communications Manager at Bibendum. His best man once described him as a man who uses breakfast as an opportunity to think about lunch. Part of his job is to manage social media for Bibendum, so he spends a bit of time on twitter, where ... Read more »
This recipe for meatballs with vodka sauce is taken from Jane Lawson’s Snowflakes and Schnapps, a Scandinavian-influenced cookery book. Find out more about the book in my review of Snowflakes and Schnapps. With little to nothing by way of recipe introductions, it’s harder to choose what to make. Perhaps it’s for this reason that I went ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]