There’s something deeply comforting about the combination of gnocchi, cream and blue cheese with the lovely freshness of purple sprouting broccoli. Baking the dish intensifies flavours and creates a bubbling brown surface; the result is something rather special yet really simple to make. We use ready-made fresh potato gnocchi from the supermarket which makes the ... Read more »
The inspector from the Istituto Parma Qualità moves quickly amongst a selection of legs of ham. He pierces each ham in at least five spots using a special horse bone needle and sniffs the needle after each puncture. The needle is quite specialist; horse bone is porous to just the right degree that it takes in ... Read more »
I don’t usually make Halloween dishes. But I had a crate full of home-grown butternut squash in my kitchen when a friend of mine gave me a block of his home-made black garlic cheese. The handover, in a central London coffee shop, probably looked like an illicit drug tryst – the cheese resembled a very ... Read more »
Pete came into the house one recent Monday evening with an overgrown courgette from the back garden, brandishing it in the manner of a cartoon caveman and his trusty club. The quiche he made with half of it the next evening was so fantastic that I begged him to make it again the next night. ... Read more »
I guess I’m like a kid with a new toy at the moment. Here’s another power blender recipe for you, made once again in my Froothie Optimum 9400 blender. We’re in the midst of a courgette glut (something I’m very happy about as I love them and feel rather sad in those occasional years when ... Read more »
Ask an Argentinian or Brazilian to recommend their favourite cut of beef and there’s a good chance they’ll choose picanha. Most commonly it’s barbequed or grilled, and is a core churrascaria menu item. With it’s thick layer of fat comes lots of flavour, and it’s tender too. Yet this prized South American cut is one ... Read more »
Having challenged myself to make a savoury ice cream, I decided on blue cheese as my flavour, melting strong blue cheese into the no-churn condensed milk and double cream ice cream base that I discovered a few months ago. It was a bit of a nightmare! I slowly melted 100 gram of Roquefort into ... Read more »
A few months back, while chatting with friends, I bemoaned my lack of adventurousness, inventiveness and originality when it comes to cooking vegetables at home. One of my friends disappeared momentarily, and returned with a copy of The Farm Shop Cookbook by Christine McFadden, which she kindly gifted me. A few weeks later, I got ... Read more »
One one of our numerous trips to France Pete & I enjoyed some wonderful meals at a cheese and wine restaurant in Bordeaux. One getting home, Pete attempted to recreate one simple dish we ate there and this is his rather tasty result! It’s a dish we both love so we have it once every ... 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]