Did you know that magnolia flowers are edible? Not only edible, but also delicious, with a mild ginger flavour. They can be eaten fresh and raw in a salad, but they also work well pickled. Pickled magnolia blossoms remind me of Japanese gari – the thinly sliced and pickled ginger often served with sushi. How ... Read more »
If you want to get to the heart of Japanese home cooking, you will appreciate Phaidon’s most recent Country Cookbook, Japan: The Cookbook by Nancy Singleton Hachisu. This hefty collection of over 400 recipes showcases the breadth of Japanese home-cooking today, and is a great reference book for any cook keen on the cuisine. Read my ... Read more »
Long before I started this blog, I was sharing recipes online at Mamta’s Kitchen, our family cookbook on the web, named after my mum who has contributed the bulk of the recipes, with many more given by family, friends and readers. Mamta’s Kitchen has been going strong since 2001 and is a wonderful way to ... Read more »
We’ve been growing a variety of cucumbers called Lemon this year – so named not because of their flavour but their size, shape and colour. The skins on ours have been tougher than we expected, so we’ve peeled them before adding them to salads. This one was combined with very thinly sliced red ... Read more »
Given how much I enjoy coleslaw – it’s a must-have accompaniment to breaded chicken fillets, deep fried chicken and chicken burgers, not to mention perfect picnic food – it’s a little surprising to me that I rarely made my own; it’s not exactly complicated to shred some raw vegetables and toss in a home-made dressing, ... Read more »
I love home-made ketchup, and it’s even more satisfying making it from home-grown tomatoes. In the past, I’ve made several batches of ketchup with red tomatoes and a couple of batches with green ones but this is the first batch I’ve made with beautiful orange sungold tomatoes, a variety we’ve been growing for the last ... Read more »
I’ve never cooked beef short ribs before. I’m not sure if I’ve even eaten them before but I think I may have. Certainly I’ve seen much talk about them being a great value cut that benefits from long slow cooking such as a braise. My beef short ribs came from The Ginger Pig, and I ... Read more »
The two apple trees on our allotment gave us a whopping 55 kilos of apples this year; 34 kilos of cookers and 22 kilos of eating apples. And that’s just what we picked – we left some cookers on the tree for our plot neighbour to enjoy. Some of them we processed at the time, ... Read more »
In my review of Bought, Borrowed & Stolen by Allegra McEvedy, you’ll see that my favourite aspects of the book were Allegra’s travel memories, and her introductions to her amazing collection of knives brought back from those travels. We did make a recipe though, choosing her Malawian Ginger & Garlic Fried Fish. (Ginger & Garlic ... Read more »
When I was invited to take part in the Grey Poupon cooking challenge, I immediately remembered the intriguing recipe for Cackalacky Spare Ribs that I’d read in my recently acquired book, The Whole Hog Cookbook by Libbie Summers. As Grey Poupon was originally an American-owned brand (born back in 1777) Cackalacky seemed doubly appropriate. (These ... 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]