Restaurant Review: La Trompette, Chiswick, London

After a Monday evening dinner at La Trompette I can definitely understand what all the fuss (and it’s Michelin star) is about. We had a marvellous dining experience! Welcomed warmly and shown to our table we were quickly asked about apéritifs and water, offered advice on the wine menu from the sommelier and offered some ... Read more »

Charles Campion’s Banana Cake Recipe

This banana cake recipe is from Charles Campion’s Fifty Recipes To Stake Your Life On and makes a really, really gooey banana cake. Campion describes the recipe collection as “fifty, sure-fire, tried-and-tested recipes and fifty stories to go with them” and its a great starting point for those just getting into cooking and looking for ... Read more »

Mini Restaurant Reviews: Cardiff, Wales

Pete and I spent a weekend in Cardiff recently, to attend the Cheese Festival and to celebrate my birthday. Here are reviews of the following: Dinner and Breakfasts at Ty Rosa B&B Coffee & Cake at Craft in the Bay Lunch at Madame Fromage Woods Brasserie Dinner and Breakfasts at Ty Rosa B&B This is ... Read more »

Restaurant Review: Maze, London

Yesterday was my birthday (and my sister’s too) and we celebrated with dinner at Maze, one of the Gordon Ramsay stable of restaurants, run by head chef Jason Atherton. We opted for the Tasting Menu which was the reason (along with hearty recommendations from foodie friends) that I picked Maze: unlike most of the GR ... Read more »

Variation on Angela Nilsen’s Carrot and Coriander Soup

On the way to somewhere else we passed a farm shop and popped in for a quick look. We ended up buying a huge bag of carrots for £2. I think about 4 or 5 kilos! Coincidentally, last weekend we picked up The Ultimate Recipe Book by Angela Nilsen, featuring a rather handy Carrot and ... Read more »

Kitchen Equipment Geeks

Pete and I are definitely becoming kitchen equipment geeks. Hence this long and rambling post about our new pans, ice-cream machine and food processor! A few weeks ago we (well, Pete mostly) decided we wanted to replace several of our very aged and cheap pans with some really decent new ones. We weren’t fussed about ... Read more »

Restaurant Review: Moti Mahal, London

Friday night one of my best friends treated me to dinner as her Christmas gift to me. We went to Moti Mahal in Great Queen Street (between Holborn and Covent Garden tube stations). Last year we went to Zaika for Christmas and we’d been planning to visit Benares this year. My friend lives in Canada ... Read more »

The Soda Bread Diaries

Having enjoyed the soda bread my friend made for a picnic in her garden recently, she sent me the recipe. It’s published in a book called The Baker’s Tale by Catherine Brown but is credited to James Burgess. The first time I made this soda bread (last Wednesday) I followed the recipe exactly and the ... Read more »