I’m very used to making jams, jellies, chutneys, ketchups and pickles, all of which require basic sterilisation of jars, easy recipes and a straightforward process to fill and seal the jars. In these recipes boiling helps kill harmful bacteria and yeasts as well as reducing the moisture in which they thrive; sugar or acid stops ... 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 »
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 »
I love the idea of giving homemade gifts for Christmas. I’ve come across the mentality that homemade is second best; I know people who judge on monetary value and assume that shop-bought, established brands are always better than amateur efforts. Homemade to these folks is about thrift or stinginess or rose-tinted nostalgia, if they’re being ... Read more »
There’s something deeply satisfying about making a meal of ingredients foraged directly from the earth, not by some faceless stranger who’s sold his lucrative hedgerow hoard to a restaurant chef, but by your own hands. Common mallow Of course, there’s the thrifty delight in a free meal. £3 for a bundle of asparagus or marsh ... Read more »
Green & Black’s Head of Taste, Micah Carr-Hill, is looking for a Taste Assistant. The winning candidate will support Micah in the development of new Green & Black’s products – sourcing ingredients from all around the world, working with marketing on the development of ideas, developing kitchen samples, scaling small trials to factory scale and ... 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 »
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 »
My family call this sauce imli (tamarind) chutney. The word chutney comes from the Hindi chaatni which describes a tangy condiment that makes you lick your lips at it’s flavour! Although the verb chaatna means to lick I think lipsmacking is a better translation.. I refer to it as a ketchup or sauce because I’ve ... Read more »
Lemons in India are different – they’re lemony (well, duh!) but rounder with much thinner skins than the ones we see most commonly in the UK. Indians in the UK sometimes choose to use limes in place of Indian lemons when cooking, although my mum recommends against this as lime skins are much tougher than ... 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]