Travel tips-Restaurant reviews-Recipes (Formerly The Single Gourmet & Traveller blog)
I hadn’t planned to do any serious cooking today but when I received a message from my Italian friend Antonio this morning wishing me a ‘Buona Befana’ I couldn’t resist finding out more. I had heard of La Befana but have always celebrated Epiphany before French style with a Galette des Rois. But clearly it […]
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I like to eat fish once or twice a week. Most often it’s salmon (organic farmed; wild when in season if I find it). Sometimes sea bream or sea bass; prawns to go into a fiery tomato sauce with pasta. I hadn’t particularly planned on cooking fish when I was wandering round Whole Foods in […]
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Happy New Year!! Let me first wish you a happy, healthy and altogether easier and more enjoyable year than the one we’ve just left. Despite the many challenges of 2020, there were positives and indeed lovely parts of it for me. Especially the birth of my fourth grandson (my son’s third child) on 27 December. […]
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‘Oh, what a night/Late December back in ’63/Was a very special time for me/As I remember what a night’. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons may famously have been singing about a very good and special time back in 1975 but the words keep coming to me from the perspective of this year’s pandemic: ‘Oh, what […]
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I was looking through an almost 20-year-old Antonio Carluccio book of his favourite Italian recipes a few days ago and came across these courgette fritters that I remember making with my son – almost 20 years ago! I’m not sure why I haven’t made them since as I remember we loved them and they’re pretty […]
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I was cooking for the family again. Ingredients for a big pot of bolognese ragù were coming in the morning with my Waitrose delivery so I suggested making a lasagna for us all. There’d be plenty for the lasagna and enough spare to freeze a few portions of the ragù. I always like to make […]
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I love making a meal for the family on Sunday. Sometimes they come to my house; sometimes I take everything to theirs. It’s more of the latter the moment. With two little boys having school and pre-school the next morning and needing early nights, it’s easier to be based at their home. We don’t ‘do’ […]
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I love fish and eat it at least once or twice a week and when I saw this recipe in Moro the Cookbook a few days’ ago, I knew I just had to make it. A few years’ ago, I almost lived by Moro: Moro the Cookbook, Casa Moro and Moro East. One of then biggest highlights […]
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British Summer Time ended today, the clocks went back an hour so we all had an extra hour in bed (except of course if you have small children who don’t understand these things) and autumn arrived with a vengeance. Heavy rain and blustery winds raged through the night and into the morning; it was definitely […]
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I like apple-based desserts more than any other kind, from a homely apple crumble or pie (which always has to be served with Bird’s custard in my house or there are complaints!) to fancier tarts and cakes. I’ve made little tartlets on flaky pastry, deep-filled tartlets. I’ve made tarts with apple purée on the bottom […]
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