Travel tips-Restaurant reviews-Recipes (Formerly The Single Gourmet & Traveller blog)
When my son and daughter were young school kids, they used to tease me that they knew which day of the week it was by what I cooked for supper. I’ve always enjoyed cooking – from when I was at school myself – but can’t deny there’s a kind of drudgery to churning out a […]
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Aubergines are one of my favourite vegetables. Although actually, they’re a fruit and even a berry by botanical definition. I like them as Melanzane alla Parmigiana; make a Norma sauce nearly every week; love them in tagines or curries; in ratatouille – either traditionally cooked on top of the stove or roasted in the oven; […]
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I’ve been busy with my job as a freelance book editor but a bit of serendipity was in play when I found that a short break while waiting for a new job to arrive coincided with the forecast of a sunny day. There was really only one thing to do: book an entry slot at […]
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I call this ‘stroganoff’ with a little caution: you have to be careful using a classic name for a dish and people can get very upset (including me sometimes!) if cooks stray too far from the traditional. But of course ‘stroganoff’ is traditionally a beef dish and thus turning it into a vegetarian one is […]
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It’s Shrove Tuesday and if you ever needed an excuse to make pancakes – this is your day! Mix a pancake, Stir a pancake, Pop it in the pan; Fry the pancake, Toss the pancake – Catch it if you can. Christina Rossetti’s fun poem says it all. Though I have to confess I’ve never […]
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This is a recipe I used to make regularly many years ago. More precisely, when my daughter was a baby, back in the early 1980s. It comes from Delia Smith’s Book of Cakes, published in 1977, where it’s named Wholewheat Guinness Cake. The page where the recipe is printed in the book is so stained […]
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A romanesco is so beautiful, how could one resist it? Well, actually I’d been resisting them for a week or two, seeing them piled invitingly in Whole Foods’ greengrocery section, before temptation became too much yesterday morning and one was lifted carefully into my basket. They’re not commonly found on supermarket shelves in London but […]
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It’s Burns’ Night tonight, 25 January, and the celebration of the great Scottish poet’s birth in 1759. Remarkably, this popular event has been going since 1801 when it was held by a group of Burns’ friends to mark the fifth anniversary of his death in July 1796. The first Burns’ Night was held in July, […]
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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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