Travel tips-Restaurant reviews-Recipes
It had been promised for a long time. When grandson Freddie (8¾) and I have been to Wisley Gardens a few times over the last year, we’ve indulged in carrot cake in their cafe. It’s a generous slice and we tend to share it; it’s rich, moist and dark, with a traditional cream cheese based icing. […]
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I’ve said on these pages a number of times that I’m not really a baker. By this I mean I rarely bake cakes and tend to stick to old favourites most of the time when I do. The particular old favourite that I’m writing about here goes back an impressive 40 years! I’ve written about […]
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I had a lot of tomatoes. There were tomatoes on the three small plants in a pot outside my back door. Planted mainly for the benefit of the grandsons but with them away for the summer holidays, there’s no little person around to pick off the ripe cherry tomatoes and pop them straight into their […]
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My daughter Nicola, her wife and 4-year-old son stopped off overnight en route to the Channel Tunnel and a trip through France, Switzerland and Italy. I wanted to cook a nice meal for the evening but also take into account that with my son’s three boys (2, 5 and 8) coming over for a while […]
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For us meat eaters of the world, lamb is the traditional meat to serve on Easter Sunday. Usually a roast meal is served but with just myself to feed today, I opted for some gorgeous lamb rib chops I found in Whole Foods. As a child, roast Sunday lunches were a weekly affair from which […]
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Years ago, when I was regularly cooking family meals and hosting dinner parties, Marcella Hazan’s Fagiolini verdi con peperoni e pomodoro – French beans with peppers and tomatoes – from her iconic The Classic Italian Cookbook, was a favourite side dish to make. It’s a great dish to accompany simply cooked meat – like grilled or […]
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It’s my eldest grandson Freddie’s 8th birthday. I’ve been making the same cake ever since his first birthday – The 1st Birthday Cake – and followed the recipe again today. In fact, I’ve made it more than eight times for my son Jonathan now has three boys, so there’s Ben (5) and Alex (2) as […]
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I always make my own pesto. Partly this is because the jars once opened have to be used up fairly quickly and they are usually too big for one person – and mainly I’m cooking just for myself. But really, the main reason is taste: there is just no bought pesto that comes close to […]
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I’ve been thinking about cooking this dish for ages after having a similar one at the brilliant Bayside Social in Worthing in April. I even bought some chorizo which has been in my freezer. This morning, considering what to eat tonight, I also found some cod. It was a fillet not a nice chunky piece […]
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Earlier in the year, sometime in spring, I was in the local garden centre and spied little tomato plants. I remembered how excited the grandsons were last year when I grew some: Freddie (now 7½) loves to eat them; Ben (4¾) doesn’t like tomatoes but said he was excited to watch them grow. So I […]
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