The pandemic and lockdown have always felt awful and we’ve all had to adjust to the shock of suddenly finding ourselves in such a terrible situation. I remember at the start I’d wake in the morning and it would be like when someone you love dies, or a love affair ends, and you suddenly remember; […]
There was a touch of routine in this evening’s supper for I almost always have an omelette on Tuesday evenings. The reason for this is that it’s my book club night and I have to eat early and don’t want to eat anything heavy before I go out. So an omelette is perfect. We meet […]
Travelling to beautiful places like Nice, as I did last weekend, where there’s the most wonderful food to be enjoyed, just has to be an inspiration once you’re back home in your own kitchen. I thus decided to cook a Niçois meal for the family this evening. Tarte à la Tomate, along with pissaladière (onion […]
I was reading the other day that taramasalata (also taramosalata) has become the forgotten dip due to our recent love affair with hummus. It reminded me that I once made taramasalata a lot. It was always a dip I offered at parties or when friends came round. I can remember making it back in the late […]
This is an Ottolenghi recipe from his book, Simple. Ottolenghi + Simple are not two words I’d normally put together. His recipes often contain very long lists of ingredients and are quite complicated. However, I was completely addicted to his Jerusalem book when it first came out in 2012 and cooked from it endlessly. Some […]
I couldn’t resist a bunch of English asparagus in Waitrose a couple of days ago; it’s almost the end of the short season (April – June) and fresh English asparagus is so delicious. I decided to cook it this evening with some eggs. It’s become a habit of mine on Tuesday evenings, when I go […]
It’s almost two weeks since I bought the two Sicilian blood oranges along with some white asparagus in Chiswick – and I really needed to do something with them! I could, of course, just eat them – straight. But I wanted to do something a bit special and the plan had been in my head all […]
Panelle alla ceci – chickpea fritters – are a popular street food in Sicily. I haven’t been to Sicily for many years but have eaten panelle in London, most memorably from a Sicilian street-food stall at Mercato Metropolitano in London. Here – as you can see below – they were fried to order and placed […]
If green food is good for us, soups don’t come much more nutritious than this gorgeous Kale & Courgette Soup. The kale was an instant buy in the little local Tesco that stocks quite a few organic things. I was actually looking for spinach but settled for kale. The pack of courgettes contained three large […]
I love risotto, as will be evident to any regular reader of these pages. I make a risotto at least once a week, ingredients to a large extent depending on the season. One of the great things about risotto is that it doesn’t have a season – you can make it with pretty much anything […]