Travel tips-Restaurant reviews-Recipes
It’s been a glorious June day with the temperature in the mid-20s and the sun shining from a clear blue sky. My beautiful pale yellow rose is in full bloom in the garden, its Old English perfume a heady, glorious fragrance. Pots are filled with bright red geraniums and what a treat it was to […]
Read MoreWith Nicola & Rachael down from Worcestershire for the weekend to celebrate my birthday, we had a busy day planned for Saturday – which included High Tea at the famous Maids of Honour tea rooms in Kew. With uncertain timings and knowing we’d have more ‘tea’ than I usually do – in fact I don’t […]
Read MoreIt was while I was wandering around Waitrose today that I saw packs of San Marzano tomatoes. I’d no particular plans for supper and thus couldn’t resist buying these famous Italian tomatoes to make a pasta sauce. Although actually when I got home, I saw these came from Spain! To be honest, it is a […]
Read MoreIt might seem crazy to be making a thick, hearty soup in the midst of Christmas madness, but I have the advantage that I’m not actually ‘doing’ Christmas until Boxing Day. It all came about because I couldn’t resist buying a bundle of cavolo nero (black cabbage) at the farmers’ market yesterday, where I’d gone to […]
Read MoreIt’s taken me most of my life to appreciate cauliflower; it’s not that I disliked it when I was younger, more than I thought it was a bit boring. I grew up at a time when cauliflower was only eaten two ways: boiled with white sauce poured over the top to accompany a Sunday roast; […]
Read MoreIt was a leftovers supper. I had a lot of polenta left over from the Fegato alla Veneziana I made a couple of evenings ago. At first I felt quite silly for having completely overestimated how much polenta I needed, but as it turned out it led me towards the simplest but most divinely tasty […]
Read MoreThis is less a recipe than a story about Droitwich salt and how it came into my kitchen. My daughter Nicola lives just outside Droitwich in a village called Shrawley, in Worcestershire; her wife Rachael’s parents live in Droitwich – also known as Droitwich Spa. When I was visiting recently, Rachael’s mother Janet had kindly […]
Read MoreMaking a tomato sauce for pasta must be one of the first things most people learn when they start cooking. I actually often do a much more basic one than I did tonight, with just a shallot, olive oil, a tin of tomatoes and seasoning. But sometimes it’s nice to take things a bit further […]
Read MoreI guess you might say tonight’s supper was a last-ditch attempt to grab a bit of summer. Well the sun has actually been shining today and the temperature was even quite warm. But the real reason I made this dish was because I couldn’t resist buying some burrata I saw on the cold shelves in […]
Read MoreI used to cook lots of Ottolenghi’s recipes after I bought his Jerusalem book (published 2012) but then turned my attention – as often happens – to new books I bought. However, I so much loved my visit to the Ottolenghi restaurant in Islington last Saturday that I vowed as I ate the delicious food […]
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