Cooking with Freddie: Making the Christmas Pudding

Cooking is a family affair for me: we talk food; we talk recipes; we cook together when we can. My parents introduced me to good food very early in life and my son started cooking at such a young age he had to stand on a stool to reach the worktop. Now he’s one of […]

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Getting Ready for Christmas 2018

This year, Christmas will be a family affair at my daughter Nicola’s in Worcestershire with seven ‘grown-ups’and three little ones: my grandsons Freddie (3¾), Benjamin (1) and Rufus (3 months). Nicola is going to do the Christmas Day cooking with her brother Jonathan and the rest of us will prepare contributions ahead to take with […]

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Making the Christmas Pudding

It’s a few years since I last made a Christmas pudding. And I’ve never actually made many in my life. When I was a child, my maternal grandmother was the Christmas cook, making the pudding and Christmas cake. After she died, my mother started making the pudding and I made the cake. But not many […]

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Christmas Recipes: Cakes & Desserts

I’ve rarely ‘done’ Christmas. When my kids were small we nearly always went to my parents’ home and they cooked; in recent years I’ve often gone to my brother Adam’s; last year I was at my daughter Nicola’s; the rare occasion I’ve hosted Christmas my son or daughter have stepped in offering to cook the […]

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Last-Minute Light Christmas Cake

There is a family story about Dundee cake. I took to making Scottish Whisky Dundee Cake for Christmas from Delia Smith’s Christmas book way back when it was first published in 1990 and my kids were still quite small. No one in the family – other than me – likes ‘proper’ Christmas cake: a rich, dark […]

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Duck with Chickpea Pilaf, Pomegranates, Aubergine & Walnuts

When I was at the wonderful Moro pop-up at Possessed N1’s Supper Club early this month the main dish was a duck fattee with chickpea pilaf, pomegranates, aubergines and walnuts. A fattee is a Lebanese dish in which pitta bread is toasted and crisped in butter then layered with various toppings, ending with some garlicky […]

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