Quiet satisfaction
"Cooking at home, you don't need to hit the bull's-eye, you just need to hit the target." David Chang This is last night's dinner. We thought it looked impressive enough to photograph and also because it illustrated for me some of what I was saying in yesterday's post - and elsewhere in the past - about how important it seems to be that things look good. In every aspect of life really - beginning with ourselves, and leading to just about every choice we make in life. We a
Feb 16
A quickie about a specific omelette
"the salty sharpness contrasts exquisitely with the rich fattiness of the eggs; against which too, the fresh hit of mint is positively exhilarating." Nigella Lawson Nigella is talking about what she (and lots of others) call a Corsican omelette - or Frittata incu a menta (e brocciu), as it's called in Corsica. Of course like those of us who live nowhere near Corsica, or even France and can therefore not obtain brocciu cheese, we will not be able to make the dish in an auth
Feb 14
Corn ribs
"The possibilities are endless" This post actually comes from my poor memory forgetting a postscript that I meant to add to yesterday's post. It was a postscript, because it was about vadouvan - that I wrote about a few days ago. The January Coles Magazine had a recipe for the above dish from Curtis Stone - Corn ribs with Vadouvan-spice butter and coriander chutney - in fact it had been my original inspiration for writing about vadouvan, but I failed to mention it I think
Feb 12
Arty brioche
"Rather a piece of bread with a happy heart than wealth with grief." - Egyptian proverb So it's the Met's first day of the week - Sunday - and facing my new week of happenings - actually a few this week - is a detail - the brioche, the flower and the peaches - from this painting - La Brioche - as painted by Edouard Manet in 1870 and now hanging on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Well it's food, so I ought to be able to write something about it. Firs
Feb 8
Robert, Tessa or Rachel?
or maybe Elizabeth or Richard? What do they all have in common? Provence. Well every now and then not always. What do they not have in common? The years in between them all. The times. Why am I featuring them? Well this is another account of another potential meal, and how I decided on what to cook. On Friday we are entertaining friends for lunch together with my sister and her husband. Maybe, at least for some of the time my niece who is driving her mother to and fro
Feb 4
Koofteh berenji - Persian meatballs
Number 46 in the 80 meatballs from around the world are Koofteh berenji - as made here by Bunny Banyai. I made them last night for the family - we were welcoming back the European travellers - and of course I forgot to take photographs of mine. I was just glad to get it all ready for people to dive in, after working most of the day in the kitchen, so I forgot. I mostly enjoyed the day in the kitchen by the way. However, I was mildly disappointed with them, even though eve
Feb 2
Chicken Kiev - or Kyiv, or something else altogether?
"the only thing that really matters with a kiev is that when you cut into that crisp shell, you're rewarded with an eruption of vivid green, garlicky butter. And that's a pleasure that will never go out of fashion." Felicity Cloake Only beware, because if you cut into it too rapidly that hot butter could spurt out and all over anything that is nearby - the tablecloth, your clothes, your fingers. And it will be hot. The trick is to get it to ooze - as shown here in Nagi Mae
Jan 29
Self-soothing meatballs?
"any shovel-handed buffoon can roll a gob of mince into a rustic ball." Bunny Banyai So I said I would return to the meatball book and here it is - Around the World in 80 Meatballs by a lady called Bunny Banyai. A strange name - well the surname - and hard to pin down an origin, but I think somewhere in the book she mentioned Russia or Ukraine as an ancestral connection. Even stranger, however, is why this particular lady is writing a cookbook, for although she is indeed a
Jan 24
Linzer torte - Italian, Austrian, Jewish?
"I didn’t have great hopes for this Linzer torte – it just seemed too simple to be really delicious." Alix Clark/SBS And I have to say when I turned to my lucky dip page - this is a lucky dip recipe - I felt a bit the same. When I think about it I don't think I have ever tasted a genuine Linzer torte. Did my mother ever make such a thing I wonder because I do remember something with a lattice top and maybe jam in the middle? If I did I doubt that my mother, or maybe even m
Jan 20
Honduras - the original banana republic
"In Honduras food is tricky, there seems to be prevailing thought that all tourists want western food and that burgers and nuggets will fit the bill." Bacon is Magic Which is perhaps an honest assessment of Honduran food, but my world tour is to try and discover what the so-called traditional foods of the world are. What the peoples of different countries supposedly eat at home, although these days, possibly they don't. Possibly everyone eats pizza and hamburgers, lasagne
Jan 18
Clear borscht - a first recipe
"the pride of old Polish cooking" Maria Lemnis I'll be up front here and say I'm not inspired by this one. I'm pretty sure I did borscht as most of us know it - a complicated meat and vegetable soup founded on beetroot - long, long, ago, but here I am with a first recipe for a clear borscht, the version of which I have in front of me, with no picture or recipe online and no comments in the book. I chose this picture of The Spruce Eats recipe from Barbara Rolek for Beet so
Jan 17
Hoppin' John
"You can dig up old 19th century "receipts" (as they were called back then), follow them to the letter, and still end up mystified that anyone could ever have loved such stuff, much less decided it was an iconic Southern dish." Robert Moss/Serious Eats I owe this post to a substack newsletter from Gastra Obscura yesterday, which highlighted it because is it is an American - well the Southern states of the Carolinas and neighbours - New Year's Day dish. So I thought that be
Jan 5
Fruit fools
"Savlon for the tongue" Nigel Slater That's a somewhat weird, maybe even repulsive or at least unattractive way of describing, what to me and many other English people is the most sublime of desserts - particularly the gooseberry version. ‘Soft, pale, creamy, untroubled, the English fruit fool is the most frail and insubstantial of English summer dishes’ says Elizabeth David and even Claudia Roden - doyenne of Middle-Eastern food describes them as "one of the delights of s
Jan 3
"Worth a write-up" said David
"Little joys illuminating an increasingly darkening world. They feed the soul and nourish the spirit." Nigel Slater A somewhat overblown, even, pretentious some would say, quote from Nigel, and although it probably overstates how I felt about last night's dinner, the dinner itself and David's comment did indeed induce a feeling of quiet satisfaction and maybe even pride that at least keeps me going. So here is my not very good photograph of a meal that I suppose could be ca
Dec 19, 2025
Coq au sauvignon blanc
“This popular dish may be called coq au Chambertin, coq au Riesling, or coq au whatever wine you use for its cooking.” Julia Child Based on, based on, probably ad infinitum is the story of tonight's proposed dinner. And for want of a better description I'm calling it Coq au sauvignon blanc - or 'sav blonk' as some would say.. But of course it's not coq at all, so let's begin there on this tiny ramble around a classic french dish. For every group of chickens that actually ha
Dec 17, 2025
Healing rice
"I had forgotten the pleasures of cooking rice properly ... In the rush to get something on the table, it is all too easy to forget that there is something infinitely calming about cooking rice." Nigel Slater And healing too. On Friday I was not feeling too well - a mildly upset stomach - which is why there was no blog that day - and yesterday we had guests. I didn't eat much, tried to drink more water, and basically just lay around feeling somewhat drained, and needing to
Dec 15, 2025
Capsicum stuffed with tomatoes
"an Italian idea that has been put into words well by Elizabeth David, Simon Hopkinson and Nigel Slater among many others. And no wonder – it is such a good idea" Rachel Roddy I spent another happy almost hour with Nigel today, checking out his book Tender volume 1 for my lunch party on Sunday. If you remember I had forgotten to check this volume out. And of course there were heaps of other possibilities in addition to what I wrote about the other day, but I think I will
Dec 12, 2025
With or without? - speculaas/speculoos
"Loos in old Dutch means without. Speculaas is with a lot of spices, speculoos is speculaas without most of those spices." reddit As I often do I started with a random, well a few, in this case, random recipes from somewhere, and you travel the world in time and space, learning a few fairly trivial and mildly interesting things along the way. Mind you I have sort of done this one before with my Biscoff for a rainy day post - and apologies for the missing pictures - I accid
Dec 8, 2025
A recipe years in the making
"pushing the boundaries of Italian cuisine, to highlight the power food, drink and travel has on memory" Rob Hobart/Peroni Nastro Azzurro I started out today researching piña colada inspired desserts - it was a topic in my Ideas list. Somehow or other during those rambles around a couple of Google pages, I came across this Cherry and strawberry crostata with black sesame praline a dish that Ixta Belfrage had presented in her Substack newsletter, telling us that it was a re
Dec 4, 2025
Beetroot mezze - well small things?
"For me, a mezze dish has to be completely self-contained - fully flavoured and ready to go without needing anything else to make sense." Yotam Ottolenghi Ok - this is not really a small thing. It's Beetroot and red onion tarte tatin by Elena Silcock on the BBC Good Food website and I'm in the process of making it - or something like it now. Why? Well it's our last local book group meeting tonight, for which we all bring a plate. I'm hosting, and my particular challeng
Dec 3, 2025