Anna's potatoes - who was Anna and are you up to this?
"the supreme potato dish of all time" Julia Child and Simone Beck I have no idea now how Potatoes Anna, crept into my Ideas list. I thought it might have been a Felicity Cloake 'perfect' dish but no. Never mind I decided I really had to tackle some of these long ago 'Ideas' so here I am with Pommes - or more correctly Pommes de terre - Anna. The picture is from my rather wonderful, but basically ignored by the internet The Cooking of France - published by Bay Books with r
4 days ago
A recipe, Coles and Curtis Stone - this and that
The recipe in question is from Curtis Stone, in the current Coles Magazine - Lemon-garlic fettucine with crisp chickpeas. I started out today thinking I would do a whole post on crisp chickpeas as they seem to be turning up everywhere I look these days, so when they turned up in the Coles Magazine in this very tempting recipe, from a professional chef, such as Curtis Stone - well he does have at least one Michelin star - I'm not sure how many - I thought I might look closely
5 days ago
The joy of the galette
"flat, round and quintessentially French." Great British Chefs This not terribly prepossessing photograph is the remains of last night's dinner - cold from the fridge. I should have taken a photograph last night but didn't. Anyway it was a dish that gave me great joy and satisfaction for a number of different reasons. Perhaps the main reason, was because in complete contrast to my previous night's dinner - the very disappointing pasta and romanesco dish - this was really,
7 days ago
à la barigoule
"One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy." Jane Austen This is my 'natural production' the Saffron milk cap mushroom - botanically known as Lactarius deliciosus - or the red pine mushroom. But in this case although it is the beginning of the food story here, it is not really the beginning of my ramble today. For this has indeed been a ramble - but it didn't begin with Lactarius deliciosus - no matter how delici
Aug 17
High-low pantry/cooking
"An extended love letter to simplicity, this book is about finding joy and satisfaction in the tiny miracles of cooking - all of the deliciousness that comes from making something from nothing." Alison Roman Yes it's another book, and this was going to be an overview/review of this wonderful book - Something from Nothing by Alison Roman - a cook of whom I was dimly aware via the New York Times I think. It has been sitting on my desk waiting for its moment for a while now, s
Aug 15
Liver and onions - ugh?
"There is rarely a middle ground with liver. Either you've turned the page already, or you're a devotee who gets excited about the idea of the exceptionally savoury exterior of a piece of flash-fried or chargrilled liver and its almost jelly-like flesh." Nigel Slater So true, and I'm willing to bet that when you see that title, signalling that this post is about liver, you will go no further. But I'm going to be true to my lucky dip rules, for this is a lucky dip post. Ran
Aug 5
A British classic - custard tart
"This is not a dessert that can be rushed, either in the execution or the enjoyment." Felicity Cloake This is sort of a postscript to my look at Delia classics. As I was flipping through her books I came across this in book one of Delia's How to Cook, which she calls Old-fashioned English custard tart. I had such a rush of nostalgia when I saw this picture for we sometimes had them at home. I say 'them' because, of course, you can get individual ones as well as large ones
Aug 4
Roasting a cauliflower whole - why?
"for maximum impact" This was going to be whole roast large vegetables - mostly brassicas it seemed - but I quickly found that cauliflower was where this particular thing began, so I am sticking to cauliflower for now. Maybe I'll do celeriac, cabbage, squash ... another time. I confess that even though I have seen an increasing proliferation of the whole roast cauliflower thing I have often wondered why? Surely those leaves, with their thick stalks, and the very thick core
Jul 31
Confused by trends
“Like dogs, foodies wag their tails at the slightest sniff of new and exciting. Then bark at each other on social media. Food is fashion. If you’re into that stuff, it matters.” Perry Haydon-Taylor/The Guardian I was going to call this post two trends in one - illustrated by this Coles recipe for Fluffy Cheesecake with matcha icing sugar from their Food Director, Sarah Hobbs - the two trends being Japanese cheesecake and matcha desserts. The trends were based on the list pu
Jul 29
What's in a name? - 'marry me'/Tuscan chicken
"I know the internet has turned this dish into marry me chicken but it’s still Tuscan chicken to me!" The Taylor Table/Instagram And what's Tuscan chicken anyway? Not Tuscan whatever else it might be. But back to the beginning, although in a way it's really the end. Pondering on this and that for today's post I decided to see what was trending in the food world and found on the Taste website - a list of Trends 2026, some of which were truly awful, but top of their list of
Jul 26
Leftover lettuce salad omelette - so many ways
"Done and dusted. Out of this world." Foodie China 888/YouTube This picture comes from the end of one of the most captivating cooking videos I have seen on YouTube. In roughly 25 seconds you are shown - complete with instructions to use either your right hand or your left hand -how to make this Rolled lettuce omelette. The pictures are very clear, the voiceover is male - he calls himself Foodie China 888 and has a slight Chinese accent I think. Halfway through, a kitsch
Jul 24
Vegetarian skewers - some thoughts
"I'm not sure a tomato belongs on a kebab anyway. They refuse to turn when the kebab is rotated on the grill, burst and collapse into a red mush. Pointless." Nigel Slater Now having a vegetarian granddaughter and some vegetarian friends, every now and then I have to think of some kind of skewer dish for them if the food I am cooking everybody else is for a BBQ or is the family's favourite kebabs. So when Yotam Ottolenghi's topic for his last week's newsletter was vegetarian
Jul 22
Tonight's dinner? - some kind of pumpkin tart
It's Friday, which is generally quiche night, but David has been loyally eating the remains of last week's quiche for his dinner when I was fasting, and so my thoughts turned to a galette - and specifically a pumpkin galette because I have some pumpkin that needs using. My thoughts immediately turned to Ottolenghi's (maybe Ixta Belfrage's too since the recipe is from their book Flavour) Butternut and sage galette with orange caramel which I have made a couple of times before
Jul 17
A week of dining out
"Everything tastes better when it's eaten together." This is the last and in some ways the best, of four meals I ate away from home last week. Here is my glorious family in the home of my younger son - the one at back right - eating one of his pasta meals. Many of them are pulling silly faces, as family and friends often do in group photos such as this one, but you get the picture - adults at one end and loving cousins at the other. I guess you could say that it was not hau
Jul 16
Ranch dressing - a moment in the sun
"It’s the friend of all manner of dude foods." delicious. Ranch dressing is one of those absolutely American things - well I think of it that way anyway - if I think about it all that is. But Deb Perelman in her Smitten Kitchen newsletter, directed to me to an article in The Atlantic by Ellen Cushing which told me that: "Ranch dressing has become, deservedly or not, a face of the nation during the World Cup." And I have checked - it is indeed a thing - at least in the media
Jul 9
Yes there is such a thing as grape pie - but ...
"Rarely do grapes make it to the cooker, the majority being eaten straight from the vine." Nigel Slater" It was just a throway line at the end of yesterday's post - are there grape pies? - but then today I thought I should find out if there are. And yes there are. Well there seems to be just the one really - Concord grape pie - the Dish 'n' the Kitchen shown here, which is a speciality of the west of New York state centred around the town of Naples. At first I thought Con
Jul 6
Italian/Indian or Indian/Italian?
"Arguably, two of the most loved foods of all time, combined." Devinder/East West Pizza" If you think about it, Italian and Indian cuisines are more similar than expected: rich comfort foods with generous use of tomato, garlic, and onion." clicksngiggles/reddit The photograph is of pizzas on offer from the East West Pizza cafe in East London that Devinder with his wife Manpreet run. In 2021 in a competition run by the BBC for the best pizza takeaway in Britain it was voted
Jul 3
Nigel's fry ups
"The fry-up has always appealed to me, in particular the bits that stay put at the bottom of the pan, the crusty scrapings that brown rather too much." Nigel Slater Uninspired as usual of late, I did my own kind of lucky dip by just picking a page from Nigel Slater's Tender volume 1 - and came up with A fry-up of pumpkin and apple to accompany a meaty supper - well why not I thought. Another enticing recipe title that sets a scene. I thought he might have some more fry-up
Jun 22
Lucky dip - Kubbeh hamusta
"A recipe that adapts to its environment, but never forgets where it came from." Elli Benaiah/Beyond Babylon There are so many tricky and just picky issues about this particular recipe. It comes from Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi's book Jerusalem - a word that evokes a whole range of emotions these days - mostly not good. Although Sami Tamimi - a Palestinian and Yotam Ottolenghi - a Jew of mixed heritage, are no longer official business partners in the Ottolenghi empire,
Jun 19
Cauliflower cheese soup
"It has something of the Welsh rarebit about it." Nigel Slater Often I have a vague idea of what to do for dinner, and then I either go with what is to hand, or search around my cookbooks and the net to find the answer. Today I thought I should probably use the last bit of cauliflower that I have in my fridge before it goes off completely - small brown spots are already appearing. And when vegetables are getting to that stage, then soup is the answer. There is some leftov
Jun 16