Torta Pasqualina - an Easter tradition
"The quintessential spring dish." Stefano Arturi I have now been trawling the net for examples of this Italian - no - Ligurian - Easter dish - a pie filled with cheese and greens and eggs. I now have a large number of examples and a few things to say about it but didn't know which example to use as my header picture - so in the end I decided to go for the very first one I looked at from a website called Marcella in Cucina - after all, she's Italian and it looks pretty goo
6 days ago
From pirates to tax haven - the Caymans
"There are twice as many companies as people." Jacques Peretti/The Guardian The Caymans are mere specs in the ocean - the tips of an undersea mountain range between Honduras and Cuba - the large piece of land to the north on this map. The smaller chunk of land at the bottom of the map is Jamaica, to which it once belonged as part of the great British Empire. In fact it still is part of the British Empire - if you can call it that these days. It's now an independent Britis
Mar 30
Provençal garlic soup
"[one of the] most delicious meals ... eaten by the poorest people in the world." Jamie Oliver And then turned into food for the rich: "Soups made with chick-pea water or chestnut water, or even garlic and sage water, are found in country kitchens today, or are translated into glamorous clear consommés complete with saffron or rose petals in the leading hotels of the region." Robert Carrier This is my lucky dip of the moment. Garlic soup in Robert Carrier's wonderful ode
Mar 17
Toblerone
" Finally, the recipe is quite simple, but paradoxically will never be equaled ... obvious ingredients, inimitable mixture" Eugénie Rousak/Now Village You may or may not remember, but quite a long time ago now, on one of my walks I decided to photograph everything with a link to food. I think so far I have tackled one, maybe two of those. Today I'm on to this one - Toblerone. A wrapper tossed away by a walker or from a car, on a semi busy road. I don't think that's a bit
Feb 11
Just too simple? - walnut sandwiches
"These sandwiches are very good with ices, instead of the usual biscuits or wafers." Elizabeth David This is a lucky dip - from Elizabeth David's Summer Food , a book that is full of simple - and sometimes not so simple food for summer. I've used it a lot in the past, and there are lots of really wonderful things in there. This was a lucky dip however, and the page that I randomly selected did not fill me with joy and the excitement of exploring something with maybe a few s
Feb 9
Vadouvan - will 2026 be its time?
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." [not] Oscar Wilde I'll begin with an aside - the quote above. First I just used the first half of it which I had a feeling was by Oscar Wilde, then I found Terence Eden's Blog which first reminded me that there was a second part of it and then told me in great detail why it wasn't Oscar Wilde who said it - the conclusion being it might have been a now defunct magazine - My Family Magazine
Jan 30
Cumin
"little striped torpedoes of flavour" Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall I'm pretty sure that I first encountered cumin in what this family calls simply - Kebabs - and probably the close second favourite dish of the Dearmans. I know I have written about the dish before - and sadly the recipe is not online. So just as a reminder - it's the marinade that is the thing - for beef cut in strips and threaded on to skewers to cook. The marinade for around 500g beef is 6 tbsp olive oil
Jan 23
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
BTW
"BTW - by the way: used, for example in emails, when you are writing something that relates to the subject you are discussing, but is not the main point of the discussion" Cambridge Dictionary It's also the name of an Indian food company that has fast food outlets, a catering service, and a whole range of snack foods, based in New Delhi. I'm not going to go into it in detail. Suffice to say that there are amazing people in the world who come from nowhere and build an empir
Jan 13
Murray cod - ethical greed?
"The stuff of legends" Native Fish Australia The AFR Weekend edition is my starting point for this but as I have progressed there are so many things to at least point to, that I'm not really sure I'm up to it. But I will give it a go. Like most Australians we are investors - and the AFR article which is my lead into the world of the Murray cod - is about this man Ross Anderson and his company Murray Cod Australia - or Aquna Murray Cod . He and his fellow Executive direct
Jan 12
Sunday - ending or beginning?
"Time flows in a strange way on Sundays" Haruki Murakami This year's Met diary has disoriented me somewhat because it begins its week with Sunday. In years gone by, and my feeling is, almost everywhere, mostly we think of Monday as the first day of the week. And the Met has previously followed that tradition. I am now into the third week of my diary, and I have only just adjusted to the fact that the day that says Saturday on the page, is not Sunday. To explain - for exam
Jan 11
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
Feast of the seven fishes and the Italian/Americans
"The best part of the Feast of the Seven Fishes is that anyone with an appetite for seafood can make the tradition their own. You don’t have to be Italian or Italian American. You don’t even have to celebrate Christmas! You just have to cook way too much food for the people you care about." Emily Saladino/Bon Appétit I'm a little bit late with this one because the Feast of the Seven Fishes is a Christmas Eve feast. Well it is Christmas and time is at a premium for indulgent
Dec 27, 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
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
Green bean casserole
"The word “gloopy” comes to mind" Alison Roman This is in no way 'gloopy' looking but I'm starting with Ottolenghi's Blistered green bean casserole with parmesan and rosemary because this was my starting point - a recipe in Ottolenghi's newsletter, which was sort of about Thanksgiving, one American festival that I don't think will make it to our shores because it's specific to a historical American event. I also saw that this looked like a really good thing to try some day
Nov 16, 2025
Beautiful words, beautiful food - Nigel
"Early spring, Kamakura, and a small basket appears at my table and a tiny dish of salt. In it, a single whisp of new season's bracken in tempura batter, the fern caught in the process of slowly unfurling." Nigel Slater Looking for inspiration again - it's an everyday thing. I couldn't get excited about the cuisine of El Salvador or smoked fish canapés (my next first recipe - maybe tomorrow), and so I decided to have another look at Nigel Slater's beautiful book of small w
Oct 29, 2025
Disappointing
"Disappointments are inevitable; discouragement is a choice . " Charles Stanley I like to have on my desk, a desk calendar - one of those things that stands on your desk waiting for you to tear off each day as it passes. I also have a diary - yes I use a paper diary. My excuse is age. Normally I have an art based one. I like to see paintings I don't know, discover beautiful pictures and new artists, even occasional blog inspiration. However, last year as the possibilitie
Oct 26, 2025
A ramble beginning with oxtail soup
"Rambling talk with an image of air." William Butler Yeats This particular ramble began today, with a question, to which I haven't really found an answer. Well maybe. Although really it began a few days ago with a vague idea for a blog. It wasn't going to be a ramble down highways and byways. It was just going to be a fairly simple exploration of oxtail soup - my ultimately chosen English soup in my very occasional world soup series. The usual thing - a few words about
Oct 20, 2025