History and tradition

Welcome to my blog/journal/whatever

This is the real guts of this website. The old website and its archived posts is still available at its old url. Newcomers might like to dip into it every now and then.

Welcome to you all. Amazingly I still don't seem to be running out of ideas on what to write - well occasionally - but I have my writer's block strategies to turn to - see the text on the right. Check this page for the latest posts and if something interests you just click on it. It's easy to leave a comment and I love to read them. And now you can subscribe to the blog and get emailed notifications of new posts. And sorry I just don't understand Facebook.

"We are not here for long. So let's at least make ourselves something good to eat."

Nigel Slater

"I was born hungry, not a cook."

Julia Child

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"

Virginia Woolf

Writer's block

Every now and then I can't think of a suitable topic and so I have devised a few strategies to get around this.

Lucky dip

The first strategy I devised is to go to one of my three cook book bookshelves, close my eyes and pick a book. Close my eyes again and pick a page. It's really quite an enlightening method of getting over writer's block.

'A word from'

My second strategy is to devote a post to the thoughts of one of my favourite cooks. Hopefully it will introduce them to you

Or

I shall choose a picture I have come across and extemporise on that.

A second kind of lucky dip

I have been thinking about first recipes in cook books - so I shall choose a book not quite randomly and then look at the first recipe for inspiration.

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enjoy

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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