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
6 hours ago
Nigel's fruit
"And then there was fruit" Nigel Slater And flowers and nuts too. On the cover of this book - a Christmas present that I requested and received from my son and his ex?partner - is - I think - a blurry fig. Inside the cover is a rather beautiful red flower - also in soft romantic focus, but then all of the photographs in this companion volume to Nigel's book on the vegetables in his garden Tender Volume 1 , are taken by his friend and favourite food photographer of the Brit
5 days ago
A disconnect in taste
"Expectation is everything" reddit I'm not sure that I shall have much to say on this, but it was such a curious experience that I thought it worth at least thinking about a little bit. My lovely husband serves me breakfast in bed every day. Well a cup of coffee and something with jam - toast, crumpet, croissant ... or occasionally some toasted fruit bread or a hot cross bun. So today it was the turn of the crumpet - with jam - but I was confronted by a very odd taste when I
6 days ago
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
Wasabi with tahini?
"Embrace the wasabi and think of it as a hot mustard." Sue Li/New York Times The above photograph of Chicken and celery salad with Wasabi-tahini dressing by Sue Li comes from one of my desktop calendar pages, the recipe for which and a longer introduction, can be found on the Seattle Times website. As you probably know by now I'm not really into salads, but this one looks like a possibility - but wasabi and tahini? My first reaction was 'weird'. Why would you do that?
Dec 16, 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
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
Invalid food - something with pasta?
"Fanny Cradock tells us to smash up some chicken, put it in a jar, cover with cheap brandy and simmer (a slow cooker will do it) for 24 hours before straining. As she says – it's miraculous." Catherine Phipps/The Guardian My husband has a mildly upset stomach, so I'm trying to think of appropriate foods for dinner. Yesterday we had a very bland greens and potato soup which was not greeted with much enthusiasm I have to say. I admit it didn't have a lot of taste - he added
Nov 30, 2025
Nasturtiums - a first recipe ramble
" Besides being delectable, these floral “greens” seem indulgent, whimsical, and oh-so-gourmet." Kitchen Lane The painting is by Monet. He loved them so much that one of the alleys in his garden at Giverny - the main one in fact - was lined with profuse beds of nasturtiums. Everybody says they grow like weeds - are weeds in fact - in the western world anyway - having originated in Central and South America - and then having been brought back by the conquistadores, they spr
Nov 27, 2025
Always add ...
"The secret ingredient is always the most simple" Of late, here and there, I have found various cooks telling us to always use a particular ingredient to lift your meal to another level, so I thought I would tackle that concept of either 'always add' or 'the secret ingredient'. I thought it would be an interesting ramble. However, I'm now not sure how to make this more than a list of quotes from here and there, as to what a particular cook thought was the ultimate secret th
Nov 26, 2025
If you're a dedicated cook ...
"I’ll admit it's a labour of love, but so very worth it." Ixta Belfrage This will be a quickie I think. It's inspired by this recipe for A curry leaf, cherry, coconut & hibiscus crudo on a red millet tostada which turned up in Ixta Belfrage's substack newsletter. (I think the link will work - if it doesn't just do a Google search.) It arrived in my email this morning. As you know I am a huge fan of Ixta. Her food is truly exciting, and generally only a tiny bit difficu
Nov 25, 2025
Bananas and butter - a surprise ramble
"Yes!! Why? Because bread is tasty, butter is tasty and bananas are tasty!" Neat_Expression 5380/reddit I've really enjoyed this little ramble around the net, which just started out with bananas and butter and ended up with all sorts of weird and wonderful sandwiches via America's deep south in the Depression, New Orleans, Japan, the Minions, Hitler and Elvis. Perhaps I should stick to the route I took, which began with bananas and butter, inspired by my fairly regular open
Nov 23, 2025
Feta or fetta?
"Keep a jar of Persian-style fet[t]a in the fridge and you'll always have something to smear on veg, swirl through pasta, add oomph to recipes and basically make life better." Sydney Morning Herald Good Food I have learnt a few things about feta/fetta today and not just the initial thing - that feta and fetta are not the same thing - but a whole lot of other associated stuff too. And let me say that I am not the only one who uses the two spellings somewhat haphazardly. I c
Nov 21, 2025
Thickening with eggs
"Stir an egg yolk into any dish that begs for an element of thickness or creaminess. That's it." Daniel Skurnik, pastry chef/Food and Wine You may remember that I was going to have a series on how to thicken things. And I started with bread , but then the idea sort of disappeared. Well today I remembered that and decided to do eggs. It's a vast subject, so I decided to ignore some of the obvious things like custard, and everything you can make from custard like icecream an
Nov 19, 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
Tomato and corn pies (and tarts)
"The problem more often than not is a basic one: tomatoes are very wet and tart crusts need to stay fairly dry" Deb Perelman/Smitten Kitchen I needed something that wasn't going to take long because I had already used up half of the day on reading a book group book and trying to speak Italian in my Italian class. Very depressing. So I decided I would pick a recipe - and then just ramble - and this was it - Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen's Tomato and corn pie I'm not exactl
Nov 11, 2025
Tasty little things that make a difference
"all the added extras that dress up a meal, making an already good dish deliciously better." Tara Wigley?/Extra Good Things After my minor meltdown the other day I have indeed been trying to spend time doing a few other things, one of which is working on that cookbook for the grandchildren. Although I seriously do wonder whether it's worth it. After all they have the internet to help with everything via their phones. Nevertheless I persevere and this brings me to flavour
Nov 9, 2025
Aubergines on top of yoghurt
"the composition is inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi’s unbeatable formula of flavoured yoghurt base + roasted aubergines + vibrant toppings." Ixta Belfrage This is Ixta's Aubergines with lime yoghurt and tomato, cinnamon and chilli oil - a recipe from I'm not sure where. Anyway I thought her words might be an opening into a post - most likely I thought - about how everyone was copying the technique. You know the one - I talked about it recently - a base of something creamy. yo
Nov 1, 2025