

A mixed bag
"Definition: If you describe a situation or a group of things or people as a mixed bag, you mean that it contains some good items,...
Mar 17, 2022


Walnuts and barberries
"Barberries are small, red, dried berries. As they are very sharp and sour, Iranians sauté them with a little sugar and butter before...
Mar 16, 2022


4 common leftovers - no.2 Bread
"These starchy staples are happy to soak up all manner of sweet and savoury flavours" Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Continuing with the...
Mar 8, 2022


Cooking with bark
My sister is in the air on her way back to her English home after three months in the lucky country. Her parting gift was next week's...
Mar 7, 2022


Time for some mini bites
" Bite - 'a piece bitten off'; a small meal; a portion severed from the whole; a morsel of food" Dictionary.com So I suppose a bite is...
Mar 5, 2022


Humpty Doo barramundi
Well actually, as always, this is going to be about more than Humpty Doo. But I will start there. The actual starting point for this was...
Mar 3, 2022


Why don't we cook more with grapes?
"Grapes don't continue to ripen once picked, so they stay as sour or as sweet as when they're harvested. Taste an unripe grape, and it...
Feb 26, 2022


Now which plum cake shall I make?
"Plums are rather the forgotten member of the stone fruit member. Not as sexy as peaches, as expensive as cherries, or as tartly exotic...
Feb 10, 2022


Crème fraïche
"For me, crème fraïche is the number one top of the pops cook's ingredient in the cream family." Delia Smith The first time I...
Feb 3, 2022


Onions et al.(liums)
"the onion acts as an architectural underpinning or seasoning to make other vegetables more flavoursome." Bert Greene I'm not about to...
Jan 27, 2022


A chicken breast on a hot day
"don’t subscribe to the fatalistic notion that people simply “run out of ideas.” There are infinitely more ideas than you could ever use...
Jan 26, 2022


Japanese (sansai udon) from Madhur Jaffrey
"Most of the vegetables Keiko used grew wild in the hills around her. Each had been cooked separately and then arranged over the noodles...
Jan 25, 2022


Strawberries - Manet, Renoir, Jane Grigson and Snow White
"When Chardin lived, wild strawberries were the only ones. His contemporary, Diderot, described them as being like 'the tip of a...
Jan 12, 2022


Sweet potatoes - a leftover on my desk
When I was doing that desk clearing exercise in the last day or so I came across this page, torn out of an old Coles Magazine. Obviously...
Jan 8, 2022


A favourite fish - first recipe
"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster" Ferran Adria I know I've done sardines before - a...
Jan 1, 2022


Those damned leftovers - especially the turkey
During the festive season, many of us lay down enough food to feed a ravenous army, and our kitchens can accumulate a huge volume of...
Dec 29, 2021


Joy - lunch at Dame Nellie Melba's place
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” John Keats “Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with...
Dec 26, 2021


What to do with all that jam
As you can see I now have lots of jars of jam (and marmalade) with still more to come. Well summer is coming and there will be lots of...
Dec 18, 2021


Iceberg lettuce
"The boring football known as iceberg." Nigel Slater "Icebergs might be mostly water but it is not watery. Its thing is crunch." The...
Dec 15, 2021


When is gin really gin?
"It’s actually required by law for gin to contain juniper berries as the predominant flavor. If a spirit does not contain juniper berries...
Nov 27, 2021

