Issues 3/17

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.

Comments I love reading your comments. Just add a name - any name - it needn't be yours, add an email, ditto, type in your comment and hit the Comment button. Done. Wix sends me an email to tell me what you said, so I can respond if needed. Mostly I just read and enjoy. If you would like to subscribe to this blog and get notifications of new posts then click here. It's free - just a way of knowing what I wrote about today.

enjoy

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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

Chicken Kiev - or Kyiv, or something else altogether?

"the only thing that really matters with a kiev is that when you cut into that crisp shell, you're rewarded with an eruption of vivid green, garlicky butter. And that's a pleasure that will never go out of fashion." Felicity Cloake Only beware, because if you cut into it too rapidly that hot butter could spurt out and all over anything that is nearby - the tablecloth, your clothes, your fingers. And it will be hot. The trick is to get it to ooze - as shown here in Nagi Mae

Jan 29

Is anyone impervious to advertising?

"A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself." David Ogilvy I noticed that the Coles Magazine now has a new section - Coles Finds . No that's not strictly accurate. It has always - well for some time now - been there, but usually just a page, with a scattering of products. Now there is a whole three or four page section which is presented in the same way as any other of the sections in the magazine - and crucially - near the fr

Jan 21

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

Things that scare me in the kitchen

"The fact is that cookery is not risk free. It involves fire and knives. While the possibility of injury may decrease with experience, the likelihood of it happening increases because of repetition." Jay Rayner/The Guardian This is actually a piece of street art but I've edited out the walls around it - an interesting picture for the street - but it's actually the best I've found so far to illustrate my theme of the day I think. I'm pretty sure that Jay Rayner's observation

Jan 15

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

Love and hate - a food blogger

"An incredibly successful food blogger/influencer who has millions of followers, struggling with a severe eating disorder." reddit commenter On to the next website on my list - Half- Baked Harvest whose home page is shown above. Having now 'finished' my research, I feel somehow a little 'dirtied' if that's the right word - simply because of some of the invective that I have come across - and which I shall come to - but also because it all made me feel so ignorant and/or

Jan 10

Hot day musings

"Little is more dispiriting to the serious glutton than being too hot to eat." Or to cook. And apologies to whoever said the above - I didn't write it down and now can't find it. Maybe Jay Rayner or somebody like that. 'We scream for ice-cream' says Coles in its current magazine as the headline for an advertising section. Cooling - oh yes. Not really food though is it? Or as Zoe Williams of The Guardian says: " don’t reach for a Magnum, they are for children". Moreov

Jan 9

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

Jan 7

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

Mission impossible? Clean out the fridge

"We start to unload and are brought face to face with our own quietly liquefying shame." Jay Rayner/The Guardian I have not made any New Year's resolutions this year, because we all know that's an exercise that's doomed to failure, isn't it? However, even though January 1 is really just another day - the next day in your life - I can't resist kind of making plans - on the 2nd. I was too busy temporarily farewelling my sister yesterday. And one of those immediate plans is

Jan 2

Guilt from browsing cookbooks

Don't be fooled by this photograph. This is not another Nigel homage, although he will get a mention or two - well more, but it's not really about him or his recipes. I also don't think I shall have much to say but I did want to say something arising from my attempt to decide what to cook for our friends coming to lunch on Sunday. And yes, I ended up with these three books and some bookmarks, but let me tell you how I came to this, and why I ended up feeling guilty. I wasn

Dec 10, 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

In praise of bland

“You can't smell a hug. You can't hear a cuddle. But if you could, I reckon it would smell and sound of warm bread-and-butter pudding.” Nigel Slater This week I have had a couple of bouts of a stomach upset. No big deal - we all have these from time to time, and this time at least there was no vomiting. But it occurred on a couple of separate days, so I took myself to the doctor just in case - who confirmed what I thought - just a mild viral infection that would go away.

Nov 22, 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

From the street to Michelin stars - first recipe

"there is no such thing as ‘traditional, authentic cuisine’ anywhere. It’s constantly evolving." Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn - Michelin star chef Bangkok Before I return yesterday's book to a shelf somewhere I thought I should do a first recipe thing on it, as it will be placed on a shelf that has already been given the first recipe treatment. I also decided retrospectively, having researched a bit, to cover two different dishes here - the first and third recipes in the book.

Oct 17, 2025