Today's challenge - persimmons
"I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness, and sweet as love." One of my Saturday dinner guests brought me this gift - a big bag of persimmons. She did this last year as well and I think I made chutney then. She also gave me a pot of her home-made persimmon jam. Now I have plenty of chutney and plenty of jam in my pantry - indeed I have so much jam it is also stored in the laundry. So I think it would be foolish to make more jam and chutney. So what to do with
May 14
I changed my mind
"When in doubt, choose." Lily Leung I'm a bit late for this post because it's about a dinner at home with friends on Saturday. Not so much about what we actually ate, in terms of what it was like - besides I, of course, took no photographs, but more about the selection process. And I know I have written this kind of thing before, but never mind. At least it's a way of introducing a few dishes you might like to try. So - steps one and two which were simultaneous. Two of m
May 13
Half the garden soup - if only
"improvising is what leads to discovery." Mark Diacono Time for a first recipe on a dismal day. And I guess my first recipe today - Half the garden soup - Mark Diacono/The Accidental Smallholder, if not exactly dismal is hardly exciting. Although actually it could be because of those words about improvising. The book is no. 4 of the River Cottage Handbooks - Veg Patch - and here is the River Cottage veg patch. Hardly a patch of course, and professional one too. And, of c
May 7
Yum - but when would I eat this?
"If you wanted to be really rogue you could dump every single ingredient into the loaf pan itself, mix, bake and eat." Sarah Kate Gillingham/Kitchn The above Badass smoky chilli cheese bear bread was one of the recipes I found when I was writing about yesterday's website Saucy Gander. It looked so decadently scrumptious that I saved the photograph for another post. And here it is, because I have less time today and this is probably going to be one of those - a list of reci
May 6
Chasing culinary white whales
"It’s not until you come to make it yourself that you see what’s not written down.” Felicity Cloake This is my culinary white whale - and I apologise for it not being one of my mother's dishes. Which is not to say that I don't make things that my mother did, and that I don't remember those dishes with all those warm and cuddly feelings the cooking world would like us to have when we think of mum's cooking - or even better - grandma's cooking. And I will come to mum and gra
May 4
A detour to broad beans and Nigel
"Grey food tends not to win a child over." Nigel Slater This was going to be a blog called 'You don't need a recipe' which partly came from thoughts gained from the Guardian Feast newsletter, from the next website on my list, and also a look at the next yellow sticker pointing out of Nigel's book Tender Volume 1. All three very tempting in themselves and also as a kind of amalgamation of ideas about recipes. However, I soon realised that that was too big a task and decided
May 2
Neil Perry's examples of what we eat
"Whatever is modern Australian food." Neil Perry I suspect that Neil Perry doesn't do that much restaurant cooking these days. He's more of a businessman I would think. I may be wrong of course, and he certainly keeps on putting out new cookbooks. This one is actually not that new - 2016 - which is doubtless why it turned up on Readings bargain table. I bought it because although I, of course, know of Neil Perry and how much he is admired by the foodie community, I do no
Apr 30
Korean? noodle pancakes
"misused words generate misleading thoughts." Herbert Spencer The April Woolworths Fresh Ideas Magazine popped up yesterday, and so I took one and flicked through it. I confess I've gone off the Woolworths magazine in recent times - it's recipes seem less interesting and less well presented than the Coles equivalent. Not that Coles is a goldmine of recipes I should add. But it is indeed always interesting to browse both magazines for all sorts of reasons other than lookin
Apr 25
Spanakorizo - Greek comfort food
“a little rice for a mountain of spinach” Tessa Kiros Having now investigated this Greek bit of home cooking, I have come to the realisation that when one explores a dish like this, and finds lots of variations of course, one ends up by thinking that the very first one that inspired you to write the post is of course the correct way to do it. Never mind everybody else doing it differently to a greater or lesser degree - the first is the truly authentic one. In this case it
Apr 23
David Chang's fresh kimchi(s)
"Kimchi … you know you can just buy it, don’t you?" Zoe Williams/The Guardian And yes I do know that you can buy kimchi - indeed I bought some a little while ago to add to something I was making. It was in the recipe. I can't remember what the recipe was, and nor, to be honest can I remember tasting the kimchi. I do remember eating some in one of the dishes served to us at Ho-chi Mama in the city a long time ago - and that was delicious. It's one of those ingredients lik
Apr 22
Drops
Drop: "single globule of liquid; small amount of anything" They can be fruit drops too - it doesn't have to be just a liquid. It's funny how almost any of the words I have chosen for these oddments posts have some kind of foodie connection. In this case many - a drop of any kind of liquid you might add to what you are cooking, which might be as vague as a little bit, or as in the case of something really strong like tabasco, or food colouring - literally just a drop - or tw
Apr 21
Feasting on fish
"It can be impressive to serve fewer dishes, but in larger quantitites - it provides a great sense of abundance." Guy Grossi It's lucky dip time, and this is the dish in question - Pesce arrosto - and you won't find this particular recipe online because it's a Guy Grossi recipe and there are very few of them online. It's curious is it not how many cooks are happy to publicise their recipes even if they come from books they want to sell, and others are not? At one end of th
Apr 20
Whipped feta
"The Best Whipped Feta Contains Feta and Nothing Else" Claire Lower/ Lifehacker Australia I'm not a member/subscriber to TikTok, Facebook, Instagram et al. and so I am not immediately aware of foodie trends. Only when they filter into recipe books and newsletters. So I'm always behind. This one seems to have begun around 2019 - but a recent 2025 study by Datassential maintains that it's only at the Adoption stage - the other stages being Inception - then Adoption - Proli
Apr 18
Everything bagel
"a doughnut with rigor mortis (alias chewy and dense and just a bit hard)" Claudia Roden/Nami-Nami I thought I was just going to be writing about a particular spice mix sold in Coles, but find, that I am indeed going to dip into 'everything bagel'. I emphasise dip. There are many more learned articles out there from Wikipedia's bagel page to J. Kenji López-Alt of Serious Eats' The good bagel manifesto . The picture here is of one website's - Tasting Table - pick of the b
Apr 17
In search of the perfect cucumber salad
"A plain cucumber salad with no dressing at all other than a few drops each of olive oil and tarragon vinegar is equally delicious." Elizabeth David Those words were a footnote to an Elizabeth David recipe for Cucumber and chive salad from her book Summer Food. This is not it, in the picture, but it's a very similar recipe, but the link is to the recipe on Elizabeth Peddey's website. I am using this very simple cucumber salad, as my starting point, because I have now spe
Apr 16
Cabbage and the vagaries of memory
“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were." Marcel Proust This was going to be a relatively straightforward post inspired by the idea that 2026 is the year of the cabbage - which I I have been mulling over for a while - which would then be an occasion to talk about my favourite recipe for cabbage and finally being nudged into action about these things by Ottolenghi's latest newsletter which talked about all things cabbage. However,
Apr 12
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
Apr 10
Poppies - and their seeds
"Poppy seeds dance the line between decoration and spice." Pam Corbin/River Cottage A-Z Above another photo from the past, now for a brief period, my computer's desktop background. Inspiration for today. I love the fields of poppies that you see everywhere in France. Such a beautiful but fragile flower. So bright and glossy in the sunlight - the Ancient Sumerians called them the 'joy plant' - and yet - today anyway - a symbol of death. And its connection with death goes
Apr 9
Deliciously bland?
"you need to be proper greedy to do leftovers well." Jay Rayner I know this photograph of yesterday's soup - now cold, contrived from the leftovers in my fridge, doesn't look that appetising, but David said I should write the recipe down because it was so delicious. He almost sort of went 'wow' when he took his first sip which was flattering - and honestly I'm not at all sure it was that good. Good, comforting, surprisingly tasty. But also unrepeatable, because of the way
Apr 7
A post mortem of sorts
"Time is an illusion. Lunch time doubly so." Douglas Adams As usual I forgot to take any pictures of yesterday's lunch, and no that is not our debris, but I just wanted something to show that lunch was a success and this picture inside the back cover of Ixta Belfrage's book Meczla sort of says it all really. A good time was had by all. So I thought that for once I would give a rundown of the various dishes I had chosen - and written about in my previous post - and how they
Apr 4