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
Some party time recipes
I've spent the morning, no - most of yesterday afternoon as well, making marmalade from a gift of home-grown mandarins, from friends, and a whole lot of lemons that I had in the fridge - 12 assorted jars seen here being the result. It's very satisfying when you get to this point, although there's always the worry it won't set, although this time I think I marginally worry about the opposite - too set. Anyway it's left me feeling lazy, so I thought I would just provide a few
Nov 17, 2025
Ixta Belfrage excites again
"Not seasoning food is against my religion" Ixta Belfrage Well it's time I did a kind of overview of this exciting cookbook. It's been sitting on my desk for a while, with a dozen or so yellow post-it stickers poking out of it, saying, cook me, cook me. So today is the day. I just worry that then I will find it a place on my shelves and it will never see the light of day again. Although I see I have already made one thing from it - a passion fruit and white chocolate mou
Nov 12, 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
Homity pie
" quiche mistranslated by a rugged, carb-addicted farmhand. " Jimi Famerewa/The Guardian In this week's Guardian Feast Newsletter, appeared this - to my potato freak eyes - a glorious concoction. It turns out it was Marmite and leek homity pie from a guy called Jimi Famurewa who had been messing with (the marmite) a supposedly much-loved British pie of potatoes, leeks and cheese. But I had never heard of it, so my interest was piqued - maybe that was just a marketing plo
Nov 8, 2025
Indian cookbooks - then and now
"Books, even cookbooks, are written for a diversity of reasons and it is often more profitable to enquire why they have been written than analyse their contents in an uncritical manner. " Shylashri Shankar/The Peepul Tree I guess this particular post stems from one of those books on my desk - The Food of India - a large beautiful book which I picked up from the op shop for a song. Like it's companions in this series from the Murdoch stable on various world cuisines, it feat
Nov 4, 2025
Recipe problems - they still exist
"If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything." Michael Symon That cookbook I was planning for the grandchildren - well I'm still working on it, although having been treated to dinner cooked by one of them last night - butter chicken, pumpkin masala, naan - I sometimes wonder why I'm bothering. I also wonder what is the best approach. I think I am aiming, in a less grandiose way, to do what Michael Symon says in his open
Nov 3, 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
Scarpaccia - and sad/happy memories
"thin and a bit crusty, just like an old shoe." Frank/Memorie di Angelina That's how I feel a bit these days ... Well not quite thin enough in body anyway. But this is a story all about this delicious looking Tuscan speciality. As always I start on one thing and wander here and there before ending up somewhere completely unexpected. So to begin at the beginning - the picture above of Tom Hunt's version of Scarpaccia which instantly reminded me of another Italian zucchini
Oct 31, 2025
Old-fashioned canapés - first recipe
"If you don't have the time to prepare something good then just serve some olives or nuts." Beverley Sutherland Smith Well you would perhaps wouldn't you? - or just open a bag of crisps because canapés - the retro kind - often take a lot of work. This is a photograph of some of Beverley Sutherland Smith's canapés, styled in a very old-fashioned way on a silver platter with the bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. The kind of thing you would get served at a fancy cocktai
Oct 30, 2025
Roast leg of lamb - a lucky dip
"How to roast a leg of lamb to rival even your mum's" Donna Hay Magazine Yet again my heart sank when I opened a page at random in my randomly chosen cookbook - Issue 10 of the Donna Hay Magazine - now discontinued. These days I ask David to choose my lucky dip books because my choices are not really random, for even with my eyes closed I sort of know what book I'm picking. He, on the other hand, has no idea. Issue no. 10 is a winter edition I think, and so a roast is a
Oct 28, 2025
Bagatelles
Bagatelle: "a thing regarded as too unimportant or easy to be worth much consideration." Oxford Languages So yes 'bagatelle' is a French word for a trifle: "The French word bagatelle , from the Italian word bagatella , means a trifle or little decorative nothing." Wikipedia And this is an oddments post - full of trifles. A bagatelle trifle is also a specific French Canadian dish of which the magazine Saveur says "The typical bagatelle in La Beauce is a child's delight o
Oct 27, 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
Hawaij, spice mixes and marketing
The other day I bought this expensive jar of Ottolenghi hawaij paste. It was on a special, I was just filling in time waiting for David for some reason I cannot now remember, wandering around Woolworths when I spied it. I had noticed Hawaij a lot here and there, or so I thought, and I was feeling a bit down, and so I thought 'why not?' and put it in my trolley. I feel a tiny bit cross at myself, because there are lots of recipes online for a hawaij spice mix, and it's not
Oct 23, 2025
The mysterious invisible cake - France, Russia, Japan?
"It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed." Jean Cocteau Tuesday is the day that Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen newsletter arrives in my inbox. Today - seeing as how it is autumn - well fall - over there in the US of A - she was focussed on apples, and amongst the many delectable recipes on offer was this Invisible apple cake, which she likened to Apple sharlotka - a Russian cake that she had wri
Oct 21, 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
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
Food for celebrities - a book
"Staying in really is the new going out." Nisha Parmar The pile of books on my desk is not getting any smaller because I keep on adding to it. It's becoming a bit of an addiction which is a somewhat worrying thought. So today I decided to tackle yet one more - a birthday gift from my son and his ex, so it dates back to June. I did look at it pretty much straightaway, but then it ended up in the dreaded pile. So a quick summary - a beautiful cover - well done designers. Go
Oct 16, 2025