

Tacos - where to begin?
“Tacos are great because you can eat very well, with really good ingredients, for not a lot of money or time,” Joe Hargrave The other...
May 16, 2023


Eggs - what's in a name?
"The variations on this simple dish are infinite" Robert Carrier Indeed they are and it is perfectly easy to become completely confused...
Feb 5, 2023


Robert Carrier, tomatoes and indexes
"Cook dinner with Robert Carrier and you’ll need butter, cream, wine and quite a lot of cognac" Jay Rayner It's guru week - by which I...
Jan 30, 2023


Is it possible to keep it simple - and cheap?
"Simple is easy to get wrong" Neil Perry It seems that Catalonia is the flavour of this week, because here I am about to talk about a...
Oct 22, 2022


Chutney - especially mango
"What the British did was just simplify and standardise what seemed like a general Indian trend." Madhur Jaffrey This is Delia's version...
Oct 7, 2022


Charter pie
"the 'Charter'. Was it sweet or savoury? Was it in fact food at all?" Jane Grigson It begins with this man - Parson Woodforde a Norfolk...
Oct 5, 2022


World lasagna day
"Where the dish has endured is on the shelves of the supermarket." Sarah Barell/National Geographic I bet you didn't know it was World...
Jul 29, 2022


Artisan - how do you know?
"An artisan product has three definite hallmarks. It adheres to traditional processes, recipes and quality." Deccan Herald What I found...
Jul 21, 2022


Vindaloo - sweet and sour, not hot
"A Goan vindaloo is not the mind-blowingly spicy curry as it has come to be known in the UK, but a rich, hot, slightly sweet and sour...
Jun 14, 2022


Curry from the jungle - a lucky dip
The dish shown above is not Jungle curry. It is a dish called Pork curry with eggplant from an old Women's Weekly booklet Easy...
Apr 26, 2022


Scary carbonara
"A dish whose principal ingredients are eggs and bacon was always going to be a shoo-in for the British palate: certainly spaghetti...
Apr 23, 2022


Guanciale - so trendy you can't find it
"Guancia means cheek, and guanciale are the salt-cured pork jowls that hang like pepper-dusted paddles above salumerie (deli) counters in...
Apr 21, 2022


Is there such a thing as mulligatawny soup?
"a cornerstone of the classic British Indian restaurant repertoire, always there, yet never ordered." Felicity Cloake I think this...
Apr 18, 2022


When politics creeps into cooking - Maqluba and Yotam Ottolenghi
"Thanks to Ottolenghi’s best-selling books, we now have 'Ottolenghi hummus' and — believe it or not — 'Ottolenghi maqluba.' The latter...
Mar 15, 2022


From a website to the whole cultural diversity thing
"I just started with curiosity and kept asking questions, eating out and metabolising lots of facts from articles and books – anyone can...
Jan 17, 2022


My pissaladière story
"just add spring sunshine and a glass of wine" Andrew McConnell Tonight my local book group is meeting to choose our books for next year....
Dec 1, 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


Elizabeth David's Carbonnade Nîmoise
is it 'authentic' or did she make it up? On Saturday we finally ate Carbonnade Nîmoise - a very old favourite recipe of Elizabeth...
Nov 15, 2021


Coronation chicken, Anglo-India, curry powder and back to Coronation chicken
"There is a vast difference between curry-powder-flavored dishes and Indian cuisine." Punita - Poppies and Persimmons This post has been...
Nov 11, 2021


Jerk chicken
"Jerk is freedom manifested in food.” Gariel Ferguson Having discovered a new 'family fave' as one member of my family said, I thought I...
Oct 19, 2021

