origins | Ramblingrose

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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COVID's Caramelised shallot pasta

"Pasta that takes half an afternoon to cook. A pasta that can – should – be cooked in pyjamas. And a pasta that is on a whole other level of amazing. Two-hat Italian amazing." Robby Dog Cooks The collage above from Alison Roman's own website on a page headed Click to watch me cry is of some of a dish of Caramelised shallot pasta made by literally thousands of people. She calls the collage 'Beautiful children'. For it is a selection from those ordinary people who have p

Sep 19

Sweet and sour pork

"its fame has spread worldwide for the very simple reason that it hits all the right notes, wherever you are. Savoury and crunchy, sweet and tangy: it’s addictive stuff. Treat with caution." Felicity Cloake Sweet and sour pork may well have been the first Chinese food that you ate. I think it was mine anyway - although I suppose it could also have been lemon chicken, chow mein or chop suey. And it probably wasn't all that good but as my Felicity Cloake quote at the top of

Sep 5

The joy of the galette

"flat, round and quintessentially French." Great British Chefs This not terribly prepossessing photograph is the remains of last night's dinner - cold from the fridge. I should have taken a photograph last night but didn't. Anyway it was a dish that gave me great joy and satisfaction for a number of different reasons. Perhaps the main reason, was because in complete contrast to my previous night's dinner - the very disappointing pasta and romanesco dish - this was really,

Aug 22

à la barigoule

"One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy." Jane Austen This is my 'natural production' the Saffron milk cap mushroom - botanically known as Lactarius deliciosus - or the red pine mushroom. But in this case although it is the beginning of the food story here, it is not really the beginning of my ramble today. For this has indeed been a ramble - but it didn't begin with Lactarius deliciosus - no matter how delici

Aug 17

Liver and onions - ugh?

"There is rarely a middle ground with liver. Either you've turned the page already, or you're a devotee who gets excited about the idea of the exceptionally savoury exterior of a piece of flash-fried or chargrilled liver and its almost jelly-like flesh." Nigel Slater So true, and I'm willing to bet that when you see that title, signalling that this post is about liver, you will go no further. But I'm going to be true to my lucky dip rules, for this is a lucky dip post. Ran

Aug 5

Roasting a cauliflower whole - why?

"for maximum impact" This was going to be whole roast large vegetables - mostly brassicas it seemed - but I quickly found that cauliflower was where this particular thing began, so I am sticking to cauliflower for now. Maybe I'll do celeriac, cabbage, squash ... another time. I confess that even though I have seen an increasing proliferation of the whole roast cauliflower thing I have often wondered why? Surely those leaves, with their thick stalks, and the very thick core

Jul 31

What's in a name? - 'marry me'/Tuscan chicken

"I know the internet has turned this dish into marry me chicken but it’s still Tuscan chicken to me!" The Taylor Table/Instagram And what's Tuscan chicken anyway? Not Tuscan whatever else it might be. But back to the beginning, although in a way it's really the end. Pondering on this and that for today's post I decided to see what was trending in the food world and found on the Taste website - a list of Trends 2026, some of which were truly awful, but top of their list of

Jul 26

Lucky dip - Kubbeh hamusta

"A recipe that adapts to its environment, but never forgets where it came from." Elli Benaiah/Beyond Babylon There are so many tricky and just picky issues about this particular recipe. It comes from Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi's book Jerusalem - a word that evokes a whole range of emotions these days - mostly not good. Although Sami Tamimi - a Palestinian and Yotam Ottolenghi - a Jew of mixed heritage, are no longer official business partners in the Ottolenghi empire,

Jun 19

Bibimbap - Korean leftovers

"The term comfort food doesn't quite suffice; therapy food is more like it, which makes sense, given that the notion of food as medicine is a fundamental one in Korean cooking." National Geographic I was flicking through my Ideas pages and came across Bibimbap, as originally mentioned in a Melbourne Food and Wine Festival review of a restaurant - Moon Mart - and decided to go ahead with this topic, because it had cropped up here and there recently. In fact it cropped up so

Mar 15

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

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

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

Coq au sauvignon blanc

“This popular dish may be called coq au Chambertin, coq au Riesling, or coq au whatever wine you use for its cooking.” Julia Child Based on, based on, probably ad infinitum is the story of tonight's proposed dinner. And for want of a better description I'm calling it Coq au sauvignon blanc - or 'sav blonk' as some would say.. But of course it's not coq at all, so let's begin there on this tiny ramble around a classic french dish. For every group of chickens that actually ha

Dec 17, 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

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