My parents have recently come back from a wedding in Southern India and they have been to one of my favourite regions, Kerala. They were blown away by the delicious food and already miss the flavours of their staple, the dosa. At about the same tim...
Read moreOn Monday 26th, we had arranged a cookery demonstration by Michael Ibbotson (who owns the acclaimed The Durham Ox); they have, also, recently taken over The Punch Bowl in Marton cum Grafton and breathed life back into it and are developing a reputati...
Read moreA year or so ago I made a simnel cake, but it came out rather squat and a tad heavy. The squatness was easily remedied with a smaller baking tin, while the texture was improved through using a lighter recipe with more eggs. I have, also, used an id...
Read moreOne of my favourite Christmassy things is panforte and I, also, love Nurnberger lebkuchen. It hails from Siena which is probably my favourite city in Italy. There really is something special about sitting out in the Piazza del Campo, looking across...
Read moreI have been asked by several people to give some starting ideas for the various goodies within Laura Santtini's Alchemical Larder box that we provide to Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges amongst others. So while there is a...
Read moreIt is not very often that I rip out pages from cookery magazines for use at a later date, so it was a surprise when the other day I found some pages I had ripped from a copy of the magazine, Delicious, from some years back. In it, I had obviously fa...
Read moreIn this festive period, we have been asked out to various families for drinks, or the kids out to parties. And the question always is what to give people in a period of giving. So yesterday, the kids and I spent a happy day making sweets, much as w...
Read moreOnce in a while, I really need to go without meat of any form and I am going through one of those patches at the moment. So I have tweaked my Chicken Balti Recipe from earlier this year to be more tofu friendly and so usable as a vegetarian dish. At...
Read moreOne of my favourite Christmas cookies are spekulatius biscuits, or speculaas as they are called in the Netherlands. I remember we always used to get a special parcel from Lebkuchen Schmidt in Nürmberg from my Granny. In amongst all the beautiful ti...
Read moreI don't know whether it is when you really learned how to cook that determines what are your favourite books, or whether some books are just better than others. However, I noticed recently how I still keep on going back to a few cookery books that I...
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