Category Recipes
Fergus Henderson’s Rice Pudding
I love the writings of chef Fergus Henderson. I’m not really one for his experimentations with offal – even he can’t convince me that pigs eyes and cows knees are a lovely thing to eat, sorry – but my goodness can this fellow cook a sterling pud and write about it wittily. I chanced across […]
Voluptuous Victoria sponge
For months I had wanted to make a really big, luxurious cake – one that, if I was a lady who lunched, I would have positioned on an elegant cake stand when my friends visited for afternoon cocktails. Sadly my life is not an endless succession of tea parties, and the moments I have to […]
Damsons and a crumble cake
I had never eaten a damson in my life before this year. The past month or so, I’ve made up for lost time – it’s literally been ‘damsons ahoy’ since we picked a whole bunch of these inky blue-skinned plums on our recent holiday in the Cotswolds. If ‘purple’ had a flavour, cooked damsons would […]
Huevos rancheros and avocado stories
Ever since I bought an avocado sandwich from a car park kiosk in Costa Rica about seven years ago, I have been obsessed with anything that involves this luscious fruit. There was nothing fancy about the sandwich – it was made with cheap white sliced bread, and contained nothing but ripe sliced avocado, a squirt […]
Sloe vodka
Ladies and gentlemen: there are wondrous berries lurking in our hedgerows right this instant that are FREE and will enable you to make wonderfully flavoured falling-over drinking booze. The above are sloeberries, which can be used to make sloe gin – or, in my case, sloe vodka, because gin makes me really argumentative, tearful and […]
Vietnamese pork stew in clay pot
Pork stew in clay pot is one of my favourite dishes from Vietnam. It takes a few hours to simmer away on the stove top, and has really aromatic and comforting flavours – star anise, ginger and chilli all combine with caramel to create a warming and savoury mixture that is great with greens and […]
Perfect mayo, plus herby potato salad
For years I hated mayonnaise. Well, let me rephrase that. I actually do hate all mayonnaise that comes in a jar. It makes me heave, tasting claggy and processed, leaving a margarine-like taste in the mouth. But about a year ago this old cookbook of my mum’s changed everything, after I learned how to make […]
Peach Melba
Today I made a really retro pud: peach melba. I wanted a pudding to follow a lazy summery lunch, where you still have room for something sweet but can’t force down a tart or rich chocolate mousse. As odd as it seems for such a glutton, I actually have days like that. This pudding fits […]
Rhubarb and lemon curd pots
I thieved the recipe for this knockout pudding from my friend Kate, who served it to me for dinner the other night. She had also nicked it from her friend (also called Kate), and so in the true spirit of a recipe democracy, I’m sharing the love so you can continue the cycle. I made […]
Chicken and fennel tagine
I’m loving the new Jamie Oliver ‘Jamie Does’ series on C4 – even though he used to really annoy me what with his years of monkeying around on that moped and getting all his ‘mates’ on camera for ‘spontaneous’ lunches and high jinks, not to mention those cheesy Sainsbury’s ads peppered with cliched Mockney-isms – […]
Toast & Butter 