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 […]
I have a question: at what point does a request for salad in one’s lunchtime sandwich constitute a desire for chopped raw onion? It confounds and frustrates me, this incessant need for it to be sprinkled in every shop-bought salad and sandwich in the UK. If you hadn’t guessed, I loathe raw onion, especially when […]
I’ve never tasted wine from Uruguay as it’s not yet widely available in this country. And since I never need any form of encouragement to go to a wine tasting, I accepted my friend C’s invitation in about 0.8 seconds flat – she was going to one at the Uruguayan London embassy (Belgrave Square – […]
Friends have ridiculed me for quite some time on account of the fact that I once spent £8 on an aubergine in Borough Market. So embarrassing! I’m still ashamed. I was younger, a bit overwhelmed by the whole BM experience, and handed over the money as though in a trance. When I came to my […]
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 […]
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 – […]
If you haven’t heard of Geetie Singh, well, she’s pretty much a legend on the UK organic food circuit. She’s like the lone ranger of organic restaurant eating – not only is she a female restaurateur (in a very male-dominated trade) but she founded and still runs the UK’s only existing Soil Association-certified gastropub: The […]
I’m hooked on the new BBC cookery programme The Delicious Miss Dahl, where the jaw-droppingly beautiful Sophie Dahl cooks up rustic dishes and bats her big cartoon eyes at us over the hob of a very gorgeous kitchen* decorated with shabby chic. Sometimes she goes a bit twee and wistful, reciting poetry while gazing out […]
This tiny bakery in Crystal Palace, South London, is one of my favourite shops on this planet. I love everything about it, as I’m one of those freaks who actually runs into traffic towards a good bakery window display. When it opened several years ago, I was one of their first customers through the door […]
Last weekend I hoofed it down to Somerset for a dance music festival called the Bloc Weekender, which was hosted at the Butlins holiday camp in Minehead. So although I wasn’t strictly going for the official Butlins red-coats ‘n singalongs experience, I got a pretty good intro as to what holidaying there would be like. […]
Toast & Butter 