Category: Sides
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Homemade taramasalata
It’s been a busy week. For the first time I can remember, I’ve not been thinking about food, what I’m eating, cooking or baking, instead my thoughts are preoccupied with the logistics of that cooking – storage, transporting food across the city, and installing stoves and ovens. The café is expanding. A new branch in…
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Roasted red pepper salsa
I had a plan for this blog post, dear reader. September is suddenly upon us, along with all those cosy autumnal feelings, so after work the other day I strolled along a quiet cycle lane, shielded either side by banks of greenery, in search of blackberries. These late-summer fruits are perfect September fare, tart, inky…
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How to make a great salad
Every year we yearn for summer’s arrival. In mid-winter’s clutches we shiver like huddled penguins and strain to remember those warmer times. Winters last eternity, much like a never-ending winter in Game of Thrones. Slowly but surely our wishes have been granted and at last, it’s summer! And with it came the sweat. Was everyone…
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Cooking without equipment: Pesto
I think it is time to confess. Dear reader, I must admit something… something I have been trying to conceal from you all this time. Here it goes… I don’t own much kitchen equipment. I am so ashamed. As a chef I am embarrassed to admit that no, I do not own a pestle and mortar,…
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Homemade butter
Once again, I am late to the party. Sometimes I don’t get the memo or in other cases, I snobbishly reject it. In this case, I’m sorry to say, I rejected it. The most popular food of the next three years just didn’t appeal. And when this food is a jar of old cabbage and…
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Yorkshire puddings
This Sunday I cooked for a dinner party. The party was more personal than usual because it was to celebrate my dad’s birthday – a milestone birthday, I’ll add. Fiona went full party-planner when it came to the decorations. Only gold was allowed, no multi-coloured numbered confetti, no sparkly pink balloons, no shiny foil bunting.…
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Guacamole
My dad works away from home, spending most of his week near Birmingham. Every Thursday he drives back to be the out-numbered male in a house of three women and spends the weekend cooking up a storm. He is a very good cook – throughout our family life he has taken the reins of providing…
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The perfect roast potatoes
Restraint is a difficult concept for a food lover. Second helpings are a must, a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack goes without saying, and chocolate somehow coerces its way in there on a daily basis. Also some form of fruit is munched on because, by then, you feel greedy and unhealthy – I hear fruit reverses…