On the Gravy Train … A short while back British Onions sent me a “Gravy in a Box” kit containing, well, everything you’d need for excellent gravy – onions and some other interesting ingredients such as mushroom ketchup, Marmite, mustard and Worcestershire sauce. They’re trying to work out exactly what makes the perfect onion gravy; [...]
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Just Like Mamma Used to Make! What could be better on a cold wintery evening than a big steaming bowl of pasta? The ultimate in Italian comfort food, surely? Add in a few spicy meatballs and it becomes the perfect Italian-American supper. I usually go for Nigella’s recipe for pasta & meatballs from Nigella Bites, [...]
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“The Only Thing to do with Good Advice is Pass it On” Oscar Wilde Clodagh McKenna’s Cork Beef Stew from The Irish Farmer’s Market Cookbook is a real favourite of mine and is a frequently made winter warmer of a dish. Generally I’d served a big bowl of it alongside some fluffy mashed potatoes or [...]
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I have become more and more bitterly disappointed with supermarket bacon over the years; the wafer thin strips that spew grey, salty water into the pan so they poach rather than fry, withering up into tiny corrugated flaps of anaemic disappointment. You can taste the pig’s depression in the meat. I was a little dubious [...]
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After Christmas I made a promise to myself that I would resist buying more cookery book until I had sorted and organised the rather mammoth collection I already own. Well, a couple of weeks back I broke that promise. How could I resist Jose Pizarro’s stunning book, Seasonal Spanish Food? Pizarro’s debut explores the regions [...]
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ODE TO A HAGGIS Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race! Aboon them a’ ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy of a grace As lang’s my arm The groaning trencher there ye fill, Your hurdies like a distant hill, You pin wad help to mend [...]
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Jose Pizarro’s recent guide to Spanish cooking with rice and the chance finding of some Unearthed Catalan cooking sausages at a local store really got me in the mood to embrace the virtues of Spains cuisine; “No, not Spanish, Catalan” (Anya von Bremzen). Catalonia (Catalunya) is a country within a country, with its own language, complex history and [...]
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Unless you have been hiding yourself away from the foodie scene these last few years I’m sure the hype surrounding the St. John Restaurant cannot have escaped your notice. The offer of a meal there would I’m sure be as poll dividing as Marmite – love it or hate it, sure, nose to tail eating [...]
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Lamb took centre stage for me this week. The rarity of having the house to myself for the evening was occuring and this could only mean one thing – the cooking of a solitary feast that the rest of the family simply wouldn’t have cared to join me in; in other words a meal that under [...]
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The first time I came across stifado was a young teenager on holiday in Corfu, from the first taste I was hooked. Strangely enough though until yesterday I had never cooked the dish at home. I don’t really recall much else from that trip to Corfu, other than a great many hill walking trips, but [...]
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All this dreary wet weather recently has left me longing after sunnier climes, whilst I can’t just hop on a jet plane and head off into the sunset at a moments notice I can get creative in the kitchen and produce food that induces memories of holidays gone by and gives the illusion of warmth [...]
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