The Water Mirrors A Still Sky Quite a while back I acquired a signed copy of Richard Corrigan’s excellent first cookery book: The Richard Corrigan Cookbook – from the waters and the wild. I’m incredibly ashamed to say, that despite the having a delightful collection of recipes, from the traditional Irish (Irish spiced beef) albeit [...]
Slim? Fat Chance Sometimes Sundays should just be about big old fry-ups and mugs of tea. With a fresh supply of both Clonakilty black and Clonakilty white pudding in my fridge, a large box of Bewley’s tea and some fresh from the farm eggs, what more of an excuse did I need? Clonakilty’s famous black [...]
Bush Tea Beginnings Cake, of course, goes so terribly well with tea and has a universality that straddles the bush/China divide. Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook (Stuart Brown) With a couple of overripe bananas sitting in my fruit bowl, what could I do but bake banana bread? I was about to trawl through my vast collection of [...]
Hazy Days On Saturday I invited a few friends round for a back garden picnic, – you know the sort that were common in childhood – to assist me in reviewing a Picnic Hamper from Interflora (RRP £60.00). There first response was one of shock – Interflora? Really? Aren’t they all about flowers? Interflora actually [...]
The Big Cheese I have to confess when I noticed Riverford (from whom I buy my organic box delivery) were selling Mozzarella made not in Italy but in Hampshire I was to put it mildly a little dubious. Could Laverstoke Park Farm really be producing genuine buffalo mozzarella that could live up to, let alone [...]
“Train up a fig-tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.” Charles Dickens Figs are such a strikingly beautiful fruit, with their fresh green or deep purple skin and vibrant deep pink flesh what is there not to love? Fresh figs always remind me of [...]
Relax … Enjoy … Unwind – the slogan seen throughout Cafe B (Burton on Trent) is supposedly to set the tone of the place. Come in take a seat, let your troubles pass you by as you sit and chill out with a beverage and meal or cake in a cafe with a calm and [...]
A Taste of Morocco “I’m really proud of this beautiful dish. I’m not sure what the mechoui man I met in the market in Marrakesh would make of it, but I like to think I’m respecting the way he cooks” Jamie Oliver (Jamie Does) If Jamie Oliver is unsure of how his version of Mechoui [...]
Breaking the Bread Challah is a soft sweet-smelling bread and is the ultimate symbol of Shabbat. It is also present at all Jewish holidays (with the exception of Passover). Technically, the word ‘Challah’ isn’t the name of the bread at all. The ‘Challah’ is a small olive sized piece of dough which is separated from [...]
“Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad but bread is king.” Louis Bromfield, American novelist (1896-1956) Oh sunshine where have you gone? The weather has been a little challenging of late, to say the [...]