Winter

This classic dish of leftover potatoes and greens isn’t something I particularly encountered until I moved to work in London in my twenties. There I’d get it in the staff canteen for breakfast and it was the perfect start to a long [...]

When you think of Scottish food, and cereals in particular there’s one thing that instantly springs to mind. Oats. The grain the nation was built on (actually barley can feel a little aggrieved at being sidelined but that’s not [...]

How often do bananas lie in the fruit bowl, quickly turning from yellow to brown spotted, to black? And automatically the mind thinks of one of two things, smoothies, or banana bread. I’ve been making a lot of rye soda bread over the [...]

The Christmas festivities have passed, the leftovers eaten or frozen, the new year steak pie well and truly finished. In fact the last vestige of the season is the bottle of mulled wine that you won in a tombola somewhere. And while you [...]

If Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking was the first cookbook that I fell in love with, the second was definitely Diana Henry’s inspiring first volume, Crazy Water Pickled Lemons. A book that opened my eyes to the exotic and intoxicating [...]

Anchovies are a fairly standard ingredient for adding umami, that indescribable flavour characteristic, and nowhere better than alongside the rich flavour of mutton in a fairly classic Roman flavour combination. I cooked this stew over the fire [...]