When I started my supper club back in 2009, sparking a movement of home restaurants and pop-ups around the UK, I had to make some sacrifices. I gave up my living room, my TV and my comfy sofas to turn it into a ‘restaurant’. Now I have 3 long tables down the centre, a side…
Desserts and sweets
Sour Cherry Strudel recipe
Proper strudels are made from very thin pastry rolled out so thin it will stretch over a table like a vast floury cloth. It should be so fine that you could read a newspaper through it. I’ve seen it made from scratch in Vienna at the Demel Coffee House. This elastic pastry is related to…
Recipe for Orange Chocolate Mousse
French menus are incredibly predictable. French restaurants always serve the same thing, especially at lunch, for le menu prix fixe. This consists of crudités to start, or perhaps a herring or carrottes rapées. For main, there will be some kind of meat with fish on Fridays. That comes with pommes frites or pommes à la…
Andre Simon Awards: the Niki Segnit interview
Niki Segnit, author of the groundbreaking book The Flavour Thesaurus, is tall, attractive and remarkably fresh faced considering she has four-year-old twins. Originally from Hampshire, she has lived in Islington for six years. I visited her kitchen, the zinc-topped desk and laptop where she writes, facing the busy City Road. Her aforementioned first book, a…
Recipes: 3 Galettes des Rois
Every January in France, patisseries and bakers sell galette des rois, an elegant almond-filled puff-pastry pie, which contains a charm or ‘fève’ (bean) and comes with a golden crown. If you are lucky enough to get the figurine in your slice, you get to wear the crown. The Feast of Epiphany, the arrival of the…
River cruise: Honfleur and recipe for salted caramels
In all my years of visiting and living in France, how is that I never knew about a gem- the port town of Honfleur? It’s got to be one of the prettiest villages in France. This picturesque Normandie town was the second stop of a Fred Olsen river cruise. Honfleur has echoing small streets with…
King Cake
Panettone and galette des rois are versions of the Epiphany King Cake, commemorating the arrival of the Magi. Here’s another King Cake, fairly unknown in Britain, but a Mardi Gras classic in New Orleans, where every bakery sells them, blindingly decorated with the traditional carnival colours of purple, green and gold. Although it is a…