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…
Food
Recipe for veggie goulash
Goulash is a cowboy stew for plainsmen in Hungary. Traditionally it is made with meat but I have created a vegan/vegetarian version. I used sweet paprika bought in Budapest and I must say, it’s very red, very fresh and tasty. Parsley roots are a traditional ingredient which I ordered through Natoora at Ocado, but parsnips…
Spas and strudels in Budapest
Budapest is really two cities either side of the River Danube; Buda and Pest. Buda is where most tourists stay, while Pest, with Castle Hill, is posher and more residential. I visited in the January low season when the weather is cold but the accommodation is cheap. I was accompanying my sister who was doing…
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…
Caribbean Veganuary
I recently went for a tasting menu supper club at The Mango Room, a Caribbean restaurant in Camden, run by restaurateur Derick Blake, that has been around for 20 years. This makes the restaurant virtually an antique in the fast-paced hospitality industry, where restaurants go bust every year. Apart from the fantastic cocktails, the menu also…
Starry starry soup recipe
I’m all about the soups in winter. These are my soup rules: Use leftovers: that stir fry and bit of rice that didn’t quite get eaten up, I whizzed the vegetables with hot water and a spoonful of stock powder then added the leftover rice at the end. It’s the same principle as chicken soup:…
Vegan sausage rolls recipe
Greggs the bakers have been running some brilliant marketing campaigns over the last couple of years, from the sausage roll baby Jesus in the advent calendar, the Valentine’s Day menu, to last year’s transformation into Gregory and Gregory for a posh food festival. This year they topped the January news agenda by bringing out vegan…
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…