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…
Recipes
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…
British Weekends: Winchester and recipe for wasabi/cream cheese gyoza
I’m re-acquainting myself with British history via TV series such as The Last Kingdom and Vikings. Both series feature the ninth century King Alfred, whose capital was in Winchester, in the former county of ‘Wessex’. Winchester is dominated by an enormous bronze statue of Alfred the Great, so called because he was the first monarch…
Five ways to cook Brussels sprouts
There are many different ways to cook sprouts, my favourite method is braising, that is par-boiling in salty water for five minutes then transferring them into a frying pan to sauté. This recipe is so delicious that I must confess to scoffing the lot, by myself, in one sitting. I do like to combine Brussels…
Warming Aberdeen recipes: Cullen Skink and Sticky Toffee Pudding
Findon, near Aberdeen, is known for the Finnan haddock, which makes the best Cullen Skink. I had a delicious bowl of this soup at The Silver Darling restaurant, overlooking the harbour. Aberdeen competes with the Lake District and Canada to claim that this is where Sticky Toffee Pudding was invented. Here are my versions of these comforting warming dishes,…