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:…
Vegetarian
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…
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…
Halloween recipes
We think of pumpkins as an autumnal North American food, although I was disappointed to discover that they usually buy canned when baking pumpkin pie. There is a wide selection of pumpkins and squashes: from giant pin cushion style of Turban Squash, to spaghetti squash, or the dense sweet flesh of acorn squash and butternut….
British Army catering, visiting 167 Catering corps in Grantham
“An army marches on its stomach” Napoleon The military is responsible for many advances in food technology: it was Napoleon that put out the call to invent a method of canning. French chef Alexis Soyer created the Soyer oven for British troops during the Victorian era, which lasted from the Crimean war until the Falklands…
Pictures from the botanical supper club with author Emma Mitchell
This was a collaboration made in heaven, myself and Emma Mitchell, star instagrammer and author of Making Winter. Emma taught people how to make silver jewellery using nature finds from my garden and I created a botanical lunch. Menu: Home-made creme de cassis with white wine Crudites with green goddess dip Mexican black bean soup…
A riot of colour: rainbow vegetables with soba noodles
I believe in eating the rainbow: choosing colourful vegetables to enhance a meat-free diet. The best cooking emerges from shopping well. Look for purple and white carrots, burgundy cauliflowers, or ivory aubergines. Here I’ve used inky mangetout, golden courgettes, sun coloured tomatoes, pale mauve aubergines, a symphony in yellow and purple, on a bed of…
Potato and cauliflower ‘fondue’ soup
My New Years’ resolutions: 1. Make soup 2. Eat soup I don’t eat enough soup. It always seems a pfaff. But it isn’t. I felt like I was coming down with a lurgey last night. I needed soup. I got home from the Basquiat exhibition and, start to finish, vegetable chopping to hot spoon of…