Post-Italian holiday induced perhaps, I’m pretty obsessed with pasta at the moment. Visiting Sicily made me realise how the regional differences in Italian cooking are so pronounced. In the south they make all their pasta with purely water and flour: no oil or eggs and barely any kneading or resting time. That makes it very…
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The Ivy Cafe
Keep readingI had the pleasure of being invited to review the Ivy Cafe recently. Little sister to the famous west end haunt, it’s newly opened on the lovely Marylebone Lane serving an all-day menu, dinners and cocktails.
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Making cheese at Wilde’s
Keep readingOn just your typical Tuesday, trudging up to Tottenham on a gale-force rainy evening to make some cheese on an industrial estate! In fact we were there to take a mozzarella-making class with the lovely chaps of Wilde’s Cheese – in their own words, ‘a small award winning independent artisan cheese making company based on…
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Slow food: dal and pizza
Keep readingI’ve got a bit into slow food lately – by which I mean that plan-ahead variety of cooking that requires soaking, simmering, fermenting and proving for days on end. Yeah, you need to think about what you might want to eat several days from now instead of right now, but there’s such a satisfaction when…
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Recipe: Winter tomato and bread salad
Keep readingFor me, one thing that’s up there amongst the suckiest things about winter is the lack of tomatoes that actually taste of anything. The only way I’ve found to coax some flavour out of them is to smother them in salt and olive oil and roast them long and slow in the oven. Then they’ll…
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Mexico City: eats, drinks and markets
Keep readingObviously, one of our main reasons for visiting Mexico was for the food. London has some good Mexican places but I was really interested to see how the real stuff compares – and what actually constitutes a real Mexican dish and which are fake exports. I’m looking at you, burritos. In general we ate really…
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A week with a veg box
Keep readingMy cooking has had a boost lately, thanks to both a neighbour plying me with veg from her Norfolk allotment and Wholegood kindly sending me a veg box to try. It’s been nice to try some ingredients that I don’t often buy for myself, and it’s much easier to make a non-lazy carb-based dinner when…
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Picklin’ at Rita’s
Keep readingI had fun last week at a night-time pickling workshop, put on by Sarson’s vinegar and held at Rita’s Bar & Dining in London Fields. Our hosts were food historian Peter Ginn and Rita’s chef Gabriel Pryce. Peter gave us a lowdown on the history of pickling as a method of preserving fresh ingredients, and…
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Three non-boring (non-)salads
Keep readingI’ve been trying to get back into some healthy wheat-light cooking lately, and have recently made several twists on that summery staple, the salad. My definition of salad is pretty loose as I don’t really like leaves: for me a salad means any combination of cooked and raw vegetables together with a carb and a…
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Review: DF Mexico
Keep readingDF Mexico is the latest creation from the stable of London-based Mexican stalwart Wahaca. It takes the same Mexican-street-food-with-an-Anglo-American-twist concept and goes a bit hipster on it to match its location bang in the middle of Shoreditch in the Old Truman Brewery. Every aspect is ramped up in the cool factor: the branding and interior…
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Afternoon tea with Truly
Keep readingPicking special presents year after year can be a bit of a pain, especially when you’re like us and have no room left in your flat for any more physical objects! That’s why I love giving and receiving ‘experiences’ instead: dinner, cooking classes, something that you can enjoy and/or learn from rather than accumulating more…
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A Vegetarian tasting menu at L’Atelier Joel Robuchon
Keep readingI apologise for it being blogger-perk frenzy round here at the moment. I’ve had a good run lately! The latest was the chance to try the tasting menu with matching wine selection at Michelin-starred restaurant L’Atelier Joel Robuchon, on the borders of Covent Garden and Soho, where a new executive chef (Xavier Boyer) and pastry…
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Breddos for brunch & dinner
Keep readingSo excited we were that Breddos Tacos were popping-up just down the road in Haggerston, we visited on consecutive weekends right after it opened earlier this month. Well, there’s both the American-style brunch and night-time Mexican street food menus to check out, so it’d be silly not to really. First up, a foray down to…
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