Bizarre though it may seem, when you next order a slab of membrillo to partner your Manchego at a tapas joint you are actually tapping into an English culinary wellspring that dates back to Tudor times and before. Quince paste, which we associate with the Spanish kitchen (there’s also a French version called cotignac) was […]
Priest Stranglers and Little Sparrows are not quite the odd bedfellows they sound. Both find common ground in the North Italian city of Trento (above), glorious gateway to the Dolomites. The Trentino has always been wrangled over by Italy and Austria; reaching its blood-stained apogee during the Great War. Witness the trenches and obsolete weaponry […]
Fashion and diamonds, waffles and ales – Antwerp’s a heady mix even before its surreal side creeps up on you. And it will. Just let it. Rubens and Bruegel, the gabled Grote Markt and the soaring Flemish Gothic cathedral offer you art and architecture with a Capital A, but don’t neglect the hard-nosed quirkiness that […]
It’s a 30 mile meander across the West Flanders fields from Dranouter in Heuvelland to Dottignies in French-speaking Wallonia. You’re always just in Belgium but aware that this is border country, in the hinterland of France’s fifth largest city, Lille. On a squally Saturday afternoon up on the Pennine Moors there’s a decided gustatory ley […]
Breaking up is so hard to do, but I’ve made my decision. Tonight’s guacamole will be the last I ever prepare. In future my signature fish tacos may have to make do with just a piquant pico de gallo pairing. I chop up (not too finely) chunks of avocado to a soundtrack of Radiohead – […]
A wet Wednesday morning in Mitton, Lancashire and I am admiring a tub of saffron milkcaps. Or to give this delectable wild mushroom its even more exotic Latin tag: Lactarius deliciosus. Not to be confused with the Woolly Milkcap (Lactarius torminosus), which is poisonous. I ask the mycophile (edible mushroom gather) I’ve just met, Matt […]
Darkness at noon, torrential rain battering the skylight of my attic office. Can’t get out of my head how many private jets flew in the world leaders to that climate change summit in Glasgow and how ironic that doomsday weather has crippled the rail line up from London. My antidote to all this gloom? Make […]
The philosopher Julian Baggini, considering rules in the kitchen, proposes a category of dishes called SIVs (Simple but Infinitely Variable) for various cuisines. The English exemplar is the Roast Dinner. Meat joint, root veg, roasties, Yorkies, gravy, condiments. There are only so many ways you can assemble this Sunday centrepiece and yet… nothing beats everybody’s […]
It’s nigh on 40 years since the BBC televised their adaptation of John Le Carré’s Smiley’s People, culmination of his trilogy about spymaster George Smiley, the squat, bespectacled antidote to the crass, cartoonish antics of James Bond. I’m all for compulsive slow burners, so I read the 1979 novel again recently before catching up with […]
Old chestnuts are less an ingredient more a verbal crutch but I can forgive Fergus Henderson for dredging up his riposte to the smugness of plant-based proselytisers: “How do you tell someone is a vegan? Answer: They tell you.” Nigella Lawson shares the great man’s charm and forthrightness. She has just ruffled a few feathers […]