What you see here are two overgrown courgettes (zucchini) weighing over a kilo each. They are two out of four, all the same weight, that I picked from my allotment yesterday. The other two, used in their entirety, I magically reduced into what you see on the plate.
I kid you not. I didn’t have [...]

June. Right now in England we are getting a sweet taste of summer in the form of strawberries, gooseberries and the short-lived elderflower, whether the sun shines or not. Cream-coloured clusters of elderflower are popping out all over the place in London, and not only in the green spaces - I’ve seen the blossoms dripping [...]

Any Ethiopian would spot this a mile off as injera, the spongy flatbread that accompanies every hot and spicy meal. Anyone from Derbyshire or Staffordshire will know it as a breakfast staple - oatcakes. Rather embarrassingly, as a London-based gastronaut, I am more familiar with the former. Whilst on a walking holiday in my campervan [...]

I’ve been inspired by The Gourmet Traveller’s blog about a no-knead bread to post my own recipe, from my book “Entertaining Vegetarians” (”Party Food for Vegetarians” in paperback. This photo by Jan Baldwin is from the book.) Gourmet Traveller aka @jswching has given a fabulous pictorial of her bread making procedure - check it out! [...]

Seasoned gardeners will no doubt have already been pottering around getting the growing year off to an early start, especially since the UK spring has arrived mercifully early. However, if you are a novice or gardening lightweight, there is still plenty of time to get cracking on your 2009 harvest. Whether you’ve got an allotment, [...]

A couple of weeks ago, we managed a foray to Little Chef Popham, where uber-chef Heston Blumenthal has reworked the menu. Any foreign readers might need to know that Little Chef is a British institution - a chain of dozens of roadside cafes which have been going since 1958 and hasn’t changed much since. Until [...]

Behold, the sumptuous, sensuous, chewy-yet-flaky-crusted, custard-gushing Pastel de Nata, native tart extraordinaire of Lisbon, Portugal. This one came from my local Portuguese cafe in Tottenham (and very nice it was too, wolfed down in two or three bites with a galao, a tall white coffee in a glass). However, there is little dispute over where [...]

Honey wine is a lost treasure

Nuts are yum but hot roasted nuts are ambrosia

A cheap, cheerful, nutritious snack