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Make your own butcher's table/kitchen island unit

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One of my long-held wishes - to have a house with a large kitchen, big enough for a dining table and plenty of cupboards - was fulfilled when I moved from London to west Dorset in 2018. In fact, it was the size of the kitchen, with its large windows on two sides with views of Chesil Beach and Portland Marina, which sold the house to me.  But as any keen cook knows, you can't have too many cupboards or worktop space. I had been hankering after a modern butcher's style table or island unit for awhile and my son, who is a professional chef, pointed out that such an addition to the kitchen layout would be very useful.  These pieces of furniture do not come cheap. Even an Ikea unit is upwards of £100 and many are designed and built for decorative rather than practical purposes and may not be that sturdy. It was Pinterest, the image sharing social media platform, which provided the inspiration for my own butcher's table - a simple frame made from galvanised steel tubes (like sc

Showing solidarity to the hospitality industry

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The similarities between my industry, classical music, and my son's, hospitality (he's a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant in west London) are many. In both industries, a specialist training or apprenticeship is required to learn and hone the appropriate skills and expertise to support and further one's career. The work is hard, the hours are long, often unsociable, and the pay is low, for performers and chefs alike (only a very few, in both professions, reach the dizzy heights of international stardom and the remuneration that goes with it). Both professions are inextricably linked to the general public by providing services which people want and from which they gain enjoyment. And both contribute a not insignificant amount to the UK economy.   Live music and hospitality have been severely impacted by the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic (and let's be clear, it is government policy, not the virus itself which has caused such damage in both sec

COMFORTING CURRY & COOKING TOGETHER

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A week ago, I got one of those phone calls that parents dread. My son rang early evening, just I was sitting down to dinner to the usual accompaniment of The Archers, to tell me he'd had a terrible headache for three days, had awful aches and pains, an upset stomach and a raised temperature. " Have you got a rash? " was my first question to which he replied "No, but I can't get rid of this headache. I'm going to A&E". The last communication with him was a few hours later to tell me he'd had a chest X-ray and a blood test. I couldn't reach him by phone the next morning and so drove up to Kingston where he lives, hoping to find him recovering in bed at home. But there was no sign of him, nor his motorcyle, at his flat and his cat came dashing in when we arrived, clearly very hungry. Eventually, I located my son in the labyrinth of Kingston Hospital. He'd been admitted to the Acute Assessment Unit and when I arrived he told me he was b

WINTER WARMER: SLOW-COOKED OX CHEEKS

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Some years ago ox (beef) and pork cheeks were marketed by a certain supermarket favoured by middle class people as "forgotten cuts", along with pork shin and other less fashionable cuts of meat - and quickly became fashionable again. It reminded me of the time when Delia Smith first introduced us to lamb shanks and suddenly this humble cut from the leg suddenly became very trendy and therefore much more expensive. Ox cheeks lend themselves to slow cooking. This is muscle with very little fat - think of all that chewing that goes on day after day! - and it needs long, slow cooking to soften it. Cooked well, it is melt-in-the-mouth tender, comforting and perfect for an autumn or winter evening. It needs only a dollop of fluffy mashed potato to soak up the aromatic sauce. I don't have a set recipe for slow-cooked ox cheeks, but tend to use the following basic ingredients to create a richly-flavoured sauce, reduced down from the cooking broth. To enhance the meaty flavour

DAILY BREAD

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Bread truly is a wonderful thing. By a simple chemical process involving flour, water and a 'leaven'  (yeast or a fermented "starter") is achieved something that is tasty and nutritious. When I stopped full-time work 21 years ago to have my son, I decided I would teach myself how to make bread properly. Fed up with commercial bread which I found generally tasteless and expensive (except for breads like Poilane sourdough which is tasty and very expensive!), through a process of trial and error, different types of flour, hot stones in the oven and other "tricks", I learnt how to make a decent focaccia-style white bread using a mixture of strong white bread flour and semolina flour. Since this is our family "daily bread", I don't usually bother with the traditional toppings for focaccia of rosemary, olive oil and salt. With its lighter texture it toasts really well and is easy to freeze. It is rare for us not to have homemade bread in the house

SIMPLE, KNOBBLY PLEASURES

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Jerusalem Artichokes I've always loved Jerusalem Artichokes, those bulbous brown knobbly tubers with an unusual earthy, nutty flavour. My father used to grow them and we ate them freshly-dug from the garden. Because of their rather unsociable side-effects they were of course called 'Fartichokes' at home and that name has stuck.... They are no relation to the globe artichoke, nor do they hail from Jerusalem, but they taste delicious and make a wonderful silky, comforting autumnal soup. (I usually combine 50/50 artichokes and parsnips.) They are very versatile: use them like new potatoes or as part of a tray of roasted root veg, or in a gratin. For a more sophisticated treatment, they can be served as a carpaccio - raw and thinly sliced - or deep-fried as crisps. Peel them and place in aciduated water to prevent disolouring if you're not using them immediately. This from Ottolenghi is one of my favourite recipes using Jerusalem Artichokes (it's from his b

MEMORIES ARE MADE OF......MALAKOFF

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In the late 70s and early 80s my parents did a lot of entertaining at home and my mum produced wonderful dinner party food inspired by cooks like Fanny Cradock, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson and John Tovey. Her well-used cookery books were full of mouth-watering pictures of elaborate starters and main courses, but it was the desserts which always caught my imagination - and taste buds. I remember being particularly fascinated by a picture of and recipe for meringue swans (a Fanny Cradock confection as I recall). I learnt to cook standing beside my mum and watching her prepare and create food and meals. I would watch the progress of a dinner party through the bannisters on the landing - people arriving, pre-dinner aperitifs being drunk, lively conservations, assembling around the dining table and the exclamations of delight as my mum served the food. Her puddings were always very popular - usually she made two - and I often enjoyed the leftovers the day after. One of my favourite pudd