Category: Cuisine

I do not often eat pasta. Occasionally I eat ricotta and spinach tortelloni, and sometimes in a restaurant I will order ravioli. I had some wholewheat spaghetti in my cupboard, so I made a bolognese sauce of minced lamb, onions and tomato, with Italian herbs and garlic to flavour....

This has to be one of the quickest to prepare. Cold lamb slices from yesterday’s roast leg, with rock salt sprinkled over them. Then a salad from Sainsbury’s help-yourself salad bar, the smallest size at £1.50. It included tomatoes, boiled egg, sugarsnap peas, feta cheese, spiral pasta, beetroot and...

I quite like escargots, which are mainly an excuse to have garlic butter, but the Savoy offers something new. It is baked Dorset snails with sweet garlic, red wine and brioche crumbs. I didn’t like it nearly as much as escargots, finding the brioche crumbs a distraction from the...

It was quite a meal at the Savoy. First came lobster bisque, though I tasted one of the Dorset snails a companion ordered. Then came beef Wellington, medium rare with Vichy carrots. The piece de résistance was the crepe suzette. First butter and squeezed oranges, then Grand Marnier and...

I went to d’Arry’s in Cambridge in October to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my Cambridge MPhil. Its a restaurant that we used to frequent regularly, until the service got so slow we had to leave one evening without evening (the gap between the starter and main courses was...

I lined a pie dish with my usual shortcrust pastry. The filling used about 400 gm of the pumpkin purée I made, plus a cup of milk, a spoon of brown sugar and one of golden syrup. I used two large eggs and whisked it all up. Then I...

I cut a pumpkin into segments after scooping out the seeds. After peeling them with a potato peeler and chopping them into roughly 1″ pieces, I simmered them for about 15 minutes until tender. Then I zapped them in a blender with just enough liquid to for a purée....

Still on my pie theme, this time I made bramble and apple pie. The bulges in the pastry are the brambles (aka blackberries). I added only a sprinkle of brown sugar, but it needed a liquid to allow the apples to cook, so I added a mix of creme...

Punnets of cherries were going quite cheaply, so I bought one and stoned all the cherries with my handy little device that pits both cherries and olives. I used two Pink Lady apples, cored but not peeled and chopped up into roughly half-inch pieces. The pastry was white flour...

Among my birthday presents was a tin of Captain Cat’s seafood rub from Pembrokeshire in South Wales.  It’s a light brown/orange colour, and is intended to be rubbed into fish before you bake it or fry it. I tried putting it into a prawn quiche, and it worked very...