Once I started to think seriously about breakfast, questions started popping up here there and everywhere.
Should we eat breakfast at all? Contradictions galore here from a stream of experts. When I was young I was sure the first meal of the day should be considered a visit to the fuel pump. Fill ‘er up. This [...]

Rhubarb, you might have noticed, is one of my favourite fruits. Well, it’s not really a fruit, but a stalk, but that’s for botanists. If you eat it like a fruit, then to me it’s a fruit, which makes a tomato a vegetable, although it’s a fruit, and who cares anyway?
Whatever it is, I have [...]

I was cooking for my daughter’s first birthday, and wanted to provide something the mature three- and four-year-olds could go ooh and aah over and then stick their fingers in, causing parents to scold; something that would have them lining up for seconds. I went for a cold rhubarb souffle, light as a feather, held [...]

Now that you have conquered the souffle, it’s time to get arrogant. This is the sort of souffle you can prepare at home, toss in the boot of a car, and cook it at a friend’s place. And it’s impossibly simple.

This one’s made with rhubarb, but any fruit that produces a thick richly flavoured puree [...]

The perfect Christmas present from a cook has to be something fantastic, yet simple to make, something surprising, yet so obvious when you make it; full of colour without gratuity; and something you’d want to make again and again and again. And it has to be seasonal, of summer exclusively, so it will be longed [...]

There are only a few desserts I have come across which have caused me to wish, instantly, for the recipe. Girardet’s passionfruit souffle was one; Sirio Maccione’s creme brulee at New York’s Le Cirque was another; Gay Bilson’s Sussex Pond pudding — an old-fashioned pudding soaked with the flavour of lemon — from Sydney’s Berowra [...]

Souffles are so simple I am forever astonished at the oohs and aahs they elicit even in the world’s great restaurants. Fredy Girardet’s renowned passionfruit souffle is served at Girardet’s knockout eatery just out of Lausanne in Switzerland with all the pomp and ceremony usually reserved for royalty. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if [...]

Jelly is one of the most underestimated dishes, at both ends of the menu. The jelly which comes together after nicely cooked veal bones, and pig’s trotters, and chicken feet, and vegetables, is one of the cheapest and best of additions to any meal; and fruit juices, held together with the best leaf gelatine make [...]

Not all chocolate recipes have to be ind-blowing in their effects on your body. I discovered this marvellous joy in a terrific American cooking magazine called Eating Well. This is not one of these New Age products which scolds and berates like an old Irish cleric breathing fire and brimstone from the pulpit. This is [...]

Chocolate mousse has become a bit like avocado vinaigrette. Once upon a time you could bet that a hollowed-out avocado doused with a dressing of a little vinegar, a very good olive oil, and a handful of chives would take us through the first course of a flash dinner party, and the chocolate air would [...]