Cauliflower happens to be a wildly under-rated vegetable, and it’s served poorly, more often than not. A cauliflower, picked at its peak in the middle of winter, has a feel and flavour like few other vegetables. Cauli should be cooked longer than is conventionally believed. I like to cook it until it takes a knife [...]

I made this up on the telephone. An old friend had organised a picture shoot of his home for Belle magazine. The shoot was to include a few restaurateurs and me, and our food. My job was to provide the entree. I wanted something which would work in pictures, as well as flavour. I was [...]

haven’t always enjoyed asparagus. Again it comes down to the influences of youth. I seem to recall trying asparagus at a pub counter lunch years ago. It was mushy, yellowing at the tip and tasted aggressive. But not as aggressive as it smelt, afterwards, you know, afterwards. It was an altogether unpleasant experience, and not [...]

When my precious took the first slurp of my sorrel soup, I thought a horse must have tip-toed into the room and left a message on the easy chair at my back. Her eyes widened and took on a slightly acidic sheen, her nose shot up, and her lips curled the curl of utter contempt.

I [...]

When it comes to the re-awareness, or re-interpretation of dishes, or discovery of ingredients, then nobody works harder or does it better than Stephanie Alexander, the well-known restaurateur and brilliant writer on food and food matters.

I think if I could wish for anybody in the business to cook for me at home, it would be [...]

My beloved despairs of my habit of putting all her best efforts on buttered bread, turning anything from crayfish to roast lamb into nothing more than a sandwich.

It’s something I will never grow out of, although I have thus far avoided reverting to type when in company.

At home there is nothing I will not put [...]

I have always loved pumpkin, but that rough and tough and mottled skin was too much for anybody less muscled than Rocky I, II, or III, before he started to get weather-beaten and beaten. Butternuts were easier, but then I could never get them to taste the way mum’s used to in the days when [...]

There are none so blind as those who will not see. For some time I had wondered about the origins of ratatouille, and then I looked at the flourishing vegetable garden and saw tomatoes blooming, and chillies and peppers blushing, and garlic popping from the ground, and zucchini taking over, and finally, surveying it all [...]

Whenever you see Roma tomatoes in the market you know it is deep summer. These are the luscious variety used for thousands of years by Italians for pasta sauces. They are much denser in the flesh and seem to have less water content, and so more flavour, than the usual table tomatoes. They also ripen [...]

Eggs are hardly the food of the nineties, these days of healthy eating, but what the hell.i’m as aware as the next person that sensible eating makes for a good night’s sleep and a productive, contented life, but that doesn’t mean you dive daily into a pool of virgin olive oil, coming up only occasionally [...]