Yoghurt pot cake: the perfect sugary blank canvas
I’m pretty easygoing when it comes to most aspects of cooking. I don’t think there’s much to be gained from…
Confit: the best (and most delicious) way of cooking duck
Of all the myriad ways of preserving, confit always strikes me as wonderfully improbable. The ability to preserve meat just…
Yorkshire puddings: is there anything as satisfying?
My mother, a Yorkshire woman, would occasionally take shortcuts in the kitchen, but not when it came to a roast,…
Is there anything safe left to eat?
It’s not only junk food we should be wary of, says Olivia Potts. Pretty well everything contains additives – and our five-a-day mantra is costing the Earth
Chess pie: how to make the flakiest pastry
Chess pie was, in one sense, new to me when I started learning about it a few months ago. I’d…
Bring back the savoury!
For a while now, we’ve been living through a renaissance of classical British cooking: a whole host of restaurants have…
Kugelhopf: a reassuring introduction to baking with yeast
Yeast scares even some of the most proficient cooks. I know home cooks and professionals alike, food writers and fanatics,…
In defence of chicken tikka masala
Chicken tikka masala has become something of a joke. When, in the late 2000s, it was topping lists of the…
Baby monitors
The rise of the nursery spy app
A French revelation: how to make Breton galette complête
When we were little we used to go on holiday to the same place in Brittany, a picturesque, quiet coastal…
Cosmo Landesman has no time for feel-good-grief memoirs
The heartbroken father endlessly relives his son’s suicide, raking over every moment of Jack’s battle with depression and drug addiction
Sussex pond pudding: the perfect January pick-me-up
I always feel pulled toward citrus at the start of the year. Initially it was subconscious: I’d just find myself…
When street hawkers were a vital part of London life
Unfairly dismissed as hucksters and fishwives, itinerant traders drove the capital’s expansion for centuries, says Charlie Taverner
In defence of duck à l’orange
Duck à l’orange is so deliciously retro, it’s almost a cliché of kitsch. It seems hard to believe that there…
A last-minute alternative to Christmas cake: boiled fruit cake
This time last year, I was disgustingly well organised. Awaiting the arrival of my first baby, with a late December…
You don’t need a fondue set to make fondue
‘This dish is very you,’ my husband says, as I serve up 650g of melted, boozy cheese to the two…
Bread pudding is the perfect bridge from autumn to winter
I am incapable of throwing anything away in the kitchen. In my fridge, there must be at least half a…
What it means to be a black African in London
Since 2011, black Africans have been the dominant black group in the UK. Many of them are the descendants of…
The politics of butter
Butter was not a major part of my childhood. In fact, I don’t remember it ever being in our fridge.…
Crunch time: how to make the perfect crisp sandwich
A crisp sandwich is a private and personal endeavour. In my experience (and I have considerable experience in this particular…
The women who changed American cuisine forever
What is ‘immigrant food’? In America, the answer can be just about anything — from burritos to bibimbap to burgers.…
Why I retrained as a butcher
Why I retrained as a butcher
Will abusive chefs get their just deserts?
Professional kitchens have always seemed like pressure cookers: hot, sweaty, stressful. The caricature of a head chef is angry, sweary,…
A lesson in understanding serial killers and child molesters
True crime is having a moment: every day there’s a new documentary, book, podcast, or blockbuster film announced, detailing the…
