More from life
Yorkshire pudding
My mother, a Yorkshire woman, would occasionally take shortcuts in the kitchen, but not when it came to a roast,…
Chess pie
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
Yeast scares even some of the most proficient cooks. I know home cooks and professionals alike, food writers and fanatics,…
Chicken tikka masala
Chicken tikka masala has become something of a joke. When, in the late 2000s, it was topping lists of the…
Breton galette complête
When we were little we used to go on holiday to the same place in Brittany, a picturesque, quiet coastal…
Sussex pond pudding
I always feel pulled toward citrus at the start of the year. Initially it was subconscious: I’d just find myself…
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…
Boiled fruit cake
This time last year, I was disgustingly well organised. Awaiting the arrival of my first baby, with a late December…
Answers to Spot the Book Title
1. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin 2. Scoop 3. The Thirty-Nine Steps 4. Moll Flanders 5. The Girl on the Train 6.…
Christmas quiz – the answers
Verbals 1. Boris Johnson, on resigning as leader of the Conservative party 2. Liz Truss, on being elected leader of…
Christmas Quiz
Verbals In 2022, who said: 1. Them’s the breaks. 2. I know that we will deliver, we will deliver, we…
Cheese fondue
‘This dish is very you,’ my husband says, as I serve up 650g of melted, boozy cheese to the two…
Bread pudding
I am incapable of throwing anything away in the kitchen. In my fridge, there must be at least half a…
Meatloaf
Meatloaf has some obstacles to overcome: it has an unprepossessing appearance, and an uninspiring, slightly off-putting name, which it shares…
Bananas Foster
I’m a sucker for a challenge. I absolutely cannot resist a little competition. Throw down a gauntlet, and I am…
Moules mouclade
Mussels were probably the first thing I ate as a child that I knew at the time was ‘an acquired…
Burnt Cambridge cream
If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, then a Trinity or Cambridge burnt cream must taste…
Chicken pie
Laurie Colwin wrote: ‘No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is…
Apple strudel
It’s possible that, like me, your first encounter with the Grande Dame of the Austrian pastry world, the apfelstrudel, was…
Sole Véronique
One of the joys of writing about old-fashioned food is coming across dishes that are new to me, and turn…
Wine-poached peaches
I’ve never been very good at leaving things be. I tend to gild the lily. I may plan to do…
Knickerbocker glory
I grew up by the seaside. More precisely, I grew up near South Shields, on the north-east coast – somewhere…
Scotch eggs
One of the perils of being a recipe writer is that people regularly ask me why I bother making things…
