My mum is a stickler for mayo. The homemade kind. Had I not watched her make it so often I’d have dismissed it as a cheffy thing nobody really does. We tend to overthink it. We hear the word emulsify and turn immediately for the Hellman’s, but this is a mistake. The ease and time it
Crumpety pancakes, Yemenite lachuch in Tel Aviv
The first time I met Irit, she was running around her tiny hole-in-the-wall caff, blistering aubergines and squeezing oranges, chopping salad and plonking plates onto tables. All the while screeching Hebrew greetings and orders to her customers (most of whom she knew). Her long grey hair was scraped into a messy bun and she wore a
Wild greens Bedouin stew
For someone who cooks, eats, reads and writes about food everyday (and travels halfway around the world to learn about it), I am so often humbled by how much I have still to grasp. Especially so, when the answers are growing quietly wild in my back garden. This particular lesson came courtesy of forager/great cook/country
A few dusty onions
“If you ever find yourself longing to cook a good vegetable but there is none in sight, get a deep pot and dig eight to ten plain, big, dusty onions from your pantry, or the cold, dark onion bin at your nearest store. Then caramelise them.” …how Tamar Adler starts the chapter, How to Find
How to make… tahini
Tahini. That nutty sesame seed paste, and backbone to many a good hummus, can be made at home with minimal effort. It requires sesame seeds, a flavourless oil, and about 10 minutes of your time. And it goes something like this… Place at least 100g of sesame seeds in a dry frying pan. Any less will make it
Beautiful brassicas
Anyone seen the latest series of Chef’s Table? As usual, it’s bowling me over, and making me want to take to the wind again, to foreign lands and new food-inspired adventures. If you haven’t and need a place to begin, watch episode one, Jeong Kwan. The South Korean Zen Buddhist nun, who in her words
How to make… yoghurt
Yoghurt starts with yoghurt. Just a spoon of it. Then all you need are a couple pints of full-fat milk, a thermos flask and 8 hours of no work whatsover, to get you a whole big lot of it. Thick tangy lovely yoghurt. No effort, a lot less plastic and a few quid saved. My grandma would
Bean broth, made good
Bean broth, bean juice, bean liquid. Whatever appetising name you like to call it (there aren’t any), that murky liquid from a tin of butter beans or the cooking water from a tender chickpea, is liquid gold. Liquid gold! Especially, when saved for a rainy, bare-fridge kinda day. That day was yesterday. A jar of chickpea cooking
Fasting and feasting with Patience Gray
Forgive me for going on about eggs and potatoes, again. A very bare vegetable box, and a strong urge to eat all things comforting and simple are to blame. So eggs and potatoes it is. Fittingly, I’m re-reading a brilliant book by home-cook and writer, Patience Grey, called, Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalan,