Comfort in curry

Potato and egg. That bloody genius, comfort combination of soft, earthy starch and runny yolk, which together prove you don’t need money to eat like a king. Potato and egg are the basis of a Spanish tortilla, of course, which I first ate sandwiched between a white baguette in Valencia. A double carb-load that could not

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Breaking bread: food and community

It’s been a few weeks since I got back from this six-month trip and I’m still digesting it all. It was incredible really. Getting back to basics, living in nature, staying on farms and in eco-communities, learning from people who live completely different lives, cooking local food and eating eating eating. For the majority of

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Homemade salt and other discoveries

December was a month for firsts. I saw an avocado tree for the first time, I picked my first passion fruit (and ate it), I built my first yurt, I became a dab hand at using a circular saw and it was the first time I completely avoided the Christmas prelude – this caused a

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Pig head soup anyone?

Just a quick note to raise a glass and say hello and happy Christmas to you all! This is me pretending I’m still drinking cognac in Armenia, when really I’m sat on my mum’s sofa not doing much. Please indulge me for just a moment. Coming home from a six-month trip across the “wild east” has

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To hummus. A love letter

I knew I couldn’t leave Israel or Palestine without talking about hummus. That ubiquitous chickpea paste that is impossible to avoid in the Middle East. And it’s good here. So good! I can’t decide whether it’s the quality of the tahini, the way the chickpeas are cooked or the very specific way it’s served depending on

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Tahini biscuits, rescued

I was thinking of calling this post Why I can’t bake and possible solutions, but I thought that would be off-putting. But I’ll be honest upfront, I can’t bake. Keep this in mind when I say I made tahini biscuits today, under the very straight-forward instructions of Galia, my Israeli workaway host and mother of this little

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boiled eggs

A pot of peelings

There is no good reason to throw onion peelings straight to the compost. The robes of a humble onion serve a far nobler purpose, and that is to make boiled eggs taste (and look) better. This is a new discovery for me, and one that I learnt at my latest workaway in Israel. I’ve been spending my days with

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Fiery and fresh: a relish from Yemen

Before you shrug and scroll on, this is not pesto. This is a potent, fiery, fresh hit of a relish, and it’s from Yemen. It’s zhoug… as tricky to spell as it is to pronounce. Yemenite food is entrenched in Israel. Or I should say Yemenite Jewish food, because there is a difference. What is great

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Salvage and save

It’s with a heavy heart (read: heavy stomach) that I left Georgia this week. What an incredible, colourful country that one is. And I chose this pic because I think it epitomises the way Georgians cook and eat, reuse and repurpose so well. I took it in Tbilisi, the capital, where cooperative shops are a

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