The success of a meal often comes down to the smallest detail. In the accompanying recipe you will note “a small amount of clarified butter” among the ingredients. It’s a quiet instruction, yet it is pivotal to the dish being the best version of …

Some years it seems that as quickly as summer arrives, it is gone again. The promise of long warm nights has suddenly been replaced by the reality of autumn creeping in, a cold night here and a cool wind there. Then it’s hard to remember the warm nights …

Earlier in the summer I gave a friend a tour of my vegetable garden and hothouse. As she glanced across the rows of small vegetable seedlings making their brave way in the world, her gaze fixed upon the zucchini plants. A 15-metre row of small, innocuous-looking …

Heston Blumenthal translates his meticulously researched version of food from the court of King Henry VIII into his iconic “meat fruit”. The Chinese have had an affinity with ducks and plum sauce since imperial times. But a bit of cultural cringe …

The Magi. Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar. These men remind us that Christmas is not all about December 25. In our increasingly secular and commercialised society, it seems 2000-plus years of stories and traditions have all morphed into the festive extravaganza …

I like to think this recipe will make many of you “carry on like a pork chop”. It is just so more-ish that it is hard not to behave foolishly and jibber-jabber about its deliciousness, emulating the chop spluttering in a hot pan. The brine softens …

Many of us have eaten them. Either in Spain, or when we have lashed out and bought a packet of Inés Rosales tortas, individually wrapped in their instantly recognisable white and blue paper. There is something about tradition and the sense of handmade …

Eggs. They are fundamental to my style of cooking and have been a much-loved human food source since the dawn of humankind. Today, the most common egg we eat is the chicken egg. So, what actually makes up an egg? The shell, the white and the yolk, all …

Dietary requirements, food intolerances, religious decrees and plain old proclamations of personal dislikes are now all in a day’s work for anybody in the food service industry. More than ever before, hospitality workers need to be able to decode dozens …