food

I have been making shortbread as a Christmas gift for many years now. I have no recollection of where this particular recipe came from, but I have always enjoyed the fact it is not too sweet and has a lovely firm crunch to the biscuit. On many...

A good meringue is cooking sorcery. To those who have watched a soufflé go from a fluffy success in the oven to a deflated plate of sadness when served, I offer my sympathy. To achieve perfection in cooking, we sometimes need to cheat. The addition...

Apologies, but this recipe does come conditionally: you will need a spaetzle maker; a little obscure, I know, but relatively easy to find and inexpensive. I bought mine on a trip to Italy prior to ever actually having made them. It was autumn, up...

Imagine a recipe you can master and then trot out in three different guises as we head back into the world of cooking for visitors at home. This may even become your new best friend as you embark on pre-Christmas entertaining. Such is the magic of...

I have made many a pilgrimage along the coast of Australia in my search for my ideal fish and chips. This quest has led me to small town bakeries and iconic beachside chippers with offerings that rarely vary from venue to venue. On the coast of...

As much as I admire rhubarb, I still think it’s a tricky beast. For a start, it has an identity crisis: it’s a vegetable masquerading as a fruit. Second, its leaves contain high amounts of oxalic acid, which is poisonous. You would need to eat a lot...

Cooking inspiration comes in many forms. Often I will have a ragtag collection of vegetables that need to be used and I simply type their names into a search engine and see what gets spat out. More often, though, I will be compelled to pull a volume...

I have always had such a preconceived notion as to what constitutes breakfast. In fact, this applies to most of my meals. Salad for dinner was certainly not on my radar, and the concept of a breakfast that didn’t include some toast or milk seemed...

Potatoes are nothing short of perfect. There is nothing they cannot do, no way they can’t be cooked, and each way is best. A perfectly boiled too-young potato, straight from the ground, is one of the sweetest things I have ever eaten. A crispy hot...