It is early February and my first true weekend of gardening. Mostly searching for bind weed in the asparagus bed but also preparing to plant a fourth row of broad beans. I was surprised to find that the wood lice hadn’t eaten all my kohl rabi. The tops are ravaged but the bulbous bits are…

It was the book’s illustrator, Carrie Hill, who introduced me to bouikos. Great to have with our impromptu local gatherings on the allotments behind our homes. An internet troll then made it clear that, as recipes go, the one from Honey & Co is the one to use. I confess that I was once sent…

I had forgotten how good keftedes are and, by using cherry tomatoes, they can be made small enough to serve with drinks. When it is to hand, crumbled feta can be added and the keftedes can be dipped in gram flour before frying to give extra crispness. The recipe is in the book but I…

A bookcase in my office had collapsed and it was a good excuse for a spring clean. Lots of old recipes stored and, of all of them, the one I wanted to cook the most was Rukmini Iyer’s recipe from The Guardian for chickpeas, tamarind and cavolo nero. The choice made easy as I happened…

Jane Grigson writes in Good Things, ‘In the 12 days of Christmas particularly, it’s worth exploiting celery, which is then in prime condition’. How true. I love celery in stuffings, soups, salads and simply, as she suggests, with unsalted butter and sea salt. Jane Grigson offers nine different salads, ranging from Waldorf to Cromwell. Several…

A friend recommended this Simon Hopkinson recipe as I was searching for an idea for a pudding to celebrate Twelfth Night. Served with vanilla ice cream, it was a huge success. A simple solution for the last meal of the Christmas season and how good that it makes no attempt to peel or core the…

I thought flapjacks would follow a standard recipe, possibly allowing for a little more richness than when I was a child, but the opposite is true. Some recipes make very much more syrupy versions and even the cooking temperatures can vary from130℃ to 180℃ or more. I started by making a batch using a recipe…

This was an inspirational last minute stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey. How did we forget about stuffing and what was in the fridge? All worked out brilliantly in the end. Oven at 180°C 2 heads of celery, washed and finely sliced1 large onion (or 3-4 shallots), skinned and finely chopped1-2 leeks, outer layers removed, washed…

My cooking apples have come to an end but there are still plenty of sweet, late desert apples to be picked. The best are the Tydeman’s Late Orange. I have discovered a whole rich seam of recipes using desert apples which sound delicious. They start with pancakes and end with dinner party cakes. It all…

My old school friend, Margaret Kelland needed a recipe for a Swedish cake. Looking through Signe Johansen’s Scandilicious Baking, I was reminded that ‘baking’ in Scandinavia mostly means biscuits, breads or sweet yeast cooking but not cakes. In the introduction to this cake, Signe Johansen calls it ‘one of Scandinavia’s most beloved cakes’ so it…