A delicious meal, thanks to Anna Jones. In the first edition of The Guardian’s Saturday Feast magazine (20 January 2018), she has a recipe which was perfect for using up food in the fridge, left over from a weekend of abysmal weather.. 800g kale (or cavallo nero) stripped off the stalks and torn into bite-size…

Of course, there are Easter traditions all round the world. My friend Trish recently gave me a packet of mahlep seeds which, in Greece, are used together with a resin called mastic (pistacia lentiscus) to flavour an Easter bread. Here we use cassia oil to flavour Easter biscuits. There is some thought that Easter biscuits…

This week (January 2018) there has been outrage that M & S should be charging £2.50 for a slice of cauliflower ‘to roast’ plus a few extras. Buy a whole cauliflower and have fun! I have just found a brilliant recipe from the pile of cuttings which I am ruthlessly editing. Thomasina Miers is always…

An exciting Christmas for us this year, spending two days in Bergen and then heading north on a Hurtigruten cruise to Tromsø. Bergen is famous for its rain which didn’t disappoint. The weather was mild until we crossed the Arctic Circle. Then it was cold and Northern Lights appeared dancing around in the night sky.…

The transformation of paprika into this vital element of Hungarian cuisine is a curious and fascinating story. Like the meeting of two people who seemed fated to fall in love, the marriage of paprika and Hungarian cooking was almost predestined. (George Lang The Cuisine of Hungary, 1985) A bottle of Hungarian wine made me promise…

Rain drove me in from the allotment and I decided to clean the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. Found a packet of butter beans close to their use by date and remembered a butter bean mash – or perhaps it was called purée – being praised on the recent series of Masterchef. Soak the…

Troika Steppes, our thoroughbred horse, has come back to Burcott for his summer holidays and will have a rest from racing until he returns to Fergal O’Brien’s yard late in the summer. Everyone and every horse was delighted to see him. Petroc, his half brother, was especially intrigued to find out who was in the…

We are now in full rhubarb season . I’m very pleased with this recipe in which the rhubarb is lightly stewed before being placed in the tart. By using the excess juice in the glaze, all the flavour is kept and the tart has a good texture.. Rhubarb Frangipane Tart Make rich shortcrust pastry using…

The Hebridean Smokehouse (www.hebrideansmokehouse.com) supplied us so well with delicacies for Christmas that we had a repeat order for Easter. Their smoked scallops are delicious! Scallops are all the rage at the moment, for us anyway, My daughter has just bought a farmhouse at Orient, on the north tail of Long Island, that lists a scallop…

A busy weekend. We have Li-Yun staying with us for her last break before’ A’ levels begin. Lots to play for as she has offers from both Warwick and Durham to study physics. On Sunday I visited my aunt in Henley. She is 101 and very frail but the carers are brilliant. Hopefully she can…