Fungi

We are enormously fortunate in having a good friend whose family has access to venison but doesn’t like it!  We therefore help out when we can!  This week we were given a piece of venison – I suspect from a roe deer.  It was a…

There are no authentic ‘Venison Bourguignon’ recipes in the same way as there are no authentic  ‘Vegetable Bourguignon’.  In food terms Bourguignon is a classic beef dish.  That has not stopped us playing with ideas for a similar tasting, but vegetarian dish.  We first published…

We first published this recipe about 18 months ago – you can find it here.  Since then we have regularly dipped in to this dish.  In so many ways I am always surprised when eating it that there is no meat!!!  It certainly doesn’t feel…

This is such a good sauce and a perfect foil for so many pasta dishes.  Not only that but it is very simple to make.  We first came across it on a pasta making course led by Theo Randall.  The course was organised by Banquest…

We recently cooked pheasant breast in a creamy parmesan sauce (see here) and commented in the last blog that the sauce would work well as a pasta sauce.  So here we are! The recipe for the sauce is largely the same as when cooked with…

This cook is based on a recipe from Boxxfresh, a UK company supplying really great fresh fruit and vegetables. They described Mole (pronounced ‘mo-lay’) as the ‘quintessential chilli sauce native to Mexico’. It apparently literally means ’everyday sauce’!   As such it is ladled over nachos, tacos, enchiladas, burritos or…

We could spend ages debating if this dish is a frittata or a tortilla – but that would miss the point of the dish!  I think of it as a frittata – but do have a look at the footnote!  We had been baking the…

This is the first of the blogs we are trying at this difficult time outlining how we are trying to make our food go a little bit further and so reduce the pressure we are putting on our food suppliers – especially the supermarkets. So…

Venison is such a lovely meat to casserole on the Big Green Egg.  The EGG seems to overcome that one problem you can have with venison – its tendency to dry out.  To be able to combine this with a seasonal ‘bounty crop’ was just…

When we were in Italy we were very fortunate to be given some Mazze di Tamburo (Parasol mushrooms).  These were found in the local chestnut groves and although we had seen them growing, our knowledge of wild mushrooms is such that unless we are with…

In 1975, the writer Shirley Conran published the book Superwoman, targeted at busy women, and with it, coined the phrase ‘Life is too short to stuff a mushroom’.  Well yes I am taking that out of context but here is an opportunity to stand that…

On a wet winter’s day it is good to remember some of our summer cooking which has inspired one of the upcoming recipes.  The summer dish was based on veal, earlier in the week we had cooked two delightful “Veal Minute Steaks” – (see here) –…

Porcini are really fabulous and I still find it very exciting to walk into a little shop here in Tuscany and see a basket of newly picked Porcini. This is something I am yet to see in the UK – but although

One of the great pleasures of Europe is chancing on simple ingredients that you would need to search specialist shops for in the UK.  And so it was in the local tiny supermarket… Porcini! At €18 per kg, around the same price per kilo as…