Hot smoked

A recent raid on our freezer turned up a 1Kg pack of pig cheeks that we had completely forgotten about.  Well time to correct this omission immediately!  I really think that pig cheeks are an overlooked resource so often just turned into pork mince.  They…

We took quite a little time to decide what to cook on the day of the Coronation of King Charles III.   Coronation Chicken entered the catering lexicon 70 years previously at the Coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953.  I suspect that our Coronation Goat…

It We need to start with two small confessions.  Firstly, we have not found an authentic Italian recipe for this dish (yet)! And secondly, we have taken longer to name the dish than it did to cook and eat it!!  Lets start with how we…

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…

This quintessential Roman dish is a perfect example of Roman food history.  This particular recipe dates from 1887 and is an iconic dish, but one probably few people know about, and certainly very few outside Italy.  In Rome, until late in the 20th century, prestigious cuts…

We have quite a number of successful ways of cooking lamb leg.  Our regular ‘go to’;  Greek lamb and roast potatoes  – is a particular favourite, but this Easter we wanted to try something slightly different.  We had came across a recipe from the delightful…

We are continuing to plan our way through the diversity and breadth of the history of ragù in Italy.  Some time ago we published our first ragù recipe from that master of Italian food;  Theo Randall (you can find that recipe here) – if you…

This dish is based on a dish from Angela Hartnett and Cafe Murano.  The original meal was described as “slowly braised lamb neck served with a light chickpea ragù.  The vegetables from the lamb braising liquor adding to the richness of the base of the…

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…

The more we look at some of the worlds great foods the more we are finding that so many have been born out of poverty, food shortage and simply the need to survive the perils of winter, looking forward to a new spring.  So we…

The first thing we bought from our local butcher after the first batch of pandemic ‘lockdowns’ was a good piece of belly pork.  This is something we have never really managed to find in our supermarket deliveries as they are just too thin and lean!…

We have cooked so much ragù on the Big Green Egg but written very little about it.  This is just because I have been overwhelmed by the diversity and breadth of the history of ragù in Italy.  So where do you start?  Well we are…

What is in a name? I often think it funny how we accept both the name of dishes and their presentation as though they are ‘original dishes’. I mean original in the sense of – always made this way.  In reality the dishes we have…

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…

Our youngest daughter has been a French citizen for more than 20 years and when I said I was going to cook a vegetable Bourguignon her reply showed the initial contempt one might expect from a French woman!  The term for the brilliant

We have probably done a greater variety of cooking this year as we have largely been confined to home during the Covid pandemic in 2020.   I have intended to use the time to do more writing for the site – but in the end…

We have written before about the glorious ‘Melanzane alla parmigiana’ We first came across it in Italy in the summer of 2017 when travelling through the Dolomites in Northern Italy.  Taste wise it was a plant based dish that absolutely took my breath away ………..…

This is a very simple reinterpretation of our earlier recipe for haunch of venison – available here. The haunch is the top of the hind leg running into the rump.  We were fortunate to be given the meat by friends who don’t enjoy venison!!  The…

In this current health crisis we have been trying to make better use of our food and make fewer calls on our food suppliers.  One area that this has worked well with is chicken.  So often an ‘also ran’ meat – but from well reared…

Just after we thought we had perfected the smoked mackerel dauphinois dish we decided to try yet another different potato!  Classically, dauphinois potatoes is made using a floury potato – but we had found the waxy potato Linda 1974 made a great tasting dish –…

The 2020 health crisis has given us time to think as well as having frightening implications on our lives.  In that thinking time we have been reconsidering amongst other things what we eat and how we prepare it.  We are trying to reduce our food…

We This is a short followup on the recipe for Roast Chicken Breast and Mushroom Stuffed Wings (here).  We had divided a large chicken as there are just 2 of us and we are trying to make our food go a little further to reduce the…

This recipe is based on an idea for a seafood pâté that we first saw on Jamie Oliver Christmas Cooking programme in 2019. It is a very simple recipe. It can be made from ingredients normally easily available in your local supermarket but we had…

This was a dish we cooked before the Covid-19 crisis hit Europe – and it is a reminder of those ‘heady days’ when we could just go out to buy meat, herbs or spices rather than having to think of the social consequences of doing…

We have been working with the idea of cooking with seasonal products as much as we can over the last year.  This is hardly a new concept, and indeed historically it was the only way to eat. This habit has changed with better forms of…

We had called into Charlotte’s Butchery to pick up some minced pork for some autumn sausage making.  One of the real joys of Charlotte’s is that in addition to fabulously consistent meat, the meat display often has something unusual to tempt you away from your…

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…

Sometimes it is the simplest of dishes that give the most satisfaction.  This is very much one of those dishes!  It is hard to better simple roast potatoes – but this is a dish that does that!.  Indeed it would be a lovely simple supper…

We have returned to this dish so often – in so many ways it has been the ‘go to’ dish of the summer!  It has also been popular with friends who have adopted the dish and have added it to their own regular cooking repertoire.…

Having been pleased at the outcome of our fried and grilled calves liver recipe, I wanted to go back and try the more conventional approach.  We had reverted to grilling the meat after initial frying as the temperature of our plancha/pan had really not been hot…