Tomatoes

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…

We have been wanting to experiment with goat for some years and have simply never got round to it.  That changed when we came across Moat Goats on a UK cookery programme with the ‘Hairy Bikers’. They are based in Pembrokeshire in Wales and have Boer…

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…

As much as anything this is a ‘reminder to self’!  There are so many wonderful vegetables available in the middle of summer that with or without a recipe we should grab and use them.  Here is a perfect example of that – we had a…

Having played with our Aubergine/Gnocchi and Parmigiana bake we have also played with a number of variations over the last year or so.  One of the best has moved it a little closer to a puttanesca sauce with anchovies, capers and olives, and for us…

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…

Over the last couple of years we have been eating more and more aubergine based dishes.  Usually Italian in style, they always seems to be made with tomatoes too.  When we came across this recipe in our local supermarket’s food magazine it seemed like too…

This is dish is so simple it is almost ridiculous!  It works well cooked in a domestic kitchen and even better when cooked over charcoal. The original recipe comes from our regular vegetable supplier Boxxfresh.  We have just added the odd tweak to this already…

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 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…

This week we had too many French beans to cope with and so we needed to be a little inventive!  We therefore combined some of the dishes we have tried over the last couple of decades travelling over Europe and were delighted with the outcome.…

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 ………..…

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.…

We have been playing around with a few meat free dishes, such as our slow roasted caramelised fennel dish and our roasted cauliflower with truffle oil and toasted flax seeds.  But although we like vegetarian food our experience is limited.  Finding the book “Charred” by Genevieve…

We were very lucky to be able to go back to the restaurant La Scottiglia in Pescina near Seggiano in Tuscany.  Last year, 2018, we wrote about the wonderful dish La Scottiglia that the restaurant has been named after since 1972.  This year we arrived…

Whilst I have come to love the taste and aroma fennel seeds bringto many Tuscan dishes, I have only occasionally cooked with fennel bulbs. So with some fennel bulbs to use it was time to search the internet for something simple.  This is therefore based…

For some years now we have visited a delightful restaurant in Tuscany called La Scottiglia in the village of Pescina on the side on Monte Amiata.  We have always been looked after exceedingly well there and it is a place we frequently recommend. They do…

Whilst visiting the local supermarket in Tuscany we spied a box of plumb tomatoes ostensibly for preserving. They looked lovely, and at €3.80 for 8Kg clearly too good to resist.  Inevitably, therefore, we are eating a lot of tomato based meals – and what easier…

Idly browsing through the internet in 2017 there were lots of “Over the Top” Chilli recipes appearing on social media.  The name itself drew me in!  ‘Over the top’ could just as well describe the obsession of Big Green Egg cooking as much as this…

What could be more amazingly simple than Bruschetta al pomodoro – and it both tastes and sounds so much better than tomatoes on toast too.  Perfect as a lunch or as a starter to get the tastebuds tingling for whatever you plan to serve up…