This is a bumper edition as I’ve been away to the Lake District and Yorkshire and didn’t get round to publishing anything. I came back into the heatwave and it felt like I had been in another country for ten days. There was a quick switch from shepherds pie and sausages to cooling salads and now back again. Now I’m jet lagged in Vancouver at the start of a holiday to the Rockies. It’s eight hours behind the UK and I am finishing this on my phone. There could well be typos.

The Telegraph had results of research which show that cooking helps slow cognitive decline which I’ve made a gift link as I feel it’s so important especially for those prior who just give up and buy ready meals.

Recipes

Heatwave meals

Shopping is the key here for a quick assembly of ingredients and no oven or hob action.

I made Helen Graves’ kiwi and watermelon salad with marinated feta from her Substack, Flavour Nuggets which was a welcome change from Nigella Lawson’s watermelon, feta and black olive salad. Now I want to make Ravinder Bhogal’s spicy watermelon salad from the FT with the other half of the watermelon.

I used Westcombe ricotta Helen Graham’s harissa-dressed tomatoes with a lime ricotta from Waitrose website. Not a lot of fiddling about and an excellent taste to effort ratio.

Ottolenghi shares my views, you will be glad to hear, and in his article on simple summer entertaining in the Guardian, he wrote, ‘summertime, and the cooking is easy – or at least it should be. This is the season to spend less time in the kitchen and more round the table.’

He gave recipes for Vadouvan coronation chicken salad with lime yoghurt. He suggests making this with rotisserie chicken but I used some leftover chicken from a roast as I only buy rotisserie chicken when I’m in France. Also a mango mess with yoghurt cream and lime leaf sugar which sounds good

A quick catch up on Nigel Slater in the Observer with his recipe for grilled scallops, coriander and lemon sauce made with preserved lemon as well as his pea and avocado on flatbread and his little herb pancake made with ricotta.

Fava, roast veg and grilled courgette: the Barbary’s recipes for simple summer dips in the Guardian

The top chefs’ guide to making the perfect risotto by Theo Randall in the Times as well as his recipe for risotto with asparagus and sugar snap peas made with roasted garlic and basil olive oil.

Ice cream

As soon as the temperature rises, supermarket freezers seem to break down but I picked up a tub of pistachio ice cream from M & S as their collection point for online orders is cleverly next to the freezer which was excellent as first mentioned by Xanthe Clay in the Telegraph. Their Cornish ice cream in a rectangular box was horrible in comparison. I’ve also tried Ottolenghi’s salted, malted chocolate ice cream from Waitrose and ate half a tub of it at once; my excuse was that it was melting. When I get back from holiday, I will try and recreate this and I’m also dreaming of Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for no-churn tiramisu ice-cream from the Guardian.

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for ricotta and breadcrumb balls in tomato, chilli and basil sauce and Helen Goh’s recipe for gooseberry and almond pies, both in the Guardian

Books

There are so many cookbooks out at the moment that even this is an abbreviated list. It’s easy to be overwhelmed and I’m concentrating on the most innovative ones.

The Brownie Book by Kate Jenkins

who runs Gower Cottage Brownies giving away her recipes for the original chocolate brownie and peanut butter salted caramel brownie in the Times and in the Guardian with crispy toffee brownies and carrot cake blondies.

Istanbul: Delicious Recipes from the Heart of the City by Özlem Warren

in the Guardian with recipes for Tavuk şiş (chicken shish kebabs with roast vegetables and arpa şehriyeli pilav (Turkish-style rice pilaf with orzo)

Midnight Sun: A Scandinavian Cookbook for Long Summer Days, by Trine Hahnemann

in the Guardian with recipes for cold cucumber soup followed by a fresh and tasty tart with raw tomatoes on top of a smooth cream and crusty pastry. But

The Kitchen Book by Ella Risbridger

in the FT with a recipe for butter salmon with tea rice where you put a jasmine teabag in the rice to create a floral tea-infused stock.

Also in Nigella Lawson’s cook book corner with six hour lamb with za’atar and anchovy

And more still in Wildflower Magazine.

First, Dinner: Food for Our Real Lives by Eleanor Steafel

in House and Garden with recipes for a tray of old fashioneds with frozen baby onions, roast chicken au poivre (and chips), the ‘goes with everything’ fennel, cucumber and chilli salad and strawberry lime skillet cake

The perfect dinner party menu: cocktails, roast chicken and cake | The Independent

MEDesque by Georgina Hayden

with more recipes in the Independent including pappa al ratatouille, one-pan moussaka and a churros Dutch baby.

I have bought the book and made the spatchcocked chicken with the chorizo, tomatoes and cream last night for my younger daughter’s birthday and we all loved, especially the sauce which four of us polished off completely with plenty of cold chicken left for an ersatz Caesar salad.

The Seafood Restaurant Cookbook: Recipes & Stories by Jill and Rick Stein in the Times

an interview with Jill Stein about the first cookbook she has collaborated on with her ex Rick Stein and recipes for classic fish dishes including grilled whole sea bass with Pernod and fennel and steamed bream with ginger and spring onion

Travel

When planning our trip to Canada, despite a thorough trawl, we didn’t find much in the newspapers to help. We relied on online searches for accommodation and Lonely Planet and Rough Guides and the advice of friends. That has affected the choice of articles here as personal accounts give a lot more than can be gleaned from a generic article.

A gift link to eight glorious English churches that hardly anyone knows are there in the Telegraph as I love exploring old churches that I come across on walks.

By train to the heart of the Yorkshire Three Peaks in the Guardian

‘The Yorkshire Dales Explorer is a little-known alternative to the Settle to Carlisle rail route, and takes you deep into wonderful walking country’

The beginner’s guide to the Outer Hebrides in the Telegraph.

That’s all for now as we head out to breakfast and I have a digital detox for the next three weeks ( who am I kidding!) Coming up, the Okanagan Valley, Banff, Jasper, Whistler and maybe even whales and bears. Here’s hoping. My current view from the eighth floor of the Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver.

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives three free articles a month

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Introduction

The big news is that the new Honey and Co book, Honey and Co Daily is out this week. I didn’t have any problem thinking about what to cook as The Times did an extract of five of the salad recipes. I’ve already made three of them, starting with the grape and bean salad with fried manouri cheese, although I used halloumi. It’s the first time I’ve pulled halloumi apart instead of slicing it and I might need a bit of practice with that. Quick tip - Lidl sell manouri whenever they have a Greek week.

I found the book in Waterstones already and it’s a banger of a book with delicious, accessible recipes. For lunch today, we had melon, cucumber and prawn salad with chilli lime dressing instead of the normal omelette or leftovers and tomorrow I’m cooking whole braised chicken with mushrooms, lardon and orzo.

I’m in the Lake District next week, slogging up mountains or maybe a sedate stroll around a lake as rain is forecast so I think I’ll do a book review instead of the normal post. It will be, here’s one I prepared earlier.

Books

Honey & Co Daily by Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer

in the Times with recipes for roasted salmon salad with herb dressing, grape and bean salad with fried manouri cheese, sardine and pitta panzanella, warm greens salad with tahini dressing, Greek-inspired beetroot and yoghurt salad and crispy potato and marinated tomato salad

Centrepiece by Helen Graham in the Observer

with her instructions for making labneh and two recipes to use it, peach, curry leaf and coconut and confit tomatoes, hawaij and crispy basil

Recipes

Georgina Hayden’s quick and easy recipe for spanakopita orzo in the Guardian. This was in last week’s Guardian but not online until later and was a good way of using up half a bag of baby spinach leaves and a few other random salad leaves which might otherwise have gone to slime. (I made a half quantity)

Sue Quinn wrote about the trend for savouries at the end of a meal instead of a dessert in the Times which reminded me of when I was cooking for a deer shooting party in the Highlands a long time ago. The owner of the estate asked me if I could make Scotch woodcock. I wasn’t sure. I was envisaging having to pull the innards out of another small bird and I’d felt faint doing that to grouse earlier in the week.

He looked at me straight in the eye and said slowly, ‘can you make scrambled eggs?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said

‘It’s scrambled eggs on toast with anchovies on top’.

Jeremy Lee’s recipe is there as well as St John’s Welsh rarebit but I’m sticking to proper puddings, Willett’s at the Cadogan Hotel’s sourdough crumpets with gentleman’s relish butter and angels on horseback.

Three seasonal recipes to make the most of new potatoes by Mark Diacono in the Sunday Times, potato and red onion salad with piccalilli mayo, new potato, leek and lemon thyme flamiche and roasted new potatoes and shallots with green goddess sauce. If I hadn’t been already been busy crushing jacket potatoes to make the Honey and Co salad, I would have made those roasted new potatoes. Later in the week…

Asparagus with crab mayo in the FT and Nigel Slater’s asparagus with ricotta, herbs and breadcrumbs in the Observer as well as a seafood tart and cucumber buttermilk salad. Last week, Romy Gill had ‘Indian-style asparagus recipes in the Guardian, stir-fried with coconut, mustard seeds and curry leaves, and tossed with tamarind, chickpeas and pomegranate.’

Felicity Cloake had a masterclass on how to make arancini and Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for Mexican-style vanilla bean flan made with condensed milk looks so good, also both in the Guardian.

Travel

UK

Best walks in the Cotswolds in the Independent. I have thoughts on this, but more of that another week as I’m running out of time here.

The South Downs near Amberley in Sussex where the Black Horse pub has just reopened. The Guardian says

‘the new owners are the gourmet Gladwin brothers, Oliver and Richard, returning to their Sussex roots near Nutbourne Vineyards. Having founded five Local & Wild restaurants in London, the Black Horse is their first country pub and first place with rooms.’

Readers’ favourite beach bars in Europe in the Guardian with Dungeness Snack Shack heading the list. One of my favourite places and I have a photo just like the Guardian’s. Also 27 of the best beach bars and cafes in Europe. Well worth a look through before your summer holidays.

Europe

The Black Forest town of Baden-Baden with its booming food scene, spa traditions and revamped grand hotels in the Times.

A Tuscan road trip in the Independent where they travelled around in the Spring in bad weather

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I write this so I cook new recipes and think about visting new places and hope it would inspire you to do the same. All my photos are my own taken on the kitchen table with my phone just before we eat. I think it’s important to see photos of food that are not professionally styled and shot with the same crockery coming up again and again.

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives three free articles a month

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Introduction

A night away in the Cotswolds at Mollies Motel in Oxfordshire and a meal at the Bell Inn at Langford is one of my favourite rejuvenating things. This included a walk from Minster Lovell along the Windrush Valley and, the next day, a trip to Cirencester, followed by a walk from Chedworth Roman villa through the woods to fields of dandelion clocks.

Following the premise that a picture is worth a thousand words, this is the salted anchovy and chive flatbread, asparagus, wild garlic butter, Collea and breadcrumbs and the longhorn ribeye with Béarnaise sauce. Also in photos, the inner courtyard at Mollies and asparagus outside a lovely greengrocer in Cirencester.

Giles Coren wrote about Cotswold pubs in his review of the Hollow Bottom at Guiting Power in Gloucestershire in the Times and mentioned ‘the Bell as well as the Lamb at Shipton-under-Wychwood, the Fox at Broadwell, the Sherborne Arms at Northleach, the Double Red Duke at Clanfield, the Mason’s Arms’ as well as Halfway at Kineton and the Horse and Groom at Bourton-on-the-Hill. Also in the Times, Susan d’Arcy says you can’t beat a Cotswolds pub and also mentions the Bell. It’s never let us down.

I’m tiring of the constant stream of murder and spy mysteries on TV and was thrilled to find British Art at War: Bomberg, Sickert and Nash with a younger looking Andrew Graham-Dixon being repeated on BBC4; the first programme was on Paul Nash. It’s also on i-Player.

Books

It is the season for new cookbook releases and the one that sounds great fun to me is

MEDesque by Georgina Hayden

in the Guardian with recipes for lablabi, a chickpea soup where you add your own additions such as hard boiled eggs, pickles, olives, and capers, a one-pot moussaka cooked in a cast iron casserole, and a basil viennetta. I am now thinking of putting a casserole in the boot and cooking the moussaka when I go to the Lake District next week.

and in the Observer with recipes for a tuna niçoise baguette, with a sociable suggestion of serving with crisps and rosé wine and having friends round and a one-pan ’nduja and three-cheese lasagne

JapanEasy Kitchen by Tim Anderson in the Independent

with an interview about Japanese food and recipes for Katsu curry parmo,

He says the top five ingredients that everyone should have in their cupboard are Japanese soy sauce; Japanese or short grain rice; dashi powder, which is a stock; mirin, a rice wine; and miso.

The Malay Cook by Ranie Saidi in the Independent

with an interview about Malayan food and recipes for udang bakar air asam – grilled prawns with tamarind relish, ayam kenduri kahwin – matrimonial chicken and nasi ros buah delima – pomegranate and rose water rice

Eat Like a Greek by Marina Georgallides in the Sunday Times

with recipes for lamb souvlaki, roasted aubergine salad and lemon filo cake

Recipes

Café Cecilia’s hake, romero peppers and aioli (gift link) was one of Diana Henry’s recipes for the week in the Telegraph. I made it with cod that I bought in New Wave in Cirencester for the eye watering sum of £18 as they didn’t have hake. However, with simple yet precise cooking and the addition of a bag of salad, it did feel as if we were in a restaurant.

Nigella Lawson with thoughts on cooking for one in the FT and a recipe for spaghetti with anchovies.

The Guardian turned spring green this week with Meera Sodha’s recipe for spring rice with feta, harissa and pine nut sauce, Helen Goh’s springtime spinach sponge cake with cream cheese icing and spring soup and bean and cheese quesadillas by Thomasina Miers.

Mexican spring soup followed by black bean and three-cheese quesadilla

There were more book extracts than recipes in the papers, so here’s some from my favourite Substacks: orange and cardamom tomorrow morning buns by Ellie Steafel and her new book, But First, Dinner and prawn, avocado and cucumber salad from Licked Spoon by Debora Robertson.

Travel

UK

The Telegraph says Machynlleth, a market town could be the most underrated destination in Wales with ‘best-in-class dining, a healthy high street packed with indies and an acclaimed comedy festival,’ and a new walking trail in the Guardian. The 83-mile Teifi Valley Trail goes from the Cambrian Mountains to Cardigan Bay and is a grassroots initiative designed to revive a once-thriving area.

Europe

Notre-Dame du Mont in Marseille in the Guardian which was voted Time Out’s coolest neighbourhood in the world in 2024

The expert guide to a weekend in Madrid in the Telegraph

A family trip to Copenhagen in the Times which they call a ‘coolcation’

10 beautiful Italian beach towns tourists haven’t discovered yet in the Telegraph (gift link) as it’s such a dreamer.

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the emojis as I keep forgetting)

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Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives three free articles a month

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

I haven’t made anything from the papers this week. I was going to make a half quantity of Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for orange, grapefruit and bay jelly from the Guardian but then I decided to have a little nap instead. And then I thought I’d make Georgina Hayden’s recipe for smoky prawn, new potato and spinach stew for supper but I was getting hungry which isn’t the time to try a new recipe. We had fried prawns with garlic and salad instead as I’d already got the prawns out of the freezer.

I did make Ottolenghi’ s green harissa whipped chickpeas with roasted beetroot this week using the green harissa paste with chillies, herbs and pickled lemons from Waitrose. It’s an easy way to add flavour quickly. I used a vacuum pack of beetroot which I found out I could roast in the oven from this recipe for honey-roast beetroot from Good Food. And I roasted chickpeas for the first but not the last time.

This isn’t an advert for Waitrose but I also made the fattoush style salad with feta recently with some rose harissa I already had. I left the garlic flatbread in the oven too long; I’ll watch them more carefully next time but it was still good.

Books

It’s the clash of the titans this week with new books being published by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver but Nathan Outlaw seems to have outdone them in the PR stakes.

High Fibre Heroes by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Times

with an interview, a league table of the top twenty foods with the most fibre per 100g, (top five below) and his fibre heroes.

• Almonds 12.5g per 100g

• Dark chocolate 11g

• Pistachios 11g

• Oats 11g

• Black beans 9g

BBQ by Jamie Oliver in the Times

with recipes including romesco cauliflower, pomegranate and harissa chicken and prawn skewers and ajo blanco sauce

Jamie’s Ultimate BBQ with Weber starts on Channel 4 on May 5 at 8pm

On Fish: A Seafood Handbook by Nathan Outlaw

in the Telegraph with what everyone gets wrong about fish,

in the Guardian with recipes for haddock three ways: grilled with braised leeks in a warm mayo sauce; poached and served in roast mushroom rarebit; and smoked haddock fritters with cheese sauce

in the Independent with ‘the best alternatives to cod’ and recipes for hake and mussels in a bag, barbecued whol mackerel with smoked chilli sauce and steamed brill with a pea, shallot and cider stew.

Recipes

Pea pancakes with salmon fillet, crab and herb crème fraîche by Diana Henry in the Telegraph, (gift link). It says it’s something special for a Tuesday night but I would only do this if people were coming which probably wouldn’t be on a Tuesday.

Three easy traybake cake recipes from Skye McAlpine in the Sunday Times orange marmalade, coconut slab, and a coffee, chocolate and hazelnut slab cake.

I love banoffee pie and enjoyed the article Why we’re all going bananas for banoffee pie in the FT with some fancy variations as I also first ate it at the Hungry Monk in Jevington.

Five salad dressings to rescue bland salads by Tim Hayward in the FT including an more unusual Japanese Carrot and Ginger Dressing which sounds good, as well as the usual suspects of Green Goddess, Ranch and different versions of Thousand Island.

Grilled prawns and squid in sesame sauce from Nigel Slater in the Observer which also has an unusual looking sauce where you blend together tahini, kefir, lime, coriander and parsley and a recipe for courgettes with pancetta, haricot and green sauce. I’m not sure where he’s shopping.

Finally, a myriad of ways to stuff a cabbage in the FT

Travel

UK

Lewes in Sussex in the Observer. They say, ‘The Bloomsbury Group cemented the area’s reputation as a hub for the counterculture. These days the hip and historic Sussex town is a perfect escape for a moment of calm.’

I love Lewes and that part of the South Downs, the garden at Charleston is my happy place. My tip would be to park in Tesco’s car park which is free for three hours and you don’t have to buy anything and then walk to the High St by the River Ouse. Just follow everyone else. Is this the first time, a picture of Tesco has appeared on a travel blog as we we were there as we went for the day on Easter Saturday?

I like Caccia and Tails for lunch, or the Café at the Depot or the Flint Owl Bakery which has a café in the back if you can get a seat. Or you can always buy something for a picnic. The garden at Charleston is free although you have to pay and probably book in advance for the house.

A morning at Great Dixter in Sussex on the Rowen and Wren blog. Its part of the 2 for 1 in Gardeners’ World I mentioned last week

Europe

A lot of travel pieces this week were affilated links for expensive hotels and we don’t like those but

Why now is the time to discover Spain’s spectacular ‘Sherry Triangle, ‘the trio of Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa María is awash with charm, great food – and many a tipple.’ in the Telegraph (gift link)

Exploring Italy’s ‘forgotten’ Dolomites: ‘The same massive mountains without the crowds and

Forget Florence: six of the best towns in Tuscany to escape overtourism both in the Guardian

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Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives three free articles a month

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Introduction

Saturday

A happy weekend where I spent the afternoon cooking for friends coming in the evening and I took a quick picture before they arrived. No phones at the table. I oven cooked half a side of Chalk Stream trout in foil, * that I bought online from Rockfish and I made Diana Henry’s sauce verte to go with it but using Hellmanns. Kill me now.

Sides were Diana Henry’s leeks, goat’s cheese and spelt salad with lemon and elderflower from the Telegraph, and the addition of a few thin stalks of asparagus from the allotment (giftlink in last week’s Substack) and peas, walnuts and orange blossom water from Helen Graham’s debut book Centrepiece, with an interview and extracts in the Jewish Chronicle here. Refreshingly, she uses frozen peas. I never see fresh ones for sale.

At the last minute, I decided there wasn’t enough colour on the table, and I roasted some strips of yellow pepper and mixed them with some tomatoes.

Pudding was roasted rhubarb in blood orange juice and a blood orange and yoghurt ice cream that I made up with shortbread bought at the last minute from Sains at the garage, as one does. The ice cream was the hit of the evening but as the blood orange season seems to have finished, I’ll save that recipe for next year and remake it to test it.

I’m going to buy Centrepiece on Wednesday night when I’m going to see Helen speak at Honey and Co. with two friends who both write inspiring and creative Substacks: Jude with monthly Scrumptious Seasons, and Angie with Changing Pages. We’ll talk books and art and exhibtions with a side order of recipes and I know we’ll have a lovely time.

My annual reminder that this is the time to buy the May edition of Gardeners’ World Magazine which has its 2 For 1 Gardens card and guide and you can also download a digital guide.

* I dread giving instructions as I cook intuitively but I seasoned it, tucked the thin bits underneath, put some lemon slices down it, wrapped it in foil, and gave it 25 mins in a medium oven. Then I tipped it upside down on the baking tray and the skin came off on its own and I tipped it back onto the serving plate.

Sunday

Ate leftovers for lunch and dinner and went to an NGS opening of the garden at Petersham House and marvelled at the Anthony Gormley statue. I stood up close and noticed the bird poo anointing the head, the rain stains running down the face and the lawn clippings sprinkled on the feet. ‘How much do you think it’s worth?’ asked my husband.

There are sometimes other openings of the garden for charity so keep an eye out on the Petersham Nurseries website.

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PS Really liked In the Print at the Kings Head Theatre in Islington. Even handed, cleverly staged and witty. You realise how powerful and cunning Robert Murdoch is/was.

Books

MEDesque by Georgina Hayden in the Times

with easy cheese recipes from the Med using feta, burrata and halloumi.

This is coming out soon and the featured recipes were roasted peach and burrata salad, Swiss chard and ricotta tart, halloumi and omelette pita wrap, seadas saganaki: cheese and honey triangles, and roast courgettes, preserved lemon and feta.

Elevate: Everyday Ingredients, Incredible Flavours by Brin Pirathapan in the Independent

with an interview and recipes for sausage pakoras with mango and coriander chutney, sambal mac ‘n’ cheese and aratha de nata.

It’s an eclectic mix of Tamil food and as well as the food of his British upbringing and influence from global travels

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Recipes

Sue Quinn writes about how to choose fish sustainably and eight great sustainable fish swaps for healthy dinners in the Telegraph (gift link) and confirming that Chalk stream Trout is a good swap for salmon. You can also buy it direct from their shop, Chalk Stream foods near Romsey in Hampshire or online. I used to do the occasional Ocado order to stock up but they don’t do it anymore.

Hake baked with yogurt and tahini by Diana Henry in the Telegraph and a warm grain, chickpea and aubergine salad with saffron yogurt. (gift link)

Nathan Outlaw’s haddock recipes in the Guardian with three ways to cook it; grilled with braised leeks in a warm mayo sauce; poached and served in roast mushroom rarebit; and smoked haddock fritters with cheese sauce

Chicken and brothy peas, ‘a light bright, Frenchish dinner’ by Nick Bramham from Quality Wines in the FT which they say is a one-pan chicken thigh dish you’ll want to make on repeat.

Nigel Slater’s kitchen diary: roast aubergines, herb labne and toasted bread

Asparagus recipes in the Observer with Nigel Slater’s midweek meal of pasta, asparagus and peas and Tomos Parry’s grilled asparagus, wild garlic, brown butter and crisp egg

Travel

UK

I am already that person who has a list of seafood places in Scotland on my phone and where to find Scotland’s best seafood in the Guardian has me adding to it. A wonderful article which has me already thinking of a trip up the west coast of Scotland next year visiting unpretentious seafood starting at the Oban Seafood Hut, and then Creel Seafood Bar in Fionnphort, on Mull, and Blas na Mara Seafood Shack in Fort William, going up a few mountains along the way.

A dilemma about whether to go in May and avoid midges or wait until June and the start of the wild flower season, the Outer Hebrides in peak machair bloom where ‘its shifting blankets of red and white clover, yellow trefoil and creamy eyebright, bold against the sky’

10 of the best scenic stays in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland might help me plan and I’m going to consult my mountaineering club friends next month on our annual week’s meet-up for more advice.

Escape the crowds with a scenic £8 rail journey along Cornwall’s forgotten valley, the historic Tamar Valley Line in the Telegraph

A trainspotter’s dream: our own station on England’s most scenic railway, staying in a cottage on the Settle to Carlisle railway in the FT

Europe,

( not so much as who knows atm whether there will be jet fuel in the future)

Why Toulouse, France’s pink city is this year’s trendiest weekend break in the Times although I would fit it in to a French summer holiday.

Toulouse in southwest France has a population that’s growing so rapidly, it’s on track some time this year to overtake Lyon, as the third-largest French city. Marseille is the second.

Along Brittany’s wild coast — in the footsteps of Guy de Maupassant in the FT

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Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives three free articles a month

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

❤️ ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Introduction

I’ve been thinking about whether to acknowledge and address world events here and was inspired by Mark Diacono’s writing on ‘micropleasures’ recently on his Substack and Thane Prince discussing ‘reasons to be cheerful, finding happiness in a challenging world’ on hers.

I recognise my frustration and powerlessness coupled with my privilege and I am mindful of a quote from Tolstoy, which was once up on a wall in the local High Street. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." I do want this Substack to be a happy place to come and gain inspiration on something to eat or somewhere to go or simply to enjoy some food and travel writing.

Last year, I took a photo every day of something that gave me pleasure, printed one out each night on a micro printer, stuck it in a page a day diary and wrote about it. The mere act of noticing something, stopping, looking framing a photo grounds me.

This weekend, I did the same although I didn’t do much. The contents of the fridge were a mystery to me after a few days away and I planned some meals, cooked some things for the week ahead and pottered around. I walked my steps each day by going to the shops, doing errands and going to the allotment. In the evenings, I read Departures by Julian Barnes.

1. My husband put up two arches on the allotment, (£10 each from Amazon)

2. I put daffodils from the supermarket and muscari and bluebells from the allotment into a cigar press vase which aids my lack of flower arranging skills into making something beautiful

3. Lilac at the entrance to the allotment

4. Blossom on the way to the High St

5. More blossom on the way back from the High St

6. Cooking rhubarb in the microwave without it collapsing

7. Clematis on a fence on another trip to the High St

8. Egg mayo and anchovy salad assembled from what was in the house for lunch

9. A few spears of asparagus on the allotment

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Books

Centrepiece by Helen Graham

in the Guardian with recipes for harissa roast carrots, mango labneh and mint and hawaij roast potatoes with preserved lemon and roast shallots. I cooked the carrot recipe to rave reviews, making the labneh and the hawaij which is a Yemeni spice one day, and roasting the carrots and making the salsa the next although my picture is nothing like the one in the paper. On the success of this recipe, I’m going to buy the book.

Recipes

Biscotti di tutti by Rosie Sykes from her Instagram. These are great. I dropped some off on a friend’s doorstep in our regular baking exchange to stop eating them all. It’s a basic biscuit recipe and then you can add whatever you have in the cupboard, chocolate, mixed fruit, nuts, coconut, marzipan.

Sally Abé now has her own restaurant Teal in London after cooking for years in Michelin starred restaurants such as the Ledbury and Claridges. She has an all-women brigade. In the Times, there’s an interview with her and recipes for a cucumber, mint and yoghurt no-cook soup, locket’s savoury, which is a blue cheese rarebit with watercress, asparagus tart with shaved asparagus, radish and herb salad, mussels with Jersey Royals and cauliflower, and buttermilk panna cotta with poached rhubarb.

Grilled lamb cutlets with sumac, feta and grapes and blood orange and mint by Nigel Slater in his kitchen diary in the Observer. I have one precious blood orange left in the fruit bowl so I think I might make these later in the week.

The Barbary’s best recipes to cook at home in the Independent including their famous dips, a spinach borani, their version of lamb chops and the ‘hash pot’ which is a kind of pistachio mousse made with a custard which is then whipped with cream to make it lighter.

The absolutely best ways to cook spring potatoes by Ravinder Bhogal in the FT with recipes for squid with potatoes and paprika, smashed potatoes with crab, avocado and roe, and potato and spring onion pancakes with soy dipping sauce.

A recipe from Xanthe Clay on how to make Gentleman’s Relish at home now the original one has been discontinued

Three tiptop recipes to make the most of asparagus season, asparagus soup with poached egg and crisp onions; asparagus, goat’s cheese and black grape tart with tarragon pesto; and asparagus mimosa by Mark Diacono in the Sunday Times.

Burrata with romesco and red chilli recipe by Stuart Ralston in the Times (Scottish edition) which has reminded me to make a shortcut romesco with the half opened jar of red peppers that I have in the fridge

I am still no wiser to the Telegraph’s rationale for Diana Henry’s recipes with different recipes in the magazine as to what’s online, with already published recipes for crab in the magazine this week. I suppose it’s to drive people to take out subscriptions as if you sign up for her newsletter which is free, even if you are not a Telegraph subscriber, you get one recipe and links to other recipes online for a weekly plan. This week, there was a tribute to Skye Gyngell and a recipe in both the magazine and the newsletter but not online for asparagus with chorizo, potatoes and romesco.

Online, I liked the leeks, goat’s cheese and spelt salad with lemon and elderflower, (gift link). Someone once commented on here about that they wouldn’t read the Telegraph because of its politics. I believe in reading a whole range of opinions on different issues.

Travel

UK

Simone Brewster shares her London in the FT, Jollof, jewellery and Ridley Road Market .

The Guardian says that Northumberland’s Kielder Forest ‘has an aura reminiscent of parts of Canada or Finland. This year it celebrates its centenary with new trails and dark sky events.’

An accessible guide to Glasgow and one to Edinburgh in the Independent.

Mollies Motel has come to Manchester in the Times. I have discovered the Cotswolds by staying at the one near Faringdon. Soho House levels of comfort with comfortable beds, quality bed linen, a powerful shower and Cowshed toiletries at motel prices. If you join their mailing list, you get 15% off. Take your own breakfast if you don’t like the smell of a diner first thing in the morning, or get something from the M&S in the garage next door and have dinner at the Bell at Langford. I was there last week.

Europe

Spain majors in the Guardian

with the search for the perfect bodega in Madrid.

‘the rugged charms of Almería, Spain’s desert city. We are not like the rest of Andalucía’

Cantabria, exploring the area west of Santander,

‘On the north coast of Spain you can see some of the world’s oldest art, explore a stunning medieval village, (Santillana del Mar )then watch surfers ride Atlantic swells.’

Gravel biking in the mountains of Andalucía, (don’t think I’ll be doing that one, as much as I love being in the mountains) in the Times,

on a journey from Santander to Andalusia, a surprising coast-to-coast road trip across inland Spain where they discover ‘delightful, lesser-known towns, national parks, paradores, mountains and more. ‘

and in the Telegraph, an expert guide to Bilbao

The best road trips in Europe in the Independent

‘25 of most enticing walking holidays in Europe for this year’ in the Times

The ultimate guide to a weekend in Hamburg in the Independent

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Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives three free articles a month

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Introduction

A quick whizz around the food and travel pages today as it’s a Bank Holiday.

Yesterday, I was inveigled to make Ed Kimber’s dinner party cake, AKA double baked flourless chocolate cake as well as Angela Clutton’s slow roasted chermoula shoulder of lamb with aubergine purée. I made the chermoula spice as I’m not cluttering up the spice drawer with any more half used and stale spice blends on my ongoing ‘less is more’ crusade. There are other recipes online and doubtless in my collection of cookbooks but this is the one I used minus the garlic powder as there was already garlic in the ‘rub’ and very nice it was too. (I didn’t have garlic powder anyway).

No food pictures as the six of us were too busy feasting and don’t want to be interrupted by my demanding to take a photo while their roast potatoes go cold. Instead a rare picture of a white linen cloth on the kitchen table which only comes out on high days and holidays. The mini eggs, a yearly tradition, had all disappeared by the end of lunch and I had to replenish supplies from the jumbo bag I had bought to to eat with coffee.

Books

The Racine Effect: Classic French Recipes from a Lifetime in the Kitchen, by Henry Harris, in the Guardian

more about Bouchon Racine with recipes for baked smoked haddock, And a lemon icebox pudding which his mother used to make it and serve it with a raspberry coulis spiked with a dash of brandy or eau-de-vie.

Recipes

So many cakes this week that I would like to make, Diana Henry’s rhubarb and raspberry crumble cake in the Telegraph, (gift link), Thomasina Miers’ recipe for a chocolate and banana cake with crunchy sesame topping and salted caramel in the Guardian and a chicken pot-au-feu with wild garlic pesto and Nicola Lamb on her golden rules on how to make pastry and recipes for super shortcrust and a frangipane tart in the Sunday Times

One of our regular weekday meals is free range pork chops from Waitrose, (fried) with jacket potatoes, peas and apple sauce, all done sequentially in the microwave. My tip, make a cut in Bramley apple round its equator, put it in a bowl, cover, microwave and then scrape out the flesh for instant apple sauce with no apple peeling.

Would I be tempted by Diana Henry’s pork chops with spring onion salad and Korean dipping sauce, instead? ( gift link). Maybe at the weekend.

Some lovely citrus recipes in the Observer by Helen Graves with a citrus kosho, slow roast pork shoulder with sour citrus and Scotch bonnet, orange and brown sugar chilli crisp and dark chocolate mousse with negroni-steeped oranges. Definitely going to do those oranges.

How did I end up here? is Nigella Lawson’s first FT column with a defence of food writing and a recipe for rice pudding.

Travel

UK

An accessible guide to Edinburgh – how to spend a weekend in the surprisingly wheelchair-friendly city in the Independent.

Spring has sprung, the garden at Charleston was full of flowers on Saturday and after a sea fret lifted, we managed a good walk on the Downs in the afternoon.

The best scenic walks in the South Downs National Park in Sussex, ‘starting and ending at a characterful country pub’ and the best of English churches. in the Telegraph. I’m rationing out the gift links to last the month so see below at ways to access.

Britain’s best gardens: which historic site should win top award in the Times.

‘The sites are Burghley House in Lincolnshire, Coughton Court in Warwickshire, Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, Monteviot House in the Borders, Plas Cadnant in Anglesey and Sledmere House in East Yorkshire.’ I do love visiting a garden but have never been to any of these.

The Guardian has spring days out where I learned how Dan Pearson created the landscape design at Goodwood Art Foundation sculpture park, in Sussex. ‘

He planned 24 seasonal moments to complement the art-dotted trails through woodland, glades and meadows. This is the first spring visitors will see his graphic plantings of daffodils and bluebells, cherry blossoms and the katsura grove coming into copper-coloured leaf.’

Entry costs £15 but if you book lunch in Café 24, (seasonal lunch £35) then entry is free. I’ve booked so see you there.

Felicity Cloake finds the UK’s best bakeries in the Times including Quince Bakery, Islington, London, St Agnes Bakery in Cornwall and the Angel Bakery in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire. Best bakeries in London hotels in the Independent.

Last but not least,

Europe

The Guardian is full of articles about France. I need no convincing to go there but first in the list,

from volcanic wilds to world-class art: 10 fun and fabulous reasons to visit France in 2026

readers 'favourite trips in France,

a gastronomic driving holiday from Paris to the Mediterranean

a cruise through history on the Canal du Midi

I know travel articles are supposed to be topical but it’s a bit late for Seville at Easter with the dark history behind its Semana Santa processions in the Telegraph and Holy Week in Granada where the Guardian says the processions are among the most authentic in Andalucía. Bookmark them for next year.

A spring hike across Corfu in the Guardian

Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s essential Copenhagen in the FT. He was in Game of Thrones, if like me, you didn’t watch it.

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Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives three free articles a month

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Easter

I’ve made a decision about a meal for Easter Sunday and am making Angela Clutton’s slow-roasted chermoula lamb shoulder with aubergine cream from her book Seasoning. Our Easter Day pudding could be this chocolate cake (see below). Who knows? I enjoy thinking about it and having the prerogative to change my mind.

I like Easter better than Christmas and always slam in the lamb. One year, I made Diana Henry’s roast leg of lamb with potatoes, pecorino, basil and garlic (gift links) and here’s her perfect Easter menu.

I like the sound of Sami Tamimi’s recipes for slow-cooked lamb with spicy pickled lemon and ruz mfalfal (jewelled Easter rice) in the Guardian and if you are a vegetarian, you might like Chantelle Nicholson’s vegetable recipes for carrot crumble and sprouting broccoli with almond butter, both from the Guardian

From old issues of the Guardian, I also liked Nigel Slater’s recipes for almond and lemon shortcakes, his blood orange cake and the pine kernel, marzipan and lemon cookies.

Books

Chocolate Baking by Ed Kimber in the Guardian with tips on cooking with chocolate and recipes for ‘a dinner party cake,’ double-baked flourless chocolate cake, a blueberry and tarragon white chocolate cheesecake tart, double chocolate olive oil cookies and matcha marble cookies.

Sunshine, Lemons and Sea Salt by Donna Hay in the Times with recipes including harissa chicken and feta baked garlic bread, minted pea and toasted almond salsa tartines and lemon, courgette, asparagus and stracciatella salad. I love the title, especially when it’s still grey and cold outside.

Recipes

In the meantime, I am carrying on with using up stuff in the store cupboard and this tuna, roast pepper, tomato and white bean salad by Diana Henry in the Telegraph was brilliant for that. (gift link)

Rhubarb is in season now and Skye McAlpine gave one super simple rhubarb recipe you need plus twelve ideas on what to do with it on her Substack, the Dolce Vita Diaries. Mark Diacono also had a recipe on his Substack, Abundance, for a ginger and allspice olive oil cake with double ginger rhubarb.

David Gingell’s baked cod, tomatoes and aioli in the FT. He has three London restaurants, ‘Primeur, Westerns Laundry and Jolene, all of which specialise in bright, light British-European cooking. ‘

Skye McAlpine shares quick recipes for tagliatelle with saffron and pancetta; farfalle with radicchio, pecorino and walnuts; and four-cheese rigatoni in the Sunday Times.

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Travel, concentrating on car and train

UK

A list of the UK’s best bakeries as chosen by the Good Food Guide in the Standard. Have a scroll through and see if you agree.

Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in the Telegraph

‘This glorious Suffolk market town is finally getting the appreciation it deserves.

Tessa Hadley’s guide to Cardiff in the FT

Two days in SW Somerset by Sophie Brendel, owner of Thornfalcon Winery & Press Cider, countryside and couture in Sawdays newsletter

Wales on rails: a car-free break in Carmarthenshire in the Guardian

Henry Moore’s revamped Perry Green in Hertfordshire in the FT which they say is the perfect place to visit with children,

His studio and gardens, info here

Europe

A search for the perfect Sachertorte in Vienna in the Guardian

The sunlit Normandy that inspired Seurat in the Times in conjunction with the Seurat and the Sea exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London.

Europe’s longest urban cable car in Paris in the FT. ‘The Câble C1, runs from Créteil to Villeneuve-Saint-Georges in southeast Paris, is 4.5 km long, takes 18 minutes and connects five stations in 105 ten-person gondolas, replacing a 40-minute bus journey, and operates as part of the public transport system.

Marolles in Brussels in the Independent

Please do like and share to spread the word. This newsletter will always be free.

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives three free articles a month.

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000

Introduction

Going on the premise that a husband is for life but not for lunch, this week I made (gift link) from the Telegraph. We ate it with chunks of cold chicken one night and then, the next day, he boiled some eggs and took it for lunch to his volunteer gardening at Kew whilst I had mine at home with some goats cheese.

I have 157 notes on my phone at time of writing, in alphabetical order. I asked a friend the other day how many she had and the answer was one - a shopping list. Maybe I should write a post on how I organise my life, or maybe not.

One note is ‘Cook Easter.’ In it, are links to Gill Meller’s recipe for hazelnut and coffee profiteroles and Anna Tobias from Café Deco with rhubarb frangipane galette, from the Guardian (as well as lamb shanks with orzo). Also, Ottolenghi’s sticky date spiced carrots which I thought might go well with a lamb shoulder. I will also put that recipe in ‘Cook Carrots’.

‘Less is more’ is continuing and if I see anything online that I think I want to buy, I put the link in a note and then forget what it is and don’t want it any more. I get books out of the library; use them or lose them, is my motto, as public libraries are judged on the number of withdrawals, reservations etc.

Books

The Racine Effect by Henry Harris in the Times

with recipes for filet au poivre, slow-baked shoulder of lamb with garlic and mint jus, clafoutis aux cerises, asparagus à la polonaise, duck fat roast potatoes, and strawberries in beaujolais.

The Red Sea Cookbook by Madeeha Qureshi in the Independent

is devoted to Saudi cuisine with an interview and recipes for qahwa (Saudi coffee) and Hawaij sticky chicken wings with pomegranate BBQ sauce, mabshoor – Saudi lamb kebabs over charcoal and mutabbaq.

Peckish by Ed Smith in the Guardian

a book about chicken with recipes for garlic butter chicken balls with orzo and lemon and sage piccata.

Recipes

Three indulgent cheese recipes in the Sunday Times by Charlie Hibbert from the Thyme hotel and restaurant in the Cotswolds: sausage, spinach and smoked mozzarella-stuffed flatbreads, potato and cheddar pie, and baked chicory and ham gratin.

Easy curry recipes from the chef of the Tamil Prince in London in the Times including paneer butter masala, Thanjavur chicken curry and prawn varuval.

Georgina Hayden’s crab recipes in the Guardian, with crab cake banh mi with quick pickle, lemon and pepper crab carbonara, tenshinhan (crab omelette with steamed rice), hot cheesy crab and chive dip ‘n’ chips and crab and asparagus glass noodle stir-fry.

In the Observer, Nigel Slater’s kitchen diary includes a sticky fig pudding

The FT had an egg issue.

Travel

UK

The 50 Best Places to Stay in the UK for 2026 in the Times ‘that are worthy of a weekend break. This year’s list celebrates the very best new hotels as well as old favourites with something fresh to say.’ It includes Updown Farmhouse in Kent ,where we stayed last September for our wedding anniversary. Verdict- our room, one of the garden rooms, was tiny, the weather was awful so we didn’t swim in the pool, but the food and service were excellent.

Exploring the Northumberland Coast Path as well as Barters Book in the Independent is my idea of heaven with the sea, hills, books and not far from where I was born, in Newcastle upon Tyne. Although my mother, who came from Morden in Surrey, loathed the cold east wind.

How to spend 24 hours in Marylebone, London’s most stylish enclave, in the Independent

Walking in Beinn Eighe in the Highlands of Scotland and on the Welsh borders in the Guardian

Europe

What is Interrailing? Everything you need to know about passes, routes and more and the best budget European affordable sleeper train journeys to take in 2026, in the Independent.

Lily Collins’s insider guide to Paris in the Standard

This made me think again about travelling. You don’t have to stay at the Hotel Bristol as Lily Collins does but you can wander around the Marais, along the Canal St Martin and have a picnic in a park. It hit me when we took a trip to Portofino from Santa Margherita on a tourist boat on my birthday years ago. We were surrounded by private yachts idling in the Mediterranean but I realised it was the same sea we were sailing in and we were looking at the same views.

Ireland’s 100 best restaurants for 2026 from John McKenna and Sally McKenna in the Times. Another one to keep in the Notes section of my phone.

Why Trieste is one of Italy’s best food cities by Rachel Roddy in the Guardian. This is part of a new series, ‘Eat your Way Around’ and I am looking forward to more.

and a bacaro crawl of Treviso, ‘Venice’s elegant, under-the-radar neighbour’ in the FT.

Exploring Menton, where the French and Italian rivieras meet in the Guardian

The best things to do and places to eat in Jerez de la Frontera as well as the best things to do in Elche, which is 12 miles from Alicante, both in the Independent

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives a certain number of free articles

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Introduction

My word of the year is less. This includes less buying of ‘stuff’, less meat, less buying of random food ingredients which I’ll only use once for a recipe, less food wastage which has led to my first ever weekly meal plans, less in the house meaning a gentle but constant declutter, and less time on my phone. On that last one, the verdict so far is ‘could do better.’ I will report back.

My original idea was to do a comprehensive press cuttings bulletin of food and travel from the papers, as I did every day in one of my first jobs on health policy. I wanted to cook a new recipe and take a quick and simple photo on our kitchen table before we ate it.

Since I started, the nature of the recipe columns have changed. Diana Henry now has a weekly Telegraph newsletter, free to anyone who signs up. The main recipe in the newsletter is in the Saturday magazine but I haven’t found it online. A lot of the of three other recipes in the Saturday magazine have been previously published and are different from the rest of the recipes in the newsletter which are online and might also have been previously published. I don’t know if that make sense but hey ho.

The Guardian drip feeds the recipes online from its Saturday food magazine throughout the week. I don’t find the The Times content interesting apart from on Sundays and the Independent seems to concentrate on book extracts. Nigel Slater’s recipes are now behind a paywall in the Observer although I’ve found some of those recipes previously published on the Guardian website before the Observer part was bought by Tortoise. The FT sometimes has excellent recipes and articles but this week, the main recipe was hummus and I expect we’ve all got our own tried and tested way of making that.

What to do? I’m doing a catch up this week but in future, I’ll be judiciously selective and Monday lunchtime is my cutoff point In this case, less is more.

Yesterday, my younger daughter, Lucy, cooked lunch. It was like having a private chef arriving at the house as I chose the menu and then only had to lay the table. The dessert was this pistachio pavlova with rhubarb and lemon curd from Charlie Hibbert in last week’s Sunday Times with lemon curd but made in the microwave from Delia Smith’s recipe in her seminal book, Complete Cookery Course which is slightly different from the one now online. (There was also a treacle tart and an elegant looking chocolate mousse with hazelnut thins in the Sunday Times). The main course was roast chicken, with Ottolenghi’s roasted leeks with crème fraîche, hazelnuts and sumac, broccoli and Lucy’s inimitable roast potatoes. Btw, Ottolenghi’s first recipe out of the two on his weekly Substack, is also published on his website

Three of us went to Honey and Co Daily in Store Street for lunch recently, and ate the most delicious and well-priced food, which I hope you can see from my quick snaps: slow roasted lamb shoulder with plums and roses and sourdough bread, chreime - sea bass braised in rich tomato stew with fennel and zehug and pastilla, braised chicken and dates and sweet spices in a crispy filo pastry. I can’t wait for their new cookbook, Honey & Co Daily: Easy Food for Your Everyday Pleasure to be published in May, when I will forget my book buying ban and cook all the way through it.

Recipes

There is rhubarb on the allotment including some my husband forced by putting a bucket on top of some growing stalks. When he brought it home, it was more exciting than giving me a bouquet of flowers, not that that’s a regular occurrence.

As well as the pavlova, I have made Angela Clutton’s rhubarb upside down cake with blood orange and cardamom curd, and a Honey and Co rhubarb and orange ricotta cake based on their strawberry ricotta cake recipe after buying one there to take home. I put the rind of an orange in the cake batter and sticks of the forced rhubarb on top and cooked it for about 50 minutes. It was one of those scenarios where I kept opening the oven door to see if it was done, so it could have been longer as the oven kept losing heat

Mark Diacono has rhubarb recipes in the Sunday Times, a rhubarb, ginger and oat cake, a rosemary, orange and rhubarb pudding and a rhubarb salsa and Flora Shedden has rhubarb and yoghurt cup cakes on the Rowen and Wren website. I do want to try some more savoury rhubarb recipes, maybe Anna Jones’ rhubarb, feta and potato tray bake, a lentil and rhubarb curry or a lamb and rhubarb stew. One will be on this week’s meal plan so read again next week.

Tim Hayward had a fantastic article in the FT, (free link) on ‘the winter-defying joy of perfectly layered potatoes’ with a detailed guide on cooking Dauphinoise, Pommes Anna and other laminated delights. I’ll save making one of those until Easter or there won’t be less of me, another putative aim.

Helen Graves had an orange and brown sugar chilli crisp in the Observer

In the Guardian, Meera Sodha’s recipe for pav bhaji, Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy crispy baked gnocchi puttanesca ‘that pilfers all the best parts of puttanesca, sploshes them on gnocchi, smothers them in mozzarella, breadcrumbs and parmesan, and crisps it all up under the grill.’

Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for coffee and walnut cookies in the Guardian from a couple of weeks ago that I did make and that we all liked, as they are not too sweet but chewy and somehow more sophisticated. One to make again but next time I’ll make them smaller and then probably eat two at once!

Books, (a bumper round-up)

The Greatest Traybake Cookbook Ever by John Gregory-Smith

with recipes in the Times including harissa salmon with crispy lentils and garlicky yoghurt and quick-fire chimichurri salmon. I would make with Chalkstream trout that I buy in packs from Ocado a few at a time and then freeze.

Also in the Guardian with recipes for ‘Mediterranean chicken meatballs with feta and black olives, Persian-style saffron chicken and rice, and a garlicky, Korean-inspired chicken and potato traybake.’

Jeremy Pang’s Chinese Kitchen in the Times

with recipes for salmon in XO sauce, rustic prawn toast, egg-fried rice and Singapore noodles and in the Guardian with recipes too for the Singapore noodles and also Sichuan chicken.

Quick Wins: Healthy Cooking For Busy Lives by Ella Mills in the Independent

which she wrote ‘to make mealtimes swifter, easier and more nutritious’ with recipes for chunky chickpea and lentil soup with tahini and tomatoes, creamy white bean and mushroom orzo risotto and pulled aubergine tortillas with crispy roasted cabbage.

The Ramadan Kitchen: Nourishing Recipes from Fast to Feast by Ilhan Mohamed Abdi in the Independent

with an interview and recipes for aromatic Somali rice, Somali dinner rolls and a Somali chai tres leches cake.

Rice: Make Rice the Heart of Your Table with Recipes from Malaysia and Beyond by Ping Coombes

with tips and tricks on how go cook rice and recipes for sweet-and-sour pork with pineapples, crispy Bangkok eggs and baked honey and soy chicken rice.

Gennaro’s Hidden Italy by Gennaro Contaldo

in the Independent with an interview and recipes for stewed squid and potatoes, pasta with anchovies and breadcrumbs and an apricot jam filled brioche.

Weeknight Vegetarian by Joe Woodhouse

in the Times with three recipes for speedy vegetarian suppers, lentil cottage pie, fried potato omelette with blue cheese, and stir-fry refrigerator fritters.

Travel

UK

20 great British pubs according to writers in the Telegraph including a new one, the Trevor Arms in Glynde in Sussex, Botley Hill Farmhouse in Warlingham in Surrey, and the Tinner Arms in Zennor, Cornwall.

A car-free trip along County Antrim’s dramatic coast where you can see the Giant’s Causeway in the Guardian.

Europe

Felicity Cloake searched for the best croissant in Paris in the Times

Zoning in on Ménilmontant, Paris, the area on the hill between Belleville’s Chinatown and Père-Lachaise cemetery, in the Guardian

Charente-Maritime by Carolyn Boyd in the Guardian, the region ‘just north of where the Gironde estuary meets the Atlantic and around an hour south of the region’s more famous resorts of Île de Ré and La Rochelle’ with wide sandy beaches and amazing seafood.

Also by Carolyn Boyd, in the Guardian, Provence in bloom in the pre-Spring. Save it for a trip next year as possibly a bit late now.

Rouen, ‘the French city with a rich food scene.’ in the Times. I know it from Monet’s paintings and have never been to the centre but coincidentally, a friend told me that I would love the market there.

Jerez de la Frontera is this year’s Spanish capital of gastronomy; the gourmet city in Andalusia that locals want to keep to themselves in the Times.

Looking for the the perfect Danish pastry in Copenhagen in the Guardian

Ending this quick and random selection of travel links, with a local’s guide to Milan in the Guardian, as we actually went to Panificio Storico Vailati on Via Vitruvio on New Years Day as we happened to be walking past from the main station to Casa Broggi, where we stayed, and I have a photo to prove it. It’s a bit out of the way of the centre though.

Back to normal service next week but in the meantime, please do like with a heart and share. I write this for fun and to give inspiration and it will always be free.

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Introduction

This is a bumper catch-up of food, cookbooks and travel. I haven’t done one of these for a while as I felt I was producing too much food content and I was on my phone all the time. My word of the year is not going to be ‘analogue’ but I have thought again about my original aims which are: cooking seasonal recipes that are new to me and then taking a quick photo, as well as exploring new places in an affordable way.

Coming up, there will be less but more of the same, if that makes sense plus more about what I’ve read, where to buy good food and being out, whether it’s in an art gallery or up a mountain. in London, the UK or abroad.

A lot of press content is now paywalled and/or not put online until much later than it has appeared in print, making writing this newsletter time-consuming and complicated. Instead, I’m going to add in links from other sources rather than rely solely on UK newspapers.

I read an article by Oliver Burkemann in the Guardian about how being happy in 2026 is simpler than you think where he quotes the American theologian and civil rights leader Howard Thurman, (probably paraphrased):

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Books

I find the extracts of recipes printed in the press are an excellent way of seeing if you would like to buy a book or not and, from now on, will endeavour to include recipes from other sources.

Winter in the Highlands by Flora Shedden in the Guardian

with recipes for fig and hazelnut crumble mince pies, sherry and raisin ice-cream, and chocolate pear meringues

I was given this book for Christmas and can see myself cooking lots from it over the winter. I’ve made the roasted squash and apple soup, and although I’ve found butternut squash soup recipes bland in the past, by roasting the veg with sage apple cider vinegar and adding the garnish of sage leaves, pumpkin seeds and breadcrumbs made it, to quote my husband, ‘really, really tasty’. I took Mark Diacono’s advice to use good vinegar and bought a bottle of Kew Gardens apple cider vinegar from their shop. It’s made by Odysea.

The Irish Kitchen by Cherie Denham & Andrew Montgomery

with brunch recipes in the Times for smoked trout and spinach baked eggs; banana and oat pancakes with caramelised apples and yoghurt; and farls with roasted mushrooms

and in the Gloss for honey and mustard ham with cranberry and apple compote, on Cotswold Flour website for potato and apple bread, and on Nigella Lawson’s website for boxty with cabbage and bacon.

I bought this well before Christmas but decided to save reading it until afterwards. I will write more about it .

The Sportsman at Home: Flavoursome Recipes for Nostalgic Eating by Stephen Harris

in the Times with recipes including lamb with couscous, sardine pasta and pork chops with leeks,

more in the Observer for Christmas

tangerine tart on Nigella Lawson’s website,

and in the Independent with recipes for proper cream of mushroom soup, a baked potato fish pie and a classic pear and Roquefort salad

Recipes

Dusty Knuckle persimmon and blue cheese salad in the FT. The hazelnuts fried with rosemary were excellent and it made a change from my normal version with pear and walnut at this time of year (picture above).

Diana Henry’s ultimate lazy pudding recipes for winter (gift link) in the Telegraph which included a stove-top rice pudding with Marsala fruit, which I made but we ate it all before I had a chance to take a photo. Also, a toffee apple self-saucing pudding based on a recipe by Ravneet Gill which I do want to make, which is in the same style as the lemon pudding which separates out to sponge on top and curd underneath such as Thane Prince’s baked lemon pudding from Delicious.

The Guardian have collated some of Ottolenghi’s old recipes in the Guardian with ‘recipes to spice up your winter’ including one-pot chicken with orzo, porcini and cinnamon, roast pork belly with apple soy and ginger and charred shallots cooked in freekeh.

Other reading

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

My younger daughter had got this out the library and I read it too while she was here for Christmas. I asked her what she thought and she said, he eats a lot of pasta, he films Conclave and he has meals with a lot of famous people but doesn’t say anything about them. It turned out that I agreed and so did the Guardian in this review.

The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial by Chloe Hooper, Helen Garner, and Sarah Krasnostein

I am currently ploughing my way through One Day I'll Remember This: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner and I thought I’d read this as a diversion about the Australian, Erin Patterson, who murdered three of her relatives by serving them Beef Wellington made with death cap mushrooms. I found it hollow at the centre, which was not necessarily the author’s fault as it didn’t answer the question of her motive and what has since happened to her children and her husband.

Travel

UK

Southwold and the Suffolk coast in the Guardian. My friends ask me why I like Suffolk so much as it’s so flat and they know I love being in the mountains. It’s the big skies, being by the sea and the excellent food.

Hidden gems to visit in London in the Standard, a timely list of places to go to this year.

Europe

A travel guide to Salzburg in the Telegraph

A city guide to Berlin in the Standard

Milan

It’s always been a family habit, long before the advent of AirBnb, to go on a trip between Christmas and New Year and stay in a self-catering flat. In the past, we’ve been to Venice, (three years running as it was such a success) to Malaga and Edinburgh, to name a few. Now it’s just my husband and I, and this year, we went to Milan complete with minimal luggage, teabags and a lump of Christmas cake.

We stayed in Casa Broggi which we found via the Sawdays website which was comfortable, warm and cosy and I would recommend for any time of year. There is also a smaller apartment (Little Broggi) but that was already booked.

Here are some quick points that might be useful if you are planning a trip:

• You can’t see Da Vinci’s Last Supper without going on an organised tour as tour operators buy up all the tickets as soon as they go on sale. We booked a tour, ‘Milan Duomo & The Last Supper Skip-the-Line Small Group Milan Walking Tour’ through Viator.

• The Piazza del Duomo has a large screen for showing the Winter Olympic games due soon and a shop for merchandise which unfortunately obscure the traditional view.

• We went to the Piazza del Duomo for midnight on New Years Eve but the official fireworks at the Castello might have been better. The Piazza itself is cordoned off, it was very crowded and a lot of firecrackers were being set off. The Metro stopped running and roads were blocked which meant I’d done 6k steps by 1am walking home.

• We were advised that everything would be shut on New Years Day so we went to Como on the train. We booked tickets online beforehand for €10 each plus tax which was much cheaper than buying them at the station. The Milano Centrale Station is an incredible building.

• You can only book boat trips at Lake Como on the day and everything to Bellagio and Varenna had sold out by the time we got to the ticket kiosks at 10.25. We went up the funicular to Brunate for the most beautiful views.

  

• We flew with BA from Heathrow to Milan Linate and then got the Milan Metro to the flat. You pay as you go on the Metro with your credit card, which was very easy.

• It was very cold and we wore thermals and lots of layers.

• San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore was stunning and my favourite place

  

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PS

I have had to wash it off now, but I did stand on a chair before Christmas and draw this on the front window copying this design by Sostrene Grene and using their metallic brush pen. I did buy chalk markers too but they didn’t work. Who knows why?

I was very proud of myself and made everyone who came to the house go back outside and look at it before they came in. Please do congratulate me on my artistic endeavours in the comments or simply like this post.

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Introduction

I thought this morning that it’s the decisions that make me feel anxious at this time of year. What presents would people like ? What to wear to a party? What to cook? If I don’t buy this by Cyber Monday, am I going to have to pay double?

At my age, you might have thought I would know better pronouncements in the media about what you should and shouldn’t do. You must buy this. Don’t wear that. Keep your tree up till Twelfth Night.*

Then I realised the next month is about waiting, about reflecting and Christmas is about traditions our family has created over the years. Advent plates, make a wreath, Delia’s mincemeat where I add glacé cherries and cook in the microwave, crab from the Crouch End London fishmonger on Christmas Eve, a carol service. I don’t need to know everything else right at this moment.

*Our tree is going up next weekend and coming down in that bit between Christmas and New Year, I can’t bring myself to say Twixtmas. By that time, we’ve had enough.

I went on a wreath making course once at a NT property with a friend and they gave us a chicken wire ring base which my husband has just tracked down behind the compost bin in the garden. Now my friend comes round with her base and we make them together. There’s no magic or skill required . We just poke bits in and enjoy the jeopardy when we open the front door and a bit has fallen off. This year, I bought more chicken wire from Amazon as my elder daughter wants one as well and then she will be able to do her own in future. I forage from the common in the muddy bit where no one goes, pick bits from the garden and use Christmas tree trimmings

.

I’ve been using up stuff in the freezer this week, boxes of breadcrumbs, egg whites, three odd sausages and a box labelled Easter 2025 lamb. I had no idea what it was and my daughter said have a look at your photos and it turned out to be Diana Henry’s roast leg of lamb with basil, pecorino, garlic and wine. I did make Georgina Hayden’s spiced chicken meatballs with orzo and grated halloumi and would do so again but it was too dark to take a photo.

Books

We are getting onto diet cookbooks and it’s only the first of December. Imagine if you got given one on Christmas Day when you’d had chocolate for breakfast, and then looking forward to stuffing yourself all day long ? What would they be trying to tell you?

Rick Stein’s Christmas by Rick Stein in the Times

with recipes for prawn cocktail with malt whisky where he says ‘Islay malt whisky, gives the prawn cocktail a subtle aftertaste of open log fires,’ grilled langoustines with Pernod and olive oil dressing, gravlax with mustard and dill sauce, salmon in puff pastry with tarragon sauce, roast turbot with hollandaise sauce.

Finally, a semifreddo cheesecake with clementine and Campari syrup which can be made in advance. I am hereby giving notice to my family that I’m going to make it for Christmas Eve along with a festive fruit salad. Decision made.

Protein in 15 by Joe Wicks in the Times

with an interview and recipes for lentil, chickpeas and broccoli with halloumi, pork chops with mash, beans and greens, Thai-style seafood broth with egg noodles, smoky chicken pasta bake and meatballs, minty lentils and feta

The Fast 800 Favourites by Dr Clare Bailey Mosley in the Independent

with an interview and recipes for a chorizo omelette, a spicy salmon and butternut squash traybake and a Persian love cake

Recipes

I’ve left out all the ‘how to make a Christmas dinner’ and ‘what to eat on Boxing Day’ as I reckon you can find that information anywhere.

Mark Hix’s festive fish recipes in the Telegraph including whole roasted stuffed sea bass with chanterelles, roast stuffed monkfish with chestnuts

Matthew Ryle’s Christmas roast capon with chestnuts, buttery pommes Anna, and twice-baked cheese soufflé as well as Meera Sodha’s recipe for Christmas aubergine and rice timbale in the Guardian. I’ve never made a timbale or a twice baked soufflé although cheese soufflé is often our Monday night meal. This could be the year.

Diana Henry has lovely festive recipes in the Telegraph but on Instagram she says they are going to be online later in the week, so I’ll mention them in the next newsletter. I might even have cooked one by then.

Three Irish Christmas recipes in the Times, gingerbread snowflakes by Cherie Denham, pork apple mustard sausage rolls Scéal Bakery and Brussels sprouts slaw by Una Leonard.

Nigel Slater’s midweek treat in the Observer is baked pears in spiced cream and there was an apple and cardamom cake at the weekend

Travel

What we did on our holidays in Paris is going to come later as otherwise this will never get published.

UK

A walking trail around the South Hams in Devon in the Independent. I think I would just stick to the coast path. Or a a wintry weekend break in Croyde in north Devon in the Guardian.

The Pennines’ new Roof of England walk in the Guardian which could be windswept but a lot less crowded than the Pennine Way. ‘It’s a huge area between Hadrian’s Wall and the Yorkshire Dales that people don’t really know.’ and the writer says, ‘the ever-changing skyscape of rainbows, storm clouds, sunrises and stars on the roof of England.’

Europe

‘Museum theory’: a three-point plan to improve a cultural city break in the Times

The first tenet of museum theory is that you should never visit more than one per day. Don’t try to take in everything, research what you want to see ( last minute by looking at the postcards in the shop if need be ) and plan your meals ahead of time.

Someone in the comments said, ‘If you have to go to the postcard stand to choose what to see, you should not be there in the first place. Don’t get in the way of people who actually want to see what is in the museum.’ They sound like a bundle of fun.

Exploring Portugal beyond the beach with a series of walking festivals and cultural programmes aim to lure visitors to the Algarve’s woodland interiors and pretty villages in the Guardian

A gastronomic journey in south-east Spain centred on Alicante in the Guardian

Greenland on a shoestring in the Independent

A trip to Legoland in Billund,

7 of the best places to visit in Finland in 2026

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives a certain number of free articles

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Or use Archive.ph

I have just been in Paris for a whirlwind three days and haven’t cooked anything from this week’s papers, which was part of the point of this newsletter. Tant pis. Here is some autumnal produce from the Marché Aligré instead. We are in a liminal space, where it’s not yet Advent and Christmas but the papers are full of festive recipes as well as the dreaded gift guides.

Books

The Irish Kitchen by Cherie Denham and Andrew Montgomery (Montgomery £30) in the Sunday Times

with recipes for boiled bacon with parsley sauce, shin of beef in Guinness with herb dumplings, and Dublin coddle with black bacon

This has been published independently by the authors though Montgomery Press. I have bought it becaue I didn’t want the print run to run out and was saving it till Christmas as a present to myself. It is stunning.

James Martin’s Saturday Morning Cookbook by James Martin in the Times with recipes for Six quick hosting recipes for winter

Beef pie, Thai pot roast chicken (from his friend Si King), chicken, chorizo and bean stew, green curry with seabass and lemon posset.

Something from Nothing by Alison Roman in the Guardian

with recipes for brothy vinegar noodles with mushrooms and sesame, and weeknight lamb ragu with anchov,y and her viral caramelised shallot pasta which I do remember making once.

Recipes

Georgina Hayden’s Greekish recipes in the Observer for spiced chicken meatballs with halloumi orzo where she says, pasta topped with salty, grated halloumi is a glorious thing. This is what I would have cooked, had I not been away. Come back next week to see if I did.

Also seafood arayes with ‘tartarziki’, the love child of tzatziki and tartare sauce.

Also a festive roast loin of pork with pears by Nigel Slater in the Observer

Six alternative Christmas lunch recipes by Jeremy Lee in the Times with glazed ham, guinea fowl, bacon and porcini pie which has a suet pastry, persimmon, beetroot, winter tomato and pomegranate salad, Potato, celeriac and herb gratin, potato pancakes, smoked trout, horseradish and dill and mini potato pancakes. Finally, clementine curd tarts where he puts a spoonful of Jersey cream and a roasted almond on top

There were towers of persimmons everywhere in Paris and I also want to make Jeremy Lee’s persimmon, beetroot, winter tomato and pomegranate salad. He says, ‘it’s a delightful bold and bright salad with much tang, as lovely to behold as it is to feast upon. When in season, blood oranges add even more colour.’ I looked for a photo, can’t find a persimmon tower, but there are some mandarins balanced on a box.

The chefs’ best Christmas recipes in the Times including Gordon Ramsay’s pan-fried duck breast with spiced orange and cranberry sauce, Rick Stein’s smoked salmon kedgeree and Alice Waters’ panforte.

Helen Goh’s cranberry, orange and ginger upside-down cake in the Guardian and from last week, Ravinder Bhogal’s recipes for warming winter pies, a flu-fighting’ filo chicken pie, coconut and curry leaf fish pies and supergreens and cheese pot pie

Travel

UK

20 of the UK’s best town and country hotels – chosen by the Good Hotel Guide in the Guardian including my favourite, the Beckford Arms. We have now stayed in all four of the Beckford Group ‘places,’ over the last couple of years, collected a stamp in each and now have a free night to stay in one of them. I’m not sure whether to call them a hotel, an inn, or a pub but we’ve had an excellent welcome at all four, a tastefully decorated room, and delicious seasonal food at a reasonable price. They show the value of well trained, helpful staff who demonstrate the meaning of hospitality.

Europe

I know there’s nothing about Paris in this week’s papers but you must agree, this is a lovely photo of Paris in November where there were still a few leaves on the trees.

A guide to Berlin in the Standard which has useful recommendations for hotels, restaurants and coffee spots as well as galleries and nightclubs. One to bookmark.

This week, the Observer are ‘just visiting Athens.’ For the sake of completeness, last week they went to Bologna, ‘for an amazing weekend in the red city’ and I missed out.

The Telegraph has a complete guide to Stockholm.

Readers’ favourite unsung places in Italy in the Guardian which are some very tempting places to stay

Murcia, southeastern Spain’s unexpected foodie city in the Times. ‘Fans of pies, anchovies and local wines will have a feast in the regional capital, an underrated alternative to Valencia with 300 days of sunshine a year.’

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Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives a certain number of free articles

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Or use Archive.ph

Introduction

Christmas has started in the papers and all I have done is order paperwhites from Farmer Gracy. I have a rule that I don’t think about Christmas until after Remembrance Day apart from working out where we are all going. I am aware that it can be a tricky time of year. I lean into the parts of Christmas that I like and attempt to ignore those parts that I don’t.

Traditionally, we have had a family theatre trip, sometimes booked through Official London Theatre for January when not so much is happening. Sales started today for MasterCard holders then next week for everyone else. An excellent article is in the Telegraph about how to book theatre seats for less. (gift link).

Following last year’s success of nail varnish painted acorns to adorn the Christmas table, and gold spray painted leaves to decorate the tree outside our house as part of our street-wide effort, I am now saving tomato purée tubes (turned inside out so it shows the gold) to make Christmas decorations, much to everyone’s amusement, including my own. I’ll let you know how it goes.

This week I had friends for dinner and made Thomasina Miers’ roast chicken stuffed with tomato rice and smoky oregano butter. Looking back at the recipe, I didn’t put any of the rice mixture inside the chicken but cooked the chicken on top of it and everyone loved it. No photos as it was dark. Preceded by Helen Goh’s chilli cheese biscuits with drinks and followed by her apple, blackberry and yuzu crumble from her book, Baking and the Meaning of Life.

I have been waiting for articles from Observer Food Monthly to go online but rather than write about them with nothing to click on, I will wait until next week.

Good Food has the results of its Christmas Taste awards, and Olive has theirs too. The writer, yes, she is a relation, tells me that supermarkets may submit different products to each magazine. I am off to buy a Christmas pudding from Sainsburys.

Books

James Martin’s Saturday Morning by James Martin in the Independent

with an interview and recipes for Welsh rarebit with bacon and chutney, beef pie with star anise carrots and sticky toffee pudding with miso caramel sauce and clotted cream

Something From Nothing by Alison Roman in the Times

with slow roast recipes for beef chilli, lamb and potatoes in white wine, slow-roasted salmon with preserved lemon, roasted fennel and capers, long-cooked potatoes, garlic and lemon and a very good tomato sauce.

Recipes

Ben Tish’s Christmas recipes in the Times with burrata, quince and honey on toast and devilled eggs with anchovies and parmesan to start with. Then roast beef rib with lemon, anchovy and thyme crust, served with roast Brussel sprouts with crème fraîche, walnuts and preserved lemon butter and Sicilian sweet and sour carrots with pine nuts and raisins. I’m thinking that if you served this all together, it would be a lot of flavours on one plate

A squash, chestnut and brown butter risotto, maybe for the vegetarians ( but why do they have to end up with a risotto) and to finish, a chocolate and chestnut cake with cinnamon chantilly

And coming around again today, probably in print at the weekend, top Christmas recipes of the decade in the Times. I’ve found some of them elsewhere, Delia’s Warm Roquefort Cheesecake with Pears in Balsamic Vinaigrette, Jamie Oliver’s winter ice cream bombe. Nothing will persuade me to eat Hugh FW’s creamed sprouts with bacon, no matter how much he says they will convert the sprout hater. Why do chefs get evangelical about persuading everybody to eat sprouts when they don’t do the same about mushrooms or bananas?

Nigel Slater in the Observer with a midweek supper of sweetcorn and marrow fritters that you could make with courgettes and served with a simple tomato sauce and grilled miso chicken with soy and lemon potatoes for the weekend and then, as I am so late, another mid week treat of soft miso and walnut cookies.

Mark Diacono with recipes for huevos rotos, fried sage eggs on toast, and huevos rancheros in the Sunday Times

Diana Henry has mood boosting soups in the Telegraph with Estonian chicken soup with caraway dumplings, pumpkin and coconut soup with hot-sweet sour coriander dressing and Greek-inspired soup of greens and potatoes with olives and feta.

Sami Tamimi’s recipes for prawn and tomato stew with fregola which sounds brilliant, and a herby quick-pickled vegetable salad in the Guardian

Travel

UK

The ultimate foodie tour of London’s Chinatown in the Times

11 of the best restaurants in Bristol in the Times, from dim sum and mezze to friendly fine dining and Korean tasting menus in the Times

Walk the Cumbria Way in the Lake District in the Independent. It’s a 73-mile footpath that stretches from Ulverston in the south to Carlisle in the north

The perfect holiday in underrated Essex in the Telegraph

Herefordshire in the Guardian as a stand-in for Stratford upon Avon in the upcoming film of Hamnet

Europe

The unexpected culinary trail inspired by the world’s best restaurant

Cadaqués in Spain’s Costa Brava ‘where the legacy of the five-times-awarded world’s best restaurant el Bulli still lives on in many new guises’ in the Independent

Nuremberg in Germany ‘notoriety should put off tourists. In fact, the opposite is true,’ says the Telegraph

Matera in Puglia in the Guardian

Burgundy in the FT

Travelling to the very top of Norway to the Varanger peninsula in the Observer

The perfect weekend in Cork, Ireland’s foodie city in the Telegraph with advice on how best to explore Cork and its nearby coastline, from historical sights to traditional pubs

Charlotte Mendelson used AI to decide which Greek island to go to on holiday as she says, ‘being, by now, practically Greek myself, I shun tourist nonsense: beach resorts, English couples in swishy linen separates.’ Oh dear. I wonder what she wears that is superior.

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives a certain number of free articles

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

If all else fails, just use Archive ph.

Introduction

This week, I’ve cooked from Substack newsletters. Friends doing a recce of the area for a guided walk have just popped in for coffee, an unheard of event for a Monday morning, and I made spiced autumn cake from Mark Diacono’s Abundance. My friends gave me two bags of apples from their garden: Holstein, an eater similar to a Cox but better they said, and Blenheim Orange, a dual eater and cooker, a welcome present in exchange for my local gossip.

The cake recipe specifies medlar purée, but I followed Mark’s advice and used more grated carrot and 200g apple purée instead. I made the purée by cutting an equator into two Bramley apples, microwaving them and then scraping out the insides. Much easier than peeling and none of the apple is wasted. The cake is so good, with the layered flavours of star anise, cinnamon, lemon and stem ginger that I’ve just had a second piece.

I also made an improvised winter salad from Lickedspoon with Debora Robertson where she writes, ‘it’s always more or less the same, a mixture of tastes – sweet fruit, salty cheese, bitter leaves – and textures – crunchy nuts and apples, crisp leaves, creamy cheese – tossed in a punchy mustard dressing.’ I ate my half at home and then took the other half in a box to the allotment where my husband was planting a damson tree and I found a poppy growing. In our road, we have a paving stone remembering the men who died in the First World War and we all gathered round to pay our respects on Sunday morning.

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Books

Clodagh’s Happy Cooking by Clodagh McKenna

with an interview and recipes for braised white beans with winter greens, seeded cheddar sunflower bread and seeded cheddar sunflower bread

Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious One Pot Cookbook by Poppy O’Toole in The Times

with an interview and recipes including Moroccan chicken and couscous, honey soy salmon noodles, and red lentil dahl

PS A late edition now it is online, baked potato fish pie by Stephen Harris from his new book, The Sportsman at Home

Recipes

Helen Goh’s recipe for pear, chocolate and hazelnut torte in the Guardian. Great minds think alike as Diana Henry does pear chocolate and hazelnut cake with sherry as well as other pear recipes, baked sausages, pears and onions with walnuts and gorgonzola, and pears in chai-spiced syrup with Roopa’s shortbread, (Roppa Gulati) in The Telegraph

Nigel Slater’s recipe for coppa, fig and gorgonzola tarts and toffee apple sundae in the Observer made with meringues, custard and toffee apples which would still be good after Bonfire Night. A bonus as you can use shop-bought meringues and vanilla bean custard.

Ravinder Bhogal’s khitchadi in the FT, a soupy stew of rice and lentils, this time, it leans more towards Turkey with its addition of preserved lemons and dried mint.

Stewy chickpeas with squash and chicken braised with apricots by Samin Nosrat in the Guardian from her book, Good Things.

Travel

UK

For everyone who is always criticising London, the garden of Chiswick House on Saturday:

A city break in Lincoln in the Telegraph.

Visiting Oxford in the Observer

https://observer.co.uk/style/travel/article/capri-poetry-and-ocean

According to the Times, it’s now the time to visit the Stour Valley in Essex and Dedham in Kent - landscapes beloved of John Constable and JMW Turner - before the forthcoming exhibition at Tate Britain, Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals, which opens on November 27.

Europe

A weekend trip to Copenhagen in the Times

A well researched and detailed article on alternative European city breaks in the FT including Regensburg in Germany, St Malo in France, Modica in Sicily, (by Marina O’Loughlin) Jerez de la Frontera in Spain, Leiden in the Netherlands, and Ljubljana in Slovenia.

‘The Irish landscape whispers tales of the past’: a trip beyond the blarney in far-flung Donegal where they explore the cliffs, beaches and villages of the Gaeltacht area of Donegal and see the landscape afresh through the Irish language in the Guardian.

Autumn in Alentejo: ancient city sites and golden vineyards in Portugal in the Guardian

Winter snow shoeing and walking in the Lower Engadine valley in Switzerland in the Guardian.

Sanremo in Liguria, Italy just over the border from Nice, ‘goes big on Mediterranean views, Nobel history and antipasti you just can’t find anywhere else’ in the Times. They deem it ‘the under-the-radar Italian Riviera city that shines out of season’

Lago and Conflenti in Calabria in Italy are putting themselves back on the map with a series of community-run music and food festivals in the Guardian

Visiting Capri in the Observer

A weekend trip to Copenhagen in the Times

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives a certain number of free articles

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Or just investigate Archive Ph.

Please do like this post as it makes it more visible. Thank you so much.

Subscribe now

In the FT Samin Nosrat was cooking recipes from her book, Good Things with Honey and Co. I made the Joojeh Kabob Roast Chicken which is marinaded overnight in saffron, garlic, onion but with a whole chicken as in the book and not chicken legs as in the paper. I served it with a fregola salad I made up on the spot, with what was in the fridge, tomato, red pepper, pomegranate, spinach and rocket leaves and added the chicken juices as well as lemon and olive oil. There are also recipes for devilled eggs, Caesar salad with aquafaba sauce, sweet potatoes with sour cream and bacon and a chocolate cake.

And with the rest of the chicken, I made Diana Henry’s chicken and leek pie with cheddar hazelnut crumble, (gift link) as this is such an excellent recipe for leftover chicken.

This week, when friends came for dinner, I made a batch of no-churn icecream with a whole tin of condensed milk and 600ml of double cream. I split the mixture into two, and added half a jar of pistachio paste and half a jar of drained, chopped Amarena cherries, (from Lidl) as a riff on the roasted pistachio & sour cherry ice cream he created for Waitrose. I served it with a raspberry and strawberry fruit coulis made from frozen fruit with a dash of Amaretto. With the other half of the batch, I made vanilla with a big teaspoon of vanilla paste and served it with Ottolenghi’s chocolate tahini sauce.

Books

Much Ado about Cooking: Delicious Shakespearean feasts for every occasion

by Sam Bilton and Shakespeare’s Globe

in the Independent with a description of the food consumed in Shakespeare’s lifetime and recipes for sherry-braised chicken with lettuce, a gratin of leeks for Fluellen and baked stuffed quinces with cinnamon cream

The Sportsman at Home by Stephen Harris in the Times with recipes including a pear, walnut and Roquefort salad where the ingredients include coffee liqueur, a Marmite-coated cauliflower with walnuts and grapes

Donal’s real time recipes by Donal Skehan

in the Independent with an interview with the excellent advice from Skehan’s Mum ‘for those who find cooking dinner an interminable chore, (she) would always start by chopping an onion. When I feel like this, I go to M & S and buy chicken Kyiv and mashed potato on their meal deal. Job done.

Recipes for rôtisserie chicken and za’atar flatbread, which sounds good with ‘crispy flatbread, golden chicken, shaved veg and a garlicky tahini yoghurt base that brings everything together in minutes’ as well as smashed sausage pasta with balsamic onions and Tuscan acquacotta soup with eggs and Parmesan

Recipes

I’m putting these first to remind me to deal with our quince harvest, quince recipes in the FT and Nigel Slater in the Observer with buttered quinces with almond crumbs.

Nigel Slater’s poached apples, maple syrup and roast onions and spinach polenta in the Observer

Ottolenghi is back in the Guardian, hurrah, with his thoughts on London’s restaurant scene and recipes for pumpkin muhammara with peppers and date molasses as he serves it at Rovi where he swaps half the peppers for pumpkin to make it less sharp and lamb and aubergine tantuni with garlic yoghurt and burnt butter. Note to elder daughter, we need to go to Mersin Tantuni in Dalston which he recommends.

Ravinder Bhogal in the Guardian with recipes for almond crusted chicken schnitzel and harissa baked hake with olives and walnut salsa and Meera Sodha’s recipe for tahini beans with basil and pine nuts.

Four canapés to make the best of British seafood by Mark Hix in the Telegraph These would be great for Christmas canapés when we can all splash out on the crab and the prawns so in that spirit, I’ve made it a gift link. so you can all make sesame prawn toasts, smoked haddock arancini, mini crab thermidor tarts and fish tikka skewers. He says, ‘substituting chicken with monkfish gives a fresh twist on this classic South Asian dish.’

Diana Henry’s meat and potato recipes in the Telegraph including a moeish looking beef and potato pie. She advises ‘experiment with the filling by all means but for the best results, don’t be tempted to add a pastry bottom.’ Also a shoulder of lamb with boulangère potatoes on top of the joint and a Massaman beef and potato curry

Travel

UK

We are spoilt for choice for the best cosy, country, autumnal pubs with great food from the last fortnight’s papers. The Good Food Guide published its list of the 100 best pubs in the UK and the only place I’ve found the full list is in the Daily Mail.

Also…

15 best pubs with rooms in the UK for cosy winter breaks in the Independent,

30 of the best UK pubs for an autumn escape with great food in the Guardian

readers’ favourite UK country pubs with great food by Guardian readers

A taste of north Wales: a walk between cafes (and pubs) on the Llŷn peninsula in North Wales in the Guardian

The best of below the radar British and Irish holiday destinations in the Observer including the Loop Head Peninsula in County Clare. Fife’s East Neuk Woodbridge and Orford in Suffolk and then my favourite part of the South Downs Way, from Southease to Alfriston, including Charleston, my happy place and Firle Beacon ( cue photo opportunity).

Europe

Just visiting… Dublin in the Observer and Louth, Ireland’s smallest county for a weekend break in the Independent and five days in Cork in the Sawdays newsletter

The best bakeries in Paris in the Telegraph

Tarragona in Spain as the perfect uncrowded alternative to Barcelona in the Telegraph and Lou Llobell’s insider guide to Seville in the FT. ‘For the actor, the Spanish city is about singing, dancing and long family lunches.’ (I’d never heard of them either.)

The unvisited centre of Sicily inland from Agrigento in the Times. When we drove across part of it last year on our way back to Palermo airport from Catania and it was yellow and arid

Lyon for a green city break in the Independent

This Istrian peninsula on the edge of Croatia is the largest in the Adriatic Sea in the Observer

In search of the best cocktail bar in Milan in the Observer, New Year here I come.

Introduction

I am on holiday in Pembrokeshire this week, staying in a property at the top of a hill with views down to the sea from huge windows. I am not supposed to be reading the papers so this is one I made earlier. My top tip, follow PRaitors on Instagram if you are watching Celebrity Traitors and work in the corporate world, especially PR.

I can’t decide whether I want to stay in, read a book and watch the ferries leaving Fishguard for Ireland or go out walking. The decision was made for us yesterday as it was raining and we couldn’t even see the sea. I did a fall salad with apples, Cheddar and crispy sage from the New York Times, (gift link) with Coxes apple that I brought with me from the tree in our garden for lunch, followed by Nigel Slater’s pear and chocolate crumble. I bought the ingredients for that in Cardigan Tesco’s because Sundays deserve a proper pudding. As I am on my holidays, I made it with two tins of pears in their own juice. It’s a really good topping which I will reuse. Then the clouds cleared to reveal the view and we did go for that walk. If I had been clever and pre-made the crumble and brought it with me, I might have made poached pears with spiced hazelnut crumble by Thomasina Miers in the Guardian where the pears are poached separately, the poaching syrup reduced and the crumble served alongside to reduce sogginess.

More about Pembrokeshire next week including thoughts on self catering, and exactly where we stayed, (in case a mad axeman turns up on the doorstep) and our plans to track down lobster to make lobster rolls and pretend I am in Maine, shellfish platters and fish and chips in pubs near the beach.

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Books

Full of Beans by Amelia Christie-Miller in the Sunday Times

with recipes for sweetcorn and black bean fritters, tonnato beans with tomatoes and capers and chunky feta yoghurt, sun-ripened tomatoes and chickpeas.

Around the Table: 52 Essays on Food & Life by Diana Henry in the Telegraph

with an extract from her new book of food writing on October as well as recipes including roast leg of lamb with ginger stuffing and cider, a pear, blackberry and walnut cake.

Good Things by Samrin Nosrat in the Independent

with an interview and recipes on how to make focaccia, as well as Joojeh kabob roast chicken which is marinaded overnight with tomato purée,lime saffron and yoghurt and curried carrot and coconut soup. They all sound tempting.

Recipes

The recipes have split in the last couple of weeks from straightforward ones to make in on weekdays to autumnal puddings and cakes which are more of a weekend activity.

Weekday

I made the tomato pasta in the FT that Honey and Co recommended from Gina’s Ravneet Gill’s restaurant in Chingford. I must have made so many tomato sauces in my life, often stuffed with onion, carrots and celery to get vegetables into my children or the Marcella Hazan one with butter and half an onion but this is different, with a base of garlic, basil leaves, chilli flakes and tomato purée and then two tins of tomatoes, simmered down. There was lots left over to freeze for another day.

Mark Diacono shares his recipes for squash and pea risotto with crisp sage; squash soup with crispy onions and harissa oil; and baked squash with white beans and tomatoes in garlic and rosemary cream in the Sunday Times.

Diana Henry has October recipes in the Telegraph including roast leg of lamb with ginger stuffing and cider, a pear, blackberry and walnut cake and an extract from her new book of food writing, Around the Table: 52 Essays on Food & Life.

I have taken note of Diana Henry’s view of cooking fish, (gift link) as she tends ‘to see it in the viewfinder of a camera, widening out in increments and adding only a few other ingredients.’ This is apposite as I don’t have many ingredients here. Her recipes are crispy-skinned trout with dill-pickled red onions, mussels with ʼnduja and white beans and prawn linguine with tomatoes, garlic and chilli.

Last week, how to make the perfect lasagne with recipes for chicken, spinach and ricotta lasagne, big vegetable lasagne, lamb and fennel lasagne and finally mushroom, chestnut and celeriac lasagne. I like the sound of the last one as it’s so autumnal and I think I coud make it and then freeze some. It was online only.

How to make the perfect strata, ‘the classic American brunch dish – ‘the love child of frittata and bread pudding’ by Felicity Cloake with egg, stale bread and anything else for example, ‘spinach (both fresh and frozen) baby leaves, curly kale, ham, bacon, leek and mushrooms, as well as soft goat’s cheese and several sorts of hard stuff including gruyere, mild cheddar and parmesan’.

Nigel Slater’s midweek dinners of beetroot and brown lentils and baked tomatoes, anchovy, basil in the Observer, apple and Stilton pastries with an onion pickle which I knew I’ve made before. I checked and they were in the Guardian in 2021.

And then his recipes for autumnal slow cooks, braises and a broth, in cludinglamb, apricot and rose harissa, a quick chicken curry soup with gyoza and cauliflower, smoked garlic and haricot beans.

Puddings

Mark Hix has hearty, nostalgic puddings you need to make this autumn in the Telegraph, autumn fruit and nut crumble, boozy, autumn fruit cobbler, steamed chocolate pudding and pastry-wrapped baked stuffed apples

Flora Manson has a plum tart with a difference in the Observer. It has a crumble base, a layer of citrus flavoured stewed plums and then a double cream and crème fraîche topping. It would make an amazing pudding for Sunday lunch or if people came round.

Nicola Lamb has recipes for an toffee apple pie along the same lines as Flora Manson’s with a crumble base and a crumble topping and an apple crumble loaf in the Guardian.

Helen Goh’s recipe for pumpkin cheesecake with maple pecan brittle from the Guardian. Having baked for the last few weeks from Helen Goh’s Baking and the Meaning of Life, I’m now going to put any Helen Goh recipe into this newsletter as they are all bombproof. I’m not keen on pumpkin but the maple pecan brittle could be a finishing touch to any cake or pudding.

Charlie Hibbert in the Sunday Times with three fig recipes, fig and almond tart; chicken thighs with figs and honey; and roasted figs with yoghurt and hazelnuts

Nigel Slater’s chocolate amaretti tarts.

Autumn bakes also in Observer Food Monthly including Georgina Hayden’s feta, white chocolate and cherry cookies which I have made before as they were in her brilliant book, Greekish and I remember them disappearing quickly and Tarunima Sinha’s plum, blackberry and apple crumble which has crumble cooked as usual on top and then more cooked separately to sprinkle on top for extra crunch. She serves it with pecan and brown butter ice-cream where she swirls the buttery caramelised pecans into softened vanilla ice cream.

Travel

UK

I find some of the most useful travel writing on Substack these day as the writers are not trying to flog a hotel through an affiliate link or on a press trip staying in unaffordable places. Walking in the footsteps of Jane Austen at Chawton in Hampshire by Angie’s Changing Pages is one of those pieces of writing which makes me yearn to go.

London’s coolest neighbourhoods according to the Telegraph including Finsbury Park, Walthamstow and Tooting. Even though I live in London, I always learn something from these sort of articles. The 20 best museums in London for 2025 in the Independent.

For a friend, who will know this is for her, where the House of Guinness was filmed in the Independent.

Buxton in Derbyshire instead of Bath in the Independent. Have to admit I prefer Bath.

Part of the SW Coastal Path from Minehead to Combe Martin from the FT’s political editor who walked this 30 mile stretch over 2 days.

The best Lake District pubs in the Times

The best hotels on the Isle of Skye in the Independent

A comprehensive guide to East Sussex in the Telegraph, (gift link).

Europe

It is the season of city breaks and in the Guardian, six of the best autumn city breaks in Europe, Zurich, Athens, Vienna, Budapest, Palermo and Lyon as well as the week before how autumn in Madrid is ‘city-break gold’.

The Independent also recommends Lyon, saying its green revolution makes it one of Europe’s best cities to visit.

The Danish Tourist Board must be having a campaign as in the Telegraph, there is how Denmark is dealing with tourists and in the Guardian, in Odense, in the world of Hans Christian Andersen

In the Observer, why this is a great time to visit the Greek islands and Galway in Ireland for fireside pubs, cobbled streets and culture on tap.

A guide to Stockholm in the Standard

Please do like this post so more people find me. This Substack is for my enjoyment, and I hope yours. It indewill always be free.

Introduction.

We have a small garden with an apple tree which has produced in abundance this year as it’s a mast year. Nigel Slater’s apple, Stichelton and berries, was a good one for a quick lunch as a ‘midweek treat’ from the Observer. It’s a bit late for blackberries now so maybe you could use figs. He ‘sometimes make this salad with pears instead of apples, swapping the hazelnuts for walnuts’.

I’m searching out more apple recipes, have a note on my phone, ‘cook apples’ and remembered this speedy apple cake by Anja Dunk which was in the Guardian which I loved. From this week’s edition, there’s Helen Goh’s recipe for toffee apple pudding cake.

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The 30 best breakfasts in London in the Standard. I like going out for breakfast as it’s a good way to try more expensive places where you might not normally go. Mount St and the Wolseley are grand and smart, The River Café Café, is excellent value and the bargain Regency Café with its inimitable atmosphere is always a go-to for lunch after a visit to Tate Britain.

Sticky lamb meatballs and plums by Eleanor Steafel in the Telegraph, (gift link). They are flavoured with garlic, fennel and plums, and garnished with mint and chilli. I’m going to make them this week and will add in a photo.

Leek, pancetta and white wine orzo by Georgina Hayden in the Guardian. I’ve been looking for an easy orzo recipe that I can make quickly and this fits the bill. Also, as does ricotta fritters with sage butter by Rukmini Iyer and Rachel Roddy’s recipe for lasagne with courgette and three cheeses - ricotta, parmesan and taleggio. I know they are all from last week’s Italian special but they only come online mid-week.

Angela Hartnett’s classic Italian recipes, from her new restaurant Cicoria in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in the Times, including burrata with chargrilled grapes and mint, lamb chops with a parmesan crust and salsa verde and plum and almond tart. The rooftop bar, set above Covent Garden Piazza, looks a lovely place to go for cicchetti and snacks, even if you weren’t planning a full meal. It reminds me of the view from the old Chez Gerard which used to be nearby and I will investigate.

Also green bean dal with coconut and lime all in the Observer.

Diana Henry in the Telegraph with bomboloni doughnuts and New Orleans beignets. There was more which I will add when it is online.

Books

Padella by Tim Siadatan in the Independent

with his foolproof tips on how to make pasta like his restaurant, Padella and recipes for pistachio, mint and basil pesto, and tagliarini with crab, chilli and lemon and his famous pici cacio e pepe.

in the Guardian with recipes for pappardelle with parmesan, creme fraiche and toasted walnuts and fettuccine with ’nduja, lemon and mascarpone’.

and in the Standard with recipes for tagliarini with mussels, oregano, chilli and garlic, pappardelle with portobello mushrooms, garlic and rosemary and the pici cacio e pepe (again).

With all that lot, it should be a good tester on whether you would like the whole book.

Travel

UK

Best outdoor art trails in the Guardian which are all over England and one in Wales and not London-based for once. including Wolterton, Norfolk, Folkestone and Wrexham.

The Guardian says go to Exmouth in Devon and you don’t need a car as it’s a compact, walkable seaside town, easily reached by train on the scenic Avocet Line from Exeter.

The Times says it is now the time to visit Lee Miller’s home in Chiddingly on the South Downs and I have just booked tickets.

The exhibition will showcase Miller’s extraordinary career, from her participation in French surrealism to her fashion and war photography. Book to visit soon because the house closes for winter on October 31. There’s a new exhibition of her work on at Tate Britain from 2nd October and I also want to watch the film ‘Lee ‘which I’ve never seen. A short subscription to Apple TV is needed to watch Slow Horses so this could be a good opportunity. to watch ‘Lee’ as well.

Europe

The Guardian praises Trouville in Normandy for its seaside charm which was painted by Monet and also has readers’ favourite ferry breaks from the UK including ones to Caen, Deauville, Le Havre, Roscoff etc. Anywhere Brittany Ferries goes, really.

The Independent has five overlooked French cities you can reach by high-speed train.

They say ‘forget Paris.’ How could they? I saw an offer for a £70 return on Eurostar to Paris and booked immediately for November. James Marriott, on his amazing Substack, Cultural Capital, which stretches my brain to places it hasn’t gone before, and probably won’t again, recommended the the Georges de la Tour show at the Musée Jacquemart André. They say demand is high and they can’t guarantee access for visitors without tickets so I’ve booked for that.

This newsletter will always be free. I enjoy writing it as much as I hope you enjoy reading it. Please do share and tell your friends about it. And do like it so news of it spreads further.

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How do you write about Florence? I am always in awe when I visit and overwhelmed by its magnificence. I am content to wander but this is some of what we did and ate when my husband and I went there in February.

On the first Sunday of every month, Italian state museums are free and we rushed across Florence to get into the Accademia just before it closed to see Michaelangelo’s David. There are apparently always queues in the day on this Sunday but we had it almost to ourselves at ten past six apart from a couple watching football on their phone on the circular bench behind. We then googled other masterpieces to see and were able to have a whistle stop tour of them in piece and quiet.

We bought a three day pass which enabled us to visit the Uffizi and walk across the Vasari Corridor one day, to the Pitti Palace the next and the Boboli Gardens on the final day.

The Vasari Corridor is a private, one-kilometre-long elevated passageway built in 1565 by Giorgio Vasari for the Medici family. It connects the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi, and it runs across the top of the Ponte Vecchio.

The Uffizi was a nightmare: crowded and noisy and overcome by tour groups and we would have had a better view of the paintings on an art history slide in a lecture hall. Walking across the Vasari Corridor was a complete contrast and a revelation. Groups are limited to twenty people, there’s a Uffizi guide at either end but we walked in silence.

The views are unique, through ancient windows down onto the River Arno and then almost into the jewellers’ shops on the Ponte Vecchio, a bird’s eye view of the Church of Santa Felicità and then down into the Pitti Palace by the camellia garden. We were entranced.

The best views

The Museo Degli Innocento has a rooftop café, the Caffè del Verone which is on the top floor has a loggia and amazing views of the Duomo. And you don’t have to go into the museum to go there. We went here for an exhibition of Impressionist paintings in the basement, ( as one would do when in Florence.) That’s no longer on but next time, we will visit the Museum itself.

The Caffè del Verone which is on the top floor has a loggia and amazing views of the Duomo. And you don’t have to pay an entry fee into the museum to go there.

From Fiesole. Get the no 7 bus from Piazza della Signoria

The Piazzale Michelangelo. We walked but you can get a bus.

How was it off season?

We had sunny days with blue skies and it was warm enough to sit out in a square with a coat on, about 16C. The city was still busy with tourists, groups of school pupils and students. The Uffizi was a nightmare but most other places were quieter. There wasn’t much growing in the Boboli Gardens but the route to the Piazzale Michaelangelo was quiet.

In previous years, we have stayed in Fiesole for a night before or after after a summer holiday in Umbria and taken the No 7 bus down into the town. It’s a much cooler and quieter option for the summer months.

Where we ate

Restaurants

Tamero in the Piazza San Spirito, buzzy, dark, excellent pizza. Would recommend

Trattoria 4 Leoni, good food, proscuitto, coccoli e stracchinosteak, spinach, fried potatoes, aubergine parmigiana. Marred by two tables, each with six Americans who didn’t know the difference between their inside and their outside voices. Emiko Davies did say it was touristy and shewas right

Sabatino, well known, very cheap, queues, canteen like, not a place to linger, mostly tourists like us. Bolognese, pork, fried potatoes, salad, sponge cake. Don’t think I’d go again but good to experience once.

Others on our list were Caffe Cibreiro, as recommended by my brother who went to Florence on business over twenty times in one year, Cammillo and Trattoria Sostanza.

Sarah Winman went to Trattoria La Casalinga every night on her visits to Florence while researching Still Life She talks all about it on the Honey and Co podcast.

Markets

We went to Mercato Centrale for lunchtime pasta upstairs which is a lot more commercialised than it used to be and to Mercato Sant’ Ambrogio just for a wander and to wonder at the produce.

Supermarkets

Sapori and Dintorni They are bigger than the City Carrefours with proper cheese counters if you wanted to buy for a picnic. One on the Via de Bard, 45-47 and another on at Borgo San Lorenzo, 11. I bought packets of pistachio ricciarelli and of beans to bring home.

Gelati

We went to Sbrino on Via dei Serragli, 32r every day apart from the first when we went to Venchi. It’s all organic best gelateria with original, seasonal falavours. It’s popular so you often have to queue and it was serendipity that our hotel was right up the road and we saw it as we first walked there. Vivoli, my other favourite was shut for a holiday as was as Gelateria della Passera as recommended by Emiko Davies

Bakery

Le Botteghe de Il Fornaio in Via Sant’Agostino, another place we just wandered past, where we went to most days for lunch and sat on a bench in the Piazza Santa Spirito to eat it pizza which they sell by measuring a slice, arancini and an excellent apple cake.

Where we stayed

We stayed at the Ottantotto in the Oltrarno district which is in CN Traveller best hotels in Florence We had Room 3 on the first floor which was one of the bigger ones. I wouldn’t choose Room 1 on the ground floor which looks out onto the main street. There is a garden where you can sit out and have a buffet breakfast, but you do need to be self-sufficient as staff are only there in the morning and it’s self check in the rest of the time.

How we got there

We flew from London City Airport to Florence, a revelation in itself, as so small and easy to get through, caught the tram to the Santa Maria Novella train station and then walked to our hotel. We travelled with minimum luggage, just backpacks, bought in Aldi for £10 each as I can’t stand the sound of suitcases being pulled over cobbles.

Where to find out more

CN Traveller gives lists of the best restaurants, museums and things to do, and how to spend three days there and is a good starting point to planning a trip.

Emiko Davies’ website who used to live in Florence, and has the best insider tips.

and on her Substack, where to eat and stay in Florence 2023

The late and much missed Russell Norman’s restaurant recommendations in the Times

The Curious Appetite, a blog by Coral Sisk, which I’ve only just found.

The Telegraph guide to Florence

22 of the best things to do in Florence on your next weekend break in the Times

Time Out best gelateria in Florence

Five pastry shops in Florence

Exploring Florence by bike (from the Guardian)

Top ten books about Florence (from the Guardian)

What to watch

Room with a View on Channel 4. Adaptation of the novel by EM Forster, the first part is set in Florence.

Tea with Mussolini is available to stream.

Andrew Graham Dixon’s programme on Vasari and Art Patrons in Florence: the Medicis. (on YouTube so not BBC copyright)

The Medicis available to stream

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This week in the papers

Recipes

Three recipes with courgettes by Skye McAlpine in the Sunday Times including grilled courgettes with burrata and mint, which I made. It’s so simple but much better than the sum of its parts, crack open your best olive oil first this.There was also roasted sea bream with buttery courgettes, chilli and garlic; and marinated courgettes with feta, lemon and pistachio

Also Rachel Roddy’s recipe for lasagne with courgette and three cheeses in the Guardian

All about pickling in the FT by Honey and Co‘with a salt pickle that is good for soft vegetables like aubergines, cucumbers and courgettes. Next is one for a vinegar pickle that works for all hard vegetables. Lastly, a sweet and sour relish suitable for all the soft fruit of the season: figs, plums, blueberries, tomatoes.’ Recipes for aubergine and chilli pickles, saffron slaw pickles and fig and ginger chutney. I must get to grips with pickling and this information might help me do it,

Recipes for grilled cucumber, fennel, curry leaf and pomegranate salsa, garlic yoghurt and roast savoy cabbage and plums with star anise, cinnamon and soy dressing by Helen Graham in the Observer

Roast duck and figs by Nigel Slater in the Observer and last of the summer recipes for tomatoes and courgettes including tomatoes, coconut and sweet-sour onions and tomatoes with a green olive tapenade and a beetroot, soy and mint. They all sound great.

Meera Sodha’s recipe for spinach and feta galette with lemon and pine nut salsa in the Guardian . I used the whole tub of ricotta as if I had just used the requisite 150g, I would have forgotten the rest and it would probably have gone mouldy in the fridge. It was huge and lasted us ages and has more filling and less pastry than a small pastry.

Books

Baking and the Meaning of Life by Helen Goh in the Guardian

with recipes for chocolate ginger beer cake, pineapple pudding cake with salted tamarind caramel, and napkin cakes with blackberry and white chocolate cream. Also, her plum and star anise frangipane tart in the Guardian.I have this book and I love it and am learning so much. I will review it next week.

Fusão by Ixta Belfrage in the Independent

with an interview and recipes for moqueca fish burger which includes coconut, chilli and lime quick steaks slicked with coffee-and-chilli butter, and stir-fried papaya side

Persiana Easy by Sabrina Ghayour in the Times

with six easy Middle Eastern recipes including hummus soup and broad bean, pea, orange and goat’s cheese salad

Simply Raymond Kitchen Garden by Raymond Blanc in the Independent

with an interview and recipes for seasonal potager casserole with pistou, a Basque-style cheesecake and porchetta stuffed with prunes and herbs

Good Things : Recipes to Share with People You Love by Samin Nosrat in the Telegraph

with an interview and recipes for pane criminale (Parmesan garlic bread), yellow buttermilk cake, chicken braised with apricots and harissa, marinated feta and warm crab with Calabrian chilli butter (gift link as it’s such a long awaited book).

Travel

A new walking trail from Haslemere to Arundel in the Guardian called the Petworth Way. The first leg is from Haslemere to Petworth, and the second from Petworth to Arundel. We did part of the route near Cocking this weekend where there is a Cadence Cycling Club Café, one of a useful network of cafés along the South Downs Way. We had cheese and ham toasties and shared the last piece of carrot cake. Their sourdough bread for all the cafés is supplied by Sødt and is excellent.

The best walks within an hour of London in the Telegraph (gift link)

A guide to Yorkshire (gift link) and a guide to York in the Telegraph

Going to Folkestone for a weekend in the Independent

Walking the Wordsworth trail and best budget-friendly hotels in the Lake District for an affordable trip, both in the Independent

A guide to Cork in Ireland in the Standard by the author Caroline O’Donoghue

Walking and feasting on the German shore of Lake Constance in the Guardian

Coming up next week

My review of Baking and the Meaning of Life by Helen Goh including the recipes I’ve cooked from it.

Please do like and share and leave a comment. It’s been a marathon.

Reading the papers

People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph.

The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account. The FT gives a certain number of free articles

Local public libraries often have Pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.

Introduction

A bit of a change to my Substack. I have always wanted to write something which inspires you to cook something new or go somewhere interesting and I’m going to add something different each week. This week, a guide to book readings. Next week, my tips for Florence from a trip in February, including going across the Vasari Corridor from the Uffizi, along the top of the Ponte Vecchio.

The recipes and travel will be shorter and more relevant instead of feeling as if I have to include everything like a traditional press cuttings bulletin.

Favourite places for book talks

I love hearing authors talk about their books. I meet my daughters or friends or might even go with my husband. A chat on the way, a glass of wine, sometimes food, a stimulating talk, a discounted book if you order it in advance, a book signing, what’s not to like?

It’s one of the great privileges of living in London but I’ve tried to include other places. Events in bookshops are much cheaper than those run by Fane or even some book festivals. I’ll add in more if you know a good one an dput it in the comments.

The best way of finding out is to sign up for alerts from bookshops, or look at an author’s Instagram pages.

Waterstones

Waterstones have so many events all round the country. London Piccadilly has a big range or sometimes bigger events are held in nearby churches. I have seen Elizabeth Strout being interviewed here by David Nicholls, Katherine Heiny and Marion Keyes, amongst others.

At the Putney branch, I’ve seen Tessa Hadley, Catherine Airey, Kevin Barry and Olia Hercules lately although I missed Penelope Lively being interviewed by Cat Rentzenbrink as I dithered and it sold out. Diana Henry is coming to Putney in October.

Daunts

Events sell out quickly. If I can get there on the bus OK (due to the current tube strike), I’m going to see Helen Goh chat to Ottolenghi this week at Notting Hill about Baking and the Meaning of Life.

Honey and Co studio.

Honey and Co now have a studio where they are hosting in person events including book talks. I’m going to see Mark Diacono talk about Abundance here.

Backstory in Balham

Backstory in Balham has regular book events. I saw Roopa Gulati being interviewed here by Diana Henry and now want to go to more non food-related ones. You have to be quick to book as they sell out quickly.

Book Bar in Chelsea

Just off the King’s Road, with lots of good events.

Village Books in Dulwich

Lots of events here too but Ive never been as yet.

Stanfords

Stanfords has a wide variety of travel related events, both in London and elsewhere. For example, we went with friends to see Caroline Eden talk about her travels in the Caucasus and writing Green Mountain.

The Garden Museum

The Garden Museum in London. Often there are book launches held there and people not invited to the actual book launch party can pay to go to the talk. Last year, I went with my husband to see Andrew Montgomery and Clare Foster do an illustrated talk on their book, Pastoral Gardens and it solved the perennial problem of what to buy him for Christmas. Then, this summer, we went to see Jasper Conran’s garden in Dorset which is featured in the book through the National Garden Scheme. A rainy day but enchanting beauty at every turn as you would expect from a Conran.

Fortnum and Masons

Fortnum and Masons has a huge range of book events and dinners, ‘in conversations with’, ‘in the studio with’ and ‘supper clubs & chef's tables’. Last Christmas, I met two friends living in different parts of London (Angie and Jude) for a Christmas catch up and to see Jane Lovett talk about ‘The Get-Ahead Christmas Cook’. There was food and fizz included for a bargain £25. They both write the loveliest Substacks:-

Angie’s is Changing Pages and she writes where ‘I share those things in London and beyond which enhance wellbeing, install calm and help me, to live well.’

Jude’s is Scrumptious Seasons which comes out on the first of the month where she writes about what’s she’s cooking, reading and about Brittany where she spends a lot of time in her house there.

Charlotte St Hotel

The Charlotte Street Hotel used to have book salons in the screening room and you could buy a ticket which then included a set dinner in the restaurant. I saw Sathnam Sanghera talking about ‘Empire World’ here. I can’t see any on the website at the moment so am not sure if they are going to continue.

London Review of Books

Events here sell out quickly too as it’s small and intimate. I really enjoyed seeing Cat Rentzenbrink interview Blake Morrison here once.

Toppings

Events in Bath, Edinburgh, Ely, St Andrews and soon York

Thyme in the Cotswolds

They call their events ‘a calendar of happenings’. We arranged a night in the Cotswolds last year, specifically so we could see Tara Wigley, Helen Goh and Verena Lochmuller talk about Comfort.

Kitchen Table, Shaftesbury

Never been here but I’ve heard it’s good

Rockwater Hove

Rockwater on Hove most second Tuesdays, where Gilly Smith does a live version of her podcast Cooking the Books with CookBookBake, Hove’s indie bookshop. Anna Ansari and Mark Diacono are coming up in October and November.

This week

I cooked Hetty McKinnon’s courgette butter pasta from the New York Times which also includes walnuts and basil, (gift link). It made a lot and was good the next day cold. Then I found a similar recipe from Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen where you didn’t have to cook the courgette in stock so I might do that another time but still include the walnuts.

I went to see a display of costumes and props from Downton Abbey at Bonhams. This free exhibition is only on now until the 16 September with an ‘upstairs’ and a ‘downstairs’ room and the attention to detail really struck me, not only in the costumes but in the letters, the photographs and the dressing table trinkets.

Recipes

Diana Henry with protein recipes in the Telegraph, (gift link), jammy eggs with chickpeas, peppers and avocado, roast chicken thighs, beans and broccoli with anchovy and almond pesto and chilli and ginger prawn stir-fry with crisp vegetables and noodles.

I used a whole chicken last night to make the chicken recipe and fiddled around with the timings as it’s much easier to buy a whole free range chicken than chicken thighs.

Nigel Slater with prawns, watermelon and lime in the Observer. I’m putting this in, as I bought a small watermelon on Saturday and now I remember why.

Nigel Slater is now on his holidays and Helen Graham ex head chef at Bubula is taking his place for two weeks in the Observer. This means interesting recipes for roast beetroot and aubergine with black garlic yoghurt and kaffir lime pangrattato and tomato parmesan tart with almond ricotta and everything seasoning. I had to look up the seasoning and it’s a mix of ‘toasted sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, poppy seeds, dried onion, dried garlic, and sea salt.’ Which seems obvious now I know.

A chocolate and malted buttercream cake by Benjamin Ebuehi in the Guardian

I’m still clinging onto summer until the 21 September at least and made a very quick peach tomato and mozzarella salad for lunch, particular as it’s my Italian week at Lidl this week and they have tubs of small DOP buffalo mozzarellas .

Travel

A food lover’s cyclist’s tour of Herefordshire in the Guardian but veen if yoiu didn’t want to go by bike, it gives lots of places to visit including foraging tours from Liz Knight’s Forage Fine Foods.

Jo Rodgers in House and Garden in Provence

Carolyn Boyd in the Times with a guide to the Atlantic coast in France

Mina Holland in the Guardian writes about the Italian region of Friuli–Venezia Giulia, around Trieste. There is a tradition of farms opening their doors and serving up a feast to the public.

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Coming next week, my tips for Florence including this unforgettable morning going across the Vasari Corridor.

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