A nice plain cake

I can count my true cake repertoire on one hand.
I have flirted and made others with varying degrees of success but trudge willingly back to these five – in the same way I reach for the threadbare, beloved items in my wardrobe I can’t bear to part with because they are so faithfully comfy – [...]

Granita days

I think I predicted that this would be the summer I ate granita.
It has been…..
Hot afternoons here interrupted and tempered at about 4 30 by a glass of  a slightly slushy grainy mass of flavoured sweetened water frozen and crushed to make something between a drink and a water ice. It was just what we [...]

Nearly

I am now only 23 hours away from a big, fat, delicious month of holiday. I can smell it already and it smells of campari and lemon granita, of caponata and Sicilian beaches, of almonds and pasta con le sarde, of beach worthy books and afternoon naps after long lunches in cool darkened rooms with [...]

Roasted red peppers with anchovies and olives.

3 nice things
all together
are even nicer.

We made these last Sunday as part of the antipasti for a the happy, abundant and joy-full lunch in the garden, I think the companionship around the table made them taste even nicer.
I have written about my peculiar relationship with peppers before and nothing has changed really. I still loathe [...]

Sunday lunch in pictures…..

Well, some of it at least. The lunch went something like this ;
bread, roasted red peppers, caponata, parma ham, olives
aubergine parmesan
roast lamb, pan fried potatoes with sage
green salad
cheese
eton mess
chocolate cake
a doze in the garden……

Lentils, aubergine, roasted tomatoes and ricotta

Recently Yotam Ottelenghi has joined the food writing fray at the Guardian, for which I am rather glad as his recipes are rather nice.
Like this one. Actually should I say a bit like this one.

I seem to remember once (with an air of superiority I cringe to recall) telling (or declaring more-like) someone in a [...]

Pan fried potatoes with sage

I have made these 3 times in the last week…
Which makes me a little excessive and these potatoes very tasty.

I have had plenty of help in eating them and have since given the recipe, or instructions rather to 2 of my fried potatoes with sage eating companions, one of whom is a very particular, opinionated [...]

A kind of holiday and a kind of carbonara

I back from my kind of holiday In London.
It was kind of, because that what happens to your holidays when you flee to another country and ignore paperwork for 4 years.
I did however tuck my knees under lots of nice tables, clink glasses with people I love and eat lots of good food, especially here, [...]

Just in case……

…anyone was wondering, I am in London on a kind of holiday which is why things are looking a little neglected and jaded around here.
Back soon, but until then here is some curly parsley. 

Goats cheese, pea and lentil salad with pesto.

The jar of pesto I was so happy to have sitting in the fridge, the green and basily one, the one Vincenzo patiently pounded in the pestle and mortar  is – as Alison Krauss sings so beautifully- gone gone gone.
Of course it has.
The last spoonful was maybe the best.
It was the final dollop on something [...]