Its happened before and will no doubt happen again: Ive got too many balls to keep in the air at the moment so Im going to have to take a break from the blog until things calm down again. Hopefully n...
Asparagus has come so early this year - a good month before the beginning of the official English asparagus season - that theres a danger you may be fed up with it already and be casting around for c...
There’s a bit of a backlash against supermarket half price wine offers at the moment with which I’ve every sympathy. To artificially inflate wine prices only to heavily discount them sails perilously...
You might not think theres a lot to say about eggs and asparagus that hasnt already been written but then you probably havent been to the northern part of Croatia thats known as Istria at this time o...
Just before winter finally disappears (although looks like I may already have missed the boat) heres a wonderfully warming dish of braised beef shortribs I made last weekend when I was having a bit o...
I meant to post this before but theres still a chance to try some Fairtrade wines at a discount before Fairtrade Fortnight ends this Sunday. The best place to go is the Co-op which not only has the w...
Take a look at these two bottles. The one on the right - bought a few months ago - contained 500ml of red wine vinegar. The significantly smaller one on the left, which my husband just picked up from...
Having spent the last 10 days in France its struck me again what a mystery it is that you cant order more vegetable-based dishes in French restaurants. Its not that they dont have the produce. Down i...
If youre someone who never manages to use up the nuts or spices you buy for a recipe dukka (aka dukkah) could be your salvation. Basically its a ground up mixture of roasted nuts, spices and dried he...
Ive banged on about this before and probably will again but I just wanted to have another moan about the extortionate price of fresh herbs in supermarkets. Witness this 25g bag of flat leaf parsley t...
With Burns Night coming up this week and many celebrating it this weekend, nows a good time to stock up on your favourite whisky brand. Almost all the supermarkets have got special offers. Heres my p...
I’m not a great one for ‘the perfect this’ or ‘the perfect that’ in recipes but if you’re a marmalade aficionado I promise you this is as good as it gets. Intensely fruity, thick and sharply flavoure...
If youre finding it hard to give up booze for the month you might want to snap up a bottle or two of Waitroses low alcohol cider which is only 1% ABV.Now Im not saying its the best-tasting cider ever...
Following yesterdays post the good news is that my student cookery site Beyond Baked Beans is back up and running but at a new domain name www.beyondbakedbeans.org.If you link to the site please chan...
Some of you may have arrived at this blog looking for my student website beyondbakedbeans.com. Im sad to say it no longer exists. (See update on my more recent post. There is a happy(ish) ending. It ...
I meant to post this just after Christmas to suggest what you might do with your turkey stock and other leftovers but events overtook me (including rather disastrously spilling a glass of wine on my ...
Im never convinced of the virtue of stuffing a turkey. It just increases the cooking time and makes it harder to get the breast cooked at the same time as the legs. Maybe a bit in the neck but thats ...
Christmas is always a big discounting time on champagne at the supermarkets but as Ive pointed out in the longer piece Ive just posted on my website you need to be careful about ridiculously cheap of...
Returning from high summer in Oz to the weirdest of weather back home in Bristol (this morning we had hail, thunder and bright sun, all in the space of five minutes) I feel the need for comfort food ...
No credit crunch drinking recs this week or next Im afraid as Im away on a work trip to Australia. (Yes, jammy, I know) Normal service will be resumed after December 11th.
Given how much leftover wine we have in the house (Im also a wine writer for those of you who dont know) I normally poach pears in red wine but I tried them again the other day in cider and Im not su...
Its always good to have a standby wine that will go with virtually everything and La Metropole rouge fits the bill. Sure, the ooo-la-la label isnt going to impress wine snobs but the content - a blen...
One of the biggest problems about bringing up four children was getting them to eat the same food. Indulgent you might say - they should have eaten what they were given - but it doesn’t somehow work ...
Heres a really good bottle to put on your Christmas table - or pull out for supper with friends. Its a smashing Côtes du Rhône from the excellent 2009 vintage - a warm, generous, spicy blend of grena...
They had some really nice cauliflowers in the greengrocer the other day which prompted me to make this cauliflower cheese with a twist. My husband isn’t mad about cooked cheese anyway so I decided to...
You might be the kind of person who thinks the beginning of November is FAR too early to start planning what youre going to eat and drink over Christmas (me too) but the supermarkets have decided oth...
I suddenly realised we were almost half way through this week and I hadnt posted a recipe. Not having done any cooking for the last few days (long story) Ive had to dig out an old one but an apposite...
This week it’s Sainsbury’s turn to knock 25% off any wine in their range if you buy six bottles. I thought their wines were showing particularly well at their recent press tasting, especially their o...
Ive been thinking of making this French take on shepherds pie for a while but what prompted it was having a large bunch of parsley in the fridge. (You cant win with herbs - either you get a ridiculou...
Moscatel de Valencia, a sweet wine from Southern Spain, has always been good value but its extraordinary that it still costs only £3.89 a bottle (in most branches of Sainsburys). A whole bottle, not ...
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