When I first started to bake, the recipe was everything. I had to have each stipulated ingredient, I had to adhere to every step of the process and the oven time couldn’t be a minute more or less than what was stated on the page. But things are different now Partially it’s down to experience, …
Tag Archives: #cookbooks
Two Culinary Daydreamers
It was last Christmas. Our eyes met across a crowded bookshelf. You reaching for Nigella, me the latest Ottolenghi. We didn’t speak, didn’t acknowledge. Both lost in recipes, imagining how flavours on the page would taste on the plate. ‘I want to try that’ our first words. Two culinary daydreamers. We cooked together that night, …
Cookbook bookcase
I finally have all of my cookbooks on shelves. Cookbooks have become a bit of an obsession in recent years and as the collection has grown it’s been a case of squeezing them in wherever I could find space. More often than not this meant piling them up, with the inevitable result of those at …
If I can’t go abroad, abroad can come to me.
It’s rapidly becoming apparent that we’re heading towards a second summer where travel outside of the UK isn’t going to be a realistic option. For now, at least the coronavirus news is on the positive side. The vaccine rollout continues apace, the infections numbers are falling rapidly and as I type the third lockdown is …
Continue reading “If I can’t go abroad, abroad can come to me.”
I’ve been simmering clementines.
I’ve been simmering clementines. Not an activity I’ve ever considered before, but after a very successful outcome, one I’ll be returning to. Before I go any further I should point out it was all in the name of baking. In particular the baking of a soft, sticky cake which has gone straight onto the ‘can …
Apple, lemon and chocolate cake
The cake in the picture with this post may not be the best-looking thing I’ve put on here, but it just might be one of the tastiest. It’s the sort of cake I know would hardly register with me if I saw it on a bakery counter. My gaze soon moving to the more cream-laden, …
Comfort food from my favourite cookbook.
My cookbook library is extensive and will soon need a larger bookcase to house it. Lockdown may have stopped random buys resulting from bookshop browsing, but it’s still grown over the last 12 months. I keep feeling now should be the time to pull out some of those which don’t see the light of day …
Now doesn’t feel like the time for abstemiousness
Everywhere I look at the moment I’m seeing references to #dryJanuary or #veganuary. Even to the extent that spellcheck just found veganuary for me when I misspelt it. If ever there were frequency illusions I didn’t want to be happening at the moment, it’s these. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against the principles …
Continue reading “Now doesn’t feel like the time for abstemiousness”
Great British Bake Off 2020 week 5
Of all the baking basics, the one I struggle with most is pastry. On the face of it things should be easy, most pastry ingredient lists are even shorter than bread making, but somehow it never quite seems to work that way. It never has quite the shortness or crumbly texture I’m looking for. I’ve …
Discovering new flavours
I’m the person who often picks the dish he doesn’t recognise on the menu. The person who then sits wondering what’s going to be delivered to the table. Hoping for a new food experience, eager to be the envy of my dining companions, running the risk of leaving them thinking ‘will he never learn’. It …
David in the kitchen. 