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Bill Granger’s Feed Me Now

November 15, 2009
Bill Granger Feed Me Now

I’ve never really liked ‘performance’ cookery.  Most of the cooking I do is on the hoof, unplanned, un-shopped-for and generally last minute and chaotic.  Quite often, it’s done without really enough time. It’s in this type of cooking that the real skill lies. What marks out a great cook is not the ability to produce [...]

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Rhubarb relish, ready for winter (already)

July 9, 2009
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Around this time of year, rhubarb tends to get tired and worn out. The stalks, those that haven’t been plundered already, are green and thick, with big umbrella-like leaves.  Everything starts to look a bit Jurassic, overgrown and gnarled. The slender pink and red elegance of the early stalks has long faded, and the taste [...]

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Bhuna Gosht, or lamb bhuna

June 15, 2009
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‘Bhuna‘ is a particular Asian cooking style where a sauce is reduced and reduced until it is so thick that it just clings to the meat, making the meat appear ‘browned’. Dishes cooked in the bhuna style are rich and pungent, the flavour of the spice mix concentrated down by the fierce reduction of the [...]

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How to make a pork pie

June 11, 2009
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I feel like I’ve mastered a mysterious, secret art. I made a pork pie, and it was easy. More than that, it tasted astounding. Here’s how. Start with the pastry. The pastry is unusual as it’s made with hot water. It seems to go against everything you know about making pastry, but it does work. [...]

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Salt’s Diner, Saltaire

May 31, 2009
Salt's Diner, Salt's Mill, Saltaire

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution gave birth to Blake’s “dark, Satanic mills”, huge cathedrals of commerce producing cotton, wool, alpaca. Conditions in the mills were harsh – the workers started young and the hours were long, the work dangerous. The mills of the North were places to be feared, [...]

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Sorry, no bacon…Roots & Fruits vegetarian cafe, Leeds

May 27, 2009
Roots and Fruits Vegetarian Cafe, Leeds

We had breakfast at the eclectic Roots & Fruits the other day. Sat in the window on mis-matched chairs looking out onto the quiet Grand Arcade, we ordered a standard English breakfast of eggs, toast, mushrooms, beans, hash browns. Nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary, but well cooked and served with early Stevie Wonder [...]

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A little corner of France in a basement in Leeds, La Grillade

May 23, 2009
La Grillade restaurant, Leeds

La Grillade is a typical French restaurant, just like the places you’d find in any sizable French town. Except it’s in Leeds. That makes it special. The restaurant is housed in the basement of a Victorian terrace, and looks uninspiring from the outside. Down the stairs, it’s a different world, a series of small dining [...]

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Pinenut and honey tart

April 26, 2009
Pinenut and honey tart

This nearly didn’t happen. There were too many things that could have gone wrong, and most of them nearly did. Toasting pinenuts, blind baking a pastry case, the wrong type of honey… To my surprise, things turned out well, and we had a delicate and delicious dessert, sweet and balanced with a deep honey flavour, [...]

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