preserving

Rhubarb, ginger and chilli pickle

May 12, 2013
Rhubarb, ginger and chilli pickle

This time of year always brings the first glut of the season – rhubarb. One day, there’s none, but the next, there are vast parasols shading slender stems rocketing skywards, growing thicker and darker day by day. Rhubarb is the most hardy and forgiving of vegetables, and it is a vegetable and not a fruit, [...]

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How to preserve lemons

April 20, 2013
How to preserve lemons

I have this theory about people who cook. It involves their cupboards. I think that you can tell if somebody is serious about cooking, and I mean really serious, after a quick rummage through their kitchen cupboard. That might sound obvious, but it’s not the weird and the wonderful I’m looking for. Everybody has barely [...]

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Kimchi for beginners – how to make Korean fermented pickles

March 10, 2012
David Chang's kimchi - Korean preserved vegetables

Kimchi isn’t very common in the cities of Yorkshire. Not surprising, as there isn’t a large Korean population in these parts, but still no reason why their national dish shouldn’t get an airing. I’ve made kimchi once. So far. It seems to be one of those things with infinite variations, where no two batches are [...]

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On Seville oranges and marmalade

February 5, 2012
How to make marmalade

This is a great time of year to cook. Yes, we’re in the depths of winter, but the first signs of the year to come are starting to appear in the ground and in the shops. The first stalks of forced rhubarb are out, straight from the groaning sheds of West Yorkshire, and it’s the [...]

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Messada di bue – Italian-style cured beef

May 10, 2011
Messada di bue - Italian beef cured with herbs and garlic

I’ve said this before, many times, but it bears repeating – the best thing about cooking is the transformation of unpromising ingredients into something better. Take this dish… normally, I’d never dream of eating a piece of brisket without at least a couple of hours on a low heat, let alone raw, but here it [...]

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Ever thought about pickling a watermelon rind?

April 28, 2011
Momofuku watermelon rind pickle

It’s good to be frugal, but there are times when frugality goes too far and tips over into just plain old stupidity. This recipe falls just to the right side of OK – pickling a watermelon rind, you know, the green part that gets chucked on the compost pile, sounds ridiculous, and it would be, [...]

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How to make salt cod

July 28, 2010
Thumbnail image for How to make salt cod

The last time I cooked with salt cod was a disaster. In retrospect, the particular piece of fish I bought looked like it had been sat in a dark and dusty corner of a market stall for several years before some poor mug came along to liberate it. That poor mug just happened to be [...]

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Duck prosciutto – the simple art of making your own ham

February 20, 2010
How to make duck ham

Salt gets a bad press. I know it’s responsible for the untold misery of heart disease, high blood pressure and a thousand other fairly major medical complaints, but it also has a near mythical ability to preserve food and concentrate flavour, the closest thing to culinary alchemy there is. This duck prosciutto, a ham born [...]

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