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Baked porridge

September 29, 2010 Food & drink

I’ve started to eat a lot more porridge, as an alternative breakfast to my usual couple of slices of toast. The benefits have been enormous. Porridge is a slow-burning food that provides fuel for the body over a much longer period of time than bread. I don’t feel hungry until much later in the morning, [...]

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Ametilles Garapinyades, or sugared almonds

July 24, 2010 Food & drink

The list of ingredients here is impressively short, but the technique is fiendishly difficult and needs a lot of concentration, good timing and, inevitably, a few botched attempts before you get it right. It’s worth persevering, though. Almonds coated in a crust of crystallised sugar? What could be better than that? Put 155g of almonds [...]

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A very good chocolate brownie

March 17, 2010 Food & drink

There’s nothing quite like a good chocolate brownie. It’s not quite a cake, not quite a biscuit, but more of an indulgence than either. A good chocolate brownie recipe is one of those things every cook should have up his or her sleeve. This recipe is excellent, a straightforward brownie recipe with an extra flourish [...]

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Wholemeal apple and orange cake

March 6, 2010 Food & drink

Every now and then, I have to make a cake. The urge often strikes at this time of year, with the indulgence of Christmas a fading memory and no sign of the rotten weather passing soon. This cake provides a hint of what’s to come, using last autumn’s fruit. Line the bottom of a 20cm [...]

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Maranchino biscuits

February 27, 2010 Food & drink

Excellent with coffee, these little almond biscuits from Turkey and the Balkans are quick and easy to make. Mix 400g of ground almonds and 150g of golden caster sugar together and add two or three drops of almond essence and two tablespoons of rose water. Bind the ingredients together with two lightly beaten eggs, and [...]

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Duck prosciutto – the simple art of making your own ham

February 20, 2010 Food & drink

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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Amaretto and chocolate torte

December 23, 2009 Food & drink

At this time of year, I tend to over indulge a little, not too much, but enough to make me think that, yes, I really do need to go to the gym or grind out some miles along the canal bank. This recipe was the start of the Christmas downfall for this year. It’s rich, [...]

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Fifteen’s Hazelnut Torte

October 8, 2009 Food & drink

This is a traditional Italian torte, loaded with hazelnuts and poppy seeds, rich with ricotta cheese. It goes well with a cup of good, strong coffee. First butter and line a 28cm tart or cake tin, one with a removable base, with greaseproof paper. Toast 125g of hazelnuts in a dry frying pan over a [...]

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Tarte aux Quetsches, or Plum Tart

September 5, 2009 Food & drink

I posted some photos last week from a small café and bookshop in Becherel, France. It was an amazing place, a bookshop with a café attached as a sideline rather than the other way round. This is the way these things should be. It was how I imagine my bookshop will look and feel if [...]

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