wine

Could the Nordic Diet stop obesity?

January 16, 2010

There should be little doubt that Britain has a problem with its’ weight. Current estimates rate the level of obesity at around a quarter of the population. That’s a lot of big people. The traditional British diet, heavy in saturated fats and carbohydrates, added to an ever more sedentary lifestyle would seem to be the [...]

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Life’s Too Short to Drink Bad Wine – Simon Hoggart

December 1, 2009

You might have noticed an almost complete absence of posts about wine from this blog. There’s a simple reason for it. Wine scares me to death. The presence of a bona fide wine expert in the family doesn’t help, either, but that aside, I know very little about wine, despite drinking my fair share of [...]

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Keith Floyd’s Beef Bourgignon

September 29, 2009

The passing of Keith Floyd earlier this month caused me to dig out one of his old cookbooks, Floyd on France, a cornerstone of the Floyd canon and packed full of traditional French recipes described and executed with typical flair. Beef Bourgignon, caught my eye. It is, as Floyd puts it ‘a splendid stew (that) [...]

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Cote de porc a la charcutiere

July 19, 2009

“Is there any better, more noble, more magical animal than the pig?” – Anthony Bourdain. Probably not, Tony. This dish illustrates exactly what Bourdain means. It’s quick, easy, cheap but still manages to be quite understated and authentic. It’s a French classic that showcases the pig perfectly. The key to the whole dish is the [...]

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Mussels, chips and mayonnaise

June 27, 2009

A few years ago, we had a long weekend in the vastly under-rated Belgian capital of Brussels, famous for beer, waffles, a statue of a little boy having a wee and mussels. I ate mussels three nights out of four, and on the other night I had a lobster, which came with a starter of [...]

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Tricked and deceived by a German wine

June 3, 2009

I was the subject of a hideous experiment the other day. I was given a glass of white wine by my wine connoisseur* brother-in-law, and asked to try it. It was very nice indeed, off dry, a little sweeter than I usually choose but perfectly good. It wasn’t the best wine I’ve ever tasted, but [...]

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Pollo Alla Cacciatora, or Italian Chicken Stew with Chianti

March 2, 2009

Chicken cacciatora is a simple dish that yields impressive results. The preparation of this dish takes minutes, but the magic happens over hours as the chicken marinates in wine, before bubbling away in a low oven. The end result is tender chicken in a deep and savoury sauce rich with wine and tomato. Authentic, rustic [...]

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