I was at the market the other day. I’d gone for some sausages, but left with a handful of pig’s ears (more on which later), some pork belly, a ham hock, a kilo of mutton and a huge tray of beef ribs, about 5kg of mammoth ribs, each about a foot long and loaded with [...]
Preserving meat … sounds like something that could go badly, botulism-riddled wrong, doesn’t it? Charcuterie is a a slightly daunting area, and it isn’t an undertaking to be taken lightly. I’m nowhere near ready to cure and air-dry a whole leg of pork, or equipped to maintain the specific temperature or level of humidity suitable [...]
I made a pain au levain the other week, a French sourdough shaped like a torpedo, and full of glorious air holes, encased in a brittle crust. It was a textbook example of why ‘slow is best’ when it comes to baking bread. The levain, or starter, was set up the night before, giving it a [...]
I’ve become obsessed with keeping the exact location of the best blackberry bush in the whole of Shipley a secret, even going to the trouble of deleting the geotags from a photo I took of the view when I was stood right next to it. I swore the kids to absolute secrecy. They won’t talk. There [...]
Here’s something a little different – a sweetened dough from the Nordic countries, particularly Finland. It’s the Northern European version of brioche, a bread dough packed with butter and sugar, stuffed with a variety of fruits, creams and spices, as the baker sees fit. Pulla buns are best made as enormous, fist-sized wedges, each looking [...]