I’ve got a very chequered history with pastry. Sometimes, it works out OK, but not perfect, other times it’s a complete disaster. The number of times the pastry has shrunk back from the rim of the tin, leaving a flat disk of insipid pastry with a slightly upturned lip, is uncountable.  That flat disk with [...]

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 [...]

Bread is the most elemental of food. It’s just flour, water, yeast and salt, and, in it’s most basic form, that’s it. Go ahead and embellish it however you want, but a basic loaf is the stuff of life itself. But, what if you were to go one step more fundamental, and use your own [...]

Ecclefechan, a small town in the Scottish Borders is famous for a few things, including being the birthplace of both the writer Thomas Carlyle and one Archibald Arnott, Napoleon’s doctor during his extended stay on St Helena, but also, and this is slightly more pertinent for a food blog, for the Ecclefechan tart, a rich concoction of [...]