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 [...]
I’ve had some success in the past with tagines of lamb or mutton, flavoured with the mysterious North African spice blend, ras-el-hanout. The tagine is suited well to this time of year, when long, slow cooking suddenly seems appropriate again. Ras-el-hanout is the garam masala of the North African and Middle Eastern world, a combination [...]
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) [...]
The Copper Dragon Brewery resurrected the local brewing industry in Skipton in 2002, with the aim of re-establishing the long defunct Skipton Brewery. Their aim, after much research which basically indicated that the more artisan end of the beer market was being squeezed to near death by the big multinational breweries, was to brew traditional, [...]
Making butter is simple. It’s really just very agitated cream. The craft of making butter seems to have been lost. In past centuries, most butter was made by hand using methods similar to this. These are forgotten skills now, so much so that actually doing it yourself by hand and seeing a pat of butter [...]