Pork belly is cheap, robust, easy to cook and very tasty, especially when roasted. The thing to realise about this cut is that the point of cooking it has little to do with the meat and everything to do with the skin. Crackling is the real draw here. To give a roast pork belly an [...]

The mackerel is much under-rated, frequently shunned by the chef and shopper in favour of more familiar white fish such as cod or haddock. This is a shame, because mackerel has a lot to offer. Mackerel is a beautiful fish, all dark blues and greys, it’s skin shiny and sparkling, and it’s easy to prepare [...]

One of the key problems of subscribing to an organic veg delivery scheme is that you get what you’re given, and this sometimes leads to a growing mountain of something that you’d rather not have. Nobody in our family really likes parsnips. They’re OK, I suppose, but not in the ‘hmm, what shall we have [...]

After much effort, I finally managed to get hold of a couple of bottles of Saltaire Brewery’s award-winning Hazelnut Coffee Porter, from the excellent Beer Ritz in Headingley. Beer Ritz is an Aladdin’s cave of premium and real beer and worth a slight detour, even on a snowy day. It may very well be one [...]