Have you ever had times where you’ve been challenged, where there’s been something that you know you can do much, much better if you just cracked a little piece of technique, if somebody simply showed you how?

Yes? It’s true for all of us, and one of my blind spots used to be French style patisserie.

I’ve made all sorts of things like this before, and I’ve always ended up with reasonably tasty bread, but the results felt like they could have been … tidier.

My croissants looked a bit scratty, a bit too rustic, not French enough. I just needed showing how to roll them out properly, how to form them into a shape that let those glorious laminated layers of butter explode outwards instead of collapsing in on themselves.

It’s all about technique.

So, I took a little trip up the Colne valley to a small town called Slaithwaite (it’s pronounced ‘Slaw-itt’ by the locals, and incorrectly by everybody else) to learn how to make French patisserie properly. More…

What?

The World Curry Festival draws together the tastes of the Sub-Continent, the Caribbean, Thailand, Malaysia and South America into one three-day celebration of the glorious curry.

When and where?

The 21st to 23rd June, 2013, between the fountains of the brand new City Park in Bradford, in the shadows of the most stunning town hall in the whole of Britain.

Why?

Let’s not be coy about this … we Bradfordians know a thing or two about curry.

We’ve all been eating it since we were very, very young indeed, and we’re quite demanding in our tastes. We like our Asian food to be made properly, with fire and passion, with the  freshest ingredients, full of life and character.

If anything fuels this city, it’s curry.

If you’re going to hold a festival dedicated to curry, it really has to be staged in the mighty city of Bradford, and there are no better places for this sort of thing than the superb City Park. That development, sneered at and mocked right through its incarnation and realisation, has proved to be a revelation – a flexible, inspiring, fun, open space that fits perfectly into the heart and culture of the city.

More information…

Hmm. Hard to know what to think of this …

Manly Food is a cookbook dedicated to food with a distinctly masculine edge.

I had to stop and think about that for a while.

What does it actually mean?

What is ‘masculine’ food, and what makes it so? There are hints, of course, nudges in much of the language … ‘meaty’, ‘hearty’, ‘bold’, ‘adventurous’, etc … and the theme is clear across the collection of recipes. There’s a lot of meat, a lot of dishes with massive flavours and real punch. Each alone is very good indeed, and there would seem to be few duff recipes or ideas here, but taken together as a collection and presented in this way?

Well, it made me a little uneasy to start.

Here are the pros and cons:

• There’s a lot of good recipes here, executed well.
• The writing is sharp, and funny. There’s a certain wit about it that’s quite engaging.
• Its mere existence perpetuates that view that men are essentially Neanderthals when it comes to cooking.
• It walks a fine line between tongue in cheek and a little bit sexist. That’s a dangerous line to walk.

The big problem here is that because it so overtly calls out a certain theme, the book tends to highlight the opposite, to show that there really are people who think that food and cooking isn’t a masculine pursuit, that men don’t cook because women should do it for them, which is, of course, fucking stupid.

But then, what of this as a book that challenges this lazy, stuck-in-the-Fifties assumption?

What if Manly Food grabs a couple of blokes by the scruff of the neck and thrusts them into the kitchen? What if it transforms through challenge? Does it succeed on that level?

More…

This has ‘gimmick’ written all over it, but unlike most things that look gimmicky, this actually does something useful.

The SinkStation bills itself as a ‘flat colander’, and the general idea is that it’s a largely flat sheet with drainage holes in it that sits in the sink and does the job of making the bottom hygienically usable for food preparation tasks. It also provides a way of rinsing out flat, delicate foods, and a place to catch peelings and other stuff more cleanly.

It sounds a little far-fetched, but it’s a good idea – a raised ‘deck’ at the bottom of the sink to keep food off the bottom as its drained or cleaned. It does the job pretty well, and is great for draining small amounts of boiled things, like pasta or potatoes … there’s a spout shaped indent at one corner that helps to guide water away that also helps to direct the cooked stuff when it’s tipped out. The same goes for the movement of peelings/assorted debris to the bin.

It’s not a bad idea – tough plastic that survives the dishwasher, easy to store, comes in a galaxy of colours, multifunctional and versatile.