“The truly delicious things are not always those that cost a fortune, but those that have been passed from generation to generation; you can taste their integrity.” Stevie Parle’s book My Kitchen: Real Food from Near and Far isn’t constrained by geography. This isn’t a collection of recipes with a defined focus on a particular [...]
I was leafing through a few cookbooks this morning when I stumbled across my copy of Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food. What struck me about it were the number of scraps of paper sticking out of the top, each bookmarking something I wanted to cook. Little scraps of paper jammed between pages is [...]
There are things we say in the kitchen, a codified lexicon, that explain some of the kitchen mentality at Ko. “Make it soigne” means make it right and make it perfect. It’s something you hear a lot in traditional French kitchens. No mistakes, no misunderstandings. Make it the best. Do not fuck it up. It’s [...]
When you think about the types of food that have strong associations with a particular place or country, what do you think of? British fish and chips, maybe, or American hotdogs? What about French crepes or Belgian waffles, Spanish churros or an Italian espresso? There’s a subtle theme here…these are all fast foods, street foods, [...]
Leon is a small chain of London restaurants with an unusual approach to a sensible goal. They believe that “food should taste good and do you good. And that everyone should be able to enjoy it”, which is a noble belief that underpins many a restaurant venture. How have they done it? In their own [...]