There are a lot of broadly Middle Eastern cookery books around at the moment. In the last few months, I’ve cooked from Ottolenghi’s peerless Jerusalem, and Levant by Anissa Helou, and now Joudie Kalla’s excellent Palestine on a Plate. All of these books share a common sense of identity, of place, and of history. The [...]
A lot of the food I cook at the moment is about convenience. Not ‘convenience’ in the sense of ‘piercing the film on some ready meal and throwing it into a microwave’, but convenience in terms of getting the best results with the least effort. That doesn’t mean that my food is becoming ‘bad’ – there’s a [...]
It’s Mother’s Day today. It’s a bittersweet experience, the pleasure of seeing our kids with their homemade cards and bunches of daffodils tinged with the regret of not being able to give my own mum the same things, not being able to hug her and tell her I love her any more. It gets easier [...]
Arabica is a small cafe-style restaurant tucked into a basement in Bradford’s student-ville, just across from the University. It’s been open for about eighteen months, and I’ve heard a lot of whispers and rumours about this new, fantastic middle eastern place. Arabica’s is one of those names that seems to have cropped up in too [...]