strawberry salad with blue cheese dressing

There is a glut of strawberries this year because of the phenomenal weather we had at Easter. I love this early summer salad of strawberries and spicy watercress. Toasted almonds add a nice nutty crunchiness to contrast with the creamy blue cheese dressing and the bitter and peppery watercress.

fat couscous and chickpea salad with a lemon-chilli dressing

fat couscous salad with feta and chlli

It isn't very often that I eat a supermarket ready-meal and think "delicious. I must rush home and try to create it". In fact it has never happened before. But recently there has been one thing I have rather enjoyed and that is one of Sainsbury's range of Taste the Difference Giant Cous Cous and Feta salad pots.

I spent years trying to track down Israeli couscous in England. But I finally managed to identify it as mograbiah or moghrabbiyeh. This is also known as Lebanese, pearl or Israeli couscous. And until I had a word to describe it, I just called it fat couscous; it shall always be fat couscous to me.

what's in season: may

© British Asparagus

The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.
Sir Thomas Malory - Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)

Out with the old and in with the new . . . most of our winter crops are coming to and end and stores of fruit and vegetables are dwindling. But British seasonal foods are just beginning to come into their own.

I'm not a particularly patriotic person; you will never see me wearing a Union Jack t-shirt (although maybe some Union Jack slippers), but I will admit to feeling a faint stirring of something when I first saw the enormous UJ bunting decorating Regent Street in London recently (up for for the Royal Wedding) . . . although that could have been due to indigestion. But I will definitely give a big old whoop and a cheer for glorious British asparagus, a very short but sweet season of six to eight weeks.

chicken with chilli, lemon and mint

chicken with chilli, lemon and mint

This Easter weekend in April was so warm it felt like summer. Ah, the joys of English weather. Not surprisingly a barbecue party was in order. It was perfect weather and I had good friends who are more than happy to let me do the food.
The first thing I prepared was some grilled chicken. This is one of my favourite barbecue dishes. But it is equally easy to do under the grill and while it is infinitely nicer served warm, but it also works well at ambient temperature; the flavours are strong yet subtle enough to fill your mouth with glorious Moroccan flavours.

basil pesto sauce

basil pesto

While a pesto made with basil isn't strictly a seasonal recipe, I had made a bucket-load last weekend. I was cooking for several picnics over the Easter holiday and the weather was divine, as good as you could hope for. (London was apparently hotter than the Sahara!) So while my basil plants are still little more than seedlings, a trip to my local Middle Eastern deli, Phoenicia in Kentish Town, armed me with bags of the stuff at a very reasonable price indeed.

oh! my darling spuds! (my perfect potato salad)

my perfect potato salad

This is for George, who unwittingly set in chain a process of events that made me realise that I loved to cook, write and share it all and led to me setting up this blog. Yup, Bat Boy (sorry, private joke) it is all your fault. But thank you anyway!  

There are times when I can be quite impulsive, but other times when I like to go away to think about things. .. for years . . . and years. It is a real case of the penny not actually dropping, as it is slowly edging along in miniscule increments that is my glacial ability to slowly mull things over.

If any of that doesn’t make much sense, what I am trying to say is that I had never made the connection between my love of cooking, my nerdy need to track down the “perfect” recipe (or the version that tasted best to me) my pleasure in the pleasure of others and my enjoyment of writing about it.

bacon froise - an interesting breakfast!

bacon froise with tomatoes and mushrooms

A friend of mine who is a "furriner" is intrigued by the names the British give some of their more traditional dishes and I delight in feeding him the ones that are less likely to appear on a restaurant menu. So when he popped round on Saturday afternoon, I had thought to make an easy standby - "toad-in-the-hole", which is essentially just sausages cooked in a savoury pudding batter and served with gravy. Sadly I had forgotten to buy any bangers, so decided to revert to a "froise" instead, the name if nothing else, being delightfully cosy.

demerara, almond and lemon drizzle cake (another winning Nigel Slater recipe)

Nigel Slater's Demerara Lemon Cake

As I have previously mentioned, I am not much of a baker. However, I am slowly improving and I do learn from my (numerous) mistakes. This is probably one of the easiest of cakes I have ever baked, so long as I remember that baking is a science and not a case of wetting my finger, putting it in the air, seeing which way the wind is blowing and hoping for the best. Although sometimes when all else fails that seems to work as well.

I always have a strong idea of what I want either my food or my photographs to look like. It is clear in my imagination. Sadly, the reality is very different. What I wanted was something a bit like Dom at Belleau Kitchen’s gorgeous Lemon and Marmalade cake, but with added lemon. (Can you feel my envy oozing out of this post?) Good, that was the intention.

good things of england: oh happy days!

Good Things in England

There is a particular joy of celebrating a glorious spring day with the purchase of a new (and soon to be treasured) cookery book. Yesterday, the daffodils outside my front door were jostling for position like footballers inside the penalty box as a grey wind sent them skittering in the early morning gloom. A day later and the sun is shining. The daffs are beaming beatifically and my mood is definitely sunny. I have finally got my hands on Florence White's Good Things of England. It's enough to bring a smile to any lover of food and history. 

Florence White was interested in retaining all of that culinary knowledge (both foods and techniques) that was in danger of being lost as a result of new fashions and technology. Sound familiar?

rhubarb & ginger bombay sapphire cocktail

As you can probably tell, I do like fruit flavoured cocktails. Let's face it, it is one of the few ways that I will actually eat fruit . . . with copious amounts of alcohol.

I am planning on celebrating the spring season by making some rhubarb liqueur, but while it is waiting to mature, I am giving you this fabulous cocktail for rhubarb lovers everywhere. It was originally created by mixologist Flavio Lorenzo, (from Nobu Berkeley), for the Bombay Sapphire pop-up bar at Somerset House, in the glorious summer of 2009. Hic!

what's in season: april

favourite spring flowers!

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.   
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
Robert Frost - Two Tramps in Mud Time - 1926

April is known as a "cruel month", not least becauseit is rather lean in terms of seasonal British produce. Stores of British fruit and vegetables are coming to an end and the new crops of vegetables are not up to maximum strength yet. Fortunately all the greens are beginning to appear, such as lettuce and watercress as well as spinach and broccoli, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

this being a tale of a quest for lemon perfection

I freely admit that I am not, and never have been, a baker. I've never really tried; something to do with being a little underwhelmed by anything sweet. This you may feel is something of a hindrance in the cake department, which, on balance, tends to be full of sweet things.
But I'm British for god's sake. Our cuisine may have been notorious around the world, our cooking ridiculed, but our cakes and pudding are renowned, and in a good way. So I decided that I needed to stand up and be counted; I hadn’t baked a cake since the dreaded Home Ec classes of my early teenage years (which put me off cooking until I was in my 20s) but I thought this might be a good challenge to take on. Besides, I had 22 lemons kicking around the kitchen after my Pancake Day party and I needed some satisfying ideas for a cold, damp day in March.