Andalucia, budget Italian and flatbreads
Introduction
This week I made a wedding cake with my elder daughter for one of her friends, lemon sponge, a raspberry curd filling and Swiss meringue lemon butter cream. For my lunch, I made Rachel Roddy’s potato flatbreads with anchovy butter in the Guardian and now the sight of my scraggy fried egg makes me feel like one of those Bake Off contestants who can construct a working biscuit crane but can’t make a scone.
Recipes
Budget friendly Italian recipes from Diana Henry in the Telegraph, peppers and potatoes in padella, maccheroni with sausage and cabbage and fagioli all’uccelletto (tomato, sage and garlic beans, and in the same vein, salt cod and pappa al pomodoro, a Rowley Leigh recipe in the FT.
Jacob Kenedy, chef and owner of Bocca di Lupo restaurant has easy Italian recipes in the Times including chard and scamorza risotto, chickpeas with tomato, chilli and mint and roast squash with sage and balsamic vinegar
Easy one tray dinner recipes by Skye McAlpine in the Sunday Times, which are also Italian inflienced,, chicken thighs with figs, sausages with fennel and grapes and orzo pasta with mackerel, pine nuts and raisins. She also suggests swapping the mackerel ingredients for green peas and courgette, or halved baby tomatoes, black olives and melting mozzarella. And a creamy leek and nduja orzo by Eleanor Steafel in the Telegraph
Five recipes from Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant Catherine St in the Times including a chicken en croute, a mushroom bolognese, and vodka and beetroot-cured salmon.
Mark Hix concentrates on rice with recipes for chicken biryani, a wild rice salad and Jersey milk rice pudding with lemon verbena in the Telegrap.,
Richard Corrigan in the Guardian with recipes for winter soups, a potato and kale soup with bacon dumplings and onion broth with kale pesto as well as a mushroom, Guinness and pearl barley stew by Meera Sodha  and Ravneet Gill’s recipe for apple terrine with palmiers.
Ottolenghi does Middle Eastern influenced Italian recipes, Halloween fruit loaf with Hawaij, (a Yemeni spice being a mixture ground ginger,cardamom pods, cinnamon and nutmeg), a curry-flavoured potato flatbread with bacon and apple mustard, and an Irish-style stew with giant couscous and preserved lemon.
He says, ‘I’ve been told off before by Irish friends for messing about with Irish stew, but I’m afraid I just can’t help myself. Every time I make it, I throw in something extra at the last minute. Please feel free to add or omit as you see fit.’
Rukmini Iyer has a potato, red cabbage, butter bean, pomegranate salad with a yoghurt dressing in the Guardian which I think would be good at Christmas. Now we’ve had Remembrance Day, I am happy mentioning Christmas..
Caramelised banana sundae by Nigel Slater and his recipes for grilled herring, tomato and pomegranate and blackberries and toasted oatmeal in the Observer.
Books
Home Kitchen: Everyday Cooking Made Simple And Delicious by Donal Skehan
with an interview and recipes for autumn pasta with blue cheese and nuts, one-pot Moroccan-style meatballs and Irish coffee, hazelnut and chocolate tiramisu in the Independent.
I went to Petersham Nurseries in Richmond on Sunday, which a friend always calls catnip for middle-aged women, and I think she’s right.
Restaurants
In the Guardian, Grace Dent travelled to Brighton to Bonsai Plant Kitchen and said it was ‘ a place for vegans to take non-vegans and open their minds, or annoy them with inverted commas and fake Mongolian lamb until they never speak to them again. Here, the former is far more likely.’
In the Observer, Jay Rayner thought the Small Canteen in Newcastle upon Tyne was ‘marvellous’ and ‘it was delightful to find somewhere so damn pleasurable and so at ease with itself.’
In the Standard, Jimi Famurewa went to Kolae, a new Thai restaurant in Borough Market, London SE1 and wrote it was ‘a sophisticated, scintillating shot in the arm for a beloved genre, and about as authentically brilliant as it gets.’
In the Telegraph, William Sitwell was in Leith on the outskirts of Edinburgh at Heron which was ‘confident, charming and extremely decent.’
In the Times, Giles Coren went to Notto, a pasta restaurant in London W1, soon to move to Covent Garden. He had the set menu for £22.50, which is historic, nay epochal, nay, aeonic value for two courses (across four plates) of cooking this good.’
Travel
UK
The Times has a list of the best Sunday roasts in pubs and restaurants as suggested by top chefs.
The Telegraph advises you where you can see the Northern lights in the UK and Aurora Watch from Lancaster University will tell you when they will be there. A friend saw them on a beach in North Devon, not mentioned in the article.Â
An autumn tour of the Yorkshire coast, Bridlington, Filey and Scarborough in the Guardian
Europe
Córdoba, which the Times cites as Seville’s underrated neighbourÂ
Michael Portillo’s tips on Andalucia in the Telegraph to coincide with his TV programme, on Channel 5 on Tuesdays at 9pm. I watched the first one on Granada and it was beautifully filmed. And in Northern Spain, along the route of the Camino de Santiago by train, starting at Bilbao, and then through Burgos, Leon, Monteforte de Lemos to Santiago de Compostela in the Times.
The Sunday Times says go to Greece in November with Athens, Delphi and by the coast at Nafplion
Amsterdam travel guide in the Independent, who supposedly have too many tourists and are not trying to attract them.
And finally an art lovers’ guide to Paris in the Guardian. Where would we be without an article and a picture of Paris each week?
Reading the newspapers
People ask me how I read all the papers. I believe in paying for quality journalism and my husband and I have digital subscriptions to the Times and to the Telegraph. Sometimes my husband buys a Times on Saturdays or I buy a Guardian and I buy the Observer when it’s Observer Food Monthly. Otherwise I rely on what’s online, and on Twitter and Instagram. And occasionally, I ask a friend to save an article for me.
The Times gives you two free articles a week as a registered user and the Telegraph gives you access to one free article each week if you register an account.
Local public libraries often have pressreader which gives access to over 7,000 newspapers world wide for free or you can subscribe to it.
Sometimes, I use the recipes for inspiration. If they are from a cookbook, they may be in other publications as well for publicity and you may find them or a similar version through Google