Autumn walks, a leek tart and flatbreads

September 30 2024

Welcome to new readers

So pleased to have you here. I cook something from the weekend papers each week and take a simple photo on the kitchen table before we eat it. As you will gather, it’s the same crockery but maybe a different tablecloth each week and they are deliberately not styled. To be honest, food styling is beyond my skill set and I think it makes it more real. And then I summarise the cookbooks, restaurant reviews, and travel for the independently minded. This newsletter will always be free as I get a lot out of writing. It also takes the pressure off.

Introduction

My friends think we eat elaborate meals all the time. We don’t. Yesterday I planned to make Mark Diacono’s leek and thyme tart with fennel pastry from the Sunday Times for supper and had made pastry at lunchtime. I am my mother’s daughter and cannot buy shortcrust although I do buy puff pastry. Then I had a phone call, the hob kept cutting out and the light was going which meant a decent photo was out of the question so I gave up halfway through. My husband came to the rescue by doing jacket potatoes in the airfrier which we had with butter and cheese and calm was restored. Anyone who has seen me ‘hangry’ will know what this means. No reflection at all on the recipe. I finished off the tart this today and the combination of fennel in the pastry. lemon thyme, bay and nutmeg in the filling made it worth waiting for. And a freeform galette is much quicker than a quiche

I’m back from a writing retreat in Dorset organised and led by Loretta who leads an online writing group and it was great to meet up with people you have only met online but who have become friends. Loretta is a fantastic cook and made Anna Jones’s lemon, tomato and cardamom dhal from her book, ‘One: Pot, Pan, Planet.’ one day. I said I’m making that when I go home. I made Mark Hix’s flatbreads from the Telegraph to go with it.

Books 

Cooking & the Crown by Tom Parker Bowles

with an interview and recipes in the Times including Queen Camilla’s chicken broth, her scrambled eggs, her porridge, her omelette aux fines herbes, with the addition of gruyère and mushrooms and a mango melba, her variation on peach melba.  

Simply Jamie by Jamie Oliver 

in the Independent with recipes for the easiest cornbread, roasted veg with camembert fondue and upside-down noodle rice bowl. The book covers  midweek meals, traybakes, and dishes made from store cupboard ingredients

Restaurants

In the FT, Tim Hayward was in Paris at the Le Grand Véfour.

In the Guardian, Grace Dent was at Mary’s in London W1, 'a new smart-casual brasserie’ from Jason Atherton which was, until recently, Pollen Street Social. She wrote, (it’s) ‘no longer a place to eat daintily, this is now a place to eat rather too much.’

In the Observer, Jay Rayner was in St Andrews in Scotland at 18 which was full of golfers and he wasn’t impressed with them or the food.

In the Standard, David Ellis went to the Ritz in London W1 for his first review and said, ‘the Ritz is the restaurant I routinely name as London’s best, because it is. Only no one ever believes me, on the grounds it’s too preposterously obvious to possibly be true. But it is. Accept no substitute, not even the afternoon tea.’

In the Sunday Times, Charlotte Ivers was at Lolo, the third restaurant by José Pizarro in same street in Bermondsey London SE1 and thought that ‘it was pleasingly, is a lot more daring than its siblings. Fashionable decor; cool crowd, for Bermondsey at least.’

In the Telegraph, William Sitwell was in Devon, at the Millbrook Inn in South Pool, Devon which is, ‘in a beautiful village, in the exquisite setting of the Devon coastline. And the chef needs to somehow cast off the shackles of his new role and put his vessel into full power, as if he were racing against the tide.’

In the Times, Giles Coren went to Toklas in London WC2 where he thought the cooking was ‘enchanting’ but the natural wines ‘terrible’.

Travel

There wasn’t a lot of British or European travel in the papers this weekend that would appeal to the independent traveller. This is what I liked and will fantasise about.

Someone said to me recently words along the lines of, ‘why are you thinking about another holiday? You’ve only just come back from France.’ My answer is that any spare money I’ve ever had, I will have spent on going somewhere, even if it’s been staying in a mountain hut and cooking my own food.

UK 

20 foodie breaks for Autumn in the Guardian including the Queens Head Broadchalke which my brother liked so I know I will. Edited to say that he’s just whatsapped to say he went to a different one, the Queen’s Arms in Corton Denham. Shows he reads my musings. I’m also attracted to the the Halfway at Kineton and Updown Farmhouse on a Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday when it is cheaper.

Britain’s best faff-free walking weekends – with stays at nice inns and pubs in the Telegraph including the South Downs Way from Eastbourne to Hassocks, along and around the Dales Way in North Yorkshire from Ilkley to Burnsall and Kemble to Stroud alomg the Cotswolds Way.

A chef’s guide to Yorkshire by Sam Varley, the chef and owner of the Owl in Hawnby in the Sawdays newsletter 

Europe

Shipwrecks, sea birds and whale spotting: exploring Ireland’s first marine park in the Guardian. The Kerry Seas national park (Páirc Náisiúnta na Mara, Ciarraí) encompasses 70,000 acres of precious marine and coastal habitats off Ireland’s gorgeous Kerry coast in the SW of Ireland in the Guardian. 

Europe’s six twin-city breaks – linked by a ferry in the Telegraph. They recommend Barcelona, Spain, to Genoa, Italy, Tallinn, Estonia to Helsinki, Finland, Corfu, Greece, to Brindisi, Italy amongst others. Ferryhopper has an interactive map where you can plan a journey.

A guide to autumn in Florence in the Telegraph.

10 of the best cities in Germany in the Times including Dresden, Cologne and Nuremberg and Bamberg. No, I hadn’t heard of Bamberg either but apparently, it’s close to Nuremberg in Bavaria. 

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