French cities, Sussex, and wild garlic
French cities, Sussex, and wild garlic
Introduction
I am writing this from the Llŷn Peninsula in North Wales where I am for a week’s reunion with the Mountaineering Club. All I have to do is make a packed lunch each day with all shopping done as all dinners are catered with two meals out. It’s a different experience from thinking about what to eat each day. I’ve been on the B- Team so far on the Anglesey Coastal Path and the Pilgrim’s Way while my husband has been scrambling up ridges in Snowdonia with the A-Team. We take over a complex of cottages; there’s the bliss of being with friends you’ve known for years on end and an excuse to eat endless cake.
An article in the Independent on what makes a successful cook book made me think, especially, the view of Kitty Coles whose book, ‘Make More With Less: Foolproof Recipes to Make Your Food Go Further, ‘has just been published. She said, “there’s a problem with cookbooks from newer voices in that they are too London-centric:–esoteric ingredients take centre stage, despite many readers outside the capital potentially not having access to them. A popular cookbook is cooking for Sue from Swindon, who only has a Tesco near her and maybe a Polish shop. You want her as well as Fred in Hackney to be able to cook your recipes.”
I so agree; even living in SW London, I do find it difficult to buy certain ingredients. Once I went to North End Road market in Fulham to buy baby aubergines for a recipe I made here which were £5.99 a kilo. I thought, afterwards, why didn’t I buy normal sized ones and cut them up? It wouldn’t have been any different.
Then by serendipity, there was an article saying where restaurateurs buy their ingredients, where some aren’t in London and these can be by mail order, in the Standard and favourite local shops in the UK, chosen by chefs and food writers in the Observer.
But those of us who live in cities might have to find wild garlic too. For Londoners, I have picked it in the Chilterns in woods near Fingest and near the Stepping Stones Car Park off the A24 south of Leatherhead.
Recipes
A week’s meal plan by Xanthe Clay in the Telegraph for £26 a person which has attracted a lot of stick in the comments or should I say opprobrium? but seems eminently sensible to me. Do I count my macros for every meal? No, I don’t. I make sure I eat fruit and veg, plant based meals and not a lot of meat these days. Probably too much cheese but I’m working on that. The ‘recipes incorporate plenty of lean protein, healthy fats and complex carbohydrates and a range of essential micronutrients’ and a shopping list. I made the Doris Grant loaf (no-knead bread) and it has made sturdy sandwiches and very good toast this week.
Other recipes include pot-roast turkey leg with lemon and garlic, brown rice and roast beetroot, mackerel salad with lemon mayonnaise, baked potatoes with tomato-braised lentils and roasted Mediterranean vegetables with feta and warm grains. Someone in the comments asked about protein and helpfully, the Guardian had an article about how to get the right amount of protein at every age.
Three tarts for spring time by Skye McAlpine in the Sunday Times, green beans; spinach and ricotta; and broad beans, pecorino and pancetta. They all sound original and there’s also a tip on avoiding soggy bottoms.
Nigel Slater in the Observer has been using wild garlic in tenderstem broccoli with garlic hollandaise and a wild garlic cheese pudding instead of a soufflé. Soufflés can feel scary even though they are not. Also recipes for blueberry yoghurt cake, lemon and spinach linguine, and aubergine, mint and cucumber yoghurt
Mark Hix with four affordable ways to cook spring lambs, lamb souvlaki with halloumi salad, Moroccan-spiced lamb cutlets with tabbouleh, spring lamb salad and spring lamb broth.
Mark Hix in the Telegraph with raw recipes, beef carpaccio with horseradish and Parmesan, kibbeh Nayeh, a Lebanese spiced lamb tartare to serve with a herb and chilli salsa, beetroot-cured mackerel and Sashimi salad with Asian mushrooms, seaweed and citrus ponzu sauce. I always worry where to find fish fresh enough as I don’t live by the Dorset coast but the articles mentioned above might help.
Diana Henry with coconut recipes from her archive in the Telegraph with fish with turmeric, dill and coconut, chicken, coconut and ginger soup with lime, Thai basil and mint and coconut and lime cake. Also Brunch with brioche with bacon, fried eggs, chilli roast tomatoes, uttermilk pancakes with passion-fruit curd recipe and erguez sausage, avocado and white beans with chermoula.
The Guardian is concentrating on country specials. The Italian issue includes Ottolenghi with spring vegetables, lemon sole with spring vegetable agrodolce and orecchiette with broccoli, anchovy and cumin, brioche buns stuffed with icecream by Ravneet Gill, Tim and Rachel Roddy’s recipe for scafata, or Roman spring vegetable stew, ‘typical of Lazio, featuring chard, potatoes, artichokes and new-season broad beans.’
Tim Siadatan’s recipes for Italian springtime pasta, penne with fennel sausage and radicchio, Ricotta gnocchi with raw pea pesto raw podded peas and orecchiette with slow-cooked purple sprouting broccoli, chilli, garlic and anchovy
Then a Mexican special issue with Ottolenghi’s spicy chipotle chicken with black-eyed bean salsa and creamy green peppers with jalapeño salsa and Meera Sodha’s vegan seven layer nachos. Benjamina Ebuehi does mango and Tajín semifreddo; Tajín is a seasoning of chilli lime and salt. You can get it in Waitrose, a cursory online search showed but I found a recipe online by John Gregory Smith, a mix of ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp mild chilli powder and the zest of ½ lime which saves buying a tub of something you might not use much. More coming online.
Fish recipes from Watch restaurant in Weymouth, Giles Coren’s favourite restaurant.
Cheesy bourekas best eaten with pickles and boiled eggs by Honey and Co and deep-fried custard with poached rhubarb by Ravinder Bhogal in the FT.
Books
The Diabetes Weight Loss Plan by Katie Caldesi
in the Independent with an interview with Giancarlo and Katie Caldesi whose low-carb diet plan helped Giancarlo get rid of his type-2 diabetes and with recipes for spicy root patties which have root veg, halloumi and chickpea flour in them, seafood and nduja stew and chocolate, date and walnut brownies which are no sugar.
So Good by Emily English
a nutritionist who has 1.2m followers on IG and 650k on TikTok with an interview and recipes including Italian sausage and broccoli pasta and Italian sausage and broccoli pasta in the Times
Greekish by Georgina Hayden
with an interview and recipes in the Observer including sticky aubergine, pomegranate and herb tart, barbecued sea bass stuffed with pistachio and caper pesto and ‘Baklava cheesecake, I love you.’
Britain’s Best Bakeries by Milly Kenny-Ryder
with a list of some of the bakeries in the Telegraph and eight of the best bakeries in Scotland in the Scotsman
Sift by Nicola Lamb
in the Sunday Times with recipes for chocolate, peanut and coconut twice-baked biscuits, flaky cheese and pickle scones and courgette galette. I can’t wait for this book to come out and want to make all these recipes now.
Restaurants
Vogue gives its list of best restaurants in London.
In the FT, Tim Hayward was at the Shed in Swansea which he called, ‘brown and brilliant’ where the chef Jonathan Woolway who had worked at St John has returned to Wales and Hannah, at Westminster Bridge, London SW1 how to do kaiseki. He said, ‘out with the formality, in with emotion at this Japanese gem.’
In the Guardian, Grace Dent went to Morchella in London EC1 and liked it. Another nice restaurant handy for Sadler’s Wells.
She’d thought the Arlington is a new place doing the same old things. There are certainly better restaurants, dining-wise, in St James’s, but few are as interesting or
In the Observer, Jay Rayner was at A Braccetto, a new venture from the Spaghetti House people. He thought the food was good but the wine spendy and at at Lita, a Spanish restaurant in Marylebone W1, which he thought good but not cheap
In the Standard, Jimi Famurewa was at the Bear in the back of a pub in Camberwell, London SE5 which he thought, had brought ‘cool, style and imagination to a handsome, ill-starred spot.’
In the Telegraph, William Sitwell went to Somerset to the Cotley Inn which he said was gloriously entrenched in the culture of the Blackdown Hills, and a pub ‘that combines such welcome, warmth, style and flavour.’ and then to Pollini at Ladbroke Hall in London W10. This ‘offers a vast and classic menu to satisfy the purist Italophile but this horse needs the whip of texture and guts to really bring it glory.
Travel
UK
The Telegraph wants us to decide between East and West Sussex. I love them both and the article is a good round up of places to go. The Guardian gives Raymond Briggs‘ favourite paths over the South Downs as ’an exhibition of the great British illustrator’s life opens this month in Ditchling village, in the South Downs countryside that inspired him.’
A modern pilgrimage through Herefordshire’s Golden Valley in the Guardian, ‘with nights spent in ancient churches and wayfarers’ meals at farms and pubs, this spiritual four-day walk is all about the journey – and rural England at its finest.’
Lyme Regis in the Observer
Europe
Marseille over Paris for the Olympic Games and Monaco on a budget in the Independent. Toulouse in the Times
10 alteratives to Amsterdam, how to have a perfect weekends in Seville and in Lisbon, a foodie weekend in San Sebastián ‘the Spanish beach town turned Michelin hotspot,’ all in the Telegraph. Extremadura, the Spanish region in the Times.
The region of Cilento in Italy in the Times. No, I hadn’t heard of it either but it’s south of the Amalfi coast, and the journalist’s parents stayed at Santa Maria di Castellabate for the winter.
The perfect holiday in the Italian Lakes on Lakes Como and Garda in the Telegraph with ‘the ultimate itinerary.’
Reading the papers
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. The FT gives a certain number of free articles
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 a quick Google.