French impressionists and Easter fish and lamb

March 25 2024

Ottolenghi’s red pepper and fennel gratin

Introduction

I’m back, I’ve had a rethink and these are my new plans: I’ll continue to review the weekend newspaper’s recipes, restaurants and travel, but once a fortnight rather than weekly. I’ll cook recipes from them and take my own photos just before we eat, on the table in the kitchen to keep it real.

On alternate weeks, there will be a variation: I’m going to write guides to different areas of the country, the first one will be the Lake District where I’m going next week and which I know well. Where to shop, eat, and go. I’ll review cookbooks by cooking right through the books over a period of time and taking photos of what I’ve made. And maybe something about our new allotment and and how we learn to revitalise it as complete beginners. I have appointed myself in charge of snacks and refreshments, harvesting and general bossing about. ‘What’s new?’ my husband would say.

Our allotment in March 2024 ‘where Rome wasn’t built in a day.’

Richard Corrigan wrote, ‘You must – must! – stay inquisitive. ‘It is probably the most important thing: stay inquisitive, like people, and keep knowledge flowing through your ears and your eyes. Listen, read and taste. Keep all that going and And don’t become old, fight ageing.’

And that is exactly why I write this. I’m glad to be back.

Recipes

Just to say, it’s all a fetching mish-mash this week with some articles from the last six weeks for the sake of completeness, (I half wish I’d never bothered) and some from this weekend’s papers. Back to the new normal with the best of the last fortnight in two week’s time.

Mark Hix is celebrating Easter with the best of British seafood, a monkfish and fennel pie, a Vietnamese stuffed sea bream, pan-fried scallops with Jerusalem artichoke salsa and baked brill with cockles and mussels. Where do I get sea vegetables from as even samphire is a stretch, here in SW London?

Tom Brown of Cornerstone and the Pearly Queen in the Times with an interview and recipes for hake kyiv with wild mushroom butter and truffle hollandaise recipe, potted shrimp crumpet and plaice with chicken butter sauce.

Tom Kerridge’s Easter recipes including chargrilled sprouting broccoli with romesco sauce, corra linn cheese, (a Scottish sheep’s cheese - I googled it so you don’t have to), ale-braised shoulder of lamb and hot cross bread and butter pudding with Yorkshire rhubarb compote in the Observer.

Diana Henry’s perfect Easter menu in the Telegraph includes roast leg of lamb with potatoes, pecorino, basil and garlic and blueberry, lemon and almond cake recipe

Salmon and spinach gratin and dark chocolate muffins from Nigel Slater in the Observer but are we eating salmon which isn’t wild or not? .

Meaty stuff in the FT from Tim Hayward and recipes by Margot Henderson

Rukmini Iyer’s easy white bean, leek and fennel casserole and Rachel Roddy’s mushroom and taleggio lasagne in the Guardian. She says, ‘knowing how many pasta sheets your dish takes is some of the best lasagne advice Mine, for example, takes two fresh or three dried per layer, and I like five layers for this particular lasagne, which turns the process into one of division and construction.’

Nigel Slater’s hazelnut cake wiht rhubarb

Nigel Slater’s hazelnut cake with rhubarb and sticky sweet potatoes and Nigel Slater’s recipe for roast fennel, blood orange and almonds in the Observer. I have made the cake and the fennel and they are both excellent.

Rukmini Iyer’s easy, quick-fried paneer curry with ginger and cream and a paneer curry with tomato and ginger by Meera Sodha, two curries by Maunika Gowardhan, a Bengali kumro chenchki – stir-fried pumpkin with dried chillies, panch phoran, ginger and cumin – and a spicy chicken and cashew curry from Kerala with turmeric, ginger and curry leaves in the Guardian. 

Lasagnes with no fiddly béchamel, no blanching lasagne sheets made with sausage and broccoli; ricotta, pesto and pistachio; and pumpkin, gorgonzola and walnut by Skye McAlpine in the Sunday Times.

An early spring pie of leek, spinach and sheep’s cheese in a rosemary garlic cream, served with a wild rice and cauliflower salad in a sweet almond dressing by Thomasina Miers in the Guardian.

Three spring soups, ham hock and celery, red mullet soup and Jerusalem artichoke soup with chestnuts by Mark Hix in the Telegraph.

Rukmini Iyer’s baked gnocchi with mozzarella, and orecchiette in a roast red pepper and tomato sauce and topped with pistachios and ricotta

Crème caramel by Honey and Co in the Standard and their potato and leek dumplings in agristada in the FT. Plus a Sephardi recipe with an egg lemon sauceand how to paillard a veal or chicken escalope, who say once you’ve mastered paillard, a whole host of easy dinner options open up to you.

Books

Books I’ll be reviewing in the next fe w weeks

Seasoning by Angela Clutton

in the Times with recipes to make winter vegetables exciting, as a sample of this beautiful book, destined to be a modern classic, with filo tart of mixed greens; shaved cauliflower, sultanas, preserved lemon and chilli; and mixed roasted roots with black pudding (or butter beans)

Easy Wins by Anna Jones

with her lemon recipes in the Times including lemon, green chilli and cheddar tart, lemon chickpeas with halloumi and seeded honey, double lemon pilaf with buttery almonds, one-pot pasta al limone, hot lemon and bay pudding and a perfect lemon salad.

The lemon, green chilli and cheddar tart is also in House and Garden as well as the courgettes agrodolce with sticky onions.

My Little Cake Tin by Tarunima Sinha

I’ve been lucky enough to sample Tarunima’s baking and I can’t wait for this book to come out. All the recipes fit a 20cm or 8 inch cake tin and in the Observer, there was a taster of what is to come with her recipes for lemon drizzle cake, pistachio and blood orange cake, coffee and walnut cake, egg free date cake and Basque cheesecake with berries.

Restaurants

The Condé Nast new restaurant awards including Lark in Bury St Edmunds, the Fish Shop in Ballater, Scotland and the Halfway House, Kineton in the Cotswolds

The best restaurants in Scotland in the Times

Where did Jay Rayner eat? A reader has done a list of all his restaurant reviews here.

Grace Dent in the Guardian went to the Pearly Queen in London E1 and concluded that ‘it wasn’t cheap, because nowhere lovely is these days, but it is a paean to fine British ingredients, and to splurging on butter and decadent dining.’

Jay Rayner in the Observer was at Bouchon Josephine in London SW10 and wrote, ‘the world is a messy place right now. The maniacs are in power. And while new experiences are great, old things can be so much more comforting, as long as they are done with commitment and panache.’

Jimi Famurewa in the Standard went to Morchella in London EC1, handy for Sadler’s Wells. ‘Finding its feet? No, this place is already dancing.

Giles Coren in the Times went to the Arlington in London W1 and thought it brilliant.

In previous weeks, the restaurant critics have all been going to the same places which makes the Standard’s article on how to book London’s hot tables particularly pertinent or maybe we should all go back to our old favourites and not forget them,

Everyone went to Camille in London SE1 by Borough Market, Jimi Famurewa in the Standard at Camille as well as Tim Hayward in the FT, and Grace Dent in the Guardian.

And then they were all at the Arlington with Giles Coren in the Times and Jimi Famurewa in the Standard.

William Sitwell in the Telegraph at the Devonshire which he gave five stars and Tim Hayward in the FT.  

By the seaside, Giles Coren went to Catch in Weymouth, Dorset in the Times, and Grace Dent went to the Blue Pelican in Deal in the Guardian, whilst William Sitwell went to the Greyhound Inn at Pettistree in Suffolk in the Telegraph

Travel

UK

Best places to stay and 35 of the best hotels in Britain for under £150 both in the Times

Hawnby in North Yorkshire in the Telegraph which is England’s darkest village and good for night photography 

Littlehampton: surf, sand, cafes and art in West Sussex in the Guardian

The Wolf Way in Suffolk, a new medieval cycle trail in the Guardian

Wiltshire in the Telegraph

The staircase at Le Petit .Palais in Paris designed by Charles Girault

France

Best holiday destinations in France in the Independent .

Carolyn Boyd who is bringing out a book, Amuse Bouche, in June writes about her favourite places to visit in France and her top restaurants and food discoveries in the Guardian.

Normandy celebrates 150 years of impressionism with shows across the region in the Guardian and Amiens, northern France’s overlooked city with floating gardens and canals in the Times.

Light fantastique: Paris through the eyes of the impressionists in the Guardian. ‘From Monet to Degas, the luminosity of Paris has inspired countless artists. As the city celebrates 150 years of impressionism it’s still shining bright. I discovered Le Petit Palais on my last trip which has a small but perfectly formed collection of Impressionist paintings and it’s free to get in.

Italy

The Abruzzo, a little known region of Italy in the Telegraph. 

A guide to Florence in the Telegraph.

William Dalrymple on the trail of Puglia’s ancient kings and castles in the FT.

Cefalu in Sicily in the Guardian.

Rimini for a city break in the Times. 

A food tour of Genoa in the Guardian.

Spain

How to see Monty Don’s Spanish gardens (and where to stay) in the Times.

Horses on the beach, fried fish and sherry in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in Andalucía in the Guardian where they say, ‘a life-affirming spirit of joy and entertainment builds from noon at the beach bars and restaurants in this laid-back coastal town near Cádiz.’

Cordoba in the Independent, ‘a place where Islam and Christianity have rubbed shoulders for more than a millennium, the Andalusian city offers a rich experience of cultural discovery.’

Oviedo in Asturias which they say is Spain’s new capital of gastromomy in the Guardian, and Asturias the new holiday destination in the FT.

San Sebastian in the Telegraph.

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.