Italy, pasta and chocolate cake

May 29 2003

My mother’s chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and chocolate fudge icing .

Welcome

to new readers. I write this just for fun, to inspire myself to cook new recipes and to go to new places or in winter, simply to dream of travelling to the sunshine. It’s always going to be free as I don’t want to feel obliged and as if it’s a chore, and I don’t do it when I’m on holiday . Please do share and recommend.

Julia Samuel, psychotherapist and writer, created Celebration Day, which she explained was a day to remember people we have known who have died, and said “It’s the joyousness of ­acknowledging that we are shaped by people whom we have loved”.

I remember my mother, who had polio when she was a child, spent time in an orphanage as her father died, and was then an evacuee in the Second World War before working in London all through the Blitz. She just got on with life and didn’t moan. When she created her own family, cooking and eating together round the table was at the heart of it. She bought seasonal food when it wasn’t a trend but a necessity; shaped by history, rationing and her own upbringing, she was thrifty, and a brilliant and creative cook. Yesterday, I made her chocolate cake.

Travel

UK

A guide to Cambridge by artist Hurvin Anderson in the FT and the Cambrian Mountains in Wales in the Times including the valley to the Llyn Brianne reservoir, one of nine Dark Sky Discovery Sites that make up the Cambrian Mountains Astro Trail.

Europe

It’s all about Italy this week, Lucca in Tuscany in the Telegraph, and where to stay in Puglia in the Times as well as a city guide to Palermo. Turin is in the Guardian.

There are cultural highlights in Europe, with churches, art and museums in the Guardian including the Convent de San Marco for medieval art paintings of Fra Angelico in Florence and the view from the roof of the Museum of Natural History in Vienna. Below the line readers’ comments are erudite and helpful for once, and I would recommend a look. The Guardian also has the best art galleries in Europe to visit by train and five European city breaks for art on a budget, Montpellier, Cologne, Kraków, San Sebastián and Malmö.

There’s a Seville city guide in the Times and a guide to Le Mans, the motorsport capital of France in the Independent. Le Mans might be good for a stopover on the way back from SW France or Northern Spain, thinking of myself this summer.

A travel guide to Greece in the Independent and Greece island hopping in the Independent including the most effective routes to travel between them, and when to visit.

Restaurants 

In the Guardian, Grace Dent was at the Midland Grand in London NW1 and said it was ‘fancy, tasty, pricey, memorable, beautiful. It might be a bit much for some and extortionate for others, but for many it will be just the ticket.

In the Observer, Jay Rayner was in Coleraine  Northern Ireland at Lir and Native Seafood & Scran and loved it.

In the Standard, Jimi Famurewa reviewed Al Kahf inWhitechapel, London E1, a Somali restaurant, and ‘ate exceptional, exhilarating and utterly unforgettable food.’

In the Telegraph, William Sitwell went to Socca in London W1 and wrote ‘it’s all glamour and big bills and not too much irony.’

In the Times, Giles Coren was in the Cotswolds at the Fox Inn at Broadwell  and thought it ‘a jewel.’ … ‘but the fact that it has now been brought into the fold as a serious eating place is a double joy.’

Recipes

The Telegraph article again on how food is a powerful way to show and share love with interviews and recipes with Prue Leith’s red dragon pie, a vegetarian shepherd’s pie made with adzuki beans, Skye Gyngell’s mussels with fennel, saffron and spinach and Ruth Rogers’ fusilli with zucchini.

And then everybody else has a pasta recipe too. It’s pasta time in the Observer with twenty pasta recipes including Rukmini Iyer’s crispy baked gnocchi with tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and pine nuts, Manteca’s brown crab cacio e pepe and Nigella Lawson’s linguine with lemon, garlic and thyme mushrooms, to name just a few.

Eleanor Steafel in the Telegraph with very  lemony bucatini with mint and pink peppercorns recipe which is also on the principle of a cacio e pepe

Diana Henry’ is cooking with nduja and chorizo in the Telegraph with tagliatelle with ’nduja, prawns, lemon and fried crumbs recipe, asparagus and ricotta on toast, and huevos rotos with chorizo, peppers, white beans and green olive salsa recipe

The other theme is cooking outdoors or on a barbecue. Ravinder Bhogal gives recipes for the perfect meal outdoors with burrata with peaches, fennel and lemon balm oil, salmon confit with preserved lemon mayonnaise and spicy shoestring fries and nectarines and raspberries with vin santo zabaglione in the FT

Tom Aikens gives tips on how to barbecue in the Times with recipes for marinades, glazes and rubs and Michelin chefs give easy recipes for barbecue food. Lisa Goodwin-Allen says I am to buy an untreated piece of cedar plank, soak it and then use it to infuse flavour in my food such as salmon. I google and find I can buy one from Amazon. She has recipes for beef picanha with chimichurri, curried cauliflower steak, toasted almonds, pomegranate, coriander and spiced rum-glazed pineapple. Spoiler, I never barbecue anything, not even a sausage.

Chantelle Nicholson’s vegan recipe for grilled spring onions with roast garlic and chickpea mash and Thomasina Miers’ recipe for Provençal chicken casserole with new-season’s garlic in the Guardian sound good. Mark Hix has foraging recipes in the Telegraph.

Ottolenghi is steaming in the Guardian with recipes for sticky rice, pork and prawn balls with Shaoxing dipping sauce, steamed aubergines with cashew rayu and steamed banana sponge with anise butter syrup and salted peanuts.

Skye McAlpine is cooking desserts in the Sunday Times, rhubarb and pistachio tart, greek yoghurt panna cotta with roasted plums and lemon, olive oil and rosemary cake 

Nigel Slater is making whipped cod’s roe with spiced crisp bread and roast fennel, broad beans, and orange in the Observer

Books 

Tandoori Home Cooking by Maunika Gowardhan

An interview here and recipes for chicken tikka masala, no-churn rose and cardamom ice cream and potato, paneer and sweetcorn kebabs

Ruth Rogers’ fusilli with courgette