Montefalco, mince and miso

January 8 2004

Nigel Slater’s soup of leeks and lentils

Introduction

Happy New Year. I’m back and have skipped judiciously over how to use up your Christmas leftovers and the best of 2023, although not the New Year’s resolutions. Mine are to plan to use what food I already have in the house before buying more and to have some modicum of freezer management, including labelling boxes. Is this too much? I’ll let you know. 

The store cupboard stew by Nigel Slater in the Observer was just the thing to start me off on my quest, using a jar of black-eyed beans that had been in the cupboard for ages and then I froze some . I also made Nigel Slater’s soup of leeks and lentils from the Observer because I’ve never put miso in a lentil soup before. As this newsletter is all about trying something new, I also made Diana Henry’s mince with mushrooms and Marsala as I’d never put Marsala in a ragu either. This was a variation to her basic recipe to batch cook and freeze as well as chilli beef mac and cheese, and beef keema.

Recipes

I’ve been racking my brain on a theme for this week’s recipes and can only think of a side order of moral rectitude.

Mark Hix on brunch with recipes for labneh with toasted nuts and honey, mushrooms with a breadcrumb crust and poached egg, ricotta hotcakes and bacon with maple syrup, and black pudding with buttery squid and a fried egg in the Telegraph. Try as I might, I cannot imagine squid for the first meal of the day.

Vegetarian wontons with a Sichuanese sauce by Fuchsia Dunlop in the FT 

Chicken with olives and preserved lemon and apples with fruit jelly and sloe gin by Nigel Slater in the Observer

White bean tomato and kale cassoulet with a pesto topping by Rukmini Iyer and Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for pasta with chickpeas, preserved lemon and chilliwhich sounds similar to Nigel Slater’s store cupboard soup with both pasta and pulses in them, and butternut broth and pastina by Rachel Roddy in the Guardian. Also Ottolenghi’s soups, sopa de tortilla, potato, cabbage and gruyere soup and mushroom and sausage meatball soup with za’atar oil I love the idea of Rosie Birkett cacio e pepe gratin and a bitter leaf salad with parsley and a lemon and anchovy dressing also in the Guardian, link to be added. Three ingredient vegan chocolate mousse by Phil Khoury, made of plant based milk, 75 per cent chocolate and caster sugar.

Jason Atherton is now the chef at Pillar in the OWO building with  with an interview here and recipes for shaksuka, overnight oats/muesli, avocado tikka potato flatbreads, and high-energy chocolate brownies in the Times. He’s working with ‘trainer to the A-list Harry Jameson’ who apparently trained Boris Johnson. I wouldn’t include that in a cv judging on the results.

Skye McAlpine in the Sunday Times with recipes for easy salads, carrot, orange and pistachio salad; radicchio, fennel, radish and walnut salad; and shaved Brussels sprouts with pecorino and toasted almonds. She says, ‘no, sprouts are not just for Christmas. Once you have eaten them this way, there is really no turning back. You can gild the lily by tossing medjool dates or dried cranberries in with them.’  Rather you than me, chums 

Books

Eat to Your Heart’s Content by Sat Bains in the Times with an interview and recipes for cod in baking parchment, crushed potatoes with feta, olives and capers  sirloin steak with anchovy dressing and chocolate mousse with aged balsamic vinegar

His aim was to create a low-cholesterol diet featuring lean protein, lots of fruit and vegetables, and the sort of “good fats” that are found in avocados, nuts and olive oil. with a combination of a Mediterranean and a Japanese diet.

Baking For Pleasure by Ravneet Gill

with an interview in the Independent and recipes for a lemon cream cake, a Lancashire cheese and green chilli tart and a banoffee pie topped with caramelised rum bananas.

Nigel Slater’s store cupboard soup

Restaurants

The best cheap eats in London for under £15 in the Standard. Some are side dishes or tapas size dishes that they advise it’s best to request at quiet times. A good article to bookmark and revisit. It could keep me going all year. 

In the Guardian, Grace Dent went King Cook Daily in London E1, a low key vegan cafe which ‘will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for many this is the sort of cooking that makes you question why you’re cluttering your innards with flesh.’

In the Observer, Jay Rayner went to Gordo’s in Guildford, a Mexican restaurant, and advised to treat it as ‘ a food adventure playground; a place to experiment and dip and dive and spread.’

In the Standard, Jimi Famurewa went to Donia, a Filipino restaurant in London W1 which he loved and said, ‘all there is to do is savour the rare, glimmering jewel of a reasonably-priced and utterly unforgettable new spot in the capital. ‘

In the Sunday Times, Charlotte Ivers was at Kysty and Lake Road Kitchen restaurant in the Lake District. I would rather keep the reviews to new places but have include it this week for the sake of completeness.  I do miss Marina O’Loughlin.

In the Telegraph, William Sitwell was in Edinburgh at eòrna and ‘found… a bold and exciting glimpse of a delicious future for Scotland.’ 

In the Times, Giles Coren was at Wild at Bull in Burford, Oxfordshire owned by Matthew Freud and thought, ‘Wow, just Wow.’

Travel

UK

There are winter walks articles but a lot of them are on low ground and judging by the way I slid and slipped my way around the Cotswolds at New Year, I don’t think they would be suitable in this wet weather, so I haven’t included them. I would find a good ridge to walk on, like the Cotswold Way .

Europe

Overlooked corners in Italy in the Telegraph with Valle Maira, Piedmont, Mantua, Montefalco in Umbria, Sardinia and Monti Iblei, Sicily. I wouldn’t call Umbria overlooked but Montefalco is beautiful and I have spent a few happy evenings at L’Alchimista, which I found in Christine Smallwood’s brilliant book, ‘An Appetite for Umbria.’ 

Five overlooked corners of Greece to visit in 2024 in the Telegraph including Thessaloniki, and Khania. We went to the area around Khania in 2010 and I thought it was quite well known.

Problems facing Eurostar in the Telegraph

Clare Hargreaves follows in the footsteps of Pan along the Menalon Trail on Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula in the Independent

Madrid where they posit a break for less than £300 and Madeira for ‘waterfalls, volcanic walks and whale-watching safaris are both in the Times.’

Southeast Ireland which is also a forgotten place but a new flight route could link London to Waterford in 80 minutes in the Telegraph

Europe’s top 10 culture destinations for 2024 in the Guardian including Bad Ischl, Austria, Strasbourg and Ghent. Ghent is also in the Times as the overlooked alternative to Amsterdam and only two hours from London by train.

Plovdiv in Bulgaria, one of Europe’s oldest cities that I had never heard of.

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.