Musical Venice, Christmas markets and a white bean soup with spinach.

Introduction

Diana Henry’s white bean soup with spinach with Cherie Denham’s wholemeal bread.

Diana Henry has bean recipes in the Telegraph with rajas con crema and black beans, prawn, leek and bean stew and lamb shanks with haricot beans I thought I was making one of them but instead, I have realised I made her white bean soup with spinach with a fried chorizo garnish from 10 November 2020, four years ago. Jolly nice, it was too.

I also thought about two nice looking aubergine recipes, Nigel Slater’s baked autumn vegetables with aubergine cream in the Observer and  Rukmini Iyer’s pickled aubergine and black eyed bean curry in the Guardian which takes inspiration from ‘the classic Sri Lankan aubergine pickle’ wambatu moju in which deep fried aubergine and onions are mixed with turmeric, vinegar, chilli and pickling spices, and then combined with tomatoes and beans in her recipe. 

,Nigel Slater’s Christmas recipes from Observer Food Monthly also look great. .I liked the one for poached pears with blue cheese such as Stichelton, which I will make nearer Christmas. It feels a bit early for them at the moment 

Restaurants

In the FT, Tim Hayward went to Bistro Freddie in Shoreditch, London and wrote, ‘London’s French renaissance has given us places like Casse-Croûte, where the authenticity is effortless and total, and Café François, where the canon is subverted and thrillingly developed. Freddie’s is, sadly, neither. ‘

In the Guardian, Grace Dent went to Fantômas in London SW3 and thought it ‘a wholly unrelaxing dining experience. There’s an open kitchen on one side of the room and a cocktail bar on the other, the music is relentless and every course seems to be delivered by a different server, which leads to oversights.’

In the Observer, Jay Rayner was at the the Yellow Bittern in London N1 where Hugh Corcoran has gained numerous column inches such as this one in the Standard after his Instagram post bemoaning the fact that customers were not spending more on boozy lunches.  It’s an subtle review and worth reading. He liked half the food but not the other half

In the Standard, David Ellis went to Canteen in London’s Portobello Road, and gave it five stars. He said, ‘London has only one perfect Italian restaurant, Bocca di Lupo.’ Well, had, not has: now there are two.’ The chefs are Jessica Filbey and Harry Hills, both ex-River Café.

In the Sunday Times, Charlotte Ivers went to Jericho, outside Nottingham , ate twenty ‘small and delicate courses’ and thought it magical.

In the Telegraph, William Sitwell was at Chalk, a restaurant on a vineyard near Pulborough in Sussex and also gave it five stars as ‘a model of great service and flavourful food’

In the Times, Giles Coren went to Delamina Townhouse in London WC2 for ‘insanely colourful food.’

Travel

UK

Ludlow in Shropshire in the Independent 

And there’s an exhibition for a sale, ‘Radical Modernity from Bloomsbury to Charleston’ on at Sothebys in London from 9-26 November.

Europe

How to visit the villages and vineyards of Bordeaux, the world’s greatest wine region in the Telegraph

Patricia Gucci who is the the granddaughter of the founder of Gucci gives her guide to Venice in the Standard.

Venice for the music with a special Spotify Venetian playlist in the Telegrap

There’s a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c 1504: reviewed here in the Telegraph. which also has a Renaissance guide to Florence which retraces the steps of the three artists and the works they made more than 500 years ago including the Duomo and the Opera del Duomo, the Piazza della Signoria and the Palazzo Vecchio.

Christmas markets in the Standard including Chatsworth in Derbyshire, Tallinn, Vienna and Copenhagen.  

29 of the best Christmas markets in Europe in the Times, ‘where you can drink mulled wine, browse beautiful gifts, sing carols, ice-skate and eat roast chestnuts’ including Cologne, Prague, Berlin, Strasbourg amongst others

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.

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. I have it via Wandsworth libraries and it’s brilliant. I can see what’s in the Guardian, the Observer and the Independent.

Please do like this as it increases visibility. It’s just for fun and my own enjoyment and will always be free.