Paris, tulips and springtime

From the papers, 28 April 2025

The bold garden at Perch hill

This week I went to an Open Day at Sarah Raven’s garden at Perch Hill to see the spring flowers, combinations of tulips, narcissi, camassia amongst honesty, wallflowers and other biennials. It was a joyful explosion of colour and I would recommend a visit. So much inspiration and we are going to have to up our tulip game next year by putting more into tubs and and not spreading them round the garden, and underplanting them with violas.

Tulips at Perch Hill

My elder daughter took me for a Saturday breakfast at Mount St Restaurant where I chose the Portland crab eggs Benedict and sat opposite a Matisse. The floor is a mosiac by Rashid Johnson, ‘Broken Floor’ and the whole room is filled with art. It’s difficult to see it all as, of course, people are sat down, but we are just going to have to go back and have a different table.

Mount Street Restaurant

The Standard reported that Fortnum and Mason is going to have a Jikoni scotch egg bar in the restaurant, May 9-16, and in the Food Hall until June 6 – a menu of scotch eggs, including a special spiced summer pea with saffron aioli and pickled chillies, at £11.50 each.

Recipes

The Observer Food Monthly is going to continue after the Observer’s acquisition by Tortoise Media. I received an email on Friday afternoon with the whole edition and I made Nigel Slater’s ricotta and herb pudding from his article on recipes for the first shoots of Spring. Mine, served with purple sprouting broccoli looks a bit messy, but that is the downside of simply taking a photo on the kitchen table before we ate it. There was enough leftover for my lunch today and it was good cold.

There were also flavour bombs to transform last minute meals by Helen Graves including a super-green seasoning oil, an ezme-inspired charred vegetable salad and a salted date and ancho chilli chocolate sauce poured over ice-cream, which looks amazing. I often make Ottolenghi’s tahini chocolate sauce to put over ice cream if anyone is coming round mid-week, but now it could be superseded.

The other individual recipes I’ve made a note of are all from the Guardian, fennel with pistachio, lemon and anchovy sauce: Rachel Roddy’s homage to Anna del Conte and Vincenzo Corrado,

Meera Sodha’s recipe for red rice and green bean salad with feta and pomegranate molasses,

Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for earl grey and lemon panna cotta with almond tuiles in the Guardian

and giant cabbage, pea and spring onion latka and roast new potatoes and carrots with whipped herbed feta by Alissa Timoshkina.

I’m going away on Thursday for a week and am currently using up what’s in the fridge but I will remember all of these.

Books

Arabica: Small Plates Big Connections by James Walters

in the Telegraph. He’s the founder of Levantine restaurant Arabica and gives recipes for urfa chilli chicken, smoked aubergine salad, and roasted garlic za’atar butter man’ousheh, a riff on a Lebanese flatbread, and a tabbouleh where you have to roll the herbs and then cut them and not chop just them.

Green Mountains by Caroline Eden

in the Guardian with recipes for chicken with white wine and walnut sauce and citrus and walnut salad. I made the salad along with the feta, grape, tarragon and sun-dried tomato one from the book. I’ve cooked a lot from it and it’s a stunning book. I predict it will win prizes as did the first two in her trilogy, Black Sea and Red Sands.

Sama Sama by Julie Lin

in the Observer with an interview and recipes including Chinese-style spicy garlic celery, nasi goreng with smoked mackerel and fragrant soy roast chicken

and in the Guardian with recipes for absolutely not ‘ground cumin lamb noodles’ and butter sambal bucatini with prawns.

Travel

UK

Walking the Pennine Way in the Telegraph which I have always found a bit of a procession on the parts I have done. Kate Humble’s walk in The Times on the Glyndwr’s Way sounds a lot less crowded. And the Capital Ring, 78 miles around London is in the Independent.

The eight best pubs in Norfolk in the Times by Pete Brown, their beer expert

Kirsty Wark’s guide to Glasgow in the FT – ‘my grand old city’. I like these guides by people who have lived somewhere for a long time as they are full of the best and quirky recommendations.

Europe

Art in the Petit Palais

Back to Paris as we know where we want to go but are still collecting recommendations on where to eat for the forthcoming trip and haven’t actually booked anything yet. At this rate, we’ll be splitting a baguette on the banks of by the Seine and jolly nice that will be too.

In the Telegraph, the 30 best restaurants in Paris, ‘how to eat like a Parisian in the French capital, from glitzy Michelin stars to hearty local bistros’ and in the Independent ‘where to eat in Paris in 2025: from classic bouillon restaurants to a street food market.’

We won’t be able to bring back any dairy products or ‘cattle, sheep, goat, and pig meat’ as restrictions have come into place because of the risk of bringing back foot and mouth as detailed in the Times

There are ten free things in Paris to do in the Telegraph. I love nipping into the Petit Palais on a wander around.

Sète is France’s greatest Mediterranean town according to the Telegraph

Antwerp by Marina O’Loughlin in the FT and why Antwerp should top the list for a gastronomic weekend.

10 Lisbon restaurants to recommend to a friend visiting the city and a visit to Vigo, the seafood capital of Galicia in Spain in the Guardian

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.