Berlin, pies and a new hob and oven

6 November 2023

Thomasina Miers’ orange, olive and chicory salad

Still no oven here. We went to John Lewis in Oxford St to look and the sales assistant told us to do our own research. We had. So we said we’d return, turned on our heels, and went to Coopers, a local shop. The salesman there had infinite knowledge that he was willing to share, advised us what to get and we quickly spent a not inconsiderable amount of money. No wonder John Lewis are going downhill fast.

Finding a recipe to cook was frustrating as everything I fancied needed baking or roasting. In the end, I made Thomasina Miers’ orange, olive and chicory salad, made with red chicory, not to go with the potato, guanciale and sage gratin but we had it with her other recommendation, a jacket potato done in our tiny air fryer. I added fried halloumi cheese coated with sesame seeds.

Recipes

Bonfire Night will have been and gone by the time this newsletter comes out but Claire Thomson had a great bonfire menu in the Telegraph with sausage and butter bean casserole with baked potato, shallot and squash skewers, a pear and sage smash gin cocktail, and quince, dark chocolate and ginger s’mores.

Mark Emberton has a Bonfire Night feast in the Sunday Times with recipes for pork cheek chilliYorkshire parkin pudding with roast pears, honey and rosemary and toffee apples. Both would be lovely for any autumnal get together

How to use vinegar to transform your cooking by Mark Hix in the Telegraph including quick pickled carrots and Charles Campions sweet pickled bullaces

Ottolenghi uses coconut for recipes for Sri Lankan chard and green bean coconut stir-fry, a chilled coconut broth with salmon crudo and a coconut, caramel and cardamom cake in the Guardian

Jacob Kenedy of Bocca di Lupo has an Italian feast with shaved radish salad with pecorino and pomegranate, grilled radicchio and grilled polenta, and scaloppine with mushrooms and moscato.

Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for three sisters tortilla soup, the three sisters being squash, black beans and corn tortillas and pasta with green beans and walnut sauce by Rachel Roddy with a sauce not unlike last week’s picada paste in the Guardian

Leek tarte tatin with blue cheese cream by Eleanor Steafel in the Telegraph. One I want to cook once I have an oven.

Nigel Slater’s recipes for leek and parmesan pie, and peanut butter cookies in the Observer.

Books

Flavour by Sabrina Ghayour

with three Middle Eastern recipes includinga a for courgette, lemon, feta and pine nut tart I want to make, crispy sticky harissa lamb and tahini, almond and chocolate crumble cookies in the Independent.

One Pan Chicken by Claire Thomson

Claire Thomson, aka Five O’Clock Apron on Instagram, with simple one-pan recipes for chicken in the Times.

She wants ‘people to see that if you’ve got nice ingredients in front of you and half an hour to pop something in a pan, then you can eke flavour and make delicious food very easily.’ I’m going to christen the new oven with her chicken with pistachios and sour cherries

Nigel Slater’s recipes for leek and parmesan pie, and peanut butter cookies in the Observer

Restaurants

In the FT, Tim Hayward liked Frenchette in New York where he was ‘looked after in a way I’m unused to in the UK’. I haven’t been to the restaurant but I did go to the bakery last summer which was excellent too 

In the Guardian, Grace Dent went to Scotland to Fish Shop, in Ballater, Aberdeenshire and said, ‘Wonderful, heartwarming places such as Fish Shop are a rarer sight than mermaids’ feet these days. If you’re ever in the area, go.’

In the Observer, Jay Rayner was in Glasgow at Gloriosa and thought it was ‘where the good things are.’

In the Standard, Jimi Famurewa went to Solis in the Arcade Food Hall in the new Battersea Power Station development and thought it was good value for money

In the Telegraph, William Sitwell went to Brooklands, the restaurant in the new Peninsula Hotel on Grosvenor Place  in London SW1 where Claude Bosi is the chef He said ‘it’s arch, adventure, innovation and fun. And the price? Well, like an aero-engined Napier-Railton, if you’re asking, you can’t afford it…’

In the Times, Giles Coren went to Tendril, a mostly vegan restaurant for the £35 discovery lunch which he thought was ‘a good lunch though, cute spot, lovely service’ and then the Ritz Restaurant, both in London W1 where he said ‘Ooh, it’s grand. And they’re all so nice.’

Travel

UK

I love the idea of a brief of a two-day hike with a railway station at either end and a pub with rooms in the middle. The Guardian did this, from Craven Arms Station, to Knighton, the walk being partly on the Shropshire Way with an overnight stop at the White Horse in Clun.

Also an arty weekend in Cookham in the Guardian. This was in last week’s papers but I didn’t see it until it was too late 

The Orkneys with a comprehensive guide to where to eat, drink,and stay in the Independent 

Luing in the Inner Hebrides, a tiny island 16 miles south of Oban in the Times where the writing is so beautiful, it makes me want to forget the weather and go there straightaway .

Readers’ UK’s favourite bus journeys  including Poole to Sandbanks where the bus goes on the ferry and also all about Hastings in the Guardian as well as an alternative guide to Liverpool including food, drink, culture and nightlife 

Europe

Low season in the South of France in the Guardian including Nice, Cannes and the Île Saint-Honorat if you fancy winter on the Riviera.

A guide to Zaragoza, in the Telegraph. They say ‘Madrid and Barcelona, San Sebastián, Seville, Valencia, Bilbao and beyond are all heavily touristed. However for some reason, the country’s fifth largest city of Zaragoza remains off the radar of most British travellers.’ The journalist’s trip was paid for by the Zaragoza Tourist Board. 

Berlin in the Times. The writer, Eddi Fiegel had never been to Berlin before, but it’s a moving article about how his Jewish family lived before Hitler came to power. Berlin is also in the Daily Mail this week with an article by John Kampfner, a journalist and

Cycling in Zeeland, an archipelago in the Netherlands in the Independent 

Note about reading the newspapers

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.

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 Google. 

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