Rothko in Paris, snowdrops and roasted carrots

January 8 2023

Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy spiced roast carrots with feta, dates, bulgur and beans 

Introduction

Better late than never this week.

The best article this week and the one which you should save with your behind the paywall access if you are not a Times subscriber is ‘my 55 best places to eat,’ in the Times by the Devonshire’s Oisin Rogers. He knows what he’s talking about and his experience shines through. I’m going to use it as my blueprint to eat out in London and to give to any friends who ask where they should go.

Xanthe Clay in the Telegraph had an excellent article on the supermarket own-label luxury items that are worth buying. My contribution to the debate is Waitrose boeuf bourguignonne. It’s quite liquid so I slice in more mushrooms as I heat it up and and serve with carrots done in butter in the microwave and potatoes for a quick meal. I have shopped at Lidl for years as there was one on the way to my mother’s house. Now there’s one on my local High Street, it’s rammed.

Recipes

This week I made Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy spiced roast carrots with feta, dates, bulgur and beans, from the Guardian although I used a tin of chickpeas. We had it hot for dinner and then more for packed lunches. I also made Nigel Slater’s overnight honey and rosemary bread with goat’s cheese. Bread recipes and I don’t get along but this one worked well with negligible kneading and an overnight prove. There was also a recipe for his poached pears with fruit jelly.

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for potato, cavolo nero and béchamel bake which is ‘potato and wilted cavolo nero or spinach, all bound together by a bubbling, cheesy béchamel and coated in toasted breadcrumbs.’

Three warming winter soup recipes by Skye McAlpine in the Sunday Times with fennel, potato and Parmesan, pappa al pomodoro; and cavolo nero and borlotti beans.

Ottolenghi did pancake recipes a week or so early and I like the idea of the crempogau, a yeasted pancake with persimmon compote and creme fraiche but I think I’ll try a Seville orange curd instead of the compote. He also did recipes for rice pancakes with egg and chilli oil and grilled pancakes with harissa cabbage and taleggio.

Jeremy Lee gave a recipe for bean, ham hock and carrot soup in the FT which reminded me of my mother who used to make this all the time but with orange lentils and not beans. I was inspired and bought a ham hock from Barnes Farmers’ Market but it’s still in the fridge.

Mark Hix in the Telegraph explains how to cook three courses in half an hour, with smoked mackerel on toast with horseradish butter, pork steak with apple and celery salad and burrata with honeycomb and black cherries. He says, ‘the key here is to keep things simple, with only three key ingredients on the plate at any given time’ and to focus on simplicity and flavour.

Books

Healthy Made Simple by Ella Mills in the Independent which I’ve featured before but this time it’s not behind the paywall with recipes for creamy black bean, harissa and almond butter stew, crispy potato and paprika tray bake and a speedy midweek dinner, lemony pea and broccoli pasta,

Simply Chinese Feasts: Tasty Recipes for Friends and Family by Suzie Lee in the Telegraph 

with recipes for chilli and black bean mussels with noodles, steamed sweet potato and pork belly and white cut chicken 

Restaurants

In the FT, Tim Hayward went to Jamie Oliver Catherine St, in London WC2 and said

‘They are executing competent food and excellent service. As a business, there’s no reason it shouldn’t do well.’

In the Standard, Jimi Famurewa went to Paradise Cove, a Caribbean-inspired restaurant in Wandsworth and thought it was ‘excellent food with a few mishaps. Go to remind yourself that the very best of this city lives not in corporate sheen but in the toil, talent and tenacity of real Londoners.’

In the Telegraph, William Sitwell went to 1 York Place in Bristol

In the Times, Giles Coren with a triple helping including the Swan at Southrop in Gloucestershire which he calls ‘a brilliant little pub-turned-restaurant’.

Travel

Snowdrop display at Thenford,, Northamptonshire

UK

Jason Ingram, garden photographer, gives his best places to see snowdrops in the UK in the Telegraph.

On the whisky trail: a weekend of wee drams in Moray Speyside, Scotland. The Guardian says, ‘the region between the Cairngorms and the Moray Firth is rightly famous for its whisky, but that is just one of its many charms.

Caroline Eden in the Guardian was in Paris and saw the Rothko exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. I saw it too before Christmas and it made me feel anxious, especially after reading his quote, ‘I would like to say to those who think of my pictures as serene, whether in friendship or mere observation, that I have imprisoned the most utter violence in every inch of their surface.’ More happily, the best country inns in restaurants in France were also in the Guardian.

Travelling by train in Italy in the Times where according to them, you can see all of Italy’s best sights in under six hours, Florence’s Duomo, lofty Orvieto, the ancient walls of Rome and Vesuvius. After university, a friend and I bought train tickets to Naples and did exactly this but over a fortnight, clutching a copy of Let’s Go Europe. We still laugh about when we were swimming off the Amalfi Coast and two men stopped on a speedboat and offered us a trip. We declined, and they said, don’t worry, we are playboys. This anecdote is here as a test for my brother to see if he’s read this far as he’s confessed to just reading the introduction ‘to see what I’ve been up to.’ (edited to say I’ve just had a WhatsApp from him, saying, ‘Amalfi.)

The Independent tells you how to find a wild bear in the Apennines in Italy in When you get to Rome, you can find, it isn’t just ruins but has breathtaking contemporary art and design according to the Guardian

How to spend a weekend in Lisbon in the Telegraph, as they say it is, ‘the ambitious European city that's having a moment’ with guides to restaurants, nightlife, shopping, and attractions.