Spanish cities, canapés and a great pub.

4 December 2023

Introduction

Welcome to new readers. Each week, I review what’s been in the papers, cook a recipe and take a quick photo of it on my kitchen table. It’s purposely not styled, with the same crockery appearing every week, to keep it real.

A bit late t oday as I’ve been doing what I will grandly call some oven installation project management this morning. So close but yet still so far, but with no oven, this week, there’s been carbs all the way. I made tomato and red wine risotto with soft goat’s cheese by Eleanor Steafel from last week’s Telegraph where to put it simply, you add red wine to the oniony, ricey mixture and then once it is absorbed, you cook it all in tomato passata. My photo is the risotto on its second day heated up, so it’s not so oozy. My husband liked it but I prefer a more traditional risotto cooked in stock.

Tomato and red wine risotto with soft goat’s cheese by Eleanor Steafel

Recipes

Discussions are ongoing on our family WhatsApp about whether we may vary our Christmas Day dessert from Christmas pudding for my husband and trifle for the rest of us. So far, Diana Henry’s Sauterne custards in the Telegraph are winning with me although my husband requests a treacle tart. Also her Christmas pudding with English ale, meringue wreath with mango, passion fruit and pistachios and bitter chocolate cake with boozy cranberry compote and port cream.

Benjamina Ebuehi is along the same lines in the Guardian with her spiced cranberry chocolate frangipane tart.

More alternative Christmas puddings in the Sunday Times by Phil Koury including dairy-free chocolate and Biscoff mousse cake and dairy free sticky toffee and apple pudding.

Ottolenghi’s vegetarian Christmas recipes with a celebratory rice filo pie with crisp sage and fried almonds, Brussels sprouts, orange and tarragon, and green beans in jurot dressing with fried breadcrumbs.

I have to break it to Ottolenghi’s that ‘his annual quest to showcase sprouts in a non-boiled way, not least to convert the naysayers’, will not work with me. I’ve noticed over the years, chefs’ attempts to use bacon, chorizo, pancetta, lardo, chestnuts, walnuts, and this time, pistachios. It’s fine. I have no need to be converted. My family like them boiled and I’ll just eat some other veg such as Mark Hix’s parsnip gratin and save the expensive pistachios for something else. I checked this morning on my regular Monday walk with a vegetarian friend, who described it as ‘a waste of expensive nuts’. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Other root vegetables recipes from Mark Hix in the Telegraph are braised lamb shank with bashed neeps, and roast sea bass with ras el hanout and cumin carrots which sounds excellent.

Rachel Roddy’s Christmas recipe for poached chicken with five special sauces, mustard fruits, horseradish sauce, bagnetto rosso , a red pepper, tomato and chilli sauce, salsa verde and mayonnaise. I think any or all of these would be great to serve up with the rest of the turkey or chicken after Christmas.

A lot of chefs’ quick canapés in the Times. I liked Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s date, goat’s cheese and bacon devils, similarly Stevie Parle’s chestnut devils on horseback which are also wrapped in bacon or pancetta and  Skye Gyngell’s toasted taleggio and sage sandwiches

 Nathan Outlaw’s roast monkfish with mulled wine dressing and spinach, walnut and tomato lasagne which is vegan (but you could use dairy products in it) by Meera Sodha both in the Guardian.

Nigel Slater’s recipes for mango and tomato chutney, and apricots in muscat and brandy in the Observer

There was so much in the Sunday Times that it could be a newsletter in itself, so very briefly, Monica Galetti’s best Christmas recipes including pineapple and honey glazed ham and Parmesan scone loaf with whipped stilton and cranberry jam,

5 stress-free Christmas recipes you can make in advance from Skye McAlpine from a get-ahead porchetta, a red cabbage panzanella and pistachio, almond and parmesan cantucci which sound excellent. Roll on the oven.

4 easy Christmas dinner recipes to please everyone by Clodagh McKenna including pulled roast chicken with harissa yoghurt dressing and pomegranate bulgur wheat which you could make with leftover turkey.

Books

Baking for Pleasure: Comforting Recipes to Bring You Joy by Ravneet Gill in the Guardian 

with recipes for brown sugar meringues with coffee cream and cherries and mango creme brûlée which are yet more alternative Christmas desserts. Make both to use the five egg whites and the five egg yolks 

Simple Suppers by Rick Stein in the Times 

with seven recipes including chicken saltimbocca, tomato bread soup, and baked Portobello mushrooms with dolcelatte and walnuts. All the recipes have less than seven ingredients. The spaghetti with courgettes, rosemary and mascarpone looks unprepossessing but is delicious and would be a great summer holiday recipe.

Rick Stein’s spaghetti with courgettes, rosemary and mascarpone

Restaurants

I went to the Merry Harriers in Hambledon, Surrey, which has recently been taken over by the team behind Hilltop Kitchen, where we have spent many happy times, either for a meal or for one of their famous sausage rolls. The excellent menu is based on what comes from their farm and is locally sourced. Hilltop Kitchen is closed for the winter but will be back next Spring, I was relieved to find out. We had a Scotch egg to share, River Kennet crayfish cocktails, pheasant schnitzel and autumn vegetable tart . They are going to do renovations which will take time as it’s Grade 2 but it’s going to be great. Remember you heard it here first.

In the Observer, Jay Rayner went to Lancaster to Merchants 1688, he thought ‘was cheek-slapping, belly-pleasing stuff from first to last, which cheerfully demonstrates lashings of professional technique while never losing sight of the imperative of appetite.’

In the Standard, Jimi Famurewa was at Akara, a West African restaurant in Borough Market, London SE1, ‘a more accessible sibling to Fitzrovia’s justly revered Akoko,’ ‘This is food with a magnificence and flavour dynamism that completely speaks for itself.’

In the Telegraph, William Sitwell reviewed Woven, at Cosworth Park Berkshire which was ‘food which weaves a fine fairy tale and was storytelling served up on a plate,’

In the Times, Giles Coren travelled by train to Doncaster to DN1 Delicatessen & Dining and said ‘it was a wonderful endeavour, a brilliant delicatessen, a hub of local enthusiasm and generosity, a showcase for genuinely remarkable local cooking talent and the very epitome of straightforward British hospitality. ‘

All I know of Doncaster is the coldest, windiest, station platforms I have ever encountered, when changing many times from London to Hull so I don’t fancy a journey there.

Travel

UK

St Andrews in Scotland in the Telegraph for ‘a wonderful weekend away.’

Europe

Madrid to buy a wedding dress in the Times and the Asturias region of Spain in the Telegraph with Orviedo at its centre. 

Turin in the Telegraph which they say is an underrated cultural holiday destination

‘Les Catacombes de Paris’ in the Sunday Times, one place I won’t be going next week while I am away. I’m going to do a festive special of recipes most of which I will have prepared earlier, and maybe a little Parisian update.

Turin in the Telegraph which they say is an underrated cultural holiday destination

Six Spanish city breaks that are overlooked in winter, Malaga, Granada a, Palma, Cordoba, Bilbao, Las Palmas in the Times. They are ‘still warm, ignored by tourists and cheaper to visit during the colder months.’

Arras is the French Christmas market alternative you need to know about this winter in the Independent.

‘Les Catacombes de Paris’ in the Sunday Times, one place I won’t be going next week while I am away. I’ll happily go up a mountain but not down underground. I’m going to do a festive special of recipes most of which I will have prepared earlier, and maybe a little Parisian update.

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.