I call this hot and sour chicken, not because it is following a hot and sour recipe from a particular place, but because I am using hot and sour flavours, and some of my favourites too. It is my hot and sour chicken, from my kitchen.

Chilli, garlic, tamarind, some savoury light fish sauce and lime make this chicken sing. A sprinkle of coriander lifts it right up before you serve it. Some fried or roasted peanuts for the texture, because you can, and because they are awesome. A little shredded spring onion (or scallions as I once knew them) freshen everything again. That says summer to me. The flavours sprinkle and mingle and dance as you eat them. Continue reading

I adore a spiced breakfast. I indulged as much as I could in Malaysia recently, from curries to laksa to curry mee to nasi lemak to roti canai with dal. When I am in Asia, breakfast is my favourite meal. It has so much flavour, so much variety and is always an adventure.

I love a good dal, an Indian spiced lentil soup, cooked until tender but still with texture, just so. Mostly lentils, sometimes beans, my favourite is made with the small moong dal. A bowl of sunshine, dal is bright and cheerful with turmeric, a culinary equivalent of the best duvet on a cold night. On top, spice dancing on tip toes, some herbs, whatever I have got. This is called the tarka (or tadka), the spice mixture that gives dal character and zing. And in my experience, while it is great to be authentic, variety is very interesting here, the dal can take any flavour.

I sometimes add ginger and garlic to my spices for an extra flavour punch, I sometimes add an egg for more body and sustenance (usually boiled until soft, halved and served on top). Today I kept it very simple, some nice dried chillies with just enough heat and rehydrated a touch, some brown mustard seeds, some small tomatoes, fried quickly, just enough to absorb the spice flavour and soften a bit and curry leaves, cooked until just starting to crisp and so fragrant.

There is lots of mixed advice as to when you salt a dal and as to whether you should soak it first. Soaking isn’t essential but it does save on cooking time and results in a speedy soft dal. I salt a little at the start, and add turmeric then too, but I season to taste properly at the end. Some say that salt can toughen the pulses, but this hasn’t been my experience, and I like the dal to take up a little seasoning as it cooks.

Notes on the recipe: Moong dal is widely available in supermarkets, Indian food shops and online too. Curry leaves are widely available in London, I can get them in my local supermarket. If you can’t get them, you could try dried online, which still have great flavour. Or substitute and entirely different but suitable flavour, fresh coriander. This is incredibly good value and a great comfort eat. Enjoy!

Recipe: Dal with Curry Leaves, Mustard, Chilli & Tomato

Serves 2 generous portions or 1 person on repeat for a day (yup – that was me!)

Ingredients

Dal

200g moong dal (small yellow lentils, larger chana dal will work fine too)
1 heaped tsp turmeric powder
sea salt to taste

Tarka

2 tbsp brown mustard seeds
12 good small tomatoes halved or quartered depending on how small they are
a handful of curry leaves, removed from the stem
chilli of your choice, finely chopped (seeds in or our, up to you, depending on how hot you like it)
ghee or butter or coconut oil (coconut oil is a great substitute for lactose intolerants and vegans, I quite like the flavour)

Method

If you have time, soak the moong dal with the turmeric and a little salt in about twice their volume of water. If you don’t, don’t worry, it will just take a little longer to cook.

Bring the dal to a boil over a medium heat. Reduce to a simmer and cook until tender and soft. Season to taste.

Melt your fat of choice for the tarka and add the mustard seeds, chilli and curry leaves and cook over a medium heat for a couple of minutes. Add the tomatoes for a final couple of minutes and serve on top of the dal, which should still be nice and hot.

Enjoy!

Jet lag hit hard and so did a salmonella relapse, something that I didn’t even know could happen. Roll on Sunday morning where I finally felt nearly human, and decided to embrace the world by heading to gorgeous Columbia Road Flower Market in East London with a friend.

If you have not been, Columbia Road Flower Market is a joyful place and a London landmark in the East End. It is a small street, lined now with cafés and restaurants, and packed with flower sellers known for their enthusiasm and high spirits as they attempt to engage the heaving mass of passers by. It gets very busy. Thronged. Continue reading

I lived quite a sheltered life in terms of spice in my early years. Rural Ireland just didn’t have any then (things are different now). I discovered Bombay Mix and the wonderful fried lentils within when I went to university, and those fried lentils remain some of my favourite things to eat, and to make in batches to eat all by themselves. Continue reading

My first taste of this dish in Emilia Romagna awoke a hunger in me that I didn’t know I had. A new desire was immediately satisfied. Spoonfuls of broth, some gorgeous textured parmesan noodles, and repeat. Until the bowl is empty and the world feels sad. But, then you have more, and the cycle starts again. Passatelli in brodo is rich and light, sustaining and so satisfying.

I adore chicken soup but this is so much more. This is chicken broth with noodles made from parmesan, nutmeg and breadcrumbs coasting inside. Why aren’t we all obsessed with this? Why isn’t it one of those dishes that every one talks about? Deeply flavoured and rich in umami, passatelli bring this chicken soup to life and soothe unlike any other.

I first learned to make this in a hands on pasta class at La Piazzetta del Gusto in Nonantola, a gorgeous local restaurant in a pretty small town near Modena. The town square is full of elderly men chatting and passing the time jovially. Just beyond it is La Piazzetta del Gusto, a restaurant and a pasta shop. All the pasta is rolled by hand every day, and the restaurant itself specialises in passatelli.

Passatelli? I was intrigued. We started with hand rolled tortelloni, then out came the breadcrumbs, parmesan, flour, eggs and nutmeg, which we kneaded lightly to makes passatelli dough. These are so easy. Once the dough is made, you push it through a passatelli press, old style or more commonly now a potato press with large holes, also used for passatelli, and snip the noodles over and into the water. So good.

There are many ways that you can serve them, my favourite is with a classic chicken broth. A winter dish in Emilia Romagna, primarily, I think it suits our 4 seasons in a day summer quite well too.

Passatelli recipe adapted from La Piazzetta del Gusto in Nonantola, Emilia Romagna

Recipe: Passatelli in Brodo (AKA Parmesan Noodles in Wonderful Chicken Broth)

Ingredients

Passatelli (enough for two generous portions)

75g breadcrumbs
85g parmesan
2 eggs
25g pasta flour
sea salt
fresh grated nutmeg
a passatelli press / potato press (I bought this passatelli press on Amazon)

Chicken broth (more than you need – you can freeze leftovers!)

a large pot – I have a home stock pot which I use lots and recommending investing in
Raw chicken – approx 1.5kg carcasses, whole chicken (save the meat for another use if using this) or chicken wings (perfect as have lots of skin and fat so superb flavour)
6 carrots, coarsely chopped
4 sticks celery, coarsely chopped
3 onions, peeled & coarsely chopped
6 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
a teaspoon of peppercorns (I used white as that is what I had, black are good too)

Method

Make your chicken broth by putting all ingredients into a pot that will fit them, and topping up with water until everything is just covered. Cover with a lit and boil for at least 2 hours, the longer the better. Strain when done and season to taste with sea salt.
Leave to the side. (If using a whole chicken, remove the meat from the carcass and save for another use).

Make your passatelli by combining everything in a bowl and bringing together to a soft pliable dough.

Heat enough stock for more than two bowls of soup and press the passatelli into it, cutting with a knife when a few inches long. The passatelli will rise to the top, and will be ready to eat a couple of minutes later. If you are making just for one, only press enough into the soup for you, and then press them onto a board, lightly flour, and store on a single layer to use within 3 days. The passatelli become flabby when left in the broth, so best to do it this way.

Now eat. How good is that?!

I visited Emilia Romagna as part of Blogville, sponsored by the Emilia Romagna Tourist Board in partnership with  iambassador.  I maintain full editorial control of the content published, as always. I wouldn’t waste your time, or my own! 

I have an unusual and very tasty recipe for you today, ripe from the shores of Grenada. Grenada is known for high quality cocoa and spice, and they meet here in this lively Coconut & Chocolate Chicken Curry.

Do you consider chocolate a sweet or savoury ingredient? For me dark chocolate is intensely savoury, and a brilliant secret addition to many dishes, enhancing with a deep low rumble. It is perfect with chilli and spices, which of course Mexicans have known for a long time. Mole, a savoury Mexican dish rich with chocolate, is a superb example of this. 

Recently in Grenada, I had the pleasure of doing a cooking session with Esther and Omega at True Blue Bay. I cooked with them last time too. They are fun, and know exactly what to do with the vibrant ingredients available in Grenada. So many spices, and the chocolate which Grenada is rich with. 

This time we made a Coconut & Chocolate Curried Chicken. A small amount of chocolate enriches the spicy sauce, with the creamy coconut lightening it. It is surprising, and it is something that all chocaholics and savoury food fans will enjoy. I have adapted Esther & Omega’s recipe for you to make at home. It is a fun one and will for sure intrigue anyone that you make it for! Ask them to guess what the secret ingredient is.

Recipe: Coconut & Chocolate Curried Chicken

Serves 4 – 6

Ingredients

1.5kg chicken thigh meat, skin removed and chopped to approximately 2 inch segments
Chicken marinade: 2 spring onions, 2 tbsp chopped fresh chives, 2 tbsp fresh coriander, 4 cloves peeled garlic, one inch of peeled fresh ginger, 1 tbsp light oil like groundnut or sunflower)
250g ripe tomatoes or the equivalent in good tinned or passata
200ml coconut milk
1 large green pepper, core and seeds removed and diced into 1cm dice
2 tbsp curry powder
1 heaped tsp ground cumin
4 cardamom pods, coarsely crushed
2 chipotle chilles in adobo (or dried chipotle chilles, or a chilli of your choice if you can’t source either), chopped fine
juice of 1 lemon
2 bay leaves
50g good dark chocolate
1 nice apple, cored and diced (fine to leave the skin on)
light oil for frying, like groundnut or sunflower
sea salt & fresh cracked black pepper

Method

Blend all marinade ingredients and add to the chicken. Marinade in the fridge for as long as you can, at least a half hour, up to 4 hours.
Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil over a medium-high heat until sealed all over.
Add all of the dry ingredients, lemon juice and the green pepper and cook for a few minutes.
Add the coconut milk, chilli and tomatoes and cook for 30 minutes.
Add the chocolate and allow to melt through. Leave for a few minutes over a low heat.
Check for seasoning and adjust with sea salt and black pepper.
Ready to eat! Superb with rice, and take care not to eat the cardamom pods and the bay leaves, they are just for flavour.

You love pork belly, I know you do. You saw that pork crackling right there and thought – PORK BELLY! Look at that crackling! But, with miso? Continue reading

Wild garlic pesto does feel a cliché but when it is so delicious, why shouldn’t it be? Wild garlic, if you haven’t cooked with it yet, is a broad garlic flavoured leaf, slightly sour, and fantastic with anything creamy, cheesy and it is the best pal for the humble spud. It grows abundantly in the shade, white flours sprouting out in clusters on elegant stems, leaping towards the sunshine.

It is wild garlic season here, but near me we mainly have three cornered leek (often confused for wild garlic), which is too grassy for pesto. I tried to source some proper wild garlic, I cried out for secret sources – I WON’T TELL ANYONE, I SWEAR! – but no joy, I failed. I am deeply impatient, and I had a visceral need for the stuff. Praise the internet for intervening and saving my brain and wild garlic free larder, a very kind twitter friend sent me some in the post, and I have been playing with it ever since.

Three cornered leek, garlicky & oniony is lovely, but it ain’t wild garlic!

Wild garlic pesto is made in many ways. I chose almonds for body, 36 month aged parmesan for that perfect cheesy umami hit, a lovely fruity extra virgin olive oil with a hint of bitterness and some wild garlic. I played with the volumes, and while they suspiciously come to the same amount in grams, the volumes are different, and they work very well, with just the right garlic punch and shade of green. The oil may seem a lot, but it needs this as a minimum or it is too dry. It also helps keep it fresh, protecting it from the air. Hey, it is healthy too, particularly as unheated and retaining all of the goodness.  When using this pesto, I sometimes add more to thin it out or help it spread. Use your own judgement for yours.

As lovely as this is used in the traditional pesto sense as a dressing for pasta, it is great as a condiment elsewhere. This was lovely as a dressing for a crisp potato hash with bacon and eggs for brunch today, and beautiful on toast with some radishes.

I love me some beans, I can’t get enough of them. It shocks people often to discover that I used to be vegetarian (WHAT?!), but you know, I was worried about industrial farming (I still am), and my degree studies were in physiology, including anatomy, which involved human dissection. Yes, HUMAN dissection. I went home one evening after an anatomy dissection, cooked some chicken and thought that it all looked too similar, the flesh and the fibres (sorry, but it is true), my stomach turned and that was that, for a long while. Then as the farmers market movement took hold properly, and people and even supermarkets started to become more concerned about meat and meat sourcing, I came back on board.

These years of vegetarianism taught me a lot. I explored pulses, vegetables, herbs and spice. I learned how to add flavour without adding meat, and I resurrected my university nutrition studies to ensure that I was eating nutritionally balanced meals. I studied more, I learned about new and exciting ways that I could eat. I devoured cookbooks, I obsessively read online. I fell in love with pulses, completely. All sorts of beans and lentils, I would fill my suitcase with bean shaped curiosities from everywhere that I travelled and bring them home.

One place I have yet to travel to is Egypt, but I have explored the food in London and in my own kitchen. One of my favourite discoveries when I first moved to London was the wonder of a bowl of ful medames (always spelled in a myriad of ways like dal|dahl|dhal!), a beautiful breakfast dish of small ful beans (dried baby broad beans), gently spiced and cooked for hours with garlic and eggs boiled within, which are served on top. I used to eat it all the time and made it my mission to perfect it at home. I think I feel a post coming on!

Dried broad beans are a superb ingredient. I loved how they cook them in Puglia, until soft and served as a gorgeous dip rich with local olive oil and mountain oregano, ripe for you to drag some crusty bread through. I brought lots home, but I buy them in local Turkish shops too. Jane Baxter, the originator of this falafel recipe, highly recommends British grown organic beans from Hodmedods, who sell them online too. You need these unassuming beans in your life, I promise you.

Which leads me on to what exactly an Egyptian falafel is. It is a falafel shaped from broad beans with spices, herbs and other joy, coated with sesame seeds. A lovely alternative to the chickpea falafel we all know so well. The falafel recipe is adapted from Jane Baxter & Henry Dimbleby, and it has a lovely story associated too (see after the recipe).

Have you got a favourite falafel recipe or story? I have many! I used to live on them when I was fresh out of university and living in Amsterdam. Another day for those, but tell me yours!

Recipe adapted from Jane Baxter and Henry Dimbleby on The Guardian. Jane serves it with different sides, and there is a lovely story attached to how they sourced it too.

It was one of those mornings. I was out of eggs – what, how could I let that happen?! – and out of coffee beans. I was staring glumly at a bag of Moomin coffee, a hasty Helsinki airport purchase, and wondering how nasty that might be and what I could have for breakfast. On my counter were some very brown bananas, barely a patch of yellow left. I had some buckwheat flour, but not a lot, and a bag of hazelnuts. I thought I might try a new take on banana bread.

It is worth buying bananas and letting them go really brown to make banana bread and pancakes. This is when they are at their best for cooking, rich and syrupy sweet. I never do this intentionally. I buy bananas and let them sit on the side. I feel guilty when I see them every day. I worry about waste, and then eventually they go completely brown, and they become banana bread or pancakes.

I love the flavour of buckwheat, I use it a lot. For pancakes, waffles, bread and now banana bread, the nutty flavour goes very well with the bananas here. It is gluten free as it isn’t actually a wheat, and as I used coconut oil too, this bread is dairy free also.

A quick word on coconut oil, I know it is being heralded as a new discovery and superfood, but you know, in Asia they have been using this forever, and in Asian shops it is very easy to buy, and much cheaper too (ok, so it isn’t extra virgin, but you know). Often in bottles, which in Asia wouldn’t be a problem as it being warm, the oil would be liquid. Here, I put mine in a pot of hot water so that it melts a bit and I can pour it. You can get jars too.

Once I discovered that coconut oil was a good butter substitute (I am lactose intolerant so I must take care), I started using it for fruit curds and in cakes that demanded to be dairy free. Texturally it is similar, unlike oils, and so it works very well. I should really share my lactose free life hacks with you some day. I have many! Of course you can use butter instead, if you prefer. Buttery bananas are good.

Lets crack on with the recipe, shall we? This banana bread is dense and fruity with nutty pops of hazelnut. It didn’t last a day in my flat, and I ate most of it. I am going to make more this weekend.

Enjoy – recipes now have their own page in my new website design, so that you can save and print the recipe on its own. PDF downloads are coming soon too. Both reader requests, and good onse I think! Let me know if there are any bugbears or things that you would like to see changed too!

Oh and you know what, the Moomin coffee was actually ok! :)

Buckwheat and Hazelnut Banana Bread [Gluten & Dairy Free Recipe]
makes one loaf

Ingredients

175g buckwheat flour
100g soft brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp good vanilla extract
4 very ripe bananas, mashed (mine came to 250g when peeled)
75g coconut oil (or butter if you prefer)
50g blanched hazelnuts, coarsely chopped

one loaf tin, I actually used a pie dish as I couldn’t find my loaf tin :)

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 deg C.
Mash the bananas and mix in the sugar and coconut oil. Beat with a wooden spoon until well combined.
Add buckwheat flour, a pinch of salt and vanilla and mix through until you get a well blended batter.
Stir through the hazelnuts and spread he batter into your greased tin.
Bake until a skewer comes out dry when the cake is pierced with it. Mine took 30 minutes, keep an eye on it from 25.
Lovely as is, hot, cold or toasted.
Enjoy!

Got the buckwheat bug? Here are some more buckwheat recipes to try:

Buckwheat Pancakes with Plums, Almonds and Honey

Buckwheat Waffles with Rhubarb, Apple & Candied Hazelnuts

Homemade Matcha Soba Noodles & A Recipe for Matcha Mari Soba

Love Bananas?! Me too! 

Black Sticky Rice with Banana & Coconut Cream

Banana, Coconut & Lime Bread

Chef Baka’s Banana Fritter Recipe (from Palm Island)

One for the veggies? No! One for all of us. This was one of those things that came together randomly in a helter skelter way, and I am so glad that it did. 

When I was in France recently I bought some dried chickpeas from a farmer at the market. I cooked half of them last week, and they were so lovely. Great texture and taste, and even though they were dried, they were fresh, if you know what I mean? The cooked until plump and with bite. I was thrilled with them and saved the rest of my stash for this week.  Continue reading

I never did love ketchup. I know everyone does. It is said to be the perfect combination of sweet, sour, salty and savoury, and tomatoes are one of my favourite ingredients, but I just find ketchup to be wanting, and something that is used to blanket other flavours not actually add to the dish. The flavour profile feels a bit two dimensional and dull to me, so I don’t have it in my pantry. Not out of snobbery, I love proper Asian instant noodles and all sorts of other things. I love good eating, and that comes in many forms, I am completely open when it comes to this. Continue reading

You have to make this, this weekend. No dilly dallying, you won’t regret it, Hummus Kawarma is a wonderful thing. Creamy thick hummus topped with pops of aromatic spiced and flavouful neck of lamb, finished with a garlic-lemon-parsley-chilli dressing (lemon sauce). Hummus is so lovely when you cook it at home, it is worth the time planning and paying attention to the small details in this terrific recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi’s book Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a must for any passionate home cook, rammed with wonderful recipes and gorgeous photography all from their home city. It is one of those books that demands dreamy browsing. Continue reading

Sometimes the world is with you, and sometimes it is not. Equally sometimes your fridge is with you, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes your fridge can be a nasty twisted beast. Last week when I came home from France to discover that my fridge had been off all weekend, well that was a moment where my fridge was being a poison troll. Today, when I shuffled through it and put together the makings of lunch, it was definitely trying to make amends.

In university a friend used to call me MacGyver, not because I sported an awesome mullet or because I had impressive skills where I could construct something brilliant, unexpected and absolutely required at that instant in time with just a piece of chewing gum and any-other-thing, but because she believed that I could tackle a kitchen with hardly anything in it and make something good to eat. I have always loved a cupboard forage and it is exactly this MacGyver skill level that brought lunch to my door this lunchtime. Continue reading

Visiting Sabah, I was excited as always about the food and the peculiarities that would be offered by the region and the local cooking. Sabah is tucked away in Borneo, caressing the sea, but it has a lot of rainforest and cultivated land too. On the coast there are what are referred to locally as sea gypsies, living in wooden houses on stilts in the sea by the coast. Originating from Indonesia and the Philippines, they do have their own local food culture, and I found a chef who teaches it, Fortunato Lowel, at the Mango Garden Restaurant.

Continue reading

I woke this morning feeling so tired but quite chirpy. I want to start the week well. It could be that spring is coming and I can feel it in my bones, and see it in the sky. Maybe it is the lovely weekend that I just spent in Lapland, the people I met, and the huskies, reindeer and general gorgeousness. Lately, I am increasingly aware of time, how precious it is, and how much I want to do. Our lives are in our hands, right? It sounds so simple, but like all simple things, it can be difficult to realise and implement.

The last 18 months have presented many challenges and I have felt overwhelmed and swept away at times. My Dad passing away, of course, this takes time to absorb and heal. The mammoth project that Project: Bacon turned out to be (my bacon opus is nearly there now, I am very pleased to reveal), and my responsibilities to my wonderful backers has been a huge part of this. I feel each disappointment keenly as they wait and I am further delayed. Life can kick and tease but it can also take your hand and dance with you. I want to do more dancing, and in colour. Continue reading

Is it too soon for another pancake recipe? No, it is Pancake Tuesday, right? Right. It also feels only right to share a recipe for those who can’t have gluten or dairy – this recipe is gluten free and that can be adapted to be dairy free.

These pancakes are made with buckwheat (as Breton crepes are), which despite its name is not a wheat, it is actually in the same family as rhubarb. I adore the flavour, deep and nutty, and the gently softened plums as a fresh plum compote, sweetened and sticky with honey, and toasted almonds provide syrupy sweetness and bite. I use milk, but substitutes work perfectly (I like almond milk for theses), and coconut oil is a perfect substitute for butter, or any vegetable oil,
Continue reading

Chocolate mousse is a death row dish for me. Always dark, so rich and indulgent. So simple too. A simple alchemy of chocolate and eggs, and I like to make it simply this way often, as I would in school and as I shared in my cookbook Comfort & Spice, dressed up there simply with broken honeycomb. Other times, as with here, I soften things out with cream, and add flavours, here spice, wonderful cardamom. 

Chocolate & Cardamom Mousse

When working with chocolate, it is important to bear in my mind how fragile it can be, and how easy it is to burn it, so always melt it in a double boiler (with the chocolate in a pot that fits snugly on top of another pot with boiling water in it). Heat it until just melted, if you let it get too hot, you might scramble the egg yolk when you add it. Otherwise, this is very easy, quick, rich and gorgeous. 

Recipe: Chocolate & Cardamom Mousse

makes 4 polite portions – but you know, who wants to be polite around chocolate mousse?! 

Ingredients

4 cardamom pods
200g good dark chocolate
4 eggs, separated into yolks and whites (ensuring there is absolutely no trace of yolk in the white)
100ml whipping cream (heavy cream in the US)

Method

Split the cardamom pods and remove the seeds. Toast in a dry frying pan over a high heat for a minute or so, the grind to a powder in a pestle and mortar or in a spice blender.

Melt the chocolate until just melted in a double boiler, or in a pot or heatproof bowl that sits comfortably over a pot of boiling water, ensuring that the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl or pot with the chocolate in.

While the chocolate is melting, whip the cream until thick, and separately egg whites as you would for meringue, until they have stiff peaks and a smooth texture. This is easiest with an electric whisk or in a mixer but by hand with a whisk will be fine, if a bit more work.

When the chocolate is just melted, remove the bowl or pot from the heat and stir in the ground cardamom, then quickly whisk in the egg yolks. If the chocolate is just melted the eggs won’t scramble when you add them (a risk when you overheat the chocolate only), but be quick with it anyway, to quickly incorporate the smooth rich eggs into the melted chocolate. Mix in the whipped cream, and then gently fold in the egg white, taking care not to knock the air out, until fully incorporated and a lovely mousse.

Divide the mousse into serving bowls and cover with cling film or similar. I like to serve it in my vintage babycham glasses, below. Leave to set in the fridge for an hour or two.

Enjoy!

Good morning? Is it safe to come out? I have been in hiding, taking an enforced break, so that I could catch up with everything else (work, book writing, the small matter of publishing a book myself), for it was all becoming a bit overwhelming, and I was losing sight of myself. But I am back now, and I am not very good at taking breaks anyway. My break actually turned out to be an intensive whirlwind of writing, cooking and planning; plotting travels too, and lots to share here. Mainly in my pjs, but you can forgive me that. And maybe you are guilty of wanting that for yourself? 

I wanted to just indulge myself this morning, and write forever about Australia. One of my favourite places to visit, but not just me, the Economist listed four Australian cities in the Top 10 best places to live. I could easily live there, maybe even move in the morning for a bit, but London’s tentacles tend to keep me here. I love London, but you know, the weather, and everything is expensive, and I will likely forever have to rent. Sometimes, it grates. As it should. 

Australia, yes! But then I thought, maybe I should indulge & nourish you first? Set you up for a week of travel joy before I head to France, and share some more. I will share a lovely new waffle recipe, and then come back with stories, when you are comfortable and well nourished. For these are very good and healthy too. Continue reading

I fell off a wagon that I wasn’t even properly on this evening. You could say that I tripped. On an innocent wander to the shop, I spied some curious lentil crisps, all bagged into nice tidy individual portions, so you know, they assume that we can all behave. I never buy six bags of anything like this, as I have no restraint when it comes to bags of crispy things, be they innocently low calorie or proper actual and delicious crisps. But I can’t resist something new, especially lentils masquerading as crisps. I had to try them.

You see I have a problem with crisps, and this has nothing to do with January. This is a commitment that I had to make to myself years ago, the only wagon I hop on, the NO-6-PACKS-OF-CRISPS-WAGON, and I fell off it today. Spectacularly. I inhaled that six pack of crispy intensity in 45 minutes. Guilty bag after guilty bag. I put them away, I took them out again. Eventually, I gave up, surrendered, finished the lot, and felt sick for a bit.

And, I was doing so well, too.

As for the January wagon, well why bother? January is a grey month and everyone is spent. If there is any month that needs an injection of joy, it is this. Moderation is for the whole year, and while I am terrible at putting this into practice, this is what I need to do. I want to exercise more restraint all year round, not just for a few weeks now. I say restraint, this means I aspire to live normally, and exercise a bit more.

Real food, full fat, occasional but not too much sugar. Food that has little distance from the hands that made it, reared it, or planted it. Lots of lovely real life affirming food that I put together myself at home, and take pleasure in doing so. And January is a great time to go to restaurants, with everyone else feeling guilty at home, it is so easy to get a table. January is, if anything, a month for comfort, culinary trips down memory lane, plans for the future and cleaning out the clutter from the past. Continue reading