Much like George Orwell’s ‘Moon under the water’ there exists in my mind, the perfect fish and chip experience. In this imagined eatery the chips are served just to my liking (not straight out of the fryer but ‘rested’ like the Sunday joint), the fish is – forgive me – cod, and its batter...
Ah Valentine’s Day, possibly the most unromantic day of the year, a notion I wrote about on lovefood.com. But if you’re looking for romance (with the stress placed on the second syllable) than look no further than Babs’ The Romance of Food’. I’m not the first to blog about this tome of love, or be...
A look at the presenters of food programming so far for the fag end of 2011 and 2012 reveals nothing but white chaps with names like Henry, George, and Tim. All good eggs no doubt, and let me say for a moment I don’t blame these fellas for the dire state of plurality in food...
Michel Roux Jr and his uncle Michel Roux talk to lovefood about family, food and feuds in their new TV show, The Roux Legacy. Doing things like this really is the best part of my job. Read more on lovefood.com
Recently we began recruiting a new writer for the editorial jugganaut that is Lovefood.com. When one candidate asked about the team structure I replied ‘how many people do you think there are?’ ‘six?’ came the reply. Wrong, there’s one (me), soon to be two. Much of my time then is spent managing a team of...
Golly, the lovely Bee Wilson (who's book Swindled is a great read btw) has very kindly named Food Britannia The Sunday Times' food book of the year, and what a year it was for interesting foodie books. Other contenders included some big tomes from the big names like Jamie's Great Britain, Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets...
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. Arnold Toynbee Just a quick one to let you know that on the 19th of October I 'got the keys' to Lovefood.com. Which as the apt URL suggests, is a website for people who love food. There’s a mix of recipes from chefs,...
Jay Rayner's July 2010 review of Trullo contains the line 'My one fear, I said, was that they couldn't keep it up; that I'd give it a glowing review and then get emails from furious readers in six months' time saying it was no longer such a star'. Well if my experience the other night...
Tottenham Court road used to be simple. South of Goodge street station and the Scientology shop were the technology bazaars; places where you'd haggle with young Asian men and their calculators over the price of the latest computer hardware and gadgets. North of Goodge street was the furniture shops, first and for most of which...
How many cookbooks do you own? And how many recipes have you cooked from them? That's the question I ask in a piece I've written for the BBC food site. As a food journalist I own a lot of books about food. What often surprises people, however, is that I don’t own too many cookery...
As you may know I've a bit of previous with the Sipsmith boys. I interviewed them for Waitrose Kitchen (read it here) as well as my book, needless to say I'm a big fan, their setup and their product. So much so that last Christmas when the snow was deep and crisp and even the...
This week on AOL I take a European grand tour looking at the history and culinary uses of summer herbs. Historically herbalists can't seem to agree on the uses and effects of basil. The English botanist, Nicholas Culpeper (1616 – 1654) says of it 'all authors are together by the ears about, and rail at...
