our disappearing food

from today’s Indy comes this depressing article: Cromer crabs are the latest local delicacy to be threatened with extinction.All across the UK, our traditional dishes are dying out.Martin Hickman and Geneviève Roberts report more here.

must. pay. attention.

I prepped a big pot of goulash last evening, and left it in the oven on very low to cook overnight. This plan is fine, except you wake up tormented by ghoulash dreams, due to the smell wafting up the stairs. When I fetched it out of the oven, I had put not enough salt…

Triple Chocolate Espresso Bean Cookies

seen on 101cookbooks.com Today’s recipe is for you coffee lovers. I had a bag of chocolate covered espresso beans on hand and thought it might be interesting to bake them into a cookie. A dark chocolate cookie. A dark chocolate cookie pumped full of lots of freshly ground espresso powder… makes my buzzy chocolate cake…

adopt an olive tree

“Adopt one of its 881 trees for a year and you’ll receive all the produce from your tree. Imagine dunking your bread in your own oil from your own tree 1,500 miles away on a hillside in Italy.” And only 60 quid! We do actually have an olive tree in a pot on our patio;…

lets have a barbecue!

… “the Queen Mary 2 of outdoor cooking is the $35,000 Talos Outdoor Cooking Suite sold by Frontgate, a luxury goods catalog retailer. The sprawling stainless steel temple features a searing station with a restaurant-style griddle, a hardwood cutting board, two side burners to heat sauces, a warming drawer, 3/8-inch-thick cooking grates, a 16,000-B.T.U. ceramic…

pastry …

Pastry and I … we don’t get on. At all. I can barely manage with bought pastry, and if I try to make it myself it’s a disaster. I’ve tried everything – food processor, mixer, by hand. It all goes grey and shrinks, and is as unappetising as you might imagine. I’ve been hunting for…

vodka chocolate chillis

I saw this on LJ, and thought of Sasha. Make a slit in the side of the chilli and remove membrane and seeds. Then you marinate them in vodka for 12 hours+. Then you pipe a mixture of white chocolate, vodka and freshly ground black pepper into the cavities, chill, and finally dip in dark…