Wild garlic (Ransoms) & nettle pasta sauce

Usually free/cheap food needs a little bit of effort to bring it up to scratch, but Ransoms and nettles are so abundant and quick to cook (you don’t even need to cook the ransoms just add them to salads or sandwiches if you prefer) that it seems ludicrous not to use them. The hardest part…

Dinner with kids – Family friendly tapas night

When it comes to food the kids can be a challenge. By that I mean fussy, contrary and downright infuriating. Food they gleefully tucked into with abandon one week, proclaiming it to be the best thing ever, is approached as if it were the rotting corpse of a weasel the next. Then there’s the usual…

Chorizo, potato, courgette and goat’s cheese frittata (or egg pizza for the kids)

You can’t kid a kidder. That’s what we always say to our eldest daughter when she tries telling us a little fib. So much so that she’s developed a keen ability to sniff out the slightest porky. And so it is with frittata, which, in a vain attempt to get the kids to eat it,…

So far, pho good… New Year Pho with Leftover goose

I don’t make new year’s resolutions. I would have added ‘anymore’ but I don’t think I ever have. But I do like New Year’s traditions. Especially traditions that use up leftovers from Christmas and feel healthy and reviving. Doubly virtuous! This is the second year in a row I’ve used the goose carcass as a…

Broccoli stalks

Who’d have thought it? Of all the places I’ve eaten and all the food I’ve tried over the past 18 months it’s broccoli stalks that have driven me to return to the blog! Well, OK, it’s not the broccoli stalks themselves but an article on the most recent Food & Drink show. And it’s not…

A pound well spent – Camembert.

What can you get for a pound these days? Or should I rephrase that? What can you get for a pound these days that once you’ve eaten it makes the fact that it only cost a pound seem utterly absurd?! Camembert! Yes, only a pound. OK, this is only bog standard camembert from a supermarket…

The Town Hall Tavern – Pig & mix and a pint of bitter.

I’m a simple man. Four pints of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord and a packet of Pork Scratchings is my ideal night out! So when I heard that revamped Timothy Taylor’s managed Town Hall Tavern was demonstrating culinary pig alchemy I knew we had to go. I used to love the old Town Hall Tavern with its…

Help!

Please help, I have an addiction…

Smoked Haddock and chorizo chowder, with sour cream.

This is the first time I’ve been inspired to post for a few weeks, mainly because I’ve been busy, but also because I’ve suffered a few heroic leftover based failures (leftover Chicken and Chorizo bake with parmesan breadcrumb topping being the worst, don’t ask me how I could have got that wrong!) and I’ve also…

Derek Pakora

I don’t wish to write many posts that are in some way negative. But sometimes you come across something so bad it would be a disservice to mankind not to mention it for fear that somebody else might succumb to the same horrific fate. In a rash moment of ‘what’s for dinner’ blindness Jo bought…