Sharp, sweet and crisp, Celeriac and Apple Tartare is a simple – essential! – winter side dish. A perfect complement to a hearty holiday or family meal. Put it on your menu soon and let me know what you think. Deal?
seasonal recipe
This humble cabbage, sweet onion and porcini mushroom soup is as simple, honest, and delicious as it gets. Served hot and slurpy with flecks of wild rice, it’s the kind of soup that comforts and fortifies body and soul. Fit this into your autumn and winter lunch or dinner repertoire for a nourishing, earthy boost. …
It is more “Scottish monsoon” than “flaming June” around here so you will forgive me, I hope, for ignoring salads and plumping for pie. A summer-into-fall (!) luscious chard, portabello mushroom and broccoli pie, studded with nuggets of feta, buttery pine nuts and magical za’atar. Covered, of course, with a few hand-crumpled layers of paper-thin …
Cauliflower covered in bubbling, boozy rarebit cheese sauce is hard to resist, especially when the cauliflower is given a boost through a simple brining. Enjoy as a side dish, light lunch or supper. Easy cheesy goodness guaranteed! Cauliflower is at its very best right now. This nutritious vegetable, its milky-hued curds cradled in a cap …
It’s all about the dressing…A salad. In February. Am I mad? An explanation: Being this tantalisingly close in the year to warmth, spring colour and fresh tastes I am really craving bright food. Okay, I’m always craving food – bright food – but lately it borders on stark-eyed obsession. The seemingly endless months of low, blue-tinged light …
This time of year – despite the falling temperatures and falling leaves – is a favourite time for me as a homecook, and glutton. And figs are one reason why. Beautiful, black bursa figs – with their soft, edible dusky-leather jackets, and their tiny crunchy seeds – are my favourite fruit of autumn. I know …
Growing up in Florida there wasn’t much opportunity for blackberry picking – too warm you see. Even in cooler Tennessee, where I was born and where my grandparents lived, I never managed to head up to the tree-covered hills just over the road – hills no doubt smothered with wild berries and mushrooms during the …
Growers of rhubarb – of the assertive and open-air type rather than tender and under wraps – will have already witnessed the wonder that is its growing habit. From a tight-fisted angry bunch, bursting through cold soil, near-tropical leaves unfurl and cover anything under its considerable umbrella. This bulky plant – a vegetable actually – …
We are betwixt and between seasons up here in Scotland. It is allegedly spring – verging on summer – but no one told May. This month has been cool, windy, and really rather disappointing. May is traditionally the time when we get flashes of summer, which is nice for most of us, but for students …
I’d like you to humour me for a few paragraphs. I want you to slip on some imaginary shoes – I am assuming you are already dressed – and walk into town. If you are lucky you will notice trees in leaf, with maybe some flower buds ready to burst or are in full, radiant bloom. …