Do you grow broccoli rabe (also known as crimi di rapa, broccoli raab, turnip broccoli)? If you don’t, but have a veg patch, however tiny, please, consider it. In Joy Larkom´s classic `Grow your own vegetables` which makes most other…
Isn’t it funny how when you have leftover egg whites all recipes you come across call for egg yolks and vice versa? Or does this just happen to me? A couple of recent baking projects left me with 4 egg…
Things are beginning to look a bit more hopeful at the allotment: the different kinds of mustard greens and radishes are growing nicely (but still just about 1 cm high), the cold frame is greening up again and just yesterday…
I flatter myself that through introducing my kids to very fresh seasonal produce from an early age (my son was just 1 year old when we took on our first allotment 8 years ago) I instilled in them appreciation and…
For all the frantic sowing, March is probably the leanest month in the vegetable garden. The window sills are getting crowded with seedlings, and many a bed in the vegetable garden has been sown under the protection of fleece, but…
Perhaps I am still getting over my recent garlic-withdrawal, but this is another Ottolenghi recipe I just could not resist: a tart filled with the cloves from 3 (!) heads of garlic, caramelized in balsamic vinegar, and two kinds of…
Last week was the kids’ spring holiday and we went to visit my sister in the Czech Republic. She lives in the kind of a place that in Czech we call “where foxes kiss good night”. Which means the road…
The Elfstedentocht was cancelled. We were this close! Even the date was set (last Sunday) and hundreds of volunteers were sweeping the snow off the ice and transplanting ice to places were it was not thick enough. And I imagine…
I have 2 large jars of porcini. Have I just made you jealous? Dried porcini mushrooms cost a fortune in the shops, I know. But mine were for free. We picked mushrooms in the summer, cut them in thin slices,…
A vegetable, a fruit, nuts, grains and seeds – sounds like a breakfast designed by a dietitian, doesn’t it? Well, let me assure you: it’s not what it tastes like. Because it’s a recipe from the first Ottolenghi cookbook and…
When my children started school, they often brought home little “friendship books” from their classmates. The point of these books was apparently to gather confidential information and everyone was supposed to paste in a passport photograph and answer tens of…
I don’t know about your winter, but ours is no winter at all. It feels rather like an unpleasantly wet autumn. We have hardly had any frost, let alone snow. Plenty of rain and wind though, that make cycling a…
Today I was all set up to make a parsnip soup. I went to our local organic food store – and they did not have any parsnips. My disappointment dissolved quickly, however, when I spotted the sign “purple truffle potatoes”.…
So, we made the potato salad to eat on Christmas Eve and then we made another batch to make open face sandwiches for New Year’s Eve. As we do every year. And the sandwiches that are not eaten on New…
Because a marriage is not only a union of two individuals but also two different culinary traditions, it is during the high holidays, when “laws” and “in-laws” meet around one table, that culinary conflicts are likely to escalate. The traditional…