3.25 / 5 Stars | 3 Reviews

by AnimalWhiz

"Simple recipe for delicious frog's legs that are breaded with cracker crumbs and cornmeal, then fried in oil."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.77 / 5 Stars | 843 Reviews

by SALSIEPIE

"I was looking for an easy way to make our Christmas Rib Roast. It turned out PERFECT. Rib Roast can be expensive, so this is a total splurge or special occasion dish. Enjoy."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.23 / 5 Stars | 143 Reviews

by SURELEE

"Layers of French fries, broccoli and ham topped with a creamy soup mixture and sprinkled with cheese."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.63 / 5 Stars | 75 Reviews

by Janine

"I created this recipe while trying to recreate the best burger I had ever tasted at a restaurant in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. My family and I think these burgers are better! They are packed with flavor!"

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.53 / 5 Stars | 68 Reviews

by RRADAMS

"Yummy! This is a wonderful pizza for those who are looking to get away from the basic, cheese and pepperoni pizza."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.33 / 5 Stars | 2 Reviews

by JLWS

"First comes the sweet and sour sauce and a bit of ginger in a bowl. Next romaine and bean sprouts. Then the shredded chicken. Give it a stir and you have a remarkable luncheon entree. Top with almonds and a good sprinkling of ground pepper."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4 / 5 Stars | 7 Reviews

by Sydny

"Lemon zest and honey is mixed together with Neufchatel cheese to make a great spread or dip. The spread is excellent when paired with fresh fruit in sandwiches."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.64 / 5 Stars | 79 Reviews

by LINDACHEK

"A quick and easy crab cake that features buttery round crackers, tarragon, green onions, and red pepper flakes."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.67 / 5 Stars | 47 Reviews

by Il Max

"Pesto, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes come all together in this quiche that I created myself. This is a perfect combination of flavors that will make you appear like a chef when you serve this plate to your friends."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.21 / 5 Stars | 50 Reviews

by Dianemwj

"Braised flank steak becomes flavorful and tender when simmered slowly in chicken broth with garlic, cloves, and lemon juice in a stovetop preparation that's easy on the cook."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.22 / 5 Stars | 87 Reviews

by grannycancook

"Here's an old recipe I have used for years. Sauerkraut and pork sausage cooked slowly in a slow cooker. Yummm!"

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.56 / 5 Stars | 16 Reviews

by RandyRandy

"This combination of Asian stir-fry and fiery Caribbean seasoning makes sweet and spicy dish."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.52 / 5 Stars | 84 Reviews

by LARANEFF

"These white chicken enchiladas are a cinch to make with ingredients right off the shelf. The only skill required is in measuring, the rest just works itself out!"

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.58 / 5 Stars | 15 Reviews

by ZEPHYLOQUY

"These spare ribs are marinated in light and dark soy sauce, orange juice, garlic, and peppercorn, then fried briefly. After simmering the ribs, marinade, and spices such as star anise and cinnamon for an hour, they are ready to serve with white rice. Very flavorful and tender!"

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.33 / 5 Stars | 55 Reviews

by Hannah

"Jamaican burgers are spicy vegetarian burgers that are very tasty. They are my favorite to make, and my friends love them!"

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.26 / 5 Stars | 57 Reviews

by SKJHFG

"A beefy alternative to 'Italian-style' stuffed peppers, great with any white rice-based side dish, or mashed potatoes."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.21 / 5 Stars | 40 Reviews

by Melissa B

"This recipe for meatloaf is easy and has a nice blend of flavors -- ground beef, herbed stuffing mix, barbeque sauce, onion and garlic. Shaped into a loaf and baked with a barbeque sauce and brown sugar glaze."

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

4.17 / 5 Stars | 30 Reviews

by Kat

"Penne pasta is tossed with fresh green beans and red potatoes in a creamy pesto-yogurt sauce. Different and yummy!"

View Complete Recipe Details and Reviews

I’ve never been able to tell if it’s the smell or the delicate golden colour on top of a freshly baked pie that has always had me hooked – maybe it’s a combination of the two.  Or perhaps it’s the hidden mystery of the flavour concealed within that captures the imagination and makes a pie hard to resist.

Sub-standard pies became for many years “the symbol of stodgy service station fare”, says BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme. "The life of pie" examines how chefs and cooks alike are rediscovering the joys of a lovingly made pastry containing top quality ingredients.

 

The humble pie now comes in all shapes, flavours and forms, some far superior to the meat pies (minced or diced beef with gravy, onions or cheese) of my childhood in New Zealand. They are celebrated as part of “Kiwiana” culture, and are also treated to iconic status in Australian cuisine. (I say humble, but New Zealanders are incredibly proud of their pies – as evidenced by over 4,400 entries to the annual NZ Supreme Pie Awards.)

The passion for pie was brought to New Zealand from its English settlers: “Our English housewife must be skilful in pastry, and know how and in what manner to bake all sorts of meat,” wrote Gervase Markham in the English Housewife in 1615. At this time the pie was even used as the centrepiece of great tables - occasionally containing (hilariously) live frogs or blackbirds.

But the British pie goes as far back as the Middle Ages, though one of the primary purposes of pastry was simply to contain and protect the meat, according to food writer Harold McGee. Inedible pastry cases used as cooking vessels were called ‘coffyns’. And from that grim beginning grew a love of pastry and what it could do.

McGee says the word pie developed in medieval English and was the equivalent of the French word pâté – a word used to describe both blends of meat and types of pastry (as in pâté sablée). 

“Pie meant a dish of any sort, meat, fish, vegetable or fruit, enclosed in pastry,” McGee says, and the word was not to do with dough, but rather the use of odds and ends. Quite appropriate as the word pie was borrowed from a bird that makes a comfortable nest from whatever’s to hand – the magpie.

 

Throwing any old odds and ends is perhaps not the best way to make a pie, although some of the flavours I’ve tried over the years show surprising and unsurprising combinations can work – Thai green curry, tandoori chicken and chilli crab spring to mind.

Getting the right thickness to your pastry and ensuring it cooks perfectly, are key to creating the perfect pie. The crucial tip for the best crust is to keep both filling and pastry cold prior to baking.
There are as many varieties of pastry as there are fillings – from rough puff to cream cheese to rich shortcrust, polenta and oat pastries. (This gluten-free pastry is great for savoury pies, too.)

As to fillings, I love a traditional chicken and leek and it’s on that’s much loved elsewhere too - this year the supreme winner of the British Pie Awards contained chicken, ham, mushroom and buttered leeks under suet pastry.

While debate has raged for years over whether pasties are pies, I take a rather inclusive approach and say anything with pastry involved is of the same family. From the politically controversial Cornish pasty  in the south to the Scottish bridie – each has their own character that epitomises the versatility of the pie, and demonstrates its consistent appeal. In particular I love empanadas and veggie ricotta parcels.

 

But I have to say, in the sweet pie arena, the Americans always win; after all they use it as a benchmark of their culture in the phrase, "As American as apple pie”. But they also top the pie charts with pumpkin pie, key lime pie, and the blowsy, billowing lemon meringue pie.

No one can resist a sweet piece of pie (not even Agent Cooper) – although perhaps not following a pie as a main course. I'm sure you know can imagine the result – an all-too real exemplification of that modern idiom: “Who ate all the pies?”

Do you have any pie making tips? Are you a top crust person, or do you insist on both top and bottom? Do pasties count?

Summer’s almost here (it is coming, right?) and we’re all going to start fancying a little something cold and refreshing of an afternoon.  Nothing beats a rich scoop of ice cream – but it’s not going to get you a swimsuit figure. I’m not a believer in low-fat versions of food, but I do believe that there are some frosty treats that are naturally lighter with just as much taste as the full-fat equivalent. Here are my top five.

Classic summer berry sorbet - packs a punch with very little fat.

Gelato
There’s no hard and fast definition of gelato, so don’t assume that all gelatos are healthier than ice cream. On the whole, gelato tends to be made with milk and egg yolks, but not cream, making it much lower in fat. The consistency is softer, silky and less prone to freezing hard.  Some people describe the taste as ‘cleaner’, but I think the real beauty of gelato is the texture. (The custard pre-freezing is so glossy and thick, it may not make it to the churn!)

We did a taste test between chocolate ice cream and gelato from the amazingly informative Ice Creams, Sorbets and Gelati: The Definitive Guide. We used the same quantities/types of chocolate and sugar, but the gelato used only full fat milk and two extra egg yolks, while the ice cream used double cream. Gelato more than stood up to the challenge, winning over half our office in a taste test.

Do you need an ice cream maker? No, but you won’t get such a silky texture which is as important as the flavour.

Top flavours: Chocolate, hazelnut, lemon lime, Blueberry

Cornflour ice cream

It sounds a little like cheating, but using cornflour to thicken milk instead of egg yolks really is traditional (in southern Italy, this is what they mean by ‘gelato’). This is a great ice cream to make with or for children, who can sometimes be put off by the eggy flavour of custard-based ices.

It’s about as easy as ice cream gets; gently heat 750ml milk and 100g sugar just to boiling and infuse with vanilla or other flavours, cool down a cup of the liquid and combine with a few tablespoons of cornflour to make a thin paste. Add the cornflour paste back into the warm milk and simmer until thickened. Cool completely, chill and freeze.

If you’re still worried that a corn flour thickened ice cream can’t have as much body as one containing eggs or cream, try adding a few tablespoons of milk powder (including malted milk powder or coconut milk powder) to boost the solids and absorb some of the excess water.

Do you need an ice cream maker? No, this ice cream works very well with stir freezing. Keep the ice cream in a plastic box, and use a hand-held electric whisk to break up the ice crystals every forty-five minutes until it’s set firm.

Top flavours: As a variation on the classic vanilla, you can add lemon or almond extract, puréed fruit, coconut or chocolate malt powder. Or try Atul Kochar’s pistachio kulfi (anyone found screwpine essence?)

Frozen yoghurt

Frozen yoghurt is quite often too watery and icy to make without the addition of some fats or stabilizers. For a pure frozen yoghurt, using a very rich Greek-style yoghurt will have the best results – because fat doesn’t freeze, the higher fat content will keep it smoother and softer. Other cultured dairy products like buttermilk or fromage frais can be equally nice.

 

Do you need an ice cream maker? No, but you may need to err on the side of richness or use a little alcohol to stop large ice crystals forming.

Top flavours: The flavour of yoghurt will always dominate, so go with it. Yoghurt sorbet, raspberry, Strawberry lollies, Lemon meringue fromage frais, Banana buttermilk    
 
Sorbet
Sometimes a revalation and sometimes a bit of a let-down, sorbet is a tricky one to get right. Fruit and syrup is all it really takes, though this kind of sorbet really needs eating right after churning.  A teaspoon of glucose syrup or invert sugar syrup (corn syrup) can be used to soften the texture of a sorbet and stop it from freezing very hard. A little alcohol can also help it stay soft.

Some recipes call for the addition of whipped egg white, which lightens the texture (technically, it’s called a spoom). You can purchase pasteurised egg white if you’re concerned about consuming any raw egg.

Do you need an ice cream maker? No, though it does help achieve a smooth texture.

Top flavours: Raspberry, passion fruit, coffee and chocolate, mango, rhubarb, cider, melon, summer berry (pictured).

Breakfast of champions - frozen coffee with (optional) whipped cream.

Granita
When I was little, the ice cream van used to sell a paper cone of crushed ice soaked in flavoured sugar syrups all colours of the rainbow.  The sno-cone has its roots in the totally sophisticated granita. This isn't one for scooping into a cone, but for eating from a glass dish with a tiny cup of espresso.  In Sicily, I believe, they eat coffee granita sandwiched in brioche. For breakfast. 

Top flavours: Amaretto, Kendal mint cake water ice, coffee (pictured, whipped cream topping optional), lemon, grapefruit and juniper (contains gin!) 

Your imagination is the only limit to what flavours you can devise.

Have you a favourite technique or flavour that you'd recommend for a low-fat treat?

As I’m writing and testing recipes so often with loads of variations and, to be honest, failures, I have to have some things that never let me down. A fridge that always works, an oven that’s dependable (ok, the door is a bit iffy), and I aim to make sure the things I bake never, ever stick to the tins.

When I work in bakeries we use all sorts of expensive tricks: lecithin aerosol sprays, plastic film for blind-baking pastry cases, silicone baking mats or endless sheets of silicone-coated non-stick paper.

But at home, these high-end options are often not worth the expense if you’re only baking occasionally. So gleaming there in the shops temptingly, typically with a celebrity chef endorsement, is non-stick bakeware, coated with chemicals that stop some mixtures sticking to it.

The history

But before these coatings were invented, cooks tackled this sticky problem using other techniques. I spoke with food historian Ivan Day, who has looked into the history in detail.

“The Victorian chef Jules Gouffé is quite specific on how to prepare ornate baking tins,” said Ivan, “and insisted on using calves’ suet as the flavour was very neutral. Beef dripping wasn’t recommended for preparing tins for sweet cakes and pastry as it had a pronounced meatiness, though it might be mixed half-and-half with clarified butter.”

To use it, Gouffé recommends warming the tin first, spooning the melted suet in and swirling it around to coat the inside evenly before placing it on an angle to drain and allow any steam to escape. This last step is important, says Ivan, as moisture in this fat “lining” could cause the cake to stick.

Cake mould depicting the Pieta from the Alsatian museum in Strasbourg, France. Image credit: Ji-elle, Wikimedia, under a creative commons license.

Then a cupful of caster sugar would be rolled around the tin so it stuck evenly to the fat, and any excess tapped out - forming a fine layer on the fat that would seal the surface of the cake as it baked. A half-and-half mix of sifted flour and sugar was very effective, or potato starch and sugar. Then, after baking, the cakes would be left for 10 minutes before being turned out. “I know it sounds very elaborate today,” says Ivan, “but the results were often fantastic, especially if a very intricately detailed baking tin was used.”

You can still use this method today, with any fat that sets hard at room temperature, like clarified butter, lard, dripping, palm oil, coconut oil, or other vegetable fats. I prefer to use only flour as the next coating on the fat, though sugar is still useful for the inside of a soufflé dish.

Pros: this method allows you to use very complicated tin shapes and is easy to do with home ingredients.

Cons: Loads of washing up to do afterwards, and adds time to the recipe as you have to prepare the tin carefully.

Non-stick sprays

You can get, in pump bottle or aerosol, a liquid that contains vegetable oil and typically an emulsifier like lecithin that forms a layer between the mixture and the tin and helps stop the cake from sticking. Really good if you’re short of time, though I have weaned myself off a dependence on them. They can leave a build-up on aluminium trays if exposed to direct heat without a covering of mixture or dough.

Pros: very easy and quick to use, and fairly dependable for cake mixtures.

Cons: A bit expensive. You’re left with a fair amount of packaging to dispose of so there are environmental concerns too.

Brown, greaseproof and siliconised baking paper

Though plain trays could be coated the same way, sometimes oiled paper was used for small cakes, meringues and biscuits. The big hassle in my home growing up was washing the tin with cake stuck to it, so my mum just used brown paper – this was the time when groceries were packed into brown paper bags – rubbed with sunflower oil so it turned translucent. This would be cut and folded into the tin and, even though the cake stuck to it and the paper has to be torn off, the mixture wouldn’t stick to the tin.

Greaseproof or straight baking paper works the same way, and will grip onto food in fiercest way. However, if your baking paper is described as “non-stick” or has the word “siliconised” written on the box, then this usually won’t stick. It is more expensive, but it can be used at least 3-4 times before it starts to tear. Just remove the paper after baking, let it cool, the place it carefully away until next time.

Pros: so cheap to do so long as you collect your paper bags, or reuse your baking paper; and avoids washing up.

Cons: Unless the paper is coated with silicone, the food will stick to it.

Silicone bakeware and sheets

In small commercial bakeries you’ll usually find a silicone baking mat lurking somewhere. Flexible and strong, reinforced with threads of fiberglass, it forms a non-stick surface that works very well with tricky high-sugar mixtures. You can bake directly on it, and it’s food safe and easy to clean. They’re expensive, but one to buy if you want a reusable long-lasting solution for flat baking sheets.

Lately you will have seen, or own, “tins” made entirely of silicone moulded like rubber. This should provide a complete non-stick surface but when turning out hot foods, like a molten chocolate cake, the steam can cause a suction effect and cause the mixture to stick. These moulds typically have soft rounded edges, are flexible, and lightweight but slightly unstable when filled.

Pros: excellent durability if looked after, light to hold and easy to clean. Provides a very good non-stick surface

Cons: Can be unstable when moving into or out of oven

Teflon and other non-stick surfaces

Nearly all metal bakeware is now available with a non-stick coating. There’s a multi-billion pound coatings industry behind these quick-release surfaces and given the potential money to be made there’s competition in providing the best result.

New ceramic surfaces are starting to appear on the market, but predominantly non-stick bakeware uses one or more coats of tough fluoropolymers locked “permanently” into place through further chemical and temperature treatments.

The most well-known of these coatings is Teflon, which uses a chemical called polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) to create a very low-friction surface that should, in theory, cause many food to slide right off during baking. But though Teflon has become a generic term for non-stick it should correctly be used for the type Dupont make, as there are many other types of non-stick coating, using various chemicals to achieve a similar effect: like perfluoroalkoxy (PFA) and fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP).

I always end up scratching the surface in some way, don’t always clean in the corners properly, so very soon into use my food begins to stick. And when that happens I end up lining the non-stick bakeware with non-stick paper. So to be frank I’m often just as happy with the old-fashioned tins, either spankingly new or just vintage ones from car boot sales, and with paper or the butter/flour combination ensure that my cakes don’t stick. It’s what my mum did, and her mum too, and sometimes that’s reason enough.

How important is non-stick bakeware for you? What approach do you take?

Eating a warm strawberry straight from the patch is arguably the most pleasurable aspect of a British summer. It’s not just nostalgia that makes us wonder if they just don’t taste like they used to. Are modern varieties a patch on what was grown in the past? Gardener Mark Diacono says: “New varieties are often developments and/or crosses of older varieties, bred for greater reliability and resistance to disease. Flavour is often lost in that process.”

But as a heritage crop, strawberries are a bit of an outlier – it’s not one that always supports the ‘older is better’ hypothesis.  It’s taken a lot of time and effort to cultivate a tasty berry – like the fruit of Tantalus, the perfect strawberry always seems just out of reach.

But first, a little history lesson.  For thousands of years, Europeans had been gobbling up one type of strawberry: the wild Fragaria vesca, tiny, but highly-flavoured with hints of clove and grape. The demand for cultivation was clear: strawberries had been the prize of French and English kings. (Henry VIII himself having paid as much for 250g of the fruit as was paid for a portrait of Jane Seymour by Holbein.)

Wild strawberry drawing, Conrad Gessner 1555-65 (Photo by Roland zh, via Wikimedia Commons)

Upon the discovery of the Americas came the arrival in Europe of two new types of wild strawberry - the Fragaria virginiana from North America and the Fragaria chileonsis from South America.  Both were larger, but a mixed bag in terms of flavour.

How fortunate that in the early 1780s, a fluke cross-breed of the two American varieties was created from interplanting in the French botanical gardens. These two plants become mother and father to nearly all of our modern cultivars - the Fragaria x ananassa, or ‘pineapple’ strawberry.

Not to say that this was the end of all other strawberries. Varieties of the F. virginiana, commonly called Scarlet, were still very popular in England and America. This juicy, acidic berry is well-suited to making jam, and is indeed still grown in the UK exclusively in Tiptree, Essex for Wilkin and Son’s Little Scarlet jam – notably the favourite jam of international man of mystery, James Bond.

Credit: Wellcome Library, London - Two strawberry plants (Fragaria cultivars): fruit and flowers. Coloured aquatint, c. 1839. after: Charles Macintosh

But the pineapple strawberry intrigued a shy horticulturist from Herefordshire called Thomas Andrew Knight. Encouraged by Sir Joseph Banks and the nascent Royal Horticultural Society, he began systematic work on a larger, sweeter cultivar of F. x ananassa, creating the Downton - a big, brightly coloured fruit that was slightly disappointing in taste. But his real legacy is his scientific approach to strawberry cultivation and his inspiration of other gardeners like Michael Keens of Isleworth. In 1821, the Keen’s Seedling quickly became the favourite strawberry - large, juicy, sweet and prolific.

Other gardeners continued his approach, with one of the most successful being Thomas Laxton, cohort of Charles Darwin, and his production of the Royal Sovereign in 1892 - combining European flavour with and American hardiness.  This is where a British cultivated strawberry becomes exceptionally delicious; it was the leading strawberry for about fifty years and is still grown today by strawberry aficionados.

After showing signs of disease, the Royal Sovereign was superseded commercially in the 1930’s by D. Boyes’ Cambridge Favourite - the Elsanta of its day - making up 70% of the British commercial market by the 1960s. But the better flavoured strawberries of the 20th century came first from developments in Scotland. Having bolstered the health of Royal Sovereign, Robert Reid also produced the scrumptious Talisman and Red Gauntlet varieties. These are both still available to grow and taste great.

So is it worth growing these older varieties, knowing that the yield might be lower and a bit more susceptible to disease? Mark Diacono again: “It is hard to generalise as there are some excellent new varieties, but older varieties typically have a more complex flavour. It’s not just about sweetness in older varieties - that makes many of them more interesting and flavoursome to eat. Royal Sovereign was hugely popular in the first half of the last century and still held in great affection by those that have grown it. But it is not a clean distinction - some of the newer varieties such as Mara des Bois (developed 20 years ago) and Marshmello are very good.”

Despite its American ancestors and awhirlwind French romance, the strawberry’s heritage seems quintessentially British. We’ve probably lots of new wonderful varieties to look forward to, but much enjoyment to be had from the past.

Are there any strawberry varieties you've grown and enjoyed? Which is the best flavour?

“Today I want to ask a question. What makes coffee exceptional?” Thus opened Maxwell Colonna Dashwood in his winning presentation to the judges of the UK Barista Championships at the London Coffee Festival this weekend. It’s a good question, and one which takes quite some answering.

Colonna Dashwood answered it on the day with a series of superlative espressos, cappuccinos and his ‘signature drink’ for the competition: a Rwandan espresso served alongside freshly squeezed ruby grapefruit juice and a spice infusion of liquorice root and star anise. The first to “tone [the] acidity down and to highlight the caramel in the coffee  -  the floral becomes hoppy”, and the second “to bring those tart, sharp, fruity notes back to the cup.” The tasting process is as exacting as every aspect of exceptional coffee: the sourcing, the roasting, the brewing, the serving.  The myriad flavour notes mimic the complexities of the relationships between the farmers, producers, importers, roasters and baristas. When we decided we wanted to know more about exceptional coffee, we had no idea the depths we were getting into.

Steve Leighton of Has Bean, a specialty coffee roaster based in Stafford, (and supplier of beans to several barista champions, including the current World Barista champion), outlined that coffee “is the most complex food known to man. It has 1200 flavour components... The nearest comparison is red wine with 450 chemical compounds in the flavour make-up. And then we go and roast it – different chemicals are burning away, others changing – this all adds to the complexity.”  This is a blessing and a curse to the coffee industry; on the one hand you have a stunning range of products – but how do you tame the volatile compounds and make them communicable to the public?

Traditionally, this has been done with ‘roasts’ – Italian Roast, French roast  - these terms stand for something in our minds, but we’d struggle to pin down how they taste. In the commercial coffee world “your skill is to produce something year round that delivers on a brand promise” Colonna Dashwood explains - consistent is king. “In most commercial blends there are 10 to 12 different coffees , from different farms. And imagine you sit in the cupping room and you get a really interesting coffee – you’d never put it into the blend – because when it goes, the blend would change.” Interesting coffees therefore have little place in the commercial world. But where these guys leave off, the specialty guys get going.  Rather than going for consistency of flavour, they sell consistency of quality.

To ensure quality, as a supplier, you need to be on top of your game; roasters check samples from farmers and importers, visit farms and build relationships with the growers. Landing a shipment of beans can take many months; Has Bean’s latest shipment from El Salvador has involved four months of planning, and started with a visit to the farm. But on location is not where the deals are done. Steve “can’t decide at origin” whether or not to buy – “the sun’s out, you’re chatting with the farmers” – quite a different scene to Stafford in January. Instead, samples are sent back to base, where they will be roasted and ‘cupped’ – a simple roast process, ground and filtered for four minutes in hot water. Once approved, the beans are shipped “green, in parchment” and when they get through the door, the roasters “play with the roast profile …tweaking time and temperature to … highlight particular flavours – chocolate, fruits, vanilla, caramels - thousands of different flavours. A high temperature at the end [of the roast] gives acidity, a short roasting time lends sweetness, and a longer roasting time gives body.” When they’re happy – it’s time to sell it to the specialty baristas, individual enthusiasts and coffee shops.

At the coffee shop, each batch of fresh roasted coffee is given a ‘brew recipe’ outlining the time, temperature, weight in grams, measure of shot, to be used.  Then each morning, the batch is tested again, and the brew recipe altered, to allow for the changes in the beans over the 3 or 4 days it’s served up in the shop. Colonna Dashwood can even programme his coffee machine to change the pressure during the espresso-making process – all to get the most out of those beans. When I asked if this was a manual or programmed process, he laughed – “You programme it – I don’t believe in the manual thing because it’s too variable. Why have another variable?!" Even champion baristas have their limits.

Other short-hands exist; notably the Cup of Excellence programme creates a clear route between growers and specialty roasters or baristas to access great coffee. The not-for-profit scheme started in 1999 as a way to boost sales through an all-time price low of under $1 per lb. Any producer can enter to be assessed by national Cup of Excellence jury, and the best 60 lots to go through to an international jury. If the coffee scores higher than 84/100 it goes to internet auction for buyers to buy.  This cuts out a lot of leg-work which can be prohibitively expensive for small outfits.
What’s interesting is that the Cup of Excellence judges are not looking to make all coffees the same, nor are the baristas, nor the competition judges.  The move away from ‘roasts’ and to a more sommelier culture of individual taste reinforces the point that the skill, for everyone, is to adapt to the coffee.  “A coffee is really judged on how these parts come together to form a cohesive structure of flavour called character.” There is character aplenty in the specialty roasters, baristas, competition judges, Cup of Excellence promoters, and customers – all the passionate individuals who want to find something interesting and satisfying from a simple cuppa joe.

What do you look for in coffee? Do you seek out exceptional coffee? What was the best cup of coffee you've ever tasted?

The new crop of spring cookery books is out and as usual publishers seem to be convinced they’re onto a winner with titles featuring the words ‘quick’, ‘easy’ and ‘simple’. (‘Slimming World’s Extra Easy All-in-One’ must tick every box going.)

It’s the same with cookery mags and even estimable cookery sites such as this one have endless links for 'quick and easy' recipes of every type. The implication being that . . . well . .  cooking is really a terrible drag, to be got through, like housework, as quickly as possible.

OK, there are some people who loathe cooking and - to my eternal bewilderment - prefer swabbing their work surfaces, but what are the rest of us saving time for? Ironically, it seems, to watch cookery programmes like Masterchef or Come Dine with Me where contestants take a lot more time and trouble making a meal than the viewers are prepared to.

Simon Hopkinson's Baked pappardelle with pancetta and porcini defers gratification by all of forty minutes - too long to wait?

Maybe we’re just too ambitious: overawed by the clever creations we see on telly we just give up. When I was brought up, my mother - not a great cook, admittedly - had a limited repertoire. Monday and Tuesday used up leftovers from the roast. There would be macaroni cheese another night (my favourite), mince another. If it was Friday we knew it would be fish - grilled plaice usually. It wasn’t too demanding because they were all familiar friends.

TV implies that every meal must be accompanied by a frenzy of chopping, sizzling and flipping but all many recipes need is 10 minutes preparation than an hour or so left to their own devices.

But the array of convenience foods you find in the average supermarket implies we’re not even prepared to do these simple tasks. Vegetables are peeled and cut up for us, cheese ready-grated, bread - of course - pre-sliced. That’s nothing new.

OK it’s not easy to rustle up a family meal night after night when you get home from work, but what’s wrong with cooking ahead for nights you know you’re going to be late? I used to use the freezer constantly when my kids were growing up. (Ed. Have you seen our make and freeze collection?)

And there’s no reason why the load should always fall on one family member. Once kids are older they can help out. Even reluctant cooks should have one speciality they’re prepared to cook once a week. A bit more fun than the cleaning the bathroom rota, surely?

Some dishes are naturally easier - like Nigel Slater's Grilled lamb with feta - and can be tackled by a novice cook.

If you live on your own it’s harder, I realise, but if when your friends come round you put them to work in the kitchen rather than shouldering the load of rustling up a meal single-handed then you don’t have to stick to recipes that can be cooked at speed. Cooking is companionable, as any Italian family will tell you.

So how do you manage juggling work and feeding the family? Do you enjoy spending time in the kitchen or are you a sucker for speedy recipes? Give the rest of us your tips!

When you ask a Peruvian to define their cuisine, it's never a quick answer. It seems to take, on average, quite a few minutes to clarify the matter. They're a passionate nation and give the Italians a run for their money when it comes to time spent talking about, shopping for, or planning the next meal or snack.

I found this out the long way round, by going to Peru and asking. I admit that I arrived in Lima with little more than a vague knowledge of quinoa, ceviche and avocados, plus a few enthusiastic emails and 'must eat' lists from Peruvian and non-Peruvian friends-of-friends.

 

Fortunately for me the Peruvians know their history, and are only too happy to share their knowledge. Often referred to as the original fusion food, and for good reason, Peruvian dishes are diverse and unexpected. The food is underpinned by Incan origins, which are still evident today, particularly in the use of corn, potatoes (of which more than 4,000 varieties are grown in Peru) and chillies. However it has also has been enriched, adapted and added to by centuries of immigration. The Spanish, African, Chinese, Japanese and, most recently, Italian and French have all played a large part in what is known today as Peruvian food. This is seen in dishes such as the Japanese-influenced tiradito, a sashimi-style dish of raw fish 'cooked' in lime juice, or the popularity of chifa (Peruvian-Chinese food).

The diversity continues thanks to a vast natural larder, much of which is grown organically on a small scale. From the seafood-rich Pacific, to the fertile Andes where potatoes, corn and tomatoes grow prolifically, to the Amazon where an array of mysterious jungle fruits and herbs are sourced, inspiration is never far away. So it came as no surprise to learn that the secret of this addictively fresh, varied, mildly spicy cuisine is finally out.

 

A market stall in Lima.

On my return to the UK I met the contagiously enthusiastic Martin Morales, owner of the newly opened Ceviche, London's first modern Peruvian restaurant. He explained: "We have always been a nation obsessed with our food and we've got an incredible cuisine now, with lots of flavours thanks to the fusion of [our] indigenous background and 500 years of immigration. Now the rest of the world is finding out about it."

There has been a boom of quality restaurants opening in Peru's capital Lima that are gaining international recognition. Ferran Adrià, the godfather of molecular gastronomy, has recognised Peru as undergoing a 'gastronomical revolution'. And, for the first time ever, a Peruvian restaurant, Astrid y Gaston, made it onto the World's 50 Best Restaurant List in 2011.

Impressive though this is, home is still where the heart is for many Peruvians. Lunch is often the main meal of the day and it's enjoyed around the table at home, with the family.  Favourite dishes might include aji de gallina, a comforting dish of chicken in a creamy sauce thickened with bread and sometimes ground nuts, or lomo saltado the much-loved chifa dish of stir fried strips of beef with peppers, aji chilli and soy. Soup is another favourite, from light broths to hearty, almost stew-like bowls of seafood or chicken.

Dan Clarke, who runs Real Peru Holidays, has been championing Peruvian food for more than ten years. He said: "The dishes you get in restaurants in Peru are really just dressed-up versions of what you eat at home - most Peruvian home cooks have no problem whipping up a quick ceviche or aji de gallina.

And whether it's a home cooked or restaurant meal, wherever you are, produce is almost always bought and cooked that day, and for that meal. There are markets in every district and even cheap corner restaurants rely on good, fresh ingredients every day. Peruvian fridges are usually just for milk and beer!"

Fancy trying your hand at a Peruvian dish? Take a look at our recipes for aji de gallina, sea bass and salmon ceviche, escabeche of sardines or Peruvian-style chicken and yellow pepper sauce with potatoes.

This year’s warm weather has brought a bevy of beautiful blossom to our trees and hedgerows much earlier than usual. It’s a great opportunity use wild flowers to add a bright and breezy bit of colour to your baking that’s as springy as a frolicking lamb. Though it’s too early for the usual rose petals, don’t miss out on early spring beauties.

Crystallised flowers are a bit old-fashioned, but in a totally gorgeous way. And as the early blossoms don’t, for the most part, have as strong a scent or flavour as the later summer flowers, it’s all about the look. These are decorations you won’t find in your kitchen shop as they’re too delicate to transport. But make use of the flowers now, and they’ll keep in an airtight box for weeks.

 

Gently paint primroses or violets in a little beaten egg white and lightly sprinkle with caster sugar, ensuring the front and back of the flower is completely coated. Set the flowers aside to dry on some greaseproof paper for at least 24 hours, then store in an airtight container. It's crucial to let them dry completely before sealing up, or you’ll have soggy blossom.

The texture of crystallised flowers is beautifully light and crisp – there’s no hint of chewy petal in there. But the colour and shape is retained, down to the butter yellow centres. I used them to top Dan Lepard’s wonderful carrot cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  Many flowers, including apple, plum, blackthorn (sloe) are technically edible and suitable for crystallising.

It's worth pointing out that it's illegal in the UK to dig up wild primroses, and over-picking can be damaging to the population - so take as little as you need and always get permission from the land owner.

Violets pack the most flavour punch and have a long-standing friendship with chocolate – try them in Nigel Slater’s Chocolate sea salt snaps for an flavourful spring variation.  If you’re up to your ankles in violets, it’s hard to resist the purple majesty of this amazing syrup.  Richard Mabey in his seminal work, Food for Free, references this 15th century recipe using violets as a flavouring for rice pudding but that sounds as old-fashioned as a pair of granny’s bloomers.

Primrose and rosemary flowers

Equally purple, but more sophisticated, rosemary flowers carry the same heady pine flavour that is in the leaves. When chopped up and baked they have no discernable difference to the chopped up leaves, as I found when trialling a rosemary flower shortbread. Alternatively, infuse the rosemary leaves in warm double cream for chocolate truffles, with a crystallised rosemary flower on top.

Later in the year we’ll have the more robust elderflowers, hawthorn blossom and roses to steep in boiling water or sugar syrup, but for now the delicate spring flowers can adorn our cakes in ladylike style.

Crystallised flowers – beautiful or too passé? What are you foraging for this time of year?

It's back again. The new series of Great British Menu is faster, bigger, higher, better, more brilliant than ever before.

The contestants' brief has been to take their lead from our Olympic athletes, and to push the bounds of gastronomy to the limits and beyond. This may seem stretching the Olympic ideal a bit, to take in cooking, but if you think about it, cooking is all about performance, about beating your personal best, driving up standards.

And that applies to us at home just as much as it does to the Great British Menu chefs, not to mention Britain’s Olympic heroes. Go on, be inspired, try a new recipe that you’ve never tried before, experiment with a new ingredient, get out of your culinary comfort zone, push through the kitchen pain barrier. Forget the bit about the pain barrier, but you know what I mean.

Stand back. He's got an espuma gun.

It takes serious training to get to the top of the restaurant world. You can’t succeed at the highest level in the modern kitchen without being fiercely ambitious and rigorously disciplined. The only limits are those posed by the chefs’ own imaginations, creativity and technical skill. This year the chefs have been encouraged to bring the full battery of modern technical gadgetry to bear on their dishes, serious fancy gear - spherification, liquid gels, hot gels, thermomixes, liquid nitrogen, PacoJet, water baths, centrifuges, desiccators – as well as source some extraordinary ingredients - to produce their culinary marvels.

It’s a miracle that Prue, Oliver and myself didn’t have to don those protective white suits you see scientists wearing on TV. Still, some of the dishes have opened our eyes, challenged our taste buds and set our brains and tongues buzzing. The chefs all search out outstanding ingredients from the regions they represent, and use the technology to extract more accurate, more intense flavours from them, producing a greater range of textures and creating more dazzling gastronomic effects. 

In the end, it isn’t down to the kit or how deft you are at creating little clusters of what look like brilliantly coloured fish eggs with your spherification kit. It doesn’t matter whether the jelly you make is hot or cold or somewhere in between, or if you can use umami like a Japanese master. It how you use them that counts. It’s what the food tastes like, how the dish works, that matters. Taste decides whether it’s up there on the winners’ podium or relegated to the also-rans. There’s no point in the wow factor, if there isn’t the yum factor. It all comes down to a chef’s personal vision, their originality, and their personality. And that’s where things get really interesting.

It may seem a little old fashioned, but after all the technical wizardry, it’s rather reassuring to see the flames leaping up from the gas burners on the hob as the chefs actually get down to the business of cooking.  So traditional. Much like the Olympic flame itself.

Although… I did get to play with a thermomix for the first time the other day. It made mushing up some garlic and anchovies child’s play. And that was just the beginning. I’m going to have a bash at an almond granita next. When I can afford to buy one, of course.

What dish are you in training for? Have you set your sights on any dishes to beat your personal best?

Well, here we are at the final blog post in this short series, and where better to end up than at the end of the meal. Yes, it’s time to look at puddings and cheeses. Many of you will no doubt think, “Beer with puddings? Ridiculous!” But once again the versatility of beer shines through. With cheese in particular it certainly proves to be a more amiable companion than the traditional red wine accompaniment. Fruit beers, honey beers, heather beers and even stouts will all pair a wide range of desserts exceptionally well.

Let’s take a look at cheese first of all - a traditional farmhouse product with a whole range of flavours and textures.  Creamy, salty, nutty and earthy are just some of the characteristics of cheese but there are some easy guidelines to follow:

• Pair delicate beers such as a heather ale with young, fresh cheeses.
• Pair malty beers with nutty, aged cheeses.
• Pair highly hopped, bitter beers such as IPAs with tart, sharp cheeses, especially mature cheddars.
• Pair strong, sweet beers, a barley wine for instance, with blue cheeses.

Now let’s move on to consider some classic desserts. In general anything rich and creamy, like trifle, tiramisu, or even apple pie and cream, will go with a rich Baltic or milk stout, the rich sweetness and smooth texture of the beer complementing the dishes well. There are also strong chocolate notes in these beers and both stouts and porters work well with any chocolate flavoured pudding. Look out for chocolate porter, which has gained popularity in recent months.

 

Sharp or tart desserts, like tarte au citron, will be contrasted by a light, delicately flavoured ale. More and more honey beers are appearing on the shelves in bottled form so well worth looking for. The heather ale mentioned above is also worth seeking out. These styles can get away with a quick chill in the fridge so great for the summer months ahead.

Finally we move on to the fruit beers, originally more of a continental style they are now gaining in popularity here. The traditional cherry, apricot and raspberry krieks work well with most fruit flavoured desserts such as summer pudding or strawberry flan. An orange wheat beer (yes, they exist!) is a great accompaniment to more traditional things such as spotted dick or syrup sponge. The carbonation helping to refresh the palate, and working as a complement to the syrup or sauce which usually comes with them.

Well, that about wraps it up. One final thought - don’t forget that beer is also a great ingredient and can enhance a whole range dishes from casseroles and stews to desserts. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of blogs posts, and that they’ve helped you look at beer in a different light. It is a wonderful drink, and as I’ve pointed out before, the right beer with the right food can be unbeatable.

If you’ve discovered any magic pairings of food and beer leave a comment and let us know.

I’ve just spent the last few days in Istria, the northern part of Croatia where they’re currently celebrating the wild asparagus season. It’s served every way imaginable but most popularly with scrambled eggs which form part of many local restaurants seasonal tasting menus.

You’d be lucky to find such a humble dish here. Apart from breakfast dishes and scotch eggs I rarely spot eggs on a menu - a far cry from their heyday in the fifties and sixties.

Whatever happened to hard-boiled eggs with a glistening dollop of rich golden, homemade mayonnaise or blanketed in a comforting cheesy sauce, the classic oeufs mornay? What about omelettes or, if you want to pull out the stops, soufflés? You’d think in these tough recessionary times restaurants would leap at the chance to cut their ingredient bills but it appears not. Are we just too blasé about eggs these days?

How can you resist?

For inspiration take a look at some of the old cookery books that pop up in secondhand bookshops or charity shops. In Fortune Stanley’s English Country House Cooking (1974) you can find Lord Darymple’s Souffle Top, a delectable concoction of butter, cream eggs and cheese with which to top caulflower, fish pie and (somewhat eccentrically) spaghetti. [For the curious, Lord Darymple’s Soufflé Top is made with 6oz (175g) butter, 6 tbsp single cream, 6 eggs, separated and 6 tbsp grated cheese. Melt the butter in a double boiler or a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, add the cream, egg yolks and grated cheese. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of mustard and cook, stirring until the mixture is the consistency of a thin hollandaise. Cool, whisk the egg whites and fold them in, pour evenly over your dish and bake in a moderate oven (around 180C/350F/Gas 4) for about 15 minutes.]

In Pellaprat's 952 page L’Art Culinaire Moderne (1967) nearly 40 pages are devoted to such rarified recipes as oeufs à la Frou-Frou (with asparagus tips, peas, French beans and mayo) and Eggs Jockey-Club (foie gras, calf’s kidney, truffle and demi-glace sauce) along with wonderfully lurid illustrations of eggs nestled in elaborately decorated plates of chopped aspic.

Or lay your hands on a copy of the great Ambrose Heath’s Good Egg Dishes (1952) which provides scores of curious and delicious-sounding fillings for omelettes including clams, cucumber and hop-shoots along with one of the best sets of instructions for making an omelette I’ve come across.

Learn to make a good hollandaise or a béarnaise and you can turn a simple dish into a spectacular one. Rustle up a homemade custard and you have the base for all kinds of brilliant homemade ice-creams. Or whip up a soufflé - not much more difficult than making a white sauce or meringue - for a show-stopping dessert.

 

So let’s hear it for eggs! Celebrate real eggs this Easter weekend as well as those chocolate ones.
Any favourite recipes or are you one of those people who feels faintly queasy about eggs?

At Easter, religious traditions cross paths with the changing seasons at a time when you see life revving-up in the countryside. You might see parallels when you make hot cross buns at home as the milder climate causes dough to rise full-throttle into airy roundness. In springtime, nature feels driven at increasing speed and there’s a rush to the blossoming in the garden that feels upbeat and inspiring.

Many countries have vast Easter traditions, dwarfing Christmas in comparison, and the rising of dough is a metaphor that fits Easter recipes well. And by adding the last of winter’s hoard of luxury − ingredients such as butter, spices, dried fruit, honey and sugar − you’re making a confident sign that summer’s abundance will soon be back with us, and that the significance of Easter is worth some expense.

Around the world, home kitchens offer a wide selection of Easter baking ideas:

Babka - a sweet yeast cake found in Eastern and Central European baking
Bochánek - a sweet bread from the Czech Republic
Choereg - an Armenian spiced plaited bread
Colomba Pasquale - a dove shaped sweet bread from Italy
Cozonac or kozunak - found in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania and Albania, a rich sweet raisin bread
Fola, or pão doce - a Portuguese bread that is often sweetened
Gubana - a hazelnut-flavoured sweet bread
Hot cross buns - the English tradition, though now popular all over Britain.
Kulich - Russian sweet bread
Paasbrood - a fruit Dutch bread
Pinca - a Croatian bread
Pinza - from Germany, Austria and Slovenia
Tsoureki - a Greek plaited bread wrapped around, or served with, a coloured egg
Velykinė boba - from Lithuania
Rosca de Pascua - from Argentina

Easter is also a time that, traditionally at least, brought families back together, which means Easter baking recipes are often generous in size and meant for sharing. The modern approach is to minify the shape, so when baked they don’t seem like such a daunting carb-fest on your plate. Little babka, individual paasbrood and pão doce are tempting and easy to share. But if you must go big, think of it as a meal. Mugs of coffee or hot chocolate, a Colomba cut on the table and served with butter − it all adds to a sense of sharing.

La Colomba, meaning dove, is the most well-known of Italy's many Easter cakes.

The lowdown on high-rising sweet dough

Butter, sugar and spice aren’t ideal bedtime-buddies for yeast. So before you start adding more of that trinity, here’s a little information on what you need to keep your Easter baking light and delicate.

The fat in butter inhibits yeast from pulling in the nutrients and sugars it needs to grow and multiply: a butter-rich yeast dough might rise well at the beginning but appear to slow down after that. Though the enzyme released by the yeast cells that causes aeration in the dough, zymase, isn’t particularly slowed by fat, there just won’t be that much of it present… unless you help it along. Warmth, time and extra yeast will get it moving faster:

•    Keeping your dough around 28C, near a radiator or somewhere else warm helps speed the yeast activity up. This applies to the bulk dough before shaping and the final rise.
•    Leaving the dough overnight in the fridge before shaping helps the final crumb become more tender when baked and allows yeast to multiply a little, but the dough will still need warmth and a long rise before baking.
•    If your dough still seems still too slow, try increasing the yeast or even doubling it next time.

Though a little sugar helps the activity of yeast, too much slows it down. This applies to sugar in all its variations, including honey and syrups (artificial sweeteners excluded). For example, if you place 400g of strong flour in a bowl with 300ml warm water, and a teaspoon each of fast-action yeast and salt, the dough made will be ready for shaping after an hour. If you add 25g sugar to the recipe the dough will be ready after 45 minutes, slightly faster than normal. But add 50g sugar to that recipe, and the dough starts to take longer and will be ready after 2 hours; add 100g sugar, and it will need 4-6 hours before shaping and even then will bake very heavily. But there are tricks you can use to keep your dough sweet tasting and light:

•    Think ‘sweet flavour’ rather than sugar. Finely grated citrus zest, vanilla, cocoa, coconut, or candied fruit (glacé ginger or chocolate chips) all trick the brain into thinking something is more sugar-rich that it is.
•    Layer sweetness through the dough: roll it thinly, spread with nutella, custard, or sprinkle with brown sugar and spice, then roll it up, twist it, or cut it in pieces to stuff roughly into your baking tin so they weld together when baked.
•    Ice it: a simple glacé icing or sugar syrup, flavoured even better, turns plain butter dough into something distinctly cake-like.

Spices can accelerate or slow the action of yeast in dough. Tiny amounts appear to increase the activity of yeast, but some spices like cinnamon and clove will slow the yeast down if used in large amounts. Now, if you’re after richly spiced hot-cross buns, this is a bit of a blow but there are things you can do:

•    layering and icing spices in your dough is the easiest. Make a sugar glaze with cinnamon and brush this over your buns, or make a ginger icing and glaze your Babka or plaited dough with it.
•    use food grade spice oils or flavourings, available from cake decorating or bakery ingredient suppliers
•    make an overnight ferment or sponge, and add some spice to that. This will give the yeast more time to multiply before you make your dough.

Give it some style

Tiny sugar flowers, sprinkles of nibbed sugar or even big white silk bows have a place in baking, and Easter is a good time to play with decoration. With the exception of architects and puritans, some fuss around your bundle of hot cross buns or Colomba shows a little pride in what you’ve baked.

•    sweet dough cries out for a finish before baking. A simple egg wash, beaten with a pinch of salt to bread down the white and make it easier to brush, is often enough. But think about sprinkling on nibbed sugar, crushed sugar cubes, coffee sugar, or even broken pieces of amaretti.
•    clear cellophane on its own, available from artists’ supply shops, or tied with a simple ribbon immediately makes what’s inside look glamorous and is more hygienic for travelling.
•    add colour with tissue or crepe paper. Even if you want to present your hot cross buns in a beaten up biscuit tin, a few layers of tissue paper inside will make it more impressive.

What are you baking this Easter?

Tim Hayward’s programme on stock for Radio 4’s Food Programme this week extracted a wealth of information about the development of stocks and stock cubes, and piqued our interest in the subject.
Stock is one of those elements in cooking that is apparently simple but which takes attention and skill to make really well. Stock comes in a variety of guises, from a simple broth, to a clear-as-a-bell consommé.

 
It is a culinary fundamental that requires few ingredients and simple instructions – warning enough that ‘experience’ is the unnamed key ingredient. You start off with roughness; bones, carcasses, meat trimmings, crudely cut veg, a handful of herbs and you finish with complexity, savouriness, and a liquid which looks by turns silky and light-capturing. It’s cooking magic.

Professional chefs take great care over their stocks and have their own preferences. Thomas Keller excludes celery from his stocks, as it adds a bitter note. As a nonpareil for decadence, Marco Pierre White ordered in crates and crates of whole chickens, destined only for stock, for his 3-starred Oak Room restaurant. In 2011’s Great British Menu, Johnny Mountain aroused the disapproval of judge Marcus Wareing over his resistance to using fish heads in his stock for a bouillabaisse, stating fish heads had no place in his cooking. Marcus didn’t agree, and Johnny’s dish, sans heads, came off the loser.

It’s easy to see why the professionals take time and intense care over their stocks – they are the root of much that issues from the kitchen, most notably, stocks provide the base for sauces, the crowning glory of many dishes. The job of saucier in the kitchen is the highest in the brigade (pipped only by the sous- and head-chefs. During service, the saucier makes sure the sauces are on hand for the head-chef, ready to apply the final spoonful or drizzle to finish the dish. Stocks are the beginning of the eloquent finishing touch to the dish.

A head-chef applying sauce from, yes, a sauce-pan, to a dish on the pass, moments before being served to a customer

While we’re not delivering restaurant service in our homes, there are some fundamentals that are good to know, some rules which once known, you can riff over.

Dos and Don'ts:
The quality points you’re looking for in a stock are:

All these pointers will help achieve a clear, stock with good body and colour:

A stock is not a dustbin for all the manky veg and leftovers you have hanging around. To produce a good stock, you need good ingredients, but they don’t need to be premium: keep herb stalks and trimmings of meat and vegetables to make your stocks.
In brown stocks, good flavour will come from well browned meat – make sure your beef or veal bones have plenty of meat scraps on them, and that they are well roasted in pre-heated trays. Chicken wings are an excellent base for a brown chicken stock – providing heaps of flavour from a very humble joint. The cooking times will be long; 8 hours minimum for a veal or beef stock. It takes time for the flavours to marry and infuse into the liquid.
For lighter stocks, the cooking time is much shorter: fish stocks will be ready in 20 minutes, vegetable stocks in 45. The ingredients threaten to disintegrate and cloud the stock if cooked for much longer, and the flavour will suffer as a result.
Gelatin is an important component in stock, as it gives the liquid body. Using bones will impart gelatin to the stock, and is a key reason why bones are used, instead of just meat (aside from the cost issue). Fish stocks that use gelatinous bones from turbot and brill are considered the best.

Once you’ve got your stock, the choice is yours as to its use. Glâces and demi-glâces are the first port of call when making restaurant-esque sauces. A glâce is a reduction of the stock to 10% of its original volume. The result is a deeply flavoursome liquid that is used as the base of, or mixed into, other flavours to make sauces. A demi-glâce is a stock reduced to 25-40% of its original volume and is used widely in professional kitchens.

So rather than simply boiling up an old roast chicken carcass, give a little more time and devotion to your stocks. Your risotto (and soups, gravies, pies, stews) will thank you for it. And your sauces will be out of this world.
 

Try making chicken stock from browned chicken wings for a rich, succulent stock that will transform a risotto

Find out more about how to make stocks with our stock recipes:

• 
  Vegetable stock
• Beef stock
• Chicken stock
• Fish stock

Listen again to Radio 4’s The Food Programme: In Praise of Stock

What’s your favourite way to make stock? And what dishes do you use it for?

For an island nation it's weird that we're not more enthusiastic about fish. Goodness knows our broadcasters try hard enough. Programmes are made on fish cookery from exotic locations. Celebrity chefs Rick Stein, Mitch Tonks and, more recently, Nathan Outlaw have devoted whole books to it. It's healthy. It's quick to cook. Yet according to the powers that be at the BBC website "we rarely see any fish dishes beyond fish pies in our top searches".

The Irish food and drink promotional body Bord Bia, which has recently undertaken research into attitudes to fish, suggests some answers − apparently we think fish is expensive, perishable, smelly and difficult to eat. But is that really the case?

Apart from the last one − yes, fish on the bone can be daunting − it's hard to see any justification for this, particularly as the majority of fish comes filleted these days.  OK, some fish − and shellfish − are pricey but no more so than prime cuts of meat − and frozen fish is very good value. Most fish is prepared in such a way that you barely have to handle it and has a 3-4 day shelf life. It shouldn't smell at all.

For many people of course there's no rhyme or reason behind their dislike − it's more a question of shuddering at the sheer idea of fish.  I have two friends (both male) who simply won't touch it. (Actually one's coming round under my relentless bullying and has discovered he actually quite likes it. I've been less successful with my youngest son, another card-carrying fishphobe − apart from fresh tuna, seared like steak.)

Others who say they don't like fish will happily eat fish fingers, tinned tuna and salmon fishcakes which I remember Antony Worrall Thompson once saying he could never take off his menu. As if they don't really count as fish.
 
So what can we do to bring the anti-fish brigade round? What puts you off it and what dishes might tempt you to have another go? Saturday Kitchen regular Nathan Outlaw, who cooks in a two Michelin starred restaurant on the Cornish coast reckons 'anything coated with crumbs' such as sole goujons is a winner. "The schoolkids I work with will even eat oysters if they're dipped in breadcrumbs and deep-fried."

Mackerel: cheap, sustainable, healthy and delicious - even without breadcrumbs.

Prawn cocktail? Thai crab cakes? Barbecued fish in a spicy marinade? There must be something fishy that would win you round. Or, if you're already a fish fan, how have you managed to persuade your friends and family to eat fish?

In my third blog on the joys of beer and food, it’s now the turn of the darker beers to show their strength and character. We’ll also move closer to home, taking a look at stouts, porters and milds − all good traditional British beer styles.

It might go without saying, but as beers get darker in colour they will exhibit greater flavours from the coloured malts used in their production. These can range from lightly toasted, through toffee/caramel to dark chocolate or even coffee. Bitterness levels range from low, as found in milds, to the relatively high levels in stouts, though overall hop aroma and flavour is low. This rich diversity of flavour and aroma makes beer a fitting counterpart for red wine and a very worthy partner to a whole host of delicious foods, and not just meat dishes either!

Game works particularly well with the chocolaty notes in oatmeal beer.

Porters started to gain popularity in the early 1700s. Dark brown in colour, sometimes black in the more robust versions, their richness, medium body and lower levels of bitterness give them a huge versatility when it comes to pairing them with food. Any grilled or barbecued food (be it burgers, steaks, chicken, vegetable kebabs or even seafood) will certainly be at home with a porter where the roast notes in the beer pair nicely with any charred and caramelised flavours produced when cooking. Try it with any dish featuring game, particularly if chocolate is used in the dish itself or as part of a sauce.

Stouts vary greatly: gentle, slightly sweet milk stouts, those made with oatmeal, strong rich imperial versions and of course the drier Irish types. Historically they followed on from porters in development and over the years became darker with a more pronounced roast character. Often served chilled they can be enjoyably refreshing in warm weather.

The classic combination of oysters and Irish stout really does work fantastically well, with the slight salty sweetness of the shellfish being nicely offset by the dry, roasted and bitter notes in the beer. Don’t just stick to oysters though; it also complements mussels and crab beautifully.

Oatmeal versions are less dry, often displaying a sweetish, slightly nutty flavour and smoothness in texture. These added characteristics produce some of the benefits of both the porter and Irish styles, which work particularly well with grilled or roast lamb and venison. Here, once again, the chocolaty sweet element in the beer finding comparable notes in the charred meats. Also try them with my favourite: good old shepherd’s pie!        

Milds have changed greatly since the 1800s. Generally thought of as a low-hopped, low-alcohol working man’s drink there are some fine examples available and at least one bottled version is usually to be found on the shelf in the pub. Their low bitterness, greater caramel, even liquorice, character means they’re a great companion to coarse pork pâtés, mushroom risotto and cheeses such as Cheshire or Wensleydale. Look for stronger versions, over 4.5% ABV, which are fantastic with liver and bacon or humble pork chops.

What are your favourite pairings of ale and food? Or do you know a recipe that combines the two perfectly?