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Trends (33)

Friday, 07 July 2017 10:55

I'm going foraging at the Co-op

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If you go to your local park and pick elderflowers it isn't foraging. If you go to your back garden and pick up some windfall apples, it isn't foraging. If you have a basil plant on your balcony, that isn't foraging either. Foraging for edible wild plants and all the new names for what we used to call weeds is OVER - time to stop.

Wednesday, 24 May 2017 17:18

Leave it out

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There's been a huge increase recently in the number of people who claim to be coeliac or have a dietary intolerance. One of my best friends is a diagnosed coeliac and she has my full understanding and empathy for the difficulties she often has to face when eating out. I'm always more than happy to cook something for her using potato, buckwheat, maize flour or other gluten free ingredient, and she never moans, complains, or gives restaurants a hard time when she goes out, despite being very ill if she does consume gluten in any recognisable amount. So when I recently heard at a local cafe, a customer asking if the soup, which was gluten free and had run out, had only been served to gluten free customers and another who was happy to eat bread pudding for dessert after asking for gluten free options throughout the starter and main courses I was very annoyed.

 

Tuesday, 21 February 2017 15:41

Back to Black ...

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So while we are told to avoid burnt toast, charcoal remains the trendy detox, teeth whitening hangover cure. Popular in the good old U.S of A is the black coconut ash ice cream from Morgenstern. Noo Yawk.

Wednesday, 19 October 2016 20:47

Brothaholics

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A saucepan of meat bones boiled up to make a tasty stock and suddenly we have bone broth, the latest nutritional elixir to hit the high street. Well here is a recipe from my 1921 Edition of The Daily Mail Cookery Book or you may prefer the gruesome twosome Hemsley and Hemsley who tag their recipe under 'gut and psychology syndrome'.

 

broth

 

cookbook

Monday, 25 July 2016 21:53

Not nuts about these names...

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I can barely bring myself to shop in Holland and Barrett anymore. Who is paid to come up with the cringeworthy names like 'mingled mixed raisins' 'yum yum cous cous' 'polenta paradiso'?  Even more annoying, Waitrose have started doing it too.

waitrose

Thursday, 31 March 2016 21:39

Poke About

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Look out for the latest food trend of Poke (po-keh, rhymes with OK) which means to cut into pieces and comes from Hawaii. Usually made with marinated, raw fish and similar to Ceviche, with Japanese influenced seasonings of soy and spring onions. They serve it at Pond in Dalston. Hipster Sushi then?

Tuesday, 19 January 2016 14:51

A spoonful of sugar

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I am so excited! I made my own sugar today from a whole, raw sugar beet. Now I need to know if this passes the 'clean' eating test. Everywhere I seem to look at the moment in my foodie world I am surrounded by clean eating. Blogs, newspapers, Newsnight, social media - it's the buzz word. Gluten free, sugar free, natural, unrefined, superfoods, bad bad food processing, dreadful dairy ingredients, killing you softly with your grains...wheat. We need to be very careful that this current trend does not lead to a dysfunctional relationship with food. Mind you, it is actually nothing new. In 1982 when I was 23 yrs old, about the age of many of these beautiful, mainly thin, young, clean eating women, I wrote my first recipe book. That's me in the picture. About as much publicity as I got at the time was the second page of the Bury Free Press. But I love the Bury Free Press, so that's great. My books, the First and Second Chalice Recipe Books (never managed a third!) were vegetarian and vegan recipe books. I owned and ran the Chalice Vegetarian Restaurant in Bury St Edmunds at that time and we made our own Tofu, sprouted our own beanshoots, ate every grain under the sun, including quinoa, buckwheat and linseed, grew our own veg, used unrefined sugar in everything, put honey in our Barleycup, and as for the deadly nightshade vegetables and leather shoes.....no way! So with some fond memories of my formative cooking years and a nod to healthy eating I bring you my  Sugar Free Lemon, Cinnamon and Sugar Beet Tart.

Friday, 20 November 2015 16:23

VizEat - the new Air Bnb?

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It looks exactly the same as AirBnb - it has the same format on it's website, but it's about food this time. Hooray! Now everyone can be a chef. I'm booking something tonight - this is what you can have in Barcelona - 'Pueees..., desde la tortilla de patata, pasando por el cus-cús, el cochinillo, un pescado con leche de coco y gengibre, gambas a la plancha, guacamole, musaka, rabo de toro, sushi...'

Wednesday, 07 October 2015 13:30

Pan-n-Ice

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We met Henry at the Urban food Fest where his business partner Rob made delicious ice cream and froyo rolls right in front of us. This fast and furious ice cream involves a process which originated in Thailand; cream or yoghurt with various favourings and additional ingredients (meringue...fruit...) is put on a -30 degree plate and everything is mixed together very fast. After approximately two minutes the initial milk or yogurt freezes and is ready to be scraped off the cold plate into rolls. Quick Bite food magazine have already interviewed Henry and Rob and this is what they said. 'When we were back-packing around Thailand at the tender age of 20, we discovered a new way of making ice cream. ‘Stir fried Ice cream’ is the official terminology for it, and because we hadn’t ever seen it in the UK before, we decided to create Pan-n-Ice and bring it back.' Thanks guys!

 

Friday, 25 September 2015 14:54

White Men Can't Jerk

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Oh yes they can! This was one of the nicest things at Meatopia with larger portions and a beautiful hot-sauce pineapple relish and so we had more than one. But of course we are biased - we are half Caribbean!

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