Holding a giant wooden spoon Nicole Bineau stirs huge copper pots full of simmering, boiling fruit in the back of a shop that welcomes the curious cook. A passionate jam maker, Nicole works in the kitchen at the back of her family shop Maison Herbin, in the southern French town of Menton. She works behind […]
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Taking a generous sip of chilled Marourde craft Blue Label mead, I taste centuries of history and a very modern twist on an ancient brew. Served chilled with a refreshingly smooth feel, this modern mead has none of the sickly sweet flavours of home-brew, but delicate tones of fruit, and floral honey. It’s a palette […]
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When two tousled-haired teenage friends drove home with a couple of buckets of olives bought from a Provencal farmers’ market in southern France one day in the early 1990s little did they see how their culinary future would unfold. Always on the look out for new ingredients George Bennell (whose culinary CV includes working […]
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18th – 21st May, 2018. 10am – 6pm Great Orangery Schlosspark Schönbrunn, Vienna, Austria. Citrus fruits are complex, endlessly fascinating and so useful in the kitchen. Around the world they are a staple ingredient to homecooks and chefs and have botantists asking questions such as: is the kumquat a sister of the orange or […]
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When two London-based chefs heading up a two star Michelin restaurant are welcomed on stage for a cooking demo it’s time to grab a seat; I was there to look and learn. So it was when husband and wife team Shauna (pictured above) and Mark Froydenlund, joint chef patrons at Marcus Wareing’s flagship restaurant […]
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So, when you invite a few friends around for a mid-week dinner in the middle of gloomy February, you might expect guests may offer a bottle of wine, a few bottles of beer, some flowers or even a chocolate selection to finish the evening off sweetly. But a tub of crème fraîche? Well, probably not. […]
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It’s Shrove Tuesday today and home cooks, restaurants and school kitchens will celebrating the day by beating eggs, flour and milk to together to make pancakes. This year we’ll be making thin, crepe-like pancakes; thicker US-style pancakes and perhaps on the on-trend Japanese pancakes which are made up to 3cm high, shaped with an […]
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Every since explorer Christopher Columbus landed at Caribbean island of Guadeloupe and saw his first pineapple, the fruit has held a spell over cooks, cheese and wine party hosts and the American canning industry. My interest in the knobbly fruit was piqued during a lecture at the Royal Academy art gallery in London, as part […]
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Kitchens up and down the UK are currently scented with orange, Sevilles to be precise, as they’re pared, boiled and sugared with the alchemy of heat and time to create marmalade, a very British obsession. Many of these Sevilles are bought in Waitrose supermarket, whose annual stock is sourced from a beautiful farm in […]
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As farmers’ market manager of the lovely Penshurst Farmers’ Market in the Weald area of west Kent, I have many roles to play; organiser, litter collector, diplomat, traffic collector and chief taster. These little treats were made for the charity tea stall at the first market of 2018 on Saturday, 6 January form 9.30 – […]
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