Summer time is salad time. Which is great because I’m not getting home till quite late at the moment and all I’m craving after a long hot walk home is something fresh and light to eat on our small balcony.
Add a glass of delicately dry Provençal rose or a tart sauvignon blanc, and the warm light of the setting sun and you have something approaching paradise – or at least as close as you can get in London. (more…)
I don’t care if spring has chilled down to the level of a Greenland glacier, it’s still sunny. And so, in the great British tradition, I am determined to forge ahead as though I’m in a temperate paradise.
So it’s got to be fresh light food to match those – ahem – fresh winds blowing down from the north. (more…)
There’s nothing better for a night when you’re feeling a bit crappy than a full on assault on the senses. This delivers that attack in spades. Chilli heat, silken aubergines and smoky tofu. All those strong flavours maintaining a fragile truce.
Blues are banished – along with any remaining subtle taste buds – in the pungent, silky-smooth smoky chilli miasma. (more…)
No-place does vegetarian food like the South Asian subcontinent. I’ve had very good vegetarian Italian, Japanese, Thai and for want of a better name, fusion food. But nowhere, and I mean no-where, that I’ve come across takes vegetarian based cooking so seriously and has such a breadth of veggie food. It’s my go-to cuisine when i’m in need of a serious green (or orange, yellow, red etc) flesh-free hit. (more…)
You don’t get home till 7pm, it’s cold outside and you’re knackered. But you still want some good home cooked food. What to make when you feel like this can be a real dilemma. Over the years I’ve developed a number of dishes are a good solution to this particular problem. But in the winter the number dwindles drastically and the need for something hot comes to dominate. But this spicy little number is great whatever the time of year.
It’s superbly adaptable and is ridiculously quick to make. More assembling over a flame than actually cooking. I use my magic warming ingredient: Lee Kum Kee chilli bean paste – it gives a wonderfully pungent heat to any dish and has many uses. Here it suffuses the whole dish with its characterful heat, transforming a dish that is usually very simple and clean, into something almost meaty in character. (more…)
