Choy Sum with Oyster Sauce and Fried Garlic

One of the things we miss during the lockdown is coffeeshop vegetables. Simply boiled greens with a tasty sauce just poured over. It’s one of those things we don’t have delivered because the greens arrive brown and soggy and the sauce has lost its freshness. So I make it. It is really simple, once you

Hokkien Fried Noodles

For those of you who have been wondering why I have been rendering all this lard, wonder no more! Hokkien Char is one of my absolute favourites. I try to limit my consumption of it, because to be painfully honest, it’s not health food. Good thing is you can easily make it at home and

Taking Stock and Making It

That picture, of course, is Normal Rockwell’s Thanksgiving fantasy. I’m sure there is one with a terrine of chicken soup, I just couldn’t find it. I know many of you will switch off at the mere thought of making stock, but you are missing out on something that not only links us to our past

Caviar & the Soviet Ambassador

Most of my life has been the humdrum kind. It’s been a good life, but you know, work, travel, dinners; not the stuff of legends. And then there are a few episodes so unlikely that I’m not sure they were real. An unlikely friendship with Blofeld, or more correctly Charles Gray, the actor who played

The Incomparable Toast

Rare are the times when you pick up a toast, butter it generously and bite into it to be instantly transported to a better time in a worse off world, i.e. the past. The soft crumb turned a golden hue, the crisp crust and the taste of natural goodness, in short a bead with substance

There’s One in Every Village

Now you might be wondering what every village has or at least used to have. The Village Priest? The Village Idiot? Sometimes one and the same. Or maybe the Village Bicycle? Which, incidentally is not a method of transportation, even though it does get around. What I meant was the Village Baker. In times gone

In Praise of Leftovers

There’s no such thing as leftovers, there are just second chances. From the simple to the inspired, there’s always another dish just waiting to be created out of humble beginnings.

General Vegetable Soup

I don’t know why every time I write “Soup”, everyone skips the post. Is it memories of mother saying: “Mange ta soupe!”? My own mother made just 2 soups well; lentil and dried pea soup. One came with Groperekichelcher; Luxembourgish for fried potato cakes and the other with wonderfully smokey, fatty Mettwurscht, which you may

The Lost Weekend

Eddie and I decided we should give the tortellini making another go. Now that our pasta machine had arrived, it was sure to be a complete breeze! Making the filling was going to be quick (it was) and we had a batch of tortellini broth ready in the freezer from last time, so there was

Almond Sablé Breton

In danger of being run out of town by angry people from Brittany, our intrepid chef bravely and brazenly changes a classic recipe.