On oat flour and elephant garlic

While not coeliac, I am wheat-/gluten-sensitive, yet I can tolerate porridge oats. Having lived in Australia for many years, I enjoyed oat bread, but can’t find it here. I’d bake…

Making fresh pasta is a rite of passage

Leo Tolstoy thought it was good for the soul to make your own shoes. As a result he spent his later years hobbling around with terrible corns. Some things are…

Do ‘superfoods’ really exist?

In the early 1990s, a cookbook called Superfoods appeared in the bookshops. It was co-written by the alternative medicine practitioner, Michael Van Straten, who is one of a handful of…

A well-done steak isn’t a food choice: it’s a crime

Ido so love animals, especially dead, sliced up and roasted ones, their very life blood oozing out of them to the rim of my plate; the colour of conker on…

The secret of the Mediterranean diet? There is no secret

Whoop-de-doo, researchers at King’s College London and the University of California claim to have identified the “secret” underpinning the oft-quoted healthfulness of the Mediterranean diet. From their lab tests on…

Eat more anchovies, herring and sardines to save the ocean’s fish stocks

Cut back on tuna and salmon and load your plate instead with herring and sardines if you want to help save the world’s fish. So says the scientist who led…

Summer prawn salad

This is a lovely fresh, crunchy salad with a hint of spice. You can substitute the prawns with crayfish meat, which is delicious and sweet, and should be cheaper too.…

Make your own bacon

Buying bacon’s a lottery. There’s no telling the quality of pork that went into it, or the quantity of water added to bulk it out. If you want something that’s…

How to eat a persimmon

Our fruit bowls are becoming more adventurous. Having embraced the kiwi, the mango and the pomegranate we are now, it seems, passionate about persimmons. Supermarkets including Asda reported sales of…

Cornish blue: the greatest of cheese

General de Gaulle is famously said to have remarked of France “How can you govern a country that produces 246 varieties of cheeses?” The same can probably be said of…

Homemade yoghurt: something for the live-culture vultures

Yoghurt. We get through masses of it in our house. In fact, most things I cook for my children go well with yoghurt – breakfast, lunch or dinner. There’s the…