For my first recipe this month I shared a vibrant 20-minute Salmon Larb Bowl that can be enjoyed at any temperature, perfect for lunch boxes, meal prep of just a healthy, colorful dinner. Whilst my original plan was to do something with pork for my third and final fish sauce recipe, it was the fish sauce-spiked salad that stole the show served on the side, so I’ll have a perfect salad to see us out of spring and into summer coming next week.

I’ll let you read the intro, but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here and for free on my website in a recipe writing landscape increasingly under threat from AI. No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function. Even if you don’t become a paid subscriber, if you’ve enjoyed my essay today, please hit like on this post as it will help others find it - and put a smile on my face!

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I’ve always loved fish pie as a concept, but smoked haddock has never done it for me. Even when I get the regular plain stuff rather than the terrifyingly electric yellow, and even though I love cold smoked fish and smoked mackerel, to me it is what ruins a pie I’d probably otherwise love. Except, when I’ve made fish pies without it, I’ve been able to tell that something is missing, even though I know that ‘thing’ is something I don’t like.

But do you know what I do love all the things you’d usually find in a good fish pie (white fish, possibly some salmon or trout, a handful of prawns and a scattering of frozen peas, a nice and creamy sauce) in but which would be utterly ruined by the addition of smoked fish? A Thai curry. This realisation is how this Thai Curry Fish Pie was born - a lovely, slightly special but still super easy Friday night dinner for two that just needs a bit of rice on the side and a nice crisp, chilled bottle of white.

I originally tested this using Thai red curry paste (recently I’ve been loving these wonderfully fresh and aromatic frozen curry paste portions from Ice Kitchen - so much better than any pastes I’ve tried jazzed up with my usual Thai curry additions of fresh lime juice, and fish sauce instead of salt) because I figured using green paste - whilst wonderfully spring coded - would result in a curry that looked a bit drab. See, these photos are not the most appealing. But, eating it J asked me why I’d chosen the red curry paste (which was very tasty) over green, which was the obvious choice for this recipe. He was right, you know; the green version is a serious level up of the red, but do use what you have in the fridge if you have everything else to hand and it is the only thing you’d go to the shops for. This recipe will still work, and you’ll still get a very tasty curry.

For the topping, I disagree with his further comment that mashed potato would have gone better, because isn’t the best thing about a mashed potato topped pie the nice crispy bit on top? And to get that we’d have to overcook the fish, which is why I’ve buried my pie under a lovely blanket of rumpled filo sheets that break into crispy shards as you serve instead.

I mentioned rice on the side, which you’ll want to soak up all the curry sauce from what is quite a loose pie; plain steamed or boiled jasmine rice is fine, but my Thai-style coconut rice is even better. There are spring onions and peas in the pie so you can get away with serving it as-is, but it is the season for both so do serve some asparagus or purple sprouting broccoli on the side if you fancy a bit more green.

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Thai Curry Fish Pie

Serves 2, Preparation time: 5 minutes, Cooking time: 35 minutes

You can be really flexible with what fish you add to this pie, 300-350g of any chunky white fish (about 2 decent fillets) cut into chunks will do it (Field & Flower where I’m an ambassador do a very nice and great value white fish mix), or up to a 50/50 mix of white fish and either salmon or trout. I think the prawns add a nice bit of sweetness and texture, but you can also just leave them out and add a little more white fish.

• 1/2 tbsp coconut oil

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I’m on a bit of rice bowl kick at the moment (I’ve got a saucy Korean beef mince and kimchee number on the front page of my website right now) so to start off this month’s ingredient we’re giving a fillet of white wine-poached salmon the Larb treatment with a fish sauce and lime-spiked aromatic dressing, served alongside rice, salad veggies and a boiled egg in a ‘serve it at any temperature’ meal situation inspired by Laotian cuisine.

I’m still working on the rest of this month’s recipes, but I have high hopes for the pork rib-eye steaks and packet of sustainable white fish chunks that came with my last meat delivery once I introduce them to a bottle of the fishy stuff!

If someone has shared this post with you (please thank them for me!) and you’re not already a subscriber, do hit the button below so you don’t miss out! And if you fancy exploring the archives for more seasonal inspiration, last April I was on hiatus, but the year before we took a deep dive into all the possibilities to be found in a simple bunch of spring onions:

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I have a degree in English Literature, because I listened to all the teachers and school careers advisers who incorrectly told me that my degree would be of more ‘use’ in the subject rather than the degree I wanted to do in Classics. Now as an adult, I know what I wish grown ups had told us all at the time; that all humanities degrees are basically the same when it comes applying to a job, that they allow you to tick affirmative in the undergraduate degree box and move onto the next part of the form. I also wish someone had told me there were other options available to me other than a university degree, but to be fair to them I only figured out that a culinary diploma would probably have been of more use to me halfway through my second year when I’d already spent more hours than I could possibly count debating if it was Frankenstein or his monster who was at fault in seminars, and reading way too much into book one of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

On the flip-side, a literature degree left me so sick of the discipline it took me years to get back into reading fiction for enjoyment (I simply started reading cookbooks cover-to-cover instead), but my love and fascination with the classical world has never dimmed. And, strangely considering how much education has been crammed into my head over the years (including several modern languages and musical instruments I’ve since forgotten) it is my early, pre-university classical education that has stuck with me. I still have strong opinions on the political context of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, I recently gave my parents a lecture on the exact technique of the red and black figure pottery we were viewing in a museum in Sicily to the great amusement of the nearby docent, and my recall of passages of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, fifteen years later is disturbingly accurate (if you understood exactly none of that, you’re not missing much!)

One fragment of my classical education I recall every time I reach for the bottle of green-topped Squid brand fish sauce (Pliny the Elder, if you want to get specific) when I want to season a curry, mix a dressing or build a marinade is the production method of garum, a ubiquitous Roman seasoning made from sun-fermented oily fish, fish guts and salt I’ve heard academics refer to as their version of tomato ketchup; archaeological evidence and contemporary sources indicate that it went on practically everything. Violently pungent (as is probably obvious) traces found in the pottery indicate that terracotta vats were utilised for the fermentation process (or purification process, to steal the language of multiple writers of the time). It was not all that different from the version we cook with today, except for the guts part, which already was less typical of other regional fermented fish-and-salt based condiments, for example the Ancient Greek version.

Enjoyed by both rich and poor (though the quality of product found on different Roman tables varied wildly) it was a highly prised ingredient, and whilst not treated the same way in Italy today, modern fish sauce is happily a deeply savoury, umami condiment that has stood the test of time.

As I mentioned above, fish sauce lends itself best where you want to add an aromatic saltiness to South East Asian-inspired dishes; typically where you find fish sauce you’ll find the balancing acidity come in the form of fresh lime juice, and the flavourings and seasonings of garlic, fresh chillies, ginger and lemongrass probably won’t be far behind.

Fish sauce is essential to making Vietnam’s pungently aromatic nước chấm dipping sauce, is found as a table condiment in Thailand, adds a little something to coconut milk-based curries and sauces, and many meat marinades would otherwise lack if simply seasoned with salt or soy sauce; fish sauce is what gives them their body. Here in the UK, Squid Brand is the anchovy-based Thai fish sauce I like the best, and I know a lot of American chefs are evangelical about Red Boat (David Lebovitz wrote a brilliant piece about fish sauce production visiting their factory in Vietnam back in 2019) - but I’ve never had a supermarket version that wasn’t decent. Typically the fish sauce available for sale (unless you’re after something premium and specifically aged to use as a condiment) has been fermented for 1-2 years, usually anything under the 2 year point tends to be from a cheaper brand. Anchovies are the most commonly used fish, but any small, oily fish might be packed into the bottle in your kitchen cupboard.

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Probably my favourite fish sauce context is in a salad; whilst I’m still working on recreating the fantastic (and violently spicy) fish sauce-spiked yum neau (steak salad) at my favourite Thai restaurant, a cool fish-sauce-flavouring-protein format I’ve been riffing on for some time is Laos’ national dish: Larb (or Laab, or Laap), a cool mince meat salad heady with aromatics and herbs which is also found on many Thai tables (Laos is sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam). Keeping with the traditional seasonings of lime, fish sauce and herbs (though skipping the toasted rice powder to make it more accessable - though sometimes, like today, I add texture with toasted chopped nuts instead) I’ve made versions with chicken and beef, but today we’re giving the larb treatment to a fillet of salmon made into a very salad-y rice bowl along with a bit of sticky or Jasmine rice (whichever you feel more comfortable cooking) and a nice hard boiled egg.

Salmon Larb Bowls

Serves: 2, Preparation time: 15 minutes, Cooking time: 15 minutes

What I love about this larb preparation is it can be served at any temperature; it will taste excellent if you serve it when the rice and salmon are still warm, a little cooler, or from the fridge as part of a lunchbox-friendly meal prep. Also feel free to mix up what is on this rice bowl: start with the salmon, sauce and rice, and take it from there!

Usually for mince-based larb, the seasonings are mixed into the meat, both when it is still in the pan and afterwards depending on the variation of the recipe, but here to suit relatively delicate salmon I’ve turned it into a dressing easy to spoon over a lightly flaked fillet.

For the Salmon Larb Bowls

• 1 x 250g pouch microwave sticky rice, or 100g jasmine rice

• baby gem lettuce leaves (about 1/2 head)

• cucumber slices (about 1/4 cucumber)

• radish slices (about 6 good-sized radishes)

• 2 x salmon or trout fillets

• white wine or water

• freshly ground sea salt and black pepper

For the Larb-inspired Dressing

• 2 tbsp fresh lime juice

• 1 tbsp grated ginger

• 1 tbsp fish sauce

• 1/2 tsp maple syrup

• 1/2 small red onion, halved then sliced into quarter pieces

• 2 birds eye chillies, finely sliced

• 2 spring onions, finely sliced

• small handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

• small handful roasted cashews, roughly chopped

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Cook the rice as per the packet instructions, be that dry rice or microwave.

2. To cook the fish, create two fillet-sized boats out of two sheets of foil and place the salmon skin side down on them. Splash a little white wine into each (just enough to help them steam) and season with salt and pepper. Wrap the boats up by sealing the tops like a tent, and cook for 10 minutes. Then, open the tops to let out the steam if you’re not already ready to plate up.

3. To make the dressing, stir together the lime juice, grated ginger, fish sauce, and maple syrup. Then stir in the chopped chillies, spring onions, coriander and cashews.

4. Assemble the rice and salad elements of each bowl, then place the salmon fillets, removing the skins if wished. With a fork, gently press down on the fillet to help it break into large flakes (see my pictures to get the general idea!) before spooning over the dressing.

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• , proprietor of London’s wonderful Sri Lankan restaurants Hoppers and author of two of my favourite cookbooks ponders entitlement in the age of Instagram on the opening of his latest dining room. His words should chime with everyone in the online food space:

  Spice School by Karan Gokani

  At the Table: Entitlement in the Age of Instagram

  I opened a new Hoppers last month. New dishes, new room, that familiar mix of excitement and mild terror that comes with opening the doors and hoping people like what you’ve made. I posted a photo of…

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  a month ago · 18 likes · 14 comments · Karan Gokani

• I had no idea that alexanders (smyrnium olusatrum) were a plant you could forage and cook with until ’s introduction to them:

  CELIA by Sally Gurteen

  What to Cook with Alexanders?

  I didn’t know all that much about Alexanders but a little research tells me their latin name is Smyrnium Olusatrum and they are sometimes also called “black lovage” or “horse parsley”. The Romans introduced them to us as pot herb…

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  2 months ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Sally Gurteen

• She’s also put together a comprehensive guide to cooking with magnolia petals (I made a syrup last year for the first time, and it was delicious!)

  CELIA by Sally Gurteen

  An Ode to Magnolia - 2026

  Magnolia, did you know, is among the oldest flowering trees in the world, originating in Yunnan, China, right back in the Cretaceous period. Yup, they were hanging out with dinosaurs. If T-rex had had ear flaps, you can bet he would have tucked a stray bloom behind one before delightedly devouring his next victim. Magnolia is also one of my very favouri…

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  a month ago · 25 likes · 12 comments · Sally Gurteen

• Speaking of foraging, I’ve rounded up all my wild garlic recipes here.

• has written a lovely piece on embracing your own company, and, specifically, dining alone:

  Table Read

  Table for one, actually

  “Chopsticks?” - “Yes please!” - “How many…

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  24 days ago · 22 likes · 8 comments · Hannah Wilding

• has been in Taiwan; he introduces us to some of their food and traditions in his travel diary:

  David Lebovitz Newsletter

  Postcard from Taiwan

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  24 days ago · 228 likes · 39 comments · David Lebovitz

• has some brilliant tips for recording old family recipes so they’re not lost which also apply really well to recipe writing in general:

  Dash of Prosecco

  How to record family recipes (and keep them from being lost)

  One day, someone you love will want to make the dishes you’ve cooked all your life. They’ll want to make them because they love the food, of course, but also as a way to remember you – and a part of themselves…

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  a month ago · 29 likes · 31 comments · Sinù Fogarizzu

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I’ve shared a couple of brand new recipes on my website this month, including this wonderful pan of Creamy Sausage and ‘Nduja Butter Beans. Also, as the weather gets warmer some make-ahead friendly, absolutely customisable Korean Beef Mince Rice Bowls with Creamy Gochujang Drizzle, which include my go-to Sesame Avocado Salad.

For my residency at local food hall Macknade this month I’ve written an Easter-friendly recipe that is something a little different (but still very luxurious) to do with a lamb shoulder: Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder Shepherd’s Pie.

As it was in the Audible sale, I finally read Ultra-Processed People this month, and I can highly recommend the audiobook version which includes extracts from the author’s podcasts, and a final chapter reflecting on what happened after the book first came out. I know you’ve already heard this about a hundred times before, but I know there are still some people out there who have not yet read the book, because I hadn’t! Whilst there are some parts of it (especially about the relationships between diet and exercise) based on my reading of other sources I’m going to choose to take with a pinch of salt, it still gives us very important look at what is going into our food, and in turn fuelling the growing obesity crisis; changing the way we eat is the only long term, sustainable way to fix this, not weight-loss jabs we don’t necessarily yet know the long term effects of. The bottom line is, our food is full of things we don’t need to be putting in there in order for big corporations to make more money by selling more of it, by making it addictive. I’m vaguely relieved I’d already started making all of our bread from scratch before listening to that chapter to be honest; if nothing else, this book will help you shop better for your health regardless of what time you have available to you for shopping and food preparation.

Cloistered was another sale find I picked up on a whim, because the idea of a memoir written by a former nun sounded fascinating. The book starts with her escape from the nunnery, running across the grass in the middle of the night with just her viola and a small bag of belongings. But after that you’re promptly returned to the beginning when she decided to take up holy orders, wondering what the hell is going to happen to get to that ending. Catherine’s writing is so immersive and engaging, it is worth getting the book for that alone, before you get to how she’s chosen to reveal the real events she lived through on a slightly staggered timeline that created an exceptionally enjoyable read (well, listen). Okay, as a secular Jew from an orthodox family some elements of Catherine’s story I found exceptionally frustrating (those of you who have read it and perhaps share my secular view of the world will know the exact moment I stopped chopping carrots, earbuds in, to admonish the author for what I perceived as her utter stupidity), but others I found very true of the human experience.

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For my first recipe this month I shared a speedy 30-minute Lemon, Pea & Anchovy Orzotto that properly highlights why orzo is the key to making ‘risotto’ manageable on a weeknight, and last week I provided you with a recipe for a super vibrant, ‘spring is almost here’ Spring Vegetable & Orzo Pasta Salad.

I’m already making good progress on next month’s recipes, and whilst I don’t want to spoil the surprise of what ingredient I’ll be focusing on for April I can tell you a delicious Laotian-inspired rice bowl that works at any temperature will be landing in inboxes at the start of the month!

I’ll let you read the intro, but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here and for free on my website in a recipe writing landscape increasingly under threat from AI. No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function. Even if you don’t become a paid subscriber, if you’ve enjoyed my essay today, please hit like on this post as it will help others find it - and put a smile on my face!

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The new year comes with very clear ingredient rhythms before produce comes abundant. At the very start of the year it is the vibrant tinge and deep ochre zest of blood oranges that bring all the excitement to our seasonal tables (and I suppose seville oranges, but is now the moment to admit that I don’t really like marmalade?) before the first tender stalks of blushing pink forced rhubarb appear. And then, as the rhubarb becomes abundant (I’ve got the second of this season’s rhubarb and white chocolate cake sitting on the kitchen counter as I write) daily walks turn into tracking opportunities for the shoots of pungent wild garlic which now carpet shady areas up and down the country. I love all three of these mid-to-late winter markers, but the arrival of the wild garlic has to be my favourite because it is both abundant, and absolutely free.

When I decided to focus on orzo as this month’s ingredient, I both knew I had to make a baked orzo dish, and it being late March, that that dish had to contain wild garlic. There were plenty of options open to me with different pestos (you can find my recipe for wild garlic pesto over at BBC Food), butters (ditto, on my own website) and oils (a vibrant green wild garlic oil is on this years to do list, as well as a jar of pickled wild garlic buds) but in the end I decided to keep it simple turning handfuls of it into a very easy, unassuming (but very delicious) supper for 3-4 (depending on the size of your chicken thighs, these ones that arrived with my Field & Flower order this month - for whom I’m an ambassador - were wonderfully large and plump), or just the two of you with some leftovers.

Rather than becoming thick and creamy as in the orzotto we started the month with, or being cooked simply as pasta in last week’s pasta salad, here the orzo gradually absorbs the chicken stock and wild garlic flavours as it bakes in the oven, yielding very flavourful, almost-tender, ever so slightly brothy grains that have also become only just pleasingly crisp on top and around the edges of the baking dish. This is a lovely all-in-one meal by itself, but if you’re stretching it to four with four large thighs, I won’t say no to a snappily dressed green salad on the side.

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Thank you everyone who responded to my poll asking if you wanted me to keep using Substack’s new recipe card format. For now, I’ll go back to typing out the recipes, but I will revisit if they improve the recipe card so it actually, well, works properly!

Baked Chicken Thighs with Wild Garlic Orzo

Serves 3-4, Preparation time: 5 minutes, Cooking time: minutes

I know I risk sounding like a cliche here, but I’ll say it anyway: the better the quality of ingredients you use here, the better your end result will be. If you can afford not to do so, don’t skimp elsewhere when you’ve gone to the effort of foraging a lovely bunch of wild garlic! Aside from the chicken thighs, this applies to the stock you use most of all, as that is what will be flavouring the orzo: I like Spring Broth’s Bone Broth which I get on my Field & Flower orders when I’ve not made my own from a leftover roast chicken carcass.

The two large handfuls of wild garlic called for here will weigh roughly 75g, which is the same weight bunch Natoora sell on Ocado if you don’t have any foraging opportunities nearby!

• 3-4 skin on, bone in chicken thighs

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For my first recipe this month I shared a speedy 30-minute Lemon, Pea & Anchovy Orzotto that properly highlights why orzo is the key to making ‘risotto’ manageable on a weeknight, and today I’m leaning into the fact that spring is very almost here with my first pasta salad recipe of 2026, packed full of crunchy, vibrantly green spring herbs and flavours. Next week, if the wild garlic gods answer my prayers I’ll have another orzo-forward dinner recipe for you (or if it looks like it is almost there, we might take a break for a week and double-stack with Nibbles so I can still get the recipe to you this month, I’m that excited about it!)

I’ll let you read the intro, but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here and for free on my website in a recipe writing landscape increasingly under threat from AI. No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function. Even if you don’t become a paid subscriber, if you’ve enjoyed my essay today, please hit like on this post as it will help others find it - and put a smile on my face!

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I think pasta salads are seriously underrated. I’ve always been enamoured, from those weirdly tangy M&S pasta salad pots I was allowed to choose as a kid (though I still stand by their Italian Pasta & Spinach Salad being an excellent emergency lunch option) to the tangy honey-mustard tomato, chicken and rocket version I mainlined as a student (I’ve included the recipe in Student Eats) I have never not loved a pasta salad. They’re the perfect platform for different colours and textures, keep well in the fridge, and I’m never not excited to know there is pasta salad waiting for my lunch, even if it is just a Monday morning use-up of odd shapes and the ends of packets and jars of fridge items (my food delivery is usually booked for a Tuesday!)

Those are personal pasta salads: pasta salads are also great for a crowd, something that travels well and tastes good at any temperature. But not all pasta shapes are created equal for pasta salads designed to be spooned onto a plate from a communal bowl: anyone who has tried to spoon pasta bows will know the feeling of trying to chase the individual shapes around the bowl in a desperate attempt to fit more than one on their spoon at once, for example. But a tiny shape like orzo? Orzo was made to be a sharing pasta salad shape: eminently spoonable, and with just enough surface area for dressings and herbs to stick amongst the sea of add-ins so they don’t simply sink to the bottom of the bowl.

The winter blues are something we’re all familiar with, but this year I think they got to me more than they usually do. So for this pasta salad I wanted to capture the essence of the incoming spring, including lots of vibrance and crunch. Peas (specifically, petit pois) are already tiny, but cutting the snap peas on the bias and chopping the radishes into quartered slices is key here to keep everything of a size to make for that really satisfying spoonful, and then mouthful. Mint and dill are the springtime herbs of choice (though chives would also work) as I find parsley sticks to your mouth a bit too much when used in a pasta salad, and what other dressing would be best here other than a simple lemon one?

If you’re lunchbox / meal-prep inclined and you don’t have any grilled chicken or cooked prawns prepped and ready to make this a proper meal, crumbled or cubed feta will do the job handsomely.

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I’d originally made this recipe to go up on my website, but I really, properly hated the photos I took of it. However, the iPhone snap of it I took just before digging in captured the dish perfectly, so I’ve instead decided to offer the recipe up here instead as a little bonus for paid subscribers!

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Even though pre-made food items are usually something I avoid, M&S's Southern Fried and Classic Chicken Tenders are pretty much always on my Ocado order as they're proper chicken, cook from either fresh or frozen in the air fryer, and are great for emergency sandwiches or even for dinner when whatever I'm developing has gone so badly wrong we just need something, anything to eat, and fast!

So, this recipe for Creamy Cajun Pasta with Fried Chicken was born: spicy, creamy pasta, topped with slices of tender, crunchy Southern Fried Chicken. Ready and on the table in just 30 minutes, it may not fit any tradition, but it is very, very tasty.

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My first recipe this month leans into one of my favourite orzo preparation methods, and gives nods to both the fact it is starting to get warmer, but also that there is still not that much exciting fresh produce about that is not a stick of rhubarb or a blood orange: my Lemon, Pea & Anchovy Orzotto may not be a looker, but it is the ultimate comfort dinner for when you’re dreaming of the warmer months to come.

Later in the month I’ll be making you a pasta salad that will work for either lunchboxes or entertaining (my tests did both), and I’ve got a simple supper I can’t wait to share featuring my beloved wild garlic that is almost ready to pick, too.

If someone has shared this post with you (please thank them for me!) and you’re not already a subscriber, do hit the button below so you don’t miss out! And if you fancy exploring the archives for more seasonal inspiration, last March I was on hiatus, but the year before that we went big on the wild garlic!

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I purchased my first bag of orzo pasta at Trader Joe’s on the corner of Glendon and Weyburn when I moved to Los Angeles in 2012. At the time, it was not really a shape common in British supermarkets, but something which a proliferation of American food blogs held up to be essential to both a good pasta salad, and in making a pot full of lemony Greek chicken soup (which, incidentally is what I made with it!)

Orzo is what we call risoni, the Italian pasta shape that roughly translates as ‘large grains of rice’, or kritharaki in Greek, which again translates as ‘little barley’. Piñones is the Spanish name, which charmingly translates as ‘pine nut’. With a smooth mouthfeel and the lovely secondary ability to cook in gradually added liquid like a speedy risotto, I feel banishing it to a soup or a pasta salad (though as you can see I could not resist making you one this month, as it does make a great one!) does it a bit of a disservice. I think orzo’s most magical format is when baked in a dish with liquid for full absorption of delicious flavours, remaining tender in the middle but crisp around the edges; orzo is a pasta shape where you get the best of both worlds, a versatile pasta, and something wheat-based that can also behave like the rice that informs it’s shape when called for (unless you’re making a pilaf of course where orzo and rice used together will yield the most wonderful texture.)

Even though orzo is now available in every supermarket (some annoyingly fatter than others in shape which makes recipe development for absorption-style recipes a real pain!) I don’t think we use it to as full an effect here as our American and Mediterranean cousins, but when it does appear in recipes it’s pleasing shape and ease of preparation do really appeal. Before this month I’ve only published two orzo recipes which honestly don’t feel like enough, and they’ve been absolute hits: my Orzo Risotto with Lemon & Fresh Oregano over at BBC Food has a 4.8 rating and people have actually come up to me in real life to tell me how much they love the recipe, and my One Pan Greek Lamb Meatballs with Orzo and Feta on my website is still both a reader hit and something I make often for family who come to stay.

I’ve written a few recipes now with Substack’s recipe card and to be honest I’ve found it really frustrating to use as it does not have all the functionalities most of the cards on custom websites have (no sections in ingredient lists, to start) and as I don’t cook in US measures the volumes don’t always render right either. But what do you think?

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For Valentine’s Day this year I reverse-seared an aged T-bone steak to serve with a creamy mushroom and brandy steak sauce which is pretty much what I make every time we have a special occasion to mark at home, with rotating starters and desserts.

But earlier in the day when we did a food shop in Waitrose (some weeks we branch out from our usual delivery not only for supermarket-specific products, but also so J gets a bit more choice about what food we eat!) we spent a good 5 minutes deliberating on which parts of their Dine In For £25 Valentine’s Meal Deal we were going to buy (even though we were not intending to eat any of them together, or indeed on Valentine’s Day).

Pretty much since we first moved in together, checking out the Waitrose and M&S (always Waitrose of M&S - I know Sainsbury’s also do a £10 deal, but nothing included even looks appetising, and as they only include a main and a side I don’t see them as a value way of exploring fun desserts, drinks or sides, they’re just another way of buying a ready meal) meal deals has been part of our ‘we’ve actually gone to a physical supermarket together’ ritual. This is probably the same for many couples, but as someone who literally writes recipes for a living, and who thinks most pre-made items span from inferior to the work of the devil (notable exceptions include Leon frozen waffle fries, Itsu frozen dumplings and Gymkhana Tikka Masala Cooking Sauce - the common theme being they’re all supermarket versions of genuinely good things to eat out in their restaurants) - this love for them is totally out of character.

I know these deals are designed to make people to want buy them, but I’ve always marvelled at how they always manage to have something for everyone, including people who like be typically balk at ‘ready meals’, no matter how fancy. Nothing made by Charlie Bingham has ever passed my lips, and probably never will.

This time around we chose some fun-sounding antipasti arancini with a pesto dipping sauce for the starter, and some sea bass fillets marinated with gremolata with a delicious-sounding Mediterranean compound butter on the side (though often we just use a deal and a vehicle for an affordable pair of decent steaks), both of which were instantly transferred to the freezer. I have no idea when we’ll try the arancini - probably an evening when we have something unexpected to celebrate so we open a bottle of fizz and fancy a starter to turn whatever was planned for dinner that night into more of an event - and the fish will go with sides (either developed for a client or to empty the freezer) when I have no idea what to make for dinner.

As our chosen side dish I often get their boxes of chips - both the Waitrose and M&S French fries work beautifully in the air fryer - but this time we made the slight error of getting their chunky beef fat chips which were just fine, and a bit much alongside the t-bone and creamy sauce (I should have frozen them also and cooked some lighter French fries from the freezer instead!)

We were both decided on the bottle of prosecco for the drink part of the deal (it was the best value) after briefly flirting with a 4-pack of Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone lager, and whilst Waitrose’s very good raspberry panna cotta or single portion tiramisu (I rarely make it for J as they’re so big and I don’t like the taste of coffee) were strong contenders, we settled on single serving sticky toffee puddings for an evening we fancied something sweet, because I still love sticky toffee, but it will be a long while before I fancy making it again after the many, many versions I went through developing this ginger-infused number for Macknade.

Even though the price has noticeably crept up over the years, high end supermarket ‘Dine In For’ deals still remain excellent value for money, which also forms part of the attraction. Waitrose sell that bottle of prosecco usually for £14, and the fish for £10, that is £24 already before we talk about starters, sides and dessert.

The main reason, however, I don’t think I’ll ever fall out of love with meal deals is even though I cook almost everything from scratch - including baking almost all of the bread we eat at least twice a week - I can only do so much. We’re busy people, each with a multitude of interests outside of our main jobs, and takeaways are expensive. Sometimes, even though after a day of cooking for clients I often cook for just us to relax, I can’t face it and having something that sounds fun and unusual stashed away in the fridge or the freezer sometimes is just what I need. We’re all only human, after all.

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• If I lived in a country where pre-made frozen scallion pancakes were a thing, I would not be able to stop making these mini croissants.

• Felicity takes us behind the scenes of her iconic, fantastic Guardian column. Also, the lives and the reality of people like us who write recipes for a living:

  Felicity Cloake's (Almost) Perfect

  How to Make the Perfect... Mess

  The first question people usually ask about my Perfect column (celebrating its sweet 16th this year) is: how long does it take to write? – which is gratifying, as it implies that the work I put into them is obvious… either that or they read like something dictated through gritted teeth. The short answer* is, i…

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  2 months ago · 187 likes · 27 comments · Felicity Cloake

• Marc has written a great essay on the versatility - and different types - of miso available in a Japanese kitchen, and beyond:

• He’s also written a great piece on what we’ve gained by people leaving food to rot (on purpose!):

  Marc Matsumoto

  The Art of Letting Food Rot (On Purpose)

  How did that title make you feel? If the word “rot” made you flinch a little, that’s totally understandable. We’re taught from an early age to think of rot and decay as things that might make us sick. Mold is bad, bacteria dangerous, and if something smells funky, it’s probably time to toss it…

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  2 months ago · 36 likes · 12 comments · No Recipes

• Sometimes, Sally’s photography simply takes my breath away:

  CELIA by Sally Gurteen

  Heaven at Dawn

  It would be a morning less than ordinary, that was clear from the moment I opened my eyes. The cold, quiet bedroom yawned with flat, permeating grey, and filled its lungs with a heavy breath. Change was coming but it wasn’t yet here. Would this winter ever end…

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  2 months ago · 22 likes · 13 comments · Sally Gurteen

• Yes to Sinu’s mother-in-law’s Venetian leftover bread cake:

  Dash of Prosecco

  A comforting bread-and-butter cake from Venice

  Welcome to Dash of Prosecco, a newsletter about good food and life in the land of Venice. Thank you for reading…

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  2 months ago · 53 likes · 40 comments · Sinù Fogarizzu

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It’s been a quiet one in the kitchen this month, spending time in Norway and working on some future recipe development - my one new recipe is a keeper, though! This month for my Macknade residency I’ve made a 20-minute take on Pizzoccheri alla Valtellina - an Alpine dish of buckwheat pasta, potatoes, cabbage and cheese, all pulled together with garlic butter. It is just as good as it sounds, the ultimate cold-weather comfort dish, the buckwheat pasta swapped out for nutty British-grown spelt, and the homemade garlic butter replaced with a lovely smoked garlic version I’ve been buying and cooking with recently.

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After arriving at our hotel to drop our bags waiting for our room to be ready, we crossed the street and headed to Bergen fish market. A lot more glossy than many of the markets I’ve been to, none the less I had to be dragged away from the shellfish displays; they just looked so much more vibrant than they do at home - I’ve not used photoshop or any other editing on the shellfish pictures below.

At the front of the market, there is a more casual open faced sandwich and sushi operation, but at the back is a brilliant seafood restaurant so lovely we ate in their heated glass dining rooms twice, overlooking the harbour. And considering how expensive it was, that is telling you how good it was!

I kicked off this post with a picture of their slightly fancier take on a classic Norwegian fish soup: chunks of salmon and white fish in a hot, creamy broth, here with shreds of carrot and leek rather than the more rustic pieces I’ve had in the past. The perfect cold-weather expression of seafood you need when it is -8C outside which we ordered on visit #2 after we’d got a little too cold hiking (okay, drinking beer after hiking) on Mount Fløyen.

Sliding back to that first lunch, J went for a rather typical presentation of white fish (cod to be specific) on Bergen menus: pan roasted with a crispy skin, and served with boiled potatoes, vegetables (in this case carrots and mushy peas), fried lardons and a creamy butter and white wine sauce. Very fresh, very good ingredients. I went a step further - after considering the effort of local crab (I’ve been put off langoustines that have not already been split in half since I cut my fingers on a batch trying to get them open at Rick Stein’s fish restaurant a few years ago - they can be sharp little buggers!) in the end I ordered a massive platter of 60 Norwegian cold-water prawns. This turned out to be one of the best food decisions I’ve ever made; forget the lemon and (good) mayonnaise they came with, that would have ruined the fresh, incredibly sweet essence-of-prawn. So incredibly different from the same prawns frozen and thawed that are sold in big bags and defrosted for pub pints of prawns here.

Also in the fish market was the bakery where we had our favourite batch of pastries. At two for about £3.95, they’re almost as big as a child’s head: we got the blueberry swirl which was good and jammy, and the plain vanilla bun filled with custard. Not pictured but enjoyed elsewhere we had a cardamom twist, and Skoleboller: Norwegian school buns which are essentially the custard-filled bun pictured above, but with coconut icing covering the top. All of these Norwegian buns are excellent choices!

Somewhere else we ate twice was the historic (1940’s) hot dog stand on Kong Oscar’s Gate (it is hard to find an exact address, but it is right at the bottom of the McDonald’s end of the street - glamorous I know!) These are fat, plump, juicy, gourmet dogs and I highly recommend you just go with whatever toppings for your chosen flavour comes with for the optimum experience - as well as forgoing the free cup of lemonade, because you’ll need both hands free to eat the hot dog!

Both times I had the reindeer hot dog (pictured left) which was wonderfully spiced with just enough juniper, which came topped with a sweet, loose lingonberry sauce, spicy mustard and crispy onions. J had the game hot dog (mild, juicy) which came with game sauce, spicy mustard and the aforementioned onions. Also worth looking out for flavour-wise where the hot dogs we had on the fjord cruise we took up Nærøyfjord: chicken and chorizo, and the Norwegian cheese and bacon hot dog. The cheese is infused in the hot dog, and bacon is wrapped around it to become nice and crispy whilst it cooks on the griddle.

For Norwegian comfort food we headed to Bryggeloftet: Bergen’s oldest restaurant which has been run by the same family since 1910 (and which for Norway is also rather good value for money!) We both ordered glasses of house wine along with our massive plates of Norwegian meatballs, mashed potatoes, fried kale and diced carrots, parsnips and swede, all served with generous pots of wonderfully tart lingonberry sauce. I’d describe them as bigger, more tender Swedish meatballs that are (pleasantly) a lot heavier on the white pepper, served in a brown sauce, rather than white. It has been so cold and wet here in England since we returned, I’ve been trying to find a gap in my recipe development schedule for clients to give these a go!

For dessert, I made a mighty attempt (it was simply massive!) at the cloudberry pavlova: a classic preparation with the tart, aromatic Scandinavian cloudberries soaked in their own liquor - topped off with a single leaf of lemon balm.

We went to Bryggen Tracteursted for Norwegian flavours with a modern twist. I really enjoyed their concept; you can either choose traditional courses, or a series of small plates either for sharing or just for you. They also did not mind that we both chose a different adventure! On the small plate front the reindeer tartare with beetroot, egg yolk and nutty brown bread was one of the best things I ate in Norway, earthy, gamey and sweet. I also enjoyed the cured lamb with celery and cauliflower pickles, and fermented cherry tomatoes - it tasted just like roast lamb in salami form. I loved in general in Norway that seasonality did not just dictate the vegetables we were given, but how they were presented: yes only winter vegetables were fresh, but preserved fruits and vegetables from warmer months really added a bit of lift to so many dishes in a way I don’t think we’re as good at here in the UK.

From the more traditional side of the menu, it was J’s beautiful piece of pan-roasted pollock with roasted leeks and caramelised onions that inspired my weeknight fish recipe from earlier in the week, and we both loved the Norwegian brown cheese (more on that in a moment) tart with freeze dried raspberries and raspberry compote as a pleasant way to properly appreciate the unusual flavours of this typical Norwegian product.

We stayed at Hotel Bergen Børs who had a very generous breakfast spread which swung from the delicious (fresh green juices, lots of fruit, and one memorable morning where the opportunity to eat my beloved sweet pickled herring for breakfast necessitated third helpings) to - at least to our British tastes - the slightly unusual: for example, mini frankfurter hot dogs being the sausage option presented alongside the bacon and eggs.

The slightly sweet, very tasty and rather crumbly meatloaf with lingonberry glaze seemed to be a very popular breakfast item, and I was over the moon to discover the pot of cream ready to be slathered along with raspberry jam on the Norwegian waffles was cardamom-infused. The breakfast buffet was also an opportunity to sample Norwegian brown cheese: a produce that is not quite a cheese, more like a cheese-textured dairy by-product that is strangely sweet, served either plain to be carved off a block as pictured, or in cardamom-infused slices. I decided I did not like it all that much, but I’d try it in another context - hence sampling that tart a few nights later!

Other Norwegian treats worth flagging are the Norwegian pilsner beers (very drinkable, especially if you’re getting them at the excellent bar at the top of Mount Fløyen (inside seating, blankets and sheep skins are available!) with a stunning view out over Bergen, and my new favourite chocolate bar. You don’t want to know how many Troika bars I carried back with me: layers of raspberry jelly, chocolate truffle and mild marzipan coated in a barely sweet dark chocolate coating make for the perfect addictive treat for a sweet tooth like mine who don’t like anything overly saccharine (in general, Norwegian chocolate is less sweet than British chocolate, though their gummy sweets are a lot more violently acidic - probably something to do with the fact they’re not in the EU so have a lot less rules about food additives…!)

We did enjoy one non-Norwegian meal at KöD, an excellent steakhouse off the main shopping drag; when we lived in London a steakhouse was often our date night spot (and steak with a creamy mushroom sauce is still what I usually make us for special occasions at home), and when we’re travelling we’ve found a good steakhouse is also perfect for breaking up the otherwise solid programme of regional cuisine in order to provide a little variety.

The steak tartare with chive mayonnaise and beef fat crisps was perfectly formed, and we had no notes on the sharing rib eye. The chips were good, the excellent bearnaise sauce was so thick we could stand a spoon up in it, and the highly unusual side of blistered padron peppers with nut crumbs and a jalapeno sauce was worth noting.

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I’ve already published recipes for my 30-minute Onion Butter Pasta (essentially a bowl of French Onion Soup in pasta form) here and my Onion Bhajis (complete with all my favourite chutney tray toppings!) here. Today, I’ve got another delicious weeknight dinner for you all inspired by a couple of fish dishes J enjoyed (and I liberally sampled!) in Bergen earlier in the month: a Quick Caramelised Onion Sea Bass with Potatoes, Bacon & Peas. You may think that caramelised onions and fish won’t work together, and you’d be absolutely wrong.

I’ll let you read the intro, but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here in a recipe writing landscape increasingly under threat from AI. No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function. Even if you don’t become a paid subscriber, if you’ve enjoyed my essay today, please hit like on this post as it will help others find it - and put a smile on my face!

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Bergen was simply brilliant, but very, very cold. I’m planning to post more about everything we ate here shortly, but for now what you need to know is that it made me (yes, me the one who literally wrote a book on cooking fish) rethink how I approach fish at home. For me, fish and seafood have always lived in a summer-coded section of my kitchen. Big fat Mediterranean prawns in tomato sauce, grilled fish cooked over coals served with plenty of lemon, and big bowls of mussels swimming in white wine and cream. I don’t why my brain was wired this way (when my parents lived in Brittany my go-to buckwheat galette order was local scallops with caramelised leeks and cream, after all) but if I’m trying to figure out how to cook a piece of fish, chances are I’ll reach for sunshine (or Asian)

ingredients.

That was until, on our last night in Bergen, J’s pan-roasted fillet of pollock came topped with a tangle of caramelised onions.

Instead of pollock (which has a pretty bad rep here in the UK, as it is usually packed into products like those cheaper fish fingers that never taste as good as the cod ones) I’ve chosen a fillet of sea bass (you can also go for a piece of bream) as it requires little skill to cook well because the fillet is so thin; just a knob of butter, a dusting of flour, and a blisteringly hot pan. I’ve kept the tangle of caramelised onions on top, but opted for the quick-caramelised ones I started the month with, so to keep this busy weeknight friendly.

For the accompaniments, I’ve drawn inspiration from the various things served with his perfectly pan-fried cod our first lunchtime at the fish market (I was too busy working my way through a platter of quite literally 60 of the best Norwegian shell-on prawns I’ve ever tasted): boiled potatoes, carrots, mushy peas, smoked bacon and a buttery white wine sauce topped with chives. We’ve forgotten about the carrots and the sauce (there is plenty of butter and bacon fat in this already to be getting along with, so the extra effort and not to mention pan isn’t needed) but the potatoes, peas, bacon and chives come together in the same pan the onion was cooked in for a rather delicious thing to serve with any cooler-weather fish dish. I hope you enjoy it for dinner sometime in the next week or so!

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I’ve already published the recipe for my 30-minute Onion Butter Pasta (basically a bowl of French Onion Soup in pasta form) and I’m planning a simple supper with onions appearing in an unusual pairing inspired by something we ate in Norway last week for later in the month. Today, I’ve got for you an easy recipe for a British curry house classic, served with some of my favourite poppadum chutney tray condiments on the side. It’s the pre-meal part of going out for a curry, but in the comfort of your own home (though I do recommend serving them with a couple of ice cold beers!)

I’ll let you read the intro, but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here! No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function. Even if you don’t become a paid subscriber, if you’ve enjoyed my essay today, please hit like on this post as it will help others find it - and put a smile on my face!

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Regardless if you have actual starters or not, there is nothing more symbolic of the classic British curry house experience than the poppadoms and chutney tray. Whilst you can add them onto your takeaway order, it never feels the same as you sit down at a white tablecloth covered table (something I’ve never understood when so many of the sharing dishes - meaning a spoon has to travel - contain turmeric??) with a couple of cold beers and a big, warm platter of just-fried poppodums arrive, accompanied by the ubiquitous yet varied chutney tray.

For those of you reading this from outside Britain, I have no idea if the ritual of breaking up the poppadoms, spooning on some delicious toppings and enjoying them as a pre-dinner snack is familiar, but I think it is my favourite thing about going out for Indian food. The chutney trays are usually pretty uniform, with some areas for variation amongst the non-negotiables. Sweet, sticky mango chutney, raita (a slightly sweet, yogurt mint based version, rather than a cucumber-spiked one - it is usually also dyed yellow with turmeric) and some sort of pickle always appear; this is almost always lemon or lime, and these almost always taste rather artificial, except that amazing one I could not get enough of they used to serve at the curry house at the bottom of Lordship Lane where we’d get the £20-per-head Sunday buffet in our twenties and money was a bit tighter than it is now. There is always a personal favourite of mine, finely chopped raw onion with coriander, little pieces of cucumber, and often tomato. And then, a tamarind sauce may also appear, but not always. Unusually, some sort of minted tangy red onion cabbage slaw thing was also present when we went out with Johnny’s parents for dinner the other week (pictured above). Everyone has their favourite poppodum toppings; J is a purist and just has the raita and mango chutney, but I go for the trifecta, adding the raw onion relish to mine along with his two preferred condiments.

This pleasant combination of chutney toppings (which ticks all the sweet, tangy, creamy, fresh, crunchy boxes) takes us neatly to today’s recipe: a classic Onion Bhaji (but made flat like fritters to allow for easy shallow rather than deep frying) with my favourite toppings ready to be spooned onto each one: my go-to cheat’s raita recipe that I make every time we have an at-home curry night, mango chutney, and a winter-appropriate version of that onion relish. We’re looking at two ways of using onion here: deep frying it in batter from raw until crisp on the outside and tender and sweet in the middle, and raw, but treated so it doesn’t taste so.

Cheat’s Raita

You don’t have me to thank for the only way I’ve made a curry house-style raita since learning this hack, but the double act of home economist Nikki Morgan and James May, when they made his Amazon Prime series Oh Cook! and published an accompanying cookbook. It’s as easy as it is genius: simply stir prepared mint sauce into natural yogurt, to taste (though you want about 1/2 tbsp for every 100g of yogurt if you’re looking for a precise measurement). And that’s it: it already has vinegar, sugar and salt in it, making a deliciously tangy, balanced sauce. For my international readers, mint sauce is so essential to British Sunday roast lamb I know it is a common feature in many international food aisles at the supermarket next to the British tea bags and instant custard powder. Jar pictured above, so you know what you’re looking for! Obviously, serve the rest of the jar with lamb or keep it for future raita adventures!

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As I want finishing up this month’s recipes to be a very much mood-based activity, and as around the time you’ll be reading this I should be boarding our flight back from Norway I don’t know what I’ll fancy making with my beloved alliums for paid subscribers, though I do already have some strong ideas - never fear! But today I’m just going to leave you with a surprisingly 30-minute pasta of quick caramelised mushrooms, woody thyme and Norwegian cheese I concocted as I ordered thicker socks online watching forecast temperatures for our trip drop below -12C. It’s hearty, warming, and just the thing on a frigid night.

If someone has shared this post with you (please thank them for me!) and you’re not already a subscriber, do hit the button below so you don’t miss out! And if you fancy exploring the archives for more seasonal inspiration, last February I shared an ode to dried dates, along with a tasty Chicken with Dates and Olives traybake:

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Irritatingly, I can’t find it online anymore but one of my favourite ‘negative’ customer reviews I received for One Pan Pescatarian was that too many of the recipes started with the instruction to soften a finely chopped onion in oil with a good pinch of salt. Obviously at the time I took great exception to this, because rarely does a bad meal start with an onion, brown or otherwise. This is not just a modern idea; if we have details about what an ancient civilisation might of cultivated and ate, you can be sure that onions were on the table.

From their raw, eye-watering astringency (which can be tempered with soaking - I’m that person who hogs the bowl of raw chopped onion from the popadom pickle plate at the curry house) to a sweet, melting softness when slowly caramelised, just like the humble egg the brown onion is one of the kitchen’s most magical ingredients in how treatment can change behaviour. Whilst a crisp, oily onion bhaji and a sultry bowl of slow-simmered French onion soup both taste like an onion, the fact you know it is what you’re eating is just about where the similarities end.

Along with red onions and banana shallots (I never buy the round ones, too tricky to peel) a healthy supply of brown onions lives in a basket in a cool, shady part of my kitchen. They’re storage onions, something to start a meal with (or even make a meal from) even when supplies are scarce.

Shall we take a journey through all the different ways you can alter the character of a humble onion?

Starting with brown onions as a raw onion, you don’t usually think of them (red is more common, though the instruction to soak them in at least 20 minutes in cold water to get rid of the aftertaste stands) as such, but as I’ve just mentioned, soaked and finely chopped they can work their way nicely into salsas; last weekend this came as a bowl of chopped cucumber, onion, tomato and coriander at the curry house with popadoms, and brown onion is also what I chop (un-soaked) into my Pico de Gallo Salsa to go with Tex-Mex or Mexican-inspired meals. You can pickle them too, though I do grant red onions and shallots do these better, and grated raw they go into our family recipe for Christmas stuffing, and my Mother’s famously juicy turkey burgers.

If you slice, chop or dice an onion and quickly soften it in butter or oil you’re providing a savoury base of a recipe on which to build a sauce, or a savoury something to stir into batters and fillings; that you’ll always make better potato latkes with onion in the binding batter than without springs immediately to mind. Accompanied by other flavours you’ve got the backbone of any number of famed flavour profiles, from a bolognese (traditional or not) started with a soffritto, or Holy trinity in a gumbo which I’d argue is even more essential than mastering a good roux.

Returning to the instruction that caused such consternation at the start of this piece, I always add a pinch of salt to softening onions as it helps break them down in the pan, because regardless if you’re taking your onions to somewhere soft but not coloured (a risotto), lightly coloured (there are too many examples to count, potentially just point to whatever you were planning to make for dinner tonight), or very dark (the base of many Asian-style dishes) a little salt will go a long way towards helping them on this journey.

Of course, onions can also be added to the pan at the last minute; the key to replicating your favourite Chinese takeaway sweet and sour at home is to cook the onions and peppers quickly at such a high heat that they’re by no means raw, but still retain much more bite than you’d otherwise be looking for in a Western-style dish. And whilst we’re on the subject of cooking an onion quickly so it is only just not raw, let us return to the aforementioned bhaji where raw, batter-bound onion is flash fried to create crispy outers and tender, mellow onion middles. There is a similar science behind onion rings (when done well, though sadly they rarely are) and a steakhouse blooming onion.

But then they can also be halved or quartered to drop into sauces and stews without any prior assistance from soaking or application of heat: all you need to do to make Marcella Hanzan’s cult favourite tomato sauce is to trim and halve said onion before dropping it into the pot to give backbone and depth to your dinner.

Halved onions are also great at a very high heat for cleaning your barbecue or stovetop griddle, whilst we’re on the subject.

Returning to the pan, if you cook the onions low and slow enough you’ll reach the point where they’re a soft, dark, sticky reduction: caramelised onions. Whilst time consuming, I think are the greatest expression of an onions’s powers. Simmer them slowly with a good stock and you’ve got a classic French onion soup, though I prefer them loaded into a pastry crust for a quiche better suited to these cooler months.

Speaking of caramelisation, I agree with every other chef and prodigious home cook out there who tries to explain there is no way to speed up the process, no matter what an internet full of hacks may lead you to believe. But there is a happy medium to be had if it doesn’t matter if some of the onion is only 90% of the way there, and if they catch a little on the bottom of the pan, which brings us to this month’s first recipe.

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30-Minute Onion Butter Pasta (French Onion Soup Pasta)

Serves: 1, Preparation time: 5 minutes, Cooking time: 25 minutes

About 25 minutes, a medium low heat and plenty of good butter is what’s needed to reduce two thinly sliced onions into the base for a French Onion-ish pasta recipe that is just so very winter. With spelt pasta (you need the nuttiness to balance out the sweetness of the onions - wholemeal pasta would be a good substitute) as the base, some woody fresh thyme and some diced Jarlesburg cheese to bring it all together (a mild, nutty Norwegian cheese I’ve chosen here both for it’s melting ability and that it is one of the few cows milk cheeses I can eat with abandon because whatever they do to remove the lactose also seems to remove my own intolerance triggers!)

If you plan to double this to cook for more than just you, use the biggest pan you have or prepare to spend a little longer stirring at the stove.

• 30g unsalted butter

• 2 small brown onions, very finely sliced

• sea salt

• leaves from 3-4 sprigs fresh thyme (use your judgement on their size!)

• 90g spelt pasta (I like Northern Pasta Co.)

• 30g Jarlesburg cheese, diced (or something else mild and nutty that melts well)

• cracked black pepper, to serve

1. Heat the butter in a medium-large frying pan set over a medium heat. Once it is frothy, add the onions and a good pinch of salt. Stir, and once they’re sizzling reduce the heat to medium low. Add the thyme leaves, and cook, stirring often, until they’re soft, golden, and reduced in volume. Stirring often means they won’t catch at a temperature a little higher than you’d usually used for caramelised onions - the larger surface area of the pan helps speed things up too.

2. However long from the end of the onions (which take about 20-25 minutes) you are cook the pasta in boiling salted water as per the packet instructions. I needed about 8 minutes to cook mine.

3. Scoop the pasta from the pot into the onions and give it a good stir. Add the Jarlesburg, and keep stirring until it has melted into the onions, adding more pasta water as needed to bring it all into a glossy sauce.

4. Serve immediately with plenty of cracked black pepper!

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• Emiko, on why we now need cookbooks more than ever:

Notes from Emiko’s Kitchen

Why we need cookbooks more than ever

I was originally drafting this piece as “Why We Still Need Cookbooks” and thinking about how our way of life, and things like style, taste, culture, diet and what is available and affordable, have all evolved over the decades. One day maybe it will still make a good article and it will be a great excuse to talk about salmon mousse in aspic and cottage …

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3 months ago · 279 likes · 123 comments · Emiko Davies

• Anna has some great tips for cooking for people who are going through illness, bereavement, or new parenthood:

  The Anna Jones Newsletter

  Cooking as care

  Hi, I’m Anna Jones and this is my weekly newsletter, a celebration of cooking, vegetables and life. It’s great to have you here. If you have found yourself here but are not yet subscribed then you can sort that out below…

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  3 months ago · 87 likes · 6 comments · Anna Jones

• Ibrahim investigates if reheated rice is really safe to eat?

  Vittles

  Grain of Terror

  Good morning, and welcome to Vittles! Today’s essay is a long read by Joe Zadeh about the persistent fears in the West surrounding the reheating of rice. It’s the first piece that we’re publishing online from our second print issue, on the theme of ‘Bad Food’. The magazine contains lots of other deeply researched and engaging pieces about contemporary f…

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  3 months ago · 156 likes · 21 comments · Vittles

• Marc has written a slightly terrifying, but none the less very informative piece on why “sushi grade” is actually a myth:

  Marc Matsumoto

  “Sushi Grade” is a Myth

  “Sushi grade” is a comfort word, not a guarantee. In the United States, there’s no legal definition, no certification process, and no governing body that blesses certain fish as safe to eat raw. It’s a label retailers use because it sounds reassuring, and we all want to be reassured…

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  4 months ago · 26 likes · 10 comments · No Recipes

• Stefan shares with us the roots of Gibraltan cuisine:

  Vittles

  So much more than ‘Britain in the sun’

  Good morning and welcome to Vittles! In today’s essay, Stefan Williamson Fa writes about how Gibraltar’s cuisine is multifarious and evolving. despite the commonly reductive portrayal of the strait’s foods and people…

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  3 months ago · 97 likes · 4 comments · Vittles

• Uyen has written a brilliant essay on immigrant identity focused around California’s Little Saigon:

  Around The Table - By Uyen Luu

  Blood, Sweat & Fish Sauce in Little Saigon

  My grandmother ladled a bowl of bún bò Huế into my hands like she was passing down a crown — fragrant, fiery and full of history. I sat in her luscious Californian garden where the lazy breeze blew the wings …

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  3 months ago · 12 likes · 7 comments · Uyen Luu

• She’s also written an excellent piece on the place pho takes in Vietnamese culture:

  Around The Table - By Uyen Luu

  A Borough Of Broth

  Cut me open and I will pour out broth. In Vietnam, phở is mostly eaten outside the home. Elsewhere, it became the dish no immigrant could live without—a lifetime of craving. A weekly pot of phở simmers quietly in the background, exhali…

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  3 months ago · 3 likes · 8 comments · Uyen Luu

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For my Macknade residency this month, I created this vibrant Herby Beetroot & Spelt Salad recipe which is perfect for lunchboxes, or as a side for grilled fish or halloumi.

Over on my blog, I’ve posted a super-cosy, unapologetically brown recipe for Slow Cooked Pork and Butter Beans with Sherry, and another colourful lunchtime / side dish number, this time in the guise of my Blood Orange and Black Olive Salad.

Also, in the category of ‘other people’s recipes I’ve tried and loved’ this month can I highly commend this Venison Barbacoa from Modern Farmhouse Eats?

January has been a red letter month for excellent reads. I picked up The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable in the Audible sale and it was an exceptional, sweeping historical novel set in 18th-century Venice within the walls of the Pietà orphanage where Vivaldi was a tutor, told through the eyes of one of his favourite pupils. It’s a story of friendship, ambition, and exploitation, as a young girl with no one in the world becomes a woman of fame born through her exceptional talent. Beautiful writing is what carries what is already a fascinating story - the narration was also excellent, if Audiobooks whilst you’re cooking are your thing, like they are mine.

Philippa Gregory and her novels chronicling the women of the Wars of the Roses and the eventual Tudor court have been amongst my favourites since I was a child, but I’ll admit as her formula became popular some of the books became a bit same-y, like she was picking the next historical women because she had to, not because they would make a good subject for a novel. She stopped writing them for a while moving onto other topics (and with good results: Tidelands is utterly exceptional) but last year returned with Boleyn Traitor, the story of Anne Boleyn’s ill-fated sister in law Jane. For the first 100 pages I did think perhaps we were falling into predictability again, but it just turns out I knew that part of history too well: it then came alive into a vivid, heartbreaking rendering of a lesser chronicled part of Tudor history painting probably more accurate view of Henry VIII as an insane tyrant puppeting his court on pain of death than Philippa Gregory has presented before. It may be a Tudor novel, but it is also a very modern one.

The Forgetting was another Audible sale find, and I’ve now added the rest of Hannah Beckerman’s books to my wish list. A psychological thriller following two women as their lives change for ever, one by motherhood and the other by a car accident that loses her her memory. You think you know what is going on, you think you’ve realised the truth about their husbands, but I’m telling you you really, really don’t. I love a book with a good ‘oh my god’ moment I’ve not realised was creeping up on me!

I’ve loved all of ’s cycling adventures around various countries on the hunt for food (One More Croissant For The Road saw me through a sunny weekend under the walnut tree outside my parent’s old home in Brittany, and Red Sauce Brown Sauce took me on a tour of the UK’s culinary delights whilst I suffered bumpy roads driving through Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula - also Completely Perfect is an recipe book essential for any kitchen big or small) I but I think her tour of America, Peach Street to Lobster Lane is my favourite so far as she cycles across the country trying to define ‘American’ cuisine showing us it is fundamentally something completely different to what most of us outsiders expect.

Just a note that all of the above are affiliate links, so if you order one of the books I get a few pence back. Thank you!

Shocking I know but I actually have something new on Netflix to recommend, rather than something very old I’ve recently discovered. After ‘Safe’, as the next few instalments of American crime author Harlen Coben’s 14-book adaptation deal have ranged from average to not worth finishing, but ‘Run Away’, the latest is actually excellent. So do watch it if you like many layered story lines with families who find it impossible to be honest with each other, leading to disastrous consequences!

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You can already find my recipe for a wonderfully warming, aromatic Butternut Squash, Lemongrass, Chilli & Ginger Soup here, and my freezer-filing Sausage Meat Dumplings (with a lemongrass-scented, Vietnamese-style dipping sauce) here. And today, I’ve made a delicious, fragrant bowl full of steamed mussels and rice noodles that is an absolute doddle to make. I’ll let you read the intro, but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here! No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function. Even if you don’t become a paid subscriber, if you’ve enjoyed my essay today, please hit like on this post as it will help others find it - and put a smile on my face!

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My desert island meal takes place in a restaurant with a view of the oyster beds in Cancale, a seaside town in Brittany in Northern France. We’ll ignore for a moment that all of Cancale’s restaurants overlook the harbour, not the oyster beds. I’ll start with a platter of their local no.3 oysters with Tabasco, lemon and mignonette with a glass of champagne (or an excellent Crémant, I’m not all that hung up on the geography of origin as long as it is French), before I switch to crisp rosé wine (French again, and the paler the better) to accompany my Mont St Michel Bay (where Cancale sits) moules mariniere served with both good French bread, and French fries. For dessert I’ll have a crêpe beurre sucre, because whilst in England crepes need lots of sugar and lime juice (tastes just like you’ve added lemon juice, but brighter), in Brittany they only need good local salted butter and a little sugar.

I think you can tell from this that a big bowl of mussels is one of my favourite things to eat. But just like pâté in restaurants that is always served with not enough bread to enjoy it all, classically cooked mussels have a massive problem: even if you have plenty of bread for dipping, short of picking up a soup spoon, you’ll always leave lots of that delicious flavour released from the mussels as they steam left at the bottom of the bowl. This recipe solves this.

Obviously they’re both well suited to the coconut milk broth, but glass noodles and mussels are such a brilliant combination. The noodles catch all the delicious liquid but are also small enough to be picked up with the mussel shell you’re eating with. Because you should be using a mussel shell to pry other mussels out of their shells rather than a fork; this method helps you keep the mussel intact, and if the 7 year old boy eating with his grandparents on my first trip to Cancale could manage it, so can you. But, when you pick up that spoon to finish things they’ve also started to soak up the aromatic, lemongrass-spiked coconut sauce in something akin to a delicious noodle soup, making it a pleasure to completely finish the bowl.

Coconut milk can be too rich and creamy in this context without the acidity of lime juice, and something strongly aromatic, which is where this month’s ingredient - lemongrass - comes into play. Lemongrass is the right choice here as you’ve got chilli for warmth and a different tone of brightness, and shallot and garlic for savoury depth. My other two recipes this month have been ginger heavy, but here you need something with freshness; kaffir lime leaves would also work as a lovely alternative.

Now fresh, live mussels which should be cooked preferably the day you buy them, but at a push the next day if stored in a (dry) bowl in the fridge under a very damp tea towel, and they’re not something you can put on your online grocery order. Obviously going to your local fishmonger for them is preferable, but sadly as these are getting few and far between I know supermarket fish counters are likely to be much more convenient for you. But, choose where you go carefully: because of my schedule last week I figured I’d get my mussels in town rather than going down to the coast (yes I know mussels are not local to Kent, but it is where all the fishmongers tend to be for the fish, crabs, lobster and oysters which are!), and it is how I discovered that Covid put paid to most of the supermarket fish counters I grew up with - because I do most of my food shopping either online or in farm shops, I’d simply not noticed. Sainsbury’s did away with all of theirs in 2020, and Tesco in 2023. Head to Waitrose if you can where they offer 20% off on Fridays to card holders, and where across their entire range they have a much better baseline for sustainability and animal welfare standards than other supermarkets. As someone who quite literally wrote the book on seafood suppers in 2020, I find the death of the supermarket fish counter depressing for everyday shoppers that their fish and seafood only comes wrapped in plastic, but heartened for the aforementioned independent fishmongers who hopefully have gained a few more customers.

Cleaning & De-bearding Mussels

Mussels are healthy, cheap (what other special fish supper can you get enough seafood for two for £4.50?) and at their best right now, but I know what puts lots of people off eating them at home is the preparation, and the fear of eating a bad one. But, honestly, they’re very easy to prepare and cook in a way that will avoid misshaps.

First, fill the kitchen sink or a large tub of cold water, and let the mussels sit there for 5 minutes. If they came from a fishmonger not a supermarket fish counter they may be a bit mucky, and you may want to change the water and leave them for another 5 minutes, or even give them a bit of a scrub. Then, working one by one, assess each mussel. If it is cracked or broken at all, throw it away. If it has a ‘beard’, that is a little stringy brown bit coming out the side, pull it off. It may give up a little resistance, but give it a good yank and it will pull away. If the mussel is open, pinch it closed and count to ten. If it stays closed, you’re good to eat it, if it doesn’t, throw it away. Once you’ve sorted your mussels, you’re ready to cook: but remember, if once you’ve cooked your mussels any don’t open, throw them away too rather than trying to force the issue.

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Coconut Steamed Mussels with Rice Noodles

Serves 2, Preparation time: 25 minutes, Cooking time: 25 minutes

These aromatic mussels cook with coconut milk and aromatics into a delicious seafood noodle soup, perfect for a fresh sharing dinner for a Friday night. Serve it with a crisp white wine, or a nice crisp Asian-style beer.

• 1kg live mussels

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You can already find my recipe for a my wonderfully warming, aromatic recipe for Butternut Squash, Lemongrass, Chilli & Ginger Soup here, and I’m still working on another simple, vibrant, seafood-forward winter recipe to bring you next week (I’m still playing catch up after the winter break!) which will hopefully help blow some of those cobwebs away! I’ll let you read the intro but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here! No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function.

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Whilst Itsu’s excellent frozen dumplings are one of the few ‘ready meals’ I will actually eat and indeed buy regularly, I do love a good homemade dumpling. Yes, I know they’re time consuming to fold (and yes, I know the internet is currently obsessed by that viral dumpling wrapper ‘lasagna’ which cuts out the folding part), but to use a packet of frozen dumplings skins up you need to make a big batch which leads onto the important fact that they cook beautifully from frozen, and you can do fun seasonal flavours like my Wild Garlic and Pork Dumplings you can’t find anywhere else.

Today, we’re making sausage dumplings.

If you think about it, using sausage meat to fill a dumpling wrapper is something of a no-brainer. I wish I’d come up with the idea of using perfectly pre-seasoned sausage meat, already balanced to the correct ratio of meat to fat as a dumpling filling, but the idea has been simmering in the back of my mind since Nadine Levy Redzepi did it in her 2017 cookbook Downtime: Deliciousness at home (which was gifted to me by our then shared publisher). I thought the idea was genius then, and I was reminded of it again when utilised all the packets of sausage meat that tend to be reduced about this time of year in his Sausage Meat Bún Cha the Twixtmas before the one that has just passed.

Using sausage meat makes making perfectly juicy dumplings at home a step easier, as you don’t have to worry about the meat or seasoning, you just need to focus on the aromatics, which today means my usual dumpling flavouring of Shaoxing rice wine, soy sauce, fresh ginger and toasted sesame oil, lightened with some chopped spring onions and plenty of lemongrass for a fragrant, cleansing back note.

For the dipping sauce, whilst I’ll never say no to my back of the packet sauce (so called as it comes off the back of the Itsu dumpling packet, with a few very minor tweaks from me) I’ve headed to a different part of South East Asia with a lemongrass heavy, cheats version of a Nước chấm which helps make these dumplings fresh and light.

I’ve included freezing instructions for the dumplings below (the sauce will keep for at least a week in the fridge!) They’d not be out of place in my 20-minute Sweet Chilli Dumpling Stir Fry for a quick mid-week dinner, and have become something I’ve become quite partial to air frying for a quick snack.

Now we’ve simplified the filling for at-home dumpling making (none of the stirring techniques you see in traditional recipes to get that perfect texture are needed when you’re working with sausage meat) I’m also here to tell you not to be scared of dumpling folding. Yes it takes years to get perfect pleats, and no, I’ve not mastered it yet either. But as long as your dumplings are sealed you’ll still get delicious dumplings. But, a classic fold is pretty easy:

1. Place a scant tablespoon of filling in the middle of the dumpling wrapper, and using a fingertip wet the top edge of the wrapper. You want a fat, juicy filled dumpling, but whilst you’re finding your legs using a little less filling will make them easier to fold.

2. Fold the dumpling like a taco, and pinch to seal it just at the very top.

3. Starting one side of the pinch, squeeze a little pleat in one edge of the dough.

4. Fold the pleat down, and make an identical one right next to it. Once you have sealed one side of the dumpling, do the same thing on the other side.

As you can see, I’m years off perfect dumplings, and as I only make them a couple of times a year I need to find my feet for the first few every time I make a batch; do compare on the right the first dumpling I folded this time around, and the final one!

The weather is terrible at the moment, there is nothing to do in the garden, and going on long walks will just result in frozen feet (though I have high hopes for the wool hiking socks I just ordered for my trip to Norway later in the month!) so let’s make some dumplings!

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Sausage Meat Dumplings with Vietnamese-style Dipping Sauce

Makes: 40-44, Preparation time: 50 minutes, Cooking time: 8 minutes

These moist, juicy, aromatic Sausage Meat Dumplings are the perfect freezer-filler. The dipping sauce makes enough for 2-3 people, as I’ve designed this recipe to freeze most of the dumplings for later! Why go to all that effort if you don’t make enough for future you to thank you for later?

For the Sausage Meat Dumplings

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As well as my monthly essay on this curious (and to home cooks sometimes intimidating) plant, below I thought I’d kick off 2026 in my kitchen with what else but a steaming bowlful of soup? In this recipe humble butternut is transported to something complex, aromatic and silky smooth with an aromatic base of lemongrass, spring onion, fresh ginger and dried chilli flakes, layered with both coconut milk and coconut oil. Special enough for a starter but also simple enough for lunch with a good hunk of sourdough (I’ve also become partial to serving some air-fried-until-crispy frozen dumplings on the side) it is one to prep for the week, or to freeze for later.

I’m still working on my recipes for later in the month, but should the impending weeks of forecast snow not stop me getting to the fishmongers shellfish is on the menu, hopefully also is a special little treat to stash your freezer with to help out with simple yet delicious dinners as we head into the New Year.

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Culinary lemongrass as we know it, the long, aromatic finger of furled layers tinted pale yellow-green with a slight purple bloom near the base - either available in little plastic bags from the supermarket or in big rubber-band tied Asian grocery store bundles - is simply the stem of the Cymbopogon grass, or at least the culinary variant of such. Another variety is where we get the citronella oil the infuses our summertime candles to keep the midges at bay.

Lemongrass at first glance may invoke the coconut milk-based simmered curries of Thailand, or Vietnamese dipping sauces and flavourings for ground meat, but as someone who does a fair bit of I hope (as far as the source material and ingredients available to me) authentic Indian and Sri Lankan cooking at home I was surprised that it is native to both; off the top of my head from such a vast area I couldn’t name a lemongrass ‘feature dish’ from either cuisine.

Starting with India researching this piece I was intrigued to learn that as well as appearing in coconut milk-based curries it is often used to infuse rice (I must try that) and to make tea (more on that below!) Heading south into Sri Lanka, it turns out uses are the same, and that I should try infusing it with my favourite Sri Lankan Yellow Rice (pictured below) as is a common recipe.

I’m going to be honest with you here; the toughness of lemongrass when tackled with a not very sharp knife before I started developing recipes professionally and started paying attention to my kitchen equipment put me off cooking with lemongrass for years. I’ve always loved the aroma and the flavour (how could I not, when an aromatic Thai-style curry served with coconut rice is one of my favourite things to order in?), I just saw it as too much faff. I’d either skip recipes where I knew it’s absence would be noted if they asked for the lemongrass to do anything other than infuse split in half or even lightly bashed and whole, or else I’d adapt the recipe to work with lemongrass pastes (the Bart one is actually quite decent if what you’re making is a marinade - though I’d skip dried lemongrass, or the stuff that comes pre-sliced suspended in liquid as a) dreadful and b) pointless).

But, as I got more confident (and I suspect the freshness of the lemongrass stalks available in British supermarkets improved - sometimes I forget I learned to cook in the pre-Ottolenghi era where world foods were often something to order online or seek out in a specialist store, not things you could pick up with the weekly shop!), the astringent, lemony, grassy aroma of fresh lemongrass started to creep back into my cooking, especially if it was going in a spice paste that could be handled by my high-powered food processor. My Duck Rendang (pictured here with the delightful pairing of Sri Lankan Yellow Rice) is case in point. The lemongrass - whilst not individually discernible in the finished product - is part of what makes the dish. The lesson here is not to be scared of the lemongrass, just be scared of blunt kitchen implements instead.

Lemongrass in my kitchen today is something I chop to infuse, to blitz, to blend. Usually supermarkets carry it with the fresh herbs, chillis, and ginger in packs of two, and if your chosen recipe only calls for one, the spare will freeze happily for several months. Use it from frozen for an infusion, or let it thaw (it will do so quickly) before proceeding as the recipe calls for it.

Speaking of things with lemongrass a recipe might call for, it will often want you to at least trim the top and the bottom, if not remove a tough outer-layer completely. These pieces - along with ginger peelings if you have some, fresh lemongrass and fresh ginger so often appear together - infuse nicely in boiling water for a slow-sipping tisane. You can of course make tea from simply bruising the stalk, but I like the idea of a cupful as a cooks treat made from what would otherwise be discarded whilst you’re rustling up something for dinner.

Butternut Squash, Lemongrass, Chilli & Ginger Soup

Serves: 6, Preparation time: 15 minutes, Cooking time: 20 minutes

For something relatively gentle and soothing, this soup has rather a lot going on, even if those things are rather harmonious. It is creamy from the coconut and the smooth-ness of the butternut, it has warmth from the ginger and chilli flakes, and the lemongrass adds a lovely aroma that really makes this not ‘just another bowl of butternut squash soup’. Of course, the humble butternut is affordable and plentiful, but the aromatics stand on their own enough that they’ll also work with other types of autumn / winter squash. But why would you soup a beautiful Crown Prince when you can simply roast the wedges instead?

I’ve actually been making this soup with the last of the turkey stock, rather than chicken, and unless you need this to be vegan or vegetarian, you should too if you have some leftover from your festive carcass. If, like me, you also have a stash of chicken stock in the freezer already infused with Asian-inspired aromatics like ginger and garlic (I have a lot leftover from testing this ramen recipe!), that would work well too.

• 1 bunch spring onions

• 2 lemongrass stems

• 2 thumb-sized pieces fresh ginger

• 2 tbsp coconut oil

• 1 tsp dried chilli flakes, plus extra for serving

• 1-1.5kg diced butternut squash (about 1 large one)

• 1l chicken or vegetable stock

• sea salt, to taste

• 4 tbsp coconut milk, plus extra for serving

• juice of 1 lime

1. Trim and finely slice the spring onions, setting the very green pieces aside to garnish the soup. Trim the tough bottom off of the lemongrass and slice them too, and peel and finely dice the ginger.

2. Melt the coconut oil in the bottom of a large lidded saucepan over a medium heat. Add the sliced aromatics, and fry for 5-6 minutes until very soft and fragrant. Stir in the dried chilli flakes, and cook for a further minute.

3. Add the squash and stock, and a generous pinch of salt, before bringing it to the boil. Reduce the heat until medium, and simmer with the lid tilted on top for 20 minutes, or until all the squash is tender.

4. Blitz using a stick blender / immersion blender until very smooth, then whizz in the coconut milk and lime juice. Taste to see if it needs a little more salt before serving with each bowl topped with a drizzle of coconut milk, a sprinkle of the reserved spring onion tops, and a few extra chilli flakes.

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It’s a bit of a lean one today as to be honest, once I’ve done one more essential task I’ve logged on for I’ll be doing the make-ahead elements of New Years Eve dinner (veal shin lasagne from the newly-received Padella cookbook - I used to live around the corner and still never got a table! - and ’s DIY mint viennetta from Sift) and then returning to my spot on the sofa with my pile of brand new cookbooks.

If you’ve somehow arrived here from elsewhere and you’re not yet a subscriber, you can sign up here so not to miss out on ingredient essays, exclusive recipes, the occasional long read!

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• Festive themed but useful year-round, Camilla dives into the different varieties of homemade marzipan:

  Kitchen Projects

  Kitchen Project #191: All About Marzipan

  Hello, Welcome to today’s edition of Kitchen Projects. Thank you so much for being here…

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  4 months ago · 105 likes · 24 comments · Nicola Lamb and Camilla Wynne

• Fascinating reading even if you’re not planning a trip, David’s travel tips for Japan are a wonderful peek into a totally different world:

  David Lebovitz Newsletter

  Japan Travel Tips

  Years ago, I went to Japan to work for a week. While it was fascinating to be there, I didn’t get to do or see much as I was working. I’ve always wanted to go back, and this year seemed like the right time. Part of the reason was that my friend Rosa Jackson…

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  4 months ago · 257 likes · 68 comments · David Lebovitz

• Jordan has written a great piece on the grocery industry obsession with fancy olive oil packaging for home cooks:

  A Curious Cook

  Liquid Gold Rush

  If you’ve watched a recipe video online in the past 3 years then you will have seen it. That bottle, spiralling a drizzle of olive oil into a pan. But wait, is it that bottle? Every few months, another brand appears in the same millennial-green hue and wobblier-than-thou typeface, promising to “make olive oil f…

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  5 months ago · 61 likes · 10 comments · Jordon Ezra King

Still suitable for New Year’s Day lunch even though it was written with the big day in mind, my Rosemary and Mustard Crusted Roast Beef that formed this month’s Macknade residency is a recipe that really does live up to being my favourite food photo I’ve taken this year; designed for boneless cuts it slices well for guests and the rub makes for a flavour that makes for brilliant sandwiches. Because we’re not all sick of leftover roast (insert meat or fowl here) sandwiches!

In that vein, I’ve not actually published anything new on my blog this past month, but I do want to point you towards a pair of ‘also suitable for New Year’ Christmas recipes I gave a glow up with new photos for 2025: my Shredded Sprouts with Pancetta and Chestnuts, and my Individual Portobello Mushroom Wellingtons - the perfect make-ahead vegetarian (or vegan with a few simple listed swaps) addition to a roast that works well alongside all the trimmings, cooking in the time your chosen roast rests.

However, I do think the matcha-infused Christmas Tree Rice Krispies Treats I developed for Project Meal Plan might need to be bookmarked for next year; or be cut with a star cutter and decorated with a bit of glam for New Years Eve!

On the ‘things I’ve cooked but did not write the recipe for’ front, Rosanna’s Walnut and Parmesan Sables (but made with pecans) were the stand-out hit of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. You can make the slice-and-bake dough a couple of days in advance (well, today for tomorrow) and she’s right, they do go perfectly with champagne!

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You can already find my recipe for a classic Roman Pork Saltimbocca here, and my make-ahead friendly Marsala Poached Pears recipe here. I’ll let you read the intro but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here! No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function.

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In my mind, three things in copious quantities are essential to the quintessential Christmas starter of Chicken Liver Pâté: double cream, butter, and booze. And I also can’t think of a better entertaining / solo festive lunchtime gift to future (well, in a few days time) you than a little dish of pâté that goes heavy on all three nestled in the fridge under a thin layer of fresh thyme and pink peppercorn spiked butter (inspired by this one I use on my Truffled Mushroom Pâté, a helpful recipe to have in the back pocket if you’ve got some vegetarians at the table!)

Whiskey, Brandy, Cognac, Sherry and Madeira are all game in your typical Chicken Liver Pâté (or indeed a mixture), so obviously Marsala adds a lovely aroma too, a certain something that elevates this pâté to sit alongside the offerings you’d be served in the very best of gastropubs, but without the need to mess around with creating a sliced terrine or quenelle for plating (good luck with that without the use of a Thermomix, anyway!)

As with our Pork Saltimbocca, you can either use a sweet or dry Marsala with varying effects. Sweet is what you want to reach for if you’re turning this into a special edition starter for a festive meal; it enhances the richness, and you’d get away with stretching it to smaller portions. However, if you’re planning this as a lunch option, something helpful to have in the fridge, or you’re going to turn it into canapés to go with drinks and other bits, you’ll want to reach for the dry Marsala. Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

320g might seem like a strange metric to use for the livers when supermarkets sell them in 400g packs, but I want to use my final recipe of the year here to give a special shoutout to the guys at Field & Flower for whom I’m happily a brand ambassador, and who help supply so much of the meat, fish and dairy I get through recipe testing during the year, and whose rib of beef and turkey crowns I’m looking forward to cooking over the coming weeks. Their ethos is to get the best meat you can afford from farmers who care about their animals and get a fair price for their meat, with the added convenience they’re online so they suit busy people who don’t have the time to spend visiting local butchers and farm shops. Their chicken liver comes in 320g packs so do order some to make this recipe, and grab some of their excellent butter and use that too whilst you’re at it!

Have a simply wonderful Christmas - I’m honestly so incredibly grateful for every single one of you who indulges me in this space where, unlike anywhere else I get to make what I want to cook each month freed from the hold of client commissions and search algorithms - and I’ll see you for the final edition of Nibbles on New Years Eve!

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Chicken Liver Pâté with Marsala

Serves: 4-6 (or many more if deployed as a canapé), Preparation time: 15 minutes, Chilling time: 30 minutes, then overnight, Cooking time: 15 minutes

A few extra notes for the festive season: I’d only make this pâté up to 3 days in advance, and if you’re going down the canapé route don’t bother with the butter seal, simply lay a piece of kitchen wrap / cling film on the surface to stop it drying out whilst it cools ready to be either spread, or beaten and piped onto something crisp or crunchy. I’d add a smidgeon of onion jam or similar on each one too, or a slice of cocktail gherkin for acidity to cut through the richness.

• 150g unsalted butter, diced

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You can already find my recipe for a classic Roman Pork Saltimbocca here, and coming next week before I sign off for the festivities I’ve got a rich, delicious Marsala-infused Chicken Liver Pate recipe my family absolutely demolished, perfect for serving up as a make-ahead starter or as a canapé spread on little melba toasts.

I’ll let you read the intro but this recipe is for paid subscribers; do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive, and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here! No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function.

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A few weeks ago - even though she’d made my favourite chocolate mousse - I was slightly crestfallen to open my parents fridge before our Sunday roast to discover two pears sitting in a bowl of the marsala they’d been poached in. They’d clearly been for dinner the night before, and there were not enough leftovers to be divided fairly, so I missed out.

Another Delia Smith recipe (she was big on Marsala in the 1990’s, clearly) my mother always uses very firm Conference pears, has reduced the cooking time (I tried the original when I started testing this recipe, and if you don’t and / or use ripe pears in the Delia method you will end up with mushy pears), and keeps to the 1970’s style method of thickening the poaching liquid with arrowroot before serving. They’re delicious pears, but I wanted something a bit different. I wanted a perfectly poached pear in a rich, heady syrup, just sweet enough to work with the dessert and for leftovers to be spooned into glasses of dry champagne for a festive tipple.

At first, I wanted to avoid the long oven bake and poach on the stovetop as in this very practical recipe, and I knew that whole pears were trickier to work with than halved. And besides, after I figured out a 1 tsp spoon made the perfect huller making these baked pears to go with cinnamon-infused ricer pudding for the most aesthetically pleasing of pears, I had somewhere to start.

But, in her The Food of Italy Claudia Roden bakes her pears skin and all - and this is key - uncovered so the liquid reduces into a syrup whilst poaching. I was not after something so rustic, but a more hands-off method is exactly what I wanted.

The result is a dish of perfectly poached pear halves in an addictive syrup, the natural aromas of the sweet Marsala infused with added cinnamon, orange peel and vanilla.

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Marsala Poached Pears

Serves: 6, Preparation time: 10 minutes, Cooking time: 1 hour 5 minutes

I cannot stress the use of firm pears enough here. Either get these pears going as soon as you get back from the greengrocer or farmers market, or settle for supermarket pears which will arrive solid, and kept in the fridge, will keep like that for a good 10 days or so whilst you fit poaching them into your schedule.

To flex with the amount of people you have to serve and the size of your dish, the syrup here is enough for either the written 3 pears to serve 6, or 4 pears to serve 8 in a bigger dish. Also, if you don’t have a suitable shallow casserole for this, simply start the Marsala syrup in a saucepan, and continue the recipe in a suitably sized baking dish.

• 400ml sweet Marsala superiore

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