Nibbles #16

On making tofu, banning books, and the recipes people don't make from cookbooks.

Welcome to Nibbles where once a month I share everything brilliant I’ve been reading on the web as well as some general updates from my kitchen, my vegetable garden during the growing season, and other miscellaneous ‘you really need to know about’ updates.

Once again, Nibbles is coming to you a little early as tomorrow as stupid o’Clock in the morning I'll be catching a flight to Tuscany to celebrate the wedding of one of my oldest friends deep in the countryside, followed by a couple of days exploring Pisa before heading home. You know the drill: you can follow on with my Italian adventures on Instagram, and if you have any Pisa food, drink or cultural recommendations for us, do let me know!

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 monthly ingredient essays (featuring a different ingredient every month), exclusive recipes, sneak peaks into some of my favourite food people’s kitchen cupboards, and the occasional long read!

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Enjoying scoops of my Mum’s homemade loganberry ice cream (made with home grown loganberries, naturally) from Ballymaloe Desserts: Iconic Recipes and Stories from Ireland by the kitchen door as the leaves start to turn.

• Kathy on the creative joy, as well as the oppressive depression of a vegetable glut:

  TALE: On Abundance

• Bee Wilson on orphaned recipes, aka the recipes in cookbooks that don’t have photographs, which everyone working in food will tell you will never get cooked. I was told this, so I’m always surprised when one of mine shows up on Instagram cooked lovingly in someones home.

• All about mulberries:

  Kitchen Project #112: All about Mulberries

• Also from Nicola, the classicist in me really enjoyed her mission to build a Greek-inspired plinth pavlova stable enough on which to display fruit:

  Kitchen Project #113: The Art of Meringue ft. The Plinth Pavlova

• Sam writes a beautiful, lyrical and thought-provoking piece about visiting her sister and brother-in-law in rural Guatemala which doubles as a reflection on our busy Western lifestyles.

• All about Fröccs, a seasonal Hungarian wine spritzer tradition I now would quite like to experience.

• I’m always a fan of Rosie’s menus (and what I’ve made from them so far has been delicious) but I am particularly excited to make her spaghetti and meatballs:

  THE ONE THAT'S FAMILY MEAL

• Kevin has written a brilliant piece on authentic food writing in the modern media landscape, framed around empanadas. I particularly enjoyed the description of SEO guidelines as horse tranquillisers for the creative mind:

  Empanada Mutiny

• Yes, I would like to finish my next batch of bolognese with truffle butter.

• Emiko visits the tofu maker in her grandparent’s village:

  Making tofu in the mountains of Nagano

• Eight American authors on what it feels like to have their books banned.

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I’ve been working on many, many recipe videos for a client this month so I’ve had no time for much else. However, over on the blog if you’ve still got courgettes hanging around I’m particularly pleased with these Courgette and Feta Fritters with Smoked Chilli Harissa Yogurt, and if watching sports is your thing (yes: we will be waking up at 7am in Tuscany to stream the Japanese Grand Prix on J’s iPad and thanking our luck that Italy is an hour ahead of London giving us an extra hour in bed!) I’ve put together an America-meets-Korean BBQ Inspired Sharing Platter (complete with timings to get everything ready together) for Macknade featuring spicy, saucy Sutton Woo drumsticks, Cajun wedges, and an excellent zero-waste coleslaw and Korean barbecue sauce from their food hall.

I’ve made the decision to just let things go in my garden for the year, but that does not mean that things are still not abundant: I have plenty of fennel fronds (though I’ve given up on trying to grown the bulbs themselves after the second failed year in a row), carrots we’ve been enjoying with our Sunday roasts, the leeks my father gave me to test a new technique of simply standing them in a hole and not covering in the roots are growing in stature, and by the time I return I’ll be drowning in miniature pumpkins which I yes, grew as Bookstagram photography props, but I’m also looking forward to roasting whole with yummy fillings too.

Obviously my tomatoes are in abundance - and our neighbours and family friends keep giving them to us too - and I enjoyed the last borlotti bean harvest of the season as well. My father - at the same time as the leeks - gave me some lettuce starts too, so hopefully once we’ve made it back from the airport next week we’ll be dining that night on said leaves with the chicken confit I’ve got in the outdoor fridge (I know lots of you have been asking for this recipe, and you shall have it once I’ve finally perfected the re-heating method for the crispiest skin!) and some air fryer chips to round off our ‘the fridge is empty’ dinner (just don’t ask me what we’ll be eating tonight as I have literally no idea!)

I have many, many opinions on why they don’t make funny comedy anymore, but an exception comes in the form of our latest binge watch: Only Murders In The Building. Yes I know it is already on it’s third season, but I’m pretty sure it remained buried on Disney + somewhere you had to know it was there to look for until the past month or so (I’m not the only one who think the app is terribly built if you want to browse things that were not originally made by Disney or The Simpsons, right?) so it seems new and shiny.

It’s one for those of us who were into true crime podcasts before the market became oversaturated and they became terrible, and who also avidly devoured the original Serial whilst cleaning their kitchens. Only Murders In The Building is about an unlikely trio: the flamboyant, OAP theatre director, the not-retired-by-choice actor, and their Millennial artist neighbour who bond over their love for a popular true crime podcast, and who decide to make their own after another of their neighbours winds up dead. It’s funny, unique, bingeable, and at least I can vouch for the first 2 seasons, clever.

As mentioned, you can find it on Disney + internationally, or on Hulu in the US.