Nibbles #20

A recipe for Cepe Fudge, a pig heist, and the ins-and-outs of Indian barbecue.

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.

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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One of the best fridge forages I’ve had in ages: leftover Queen butter bean, leek and spinach stew heavy with lemon and creme fraiche which used to have sausages in it by Sophie Wyburd from the (gifted & excellent) Bold Bean Co. Cookbook, topped with a jammy egg, Italian chilli oil and Aleppo pepper flakes.

• One to bookmark, Nami has produced an excellent guide to both cutting and traditionally plating sashimi.

• Perzen teaches us all about the different marinades required for authentic Indian barbecue:

  Get Desi with your Barbecue

• The fascinating story of the hogs that live on Ossabaw Island in Georgia: a culinary delicacy and what should be a protected species which is being culled by the state, and whose perseveration story includes an almost pig heist.

• My friend Sally writes all about making fudge meant for sharing with unusual flavours, and her most popular creation might surprise you:

  On the Subject of Fudge

• She’s also put together a fantastic ode to forced rhubarb, with recipes:

  Rhubarb Every Which Way

• This priest in Kharkiv wants to open a bakery to supply local Ukrainians with free bread:

  The priest who plans to open a bakery

• Debora introduces us to Navets de Pardailhan, turnips local to her home in the South West of France:

  I never met a root I didn’t like

• Nik ran an experiment weighing the measures that came out of cups around the world, and the results reaffirm that we should all be weighing things in grams only:

  Weight Does Matter

• Sarah has done a beautiful piece of writing on Hungarian Gulyás, with her family recipe at the end behind her paywall:

  BROTHY HUNGARIAN GULYÁS (GOULASH)

• Giulia’s Southern Italian lasagne recipe is a true labour of love, accompanied by beautiful words and photos:

  Sagne a lu' fuorn' - My family Southern lasagne for your Christmas holidays

• Do you remember when I shared an essay about my ritual of making chicken stock from a leftover roast chicken? Giulia also does the same with vegetables:

  Channel the Italian waste-not spirit with your vegetable scraps

• What Rosie learned doing a masters degree in her thirties:

  Issue #10: Lessons learned doing a masters degree at 30, and the only brownie recipe you'll ever need

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It’s citrus season, and whilst I confess to usually finding Seville oranges far too bitter, I am rather pleased with the Seville Orange Loaf Cake I created at the start of the month for my Macknade residency.

On the salad side of things I’ve got a wonderfully bright and punchy Make-ahead Vegan Chickpea Salad recipe new over at Project Meal Plan, and as promised over on my blog I’ve got another use for that jar of Sri Lankan Roasted Curry Powder I bid you toast, crush and blend to make my Sri Lankan-inspired Curried Parsnip Soup: a Sri Lankan Chicken Curry which is perfect if you fancy a project this weekend that is a little bit different, and which I’m rather excited to tuck into night along with a mountain of Sri Lankan Yellow Rice.

Parsnips.