Nibbles #29

A pizza recipe that *actually works* in a domestic oven, how to find the best flea markets in France, and probably the best autumnal dessert recipe I've ever written.

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.

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Rain-washed pumpkins and squashes outside Hartley Farm Shop.

• The family behind one of my favourite Chinese cooking websites, The Woks of Life, have put together a guide to assembling the perfect Chinese meal which is both super helpful, and gives an interesting insight into Chinese at-home dining and entertaining culture.

• Brian’s adventures in trying to produce the perfect plant-based custard recipe are a fascinating and (eventually!) delicious read even if you eat eggs and dairy, and will never need such a product yourself:

Kitchen Project #148: Plant-Based Custard

• David has written a brilliant guide on how to find good flea markets in the French countryside:

  How to Find Flea Markets in France

• Emiko explores the problems invasive blue crabs are causing in the Venetian lagoon, and shares a delicious-looking recipe for cooking them in an attempt to make a (tiny) dent in the problem:

  Blue crab rigatoni with colatura di alici

• Ruth explores all the traditional flavours of autumn in Japan:

  Tasting Fall in Japan

• Giorgia introduces us to soursop fruit, explores why it it is so difficult to buy in the UK, speaks to one of it’s few importers, and discusses the best recipes to try once you’ve (eventually!) got your hands on one:

  Searching for Soursop

• Vidar takes us behind the scenes shooting images for his cookbooks. There are so many differences between countries and authors, but his experience really chimed with mine for One Pan Pescatarian:

  A cookbook photo shoot + 7 recipes

• Samantha shares some beautiful, less trodden destinations from her Balkan road trip, and some thoughts on truly switching off and living in the moment whilst travelling:

  Balkan Roadtrip Reverie

Only two new recipes from me this month (I’ve been working on some festive sides elsewhere I’m looking forward to getting online!) but they’re both beautifully autumnal. I’ve been wanting to share this Baked Pear and Cinnamon Rice Pudding I created for Macknade for ages now as it really is one of my favourite desserts I’ve ever written, with get ahead options too. Over on my blog, this Mushroom and Brandy Steak Sauce has been one of J & I’s at-home steak night favourites for a while now, perfect as a Friday night treat with a good bottle of red.

I do however have two more recipes for you which are not mine, but recipes I’ve enjoyed cooking which I want to flag to you! This Warm Beetroot, Blackberry & Goat’s Cheese Salad from the September issue of Waitrose Food was excellent: hearty, textured and flavourful with lovely creamy bursts from the goat’s cheese, and

Anna Jones

’s Crispy Bottomed Traybake Pizza from her latest book Easy Wins (pg 66) is honestly the best at-home pizza I’ve ever made. Not trying to be something thin and Neapolitan (because you simply can’t in a domestic oven no matter how hard you try) it’s a cross between a deep dish pizza and a focaccia, it’s an instant keeper. Just re-heat any leftovers in the oven not the microwave… where a slice will inexplicably give out over 1 tbsp of water! The book is worth buying, but the recipe has been re-published in full, complete with headnotes here if you want a little try-before-you-buy preview.

Regular readers of this bottom-of-the-newsletter ‘What I’ve Been Watching’ section will know how fussy J and I are about the TV we watch, so it is a section rarely utilised. However, last week we finished Ridley Scott’s epic 2018 one-off series The Terror which was hidden on ITV X (in the US it’s on Amazon Shudder and AMC Plus), and J saw clipped on TikTok of all places.

Based on the novel by Dan Simmons, it follows Captain Sir John Franklin's expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1845 aboard the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. I don’t want to share too much about what actually happened in history (J knew and I did not watching it and I think I hard the better experience for being totally in the dark) but the series is aesthetically and thematically chilling, surprising and well written with some brilliant performances. One to hunker down with this winter.