Nibbles #37
The best, tried-and-tested method for making pasta salad, lessons in Japanese table manners, and my favourite new chicken & apricot recipe for the 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.
I’m hard at work writing and developing recipes for what I hope will be a re-launch of ingredient, tentatively penciled in for the end of the summer. After a bit of experimentation with a looser way of doing things, I’m going to go back to the ‘one ingredient, three recipes’ a month format I originally launched with. I’ll keep you posted on all the details, including the resumption of paid subscriptions.
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Claire, on what she as a vegan fed her parents (who are highly suspicious of vegan food!) when they came to stay:
I also want to try her Honeysuckle sparkling wine:
Also, I love the website Just One Cookbook as an essential guide to all things to do with Japanese cooking. Recently, I’ve found Namiko’s posts on Essential Japanese Dining Etiquette and Table Manners, and on mastering sogigiri (the Japanese slanted slicing technique) really helpful / interesting.
Audrey introduces us to Moitié-Moitié, Marseille’s own unique pizza snack:
Just two new recipes from me this month, but they’re both perfect for summer entertaining! For my Macknade residency this month I’ve got a dish that has to be one of my favourite barbecue recipes I’ve ever written: Barbecued Chicken with Grilled Apricot & Thyme Relish. It’s so simple, it looks so striking piled together on a serving platter, and grilled apricots are just something else if you’ve never tried them, the method really playing up their natural honey notes.
Over on my blog and inspired by two fantastic salads I ate in Ortigia last month, my Sicilian Orange and Fennel Salad with Anchovies is the perfect make-ahead salad for summer entertaining - including barbecues. If usually you think raw fennel is a bit much, I still urge you to give this salad a go as I’ve incorporated an extra step to prepare the fennel that I think makes all the difference!
Yes, Guy Richie has made another mob-related show, and as you’d expect it is very good. But it you have Paramount Plus, MobLand is worth a watch for the performances alone, but also as they’ve managed to produce a script that is not as predictable as his usual offerings. There are honestly some what the fuck? moments you won’t have seen coming, even if the tale of warring mob families has been done hundreds of times before.
On the Amazon Prime front we actually watched a film the other week that also held our attention in a way that streaming services don’t usually manage. Starring Hugh Grant in what seems to be his new ‘creepy psychopath’ phase, Heretic is a psychological drama with hints of horror and the gothic. A young pair of Mormon missionaries knock on his door with hopes of a religious conversion and find themselves stuck in a twisted game of cat-and-mouse heavy with religious imagery.
On Wednesday evening I was out in my parents’ fruit cage picking some of their bounty (the raspberries went with what of their strawberries the squirrels did not get and my Mum’s homemade vanilla ice cream, but the peas were just for snacking!), but I’m happy to report that next week I will be picking the first ever beetroot I’ve managed to grow from seed to proper veg! I’m planning on making this Greek Beetroot Salad. My little gem and cos lettuces have now all been eaten (though my Dad has sowed more in their place) and I’ve also taken some time this week to tie up my Crown Prince Squash, and re-pot my cucuzza seeds I sought out and rapidly sowed after I fell in love with their tenerumi greens in Sicily.
Oooh, I'm thrilled to be included as a Nibble, thank you. And congratulations on your first beetroot! 👏👏