Celebrating seasonal, homegrown, and wild food
It's wild garlic season and the culinary world is, once again, obsessed with the fresh, pungent deliciousness of these wild greens. Walks in the woods over Easter weekend in the glorious sunshine were made all the sweeter by being able to share it with family and soak up the delectable scent of all the yummy [...]
A little while back I would have been the first to complain that foragers seem to be obsessed with making everything into a syrup - especially flowers. However, I've gradually learned that it's one of the best ways of harnessing and preserving the flavour of many of nature's best, and most fleeting specialties. Making syrups [...]
I've loved magnolia trees ever since I was a child visiting my grandmother's cottage in spring and seeing the beautiful Magnolia soulangeana in bloom in her garden. There seem to be a lot of magnolia trees where we live - I feel very lucky to be able to walk down nearby streets and see them [...]
At this time of year there really is a sense of emerging as the blossoms and bulbs begin to flower. Saturday 20th March was the vernal/spring equinox which marks the final transition out of winter as the days and nights are of equal length. We spent the day outside on our allotment in the fresh [...]
I was inspired to try this combination when I came across a few chefs on Instagram playing around with celeriac in sweet recipes or cooked in a sweet-savoury way. Gill Meller's celeriac fudge ice cream was weird and intriguing to me, and then I came across someone using combining celeriac with frangipane (unfortunately I can't [...]
Wild garlic shoots have been spotted in the south and it never takes Instagram long at all to catch on to the start of wild garlic season. As soon as the young shoots emerge across the south of England there's a frenzy of photographs and recipes and the excitement for a new year of foraging [...]
The hungry gap is back for another year as we get through the last of the previous season's produce and wait for the next season to start. Thank goodness for the few winter stalwarts of purple sprouting broccoli, cabbages and kale, but also the wild mushrooms and three-cornered leek. At this time of year I'm [...]
'Tis the season of purple sprouting broccoli! Someone should tell our broccoli plants though as their purple florets are only just beginning to peep through and I can't wait to get my hands on them. Thankfully our local farmer's market is keeping us well-stocked in winter veggies to see us through until ours finally decides [...]
There's something very special to me about any plant that flowers throughout the winter. When the cold weather is biting, many of the trees are bare and the landscape's colour palette is more brown than green, seeing a pop of yellow really does brighten up your day. There's a saying that when gorse is out [...]
The story of this particular recipe begins - perhaps surprisingly - in Luang Prabang, Laos. You might be puzzled - how can a warming winter broth full of ingredients that grow abundantly in the wild during the coldest season here in the UK have anything to do with a small city in a tropical country [...]
