Posted in alcohol, baking, British, butter, Christmas, culture, custard, Delia Smith, dessert, easy, England, festival, festivals, fruit, history, holiday, holidays, nuts, spices, tradition, winter on Jan 2nd, 2012
Most Brits associate mincemeat with Christmas – its intoxicating mix of fruit, spices, booze, nuts and mixed peel provide Pavlovian stimuli, stirring memories of cherubic choirs a-caroling, roasted poultry, and the Queen’s speech – whereas I associate it with Easter, because it was always around then that we finally ran out of mince pies. I [...]
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A lot has been made of the glory and diversity of America’s road-foods by such hit US TV shows as Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, which, if you haven’t seen it, features a bleach-blond moron traveling the highways and byways of this great nation gorging himself on deep-fried hamburgers, the world’s spiciest chicken wings, and platters of [...]
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Posted in Alba, celery, culture, Garlic, Italian, Italy, lemon, octopus, Olive Oil, Puglia, Pugliese, salad, seafood, tourism, travel, winter on Feb 25th, 2009
Looking for a ray of sunshine in your diet?
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Posted in beef tallow, British, carrots, chicken, chicken stock, England, flavor, flavour, flour, Garlic, herbs, lard, leek, London, Manchester, onions, parsley, parsnips, Potato, Recipe, stew, suet, thyme, vegetables, weather, winter on Jan 16th, 2009
File this one under “utter fabrications told to you by older sibling and believed for too long”. I must have been very young when my sister (15 months my senior) informed me that I should be wary of eating my grandmother’s suet dumplings because suet was the gooey material supporting bovine eye-balls. Quite where she got this [...]
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Posted in alcohol, alcoholic drink, anise, bay, beverage, British, brown sugar, Christmas, cinnamon, culture, drink, easy, England, holiday, holidays, juice, lemon, orange juice, oranges, Recipe, spices, sweet, tradition, wine, winter on Dec 20th, 2008
Even though mulled wine should remind me of being in the church choir as a cherub-faced youngster and singing Christmas carols with frosty breath overlooking a seasonally-decorated nave and a sea of pink-cheeked parishoners, it doesn’t. In spite of this being the way I was introduced to this most famous Yuletide beverage, my abiding memories [...]
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Posted in America, appetizer, British, Christmas, embarrassment, family, hazelnuts, manwich, top five, tradition, winter on Dec 7th, 2008
Not your average Christmas meal… We couldn’t let this month go by without doing some sort of “holiday themed” post. We were scratching our head trying to come up with this months “Top 5″ contest thinking of such winners as, “Top 5 Most Friggin’ Annoying Christmas Tunes” and “Top 5 Christmas Sweaters Your Mom Owns” [...]
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Posted in anchovies, appetizer, butter, condiments, easy, Fall, fondue, Garlic, grilled, Italian, Italy, Liguria, Olive Oil, Piemonte, Potato, Recipe, tradition, travel, vegetables, winter on Nov 29th, 2008
And, while you’re at it, good fellow, I’ll have a warm bath with virtually anything you’ve got on the menu: pasta, potatoes, fish, chicken, soup, bread… Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… A man goes to the doctor complaining of neck ache. The doctor gives him some painkillers telling him to take two [...]
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Posted in braised, dining, easy, eating, Garlic, healthy, Jacques Pepin, lamb, lower fat, Meat, mushroom, mushrooms, onions, pressure-cooker, Recipe, Recipes, rosemary, safety, savory, shanks, thyme, water, wine, winter on Sep 18th, 2007
So maligned are pressure-cookers that it seems almost sacrilegious of a food blog like this, that likes to extol the virtues of fresh ingredients and traditional cooking methods, to even consider adding a recipe that calls for using one. Undaunted, here we are flaunting convention and defying the culinary thought-police once more with a recipe [...]
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