My Kitchen

Say hello to halloumi

Say hello to halloumi

After fla­vour, I con­sider tex­ture to be the most import­ant ele­ment of any recipe. This salad com­bines three lay­ers of my favour­ite tex­ture — crisply crunchy, prefer­ably from being recently […]

Sweet tooth

Sweet tooth

Being born in April, one’s mind can’t help but turn, cur­rently, to thoughts of cake. Actu­ally, my mind turns to thoughts of cake most days of the year. For those of […]

Last of the summer vines

Last of the summer vines

There’s a par­tic­u­lar kind of Itali­an recipe that I love, where there are hardly any ingredi­ents and it’s all so aggress­ively simple that it feels like it almost shouldn’t work, […]

Herald of summer

Herald of summer

I love tra­di­tion­al asparagus rolls, and will guard a plate of them pos­sess­ively while rap­idly deplet­ing its con­tents if they’re ever served up at a party. How­ever, asparagus sold in […]

Summer sago

Summer sago

I didn’t know what to make of sago when I first encountered it — strange slip­pery see-through little bubbles, like shiny beads or bubbles in a rock pool or, well, […]

Spring scallops

Spring scallops

When put­ting togeth­er my Menu of Memor­ies to cel­eb­rate 22 years of the White House, this dish was high on my list of poten­tial stars. In the end I decided […]

Spring sweetness

Spring sweetness

Septem­ber is that strange time when spring is offi­cially here but winter is still insist­ing on mak­ing itself felt. You’re either freez­ing and rain-soaked or skip­ping through mead­ows gath­er­ing flowers […]

Pulling pork

Pulling pork

One Sunday a few years ago my Aro Val­ley flat­mate Edward cooked pork all day — eight hours in the oven. I wondered if he was slightly mad. If nothing […]

Tarte Tatin

Tarte Tatin

The clas­sic French dessert tarte Tat­in is simple to make and, with its com­bin­a­tion of light golden puff pastry, soft juicy apples and deli­cious car­a­mel, is a fam­ily favour­ite. It’s […]

Pronouncing pissaladière

Pronouncing pissaladière

There’s some­thing extremely sat­is­fy­ing about bak­ing bread from scratch — play­ing around with the yeast, get­ting your hands into a com­pletely sticky mess knead­ing the dough, and end­ing up covered […]