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Daube
Today, Sunday, is a day about which stern weather warnings have been issued.I don’t think I have ever heard a weather forecaster actually tell me to stay indoors with a good book, but that is what they...
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Someone died.Someone I never met, and did not know beyond a couple of exchanges of emails, but someone who was part of a profound change in my life.How long ago was it exactly?Fourteen years or...
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Marmalade – a long cut
I usually avoid any recipe that tells me its method is easy.Easy generally means short cuts; easy like as not means dried, packaged, microwaved, deep frozen and processed; garlic granules, tinned...
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Wassailing, Somerset 2008
In the days when Christmas Day was celebrated on 5 January Twelfth Night was celebrated twelve days later on 17 January.This date is now known as Old Twelfth Night and is a traditional date for...
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Hot pot
I’m sure everyone knows the background to the famous Lancashire hotpot; it’s one of those dishes that was prepared in the morning and put into the baker’s oven after the bread came out to cook long and...
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Raise your glasses please…
Yes, it’s Burns Night.All over the world people with only the faintest claim to Scots nationality will be getting in touch with their inner celt.People who never normally drink whisky, and wouldn’t...
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In Defence of Food
Michael Pollan’s new book In Defence of Food describes in detail how food, our food, real food, has been stolen from us, commercialised by the business of nutritionism.Not nutrition, he points out, but...
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A woodcock
Someone gave me something beautiful the other day.And I ate it.A woodcock is a small game bird, with a wondrous long beak.Its plumage is designed more for camouflage than for showing off, but that beak...
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Potted pheasant
It’s a bit late this year, because the pheasant season has just ended, but if some time you find yourself cooking pheasants and you have some left over this is a really good way to use it up.The number...
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Delia, for the love of God…
Last night I decided to rustle up some nice simple leek and potato soup because those were the ingredients to hand – a couple of leeks, an onion, some potatoes, some chicken stock and the remains of a...
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Chard labour
I acquired an allotment last autumn, or half an allotment to be exact.The day I heard about it I went down at sunset and looked at the huge piece of ground of which I had become the custodian.It seemed...
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Brotformen
If you make your own bread you will have come across the proving baskets known as bannetons.Traditionally these baskets are made of wicker or cane, some sort of breathable material, and often they have...
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Thomas Etty Esq, Heritage Seedsman
The small family firm of Thomas Etty, in Horton, Somerset, is the only heritage seedsman in the UK, quite possibly the only real heritage seedsman in the world.That’s quite a claim, but one that Ray...
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How to make butter
George Keen is one of the great Somerset cheesemakers; his family has been making traditional farmhouse cheddar for over a hundred years and Keen’s cheddar is one of the three great artisan cheddars in...
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Sea kale
I grew up in the North West of England, on the shores of the Irish Sea.We had a flat golden strand where lunatics went sand yachting, and a cinder track that ran along between the dunes and the golf...
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Rapeseed oil: the next big (yellow) thing
Stand by for two things.The first is the explosion of acid yellow rapeseed flowers that will dazzle the eyes in fields across the country in early summer.The second is the explosion of locally grown,...
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The heart of a tomato
This is one of the little tomato seedlings which are currently reaching for the sky on my windowsill. If April is, as T S Eliot wrote, the cruellest month, one of the reasons is because some of these...
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The Real Food Festival, London
Another food festival to add to the growing calendar.I liked it.I’ve been to a lot of food festivals in the last couple of years and I’m often disappointed, because the big boys always seem to crowd...
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Apple Blossom Day
May is Apple Blossom Time in Somerset.This is when the harvest to come in the autumn starts out on its annual journey.Never an easy time as wind and rain and frost can wreak havoc on the crop, but...
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Elderflower jelly
Everybody seems to be making jelly these days, jellies for cheese, jellies with herbs, jellies with and for everything.And as the hedgerows are frothing with elderflowers I thought I’d have a go at...
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