Focus on Berries
A summer staple, and one of the only fruits children willingly eat – berries hardly need an introduction! And while we cannot argue that they are perhaps best when freshly picked and ripe from the garden, the best thing about these bite-sized fruits is their versatility. Summer may only last for a few months, but […]
Anything but Basic
As in most areas, kitchen capabilities start with some basic building blocks – fundamentals that every home cook needs to know. Ok, so you know where the kettle is and how to turn it on, but to know instinctively how to make a white sauce, a bread dough or a sponge mix is a basic […]
Fibre Up
It turns out that eating what you can’t digest is actually good for you. Well, in some cases at least. We have been told a lot of things about our diet ever since childhood, including many appeals to up our fibre consumption. In fact, fibre is apparently so important that our mothers told us the […]
Low Fat – Fact or Fiction?
Low-fat foods seem to be a conundrum, a paradox and maybe more. The very reason we eat is to stockpile energy and resources, much the same way as a camel stockpiles water. So, eating low fat seems to be a little counterintuitive – doesn’t it? For example, low-fat milk is said to be 97 percent […]
Pickled and Preserved
Rows of gleaming jars lining pantry shelves, a batch of jam simmering on the stovetop, or the tingling smell of freshly made pickles are possibly the very essence of home cooking. There is something satisfying about turning surplus fruits and vegetables into jams and preserves that can be gifted to friends and family or stored […]
Pair with:
There are some things that just go together like peanut butter & jelly, fish & chips, or Tweedledee & Tweedledum. The abundance of culinary delights such as apples with cinnamon or lemon with lime always show up together, akin to Lewis Carroll’s enduring characters. But recently, we’ve seen a few food combinations that leave us […]
When life gives you lemons. . .squeeze them!
Like little fragments of sunshine, lemons bring a pop of colour and brightness to the kitchen, and their tartly tantalising flavour is second to none. A burst of fresh fragrance hits the air the moment you cut into one of these yellow gems. In terms of cooking essentials, we put the Citrus limon right up […]
Finger-Lickin’ Good!
At any given time someone, somewhere, is cooking chicken for dinner and, while it’s not for us to question the motives of these road-crossing birds, we can get down to some details on why they frequent our dinner tables so often. Let’s see what the statistics tell us. First, there are about 20 billion chickens […]
Restorative Remedy or Restaurant-Ready Repast?
For a quick lunch option, there’s nothing wrong with throwing a slice of bread in the toaster whilst you stir up a packet-mix soup. After all, what other meal can be prepared in less than 10 minutes and combines vegetables, protein and carbohydrates in every mouthful? Although the packet-mix variety might have doubtful nutritional value, […]
Garlic – not just for the Gallic!
A powerful food, flavour and medicinal wonder plant, the unattractively named ‘stinking rose’ has been popular for millennia. Pyramid-building slaves of Egypt were fed garlic to keep them going each day – look closely between the stones and you may see a preserved clove or two! Native to Central Asia, China is still the largest […]