Food Archives

River Cottage Festival – Fun, Food and Serious Chat

A food festival that really delivers: River Cottage Festival

A Simple Tasty Tomato Tart Recipe

A crips pastry case filled with delicious heirloom tomatoes. This recipe is easy and delicious

Looking for a tasty tomato recipe? Try this flavoursome tomato tart

Clotted Cream a must for Afternoon Tea

All homemade: Clotted cream, scone and strawberry jam

It’s an essential of afternoon tea, but have you ever thought how clotted cream is made?

Bees abuzz in the city

Discovering beekeeping in an unlikely location on top of a hotel.

Tasting and eating wine

If you’re not a wine expert, how do you discover a wine you’ll like? And will it inspire you to cook a great sauce?

Make the perfect coffee ice cream

It’s all about the coffee

The first time I ate a Café Liègeois was in Ajaccio, Corsica. It’s a beautiful town full of grand buildings – blink and you might think yourself in Paris. A fitting place to discover a grown up indulgent dessert.

The Café Liègeois is made with just three ingredients: espresso coffee, coffee ice cream, and whipped cream: the French take on an ice cream sundae. Rather than getting its name from the Belgian city of Liège it was renamed from Cafe Viennoisduring the First World War in homage to the siege of Liège .

Discovering Cotswolds food and drink

If you visit a new area, where do you choose to eat and drink? Of course you ask people you meet, but with an area as large as the Cotswolds, you’ll inevitably not find all the gems.

The Cotswold Cook Book will help. It celebrates the amazing food and drink in the Cotswold and includes more than 40 recipes. I’ve been reading through and getting very hungry. I’ve also started to plan visits to many of the places mentioned. What better way than to read a recipe and think, “I’d like to visit and try more”.

Get growing mushrooms

I think growing mushrooms could get addictive.

A few weeks ago we visited Feed Bristol a project run by the Avon Wildlife Trust in Bristol for a look at the business co-located on the site. One business, was growing mushrooms on a small scale. Imagine plastic boxes a good 90 x 60 x 60 cm seeded with various types of spawn. Some were located in a polytunnel under the benches and if you peeked, you could see some “sprouting”. We saw the amount of the hard work goes into making the medium on which the mushrooms will grow based on wheat straw.

All aboard the SS Great Britain

What makes a great day out with children? Roaming freely and the opportunity to relax over tasty food come high up on the list

Spicy Squid Stew – Comfort on a plate

The finished squid stew - doesn't it look appetising?

A warming, tasty recipe

When challenged to create a recipe using new potatoes, I immediately thought of this dish. I know many of you love crispy rings of squid, but have you ever tried squid stewed? Most people haven’t.

Indeed if you’ve ever tried to cook it, you might have said “never again” as the squid turned out rubbery. Not with this recipe. It’s easy to prepare and it’s a dish that you can leave to cook slowly whilst you go off and do other things, the result is amazingly delicious and tender. Spanish inspired flavours including smoked paprika make this dish very special