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Week 22 - Polpo
This week's #cookbookchallenge is from a much-loved classic; Polpo. A cookbook gifted to me by Stealth that features Venetian inspired recipes from the London-based restaurant chain that, as I sit...
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week 23 - Bocca - Jacob Kennedy
After my lofty ambitions following the last #cookbookchallenge, this week I dialled it back and just made a bowl of pasta. Orecchiette with n'duja, red onion, tomato and rocket, to be precise. Well, I...
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week 24 - My Lisbon - Nuno Mendes
While the world is a very different place to the one we knew six months ago in many ways, for the the Ewing and I at least, life has rolled on by without too much upheaval. We're lucky to both be...
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week 25 - Flavour Thesaurus - Niki Segnit
One of my favourite cookbooks isn't really a cookbook at all. Instead, Nikki Segnit's flavour thesaurus is a wheel of different ingredients that have been paired up with each other to create different...
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week 26 - Kitchen Diaries II - Nigel Slater
The English summer is now in full flow (as I write this while sitting under a blanket) and so we've been spending even more time arguing down at the allotment after work. Thankfully the soft fruits are...
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week 27 - Ice Cream Book - Humphry Slocombe
2020: another week; another ecancelled event; this time Wimbledon. And, although I wouldn't have been queuing in my tent in SW19 to sit on Henman Hill, there's nothing like getting home from work and...
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week 28 - Jamie's Italian - Jamie Oliver
While it's easy to focus on the all things we had to stop doing, it's also nice to experience some 'firsts' as lockdown has eased. First draft pint beer; first brunch out; first train journey; first...
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week 29 - The Barbecue Bible - Steven Raichlen
Apart from briefly developing a dangerous online shopping habit - natural wine, posh hand cream and boxes of British cheeses being delivered to the door seemed pretty essential purchases when you can...
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week 30 - Every Grain of Rice - Fuschia Dunlop
While I'm sure I will look back at the blog in times to come and marvel at how well we ate during this strange period, the reality is that about 80 per cent of our time since March has been spent...
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week 31 - Ottolenghi
Stealth's birthday celebration have featured several times before on the blog, including summer strawberry cakes, handmade noodles, and several weekends where we probably didn't feel like eating much...
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week 32 Delia's Summer Collection - Delia Smith
'Delia's tarragon chicken' always reminds me of my family. It was a family favourite when I growing up and my Mum and Sister still mention it when we talk about what we are going to have for dinner in...
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week 33 - Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery
 Following hot on the heels of one childhood classic - the infamous Delia's tarragon chicken, from her Summer Collection - this week features another beloved influence from when I was growing up -...
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week 34 - Nigella Bites - Nigella Lawson
Despite my 'normal' working life ceasing on a grey Thursday at the end of March, work has continued at a manic pace, unabated by global events. If anything, things have been even busier than normal....
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week 35 - Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat - Samin Nosrat
One of the things I was most looking forward to about #cookbookchallenge was creating fancy confections with involved instructions, precise weighing and measuring and the kind of accuracy that normally...
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week 36 - Simon Hopkinson Cooks
Once upon a time lamb shanks, like pork belly, oxtail and oysters - the latter famously ending up in Victorian pies to bulk them out (although considering they also drank beer as the water was so...
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week 38 The Border Cookbook - Cheryl and Bill Jamison
While it feels like ancient history now (as I sit here writing this on the eve of Lockdown 2.0...) when Lockdown 1.0 was first announced, the public seemed to collectively lose their minds. Loo roll on...
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week 37 Everyday Harumi
When the Ewing and I were both penniless library workers and travelled to Japan, I was preparing myself for it to be so ruinously expensive that we would have to subsist on packet noodles; strange...
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week 39 A Bird in the Hand - Diana Henry
Joining the litany of average things to happen this year, my oven has now given us the ghost. Well, that's not strictly true. The fan has gone in the main oven, but the top oven - which is the size of...
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week 40 What to Eat Now - Valentine Warner
You think you go on holiday to get away from routine, but somehow - after fortuitously managed to escape to Cumbria for a fortnight between lockdowns - we still ended up cooking a roast in our cottage...
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week 41 - Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook
 After roast lamb shoulder with onion sauce the previous Sunday, this week it was roast pork. And, again keeping with the theme of local ingredients, the meat - a piece of rolled loin - was bought from...
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week 42 - Lakeland Cookery
The last part of the Cumbrian Trilogy was, unlike many final instalments, a stone cold classic; the cheese scone. It's not a spoiler to reveal that I am currently sans a main oven at home (mainly as I...
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week 43 - Falling Cloudberries - Tessa Kiros
In lockdown part one, back when we couldn't leave the house without 'a reasonable excuse', our Saturday routine mainly consisted of watching Saturday Kitchen and then hiking up the hill to the butchers...
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week 44 - River Cottage Everyday - Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall
I remember borrowing a copy of River Cottage Everyday from the library over a decade ago, when when it first came out, and excitedly poring over the lunch ideas, such as the mackerel with puy lentils,...
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week 45 - New British Classics - Gary Rhodes
A neighbour of my Mum's gives her a brace of pheasants every Christmas. The first time she drove by and offered her some, my Mum enthusiastically agreed, peered into the car boot and was greeted by two...
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week 46 - Fire Island - Eleanor Ford
Of the (literally) thousands of things I have cooked for the Ewing, there is only one she hasn't eaten; my beef rendang. Describing it as 'gritty' (I wasn't allowed to use her coffee grinder to grind...
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