Food & Place
Bowls of olives, plates of thinly sliced saucisson sec, and lots of opened bottles greeted us when the local white wines of 2018 were recently launched at the old cave co-operative in Saint Montan. The farmers who grew the grapes were keen to talk as they offered glasses of sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, and a superb…
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When I grew my own green asparagus in a long narrow border in my kitchen garden in Devon, fame arrived in the shape of a photographer from a leading weekly magazine. The only problem was the timing. Due to the lead time for magazines at that time, the special feature on my asparagus growing had…
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Lucas arrived to prune our olive trees and gave me a springtime present: six brown-shelled eggs from his hens. In his other hand, he held a large white egg, the first of the year from his only goose. ‘Ideal for a cake,’ he said and disappeared into the garden. I weighed the large white egg…
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Soon after my first book was published, the editor of my local Devon newspaper invited me to write a weekly food column. “But with no recipes,” was his only condition. So I sent in half a dozen pieces and he rang to say “Carry on, we enjoy reading them.” But what about the one that…
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A reader asks how she could bake one of my cake recipes in a different size tin from that I’d specified. I replied by explaining how to work out the capacity of a round, square or oblong cake tin mathematically so that the mixture would still turn out well. But then I realised that there…
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