My favourite place to walk is on the Dorset coast, from the ruined village of Tyneham, through woods carpeted with wild garlic in the spring, down to the pebbly beach. The abandoned cottages, empty since the government commandeered them in 1943, are still standing, but only just. Walking there yesterday with the sun shining and […]
Month: August 2011
Posh Cheese on Toast – aka Parmesan Cream on Tomato and Olive Toast with Edible Flower Salad
Cheese on toast was a wonderful ally when I worked nights as a breakfast television reporter. The shift started at 9pm and ended at 9am… and it was brutal. Complexion, fashion sense, good temper and appetite all disappeared through the metal-framed windows of BBC Television Centre by about 3.25 each morning. Cheese on toast became […]
Spinach and Sorrel Soup, The Sonnet
Soup is one of the best foods ever invented, so why are most of the references to it in literature unashamedly dismal? Soup is usually a metaphor for hard times, dour landladies and dubious chefs. The 20th century American author Margaret Halsey captured the ‘sad soup genre’ perfectly when she said that the broth she […]
Review: In at the Deep End by Jake Tilson
Wafts of fishy scent drift insistently into my nostrils as I talk to artist and writer Jake Tilson in his Peckham studio. ‘Oh, it’s that’, he says, pointing upwards, when I ask him what the smell is. Hanging from the ceiling above my head is a large dried cod. The wizened, grey fish is just […]