Do you ever just thank God for the Ziplock bag? I do. I do it all the time. Food that’s waiting for you in the fridge, from the seasoned depths of a Ziplock bag, means that something phenomenal is coming to the table and there’s very little work left to do once that bag is … Continue reading PICKLED LEMON, OLIVE & TOMATO CHICKEN BAKE WITH ORZO
Everybody’s got a lasagne recipe Even the shakiest of kitchen-phobes somewhere in the depths of their culinary cranium, have a lasagne recipe. I often hear people who aren’t the most confident of cooks, punctuate their anti-kitchen confessions with ‘But I do make a good lasagne!’ And I’m not mad at this. I think so long … Continue reading A REALLY RELIABLE LASAGNE
The thread of Nigella is strong here. There’s a slight web of inspiration happening with this recipe that meets somewhere in between Nigella’s Italian inspired cookbook, Nigellissima (2012) and Simply Nigella (2015) with a little added layover in Jack Monroe’s Tin Can Cook (2019) which, in true culinary respect, is the definition of a fusion … Continue reading SPICY MACKEREL LINGUINE WITH SUMAC & GARLIC BUTTER
A ragù is emotional. I’ve always found, after many years of cooking, that a ragù/ meat sauce, is deeply personal to everybody that cooks it. Even people who hate cooking/ don’t cook will always say to me that they make ‘a good bolognese’ or ‘a good lasagne’, and while this makes me happy, because I’d … Continue reading BEEF & ‘NDUJA RAGÙ
There is a scenic recipe route for cooking meatballs. Lavish, sepia toned landscape affairs of frying onions, soaking cuts of bread in milk, cracking eggs, grating garlic, combining two bricks of ground beef and sausage and then a laborious amount of dexterity. This isn’t that recipe. If that recipe is hiking the Himalayas to meatballs, … Continue reading QUICK MEATBALLS & SPICY PEPPER SAUCE
Nigel Slater, who I consider to be somewhat of a paternal figure to me in the kitchen, once said, ‘Whatever the xenophobic meat-‘n’-two-veggists say, pasta is now our national dish. The family no longer unites over a joint of beef. It unites over a bowl of pasta’. I’m sure the meat-‘n’-two-veggists reading this will be … Continue reading CRUSHED PEA, PRESERVED LEMON & PISTACHIO PASTA
Mussels are just that thing, aren’t they? One of those things that look like a hell of a lot more posh than they actually are. Yet people are still infinitely frightened of them. Those that like cooking think they’re hard to cook and those that hate themselves hate the way they taste. How can you … Continue reading VERMOUTH & GARLIC BUTTER MUSSELS
Whenever I am away from my Kitchen for an extended period, I always start missing it like a family member. I start feeling like I’ve neglected it. Like it’s pining for me. Like it’s waiting for me to respond to a text that I’ve left on two passive aggressive blue ticks. I’ve had a manic … Continue reading SCRATCH BREADCRUMB & BACON PASTA
When I make pasta, I cannot stop myself from making enough to feed an army. There’s nothing like the buttery taste of pasta and I am very proud of myself in the quantity of pasta I can eat in one sitting. As I told you before, I impressed an Italian chef who has been working … Continue reading CARROT & HAZELNUT PESTO
“There is no such thing as Italian cooking”. This was the first thing my mentor Marcella told me as we sat down for my first cookery lesson in Florence. Sat between two bookcases of thick cookbooks (some of which were her own) and cradling an espresso in her hands, Marcella told me that Italian cooking … Continue reading FLORENTINE RAGÙ
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 