Just like that, the year is teetering over into its dark half. It’s still warm enough that my tomato plants continue to bear golden fruit, but the wind is getting colder,...
There’s nothing like summer to remind you of the joy of simplicity. This is the season of the ingredient, of the stripped-back and uncooked. The best-eaten-raw, the garnished-only-with-salt. Of heirloom tomatoes...
For all of my life, I was totally disinterested in Caesar salad… well, at least until the other week. How can I explain what changed? Maybe it was just the gradual...
I’ve come around to courgettes. I used to find them watery and insipid, a seasonal vegetable that grew in large gluts that were inversely proportional to its deliciousness, but I’m beginning...
The arrival of spring usually makes me a little loopy. It’s not only the warmer temperatures, the scent of blossoms on the air, the blessedly later sunsets. It’s also the new...
A Sunday roast is a special thing – or at least it is for a lot of people. Blame my US upbringing, but I never felt that attached to the...
I’ve come around on Valentine’s Day. February is short on festive feeling; why not take the opportunity to make a special occasion out of what would otherwise be another grey Wednesday?...
For years, I thought I hated turkey, scarred by the overcooked turkeys served at childhood Thanksgivings. Who needs turkey when you can have duck or goose – or even roast chicken, half...
This time of year in England can be hard to love. It’s one of the biggest things I miss about living in the States, where autumn (fall) is treated like a...
There are few better teachers – or creative constraints – than necessity. The best of my cooking over the past year has arisen out of leftovers that urgently needed using:...
I’m not on TikTok (after spending much of the past decade donating large parcels of my brain to social media, I’m moved to defend the last stake of my sanity),...
At most weddings, the food is barely worth remembering – but at this one, there were empanadas. Beef empanadas, cheese empanadas, all dressed in a deliriously spicy orange sauce. I remember them,...
I am a creature of habit. When July comes, I know it’s time to eat as many tomatoes and peaches and nectarines as I can. The opposite of a squirrel hoarding...