Summer Sauces

When you get right down to it, most of the ingredients in our food our quite dull: meat, starch, veg. If you want to improve them you have to dress them up. Onions and nuts to the rice, butter and lemon over the broccoli, and hollandaise over the meat (and everything else for that matter.… Continue reading Summer Sauces

Greek Gifts

I was feeling all zorba-esque this week, so I bought three Greek wines to try. If you’re thinking retsina, you probably have bad memories of a party long long ago involving inappropriate behaviour. No one who actually likes wine, likes retsina. Near as I can tell, the popularity of retsina stems from a) smoking so… Continue reading Greek Gifts

Angostura Bitters & the Banshee!

The thing you have to understand with cocktails (and all food) is that astringency is important. Celery is astringent. Grapefruit is astringent. Romaine is astringent. The absence of astringency begats a palate for fat people. Angostura Bitters is widely available and perhaps the most useful cocktail ingredient ever invented. It is gentian extract. Apparently it… Continue reading Angostura Bitters & the Banshee!