Food, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Coronation Toad-in-the-Hole

With May being coronation month and all, the NYTimes Cooking section has a selection of dishes it deems British, and suitable for the occasion.  I’ve made a few of these recipes and can recommend the Vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie, Bacon-Wrapped Dates, and the Orange Marmalade Cake. The Cider-Spiked Fish Pie was OK. Classic Scones are always good but best eaten in…

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Food, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Pop Some Seeds and Get Cooking!

Long before everyone aspired to be a gourmet chef and cooking programs were all the rage, it wasn’t so easy to get good advice about what to cook and how to do it. Of course, the posh papers had their Sunday supplements with glossy accounts of exotic meals first tasted in far-off places like Mykonos, Sicily, and the South of…

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Food, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Bread Baking Freestyle

I enjoy reading the daily newsletter from the cooking crew at the NY Times. Always some interesting new ideas and recipes to try out. From today there’s Melissa Clark’s new sheet-pan dinner of roast chicken, plums and red onions. Sam Sifton comments: “She came up with it as a dish appropriate to Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which begins…

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Education, Food, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

Blackberry and Apple Crumble

If we had some bacon we could have bacon and eggs but we’ve got no eggs. That First World War catch phrase came to mind as I was contemplating an idle wish to make blackberry and apple crumble. I imagine a Bruce Bairnsfather cartoon with Old Bill and Alf or Bert grousing about the food while the whizz bangs fly…

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