What a terrible waste!

I spent the last couple of days in Dublin, judging the World Cheese Awards (see right). You can read more about it on my cheese blog, The Cheeselover, but there was one thing I wanted to share with you here.At the end of the judging all the cheeses - some 2000 of them, worth thousands of pounds were apparently destroyed, for 'health and safety' reasons. They were apparently going to be rendered into 'cheese powder' whatever that is. I'm sure the organisers are abiding by the letter of the law. Some of the cheeses were laid out overnight and certainly it would have been foolish not to dispose of...

Read more ►

French-style pork chops with cream and mustard

It's been a bit of a crazy week in Bristol. The long-awaited £500 million shopping centre Cabot Circus has just opened with huge razmatazz. We went down for the opening of Harvey Nichols (a friend was doing the PR!) which bizarrely included a striptease by Dita Von Teese. There are apparently 25 (twenty five) restaurants in the new development. How will they possibly fill them all? Easily if the crowds this week are anything to go by. Certainly in London restaurants are still heaving. I tried to get into two yesterday and they couldn't offer a table until after 2pm. I thought we were supposed...

Read more ►

Chaps, cheeks and trotters

News in the Guardian today that Waitrose is to start selling Bath chaps, ox cheeks and trotters from next month. Which sounds like good news except for the fact that it will almost certainly drive the price of these thrifty cuts up. Lamb shanks, once a cheap food, are no longer a bargain buy. Ox cheeks (which are delicious) will probably follow suit, particularly if the other supermarkets decide they have to stock them too.And I wonder how many people will actually cook with them? I must confess that even when I was researching The Frugal Cook I didn't use any of them (though I did use ox liver,...

Read more ►

Classy chocolate at a budget price

Although I wouldn't describe myself as a chocaholic I do have a weakness for fine dark chocolate which I justify on the basis that it's good for me.I'm always on the lookout for the perfect bar but until this week the ones I've liked have all been pretty pricey. Except for one we buy in France which it would be pointless to recommend to you here.Now I - or to be strictly truthful - my husband has found a really superb one in the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference range. It's called São Tomé and comes from the African island of the same name which I'm embarrassed to admit I'd never heard of. It not...

Read more ►

Tough times ahead

It's hard to read today's headlines without a shudder. Even though city boys, who for years have enjoyed ludicrously inflated bonuses, might not be the immediate object of our sympathy you have to feel sorry for the hundreds of ordinary people who have lost their jobs. And there will be more casualties, of that I'm sure.Losing your job is tough. It's not just the financial implications, worrying though they will be to those who are mortgaged to the hilt. It's the loss of identity that is bound up in a job and the consequent lack of self worth that often ensues.Adapting to a situation where you...

Read more ►

Two thrifty soups

This week has been dominated by the produce I bought from the Organic Food Festival. Cooking it hasn’t quite gone to plan as I had to go to London for two days but earlier in the week I used the beets to make a favourite soup which my daughter Jo invented - carrot borscht. The addition of carrots - and a skinned tomato - is an inspiration. It sweetens the soup and rounds out the flavours. I used the chicken stock I’d made from the carcass of the organic chicken I bought which wasn’t quite as strongly flavoured as the game or beef stock I’d normally use so added a scant teaspoon of Bovril stirred...

Read more ►

Introducing The Cheeselover

A new book project (cheese). A new blog - The Cheeselover.Must be mad but here's the thinking. I could write about cheese on The Frugal Cook but it would take the blog over for the next few months and cheese, as we all know, is far from frugal these days.It also helps, I've found, writing a blog as you write a book. Book writing is a long and lonely journey and you don't see any results for months but blogging is immediate and gratifying, enabling you to share the ideas and thoughts you have as you go along with fellow enthusiasts.You can also take and share your own photos which publishers understandably...

Read more ►

Farewell Fresh & Wild

As we passed the Bristol branch of Fresh & Wild earlier today we noticed huge notices announcing a closing down sale. By the time we got there a couple of hours ago the shelves were nearly stripped bare.Word had spread rapidly on the local grapevine and the store was crammed with bargain-hunters, gathering like vultures over the carcass of this once-hip organic hypermarket. I don't think it was the fact that it was organic that did for it so much as the prices. It took a discount of 50% to bring the shoppers - including us - in. (We normally shop for that kind of produce in our local health...

Read more ►

Why it's still worth buying organic

I spent the best part of today at the Organic Food Festival in Bristol, doing a demonstration in the Bordeaux Quay demo kitchen (thanks to all those brave souls who turned up in the pouring rain) then wandering round the stalls.Thankfully there was little sign of the reported slump in organic sales. Although I would have said the numbers were down marginally on last year there was still an impressively large number of people milling - or rather sploshing - around. (When is it ever going to stop raining?) The media who love a bad news story are convinced we've all switched to shopping at Aldi and...

Read more ►

Off to press!

It's been a frantic couple of days - my last chance to read through The Frugal Cook before it goes to press.It's a frustrating process because however many times you look at it - in fact, however many pairs of eyes go over it, silly mistakes always slip through. The author is the last person to spot them, being so familiar with the text.The compensation is that you finally get to see what the book is going to look like when it's published and I have to say the design is simply brilliant, with wonderfully original, quirky illustrations. (Thanks to Matt, Claire and Andy!) You can't see it that clearly...

Read more ►

A tale of two tomatoes

One rarely acknowledged reason why recipes don’t always work out is the quality of the ingredients. Take a look at this picture. This is the tomato salad I made yesterday from locally grown tomatoes in the south of France (which incidentally cost 1 euro (81p) a kilo). All you have to do is cut them up, season them with salt and pepper, pour over a little olive oil, toss them and leave them for 10 minutes or so. Then just before serving them sprinkle over a little red wine vinegar and some fresh basil (2.50€ for a bushy plant that doesn’t die 3 days after you get it home). The lavish amount of...

Read more ►