The following is a base for chip shop and katsu curry. In other words when you want a quick fix artificial curry. Ingredients 2 tbsp chicken fat 1 tbsp flour 1 to 2 tbsp medium roasted curry powder 1 tsp turmeric ( for katsu curry option see Method) 3 tbsps of stock from a roasted chicken carcass - the stuff you normally make the gravy with Water to dilute as appropriate Method Make a roux and then stir in the curry powder and turmeric if you’re making katsu. If you can get a

We recently bought some chilli seedlings locally and brought them home to put under our grow lights. All was good for a few days until we spotted tiny black flies hovering around them. After some research it seemed apparent that we had brought home fungus gnats and so, fearful of the impact of our biosecurity measures in the apartment, we set about researching suitable pest control methods. It seems that these little blighters spend their larval stage in the pot compost aro

Rightly or wrongly this was one of tastiest and most colourful pad thais that I have made in recent times. Technically it is not a pad thai, it is more like a warm salad but I don't actually care about that. I couldn't get beansprouts separately so had to buy a pepper and peashoot salad pack from M & S. The original recipe source some iterations back is from Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey. The origins of the dish are not very ancient, arising as it did in the 1940s driven

It's been a while since we had shakshuka for breakfast but the sight of a jar claiming to be a shakshuka in a local shop set us wondering how it had dropped off our breakfast radar. My basis for the recipe is Ottolenghi's Jerusalem as we used to do that on the Aga when we lived in Frome. Ingredients 1 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp harissa paste ( I used Belazu) 1 tbsp tomato puree 1 large red pepper cut into small/medium dice 1 small green chilli deseeded and sliced 3 cloves garlic

Finished Demi-baguettes I needed some bread for lunch and hadn't got the time to go out and buy it between phone calls. I decided to make some small baguette style rolls although I didn't have the time to process them as I should have. I used instead a combination of normal kneading and stretch & fold techniques over a shorter period. The result was quite successful as I hope you can see from the finished product. (I'll refer to the variation between the rolls in the Observa

We recently visited the Lake District for the first time ever and found that immensely entertaining. It rained pretty much every day but that is what waterproofs are for, isn't it? We drove there from Dartmouth and decided to stop off en route both on the way up and on the way back. The nearest halfway town , (sort of) was Ludlow and we booked there both ways at an old inn called The Feathers. The Feathers Inn Ludlow must have the biggest collection of 17th Century houses th

I first published an article in June 2025 about our move into an apartment after many years with a substantial garden in Frome, Somerset. this is an update as we start to head out of our first winter here. Being both passionate gardeners, the whole loss of the outside space had the potential to leave a nasty wound on our mind set and so we embarked on a period of self-justification about what we would do and could do with the 77 square metres of indoor space that we now had

Our second visit to the Vigeland sculptures in Oslo took place in November 2024 where on a relatively sunny day we wandered about in a gentle -2C taking more time to look at the sculptures in more detail. This time we weren't walking the grandson ( although he was wrapped up in a pushchair) and we were able to view the separate components of the installation. The gallery below here is of the Monolith The Monolith stands at the centre and is the highest and tallest part of t

I fancied doing a chicken jalfrezi recipe in the style of an English Curry House as two of my sons were partial to it. I accept of course that an authentic Bengali recipe would not have the peppers anyway. Ingredients (serves 4) 2 large chicken breasts 2 tbsp ghee 1 large onion thickly sliced 1 red bell pepper (also thickly sliced) 1 green bell pepper (also thickly sliced) 1 yellow bell pepper (also thickly sliced) 2 to 3 green chilies, slit 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 tbsp fr

This is a really simple and delciious meal that I adapted from a recipe I read for salmon. Personally I love scallops with a passion both for their texture and taste as well as their ease of cooking. All in all this recipe makes for a simple and tasty meal that is a joy to cook up. The ingredients are short and sweet and the method is pretty straight forward. I had to use frozen scallops in this recipe as it was done just after Christmas but always use fresh scallops if you

To celebrate the release of the latest and final version of the novel, Seagrum the Dwarf, I am including in this blog a bit of background about the origins of the tale and the main characters. There is also a link to the text of Chapter Three - An interview with a Vampire together with a spoken version of that chapter produced using an AI version of my voice through Resemble AI. The graphics are produced by Chat Gtp but all the text (warts and all) are proudly produced by hum

We put an order in for a halibut from a well known food store and when we went to collect it on 23rd December it wasn't available. This despite being informed the day before that our order was ready for collection and so on. In fact they failed to deliver four of the nine items we ordered but let's not go there right now. So at 14:00 the day before Christmas Eve, our Christmas Eve meal had gotten lost in the ether. There was only one thing to do, of course. To head off to our

This version is with chicken but the mildness of the dish would also compliment fish. Apparently Ling is a good substitute for catfish or monkfish or hake. Must try it sometime. Either way the wonderful colours of the curry reminded me of a journey that I have only taken in my mind to the Xandrian Quarters.

We managed to pick up a decent bag of cooking apples from the Dartmouth Community Orchard in October and froze most of them after processing. Processing in this case meant peeling, coring and cutting into decent sized pieces. We also had the view that butter would prevent the apples going brown and so we melted butter and mixed it with the apples. We have since learned that this was actually pointless for this purpose. However it gave a nice base to a cooking mix. Anyway, we

This is a short piece of writing taken from The Collector of Tales. Although the images are provided by Chat Gpt and the spoken voice by ResembleAI, the story itself is entirely my own work. I hope you like. If you'd like to listen rather than read then download here. The Swift’s Tale My pursuer had backed off and so I waited for him. Briefly he reappeared but soon faded back into the crowd as I continued on towards the square. Although I stopped to look back, I didn’t see

Some meals are simply perfect. Of course it is all a matter of preference but last night's offering to the gods of cooking has to be listed as being on a par with the best that I have experienced. It's not arrogance. After all I cooked it, ate it and tasted it and it was indeed for my own pleasure. It's reportage. So I am not up there in the presentation of the food but to me that's not what its all about.

It's the weekend of 25th October and the 2025 Dartmouth Food Festival is in full swing. The wind and the rainy weather has given over to crisp cool sunshine with occasional light showers that you can usually see coming down the river valley. The Pelican of London, a splendid, three mast vessel moored up on the town quay, normally in pride of place as a focus of attention, is having to take second place to a whole swathe of marquees that are set up along the South Embankment.

Oslo is home to Frogner Park, a municipal open space famed for the stunning Vigeland sculpture installation. Over 200 bronze and granite works by Gustav Vigeland depicting, I assume in his words, the breadth of human emotion and experience. The works took Vigeland from 1924 to his death in 1943 to complete (designing and modelling each piece himself) and when you look at the body of work it is truly a remarkable achievement. I am sure it is documented somewhere but I wonder

Trilobites became extinct on our planet about 250 million years ago at the time of the Permian mass extinction. This was the greatest mass extinction recorded with something like 90% of all species being wiped out. It made the Dinosaur (KT) extinction look tame. These were marine creatures and so it is unlikely that on our planet they would have ever scuttled about around the feet of humans. But I guess it could have been! In any case, I chose to bring these marvellous creatu

Seagrum the Dwarf is a vivid, unflinching plunge into a decadent world of taverns, bounty hunters, witches, vampires, and bureaucratic corruption. At its heart stands Seagrum — a coarse, cunning dwarf whose vices, wit, and grim practicality make him both the story’s hero and its moral caution.