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Today I learned the secret of the strange giant crackers that rescued my chicken sate from being way too goopy.

I’m on what the real professionals call a mission, or, failing that, duty travel. And once again I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. So, rather than admit defeat and just leave well enough alone, I decide to record a little reflection on the food of Indonesia, at least, the food I’ve eaten so […]

Restaurant reviews, fake parmesan, real Prosecco, emulsions and nostalgia.

Karima Moyer-Nocchi is an American woman who teaches at the University of Siena. When she had been here almost 25 years she developed something of an obsession. On the one hand, she watched “a bewildering decline in the quality and craftsmanship of Italian food together with a skyrocketing deification of it”. On the other, “in […]

A lot of bread, a little cheese, and some thoughts on food systems and what constitutes food.

   Huffduff it This year’s Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food was dedicated to The material culture of cooking tools and techniques and was full of fascinating stuff. I especially enjoyed a talk on the hay box, the original slow cooker. The principle is simplicity itself. Bring a pot full of food to the […]

Operant condition your children and get behind the rise in sourdough.

Rachel Roddy, after about 10 years of hard slog, is an overnight sensation. She’s just scooped the André Simon award for best food book in 2015, a very big deal indeed for a first book. I’d been warming up this second helping for a day or two before that news came through last Friday. My […]

Is there such a thing as “Indian” food, variations on fried rice and hulled wheats.

As promised, another second helping from one of 2015’s episodes, before we get to the new stuff. This time, I’m remembering my trip to the little place in St Martin’s Lane in London that serves a couture version of koshari, the iconic street food of Egypt. And one trouble with these second helpings is that […]