Skip to recipes This has been one confused winter: daffodils rehearsing in December, snowdrops extending their run into March, then actual snow just as the daffs get into full costume. It’s as though winter had stage-fright and only roused itself … [Read more...]
Rose geranium sponge cake
If you are a fan of the edible rose geranium, as I am, this is a beautiful cake with a herbal, floral note, supported by Cognac and the flavour of good butter and eggs. The leaves of this scented pelargonium add prettiness and a complex flavour. … [Read more...]
Peas in the pod
Garden peas, picked fresh at that perfect petit pois stage of juicy, crisp sweetness, are something to experience at least once in a lifetime – and how good it would be to count on them once a year. Most fresh peas we buy with hope in the season are … [Read more...]
Elderflowers: champagne, cordial and a cake
There’s just time to make one more batch of elderflower cordial and champagne, with their inimitable fragrance of English summer – floral, yet also a little wild and very slightly musty. Nothing drinkable is more evocative of our hedgerows and … [Read more...]
Bullet ice cream and other strawberry tales
The most enchanting strawberries I have ever tasted were Norwegian berries, bought from the grower in a gravel-strewn lay-by on a winding road along Sognefjord on Norway’s west coast. They were pale pink and I was suspicious of their anaemic pallor, … [Read more...]
Syttende Mai
Norwegians everywhere on this 17th day of May are celebrating “Syttende Mai” – Norway’s National Day of independence, the day in 1814 when its constitution as an independent nation was signed after over 400 years of Danish rule, following Denmark’s … [Read more...]