Slurping delicious buckwheat soba noodles is a New Year’s tradition in Japan. I know New Year’s celebrations might feel like a while ago at this point, but we’re still in January, and I’m certainly still in transition mode from one year to the next. I think we too often forget that this transition is something […]
As the weather turns cooler and the frosts start to creep in at night, for most people the main foraging “season” is coming to a close. Of course, the notion of a defined foraging season would have been nonsense to our ancestors who were relying on gathering their food from the wild in order to […]
The joy of autumn is difficult to describe. Is it the leaf colours, the weather cooling, mushroom gathering, warming up around a campfire and how it feels all the more magical now the air is crisp and the dark evenings draw in? This year it feels accentuated by the sunny weather we’ve been enjoying after […]
With May being so cold this year, a lot of things have been a little slower to appear than usual. One example is the St George’s mushroom, Calocybe gambosa, which as its name suggests usually starts to appear around St George’s Day, 23rd April. This year, however, they didn’t seem to start appearing until much […]
I’ve loved magnolia trees ever since I was a child visiting my grandmother’s cottage in spring and seeing the beautiful Magnolia soulangeana in bloom in her garden. There seem to be a lot of magnolia trees where we live – I feel very lucky to be able to walk down nearby streets and see them […]
The hungry gap is back for another year as we get through the last of the previous season’s produce and wait for the next season to start. Thank goodness for the few winter stalwarts of purple sprouting broccoli, cabbages and kale, but also the wild mushrooms and three-cornered leek. At this time of year I’m […]
Autumn is a beautiful season full of colour and feelings of warmth as the days grow shorter and the weather cools down. One of my favourite places to experience the essence of autumn is in the New Forest in Hampshire which, as you can imagine, is just stunning at this time of year. We spent […]
Celeriac is a perfect winter staple. It’s another winter root* vegetable that we tend to confine to soups, or a purée if we’re feeling chef-y. It certainly excels at both, but I wanted to broaden the repertoire here. Celeriac for me bridges the gap between comforting and (dare I say) healthy with its velvety texture […]