My local deli
Balzano’s in Cambridge is an authentic Italian deli established well over 30 years ago now and still serving the well-settled local Italian community and everyone else….It has a fantastic bakery where bread is still baked each day and supplied to a host of restaurants and food outlets. I love...
Dinner with the rocket boys
Cambridge University Spaceflight had their first formal dinner of the new term, celebrating two record-breaking balloon launches, successful tests of some very sophisticated tracking technology, and (of course) more work on the rockets they will send into space within a few months. It was held in Emmanuel College this...
After a good meal
Calvados is an apple brandy from the French region of Lower Normandy. It is made from cider apples, double distilled and often aged in oak casks for a period of time. It is rumoured to have come into being around the time of Charlemagne, the great leader often cited...
Mermaid’s Tail
There’s an old rule that tells us the quality of the food is inversely proportional to the view from the restaurant. If people go for the breathtaking sight, the food doesn’t have to try. When a new fish and chip restaurant opened right on Leicester Square, it seemed that...
Cavolo Nero, a lemon and sweet red pepper
Cavolo Nero, originally from Italy, has a distinctive colour and depth of flavour. Once cooked and combined with roasted red pepper and lemon juice and a little olive oil, it takes on a ‘surreal-sublime’ taste, which will stand its ground as a excellent accompaniment alongside any dish of the...
Snails and rosé
I was treated to an excellent dinner at one of my favourite local restaurants – Chez Gérard. They do an excellent dish which they call ‘escargots’ (as in, snails, but the French sounds so much more appetising). You get the choice between six or twelve, so I chose twelve,...
A Vegetable trivet
A trivet, also known as a ‘hot plate,’ is an object placed between a serving dish or bowl and a dining table, usually to protect the table from heat damage. In cooking a trivet serves the purpose of cooking a joint of meat with the same care of protecting...
Post-prandial exploration
A few of us met up post-dinner for a bottle of wine at a relatively upmarket King’s Parade restaurant called The Chop House. The wine was called Explorer and was made from Pinot Noir. It was also from 2007 and Chilean. But its best feature was that it was...
Broken promises
A while ago now I made a promise not to buy another cookery book – as one tends to just buy them and not actually cook from them. Only last week I bought this online and thus broke my promise that I had made a few months ago. This...
Not a goer
I selected a bottle of Canti Sicilian Catarratto-Chardonnay blend from 2007 at the local Tesco as part of a 3 bottles for £10 special offer. It was 12.5%, and obviously Italian; wines from Italy have never been my favourite, but I tried to block this out of my mind...