Picota cherry, smoked chicken and goat's cheese salad

I generally consider myself a sweet rather than savoury kind of girl. By that I refer, of course, to my tastes in food, rather than implying that if you came over and licked my arm it would taste sugary. I enjoy baking and the gentle crafting of desserts more than I do the assembly of savoury dishes, and I have a completely unlimited appetite when it comes to the final course of a meal. Especially if it involves crumble and ice cream. Seriously. I have been known to eat half a cheesecake in a single sitting.

Yet when my attention is drawn to a specific fruit - something on sale in the supermarket, maybe, or something that's just come into season and is appearing in ripe, plentiful boxes at the market - I seem to instinctively bypass the natural reaction of contemplating desserts to showcase it, and instead jump straight to thinking up savoury recipes.

I put this down to my desire to think up slightly unusual pairings (perhaps a consequence of being achingly uncool as a child and therefore desiring to be edgy and different nowadays), but perhaps also to my love of fruit in all its guises, particularly as a sharp, sweet and zesty way to perk up the richer ingredients in life, from smoked fish and braised meat to oozing cheeses and plates of sexy wholegrains. 

No, that's not an oxymoron. Believe it or not, I actually like wholegrains.

No, I don't wear socks with sandals.

A couscous or pearl barley salad, for example, wouldn't be the same without the explosive magenta snap of a jewel-like pomegranate seed. Rice, particularly the brown variety, is always tastier with some chopped dried apricots folded through, perhaps with a little cinnamon too. Then there are the endless possible pairings of meat and fruit, or fish and fruit, many of which appear on this blog already. Pork and apple, standard, but also more interesting ideas like duck and figs, or steak and mango.

Or chicken and cherries.

I think this delightful combination was first introduced to me by the wonderful food writer Diana Henry, in her book 'Food From Plenty'. She features a stuffing for roast chicken comprising cherries - dried or fresh - goat's cheese, dill, breadcrumbs and onion. It worked wonderfully. I've tried it with both fresh and dried cherries, and the dried ones are actually more successful, possessing a stronger, resinous flavour that can stand up to the assertive cheese and dill. 

Perhaps that's what was bouncing around in my subconscious when I suddenly came up with the idea for this salad.

Largely responsible for the raw materials are the wonderful people at Picota Cherries, who have been sending me gorgeous cherry-based goodies (including a mug, which has quickly become my favourite thanks to its sturdy shape and ample tea-carrying capacity) to mark the start of the season for this excellent fruit. Incidentally, I also love them for sending me the most incredible hamper of Spanish foodstuffs and making me feel like Christmas had arrived in the middle of summer.

I'd never heard of these Spanish cherries before. They're grown in the Jerte Valley in the Extremdura region of Spain, where they are ripened for twice as long as other cherry varieties, lending them a deep red colour and sweet flavour. They're notable for being the only naturally stalkless cherry available - as the fruits fully ripen, the stalks just fall away. Proudly bearing the Denomination of Origin status, these are special cherries indeed. I was thrilled when I received some in the post last week.

They're great cherries. Beautifully dark and heart-shaped, with a strong and lovely fruity flavour. You can slice them in half lengthways and admire their gorgeous dark-veined interiors, a pale gold colour with a crimson blush radiating out from the middle where the stone had been cosseted only seconds before.

As I said, my mind immediately turned to the savoury rather than the sweet. I've made sweet things with cherries in the past - notably this cherry and amaretti cheesecake, or cherry and chocolate cake with almond icing - but I've always thought that the lovely subtlety of the cherry's flavour is masked by the sweet things we naturally pair them with, like chocolate. It tends to blend into the background like a shy girl at a party, swamped by those dominant flavours who hog the limelight. One of my favourite ways to use cherries is in a cobnut and goat's cheese salad with shaved fennel, and this recipe is basically a new and different version of that. Similar, in fact, only in that it uses goat's cheese too.

Goat's cheese, because it works so well with cherries (as it does with most fruits - particularly pears and apples). It has a chalky, tangy richness that needs the bite of a crunchy fruit to cut through it.

Smoked chicken, because - unlike normal chicken - it's cloyingly rich and can take the strong crispness of fruit as a partnering flavour. In fact, the fruit positively balances the strength of the smoky meat. 

Fresh basil and mint, to add a citrussy snap that lifts the whole plateful. Plus these herbs both work very well on their own with goat's cheese or chicken.

Watercress and rocket, for a peppery hit to counteract all those intense flavours.

A drizzle of hazelnut oil, for a rich, nutty flavour to soften the sharp edges of the cheese and fruit.

Finally, a hefty dash of balsamic vinegar and a squeeze of lemon juice to brighten up the palate. Don't be shy.

This is just a gorgeous summer plateful. The colours are so striking when it's all piled together. The flavours are like a small rave going on in your mouth with every bite - sweet, salty, smoky, crunchy, peppery. It feels indulgent, yet is terribly healthy. It's unusual, so will win you dinner party points, with people oohing and aahing over the exciting and frightfully modern use of cherries in a savoury dish.

I can't think of a better way to showcase these lovely Picota cherries.

So much more exciting than a chocolate cake. 

The best thing about this salad is its adaptability. I added some cooked brown and wild rice to make it a more substantial meal (meals without carbs frightne me). I also think some toasted nuts - particularly flaked almonds or chopped hazelnuts - would add a welcome flavour and texture dimension. You could swap the smoked chicken for smoked duck, or any smoked meat really. Smoked mackerel would be surprisingly good, I think, or even Parma ham (though to keep it vaguely Spanish, let's say Serrano ham). Blue cheese might work instead of goat's, or possibly some feta or mozzarella. 

Picota cherry, smoked chicken and goat's cheese salad (serves 1 generously):

• A large handful of watercress or rocket, or both
• 12 Picota (or normal) cherries, halved and stone removed
• 1 smoked chicken breast, shredded
• 2 sprigs fresh basil, leaves roughly torn
• 2 sprigs fresh mint, leaves finely chopped
• 50g soft goat's cheese, crumbled
• Hazelnut oil (optional - use olive if not)
• Balsamic vinegar
• A squeeze of lemon juice
• Salt and pepper
• Additions: toasted flaked almonds or chopped hazelnuts; cooked brown/wild rice or lentils

This is the easiest recipe you will ever make. Place the watercress and/or rocket, the cherries, the chicken breast, the herbs and the goat's cheese in a large bowl. Toss gently together. Drizzle with the hazelnut oil, balsamic vinegar and a squeeze of lemon, to taste, and season with salt and pepper.

Where to eat in Cambridge

[Note: this page was created in 2012. While many of the recommendations are still current, it's always worth checking reviews before you visit these places in case things have changed!]

It was pointed out to me recently that, while I have a page devoted to extolling the very best highlights of the Oxford restaurant scene, my blog is sadly lacking in culinary recommendations for Cambridge.

In case you're wondering: yes, I grew up in Cambridge and then went to university in Oxford. The amount of people who have pointed out this crazy paradox to me as if a) it's wildly unusual that I'd want to leave the small town where I'd spent eighteen years of my life for somewhere new and b) I didn't realise this fact myself is slightly ridiculous, and it kind of pains me to have to put on a forced smile every time it's pointed out to me and be like "yes, well, I quite wanted to go somewhere new".

Oh and, in answer to the other inevitable question, I support Oxford in the Boat Race.

There is a reason that I have a huge list of detailed restaurant recommendations for Oxford and not Cambridge. Cambridge is widely acknowledged to be the place where gastronomy goes to die. It has the highest concentration of chain restaurants out of any town in the UK, apparently. You're hard pressed to find somewhere to eat that isn't a Cafe Rouge or a Pizza Express, and generally the standard of independent restaurants is pretty appalling, especially when compared to Oxford.

However, there are a few places that I would recommend, should you be on the hunt for somewhere to eat moderately well in this wasteland of culinary ingenuity.

Fitzbillies - 52 Trumpington Street. A Cambridge institution, Fitzbillies is most famous for its Chelsea Buns - soft, sweet rounds of dough twirled around an impossibly sticky, sweet, cinnamon-spiked filling. It also offers a wide array of excellent cakes and is perfect for a spot of quintessentially British afternoon tea. On the savoury side, they offer hearty, rustic lunch dishes such as mushrooms on toast and delicious soups and salads, as well as more exciting combinations like venison pâté with toast and quince compote, or rare pigeon salad. I can't comment on dinner as I haven't yet been lucky enough to go, but the food at lunch is thoughtfully prepared, and simple yet delicious. Just make sure you have enough room for one of those buns and be warned: sharing one is not an option and you will need to wash your hands afterwards. Don't even attempt to eat it with a fork.

The Oak Bistro - 6 Lensfield Road. I used to work here, many moons ago when I was a young and carefree undergraduate on her holidays. This may make you claim I'm biased for putting it up here, but I would suggest that it's actually the opposite. Working in a restaurant often puts you off the food they serve, either because you just can't stand to see another plate of confit duck waiting at the pass for you to pick up, or because you see the dodgy stuff that goes on behind the scenes, like using ready-made ingredients out of a bag, microwaving things, and - god forbid - spitting in the food of annoying customers. Fortunately, none of these apply to The Oak.

Instead, I go and eat there on a regular basis as a paying customer. Why? Because it's one of the best restaurants in Cambridge, by all accounts. The atmosphere is always buzzing (there's a lovely outdoor garden seating area for that brief two-week period in the British calendar when it's warm enough to dine al fresco), the staff are fantastic (obviously), and it's not too expensive; a three-course à la carte meal will probably set you back around £30-£35. Often fully-booked (best to call in advance if you don't want to be disappointed), The Oak serves hearty, gastropub style food with a bit of a twist. Think Cajun-spiced swordfish on a mango, green bean and walnut salad; crispy pork belly with a mustard and apple compote; fillet of sea bass with palm hearts, tomato and coriander. They also do simple, big flavours very well: braised lamb shank with winter vegetables; crispy confit duck leg with red cabbage and mash (the mash is so soft, unctuous and creamy you could sleep on it); salmon fishcakes with tomato salsa; wild mushroom and truffle risotto. Apparently, their steak is the best many people have ever eaten; it comes with a melting slab of flavoursome truffle butter, chips (The Oak does incredible chips...my favourite ever shifts were the ones where the chef would make a bowl of chips for the staff to eat) and is always cooked to perfection, however you order it. I once asked the chef if he's able to tell when the steaks are cooked just by touching them, and he scoffed at me, with a look that said 'Of course I can, you idiot. In fact, I can tell just by looking at them from the other side of the kitchen.'

 Leave room for the melting chocolate fondant that has never moved from the menu because, quite simply, it's worth making a pilgrimage for.

Cotto - 183 East Road. OK, I've worked here as a waitress too. But again, it only made me more likely to pay for the food. Chef and chocolatier Hans Schweitzer is an absolute genius in the kitchen, taking simple ingredients and turning them into something utterly fabulous. The emphasis at Cotto is on well-sourced, high quality produce, treated simply to maximise its potential. While on the expensive side, it's widely acknowledged to serve some of the best food in Cambridge. Again, it's often fully-booked, so call in advance. Mouthwatering dishes from the past include salt marsh lamb with a garden herb crust, pan-fried fillet of turbot with hand-dived scallops, and a trinity of wild sea trout. As you might expect from a restaurant whose chef is a chocolatier, Cotto produce some incredible cakes and desserts; when I worked there the Tunisian citrus cake, plum crumble tartlets, Mocha layer cake and fruit custard tarts were always popular, and the creme brulée was so good that even I, a creme brulée hater, had to try some. What really stands out in my mind, though, is the chocolate dessert he used to produce, featuring a mini grand piano made out of various textures and types of chocolate. It had to be seen to be believed. Don't leave without trying something sweet.

Charlie Chan - 14 Regent Street. Charlie Chan is a Chinese restaurant in the heart of Cambridge. If you go for dinner, you can sit upstairs in their quaint, old-fashioned dining room, where some of the tables have lazy susans to make reaching for your favourite dish a little easier, and there's live jazz at weekends. They serve an extensive menu of meat, fish and vegetable dishes, as well as a selection of complete noodle and rice dishes. My favourite, however, is the dim sum menu served at both lunch and dinner. For an incredibly low price, you can enjoy a succulent array of tender steamed or fried dumplings, filled with rich and intriguing flavours. My favourites are the cha siu steamed pork buns, a pure white, cloud-like fluffy dough encasing a tangy, sweet, sticky pork filling. Also excellent are the 'half-moon' steamed prawn dumplings, the fried taro croquettes (like a potato croquette, but with a juicy meat filing) and the minced pork and prawn dumplings. For about £15, you can completely stuff yourself with dim sum and jasmine tea to the point of collapse.

Efes - 80 King Street. Efes serve classic Turkish food in a small, buzzing restaurant painted with charmingly gimmicky frescoes of ancient ruins. The place is dominated by an enormous grill, on which they cook everything from lamb kebabs to swordfish. The menu is a homage to the best of Turkish food; start by ordering a mezze selection and tuck in to classics like taramasalata, hummus, stuffed vine leaves, feta cheese, stuffed aubergine, falafel, red pepper puree and lots of warm pitta bread. Proceed to a kebab which, far from resembling hideous drunken student fare, involves tender grilled meat or fish - mostly lamb and chicken - served with deliciously fragrant basmati rice and a selection of crunchy salads. For dessert, you have to have the sweet, syrupy baklava, a perfect antidote to all that rich meaty fare. The set menu is great value and comprises a mixed hot and cold mezze, a mixed kebab and salad, baklava, and coffee. Serve is always ultra-friendly and the atmosphere is great. Perfect for a convivial meal with friends.

The Hole in the Wall - Primrose Farm Road, Little Wilbraham. Run by Masterchef finalist Alex Rushmer, The Hole in the Wall serves exquisite food in beautiful and relaxed surroundings. It has a lovely cosy country pub feel, with rustic wooden tables and simple yet elegant tableware - there are little plants on each table and the butter is served on a wooden slate, sprinkled with sea salt. Everything I ate was delicious, from the homemade soda bread and sourdough we slathered in said butter, right through to the incredible dessert. I had a perfectly-cooked fillet of wild sea bass on a bed of pecorino tortelloni with asparagus and pea puree. The tortelloni were the best I've ever had - the pasta was perfectly al dente, giving way to the rich cheese filling within. The asparagus was fresh and crunchy, and the sea bass meaty and delicious. My boyfriend had the roast sirloin of beef, which arrived so beautifully pink I could have cried with joy on his behalf. It came with two perfect Yorkshire puddings - the right balance of crispy and gooey - and the best duck fat roast potatoes I've ever eaten. They were so crispy you could hear one being cut into across the other side of the restaurant.

For dessert, I agonised over a choice between the lemon and passion fruit tart with pineapple sorbet, or the sticky toffee bread and butter pudding. Yes, that's right - not sticky toffee or bread and butter pudding, but both in one. Why have I never thought of that before? I told the waiter about my dilemma, and he actually laughed at me for being so ridiculous as to even have a dilemma. He rightly pointed out that I would hate myself if I ordered the tart. I saw why, when my pudding arrived.

It was a quivering, custardy square of gooey bread and juicy raisins. It came drenched in a molten puddle of sticky toffee sauce with more of those plump, caramelly raisins. There were blobs of passion fruit coulis. There were two little strawberries for decoration. There was a scoop of - wait for it - clotted cream ice cream, perched atop a crunchy biscuity mixture. The texture of the pudding was just sublime - you couldn't detect the individual bread layers, as it had all melded together into one tender, creamy mass, slightly gelatinous and subtly sweet. The raisins gave a perfect bite to the whole thing, and the toffee sauce was so fabulous that I nearly picked the plate up and licked it clean. The coulis gave a welcome sharpness to the whole thing, and the clotted cream ice cream helped lift the richness of the sticky sauce. When the waiter came to collect my plate, he actually laughed at me and said "How insane were you, thinking about having a different pudding?"

Alex Rushmer is a genius. Go and eat his food now, while you can get a table. Service is really friendly, the atmosphere is fantastic, and the food is beautiful. And don't even think about ordering the lemon tart over the sticky toffee bread and butter pudding.

De Luca Cucina & Bar - 83 Regent Street. Want Italian food in Cambridge? Please don't go to Zizzi, Ask, Bella Italia or Pizza Express. Go here, where the food is slightly more interesting, unusual, and thoughtful. From chorizo arancini (deep-fried risotto balls) to fillet of beef with gorgonzola sauce and calves liver with duck pâté crostini, this is a decent independent restaurant and much nicer than your bog-standard chain. The inside is classy and they offer a range of good-value menus offering genuinely interesting food.

The Belgian waffle stall at Cambridge market is not to be missed (as if you could miss it - the smell wafting from it around the city is enough to reel you in and make you part with your cash in exchange for a sumptuous, buttery waffle topped with anything from nutella and bananas to strawberries and cream). You can see, at the top of the page, me eating one. I always made my boyfriend swear he'd never upload this photo to the internet, so I've decided to pre-emptively do it myself so I won't be embarrassingly surprised should he do so one day. I have pink hair. That might distract you from the gaping enormity that is my greedy open mouth.

Finally, although I've never been, Midsummer House is the obvious choice for Cambridge dining excellence. With two Michelin stars, it has received rave reviews, and chef Daniel Clifford recently made it through to the final of Great British Menu with his amazing and inspired deconstructed modern dishes. It hurts me that this restaurant is literally 200 yards from my family's house, but I have never managed to get there. One day, perhaps. If you're looking to splurge, the food is apparently amazing and the service faultless. 

Gooseberry and elderflower cheesecakes

I find it strange that the gooseberry has become a metaphorical signifier for social awkwardness. When one remarks that one "feels like a gooseberry", for example when forming the third person in an uncomfortable triangle whose other two members are romantically involved, it would make sense to identify oneself with a fruit that is as culinarily awkward as one feels socially awkward at that moment in time.

And yet the gooseberry is by no means an awkward and incompatible ingredient. In fact, it couples beautifully and harmoniously with many other things; so much so that I simply cannot understand why it has become sadly underrated and used more as a metaphor for uncomfortable isolation than as the delicious kitchen treat it really is.

Gooseberries identify very closely with rhubarb, both in my mind and in my kitchen. In fact, they are pretty much interchangeable in all recipes.

They are both unpromising when raw, tough and bitter and crying out for the sweet tempering treatment of a snowy sugar coating and a gentle heat. They are both available for a certain period of the year, outside which it is impossible to source them from abroad as there simply isn't the demand to produce them. Gooseberries especially - you're lucky if you can find them outside the months of June and July.

They both mellow and transform into something soft, pastel-hued and delectable with the brief heat of a flame or oven and a generous few spoonfuls of sugar to round out their aggressively acidic edge.

They both have similar sweet and savoury applications. If you want to be a bit risqué, try pairing your cooked rhubarb or gooseberries with fatty meats or fish, such as pork belly or mackerel (fresh or smoked). They provide the perfect foil to its cloying strength, a refreshing partnership that takes both ingredients to new heights.

On the more mainstream sweet side, you can't beat a pie or crumble. You really need something lovely and buttery to stand up to all that sweet tartness. Perhaps a fool, where the collapsed fruit is folded into softly whipped cream (although being a hater of cream, I'm not really a fan of fools. In fact I loathe them and would rather eat Ryvita).

Or a cheesecake.

I can't think of many fruits that don't go well with a creamy cheesecake batter. Something about that soft, bland, blank canvas just begs for a vibrant and flavour-packed fruit to decorate it.

The gooseberry is your fruit. It's soft and delicate to look at, collapsed from its heat treatment like a deflated football but still possessing that jade hue and tart juice. It has a fragrance reminiscent of muscat grapes and sweet dessert wine; mellow, honeyed tones that partner perfectly with cream. Or cream cheese.

Rhubarb has many friends, from ginger to strawberries, but gooseberries have their fair share too. Cream, for one, but also elderflower, a completely classic and divine pairing that makes you wonder, rather like the combination of apple and cinnamon, which genius discovered it. Ideally you'd simmer gooseberries with heads of freshly picked elderflowers, but I can never find any, so I settled for elderflower cordial, which also provides the benefit of sweetening the berries as well as imbuing them with a heady floral fragrance.

These cheesecakes (aren't they gorgeous?) were inspired by a recent trip to York, which will be my home for at least the next three years when I embark on my PhD this October. I've visited Cafe No. 8 Bistro twice now on visits to this beautiful city, and really cannot wait to make it a regular haunt as I love their food. On my most recent visit, I couldn't resist ordering the 'Gooseberry crumble cheesecake' that I saw scrawled on the blackboard dessert menu. A dessert whose name literally just takes three of my favourite food-related words and puts them together? It was obviously going to happen.

It was pretty as a picture and tasted even better. The cheesecakes had been individually made in little moulds, so I got a circle of biscuit base all to myself, with a very light, creamy topping, lots of sweet-tart berries, and generous shards of buttery crumble. The whole thing was drizzled with cream, which I initially thought might be overkill, but I loved the way it mellowed the tangy edge of the gooseberries.

I knew it was going to be good before I even tucked in, because the biscuit base to cheesecake ratio was approximately 1:1, which is obviously going to result in a damn fine eating experience.

I've been thinking about that little cheesecake ever since, and dying to replicate it at home. Now that gooseberries are on the market once more, it had to happen. I also picked up these beautiful little trifle glasses for the princely sum of 20p each on a recent impulse visit to the charity shop, and I just loved the idea of serving individual cheesecakes, with all their pretty pastel layers of goodness on display.

This recipe is very simple, using a mixture of melted butter and digestive biscuits for the base, which is chilled before the topping goes on, for maximum crunch. The topping is a simple mixture of Quark (fat free cream cheese), cream cheese, icing sugar and elderflower cordial, set with gelatine to a soft, quivering creaminess. It's sweet and unintrusive, setting the scene for the burst of flavour provided by the gooseberries, which I simmered with sugar and elderflower cordial until they were fragrant and delicious.

These, for me, are a perfect summer dessert. They showcase this tragically maligned fruit to its full potential. They look simply beautiful, with their subtle colours and defined layers. They taste fabulous, the buttery crunch of the biscuit coupled with the sweet creaminess of the cheesecake, all lifted by the tart, floral berries.

They're very English, very summery, very understated, and just very tasty.

So please, next time you feel socially awkward, please pick a more apt fruit to identify with. Surely the durian fruit, which reportedly smells like rotting flesh and is actually banned in several countries for this reason, is a more realistic candidate. Leave the poor gooseberry alone.

How do you like to eat gooseberries? Have you discovered any good friends for them in terms of ingredients?

Gooseberry and elderflower cheesecakes (makes 6 mini cheesecakes or one large one):

• 10 digestive biscuits
• 60g butter, melted
• 250g Quark
• 250g light cream cheese
• 150g icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp elderflower cordial
• 1 sachet powdered gelatine
• 350g gooseberries, topped and tailed
• Sugar, to taste (probably around 2 dsp)
• 1-2 tbsp elderflower cordial

Blitz the biscuits in a blender to fine crumbs, then mix with the melted butter. Spoon the mixture into six individual trifle glasses, or into a greased and lined 20cm springform cake tin. Place in the fridge for an hour to chill.

Whisk together the quark, cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla extract. Place the elderflower cordial in a small heatproof bowl and microwave until hot and starting to bubble. Sprinkle the gelatine over the top and leave for a minute or so, then stir vigorously to dissolve. If it doesn't all dissolve, blast in the microwave for another few seconds.

Add this to the cheese mixture, then quickly whisk it all together. Divide the mixture between the six glasses or pour into the cake tin. Place in the fridge for a couple of hours to set, or overnight.

For the gooseberries, put the berries in a small pan with a couple of tablespoons of sugar and heat until starting to burst and release juice. If the berries release a lot of liquid, drain it off as you go - you want it to be the consistency of a compote, not watery. Stir the berries to squish them together a bit. Add the elderflower, then taste the mixture to check the sweetness - it should be quite sharp, but not unpleasantly so. Add more sugar if necessary. Leave to cool, then chill the mixture in the fridge.

When ready to serve, spoon the gooseberries over the cheesecake mixture. You could scatter with some flaked almonds, if you like.

Grilled spiced sardines with fennel and grapefruit salad

Britain. You need to eat more sardines.

In this current age of austerity, economic climate, blah blah blah, when food prices are continually rising, supermarkets are trying to pull the wool over our eyes by proffering multibuy offers that actually involve spending more, and there is barely a single source of protein available that doesn't carry a heavy cost both literally and in terms of animal welfare, I honestly believe the solution lies in the humble sardine.

I went to the fish counter the other day and asked for five sardines. The woman behind the counter scooped up their plump, shimmering bodies and dropped them on the scales to weigh them. I could barely believe my ears when she told me that those five beautiful specimens, plump, meaty and very decently sized, were going to cost me a grand total of £1.60. 

Therein lies the first major bonus of sardine consumption. It's cheap. I make that 32p a sardine, and given that two or perhaps three will quite adequately feed a normal adult (I've been known to eat four at a time), you're not exactly breaking the bank. 

The second pro is of course the nutritional benefit. Sardines are one of those much-heralded 'oily fish' that we all know are hugely good for you. Or if you don't know, then have you been living in a cave? Get out there and ingest some omega oils before you waste away and die. 

If only they weren't given such an unfortunate branding...calling anything 'oily' is hardly going to get people flocking up to put it in their mouths. I think maybe "firm-textured deliciously rich and meaty fish" might be a better tagline, but it's not quite as easy to cram onto packaging labels.

Thirdly, they're ethical. Sardines are one of the few sustainable fish species left to us now. Eat them with a clear conscience, and let your cod live out its happy life under the sea rather than meeting a speedy and ignominious end encased in batter and served on a piece of newspaper.

The fourth plus point of sardines, and oily fish in general, becomes apparent when you get them into the kitchen. There you can assault them with your entire arsenal of flavourings and spices, and they'll just sit back meekly and let you get on with it. These are tough creatures; I can't think of a single ingredient that an oily fish couldn't stand up to. These are fish you'd want on your side if you were ever getting a fish army together. Which, let's face it, is probably unlikely, but I thought I'd just mention it in case the occasion ever arises and you're stuck choosing between a mackerel and a monkfish. Monkfish may look impressive and threatening, with their hideous faces, gaping mouths and creepy spines, but the cool and unassuming mackerel will always win.

I literally have no idea what I am talking about. Back to the sardines.

There you have it: I can't think of a reason not to enjoy these lovely fish. They're so cheap, so ethical, so versatile and so good for you.

And please, to those of you who whine about all the little bones, I really, really don't have time for you. Nothing annoys me more than people who complain and say they don't eat fish because of the bones. Jesus, get over yourself. Take the five minutes to pick out the bones and just man up.

Here's a lovely way to eat sardines. Their skins are rubbed with a mixture of olive oil, salt and pepper, ground cumin and sumac (a lemony Middle Eastern spice, but you could use lemon zest if you can't find it). They're grilled until crispy. Then they're served on a bed of vibrant, fresh, zingy, citrussy salad. It has wafer-thin slices of crunchy raw fennel, for that aniseed bite that works so well with our oily friends. It has curls of red onion, to add savoury depth. It has a handful of fragrant mint, for freshness, and lemon juice, for zingy bite. Finally, it has thin segments of pink grapefruit to deliver a punch of zesty flavour that works so well with the creamy flesh of the fish.

The salad on its own is lovely, but it needs something rich to mellow all those vibrant flavours. Mackerel would work beautifully - either fresh or smoked. Spicy chicken could be an excellent substitute if you're one of the above annoying fish-bone-haters. Even a tangy cheese like goat's cheese or feta, or slices of grilled halloumi, could replace the sardines.

But, given my highly cogent and persuasive argument above, why would you want to replace the sardines? They are the answer to Britain's problems, and possibly the world's. 

Grilled spiced sardines with fennel and grapefruit salad (serves 2):

• 1 bulb fennel, thinly sliced on a mandolin
• 1/2 a red onion, thinly sliced on a mandolin
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil
• A small bunch of fresh mint, leaves picked
• Juice of half a lemon
• Two pink grapefruits
• 5 sardines, filleted (yes, the ones in the photo are whole, but only because my fishmonger apparently misheard 'filleted' as 'gutted' - if using whole ones whack them under the grill rather than pan-fry)
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp sumac
• A couple of handfuls of spinach, rocket, watercress, or a mixture

First, make the salad. Mix together the thinly sliced fennel and red onion with the lemon juice and a good glug of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, add the mint, and toss together well. Use a sharp serrated knife to cut the skin off the grapefruits, then cut in between the pith all around the grapefruit to release the segments. Add these to the salad and toss gently to mix.

Rub the sardine fillets with olive oil and season with the cumin, sumac and some salt and pepper. Get a non-stick pan very hot and cook the sardines, skin side down, for a couple of minutes until crispy, then flip over and cook for another minute.

Divide the spinach/rocket/watercress between two plates and top with the grapefruit salad. Place five sardine fillets on each plate and serve.

Reza's Indian Spice

I'd like to introduce you to a new contender for my 'favourite cookbook of all time' award. It's a keeper. It's going to be adorned with sauce splatters, anointed with oil smears, christened with overkeen garlicky fingers and placed in pride of place on my shelf before the summer is out.

When I first picked up my copy of Reza's Indian Spice, kindly sent to me to review by Quadrille Books, I flicked through the pages briefly. I'm pretty good at surmising from the quickest of flicks whether I'm going to be interested in a new cookbook or not. There are several factors that contribute to this:

1. The amount and quality of photography (sad to say, but I'm generally not interested if there are no photos - how are you supposed to be drawn in by a dish if you can't see it presented to its full potential?)
2. The general style and layout of the pages (although I enjoy the sparseness of - for example - Nigel Slater's books, sometimes simple can mean boring)
3. The way the book falls open (yes, this may sound silly, but if the pages aren't going to fall open for you to cook from without holding the book open manually, then that's a pretty useless cookbook - Dan Lepard wins points for Short and Sweet, whereas Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day is severely lacking in this area, requiring the machinations of several pieces of kitchen equipment to keep the pages apart long enough to glance at the ingredients)
4. The desserts section (always the one I flick to first, reading the book from back to front, rather like the way a keen sports fan reads a newspaper)
5. And, of course, the titles of the dishes and whether they appeal.

Reza's Indian Spice wins on every count. Honestly, I cannot stress what an incredible cookbook this is. I'm not just saying that because I'd very much like Quadrille to continue letting me review their publications; I'm saying it because I was truly stunned by this book and would heartily recommend it to everyone with vim, vigour, zest, passion and gusto.



Reza Mahammad is a TV chef, and also owns the 'Star of India' restaurant in London. The philosophy behind this book, as it proclaims on the title page, is 'Eastern Recipes for Western Cooks', and I couldn't think of a better summary. Reza was brought up in London, educated in India, and has a house in France. He is passionate about all kinds of cuisine, but even more so about combining them to result in new and fabulous recipes.

This is evident from many of the dishes in the book; 'Frindian' (French/Indian) ideas such as 'Paupiettes of lemon sole with saffron sauce', or a dessert combining a very English ingredient, rhubarb, with the Indian flavours of almonds and oranges. Reza adds cinnamon to a classic celeriac gratin to serve with duck and orange, takes Italian polenta and adds a hefty dose of Indian spice, stuffs a haunch of venison with dried fruit and chilli after rubbing it with anise, cardamom and allspice, puts a spin on meatballs with mint, coriander, ginger, chilli and cumin, uses the very European beetroot in a lemongrass- and lime-infused salad, and even provides recipes for an Indian High Tea, featuring crab samosas, masala tea, sweet potato cakes and saffron halva with pistachios.



The book is simply divided into sections. 'Quick and chic' dishes are exactly what they proclaim themselves to be: chilli-seared mackerel, spicy beef salad, lemon and coriander chicken, and several lassi recipes (mint and cumin, roasted fig, rhubarb, minted mango, strawberry and cardamom) which I thought was a nice touch - you can complete your Eastern feast by stretching the theme as far as the drinks. 'Slow burners' are those that require a bit more cooking time, like sweet and sour stuffed chicken, or 'Royal leg of lamb'; 'Showing Off' are those perfect dinner party dishes designed to impress, like stuffed chillies, stuffed quail, and spice-crusted monkfish; 'Classic Curries' are fairly self-explanatory - think tandoori prawns, red fish curry, chicken in a cashew nut sauce, lamb and potato korma; 'Perfect Partners' are where you'll find all the side dishes and chutneys to accompany your chosen recipe, like mooli and pomegranate salad, roast potatoes with chilli and chaat masala, saffron-roast cauliflower; and, finally, 'Sweet Like Candy' contains the dessert offerings.

So, let's go through my checklist, in case you need any more convincing as to the merits of this book.



The photography is absolutely gorgeous. Truly stunning, with a rather dark and moody aspect that really highlights the exotic qualities of the food, allowing its amazing colours to stand out. The photos of myriad spices scattered over bold backdrops and beautiful crockery are some of my favourite, as is an image of pomegranates on the contents page. Whereas some recipe books post photos of the dish simply to provide a reference point, these images are works of art in themselves, vibrant still lifes that really bring the book alive and infuse you with a zest and passion for the heady spices that are boldly used in each recipe.



The pages are beautifully laid out, with a little description of each dish (I always think this is essential - my favourite part of reading a recipe book is learning about the provenance of each dish; how it relates to others in the country's cuisine, where it originated, how the author feels about it). The font is simple and undistracting, and the ingredients clearly listed. What I particularly like is the little note at the bottom of each recipe recommending a side dish or accompaniment, ranging from simple coconut rice to something more elaborate, like 'sambal with lemon grass', or 'kidney beans with dried lime', all of which can be found later in the book. It's sometimes so hard to know what to pair complex spiced food with, especially if you are a 'Western cook', but this takes all of that stress away, while inspiring you to cook not just one but maybe two or even three dishes from the book at the same time.

Also, the book easily stays open on each page. Towards the beginning and end you might need to gently weigh it down with something (my iPhone normally serves this purpose), but generally it's very easy to cook from. Points for that.



The dessert section is relatively quite small, and I have to say I'm not hugely drawn in by any of them, but that's mainly because quite a lot of milk and cream is involved - think white chocolate, cardamom and rose pannacotta, Vermicelli milk pudding with pistachios, mango creme brulée, and rice pudding with rose petal jam. They all sound lovely, exotic and sweet, but I'm not a big fan of dairy in desserts (apart from cheesecake). This is totally personal, though - I'm sure they taste fabulous if you're a fan of that sort of thing, and once again the photography is gorgeous.

Finally, the titles of the dishes and whether they appeal. You only have to read 'Five jewels dal', 'Persian chicken with saffron and cardamom', 'scallops with coconut and ginger', 'spice-crusted monkfish in tomato sauce', 'duck breasts with orange, ginger and cinnamon', 'lamb pasanda with green mangoes', 'beansprout salad with chargrilled asparagus and coconut', and 'gingered carrots with maple syrup' to understand why I couldn't wait to get cooking. The dishes are at once exotic and familiar, putting an Eastern spin on well-loved European classics, or giving us an authentic version of things we love already - tandoori prawns, chicken masala, beef tikka.



I dived in the day after I received my book, and made the 'sweet potato and goat's cheese samosas'. These use filo pastry and are baked not fried, which Reza seems proud of - it "both makes them healthier and somehow intensifies the flavour of the filling". The filling consists of chunks of cooked sweet potato, mixed with ground toasted cumin seeds (toasting them first gives a wonderful aromatic flavour, which you just don't get with ready-ground cumin), goat's cheese, spring onions, coriander, chilli, cinnamon and garlic. This is wrapped in little filo parcels, which are brushed with butter and scattered with cumin seeds before being baked.

They were a real surprise, one of those dishes where the end result is so much more than the sum of its parts. All the filling ingredients melded together to provide a beautiful soft, rich, deeply aromatic taste sensation, given freshness by the cheese and herbs. Reza recommends serving them with an 'Indo-Italian pesto', using watercress, rocket and coriander with chilli, parmesan, lemon and pine nuts. I didn't have time to make this, so served mine with a simple watercress and pomegranate salad, which was a lovely fresh match for the rich filling. These would be a great dinner party starter; the crunch of the flaky filo against the soft, flavoursome filling is so delicious, and they're great sharing food. I couldn't stop picking them up off the baking sheet and eating them. Allow them to cool a bit, though, and don't eat straight from the oven as I did, or you'll burn your mouth. That's how inviting they are.



I was particularly intrigued by the 'Braised and Fried Beef' recipe. Reza calls it "rich, dark and reminiscent of a Malaysian rendang". It involved an unusual method, in that the beef is braised in rich spiced liquor first before being drained and fried. I couldn't resist the gorgeous combination of spices: cloves, coriander seeds, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, garlic, curry leaves, plus plenty of chilli - the recipe suggested three dried chillies for the spice mix, three fresh green chillies for the braising, then another two green ones for the frying.

I'm so glad I followed my gut feeling and used only one dried chilli and one fresh. If I had followed the original, I think I might be in A&E right now with third degree burns to my mouth. Instead, I was rewarded with a really gorgeous dish. The meat was meltingly tender, with a very deep, rich flavour from all the aromatics, particularly the curry leaves which give off a curious earthy fragrance. It combined wonderfully with the onion and red pepper during the second frying stage, though I wasn't quite sure about the method - Reza suggests frying it along with the remaining cooking liquid, which means that the meat doesn't fry properly as it's soaked in liquid. Instead, I added the liquid bit by bit and ended up with more of a saucy curry (oo-er) than a dry dish, but it was delicious nonetheless. I served it with the coconut rice from the book, which was subtle and a perfect partner to the rich dish, tempering its heat (it wasn't too spicy at all; it had a pleasant kick which enhanced all of the other flavours and I rather enjoyed).



I can think of only one improvement that could be made to this book, and that would be to have a nice glossary at the front or back explaining some of the more unusual ingredients, and giving advice on where to source them. Certain types of chilli, for example, or elusive beasts like asafoetida and fenugreek. They're not the easiest things to get hold of, but if you know what you're looking for and are given the name of a decent online stockist or a recommendation to seek out your local Asian grocer, you'll be on the right track. It's also quite nice to know about the provenance of each of these exotic ingredients, and how they are generally used in Eastern cuisine.

But that is honestly my only slight criticism. I absolutely adore this book. It's beautiful, inspiring, tantalising and truly one to be savoured and cooked from at every possible opportunity.

Alphonso mango, coconut & cardamom cheesecake

OK, so I'm kind of cheating with this one. In that I posted this recipe already, approximately a year ago. But a) I felt it was only fair that it had another moment in the limelight, as it's so damn good, and b) my photography has improved slightly since then, so I wanted to do the cheesecake its full justice by taking half-decent photos of it. Actually, they're kind of odd photos, because I took them al fresco, so the sunlight is doing weird things with shadows and exposure. However, I quite like them because they remind me that today was beautiful and sunny in the afternoon, so I could actually take a cake outside. Had I tried to shoot these photos approximately four hours earlier, the cheesecake would have been swept away by what was pretty much a monsoon, engulfing Cambridge for an hour this morning, soaking me to the skin and forcing me to take refuge in Marks & Spencer. What a hardship.

It's Alphonso mango season at the moment, which basically means my life is perfect and joyful. I've been kidding myself over the past year that my favourite fruit is the pear. Which then changes to the apple every time I bite into a crisp-skinned Pink Lady or a citrussy Cox. Which then changes to the pineapple when I have a really good piece of juicy, sweet, perfectly ripe pineapple, oozing luscious golden juice. Which then changes to the banana, when I eat a really good, tangy underripe banana to give me an energy boost for the gym. Which then changes to the apricot, when I bake them with orange flower water and honey and spoon them in seductive rosy heaps over my morning porridge. Which then changes to the raspberry, now that British ones are in season and offering up their tart juiciness. What can I say? I'm fickle when it comes to fruit.

But suddenly, come June, I realise now that all of this is a lie. Because my absolute favourite fruit, dear readers, is the Alphonso mango. Trust me to pick something exotic, elusive and expensive that is only available for a very tiny window of the year. 

I don't want to go into too much detail about these luscious mangoes, because I did so in my last post for this cheesecake.  Suffice to say that if you could eat gold , this is probably what it would taste like. 

The flesh is buttery, honey-sweet, oozing syrupy orange juice (your fingernails will look like a smoker's for days after eating one of these bad boys). The perfume is heady, whispering of tropical climes, of heaving spice markets, of radiant silks. The feel in your hand is firm, plump, warm, almost alive. Mottled, sun-kissed flesh, hinting coyly at the promise of treasure within. 

If you don't believe me, try and track down a box of these specimens before the season ends - they're generally found in Asian markets and groceries. I actually got mine from the Chinese grocery store near where I work; the middle Eastern stores were only selling the Pakistani honey mangoes, which are also fabulous but not quite as wonderful; they're slightly more bland, with creamier, less vibrant flesh. They're still a million times better than any other mangoes from the supermarket, though.

So, get your Alphonso mango. Beg, borrow or steal if you have to. If you think £5-7 for a box is too much, you're an idiot. It's so worth it.

Sniff one, cut it open, and suck the flesh straight from the stone. 

Then send me a thank-you via email, for enriching your life.

I've spent a small fortune on these golden globes of gorgeousness so far this month, but to me they're worth every penny. To be fair, they're actually the same price as supermarket mangoes - around £1-1.50 each, but because you don't normally buy supermarket mangoes in batches of five or six it seems more expensive. THIS IS IRRELEVANT. Would you pay seven small pounds to enter HEAVEN? Of course you would. So do it. 

You don't want to do much with an Alphonso mango. It's kind of like the early stages of love, the honeymoon period of a relationship. You don't care what you do; you'd be happy just to sit on the sofa all day together, or lie in the park, or generally carry out very little, because it's all about the company of your loved one.

It's the same with an Alphonso mango. You're just so happy it's there, you don't need to do anything to enjoy it any more.

However, should you want to elevate its deliciousness to extreme and sublime heights, try making this unbaked cheesecake. Baking an Alphonso mango is not a good idea; it can only dull that vibrant flesh and flavour. Instead, fold cubes of this startlingly orange treasure into a smooth cream cheese and coconut batter. Enjoy the contrast between the marigold fruit and the snow-white cheese. Set it with gelatine, and fold it luxuriantly over a buttery biscuit base enriched with the heady, citrussy perfume of crushed cardamom pods. Leave to set in the fridge, sprinkle with coconut, and serve.

I repeat, from my last post about this, what one of my friends remarked upon eating it: "This tastes like India".

Actually, given some unsavoury stories about Indian travel that I've heard from gap-yearing friends of mine (the "I saw my first dead body" story particularly springs to mind), perhaps I wouldn't want this cheesecake to taste like the real India. But in that it tastes like all the flavours you could associate, wistfully and longingly, with India and tropical climes - fresh coconut, super-sweet mango, fragrant cardamom - it's a perfect description.

Incidentally, it's even vaguely healthy - apart from the biscuit base (though I did use reduced-fat biscuits and a fraction of the butter traditionally called for in cheesecake recipes). The filling uses Quark, a fat-free cream cheese, and light normal cream cheese. Yes, there's sugar, but in terms of fat it's much better for you than traditional offerings. Plus with all that mango goodness in there, I'm sure it must be one of your five-a-day. 

You wouldn't guess it's healthy, though, from the taste. The filling is beautifully creamy, holding its shape yet melting in the mouth. It has a slightly sweet coconut tang which complements the fruity mango - I used coconut essence, which I managed to track down online. It's hard to get hold of, though, so use vanilla if you can't get any, or don't add any essence and instead dissolve the gelatine in the microwaved hot juice of one lime, rather than water. This variation is also delicious; I'm torn between which I prefer.

Either way, this is a perfect summer dessert. It can, of course, be made with normal mangoes from the supermarket, and will still be fabulous - just slightly less heavenly.

This time I made the cake in a 20cm tin rather than an 18cm tin, mainly because that way you get a thinner layer of cheesecake, which means MORE BISCUIT BASE per mouthful. Which is basically the whole point of cheesecake. I also used two mangoes in the cake instead of one, skipping the mango decoration on the top and just finishing with a light sprinkling of coconut.

Mango, coconut and cardamom cheesecake (serves 8):

• 10 digestive biscuits (normal or reduced-fat, if you want to make it slightly healthier)
• 50g butter, melted
• 10 cardamom pods, seeds crushed to a powder
• 2 ripe Alphonso mangoes
• 250g Quark
• 150g light cream cheese
• 150g icing sugar
• 1 tsp coconut essence (you can order this on eBay; if you can't find it, leave it out or use vanilla)
• 1 sachet gelatine
• 3 tbsp boiling water
• 2 tbsp desiccated coconut

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Blitz the biscuits in a food processor and mix with the melted butter and cardamom. Scatter over the base of a greased, lined springform cake tin (18cm or 20cm) and press down with the back of a spoon to form an even layer. Bake for 10 minutes until golden and aromatic. Leave to cool.

Meanwhile, mix the Quark, cream cheese, icing sugar and coconut essence together with an electric mixer. Peel the mangoes and dice into small cubes.

Place the boiling water in a small bowl and sprinkle over the gelatine. Leave for a couple of minutes to partially dissolve, then stir to dissolve completely - if it hasn't all dissolved, heat in the microwave for a few seconds. Have the electric mixer ready, and pour the gelatine mixture into the cheese mixture. Whisk thoroughly to incorporate, then quickly fold in the diced mango. Pour over the biscuit base and place in the fridge for a few hours to set (I left mine overnight).

When ready to serve, sprinkle with desiccated coconut and finish with mint leaves, if you like.

Granny's shortbread

"Granny made some shortbread for you."

Six simple words, yet the joy they promise is boundless. I lift the lid of the gaudy plastic ice-cream tub, so incongruously matched to its sublime contents. I pull back the corner of the kitchen paper to reveal wedges of golden, burnished biscuit, thickly dusted with a snowy layer of sugar. I inhale the sweet, musty fragrance of butter, flour and sugar, picking at a stray crumb before extracting my chosen piece, always going for the largest in the box despite knowing it's inevitable I'll come back for a second. And a third.

I'm not alone, I'm sure, in possessing childhood memories of my granny that revolve around food. They're perhaps less conventional than some. I don't, for instance, fondly recall tugging at her apron strings as she showed me how to whip up a fabulous sponge cake, or licking the cake bowl after she'd finished. I don't recall a bubbling pot of jam, stew or soup on the stove, and the condensation it produced at the windows in winter. 

I do, however, recall very vividly the mini rotisserie attachment on her cooker, that allowed a chicken to be spit-roasted to succulent perfection. I remember the little crisp crackers she would put in a bowl when the grown-ups had their evening drinks - I always called them 'stars' even though they came in all sorts of shapes - diamonds, circles, and (obviously - there was some logic to this) actual stars. I would nibble the points off the stars until only the mutilated centre remained, like a tragic soggy starfish that's been cruelly mauled by a hungry shark.

I remember breakfast every day in her lovely light conservatory, where we were spoilt for choice, totally different to our usual standard bowl of cereal at home. There were tinned grapefruit segments, swimming in their cloudy tart juice. Being a picky child and totally unconcerned about my vitamin intake, I naturally ignored these. They were for the grown-ups. There were boxes of bran flakes, my favourite cereal back then. I remember watching someone put sugar from the sugar bowl onto their bran flakes, and remember trying it and being distinctly unimpressed with the results. Even as a child, I wasn't into sugary cereals. There was a toaster waiting to hungrily accept crumbly slices of soda bread, which until very recently I always referred to as 'Granny's bread', so strong was the mental association. 

I remember a warm, gooey apple cake she once made, served with lashings of vanilla ice cream that melted and soaked creamily into the sweet, tender crumb. I think I remember she had one of those fancy dinner party serving cabinets that keeps the food warm while you bring it to the table. She made excellent roast potatoes, and I know now that she makes a wonderful coffee cake, but my childhood self was unlikely to take a bite of that weird creation, so its sumptuousness would have to wait a good decade to make its way into my life.

It's a bit of a cliché to go on about how great a cook one's granny is (come on Britain, 'fess up - surely there must be some culinarily-challenged grannies out there; I refuse to believe they're all paragons of kitchen perfection, daintily arranged in spotless aprons churning out Victoria sponges for their adoring grandchildren), but in my case it is just plain factual. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that she spent a lot of time living in various locations in Asia when she was younger, absorbing recipes and cooking tips by some sort of osmotic process. 

I was lucky enough to read through her recipe book recently, and it's a fascinating mish-mash of English and Asian, with sweet-and-sour fish sitting happily alongside jellied ox tongue, lemon meringue pie, and blackcurrant bake. There's a recipe simply titled 'Mohammed's bread', named after the family cook when she was living abroad (I forget where, but I think perhaps Calcutta). The pages are crinkled and the handwriting has faded, slightly, but it's a fascinating treasure-trove of memories and inspiration, one that I hope to cook from one day.

But when I think of my granny and food, one thing will stand out for me every time. Her shortbread.

She knows how much I love it; so much so that every time she comes to visit, she can be found earnestly pounding butter, flour, sugar and semolina together in a bowl with a wooden spoon, to provide me with my favourite treat. Sometimes she has to produce more than one batch in a very short space of time, such is the speed with which it's devoured.

How to describe the sheer simple beauty of a piece of granny's shortbread? 

For a start, it's nothing like that stuff you get in a tartan packet masquerading as shortbread. That stuff is often too sweet, too bland, too mass-produced. This is the real deal. It has a hefty amount of butter and sugar. That's why it tastes so good. You mix them together with a wooden spoon until they are soft and creamy.

It has semolina, which gives it this amazing crunch. You fold that in after, along with the flour. That's literally it. Then you press it firmly into a greased tin, prick it all over with a fork to stop it puffing up in the oven, and bake it for around an hour at a low temperature. It's somehow satisfyingly crunchy and crumbly, yet melt-in-the-mouth buttery and sweet. 

Granny dusts it with a thick layer of caster sugar while it's still in the tin, which gives it even more crunch when you come to take a bite. 

Think of how good the buttery topping of a crumble tastes, or the crispy pastry bits around the edge of a fruit pie. This is how the shortbread tastes. Crispy, crunchy, rich, buttery. It's just unbelievably good. Better than any biscuit you will ever make or buy, I'd wager. So simple, yet so perfect. 

I am physically incapable of having just one piece. In fact, I reckon I could eat the whole tin in one go. I normally eat this stuff in three-piece portions, simply swept away by the sugary rush into eating more and more. It's addictive. 

I think granny is always amazed that I rave about her shortbread so much. Every time I do, she laughs and tells me "It's just Delia!" There's no grand family secret recipe behind this post, nothing in granny's carefully-written recipe book; simply the work of the good old Delia Smith. 

What I don't think she understands is that for me, it's not about where the recipe came from, or who wrote it. It's about the fact that granny has made the shortbread with me in mind, knowing how much I love and adore this irresistible combination of ingredients. That, for me, is special, and is the reason why this shortbread will always have a special place in my heart, as a reminder of my lovely granny.

That, and the fact that it tastes incredible, of course.

Should you also want to replicate the perfection that is granny's shortbread, the recipe is here, on Delia's website.

Banana and brazil nut blondies

Ah, the overripe banana. Has there ever been a foodstuff so divisive? On the one hand, it repulses and horrifies, with its festering, milky innards and dark, wrinkled exterior. On the other, it lends a fabulous moisture and sweet banana fragrance to all sorts of baked goods, improving with flavour the longer it is left to liquefy in its skin.

Maybe not as divisive as some other foods - foie gras, battery chicken, rabbit, and those horrible Chinese dishes that involve eating pieces off the animal while it's still alive - but still a subject of contention, I am sure. I know of many people who simply cannot abide an overripe banana, for whom the thought of peeling back that leathery brown skin to reveal the grisly mush within is tantamount to a nightmare.

My standard response to overripe bananas - and for me, any banana that isn't still tinged with green and firm to the bite is classed as 'overripe', so god help it by the time it starts to show those telltale brown spots - is to bake banana bread, or whip up a fluffy batch of banana and blueberry pancakes. I used to produce the former on an almost weekly basis while at university, inviting all my friends over to partake in the extremely pleasant ritual of a good cup of tea and a steaming slice of moist, gooey, still-warm banana bread. The latter are also delicious; the squished bananas give the pancakes all the moisture they need, with no requirement for surplus butter, meaning you can even claim your whopping mountain of brunch sustenance is healthy.

However, while perusing the baking Bible that is Dan Lepard's latest cookbook, Short and Sweet, I alighted on the recipe for the simply- and alliteratively-titled 'Banana Blondie'..

Perhaps it was the picture that drew me in, managing to perfectly capture what I imagined to be the intense fudgy deliciousness of these golden creations.

Perhaps it was the use of brazil nuts, easily my favourite nut of all time thanks to its irresistible creamy-yet-nutty texture and super-rich flavour.

Perhaps it was the idea of a blondie, a new culinary experience for me and one involving liberal amounts of sweet, vanilla-scented white chocolate, which I rarely cook with but which sounded rather good enriching the hearts of these tender morsels.

Perhaps it was the prospect of another way to use up those overripe bananas.

I think it was probably all of the above, but the latter was the main reason for me donning my apron this morning and whipping up a batch.

'Whipping up' is perhaps the wrong phrase; they are a little bit more fiddly to make than your average blondie or brownie. They require making a caramel (which always sounds very tricky and technical, but in fact involves nothing more taxing than mixing sugar and water, and letting it boil without stirring for a few minutes until it turns golden and bubbly), into which you stir your chopped brazil nuts before letting it set to a kind of hard toffee, which you then slice - with an immensely satisfying crunch - into glistening shards before enveloping in the golden batter.

The batter is a mixture of melted butter and white chocolate, ripe bananas, flour, baking powder, vanilla and sugar. Stirring the molten butter and chocolate into the sugary banana base is delightful; the hot butter melds with the banana and sends wafts of heady, perfumed fragrance into the kitchen. It's quite runny, cascading in viscous waves into the tin ready for baking, after you've punctuated it with the delicious sweet, nutty brazil toffee. It smells banana-y, vanilla-y, and buttery.

These can only be good blondies, I thought to myself as I carefully lowered the baking tray into the oven.

Ha. How little I knew. These are, in fact, possibly the best baked good I have ever put in my mouth

Honestly, I can't even begin to describe how incredible they are. They are so moist and gooey, beautifully sweet and squidgy from the white chocolate, with that subtle enticing banana flavour. They're then rippled with crispy, sugary splinters of brazil nut toffee, adding a gorgeous buttery richness to the entire thing. The combination is incredible.

It's like eating banana bread on steroids , super-charged with white chocolate and brazil nuts.

It kind of reminds me of crumble, the combination of nutty, buttery, crunchy and gooey all at once.

Essentially, they are everything you'd want in a baked good. I think they're actually better than rich, plain chocolate brownies - they have that moreish gooeyness and light, buttery flavour. Plus the nuts really elevate them to something special. It's not like those boring chunks of generic chopped nuts you get in some commercial brownies, that taste of nothing and leave an unpleasant dryness in the mouth. These are toasty, buttery, crunchy and delicious.

Dan Lepard states to leave them until 'stone cold' before slicing into squares. This is probably the first and last time I will ever say anything to the contrary of my idolised baking guru, but - don't. Let them cool until lukewarm, then slice and eat while still semi-molten and gooey. There will be more crumbs. You won't get a neat edge. It will be quite messy and pieces will break off under the pressure of the knife.

Embrace it. Eat the crumbs, because calories consumed while preparing food don't count. Love and cherish those messy edges - rusticity is the key to deliciousness.

Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream, as I did, and you've pretty much got the best thing you will ever eat. I do not lie. I am so glad these have been introduced to my life.

Luckily for all you readers, the recipe is available online here. I did, however, make a couple of changes: I used 75g caster sugar for the brazil nut toffee, and then only another 200g (instead of 250g), of which half was caster and half was light brown - I love its caramel flavour. I also used 250g flour, not 200g, as my mixture was quite runny - probably due to the intense ripeness of my bananas (I didn't chop them, as the recipe says, as they were very soft - I just mashed them in with the egg using an electric whisk). Other than that it is the same, in all its beautiful, beautiful glory.

Fudgey. Gooey. Sugary. Crunchy. Nutty. Buttery. 

These really are just amazing.

Duck with chocolate and marsala

If it's possible for food to be sexy - and of course I believe it is, otherwise my life as a food blogger and aspiring food journalist would be very barren indeed - then this dish might just be the epitome of blushing, pulse-quickening, supple-fleshed sexuality. 

Think tender, succulent, meaty duck legs, smothered in a powerfully rich and complex sauce. It's glossy and dark with molten chocolate, enriched with the creamy bite of toasted pine nuts, sweet and juicy with plump raisins and laced with alcohol. It dribbles seductively off the spoon over the crispy skin of the duck, a dark and dramatic waterfall leaving sweet-savoury nuggets of powerful flavour in its wake.

This is a recipe from the Bocca cookbook by Jacob Kennedy, acclaimed head chef of Bocca di Lupo in Soho. I've been there twice and it's one of the best restaurants I've ever visited. It serves Italian food, but not as you'd know it; the dishes are often unusual, highlighting recipes, flavours and combinations from all over the diverse gastronomic melting pot that is Italy. Flavours are hearty and robust, the cooking is exquisite, and eating there is a fascinating tour de force of Italian cuisine at its lesser-known and best.

Unsurprisingly, then, the Bocca cookbook has no time for lasagne, spag bol and carbonara. Instead it treats you to underrated classics: caponata, the amazing sweet-sour aubergine stew from Sicily; guidelines for making your own Italian sausages; octopus with olive oil and peas; baked pigeon and bread 'soup'; cassata, a sublime confection of ricotta, chocolate and candied fruit from Sicily; tuna tartare, and other wonderful and exotic dishes. 

(Incidentally, I'm not being asked to write about this lovely book...I just thought I'd share my passion for it with you.)

I've started bookmarking recipes in new cookbooks as soon as I first read through them, to make it easier to find them later on. I take this a bit too seriously, having created a geeky colour scheme of page markers (blue for fish, green for vegetarian, pink for desserts, purple for meat...) to categorise the recipes. It's lucky I'm going back to university in October, really, isn't it?

This recipe was bookmarked immediately. Just the title had my mouth watering in anticipation.

Perhaps because it just rolls off the tongue in this incredibly sexy fashion. Perhaps because the word 'chocolate' is effortlessly inviting, conjuring up images of dark, sweet, melting goodness; of the voluptuous flow of a chocolate fountain or the warm, molten centre of a chocolate truffle. There's something beautiful about the word 'marsala', too, its soft sounds reminiscent of a seductive whisper, a romantic sigh, the letters curling around each other like slumbering lovers.

I've always been fascinated by cooking with chocolate. It's not a new concept; the Aztecs used it in this way before we Europeans got hold of the stuff and pumped it full of fat and sugar. You still find chocolate used as an ingredient in some savoury Mexican cooking. I've been experimenting with its deep, tannic richness recently, finding it a perfect partner for smoked duck, caramelised pears and goats cheese in this beautiful salad, though it's also commonly paired with venison. If you use good quality dark chocolate, it can add an intriguing complexity of flavour to a dish; a hint of bitterness, a touch of fragrance, a soft and melting mouthfeel.

This recipe starts by browning duck - it states to use a whole duck, jointed, but duck legs were on offer at the supermarket so I went with those. Once the duck skin is brown and crisp and has rendered down a lot of its fat, you remove it from the pan and fry chopped onion, pine nuts and raisins along with a cinnamon stick, fennel seeds and bay leaves.



The scent emanating from the pan as I stirred this heady mixture was intoxicating. The combination of spicy fennel, warm cinnamon and perfumed bay is unusual, wonderfully fragrant in a way that manages to be both sweet and savoury simultaneously. The pine nuts toast, offering up their nutty aroma, while the onions soften into translucent slivers.

To this you add a generous amount of marsala, or medium sherry (I went for the latter as marsala is pretty expensive). The duck legs sit in this sauce, covered, for around 45 minutes, braising gently away while infusing all of their meaty liquor into the sherry.

The finishing touch, once the duck is cooked, is to stir some dark chocolate into the sauce, where it melts and colours the whole thing a deep, dark brown. Being dark chocolate, it lends more of a bitterness than a sweetness to the mixture, which is already quite sweet from the alcohol, rounding off the complex mixture of spices, nuts and raisins. It also thickens the sauce, turning it glossy and unctuous. I stirred in a little parsley at the end, to lend its welcome freshness to the whole affair.



The recipe suggests no other accompaniment than plain couscous or wilted spinach, owing to the complexity of the flavours. I'd have to agree. I served my duck with bulgar wheat (slightly nuttier and chewier than couscous, so a good match for the strong sauce) and the suggested spinach, which worked perfectly.

I'm hoping I don't even need to tell you how unusual and delicious this dish is, because the title has already caught your eye, like it caught mine, and made you think "Right. I can go no longer without this in my life". It's just a fabulous combination of ingredients that work in total harmony. It's sweet yet bitter with cocoa, it bursts with juicy raisins and the crunch of toasted nuts, it melts in your mouth like chocolate. It doesn't overpower the rich flavour of the duck meat, instead complementing it perfectly and allowing its iron-rich gameyness to shine. It is incredibly rich, though, so a little sauce goes a long way. In future I might try it with pan-fried rare duck breasts, which are less intense in flavour than the legs.

I'm not going to give you a recipe, unfortunately, as I cooked the dish word-for-word from the Bocca cookbook, and I think it would probably infringe some kind of copyright to replicate it exactly on this blog. But do go out and buy Jacob Kennedy's excellent book; you'll find far more delights than just this gorgeous dish nestling in between its hallowed pages.

Quince and marzipan cake

I have a culinary conundrum for you. It's one I've been pondering for a long time now, often while daydreaming in the swimming pool or on my bike. Yes, I know that's a bit dangerous.

Why is it that some flavours taste more of themselves than the actual ingredient they have derived from?

That probably doesn't make any sense. Let's take an example.Marzipan.

Marzipan has that distinctive almond flavour, the kind you find in macaroons and flavoured sweets or chocolate. The kind you find in those mass-produced, impossibly neat, garish bakewell tarts with a cherry on top.

OK, so you've eaten almonds, right?

They taste nothing like almonds. 

Almonds have a strange, mouth-puckering dryness. They're soft, crumbly, and have a very very subtle sweetness and a deep, earthy flavour. But they bear no resemblance in taste to anything that carries their name. Almond croissants. Almond marzipan. Almond macaroons. Almond cakes. These things taste how we expect them to taste; they taste of the flavour we have come to associate with almonds. I've used ground almonds in cakes many a time, and found they impart little or no flavour to the rest of the cake; they certainly don't pack an almond punch on their own, whether whole or crushed up.

How, then, do they derive this flavour from a nut that tastes nothing like that? And why do we accept this unnatural and bizarre notion of almond flavour?

It's the same with coconut. Actual coconut flesh tastes almost nothing like the synthetic 'coconut' flavour we put in baked goods and chocolates, in Bounty bars and coconut ice and other tropical delights. It's remarkably subtle in taste, as is the coconut milk we add to curries and are often disappointed with because it doesn't offer enough of a 'coconut' hit, enough of that artificial flavour we've come to associate with coconut.

I'm sure some molecular gastronomic genius like Harold McGee or Heston Blumenthal would be able to answer me on this, but if anyone else (Heston, I know you're busy - please don't feel like you have to comment on all my blog posts) has an answer to this serious query of mine, there's a comment box at the bottom of the page.

But obviously you don't care about my almond and coconut dilemmas, because what you really want to know is how damn good this cake is.

Doesn't it just look the picture of rustic, English perfection? I can't think of a more traditional tea-time cake than this. It uses quinces, a medieval fruit that has sadly fallen out of favour yet, for me, is one of the most exquisite ingredients in the world. It has a complexity of flavour like no other; I once made a sorbet that contained just quinces, sugar and water, yet from its taste you would have thought it was spiked with a heady cocktail of fragrant spices.

Indeed, when my father tried this cake he was adamant that I'd put cinnamon in it. I hadn't. That's just the complexity of quince for you; it has a perfume redolent of mulled wine and potpourri and the bubbling cauldrons of medieval cooks, brimming with treasures from the spice trail.

Poached quince segments make a great basis for all sorts of desserts. By simply simmering them in the gentlest possible way, in a syrup of sugar and water flavoured with whatever herbs and spices you choose, you end up with kitchen gold - literally. They mellow and soften, becoming golden, sometimes deep sunset red, full of ambrosial fragrant flavour and with a pleasant yielding yet grainy texture not unlike that of a perfectly ripe pear.

Cooked like this, you can use quinces for so many things. I like them pure and simple, spooned onto my morning porridge with a handful of tart blackberries or blueberries. They are also excellent with ice cream, or you can use them to top a dessert, as in this wonderful  quince tarte tatin recipe. Cover them in pastry for a beautiful pie, or top with a coarse crumble for a buttery treat.

Quinces marry particularly well with almonds. Given that they are not dissimilar to pears in both shape and texture when cooked, this shouldn't be surprising. The idea to include them in a cake with marzipan came to me when I was baking mini simnel cakes this Easter. I had some high-quality marzipan to use up, and some quinces sitting in the fridge, and I suddenly thought that stirring cubes of marzipan into a cake batter with cubes of poached quince would create something fabulous.

I wasn't wrong; this is a beautiful cake. The cubes of marzipan melt in the heat of the oven, giving a gorgeous gooey texture and sharp hit of almond flavour (that strong, almost fake variety, as discussed at the beginning of this post). The quince is soft, grainy and fruity, delivering a sweetness and a perfume that matches beautifully with the marzipan. The cake is nutty from the use of spelt flour and the scattering of flaked almonds over the top, resulting in a dense crumb that is beautifully moist from the molten marzipan and the juicy quince.

This isn't a very sweet cake; it's more of a pudding to be eaten after a light meal, or something to be served in slabs with a good cup of afternoon tea. The quince and marzipan combination is more than enough sweetness for the whole cake, so there isn't much extra sugar involved. I'd suggest pairing it with vanilla ice cream, as the cold cleanliness of the ice cream is a good foil for the sugary marzipan and the fragrant quince. If you don't have quinces (they're quite hard to find even when in season), use ripe but firm pears - but don't bother with the poaching step, just cut them up and put them in raw.

This is a hearty, rustic cake, the kind I can imagine a medieval chef unearthing from the bowels of the oven and cutting into thick slices to serve after a banquet of venison and wild fowl. It looks beautiful and makes a satisfying pudding or afternoon treat, the kind of thing that will keep you going in that hideous destitute period between lunch and dinner when all seems bleak.

Pair it with a strong cup of tea - perhaps something rich and smoky like lapsang souchong - or coffee, cut yourself an indecently large slice, and savour the comforting, crumbly warmth of the cake and the surprising burst of gooey marzipan pieces. This is a proper cake, as cakes should be.

Quince and marzipan cake (serves 8-10):

• 600ml water
• 250g caster sugar
• 1 lemon
• All or a mixture of: cloves, star anise, crushed cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, vanilla pod, bay leaf
• 3 medium quinces [Or, if you can't find quinces, just use 4-5 ripe but firm pears - Conference are good - and skip the rest of the above ingredients]
• 310g spelt flour (or plain/wholemeal, depending on your preference)
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 80g brown sugar
• Grated zest of 1 lemon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 60g melted butter, cooled slightly
• 2 eggs
• 340ml buttermilk (or yoghurt loosened with a little milk)
• 150g marzipan, cut into 1cm cubes
• 2 tbsp flaked almonds

First, prepare the quinces. Bring the water and caster sugar to the boil in a large saucepan, then bubble away for a couple of minutes so the sugar dissolves. Cut the lemon in half and add to the pot. Add your chosen herbs and spices. Peel the quinces then cut into quarters. Remove the tough core and cut each quarter lengthways so you have eight slices. Add the quince slices to the liquid. Top up with more water, if necessary, so they are just covered.

[If using pears, skip this step and go straight to the cake-making - cut up the pears as below and use them raw]

Cut a circle of greaseproof paper to fit over the quinces in the pot, and cut a 1-inch hole in the centre. Place over the quinces, touching the water, then turn the heat right down. Simmer very gently for an hour or so, until the quinces are tender but still holding their shape - check them occasionally as you don't want them disintegrating. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a chopping board. Slice three or four of the segments lengthways into three pieces so you end up with long, slender slices. Cut the rest of the segments into 2cm dice, and set them all aside to dry on a piece of kitchen towel.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C (fan oven). Grease a 25cm cake tin or fluted tart tin and line it with baking parchment.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Add the brown sugar, lemon zest and salt.

In another bowl whisk together the melted butter, eggs and buttermilk. Pour this into the dry mixture and fold together gently with a large spoon until just combined - don't over mix.

Fold the cubes of quince and marzipan into the mixture so they are evenly dispersed. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, then arrange the long quince slices in a pattern over the top of the cake. Scatter over the flaked almonds.

Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until the centre is firm and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool slightly before dusting with icing sugar.

Serve with vanilla ice cream. It's best eaten warm, but keeps for days wrapped in foil and reheats well in the oven or microwave.

Caramelised pear, pecan and cranberry upside-down cake

So, dear readers, as we breeze inexorably into the month of June and the blossom is in full swing on the trees and the hayfever is at full saturation point in the air and the hosepipes are at full prohibition point on the lawns, I bring you the most Christmassy, un-summery cake ever.

Would you believe me if I told you that the fresh cranberries used to top this cake have been in my fridge since November?

Would you?

Probably not. Neither would I if I had told myself back then when I stashed them away for future baking. But then I discovered that cranberries have an amazingly long shelf life, largely because they have a low moisture content and a sort of waxy coating on their skins. I read that they'd last a couple of months; I didn't expect them to last nearly six.

The reason I kept some back after Christmas is mainly because I feel the humble cranberry is a bit overlooked. In fact, I feel really sorry for it. It gets its tiny little moment in the limelight, the month before Christmas where everyone feels the compulsion to make a huge batch of cranberry sauce even though no one really eats it and it doesn't go particularly well with turkey, and then it's relegated to the depths of beyond for the next year. 

Why do we consign cranberries to Christmas in this country?

They have so much potential. I have the wonderful food writer Diana Henry to thank for this; in her book 'Roast Figs, Sugar Snow' she extols the virtues and versatility of cranberries, pointing out that they can be used in a wide variety of dishes; to add sharpness to a plate of meatballs or venison; to serve in a compote spooned over a slab of ginger cake; to stir through a rice salad with duck. It was her gorgeous recipes and beautiful prose that awoke me to the potential of cranberries outside the Christmas table, and that is why I tucked them away in my fridge for all those months. 

She was also the reason for this cranberry and wild rice duck salad, for a lovely dinner I made involving chicken breasts stuffed with cream cheese, dried cranberries and pecans, and for my morning porridge peppered with chunks of juicy pear and gem-like dried cranberries. I'm a cranberry fiend, and I wanted to use my stash in the fridge for something really special. 

I finally got round to using them this week. I've no idea why it's taken me so long...I guess there have always been higher-priority desserts on the cards.

But now that I've made this once, it's going on the 'high priority' list. 

The idea for a pear, pecan and cranberry upside-down cake came from 'Roast Figs, Sugar Snow'. I'd been thinking of a cranberry upside-down cake anyway, but the slight problem with baking with cranberries is that they are extremely sour. Even if your cake batter is quite sweet, those little pockets of mouth-puckering tartness are not to everyone's taste. By toning them down a little using sugary pears and toasty pecans, you end up with a much more pleasant combination, both in terms of texture and flavour. The pears turn soft and grainy; the nuts are crunchy and earthy; the cranberries give a moreish little burst of flavour.

I love the magic of upside-down cakes and tarte tatins.

The way the fruity caramel seeps into the cake or pastry. The moment of anticipation as you flip it over and unveil it. The burnished, caramelly edges of the fruit where they've been in contact with the hot tin or pan. 

You know what I love even more than that? Caramelised pears. Frying pears in a bubbling mixture of dark, ambrosial brown sugar and butter is one of the most wonderful things to spend your morning, afternoon or evening doing. The smell is intoxicating. The sight of the golden liquor is ravishing. I love the way they soften from hard, glassy, white shards into tender, slippery, curling strands of burnished sumptuousness while perfuming your kitchen with their buttery fragrance.

On the top of this cake, they melt down into sweet morsels that infuse the batter with their juice. They provide a mellow sugariness to contrast with the tart cranberries. Top it all off (literally) with the irresistible sweet, nutty flavour of pecans, and you have an addictive and delicious combination. 

The cake batter for this is a healthier version of Diana's. Don't be put off. It's my standard cake batter recipe for any cake topped with fruit, and you'd never believe it only uses a fraction of the butter of normal cakes. This is down to the genius of adding yoghurt, which keeps the cake really moist and flavourful while negating the need for huge amounts of butter. 

The result is a dense, vanilla-scented, moist crumb that pairs beautifully with the rich fruity topping. Seriously, it's incredible. This would work with any fruit, really, but the pear-pecan-cranberry trio is something worth trying, particularly as it looks very pretty. The cake is excellent served warm from the oven with lots of cold vanilla ice cream, but is also good just as it is with a big cup of tea. In fact, I think it's better after a day or so, when the cake becomes even more moist and the fruit tastes sweeter.

This would be the perfect cake for winter, tasting as festive and wonderful as it looks. If you're not like me and don't obsessively hoard seasonal fruits, then you could make it year-round using raspberries, blueberries, blackberries or even raisins instead of the cranberries, or use dried cranberries, or omit them altogether or change the fruit. It's up to you. Follow this basic template and you'll end up with a hugely rewarding piece of cake. 

Caramelised pear, pecan and cranberry upside-down cake (serves 6-8):

(Inspired by 'Roast Figs, Sugar Snow' by Diana Henry)

• 40g butter
• 70g brown sugar
• 4 medium pears (Conference work best)
• 60g pecan nuts
• 150g fresh cranberries
• 150g light brown sugar
• 60g soft butter
• 2 eggs
• 200g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Around 200ml plain yoghurt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt

Heat the 40g butter and 70g brown sugar sugar together in a non-stick frying pan. Peel and core the pears, then cut into slices around 1cm thick. Add to the butter and sugar and cook over a medium heat until the pears soften and release some of their juice. Turn the heat up and caramelise them briefly so they are golden brown and sticky. Mix in the cranberries and pecans and turn off the heat.

Grease and line a 23cm springform cake tin, then tip the fruit mixture into the bottom. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/170C fan oven.

In a large bowl, mix together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer/hand whisk. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat thoroughly until the mixture is pale and creamy. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then fold in the vanilla, salt and yoghurt - just enough to make a smooth batter (you might not need it all, or you might need a bit more, depending on how thick your yoghurt is). 

Pour this mixture onto the fruit in the tin, then level and bake for 35-40 minutes, until golden brown and the centre springs back when you press it. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the tin, then run a knife round the edge, put a plate over the top and invert the cake onto the plate (don't let it cool too much before you do this, or the caramel will stick to the tin).

Serve warm with ice cream, or cold for afternoon tea.

Smoked duck, goat cheese, pear and walnut salad with chocolate & vanilla balsamic

I think I may have been a salamander in a previous life, because I just love smoke.

Smoked anything. Anything, for me, is better if it's smoked. Buying bacon? I always go for smoked, even if a recipe specifically calls for unsmoked. Haddock? Smoke it, it makes it better. (Obviously by that I mean hang it up in a room over burning things to give it a unique aroma, rather than stick it in a pipe and inhale it). Smoked garlic has the most incredible rich scent, though I've always found that it mellows disappointingly if you cook it. If you've never tried smoked chicken, you don't know what you're missing. It's like eating barbecue chicken without having to actually barbecue it. Try it in this amazing smoked chicken and mango rice salad. When I don't want to splash out on smoked chicken, I go for mackerel instead. I love mackerel in all its forms, but particularly when it's scattered in firm, meaty flakes over a salad. Smoked trout is a lovely alternative, much more mild but still possessing the richness to accompany ingredients such as eggs or asparagus. 

These are all fairly standard. What I particularly love is finding an unusual smoked ingredient. Smoked quail eggs are something I tried recently, and found utterly addictive and wonderful. There's something about the way the bittersweet tang of the smoke couples with the creaminess of the egg that makes for an incredible taste experience. I once found a jar of smoked roasted peppers in oil, which were sweet, slippery, smoky and delicious. In Italy I sampled smoked swordfish, sliced wafer thin and arranged in succulent, gossamer-like folds on a plate, drizzled with olive oil and tasting simultaneously of smoke and of the sea. I've been eyeing up smoked sardine fillets in the deli section of M&S for months, not quite able to bring myself to splash out on them (no pun intended) but knowing it's inevitable as I can't resist the allure of smoke.

Essentially, if I see 'smoked' before any ingredient, it's going in my mouth.

Smoked duck is a new and firm favourite. Fresh duck breasts are one of my all-time favourite ingredients, mainly because they're quick to cook, can partner with exotic fruity flavours (try this lovely smoked duck, fig and mozzarella salad, for example), and can be served pink and bloody. 

I also think I might have been a T-Rex in a previous life, given my penchant for meat that is basically still moving.

You can sometimes find smoked duck sold pre-sliced, but in my opinion it's much better to buy a whole smoked duck breast and slice it yourself. It's fresher, sweeter, and more tasty. I'm lucky enough to find them at my butchers, but you can sometimes get them in good delis or supermarkets. The organic butcher in the Covered Market in Oxford (one of my favourite haunts when I was at university) sells whole smoked chickens vacuum-wrapped for about a fiver. These are a total bargain and there's nothing more satisfying and aromatic - or more oily - than sitting down with the whole bird and rampantly stripping chunks of succulent perfumed meat from its carcass. Memories like this make me miss Oxford the most. Not those of my friends or anything, they pale in comparison to a large hunk of smoked poultry.

I came up with this salad because I wanted to find a recipe to use this gorgeous chocolate and vanilla infused balsamic vinegar from the Gourmet Spice Company, whose blackberry and rosemary balsamic I wrote about recently. They're not asking me to write this, I should add - I just bloody love their flavoured balsamic vinegars.

Chocolate and vanilla...in balsamic vinegar? You may think it sounds mad. But then you obviously haven't dipped your finger (or a piece of bread, if we're being hygienic here) in this heavenly elixir and had a taste. 

The richness of the cocoa is the perfect match for the deeply flavoured balsamic, which has a hint of dark sweetness anyway that is perfectly complemented by the flavour of cocoa. The hint of vanilla gives the whole thing a pleasantly light, fruity taste. It blurs the line between sweet and savoury in an unusual and delicious way.

I came up with this salad essentially by thinking of all the things that I know work well with chocolate, and putting them on a plate together. Pears and chocolate are one of the most heavenly combinations known to mankind. Nuts obviously work well too, particularly walnuts whose bitterness counteracts the sugar content. But would you ever have thought of duck and goat's cheese working with chocolate? 

It's not too surprising; venison and chocolate is a well-known pairing, and duck has a similarly rich gamey flavour. Smoked duck has even more depth, and is so rich that it desperately needs something to stop it cloying; enter chocolate. Goat's cheese works amazingly well; something about its light tanginess is excellent against the darker, deeper aroma of cocoa. 

I caramelised some sliced pears in a little butter and brown sugar. I mixed these with slices of smoked duck breast, a handful of rocket, crumbled walnuts, chunks of soft goat's cheese, and a generous drizzle of the chocolate and vanilla balsamic. I tried making a vinaigrette using rapeseed oil, as its flavour isn't too intrusive, but I found that the oil made the whole thing rather greasy and unpleasant, totally detracting from the flavour of the vinegar. This beautiful vinegar is sweet and mild enough that it doesn't need anything else; you can splash it, unadulterated, over your salad. 

I was sceptical that all these ingredients would work in harmony, but I needn't have been. Instead, I was rewarded with one of the most invigorating, delicious and unusual salads I've ever made. There's a perfect marriage of textures - dense meat, soft tangy cheese, crunchy walnuts and juicy, grainy pear. There's a gorgeous relationship between all the individual flavours, which stand out on their own and combine beautifully with the chocolate and vanilla. The acidic, cocoa-rich bite of the vinegar prevents the combination being too rich or confused, bringing everything together. 

Plus I think it looks beautiful, with all its different colours and textures. If you can't get hold of this vinegar (you can order it online), try using ordinary balsamic and warming it with some grated extra dark chocolate. I promise you, this is an incredible salad; you need to try it soon.

Smoked duck, goat cheese, pear and walnut salad with chocolate & vanilla balsamic (serves 2):

• 2 medium pears
• A knob of butter
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 large smoked duck breast, thinly sliced
• 150g soft, mild goat's cheese
• A large handful of walnuts, toasted if you like
• 75g rocket, spinach or watercress (or a mixture)

Chocolate & vanilla infused balsamic vinegar (or normal balsamic - you could grate in a little strong dark chocolate and warm it to get the flavour)

First, make the caramelised pears. Quarter the pears, cut out the core and slice lengthways into slices about 5mm thick. Heat the butter and sugar in a non-stick frying pan until bubbling, then add the pears. Cook over a high heat until caramelised on one side, then turn over and cook for another couple of minutes, until soft and golden.

Arrange the salad leaves between two plates. Arrange the slices of duck breast and pears on the plate, then scatter over chunks of goat's cheese and the toasted walnuts. Before serving, drizzle with the balsamic.

Strawberry French toast with basil sugar

I was recently invited by Allinson (the bread and flour company) to take part in a recipe challenge. Harking back to founder Thomas Allinson, who in the nineteenth century encouraged healthy eating by prescribing the consumption of two salads a week, Allinson are encouraging consumers to grow their own herbs by offering them a Kitchen Herb Garden when they send off tokens from the Allinson bread range. The herb garden includes a box for growing the herbs, compost, and three packs of seeds - basil, parsley and chives. The challenge was to come up with a recipe featuring one or more of the herbs along with bread from the Allinson range, and to focus on healthy eating, in the spirit of the company's founder.

Like many pioneering geniuses, a lot of Allinson's ideas were regarded as a bit mad during his time. He outlandishly believed nearly all ailments could be cured by a good diet, exercise, and a healthy lifestyle. Apparently this was regarded as 'rebellious' by his peers. Oh, how times have changed.

I've never had much success with growing my own herbs. I did try, diligently, when I moved into a house in my second year of university and found myself with a window ledge. It was promptly filled with pots of mint, coriander and parsley. They all showed promising progress for a while, and then almost as promptly decided to stop growing altogether and die. From then on I kept mint in my room, and had a bit more success, but it still had a tendency to grow rapidly for a couple of weeks then stop, turning wispy and lacking in foliage to be used for Moroccan tea-making.

I've always been so envious of people who complain that fresh mint grows like a weed in their garden. Oh, to have my own giant supply of this wonderful, fresh, versatile herb. I've tried so many times and failed, and I think I deserve a successful mint plant far more than most people, seeing as it's one of my favourite herbs and I would actually use and treasure it rather than dismiss it as a weed and moan about it.

In spite of these failures, I gave the Allinson box a go. I sprinkled my seeds - which came in cute little sachets bearing quotes from Allinson himself, such as "Pure air is our best friend", "A man is what he eats" and "Brown bread is not a luxury but a necessity" - into the soil, watered, and waited.

Lo and behold, after a week or so, green shoots started to appear.

Despite this promising start, the shoots still remain in this state, several weeks later. The basil has gone a bit mouldy and the chives have wilted, but the parsley is still growing, I think. Perhaps this is due to my assiduous over-watering. I did desperately try not to over-water them, but I'm useless at knowing when to stop. Here's a tip if you're thinking of collecting the Allinson tokens (6 tokens and £2 P&P, or 3 tokens and £5 P&P) and getting your own herb garden: if you think it needs watering, it probably doesn't. Err on the side of dryness, and you'll probably have much more success than me. It's a lovely little box and I love the idea of it growing happily away on the kitchen worktop. If only I'd held back with the water.

Fortunately I wasn't required to use my own home-grown herbs for this competition, or you might be looking at a recipe for 'strawberry French toast with a tiny sprinkling of mouldy basil shoot'.

I had numerous ideas for recipes involving bread and a combination of chives, basil and parsley. Cheese was involved in nearly all of them, as were eggs. However, I wanted to do something a little bit different.

Generally, people think of herbs as an ingredient for savoury cooking. However, the dessert potential of herbs is something I find fascinating, and enjoy experimenting with. I once made a rosemary ice cream which was beautiful with slices of poached quince, and I imagine would have worked well with poached pears too. Bay leaf ice cream was another hit; served alongside a very spice-heavy, fruity crumble, it added an intriguing herbal note that cut through all the other flavours.

Perhaps the most common herb used in desserts now is basil. It has a fairly sweet, citrus flavour which makes it easily adaptable for sweet dishes; you'd probably have a harder time getting chives, sage or parsley to taste good alongside sugar (although I love a challenge in the kitchen...maybe I'll have a go one day). Basil ice cream was a hit with everyone who tried it; they were often expecting to be repulsed, and ended up going back for thirds. It worked beautifully alongside strawberries, whose light, fruity sweetness sits comfortably with the more complex, slightly metallic flavour of basil.

Basil sugar was an experiment for me last summer; I used it to sprinkle over these honey mango tartlets, giving them a fabulous crunch and another dimension of flavour to set against the super-sweet Pakistani mango topping and soft, creamy ricotta filling. When I entertained the concept of doing a sweet dish for this recipe competition, I immediately decided to incorporate the basil sugar. It's different, interesting, and surprisingly delicious, delivering a totally unexpected flavour and texture.

It's the simplest thing to make, too - you just blitz caster sugar and fresh basil together in a blender, until the sugar becomes pungent with heady basil flavour, and the leaves disintegrate to colour the sugar. It ends up looking rather like green snow.

French toast seemed the obvious sweet way of using bread in my recipe. You might argue that French toast isn't exactly healthy, and the emphasis is supposed to be on healthy eating, but I disagree. French toast is actually healthier and more nutritious than toast itself - you're soaking it in milk and egg, which are good sources of protein and nutrients. It's basically the same as having toast, a boiled egg, and a small glass of milk. I used wholemeal bread, too, which ups the health quotient a bit. You add a tiny amount of sugar and pan-fry it in a very small amount of butter, no more than you'd have on your normal toast.

The result is, of course, a delicious crispy, chewy exterior giving way to a fluffy, soft, gooey crumb, subtly flavoured with vanilla and a touch of cinnamon. It's also a great way to salvage stale bread, which makes the best French toast as it soaks up more milk.

The French call it pain perdu, 'lost bread', which I quite like - I have this image of the lost souls of countless loaves wandering bread purgatory until their redeeming kitchen angel decides to save them through a good baptism of milk and egg.

So, then you cover your little lost bread it in sliced strawberries - one of your five a day - and sprinkle over a little of this delightful basil sugar.

The sugar is the star of this recipe. OK, so the delicious squidgy French toast is pretty spectacular, and the sweet strawberries go very well with it, but it's the herbal, citrussy crunch of the basil sugar that turns the whole thing from an ordinary breakfast or brunch to something classy and a bit special. It gives another texture to the plate, adds a pretty green finishing touch, and works harmoniously with the strawberries.

This is probably a breakfast or brunch dish, but if you made the portion a bit smaller it would make a lovely dessert after a light meal, too. You could swap the strawberries for raspberries or even blueberries; basil would work well with them all, I think.

Strawberry French toast with basil sugar (serves 2):

• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• A small bunch of fresh basil
• 4 slices wholemeal bread, preferably a bit stale
• 2 eggs
• 150-200ml milk
• 5 tsp sugar (caster or light brown)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• A pinch of cinnamon
• A knob of butter
• Sliced strawberries, to serve

First, make the basil sugar. Put the 2 tbsp caster sugar in a blender along with the basil, and grind until the sugar turns green and fragrant with the basil - there should only be tiny bits of basil leaf still visible. Set aside.

Cut the crusts off the bread and cut into triangles. Mix the eggs, milk, 5 tsp sugar, vanilla and cinnamon in a shallow dish using a whisk. Put the bread into the dish to soak up the mixture for a minute or so, then flip over and soak the other side. You may need to add a bit more milk, depending on how 'thirsty' the bread seems.

Heat the butter in a non-stick frying pan until foaming. Add the bread slices and cook for a couple of minutes, until they develop a golden crust, then flip over and cook the other side in the same way.

Place the toast on a plate to serve, and scatter over the sliced strawberries and basil sugar. Serve immediately.

Five things I love this week #5

1. Tracklements Caramelised Red Onion Relish. It's National Sandwich Week this week, and so Tracklements were kind enough to send me a selection of their top sandwich-enhancing products. I tried their take on two classics: first, a jar of proper thick, tasty mayonnaise, enhanced with Dijon mustard for a bit of a kick and a delicious creamy flavour; secondly, a lovely tomato ketchup made with ripe Italian tomatoes that had a much deeper flavour than your standard Heinz. I'd much rather use this than something mass-produced on such a large scale. It would be delicious in a classic bacon or sausage sandwich. There was also a delicious country garden chutney - so-called because the first batch was made from all the vegetables Tracklements could find in their garden - with lovely tangy chunks of onion, carrot, swede, parsnip and turnip, and an interesting kick from apricots, tamarind, apple, sultanas and mustard.



My hands-down favourite, though, is this wonderful caramelised red onion relish. I love using caramelised onions as a garnish for any dish involving cheese, but cooking them down to tangles of sweet tenderness in a pan takes time. With this, all the work is done - the onions have been slowly caramelised before the addition of vinegar, muscovado sugar (which adds a lovely caramelly depth of flavour), salt and pepper. The jar suggests it would be the perfect partner for a steak sandwich, which I can't wait to try - possibly with a little blue cheese. If that doesn't make you rush out and buy a jar, I don't know what will. For now, though, I'll suggest this sandwich as a celebration of National Sandwich Week, which I made for lunch yesterday and which was amazing, really showing off the red onion relish to its best advantage:



Take some good sourdough bread (I made my own because I'm hideously enviable like that. But you could buy it). Lightly toast. Smother with crumbly, tangy goat's cheese. Dollop with Tracklements caramelised red onion relish. Top with quartered fresh figs and a few basil or mint leaves, roughly torn.

Eat. It'll be messy. Enjoy it. Relish it, if you will. Have a napkin ready.



2. Baked plums with ginger and orange. I found these gorgeous plums at the market yesterday and couldn't resist buying a few. Because raw plums are often so disappointing when flown in from halfway across the world, I like to bake them to bring out their sweet-tart flavour.

Simply halve and stone your plums, then arrange cut side up in a baking dish. Splash over a glug of orange juice (bottled is fine), scatter over some light brown sugar, and take a ball of stem ginger in syrup and cut it into little cubes. Scatter this over the plums before drizzling with a little of the ginger syrup. If you don't have ginger in syrup, use fresh grated ginger and add a bit more sugar. Bake at around 170C for 20 minutes or until soft but still keeping their shape. The ginger, sugar and orange will have formed a succulent syrup around the base of the plums. These are amazing served with vanilla ice cream, but are also good for breakfast on muesli, granola or porridge.

3. Two Greedy Italians. I know I'm a bit late with this one, as it's been on TV for a while, but I've only just got round to watching it. There couldn't be a more refreshing antidote to the swarm of waif-like, vapid, impossibly manicured female 'TV chefs' currently gracing our screens with their perfect lipstick and clearly false claims that they 'love cheese' while they strut around in their size six jeans and take small bites out of cakes they've made. Such shows irritate me beyond belief, especially as the recipes are so often unimaginative rehashes of things that have been done a million times.

You can't get more honest than two decidedly un-waif-like effusive Italian men gesticulating wildly whilst wolfing down everything in sight and playing pranks on each other in the process. Not only is it a fascinating insight into the lesser-known sides of Italian life, but the recipes are also unusual, original and intriguing. Chestnut gnocchi, orange rice cake, barley risotto with minced pork, buckwheat pasta baked with cheese and swiss chard...this is the kind of food I want to cook and eat, and in no small part because of the heartwarming and amusing way it is presented on the screen. I think I might have to buy the cookbook...and buying the cookbook to accompany a TV cookery series is something I told myself I would never do...

4. The Hole in the Wall, Cambridge. I've been meaning to go to Masterchef finalist Alex Rushmer's restaurant ever since I heard it had opened; it's not often that you get a contestant from your home town on national TV, and I was yearning for him to win and put Cambridge on the culinary map (not likely to happen anytime soon, as it apparently has the largest concentration of chain restaurants in the UK). Despite not winning, he's certainly done very well with his place out in Little Wilbraham on the outskirts of Cambridge. I finally ended up there for Sunday lunch this weekend, and was absolutely charmed by the place. It has a lovely cosy country pub feel, with rustic wooden tables and simple yet elegant tableware - there are little plants on each table and the butter is served on a wooden slate, sprinkled with sea salt. Everything was delicious, from the soda bread and sourdough we slathered in said butter, right through to the incredible dessert.



I had a perfectly-cooked fillet of wild sea bass on a bed of pecorino tortelloni with asparagus and pea puree. The tortelloni were the best I've ever had - the pasta was perfectly al dente, giving way to the rich cheese filling within. The asparagus was fresh and crunchy, and the sea bass meaty and delicious. If I were to make a very minor criticism, I'd say that I'm not entirely sure they belonged together on a plate - it felt rather like two very different dishes; the pasta didn't actually need the sea bass. But I enjoyed it immensely and could have eaten another plateful. My boyfriend had the roast sirloin of beef, which arrived so beautifully pink I could have cried with joy on his behalf. It came with two perfect Yorkshire puddings - the right balance of crispy and gooey - and the best duck fat roast potatoes I've ever eaten. They were so crispy you could hear one being cut into across the other side of the restaurant.

For dessert, I agonised over a choice between the lemon and passion fruit tart with pineapple sorbet, or the sticky toffee bread and butter pudding. Yes, that's right - not sticky toffee or bread and butter pudding, but both in one. Why have I never thought of that before? I told the waiter about my dilemma, and he actually laughed at me for being so ridiculous as to even have a dilemma. He rightly pointed out that I would hate myself if I ordered the tart. I saw why, when my pudding arrived.

It was a quivering, custardy square of gooey bread and juicy raisins. It came drenched in a molten puddle of sticky toffee sauce with more of those plump, caramelly raisins. There were blobs of passion fruit coulis. There were two little strawberries for decoration. There was a scoop of - wait for it - clotted cream ice cream, perched atop a crunchy biscuity mixture. The texture of the pudding was just sublime - you couldn't detect the individual bread layers, as it had all melded together into one tender, creamy mass, slightly gelatinous and subtly sweet. The raisins gave a perfect bite to the whole thing, and the toffee sauce was so fabulous that I nearly picked the plate up and licked it clean. The coulis gave a welcome sharpness to the whole thing, and the clotted cream ice cream helped lift the richness of the sticky sauce. It goes straight to the Elly McCausland Pudding Hall of Fame - in there with my top five restaurant puddings of all time. When the waiter came to collect my plate, he actually laughed at me and said "How insane were you, thinking about having a different pudding?"

Alex Rushmer is a bloody genius, people. Go and eat his food now, while you can get a table. Service is really friendly, the atmosphere is fantastic, and the food is beautiful. And don't even think about ordering the lemon tart over the sticky toffee bread and butter pudding.



5. Roasted cauliflower. Banish all thoughts of watery, grey, smelly, overcooked mushy cauliflower from your minds. Yes, it can be horrible. It can be anaemic-looking, flavourless, squashy and reminiscent of old socks. Here's how to change that.

Cut a cauliflower into florets. Toss with some olive oil, half a teaspoon of cumin, a sprinkling of cinnamon and a squeeze of lemon juice. Season well with salt and pepper. Bake at 180C for 10-15 minutes until parts have turned crispy and it is tender in the middle.

I promise you, this is a cauliflower revelation. You can vary the herbs and spices as you wish, but be sure to be generous with the oil and salt for a perfect experience. It goes very well with Indian dishes, but also with any roast meat or as part of a salad. Good flavour partners are tahini, lemon, lentils, couscous, pomegranate seeds, lemony roast chicken or spiced lamb.

Daring Cooks: Boeuf Bourguignon

This month's Daring Cooks challenge was fairly close to my heart, as a couple of weeks ago I spent my weekend in the picturesque town of Chablis, immersing myself in the Burgundy wine and food culture. Although not all the typical dishes of this region are enduring classics that I am going to enjoy trying to make for years to come - the pig colon sausage, andouillette, being something that I hope I never get within a fifty mile radius of ever again - there is a reason why boeuf bourguignon is one of the classic recipes of the region: it's bloody good.

I did, in fact, sample an authentic boeuf bourguignon while in Chablis. The receptionist at our hotel had been cruel enough to cook the dish for himself that evening, meaning that the entire building was permeated with the mouthwatering aroma of braising beef and wine. How he could have been so selfish as to not share it with us, I really don't know. Unable to even consider eating anything else, we hurried off and found a restaurant offering the dish. We tucked into tender chunks of beef, falling apart under the pressure of a fork and bathed in a dark, flavoursome jus, rich with the aroma of salty bacon and the depth of red wine.

This month's challenge used a Julia Child recipe, and involved some interesting steps that I hadn't considered before. First, the rind was cut off the streaky bacon and the whole lot simmered together in water before being dried thoroughly and then fried. I'm not sure what this step was meant to achieve, but it was an interesting idea; perhaps to remove some of the salt from the bacon. Secondly, the meat was also dried thoroughly with kitchen towel before being browned over a high heat; I'd never thought of doing this, but of course it helps the meat to brown more and sizzle when it comes into contact with the hot pan. Thirdly, once the beef and veg had been mixed together and coated in flour, it went into the oven for a few minutes to develop a crust before the liquid was added. I'll certainly be using these techniques next time I make a stew, because the result was fantastic. Also, the garlic wasn't cooked along with the vegetables, as I normally do it; it was just added, raw and crushed, to the liquid before the stew went into the oven.

Browned cubes of beef, onion, carrot, bacon, flour. To this, you add a lot of red wine, some beef stock, crushed garlic, a bay leaf, thyme, and tomato puree. I did deviate from the recipe slightly, in that it tells you to add whole shallots and mushrooms sauteed in butter at the end of the cooking. I wanted the mushrooms (I used whole button mushrooms, as I love the texture) to add their rich flavour to the stew throughout the cooking process, so I added them at the beginning along with the carrot and onion. The shallots I added with about an hour to go in the oven, to give them time to soften and release their lovely juices but still keep their shape. 

There's something so addictive about the surprising burst of a meltingly soft baby onion in the middle of a pool of deep, dark gravy. They add a welcome tang to the richness of the meat and bacon, and look like little pearly globes of deliciousness as they sit there, awaiting your fork. Similarly, the button mushrooms, which add an irresistible pop of texture.

I don't think I've ever made boeuf bourguignon before, and this has made me realise what I'm missing. I think it's my favourite ever stew recipe. The wine and stock thicken with the flour to make the most incredible thick, glossy sauce. It has such an amazing depth of flavour from the bacon and vegetables. The meat, after four hours in the oven, falls apart as you eat it. The shallots soften, becoming tender and delicious, a surprising change in texture as you bite into one alongside a piece of beef. The button mushrooms are meaty and delicious. 

It really is the ultimate beef stew; the ideal winter comfort food, or spring comfort food on a rainy evening. I served mine with green beans and a large pillow of mashed potato into which I'd stirred a very generous amount of wholegrain mustard - it sets the richness of the beef off perfectly. Thank you, Fabi, for hosting this challenge and putting boeuf bourguignon into my permanent kitchen repertoire.

For the recipe used in this month's challenge, click here.

Lamb, rhubarb and cardamom khoresh

This was almost a culinary disaster. 

Well, as close to a culinary disaster as I ever really get. I've never dropped anything on the floor rendering it totally ruined. I've never burnt anything. I've never accidentally smashed glass into a dessert (though my mother has). I've never curdled mayonnaise (largely because I've never tried to make it, but still), collapsed a souffle, made something involving gelatin that has failed to set or accidentally used salt instead of sugar.

I have, however: sliced off part of my finger on a mandolin; spent the night weeping in agony over chilli burns; hideously overcooked a beautiful joint of beef that I was planning to serve medium rare; attempted to make gnocchi and ended up with a sieve full of watery mashed potato; put contact lenses in too soon after handling chilli; added water to melted chocolate resulting in a grainy mess...

...and nearly made this stew into something totally, mouth-puckeringly inedible.

The recipe was one with unknown provenance: it was hastily jotted down from a magazine article during a waitressing shift about five years ago. The identity of the magazine in question has long escaped me, but I must have liked the sound of this recipe because I'd taken the time to stop serving customers their morning coffee and furtively dart down behind the counter to pilfer the recipe contents of the weekend supplements. This was when I was just starting to get into food, when I'd finally worked my way out of the 'only-eating-cottage-cheese-sandwiches-and-fish-fingers' phase and consequently was obsessed with trying out new flavour combinations.

This passion has stuck, and the idea of combining lamb and rhubarb still seems as wonderful to me now as it did back then.

How is this not a more common pairing? For something so ubiquitous at this time of year, rhubarb is sorely underused in most British kitchens. It's common in crumbles and prevalent in pies, but its savoury applications are somewhat ignored. Serving it with mackerel has become more of a normal idea, but is still one that might strike some people as a bit wacky. Serving it with fatty cuts of meat like pork belly seems to be a relatively new concept, yet it is one that works so well. If you think about it, it makes just as much sense as pork and apple sauce: using that astringent fruity foil to cut through the richness of the meat. Apples, rhubarb - both interchangeable in their ability to be sharp, colourful and intensely British.

Rather like myself, I like to think.

Er...right.

Anyway, apparently the notion of a lamb and rhubarb stew is of Persian origin, where they use rhubarb like a vegetable in savoury cooking. Hence the word 'khoresh', which is a Persian stew often flavoured liberally with saffron and using various meats and vegetables.

Don't get me started on how much sexier the word 'Persian' is than 'Iranian'.

So, I finally decided to have a go at the lamb and rhubarb khoresh recipe jotted down on a scrap of paper in my recipe journal, seeing as rhubarb is everywhere at the moment and there's a limit to how many crumbles I can eat without expanding wildly. My recipe was a bit vague in places - perhaps a customer had come along during those moments demanding my barista services - but I changed a few things anyway, seeing as I have a total inability to directly follow a recipe these days.

The near-disaster occurred as a result of such a humble little thing: a lemon. My recipe clearly stated to add the juice of a lemon. Sceptical about this, I added the juice of half before putting the lamb on to braise for a couple of hours. Upon tasting it, it was rather too rich and fatty for my liking, so I added the juice of the other half, then the rhubarb. Big mistake.

I don't know if it was because my lemon was on the large side, or because rhubarb is obviously quite sour anyway and I hadn't factored that in, but on my next taste the khoresh was unpleasantly sour. I was prepared to overlook it, as I quite like tangy flavours, but the look on my mum's face as she tested it made it clear that immediate action would have to be taken. She looked like I'd just made her eat a lemon. Pure and unadulterated. A lamby lemon.

Salt, pepper, brown sugar and honey all worked to no avail. It still tasted...of lemon juice. Not of lamb. Or of rhubarb. Or of onions, stock or saffron. Just of lemon juice. Far too sharp and too sour.

What on earth to do? Adding other ingredients hadn't worked. I know what to do if a dish is too salty - you add lemon juice (!) or a raw potato to soak up the salt. I know what to do if it's too sweet - add salt or citrus. But if it's too sour? I had no idea, convinced sugar would work but sorely disappointed and still being grimaced at by a mother with a face like one of the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings. (Because of the sourness, I mean, not because that's what my mum looks like normally).

But you know what I did, like an utter genius? I went on the internet. I found out that you should add bicarbonate of soda to dishes that are too acidic.

Suddenly, GCSE Chemistry came flooding back. Of course, acid plus alkali equals a neutralisation reaction.

And also a bloody exciting mini volcano.

My stew erupted as I stirred in a bit of bicarb, frothing madly and developing a curious fishy smell that had me terrified for a second but quickly disappeared. Once it had subsided, I discovered to my delight and amazement that the sourness was gone. In its place was a pleasant deep, lamby flavour with a slight fruity tang from lemon and rhubarb.

I added fresh mint to lift the dish and give it a lovely vibrant edge. I scattered over toasted flaked almonds to give an earthy note that would counteract the still-rather-tangy sauce. I served it on a bed of rice which I'd boiled with a few crushed cardamom pods. The sauce was flavoured with saffron, ground coriander and more cardamom (my own idea, because it goes so well with rhubarb), with simple sliced caramelised onions to give it depth.

After its lucky rescue, this turned out beautifully. It's a bit like a classic Moroccan lamb tagine, but the use of rhubarb makes it really unusual. It lends a welcome bite to the otherwise very rich sauce, and is the perfect sharp foil for the earthy lamb chunks, which just fall apart under your fork due to the slow cooking. The subtle use of spice, especially the cardamom, give the sauce an intriguing flavour, and the garnish of fresh mint and almonds is the perfect complement to the whole thing.

Don't be sceptical - it really works, and provided you don't overdo the lemon (I've only suggested half in the recipe below, and if you go for it too much you can always rely on the trusty bicarb), it will be a triumph of exotic and unusual flavours.

Lamb, rhubarb and cardamom khoresh (serves 4-5):

• 1kg diced lamb (neck or shoulder is best)
• Olive or rapeseed oil
• 3 onions, sliced
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• Salt and pepper
• 600ml lamb or chicken stock
• A large bunch of fresh mint, shredded
• A generous pinch of saffron
• 3 cardamom pods, crushed
• Juice of half a lemon
• 400g rhubarb, cut into 1-inch lengths
• Toasted flaked almonds, to serve
• Rice, to serve

Heat a little oil in a heavy-based casserole with a lid. Brown the lamb in batches over a high heat, then remove and turn the heat down a little. Fry the onions in the lamb fat until softened and golden. Add the coriander and a little seasoning. Return the lamb to the pan and add the stock, half the mint, the saffron, cardamom and lemon juice. Cover and cook on a very low heat for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, remove the lid and simmer for 20-30 minutes to reduce the sauce (you could use cornflour or arrowroot to thicken if you like a thicker sauce). After this time, add the rhubarb and cook for 10 minutes or so until it softens (if you like, add some right at the last minute so it keeps its shape - for presentation purposes only, it makes no difference to the flavour) Check the seasoning - it might need more salt or pepper.

Serve the khoresh over plain or cardamom-infused white rice, with the remaining mint sprinkled over the top along with the toasted almonds.

Venturing into viticulture: my weekend in Chablis

Avid readers of this blog may remember that back in March I was invited to take part in the Chablis blogger challenge, which involved suggesting dishes to pair with two bottles of Chablis I was sent in the post. (Yes, it's a hard life. If you're thinking of getting into food blogging, do consider it carefully - you never know when you might find yourself in the desperate and tragic situation of having to accept free wine). I came up with this four-course tasting menu, inspired by the Burgundy region of France and featuring dishes that I, lacking any knowledge whatsoever about wine and food matching, thought worked pretty well with the bottles I received.

Much to my delight, I won the challenge. My hard work eating cheese, curing salmon and making biscuits paid off, and I won a trip to the town of Chablis a couple of weekends ago, which included a place on the Balade Gourmande, a 12km walking tour around the vineyards of Chablis with stops to drink wine and eat a five-course lunch along the way. I'm sure I've put you off food blogging now, haven't I?

Chablis is a well-kept secret. It's not particularly easy to access - apparently they have not yet started work on the high-speed Cambridge-Chablis train line, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. We went to Paris via the Eurostar, then had to catch a train to Laroche-Migennes, which is on the main line to Dijon. A 30-minute taxi ride later, and we found ourselves in Chablis. All this time I'd been rhetorically asking why we couldn't just get a train to Chablis itself. 

The answer soon became apparent when we explored the town a little further - it has only 2,700 inhabitants and you can circumnavigate it in about the same time it would take to circumnavigate a large branch of Tesco. This, however, lends it a certain charm.

The first accounts of Chablis date from the year 510, when a small monastery was founded there. Around three hundred years later, the monks of Tours sought refuge there when fleeing from the Vikings, and the wine-making tradition of Chablis begun; monks were synonymous with wine production in the Middle Ages, as they required it both for religious ceremonies and for entertaining and lending prestige to the abbeys. Gradually the reputation of Chablis grew, and the wine was exported to England. By the 19th century, it was also exported to Holland, Belgium, Germany, the US and Russia (there's a mention of it in Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina).

Unfortunately, 'Chablis' has now come to describe almost any white wine, regardless of origin or grape. Because of this, in recent years the Chablis winemakers have fought hard to protect their origins, pressuring foreign countries to recognise their region on wine labels; it now has an AOC qualification meaning only wine produced in Chablis can officially bear the name.

True Chablis is made from chardonnay grapes only, and has been recognised as possessing one of the 'purest' tastes of any chardonnay wine due to the simple, traditional winemaking style still used in the region, and its distinct terroir and climate. Chablis is frequently described as a 'flinty' or 'steely' wine, though Grand Cru and Premier Cru can be aged for around fifteen and ten years respectively, developing honeyed aromas with age. It was fascinating to imagine that all this distinguished wine was being produced in an area with such a tiny town as its epicentre.

Chablis, as seen from the Grand Cru vineyards

Although the town has had its fair share of hardships (it was pillaged by the Hugenots in 1568 and the vineyards destroyed by the phylloxera bug at the end of the 19th century), it remains a successful wine-producing region, largely due to its fertile limestone-rich soils - the Chablis region was once underwater, and its 'Kimmeridgian' soil (so-called after the soils of Kimmeridge in England, as they share the same fossil oysters) is ideal for producing wine. 

We stayed at the Relais de la Belle Etoile hotel in the centre of the town, a quaint former coaching inn with lovely old-fashioned rooms (and a great little sign in the bathroom informing guests that they might have to run the tap for a while to wait for hot water in the morning due to the age of the house...but 'When there is no hot water, here we shower with Chablis!'). Also, it had this fantastic car parked below our window, which I can't resist sharing.

Our free time was spent wandering Chablis, which is generally everything you'd expect from a charmingly rustic French town. There were medieval-looking buildings, little winding alleys, a small church and, perhaps less traditional, an overwhelming number of cats. I suggested they should rename the place 'Chatblis', which is the first and probably last French joke I will ever make. We saw a little old French lady open her door and glimpsed about five cats ambling around her heels; whether they belonged to her or she was just a cat lady befriending the strays, I'm not sure. One of these cats seemed to be the sole feline resident of Chablis's only bar (called, appropriately, 'Chablis bar'), and took great delight in claiming possession of various surfaces (tables, people's laps, etc.) by simply sprawling luxuriantly across them.

Every few metres we would pass a 'Cave', a wine cellar offering free wine tastings, though the knowledge that we'd be tasting Chablis all day during the Balade Gourmande prevented us from going in. In retrospect, I wish we had, but I definitely got to experience my fair share of different Chablis wines in the end, so it's not all bad. Plus I was worried I'd be coerced into parting with large amounts of money for high quality wine that I had tasted and become hooked on. Given that I'm becoming a student again next year, I don't think it would be the best time to develop a taste for Chablis Grand Cru.

We wandered along the river, swollen and fast-flowing due to the amount of recent rain (it seems that our Gallic cousins are equally inflicted by bad weather at the moment), where we found the 19th century communal wash house (a sort of pavilion at the edge of the river so you could wash your clothes in it) and eventually ended up at the Pâtis, a stretch of former marshland now planted with trees, where we basked in the sun for a little while. We passed the city gate, known as the Noel-Gate, featuring two medieval-looking round towers, and visited the Petit-Pontigny, a wine cellar built by monks in the 12th century which still remains, though the rest of the buildings were burnt down in 1568 during Protestant plundering. In the courtyard we could see an old wooden lever-beam wine press.

While this was all very exciting, for me the most exciting part was finding this white asparagus at the town grocer (which, incidentally, was better-stocked than most big city grocers in the UK). I've heard of white asparagus but had never seen it in the flesh before; it was curiously beautiful, in an anaemic way, with its delicate purple-hued tips and chunky cream-coloured stems. I bought some to take home. Surely I'm not the first to travel back on the Eurostar with a cargo of asparagus?

I can confirm, two weeks later and having eaten it all, that it tastes exactly like normal asparagus, only slightly more watery. You have to get the idea that you're eating chubby human fingers out of your head, and then it's quite nice.

We ate very well in Chablis, particularly on the first night where we ended up at the kind of French restaurant you often only dream about: simple, rustic, with wooden tables and garishly-coloured water tumblers, paper napkins, and a menu featuring flavoursome, delicious French classics generously portioned. It was called La Feuillette (named after the wooden barrels traditionally used to age the wine in) and conveniently sat right next door to our hotel, so we could just roll into bed after inevitably stuffing ourselves with the wonderful food on offer.

I began with a 'tarte fine' of tomatoes and goat's cheese, which was rather like a tomato tarte tatin. The combination of feather-light flaky pastry with deep, sweet tomatoes and that tangy goat's cheese was just wonderful. Next, an entrecote steak, which the waiter assumed I'd like 'bien cuit' because I am English - I rather indignantly corrected him. It was incredibly tender, slathered in herby butter and served with - rather oddly - a jacket potato, whose contents had been scooped out, mashed with chives and seasoning, then replaced and covered with cheese. Superbe

.Then an unexpected plate of cheese, which I hadn't realised was part of the set menu I'd ordered, or I never would have eaten that entire potato. I had Epoisses, a famous Burgundy cheese that apparently was Napoleon's favourite, and for good reason - it has a sticky orange rind and a gloriously ripe, oozing centre, pungent like camembert but stronger. There was also Chaource, another Burgundy cheese that looks rather like a large goat's cheese, with a chalky white centre that is soft around the edge and almost crumbly in the middle. It's hard to describe its flavour; it's tangy like goat's cheese, but with the creamy softness of a camembert or a Brie. I also had Brie de Meaux, which - as its name suggests - is a Brie produced in the town of Meaux. They were all fabulous, but the Chaource was my particular favourite.

Thank goodness I had room for dessert, because it was the second-best tarte tatin I've ever had in my life (the first was in Nice, and I've reminisced about its glories on this blog before, but basically it involved a flaky, buttery pastry base drenched in caramel and supporting cloud-like chunks of fluffy, juicy, sugar-burnished apple). Like the Nicoise version, this had a barely-there crust, allowing the chunks of apple to really shine in all their caramelly glory, sticky and sweet and slightly charred on top. It was served with a really lovely vanilla ice cream, which I believe is the only true partner to a tarte tatin; I'm sure the garden of Eden featured vanilla pods alongside those legendary apples, so God's favourites could help themselves to a dose of this dessert delight. Or could have if, you know, it wasn't hugely prohibited and would result in their certain damnation.

Naturally I couldn't go to Burgundy without indulging in a spot of boeuf bourgignon, so the following night we went to Le Bistrot Grand Crus, the sister restaurant of the much more glitzy and expensive Hostellerie Clos, which we sadly could not afford (when the desserts are fifteen euros, you know you're in trouble). Here we had a tasty starter of molten goat's cheese on toast, followed by the beefy classic, which was dark, sticky, rich and delicious, laced with smoky bacon and earthy mushrooms and falling apart under the gentle pressure of a fork. It was served with mash and some really fabulous buttery carrots, which were actually my favourite part. You can tell I'm not cut out for this carnivorous French lifestyle...I'm sure they were glad to see me go.

For dessert, another apple tart. This time a tarte aux pommes rather than a tarte tatin - a feathery puff pastry base groaning under the weight of juicy, tangy apple slices; soft and sweet and crispy and buttery, it came in a huge portion - to my delight - and swiftly disappeared. You hear a lot about French restaurants being pretentious and stingy with portion sizes, but in Chablis it's the opposite - this was by far the biggest dessert I've ever eaten in a restaurant (obviously I don't count my own kitchen - when I make desserts for myself, they're generally about the size of the previous course).

On our free afternoon, we wandered over to some of the vineyards at the end of the town, and ended up on a two-hour hike around what I later found out are the Grand Cru vineyards. When driving into Chablis, we saw these gnarled stumps lining the hillsides and figured they were newly-planted vines due to the total lack of growth. However, when we realised all the vineyards looked like this, we concluded they must just prune the vines every year, and these were still waiting for their spring growth; we did see some budding leaves, but generally they bore a rather creepy resemblance to wizened, haggard witches' arms protruding menacingly from the underworld. It was hard to believe these lowly stumps span an area of around 5,000 hectares and produce 35 million bottles of Chablis every year.

We were to find out far more about Chablis viticulture the next day, on the Balade Gourmande. This is a gastronomic walking tour that covers a 12km stretch of the Chablis vineyards, with five stops along the way to drink a glass of Chablis and eat one course of a five-course lunch.

When we woke up on Sunday morning, though, it looked more likely to be a gastronomic swim; torrential rain was battering against the windows while the wind whistled threateningly. Miraculously, it completely cleared up in time for the walk and we ended up with glorious sunshine (though there were still gale-force winds - I know it's windy when I have to take my earrings off because they are acting like small vigorous wind chimes suspended from each of my earlobes).

This was the first year of the Balade, but an amazing 400 guests turned up in the wind to explore the Chablis vineyards and eat along the way. Actually, when you remember that there is a lot of free wine involved, suddenly it makes more sense. My absolute favourite thing about this tour was that at the beginning you were given your own glass to taste the wine in. It was a proper, elegant wine glass with 'Chablis' written on the side. You had a little pouch to put it in and carry it around in, from tasting to tasting. You got to keep the glass afterwards.

This is conclusive proof that the French take these things seriously. If the same event were to be hosted in Britain (OK, pretend we have vineyards for a second), you would so just be given a disposable plastic cup at each stop to sip your lukewarm wine from.

During the tour, we were accompanied by Eric from Au Coeur du Vin, an absolute expert on Chablis and its viticulture, and driver of this fantastic car (her name is 'Lulubelle II', if you're interested; Lulubelle I is, worryingly, dead). He claimed upon meeting us that he spoke only a little English, which soon proved to be completely false as he regaled us throughout the entire tour with perfect, lucid explanations about every single aspect of Chablis wine and wine production.

He told us about how the monks who first settled in Chablis would taste the soil to discover the best places to plant certain grapes; they were so skilled in the art of winemaking that they could use their tastebuds to detect the chemical composition of the earth and its suitability. He gave us a brief history of Chablis winemaking, from this early monastical phase to the devastation of the vines in the late nineteenth century due to the phylloxera bug, a problem eventually solved by grafting the roots of American vines onto the French vines; these roots are tougher and more resistant to the bug, and every single vine in the vineyard has them instead of its natural variety. He pointed out younger, sprightlier vines as well as some growing alongside that were more than eighty years old.

The vineyards, some 5,000 hectares, stretch out in all directions, all almost identical with their gnarled black stumps and the occasional green glimmer of a leaf. Eric told us that each vine makes approximately 1.5-2 bottles of Chablis; it was slightly mesmerising to look around us and imagine hundreds of bottles of wine standing there instead of the vines. We spent most of our time climbing hills spread with identical expanses of vine, but occasionally passed through some of the forest that stands in patches across the landscape.

Eric pointed out objects that looked like large blackened tins standing at intervals among the vines; he explained to us that when there's danger of a frost during the night, the winegrowers place lit candles in these cans and they radiate heat, thereby preventing the vines from freezing. I could hardly imagine the sheer amount of manpower it would take to light all those candles, considering they were spaced about one every three vines. Apparently it's quicker to use petrol, which is pumped along the vineyards and then ignited at intervals in small burners, as it burns more fiercely so you can spread it out more. We saw some petrol burners too, and huge tanks to contain it at the side of the vineyards - but Eric pointed out that these are kept empty, as otherwise people just steal the petrol.

I asked about the harvesting of the grapes; Eric explained that in an ideal world, it would be done manually rather than by machine, but that this isn't practical for the lower-cost Chablis wines, like Petit Chablis and Chablis. The benefit of this is that the vine isn't shaken vigorously, potentially causing it damage, and that the grapes are picked with their little individual stalks attached. The machines rip these out, leaving a small hole in the grape which causes them to begin to oxidise and affects the quality and flavour. However, it is expensive, requiring huge amounts of manpower, and therefore isn't viable in terms of cost for a wine that will sell for about five euros a bottle. For the Premier and Grand Cru, Eric believes it's important to harvest the grapes manually for the best quality.

I had read when I entered the Chablis blogger challenge that Chablis has a very high export rate; Eric told us that apparently it isn't drunk much at all in France, instead finding favour in foreign markets, particularly the UK, which accounts for around 40% of sales. I asked why this is, and he simply told me that that's how it has always been, ever since merchants in the Middle Ages took wine over to England and it was discovered and enjoyed there by both natives and other traders from places like the Netherlands. Obviously, in the town of Chablis, Chablis is the house wine on all menus and it would seem absurd to drink anything else, but this clearly isn't the case in the rest of France.

The balade gourmande wasn't just about wine, though, as its title suggests. There were five planned stops along the route, and at each the opportunity to sample one course of a five-course lunch and drink an accompanying glass of Chablis.

At our first stop, we sampled an 'aperitif' alongside a glass of Petit Chablis; a young (around 2 years), fresh, easy-drinking wine with floral and citrus notes, often paired with meat or seafood. I was delighted to taste proper French gougères, which I'd attempted to make as part of my Chablis tasting menu, but had no idea what authentic ones would be like. These were seriously delicious - like giant savoury profiteroles, somehow managing to be really crisp on the outside and moltenly gooey with cheese within. There was also a cube of jambon persillé, skewered on a cocktail stick - this is a kind of terrine made with ham, ham jelly, and liberal amounts of parsley to cut through the richness. We also had several slices of sausage - a thicker variety which was quite nice, and a thinner variety, which turned out to be slices of andouillette. But more on my opinions on andouillette later. As Eric pointed out, "jambon persillé...sausage...it's fat. And the acidity of the wine destroys the fat". I couldn't have eaten it without the wine, as it was indeed rather rich and meaty. Except for the gougère, which I could have eaten several times over quite happily.

It couldn't have been a trip to Burgundy without that French classic, escargots, which greeted us at stop number two. I'd only tried these once before, in Paris, and I remember them tasting solely of garlic butter. Which makes me think, if you need to slather something in so much garlic butter to make it palatable, that's probably a hint that underneath it isn't very nice.

These, however, were quite nice. They were served not in their own shells, but in little 'shells' made out of a kind of crispy pastry, so you could pop the whole thing in your mouth. Each little shell had a small snail inside, drowning in a buttery, garlicky bath. The contrast in texture between the crisp exterior and the soft, melting inside was quite pleasant, but I didn't particularly relish the moment of biting into the chewy mollusc within. It's a bit like if you stop too long to think about what you're doing while eating an oyster...if you start to chew on it a bit, or it lingers for a split second too long in your mouth. I think perhaps it's because I kept snails as pets for years as a child, and I still feel a curious fondness for them...or maybe I'm just more squeamish than I like to think. I ate a few, but after about five it was all just too rich, buttery and snail-y for my liking, and I had to leave the rest.

Not horrible, by any means, but not something I'd ever go out of my way to eat. Lord knows why they're making such frequent appearances on Great British Menu at the moment. The snails were accompanied by a glass of Chablis - a dry, delicate wine normally enjoyed young (2-3 years), and the one with the largest production area - which again was a pleasant foil to the extreme butteriness of the whole affair.

There was an interlude as we strolled through forest to get to the next part of the vineyard tour, and I have to say the most exciting part of this for me was witnessing an incredible natural phenomenon - a line, about two or three metres long, of furry caterpillars nose-to-tail, wiggling slowly across the forest floor. I had no idea caterpillars moved in a pack like this; it was a little bit exciting. Eric was less pleased, however, informing us that they do this and then go and attack all the trees and vegetation. He clearly thought I was a bit mad as I stood there squealing with joy and taking numerous photos of this furry phenomenon. I'm sure they were actually just going for a nice Sunday walk, not to pillage the forest.

For the main course of our lunch, we sampled Jambon Chablisienne, which is ham served in a rich sauce of cream, Chablis and tomato. It was delicious, and accompanied by creamy, melting potato dauphinoise. There was also a cooked andouilette sausage to accompany it.

Andouillete is a sausage made from pork (or occasionally veal). But not just pork meat. This sausage incorporates the colon of the pig. As a result, it both smells and tastes of - essentially - pig excrement. I was all ready to like this, honestly. Generally I kind of figure that sausages use dodgy bits of the animal anyway, but normally taste lovely, so what could be the difference? 

Everything, apparently.

I should have followed my nose and not even taken a bite. The smell of the sausage cooking was enough to close up my throat in repulsion. I've never smelled anything like it. It was a cross between excrement and rotting flesh, wafting rancidly on the air like some black cloud of doom and pain. Even then, I determined I would try it, in case it tasted better than it smelled.

It didn't.

I took one bite, my teeth closed around the squishy coils of pig intestine, and I immediately grabbed my napkin and spat the whole thing out. It was, without doubt, the vilest thing I have ever put in my mouth. I can't even describe how utterly foul it both tasted and smelled; like nothing that should ever, ever be eaten. The texture didn't do it any favours, either - it wasn't uniform and meaty like a normal sausage, but had thick chunky fatty bits of gut in it. Dear lord, it was horrendous. To give you a further idea, apparently the French parliamentarian Edouard Herriot once said: "Politics is like an andouillette - it should smell a little like shit, but not too much."

The French actually accept that they produce an ingredient that reeks of excrement. There's something wrong with that.

A minute or two later, Eric leaned over and whispered conspiratorially:

"I tell you a secret...I hate andouillette."

I was so, so relieved. I had worried he'd seen me spitting it into my napkin and would be offended at my visceral rejection of his beloved country's regional speciality. But if a native Frenchman hates the thing, you really do wonder why on earth it can be allowed to exist. I saw a few people leave theirs too, but - more shockingly - a lot of them were eaten in their entirety. Not even a glass of Chablis Premier Cru, the accompanying wine, would have salvaged my tastebuds had I attempted to swallow that piece of gut sausage. Thank god there was ham too, not just fatty porcine colon. I am still bristling with horror at the thought of it, sitting here writing this. I might go and wash my mouth out with Chablis just to be on the safe side.

Fortunately, there was cheese to follow. Not just any cheese. A beautiful plate of ripe, warm French cheeses, oozing and unctuous and the perfect thing to spread on a crusty baguette. We had Epoisses, two different goats cheeses, and a Camembert. What really amazed me about this wasn't just the delicious cheese, but how incredibly well it partnered with the glass of Chablis Grand Cru. Not knowing much about food and wine pairing, every now and again I try a dish with a drink that has been recommended for it by someone far more knowledgeable than myself, and I am just blown away. This was one such moment.

The wine not only tempered the richness of the cheese, but the cheese mellowed it and made it taste beautifully honeyed, almost sweet. It was like drinking sweet gold nectar. The Grand Cru vineyards only account for 3% of Chablis's annual wine production, which is why it is the most expensive of all the Chablis wines. It has the best ageing potential, developing a Sauternes-like aroma which I could certainly detect, and intense blossom and dried fruit flavours. We tried examples from three different vineyards (there are seven in total), and there was a marked difference in aroma and intensity between the three.

Having circumnavigated the vineyards, we ended up back where we began for dessert, which was a really beautiful 'Chablis mousse' prepared by the chef of Hostellerie Le Clos, the expensive restaurant we hadn't been able to afford to visit. At least we got to taste his cooking in some capacity. It was a sort of set custard flan, quite wobbly but with a genoise sponge base to give it a little texture. The flavour was beautiful; I couldn't detect any Chablis, but it had a light, sweet fragrance and was only too easy to devour in seconds, especially when paired with a sharp fruit coulis and chewy biscuits. I don't normally go in for creamy, airy sorts of desserts, but this had such a delicate, delicious flavour that I couldn't resist.

This was served with Crémant de Bourgogne, a sparkling wine from the region that is rather like poor man's champagne - it is made according to the same method but doesn't come from Champagne so can't be labelled as such - and is really delicious; we tried the rosé version and it went perfectly with the sweet dessert. Apparently it also makes an excellent Kir Royale. Eric pointed out that if you find a bottle of Champagne for ten euros, it is clearly inferior and shouldn't be bothered with, whereas with Crémant de Bourgogne, ten euros will buy you the best. Another strange truth from the world of winemaking. This was the perfect celebratory end to our tiring 12km trek, and to our weekend in Chablis. The sun had shone, I'd somehow burned the back of my neck, I'd pretty much walked off the entire calorie content of my giant lunch, I'd had the opportunity (though I didn't accept, not wanting to embarrass my host by falling catatonic to the ground mid-walk) to drink five big glasses of wine, and I had a bag of white asparagus waiting in my luggage. That's basically perfection, French-style.

I had a fantastic weekend filling in the (shamefully, rather large) gaps in my knowledge both about winemaking and about rustic French villages; seeing the effort and care put into a wine that I'd barely considered before I entered this competition was fascinating and so rewarding. The balade gourmande was a wonderful way to immerse ourselves in the culture of Chablis, both in terms of wine and food, and I'd like to give a special thank you to Eric for being such an interesting and informative guide; those tough twelve kilometres in the battering wind simply flew by thanks to his entertaining commentary. I'd also like to thank the Chablis wine board and Sopexa PR for hosting the Chablis blogger challenge and giving me this wonderful opportunity.

Vanilla and blood orange torta di riso

I don't like rice pudding. Not at all. And I'm not just talking about the weird gloopy stuff you buy in cans or pots, the kind that my boyfriend loves to devour after dinner topped with some tinned pineapple from the tin that I'm eating instead of his horribly ricey concoction. Even the proper homemade stuff. I didn't actually try it until a couple of years ago, when I made a recipe that - on paper - sounded delicious, full of milk and sugar and cardamom and cloves and cinnamon, topped with gorgeous juicy roasted plums. But I totally hated it. The reason? Not, perhaps, what you'd expect. I didn't find it too stodgy. I didn't hate the formation of a slight skin of milk over the top. It wasn't too gloopy for me, or texturally unpleasant.

No. The reason I hated it was simple: it was too similar to porridge. 

Wait, wait. This doesn't mean I don't like porridge. Quite the opposite, as anyone who knows me and has watched me devour a bowl of porridge approximately the size of Asia every morning will know. The reason I hated rice pudding so much was that it looked like porridge. Sitting there in its bowl, topped with its lovely plums, it looked exactly like my breakfast. I often have porridge topped with roasted plums. But as soon as the spoon of sweet, ricey goodness was in my mouth I was disgusted.

It looked like porridge. It should have tasted like porridge. But instead it was sickeningly sweet, jarringly so, and too creamy. I couldn't eat much of it. The whole experience just seemed wrong; everything was telling me to expect a bowl full of soothing, bland, mushy oats, totally untempered by sugar of any kind and lent sweetness simply from their fruity topping. Instead it was cavity-inducing and weird.

I haven't tried it since. Maybe it sounds like I don't have much of a good reason, but to be honest I'd much rather use whatever luscious rice pudding toppings are out there (I've seen some fantastic recipes involving caramelised mango...) to decorate my bowl of porridge, and feel a lot less guilty about it seeing as there's no sugar involved. And it's not dessert. Rice for dessert is kind of odd.

Rice pudding, to me, looks far too much like either risotto or porridge, and because it is neither it delivers an unpleasantly surprising eating experience. What can I say? It just doesn't do it for me. Give me a good crumble or treacle tart any day.

However, when I came across a recipe in this month's delicious magazine for torta di riso al profumo d'arancio by Gennaro Contaldo (of 'Two Greedy Italians' fame, with Antonio Carluccio), I was intrigued. The picture looked wonderfully inviting, in a sticky, carbohydrate-dense sort of way. The English translation of its name is 'orange rice cake', which is sadly lacking in elegance compared to the Italian.

I've read about and seen similar cakes before, on both my literal and literary culinary journeys around Italy. They're typical of northern Italy, where rice is a staple crop. I had a wonderful time staying in Vercelli last April eyeing up the countless varieties of rice on offer at the local delis, and it turns out I needn't have bothered, because the hotel where I stayed gave away free bags of branded rice as a farewell gift to every guest. How amazing is that? As if you'd ever find an English hotel doing something similar. What would we give away? Branded bacon sandwiches? Takeaway tubs of shepherd's pie?

This cake uses the now ubiquitous arborio variety of rice. You essentially make a cross between a rice pudding and a risotto, simmering the risotto rice in milk that's infused with citrus zest, vanilla and sugar, before thickening it with egg yolks and lightening it with egg whites and baking it in the oven.

This cake could also be called 'Sicily meets Tuscany'.

 I have some gorgeous Sicilian blood oranges sitting in my fridge from a couple of weeks ago, and decided to use their zest and juice in this cake, even though it's of northern Italian origin. Still, my fusion of north and south worked exceptionally well, if the taste of the result is anything to go by. I simmered the rice in milk permeated with the fragrant orange zest (along with a vanilla pod), until it became plump, sweet and gorgeous. In went some raisins, which I think are essential and provide a wonderful contrast both in texture and flavour. Next time I'll use more, and probably add some candied peel as well.

Then egg yolks, whisked with blood orange juice to a light orange cream. The original recipe says Grand Marnier, but I had none and the juice worked fine - though I did add a splash of Drambuie, for good measure. This goes into the rice to bind it together. Finally, egg whites, beaten to stiff peaks. They're folded through the mixture to make it fluffy and mousse-like, and it all goes into a tin and into the oven.

I have to say, despite my hatred of rice pudding, that the cooked rice - having soaked up its milky bath of delights - looked so delicious. Perhaps I may be coming round to the idea. But I doubt it, because when you can take rice pudding to another level completely by baking it in cake form, why on earth would you want to eat it any other way?

This cake is intriguing and delicate. It's sweet and subtle. It's delicious and fragrant. It's satisfying and sticky. 

You end up with a very well-risen creation, burnished and crinkly on top where a skin has formed, and with a fluffy crust around the edges like a cheesecake. In fact, it looks very similar to a cheesecake when turned out of the tin. Cut into it, however, and you find a slightly molten centre, still partially liquid from the milky rice, while the outer parts are firm and slightly chewy. Needless to say, it's a very moist, sticky cake - there is, after all, over a litre of milk in it.

Although you can clearly see it's made of rice, this is definitely more cake than rice pudding. It has a wonderfully satisfying cakey texture, with a slight bite to it. Even better, it is decadently rich and creamy, suffused with the perfume of vanilla, orange juice and orange zest. I can't quite describe the flavour, but it reminds me a lot of eating proper French custard - that thick, gorgeous creme patisserie that you find in little pastry fruit tartlets; rich, creamy, with a delicate hint of sweet fragrant flavour. It's quite subtle and not too sweet either; too much sugar I think would just destroy its nuanced flavour. I love the juicy crunch of the raisins, which really enliven the whole creation, though I can't wait to try candied peel as well to continue the Sicilian theme.

I served this simply, dusted with a thick layer of icing sugar (essential, I think, as the cake itself isn't very sweet) and accompanied by slices of blood orange. The fruit goes really well with the cake - as it's quite creamily bland (in a good way), the zestiness of fresh orange slices really works a treat with the thick mass of baked rice.

Please don't be sceptical that I'm giving you risotto baked into a cake. This is really, really lovely. It would make a perfect mid-afternoon snack with a cup of coffee, and also makes an unusual dessert - though, being predominantly rice, it is quite filling, so plan your preceding courses carefully!

If you're a rice pudding hater, don't worry. This is not rice pudding. It is torta di riso al profumo d'arancio,  and mamma mia, is it good. It's nursery food, dressed up with Italian elegance and style, made exotic and sexy.

And if you don't think rice is sexy, try bathing it in milk fragrant with sweet vanilla and orange zest. You might just change your mind.

Vanilla and blood orange rice cake (serves 6-8):

(Recipe adapted from delicious. magazine, May 2012 issue)

• 1.1 litres milk (I used semi-skimmed)
• 1 vanilla pod, split
• Zest of 1 blood orange
• 130g caster sugar
• 200g arborio rice
• 50ml blood orange juice
• 2 tsp Drambuie or Grand Marnier (optional)
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 70g raisins
• Icing sugar, to serve
• Blood oranges, to serve

Put the milk, sugar, orange zest and vanilla pod in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the rice and simmer for 25 minutes until the rice has absorbed most of the milk, and is cooked but still slightly al dente. Leave to cool - while it cools, the rice should absorb the rest of the milk, turning into a thick, creamy mass. Add the raisins.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160C fan oven. Grease and line a 20-23cm springform cake tin.

In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks with the orange juice and liqueur (if using) until thick and creamy. Stir into the cooled rice. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, then fold a third of them into the rice mixture to loosen it. Once loosened, fold in the rest of the egg whites.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 60-75 minutes, until the centre is quite firm to the touch and a skewer comes out mostly clean. Halfway through the cooking time, cover the cake with foil to stop the top browning too much.

Leave to cool, then serve at room temperature dusted with icing sugar and garnished with sliced blood oranges.

Mexican spiced chicken salad for Cinco de Mayo

In honour of the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo (the 5th of May) this Saturday - from what I gather from reading various US-based food blogs, across the pond it's basically known as an excuse to gorge oneself on nachos, tacos, enchiladas and the like - the lovely people at Discovery sent me a load of fajita-themed goodies to celebrate with. I have a bit of a soft spot for Discovery ever since I won a KitchenAid blender at one of their competitions last year, and am still trying to work my way through the huge stash of goodies I picked up then. Included in this treasure trove are their new Green Jalapeño Relish, a fajita kit and their mild and medium salsas; pretty much everything you need to whip up a perfect Mexican celebratory supper. They were even nice enough to send me a pan and a chopping board, so I literally had everything I needed to cook said supper...apart from maybe a hob. (Note to Discovery - I'd like an induction one, please, and you can deliver it any time that's convenient).

Rather than make your standard fajitas, however, I decided to do something a bit different. If you're feeling lazy, it's stupidly easy to whip up fajitas with Discovery's fajita kits, which include basically everything except the meat and veg (it's even easier if you follow their recipe for all-in-one chicken fajitas, where everything is fried in one pan). I love their fajita spice mix, which contains just the right amount of heat, flavour and piquancy to liven up chicken and make an authentic-tasting dinner, and they have a great range of salsa and relish (guacamole, sour cream topping, whole red and green jalapeños...) to make your fajita more interesting on its journey from plate to mouth (the green jalapeño is even better for being green - you can pretend it's one of your five-a-day!)

I've made this Mexican salad on several occasions, though, and figured it was time to blog about it. The photos aren't great, and certainly don't do this vibrant salad any justice, but given that the fifth of May is nearly upon us, I may as well suggest it to you as a dish for the occasion, as it's utterly delicious.

OK, so this is my interpretation of Mexican. I rarely eat Mexican food and have never been to Mexico, but I know what ingredients can be combined to make something vaguely authentic. This salad features all the staples - sweetcorn, beans, red peppers, avocado, lime juice, chilli, coriander and spiced chicken. Only instead of being stuffed into a tortilla, they're served in salad form. The chicken is coated in Discovery fajita spice mix and seared over a high heat, then serve atop its colourful bed of sweet, tangy, crunchy vegetables. The dressing is a mixture of lime juice, coriander, and Discovery chipotle paste. If you've never tried chipotles, you're missing out. They're smoke-dried jalapeños and they have the most incredible addictive aroma and flavour. They lend the salad a real kick. Discovery do them in a handy paste form which is ideal for adding to sauces and stews, but you can also buy them as dried whole chillies.

When I first made this, I used freshly cooked black beans, as they seem more Mexican (and by that, I mean they're normally the kind I find in burritos I buy every now and again). You can use a tin of black beans if you can find them, but I've never succeeded - in which case tinned kidney beans are fine. Discovery also do refried beans, which might work, and cannellini beans would probably work too. The point is to have those pillowy, starchy pulses to contrast with the crisp crunch of the vegetables. This is a pretty easy salad - you just chop stuff and put it in a bowl, and some of it you don't even need to chop because it comes out of a tin (not normally my style of cooking, but sometimes there's something so therapeutic about just opening tins and throwing things into a bowl, particularly when the end result is this good).

The avocado is, in my opinion, essential. It gives a really gorgeous creamy texture to the salad, and I love its mild flavour against the spicy chicken. Avocado, lime and coriander are such an excellent trio, and they feature well in this dish. It's such a healthy-looking and healthy-tasting plate, and pretty filling considering there aren't really any carbohydrates involved, but go ahead and add some nachos or a tortilla if you're that way inclined.

The beauty of this salad is its versatility. If you omit the chicken, you can stir some grated cheese into the vegetable mixture, sandwich it between two tortillas, and fry it in a pan to make a lovely melting quesadilla (be warned, though, that it'll be impossible to flip without at least some of the filling leaking out). That's how I first came across this combination, and it was delicious. You could wrap the whole thing in a tortilla and eat like a fajita, or stuff it into tacos, or maybe even bake it into enchiladas. Add some feta cheese instead of the chicken to make it vegetarian, or even coat slices of halloumi with the spice mixture and fry. Use steak or pork instead of chicken. Change the vegetables a bit. It's up to you.

My version has a bit of yoghurt on top - I didn't have any sour cream, but that would be preferable - and is served with lime wedges and Discovery salsa alongside. I find it quite spicy, but you can add some of that feisty green jalapeño relish if you want to make it hotter. Use it as a template for your own Mexican-themed feast, and enjoy its fresh, tangy, spicy flavours and beautiful vibrant colours.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Will you be cooking up anything to celebrate?

Mexican spiced chicken salad (serves 4):

• 1 x 400g tin sweetcorn, drained
• 1 x 400g tin black beans or kidney beans (or cook your own from scratch if you like)
• 4 sweet pointed red peppers, chopped into 1cm dice
• 4 spring onions, thinly sliced
• Juice of 1 lime
• A large bunch of coriander, finely chopped
• 1 tsp Discovery chipotle paste
• 2 ripe avocadoes, sliced or cubed
• 4 chicken breasts
• 1 sachet Discovery fajita spice mix (mild or medium, depending on your preference)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• To serve: sour cream or yoghurt, lime wedges, and Discovery salsa

In a large bowl, mix together the sweetcorn, beans, peppers, spring onions, lime juice, coriander and chipotle paste. Toss well and check the seasoning - if you like it spicier, add more chipotle. Gently fold in the avocadoes without turning them to mush. Divide the salad between four plates.

Thinly slice the chicken breasts and coat in a couple of tablespoons of the spice mix and the oil. Heat a non-stick frying pan over a high heat then add the chicken, turning occasionally until slightly charred on the outside and cooked through. Taste - you might want a bit more spice mix if it's not flavoursome enough for you.

Divide the chicken between the plates. Top with a dollop of sour cream, a wedge of lime, and Discovery salsa, if you like. Serve immediately.

Tuscan temptation and Romagnan revelry: my Italian Easter holiday

There's a famous saying about Parma.

A Parma si mangia due volte. Prima si mangia, poi si parla.

In Parma one eats twice: first you eat, then you talk. 

What is this blog, if not an opportunity to eat for the second time by reliving recipes through writing? As I sit here examining my furious scribbles in the notebook that accompanied me round Italy three weeks ago, I feel like I'm back in my favourite country, savouring all these exquisite gastronomic moments for the second time. I'm writing this out of a purely selfish desire to reminisce for a little longer, to make those memories a little more permanent, to indulge my greed and love for Italian cuisine once again. But I also hope that this provides an interesting insight into the real food of Italy; not just the ubiquitous lasagne, carbonara and Bolognese that have become student staples, but lesser known and intriguing dishes from a country with fascinating culinary diversity.

I finally found the tower. I had to take a photo to prove it.

I begin in Tuscany, where we spent four days exploring the cities of Pisa, Florence and Siena. I'd been to the latter two before, but Pisa was new to me. Which is probably why my boyfriend (thanks to him for a lot of these photos) and I spent about three hours wandering around trying to find the leaning tower. If you imagine it to be an unmissable landmark around which everything else revolves, maybe like the Eiffel Tower or Empire State Building, you'd be wrong. It's not very tall and it definitely isn't visible for miles around. We began to think the entire thing was a conspiracy, until we eventually stumbled upon it. Our reactions?

"Oh, right. So it...it really does, y'know, lean."

Culture done, we swiftly moved onto the important part of the holiday - eating.

I was lucky I'd been warned in advance about the bread of Tuscany, or I'd have got a not-entirely-pleasant surprise upon first bite. It is completely devoid of salt. That might not sound like a big deal, but believe me, once you try bread made without salt you will realise just how much that simple ingredient contributes to a humble loaf. Bread without it is odd. It's not horrible, as the texture and satisfying breadiness is still there, but instead of tasting squidgy, moreish, doughy, it tastes like a sad, bland cloud.

But, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. The fact that I found the bread not very enjoyable to eat means that I didn't guzzle down the entire bread basket before the meal had even begun. It enabled me to have more stomach space for delicious pasta. It probably enabled me to return from Italy a couple of pounds lighter than I would have otherwise. So for that, Tuscany, I thank you.

Also, if you view bread as a vehicle for mopping up delicious sauce and remnants, the Tuscan variety is perfect. Because it's nothing spectacular on its own, it allows whatever you soak into it to really shine. This, I suppose, is why Tuscan bread is often used in staple dishes like panzanella, a salad of stale bread and tomatoes, where the bread soaks up all the delicious juices and dressing.

The first thing to pass our lips in Pisa was, as you might expect, bread. However, this was not the saltless Tuscan bread. This was actually a rustic kind of thick baguette. Not very Italian, but wait to hear about what it contained. Starving, our BA lounge breakfast a distant memory and no lunch having materialised on the plane (BA, take note - a tiny bag of salted poppadom-type crisps is really not food), we ended up wandering into Pisa at about 4pm after checking into our hotel. The first viable place we found was a little bar, that I was drawn to by its sumptuous display of cured meats, cheeses and other tasty delights. It was utterly perfect - you could choose any combination of all the proffered ingredients and have them made into a huge, fat panino. There were about twenty different types of meat (cured hams, roast turkey, roast hams, chicken, stuffed pork), trays of different cheeses, little pots of glistening, vivid sauces, and platters of slick grilled marinated vegetables. I went for a classic(ish) combination: prosciutto, mozzarella and grilled vegetables. Jon had the same, but with a pepper sauce, which I really wish I'd had too.

Pisa at dusk

We sat outside this unassuming little bar, right next to the river, and ate our sandwiches, which turned out - when produced - to be about the length of our arms. They were incredible. Mine was absolutely bursting with slices of salty, moreish prosciutto and chunks of milky, cold mozzarella, tempered by the slight crunch and earthy flavour of grilled courgettes and aubergines. Jon's was, if possible, even better with its red pepper sauce.

One thing, though. I don't know how long it is since I last ate a crisp baguette, but it must have been ages, because this one left loads of little cuts along the roof of my mouth. Clearly I need to toughen up a little bit by eating daily crusty baguettes. What a hardship.

What do you do when your mouth is sore and chafed by a crusty baguette? You go in search of ice cream, obviously.

About two minutes from the sandwich bar we found Pisa's most recommended gelateria - La Bottega del Gelato. This became a regular feature of our stay - I find it impossible to reside in Italy and not make daily gelato a key feature of my trip. All the flavours I tried were lovely, but the most notable was 'ciambella', which is Italian for doughnut. However, it's also the name assigned to a gorgeous ring-shaped cake made with eggs, butter, sugar and lemon, that I think is a speciality of the Emilia-Romagna region. This gelato tasted exactly like lemon meringue pie, or lemon drizzle cake; a kind of hybrid of the two. It was creamy and tangy, full of zesty lemon goodness. Not as purely lemony as lemon sorbet; it had a richness reminiscent of butter and eggs and other delicious things. The pistachio was also wonderful, as was the Nutella flavour, which was a plain custard base strewn with rich, grainy rivers of molten Nutella. Also fascinating was a pine nut ice cream, which I just had to try, and which was gorgeous - nutty and rich and buttery, with that prominent and distinctive pine nut flavour.

Perusing potential restaurants in Pisa

We ate dinner that night at Trattoria Il Campano, and though our food was wonderful, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were missing a trick somehow. We sat there eating our pasta while the matronly waitress brought out steak after steak from the kitchen. This wasn't any steak, though. This was bistecca Fiorentina, the Tuscan carnivore's paradise. It's an enormous T-bone steak, usually from the Chianina breed of cattle, very thickly cut - one will serve two or more people. It's served very rare, simply grilled and then rested on the bone for five minutes to allow the blood to flow out. The waitress brought them out on platters and carved them at the table of the eagerly awaiting diners. I watched her slice that perfectly cooked, utterly gorgeous steak into strips, marvelling at its perfectly crimson interior, and I suddenly felt a deep pang of longing. Jon simply remarked that it was "too rare" for him, and carried on with his dinner. I get the feeling it's what all the locals eat on a Saturday night to treat themselves (it's not cheap, priced at about €4.50 per 100g, with an average steak weighing around 1.2kg), and I was so jealous. Maybe next time. When I have a boyfriend with more bloodlust.

Anyway, our food was excellent. Being near the sea, the seafood in Pisa is wonderful. An interesting quirk of many restaurants there is to offer two different menus - terra (land), and mare (sea), which similar courses across each. Pici pasta, a thick, doughy spaghetti that is a Tuscan speciality, may be served with a cinghiale (wild boar) sauce on one menu, and a baccalà (salt cod) sauce on the other. Jon tried the former at Il Campano, and it was gorgeous - really rich and earthy, like pork but more gamey and intense. I went for a starter of seppie, cuttlefish, which I'd never had before. I could smell it before it reached my table; cooked in a light tomato sauce with Swiss chard, it came piled up on a piece of bread, which absorbed all that gorgeous cooking liquor. It was rather like squid, but much more tender and yielding, and had a really rich, salty, seafood flavour. In this case, the Tuscan bread was perfect to mop up the sauce, which was pretty salty.

I followed this with ravioli filled with potato cream, served in a sea bream sauce. I'm not convinced by the idea of filling ravioli with mashed potato, I have to say - too much carbohydrate even for my flour-loving stomach. It was a bit odd in terms of texture. But the sauce, made of flakes of sea bream in its cooking liquid, was lovely. I'd never have thought of putting the seafood outside the ravioli before; it's definitely something I'd experiment with.

Probably my favourite dinner of the whole trip was at Osteria del Porton Rosso (see above), one of those charming little trattorie tucked away down a side street that you read about in travel guides and wistful novels but assume doesn't actually exist in real life. This one did. Unfortunately, the side street on which it was located appeared to be the unofficial urinal of Pisa. There are several streets vying for this nickname. Perhaps it's because public toilets in Pisa, like in most of Europe, are basically non-existent. Perhaps it's because the youth of Pisa are just lazy. But there's nothing like walking down a street fragrant with urine, dodging the tell-tale trickles of liquid on the otherwise dry pavement, to whet your appetite.

Fortunately, the food more than made up for this experience, as did the charming waiter. It helped that we were the only customers apart from a little old lady sitting in a corner. Perhaps I should explain why. For some reason that I still don't entirely understand, Pisa celebrates the New Year on March 25, and has done since the 12th century because it had a different calendar from then until 1749. Obviously. Because of this, there is a big celebration every year on March 25 called the 'Capodanno Pisano' - you can find out more about this odd custom here, but essentially it involves a parade of people in medieval garb carrying banners with crests on, all ending up in the cathedral for a service. We somehow got swept along in this wave of marching and instrument-playing, and ended up squashed near the front of the church having to endure a lengthy service entirely in Italian. Apparently it involves a sunbeam from one of the church windows landing on a marble egg, which marks the official New Year, but unfortunately we couldn't see said egg. I translated bits to Jon at first, but eventually we both kind of gave up and passively absorbed the priest's wisdom, while our legs and lower backs grew uncomfortably stiff. Still, it was very interesting. It also meant that the streets were totally deserted that night, and hardly anything was open, which is why we had the restaurant to ourselves.

Jon ordered a steak. How very male of him. I ordered fish. How very female of me. This was a place featuring the terra and mare menu concept. It wasn't just fish I ended up with, though.

I do speak Italian fairly well, but if there is one phrase I'd advise you to learn before visiting the country, it is this:

Cosa mi consiglia?

It means 'what do you recommend?', and is the key weapon in my culinary tourist arsenal. I always, always ask waiters this question, even when I've mostly decided what I want to eat, though it's even more useful when I'm being my usual pathetic ambivalent self. In this case, the waiter recommended the 'Degustazione del Mare', which he explained was a starter comprising five or six small tastes of various typical seafood dishes. I immediately got excited and ordered it, followed by ravioli with sea bream and artichokes (similar to the potato ravioli, but with sea bream inside the ravioli along with the potato, and topped with gorgeous fruity olive oil, more bream, and marinated artichokes - it was wonderful). Let's talk about the starter, though.

He asked Jon if he'd be sharing, and I said he might try a little bit. The waiter obviously took this as a cue to prepare this starter for two people. I was definitely not prepared for the amount of food that followed. He brought two tapas-size portions, which I began to eat. Then another two. Then another two. Then another one. At one point I was worried this gastronomic onslaught would never end, but masochistically I couldn't wait for it to continue. There was a little plate of glistening, salty marinated anchovies. Four neat little tuna meatballs, crispy on the outside and yielding within, with a slight hint of fish. An unusual fried fishcake of chickpeas, vegetables and mussels. Set grilled polenta with prawns and lardo (cured pig fat), draped in elegant, meltingly delicious ribbons over the top. A pureé of salt cod and chickpeas, which was like a mellow, fish-flavoured hummous (though that sounds vile - rest assured it was delicious), and finally my two favourite dishes: ribollita with prawns and vegetables, and farro with octopus. Ribollita literally means 'reboiled' - it's a Tuscan soup originating from minestrone leftovers which were then reheated and various odds and ends added, including bread and vegetables. The result is a thick, starchy broth. This one was resplendent with prawns, salty, rich and delicious. The farro with octopus was definitely a highlight. Farro is a nutty grain similar to pearl barley. It was served with exquisitely tender cooked octopus, and the combination was just wonderful; like a hearty, flavoursome seafood salad.

Needless to say, I didn't have much room for my ravioli (though I ate it all, obviously), because I'd eaten enough starter for two people (Jon isn't a fish fan, so picked at a couple of things and then sat awaiting his steak). I did, however, have enough room to try his steak, which was the best steak I've ever had. This might be because it was drowning in a totally decadent creamy peppercorn sauce, but it also might be because I could probably have brought it back to life with CPR. It oozed sumptuous rivulents of pink blood into the sauce as he cut it, its flesh scarlet and bursting with juice. It was too rare for him. I wish I'd ordered it. To this day I dream of it.

That degustazione del mare is up there with one of the best things I have ever eaten. I love trying lots of little things, and every plate was so carefully cooked and presented, and so beautiful, that the memory of it fills me with joy. You know what else fills me with joy? The fact that it cost €14. For enough tapas-style seafood dishes to share (though I didn't). I think the waiter, realising that there'd be no other customers that night, was feeling generous, as that can't have been a normal portion size for one person. Every dish was so unusual, too - chickpea and mussel cakes, fish hummous, prawns and pig fat; a glorious mixture of surf and turf, served in rustic Italian style.

I'd had in my head romantic visions of dining al fresco in the shadow of the tower of Pisa (which, as established previously, is a pretty small shadow), but being a realist accepted that this probably was not likely. Generally, good restaurants are not to be found within a 500-yard radius of major tourist attractions. We were proved wrong, however, by Trattoria La Buca (see above), a lovely pizzeria/restaurant if not in the shadow of the tower then definitely close to it. I had fabulous fresh tagliatelle with an anchovy sauce, which was salty and slick with olive oil and delicious. I had been torn between that and the cacciucco, a Tuscan fish stew which supposedly should contain five different types of fish to be authentic - one for each of the C's in its name. I never did get to try it, sadly, but my seafood experience at Porton Rosso more than made up for this deficit.

We also dined at La Sosta Dei Cavalieri, the sister restaurant of Osteria Dei Cavalieri, which is where we really wanted to go but unfortunately they were full. La Sosta served Italian food on the more expensive, less rustic scale. My sformata of pumpkin served with cheese fondue was beautifully presented, but wasn't a particularly well thought-out dish - there was only one texture, which was creamy, and nothing to balance it. It probably wasn't worth twelve euros. However, my fresh pasta with 'barnyard ragu' (rabbit, guinea fowl, duck) was fabulous, really rich and yet delicate. For dessert we tried chocolate torte and apple cake - again, lovely, but nothing particularly ground-breaking.

Siena, languishing under the moodiest of Italian skies

There was something rather nice about returning to Siena, a city I found beautiful and intriguing when I visited four years ago, and which has lost none of its charm since. It has an appeal like no other, with its labyrinthine streets and terracotta brickwork, all winding lazily outwards from the central square, a giant sink-shaped basin where tourists and locals alike bask in the sun and the shadow of the Torre del Mangia. I don't normally go in for Italian churches - I travelled round Italy with a Catholic three years ago, therefore have seen enough to last me well into my grave - but Siena's cathedral is something else. It's utterly stunning, with its white and coral exterior and its highly ornate interior, dominated by its starry ceiling, floor mosaics and monochrome striped pillars. I've never seen anything like it; it'll certainly make you re-evaluate your ideas of Italian churches. There was an exhibition of 15th century music manuscripts which my inner medieval geek slash magpie found pretty exciting. They were all shiny and old and stuff.

But woah, enough culture there. This is a food blog. For lunch I had gnocchi.

Delicate, pillowy gnocchi with a gorgeous pine nut cream sauce, shredded radicchio, and chunks of apple. An unusual combination, which is why I ordered it. It was divine - almost as divine as the cathedral. The sauce was so rich and moreish, I was using the last piece of gnocchi as a sort of scoop to make sure it all ended up in my mouth. The apple, soft and buttery and juicy, worked perfectly with the rich cream and the crunch of the radicchio. Jon had a sort of carbonara made with pork cheek and artichokes, which was rich and delicious, if a little on the eggy end of the carbonara spectrum. They had a chilli, chocolate and pear cake on the dessert menu which we sadly didn't end up trying, but I wish I had. Should you wish to enjoy these delights, you can find them at Hosteria Il Carroccio.

I consoled myself with panforte. Panforte is a Siena speciality: it's a kind of dense sweet made with lots of sugar, nuts and candied fruits. It's made in huge wheels and sold in wedges, rather like cheese. You see it everywhere, wandering around Siena - there are little baby ones on sale in gift shops, or huge wheels of the stuff in the windows of bakeries, glistening invitingly and begging you to ask for a sliver. It's a very attractive confection, with its jewel-like chunks of candied fruits (not just citrus - they use watermelon and pumpkin too), sprinkling of sugar on top and chunky nut pieces. I bought two slivers from Nannini, a famous cafe/bakery. They were extortionate, but worth every euro.

I tried the panforte margherita, which features hazelnuts, almonds, pine nuts and candied citrus fruit, and is spiced with cloves, coriander, honey and cinnamon. It had an amazing crunchy almond topping reminiscent of marzipan, and a lovely fudgy texture. Panforte is very sweet, but its gooeyness somehow makes up for that. The other version was fichi e noci - figs and walnuts. This was a much darker, denser concoction, gritty with fig seeds and sticky with the dried fruit. It was probably my favourite, less sickly and cloying than the margherita version, rather like a much stickier, thicker English tea loaf or Christmas pudding. I'm gutted I only bought two tiny slivers of each, but that was all I could afford. The wheels are priced at about €27 a kilo, and the tiniest possible slice weighs 150g.

Fig and walnut panforte; a dense, sticky concoction of candied fruit and sugar

I also bought some ricciarelli biscuits, another Siena speciality - rather like macaroons, these are made with sugar, ground almonds, honey and egg whites. They taste a bit like crunchy marzipan.

Now I think about it, it's a miracle the Sienese have any teeth left.

Also, can I just share with you my utter joy at the contrast between this visit to Siena and my last. During the latter, I sat down on the floor of the square and for lunch ate a bread roll and a pot of cottage cheese that I'd bought from a supermarket. That was four years ago, when I was an impoverished student halfway through a trip to Italy that was costing far more than she had anticipated. This time, I could go to a restaurant. I could order three courses if I wanted. There was no cottage cheese involved. The joys of having a job.

Siena also provided a trip to Grom. Grom is a bit of an Italian institution. It's a chain of gelaterie, but one that prides itself on making the best possible ice cream out of the finest quality ingredients, using natural processes and no rubbishy chemicals. Its ice cream cups and spoons are all recyclable. Grom is endorsed by the Slow Food movement, which is a pretty prestigious accolade in Italy. Its slogan is 'Gelato Come Una Volta', which loosely translates as 'Ice cream as it once was'.

I've been to a few Groms in my time, not just because I love the word 'Grom'. I heard that it's called that because the original branch was in Rome, and Grom is an amalgamation of 'Gelato Roma', but I'm not sure if that's true. I've visited Groms in Rome, Padova, Vercelli, Turin, Perugia, Bergamo and possibly a few other cities that I've now forgotten. Siena was the latest visit in a long line.

Although some people have argued that Grom has now become a soulless chain, I do rather like their branches. The walls bear a vague resemblance to Pret a Manger over here, in that they bear colourful placards of inviting ingredients with a little description. We get told that they only use the best pink Himalayan salt for their salted caramel flavour, that they use Sicilian Bronte pistachios - the best in the world - when in season, but when not they go to Syria for the emerald nuts, that they use 'distinctly aromatic' Guatemalan coffee to flavour their coffee ice cream.

The ice cream is housed in gleaming metal vats with shiny lids, a far cry from those touristy gelaterie you get in major cities where all the ice cream is artfully piled up about two feet high and adorned with garish chunks of fruit or chocolate. Generally speaking, in Italy if you can't see your ice cream before you order it, it's going to be better. At least this is how I've always found it.

Grom doesn't change its menu very much, instead offering year-round stalwarts interspersed with a few seasonal specialities. I've tried many of them, and can heartily recommend the pear sorbet, the salted caramel, the Torroncino (hazelnut nougat) and the Sicilian cassata (ricotta cheese with chunks of chocolate and candied fruit). Yes, there might be better independent gelaterie in Italy, but if you need somewhere you can rely on, Grom is a surefire winner.

Florence at its loveliest - not a tourist in sight

We visited Florence the next day (where the 'I love gelato' title photo of this post was taken); I won't attempt to say something new and original about this most touristy of cities. Although I could tell you that the Duomo is a massive disappointment on the inside. I'd never been in, despite visiting Florence twice previously, and we somehow managed to just walk in, despite a few hours earlier having observed queues approximately the size of the Nile snaking noisily around the curves of the building. They were about to close, which is probably why, so we managed to dart in (me wearing a rather un-churchly dress that revealed a decent amount of leg), conclude that it was really better observed from the outside, and then leave. How uncouth.

More memorable were these crazy lemons that I spotted outside a little greengrocer down a side street. They reminded me a bit of that horrible Orc from one of the Lord of the Rings films that has this bizarre fleshy growth on the side of its head. This was the first and only food stall I saw in Florence; it seems that tourists are more likely to buy boxer shorts featuring an image of David's resplendent marble penis than anything that might sustain them nutritionally. Such is life.

Back to Pisa for dinner. If my degustazione del mare was the best meal of the trip, dining at Ristoro Al Vecchio Teatro was certainly the most memorable, if perhaps not for all the right reasons. I'd been attracted by its seafood tasting menu (because, you know, I hadn't had enough of that already...), and by the effervescent enthusiasm of the owner when I'd gone to ask about the menu before booking a table. There were some meaty options on the menu too, and Jon was placated by the presence of spaghetti with ragu, so we sat down ready to order. We were ready to order from this moment until we left the restaurant, and the opportunity never arose. The menus sat untouched on the side of the table, while the owner enthusiastically presented us with dish after unexpected dish.

There was a plate of sliced meats for Jon. Bruschetta with anchovies and olives for both of us. Polenta with lardo. Octopus and chickpea salad. Stuffed mussels. Seafood omelette. Except we hadn't ordered any of it. When the bruschetta came out, we thought it might have just been a complimentary appetiser - a restaurant in Rome once served me bruschetta for no reason, and it was lovely - and free. But once plate after plate continued to grace our table uninvited, we became rather confused. Add to this the fact that the waiter kept conversing wildly in Italian with the table next to us while showing them his Facebook photo albums on the computer in the dining room, and it was all rather bizarre. I eventually had to tell him that while I did, in fact, want this huge seafood tasting feast, Jon really only wanted spaghetti with ragu. No, we were told, the kitchen was preparing a whole host of meaty dishes for Jon so he didn't feel left out. While I was tucking into an unusual risotto of prawns and orange, Jon was given one with vegetables and cheese. When my fish spaghetti (delicious) arrived, Jon finally got his ragu. While I proceeded to eat 'prawns in shirts' (prawns wrapped in lardo and then a thin crust of pasta) and stuffed mussels, he had to decline the waiter's offer of osso buco, which I think offended him because he didn't seem as friendly after that.

I was a bit worried we were getting this odd treatment because we were obviously tourists, so I was immensely reassured when two more tables came in and sat down, and proceeded to suffer the same fate. We sat there and laughed at those unsuspecting victims as they happily perused the menu, no doubt carefully planning their choices, salivating over certain options, getting their appetites whetted for the hand-picked delights to come. If only they'd known that the chance was to be so cruelly snatched away. I admit I did slightly relish their confused expressions as the bruschetta was steadily followed by everything else, according to the waiter's whim, and the menus lay sadly unnoticed on the tabletop.

We shared a trio of desserts: castagnaccio, a chestnut cake typical of the region; a pine nut cream cake, which was lovely; and a sort of sweet focaccia type thing. I have to say I was a bit disappointed by the castagnaccio - Lonely Planet sold it as the main reason to go to this restaurant, but maybe the cook was having an off day, because it wasn't particularly special. In fact I think it may have been a bit burnt. Incidentally, there was no great army of chefs preparing this gastronomic onslaught that night - Jon and I were both astounded to discover that the chef was a single woman, presumably the waiter's wife, working in a kitchen about the size of a large wardrobe. Credit to her for turning out so much food in such a tiny space.

Ponte Vecchio, Florence

Anyway, I really loathe people referring to adverse occasions as 'experiences', but this certainly was an experience. Some of the food was fairly average (I wouldn't say the tasting menu was worth the €35 it cost), some of it was really lovely, but I'll certainly remember the restaurant more for this totally bizarre dining experience. Having had a quick look at reviews on TripAdvisor, it seems we weren't the only victims of the waiter's immense enthusiasm for his restaurant's cuisine. He explained to me that he just wanted us to try everything, that this was the Italian way. While I think that's rather sweet, it was a bit alarming and confusing, and I'm not sure I'd go back. It was a joy the next day to go to a restaurant and just pick from the menu, and receive exactly what we ordered. It felt like a bit of a luxury. Also, it was pizza. Can't get more simple yet delicious than that.

The standard sight in most Bolognese shop windows

Onwards, to Bologna. Known both as 'La Rossa' (the red one) and 'La Grassa' (the fat one), Bologna is probably where we get most of our ideas about Italian food from. It's in the Emilia-Romagna region, widely regarded as the best region for food in all of Italy, apparently because of its rich, fertile soil. This is where you get Parma ham, as well as Parmesan cheese, lasagne, Bolognese sauce, mortadella, numerous salamis, tortellini, aubergine parmigiana, and more varieties of stuffed pasta than you could eat in weeks. The region is also one of the wealthiest in Italy, in monetary as well as gastronomic terms.

It's in my top five Italian cities (the others being Naples, Perugia, Turin, Bergamo. Though this list changes according to my caprices, and sometimes will include Padova, Parma and Catania. Maybe Ferrara too. In fact, there's nowhere in Italy I don't like, though Venica makes me feel a bit sick because you constantly feel like you've been mugged; whether you're buying a meal, using a public toilet or entering a museum, you can practically hear the steady flow of your hard-earned cash seeping out of your wallet).

Just strolling around the city of Bologna is joyous and fascinating. It's architecturally interesting, with its  38 kilometres of arched red porticoes keeping you in the shade as you sample its vibrant culture. It's renowned as a university town, famous for its music, scientific history, artistic history...essentially, you feel cultured just by virtue of being there. Its main square is a hub of activity, but more interesting are the little streets that branch off it, especially Via Vecchie Pescherie, which literally translates as 'the street of the old fishmongers'. There are indeed fishmongers here to this day, along with numerous grocers, cheese shops, ham shops, butchers, bakeries, pasta shops, kitchenware shops...essentially, it is where I would spend my last day on earth. Provided I had a fair few euros in my pocket and an empty stomach.

It's all about ham and cheese here. Ham, cheese and beef. Every menu will feature 'ragu', which is what the Bolognese call our 'spag bol'. Except, as you may know, Bolognese sauce is never served with spaghetti in Italy. Such a robust, thick, chunky sauce demands a chunkier pasta than tender, slippery strands of spaghetti: tagliatelle is a favourite, though it can also be served with penne, rigatoni and sometimes gnocchi. What I also found interesting when I sampled ragu is that the pasta and the sauce are given equal roles to play. The pasta is lightly coated in the ragu, which authentically is quite a dry sauce, as it is cooked until all the water evaporates and the tomatoes cling to the meat. There's no unceremonious dollop of red gloop on top of a bowl of pasta, as you so often find in England. In Italy, the pasta does not play merely a supporting role.

Spag bol, except it's 'tag bol', Italian style

The same applies to Bolognese lasagne, which is much firmer and drier than its English cousin. Instead of glooping everywhere when you try and slice it into portions, it can be cut easily without everything leeching out everywhere. It's also a lot more cheesy, with thick chunks of milky mozzarella more noticeable than any gooey white bechamel, and the pasta is a star player rather than a supporting role. There is meat sauce, yes, but it's not the whole point of the dish. Obviously I'm basing this on the lasagne I tried, but I suspect it might be a general rule.

I enjoyed comparing the melanzane parmigiana (aubergines baked with parmesan - see below) with my Mum's, which is the only other version I've ever tasted. It was very different, in that the aubergines in this version were clearly cooked into oblivion in huge amounts of oil, giving them a rich, silky, unctuous mouthfeel (both my Mum and I like to fry them in considerably less fat, as we don't want to turn into balls of lard). There was far more mozzarella than in my Mum's version and less tomato sauce, so the whole thing was like a gorgeous slippery pile of oil, cheese and aubergine. Having already devoured tagliatelle with ragu, I couldn't finish all of it, but it was lovely. Especially the burnt cheesy bits on top.

Our first experience of food in Bologna (well, not my first, as I've been before, but my first of the trip) set the tone for the rest. Hungry, having spent the morning and early afternoon on the train, we ambled towards the city centre when I spied what I would call a 'deli' in England but seems to just be the general type of food shop you get in Bologna. Huge legs of Parma ham hung from the ceiling; in the window was a vast array of cheeses, cooked meats, marinated vegetables and antipasti, loaves of bread, and jars of truffle paste and other enticing sauces. In Italy you can usually go into one of these places, somewhere that sells cheese and various meats, and they will have bread behind the counter with which they can make you a sandwich.

Incidentally, a sandwich is a panino. The plural of panino is panini. Which is why every time I hear cafes, bars or people in England refer to 'paninis', I want to die.

If I spy a sign reading 'panini's', not only do I want to die, but I want to bring whoever wrote it with me.

Anyway. I discovered this little-known fact when in Naples several years ago, and it's got me out of many a hungry spot where there seems to be nothing around. You don't really get 'sandwich bars' in Italy as you do here; better to wander into a shop with nice fresh produce and ask them to put it between two slices of bread.

This shop makes the best sandwich in Bologna

So we ended up eyeing the incredible array of charcuterie and cheese, totally bewildered as to what would go with what - I was mentally savouring some large, rotund balls of smoked mozzarella, thick and plump with a mottled brown crust - when the man behind the counter obviously sensed that I am the least decisive person in the entire history of the universe, and told us to have the squacquerone cheese.

Is there a better name for a cheese? Really? Squacquerone. Pronounced 'squack-er-oh-nee'. Amazing.

It's a cheese typical of the Emilia-Romagna region, soft, thick and creamy, runny in places and thicker like cream cheese in others. It actually has a taste reminiscent of those hideous Dairylea triangles: cloying on the palate, but in a pleasant way, with a lovely creamy tang to it. I first had it in a piadina - a thick flatbread traditionally made with pork lard - in Ravenna, where it was coupled with caramelised figs.

Let's talk about caramelised figs, fichi caramellati. You see them everywhere in this region. They're sold in big trays where you buy them by weight, but you can also get them in jars (I bought some to take home). It's always the same product - a big, shining mass of treacle-black pulp, glistening with crunchy seeds and the glossy curve of the collapsed figs it contains. How they get them like that I don't know - they're obviously caramelised into sheer, joyous oblivion, dark as coal and sweet as honey. They sell them in delis, and they also fold them into ricotta gelato where they provide a beautiful contrast in both colour and texture, their rich sweetness offset by the milky ricotta cream. Being a fiend for figs, I try and eat them everywhere I go.

Anyway, once the man had put the squacquerone in our sandwiches, I remembered that piadina in Ravenna (hands down one of the best things I've ever eaten), and asked for some caramelised figs in there too. Then some prosciutto, to balance the sweet figs with a salty tang. I watched him scoop out the glistening figs and smother them over the cheese, then elegantly drape wafer-thin slices of pink prosciutto over the top. I wonder if I actually salivated onto the floor; I can't remember. I do remember he said 'Wonderful!' with genuine delight as he handed us our panini.

There was a bit of a worry when he announced that these two little sandwiches would cost seventeen euros. The problem with having a sandwich made up in this way is you pay for everything in it by weight, which can be expensive if you ask for certain things. I was suddenly horrified that I'd accidentally ordered the most expensive sandwich in history and felt terrible for telling Jon what a great idea it would be to go into this shop...until it turned out the man at the till had accidentally added something costing ten euros onto the bill. Panic over.

You'd be smiling too after a week-long diet of meat, cheese, bread and ice cream.

Needless to say, these little panini were indeed wonderful. He'd used that infamous saltless Tuscan bread, which was great as the fillings were so flavoursome they needed a bland casing. We sat on a monument by the bustling main road and tucked in, getting ourselves totally covered in cheese and sticky figs in the process.

But Bologna isn't just about the savoury stuff. The bakeries also proffer all sorts of wonderful delights, generally quite heavy on the butter, flour and sugar; rustic concoctions based on simple flavour combinations, without any of the faff and whipped cream nonsense of French patisserie. My particular favourite Italian pastry - not typically Bolognese, mind - is crostata. This is essentially a jam tart, but - yet again - the Italians make it so much sexier. An Italian crostata features a very rich, yellow, crumbly pastry encasing or topped with a thick layer of jam. Sometimes the pastry is arranged in a lattice pattern over the jam. The fruit varies - I've had several varieties, but blueberry was a highlight - but in all cases you end up with a crunchy contrast between the very short, buttery pastry and the gooey jam filling, which is sugary and delightful. I bought a huge wedge to eat for breakfast - the only time in my life you'll probably ever find me eating a jam tart for breakfast - filled with sweet, orange apricot jam and sporting a layer of pastry so thick it was basically a biscuit topped with jam. So sugary, but so good with a bitter cappuccino to take the edge off.

Incidentally, I marvel at how much better Italian coffee is than English. I suppose it's to be expected. But I can't quite put my finger on what makes it so much better. I think it's the fact that an Italian cappuccino is half the size of an English one, therefore much more coffee-flavoured and not just like a huge vat of warm milk with a bit of chocolate on top. I quite like its bitterness; it leaves you wanting more, rather than leaving you feeling like you've got a small ocean of lactose swishing around in your intestines. It has the perfect balance of foam/milk/coffee. It's served in a small and dainty cup. Oh, and it's usually about half the price of the English version. I suppose those are all the reasons it's better.

The gelato in Bologna is some of the best I've ever eaten. I'd highly recommend two places: Gelatauro, which is recommended in the Bocca di Lupo cookbook; and Sorbetteria Castiglione. At the former, we devoured unusual flavours like pumpkin and cinnamon; Sicilian sponge cake with almond and pistachio; coffee, chocolate and whipped cream (see below for our spoils). The pumpkin and cinnamon was really wonderful, as was the ginger gelato. Sorbetteria Castiglione (which, incidentally, doesn't just do sorbet) is somewhere I've been before; it offers unusual and inventive combinations under the names of people - I had the 'Dolce Emma', which comprised ricotta, lemon and caramelised figs, but there's also the Michelangelo, Karin and Edoardo  - as well as two sublime sorbets: pear and cinnamon, and papaya.

The colourful fascia of a Parma street

While in Bologna we went on a day trip to Parma. I have fond memories of Parma, having stayed there on a school exchange during sixth form. I chiefly remember the lovely family I stayed with feeding me cake every day for breakfast. I was in heaven. I mentioned to them casually that I liked salmon, and the next day was treated to two courses of salmon in various forms at dinner. So I was rather surprised when I recognised precisely none of Parma. I thought at least the main street would ring a bell, but I may as well have never been there before. Perhaps my 17 year old self was too busy worrying about important teenage things like the fit of her jeans or a spot on her chin to notice her elegant surroundings; Parma is a beautiful city. It's also ranked one of the wealthiest in Italy, and you can tell. 'Well-heeled' is perhaps the term I'd use to describe its denizens.

I thought Parma was the city of the pig. Home of the eponymous ham, they absolutely love the stuff there. Every meal seems to start with a platter of cured pig in various forms. They even love their pig so much that restaurants use special pig-shaped boards to write their daily specials on ('oggi' means 'today'):

I didn't realise that it may also be the city of the horse. We stumbled upon the above restaurant while looking for another recommended restaurant which turned out to be closed. Hungry and tired, we figured we could do worse, and the menu featured 'ravioli della zucca' (pumpkin ravioli), which meant I had to go in. I was astonished by the sheer amount of horse on offer. Horse steak, roast horse, horse salad, horse tartare. There was a 'trio of horsemeat' main course available. I watched an Italian tucking into a huge bloody steak that, judging by its dark purplish colour, could only be horse meat. I got to try some of the horse tartare as part of our shared starter, and I was pleasantly surprised. I've never tried beef tartare, but I imagine horse tartare is very similar - it has a clean, mild flavour with only a hint of ferrous meatiness, and a lovely melt-in-the-mouth texture. Jon hardly touched it, perhaps put off by the idea of eating something equine.

At this restaurant - Osteria dello Zingaro (which means 'The Inn of the Gypsy') - we had one of the best meals of the trip. Having watched enviously as a group of very stylish Italian ladies at the adjacent table tucked into enormous, fresh, vibrant salads, I found myself suddenly conscious of a craving for vegetables, having eaten little else but cheese, meat and bread over the past few days. One of the salads looked particularly wonderful - a huge platter of cured meats, cheeses, marinated vegetables, fresh vegetables, olive oil and eggs. It was just the nutritional boost I needed, and absolutely delicious. We shared it, piling its contents onto bread rolls and devouring the lot, horse tartare included. Looking over at that other table, I couldn't help but think of the 'Mediterranean diet' concept that is so bandied around these days. Those salads were huge and satisfying, but undoubtedly healthy too. If only you could get something that simple yet that nutritious and delicious over here.

For our main course, we abandoned the healthy idea and had pumpkin ravioli. This has to be one of my favourite ever Italian dishes; I seek it out wherever I go, though you're only really likely to find it in the Emilia-Romagna region. I first tried it on another school exchange in Mantova, where I remember being horrified and disgusted at the notion of eating something that, hitherto, I'd only thought fit for a Halloween decoration. This was at the age of 14 when I refused to eat anything that wasn't fish fingers or cheese sandwiches, so it's unsurprising. Now I'm kicking myself for not appreciating it properly when I was lucky enough to eat it in an Italian home.

Anyway, pumpkin ravioli is one of the best things man has ever invented. Soft pillows encasing a sweet, fluffy, rich filling, that are then drenched in melted butter (sometimes with a little sage added) and smothered in parmesan cheese. The salty butter and cheese counteract the sweet pumpkin, and the overall effect is just culinary magic. I'm looking at that picture now and I can practically taste it. I used my bread to wipe every last buttery, cheesy morsel from the plate. It was perfect.

Our last supper in Italy consisted of pizza. It kind of had to, really. We went twice to the lovely La Scalinatella in Bologna, where the pizzas are enormous and have that perfect balance of crisp and dough to their bases. We drank cheap fizzy wine and devoured every morsel of cheesy, meaty, tomatoey goodness. Their pizza menu is surprisingly short, which I always think is a good sign - it was just full of simple, classic Italian combinations; not a ham and pineapple or a Cajun chicken in sight, thank God.

What really sticks in my mind, though, is a dessert I had there and had to have again the next night because it was so good. It was a chunky slice of pastiera Napoletana, a traditional Easter cake from Naples that features a pastry crust encasing an unusual mixture of sweetened ricotta, wheat, eggs and candied fruit. Sometimes they add orange blossom to the ricotta, sometimes they use pastry cream. The result is like a cheesecake pie, a fabulous contrast between the crisp pastry and the smooth, sweet, creamy filling with a hint of vanilla and the bite of candied citrus peel. It was just gorgeous; rich, light, sweet and buttery. It's on my list to recreate at home; as a lover of cheesecake and tarts in equal measure, this beautiful combination of the two can't go untasted until my next trip to Italy. It just can't.

I think the people of Parma are right. After writing all this, I do feel like I am eating every one of these dishes again. Yet without the waistline expansion or severe sensation of having eaten a lead balloon. It's simultaneously wonderful and depressing, reminding me of what I'm missing while at the same time making me feel grateful that I will not pass my life without knowing the succulent bite of an octopus and farro salad, the joyous sticky crunch of a seeded fig and walnut panforte, or the astringent sweetness of a lemon cake flavoured ice cream. Without staring in awestruck anticipation at a deli counter brimming with glistening fresh cheese and marbled, candy-coloured slabs of cured meats. Without strolling sunlit porticoes taking delicate mouthfuls of creamy, buttery pumpkin-flavoured ice cream and looking forward to a strong cappuccino to wash it all down. Without experiencing the satisfaction of biting into a square of ravioli brimming with fresh fish and toothy artichokes.

Permit me my bout of self-indulgence as I return in my mind to these happy pasta-slurping memories. I just hope this post goes to show that there is so much more to Italian cuisine than you'll ever find on a Zizzi or Pizza Express menu.

(Incidentally, thank you to Jon for allowing me to use some of his photos)