Raspberry, white chocolate, pistachio and cardamom blondies

Sometimes, you make a recipe that you know people are just going to love. It's hard to put your finger on exactly how you know this. Maybe it's because you yourself were just blown away upon first tasting it, and uttered a deeply antisocial grunt of 'ohmygodyum' with a mouth half full as you took your first bite. Maybe it's because it happens to incorporate a certain set of ingredients that are generally just pleasing to everyone. Maybe it's because it's sugary and cakey and is the kind of ridiculously moreish sweet thing that everyone just loves to partake in.

All of the above applies to this recipe.

One of the things I love about being a student again is that there are people around me every day who I can force my baked goods onto. There's nothing worse than whipping up a calorific feast in the privacy of your own kitchen only to be forced to devour the entire lot, when really you only wanted a few pieces to quality control. What could have been a pleasant sugary treat suddenly turns into a couple of extra inches on your thighs, and no one is happy.

What a hard life.

Anyway, now I can bake with peace of mind. I have neighbours. Supervisors. Friends. Sometimes people I don't know very well but who I am sure will appreciate cake. It's a good network to have.

And if all else fails, there are lots of ducks on campus. In fact, the other day a duck was so intent on stealing my/my friends' lunch that it actually nibbled my exposed toes in a desperate bid to get me to part with my couscous. That was somewhat unexpected. The moral of this story is: probably don't feed ducks your lunch. They get accustomed.

Also, don't take pity on it and throw it one of the chickpeas from said couscous. The duck will not appreciate this, and you will have wasted a chickpea. Not sad if you don't like chickpeas, but I really do. I'm cool like that. Every chickpea thrown to an unappreciative duck is a chickpea wasted.

Back to the point. I bake a lot of things. I test a lot of recipes that I make up in my head, and need to turn into reality. Sometimes they are a little bit out of the ordinary, like maybe a mango, coconut and cardamom cheesecake, or a lime, lemongrass and ginger cheesecake. Or a quince and marzipan cake. Things that I am surprised don't exist already, because they just seem to make sense. So I make them happen.

And yet for all the creative love and skill that goes into something like that, all the many minutes of ingredient and technique planning, of scribbling down ideas while you're supposed to be writing a PhD, of deliberating in the aisles of the supermarket, of tasting as you go, tasting, tasting..

...what people actually seem to prefer is a totally trashy, chocolate- and butter-heavy blondie.

I can't even be cross, though. Much as I love some of the recipes I've created over the years, after a couple of bites of these I seriously considered never bothering to make anything more sophisticated ever again.

That basic combination of butter, sugar and chocolate appears in so many permutations, but it probably beats any other for sheer gastronomic satisfaction. Sure, dairy is nice - a lovely cheesecake can be a beautiful thing - and fancy sugary concoctions like meringues or macaroons have their place. But for serious tastebud and texture appeal, you want something like a good brownie or blondie. Rich. Moist. Gooey. Slightly crunchy on the outside. Inducing salivation with the very first taste.

These are what you'd call crowd-pleasers, in the dessert world. There's a reason restaurant dessert menus pretty much always feature some form of chocolate brownie. It's the ultimate 'treat yourself' food. While I hate to apply adjectives like 'sinful' and 'naughty' to food (no really, I loathe it), that's kind of what a brownie is.

Decadent. Decadent is a better word.

Much as I love to experiment with desserts, I also love to get into the kitchen on a beautiful summer evening, put on my apron, switch on some ridiculous music (think Carly Rae Jepsen), and spend twenty minutes mixing together vast quantities of fat and sugar in the knowledge that EVERYONE WILL LOVE ME FOR IT. I'm often pretty good about not licking the spoon (often because I bake straight after breakfast, having brushed my teeth, and I can't really be bothered to go and brush them again), but with these it's totally inevitable.

This is a recipe I've developed over a few different tries. The first time I made it, from an internet recipe, I was in love. Guttural, primal, salivating love. I've tweaked it (after making it at least four times, much to the delight of my nearest and dearest) to incorporate a few other favourite ingredients: cardamom, which goes wonderfully well with white chocolate. Pistachios, which also go excellently with white chocolate but also with raspberries, which are the star of the show here.

Actually, having said that, the star of the show is the brown butter and white chocolate base. It's basically everything you could ever want from a baked thing. Moist and cakey, with a ridiculously delicious biscuity-caramel flavour from the mixture of molten, brown-flecked butter and sweet chocolate, with a delicate fragrance of cardamom in there, so slight you can barely put your finger on its presence. There's also a mixture of light and dark muscovado sugar in there, beaten with eggs to a glorious caramel creaminess. Then on top you have a fabulous crunchy crust of white chocolate chips, which keep their shape and deliver little pockets of oozing sweetness, and toasty pistachios. The raspberries are crunchy on top and gooey within, sweet and sharp, balancing out all the sugary goodness around them.

I use frozen raspberries for these, which are much cheaper than fresh. You don't need fresh. You just need them to be bold and purple and stain the surrounding cake with their delicious sweet-tart juice, brightening the rich canvas of chocolate and butter. You could adapt these, too, to your taste - maybe use hazelnuts, almonds or pecans instead of pistachios (I reckon any of those would be divine); blueberries instead of raspberries; a mixture of milk and white chocolate; a little ginger instead of cardamom.

Think of them as a blueprint for all your most ridiculously decadent dessert dreams. Forget making anything more sophisticated - I can guarantee people will appreciate these more.

Raspberry, white chocolate, pistachio and cardamom blondies (makes 2 x 16-20 blondies):

• 300g butter
• 300g white chocolate chips (or chopped white chocolate)
• 200g light muscovado sugar
• 200g dark muscovado sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 6 cardamom pods, seeds crushed to a powder
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 200g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 280g raspberries (I use frozen as they're cheaper)
• 60g pistachios, roughly chopped

In a large, wide saucepan, heat the butter until bubbling then cook over a medium heat, swirling occasionally, until the white solids separate from the gold liquid, then brown flecks start to appear, the colour darks, and it smells biscuity (for a tutorial on the technique, see here). Leave to cool for five minutes, then stir in half the chocolate chips to melt them. Grease and line two 8x8 inch cake tins, and pre-heat the oven to 165C.

In a large bowl with an electric whisk, or using an electric mixer, beat the sugars with the eggs until pale and creamy - about 3-5 minutes. Beat in the cardamom and vanilla, then the white chocolate and butter mixture. Gently beat in the flour and salt, then when you have a smooth batter fold in half the remaining chocolate chips and half the pistachio nuts.

Divide between the two tins, then scatter over the raspberries. Scatter over the remaining chocolate chips, then the pistachio nuts. Bake for 45 minutes, or until firm and golden on top with only a very slight wobble in the centre (they will continue to cook as they cool).

Coconut crêpes with mango, passionfruit and blueberries

A tropical twist on your classic French crêpe, these deliciously delicate pancakes are made with coconut milk and filled with succulent chunks of golden ripe mango, tart blueberries and sweet passionfruit. A scattering of toasted coconut, and you have a beautiful brunch that will transport you to warmer climes (with the added bonus of being suitable for those who can't eat dairy). For the recipe, check out my latest post on the Appliances Online blog, here!

Rhubarb, blueberry, almond and cardamom breakfast oat crumble

Oops, I did it again. Having told myself I was going to completely cease hoarding various fruits in my freezer, and just eat things seasonally without worrying about storing them up for a period of dearth (it's not like we still live in medieval times, where pretty much nothing is harvestable between winter and spring), I found myself handing over the best part of a tenner at the market yesterday for a huge armful of hot pink rhubarb stalks. They were just so pretty, and it was the only stall still selling the lovely slender, pastel pink type, rather than the thicker, more purple-green woody stuff. I told myself it was the last time, but I bet if I see it again next weekend I buy some more.

Fortunately, I bought it at the weekend, and the weekend means brunch. Even though I live on my own, I still bother to cook brunch just for myself. It's a nice way to differentiate the weekend from the more monotonous weekdays, and I have to admit there are few things I enjoy more than sitting down on my own to a big bowl of brunch, a large mug of green tea and Masterchef on my iPad. Plus, while it's in the oven, I find myself doing useful tasks like laundry, tidying and writing blog posts. What a mad crazy weekend life I lead.

I'm not mad enough, though, to faff around cooking something like pancakes just for me. But a big dish of some kind of baked oatmeal is perfect, because you can make it at the weekend then eat the rest during the week - it microwaves well. One of my favourite rhubarb dishes is this blueberry and rhubarb baked oatmeal, where a delicious chewy and crunchy layer of oats, berries and milk bakes over a juicy layer of rhubarb. I'm also a big fan of this rather less fiddly pear and gooseberry oat crumble, which is incredibly easy and just requires mixing an oat mixture with some fruit, then baking for an hour.

One day I decided to try the aforementioned pear and gooseberry recipe with rhubarb. The recipe works because the pears and gooseberries release a lot of juice during the cooking process, which soaks into the oats from below and makes them beautifully chewy and gooey. Rhubarb, too, turns very juicy in the oven, as do blueberries. It seemed like something that had to be done.

I threw in some crushed cardamom with the rhubarb, a pairing which I have loved for a long time - the exotic citrus fragrance of cardamom works beautifully with sweet rhubarb and blueberries. Into the oat mixture I stirred some ground ginger and cinnamon, warming spices that just seem made to go with oats. To moisten the oat mixture, a delicious medley of maple syrup, olive oil, vanilla extract, and a splash of water. I use a beautiful mandarin-infused olive oil, which you can find here if you're interested - it has the most wonderful deep, orange flavour which survives the cooking process to leave a beautiful hint of citrus in each mouthful, a fantastic combination with the cardamom and warming spices.

You may think that breakfast is not the time to be messing around with cardamom, mandarin-infused olive oil, cinnamon and ginger. I think you'd be wrong. Brunch is exactly that: a time to make something a little bit more exciting for breakfast, to treat yourself. Plus, this is hardly a chore - it comes together in minutes and then sits patiently in the oven for just under an hour, leaving you to get on with other things.

Oh, and I haven't yet mentioned - it's delicious. It's like eating crumble for breakfast, as the name suggests, which is pretty much living the dream. You have a beautiful gooey mixture of rhubarb and blueberries, dark and inky purple, sweetened with caramel-scented honey and citrussy cardamom. You have a scattering of oats, crispy and crunchy on top, gooey and sticky underneath where they've absorbed the juice from the fruit, warm from cinnamon and ginger and with a hint of orange and vanilla. The contrast in textures is delicious, and the balance of the warm toasty oats and sharp, juicy fruit.

It feels like a pretty decadent breakfast, but it's actually not bad for you at all. It's even vegan (if you swap the honey for some caster sugar), so hopefully any vegan readers out there will find that exciting. And, I imagine, you could make it gluten-free if you used gluten-free oats and a gluten-free substitute for the spelt flour - buckwheat flour, for example.

Make this for your friends, or make it for just yourself. Either way, I promise you'll be impressed. If you're as big a fan of crumble as I am (and if you're not, why are you reading this blog?!), you will hopefully enjoy the slightly risqué excitement of indulging in it for breakfast (is that a bit tragic? I think it might be, but never mind). It's also one of the prettiest breakfasts you will probably ever make. And, if you have leftovers, they microwave very well - I normally put them in a bowl and microwave for 2 to 2 and a half minutes on full power. Leftovers are fairly unlikely, though - it takes me a huge amount of discipline not to eat the entire dish of this in one sitting (and I promise you, I could, easily).

I can think of few better ways to welcome the weekend than with a beautiful vibrant bowl of sticky, pink-purple, spice-scented crumble.

Rhubarb, blueberry, almond and cardamom breakfast oat crumble (serves 2-3):

• 400g rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 2-inch lengths
• 150g blueberries
• 3-4 tbsp honey, depending on the sourness of your rhubarb
• 6 cardamom pods, seeds crushed to a powder
• 150g jumbo oats
• 40g spelt flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3 tbsp olive oil (I use mandarin-infused oil)
• 3 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp water
• 3 tbsp flaked almonds
• Maple syrup, to serve (optional)

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.

Scatter the rhubarb and blueberries over the bottom of a baking dish (a 20cm square one is good, or a similar capacity oval one like mine). Drizzle over the honey and sprinkle over the cardamom, then toss together with a spoon.

In a small bowl, mix together the oats, flour, salt, ginger and cinnamon. In a small jug, whisk together the olive oil, maple syrup, vanilla extract and water. Pour this into the oats then mix together until combined. Sprinkle this mixture over the rhubarb then mix gently, keeping most of the oats on top of the fruit. Scatter over the almonds.

Bake for 50 minutes, until the oats are toasted and crunchy and the fruit juicy. Check it halfway through and if it looks a bit dry, sprinkle over a little water. Leave to cool for five minutes once out of the oven, then serve, with maple syrup if you like.

Baked amaretti, ginger & lime papaya with toasted coconut gelato

Recently, I got to thinking about the way we express our appreciation while eating good food. How do you do it? Are you the type to take a mouthful, put down your spoon, lean back, close your eyes and raise your visage to heaven, indulging in a moment of quiet quasi-religious worship of the food gods? Or do you open your mouth, aforementioned mouthful still visible inside it, and make a thick, guttural, primal grunt of 'ommagodatsogood'? Maybe you go for a short and sweet 'mm', delivered with vim and gutso, in the style of Nigella? Or a longer and more voluptuously drawn-out 'mmmmmmmmm'? Do you go all out and emit a rapturous and somewhat inappropriate moan of 'oh my goddddd', or do you eschew such drama altogether and simply express your seal of approval with a restrained 'this is very nice'?

A couple of weeks ago, I had a friend over for dinner. We'd just polished off a delicious (even if I say so myself) main course of Mexican spicy marinaded roast chicken thighs, pineapple and avocado salad and corn on the cob. I'd found a new dessert recipe I wanted to try. I sliced a fat, ripe papaya in half, scooped out the seeds and stuffed it with a mixture of amaretti biscuits, stem ginger in syrup, sultanas, lime zest and juice, yoghurt and pistachios. I baked it in the oven for just under half an hour, let it cool for a few minutes, then tucked in.

We were talking about something, I forget what. Or at least my friend was talking, and I listened intently as I dug my spoon into the soft, gooey papaya centre and placed it in my mouth. Completely involuntarily, I suddenly let out a loud and deeply guttural cry. I forget what the words were - something in the vein of 'Oh my GOD THIS IS INSANE' - but they are, by and large, unimportant. What is important is the tone in which they were conveyed, a tone of wild, primal, unadulterated and lascivious food lust.

I'm pretty sure I have never expressed such deep regard for a single mouthful before. I'm certainly one for conveying my appreciation of food in vocal and often inappropriately loud and involved ways, sometimes with a mouth impolitely half-full, but this was on a whole new level.

I'm just going to go right ahead and say it. All my recipes are delicious, OK? That's why I blog about them, because they taste good and I want to share them. But, to grotesquely mis-quote Animal Farm, some recipes are more delicious than others. This is probably in the top five of all time.

It's not something I can take total credit for. I discovered it in an obscure Asian cookbook of mine that I looked up on Amazon and discovered is now out of print and therefore would cost you hundreds of pounds if you wanted to acquire a copy. I've tweaked it slightly to adjust it more to my taste, and the result is just so ridiculously good that it would be a crime not to make it available to a wider audience.

You've never thought of baking a papaya before, right? Me neither. There are some fruits that beg to be baked into luscious desserts - pears, banana, apples, plums - but there are equally some whose very structure and fruity identity feels ill at ease enveloped in a batter or exposed to the searing heat of oven or pan: mango, for example; strawberries; and, until now, papaya. 

You just wouldn't think it would work. Papaya flesh is quite watery, and possesses such a subtle flavour - surely the oven would just destroy its creamy, slightly grainy, texture and fragrant flesh? Not so. If anything, the flavour is intensified by the oven, the texture firmed up and yet simultaneously made even more meltingly delicious. The sweetness is multiplied tenfold, the orange colouring becomes much more resplendent. 

And the filling is just something else. It's quite a strange assortment of ingredients - or, rather, there are lots of established pairings of ingredients in there, but alongside lots of other pairings, so it's a kind of strange medley. Ginger and raisin, yes; amaretti and pistachio; ginger and pistachio; ginger and amaretti; raisin and amaretti; raisin and pistachio; yoghurt and pistachio...you get the gist. But it all melds together in the heat of the oven to form the most incredible flavour-packed stuffing for the papaya. The top turns crunchy and golden, knobbly with nutty pistachios and biscuit, while the inside is soft and gooey, deeply spiced with ginger and with surprising little bursts of sweetness from the raisins. I added even more ginger to the original recipe, and omitted the extra sugar, because this is a very sweet dessert already (not overly so, and there's actually no added sugar - it all comes from the fruit, raisins and stem ginger). 

I've made this three times already, and the second time I decided to pair it with a homemade ice cream. Specifically, a gelato (a milk base rather than cream) made with toasted coconut. This has a delicious deep, rich, nutty flavour and sweet coconut perfume that marries very well with the papaya - it takes the edge off its sweetness, and the contrast between the cold ice cream and hot, juicy, gooey papaya is fantastic.

It's a bit of a strange ice cream recipe (I adapted it from the excellent online cooking resource, Food52), in that you cook the ice cream base with half the coconut, then strain it out, only adding the toasted coconut once the ice cream is churned. It also doesn't thicken as much as traditional cream-based ice cream custard mixtures. Despite that, you end up with a lovely subtle coconut flavour, enhanced by the addition of a vanilla pod. There's something about vanilla that seems to bring out the flavour of coconut; I wonder if they have some kind of similar chemical flavour component. 

I'm really excited about this recipe, and could hardly wait to share it. It's fabulously unusual, and I think it's one of the prettiest desserts I've ever made, too - the colours both as you prepare it (jade green pistachios, deep sandy biscuits, bright vibrant limes, silky yoghurt) and when you take it out of the oven (that deep marigold colour of the baked papaya, and the burnished golden stuffing) are mouthwateringly beautiful. 

Let us not forget, either, that this tastes so good that - even if this isn't normally your style - you will be forced to throw all caution to the winds, and emit a raucous, guttural moan of delight upon your first mouthful.

Baked amaretti, ginger and lime papaya (serves 4):

(Adapted from The Ultimate Thai and Asian Cookbook by Deh-Ta Hsiung, Becky Johnson and Sallie Morris)

• 2 ripe but firm papaya
• 2 globes stem ginger in syrup
• 8 amaretti biscuits
• 40g pistachio nuts
• 3 tbsp sultanas
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• Zest and juice of one lime
• 4 tbsp yoghurt

Cut the papaya in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds. Place cavity side up on a baking tray. Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Put the stem ginger, amaretti and two thirds of the pistachios in a blender and pulse briefly to roughly chop - you don't want a powder, but coarse chunks of nut and biscuit. If you don't have a blender, crumble the biscuits, finely chop the ginger and roughly chop the pistachios. Put in a small bowl with the sultanas, ground ginger and lime zest, then stir in the lime juice and yoghurt. Spoon the mixture into the cavities of the papaya, then roughly chop the remaining pistachios and scatter over.

Bake for 25 minutes, then leave to cool for 5 minutes before serving with the coconut gelato.

Toasted coconut gelato (makes around 500ml):

(Adapted from Food 52)

• 190g desiccated coconut
• 4 egg yolks
• 160g caster sugar
• 480ml whole milk
• 1 vanilla pod

In a large wide frying pan, toast half the coconut over a low heat until golden and evenly browned, stirring occasionally (or place it on an oven tray and bake for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally). Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, use an electric whisk to beat the sugar and egg yolks together until thick, pale and creamy - about 3-5 minutes.

Place the milk in a saucepan with the vanilla pod and heat gently. Add the sugar and egg mixture, stirring constantly, then the (untoasted) half of the coconut. Continue to cook over a very low heat, stirring regularly, until the mixture has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon (it won't thicken as much as regular ice cream or custard due to the lack of cream). This could take up to half an hour. Pour into a jug and chill in the fridge for at least four hours, preferably overnight.

When ready to churn, strain out the coconut and vanilla pod from the mixture, then discard it. Churn in an ice cream maker until set, then quickly fold in the toasted coconut, pour into a tub and place in the freezer to firm up (preferably for at least six hours).

Sicilian blood orange cheesecake

So often cheesecakes can be overly sugary, overly creamy and just a little bit much. This version might make you rethink your conception of a cheesecake. There's no biscuit base, but instead there's a beautifully light and fluffy ricotta filling, studded with all the flavours of Sicilian desserts: sherry-soaked raisins, emerald pistachios, vibrant candied peel and citrus zest. On top, a gorgeous burst of blood orange colour and a scattering of more pistachios. It's light, fresh, fluffy and really very good. For the recipe, head over to my latest post for the Appliances Online lifestyle blog, here!

Fire, ice and fermented shark: adventures in Iceland

“Oh right. Are you going for work then?”

“No, just for fun.”

“Oh, OK. So you have family or something out there?”

“No, nothing like that, I’m just going for a holiday.”

“Oh…so like, is it something to do with your PhD?”

My recent trip to Iceland seems to have perplexed more than a few people. I’ve been asked all of the above, plus a few more questions, as people attempt to determine the logical reason for my heading off to somewhere that’s a little bit off the mainstream tourist radar. Or perhaps they were just trying to grasp a rational motive for my jetting off to the frozen north just as York was beginning to heat up and become bathed in radiant sunshine.

I have to admit, I wondered the same thing myself as I stepped off the plane to gusts of freezing wind and stinging sleet, to skies greyer than a naval warship and a landscape bleaker than a morning without breakfast. On the bus ride to our hotel, I marvelled at the expanse of uniform moss, scrub and black soil, at the formidable-looking waves licking the rugged shore around us. I huddled into my goose-down jacket, which I had put away for the summer in York and had had to retrieve for the trip, adjusted my sheepskin earmuffs and braced myself for the cold days ahead.

Cold they were, and miserable at times, but this is a country that doesn’t need sunshine and balmy evenings to bring its magic to the fore. Yes, Iceland looks beautiful in the bright, clear morning sunshine (we were lucky enough to glimpse a few hours of it the morning we left), when the snow-covered mountains radiate a frosty grandeur and the sky and sea blend together in one uniform shade of blinding azure; but it is equally splendid, and somehow seems more comfortable, when its massive natural wonders and geographical marvels are silhouetted against a muted backdrop of greys and browns, hazes of drizzle, assaulting gusts of wind.

“In Iceland there’s no such thing as weather,” our taxi driver told us, “just examples.” This is a country hardened towards extremes of temperature and the capricious whims of mother nature, who, with a tendency towards hyperbole, has shaped its marvellous, and at times surreal, landscape.

We spent three days in Reykjavik, the adorably compact capital. An aerial view of the city presents you with something that more resembles a model town, perhaps built out of lego, than anything real. The houses are all painted in bright pastel shades, colours you might associate with a row of beach huts rather than dwellings built to withstand the cold and rain. Arriving in the city in the grey damp, they were a welcome burst of brightness. 

Reykjavik, for me, was a curious mix of seaside down and ski resort. A few minutes takes you from the centre of town – straight streets, Parisian and Danish-style cafes, modern shops selling clothes, homeware, books, all of it exuding smart Scandinavian chic – to the harbour, where fishing boats sit idly in front of the glorified huts that house some of the city’s best restaurants, and the sweet scent of fresh seafood lingers in the air. You are cradled on two sides by mountains, lurking dappled grey across the distant sea. You stroll past ice cream cafes, shop windows filled with thick fur and wool garments, trendy bars and coffee shops, restaurants advertising their ocean-based fare. The centre of the city is tiny, easily explored in a few hours. Step into one of the uber-cool cafes and you could be in mainland Europe; step outside, and the freezing May weather reminds you that you are not. 

“We’re not cool enough to be here,” was a niggling feeling frequently voiced over our three-night trip. It’s hard to be any more eloquent about it: Reykjavik is just cool. Every café or bar we visited exuded the same kind of aura: vintage, quirky, eccentric. They were often decorated with an assortment of kitsch or vintage so random it was hard to believe the place hadn’t just accumulated its décor over centuries of use. One café we visited twice was decked out like a Russian grandmother’s living room, all yellow-green chintz armchairs, old-fashioned floral still lifes on the wall and ornate gold frames. Another was brimming with retro toys – dolls, figurines, clocks, pages from books – voluminous spider plants and tables pasted with quirky adverts from old newspapers. We sat there and consumed two absolutely gigantic wedges of cake – a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing, and a ‘New York cheesecake’ so claggy and sweet I almost needed a spade to scrape it off the roof of my mouth afterwards. One night we ate dinner at an achingly trendy youth hostel, housed in an old biscuit factory. Empty bird cages dangled from the dilapidated ceiling, one metallic wall was devoted to the arranging of magnetic letters by guests into rude words, a corner was given over to an enormous bookcase, and old-fashioned maps of the country were fixed, resplendent in vintage frames, to the wall. Although we did have the misfortune to spot a Subway, this is a city that has yet to fall prey to the plague that is the chain store: it’s all about those quirky little independent places, the kind you always dream of finding on holiday. They’re not a myth perpetuated by travel guides – they’re just all in Iceland. 

Our exploration of Reykjavik began with a coffee in the aforementioned Russian grandmother’s café. Icelandic coffee is excellent. It reminds me of Italian coffee: strong, not very milky, cappuccinos served in small cups, not the ridiculous vats you get over here. They are predominantly coffee, rather than froth – probably what you’d call a small latte over here, in terms of lack of frothiness. I don’t drink coffee very much, but found myself craving at least one a day in Iceland. Partly because I was utterly exhausted from our exploring activities, but also because it tasted so damn good. The best came from what I think is a local chain of coffee shops, ‘Te & Kaffi’, which has several branches in the city. They also sell an adorable range of brightly coloured teapots, and some exciting-sounding bags of Chinese and Japanese teas, as well as some Icelandic herbal tea that claimed to be useful for treating a variety of ailments.

Pleasantly surprised by the coffee, we sought dinner at a restaurant I’d read good things about on the internet, Tapashusid (translation: Tapas house). When I tell you that this is a sort of Spanish/Icelandic fusion restaurant, I expect your scepticism. I was somewhat confused too, and a little apprehensive. Even more so when I ordered the six-course ‘Taste of Iceland’ menu for nearly £40 – disappointment is so much more bitter when you’ve paid forty pounds for it. It was a risk.

Instead, I spent around two hours devouring what was probably one of the best meals of my life. This place utterly astounded me. Inside it was informal-looking, again blessed with the vintage Midas touch that seems to have left no corner of Reykjavik unaffected – we sat in a little corner near a wall plastered with retro record covers. Blackboards over the bar proclaimed the specials, as well as a hilarious guide as to how the steaks are cooked (“Blue: still mooing”; “Well done: ORDER CHICKEN”). We were served by a series of effervescent and charming waiters, who occasionally paused to join in with the resident female flamenco dancer. All this, you would think, would probably not be the setting for incredible food. A quick glance at the menu, though – bacon wrapped monkfish with bacon-wrapped dates; minke whale steak with teriyaki sauce, smoked apple, apple puree and mushrooms; smoky mushroom tortilla; salt cod, langoustine, bacon and egg foam – did tell me that I was unlikely to be receiving a bowl of sub-standard paella and a few calamari rings. 

The food here was heart-stoppingly beautiful. Probably some of the prettiest food I’ve been served since my last trip to the Michelin-starred Yorke Arms. My first dish was a small plate of rare guillemot breast, apple puree, smoked apple pieces, mushrooms and a red wine jus. I’d obviously never tried guillemot before, but it was gorgeous – like very dark, very gamey pigeon, but beautifully tender. Game and apple is a new combination to me, but it was stupidly good, the whole thing held together by an underlying smokeyness; I’m not sure whether it came from the meat, the apple or the jus, but it was so good.

Next, slow-cooked Arctic char, which looks and tastes rather like trout. This was accompanied by pickles, dill, a very creamy, Hollandaise-like sauce, and a little green savoury meringue. I knew then that the rest of this food was going to be good. There’s something about a savoury meringue sitting on top of your fish course that kind of implies subsequent sophistication. This was a lovely plateful; you can’t really go wrong with oily fish and dill.

Next up, a wooden board sporting food that was a complete work of art. There were two dishes perched atop this: first, wafer-thin slices of pale pink lamb carpaccio, a little spoonful of lamb tartare, cubes of red and gold beetroot, a thin shard of crispbread, and a golden ribbon of parsnip puree. I’ve never tried raw lamb before, but this was lovely – fatty enough to give it a lovely silky mouthfeel, but still possessing that sweet lamb flavour. The parsnip (I normally hate them, but this was quite tasty) and beetroot helped to cut the richness of the meat.

On the other side of the board, a dark and interesting assortment of cured minke whale, blueberry coulis, halved bulbous blueberries, mustard, a red wine jus and a drizzle of teriyaki sauce.

Now, I’m just going to take a step back for a second, because I can tell you that without a doubt there is going to be some holier-than-thou person, somewhere, who will read that I ate whale and decide to lecture me on the grotesque ethical implications of my gastronomic choices. So I’ll pre-empt you with some honesty: I admit that I had no idea about the controversy surrounding whale-fishing in Iceland. This is unusual for me, as I’m generally pretty clued-up on unethical food practices the world over – shark fin soup in China/Japan, foie gras in France (I refuse to touch the stuff; I think it’s appalling, sick, and it doesn’t even taste that nice), weasel coffee in south-east Asia; snake-heart vodka in Vietnam; battery farming (particularly pork, which many people seem to forget about) in the UK and Europe. For some reason, the whaling issue had slipped under my ethical radar, and I tucked in without really understanding the implications. Having read a bit more since I returned home, I’m actually not entirely sure where I stand on the whaling debate. However, the single whale dish that I ate in my trip to Iceland, which will probably comprise the entirety of the whale I eat in my entire life, is probably not going to tip the balance either way. Yes, I feel a bit uncomfortable about it, but I’m going to make no apologies for my one-off consumption of this controversial product.

And also, unfortunately, I cannot lie. It was bloody delicious. My minke whale came cured, meaning it had a firm texture and deeply gamey flavour. We also ordered, though, a dish of minke whale steak, served very rare with a similar flavour combination to my cured dish – apple puree, teriyaki sauce, red wine jus. This was a total revelation, both the meat and the flavour combination. It was like the tenderest, most juicy, melting fillet steak you’ll ever eat. Combining teriyaki, red wine, mushrooms, apple and game is something I’d never considered before, but something I now cannot wait to try. Obviously it won’t be with whale when I try it –I’m thinking more along the lines of venison, grouse or pigeon, and whale is illegal in the UK – but I can’t wait. It’s one of those combinations you can’t imagine until you taste it, and it was ridiculously good. Just take my word for it, and then hop over to Iceland so you can try the real deal.

There was a small wait for the main courses – yes, I know, those were only the starters – so I nibbled on some of the restaurant’s excellent foccacia, which they serve with olive oil to dip, and a little bowl of crushed salted spiced peanuts. Another flavour revelation – dipping oiled foccacia into crushed peanuts is DELICIOUS. Something I must try soon in my own kitchen. I’m glad I didn’t eat too much of this, though, because my main courses – all two of them – arrived, and they were pretty generous.

First, lamb rib-eye (a cut I’ve never heard of in relation to lamb, and which I suspect goes under another name here), which was the best lamb I’ve ever had. It was juicy and pink in the centre, smoky on the outside from the grill, succulent and sweet and fabulous. Lamb is a big thing in Iceland – much more so than beef. This came with ‘cauliflower couscous’, which I recently saw on MasterChef so was excited to try, a mustard sauce, a dark jus, and grilled oyster mushrooms. It was a carnivore’s delight, everything you want a plate of steak to be – juicy, salty, rich, meaty, robustly flavoured.

The other dish was equally substantial and robust – a mini decorative saucepan filled with ridiculously gorgeous chunks of salt cod – firmer, sweeter and saltier than normal cod – juicy langoustines, crispy bacon, and topped with an ‘egg foam’ which was basically a gooey, rich, thick hollandaise. This was finished with crunchy breadcrumbs for texture, and was the kind of thing I would eat for breakfast every day if I didn’t mind being obese. I loved the way the restaurant had struck a balance between delicately presented, beautiful food, and the kind of mouthwatering moreish flavours that you actually want to stuff yourself with. The other dishes we tried – the monkfish with dates and bacon, deep-fried langoustines, smoky mushroom fajita – were also in this vein; surprising flavour combinations that made you wonder why you don’t eat them every day, because they are so damn good.

Also fabulous were a dish of bacon-wrapped monkfish, roasted peppers, and bacon-wrapped dates, a plate of deep-fried langoustines, crispy and sweet and delectable, and a smoky mushroom fajita - deeply flavoured, intense mushrooms on a tortilla with tangy cheese.

Dessert was a struggle. You know how sometimes you worry about tasting menus, thinking they’ll present you with a thimbleful of each dish and leave you desperate for a piece of toast when you get home? This left me desperate for a Roman-style feather when I got home (note: this is a joke and I do not, in fact, support bulimia as an easy way to alleviate that feeling of self-disgust that accompanies a session of wild, intense, unmediated gorging). However, my dessert was sensibly light and pretty, and didn’t make me want to cry and run away in grotesque repletion when it arrived.

It consisted of a thin slab of moist carrot cake, a carrot sorbet (surprisingly good – I think it had a hefty dose of orange in there, because it was sweet and fruity and tasted very little of carrot), and a parfait of ‘skyr’. Skyr is an Icelandic cheese, made in a similar way to Middle Eastern labneh – by straining yoghurt until firm and tangy. Its pairing alongside the carrot cake made sense – it was basically a fancy version of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The dessert was sprinkled with tiny, plump, marigold orange buckthorn berries, something I’ve always wanted to try since they were used on Great British Menu a few years ago. They are deeply sour, but also quite fruity, a very pleasant addition to the mellow cake/cheese combination. We also had an ‘Oreo pudding’, which was a chocolate mousse (pronounced ‘chocolate mouse’ by our waiter, which made us smile), blueberry compote, crunchy oreo crumbs, and a ball of ice cream. It was the total antithesis of my elegant dessert, trashy and obvious and in-your-face, but in a totally delicious way.

And that was my introduction to Icelandic cuisine. I have a sneaking suspicion that Icelanders do not eat like this on a daily basis, but it set the tone for a trip of excellent restaurant meals. This, at Tapashusid, was by far the best. It wasn’t cheap, but it was worth every penny, both for the temporary gratification it afforded me and also for the ideas it has given me for use in my own kitchen.

Speaking of money – Iceland is expensive. Probably not much more so than London, but it is hard to spend under about £50 a day, and if you want to do the kind of things you should do when visiting this unique country – ride horses, visit the Blue Lagoon, go on boat trips, see the geographical wonders – you will have to spend even more. It is possible to eat cheaply if you’re not bothered about sampling some of the gastronomic delights of Reykjavik – there are some fast food places and cafes selling sandwiches – but the good food comes at a price. Luckily, you don’t have to pay that much to get something delicious, as some of my other restaurant visits will show.

Barely hungry from the gluttony of the night before, I woke the next morning and forced myself to partake in our hotel breakfast – what a hardship. We stayed at the Leifur Eriksson hotel, in what I like to call the ‘penthouse suite’ but what was actually an absolutely tiny attic room on the top floor barely large enough for two people to stand up in without concussing themselves. It was cosy, that’s for sure. That aside, the hotel was perfectly pleasant, and breakfast was a bit of a highlight. In the corner of the breakfast room stood an arresting contraption: a waffle maker, with two hot plates, completely black and encrusted from years of use, smoking and perfuming the entire hotel with the sweet candyfloss scent of freshly made waffles. Next to it sat a big bowl of pale, thick batter, and a ladle.

I am baffled as to why the hotel hadn’t put up some instructions next to the waffle maker. In the three mornings I was there, at least two people had what can only be described as a complete waffle fail. There’s a knack to making waffles, you see – firstly, spray the plate with non-stick oil spray. Secondly, put enough batter – more than you would think – in, otherwise it won’t form a proper waffle and will just stick to each side. Thirdly and crucially, be patient. If you lift up the lid too soon, the waffle will pull apart and you’ll just have batter stuck to each side, impossible to remove (the staff were not happy – there was an audible tut as they set to work with a knife attempting to deal with the consequences of one guest’s waffle ineptitude). Fortunately, I managed to perfect this complex and elusive art very quickly, meaning we had perfect waffles for breakfast each morning. They were fabulous – thick, doughy, crispy on the outside, and subtly sweet and buttery. On top, generous dollops of blueberry jam – actually, I think it was bilberry, or wild blueberry – which was delicious but had the unfortunate side effect of giving me a bright blue tongue that no amount of toothpaste/toothbrushing could shift.

Photo by Jon Adair

Our first full day took us out of the city into the forbidding landscape. We began by riding Icelandic horses through the lava fields, in all their bleak, rugged glory. The terrain is unchanging around here – earthy green moss and scrub, punctuated by dark black roads of cooled lava, the imposing mountains ever-present in the background. It wasn’t the most scenic, particularly given the steely skies, but this was more than compensated for by the fun I had riding my horse. His name in Icelandic translated as ‘little man’, and he was indeed tiny – like a slightly overgrown Shetland pony, a beautiful tan colour with the most gorgeous thick, sandy mane. I feel we bonded early on, as I led him by the bridle out of the stable – he kept nuzzling me with vigour. Later I discovered that he was just trying to use me as a scratching post. Oh well.

Most of the people in our large group had never ridden before, so we walked at a steady pace in single file through the lava fields. I soon felt slightly frustrated by this, as I could tell my little horse was eager to go a bit faster (or maybe it was just that his legs were about half as long as the other horses’, so he had to trot to keep up with their walk), so I joined the ‘fast group’ for experienced riders. I’m not sure I’d consider myself an ‘experienced rider’ – that implies a degree of confidence that I do not have, my recent experiences with horses involving falling off or them bolting - but I figured I’d take the chance, and am so glad I did. I had a fantastic time, riding through the countryside, my little horse keen and fast but also very well-behaved.

My guide told me all about Icelandic horses, which was fascinating. There is a complete import ban on Icelandic horses to preserve the purity of the breed. When the horses go abroad to compete in international competitions, so strict are the rules that they can never return to Iceland, and must be sold in the country of the competition. This isn’t so bad if they’ve won, my guide explained, as they’ll fetch a good price – but the worst situation is when the rider has an excellent horse, but for some reason he doesn’t perform so well in competition, meaning the rider has lost both his horse and won’t even receive adequate financial compensation for his loss. Foreigners are also not allowed to bring used horse equipment into Iceland – hats, bridles, et cetera – or at least not without it being heavily sterilised first. They don’t vaccinate their horses, she explained, so their immune systems are quite susceptible to diseases that can be carried on used equipment.

The riding style is very different, too, to what I am used to. For instance, riders don’t rise during the trot – they stay sitting on the horse. This makes for an extremely bouncy but definitely less exhausting ride; it was slightly alarming at first, as I was convinced I was going to fall off, but I soon got used to relaxing and moving with the horse. The Icelandic horse also has a different set of gaits: tölt is faster than a walk but slower than a canter, and it is also very smooth for the rider. My guide was telling me that sometimes competitions are held where the rider holds a pint of beer for the duration of the ride, the aim being not to spill any, and then they must drink the remainder upon returning from the ride. There is also ‘flying gait’, which is faster than a gallop and so-called because in between strides the horse appears to be flying through the air; many horses aren’t trained to do this, though, because it’s exhausting for the horse and rider. I was certainly quite tired after my brisk and bouncy outing on my beautiful Icelandic horse, which was lucky because we were going to spend the afternoon steaming luxuriantly in a hot outdoor bath.

Photo by Jon Adair

The Blue Lagoon is one of Iceland’s top tourist attractions. It’s easy to see why – with weather so changeable and a landscape so bleak, there is unmatchable relief to be had from sinking slowly into mineral-rich waters the temperature of a very hot bath, the result of geothermal activity, while the brisk Icelandic air whips your face. I say ‘sinking slowly’, but this is really just a romanticised notion. Because, in fact, you’ll dive frantically and in a clumsy, ungainly fashion into those waters: not only do you have to make your way from the changing rooms to the outdoor lagoon clad in nothing but your swimsuit, but they make you shower before you do it, meaning even the slightest tremor of Icelandic wind feels like someone has pressed an ice pack to your skin. Once in the lagoon, however, sweet relief is to be found. It really is hot, not the shiver-inducing lukewarm temperature of most UK outdoor swimming pools that claim to be heated. In fact, in some places the currents are almost scalding, and your otherwise relaxing dip in the lagoon is certainly likely to be punctuated by a few high-pitched shrieks every now and again, as one of these scorching currents wafts casually into an unsuspecting bather. 

The water is milky, completely opaque and with a curious iridescence; it almost glows, particularly when the skies are so grey and flat. Thick steam rolls off the surface in waves. There is a smell of egg-like sulphur in the air (another thing about Iceland – the tap water smells of boiled eggs, making brushing your teeth an interesting sensory experience). Depending on which part of the lagoon you are in, you’ll either be standing on crunchy gravel-like sand, or sinking into thick mud that oozes creepily between your toes. It’s quite something, though, to sit there, face and neck exposed to the harshness of the elements (it started raining during our visit) while the rest of your body luxuriates in the delicious warmth. The high mineral content of the water is apparently very good for your skin, though leaves a horrible chalky residue that requires two showers to remove. As you sit and warmly repose, you’re surrounded by rocky outcrops that you can perch on. There is nothing else to see, for miles around – the lagoon lies in the middle of nowhere, a surprising beacon of blue among the dark rocky landscape. It’s hard to believe this is a totally natural phenomenon.

Photo by Jon Adair

Horse riding and the lagoon left me absolutely starving. That night, we visited somewhere a little more budget-friendly for dinner, and weren’t disappointed. Icelandic Fish & Chips is a small café/restaurant near the harbour (choosing where to eat in Reykjavik is easy, because all the recommended eateries are approximately one hundred metres away from each other, so you can quite easily scout them all out in a ten minute session before making that all-important decision). You’d barely notice it if it weren’t for the sign above the wooden door that you have to open gingerly, peering around to see if the place is actually open – it’s hard to tell from the window. Inside is a very simple restaurant with a small bar and more blackboard notices on the walls. The premise behind this place is, as you might expect, fish and chips – but done well, and made a little unusual by their choice of accompaniments.

A lot of thought has gone into the food at this ‘organic bistro’, as they like to call it. The fish is coated with a batter made from spelt flour, because it crisps up better in the fryer and is better for you, being a more complex carbohydrate. They serve the fish with oven-roasted potato wedges, which are a little healthier than chips, and come in various options – plan, garlic, rosemary, for example. They fry their fish in rapeseed oil, high in omega 3. The fish is always fresh, the menu changing depending on what has been delivered that day. You are encouraged to choose a salad to accompany your fish, which range from simple greens to an elaborate combination of mango, red pepper, toasted coconut, spinach and olive oil. Finally, you can choose from a range of ‘skyronnes’: flavoured dips made from skyr, with flavours like truffle & tarragon, ginger & wasabi, lime & coriander. This is a far cry from the greasy, lard-scented chippies of the UK; not a wooden fork or piece of newspaper in sight. 

We both had the fried Icelandic cod with plain potato wedges, the aforementioned mango salad, and a lime and coriander skyronne to accompany it. It was exactly what I needed after a hard day’s exertion (OK, sitting in the lagoon wasn’t really difficult, but it was certainly appetite-provoking): indulgent because of the superbly crispy fish batter and the sweet, succulent cod, but still nourishing and satisfying because of the zingy, flavoursome salad and well-seasoned potato wedges. It probably didn’t need the dip, but it was tasty all the same. I’d also been eyeing up a delicious-sounding combination of fried ling (a firm white fish), orange and black olive salad and rosemary potatoes; we didn’t have time to return, but I bet it would have been delicious. Our plates were about £14 each, which isn’t cheap but they were filling and very well done.

A quick aside: one of the things I really liked about Iceland was that every single café and restaurant had a table with jugs of water and glasses for you to help yourself – no need to ask for tap water and risk a sneer. Similarly, everywhere seemed to have free wifi (even the tourist buses), and public toilets are widespread. In these three respects, it is a world away from continental Europe.

Photo by Jon Adair

Another aspect I enjoyed was the long daylight – the sun didn’t set until around 11pm when we were there; it’s even later in high summer. There is something quite disorientating and surreal about emerging from a long restaurant meal at 9.30pm to bright daylight, or settling down to sleep for the night while there is still light sky outside the window. Icelandic people must get so much done at this time of year. I did feel a bit bad that we didn’t do much to make the most of the longer light, but I was exhausted after all the food and activity.

Our second and last full day saw us taking in the Golden Circle, a 300km loop of some of Iceland’s best geographical attractions, by coach tour. We drove through the mountains, gloomy and imposing in the overcast light of day, through ‘no man’s land’, the area between the American and Eurasian tectonic plates, past dark green fields and black lava, past rocky hills and snowy mountains that are apparently the homes of elves. There were no animals in sight other than the Icelandic horses. Our guide told us that you can look at an Icelandic horse to tell the direction of the bad weather – they face away from the wind and rain. Given that Icelandic lamb is supposed to be a delicacy, I thought it strange that I didn’t see a single sheep on my trip.

Before we actually visited any of the geographical marvels, we stopped at a ‘greenhouse town’ on the way, so-called because farmers use the high geothermal activity in these areas to power greenhouses and supply Iceland with exotic fruit and vegetables that wouldn’t otherwise be producible. This particular greenhouse grew tomatoes. The owner explained that the water comes out of the ground at 95C in this area, the heat of which is channelled into the greenhouse system. The tomatoes are watered with the same water that people drink – because, he explained, a tomato is about 90% water, it makes sense to use good-quality water to grow the crop, as that quality will be reflected in the final product. The lights in the greenhouse are on 14-17 hours a day, and the plants grow 25cm each week – they have to be suspended from the ceiling on strings so they don’t droop with the weight of the fruit. The transition from a flowering plant to a red tomato takes about eight weeks. One aspect of the process I found fascinating was the pollination – bees are shipped in from Holland to perfom this careful task. Two boxes containing 60 female working bees arrive at the greenhouse each week. 

The greenhouse had a little café, which was offering mugs of tomato soup. I mention this because of something I loved – each table had a huge basil plant on it, with a pair of scissors strapped to its pot. The idea being that you would get a mug of soup and snip your own basil to garnish it. It was the simplest idea but so lovely; I hope it catches on in cafes at home. Think of the possibilities – chopping your own coriander to adorn a curry; snipping your own parsley or dill to scatter over your seafood; tearing off delicate leaves of thyme to season your Sunday roast. 

After this somewhat random first stop, we were taken to Gullfoss waterfall, first step on the Golden Circle itinerary. This absolutely gigantic waterfall formation appears startlingly smack bang in the middle of an otherwise fairly featureless landscape: green scrub, black soil, mountains in the distance. The sheer force of the water as it plummets over the various crests of the waterfall is astounding, as was the force of the freezing wind as we walked along paths hugging the edge of the cliff to get closer to this watery spectacle. I’ve seen waterfalls before, but none on this colossal scale. At one point a company tried to privatise the waterfall and use it for hydroelectric power, but the idea caused storms of protest and since then Gullfoss is protected for public enjoyment. Apparently there is a saying in Iceland: if someone suggests something completely inane or ridiculous, the common response is, ‘And then what? Sell Gullfoss?’ 

Next, we visited the Geysir hot spring area. With its gloomy, rugged, earthy landscape awash in white smoke emanating from the ground, this reminded me of the Dead Marshes from the Lord of the Rings. The air is thick with the smell of sulphur, while a walk through this geothermally active area sees you alternately exposed to the cold Icelandic air and bathed in hot steam droplets as the vapour pours off the ground into your face.

Along the way there are small pools, some of them mini geysers, bubbling rampantly and sending hot spray into the air. The main attraction, though, is Strokkur, the famous geyser, apparently active for over 10,000 years, that erupts every few minutes to raptures of delight from the crowds inevitably gathered around its circumference, cameras poised to capture the moment. 

Every so often, the innocuous-looking, calm blue pool that is Strokkur suddenly vents a colossal bubble, followed by a gigantic blast of boiling water – at least twenty feet high – that is no less surprising for being expected. At one point some of the crowd had to run backwards as the hot water, carried by the wind, descended upon their heads. The force with which it erupts, and the height, is really quite remarkable, particularly as it returns so quickly to a lake of placid blue calm, only an occasional bubble signifying the colossal geothermal activity occurring within those depths. Apparently only 100m down into the geyser, the temperature is 200C. It’s definitely a ‘look but don’t touch’ kind of attraction.

We stopped for lunch and a break from the assaulting rain at the tourist café which, as might be expected, was hideously overpriced – I objected to paying £12 for soup and some bread, so had an egg sandwich. Oddly, the omnipresent smell of sulphur had actually given me serious cravings for eggs, rather than – as might be more expected – a complete aversion. A small highlight, though, was a piece of apple tart. This seemed to basically combine everyone’s dessert fantasies into one: a pastry case, filled with custard and cooked apples, topped with crumble and drizzled with caramel. It did have that slightly soggy mass-produced taste to it, like something from an Ikea café, but it was pleasantly sweet and tasty all the same – just what we needed after hiking up the hills around the Geysir area and getting absolutely covered in quicksand-like thick red mud.

Finally, we visited Thingvellir National Park, home to Iceland’s parliament from 930 to 1262, which incorporated the geography of the place into its proceedings: speeches were held around the Logberg (Law Rock), while transgressors were executed in the Drowning Pool, a small lake at the foot of the rocks. Here you can actually see the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates pulling apart, and witness the gulf between them. The area is rocky and hilly, with gorgeous views of Lake Thingvallavatn (formed by a retreating glacier) and the surrounding mountains; it was how I imagined the Norwegian Fjords would look. 

On our way back, our guide told us something fascinating about the Icelandic language (words of which it is possible to recognise from my brief dalliance with Old English during my Masters). During the 18th century, a movement was started in the country to remove as many foreign words as possible from the language, and create a new vocabulary that would adapt the Icelandic language to new concepts, rather than imposing foreign words. For example, the computer: it was decided (for some reason) that a computer can see into the future, and that it works with numbers. Thus the Icelandic for computer is a portmanteau of tala (number) and völva (female prophetess): tölva. I’d heard something of this before, when someone once told me that the Icelandic for ‘coathanger’ literally translates as ‘wooden shoulders’. I love the idea that there is actually a committee dedicated to coining new words for modern concepts out of this ancient language. 

Dinner that night needed to be substantial, given our day trekking around in the wind and rain. This was achieved in the best possible way by a trip to Sæmundur i Sparifötunum, the restaurant of Kex Hostel (the one discussed above, with the birdcages). Though the menu offered some tempting options – fried plaice with pickled lemons, burned butter and almonds; fried and glazed turkey with mushrooms and bacon; lamb meatballs – it had to be the burger, which promised local free-range beef, Icelandic cheese, caramelised onion mayonnaise, and potato wedges with cumin mayonnaise. It was probably the best burger I’ve ever eaten, everything you want a burger to be. The bun was robust enough to hold the burger without tearing, nicely toasted on top for a little texture. The meat was rich and deeply flavoured, the cheese tangy and creamy, the mayonnaise holding everything together. The potato wedges were just insane. They were the crispiest things I think I’ve ever eaten, seasoned beautifully, and the cumin mayonnaise was just an inspired idea. This was proper big, hearty comfort food, but taken to the pinnacle of perfection – much like the fish and chips of the night before. Not bad value at £14, either – probably what you’d pay in a London gastropub. Plus you could help yourself to very nice bread and butter, so there was no danger of us leaving hungry.

Afterwards (still daylight!), we went to a little ice cream café, Eldur and Is, where I had a crêpe with bananas and pecan caramel ice cream. The menu pointed out that the crêpes were made with spelt flour. This seems to be a bit of a thing in Iceland – several menus had mentioned spelt chocolate cake, while Icelandic Fish and Chips used spelt in their batter. I don’t know if maybe the flour is cheaper there than ordinary white flour, or they’re just more health conscious. Either way, the crêpe was tasty.

While I was eating it, I watched the man behind the counter dip a huge Mr Whippy-style ice cream on a cone – the ice cream must have been standing at least six inches high – upside down into a vat of molten chocolate sauce. How the structural integrity of this calorific creation was maintained I do not know; it was quite remarkable to watch. The dessert of choice in Iceland, crêpes and ice cream aside, seems to be a mousse of skyr served with various fruit compotes, chocolate, or nuts. I didn’t try this, though, as I’m not a big fan of creamy desserts – I like them to have a little more texture (read: stodge). 

On our final morning, we got up early to head out on a boat and watch puffins. This was immensely exciting, as there are few things funnier to observe than a puffin. They look so out of proportion, with their huge coloured beaks and their little wings, flapping desperately in the air as if struggling to stay airborne. We visited an island home to thousands of them; there are around 10 million in Iceland. Our guide told us a little about these birds: their black backs and white bellies provide camouflage while underwater – if something is above the puffin looking down, it sees only the dark of the water; if below and looking up, it sees the white of the sun shining down on the water. This is true for a lot of ocean animals – fish and whales included. I’d never thought about this before – why fish have light bellies and dark backs – and found it fascinating. Puffins can dive to 40 metres underwater, and they mate for life, somehow carving out little holes in the side of islands in which to rear their young – they have only one baby at a time. The babies are called – wait for it – pufflings, which is possibly the most adorable thing I have ever heard. Sadly we were too early in the year to see any pufflings, but it was a very enjoyable morning spent upon the boat watching these funny creatures through binoculars.

Photo by Jon Adair

Incidentally, the weather finally brightened up for our final few hours in the country. This was how I’d imagined Iceland to look – completely clear frosty blue sky, bright ocean, majestic snowy mountains in the background. It was beautiful, and a completely different experience strolling the town with the warmth of the sun on our faces. 

My final meal is worth mentioning, largely because it presented me with the opportunity to try fermented shark. Innocuous enough, the shark was served in small cubes – resembling ceviche – in a little ramekin. It was pale, white and firm. The first few seconds were fairly pleasant. There was a light, sweet taste; a firm, meaty texture, reminiscent of good sashimi. I was rather enjoying it, until a rancid wave of searing ammonia hit my palate, stinging the roof of my mouth and engulfing my sinuses with its acrid tang.

Fermented shark is definitely not the ideal introduction to Icelandic cuisine. When fresh, the Greenland shark is actually poisonous due to its high urea content. After being buried in gravel, pressed with heavy rocks for six to twelve weeks and then cured for several months, however, it is miraculously transformed into a local delicacy, something that can be eaten. Whether it should be, of course, is another matter. Newcomers to this unusual foodstuff are advised to hold their nose, as the shark packs a hefty aromatic punch of ammonia, exuding an aroma that I can only describe as a cross between toilet cleaner and strong cheese. I’m normally pretty adventurous with food, but fermented shark can go on my ‘never eating again’ list, alongside andouillette, a French sausage made from the colon of a pig and tasting exactly like the colon of a pig. 

This gastronomic adventure took place at Café Loki, a lovely little venue about twenty metres away from our hotel and right in front of Hallgrimskirkja church, the largest church in Iceland and an imposing, modernist building that reminded me a little of Minas Tirith (more Lord of the Rings similarities here…I wonder if Tolkein ever visited Iceland). 

The café was light and airy, and offered an array of Icelandic dishes as well as more standard fare, like bagels and cake. I went for a plate of Icelandic specialities, which included the aforementioned shark. Other than that, though, it was very tasty indeed – I had rye bread topped with smoked trout and cottage cheese, rye bread topped with a delicious mixture of herring, potato, cheese, chives and onion (which looked like scrambled egg but tasted, deliciously, like a fish pie), and – my favourite – rye flatbread topped with butter and smoked lamb. This appeared in various places on my travels, and is really satisfying – the bread is dense and squidgy with a nutty flavour, while the butter is creamy and the lamb subtly sweet and smoky. I also tried dried fish, which you’re supposed to spread with butter and eat, but this was a bit odd – the fish was indeed very dry, so quite difficult to eat and a bit of a strange experience. At least it wasn’t fermented, though. 

Photo by Jon Adair

And that was it – a whirlwind tour around a remarkable country, with plenty of opportunities for eating along the way; a journey home fuelled by fermented shark. There is a lot I wish we’d had time to do – whale watching, snorkelling (the water is the clearest in the world, you can see for up to 100 metres), more horse riding, trekking – but I think I got a fairly good feeling for the place. It was so different to anywhere I’d visited before – normally my holiday destinations are substantially hotter and more tropical than the UK – and presented me with things I’d never seen before.

Perhaps it was rather a strange holiday destination, but Iceland is certainly somewhere you should visit at some point in your life, if only for the way it presents you with the unexpected and the marvellous every day. It’s geography taken to the extreme, and experiencing the culture that has been shaped from that rugged landscape and hostile climate is certainly an adventure. More than all that, though, the food is excellent – exciting, unusual, revelatory, and often beautiful.

Lemon balm ice cream

My mother is obsessed with trying to make a gardener out of me. Ignoring my frequent protests - along the lines of 'BUT I KILL EVERYTHING I TOUCH' - she is adopting sneakier and sneakier strategies to turn me into some kind of green-fingered guru. These include: randomly depositing packets of seeds on my desk when she comes to visit; turning up with unrequested surprise armfuls of courgette and tomato plants; constantly steering any conversation round to the potential of my 'lovely little garden'; asking me just to 'come outside and have a look at these plants', a request that then somehow ends with me and my soil-stained fingernails helping to establish said plants in my greenhouse.

Now I have to admit that I do fancy the idea of myself as some kind of Nigel Slater type - a keen cook with a fabulously fertile garden brimming with the raw materials for my culinary exploits. His Tender cookbooks are some of the best in my collection, and I like to live vicariously as I leaf through them, imagining that I too have the wherewithal to train a gooseberry bush up the fence and have oodles of my favourite fruit in the back garden, ripe for the picking come July, or I too am pretending to moan about a gigantic glut of courgettes but am secretly thrilled at my own gardening prowess, or I too can just casually wander through my herb garden, brushing the leaves of chervil, marjoram and lemon verbena with my fingertips and inhaling their fragrant aromas as I pass.

Much as I do love the idea of myself as a gardener, I will always be a cook first and foremost. Nothing illustrates this fact better than this recipe.

You see, there are quite a few weeds in my garden. The poor thing has been pretty unloved for a couple of years and left to run a little bit wild. In particular, there are bright green clusters of leafy weeds sprouting from a small gap between the paving and the garage walls.

A gardener would remove them. Weedkiller, brute force, elbow grease with a blunt knife, whatever - they'd have those unsightly weeds gone in no time.

So what do I do? Obviously, I use them to make ice cream.

Because this is not just any weed. No, it's deliciously scented lemon balm, a herb that looks a bit like mint but with slightly fuzzy leaves and an incredible sharp citrus aroma with a hint of minty freshness about it. It has the same citrus astringency as lemon thyme but is sharper somehow, almost limey. I discovered it when I noticed this aroma floating in the air as I brushed past the plant walking through the garden. I'd never heard of lemon balm before, but its smell was too intoxicating not to think about bringing it into the kitchen.

So this is about as close to the Nigel Slater fantasy as I get. I took some scissors outside, chopped some weeds and made them into dessert. You couldn't make this up. I think I now get why my new friends in York think I'm a bit weird.

Still, it made logical sense to me. Take a thick, rich mixture of milk and double cream, and infuse it with those sharp lemony leaves. Beat egg yolks and sugar until pale, thick and frothy, then transform the lemony dairy into a luscious scented custard, before churning it in the ice cream machine. I've made lemon thyme ice cream before, and it was amazing, so this wasn't too far a step from that. Except for the fact it was made with weeds growing in the garden, of course.

The flavour of the resulting ice cream didn't quite pack the heady citrus punch I'd expected. I think lemon balm has a stronger smell than it does flavour, or maybe it doesn't take well to heat. However, the ice cream is nonetheless delicious - it has a very subtle, herbal tang to it and a moreish flavour you can't quite place. It is sweet and creamy but with a refreshing hint of minty lemon. I think it would be very good served alongside some fresh strawberries, raspberries or cherries, or - as I plan to do later in the week - in scoops to adorn a strawberry and rhubarb crumble pie.

Maybe one day soon my gardening skills will have advanced to the point where I can intentionally grow herbs to make my own ice cream. In the meantime, I'll stick to making dessert out of weeds. Sorry, mum.

Lemon balm ice cream (makes approx 500ml):

• 250ml whole milk
• 250ml double cream
• A pinch of salt
• 40g lemon balm leaves, rinsed and dried
• 4 egg yolks
• 110g caster sugar

Put the milk, cream and salt in a saucepan. Roughly tear the lemon balm leaves and add to the pan. Bring to just below the boil, then turn off the heat and let the mixture infuse for an hour or two.

Using an electric whisk, beat the egg yolks with the sugar in a bowl until thick, pale and creamy. Strain the milk/cream mixture to remove the lemon balm leaves, and add to the eggs and sugar. Whisk well, then return it all to the pan. Place over a low heat, stirring continuously, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon (this could take up to half an hour). When it has thickened, chill in the fridge overnight.

The next day, churn the mixture in an ice cream machine until set, then transfer to the freezer.

Rhubarb, vanilla and cardamom jam

Sometimes, I feel like vanilla gets a little overlooked in my kitchen. That's not to say I don't use it often; a teaspoon or two of golden vanilla extract regularly makes its way into my baking and even sometimes into my breakfast. But it's always there as a background to other things, a pleasantly sweet, bland, blank canvas to be painted over in vivid stripes by other flavours. It's so easy just to tip vanilla extract out of the bottle without thinking about it, without really enjoying its heady (there's more than a little alcohol in there) perfume, to just let it blend in. You get a totally different experience using vanilla pods.

Opening a thin glass jar of vanilla pods is a wonderful thing. First, there's the incredible aroma that hits you like a powerful blast of sweet air as you take off the lid. Then there's the feel of the pods - slightly moist, almost silky, damp with flavour and perfume. I always find it odd how something ostensibly so gnarled, black and ugly can produce the flavour we associate with everything light, white and aesthetically pleasing - think vanilla ice cream or vanilla cheesecake.

Then there are those beautiful little seeds, tiny capsules of flavour that should look so wrong peppering a dish like dust, but instead are pleasing to the eye, promising an abundance of sweet vanilla goodness. I hate recipes that tell me to scrape the seeds from a vanilla pod and add to something, because inevitably some seeds always get lost in the process - they stick to the knife, or the bowl, or the spatula, or you just can't get them all out of the pod.

Still, I also like that you can recycle vanilla pods. After infusing things with them (ice cream, jam, etc.) I give the pod a quick rinse, let it dry on some kitchen paper, and then stick it in a jar of caster sugar, where it infuses the sugar wonderfully with its scent. Our vanilla sugar jar at home now has a total of five pods twisting up out of the mound of sugar - that's got to be some potent stuff. While vanilla pods aren't cheap, they're certainly good value. And while a good brand of vanilla extract (or vanilla paste, which is my new love - it contains all the seeds as well, in a viscous, treacle-like black goo) is perfectly fine for most things, you sometimes can't beat a vanilla pod in the kitchen.

This jam is one example. While I used to think ginger and orange were the best things in the world to pair with rhubarb, this jam changed my mind. There is something about the combination of rhubarb, sugar and vanilla that is just incredible. I think it's the intense sweetness of it, reminiscent of childhood desserts and sweets from the corner shop. Combine the fragrance of vanilla with the tart sugary hit of rhubarb, and you have something utterly wonderful.

This jam arose as a way of using up six bags of rhubarb from my freezer, but I've made it again since with specially purchased rhubarb, because it's just so good. The rhubarb and sugar cook down into a rather unassuming brownish pink mass, flecked with those all-important vanilla seeds, but it is definitely one of those things that tastes better than it looks. Spread on toast, where it becomes a lovely dusky pink colour, it's the ultimate sweet morning pick-me-up.

I've also added cardamom, which I have to say was a bit of an inspired idea. Cardamom works well with rhubarb, lending it a delicious citrus note, but the combination with the vanilla as well is ridiculously good. There's tartness from the fruit, sweetness from the sugar, fragrant perfume from the vanilla, and an alluring exotic citrus note from the cardamom that is reminiscent of those beautiful syrupy sweet Middle Eastern desserts.

This is a very special jam indeed, yet one that hardly takes any effort; in fact, it's more effort to sterilise the jars to put it in than it is to make the jam. A fine use for the special vanilla pod, as well as one of England's most neglected vegetables.

Rhubarb, vanilla and cardamom jam (makes 5 jars):

• 1kg rhubarb (weighed after trimming)
• 1kg jam sugar
• 1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
• 12 cardamom pods, seeds removed and crushed to a powder
• Juice of 1 lemon

Chop the rhubarb into 3cm pieces and put in a large, heavy-based saucepan or preserving pan. Add the sugar and vanilla pod, and heat gently until the rhubarb starts to turn juicy and the sugar starts to dissolve. Put a small plate in the freezer (to test for when the jam is set). Add the cardamom and lemon juice to the rhubarb, then turn the heat up and let it bubble quite vigorously for 30 mins-1 hour. Stir occasionally to prevent the rhubarb and sugar catching on the bottom of the pan and burning - this happens if the heat is too high.

Meanwhile, sterilise your jars and lids. I do this by washing them well in soapy water, then putting the jars upside down in an oven at 120C for 40 minutes, adding the lids (also upside down) for the last 10 minutes. Turn the oven off and leave the jars inside until ready to bottle the jam.

To test for a set, put a teaspoon of jam onto the cold plate from the freezer and leave for 2 minutes. If you can run your finger through it and it wrinkles and separates, it's ready. If not, let it bubble for a bit longer.

When the jam is set and still hot, ladle through a clean funnel into the jars, add wax discs and put on the lids. Voilà!

Spiced pineapple and coconut crumble

The other day, I found myself standing outside the Co-op near my house crying a little bit. I had been trying to lock up my bike, when it fell violently onto my leg, scraping off all the skin and hurting rather a lot (there is very little cushioning on a shin). It had generally been a pretty bad day, a day that started at 5.30am due to my inexplicably overactive mind deciding it needed no further rest, and which by 2pm had turned into - in my mind - a tragedy of epic proportions. Why had I not just gone straight home and avoided this painful bike scenario, I hear you ask? Well, obviously, I needed to buy two pineapples.

At the moment, I am completely obsessed with pineapple. It started with these pineapple pancakes, an attempt to assuage feelings of deep nostalgia after my trip to Vietnam. I ate quite a lot of pineapple over there - in pancake form but also in the smoothies that I became obsessed with, a fixture of my daily diet.  You can also buy prepared pineapple in supermarkets over there, just like you can in the UK, but the Vietnamese have an interesting habit of eating underripe pineapple as a savoury snack, with salt and chilli - it would come shrink-wrapped accompanied by a little sachet of this spicy salt, for dipping. I prefer my pineapple sweet, though, hence the delight caused by its inclusion in breakfast pancakes.

After caramelising chunks of fresh pineapple with cinnamon, vanilla and brown sugar, a revelation occurred in my kitchen. While fresh pineapple is, of course, delicious - bursting with juice, sweet yet tart at the same time, bright and almost perfumed - having tasted its cooked and sugared form, I'm not sure I can possibly express how infinitely more wonderful pineapple is after a little heat treatment.

Then there was this recipe for chilli and ginger stir-fried pineapple, a dish I've made at least fifteen times since discovering it only a couple of months ago, which is something I can't say for anything else I've ever made. The combination is just ridiculously moreish, with the sour and salty notes of fish sauce and the aromatic ginger and garlic spiking the sweet juice of the fruit. I'm now a big fan of pineapple in savoury dishes, a combination found in this incredible Cuban-influenced caramelised pineapple and avocado salad recipe from the excellent Food 52: I stumbled across it recently and had to try the very next day.

It didn't disappoint; my favourite part was sprinkling thick wedges of the fruit with molasses sugar and caramelising them under the fierce heat of my grill, ramped up as high as it would go. The combination with the creamy, delicate avocado and the peppery watercress was something else.

A few weeks ago, I visited Dishoom, a fantastic 'Bombay Cafe' in Covent Garden. My menu choices were completely based around the fact that I knew I had to leave room for the pineapple crumble on the dessert menu. When it arrived, I was so glad I hadn't devoured a second bowl of lentil dahl. Underneath a deliciously buttery crumble lay a sweet, sticky blanket of caramelised pineapple, juicy and ridiculously tasty. The crumble crust was unusual in its texture, full of crunchy seeds and, I think, coconut, which added a beautiful dimension to this fabulous spin on a classic pudding. There was a hint of fragrant spice - the menu mentioned black pepper - which mellowed the acidic sweetness of the fruit. To top it all off, a scoop of cinnamon ice cream. It was one of the best desserts I've ever eaten.

So, naturally, I had to bring this combination of flavours into my own kitchen. And, incredibly, I think I got it absolutely right. It tasted exactly the same as the restaurant crumble. It's too good not to share. (The crumble itself, incidentally, is way too good to share - halve your estimation of how many people it will serve, right now).

When you melt butter in a pan and add molasses sugar (the really really dark, sticky, caramel-scented stuff), the world is instantly better. When you then add a sprinkling of cinnamon and a large amount of juicy fresh pineapple, it is almost too good to be true. When you then let that caramelise and turn soft, golden and toffee-esque, you may as well accept that few things will ever be as good. Finally, a splash of vanilla - heady, tropical fruity perfection. I added a dash of black pepper to my pineapple, to emulate the restaurant version - just enough to give the fruit a very slight spicy edge, but you'd never detect it was there unless you knew.

I've come across black pepper with pineapple before, in an Indian-style chutney. It works very well in dessert form too. Pineapple, though quite tart raw, is incredibly sweet once cooked with a little sugar; the pepper helps to mellow it a little, yet also allow its flavour to shine.

Tumble the pineapple into a baking dish. Then it's time for the crumble. This basically involved putting all the ingredients I love into a bowl. Spelt flour, for nutty flavour. Butter - of course. Demerara sugar, to give that all-important crumble crunch. Then we start to turn things a little bit sexy and exotic.

Ground cardamom, because its mellow fragrance works so well with all kinds of fruit and sweet confections. Desiccated coconut, an ingredient many people cannot spell and I wish would learn because it infuriates me. Sunflower seeds, for delicious nutty crunchiness and because I think the restaurant crumble had them, though it may have been pumpkin. Slivered pistachios, because they are green and pretty and I cannot think of anything that isn't improved by them (except perhaps a nut allergy).

Oh, the sweet goodness that was this crumble. I was thrilled with how it turned out, exactly as I was hoping. If I made it again, the only slight tweak necessary would be to add a little more butter to the topping - I used my normal crumble topping, but because I added a few extras (coconut, seeds, etc), I needed a little more butter to hold it together. It was, as I suppose it should be, quite crumbly, which is why it perhaps looks a bit of a mess in the photos. This had no impact, however, on the resulting taste. I've adjusted the recipe below to include a bit more butter.

Butter issues aside, the heady mix here of juicy, sticky, toffee-scented pineapple with an exotically spiced, crunchy, coconut-sweet, nutty crumble is just ridiculously good. For traditionalists who believe crumbles belong solely in the realm of orchard fruits or perhaps rhubarb, it's time to rethink things.

This is a dessert that will surprise and delight. The unexpected inclusion of pineapple in a crumble is pretty exciting alone, but when you combine that with the hint of peppery spice and the exotic allure of cardamom and coconut, you have something really special. I couldn't stop eating this. It's fabulous with vanilla ice cream, though one day I want to make cinnamon ice cream to go alongside, à la the restaurant original.

It's time to take pineapple out of the fruit salad and into the kitchen. If you haven't experimented with cooking this wonderful fruit before, I suggest you change this situation, starting with this crumble. 

Definitely worth crying over outside the Co-op.

Spiced pineapple and coconut crumble (serves 4-6):

• 2 medium pineapples
• 25g butter
• 2 tbsp molasses sugar/dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 160g plain/spelt flour
• 100g cold butter, cubed
• 50g demerara sugar
• 8 cardamom pods, seeds ground to a powder
• 80g desiccated coconut
• 25g sunflower seeds
• 1-2 tbsp cold water
• 40g pistachios, roughly chopped

First, make the pineapple mixture. Peel the pineapple and cut into small chunks, discarding the woody core. Heat the 25g butter in a large non-stick frying pan and, when melted, add the sugar and cinnamon. Add the pineapple and cook over a high heat, stirring, until soft, juicy and caramelised - about 5-10 minutes. It should have released a little bit of juice and be quite sticky and golden. Turn off the heat and add the black pepper and vanilla extract. Pour the fruit into a baking dish - I used a pie dish about 30cm in diameter.

Next, make the crumble. Pre-heat the oven to 170C. In a large mixing bowl, rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, cardamom, coconut and sunflower seeds, then stir in the cold water so that the mixture forms small 'pebbles'. Pour the mixture over the pineapple, gently pressing it down, then scatter over the pistachios.

Bake for around 35 minutes, until the topping is crispy and golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5 minutes before serving with vanilla ice cream.

Cambodian aubergine curry

Cambodian cuisine is often referred to as being “less sophisticated” than its Thai and Vietnamese neighbours, which seems to me a highly unfair accusation. For me, Cambodian food is just as exciting as Thai or Vietnamese, particularly its curries. These are often based on a spice paste called kroeung, a heady mixture of galangal, turmeric, garlic, lemongrass, lime leaves and chilli, given a savoury kick by fermented shrimp paste. To this is added coconut milk, more lime leaves and a little sugar, resulting in the most delicious sweet-sour-salty-coconutty curry sauce, fragrant with lime and lemongrass, hot with chilli and deeply savoury from fish sauce and shrimp paste. For a delicious introduction to the cuisine, try out this stunning vegetarian curry recipe - my latest post on the Appliances Online lifestyle blog. For the recipe, and a little bit more about Cambodian food, click here!

Tamarind glazed pork chops with watercress and pear salad

When I first started cooking, really cooking, I would follow recipes to the letter. I had very little experience of techniques and anticipating how things would taste, so I made anything and everything from recipes, rarely departing from instructions or ingredients. Then came a phase where, having picked up a lot more experience and confidence, I would cook predominantly from my head. I'd wander the markets, buy what looked nice that day, then invent a dish in my mind on the spot, often based on components I'd made before, a slight variation on something that was tried and tested. Sounds liberating, perhaps? Maybe, but it's more complicated than that.

Cooking without a recipe can give you a real sense of freedom. The freedom to make exactly what you feel like that day based on the absolute best produce available - no point in going to the shops armed with a list that includes avocadoes and strawberries if the only avocadoes to be found are rock hard and the only strawberries woolly and over-sour. No point in brandishing a beautifully planned shopping list that all revolves around a big leg of lamb if you then find the butcher has sold out. Shopping without a list and based on impulse and inspiration avoids these pitfalls.

And yet, it can be incredibly stressful. I would sometimes find myself wandering around the same stalls and shops for hours on end, agonising over various menu ideas in my head, unsure that they would work or how best to make the most of the ingredients I wanted to buy. Nothing worse than being asked by the man behind the counter what you would like, and having to keep saying 'I'm just looking' despite having been there for over fifteen minutes, getting increasingly flustered and red-faced, wanting to make the very best dinner possible but unsure how, or wondering whether the mackerel might be better than the trout, or whether those plums are a better option than those oranges.

So now, things seem to have come full circle. I decided that, with a collection of over sixty cookbooks, I should start using them. Really using them, rather than seeing a recipe and then tweaking it beyond recognition. I still do this, of course, but one day I just told myself to start following the damn recipes a bit more often.

It was liberating. Ridiculously liberating. While a shopping list can be restrictive, it can also be your passport to sanity and peace of mind. In order to avoid minor crises when a crucial ingredient can't be found, I often have two or three different options for meals, so I have a backup if something important (pomelo? galangal? ripe avocado? watercress? mackerel?) can't be located. I go to the supermarket with a list of military precision, organised into columns, so that if the central ingredient for one dish is missing, I can buy the components of something else instead.

Honestly, after cooking from your head for so long, sometimes it can just be stupidly relaxing to let someone else tell you what to buy and what to do, and for you to be fairly sure it will come out tasting pretty nice (with exceptions...but there are some cookery writers who just never fail me, like Nigel Slater, Diana Henry, Bill Granger, and Ottolenghi). To just write down a shopping list from a cookbook page, and ponder a list of instructions as you potter around the kitchen. No last-minute stress at the fish counter, or flusterdness in the fruit and veg aisle, or sinking feeling as you eye up your conveyer belt of groceries and realise you had no idea what you were planning to do with them, and wish you'd just decided to make a bowl of carbonara instead.

In the spirit of this, I am going through old cookbooks and trying out recipes that have been gathering dust. While I discover new recipes every day, I do try and keep on top of things by making a couple of new recipes each week. I have a battered but well-loved recipe journal, a birthday present many years ago from a friend, that is full of recipe cuttings from magazines. I am attempting to make a substantial portion of the recipes inside it before I move onto a new blank journal (it's now full).

This recipe for tamarind glazed pork chops with a pear and watercress salad appeared in Sainsbury's magazine a few months ago. I had a beautiful pair of thick Saddleback pork chops in the freezer, and when I realised I could buy all the other things I needed at the Co-op on the way home from work (rather than trekking to the supermarkets), it just had to be done.

I don't normally cook pork chops. When I do cook pork, it's either bacon, sausages, or tenderloin. However, I could tell this was going to be good from the beginning. I marinated the chops in a mixture of turmeric, ginger, oil, seasoning and white wine vinegar, which gave them a lovely deep yellow colouring. Before baking in the oven, they are doused in a glaze made from tamarind paste, sugar, cumin and a little water. This is thick, dark and treacly, imbuing the meat with a delicious sweet-sour earthy flavour. They bake in this luscious mixture before going under the grill to finish off, leaving them deeply sticky and caramelised on the outside, while moist in the middle. The tamarind glaze is stupidly good - it's hard to describe the addictive tang of tamarind, but it combines so well with the slightly sweet meat of the pork, resulting in a deep, almost caramel-like moreishness.

I was seriously impressed with these pork chops. This cut can often be quite bland, fatty, or chewy. However, they were ridiculously good. They still retained their rich flavour, while being given a deeply delicious sweet-savoury kick from the glaze. The best bits were the charred, sweet edges of fat around the bone, which had to be nibbled off, while the inside of the meat remained moist (which is often hard to achieve with chops). I'm inspired to cook more with pork chops.

To accompany the pork, an unexpectedly delicious salad. Unexpectedly because the dressing lifts an otherwise fairly standard pear and watercress combination to new heights - lime juice, crushed fennel seeds, olive oil and a little honey result in a gorgeous fruity, slightly liquorice-scented coating for the leaves and fruit. It's the perfect refreshing partner to the deep, sticky, savoury pork - crisp, crunchy, peppery, sweet.

This may look like an ordinary meat-salad combination. It's not. It's a really simple recipe, but one that is deeply, deeply satisfying. Refreshing and unusual, it makes a delicious light meal for the warmer weather. If you want something a bit more substantial (i.e. you're scared by no carbs on the plate), you could serve it with a yellow split pea dhal, like I did. The combination of slightly charred, caramelised, sweet-sour meat with the crisp, fruity salad is perfect.

Further evidence that cooking from recipes can sometimes pay off.

Tamarind glazed pork chops with watercress, fennel and pear salad (serves 2):

(Adapted from Sainsbury's magazine, not sure which issue)

• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 3 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp rapeseed or vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 large pork chops
• 20g tamarind paste
• 2 tbsp dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1/2 tbsp clear honey
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 ripe but firm pears
• 100g watercress or a mixture of rocket, watercress and spinach

First, marinate the pork. Mix the turmeric, ginger, pepper, vinegar, oil and salt in a shallow dish then add the pork, coating it well with the mixture. Cover with cling film and leave in the fridge overnight, or for as long as possible (I left mine about 8 hours).

When ready to cook, pre-heat the oven to 180C. Pat the pork dry with kitchen towel then transfer to a baking dish. In a small pan, heat the tamarind paste, sugar and cumin until combined and it turns bubbling and sticky, then pour over the pork. Cover with a lid or foil and bake for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, toast the fennel seeds in a dry pan then crush with a pestle and mortar. Combine with the lime juice, honey and oil in a large bowl and whisk together to make a dressing. Core and quarter the pears, then slice into thin segments. Toss together with the salad and dressing, and divide between two plates.

When the pork is done, remove it from the oven. Pre-heat the grill to high (about 230C), then place the chops under the grill for five minutes to caramelise the glaze. Rest for five minutes, then serve with the salad.

Rhubarb and ginger brack

I used to make myself a tea loaf every few days when I was in my second and third year of university. I remember this very distinctly. I can remember the exact spot on my bookshelves in my room where I would keep the polka-dot Emma Bridgewater cake tin (a present - I can never afford that sort of stuff normally). I can remember my daily afternoon ritual: returning from the Bodleian to have lunch, then working in my room for the rest of the day, occasionally getting distracted by people-watching through my gigantic bay window that looked out onto a busy thoroughfare (sometimes I'd see a friend frantically waving up at me). Around four o'clock, I'd make myself a big mug of tea, slice a thick slab of tea loaf, lick the sugary residue off my fingers after transporting it to a plate, and sit down, settled, a fork in hand.

There I would sit, sun streaming in through the window, books piled up around my laptop, tea steaming, the faint sound of voices and laughter emanating from the street outside. Mouthful after sugary mouthful, the tea loaf would disappear in a haze of sweet stickiness, and I would feel revived, ready to carry on with Marvell or Richardson or Defoe or whatever else I had to set my mind to that afternoon.

Sometimes it was banana bread, when I had bananas to use up, but often I'd make various variations on the theme of a tea loaf. Tea loaves are, to me, a quintessentially British bit of baking. They involve steeping dried fruit in strong tea for several hours (or overnight), before mixing this fruit and tea medley with flour and eggs; sometimes a little sugar (not much is needed as the fruit is so sweet), sometimes ground almonds to add moisture; sometimes a pinch of warming spice. The main point is that there is no fat added: the tea-soaked fruit makes the cake perfectly moist and gooey without the need for butter or oil. Thus, the beauty of the tea loaf: good for those watching their waistline.

I wasn't, incidentally, but few things can perk up the academic brain more than a slice of cake packed with dried fruit. I used to use apricots, figs, prunes, dates and sultanas. My favourite mouthfuls were those featuring the dates, which turned gloriously sticky and toffee-like during the baking process. Sometimes I added almonds, for a little crunch, or steeped the fruit in orange juice instead of tea.

I love the magic that happens when you soak dried fruit. Used to eating it raw, or throwing it raw into things like cakes and breads, I forget how deliciously plump and juicy it becomes after a nice hot bath. The saturated fruit makes the cake all the more moist, sticky and gooey. It's kind of how a fruit cake should be - I always find those fruit cakes we make on festive occasions, like Christmas cake or simnel cake, far too dry.

There's something intensely comforting about a tea loaf. It's solid and robust, a good, proper, old-fashioned cake. It often has a lovely crunchy crust around the outside, while the inside is gloriously moist and gooey from all the fruit. The fruit is plump and sweet, having absorbed the tea or juice, while the cake itself is fluffy, often with a hint of spice. It's the kind of thing you eat when you are feeling a bit sad, or a bit tired, or a bit peckish. I can't think of something better to revive you in the afternoon. Also, because it's lower on sugar than most cakes, it doesn't give you a horrible sugar crash when you come back down to earth - the dried fruit is good, honest, slow-release energy. At least I feel it is; I'm no nutritionist.

You can eat a tea loaf spread with a little butter, but when it's fresh from the oven it needs no accompaniment other than tea. The smell as it bakes, filling your kitchen with homely, warming aromas, is - for me - what baking is all about.

This recipe is inspired by my recent trip to the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival. There I bought a delicious rhubarb and ginger 'brack', an Irish name for a sweet, fruited bread that is now often used to denote a tea loaf. I gave it to my mum for Mother's Day, and it only recently emerged from the freezer, allowing me to finally have a taste. It's delicious - quite a dense cake, with wonderfully gingery, sweet sultanas and sticky chunks of rhubarb. The sort of thing you could almost justify having for breakfast. It feels wholesome, somehow, robust and earthy and inviting.

Inspired by a few mouthfuls of this, I decided to have a go at creating my own. Having never made a rhubarb tea loaf before, I experimented, basing my recipe on a few others I'd come across online and the taste and texture of the brack I had bought. I was a little worried it wouldn't work, but it did - beautifully.

I soaked a mixture of raisins, finely chopped crystallized ginger and finely chopped rhubarb in strong Earl Grey tea overnight (part of me wanted to use Yorkshire tea, given the provenance of rhubarb and where I live, but I thought Earl Grey would add a lovely floral fragrance). In the morning, the raisins were plump and the ginger had perfumed the whole thing with its sharp, hot scent. To this mixture I added an egg and a little brown sugar, then folded the whole lot into flour, baking powder, ground almonds, a hefty amount of ground ginger and a little cinnamon. I wanted the whole thing to be really gingery - I almost considered adding some stem ginger syrup as well, but restrained myself. The batter was the perfect consistency (I worried I'd put in too much tea, and the rhubarb would be watery) as I spooned it all into a lined loaf tin.

This honestly is one of the easiest cakes you could ever make. I whipped it up in the time it took me to make a cup of tea to go with my breakfast. You only need a couple of bowls and spoons, and a loaf tin.  And an oven, of course. I really love how simple and homely it is - just a few ingredients, no fancy techniques (not even a whisk needed), and the result is a beautiful old-fashioned loaf.

And the taste? Fantastic. It's incredibly gingery, fiery bursts of crystallised ginger peppering the dense, moist crumb. This, though, is tempered by the gooey pieces of rhubarb throughout, and the sweet, plump raisins. I actually think it's better than the brack I bought from the festival! Although tea loaves have a tendency to be quite dense, the juicy rhubarb in this really lightens it, while still making it seem indulgent. You could serve it as a pudding after a light meal, with some ice cream, or have it for breakfast spread with butter. I ate it still warm from the oven, unable to believe that my spontaneous experiment had worked out quite so well.

If you're a rhubarb fan, or a ginger fan, I'd urge you to try this. It's unlike any other rhubarb or ginger cake I've tasted, and perfect for lovers of very gingery cakes. For such a simple recipe, it's immensely rewarding. And, even better, it's low-fat - but you wouldn't guess.

Rhubarb and ginger brack (makes 1 loaf):

• 300ml strong, hot tea (I used Earl Grey)
• 100g raisins or sultanas
• 150g finely diced rhubarb
• 50g crystallised ginger, finely chopped
• 200g plain, wholemeal or spelt flour
• 50g ground almonds
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 75g light brown sugar
• 2 tbsp demerara sugar, for sprinkling (optional)

Soak the raisins, rhubarb and crystallised ginger in the tea overnight.

When ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 170C. Grease and line a loaf tin with baking parchment. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, almonds, baking powder, ginger and cinnamon. To the tea and fruit mixture, add the egg and sugar and stir together. Pour the fruit mixture into the flour mixture, and mix with a large spoon or spatula until evenly combined.

Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, then sprinkle with the demerara sugar, if using. Bake for 55 minutes, until the top of the loaf is crusty and golden, but still gives slightly in the middle when pressed. Leave to cool a little before slicing and serving. It's also very good the next day spread with butter, and freezes well.

Ginger and orange roasted plums

There are some fruits that I rarely, if ever, eat simply pure and unadulterated. While I'm happy to pick up an apple and take a bite straight away (although, a little neurotically/childishly, I prefer to take a knife and a plate and cut it into quarters then eighths, eating a piece at a time), or wolf down a banana before a trip to the gym, or eat bouncy, fridge-cold grapes mindlessly as I work my way through some PhD reading, or slice succulent chunks of mango straight from the skin onto my cereal, there are others that just don't quite cut it eaten raw, or untempered by some form of culinary enhancement.

Figs, for example. Unless you are lucky enough to be shopping during the week-long window in the year when figs arrive from Turkey, ripe and beading with luscious pink syrup, and aren't instead rock-hard, woolly, tasteless and crunchy inside, then your figs will probably need a bit of help before they're likely to provide you with any eating pleasure whatsoever. Baking them in sloe gin is a good idea, as is quartering them and sautéeing them in a little butter and brown sugar, adding a dash of balsamic vinegar if using them for savoury purposes (with cheese, for example).

Apricots are another - I must have eaten at least a hundred apricots in my life, and approximately four of those were nice enough to eat raw. They're usually hard, woolly-tasting and deliver very little flavour, despite their promising golden glowing skins. Once again, baking them is the key - I like to bake them with a little white wine or orange juice in a parcel, along with some warming spices - or simmering them with a little orange juice, sugar and spice to provide a beautiful sweet marigold compote.

Blueberries, too. While I do like a handful of these scattered over cereal or porridge, they seem to get used in my kitchen much more often when baked, usually in this delicious baked oatmeal recipe that I often make for brunch, either with rhubarb or bananas. I love the way cooking intensifies their flavour, as they can sometimes taste a bit bland when raw. Plus, you get the benefit of that gorgeous purple juice, which seeps into and stains deliciously everything it touches.

While I never cook strawberries - it's generally not a good idea - I find them bland and disappointing when raw. I always quarter them and toss them with a little sugar, allowing them to macerate for a while so the sugar can permeate the flesh and enhance their flavour. I usually also add a splash of balsamic vinegar (I have some incredible chocolate and vanilla infused balsamic that works wonders with the berries) or lemon juice, which brings out the sweetness of the berries. This way they are sticky, scarlet and delicious, so much more interesting than when bouncy, raw and tasteless.

And then we have plums. Often so inviting, with their beautiful colours - ranging from the bold yellows and magentas of imported plums to the more subtle, mottled autumnal hues of our native crops - plums can regularly disappoint, offering up flesh that is either solid and too tart, or almost jelly-like and possessing a sickly watery sweetness. Generally it's the former that is the problem.

Having been faced with one too many unsatisfactory plums in my time, I now don't even bother trying to eat them raw. Particularly because I think this is the most delicious thing one can do with plums, so why would you bother doing anything else?

Place some halved, stoned plums in a baking dish, cut side up. Next, get some of that stem ginger in syrup - the kind that comes in little amber globes, suspended in throat-warming sticky syrup. Take a couple of globes and finely chop them, then scatter over the plums. Drizzle a couple of tablespoons of the ginger syrup over the plums. Next, scatter the plums with brown sugar, ground ginger, and cinnamon. Then scatter the plums with some dried orange peel powder (I get mine from JustIngredients) - this adds a slightly earthier orange flavour, though you can use orange zest if you don't have any. Add a splash of water or orange juice, then bake, covered, for half an hour or so.

The plums soften into tender sweetness, while the spices and syrup and liquid accumulate in the bottom of the dish to form the most amazing sweet liquor, warm with fragrant spices. The edges of the fruit caramelise slightly, while the centre goes soft and gooey. This is such a simple recipe, yet it's deliciously versatile. If you use less sugar and add a splash of balsamic or soy sauce, replacing the spices with Chinese five spice, you can use the plums in savoury recipes - along with roast duck or pork, for example. If you keep them sweet, they are delicious spooned over porridge or muesli for breakfast, either hot or cold, or served warm with a very cold scoop of vanilla ice cream as a dessert.

They also look beautiful and smell incredible as you remove them from the oven. There are few things as simple as a big dish of baked fruit, and I love the transformation that takes place every time I cut up some underwhelming plums, add these magic ingredients, and watch them become a glorious mass of soft, spiced sweetness. Incidentally, you can use other fruit - apricots, peaches and nectarines all work well.

So much better than taking a gamble on what will probably be a disappointing specimen.

Ginger and orange roasted plums (serves 4):

• 8-10 plums
• 2 globes stem ginger in syrup
• 2 tbsp syrup from the ginger jar
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp orange peel powder
• (or the zest of 1 orange)
• 100ml orange juice or water

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Halve the plums and remove the stones. If you can't get the stones out without destroying the plums, don't worry - you can take them out later while eating. Place the plums in a baking dish where they can all sit snugly in a single layer, cut side up.

Finely chop the stem ginger, then scatter over the plums. Drizzle over the syrup and scatter over the brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and orange peel powder/orange zest. Splash over the orange juice or water.

Cover the dish with foil, then bake for around 30-35 minutes, until the plums have softened and the juices have turned pink and syrupy. Remove and leave to cool before serving (or chill in the fridge until you want them).

Lamb chops with garlicky green vegetable and bean salad

In an exciting new development in my food writing career, I am now a regular contributor to the beautiful and ogle-worthy Appliances Online lifestyle blog, which features everything from recipes to crafts to ridiculously stylish home design ideas. I'll be contributing recipes twice a month and already have some pretty exciting and delicious things lined up, so watch this space. My first recipe originated from Easter leftovers, but it was so good I had to make it again as a dish in its own right. The result is a gorgeous salad of creamy white beans, charred courgettes, caramelised fennel and green beans, spiked with a feisty dressing of garlic, anchovy and lemon juice. Atop sits a beautiful pink, rare lamb chop. For the recipe and to read more, head over to my post on the blog here. Enjoy!

Condesa, Covent Garden

A couple of weeks ago, I escaped the hustle and bustle of Covent Garden for a brief but deliciously enlightening adventure into Spanish and Mexican cuisine. Condesa is a little wine and tapas bar, tucked away amidst other more imposing pubs and chain restaurants in this ever-heaving district of London. Blink and you'd miss it, so make sure you keep your eyes wide open as you walk past, because it would be a sad thing if you did miss out on the delights Condesa has to offer (not least of which is Daniel, the rather charming owner).

Run by Daniel Caballero, originally from Mexico, Condesa is an example of what happens when someone with a deep and ingrained passion for food decides they want to share that passion with the people of London. Ingredients are sourced with the utmost care, great attention is paid to every detail on the plate, and the result is a riot of big, bold flavours, surprising tastes and textures, and a little bit of excitement in every dish. You can tell, after spending a few minutes in the place, just how much care goes into the entire enterprise.

I was expecting a large restaurant, so was surprised to find myself in a small and rustic-looking wine bar. You can perch at the bar on stools and read off the menu and wine list written on a large blackboard across the wall, or sit at small tables dotted along the side of the room. The place definitely has atmosphere for being so small; everyone around us seemed to be having a great time, and there's a really laid-back feel to everything. It's a proper Spanish tapas bar, not an English restaurant attempting to take some of those elements and enlarge and commercialise them. This is evident from the extensive list of wines written on the board, from Argentina, Chile, Spain, Mexico and France; it's obvious that the food and wine are of equal importance at Condesa.



It's a bit of a treat for wine lovers, particularly with Daniel's expert knowledge to recommend wines to match the food. We started with an Amontillado sherry, which with its sweet, honeyed tones was the prefect thing to whet the appetite before the food commenced. We also sampled a range of Mexican wines, which I found very intriguing, having never tasted wine from that part of the world before. A sweet but crisp and refreshing Chenin Blanc, Daniel explained, gains its sweetness from the salty sea breeze that perfumes the grapes, lending them a distinctly honeyed aftertaste.

Condesa offers big, bold, vibrant food, yet also food that demonstrates a huge amount of skill and care in the blending of flavours and textures. The specials board changes every two days, and ingredients are carefully sourced from Mexico, Spain and local suppliers, with emphasis on quality and authenticity. There's a separate lunch and dinner menu, the former featuring bocadillos (home-made sandwiches), with fillings such as pulled pork, chicken chipotle, jamon serrano with olive oil, and goat's cheese with cranberry sauce, all costing around £5-6. The latter showcases a range of Spanish and Mexican classics, such as charcuterie, ceviche, tostadas and quesadillas.

If you're looking for fancy, artistically-presented restaurant food, with foams and garnishes and the like, go somewhere else. This is the kind of food I really love to eat, the kind that makes me fail to see the point in Michelin-starred places: it's hearty, generous, but also perfectly balanced to deliver a really exciting taste experience. There's meat and cheese. Toasted bread. Olives. Chilli. Beautiful fresh fish and seafood. I really cannot think of what more a person could want.



My favourite dish was the pork pibil sliders, beautiful soft buns filled with slow-cooked pork shoulder that had been marinated in anatto seeds, orange, lime and grapefruit, lending the meat an incredibly rich, salty, tangy flavour. It was served with a tomatillo dip, which was an amazing blend of spicy and cooling at the same time - ice cold yet tingly on the tongue, the perfect zingy complement to the rich meat.

Another favourite, and one which I think epitomises the food at Condesa, is the charcuterie board. Daniel explained the provenance and production process of everything on the plate, which featured - among other delicacies - the famous Iberico ham, which was slightly sweet and salty and melt-in-the-mouth rich. My favourite, though, was the mojama - dried tuna, served drizzled with olive oil and almonds. This is like nothing I've ever tasted - it's basically tuna, cured in the same way you would meat. The result is an incredible concentration of its sea-sweet saltiness, perfectly offset by the grassy oil and the toasty almonds.



We also tried a delicious Manchego; Daniel explained that he had sampled a nine-month old cheese, but thought it would be too dry for local taste, so chose a six-month specimen instead. It was perfect, delivering that sweet grainy taste I love so much about manchego. You can't serve manchego without membrillo, quince paste, which was also excellent. We also had two different types of olives - manzanilla, and guirdillo, which were slightly spicy.

The Mexican dishes on the menu were probably the most exciting. A ceviche of tuna, with lime, olive oil and agave, had an incredible soft, melting texture, but still retained that subtle flavour of the sea, lifted by the zing of the citrus, perfectly 'cooked' cubes of delicate tuna keeping their shape and flavour. Served on top of a crisp tostada, which balanced out the sharp citrus with a deep, buttery toastiness, it was utterly gorgeous - the kind of fresh-tasting food I could eat all day.



In the same vein and equally wonderful were the prawn tostadas. On top of corn tostadas (baked not fried), sat a fabulous medley of prawns fried with onions, leeks, red cabbage. The prawns were beautifully fresh and sweet, almost buttery in flavour, with a lip-tingling hint of spice. What really made the dish was the habañero mayonnaise, which lent a delicious creamy texture and spice to the whole thing. What I especially loved, though, was that the sweet prawns weren't overpowered by this assertive layering of flavours.

In a similar category to the pork sliders - that of sheer, unadulterated, carnivorous joy - are the braised pigs' cheeks. It's no secret that I love pigs' cheeks, economical morsels of meat that braise down into succulent melting goodness. These were cooked in a mixture of PX sherry, bay leaf, leek, onion, carrot, and served on roast potatoes. I have to say that after the other vibrant, zingy flavours we'd eaten, I found these a little bit on the bland side, but I think that may have been simply because everything else was just so zingy, spicy and delicious. A plate of these on their own would, I'm sure, satisfy any ardent meat cravings. The cheeks were deliciously tender and the sauce rich, thick and meaty.



The ultimate in crowd-pleasing dishes, though, is the corn truffle quesadilla. Both this and the pigs' cheeks were originally on the specials menu, Daniel told us, but they proved so popular that he's decided to put them permanently on the menu. You can't really go wrong with crisp, toasted tortillas sandwiched around melting cheese and earthy, salty, rich corn truffle (a fungus which grows naturally on ears of corn and has a similar deep flavour to Italian truffles). The combination of textures is so satisfying, as is the gooey richness of the melting cheese and deeply savoury truffle within. This is proper comfort food, at a different end of the scale to the vibrant ceviche and tostadas - I would recommend having all of them, to experience the delightful differences in flavour and texture.

To finish, we devoured a plate of exceptional cheeses: Manchego, Valdeon (a Spanish blue cheese from Leon), and Murcia al vino (a goat's milk cheese, the rind of which is washed with red wine during maturation). The Murcia was soft and creamy with that unmistakeable goat milk tang; the Valdeon also deliciously creamy with an assertive blue cheese sharpness. These came with membrillo and fig jam, the latter absolutely wonderful with the Valdeon. To wash all this down, a glass of Crema sherry, which is aged for longer than the other sherries on the menu and as a result is darker and sweeter; it's a great match for the tangy cheese.



The eating experience at Condesa is just as a tapas bar should be - portions are small enough to order a few and make for satisfying sharing, but large enough that you don't feel cheated and have to order out of your price range in order to fill up. The prices are reasonable, too - charcuterie plates range from £5-11, meat dishes around £5-6, fish dishes between £8-11, while salads are around £4-6.

Condesa was genuinely one of the best restaurant experiences I've had in a while. I loved the informality of the place, the friendliness of the staff, the buzzing atmosphere, the delicious wines. Most of all, of course, I loved the vibrant food, which I found truly exciting, a really refreshing change from the standard things you find in restaurants all the time now. I would urge anyone feeling slightly jaded by the generic restaurant scene to go along and let Daniel surprise them with his fabulous and expertly-judged food and wine; I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

(Also, apologies for the slightly dodgy photos - my camera is useless in dim lighting so I had to use my iPhone, which isn't much better...)

Nutmegs, seven dined as a guest of Condesa. Many thanks to Lucy for arranging the evening and to Daniel and his staff for being such excellent hosts.

Chilli and ginger stir-fried pineapple

Have you ever discovered an amazing recipe a bit by accident? Say, found yourself with random ingredients to use up and located a recipe in one of your cookbooks that you wouldn't normally make but since you have all the ingredients you may as well? Or, at a loss for culinary inspiration, simply turned to a random page in said cookbook and picked something you wouldn't normally try, only to find it a wonderful addition to your repertoire? Or decided to give something a go because it sounded weird and used an odd combination of ingredients, and you were curious to know how it would taste?

This recipe came about a bit like that. One night, I was cooking amok (a Cambodian coconut-based fish curry steamed in banana leaves - it's insanely delicious) for a friend. Feeling guilty over a fresh pineapple languishing in the fridge and starting to turn a little brown in places, and sure that I could turn it into some kind of side dish to accompany the fish, I flicked through one of my Vietnamese recipe books, certain I had seen a recipe for a stir-fried pineapple dish.

Now, I love pretty much all fruit-in-savoury-dishes combinations, but I think pineapple has to be a particular favourite. In Vietnam, one of the absolute highlights of my travels was a dish of stir-fried seafood with onions, tomatoes and pineapple. It had a delicious sweet-sour flavour and the seafood was fresh, tender, sweet and succulent. Pineapple adds wonderful flavour to south-east Asian dishes, since they're often quite sour and spicy; the sweetness and caramel notes of fresh pineapple add a delicious dimension to the mix, particularly if there's coconut in the sauce - like a piña colada, only savoury and chewable.

This recipe is simple but so much more delicious and rewarding than you would expect for its simplicity. You stir-fry chopped ginger, garlic and chilli in a hot pan. This alone is going to make it good - nothing like that beautiful triumvirate of flavour to get a dish going. You then add fresh pineapple, keeping the heat high so it starts to caramelise on the outside. The colours are beautiful and golden, the fruit streaked with dark toffee colour, the fiery red of the chilli dotted throughout.

Then, the best bit. You pour on a dark and potent mixture of fish sauce, soy sauce, and dark brown sugar. This sizzles and bubbles in treacly waves, coating the pineapple and turning it a dark bronze, the smell of salt and toffee wafting up from the searing pan. As you continue to stir the sauce thickens and caramelises. You then add a squeeze of lime juice, to brighten everything up.

You can keep it simple and serve it just like this, as a side dish, sprinkled with toasted peanuts. The deep savoury flavour of the nuts contrasts beautifully with the sweet, sticky, slightly sour, salty pineapple. I like to stir in some spinach just as the sauce has thickened, where it wilts in the pan and is coated with the sauce. It adds fresh green colour, another texture, and also one more of your five a day -  surely a plus.

Since I discovered this recipe a few weeks ago, I've made it at least ten times. This is a clear indication of its wonderfulness, because I rarely cook the same thing twice. But there's something about this dish I just can't get enough of. The flavours are incredible - the glaze on the outside of the pineapple is salty and slightly sour in your mouth, but when you bite into the pineapple it releases wonderfully sticky, toffee-scented juice. The peanuts are rich, toasty and nutty, providing crunch. There's heat from the chilli and ginger, just enough to make your lips tingle.

At the end, I like to scatter over some herbs. Mint and coriander work well, as does fresh basil, but my new love of late is sweet basil. I found this in an Asian grocer, and was not quite prepared for what would happen when I opened the packet and took a sniff.

I didn't think I'd tried sweet basil before. It turns out, I basically lived off the stuff when travelling around Vietnam. It's common when eating in a Vietnamese restaurant to be presented with a big plate of fresh herbs, water droplets clinging to the leaves, to add to your meal or just munch on as they are. Sweet basil leaves - darker green and more pointed than regular basil, with a purple tinge - were a staple. They have a very strong, assertive flavour, quite unlike Italian basil; it's hard to describe, but it's almost minty, somehow, with a hint of aniseed. One sniff of that bunch of leaves and I was back in Vietnam.

It's amazing how smell, more than any other sense, I think, has such a profound and involuntary effect on memory. There have been a few occasions in my life where I've been unexpectedly jolted back to a certain event or period of time, all through the sniff of a certain aroma. It sometimes leaves me reeling, particularly if the memory is an especially emotional one (and aren't they all, in a way?). This was no exception. I've been cooking with the sweet basil for days now, but the effect hasn't lessened in any way. Its scent is inextricably tied up with images, emotions, ideas from far away in my head. I actually went to the fridge and just stood there, inhaling the packet. A little weird, perhaps, but I am still pining for Vietnam and this is the closest I can get. A bunch of leaves. Strange how it's the small things.

But let's put aside the nostalgic meanderings of my mind. Sweet basil is also very good on this pineapple dish.

I would really urge you to try this soon. It's excellent as a side dish with various Asian recipes - it was amazing with the amok - but would be good with any kind of Asian-spiced fish dish, or with chicken or pork. Although it's quite assertive in its flavours, its sweetness provides a fresh, pleasant contrast to anything spicy, creamy or meaty. I also think it would be very good with cubed firm tofu, fried in a hot pan until golden and slightly crispy around the edges, and served over rice or noodles. Or with seared spicy lemongrass prawns.

One of my favourite ways to eat this, though, is simply poured into a big bowl of cooked rice noodles, where the juices coat the slippery strands, their comforting blandness a welcome foil to the hot, sweet, sour, sharp, salty flavours of the caramelised fruit and wilted spinach. I scatter over the toasted peanuts, squeeze over some lime, and pile shredded sweet basil over the top. I sit down with this big bowlful, some wooden chopsticks that I bought in Vietnam, and am a little bit in love.

P.S. Don't leave your chopsticks like this in south east Asia. Apparently it's a symbol of death.

Chilli and ginger stir-fried pineapple (serves 1 as a lunch with rice/noodles; 2 as a side dish):

• 1 clove garlic
• Half a red chilli (or more, depending how spicy you like your food)
• 20g fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp rapeseed or groundnut oil
• Half a medium pineapple
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp dark brown sugar or palm sugar
• A large handful spinach or baby spinach
• 2 tbsp peanuts, toasted in a dry pan and roughly chopped
• The juice of half a lime
• A few leaves of Thai/sweet basil (or normal basil if you can't find it), shredded, to serve

Finely chop the garlic, chilli and ginger. Remove the skin and woody core from the pineapple and chop into small chunks. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan or wok and fry the ginger, garlic and chilli over a medium-high heat until starting to colour. Add the pineapple and cook until starting to caramelise.

Mix the fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar in a small bowl or jug, then tip into the pan - it should sizzle and bubble. Stir to coat the pineapple in the mixture, then cook for a minute or so until everything has turned dark and sticky. Add the spinach and cook for a minute or so until wilted.

Squeeze over the lime juice and stir well, then serve garnished with the toasted peanuts and shredded basil.

Salted caramel and cacao nib brownies

People sometimes tell me that they think I am an obese person trapped inside a thin person's body. I think this is often intended as a general comment pertaining to the fact that I love to cook and I love to eat, and I can, on certain occasions, consume quite a substantial amount (such occasions usually being marked by either a significant amount of exercise or a significant amount of stress; quadruple portions needed if both factors are present). It isn't, however, entirely accurate, because if people looked closely at this blog, my recipes and the kind of things I eat, they'd realise that actually most of it is pretty healthy.

Sometimes, though, I like to get into the kitchen, put on my apron, and let that obese girl within me cook whatever the hell she likes.

These times usually arise when there's baking to be done for someone else. I enjoy such occasions, because it means I can go crazy with the butter and sugar without worrying that the fruits of my labours will be sitting dangerously on the worktop for days forcing me to gorge myself upon their sumptuous goodness. I don't believe in deprivation, but I do believe that having to single-handedly polish off an entire cake or batch of biscuits/brownies on a weekly basis is probably not very good for you.

I revel in the things that find their way into my kitchen on these occasions. Slightly out-of-place things that probably feel a bit alien there, that don't generally make much of an appearance. Chocolate, for one. I just don't eat much of the stuff; not because it's unhealthy, more because I'm not that bothered about it. I'd much rather have a big slice of fruit pie or cheesecake than anything chocolatey. I have been ridiculed over my ability to make a standard-size Dairy Milk bar last more than a month.

But when there's baking to be done for chocaholic friends, family or neighbours, I do rather enjoy the process of melting voluptuous waves of glossy dark chocolate in a bowl or pan, stirring its viscous form through flour, eggs, sugar, butter and whatever else finds its way in there. There's always a spoon or bowl to lick, and it always makes me wonder why I don't eat more chocolate.

Derivatives of chocolate also apply. Ganache, for example. There's something obscenely decadent about melting chocolate and swirling through delicate silky folds of double cream. I love the magic that takes place as it transforms from runny liquid to thick, smooth, spreadable icing.

Caramel is another thing that my kitchen doesn't see very often. Oddly enough, the last time I made caramel was for a savoury dish: a Vietnamese chicken and sweet potato coconut curry, that features a good dose of light caramel added to the sauce where it lends a gorgeous honeyed sweetness to the spicy coconut overtones. It sounds weird, perhaps, but it truly works. Other than that, apart from the occasional caramel for a tarte tatin, I generally don't find myself indulging in that magic alchemy of sugar, butter and cream very often.

When I do, though, how I enjoy it. There's something mesmerising about the ability of solid sugar to melt and turn golden, bubbling ferociously and combining lusciously with double cream and a little butter to form a glossy, golden mass of sweet honeyed goodness. I always add salt to my caramel, because I just don't see the reason not to: it completely enhances the taste experience, taking something just plain sweet to dizzying heights of mouth-filling richness. If your only experience of caramel has been that horrible sickly runny stuff that pours out of a commercial chocolate bar, you really need to sort your life out. Salted caramel is on another plane altogether. It's like comparing a supermarket frozen pizza with the kind churned out by an Italian pizzeria on a daily basis.

A while ago I was sent some 2012 vintage cacao beans from the wonderful Blyss Chocolate. They're Arriba Nacionale beans, grown in Ecuador, and - unlike many commercially treated cacao beans - their subtle fragrance and aroma is preserved by ensuring they are never subjected to heat over 50C. I've been meaning to try them out in a recipe for months, and while I'm incredibly excited about their apparent potential for use in savoury dishes like a chicken tagine, my initial thought was that they'd be excellent in a brownie.

You may have heard of cacao nibs before - those dark, crunchy, bitter nuggets of pure cacao that have become quite trendy recently and add wonderful texture and flavour to desserts, as well as carrying a host of purported health benefits. Chopping up my cacao beans and removing their beige, papery skin yielded basically the same thing. They have a wonderful flavour, like the darkest dark chocolate, bitter yet fragrant and aromatic, with a delicious crunch. They also have a beautiful slight purple sheen to them.

I'd seen a ridiculously decadent recipe for salted caramel brownies with cacao nibs over on the excellent Poires au Chocolat a while back, and decided that these would be perfect to show off the beautiful cacao beans to their full advantage. You make a brownie mixture by melting a load of delicious things (butter, sugar, golden syrup, chocolate) together in a pan and adding flour and eggs, then into this you swirl a glorious few dollops of salted caramel - made with sugar, cream, butter and, of course, sea salt. A scattering of the cacao nibs, and into the oven they went.

I love the way the cacao nibs look almost like rose petals strewn over the top of the brownie. The chocolate mixture turns rich and gooey, while the caramel and its salty sweetness permeates throughout. In each bite there is a beautiful blank canvas of slightly bitter dark chocolate, through which run veins of sweet and salty caramel. On top of all this gooey sweetness are the bitter crunchy cacao nibs, fragrant and delicious. Every mouthful is different.

I adapted Emma's original recipe a little - I added a bit more flour to give a more solid, chewy texture. I had to use some honey as well as golden syrup, as I ran out of the latter. I used a bit less chocolate, again because I ran out. I also almost halved the amount of sugar in the brownie mixture, because I figured the caramel would be very sweet and they might be a bit sickly otherwise. The result is perfection: the brownie isn't too sweet, it has a slight bitter tang from the 70% dark chocolate, which means the ripples of salted caramel provide a contrasting and delicious burst of sweetness, which also contrasts with the tang of the cacao nibs over the top.

Incidentally, if you don't have cacao beans to scatter over the brownies, use roughly chopped pecan nuts, as I did in another batch - the combination of toffee-scented pecans, caramel and chocolate is just ridiculously good.

I think these are the perfect vehicle to show off the beautiful cacao beans, while also being one of the most gloriously decadent things I've ever made. I have to say I enjoyed every minute of sugary, buttery, sticky, messy activity that these entailed, all the more because it's not very common in my kitchen. 

This, my friends, is what happens when the trapped obese girl gets to cook. I think I should let her loose in the kitchen more often.

Salted caramel and cacao nib brownies (makes 2 batches of 20 brownies; easily halved):

(adapted from Poires au Chocolat)

For the caramel:

• 150g white caster sugar
• 100ml double cream
• 20g unsalted butter, in cubes
• 1/4 tsp sea salt

For the brownies:

• 200g unsalted butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 150g light brown sugar
• 50g golden syrup
• 60g honey
• 450g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids), broken into pieces
• 8 eggs
• 160g plain flour
• To decorate:
• 4 tbsp cacao nibs or chopped pecan nuts

Put the sugar in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan in an even layer. Heat over a medium-high heat until the edges start to melt. Swirl it around the pan occasionally (don't stir it!) until all the sugar has melted and turned golden. Place back over the heat and cook until it is a golden-bronze colour.

Quickly take the pan off the heat and whisk in half the cream, to stop the caramel cooking (I wear oven gloves to whisk the cream in, as hot caramel can spit and cause very nasty burns). Keep whisking and adding the rest of the cream as you go, then whisk in the butter and salt until smooth. Set aside to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 160C. Grease and line two 20x20cm tins (at least 2.5cm tall) with greaseproof paper or baking parchment. 

In another large saucepan (I used a Le Creuset casserole dish), add the butter, both sugars, syrup and honey. Gently heat until it is all melted together, stirring until smooth. Turn off the heat and add the chocolate, stirring until it is all evenly melted in. Whisk the eggs in a small bowl then beat into the chocolate, then finally fold in the flour and stir until smooth. Pour this mixture into the two prepared tins.

Divide the caramel between the two tins, spooning it evenly over the top of the chocolate mixture. Use a knife to lightly swirl it through the brownie batter. Scatter the cacao nibs or pecans over the top.

Bake for 20 minutes, then remove and leave to cool in the tin. When cool, slice into twenty squares per tin. Eat as they are, or with some ice cream for dessert. They can be stored in the fridge and eaten cold, and they also freeze very well.

Wild garlic

I'm what you might call an accidental forager. Articles on how to salvage delicious edible produce for free from the countryside pop up on my gastro-literary radar (a posh term I have just invented for 'articles in various media relating to food') now and again, but I read them with little more than a cursory interest, safe in the knowledge that I am not likely to find half the glorious things they talk about within a ten-mile radius of my house (either in York or Cambridge) and, realistically, I'm probably not going to don the walking boots to achieve nothing more than a sparse handful of berries or greens, barely enough for cooking a meal for one.

My most successful foraging expeditions have actually been those that came about completely unplanned, completely by chance, and completely by surprise.



Pretty much all of these expeditions have taken place near our house in the Yorkshire dales. A casual walk a few autumns ago revealed hedgerows brimming with glossy dark blackberries, which seemed too delicious and inviting to go ignored. Unequipped with anything in which to put them, I used my cunning ingenuity and placed them all in the hood of the jumper I was wearing (which, fortunately, was quite an old one and a dark colour, so the resulting purple stains weren't too much of an issue). Subsequent autumn walks around the area have always been accompanied by a pocket full of plastic bags. Last year was particularly successful, yielding a massive tub of blackberries which sustained me through several weeks on porridge, in cakes, and squished into the roasting juices from a pheasant or partridge to make a delicious gravy.

Then there were the sloes, a couple of years ago. Again, happened upon on a quiet afternoon walk, I had to run back to get a bag for these, as there was no hood on any of my garments. The result of some slightly painful foraging (sloe trees have sharp thorns) was a kilo and a half of these plump little berries, which found themselves turned into luscious sloe gin - dangerously drinkable stuff.



There were the bilberries, gathered on a trip to Brimham Rocks in the dales. I'd been purposely foraging for these little blue berries - a wild variation of the blueberry, with a much more pronounced flavour - earlier in the year but had been fairly unsuccessful, taking about three hours to produce no more than a handful (they're quite well camouflaged in their bushes, are fiddly to pick, and are only around for a few weeks of the year). Suddenly they were everywhere at Brimham Rocks, glinting invitingly from their stalks. Again, having no bags on me, I had to put them in my red woollen glove. I ended up carrying around this giant bulging glove, stuffed with berries, and looking somewhat ridiculous (not to mention with a very cold hand). However, the result was a delicious bilberry pie.

This year, we spent Easter at our house in the dales. (There was lovely roast lamb, homemade hot cross buns, and a delicious salted caramel tarte tatin, should you be interested). I had actually jokingly said that there was no point in going out for a walk because there was nothing to forage at this time of year (I normally come up in autumn, when blackberries/bilberries/sloes are abundant). A walk around the grounds of Bolton Abbey soon proved me wrong.



All foraging guides will tell you that the best indication of wild garlic growing nearby is the scent of it in the air, and they're right. An unmistakeable waft of garlicky perfume followed us as we walked through the woods and by the river, and hundreds of bunches of the green stuff stood perkily aloft amidst the leaf litter and the trees. I wasn't sure that it was wild garlic I could smell (maybe someone was walking along behind me eating a piece of garlic bread or something - unlikely but possible), so I went over to one of the bunches and crushed a leaf between my finger. The scent is unmistakeable.

I was genuinely quite excited by my discovery. There was just so much of it, growing in huge vibrant green bunches all over the ground for miles. I've had wild garlic once before, but I bought it from a market, and it's not a common sight even when in season. It always makes me quite pleased when I see these things growing wild, things I've only read about before in those foraging articles that I tend to pass over without much interest.



Unable to resist, I picked a little clump of leaves. I'm not sure if this was strictly allowed, but I took so little and there was so much growing that I think it's probably OK. Besides, it was only going to die off, unused, eventually, so I figured it would be good to make the most of it. I had to laugh a little bit at some of the people around us, looking very confused and going 'Can you smell garlic?' to each other, totally unable to comprehend where the smell was coming from. Perhaps they too assumed someone around them was eating a piece of garlic bread.

Once again, accidental forager that I am, I had no receptacle for the garlic leaves. I stuffed a few in my pocket but wasn't keen on the idea that they might permanently impart their strong aroma to my coat, so I ended up just carrying a big bunch of them around with me.

Ridiculously, the following day I went for a walk and discovered there is an absolute forest of wild garlic growing about three hundred metres away from our front door. All that furtive carrying around of those garlicky green stems was apparently for nothing. I went back today and picked a large bunch.

What to do with wild garlic, I hear you cry? First of all, very finely chop it. You can use a food processor, which will turn it into a potent green paste that will then enrich a multitude of dishes. Apparently it's very good with both lamb and scrambled eggs, but I decided to make a beautiful spring risotto, studded with mushrooms, broad beans, peas and broccoli. I stirred about four tablespoons of very finely chopped wild garlic in at the end, along with a hefty mound of grated parmesan and a good sprinkling of salt.



It was utterly delicious. The beauty of wild garlic is that it has a really great garlicky flavour, but without any of the harshness of bulb garlic. The risotto was garlicky like the best garlic bread, incredibly moreish, greatly enhanced by the parmesan cheese, but it doesn't leave you with an aftertaste in your mouth. The flavour is altogether fresher and more subtle. Plus, that vibrant green paste turns the whole thing a beautiful pastel jade colour.

With the rest of my foraged spoils, I made a wild garlic paste. I put the handfuls of leaves, roughly chopped, into a food processor with a good teaspoon of salt and a few glugs of olive oil. It turned into a beautiful emerald green pesto-like paste, which I then put in a kilner jar along with a little more olive oil. That way, the garlic is preserved for later use - it doesn't store very well in the fridge, quickly losing its vibrancy, but kept in olive oil it should last a little while, and can then simply be stirred into anything. I plan to stir the paste into a hot pasta along with some lemon zest, pine nuts and parmesan for a delicious quick dinner.

Wild garlic risotto with mushrooms, peas and broad beans (serves 4):

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
250g mushrooms, finely sliced
3 sprigs fresh rosemary, needles finely chopped
20g butter
300g risotto rice
A good glug of white wine
1 litre chicken stock
300g mixed broad beans and peas (or just peas/broad beans)
A large handful of wild garlic, blitzed in a blender to make about 4-5 heaped tbsp
Salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese, to serve

Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan and cook the onion and garlic over a medium heat until soft but not coloured. Add the mushrooms and rosemary and cook gently for a few minutes, until the mushrooms have shrunk and turned golden. Stir in the butter, then when it melts add the rice. Stir to coat the rice in the butter for a minute or so, then add the wine and stir. Wait until all the wine is absorbed by the rice, then add a ladleful of stock, stirring regularly as the rice soaks up the stock.

Wait until all the liquid is absorbed, then add another ladleful of stock. Repeat until most of the stock is used up. Add the broad beans and peas along with the last couple of ladlefuls (you may not need all the stock - taste to check the rice; it should be tender with a little bit of bite, like pasta). Once it is all absorbed, check the seasoning then stir in the wild garlic. Serve with large amounts of parmesan cheese to scatter over.

Rhubarb vodka

A few weeks ago, I got up on a cold, grey, quintessentially northern morning and made my way to the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival. Before I moved to York, I always looked forward to late-winter trips to my parents' house in the Dales, because they would furnish me with plentiful heaps of gorgeous, hot pink Yorkshire rhubarb from the grocer's around the corner. Now that I'm living so close to that romantic and mysterious-sounding thing, the 'Rhubarb Triangle', it seemed rude not to get on a train and visit the heart of rhubarb country for a celebration of all things to do with this beautiful ingredient.

Any rhubarb connoisseur can tell you that Yorkshire rhubarb is the finest in the world - why they bother importing stuff from Holland later in the year is a mystery to me, as it's never the same. Early season rhubarb is a sight for sore, winter-jaded eyes and souls. Unless you're the world's worst scrooge, I fail to see how it couldn't cheer you up.

An entire festival devoted to rhubarb, given my love for the stuff, was a ridiculously exciting prospect. If you're wondering how you can build an entire festival around a single, generally quite underrated, ingredient, you'd have been surprised at the rather substantial scale of the Wakefield festival. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be more of a general food festival with most stalls offering something rhubarb-themed, but there was still a prominent vein of rhubarb mania running throughout the whole thing.

There were cheese stalls offering Wensleydale cheeses with rhubarb pieces in. Chocolatiers proffering bars of rhubarb crumble chocolate. Cafés offering rhubarb and white chocolate pots in addition to their usual cakes. Butchers with pork and rhubarb sausages, or rhubarb pork pies. Rhubarb and custard fudge. Myriad manifestations of rhubarb jam and chutney, and an excellent rhubarb and orange marmalade. There were delicious rhubarb cordials, cakes and tarts.

There were also, of course, stalls selling gigantic bundles of hot-pink Wakefield rhubarb. I don't think I've ever seen so much in one place. Predictably, I gathered three huge bunches to hoard in the freezer. I also ended up with my very own rhubarb plant, which sent up a little pink, green-tipped stalk about a week ago and rendered me unfeasibly excited (I normally kill pretty much every vegetation I touch). I can't wait to harvest it next year and feast on my own home-grown rhubarb.

One of the highlights, though, was a small sip of rhubarb vodka that passed my lips just close enough to 12pm for it to be legitimate and not reminiscent of desperate alcoholism. Given that the day was freezing, the fiery warmth as it slid down my oesophagus would probably have been welcome no matter how it tasted. But on top of that, oh, was it delicious.

Sometimes it's hard to pick up on the distinct and unique flavour of rhubarb. We so often mask it with sugar and cover it in buttery crumble, nuts or custard that its qualities tend to get a little lost. This vodka was wonderful in that the pure rhubarb flavour came through - that delicious fragrance, a slight hint of vanilla sweetness. It was like delicious rhubarb nectar, and dangerously drinkable.

Having braved the realm of homemade infused alcohols a couple of years ago with my very successful (and equally dangerously drinkable) sloe gin, I decided to have a go at making rhubarb vodka at home. Any excuse to buy more rhubarb is a worthy one, in my world. I'm trying to think of the last time I didn't spend a trip to town with at least half a kilo of pink stalks sticking out of my rucksack, and I'm not sure I can. Soon they will start calling me 'rhubarb girl' and try to pour custard on me.

There don't seem to be many definitive recipes for rhubarb vodka online. Some say to only use a couple of sticks of rhubarb, others (most) suggest more, around half a kilo. They generally agree on a 2:1 rhubarb:sugar ratio. Some add orange peel, lemon peel, cloves, cinnamon sticks or ginger. I thought about adding a vanilla pod, because I reckon that could be insanely delicious.

However, for my first attempt, I wanted to keep it pure and simple - just rhubarb, vodka and sugar. If I feel it needs improving, I might try a rhubarb/ginger or a rhubarb/vanilla version next year. I didn't want to complicate things with spices, as I think they would be too intrusive. Cinnamon and rhubarb don't work that well together, in my book - not as well as ginger or vanilla, anyway.

So here is one of the simplest recipes you'll find on this blog. It's one of those simple recipes whose text belies quite how enjoyable and rewarding it is. I spent a lovely relaxed Sunday morning chopping beautiful candy-coloured rhubarb into chunks, then smashing it satisfyingly in a pestle and mortar. I loved the crunch and crush of the pieces as they shattered into pink and white shards, the way they started to release juice that then combined with the sugar in the jar to turn frosty and almost sparkly.

The crushed rhubarb went into a big Kilner jar, and I poured over the sugar, shaking the jar to let the sugar permeate into all those lovely cracks in the rhubarb pieces, turning the whole lot into a garishly pink mass reminiscent of a small girl's bedroom decor. Crushing the rhubarb first means there's more surface area for its aroma and flavour to infuse the vodka, and it also helps the sugar combine with the fruit. Plus, it looks so pretty.

Next, I poured an entire bottle of vodka into the jar. I haven't bought a bottle of vodka ever in my life, I don't think. In fact, I don't think I've drunk vodka since I was actually legally able to. I was almost embarrassed at its presence on the conveyor belt at Morrisons, especially as I was buying very little else so it looked like I was on a strange diet of strong spirits, mints and dried cranberries.

But there was a certain satisfaction in tipping that entire vessel of clear, potent liquid over my beautiful frosty sugared rhubarb mass, knowing that in a few weeks time the whole lot will have coalesced into stunning, hot-pink, sugary, warming deliciousness.

If you decide to make this, try and make it using early season pink rhubarb, rather than the thicker, woodier, greener stuff from later in the year. You'll need to be patient, as it needs to mature for a few weeks - at least three months, preferably. However, if it tastes anything like the stuff I tried at the festival, you're in for a treat. Try it served in small shots after dinner, or combine with cranberry juice and a squeeze of lime for a sort-of rhubarb cosmopolitan. It's also, reportedly, very good in a bellini, topped up with prosecco, though perhaps only if you can handle the inevitable hangover. My alcohol expertise ends there, really, as I don't drink much, but I'm sure more experienced mixologists will find exciting uses for this.

Meanwhile, it's still sitting on my kitchen table. I know I need to move it to a cool, dark place, but the sight of it is just so cheering and uplifting that I can barely bring myself to part with it.

Rhubarb vodka (makes 750ml):

• 500g rhubarb
• 250g granulated sugar
• 750ml vodka

Cut the rhubarb into 2cm pieces. In batches, crush it roughly in a pestle and mortar, and place in a large, clean airtight jar (I used a 2-litre Kilner jar). Add the sugar and shake to combine. Pour over the vodka, clip on the lid, then shake well.

Leave in a cool, dark place, shaking the jar daily, for at least 3 weeks. After 3 weeks you can shake the jar less frequently, about once a week.

When ready to drink (patience is a virtue - it will be at its best after at least 3 months), strain the vodka through a fine sieve or muslin, then bottle.

Food Glorious Food

Hello avid readers. This is just a quick note to say that I'll be appearing in tonight's episode of Food Glorious Food, on ITV at 8pm. Tune in to see how my rhubarb and ginger crumble cheesecake fared with the show's formidable judges. If you miss it, fear not, you can catch up on itv player. And if you still miss it, then don't worry too much - the show has been widely slated by pretty much everyone who matters and is generally acknowledged to be a bit of a flop, so you're probably not going to have a giant hole in your life if you fail to watch. I'm also fairly certain I said some awkwardly embarrassing things and have been typecast as a horrifically middle class food snob, so maybe it's best that you don't watch (yes, I know I am a horrifically middle class food snob, but I try to pretend I'm not).

I'd be interested, however, if you do watch it, to see if you agree that Carol Vorderman (the show's presenter) and I look identical. I'm not so convinced, but perhaps this photo, taken during filming, will let you judge for yourselves:

So, if you like food, bunting, Carol Vorderman and home cooks making fools out of themselves and being lacerated by WI judges in cardigans, and want to see me possibly cycling around York with a baguette in my bike basket, tune into Food Glorious Food tonight at 8pm on itv.

A final note: if you don't watch the show, the accompanying cookbook is actually quite good. My cheesecake recipe is in it, which is reason enough to buy it. Even if they did misspell my name in giant letters.