A weekend, a wedding and River Cottage HQ

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Scarce few things typify London life than a bank holiday trek to the country. We sped down to Dorset with a packed lunch, foil wrapped toasted sandwiches of manchego and roast veg, no less. Mustard in the ‘slaw dressing, you see. I do like serving a lunch on an enamel plate on a train. The prospect of this weekend had sat on the edge of my awareness for months. Not just because one of my best mates was getting married, [...]

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Can corporate owned be authentic? Nick Tolley talks coffee

Undoubtedly, a well formed beverage.

I always find it refreshing when a “foreigner” visits London. Whilst it’s often said London is more international than British, it’s interesting how widely adopted some Briticisms are. Like biting of the tongue, not saying what could be seen as impolite, even when it’s true. I knew Louisa when we both worked on an Asia-Pacific ad account. We crossed paths from time to time in Hong Kong or Sydney. Last Autumn, Arsenal FC had flown her and a bunch of [...]

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Food tells a story: memories of Avoca Beach

As I type this post, there is snow falling outside the my London window. It seems a far cry from the week I spent on Avoca Beach, just north of Sydney, back in January. It was the final week of a three week Australian adventure. And it turned out, to be a culinary adventure. Food is rich, on so many levels. In a psychological context, one’s relationship with food can speak to an ability to take in, or a need [...]

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A foodie pilgrimage to Tasmania

As far as pilgrimages go, my traverse of Bass Strait to the isle of Tasmania is a familiar one. I left when I was still a kid. Off to University and adventures new. And whilst I’ve found myself on a 737 bound for Hobart many a time, this journey felt different. Perhaps because it’s been several years since my last voyage. Partly, too, because in the three years since that last visit, a lot of change has happened in my [...]

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Eating with meaning and meaning to eat

I landed in spain in late December. Right away, I began to notice the difference in culture. Things that I knew but that I saw differently on this trip. Most of it revolved around food. What it means to Spanish people and how it threads it’s way intrinsicly through life. It’s important, it’s meaningfull. It’s unapologetically linked to local identity. And the food carries that sense of significance with it when it’s eaten. The focussed generosity of generations of cooks [...]

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Back to basics: Food shopping in Barcelona

I’m a sucker for food shopping in a foreign place. I like that sense of questioning your own experience. You can tell what a product is, but the labels make no sense. You know where the dried pasta should be, intuitively, but the aisle layout design has seemingly been turned upside down. It’s perplexing. Yet there’s a familiarity to the experience, a knowing says that you’d select, purchase, buy, take home – cook. There’s something almost archetypical in the universality [...]

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Countdown to Christmas and a Kitchen Clear-Out

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So you’ve probably noticed by now that I don’t like to waste food – in fact I kind of pride myself on doing imaginative things with the “ends” of things in the fridge. I’m about to head off on a long overseas trip so the kitchen is in wind down mode. I like this period, I like the “forcing function” of a deadline, it creates a space where creativity is guaranteed. Needs must, and all that. It so happens that [...]

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Why I don’t often blog about baking

banana bread and muffins - done

So if you’ve read a few of these posts you probably know I’m into free-style cooking. Or cooking with your Foodstinct. I don’t often measure, I rarely follow recipes. It’s especially rare for me to follow a recipe to the nth degree. And for that reason, baking rarely shows up in my blog. Baking is a fairly precise kind of game. Things can go quite wrong if you don’t do what you’re told. Then again, I tend to blog from [...]

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A Comfort Bowl (Food Waste Challenge #5)

comfort_bowl_mushroom_miso_swede

Last post I steamed some swede and jerusalem artichoke. I didn’t really know what I was going to do with these tasty veggies at that time, so I thought I’d pre-steam them. Swede is a fairly tough veg, so a steam would mean a future dish would be a lot faster. Plus, it meant I got a few more days out of a veg that might have otherwise gone to waste.This was just enough time for me to conjure up [...]

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Premeditated Mac n Cheese (Food Waste Challenge #3)

macaroni and cheese - in the oven

There’s a really important tactic I’ve learnt to help reduce food waste. I call it making a “nifty component”. But all it really means, is cooking something that will otherwise be ruined into something that later will become an ingredient in something else. This contrasts with making a dish for immediate consumption. It’s the idea of prepping. Of creating a component that will later be used in another dish. Most kitchen’s use this all the time, they par boil risotto [...]

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Win a Veg Box Cook Book – by sharing your foodstinct

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It’s week two of Recycle for London’s Food Waste Challenge. So all across London, busy kitchen cooks are putting together dishes which use up what they have in the fridge. Personally I couldn’t be more excited. In honour of these creations, I’m giving away a veggie box cook book to the person who submits a picture of their most creative dish. You don’t have to be part of the food waste challenge to enter. Entries close next Saturday, 3rd of [...]

Save that salad for later! (Food Waste Challenge #2)

Dinner is served, in about 12 minutes.

So the food waste challenge is reaching the end of it’s first week. This week we’re supposed to be cooking as normal and observing what we throw away. It’s been interesting, noticing what goes in the bin. I made the ultimate sacrifice Tuesday night: throwing out a whole bag of salad leaves. I tried to pick out the bashed bits, to no avail. They went off to worm farm heaven. But at the same time, it’s nice to notice some [...]

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Apple, bread, yogurt = breakfast? (Food Waste Challenge #1)

french_toast_with_spiced_apple

One morning this weekend I woke up – not only was I 1) hungry and 2) in short supply of ingredients but I also had just begun the first day of the London Food Waste Challenge. The eternal optimist when it comes to whipping up something from nothing, I got started. My first rule to reducing food waste is to look for things that aren’t going to last much longer. This bread (a welcome back gift from my veg box [...]

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Take part in the London Food Waste Challenge

Why do we need a Food Waste Challenge? It’s pretty scary how much food the average kitchen wastes, especially when the price of food is on the up and how much of the planet’s resources are involved in food production. Thirty per cent of all the waste we generate at home is food and drink, but this food isn’t all rubbish. Over half of this ‘wasted’ food could have been eaten or drunk if it was eaten before it went [...]

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Vegetable Tart (Quiche) – the re-used ingredient catch-all!

Spinach and camembert tart

This October Sunday evening called for something warming. Something easy. And something that wouldn’t require too much from the fridge. I hadn’t shopped this weekend so I was just left to the the “ends” of a few ingredients and the kind of staples that I always have floating around. I did a quick fridge inventory: Onions Some eggs Butter White wine Half a slice of camembert The last of a bunch of fresh herbs, fennel, rosemary and parsley Spinach (slightly [...]

Review: Bill’s Angel – Veggie Breakfast

Bill's Veggie Breakfast

I love breakfast. So seeking a great breakfast is a little bit of a pastime of mine. I’ve wandered by a few Bill’s locations, including Bill’s Angel and when I have I’ve generally kept on wandering, suspicious of it’s all too homogenised “fun” decor and suspiciously clean looking branding. It reeked of mass franchise, to which my foodstinct usually says no. But this morning, I googled “best breakfast London” and was somewhat surprised when Bill’s topped the list of the [...]

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The angriest soup I’ve ever tasted

A very angry soup indeed.

I free-styled it the other night. Had a late night at class and saw some odd looking carrots at the local supermarket on the way home. Carrots, but they weren’t orange! (A BBC doco later informed me that carrots were originally purple – ’till the dutch bred the ones we know today). But as I say, I was free styling it, so I grabbed the carrots without thinking a whole lot and off I went. A few days later, it was time [...]

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A walking tour of Clerkenwell Coffee

Prufrock Coffee

I recently wrote a guest post for theislingtonblog on my favourite coffee haunts in Angel Islington. As I put it together, I had a stark and uncomfortable realisation. Most of the better coffee I have in this part of east London tends to be south of Pentonville Road. More Clerkenwell than Angel. Quick sticks, I thought I’d rectify that with a tour of coffee, SoPen. That’s south of Pentonville, in case that needed further clarity. Start at the corner of [...]

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Exmouth or Kings Cross: which Caravan has the most foodstinct?

Roasting Bag at Caravan Kings Cross

It was all pretty touch and go this early September morn. I realised on the way out the door that the hangover I thought was a mild, passing annoyance, was developing. Full blown grouch Jared was emerging. Woe betide anyone who stands in my way when that fella is about. Nevertheless, we were celebrating a reunion so breakfast was in order. And having heard all the rave of the Kings Cross branch of Exmouth market’s Caravan, we deemed it time [...]

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What does food mean to you?

Food as status White bread was only for the rich in pre-industrial times. The finest, purest flour was hard to come by before the mechanisation of wheat processing. So white bread became a symbol of power and status. Sometime in the late 20th century this trend was bucked. With artisan wholegrain sour dough spelt pumpkin seed loaf becoming a symbol of something else: sophistication, green living and perhaps even, a little urban snobbery. Food as a part of your identity [...]

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Cooking for your mind, body, soul and Foodstinct

Popeye eating spinach and yams or sum such

I have an epic weekend of commitments, some to projects I’m working on, others social. It, frankly, all feels a bit overwhelming. Last night I was totally tempted to order a pizza, but instead I made a tomato and mozarella salad with some nuts on top. I had some dressing (a nifty component) that I’d made a little while ago to top it all off. The whole thing took five minutes. I’ve written before about the importance of cooking, even [...]

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Organic food: what does your foodstinct say?

How open are you to what the world is trying to say to you? Might seem like a strange question, but what is significant to a person is a very unique and individual thing. What occurs to me as significant as I walk down the street will be different to the person walking beside me. Of the constant stream of information that gets belted at me each day, what I read basically depends on what particularly resonates. And, something which [...]

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Salad on a Train – My tribute to Virgin on the West Coast

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In case you hadn’t heard, Virgin Trains is not going to be running trains on the west coast line (That’s the line from Euston to Birmingam, Manchester, Glasgow, etc.) from December this year. I found myself quite disappointed by this news. I’ve gone up and down the west coast line many times in the last few years. Many times for occasions which I’ll remember always, as they were, how to say, “life defining” moments. On these trips, Virgin whisked me [...]

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Potato Buttie: Foodstinct Style (or how to make the perfect pick me up lunch at work…)

potato buttie with catalan kick

I thought I might need some comfort today. I was woken by a news bulletin (never a good thing) and it reminded me that the Olympics were over and that we’d returned to the usual bad news routine. Then as I rolled out of bed, the sky looked very overcast. I had a feeling I’d need a pick me up around 1pm. Something stodgey, a little greasy and kinda spicy was just the tonic for a midday attitude adjustment. Plus, [...]

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Quinoa salad with lime dressing – dinner in 15 minutes

Quinoa salad with Avocado and Peppery Lime Dressing

I’ve been enjoying the delights of Quinoa of late. I know Quinoa has been in the human diet for a long time. South Americans, I think they started it. Along with potatoes, apparently. But my point is, we humans have eaten it for a long time. Westerners, not so much. Unless you’re vegan or a regular healthfood shop vistitors, it seems. It’s great for you. Packed with protein and fibre. Rinse it well to remove nasties that can mess your [...]

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How to wrap a tortilla wrap (aka: Nifty Ingredients, illustrated – VIDEO)

Spicy pepper bean salsa

You might have heard me go on about nifty ingredients a little by now. If not, you can read about them in my reducing food waste section. So remember that Tali sauce I made the other day? Well I had some beans left from that. Plus the spicy red pepper chutney which garnished my weekend breakfast? Well that wasn’t all gone either. These both, are nifty ingredients ready for re-using. I like to make my lunch when I can, but [...]

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Red Peppers: Salsa all the way to breakfast

Best breakfast ever: Hashbrowns with Red Pepper Salsa, served in jumbo basil leaves.

I am a MAJOR breakfast fan. I think it’s the most important meal of the day, not just because it’s the setup for the day energy and nutrient wise, but also because the people that are around at breakfast time tend to be the more important people in your life. The problem is: this fact has become known amongst family and friends. So I’ve kind of setup an expectation that I’ll make something good, or indeed, better. It’s a bit [...]

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Potatoes: Hash browns (not hash tags)

sizzling potato hash browns

I grew up in a family where there was always a 10kg bag of potatoes under the kitchen sink. Usually stored in a thick cardboard bag. In that sort of environment they seemed to last months. Or maybe because we were a bunch of voracious kids, they just ran out. My lifestyle now is quite different: the same volume of potato consumption is not required. Also, the spuds end up living in the fridge, which isn’t dry or dark enough [...]

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Pressure, drive and Tali Sauce. And always remember to cook!

There is an awful lot going on at the moment. The London Olympics seem to be pre-occupying and gripping the emotions of the nation. Yours truly included. Besides that, there’s the usual pressures of work and oh, wait, what better way to spend a summer break from class that to have a 6000 word essay due the first week term is back… Glorious! (sic). Long and the short of it is, I’ve been feeling very pressured. In the past, I’ve [...]

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