Posts from 2010

Posted on Wed, 10/02/2010

Two interesting articles in The Guardian on the vexed subject of wine criticism - both from a different perspective, but both written by men who have the very serious qualification of an MW. Tim Aitken argues that with the...>>>

Posted on Wed, 10/02/2010

I've just had a late lunch with Rick - tomatoes and basil and eggplant out of the garden, tossed quickly over heat and mixed with some pasta. Perfect flavours for a day like today. John had brought over a beetroot tart that...>>>

Posted on Sat, 13/02/2010

In the years that I've been enjoying musing via this blog, I've never been tempted to relay recipes, even though one of the things I refer to the most, is the cooking of food. The reason for this reluctance is that I don't...>>>

Posted on Sun, 14/02/2010

Somerset at Home is designed to help people, who enjoy cooking, to eat good food at home. I understand that that may sound like a contradiction in terms, since all of the items available under the Somerset at Home label,...>>>

Posted on Mon, 15/02/2010

I am not inherently a fan of the classification of wine or restaurants into lists of the best - becos I have problems with the variability of the criteria used, and the type of people who set themselves up to pass judgement. But...>>>

Posted on Tue, 16/02/2010

Both Rick and I really enjoy eating Indian food, even though its one cuisine that we've never learnt much about. Many years ago we went to a cookschool at The Epicurean Workshop in Auckland, where David Thompson who's a...>>>

Posted on Sat, 20/02/2010

 This is a link to the latest Michael Ruhlman blog, in which he ponders on why he gets so much satisfaction from the act of cooking, and his resoning, and some of the following responses from people underscore for me,...>>>

Posted on Mon, 22/02/2010

I'm just heating up the oven to cook a tomato tart for lunch. Each trip down to the vegetable patch at the moment is yielding copious quantites of tomatoes, and I'm having to come up with inventive ways of using them. Not,...>>>

Posted on Tue, 23/02/2010

In one of the cookschools last week we got into a discussion that I'd provoked, by saying that in my recent reading about baking techniques, it had  been explained that its better to use granulated sugar, than it is...>>>

Posted on Thu, 25/02/2010

I've been hovering around the computor - flicking backwards and forwards from the restaurant for the last couple of hours waiting for the results of Day 2 of the Womens Tour of NZ to be posted. We'd spoken to Courteney earlier,...>>>

Posted on Fri, 26/02/2010

Courteney is currently in Wellington, racing in the 5 day international Womens Tour of New Zealand. To our enormous pride, she was picked to replace Alison Shanks who pulled out of the National Team, and she is currently...>>>

Posted on Fri, 26/02/2010

 I've been contacted by a couple of people who have read the previous sponge recipe and said it is exactly the one that they have used for years of baking. Curiously all of those people lived the earlier part of their...>>>

Posted on Sun, 28/02/2010

Dan Lepold is a baker that we rate very highly, and have a couple of his books. I also happen to have a great love for good hot cross buns, and rue the fact that Dean is no longer at La Boulangerie, becos his hot cross buns...>>>

Posted on Sun, 28/02/2010

This link is to a blog I check in on periodically. The author cooks in both the US and England, and she makes some interesting points sometimes. I have mentioned previously, my frustrations with some of the attitudes of...>>>