Posts by Tom Johnston

When eating at an Indian restaurant, sometimes the vegetable side dishes can become the star of the show. Hardly surprising since India has by far the largest percentage of vegetarians in the world. Read to day’s review of Bell Bottom Indian Eatery and you’ll see the highest praise reserved for the Aloo Gobi Masala (potatoes…

Easter. Lamb I suppose. Regular readers know my views on that by now. But hey, lamb/hogget/mutton is delicious at any time of year. As with many culinary delights, the two optimum cooking options are hard and fast or low and slow. Thus I like a lamb leg done at a fairly high heat, pink and…

Hadn’t been to the shops for a while and no clear plan on what to make for the memsahib’s dinner. The fridge had a vat of stock from a chicken earlier in the week. The veg drawer had half an onion and half a red pepper, plus a bag of spinach. The stock was the…

Well, after we came out of the restricted March offering, and had an article on Luxury on Wednesday, you could have been forgiven for expecting larks’ tongues or lobster Thermidor this week. But before you start to complain, pause for a moment. Pine nuts are one of life’s more expensive store cupboard ingredients and this…

Continuing the vegetarian theme, I turned for inspiration, as I so often do, to a thick red folder from Let’s Cook Scotland. As many of you are aware, that’s where I spent a game changing fortnight under the Sarah Mellersh tutelage of the very lovely Sarah Mellersh. There are hundreds of recipes in the book…

We’ve been on our annual jaunt to see cheery chums in Portugal. There’s a lot more to the cuisine of that country than people think. Here’s a recipe which I picked up. It’s vegetarian (as promised for this month), though I think I’d be tempted to use chicken stock. The recipe suggests flat green beans.…

It takes a special group of people to set up a restaurant and simultaneously to poke fun at themselves. When David and Kay Canter and friend Daphne Swann opened Cranks in in London in the early 1960s, that is precisely how vegetarians were regarded. This was pre swinging London, but the Carnaby Street location certainly…

Last week I declared that in the month of March, Tom Cooks! would be a meat free column. I noticed that we are still in February, so I’m meeting you halfway, reproducing one of the dishes which Binkie Johnston enjoyed at the Tsar’s table in 1914. Those of you with decent French will have noticed…