On The Side

On more than one occasion I have been asked why the blog doesn’t contain a fourth column, Tom Drinks! There are a number of reasons. What do you think I am, a professional journalist? Putting together three columns a week is quite enough work, thank you. But the main reason is quite simply that I don’t…

That’s tomorrow, that is. I kid you not. Much harmless amusement can be gained from a Google search (other search engines are available) on national food days. It is not unfair to say that most of the weirder stuff comes from the States. So let’s consider this further. A cheesecake day. One might consider this…

Getting something On The Side is ticklish. Note I used the capitals to stop the sniggering in the back rows. Childish. Really! The point is the varying degrees of difficulty presented by each of the columns in the blog. Food is infinite. If I felt the urge and, more importantly, if I thought your boredom…

If you go to an Indian* restaurant and don’t have a side of dhal**, you are really missing the point. It’s a dish which most Indians other than the poorest will eat probably twice a day. At its best, it’s sublime, but there are inherent dangers. Singed lentils, for example, are disgusting. As when you…

Unfortunately, my guest contributor who was scheduled to fill this week’s Food Producers column has been ill. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. So instead, some food snippets for your information, delectation and delight. Wild Hearth Bakery, Comrie John Castley, Wild Hearth Bakery You may recall that the other week I mentioned them and their…

I finally got round to using a Christmas Waterstones voucher. Not unsurprisingly, the food section drew me in. While my embargo on buying more cookery books is holding up quite well, that doesn’t apply to other works in the genre. Here are three diverse books which I’ve enjoyed recently. Only one of them is a…

Photo by Douglas Scott A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Scottish Bread Festival which took place at Bowhouse, near Elie on the 28th of February. I went on the 27th. No, I didn’t get the date wrong: I was a judge. This may come as much of a surprise to you as…

Fond of your daily bread? Do you enjoy your loaf as well as using it? On Saturday a treat awaits. Get yourself to Bowhouse, between Elie and St Monans in Fife, for the Scottish Festival of Real Bread. There will be bread stalls, there will be workshops, there will be events for children: and there…

So you want to become Britain’s best known food writer and TV presenter? Build up a chain of restaurants (and possibly watch them crash spectacularly)? Go on TV and swear a lot? Or, in this modern age, get three million followers on social media? In the 1970s and 80s, the answer was, none of the…

Cabbage. Cabbage. Such a dull word, is it not? A word to insult a stupid person. Redolent of school dinner halls and hospital kitchens. But I pose the question – is cabbage making a comeback? But perhaps the better question is to ask if it ever went away. Certainly not in Russia, where the average…

Not even two and a half years since I ranted about The Sunday Times and its choice of restaurant reviewer. Or to be more accurate, about giving my job to someone else. (See Tom Eats! A New Restaurant Critic published in October 2023.) I was then forced to concede that new kid on the block,…

Once again, remember the target audience. Not the expert. While I’m reasonably comfortable with chilli these days, it’s not so long ago since I served up dishes which verged on the inedible. When the legendary Delia ventured into recipe publishing, she infamously wrote one containing a tablespoonful of chilli powder instead of a teaspoonful. As…

Belly Dance is a new fermented soft drink. Made from water kefir, it’s low sugar, caffeine free and vegan. Tom’s Food! can confirm that it’s also delicious. We particularly like the Fiery Ginger one. Other flavours include Cherry Berry and Kiwi Mango.  Drinks expert Diana Thompson has written that it’s now her favourite non-alcoholic drink.…

BLOOD, SWEAT AND ASPARAGUS SPEARS The Story of the 1990s Restaurant Revolution Andrew Turvil Elliott & Thompson         pp241                    £20    Britain has no habit of restaurant use. Thus wrote The Good Food Guide (TGFG) editor Tom Jaine in 1990. Every foodie is aware of…

Oysters, again, I hear you moan. Yes, best beloveds, I do keep an eye on my back catalogue. Yes, I know I wrote about the Stranraer Oyster Festival, and followed up with some bivalve recipes. But while I would never concede my prose to be dull, these were largely factual affairs. So what has brought…

Were you pickled like me? No, Mrs Johnston, not like that. I mean, was your first experience of today’s beauty in a jar with vinegar? And not vinegar as is used by us expert cooks, but the industrial strength stuff which you could use to strip paint. Maybe it meant that the producers didn’t need…

No, not originally my title, though I have written about service before. It comes from the current edition of Scottish Licensed Trade News. At a recent event entitled Art of Service, a Q & A session had been set up involving three experts from different parts of the licensed trade spectrum. First there was award winning mixologist Mal…

No, NOT that one. This is a food column, remember? I have to say that until I read an article in the most recent Noble Rot magazine, I had no idea that Anton Mosimann was still alive and chopping. Truth be told he had slipped out of my memory. Many of you may not even have heard…

If you have pals who love food and with whom you exchange presents, help may be at hand on the gift front. Unless you know them very well, I would counsel against cookery books. (An exception may, of course, be made if the person has been wise enough to drop unsubtle hints.) Suffice it to…

Well I did promise it would return, did I not? But just to confuse you, the A in question isn’t really an A at all. Yes, artichoke does begin with the letter A, but today we’re referring to the Jerusalem “variety”. Now not only is our hero not really an artichoke at all, it certainly…

Readers of The Scotsman newspaper and other good periodicals will be aware of the quirky but elegant writing of Cat Thomson. We lunched the other week – at The Gordon Arms, Yarrow, review pending. With my neck at its brassiest, and my luck pushed to stretching point, I suggested an article for my dear reader…

Granada If you’re thinking of cultural innovations, Spain in the years 1930 – 1950 may not be the first period which comes to mind. And unless you have travelled much in that remarkable country, you may be completely in the dark as to what a parador is. Surprisingly, they started in the 1920s, and developed…

The UK’s native oyster season begins on 1 September. This means that the increasingly popular Stranraer Oyster Festival will soon be upon us, I’m grateful to my friend Cat Thomson for providing me with the official press release. It appears that ice cream sellers have not been the sole beneficiaries of our warm summer. Marine…

And when I say Festival, I obviously mean The Edinburgh Festival, the wonderfully chaotic collection of events which takes place here in my city every August. It’s the world’s biggest arts festival, featuring over 54,000 performances in the month. Don’t be fooled into thinking there is just one Edinburgh Festival. The picture shows The Hub,…