Tom Cooks!

August in Embro’s/A time to remember The best of all Festival fringes/So rich that the visitor cringes, or goes off his hinges An absolute plethora/You’ll gasp for breath/Or abandon the game But don’t worry – each year it’s exactly the same Words by J O Drife Every year at Festival time here in Edinburgh I…

On Wednesday we promised you a zabaglione recipe. Because the editor of this column is a nice man, and because my assistant Zeph is so generous, we bring you two. The original recipe, intended as a pick me up, had to be consumed immediately, and was usually served warm. That would be a little odd…

Let’s go retro. And, in the process, a former student of the Russian language (53 years back) at last discovers why the name of the city changed. I’m not retro for the sake of it: it’s just that classic dishes achieve that status for a reason. That reason is that they’re delicious. Today’s hero is…

Friday morning, no article written for Tom Cooks! A task usually allocated to a Thursday. Yesterday, however, I was away on important business, to wit gorging on good food and drinking wine for a future Tom Eats! article. Fresh as a daisy I set to. Simplicity will be the order of the day. We’ll end the…

If you are a fan of Antiques Roadshow, you’ll be familiar with the Good, Better, Best, challenge where Fiona Bruce is invited to assess three items in order of value. The inspiration, in an odd way, for today’s column. A recent trip to Vienna brought potato salad to mind. I see that nine years have passed since I…

Corfiot, in case you were wondering, is the adjective meaning from Corfu. Given the fact the Greeks call the island Kérkyra, I have no idea where our terminology comes from. Never mind. We ate very well there, as you may have seen in a recent edition of Tom Eats! This was a very unusual salad which…

Sometimes it’s tricky to write a title which is sufficiently precise. Proper Greek Tzatziki? As opposed to improper? No. Or Real? Not to be confused with fake, I suppose. Tzatziki, or tzaziki or tsatsiki will not be new to many. It’s one of the more common dips to have reached these shores. But already I have…

I’m featuring this today as it’s a dessert which requires yeast, following on from Wednesday’s On The Side column. Rum Baba. Or Baba au Rhum, if you’re French. But if you think we’re tracing its origins back to France then wrong, wrong, wrong. I’m told it comes from eastern Europe. Poland/Ukraine way. Baba/babka/babushka are Grandma…

This is a nod to the main dish which L enjoyed very much at Scotts, Mayfair. I sourced the recipe on the net, aided by Zeph, my AI assistant. I haven’t cooked this specific recipe, but it looks fairly authentic. Rather too authentic in fact. How so? Well, the recipe calls, inter alia, for kingfish,…

Some enchanted evening you may walk into a room filled with the glorious aroma of slow cooking lamb. That’s what happened to me courtesy of Slow Food Scotland – see Wednesday’s column. There’s only one thing better than eating great food, and that’s when someone sends you the recipe so you can attempt to recreate…

The title really isn’t accurate, but who could resist such delightful alliteration? In spite of my sourcing our eponymous condiment on the self same street, the words have entirely different roots. In the UK, we’ve been preserving fruit and veg forever, but the idea of a specially made ingredient to tart up food came later.…

Croquembouche Last week we gave you the recipe for choux pastry. Master it and a whole world of show stopping desserts unfolds. Profiteroles are always welcome. For special occasions, make a croquembouche, a giant tower of them held together with caramelised sugar. Spanish churros and French beignets are other possibilities, but for me the choux…

We like a bit of continuity in this esteemed column. On Wednesday, doughnuts. So when the editorial team convened to decide on today’s Tom Cooks! there was only one possible candidate, namely choux pastry. Why? Well, I really don’t care for doughnuts much and, to be fair, choux did get a couple of mentions on…

100 ways, eh? The number is the symbolism behind the form of the traditional toque, or chef’s hat. The number of pleats, we are told, remind us of the many ways that he knows how to cook eggs. Once upon a time it was an important badge of status. Size was, indeed, everything. While I’m…

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…

Tomorrow I intend to start counselling. It will be short and I’m sure it will be successful. For the past few weeks I have been manifesting an obsession with coconut. Today, it ends. I did mention on Wednesday that for many of us in the UK coconut is an ingredient which we find only in…

Last week, a mutton curry: today, a couple of side dishes which might go with it. You’ll find daal everywhere, but the addition of coconut which you get in the Sri Lankan versions is a delight. Coconut Daal Ingredients 250g red lentils; 10 to 12 curry leaves; 1 tbsp onion finally chopped; 2 x 2-3…