Tom Cooks!

The Milkmaid by Vermeer In this country we’re not too inventive with bread once it’s past its best. On the continent they’re much more creative, though it does help if you are in a country rich with good quality oil, and ripe tomatoes. A supply of breadcrumbs in the freezer is always useful for a…

Mark Baird is well known in Tom Eats! as the Retired Captain of Industry. His post of Head of Alcohol in Society of Diageo together with his natural Italian charm (not everyone knows of his proud ancestry) made him hugely influential and respected in the drinks industry. Both he and his lovely wife Liz are…

By making your own rolls at home you really start to get some economic benefits. We’re going to start by turning that first batch of dough you made from a few weeks ago into rolls. A standard morning roll weighs about 80g, which means you’ll get at least 10 of them from your dough. Remember…

Your first attempt at bread. Congratulations. Now while I hear that many of you were delighted, some of you had problems. Let’s consider some of them. My dough went into a sticky mess and I couldn’t work with it Getting the amount of water right is tricky, even when you follow a recipe. While the…

So you’ve never made bread before. No problem, that applies to millions of you. We’re into February, so I’m not trying to get you to make resolutions. Assuming you eat bread, and buy some or all of it as part of your supermarket shopping, I give you one very small challenge. Follow this column and…

Tom Cooks! is continuing the theme of things to spread on your toast. That’s about the only thing that today’s recipe has in common with last week’s lemon curd. That one was quick. This week’s, like January itself, seems to go on for ever. Seville oranges will only be available for another couple of weeks…

So do you have a citrus problem? Find them coming at you from everywhere? That happened to us last year. We threw our first party in over two years. Both L and I both bought lemons and limes by the ton, and probably used but two on the day. Nothing worse than watching them shrinking…

Claire Macdonald This is a genius of a recipe. Even by Claire Macdonald’s standards she has surpassed herself. And with the pheasant season drawing to a close, pheasant breasts are really economical. I think I paid £3 for the meat for the whole dish. With a terrine, you generally require a chutney. No need here…

I mentioned a month or two ago that – to my own surprise – this column has just celebrated its seventh birthday. 7 years. A time for introspection, albeit one without an itch. It started off on the back of two cook books. The first was written for me by my mum when I was…

The original plan for today was to give you a stollen recipe; however, that would have been three sweet things in a row, and I haven’t had time to test it. Next year, perhaps. So, staying seasonal, what shall we have? Over the next two or three weeks, eating patterns will change for many of…

Many families like a trifle on the table at Christmas time. This recipe is taken from Wendy Barrie’s book, Meadows: The Swedish Farmer & The Scottish Cook which we reviewed on Wednesday. A badly made trifle can be disgusting. There are no shortcuts in this recipe as it features home made Swiss roll for the…

With Christmas approaching, I had a fancy to include a cake recipe. Not a traditional Christmas cake – for me it has too much similarity to Christmas pudding, the true highlight (after the roast potatoes) of Christmas dinner. I acquired a stollen recipe from a friend, but I’m suspicious of the yeast quantities given. Not…

With the onset of winter you expect the temperature to drop. That’s fine. In fact I rather enjoy the clear, crisp, blue skied days, but not those damp, dank ones where the cold seems to seep into your bone marrow. At such times comfort food is called for. But which one? Looking through the archives…

This is a homage to Portugal where I holidayed recently. The country is the world’s largest consumer of salt cod. In every supermarket you’ll see racks and racks of the stuff, stiff as a board, probably handy as an offensive weapon. You’ll find variations wherever cod was common, Newfoundland, Norway and the Faroe Islands. It’s…

While there are probably no new recipes under the sun, this one did come out of my head. One of the many reasons I like Nigel Slater so much is that he says he will often just decide what to cook for dinner when looking at the contents of his fridge. While his TV programmes…

Call this beef stew if you like, but that’s akin to saying that Leonardo da Vinci could paint a wee bit. Today’s column was inspired by two things. After being delighted by Felicity Cloake’s Red Sauce, Brown Sauce, reviewed in On The Side a few weeks ago, I bought a copy of her earlier work, One More…

Well, what a stooshie we had after last week’s article about omelettes. I fear I may have lost a couple of friends in the fall out. I shall say no more other than to quote the wise words of Elizabeth David in French Provincial Cooking. As everybody knows, there is only one infallible recipe for…

Last week’s article about Wiener schnitzel attracted a bigger postbag than usual. Breaking free of the authoritative Austrian shackles – it must be veal and it must be made in Austria – two things became clear. It’s a great favourite of many of you, and the majority would use pork or chicken over veal. The…

Today’s ramblings were inspired by two things. A recent visit from the Vienna based members of the family brought back memories of my first (and thus far only) trip there earlier this year; and a brief snippet from a Radio 4 programme this morning. Wiener schnitzel translates simply as cutlet from Vienna. What I didn’t realise…

Now don’t recoil in horror. I can guarantee three things. Firstly, if it’s a Claire Macdonald recipe, it will work, no matter how unlikely the combination of ingredients may sound. Secondly, although there are only three principal ingredients, no one will correctly guess all three. And finally, it is absolutely delicious. And if it’s a…

I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me, and I couldn’t get pasta. Believe it or not, Masai Graham’s piece of hilarity was voted the funniest joke at the year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It did two things for me. Firstly, I found it a depressingly sad reflection of the…

Charles Dickens goes into a bar. -I’ll have a martini, please. -Certainly, sir. Olive or twist? Your task is to spot the anachronism. Well the cocktail (then known as a Martinez, named for a town in California) almost certainly existed at the time of Dickens’ last trip to the States; however, the practice of adding…

You ungrateful lot may not appreciate it, but this recipe writing is fraught with peril, not to say downright danger. Seasonality is one thing, but to publish a recipe which works only when the mercury is high can be fool hardy at best. Worse still if you have a restaurant and need to plan menus…