11/1/2023 0 Comments Favorite recipes of all timeBut then, I do feel such details are the heart and soul of a recipe. The recipe makes a big deal of using the roasting juices in the dressing, something I seem to have been going on about for three decades. My first column started with the line, “It has been a good week for flavour” and the recipes celebrated the arrival of the first damsons (the accompanying recipe was a compote with a dash of gin) and a haul of red peppers, which I roasted with thyme and garlic, and served with their caramelised juices and a drop of balsamic vinegar. There had, in the interim, been a year of long and beautiful essays and recipes by the late Leslie Forbes. Intimidated, because I was stepping into the pages of Jane Grigson, a writer I revered more than any other and who had been in place for more than 20 years. Surprised because I hadn’t actually applied for it: the suggestion came from Matthew Fort, who wrote the restaurant column for the Guardian at the time and to whom I am eternally grateful. I was surprised and slightly intimidated when, in 1993, I was offered a column in the Observer’s weekly magazine. Any leftovers are packed up into a care package for Jonathan’s long journey home or are there to feed me for the next day or two. There are no recipe developers and food stylists, no photographic props, I just cook as if making dinner, put it on a plate or dish on which it looks comfortable and hopefully tempting then, once photographed, we sit down and eat. ![]() Such notes are made before I have been to the shops or the market, before I have cooked and tested and retested a recipe (then cooked it again to be photographed by Jonathan Lovekin, who has been part of this column here almost as long as I have). These handwritten notes are guided by the season, what is at its best, by my old collection of kitchen diaries and what I have been cooking over the last few days. The surface is matt except for a patch that has worn to a shine, marking the spot where I sit and write notes in fountain pen that eventually become my weekly Observer column – the letters I have been writing to you from this kitchen for 30 years. The kitchen table is a plank of bog oak, rescued from the Fens, as dark as chocolate cake.
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