It’s nearly the end of summer. We have endured heavy downpours over the past week and my heart goes out to the farmers who are struggling to harvest their crops. This herring escabeche is a bit of sunshine on a plate and reminds me of hot sunny days and holidays to France.

It’s been three weeks since we have opened the doors to the British Larder Suffolk. It’s been hard work and I relied heavily on preparing dishes like this herring escabeche to help me through very busy days. The beauty is that you can make the salad early in the morning or even the day before, and when it comes to serving the dish it’s perfectly pickled. I like the simplicity and pureness of this recipe, it’s not at all complicated. I serve this herring escabeche salad with pickled green beans and plenty of buttered brown bread, and the pickled

A few years ago Mr.P and I were seduced by the bright lights and glamour of New York City. We planned a gourmet trip with a hectic itinerary. We drew up an area list and hit the cities foodie hot spots with gusto and almost military fashion.

We stayed in the glamorous Hudson Hotel with it’s beautiful minimalistic but striking interior and super tiny rooms. You need to be a size 6 to stay in the rooms because there is no room to turn around, Philip Stark did a good job and designed a beautiful hotel but boy oh boy did he not allow any space for ones suitcase. Anyhow we did not spend that much time in the room as we were busy testing out all the foodie establishments.

The hotel is situated near the foot of Central Park near the Time Warner Building and home to

The British cherry season is definitely something special to celebrate and enjoy. Sadly, it’s reported that in the last 50 years Britain has lost 90% of its cherry orchards and imports 95% of the cherries we eat, and in light of this, Food Lovers Britain launched CherryAid, a campaign to save the British cherry. I felt the need to create a special recipe for this very important cause.

I used the cherries in three ways; raw in a delicious salad for superb freshness, cooked into a flavoursome and powerful compote and finally dried, and then using the dried cherries to make a fizzy sherbet to coat the freshly cooked dougnuts.

All the cherry flavours work incredibly well served with this very light goat’s milk, set into a soft pudding, and it’s best served in small glasses.

The goat’s milk pudding has it’s own unique natural fresh taste. If you make the goat’s

Baking bread used to be something I did but never really understood. After being tutored by Richard Bertinett at his Kitchen on how to make the perfect dough enabled me to find the passion to add to my knowledge.

I came across this video of  USA baking legend Peter Reinhart and I must say he confirmed my feelings for baking bread. His passion together with his simplistic and humorous manner of explaining how to make the perfect dough, what happens during the “making” process and all things  technical  is just simply perfect!

If you have a  spare 16 minutes watch this video as it definitely clarified any remaining issues as to why I still sometimes bake bricks! Baking bread is the radical transformation of taking wheat or flour and making it into a tasty loaf, it’s a tricky process and the fate of your loaf lies in your hands. The