EATING out is the answer to eating in as one gets older. As my confidence in my own cooking wanes, and as it takes me longer to organise, invite, shop and cook for an entertainment which lasts only a very few hours, I look with gratitude at all the eating-out possibilities we have around us….
Shaftesbury-born private chef Philippa Davis is back on her travels, most recently in Ireland. She cooked some delicious food – and she explains why she strays occasionally from strictly following recipes. MY latest job was a fast, furious and fun weekend. Having flown across the Irish sea I headed down to County Carlow. I was…
THE geese are busy laying at the Traditional Free Range Egg Company, so directors Dan and Briony Wood have teamed up with local award-winning chef Brett Sutton to offer some great ideas to their customers. To celebrate the start of the new goose egg season, Brett , chef-proprietor of The White Post in Rimpton, has…
by Simone Sekers WHEN we first moved here to Somerset, 15 years ago, we bought our fish from Dick the Fish, who called round the village with his van once a week, and who sold the freshest mackerel we’d ever seen, stiff with recent death, silver darts of deliciousness. When Dick signalled his retirement, he…
FRIENDS who have come to visit have twice recently brought pots of their own newly-made marmalade – quite the nicest present. What prat suggested marmalade was no longer a popular taste? Shaftesbury-based chef and cookery writer Philippa Davis bought her Seville oranges when they came into the shops in January and then got busy catching…
TRAVELLING chef Philippa Davis has been back in Dorset for the first few weeks of 2017 – back to freezing fog and other seasonal delights. So here’s a totally delicious cake from her festive and New Year baking, to enjoy with a mug of hot chocolate (perhaps with a little something extra to keep the…
by Simone Sekers TRYING to play the glad game about leaving Brexit, I wondered whether, instead of all those smug Wrecksiteers going on about “getting our country back,” it might be possible to think about getting France back instead. This would restore the magic of that descent from the ferry in to the very heart…
“Welcome to Scotland, Its -6 °C”! the cheerful staff at Enterprise car hire chirped. I think if they had looked closely at my five layers, hat, gloves, fur lined boots, hunched shoulders and hopping around moves, they would have been well aware that I had totally sussed that part of the situation out. Winning top…
ARMED with my lists, menus, timings, recipes, dietary requirement sheets and suitcase of red aprons I was totally ready for this job. Five days of feasting and festivities for 20 people, heading to the ice blue skies and rustic, rural, rolling landscape of South West France. I was prepared for the fast and furious few…
TWINKLING lights around the ancient farmyard, glittering Christmas trees and a menu packed with festive favourites – it would be hard to imagine a more magical setting for a pre-Christmas dinner than Symondsbury Kitchen. On the evening we went, it was cold, properly frosty cold, so you wanted to be inside, looking out at the…