Private chef Philippa Davis has just returned from the south of France – in time for English asparagus! LAST week I almost fainted. By instruction of a client I was purchasing some relatively good-looking apples from a trendy west London shop. The fruits were prettily laid out in pristine new wicker baskets and they had an…
by Simone Sekers MARCH saw us trawling Macclesfield’s Treacle Market, and by great good luck April found us in my home town of Lewes, in Sussex, looking at another range of local foods. My family left the town for a nearby village when I was ten, at an age when food was, well, just food….
THE sun was out, I had front row seats to the hottest Easter party in the Algarve (OK, I was cooking for it) and we had more chocolate than Willy Wonka for the Easter Egg Hunt of 2016, I just knew it was going to be a great week. On the southern coast of Portugal…
DORSET-based private chef Philippa Davis has been on the radio (Radio Soho) chatting to William Sitwell, editor of Waitrose Food, about her varied life as a private chef. And If you see a crocodile… “Row, row, row your boat” has got to be a top classic when it comes to kids songs. This was made…
MACCLESFIELD in Cheshire holds its Treacle Market on the last Saturday of every month; it’s a relatively new invention, aimed at bringing back life to one of the most attractive small towns that orbit Manchester. It reminded me of our own Frome Independent, the market stalls trickling down the hills and congregating wherever there’s a…
PHILIPPA Davis had an exhausting few days recently, including cooking for a Shabbat in West London, a whisky tasting lunch and photographic exhibition in a Soho car park, a wine tasting at the fabulous Whirly Wines down in Tooting Bec, working on a brilliant Dorset book project* and a trip to Nice and Monaco. I…
JOIN the supper club at La Fosse, the restaurant with rooms in the centre of Cranborne, for a taste of Ireland on Thursday 17th March. You might be lucky enough to get one of the two remaining tables for the Irish Supper Club, where chef-proprietor Mark Hartstone will be serving traditional dishes including lamb, boxty,…
NAVIGATING airports at half term is a bit like playing a kids computer game, says the Dorset-born private chef Philippa Davis. The route from departures in one country to arrivals in another is pitted with challenges, obstacles and tasks to test your intuition and skill – and all has to be completed within a certain…
THE 2016 World Cheese Awards, run by the Guild of Fine Food, which is based in Gillingham, will be crossing the Bay of Biscay to take place in the Basque country, at San Sebastian during the city’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. As the dairy industry continues to experience challenging times, this is a…
by Simone Sekers MY mother is now in a care home. This is very much not what she had had planned. At the age of 92 she had decided not to have her flu jab this winter; her plan was to catch flu, which would progress to pneumonia and then end neatly in her demise….