by Simone Sekers FACING the chores of everyday life after returning from holiday is never easy, and when that holiday was ten days living in Venice it is doubly difficult. From sitting on our wisteria-hung balcony, watching the humming bird moths hover over the late flowers of a white petunia, as the sun sunk over…
“Where you off to next?” “I’m off to cook for a stalking week.” “Stalking? What’s that, sounds dodgy?” said my friend. “Well…. it’s where you head into the hills dressed in tweeds, cashmere and Barbours, crawl around in the mud and heather and scramble over rocks and walk for absolutely miles from sun up to…
“WHEN I moved here 20 years ago, Lucca didn’t have tourists. Look at it now – foreign voices on every street!” my friend Fabrizio says with a mix of pride and surprise. It’s not hard to see why this exquisite little city of northern Tuscany has so captured the hearts of visitors from around the…
PHILIPPA Davis, the travelling chef from Shaftesbury, has been swamped with plums on her recent engagement in the south of France where she faced an almost impossible task of making use of all the plums growing in the garden. For her latest trip she was in Stirlingshire in Scotland where she found a freezer full…
TRAVELLING chef Philippa Davis was back in Dorset in time for the annual Great Dorset Chilli Fest at St Giles Park near Wimborne – and the hedgerow harvest of blackberries … The tropical sun set a thousand colours over the lush vegetation as the choruses of tuneful birds swooped through the warm evening air back…
WHEN in Rome … and when in the USA, you definitely want to smoke pork ribs. Travelling chef Philippa Davis from Shaftesbury is currently in Boston and her latest postcard recipe is for her successful version of the classic hickory smoked baby back pork ribs. As she says: Smoke gets in your eyes… so try…
HEADING north on the M5 has just become a bit more enjoyable. There is a new motorway services station that promises more than congested fast-food eateries, noisy slot machines, crowded chainstore shops full of grumpy travellers and toilets at least half of which won’t be working on any given day. And that’s without mentioning the…
TRAVELLING chef Philippa Davis from Shaftesbury has crossed the Atlantic for her latest project – and has had some uncomfortable company at night … But she is “happy as a clam,” she says. Arthur kept me up for most of the night, boisterously crashing around and showing off and with repeated spectacular flashes I began to…
WE love France as much as the Dorset-born travelling chef Philippa Davis does, so when we saw her latest Postcard Recipe was cherry clafoutis, we couldn’t have been more pleased. It is one of our favourite puddings, redolent of warm days in the Midi, just totally French. Philippa has been down in the south of…
IN Deadwood, where almost every shop offers gambling and Wild Bill Hickock is shot five times a day on Main Street, Mary Tautkus started her Chubby Chipmunk Chocolate shop ten years ago. She trained with the best in Belgium, and now makes truffles and various caramel delights, often with a gold flavour to match the…