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…
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…
TOURISM conferences in Wiltshire and Cornwall in March have been announced as part of the South West Tourism Growth Fund, with the aim of helping businesses in the region to do things differently and increase tourism throughout the year. The conferences are at Bowood House near Chippenham on 10th March and at the Eden Project…
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…
PRIVATE chef Philippa Davis ended her Asian travels back in Singapore preparing a variety of meals for clients including an amazing feast … DESPITE the mass splattering of red decorations over every street in Singapore in readiness for Chinese New Year my focus for the week was on preparing a party feast for Russian New…
CONTINUING her Asian travels, Philippa Davis instantly loved the fast energy of Hong Kong … The winding streets that were connected by hills, steep steps and alleyways were, I admit, a challenge at first, with not every corner always being named and most signs being unintelligible to me, but I feel sometimes the best ways…