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Cauliflower Fesenjan (Persian Pomegranate and Walnut Stew)

March 4, 2026

With many of you observing Lent, Sarakosti or Ramadan (Veganadan), you may well be searching for inspiration for plant-based meals. If you normally add meat to your diet, this is a long time to maintain your creativity in the kitchen and stay vegetarian or indeed vegan. Many meat-based recipes are easy to convert into delicious plant-based meals. Fesenjan is a very good example. A popular traditional Persian stew made with chicken. This recipe swaps the chicken for cauliflower, which is

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Fennel Salad with Ginger Carrot Dressing

February 19, 2026

You don’t need a recipe to put together a good seasonal salad, but sometimes you might need inspiration for a dressing that’s a little different. Ginger-carrot dressing is particularly good for winter leaves. Get creative with a wide variety of seasonal salads: mâche (lamb’s lettuce), winter purslane, spicy mustards, mizuna, arugula (rocket), chicories (radicchio, Belgium endive or escarole), and rocket. Then add finely sliced spring onions, apples, avocado, fennel, and oranges. Finish with a sprinkle of fennel seeds and walnuts.

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Savoury Polenta Cake

February 18, 2026

A savoury polenta cake is perfect for just about any occasion: a robust aperitif, a picnic, a packed lunch, a tea snack or even breakfast. It’s an absolute doddle to make and easily flavoured with a hundred and one herbs and vegetables. Serve straight from the oven or later …… gently fried. Delicious! We often turn to polenta to make sweet cakes, but the more traditional savoury version seems to be out of fashion. Give it a go – it’s

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Buckwheat Pancakes or Galette Bretonne

February 17, 2026

Buckwheat pancakes, galette bretonne, galette de sarrasin, galette de blé noir, or galette normande!! In short, a delicious gluten-free pancake (galette) originating from Brittany, made from buckwheat flour. They have a gorgeous, minerally, earthy, nutty flavour, and although traditionally a savoury pancake (recipe below), the nuttiness also pairs well with honey, fruit, and yoghurt. Brittany is famous for its creperies – whole restaurants are dedicated to the cause. Served alongside local cider, creperies in Brittany can be almost as popular as cafes.

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Confit Fennel with Butter Beans

January 28, 2026

Nourishing, easy and delicious. Every corner of the internet is telling us to eat our legumes. Confit fennel with butter beans is an easy and fun way to boost your legume quota, but also a fun alternative to the classic bean soup or casserole. Fennel really lends itself to confit. We cheat a little by adding some stock (vegetarian, chicken, or bone broth). Flavour is enhanced with fenugreek, carrots (fennel and carrots are great partners) and plenty of garlic. According

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Italian Style Slow Roast Pork

January 16, 2026

There are many Italian recipes in which the meat is cooked slowly over low heat and allowed to fall apart. Pork is a particular favourite, often with sausages, onions, tomatoes, and porcini mushrooms. However, today’s recipe shouts winter walks and long Sunday lunches. The bone-in joint is slow-roasted in red wine vinegar with warming winter spices such as juniper, five-spice berries, star anise, cloves, and bay leaf. The recipe is inspired by Marcella Hazan from her bible of Italian cookery,

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Pumpkin Velouté with Ginger Butter

January 15, 2026

A versatile soup made with a vegetable, chicken or ginger broth. Pumpkin Velouté is light but tasty, making it a good starter or lunchtime soup when you need something warming but not too heavy. It’s also easy and relatively quick to put together. We’ve kept it versatile: changing the stock lets you adjust how rich, spicy, or simple you want the soup to be. The ginger butter is gorgeous, but again, entirely optional. Stock Options If you don’t have time

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Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

November 10, 2025

There are many recipes for chocolate olive oil cake, but they all share similarities with Nigella Lawson’s iconic 2012 recipe. This recipe pays homage to her original chocolate olive oil cake, with a few tweaks to add a touch of Wild Epicurean—a perfect excuse to post a recipe in celebration of the latest olive oil harvest. The secret ingredients are good-quality olive oil, the best-quality cocoa powder, and a hint of turmeric—a fabulous combination. Turmeric is great with chocolate; its

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Tomato Soup

November 3, 2025

There is nothing better than a hot bowl of tomato soup on a cold winter’s day. You will be loved all day long for serving the perfect meal at just the right moment. And if you’ve baked sourdough or soda bread, you’ll be walking on water. The Tomato Tomato soup is delightfully easy to make, but it relies on super-tasty ripe, juicy late-season tomatoes and a delicate balance of spices. Apologies, I’m more than a little late posting this recipe

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Aubergine Rollatini

October 3, 2025

If you can still buy local aubergines (or eggplants), I think aubergine rollatini makes a beautiful autumn dish—perfect echoes of summer and a comforting food for colder evenings. They should be firm and shiny – don’t buy dull aubergines – they’ve been hanging around for too long. Climate change means that many vegetables now have an extended season. For us, aubergines are most certainly still in the shops. My plants are on their third crop. 😁 Ditto the basil plants,

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Lasagne alla Bolognese

September 26, 2025

There is something remarkably comforting about Lasagne alla Bolognese, the wonderful pasta dish from Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. It says made with love, and please come and share my table. Lasagne is neither cucina povera nor indeed haute cuisine. Lasagne is perfect for a gathering of friends, a family homecoming, and when you need to feed a crowd. Lasagne alla Bolognese needs Time It takes time to perfect a really good lasagne with a mighty bolognese sauce, a well-seasoned bechamel and

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Cretan Dakos Salad

September 10, 2025

The iconic Cretan ‘horiatiki’ (village style salad) is delightfully simple, filling and quick. It’s Greek salad on toast, but these toasts are anything but ordinary. The paximadi, or barley rusks, are made from whole-grain barley flour – a very filling and healthy snack. You will likely need to source them from a local Greek deli, unless your supermarket has a well-stocked Greek section. They come in all shapes and sizes; however, to make the Dakos salad, choose the larger, round-shaped

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Homemade Sauerkraut

May 13, 2025

With the cabbage season well underway, it seemed a good moment to write about sauerkraut. Homemade sauerkraut is a cheap, quick, delicious and easy way to preserve fresh produce and prevent waste. You’ve likely read numerous articles encouraging you to incorporate fermented foods into your diet; a healthy dose of probiotics equals a healthy gut. Think yoghurt (some cheeses), kefir, kombucha, miso, tempeh, kimchi, sourdough bread and sauerkraut. The Ferment At its most basic, the ingredients are simply cabbage and

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Endive Tart with Olive Oil Crust

April 15, 2025

A tasty olive oil crust lifts this endive tart recipe from an average quiche lunch into a delicious and nourishing meal. It’s very easy to put together. Endives (chicory or Belgium Endive) are softened with yellow onions and a little nutmeg and baked in a delicate yoghurt, egg, and feta filling. The filling is light and airy, beautifully complementing the wholemeal pastry. No cream or butter! Endive – the Prebiotic Belgian endives (chicory) are a super nutrient-rich winter vegetable. Though

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Spring Courgette Pasta

April 14, 2025

Spring Courgette Pasta is a classic, quick, and tasty recipe for early-season young courgettes. These young vegetables are sweet and firm and perfect for whipping up a quick pasta sauce in the time it takes to cook the pasta. Use wild or early-season garlic to flavour the sauce with mint, wild lesser calamint, dill or parsley. Whatever fresh herbs you have to hand. I use a lot of mint at this time of year – it’s a great complement to spring

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Asparagus Risotto

April 11, 2025

Asparagus Risotto is a delicious spring recipe to celebrate the magnificent asparagus season! Like many of you, I’m sure, I consider asparagus one of spring’s big highlights—a real treat and a sign that summer is just around the corner. Asparagus is a tricky crop to grow as it needs space and time. Despite last summer’s searing heat, our small bed survived. Small spears appeared but were not even pencil-thick, so we will probably have to wait another two years before

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