Beetroot Risotto

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Back in the days of yore when I was at home revising for my A Levels, I saught distraction from the TV. There were only four channels in those days and Freeview was merely a twinkle in someone’s eye, but there was a delightful little midday show that afforded me a break called Light Lunch with Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins. Combining a spot of cookery, chat and comedy accompanied with a studio audience eating their sarnies at the same time, it was much easier to digest than than the Westerns on the other channels. One of the reasons that this programme has stuck in my memory is the fact that it introduced me to one of my favourite dishes of all time, a perfectly pink beetroot risotto.
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Upside-down Rhubarb Cheesecake

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Some people have a spirit animal that sums up their personality and beliefs. We here at North/South Food have a spirit ingredient instead in the shape of rhubarb! Preferably the seasonal treat that is forced Rheum rhaponticum from the Rhubarb Triangle of Yorkshire with its perfect perky pink colouring and tangy taste, but ultimately any rhubarb pleases us profoundly. We’ll eat it any which we can and as often as possible!

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Steak and Kidney Pudding

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I love suet. I know it’s as unfashionable as lard these days, but I love the stuff. A fluffy suet dumpling on top of a rich stew is such a winter treat that I will bear a lot of cold grey days just to have the excuse to embrace this most British of dishes. I also love the rich stickiness of Christmas dishes filled with fruit and suet and welcome sweet suet dishes that are a stunning vehicle for custard. But despite this love, I have never made a proper steamed suet pudding before. The sticky soft texture that is so dinky as dumplings, scares me in larger quantities. I have visions of sheer stodge, something you could kill someone with if handled incorrectly. Add in the traditional filling of kidneys and I feel a moment of blind panic. So it makes perfect sense that I offered to cook one for several friends on Friday night… Read more

Holy Moly, Coley!

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Fish has been a hot topic of debate for the past few weeks due to Channel 4’s collection of The Big Fish Fight programmes that looked at the issues around commercial fishing and fish farming today. I felt both guilty due to my love of anything fish or seafood related, and slightly smug since I have been avoiding cod for years, I didn’t watch any of it as I’m not a big celebrity chef fan.

Instead I took the opportunity to read up on the subject, finding both Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Tom Fort’s The Book of Eels, to be an excellent source of information without personality fighting the facts. I also took advantage of the fact that since the issue of fish was being talked about to try and see what types of fish are sustainable and where I could source them without having to get up and hit Billingsgate at 4am.

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Sprats, spuds and Swedish sauciness

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Miss South and I have a long-running appreciation of the herring family: from whitebait, the essential anchovy (in all its multifarious forms) through to sprats, pilchards, sardines and herrings; little silvery fish get a full-on thumbs up.

Curiously I’d come late to the pleasures of sprats… but once I discovered how cheap (and I mean cheap) a handful of good fresh sprats could be, I was a convert. Normally I’d have them very simply; tossed in a dusting of flour and smoked paprika, grilled whole and finished with a little freshly-squeezed lemon juice, then eaten with some fresh crusty bread. The fact these small fish also answered to the delightfully silly scientific name of Sprattus Sprattus only enhanced their place high up the canon of favourite, fast, fishy fixes. But I alliterate too much…

So I was delighted when Miss South gifted me a tin of Swedish sprats as a Christmas stocking filler, which she’d picked up on her previously documented mission to the wonderful Scandanavian Kitchen.  Read more