An unexpected marketing genius

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I’m not sure how many churches there are on New Providence, but I think in terms of sheer variety they surpass even the liquor stores, petrol stations and nail salons. In such a crowded marketplace, one genteel Bahamian lady of a certain age (all Sunday hats, proper pastel suits and sensible heels) has found a [...]

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Three deliciously controversial gelato flavours: toasted sesame and butterscotch; brown bread; beetroot stracciatella ice-creams

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Mr R&R would like it known upfront that he’s morally opposed to this post. It deeply offends his Italian sensibilities, history, culture, in fact everything that he stands for, and is an affront to the metric tonnes of ice-cream he’s consumed so far, and and insult to the hard-working families producing authentic gelati the length [...]

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Tried and tested 6: Nigella’s chocolate cookies, beetroot ice-cream, beetroot brownies and kasutera cake

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I’ve always thought that brownies are a grown-up excuse to eat raw cake mixture – a cursory nod to the oven gives them baked-goods legitimacy, just as a whiff of the martini bottle is the grown-up excuse to down a large bucket of gin. This version with beetroot is, of course, just another such excuse [...]

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Homemade gnocchi with broccoli, and two new gadgets!

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The 8th January? Er, I’m not quite sure how that happened – it’s not as if I’ve spent the first days of the new decade with amnesia induced by wild-partying, hard-drinking or pavement-sleeping. No, my New Years Eve was spent at home, watching the NFL Network (Top 10 Greatest Receiving Tackle Fumblers Coached By Aliens, or [...]

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Tried and tested 5: pumpkin ice-cream, walnut chocolate chip cookies

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Pumpkin ice-cream I have an unhealthy obsession (very literally I’m sure) with the various seasonal flavours at Starbucks, my current favourite order being a tall iced non-fat pumpkin spice latte. It is sickly, artificial, contains no nutritional value whatsoever… and I love it. This recipe from David Lebovitz, however, is all the good bits chucked [...]

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Viennese striesel

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Viennese striesel a plaited, glazed fruited buttery brioche-style bread suggested by Katie of Thyme for Cooking for the Bread Baking Babes group (I’m just baking along for the ride as it looked gorgeous!). As I’m gathering my thoughts, equipment and baking mojo for the challenge of panettone, this seemed like a good intermediate step and [...]

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Review – Bread: River Cottage Handbook No.3

All my worldly possessions are in storage at the moment. It’s all too clear, I’m afraid, where my priorities lie: 3 boxes of clothes, 5 boxes of books and 11 boxes of kitchen equipment. (I think you can probably guess for yourself that most of those books are cookbooks.) While my prized mango slicer, silicone [...]

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Date and oat slice: a kiteboarder-approved, homemade energy bar

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It has proved a lovely, lovely thing to cook some of my childhood favourites for Mr. R&R, and I’ve also (with not a little trepidation) cooked some of his remembered dishes from growing up (see my italian meatloaf, or polpettone). I suppose it’s a way of cementing our two histories together, of saying that yes, [...]

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Taralli – brutish bagel biscuits from Puglia

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As you can see from the picture, they’re not exactly delicate, pretty morsels. My homemade version of these pugliese biscuits are dumpy and lumpy, browned from baking. Indeed, when I cooked them yesterday evening, they seemed to lurk menacingly in the oven, as if saying “Just wait ’til I get crispy, sunshine…”. But I have [...]

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A light gelato with green tea, hazelnut, mocha and ginger variations

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The following is my standard ice-cream recipe – a light custard base which will take infinite variations – flavour the milk and cream before cooking, stir in liquid ingredients into the custard or add chunky pieces just as the ice-cream is nearly done churning.
I worked on this recipe (well, it didn’t really feel [...]

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