Rachel Roddy’s recipe for hazelnut and chocolate cake | A kitchen in Rome

Having been kept waiting for three hours, Dick Dewy leaves Miss Fancy Day snipping and sewing her blue dress. The plan is that he will return for her a quarter of an hour later, however, Dick convinces himself that he has been scandalously trifled with by Fancy and decides that, to punish her, he will not return. Instead, he leaps over the gate, pushes up the lane for two miles, takes a winding path called Snail-Creep, and crawls through the opening to the hazel grove in Grey’s Wood.Getting a class of 15-year-olds to relay/read the opening of chapter four of Under the Greenwood Tree, which is memorably entitled “Going Nutting”, is an extremely effective way to engage them with the majesty of Thomas Hardy. And the title is nothing compared to the line (as Dick vanished among the bushes): “Never man nutted as Dick nutted that afternoon

How to make cauliflower cheese using the whole plant – recipe | Waste not

This recipe, adapted from one in my cookbook, is a very elaborate way to serve humble cauliflower cheese. The whole plant, including the leaves and core, is seasoned with nutmeg and roasted, and it’s then dressed with a satisfying layer of rich cheese sauce and grilled until charred and bubbling. Choose a cauliflower with plenty of leaves, because they go deliciously crisp when roasted.This is perhaps the most decadent cauliflower cheese I’ve ever made. Inspired by an orange-coloured cauliflower I found sitting proudly in a box at my local Brockley Market in south London, I decided to make a vibrant and very orange cauliflower cheese using red leicester cheese and turmeric

A marmalade-dropper for Paddington Bear? | Letters

As a Portuguese-British citizen, I feel it is my duty to add to your explainer article (Keir Starmalade, anyone? Will marmalade really have to be rebranded in UK?, 4 April) and explain where the word marmalade originated from. Marmalade comes from the fruit marmelo (quince). And marmalade was and is quince jam in Portugal. This jam began to be exported to England at the end of the 15th century. Only in the 17th century did the English start to apply the word marmalade to orange jam

How to save limp herbs | Kitchen aide

What can I do with herbs that are past their best?Joe, by email Happily, Joe and his on-the-turn herbs aren’t short of options. “The obvious choice for hard herbs is to chuck them in a sandwich bag and freeze them for future stock-making,” says Alice Norman, founder of regenerative bakery Pinch in Suffolk. Alternatively, Sami Tamimi, author of Boustany, would be inclined to dry his excess herbs. In summer, he’d simply pop them on a tray and put them outside in the sun, but right now he “dries them in a 60-70C oven, then packs in containers, ready for the next time you’re short of fresh herbs”.Norman’s current MO is to blitz languishing herbs (“rosemary and/or thyme work best”) with a 3:4 ratio of fine salt

‘Before I can stop her, my daughter is licking crumbs from the table’: my search for the perfect kids’ menu

Chips, fish fingers, pizza … restaurant food for children is depressingly predictable. Are there more adventurous options? I took my four-year-old daughter on a month-long mission to find outWe’re heading out for dinner. Before I tell my four-year-old where we’re going, she has already announced that she’s going to have fish, chips and lots of ketchup. It sounds delicious; a classic. But there’s the irksome feeling that the intrepid impulses of childhood should be met with food that expands palates rather than feeding into the well-trodden path to a beige meal

Can’t face another mouthful of chicken? You’re probably coming down with the ick

Name: The chicken ick.Age: Chickens have been around since, well, eggs …Unless it’s the other way round. Whatever. The chicken ick, on the other hand, is new.And what is it, please? You know when you suddenly feel disgusted by the chicken you’re eating, possibly mid-bite, despite previously enjoying it?Er, not really, to be honest