Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for chard borani soup with yoghurt, crispy garlic and beans | Quick and easy

I am emphatically not a dip person (see also: salad), but the first time I tried chard borani, a Persian dip made with chard and yoghurt, I became so obsessed that we’ve been having it on repeat at home ever since. Today, I’m sharing my soup version, thickened with beans and topped with crisp garlic and brown butter. It’s perfect served with flatbreads, and takes just minutes to put together: a homage to the excellent original.If you’re making this in advance, reheat it very gently so as not to split the yoghurt.Prep 15 min Cook 30 minServes 3-42 tbsp olive oil 1 large onion, peeled and roughly sliced2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely grated400g rainbow or Swiss chard, stems roughly chopped, leaves roughly sliced2 tsp sea salt flakes 1 400g tin haricot beans, drained and rinsed (260g drained weight)Juice of ½ lemon150g natural or greek yoghurt, at room temperature , plus extra to serve For the crisp garlic butter 40g salted butter2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced2 tsp aleppo pepper (optional)Heat the oil in a large, wide-based pan, add the onion and stir-fry on a medium to high heat for five minutes

How to make the perfect bara brith – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

Bara brith, the traditional Welsh fruit loaf whose name means speckled bread, is, as Ben Mervis notes, not dissimilar to Yorkshire brack, Irish barmbrack and Scottish “kerrie loaf” – the last is a new one on me, though, of course, I’m more than familiar with how well they all pair with strong tea and cold salty butter. According to food writers Laura Mason and Catherine Brown, they were originally known as teisen dorth in south Wales, and they date the recipe to no earlier than the beginning of the 20th century. However, the digitising of records since their book Food of Britain was published in 1999 allowed me to find a reference to it being eaten before school examinations in Bala, Gwynedd, in Seren Cymru from 1857. (Pen Vogler notes that “anything made with flour, however, is likely to be relatively modern, as wheat was too unreliable to be a staple in wet, upland Wales.”) There’s no reason to doubt the pair’s claim that bara brith was originally made from excess bread dough, but I think it’s good enough to need no such excuse

Breakfast at Pavyllon, London W1: ‘Does fine dining strictly have to wait until lunchtime?’ - restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

Now that gen Z is eschewing booze and all-night raves, are we moving into a hospitality era when the big posh breakfast might well be the main event?For 5am Club people such as myself, who love to be up, caffeinated and scribbling on Post-it notes pre-dawn, the Four Seasons’ recent launch of London’s first Michelin-starred breakfast is perfect. Now we can do all that over a £70, five-course tasting menu served at a counter in a genteel, pastel-shaded dining room. If, that is, you can get a booking, in which case well done; otherwise, you could simply sit a little farther from the counter and order almost the same food off the normal breakfast menu, only without all the explanations.Regardless, chef Yannick Alléno is clearly doing the world a favour by luring all of us early risers to one room and distracting us with lobster flatbread and a bespoke “amuse juice”, because we are clearly some of the most annoying people on Earth. Have you ever heard one of my bumptious 5

Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for coffee and walnut cookies | The sweet spot

When it comes to British cakes, coffee and walnut is such a staple that if there isn’t one present at a bake sale or coffee morning, I’ll raise an eyebrow. I’ve taken the classic combination and put them in a cookie for something fun and quicker to make. Full of toasty walnuts and a hit of that very nostalgic instant coffee flavour, I finish them off with a white chocolate button as a nod to the sweet, creamy icing.Prep 5 minChill 2 hr+ Cook 55 min Makes 1080g shelled walnuts 140g unsalted butter 1½ tbsp instant espresso powder 100g dark brown sugar 75g caster sugar 1 large egg 150g plain flour 80g porridge oats ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda ½ tsp flaky sea salt 10 white chocolate buttonsHeat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas 4. Put the walnuts in a single layer on a small baking tray and roast for 10-12 minutes, until toasty

Bitter-sweet symphony: vermouth is more than just another cocktail ingredient

I like to think of vermouth as the Nile Rodgers of drinks, a backbone of good times known more for big hit collaborations than for its solo work. It is a foundation of any self-respecting cocktail cabinet (though it should be kept in the fridge), and also a family of drinks with many individual talents, which are now at long last being more widely recognised – Waitrose’s most recent Food & Drink report even touted vermouth as a 2026 trend, with searches for the stuff up by 26%.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more

The bubbling beauty of baked pasta

The other day, I climbed the communal stairs and opened the front door to the smell of cheese on toast. A welcome aroma made even more welcome when I realised that it was actually the tips of pasta tubes turning golden among grated cheese and creamy bechamel sauce. To add to the pleasant scene, my partner, Vincenzo, was washing up. Because that is the thing about pasta al forno – baked pasta – the time between finishing the construction and the eating is around about 25 minutes. That is, exactly the right amount of time to wash up and wipe up, or delegate those tasks to someone else while you make a salad and open a bottle of wine