Summer calls for chilled red wine

Last week’s column was a casual toe-dip into the lido of summer-centric drinks writing. I write these columns just over two weeks in advance, so I need Met Office/clairvoyant weather prediction skills to work out what it is we’re likely to be drinking by the time the column comes out. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and declare that summer will be here when you read this. No, don’t look out of the window. Keep looking at your phone screen, and imagine the sun’s beating down outside

‘I don’t have rules’: cooks on making perfect porridge at home

The cookbook author Elizabeth Hewson cherishes her winter breakfast routine. She creeps downstairs before sunrise, while her husband and children are still sleeping, to make herself a bubbling pot of porridge.“It’s that small moment of peace before the day gets going,” she says. “The rhythm of standing at the stove stirring is one of those quiet rituals that I love.”She makes it with traditional oats, usually toasted dry then soaked in water overnight

How to turn the whole carrot, from leaf to root, into a Moroccan-spiced stew – recipe | Waste not

Today’s warming recipe makes a hero of the whole carrot from root to leaf, and sits somewhere between a roast and a stew. The lush green tops are turned into a punchy chermoula that is stirred into the sauce and used as a garnish.One image has stayed with me ever since a journey through a small Moroccan village near Taghazout, just west of Marrakech, all of 12 years ago. Bright orange carrots lay in vast heaps on contrasting blue tarpaulin spread across the ground. I was especially struck by how the vast majority of each pile was green with the feathery foliage that was still attached to the roots we love

Empanadas and stuffed piquillos: José Pizarro’s recipes for green peppers

Peppers are more than just staples of the Spanish kitchen, they are one of our culinary foundations. As with tomatoes, when Columbus returned from the Americas in the late 15th century, he presented peppers as a gift to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, and they very quickly became a key part of our cooking traditions. The pepper’s most iconic contribution to Spanish cuisine is surely pimentón de la Vera, or smoked paprika, which is an essential seasoning in a lot of Spanish cooking, adding exquisite depth to stews, rice dishes, seafood and, of course, chorizo. But we also celebrate fresh peppers in all their guises. Padrón peppers are, of course, a classic tapa, while pimientos rellenos (stuffed peppers) are filled every which way, from seafood and minced meat to creamy bechamel

Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for mini parmesan, apple and rosemary scones

The secret to these ultra-fluffy scones? Cream cheese. In a fit of inspiration (I was thinking about rugelach at the time), I replaced almost all the butter with it to great success. These scones are a hit with children, too: my three-year-old quite competently helped make them, from fetching rosemary from the garden to stamping out the dough and brushing on the egg wash. A nice kitchen activity for any resident children, even if your dog turns up for the cheese tax at the last stage.Prep 15 min Cook 15 min Makes 30 mini scones25g cold butter, cubed100g cold full-fat cream cheese100g parmesan, roughly broken300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting2 scant tsp baking powder1 tsp sea salt2 rosemary sprigs, needles stripped and finely chopped 1 medium-sized apple, grated 1 egg50ml milkFor the topping1 egg, beaten50g parmesan, finely gratedA few small rosemary sprigs (optional)To serveCold salted butter or Boursin Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6

How to make perfect cheese arepas – recipe | Felicity Cloake

When I first came across arepas, at a food market in Williamsburg, New York, almost a decade ago, I was attracted mainly by the fact that these stuffed South American corn breads were, as the stall proclaimed in big letters: “110% gluten-free!” which meant I could share one with a coeliac friend. One bite later, I regretted my generosity: crunchy, buttery and filled with sweetcorn and salty, stringy cheese, I could easily have polished off the whole thing without any help.These, I later learned, were Colombian arepas de choclo, but arepas – flat, unleavened maize patties that pre-date European settlement – are found in many forms and flavours in many other countries, too, most notably Venezuela, but also Bolivia, Ecuador and parts of Central America. As J Kenji López-Alt notes on Serious Eats, to think of arepas like thick tortillas “is the equivalent of a Colombian native hearing about bread and saying: ‘Oh, it’s that European wheat cake, right?’” Within the first three days of his first visit to the country, he says he sampled more than a dozen different variations: “Arepas stuffed with cheese and baked on hot stones in coal-fired ovens. Arepas with sour milk cheese worked right into the dough