Daffodil Soup London

I AM  a feasting kinda gal, excess draws me like a moth to a flame and there's nothing that excites me more than an 8-hour lunch that becomes supper (I call that lupper) and then goes on into the night as we open yet another bottle. My friend Andy, who is more English than I am, recognises it as a 'Leo' (Sayer = all-dayer in Cockney rhyming slang). It's a well-established ritual but one that happens less often as we get older, and not at all under current lockdown restrictions. Sigh.  Tasting menus excite me. They allow smidgins of lots of different foods but never trigger the synapse that controls the Off button.  I read menu like others novels. All the starters, please,  then divvy up the mains so we can all have a taste. Someone at the table will always say 'ooh, there's a chocolate thing on, I must save room for that' and I'll think boo, how dull, I'll have the CHEESE.  I am quite well known for desserts generally, have made and sold co...

  THIS may look like a bowl of beige sludge but boy oh boy it packs a flavour punch.  There are lots of versions around, also known as Baba Ganoush, as it’s a staple of Mediterranean and North African cooking, and I have combined a few here but mostly the flavour bomb is the smoking of the aubergine.  Shortly before lockdown I invested in a smoker – it’s a small, table-top model (not much bigger than a backpack) that can be easily stored in the shed –  and I’ve been experimenting with cold-smoking, which is a low and slow way to infuse meat, fish and vegetables with that deep, smokiness that doesn’t come from a bottle like so many ‘smoked’ goods.  The critical different between hot and cold smoking, unsurprisingly, is temperature.  You can hot smoke foods in any closed-lid barbecue – it’s a guaranteed side benefit of  cooking over charcoal. With hot smoking you are cooking AND smoking at the same time – the smoke is gener...

We're all cooking so much more these days and while for some of us that's a busman's holiday for others it's a tedious treadmill of getting meals on the table with all the associated planning, prep and cleaning up that entails.  We're all looking for inspiration and hungrily devouring recipe collections and suggestions, and enviously eyeing up instagram feeds from foodies who make everything look so delicious - we do, after all, eat with our eyes.  Here at Daffodil Soup HQ we've been making lots of comfort food, baking bread and delving in to kitchen classics, which led to one of the most comforting meals of Lockdown so far - the most serendipitously delicious example of kedgeree that it just had to be shared.  Originally a Bengal staple dish of spiced rice and lentils served with fried fish (Khicharhi), smoked fish and boiled eggs were added by Colonial cooks in the kitchens of the British empire to make it a favourite at the breakfast table...

Everyone’s cooking and baking again, and posting their stories online, which is lovely to see.  For professional chefs, this has been a stressful time, not being able to cook and feed people every day (it’s not just a day job, it’s basically a calling). With just two of us at home during lockdown, I’ve had to fight the urge to keep creating loads of dishes that we just can’t eat. The freezers are full, and there really is only so much one can eat in a day. (Trust me, we've tried.)  I’ve been making sourdough bread for decades with my starter called Elvis (and documenting the results endlessly on Insta) and once the strong flour issue was resolved I started baking bread for friends and neighbours, which has scratched the itch somewhat.     Then, seeing the lovely cheese and chilli cornbread recipe posted by Rosalind, the founder of Cookery School at Little Portland Street reminded me that I have a savoury muffin recipe which I use...