Hugh Duncan Fearnley-Whittingstall talks about making a cup of tea
Now, to make my tea, I need two good-sized mugs. I boil the kettle. The hot water goes into one mug first, stays for a few seconds so the mug is heated, then goes into the second mug.[…]

Category: Nearly-Railway
(This is the continuation of a project which has been dormant, largely as a result of a lengthy period of foul sobriety. New readers, or forgetful ones, might like to catch up with what this is all about. This review is of t[…]

The other night I found myself on a work jolly to All Star Lanes, one of two mini bowling alleys to have cropped up in Soho. All-Star Lanes offers four lanes, a spacious bar, a rather less spacious restaurant, an extensive cocktail menu, Americana on[…]

Now coming from a rather staunch royalist background, I have a stupid range of Windsor trivia clogging up my brane. In particular when it was decided that the FT group trip to the great british beer festival would be next Friday I immediately though[…]

Of course you are allowed to change your mind. And of course good things go rotten. But the sad tale of The Old Nick is one worth considering for all the pub trade. Back in the mists of time (2004) The Old Nick opened: a refurb of a smaller, single f[…]

So Smirnoff is back then in Casino Royale. The grand-daddy of product placements (if you discount the cars wot fall apart in Keystone Cop shorts) has taken over from young buck Finlandia which Bond flirted with in Die Another Day*. But then he had […]

MULLED WINE! Yeah! A brief mention of Pimms Winter (brandy cup, to you and me) is all it took to remind me of clutching a polystyrene cup gingerly with gloved hands and trying not to burn my tongue on the spicy yet STICKY warmth of the comforting vis[…]

Aggresively pushing its Frenchness by spelling words in a French way, Boursin Salade & Apertif is another attempt at the snacking cheese holy grail. Okay, not so much a holy grail as a on the wholly bad idea, it was at least partially solved by […]

There are three steps to perfectly cooked rice:
* Clean the rice
* Use 2 water to 1 rice (or a little less water, 1:1.8 as Gary Rhode might say)
* Leave lid on and DO NOT STIR (yes that is 1 step)
and that really is it. If you are still getting stick[…]

two christmases ago my mum’s present was the money to buy a nice casserole dish, but the one i chose at john lewis was sold out by the time i went in to get it, and then never in stock — anyway i found it in habitat a month or so back, an[…]