The pleasure of cooking

We both love to cook. We love to share a glass of wine while perusing our cookery books and we love to share a glass of wine while pottering in the kitchen preparing our dinner each evening. It’s the highlight of the day for us as we sit down and enjoy whatever we have made. In the winter (when we are closed and things are calm), we spend hours looking at recipes and trying out new ideas for the coming year. New trends and ingredients are incorporated into old classics and new recipes are adjusted to make our lives easier and less laborious.

The picture shows some of the things we like to cook on a regular basis. We work with the seasons and use local produce wherever possible. The picture top left is Ottolenghi’s cauliflower cake, a delightful veggie treat that is wonderful served with a dressed green salad. Then comes roasted cod (we cook a lot of fish) served with a caper butter sauce on a cauliflower cream with romanesco alongside. The courgette charlottes are a real faff to make but will definitely be on the table when the garden is overflowing with home grown courgettes and are wonderful served alone as an entrée or alongside a griddled chicken breast and some roasted tomatoes.  In full summer when tomatoes are tasting fantastic, we’ll make a tomato jus and served a simple salad with toasted croutons and fresh almonds or blitz them up with peppers, cucumber and onion to make a chilled gazpacho served with diced summer vegetables and olive oil. In the centre you can see pan fried pork fillet served on crushed new potatoes with a cornichon sauce and then last but not least dessert. Often a little pot of something like this dark chocolate pot or something lighter such as roasted figs with orange and pomegranate molasses or a light and airy lemon tiramisu layered with limoncello soaked boudoir biscuits, strawberries and a rich marscapone cream.

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The things that we cook are easy and never too time consuming.  Life is too short to involve too much sieving and whizzing and the best things are made using fresh, local, seasonal ingredients.