We love the old-world, gruff charm of Kao Rou Ji restaurant in Beijing’s Houhai precinct. This gorgeous area is right on the lake and although it has been hijacked somewhat by souvenir shops and pizza joints, it still speaks of a time when life was a little less polished and a lot less Westernised. The dining room is filled with the smells of cumin and lamb and barbecued meat and this dish reminds us of being there…

The assignment? To turn a whole heap of English spinach into something everyone would love, and that wasn’t too, you know, spinachy. An overload of spinach tastes ever so slightly metallic. Spinach soup doesn’t ring my bells…

Why are these called The Peanut Brownies We Never Had? Because we still have some bad attitudes toward the 1970’s baking of New Zealand. And yes, before the, er, Peanut Gallery goes, um, nuts, we do know that there were some, uh, gems from that era…

Love jaffa vibes? Then get on this cake. It’s seriously delicious, with sour cream adding to the overall choc-orange-butter-eggs richness. And, as if 275g of sugar in the batter wasn’t enough, there’s a whole heap more lurking in the syrup plus in the glazed orange situation…

We never met a meatball we didn’t like, We l-o-v-e meatballs. The global meatball repertoire is huge; think polpette (Italy), kofte (Turkey), keftedes (Greece), albondigas (Spain), bakso (Indonesia), bun cha (Vietnam), frikadeller (Germany, Scandinavia and Poland), bitterballen (Netherlands) and the like…

Ovens can be dodgy bastards. See that thermometer dial on yours? If your oven’s calibration slips, which it inevitably will, the dial is not necessarily the most reliable indicator of the exact temperature your oven is at. Bummer. But there’s a simple workaround…

We can’t lay claim to this fabulous dish; it’s based on a Palestinian recipe from Joudie Kalla’s stunning book, Balaidi Palestine (Quarto UK, 2018). We’ve tweaked and played with it a bit, amping up the garlic and using a stick blender to emulsify the heck out of the dressing…

If you had to bake for a Zombie apocalypse, this would be the thing to make. It keeps f-o-r-e-v-e-r.. This classic, hefty, long-keeping loaf is based on a traditional Welsh bread called bara brith (which means ‘speckled bread’); some versions use yeast for the rising…

Yay! Middle Finger Buns! Complete with pink icing and a smattering of desiccated coconut. How cute are these? We hear that many of you are scared witless of yeast; if that’s the case can we implore you not to be such a bunch of sooks and, like Lennon with peace, give yeast a chance?…

1982 called and wants its chicken back… Chicken Marbella, to be exact. If you kids ever wondered how your forebears dinner-partied hard, look no further than this tasty relic from the beloved classic, The Silver Palate Cookbook…

Here’s an old fashioned dessert that’s totally worth resurrecting. It’s the kind of thing popular in a previous epoch, when food options were more limited, everyone had a lemon tree, and people didn’t respond to the concept of sago with a screwed-up unhappy face…

Canned seafoods are quite the thing lately, aren’t they? Although the French (who pioneered sardine canning in the early 1800s), Spanish and Portuguese have known for quite some time that fish in a can is fab. While you can drop serious coin on boujee canned fish brands…

Use whatever sausages you darn well like here, although some are definitely better than others. The ones to avoid are the sort with super-smooth interiors, that cook to disappointing hardness and don’t really taste like much except maybe over-seasoned pureed meat. They’re full of fillers…

American food. Yeah? Nah? Or yeah-nah? Because when it comes to food, Americans do eat a lot of shit. If anecdotal evidence is to be believed, many of them don’t properly cook. (We’re not talking about the Alice Waters, Rick Baylesses, Nancy Silvertons or David Changs of the world…

Dahl. Basically mooshy, spicy, slightly soupy lentils, best served over fluffy basmati rice with tons of accompaniments. It’s soothing. Economical. Incredibly easy to make Just grab a bag of chana dahl (split chickpeas by any other name), rinse it off, boil it up, spice it up, then guzzle it up…

Brains, Intestines. Liver. Kidneys. Tongue, tripe and tails – the whole nine yards. If you’ve been to Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East or the Subcontinent (basically anywhere not overly Anglo), visited local food markets and squizzed the fresh produce, you’ll know that in actual food cultures, everything’s on the table…

As digestive systems everywhere brace for the annual chocolate onslaught, I thought I’d throw a cake your way so you’re match fit for Easter. Not literally, natch. I mean ‘throw’ more in a ‘here’s my chocolate cake recipe, come and geddit’ kind of way. And not that it’s ‘my’ cake, either…

We love the layered flavours you get in an Indian curry, especially when they skew sweet-sour. Which they do here, thanks to jaggery, tomatoes and – yum! – tamarind paste. There are a few steps to making this but none are hard. It’s a perfect Sunday cooking project and you can make extras and freeze them for during the week too…

Unleash the corgis and guzzle the Pimms… it’s coronation time! Well it was.  Concocted by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume from the London Le Cordon Bleu for Elizbeth 2’s anointing, coronation chicken was a mess of cold chicken, curried mayonnaise sauce, dried apricots and almonds…

I’m flexing my mince muscles in anticipation of May, which I’m dubbing My Month of Mean. Or of Mince. Or of Misery. Or something. With the cost of everything going bananas and cash reserves shrinking (thanks, Reserve Bank!), I’m pulling my horns in. No more soothing retail, bye bye Binge account and see ya later exxie wine habit…