On one of my early visits to France years ago, we stayed in a divine little Chambre d’Hôte, L ’Impasse du Temple, now called a Maison de Maître. It was located down a difficult to find narrow laneway, pre-GPS days, in a pretty, tiny town called Léran, in the Midi Pyrenées, near Mirepoix, a beautiful [...]
Cooking all these chicken dishes and stock as I have been in this Covid-19 winter 2020, reminded me of some happier times and our visit to Bresse, the home of the famous Bresse chicken, la volaille de Bresse, and the Monday market day in the market town of Louhans in Burgundy. The summer of 2017 [...]
We are having a sensational trip along this glorious canal. Every-day is blue skies and sunshine and something new to see. For the past two days we climbed a staircase of 36 locks, each about 500m apart so it was busy and tiring getting up and down to do the ropes to secure the barge [...]
Dukkah is an old Egyptian specialty condiment. It is a loose blend of nuts and spices in a dry, crushed but not to a powdered, form. The name “Dukkah” is derived from the Arabic word “to pound” referring to how all the spices are pounded together to prepare the dish. It is a very personal [...]
Honey from a Weed: fasting and feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia, by Patience Gray has been highly recommended to me from a variety of sources, including Sussan Loomis from On Rue Tatin Cooking School in Normandy and Kate Hill from the Kitchen at Camont Cooking School, down in the south west of [...]
On the recommendation of some recent cooking school clients, we were looking forward to going to this lovely restaurant for dinner. Neville had said it was in the Realis et Châteaux group but did not mention it had a Michelin star. He did say it was just a short walk from the Canal de Bourgogne, [...]
It is a challenge finding a ‘perfect’ restaurant when you are barging along the canals. For me, this means a charming, pretty restaurant with a pleasant ambience and décor, with good quality, flavoursome, well-presented food, with a focus on the region; a small, quality wine list with a variety of price ranges; if you are [...]
Morocco Beyond the Bay continues this year with many happy, adventurous travellers joining our culinary tours arranged by Cooking on the Bay and Edwina Golombek, chef and owner of the House of Fusion in Marrakesh. A small group is about to depart at the end of August to enjoy their exotic adventure. In these culinary [...]
Migennes and our dinner of cabillaud. Migennes, in Burgundy, is a short two hour drive south from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. We arrived at CDG on an early flight out of Hong Kong, with Michael feeling very poorly, collected the Europcar and off we went GPS directing us to Auxerre where we need to [...]
Despite our great lunch at the Cristal room, we treated ourselves with another dinner out, as we could eat my lapin with calvados, apple cider and apples any night on the barge! La Coupole is one of the great Parisian brasseries of la belle époque’ and is the favourite of Celebrity English Chef, Rick Stein, [...]
