In this case Tom Parker Bowles, fabulous food writer, dedicated food explorer lover of horror films, Mexican dishes and chillies. And an old pal. In the last podcast in the present series Lois and Matthew hitch a ride on a conversation that’s fluent and funny and informative. They start with breakfast and finish with dinner, […]

A lot of people approach the business of cooking fish with a certain amount of trepidation. Not Lois and Matthew. They share tips on buying fish, preparing fish, cooking fish. They discuss the pros and cons of fish farming, and why we should never eat farmed salmon. They list the fish that you can eat […]

Lois & Matthew are in conversation with the wonderful, magical Andi Oliver, singer, performer, actor, restaurateur, author, tv judge and host. In mesmerising story after mesmerising  story she talks about – wait for it – how she  got started; her friendship Neneh Cherry; playing Titania in her school production of Midsummer’s Nights Dream; her punk […]

One of the incidental pleasures of leafing through my mother’s recipe cards has been the way they have triggered memories of Proustian intensity (although not, thankfully, of  Proustian prolixity. I was able to dwell upon the voluptuous beauties of her cold creamed rice pudding of which she never quite made enough (the secret lies in […]

The chef is dead. Long live the chef. There has been a certain amount of rather smug comment from various food writers following the news that Noma, Denmark’s world beating,  multi-award winning restaurant,  is closing later this year and René Redzepi, chef/proprietor/guiding spirit, and his team is going to concentrate on producing a range of […]

I came across a friend’s Christmas present the other day that made me distinctly envious. It was a cook book, although to call it simply a cook book is not to do justice to its range and richness. The cover is holly green and imprinted with drawings of two pans and a colander in a […]

The other day I was taken by a sudden urge to make some cheese biscuits. I was about to go to Cornwall, and I thought, well, I’m not sure I thought what I thought, but it seemed a good idea to have something to offer by way of a contribution to general well-being. You can […]

It’s a salutary lesson. Every now and then you come across something that challenges an opinion that you’ve held for so long that it’s become a fact carved in the stone of your personal order of things. That’s how I felt about hydroponically-grown vegetables, raised under glass on plants with their roots in water, nurtured […]