Recipes from a Wine Merchant’s Kitchen
A tale of 250 of my family’s favourite meals.
I have been cooking for over 40 years, for my wife initially and then, one by one, for my children. It was, and still remains, a pleasure and privilege to feed my family each day. What I have never categorised is the collection of recipes that would serve to illustrate the many thousands of meals I have cooked for them and their friends. Now was the opportunity and imperative to do so.
Recipes
Poached Chicken in Tarragon Sauce
“If you really like chicken, you like it poached. But poaching takes no pity on inferior birds” Jean-Claude Miéral. Volailles Miéral, Montravel-en-Bresse If there’s one single dish that would be a challenge to live without, and would certainly score highly on the...
Ravioli with Spinach and Ricotta
Looking back on my life in the kitchen I am forced to admit that of all the adventurous cuisines that I have elected to emulate, many have not been entirely successful or granted the unalloyed praise I quietly desired. Come to think of it, some of the run-of-the-mill...
Preserved Ginger Cake with Lemon Icing
"...take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all...
![Beef in Barolo [Brasato al Barolo]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/IMG_8741-400x250.jpg)
Beef in Barolo [Brasato al Barolo]
“I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food”. WC Fields I’m keen to get a few things cleared up. There are many myths linked to wine drinking that continue to drift aimlessly on the trade winds. They are, more often than not, linked directly to what and how...
Classic Roast Partridge
Living in the East Anglian countryside, the game season offers some authentic free-range eating, but on a rising tide of such good intentions it frequently prompts serious ethical grumbling. From the beginning of October to the end of January, the nearby sound of...
Baked Papparadelle with Pancetta & Porcini
Of all my food fantasies, I’ve long harboured a wish to become a discriminating, sharp-eyed, wild mushroom gatherer. But whether you know me or not, I can verify that I come nowhere near to fulfilling any part of that particular job description. I dream idly of being...
Thai Mussels
“I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own” - Michel de Montaigne Over the years I have accumulated an awful lot of cookbooks. I buy and read them in the same way young children once devoured comics. And apart...
Haggis, Neeps and Tatties
"Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves” Michel de Montaigne (1533 -1592) In 1980 the New York publisher Time-Life began releasing a series of cookery books in Britain and America by way of monthly installments. Entitled...
Traditional Seville Orange Marmalade
"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges ..." D.H.Lawrence Throughout the countryside and along our seashore, incremental seasonal peaks determine our passage across the culinary...
Samosas
Some years ago now, a few members of the family embarked upon the West Country equivalent of the Camino de Santiago in Galicia and visited Padstow in Cornwall. We were to undertake a two day, fish-worship, courtesy of local boy Rick Stein. At that time a hero of the...
![Fish Stock [Fumet de Poissons]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_4372-400x250.jpg)
Fish Stock [Fumet de Poissons]
Homemade fish stock is inexpensive to provision for, and a breeze to make. I have never found a stock cube that comes anywhere near its memorable flavours, and given that a carefully built stock is an essential component in the sauces and soups of so many cuisines -...
Moules Marinière
“You have to be very careful with mussels. I am not talking about the cooking process, which is a relatively simple affair; as long as you clean them well and take them off the heat as soon as they open rather than allowing them to overcook and dry up, it’s a doddle....
Chicken Chow Mein
“To the ruler the people are Heaven; to the people, food is Heaven” Kwan Tze. 700 BC Although we unwittingly manage to obfuscate many of the origins of our cuisine, usually at the expense of diversity, some in the UK have become determinedly proud of...
Classic Christmas Cake
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting…” From Jumpers by Tom Stoppard With a year of lock-ins, lock-downs and lock outs - the last being my cunning reference to the Brexit débâcle, although using a French term might appear downright impolite at...
Mincemeat
“It is lucky to eat as many pies as possible before Christmas, as says the dweller in London, or is the more elaborate custom found in Yorkshire more correct? The writer of this book, being a Yorkshire woman, is quite sure that it is not correct to eat mince pies...
Madeleines
“There is no man however wise”, he said to me, “who has not at some time in his youth said things or even led a life of which his memory is disagreeable and which he would wish to be abolished. But he absolutely should not regret it, because he can’t be assured of...
Parmesan Risotto
When just out of college, and income was in short supply, I loved to eat out. Ironically, as time passed, with a growing family and a burgeoning income, I chose to eat more at home. I had discovered a desire to cook and I began to teach myself the rudiments of...
Chicken with Grapes and Sweet Wine
During my time as a wine importer I have visited scores, if not hundreds of wineries around the world. I have shivered in dank subterranean cellars long before the first espresso of the morning and baked in arid vineyards at midday. I have stared with feigned interest...