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
Maine Crabmeat Turnovers
Living only a short car ride from the North Sea, and often after a morning’s work, staring at this screen, I unexpectedly find myself yielding to a culinary lunar pull from the coast. Think on the land based equivalents; bacon sandwiches, take-away curries, chocolate...
![Lasagne with Meat Sauce [Lasagne al Sugo]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/20200912_145655-400x250.jpg)
Lasagne with Meat Sauce [Lasagne al Sugo]
“Translating from one language to another…is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them” Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote It is suggested that with any popular food,...
Granola
“I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’ so I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.” Steven Wright I’ve never really ‘got’ breakfast as a domestic routine, although I do enjoy a home cooked breakfast on rare occasions, especially in a...
Penne alla Carbonara
As a parent I have always wished for my children to grow up thinking independently, become loving partners and eventually supportive parents. I have also encouraged them to be happy, thoughtful cooks too. Never more so than when they first left home. Early Autumn is...
![Fish cakes [Tod Mun]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_0418-400x250.jpg)
Fish cakes [Tod Mun]
"Plain cooking cannot be entrusted to plain cooks" - Countess Morphy The difference between catering and cooking is as wide as the berth I'd give a KFC outlet. David Tanis is a good chef. He's also a good home cook. Few chefs possess the expansive imagination to...
Beetroot Jelly with Dill and Horseradish Cream
It is amazing how many adults loath beets - although puréed, strained beets are a staple of the baby-food industry. Perhaps in later life the inner child in the grown-up jumps to its feet and says -“You expect me to eat something magenta?” More Home Cooking (1995)...
![Linguine with Crab [Linguine al Granchio]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_0394-400x250.jpg)
Linguine with Crab [Linguine al Granchio]
“It is an ancient town that stands Upon a lofty cliff of mouldering sands; The sea against the cliffs doth daily beat, And every tide into the land doth eat” John Taylor Some 12 miles from our cottage sits the Victorian seaside town of Cromer. Although perhaps past...
Eve’s Pudding
"You first parents of the human race...who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?" Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin I like cookbooks and I like cookbooks that contextualise their recipes. They are more familiar than airport novels...
Roast Butternut Squash soup with Cinnamon
My relationship with soup began badly. Like many food writers before me I would like to record that my life’s interest in food began at my mother’s side, or at least on the knee of a mythical nonna, but it didn’t. My mother, like so many women of her generation, had...
Chicken and Broccoli gratin
On my shelves sit two little independent cookbooks that didn’t begin their life in a journalist’s kitchen, buttressing a fashionable metropolitan restaurant or providing yet another hackneyed spin-off from a television show. Their journey began in a water driven...
Parmesan Biscuits
I am not what could be described as ‘sporty’. Football provides no interest, save for my curiosity of how players manage to amass more income per week than I ever pulled down in a year. The very mention of cricket and I slip into a light coma, and short of its opening...
![Parsi Tomato Chutney [Tamota ni Chatni]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_1519-400x250.jpg)
Parsi Tomato Chutney [Tamota ni Chatni]
With a reasonable climate throughout the summer and more than a fine crop of tomatoes in the greenhouse; Black Opal, Marzano, Marmande, Ailsa Craig, Red Zebra and Alicante, I was reaching out for additional recipes. Sometimes you spot one and you know it is faultless...
Classic Apple Pie
As a wine merchant I have undertaken a great deal of travelling, visiting wineries and vineyards across the globe. And although I have clocked up an awful lot of air miles, I no longer want my supper to have done the same. For the best part of human history, selecting...
Roasted Chicken with Clementines and Arak
“I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps,...
![Sweet Spinach Pie [Torta dí Verdure]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_0797-400x250.jpg)
Sweet Spinach Pie [Torta dí Verdure]
Once upon a time, Tuscany was regarded as a relatively poor region, although that has changed dramatically with the recent influx of tourists and their appetite for second homes and bucolic post-Renaissance lifestyles. By the time the likes of Tony Blair, Sting, Brian...
Quiche Lorraine
A few notable dishes seem to engage us from a different time zone. Although celebrity chefs seem unable to resist adding their ‘riff’ on original recipes, some dishes just taste pleasantly old-fashioned. This one embodies a time before fusion and crossover cuisine, a...
Tomato Salad
“The real Provençal cuisine was essentially lived and spoken, but not written down. It remains in the memories and long established habits of grandmothers, and in the country’s more remote towns, where tourists with a dislike of garlic seldom stray” A Taste of...
![Pea Soup with Ham and Mint [Sopa de Guisantes]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_1481-400x250.jpg)
Pea Soup with Ham and Mint [Sopa de Guisantes]
“Pease pudding hot, Pease pudding cold, Pease pudding in the pot Nine days old” English nursery rhyme circa: 1790 Pea and Ham soup has been served up under countless guises and has circled the globe almost continually since antiquity. The two principal storehouse...