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
Irish Oatmeal Soda Bread
“All sorrows are less with bread” Miguel de Cervantes from Don Quixote As I have mentioned elsewhere on this site, the saintly Delia Smith has a knack of making certain recipes appear seamless, none more so than this Irish soda bread. A potential nemesis to our...
La Gougère
If Bordeaux wine estates are in the grip of absentee landlords and investment trusts, Burgundy (Bourgogne) in eastern France remains a land where small farmers still maintain their own vineyards. However due to the escalation in wine prices these days, those same...
Moussaka
"I at last realised that eating was a spiritual function and that meat, bread and wine were the raw materials from which the mind is made." From the novel Zorba the Greek. Nikos Kazantzakis. In the 2002 film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the female lead and author, Nia...
Plain and Simple White Bread
"A technological triumph, factory bread may be. Taste it has none. Should it be called bread?" Elizabeth David. English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1971) Across the culinary television schedules from 1955 until now, we have been subjected to an array of celebrity chefs....
Croque Monsieur with George
"…you get a pretty good plate of food - and the Bellinis are just fine. They just cost a fuck of a lot". Anthony Bourdain on Harry’s Bar. It is far too long since I have squeezed around a table at Harry’s bar in Venice. At my last visit, a then unmarried George...
Steak and Kidney Pie
“I’ll be with you in the squeeze of a lemon” Oliver Goldsmith Mike and Sheila purchased a robust cottage in North Norfolk, with a garden more befitting the scale of a Victorian smallholding than a domestic backyard. The reason Mike required such a generous plot was to...
![Rice with Peas [Risi e Bisi]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/IMG_2623-e1627470115136-400x250.jpeg)
Rice with Peas [Risi e Bisi]
"To bless the holy Spring, which makes a garden a paradise, all I need is a soup bowl, a soup bowl of our own risi e bisi. There in hundreds of tiny little globes, I savour a tender green jewel of the earth scattered in a white sea of tender smiles" Domenico...
![Baked fish with potatoes – [Pesce al forno con le Patate]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IMG_1206-400x250.jpg)
Baked fish with potatoes – [Pesce al forno con le Patate]
"Soup and Fish explain half the emotions of life" - Sydney Smith Back in the early eighties, before Tuscany was trampled underfoot by New Labour voters looking to buy a seconda casa, my family and a group of friends, took a large run-down villa in the hills near...
Grilled Pineapple with Lime, Chilli and Rosemary
'Sometimes I read a book with pleasure but detest the author"- Jonathan Swift Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s life spanned the final years of the sixteenth century and the dawning of the seventeenth. A vainglorious, amour propre painter and very much the prideful...
Summer Vegetable Tart
Frances Bissell was one of the most acclaimed cookery writers in England in the 1980's. She wrote regularly for The Times for over thirteen years, as well as Harpers Bazaar, the New York Times and Homes & Gardens. She also managed to fit in over two dozen...
![Ham Croquettes [Croquetas de Jamón]](http://keithreeves.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IMG_8934-400x250.jpg)
Ham Croquettes [Croquetas de Jamón]
It has been my good fortune to have been invited to so many wine producing regions across the globe, with the opportunity to sample not only the wines at source, but also the accompanying indigenous cuisine. Wine producers take great care in presenting traditional...
Asparagus Tart
“Nature ordained that asparagus should grow wild, so that everyone may go and pick it, yet now we see cultivated asparagus!” Pliny the Elder Heaven forbid, although I am unsure as to whether he was merely surprised by such commercial modernity or thoroughly outraged...
Coq au Vin
“I’m having fruit salad for dinner. Well it’s mostly grapes actually. OK, it’s all grapes. Fermented grapes. I’m having wine for dinner” – Julia Child. Julia Child, seminal American cook and author said “Wine is part of the food chain, it makes meals more pleasant”...
Asparagus
"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses" Abraham Lincoln Just for a moment, as May Day beckons, I steal my gaze from the airborne grace of our incoming house martins, swallows and turtle doves to a more earthly...
Stock with Fergus
If you want British food at its finest, or should I say British country food at its finest, then you should head straight to St. John Restaurant near London’s Smithfield Market. If Gavroche has provided London with its finest French cooking and River Café its Italian,...
Tom Yang Gung
“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but not with an empty stomach” Jìt-jai thêe râh-reung bpen yah thêe dee dtàe dtâwng mâi yòo bon tháwng thêe wâhng. – Thai proverb As with European monks living off their abundant landholdings during the medieval period, Thai farmers...
Roast Chicken
"Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral". Frank Lloyd Wright Readers of the Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine voted Roast Chicken and Other Stories (1994) the 'The most useful cookbook of all time'. I have no argument with...
Spag Bol
“People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice… they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.” Anthony Bourdain I’m not sure as to whether it was the early...