The ultimate cheese fest

Imagine what it’s like being asked to judge a cheese competition alongside cheese makers, experts, buyers and sellers from all around the world… 

Let them eat chips!

I was in Ireland the other week when I saw a sign outside a restaurant, proudly advertising ‘No chips here!’

It took me aback. I love chips. Everyone loves chips, don’t they? Why would you boast of not having them? Isn't that like saying: 'None of that horrible chocolate stuff here', or 'No booze!'?

But maybe that chalked notice wasn't really about food. Maybe it was about class. Perhaps in Ireland, 'No chips' translates as 'Don't worry, no plebs in here.'

That's certainly how things used to be in England. 

Once upon a time, middle-class mayonnaise wouldn't be seen dead with chips

Meet the authors with Bloomsbury Cooks

There are few things that the delicious. team like more than a good food book, be it a volume of recipes from a brilliant chef or food writer, a foodie travelogue about a far-flung country or an in-depth study of a single cuisine (here’s a selection of our favourites). The best cookery books are sources of inspiration and indispensable allies in times of culinary need.

So, what could be better than a great food book? Well, meeting the authors of great food books, who can bring their paper creations to real life – and that’s just what book publishers Bloomsbury plan to do with a new series of talks called Bloomsbury Cooks.

Have a butcher's...

Saturday 3 November saw the first collaboration between delicious. and Simply Beef and Lamb, with a butchery masterclass at L’Atelier des Chefs cookery school in central London.

Danny Lidgate imparts advice as the gloves go on...

Forty keen cooks joined us over the course of the day to be tutored by fifth-generation butcher extraordinaire Danny Lidgate, head of the famous Lidgate’s butchers of Holland Park. What this man doesn’t know about cutting up meat is really not worth knowing. Danny kicked things off by dividing an enormous rump of beef into its constituent parts, explaining all about muscle fibres, sinews and why fat is so very, very good. He explained wet-ageing vs dry-ageing (dry wins hands-down), and grain-fed vs grass-fed (it’s got to be grass-fed for us).

Next on the butcher’s block was a half-carcass of lamb that Danny jointed with exacting skill. After a brief Q&A session, in which the boys in the audience displayed a somewhat morbid fascination with the workings of an abattoir (who knew that some lucky cattle go to meet their maker to the strains of a string quartet?!), attendees were let loose on their own leg of lamb, which Danny taught them to butterfly.

Beyond baked beans: student cooking

This week students at an Oxford college have hit back at a proposed levy on their canteen, claiming the proposed changes could cause financial hardships, particularly for less well-off students.

The students currently pay £4 a meal, but under the new charges they’d have to pay a fee of £150 a year to cover kitchen costs, and another fee of up to £150 to spend on food in the canteen.

The proposed increase has led to a number of students from Magdalen’s Junior Common Room committee boycotting the canteen. Lots of delicious. love is going out to two students in particular. Tilda Ferree and Kate Eccles are sharing the love and easing the financial burden on fellow students by serving soup from a ground floor window, with a suggested donation of £1 to go to the Food Justice charity. It’s thought that this is costing the college up to £5,000 a week.

It’s not that long since I was a student, and these guys put me to shame. Cooking from scratch when you’re living off a pittance can seem like a massive expense, and on more than one occasion I hit the Super Noodles in an effort to save a bit of money.