Kit de Waal: ‘Writing’s very solitary – you do it because you want to find...
The acclaimed novelist on how her working-class roots inform her writing and her food choicesWhen Kit de Waal’s first novel, My Name is Leon, was published to proper acclaim three years ago, she...
View ArticleWelcome to April’s Observer Food Monthly
Delicious recipes for Easter, tales from an Icelandic farm, and lunch with Kit de WaalOn a chilly spring afternoon, there is almost nothing I would rather eat than a hot cross bun, a wave of salted...
View ArticleNigel Slater’s new recipes for Easter
Catalan bubble and squeak, chicken, trout and lemon swiss roll are all on the menu for the holidayEaster arrives and there is a definite change of step in this kitchen. The mood lightens, flavours are...
View ArticleDon't talk about 'food poverty' – it's just poverty
We need to deal with the economics of food as well as the obscenity of poverty. But the solution to one does not fix the otherIt is, I know, a statement of the bleeding obvious to say that we must get...
View ArticleLucy Worsley: ‘Johnny Depp stood me up at Hampton Court'
The historian and joint chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces on having to wear a bib on the set of her TV shows and the peril of exploding proseccoHenry VIII’s kitchens at Hampton Court had 200...
View ArticleI wanted to order my breakfast from a waiter not an iPad
Eating is a social pleasure – touchscreens just serve to make it more solitaryLast month, in New York, I saw the future, and I didn’t like it. Let me first set the scene. Booked on an eye-scorchingly...
View ArticleOFM’s classic cookbook: Rick Stein’s English Seafood Cookery
Nathan Outlaw pays tribute to the 1988 book that he borrowed from Rick Stein’s restaurant (and never gave back). Plus five brilliant recipesI wouldn’t be the chef I am today if this book didn’t exist.I...
View ArticleWhat's it like to live with a chef?
Long hours, early starts: three couples reveal how they juggle the demands of the job with domestic life – and who does the cooking at homeJames “Jocky” Petrie, group executive development chef for the...
View ArticleCounter culture: my life growing up in a corner shop
BBC presenter Babita Sharma on what she learned from helping out in her parents’ store, and why corner shops remain an essential part of British lifeI am a corner shop kid and my childhood home was...
View ArticleThe rise of social supermarkets: 'It's not about selling cheap food, but...
Millions of Britons struggle to put food on the table. Are social supermarkets, where surplus stock from big retailers is discounted, the solution?Near the tills, in what looks, at first glance, like a...
View ArticleThere's more to wine than terroir
Fashionable techniques, such as whole bunch fermentation, are bringing an extra dimension to winemakingReceived thinking in the wine trade these days is that what goes on in the vineyard is more...
View ArticleJessie and Lennie Ware: ‘We don’t want to turn into the Kardashians’
Mother and daughter on their Table Manners podcast – and the day it all went wrong at Pete Tong’sThere is a poacher turned gamekeeper feel to interviewing Jessie and Lennie Ware over lunch. It’s...
View ArticleNigel Slater: 10 recipes from my little black book
Exclusive extract: For years, Nigel Slater has been writing down everything he eats in his notebook. These notes shape the plant-based recipes in his new book, Greenfeast There is a little black book...
View ArticleWelcome to May’s Observer Food Monthly
This month’s OFM treats, from corner shops to social supermarkets, classic seafood dishes to my own latest recipesWe didn’t have a corner shop where I grew up. Our groceries, the tea and instant...
View ArticleMy dad was ahead of his time – except when it came to cooking
Despite his dreadful wurst omelette, my father taught me a great deal – not least how to be a good dadRecently, my eldest messaged me a photograph from the kitchen of his student house. It was of a...
View ArticleTan France: ‘I’m a nightmare in the kitchen’
The Queer Eye star on the joys of school dinners, potluck suppers – and being a better cook than his mumI’m the ultimate dinner host. I’ve been in the kitchen since I was nine and by 13 I could cook a...
View ArticleIn the Tory leadership race, I know whose kitchen cabinet I want to be in
Candidates love to be seen in their kitchen when touting for votes. But who’d be handiest with a Primus stove?The Conservative leadership election, which, even since the 1922 Committee changed the...
View ArticleWhere do chefs eat when they’re on holiday?
From Yasmin Khan’s noodles at a Thai beach hut to Ruby Tandoh’s ice-cream in Dublin, chefs, cooks and food writers share their favourite destinationsFor the past eight years I’ve been going to Ko Pha...
View ArticleClams, baked bream and torta caprese: recipes for an Italian summer feast
Jacob Kenedy’s menu, from aperitivo to pudding, is inspired by childhood holidays in a remote fishing villageI spend as much of the summer as possible in Sperlonga, which is to say not all that much....
View ArticleHow dementia robbed me of my love of cooking
Wendy Mitchell wrote a bestselling memoir about having Alzheimer’s. Here she describes how the disease has changed her relationship with foodSome days there is not much that I remember. When the fog...
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