If you’d like to come to one of my events or book a private dining experience, you can call me on 07764 336 220

So not being one to hang around, I immediately started talking to my friend Robert Barker who runs the inspired food delivery service, Farm Direct. And almost as if it was meant to be the old Citroen Garage up the alley next to Antonio’s restaurant on Upper St became available as a short term rental.

We’ve created a pop-up farm shop and kitchen until April 2012, where Robert sells his fantastic quality vegetables, fruit, fresh meat, fish and dairy and I use the produce to cook meals over the weekend.

The space was completely bare so we’ve created a kitchen out of nothing but it works and we’ve been cooking for parties, lunches and dinners since late November. Why not come and find out what we’re all about. On Friday and Saturday lunchtimes we operate a policy of pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth. We do so well out of this that we run a FREE LUNCH FRIDAY policy for groups of local pensioners.

Otherwise if you want to book for dinner, we are open for our regular Friday Supperclub (3 courses £25 BYOB) and we are running a bookable Sunday Lunch for up to 30 around the Barn Table with live music.
If you want to have a party any other night of the week, let us know and we can work something out.

VISIT US AT 133B UPPER ST, LONDON N1 1QP CALL PHILIP ON 07764 336 220 to BOOK

But all said and done I cannot fathom the baking craze. These gorgeous baker boys and their equally scrumptious lady peers – like Nigella and Lauren – are everything from positively pectoral to plumply fulsome but not one of them is fat. I mean really overweight: obese. But behind this refined, sugary, lardy, high-carb cooking spree that has become our national baking obsession, all these floury delights and their cheap mass production imitations are making everyone bigger. Apparently 24% of women and men in the UK are obese. The cup-cake culture, once middle class mumsy, now fuck-me Abercromby & Fitch is dangerous and is causing a serious health epidemic.

OK, people make their choices and I love good bread but if all you see is cakes and pies everywhere who’s going to stop you? Move over MDMA, these days serotonin levels everywhere are peaking on the shortcrust rush of insulin as starch converts to sugar and stores itself in our fat cells. But all the pushers are thin and gorgeous. Funny that.

The Bakers are clearly passionate cooks. And no doubt their hunk hungry producers have made a smart ratings choice there. But there is an incredibly serious point in all this. TV cooking programming has all but thrown aside any nod to healthy eating since the ill-fated “Doctor” Gillian McKeith was thrown to the wolves. In fact, the message she was giving, albeit a little obsessed by poo, is right. You are – or will become – exactly what what you eat. If you spend a lot of time cooking cakes, bread, pies and chocolate sticky sticks and then eating them, you’ll end up like the back end of a bus with any number of potential reasons to suffer complete engine breakdown.

Fine for those who have the time, money and energy to go off to the gym or body attack after filming. But the country is stacked high with people who can only just make it to the cake tin and back. And it’s just a bit dangerous that we are not doing anything to encourage people to eat responsibly.

It stands to reason that there is a direct link between obesity and people’s ability to cook. If you distance yourself from the actual act of cooking, then you are devolving responsibility to someone else for your physical well-being. Mostly that other is a nasty food producer who is filling you full up with salts, sugars and fats you just don’t need. And even if all you are doing is following recipes from the telly you are still giving over to someone else (however good-looking) the choices of what you eat. It’s time for TV to get responsible again. Move over boys.

You need to start with large Fennel bulb which you slice roughly and place in the roasting dish. I use the terracotta ones, they look good when they come out of the oven. The bird roosting on top. Then grate the rind of a lemon over the skin and rub it in, making it wince. Carefully separate the skin from the flesh, sliding thin lemon slices over the breast. Same with the legs.

Cut the garlic cloves in half. Stab the chicken with a small knife and insert the garlic (skin on or off) and season the whole with salt, pepper and rather lavishly shaken ground cumin.

Pop in the oven at 200-250C for about 20 mins until the lemony skin is bronzed. Pour a generous glass of wine to simmer the fennel and turn the heat down a bit. Not ‘cooking’ wine. Just what you’re drinking. A decent bird deserves at least that. Cook for another hour or so until the juices run clear.

Take out and sit for a while. Make sure everyone gets lots of the skin and lemon slices which should be deliciously crispy – and juices with the fennel. Serve with basmati rice.

Back in October, Robert Barker from Farm Direct and I got talking. We wanted to find a way to collaborate in an interesting space over Christmas. Somewhere I could put together street food and a market atmosphere with some children’s theatre as an alternative to the hideous Christmas experience in London that is Westfield or Oxford Street! The very next day I found that the old Citroen Garage on Upper Street in Islington had been vacated after 50 years of business. So we jumped in and luckily got ourselves a short-term lease to make our ideas come into reality.

For 2 weeks we’ve been neck deep in oil, grime and then finally paint. Our connections in the agricultural, food and theatre worlds are helping us put together a fantastic venue, where you will be able to buy Christmas presents, order your geese and turkeys for the festive day itself and keep the kids occupied in the afternoons with some entertaining and imaginative theatrical experiences that won’t break the bank. We’ll have Christmas Trees, wreaths, hampers, books and if you’re jolly, you might even get a warming wassailing cup of mulled wine. There will be Christmas Carols, jollity, some great food and it’s all under cover.

Welcome to The Islington Barn, 133B Upper St, N1 1 QP

Hector et al are on the button, on the ball and on the way.

Here’s what a few people say about PipsDish

“PipsDish is the most wonderful pop-up and of course the icing on the cake is dishy Pip himself, the host extraordinaire!” (Simon, London)

It certainly wasn’t just a food thing as Pip seems to be about experiences, both cerebral and experiential. We love it! (Maurice, Sydney)

If you’ve never done pop-up then don’t waste a minute to find the next place Pip pops’ (Devana, London)

“Delicious food, wine and very entertaining experience. Heaven only knows what he’ll do for Christmas!” (Humphrey, Edinburgh)

Wasted Food
An estimated 400,000 tonnes of surplus food can be reclaimed each year from the food retailer industry to be made into healthy and nutritious meals.

Food Poverty.
There are 4 million people affected by food poverty in the UK. BAPEN estimates that malnutrition costs the NHS 13 billion pounds each and every year.

Volunteering
Over 2.4m people in the UK are currently searching for work, including almost 1m 16-25 yr olds. These people need opportunities to develop skills and affect their community positively.

“Cooking without Recipes liberates you from the tyranny of someone else’s culinary imagination. Do your own thing, it says, listen to the food, listen to your stomach and your palate, let cooking become second nature. It is the book my grandmother would have written if she had known how to frame a sentence, which Philip Dundas certainly does. Read, inwardly digest, then throw the book away. This is the first day of the rest of your life in the kitchen.”  Simon Callow

‘Cooking Without Recipes’ encourages you to build your confidence in the kitchen, by going it alone. From how to shop for the food you like the look of without starting with a list of ingredients to cooking dishes you love, based not on someone else’s recipes but on your own skill, I want my readers to become creative and inspired cooks.

‘Cooking without Recipes’ takes a light-hearted but entirely sensible approach to cooking. By making the kitchen a less scary place to be, helping you understand how to work with a few basic tools, and explaining different ingredients, I try to demystify the ‘art’ of cooking, making it an easily accessible skill to us all.

It’s available on Amazon or if you’d like a signed copy delivered to you, click here

In another pleasing volume from Quadrille Books ‘New Voices in Food’ series Niamh takes us through her own passions for food. Ideas, concoctions, cooking styles she has perfected over years of feeding friends and exploring ingredients.

And it’s what she gets absolutely right. Food and cooking are about people, first and foremost. For what would be one of her slow-cooked pork cheeks in cider, without a gang of mates, several bottles of wine and a considerable seasoning of the craic.

Niamh travels extensively. To places many wouldn’t bother. When I met her recently she was off to Heidelberg – for some quality r+r – alone. Writers need that – time to regenerate. And she surely is a writer as well as a cook. These are not simply recipes to cook but to absorb. They ooze with pleasure and appetite. I am certainly inspired by scallops with pancetta and samphire and will be making my own butter, cheese and vinegar, thanks to her native wit and wisdom stimulating that curiosity in me.

This series from Quadrille is offering readers the chance to savour new talent, and giving new writers and cooks the starring role, they surely deserve.

Despite our recent uncharacteristic heatwave, it’s particularly this time of year that I do miss the rainy, wet-dog country Sundays of my childhood. The smell of sodden, decaying undergrowth, shotguns in the distance and alarmed pheasant leaping from the brake, the squelch of mud under boot and the lowering autumn skies.

Round about now, as the pheasant shooting season comes upon us,  my cooking instincts turn towards eating game. As a boy, growing up on a farm in Scotland, there was lots of it hanging about, literally. The birds, mainly pheasant, partridge and a few wood pigeon would be decked across the eaves of the potting shed, summoning up a gamey whiff before being plucked. My father belonged to the generation who believed game should literally be maggoty before it was fit for eating.

I didn’t really shoot. I tried a few times with my friend who had a shotgun. But I preferred to listen out for the crackle of the fieldfares descending on the hedgerows than exploding gunpowder. Not that I had a problem killing birds to eat. But as boys we deployed a far more subtle form of slaughter. We’d make our way with stealth up to the fir tree plantation just as the sun was going down. And using a catapult and ball bearings we’d knock the pheasant stone cold out of the lower branches where they’d be roosting for the night. I’m ashamed to say I was an instinctive poacher and quickly developed a clandestine arrangement with the local game dealer.

These days a brace of Suffolk pheasant from Robert Barker at Farm Direct is sufficient to create that ambiance of seasonal fruitfulness. I’ve been delighted to be able to source so much excellent game from his suppliers. Venison, rabbit and woodpigeon have been on the menu throughout the recent PipsDish Pop-Up restaurant at The Marquess Tavern in London.

And though you don’t need to go to the extremes my father enjoyed, most game – particularly birds – do benefit from hanging around for a bit. It softens the flesh by allowing the lactic acid to break down some of the tougher fibres in the flesh. But sadly, most game is no longer actually ‘hung’ so I recommend leaving your pheasant in a bowl in the back of the fridge for a week where, they acquire a nicely intensified gaminess.

When you are ready to cook them, rub the skins with salt and let them air for a while. I grate orange zest and crush red peppercorns over them before covering them in streaky bacon. This helps to keep the birds moist while they roast. They don’t need much more than 30mins. You can remove the bacon in the last 10 minutes to let the skin brown and don’t forget to let the bird ‘rest’ before serving it.

Bread sauce is an essential for pheasant. Just soak some old heels in a bowl of milk with a small onion studded with cloves. When you are ready, remove the cloves, liquidize and heat gently. All sorts of different seasonal root vegetables go well with game. Have your pheasant with very thinly sliced celeriac chips, fried in oil until crisp, roasted parsnips with cumin seeds and honey and pureed squash with butter. To keep your palate clean, try a crisp watercress salad with a dressing made from the leftover orange juice, red wine vinegar and clarified butter.

Fish is a bit of a problem these days. It’s a classic case of love gone wrong. We want it so much, there isn’t enough left. Basically our fishy favourites are failing. And even if we let them recover, we’re destroying their habitat so there are still no guarantees of successful recovery.

Farming hasn’t helped either. First there is the spread of disease into the wild population and then the fact that farmed fish are fed with wild fish ground into meal. It takes three tonnes to farm a tonne of hunchbacked, captive salmon.

We have to take a hard line. Just as we do with intensively reared meat and poultry. Every time you eat a battery chicken at home or in a restaurant, you are personally encouraging the enrichment of that industry. Same with fish. If you can’t source your food with confidence, don’t eat it. Ignorance is Hell.

The tricky thing is finding a fishmonger who will help. Like trawlermen they have a livelihood to make, so it’s not much in their interest to worry about sustainability. But the best do and with demand, more will. Thankfully some supermarkets in the UK now have a sustainable green fishing policy and support the work of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Look out for their stamp.

There are alternatives. Pollock, megrim and coley are pretty tasty white fish and oily fish like mackerel, sardines and herring are enjoying a bit of a recovery in UK waters. Shellfish can be hand-gathered instead of dredging and herbivorous fish like carp, tilapia, and barramundi are doing well in freshwater ponds. For anything else just make sure you always go for line-caught, except tuna, which is sadly pretty much out of bounds unless you catch it yourself with a rod or it comes from the MSC endorsed Seafood Producers Cooperative in Alaska.

It’s not all bad news. This week we had sustainable fish stew. It’s a quick and easy way to feed a gang of hungries on a Friday night and doesn’t need much else but some good bread and wine. Like all stews, you need balance, rich liquid and a range of potent flavours steaming from your pot. But unlike meat, fish cooks quickly so you don’t want it stewing for hours. For a quick fish stock the easiest thing is to quickly boil up some vegetables with the remains of any shellfish and fish heads and tails. The fishmonger will sell you these or you can use the bits from the fish you are about to prepare and make the stock on the spot.

Start by making a spicy tomato sauce. Fry garlic in extra virgin oil, add turmeric, cayenne pepper, green peppercorns and when sizzling, add two tins of plum tomatoes. Reduce this lot until it’s a thickish paste, add the stock and a bottle of good white wine. You should be looking at a vat of winey, steaming red liquor. Add two sliced fennel bulbs and simmer.

While doing that cut up chunks of mackerel fillets and wild Alaskan salmon and grill skin side up with soy sauce until crisp. Slice a large squid and a side of Pollack fillet. Beard and scrub mussels and have some fresh langoustines at the ready (their wispy limbs add something to the mix).

Now add everything gradually. First the white fish to cook in the sauce and then the squid and the shellfish. When that’s done add the oily fish and some parsley. Take it bubbling to the table and mop up with large chunks of bread spread generously with a fresh salsa verde of coriander, tarragon, basil, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, sea salt and fresh broken pepper.

Any leftover liquid can be blended to make a potent bisque for Sunday supper.

The reason this is so generous is that as a successful gastro-pub, The Marquess has it’s own reputation and it takes a huge leap of faith to let someone else come in and run their own show for 3 weeks. But that’s the spirit of collaboration. They get that. And their local customers and regulars love having something different, like a London pop-up restaurant, for a while.

What’s even more exciting for The Marquess is that they have a new chef starting in October. So in effect I’m the warm-up act, while the main event is still to come. Gethin Russell Jones, is an immensely talented young chef with a stunning track record. Gethin was the Head Chef at Graze in Brighton and before that cut his teeth as sous chef at Ju Tanaka’s Pearl in London. Tanaka says of cooking “When creating a new recipe, I always think how each and every ingredient will complement each other to create a complete and balanced dish.” With training like that The Marquess Tavern is set to be an even bigger hit, after the PipsDish pop up restaurant departs.

I’ve also had the privilege of working with Ed Crowley as my assistant. He’s an ambitious and charming guy who is starting to find his voice in the food world. Watch out for him. And read his blog. We’re about to launch the last week of the pop-up restaurant, and after almost full houses, every day this week, we’re hoping for the same. Bookings are already coming in but we have some places for Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, tell your friends and if you haven’t booked a table, email me or call 07764 336 220.

Here are the menus from the last 3 weeks, created from the fresh, seasonal products supplied by Farm Direct, Sillfield Farm, The Well-Hung Meat Company, Neals’s Yard Cheese and Tony Booth at Tayshaws.

Wednesday – Cornish Crabcakes, Watercress, Tartare Sauce – Roast Venison with Chorizo, Fruit Compote Meringues with Chantilly.

Thursday – Braised Fennel & Kuri Squash Soup – Hake with Romesco – Mrs Kirkwood’s Lancashire Cheese, Plum Ice Cream with Baked Peaches.

Friday – Beets Salad with Toasted Walnuts & Niblets of Giblets – Chicken Stew – Ed’s Double Baked Brownies with Ice Cream

Saturday – Ed’s Onion Soup with Parmesan Rinds – Roast Pork Belly with Girolles and Liver Pate – Plum Alaska

Wednesday - Golden Borscht Soup, Pan Fried Pollock with Pernod, Victoria Plum Sorbet, Wild Boar Fat Oatcakes & Cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy

Thursday - Grilled Cornish Sardines with a Chervil Crust, Woodpigeon & Girolles on Toast, Puy & Chorizo Daal, Poached Plum Alaska

Friday - A Broth of Many Squashes & Braised Fennel, Orange & Honey Poached Ham with Black Kale and Yellow Carrots, Quince & Bramley Crumble with Custard

Saturday - Ed’s Ham Hock Terrine, Whitby Landed Fish Stew, Apple Crumble Ice Cream and Cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy

Wednesday - Fish Soup with a Lemon Mayo Crouton, Slow Roasted Pork Shoulder with Quinces, Plum Sorbet & Cheese

Thursday - Rabbit on Toast, with Hedgehog Mushrooms and Lemon Pork Crackling, Loch Duart Salmon with Dorset Palourde Clams, Watercress & Swiss Chard Salad, Rhubarb & Custard Ice Cream with Rhubarb Stewed in Porter

Friday - Chicken Broth, Free-raise Rose Veal Braised in White Wine, Spiced Plum Ice Cream & Jelly

Saturday - Salmon & Wild Garlic Broth, Squash, Oakleaf & Courgette Salad with Champagne Dressing, 3 Day Cooked Welsh Blackface Mutton, Orange & Quince Pudding with Custard.

Rabbit should be handled with kid gloves; it’s boney and gets dry when over-cooked. So I vote with the Italian method of stewing it gently in milk. Traditionally this is done with rosemary but I find the fragrant oils of that herb overwhelming.

Chop some garlic and sage leaves and fry them in a little oil with some finely chopped pancetta or bacon. When it’s all nicely crispy, add a diced onion and soften. Empty this lot out of the pan, dust the jointed bits of bunny in flour, season and brown in the remaining oil. Put the herb and onion mixture back and cover it all with milk adding some juniper berries.

Allow to simmer for around an hour before taking out the rabbit pieces and easily removing the meat from the bones. While reducing the juices, add some peas and finally return the meat to the mixture, adding some chopped flat leaf parsley. Serve with steamed basmati rice.

It opened last year and has taken as long for me to book a table. In that time, every reviewer worth their salt has sung accolades, so I probably have nothing new to say about why you should book a table. But the inspiration of going there, certainly reminded me of all the reasons why other places get it so wrong.

Many restaurants think it’s only about the food. It’s not. When we can practically have Nigel or Skye at our side, cooking with us in our beautifully manicured kitchens, with a glass of something at our sides, we are all getting better at cooking. So going out has to compete with staying in.

Too many places forget that restaurants are about people. So when you walk into Trullo you are greeted by people who themselves eat out in restaurants. You get the feeling that the staff would be just as likely to book a table here on their night off. In fact you almost want them to join you.

I think the two reasons I liked Trullo beyond any other restaurant I know about at the moment are wild rabbit and partridge. You can add the bold statement of my overture of slivers of grilled ox heart with a kind of special haricot bean called coco blanc. The Belgian had mussels (naturally) with fennel and garlic. Both special in their own way and washed down with something called Morellino di Scansano, a light sangiovese.

Because we’re greedy (and it’s clever of Trullo to offer this), we went for a little primi platti of pasta with rabbit. Now, I am of the opinion that most people cook rabbit too robustly as it if it were game. For me, it needs to be treated like a baby, smothered in milk and cooked until tender. And this was a seraphic little pasta.

My childhood is filled with the sounds of coveys of partridges fleeing across the fields and images of rows of them hanging from the eaves of the wood-shed. With almost no cooking at all and accompanied by something strong and sweet (here chicken liver and figs), they are the most satisfying of game birds.

Salted caramel ice-cream with a slosh of marsala to drink, was so good I didn’t even notice what the Belgian was eating. We slithered home replete and happy that finally we found a restaurant where I had nothing to say except ‘when can we come back?’

It’s not hard to get it right. But it’s very easy to get it wrong. I bow to the Trullo experience. When you book, ask to sit upstairs.

Trullo, 300 – 302 St Paul’s Road, London N1 2LH (020 7226 2733)

Alternative: The other sensation in this part of the world, which is also almost impossible to get into is A Little Of What You Fancy, run by the inimitable Elaine Chalmers on Kingsland Road. You need to get into the Dalston vibe and realise that some very exciting things are happening round here.

There has always been a strong habit and energy for market shopping all over South London. Every year a few stalls pop up somewhere or a farmer’s market locates in a new area, from Croydon to Oval and Brixton to Greenwich.

The art of hunting for the best ingredients, from producers you believe in has become an integral part of the foodie experience. Unlike the kind of supermarket sweep you need to do for the weekly family shop, this is an altogether more reflective and nourishing activity.

Markets and street stalls offer a different approach to buying food. Just what you need on the day. The habit has been well-established in Brixton, where it’s been possible to shop for your dinner on the way home from work for years. And the fact that everyone’s tastes and national ingredients are being catered for somewhere in our capital, is something to be celebrated. It shows not only  is there hugely increasing enthusiasm for buying well-sourced food but also for food shopping as a lifestyle choice.

And the latest place you’ll discover this experience is on a Saturday morning if you wander along the railway from London Bridge, east past Tower Bridge. You come into a gaggle of Dickensian sounding lanes and arches off Druid St, including Tanner Place, Rope Walk, Stanworth and Maltby Street.

Collectively known as Maltby St, over the last year, this collection of outlets has grown. It isn’t strictly a market and started more as group of local food wholesalers, selling products to the public from their warehouses. And as more and more railway arches are being refurbished, this seems to be growing to include new openings and producers every week.

On the corner of Tower Bridge Road, Sebastian Harguindey the owner of Argentinian Grill Constancia a few streets away in Bermondsey, has opened a wine shop, selling fine wines from many regions of the country from Patagonia to Corrientes. The shop called El Madero also stocks boutique Tequilas and food products from Spain.

Cross the road and you are in the heart of the area. On Tanner Place, once a month The London Honey Company opens its doors for customers. Run by expert apiarist Steve Benbow, they have hives on roofs all over London from the Tate Gallery to Fortnum and Mason. Ring the bell and wander up to the third floor, where Steve will get lyrical about his bees.

Past a couple of irresistible bric a brac and antique warehouses you’ll come to Maltby St itself and the little lane running behind it called Rope Walk. This is where London originals Monmouth Coffee, roast beans and serve up their elixir to their enthusiastic fans. You can sit outside on a good day and just beside you’ll find the tiny La Grotta ice cream van. Selling palate altering flavours like peach and tarragon and strawberry rhubarb crumble, there isn’t a hint of artificial anything here, so the kids will be perfectly served.

On Rope Walk, the Kernel Brewery and The Ham and Cheese Company have teamed up, so you can literally scoff a plate of mixed charcuterie and cheese while necking some of the finest artisan ales, you’ll ever taste. And, as with everything round here, you can also take some home in your shopping basket. Further up here, you’ll come to the back entrance to Neal’s Yard Dairy. This is where they age the cheeses that arrive from all over Britain and Ireland. They only sell a few out from here, alongside some other dairy products.

In Druid St, the main players are Topolski’s Polish sausages, Kase Swiss with their massive rounds of aged Gruyere and other alpine cheeses and outside Jacob’s Ladder Farm specializes in organic meats. Further along are the St John Bakery and Bea’s of Bloomsbury’s amazing meringues and cakes. Definitely not to be missed sitting at her little table in the same arch is Rachel McCormack, a Scot turned Catalan who sells some fine artisan oils and products from Spain and will cook you up fresh, one or two of her irresistibly more-ish Salted Cod Doughnuts.

By far one of the greatest treats round here for anyone who loves their produce, is Tony Booth’s fruit and veg wholesale shed Tayshaws Ltd, which he opens to the general public at the weekend. Here you will find every kind of seasonal ingredient, from herbs, salad leaves, to perfect Italian plum tomatoes and heritage varieties of vegetables and fruits and quite simply the best range of edible mushrooms around. This is a cook’s Garden of Eden.

Behind Druid St, the tiny Stanworth St hosts a number of different outlets, from Mons and Borough Cheese to Fern Verrow selling biodynamic farm produce, Coleman Coffee. For wine buffs, not to be missed are Aubert & Mascoli and Gergovie, selling fantastic rural wines from France and Italy.

Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll want to linger. Browsing like this allows your taste-buds and culinary imagination to be tempted by something unusual or new.

Maltby St is chilled foodie shopping at its best. Sometimes, we prefer to choose from fewer well placed products than be faced with a cornucopia of choice that leaves us bewildered.  Here’s a place you’d as happily wander with your kids or your parents. And if you want to get there first before the crowds find it, go now. There is truly something to suit everyone’s taste.

Based in Highbury in North London, Farm Direct has taken online food shopping to the next level. And it’s more personal and feels less corporate than some of the other national delivery services. With Farm Direct, you log on to their website and specify exactly what you want to be delivered. No more overload of parsnips or apples, this is market browsing for the busy. And though nothing compares to the pleasure of literal shopping, this virtual experience is crowned by receiving a cornucopia of amazing goodies from the Farm Direct van straight to your door.

I’ve worked with Robert and his team at Farm Direct with all of my pop-up restaurants, even shipping a carload of stuff up to Edinburgh last Christmas for the PipsDish event. It’s comforting to know exactly where something comes from and how it gets to you. And with Farm Direct because they cut out the middle man, you aren’t paying Farmer’s Market prices.

I urge you to try out Farm Direct. And if you don’t always get what you want (which is the nature of getting seasonal, freshly delivered produce straight from a farm or boat), then Robert and his team will always find a way to compensate.

If you live in North or Central London Farm Direct is simple, convenient and environmentally sustainable shopping, even if you only take into account the packaging you won’t be sending to landfill. And if a brace of grouse take your fancy, or a bunch of nettles, or an eel steak, get surfing. Thank god, he lets you pick up your order too, so if you’re living too far away for him to deliver, it’s still possible. And when I’m being really demanding he’ll even come south of the river.

@ The Marquess Tavern, 32 Canonbury St, Islington, London N1 2TB

14 September – 1 October Weds, Thurs, Fri, Sat @8pm

As I progress my culinary adventures, learning about new ingredients and cooking for new audiences from Edinburgh to Brussels and Barcelona to London, I’m running a pop-up London restaurant, taking over The Marquess Tavern kitchen for 3 weeks and cooking up a daily dinner menu of seasonal dishes.

Many different pop up restaurants london wide work on different principles. With PipsDish it’s like this. There is only one sitting at 8pm every evening and like my other pop up restaurants in london, you can book individual tables for your party. This time, I’m working in a professional kitchen, where I’ll be doing the preparation. But on the night, you will be served from a central table, where you can see your dishes being put together, with the usual theatre!

My philosophy is ‘Cooking without Recipes’, which is also the title of my forthcoming book of which Simon Callow, writes “this is the first day of the rest of your life in the kitchen”.

There are no planned menus at PipsDish, I buy fresh ingredients and creates a new menu everyday with ingredients from the best markets in London and cook a range of produce and dishes and will always accommodate your needs. Whatever, I hope this will be one of the pop up restaurants London 2011, you’ll remember.

From Wednesday to Saturday 14 September to 1 October, you can book a table at PipsDish.

3-course dinner  £25

We’re happy to take large bookings or birthday parties. If you are booking as a big party, you can speak to Philip in advance about what you’d like to eat.

Some reviews of PipsDish:

“this is a triumph not just of culinary skill but hospitality too.. infinite riches…highly original menu, professionally executed but with a friendly, home-cooked flourish”

“A total triumph. fabulous food and wine and hospitality…”

” I’m reminded of one of my grandfathers favourite sayings: “do you live to eat , or do you eat to live” and thanks to amazing food experiences, such as PipsDish, I know absolutely where I am blessed to sit.”

“Flavour lies behind everything Pip does – yes, shopping, menus, cooking – but also the mix of people he attracts to his pop-up restaurants. A genuine feast. And a bright memory.”

TO BOOK A TABLE email: philip@pipsdish.co.uk or call 07764 336 220

The way I figure it, is this. Almost 4million kids in the UK live below the poverty line and are not eating proper, nourishing food. 1 in 4 children get only 1 hot meal a day. And that is often the free school lunch to which they are entitled. But with at least as many foodies in the UK, all of us indulging our appetites for high-quality, sustainable, organic, artisan produce, I also figure we can easily do something to help.

I’m campaigning for an amazing charity called Magic Breakfast that delivers free, healthy breakfast foods to UK primary schools where many children start the day too hungry to learn. A hungry child is unable to concentrate in class. Magic Breakfast provides a healthy breakfast to 6,000 children in 200 schools in the UK each morning. This is essential brain fuel for learning. This in turn improves child attendance, punctuality, concentration and behaviour. And ultimately a young person’s life chances. All for just 22p a day.

So given there’s nothing like leading by example, on 16 October, World Food Day, PipsDish will be popping up at Keyworth Primary School in Kennington and running a Magic Lunch to raise funds, so that the school can keep feeding their hungry youngsters every morning through the Magic Breakfast scheme.

But more than that, I’ll be working with parents and carers in the school, to show them how to run their own fundraising foodie events in the future. And we’ll be collaborating with local food enterprises and producers who’d like to support the event. So the Magic Lunch can eventually spread around the 200 upwards UK schools being supported by Magic Breakfast.

If you are a supper club or pop up host and would be interested in supporting a school near you by running an event, run some cooking workshops for parents and carers, dedicate a pop-up or supper club to the cause or just ask your diners to donate some money to the Magic Breakfast please get in touch with me philip@pipsdish.co.uk.

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You need a good range of texture when soup is the main event, so toast up some ciabatta slices in extra virgin olive oil. Add what you like to the top. I stir-fried broccoli florets in sesame seeds and oil.

This was the advice given to Elizabeth David by her good friend and mentor, the writer Norman Douglas. Certainly taking on the stodge of British culinary traditions after the war was a bold endeavour. Particularly under rationing. But she was a woman driven by her passion for flavours and ingredients – the discoveries she made during the time she spent in Italy, Egypt and Crete – and also by the rage she felt at the outrages of hotel food and pompous restaurants in her native country.

She was extraordinary and radical. And it’s thanks to her bloody-mindedness that she wrote the books and articles that changed so much of what and how we eat today. The seasonal artisan produce that enthusiasts are able to source so readily across this country is proof enough that we are no longer prepared to accept food we have no faith in.

This all occurred to me last week, when I was being given a tour of the ageing rooms and warehouse of Neal’s Yard Dairy. Another example of bloody-minded courage. Back in the 1970s when we were mostly limited to a few varieties of Cheddar and Stilton, Randolph Hodgson started on an epic journey which has brought the huge range of artisan British cheeses to international standing.

I suppose it’s exactly this bloody-minded approach to life that has persuaded me to set up a pop-up restaurant in Islington in September. For three weeks I will immerse myself in a frenzy of produce and ingredients from my favourite farms and boats and markets, feeding forty people a night at a friend’s pub, The Marquess Tavern in Canonbury.

And if I come out of that in one piece, then there’s a book to be published. Cooking without Recipes hits the shelves in October. Let’s hope I won’t be sending myself or anyone else to Hell. But it’s still a damned good rule of life.

If you find yourself at Neal’s Yard Dairy, ask to try ewe’s milk Spenwood from Ann Wigmore. Innes Log goat and Mrs Kirkham’s Lancashire.

And for something different, I’ll be serving these and other Neal’s Yard cheeses at PipsDish with Apple Sorbet and bacon fat toasted oatcakes. If you want an idea of what I cook, you can check through some of the dishes on this blog.

To book a table at PipsDish, contact me directly or go to the Marquess Tavern website. I’m running 3 Cooking without Recipes lunches (Fridays 16, 23, 30 £15), where we’ll work together preparing the menu and we’ll eat while I talk about the ideas in the book.

Today the once, bleak and blasted Blackheath is the perfect spot for a summer picnic or a windy walk. The wide open spaces make this the ideal place for dogs, kites and kids. And there are some excellent finds for foodies on the search for new and interesting culinary experiences.

However you arrive at Blackheath, it’s a surprise. From the train you walk out into a largely unspoiled village, which has retained its Victorian charm and is unspoiled by too many brash shop fronts. Driving in the other way, from Newcross or clambering over the hill from Greenwich Royal Park, you’re confronted by this expanse of open land and behind you, with amazing views across the great cityscape of the capital – Canary Wharf to St Pauls and Westminster beyond.

And you won’t go hungry in this little oasis of culinary delights. Whatever your mood, taste, or the time of day, there are some real gems in this picturesque village.

First things first, we’ll start at the top of the hill at the Princess of Wales pub, a local favourite with a solid menu of gastro English standards for the seasonal omnivore. When the weather is summery here, the crowds actually spill out on to the heath and tables for eating are like gold-dust, so prepare to queue.

Across the way, where Royal Parade meets All Saints Drive, you’ll find one of the jewels in the Blackheath crown, Chapters All Day Dining. With a Michelin-starred sister in Kent, this is sophisticated Modern European cuisine, overseen by Trevor Tobin, a young chef who came from Damien Hirst’s restaurant, the Pharmacy in Notting Hill. Trevor holds a Michelin ‘Bib Gourmand’, which personally I rate as a noble accolade, signifying an ability to cook good food at reasonable prices. They also use an unusual Josper oven, which works like a super-fast barbeque, sealing meat on all sides, without drying it out and still imparting the rich charcoal pungency.

A few doors down is Montpeliers, a tea shop and deli, set in an old milliners shop In the next few weeks they will start serving afternoon teas with cake stands and bone china in the Georgian elegance of the refurbished back room with a marbled fireplace, chandeliers and a stunning gilt mirror.

At one time, you might have looked across the pastoral scene from your Regency home on Royal Parade to see cattle grazing on the grassy pastures of Blackheath. While you’re more likely to see a couple of labradors and a baby buggy today, round the corner at one of the area’s best restaurants, Buenos Aires, they do take their cow seriously. Transported by ship from the pampas plains of Argentina, the steaks are sturdy and lean and because most of Argentina’s Europeans are Italian and Spanish, there are dishes with their roots in both countries made new; from empanadas, chorizo and morcilla (blood sausage) to the famous tomato-less pizza fugazza with onions.

From the Vikings and their pillaging to Wat Tyler’s peasant revolt, Henry V and the Duke of Wellington to the Suffragettes and their battles, Blackheath has been a rallying point for many dramatic moments across the ages. Perhaps with something more peaceful in mind and all this wonderful space on the heath, it would seem like a wasted opportunity, on a sunny day not to gather a few friends here for a picnic.

There are some perfect picnic shopping venues to choose from. Artisan shops and cafes where you’ll be able to buy great picnic treats. As you wander down the delightfully named Tranquil Vale, you’ll find French patisserie Boulangerie Jade (with a sister café on the other side of the village) selling breads, cakes, croissants and tarts aplenty. There’s another ‘boutique’ bakery on the same street, towards the station, called Black Vanilla. Here they also sell amazing versions of the ubiquitous cup cake and ice-cream to die for.

Hand Made Food owned by Fergus and Victoria Clague is rightfully renowned for fine food and produce, great coffee and charming service. They also have a growing reputation for dinner evenings and catering at exciting events. There are few tables outside and up some rickety stairs two more light and airy rooms where you can while away some hours in the company of a Homity Pie and fresh seasonal produce from farms around London. Or just pack some really fine food and wine into your hamper and head up to the heath.

It’s des res round here, so there are also the familiar chains, though they’re all fairly high-end. Strada, Bella Vista, Café Rouge and the fine dining Italian experience Locale all have branches here. And there are a few Nepalese and Indian restaurants too. Mountain View and Everest seem to be the favourites among locals.

I always reckon that if an area has a cookery shop (Cookery Nook) then the residents take matters culinary, reasonably seriously. And such discerning audiences need their daily provender supplied old-school style. Here cooks shop for their needs at old-fashioned butcher John Charles, greengrocer Kenners and Shepherd’s the grocer. There is also a Farmer’s Market on Sundays.

Another place not to miss is the Village Deli, which sells quiches, pies, sandwiches and all sorts of specialist foods. Like Chapters, this is also a breakfast heaven. Finally, a little hidden refuge called the Reminiscence Centre in Blackheath Village is the home of an intergenerational charity called Age Exchange and also hosts the village’s library. But if, like me you get rained on, it’s worth popping in for an old fashioned cuppa and home-made scone and to see their museum of grocery products.

Like many of south London’s grand suburban junctions, with main routes in all directions, Camberwell is a hugger-mugger of people, cultures and cuisines. Certainly arriving in the hectic streets around the Green you could be forgiven for passing through without stopping to explore. But you might just be surprised by the wealth of choice on offer. With food and cooking from Kazakstan to Mexico and Xinjiang to Scandinavia, it’s worth exploring.

The most recognised cultural landmark in the area is the South London Gallery. And its adjoining restaurant, No. 67, is a culinary jewel in the Camberwell crown. They have a menu of great home-cooked dishes, day and night and  serve the best coffee in the area. The Clore Studio with its high ceiling,  gold leaf mural and long table, looks out on to a modernist garden. It’s the perfect refuge.

House is another gallery on Camberwell Church St, adding more to the artistic fabric of the area. Their café is a light and airy rendez-vous at the bottom of the Georgian splendour of the Grove. Further along, on the corner of Grove Lane you’ll find a sleepy wine bar and deli called Johanssons, where in winter you can hog the open fire and read the papers or peruse the cookbooks, making this a local brunch favourite. They also have a terrace at the back and last year, started to open at night, making more rich the choices of places to dine.

At the other end of the culinary spectrum, Silk Road specialises in Xianjing Province dishes, which perhaps surprisingly for Chinese cooking has Muslim influence and includes a lot of lamb. This is food from far across the arid plains of on the Mongolian border. It’s spit and sawdust (in a good way )and far from the standards. Ask for the grilled lamb skewers and ‘big plate chicken’, which comes in a spicy broth with potato.

Two time-served locals are the Vineyard Greek Restaurant and over the road the Italian, Caravaggio’s. These are both old-school, so go with the no frills standards, and you’ll be in for a treat, particularly when you get the bill.

One of the biggest surprises in this hotch-potch corner of south London is the little paean to Iberico-Latin culture housed in The Church Hotel and beneath it the incongruous, Angels & Gypsies. Having won lots of accolades in 2010, when it first opened, steady business is bringing people from all over the city to sample what are, by any standards, great tapas.

Tapas, outside Spain, are always problematic. It’s a cultural thing. More than just the ingredients, which are so specific to the place, tapas, like all good eating experience, are about the conversation, the drink, the company and of course the weather. And sitting on the pavement watching the world go by,  fascinating though that would be, is not something you’d be likely to do in this neck of the woods. Nonetheless, here you’ll find some exquisite combinations with just a nudge of Mexican and British influences over solid Spanish foundations. Rabbit, salt cod (bacalao) and octopus, aged Iberico ham and chorizo, sit comfortably with some finely sourced English lamb and beef and bags of seasonal vegetables.

For cooks, a shop really worth visiting for interesting ingredients is the Continental delicatessan, stocked full of southern Mediterranean produce from tinned dolmades and Greek feta cheese to fresh seasonal vegetables and fruit, from Italian tomatoes and peppers, to Seville oranges and French garlic.

Back in Victorian times a music hall called the ‘Oriental Palace of Varieties’ was proposed for Camberwell. The plan was blocked by the imperious, puritanical, councillors  But you have the impression that something of such oddity remains about these streets. The Wing Tai Supermarket stocks everything from fresh seafood, to herbs and vegetables and everything you’ll ever need to make oriental dishes. And opposite is Café Bay, now a bit of a trendy destination lunch spot with its selection of Bánh mì, Vietnamese sandwiches. On a sunny day, you could take out your Bánh mì , grab a fresh fruit smoothie up the road at the Love Walk Deli and chill-out in the delightful Ruskin Park on Denmark Hill.

The sheer chutzpah of Camberwell is always a surprise. And nowhere more so than  at Kazakh Kyrgyz in the Pasha Hotel on Camberwell Road. The bizarre riches of the menu  offering Russian, Kazakh, Chinese and Turkestan dishes, is matched by the extraordinary colour and vibrancy of restaurant decor. You might even want to book ahead for a session in their Turkish Hammam, before dinnner or go at the weekend for some live music and belly dancing.

From it’s early medieval beginnings, Camberwell was an unspoiled rural village in the county of Surrey. With the coming of the railways and their bridges across the Thames, it became a melting pot of class and culture. Today it still has that thing we Londoners refer to as ‘edge’, when we can’t quite pin a place down.

One of the questions the BBC girly asked me was if I was competitive and if I thought I could win Masterchef. She should have asked me if I thought I could watch it. Long gone are the days of mercilessly laughing at the elongated drawl of Lloyd Grossman. Now it’s almost painful witnessing the emotional turmoil of the TV kitchen casualties. I told her that I had a book coming out (did I mention that?) in October, suspecting that it would disqualify me from the programme. Let’s hope so. Or that the producer reads this. Because I think if I was offered the chance, purely for the challenge, I’d be tempted.

Two books came out this month, which I want to promote because they are clever and handsome titles with an original outlook on cooking. Vanessa Kimbell’s Prepped! is clever, yummy mummy fodder. Her rather brilliant premise is that if you cook a certain dish, double the quantities and use half for another dish. Vanessa gives you all sorts of choices and ideas for this and once you’d worked on her dishes, you’d soon have a go at your own. What flows through the book rather brilliantly is her curious and fragrant syrups, flavoured variously with ingredients like elderflowers, rhubarb, vanilla and cardamom. This book is fun, copiously illustrated and you can almost smell the sugary aromas of the lavender roast chicken emerging from its pages. I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth but who could resist broccoli with hot vanilla vinaigrette?

Another is James Ramsden’s Small Adventures in Cooking. I’ve been following James because his quirky and frankly, quite silly videos on YouTube, in search of ingredients around London are exactly the irreverent oddities that we need to cauterize the flow of too much painfully pious, TV cookery. James also hosts a much-admired supper club called Secret Larder, too often sold out for me to get a seat. The book is another compendium of recipes (I would say that) but they are simple, original and autobiographical, which is how I like my food. You can find his engaging, observant voice, hidden among them. And it’s a voice that will appeal to young, urban foodies who want to experiment with the many interesting (and cheap) ingredients to be found on any London high street.

Talking of food writers, I watched Nigella being interviewed at the Hay Festival and must say that she came over as an honest, authentic cook. When asked about being coquettish, she smiled and said rather sweetly that, on camera, she was actually talking to her late sister Thomasina. She admitted the truth about cooks. We’re all basically greedy. And even if we don’t want to eat lots, we want to eat first.

Tonight I’m taking the Belgian for supper to our local Kazakhstani restaurant. It’s not his thing but I’m going in the interests of research. I hope he likes belly dancing.

You can already pre-order my book (Cooking without Recipes, Spring Hill, October 2011) on Amazon. Of which Simon Callow writes, “the equivalent of a culinary bra burning’.

The word salad describes so many variations on a theme. And yet it in most homes and restaurants the great British salad is a surprisingly uninteresting while ubiquitous performer. Amazingly we still remain faithful to the lettuce, tomato, cucumber, pepper combination with some over-vinegary mustard dressing sloshing around. Albeit we’ve moved beyond iceberg to radiccio.

And how often it appears to make up plate space, bring something to life or act as pointless garnish for an otherwise dreary dish. The point the astute Evelyn makes is that the salad should be poised and well-appointed. Something to prepare the palate if it is the prelude, the enhancing accompaniment to something bigger or the liberating finale. Whatever, less is certainly more. Every element should be present for a reason and not just flung in. Nowhere does the combination of flavours, textures and piquancy matter more. Too often our salads are reluctant interlopers or just the old served cold.

But you can really let your imagination loose on salads. You can compose anything you want, from recreating a standard hot dish as a salad to combining the bizarre and the sublime in hitherto unknown combinations. Follow your own counsel here.

There are a few guidelines, common for a hotchpotch of ingredients in any dish, which will help you make a great salad. The central advice is not to fall into the trap of bringing too many individuals who don’t know each other to the party. You’ll start to find cliques and resentment brewing between rival ingredients. The salad risks being over-run and disaster ensues. If this does happen, throw it all in a pot and make soup.

The leafy bits of your salad, whatever they are, must be lively and fresh. You can always tell is a salad thoughtlessly thrown together from one of those supermarket mix bags and a bottled dressing chucked over. So here’s a plea for imaginative and harmonious salads with elegant dressings. Choose your own leaves, find a balance of textures and flavours. Make sure they are washed and dried.

It’s worth preparing it carefully. This wants to be a vivifying dish. Raw vegetables are hard enough to digest and tomato cores, celery strings and cucumber skins are easily removed, like most of the other unpalatable bits.

Don’t forget too that any eligible salad item can be served on its own. Sometimes a judicious bowl of sliced cucumber or fennel, lightly dressed is the best antithesis to a stronger main course.

Most importantly, go in search of new ideas and follow your desires.

It was 1979. I met him at the bar of Lord’s Discotheque in St. Helier, Jersey . He said his name was Joe, that he drove tourist coaches for a living and he came from Argentina . I don’t know if he was a particularly good liar, or a particularly good impersonator – he even went to the trouble of carrying a coach driver’s license tag on his key-ring – but I was twenty-one and particularly naïve. I believed that his jealousy, sullen moods and tendency to show up at my place at all times of the day and night were proof that he loved me.

This was my first Bolognese, courtesy of Robert Carrier, whose precise instructions I followed to the letter, slice and ounce for hours on Sunday morning. Joe was due at my flat at one o’clock. He turned up at three in full defensive bluster, blaming a football game he’d forgotten about, trying to make me laugh about the whole thing, and, when that failed, resorting to loud threats of leaving. He didn’t have to stay and put up with this kind of shit. He’d had a tough enough week at work without his girlfriend giving him a hard time at the weekend. He was going to walk out and not come back. Go on then, I shout from 30 years away, walk out and keep on walking.

And I want to shake her, that girl who starts crying. ‘Don’t go. I’m sorry. Please stay,’ she says because she’s frightened, because she feels she’s in the wrong, because she can’t see she has a choice.

I can come up with any number of reasons for my reaction, then and on later occasions. I didn’t have any strong, independent, female role models. I had no self-belief. I used to mistake a man shouting for authority. I can cite my family background; the era in which I grew up; the bank where I worked that had different ideas about work, approval and promotion for men and women.

How long did I carry on seeing him? Six months, nine months? Until after I found out he was married and ran a hotel with his wife above St Aubin’s Bay. Until after he was taken into police custody one Friday night, accused of stealing drums of coffee and fillet steaks from the Cash & Carry, and coerced me into being his alibi. Until after his wife phoned me at work one day and said, ‘You think you’re special? You’re just one in a long line of girls. He always comes back to me, you’ll see.’

She was right.

Joe wasn’t Argentinean either. He was Portuguese. It seems like a strange thing to lie about today but at that time in Jersey the local people, and a lot of my colleagues in the banking world, looked down on the island’s Portuguese population who were there mostly as low-wage workers in the hotel and restaurant industries. ‘Pork-and-cheese’ and ‘spic’ were used casually and without conscience to describe anyone with olive skin, or with a Hispanic or Latino sounding name. Joe Santos.

Santos: originally Portuguese and Spanish for ‘saints’. The irony of that makes me smile and wince at the same time. His behaviour. How his wife put up with him. My own self-absorption.

He said the Bolognese was great, he could tell I’d gone to a lot of trouble, but there was no way it would have been ready two hours earlier. No way.

Some things take time.

Lynne Rees is a writer and editor who was born and grew up in South Wales . She currently lives in Antibes , on the Cote d’Azur , where she’s spent the last three years renovating a 100 year old villa. She blogs as The Hungry Writer at www.lynnerees.com

So I’ve been through the conception that took the idea from my mind and started committing it to paper. Then came the gestation, a long and sometime indigestible experience, where the content took twists and turns and many rewrites to sustain the direction and meaning. The pace slowed and accelerated, reversed and halted, while doubts, enthusiasms and renewed energies took their place. Ultimately the momentum was maintained to complete it. Almost. Needless to say the last chapter took the longest. Like not wanting to give it up. Indeed, it is undeniably true that for me writing the book was the pleasurable bit, not finishing it.

Now it’s born, all I have wanted is to see it flourish in the world. So the search began for a publisher, someone to bless the birth. Someone who delights in the charm of the child and realises that with the right upbringing everyone else will too.

But of course this is hard because this child of mine is illegitimate (neither asked for nor born into a good family) and most want me to change it, for it to be the same as the others (‘what no recipes?’) or tell me that if only it was such and such or more of that or this. And of course, there is the name. What do I call this bastard child? There have been many versions and monikers. But I don’t want to burden it with a name that will be laughed at in the playground or make people think my child is something other than it is.

This is a book that simply tells of cooking as it is. Not a secret art that only the initiated can understand. But that instinctive creative process that so many of our mothers and grandmothers exercised without even thinking (how typical that since cooking has become the man’s art that we’ve turned it into an almost unattainable skill). It’s not that I don’t believe in recipes but they teach us to cook by numbers. In a nation where most of the population is dying from its diet, we can’t afford for cooking or healthy ingredients to be something only the middle class foodie or bookish types can aspire to.

I am getting some interest and enthusiasm for this child of mine. I know it will never bring me riches, but I may have the confidence to bring another into the world. And when I don’t feel inspired, I have a fish supper or beans on toast.

Postscript: Within 2 days of writing this post, I was offered contract with a lovely independent called Spring Hill Books. Happy Days!

(thanks to Robert Littleford for his wonderful, inspired illustrations)

There’s always been a local snobbery about being on the wrong side of the river. From Glasgow to Istanbul and New York to Montevideo residents raise eyebrows if you appear to have stayed in the ‘other’ place. Last weekend we made a wine dash to Calais and thought we’d have a couple of nights in Paris (on the way). ‘But what about the Marais, Montmartre, Pigalle?’ my friends ask, when we say we’re staying deep in the Rive Gauche. Not, revolutionary in any way, and when you’re in Paris they wonder why anyone wants to go beyond Pont Neuf anyway.

Half a day wandering through the Montparnasse Cemetery brings you up close to the remains of everyone from Beckett to Dreyfus, Serge Gainsbourg to Sartre and Ionesco. This part of town was always louche and out there. There’s something contemplative and unsurprisingly restful about meandering through the forest of stone memorials. And it’s certainly deserves whisking back up to Saint Germain for a life-giving lunch at Fish La Boissonerie in Rue de Seine. Vichyssoise aux Huitres was certain winner for me with a grassy Picpoul de Pinet. Some essential bijouterie later in and it’s clearly time for late afternoon drinks in the highly literary Les Editeurs gently observing the passing book trade on the Carrefour Odeon.

La Coupole on Boulevard Montparnasse is one of the oldest Parisian Brasseries, where those dead artists and poets spent hours engaged in pushing the boundaries of the modernist world. Now owned by the Café Flo Group you’ll wait in a queue for an hour or more at busy times while the staff in this vast Deco canteen keep the table traffic moving. But a glass or two of champagne at the bar will keep your spirits high until you have the chance to sample some classic French staples.

Of course a weekend in Paris would be incomplete without a visit to the Sunday salon of Jim Haynes, the original supper club host. You can find him on the web and though it’s not quite the culinary and socialite melange it was 30 years ago in its heyday, there’s still uproar and fun to be had on the terrace of Jim’s tiny studio flat where ages and races mingle and aspirations soar.

On the way home, visit Calais Vins. This is a great family run wine warehouse off junction 41 towards Boulogne, where you should ask for the Petits Frères range; superb wines from next-door vineyards to the great names, at a fraction of the price. You can taste most wines before you buy them and the owner Jerome Pont will give you a good discount for your next trip.

All in a day’s work.

I had several reasons for deciding to make my own cake for my wedding a few autumns ago. First of all, I wanted to add a personal touch. Secondly, I was on a budget. I knew I couldn’t do it by myself because of my aforementioned cooking style. My sister was the ideal partner. My mix and match approach led us to a lemon sponge cake with a lemon curd filling. Marieke’s perfectionist approach ensured that we finally got the cake right.

Making a delicious, beautiful cake is an amazingly hard job: the cake wasn’t perfect the way it would have been had a professional made it. Time and patience, though clichéd, are essential ingredients. We put in three trials, each taking a day, over a two-month period, before making the real thing.

Marieke and I started two months before the day. Sitting on the floor of our local Barnes and Nobles, we went through every book on cakes we could find. I found a single layer cake that I loved the look of: a white base, with fine brightly colored stripes.

“But I want a stacked cake,” I said, introducing the first of many alterations. “With daisies.” Marieke pointed out that you have to create a sturdier sponge for stacked cakes, so we could try the recipe listed, but we’d probably have to alter that too.

The plan was to make a large, three-tiered lemon sponge cake with white fondant icing, decorated with colorful pink, green and orange pinstripes and sugar daisies. At the very top, I wanted a ring of candy red roses. Marieke makes amazing lemon bars, and she used that recipe to make the filling.

Then, it was time to go shopping. Our first stop was New York Cake Supplies in Chelsea. This dimly lit store has everything a baker could need or want. I spent $150 and came away with two large – and heavy – bags containing all the necessary hardware: a spinning platter to work on, dyes and nozzles for making the stripes, tiny little daisies for further decoration, fondant and marzipan as a base for decorating the cake, a cardboard circle to place the cake on, ribbon for tying around the cardboard circle, and pans for baking. This excursion took us about two hours. Granted, this was partially because Marieke had to examine everything in the store. “Do you need that?” I asked, looking over her shoulder at a tool that looked for all intents and purposes like a leadless pencil. “Yes,” she said. “What is it for?” I said, perplexed. “I don’t know,” she replied. I lugged my treasure trove home.

The next morning, we started shopping. Lemons, flour, sugar made their way into our basket. Each time we made the cake, we went through about twenty or thirty lemons. Shopping done, it was time to carry out the first draft.

As I reached for my tiny-New-York-City-apartment handheld electric blender, Marieke sighed. “You can’t be serious. Next time, I’m bringing the KitchenAid.” The kitchen became a laboratory and my sister and I were the mad scientists. My husband-to-be would come home after a hard day at work and would force a pained smile at the sight of the chaotic flour-covered kitchen and its cooks. After the first piece of sponge cake melted in his mouth, though, he relaxed and started to look forward to being the guinea pig in our experiments. “Too sweet,” he proclaimed, or “not lemony enough.”

Following the recipe we’d chosen, plus a recipe for lemon curd that I found on Epicurious.com, we worked for about twelve hours. The result was a disaster. The fondant and marzipan were hard to roll out, resulting in a lumpy, wrinkled canvas to wrap around the cake. Fondant, a white sugary dough, can be bought in blocks and then rolled out to the desired thickness – which is usually super thin, because fondant, quite simply, has a horrible taste. The layer of marzipan that goes below it is partially to give added strength, and in my opinion, partially to counteract the synthetic taste of the fondant. The sponge was not good for stacking, the lemon curd too sweet, and the decorating turned out to be the hardest part. As it turned out, neither of us were capable of drawing straight lines. Still I loved that design, so we decided to keep the outside and ditch the rest.

Two weeks later, we decided we needed a new recipe. We refined the lemon curd recipe. We rolled out fondant and marzipan as thin as we could, and wrapped our cakes. We unwrapped the cakes and did it again, until we got a smooth surface with no wrinkles. We spent an hour practicing straight lines. This version tasted much better, though it still didn’t look great.

We pulled off the third attempt in nine hours with good results. We now felt like we were ready for the final product. We made it the day before the party and it turned out to be a success. We figured out how to blend and dovetail our different approaches to kitchen work, plus we had a blast doing it. The guests came back for seconds and thirds and admired the design.

The only downside was that on my next trip to the dentist I had developed more cavities – three! – in those two months than I had in the rest of my life.