This is (not) Shepherd’s Pie because it’s actually Cottage Pie! And the difference, you ask? Well, the difference is that Shepherd’s Pie is made with ground lamb and Cottage Pie is made with ground beef. I make mine with ground beef and yet somehow I started calling it Shepherd’s Pie, despite the fact that I’m sure we called it Cottage Pie growing up. I have no idea at which point along the way I made such an egregious error, especially as I have never once made it with ground lamb, but, in my defense, I did read somewhere that the…
~Ninety-Nine Glimpses Of Princess Margaret Craig Brown This biography is a whimsical and highly entertaining mix of fact and fancy. It comes at its target from a myriad angles via diaries, biographies, palace announcements and lists — as in the possessions auctioned after her death or a chapter about the phrases coined in the year of her birth. And scattered throughout are re-imaginings of what might have happened if, say, she had married Peter Townsend. If you’ve watched The Crown you’ll have enjoyed Helen Bonham Carter’s magnificent portrayal of Princess Margaret in which she comes across as witty and whimsical, a…
Many, many moons ago, in the town of Eccles, Lancashire, an annual party was held to celebrate the construction of the church around which the town had grown. A right old knees up it was, with lots of food, drink, and Eccles cakes. Over time, the parties became a little, well, out of hand, as parties are wont to do sometimes.
Then along came Oliver Cromwell – pious puritan and crown usurper. Rumour has it that he deemed the Eccles’ parties as too pagan and Eccles’ cakes as too rich and sinful. Anyone caught eating one would be, well – thrown in jail!
Years ago, for kids everywhere in England, the turning of leaves from green to brown meant only one thing: conker season. School playgrounds would be filled with the swinging of chestnut brown conkers as children vied to attain superior conker status. I can’t say I played it much myself, but my younger brother was a huge fan. In an attempt to garner a champion conker he was forever soaking them in vinegar, or baking them in the oven where they would generally catch fire. The game of conkers is played by threading a string through the conker and holding it…
Four iconic British TV series — two from the seventies, two from the nineties. A little long in the tooth perhaps and lacking some of the bouncy lushness of a Bridgerton or Downton Abbey, but I like to think that these shows have a classic meets retro vibes feel that’s all their own. ~The House of Eliot Sisters Evie and Beatrice, brought up by a stick-in-the-mud father who gave them little in the way of niceties and education (their mother died giving birth to Evie) despite being an affluent physician, find themselves in dire straits when he dies. Turns…
Instructions for a Heatwave Maggie O’Farrell A family drama set against the infamous British heatwave of 1976. Robert Riordan, recently retired, husband to Gretta, gets up from the breakfast table one morning, leaves the house to buy a newspaper and doesn’t return. Gretta, the Irish matriarch of this family that has settled in London, calls her kids who then return home—including Aoife, the youngest, who hasn’t been seen in several years and currently lives in New York. From here we learn the backstories of each sibling and how they interact with each other. Michael Francis, a history teacher who put aside…
According to Winston Churchill, the gin and tonic “has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.” These days, of course, a case could be made as to whether or not those Englishmen’s lives, as they wreaked havoc over a quarter of the world while ruling their Empire, were actually worth saving. But that is a moral debate for another day. Meanwhile, it was the quinine in the tonic that was responsible for any lives saved. Seventeenth century Peruvians discovered that the bark of the cinchona tree (which became known as the fever tree) could…
As a kid, Heinz Oxtail Soup was one of my favourite things to eat. It’s been a long time since I’ve had it (it’s unavailable in the US) — and it probably wouldn’t taste nearly as good as I remember it anyway — but I have never forgotten that sense of comfort it provided. And so, feeling a bit nostalgic, I decided to have a go at making my own — a version more suited to my grown up self. It’s not the simplest or quickest of recipes as it needs to be made over a couple of days (hence weekend…
~Say Nothing Patrick Radden Keefe A brilliantly written, hard to put down account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland between the 1960’s and 1998 Good Friday Agreement. At its centre is the story of Jean McConville, a 38 year old, recently widowed mother of ten who is kidnapped in front of her children and never seen again. With a back and forth timeline Keefe unravels the details of the kidnapping, setting it against the harrowing history of the IRA, Sinn Fein and the antagonism of Protestant Unions vs Catholic Republicans, while also giving the backstory of a myriad villains involved…
When the skies are grey, when the world, despite so many bodies crushed together, feels like a vast and lonely place, when life feels irreparably off kilter, rice pudding can always be relied upon to set everything to rights. Rice pudding is British nursery food at its very best. As a child I would visit my grandparents in Wales each summer with my family and this is one dessert that I always remember my Nana making. As an adult, and without her recipe, I attempted to make my own. Nana baked hers so that’s where I too, began. The only…
