A begrudgingly benevolent bestowment: Cardamom and seville orange marmalade

I’ve never made marmalade before and so didn’t have a tried and tested recipe to pass on (benevolently, but almost begrudgingly as they so often seem to be). Instead I scoured the internet, bringing together the different (and often contrasting) ideas from a whole host of recipes to suit what seemed to me the ideal. You see, I want my marmalade to be deep flavoured and darkly coloured, and yet aesthetically I want it to be clear as crystal with generous slithers of thick-cut skin (but not too thick). Taste-wise I don’t want it to be too sweet as I tend towards the tart (oh err) and I wanted to have a little hint of something else in there too: something hidden and subtle, but different to the other jars that you can pick up at your local supermarket. So I stole a little bit from here, a little from there, the general method from Delia, and some tips from twitter (in particular @terreaterre). The result is a confuddled recipe that I can call my own and benevolently (though somewhat begrudgingly) bestow upon you all. I do hope you enjoy it and feel free to tweak away to match your own tastes and aesthetics.

No-haste-big-taste curry: Malaysian beef rendang

I’ll hold my hands up right from the start, this doesn’t look like an authentic “rendang”. Firstly, it’s pretty darn wet and doesn’t a bit resemble the other rendangs I’ve seen out there (all of which look marv). And secondly, I fiddled with the recipe a bit. However, I’m going to dub this a “wet rendang” (which is a real thing, I swears it), and press on confidently.

Massive blog fail: A taste of Christmas #3, #4, #5, etc

Can I just apologise for the *massive* blog fail that took place in December. My epic “A taste of Christmas” series fell staggeringly short of my plans and ended up consisting of only two rather un-spectacular posts. To add insult to injury, I really and truely did cook all of the things that I planned to cook, and just failed to actually write them up. So, just so I have something to show for my efforts, here are those “tastes” in pictures:

F&G Eats Brighton: Bonjour Breakfast (the breakfast that comes to your door)

Everyone loves breakfast in bed; unfortunately I don’t think my husband loves me enough to make one for me. As I recall, I have given him the gift of bed crumbs on numerous occasions, but to my knowledge (though this will doubtlessly be followed by hurt contradictions) Sven has never indulged me with such a luxury. In fact, I’m not sure Sven has even got up before me on a weekend more than say 5 times in 7 years, and thinking about it he certainly has never made me breakfast (leave alone plated it and served it on a tray). I should temper this accusation with the admission that my husband does do all the cleaning, washing up, laundry, hoovering, etc, so I ain’t mad at him, but dammit… I want breakfast in bed just like everyone else.