James Ramsden

Competition: Lurpak Bake Club

jamesramsden — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:34:51 +0000

There’s a fun little competition going on over at the Lurpak Bake Club. All you have to do is submit a tart recipe and you’re in with a chance of winning dinner for you and a friend cooked by me. Here’s what you’ll eat: Bagna cauda with radishes, asparagus, and whatever else is in the [...]

Recipes: To tweak or not to tweak?

jamesramsden — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:35:51 +0000

There are, as we all know, and broadly speaking, three kinds of cooks. There are the Deliacolytes who follow recipes so closely that they leave streaks of snot on the page. There are those – most of us, I’ll say – who’ll have a look at a recipe and vaguely follow it here and there [...]

How to eat cod sustainably

jamesramsden — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:04:06 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece for the Guardian about the continuing and increasing headache that is eating fish these days. Going several better, the people over at Great British Chefs have made this brilliant infographic about eating cod. Armed with this, we should all be able to eat cod with a clear [...]

Recipe | Lamb koftas

jamesramsden — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:30:15 +0000

A kofta, as you probably know, is a meatball with swagger. How much swagger you give it is entirely up to you. I chucked in what was to hand and it worked really rather well. I’d never added pine nuts or raisins but there they were, winking at me, when I opened the [...]

Recipe | Duck and miso ‘ramen’

jamesramsden — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:04:06 +0000

Edit: certain nitpicky authento-fusspots (ahem, Lizzie) have pointed out that avec udon this ain’t no ramen, which is no doubt right, but I’m all for gnomic, synoptic perspicuity, and so, with all the other ducks in a row, ‘ramen’ it is. Straightforward, damn good. If not duck, try with strips of chicken or nuggets or minced pork. Serves [...]

Recipe | Linguine with butter, brown shrimp and capers

jamesramsden — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:48:18 +0000

The phone photo I had was so bad that which ever way round I flipped it it still looked upside down, so you’ll just have to imagine a bowl of pasta. At another time I’d prefer my butter and brown shrimp with toast, but on a chilli day hot noodles just – and only just, [...]

BBC Radio 1 Food Trends

jamesramsden — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:10:31 +0000

I’m doing a weekly ‘food trends’ snippet on the lovely Gemma Cairney’s weekend breakfast show on BBC Radio 1 each Sunday. I never got round to posting the first one, on dude food, but last Sunday I was talking tea. You can listen here, it starts at 1.48 (after Rita Ora, yo).

Recipe | Cider-braised pig cheeks with chorizo, clams, parsley and beans

jamesramsden — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:23:08 +0000

I tend not to blog supper club dishes. This might be because there’s never time, amidst the ordered chaos of feeding four courses to twenty people, to take photographs. Or it might be because in August there’s going to be a rather more substantial publication and I wanted to keep my powder dry. I couldn’t [...]

Recipe | Udon noodles with bok choi and dashi

jamesramsden — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:16:56 +0000

There’s a new Asian supermarket on the Holloway Road, just down towards Highbury Corner. Apparently it used to be a shop called Fettered Pleasures but I wouldn’t know about that. Now it’s brightly lit and, based on yesterday’s brief and impartial visit, pretty well stocked. We bought some fresh udon noodles and bok choi and various [...]

Recipe | Five-spice pork belly with noodles and greens

jamesramsden — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:15:17 +0000

This is a terrific way of using up leftover pork belly, although it would undoubtedly be worthwhile to cook it from scratch. The house was inexplicably bereft of five spice powder, so here I use something of a homespun version, which works well even if the balance isn’t quite right, or at least quite the [...]