What to do when you have a surfeit of tomatoes? Channel your inner southern European and bottle them, of course! It’s remarkably simple to do.

One of the most popular pictures I’ve put up on Instagram recently has been one for Homity Pie. Strange name.

I got an email last week from a friend seeking my help for a dinner party he was proposing to hold in a few weeks. Dear Mr Onion, it began…

If your area is anything like mine then Covid19 has seen no flour on the shelves for some time, along with associated items like yeast, and it is only just beginning to reappear now. I don’t really know why, because bread has not been in short supply, but I can only assume that in isolation people have dragged out their lonely and neglected bread machines, or just started from first principles and begun artisanal baking. To that end let me introduce you to my friend Doug (the dough).

In his book ‘Bills Basics’ (which I thoroughly recommend), Bill Granger says that he stopped eating meat when he was in India, because the choice of vegetable dishes was so vast. Having recently returned from India, just in time to beat the worst of the Covid-19 madness, I know exactly what he means.

The Dad’s Onion kitchen is on the move! In just a few days we’re heading off to India for a holiday, and as well as all the wonderful sights and experiences, I’m perhaps most looking forward to the food and the opportunity to get some ideas and expand my repertoire.

Happy New Year!

Lately I’ve been playing around with and making a few vegan recipes. I haven’t grown my hair long (those that know me will know that ship has well and truly sailed) or developed an inexplicable fondness for mung beans. I also won’t be taking up veganism on a full time basis anytime soon, but my son and daughter-in-law have, which has pushed me into trying a few recipes, and I’m also interested in some of the replacements and substitutions that can be made for common ingredients.

There’s a wonderful feel about egg and bacon pie – something reassuring about the sense of simplicity, old style homeliness and ‘tradition’. It’s unusual (for us anyway) to have things like this these days, but it’s an old blast drawn from the pages of the ‘Golden Wattle’ cookbook.

Every cuisine has its distinctive dishes and characteristics, and it’s partly that variety that fascinates me and no doubt keeps us all interested in food. As with music, where I am constantly amazed at the different ways of putting eight notes together into something unique and new, so it is with cooking and the different ways of combining ingredients. Each cusine not only seems to have its own style but also borrows elements from other nations as people moved around the earth and made contact with each other and new ingredients over the ages.

Since 2010 I’ve kept a food diary – a record of the meals I’ve made and the things we’ve eaten virtually every day since then. What would be the purpose of doing such a thing, do I hear you ask? Read on, and note the stylish segue to the recipe for kedgeree.