Welcome to March's OFM
Spring is here and we celebrate with a glass of something in tune with the season, suggested by David Williams. He has a cellar full of ideas for something to raise to the arrival of spring sunshine, cherry blossom and the rising sap.
Tarunima Sinha has a box of chocolate treats for us, including muscovado cookies, a cardamom cake decorated with edible flowers, and extravagant pistachio and kataifi cups.
The best kitchen knife is the one with which you are most comfortable. It might be a Japanese number that cost the best part of £500 or one you inherited from your granny. I would be lost in the kitchen without my Dan Prendergast cook's knives, but I still have one from hotel school that must be knocking on for half a century old. Rachel Cooke has been on the hunt for a new kitchen knife – a task that can be both frustrating and intimidating – but may have found just the one for her.
Jimi Famurewa gives us an insider's look at the current craze for restaurants putting their behind-the-scenes stories online. You can either file this output as TMI or follow avidly as restaurants show us the workings of their kitchens. Whatever your view, it is proving to be a way of getting bums on seats, and in this day and age, with businesses opening and closing like clamshells, that is what it has to be about.
We also take lunch with Claudia Roden at an intimate little place in Hampstead, where she tells us she is working on a new book – a fact that will delight her many fans. My life on a plate features Dame Denise Lewis, who talks grilled snapper and batch cooking, and how she makes a perfect gin and tonic.
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