Spectator Life

It is hard to think of a vegetable which is as eagerly anticipated as that of home-grown asparagus. Partly it is because the season is so short: St George’s Day traditionally marks the start of the season which typically lasts for just eight weeks. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and, so long as we resist the temptations of year-round flown-in asparagus from foreign climes, the arrival of the first spears of this vegetable grown on home soil is as exciting a moment as any in the culinary calendar. There are occasional disruptions to nature’s rhythm: last year frosts ruined large parts of the British crop forcing supermarkets to stock asparagus from abroad.

You don’t see Waldorf salad so much nowadays. It’s a simple dish: raw celery, apple, grapes and walnuts, tossed in a mayonnaise-based dressing. Although you might still find it packaged in the bigger supermarkets, it’s fallen off dinner tables and restaurant menus alike. We wrinkle our noses at the prospect of combining fresh fruit and mayonnaise: the combination always makes me mentally place the Waldorf salad in the 70s, alongside big platters of dressed salmon, covered in wafer-thin cucumber scales, and a host of other mayonnaise-coated, tricky-to-identify bowls purporting to be salads, possibly involving tinned mandarin oranges.

Wine tourism is booming. France alone attracts 10 million oenophile tourists each year, generating almost $6 billion (£4.6 billion) annually, according to CNBC. But with places like Bordeaux, Champagne and Napa Valley in the US suffering increasingly from overtourism and rising prices, many wine lovers are seeking more offbeat destinations. From tiny islands to primordial forests and buzzing metropolises, here are the surprising places which make excellent wine breaks. Budapest, HungaryThere's more to Hungarian wine than Tokaj For most people, Hungarian wine starts and ends with the golden syrupy nectar that is Tokaj. But the country’s wine culture is far more nuanced than this lets on.

Beef is one of our proudest national exports. Though showcasing British beef to the world has at times had its challenges, one story raises a smile: as a result of BSE, British beef was banned in France during Lord Jay’s tenure as our ambassador in Paris. He and his wife Sylvia made a principle of serving only British ingredients at ambassadorial functions wherever possible – and, as a result, they felt they could not serve beef at all. As I recount in my forthcoming book, they did, however, have one triumph. Lord Jay recalled: 'Just as the ban was beginning to be lifted the French said that British beef could be imported to the great agricultural show at SIAL, provided that when the show was over the British beef was either burned or taken to the British Embassy.

The onset of summer makes me feel giddy. And it seems from those piling into beer gardens and loading up their hampers for picnics in parks, I’m not alone. Perhaps this is because it is of course too early for summer, I’m not ready for it. And to be fair, it’s barely arrived. Spring is still stamping its feet with April showers, and shaking its blossom filled trees to remind us of its presence. But those hot hazy golden days are creeping in, even on bank holiday weekends, the traditional domain of miserable, dreary weather, which we bravely brazen out, so determined are we to make the most of the one day vacation from work. No need this year: sunshine and giddiness prevails. Such giddiness calls for something silly, something bright and zippy, and maybe a bit childish.

When life moved to Zoom in March 2020, I quickly found myself with a lot of time on my hands. With events and weddings off the cards indefinitely, I needed to pivot my baking business and realised that if people couldn’t go out to eat cake, I needed to get the cake to them. Overnight, boxes and packing tape were ordered, recipes chosen, and my postal bakes business was formed. Thanks to the power of Instagram, demand was overwhelming. People ordered boxes for their households – their arrival a mini event to look forward to amid the monotony of lockdown – but most ordered for others. Boxes were being sent to say everything that I was feeling, too – I love you, I miss you, I’m here for you, we will be together again.

Savvy planning can negate succumbing to a sad Ginsters sandwich and insipid service station coffee as you hit the road and criss-cross your way around the UK this spring. Of course, there are the A-grade service stations run by the Westmoreland family (at Gloucester on the M5, Cairn Lodge on the M74 and Tebay on the M6). This trio has revolutionised our expectation of a motorway stop and are worth letting your petrol gauge hit the red for: no Burger King, proper coffee and farm shops heaving with local pies, pickles and preserves. But plot carefully and there are other lesser known foodie stops that make the prospect of a day spent in the car a little more enticing, from fish trucks and bakeries to hidden cafes and upmarket diners, all on the road or just a short diversion away.

It always feels criminal to throw away hot cross buns. Hot cross buns are marked by their scarcity in my house: no sooner do they cross the threshold than they are pounced upon and demolished. Assuming that you are capable of more restraint than me, this recipe deals with the unlikely scenario of how to use up those leftover buns. The ravenous will be relieved to hear that only two buns are required. And if you have more willpower than I do, you can even hold back a couple more hot cross buns and serve the ice cream between two halves of a bun, as a particularly Eastery ice cream sandwich. This is a bit of a cross between traditional brown bread ice cream and my a spice-infused ice cream. It has a custard base, infused with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Why was it that when lockdown haunted our doors we all rushed out to buy pasta? Dry wheat in a bag in a funny shape. Cheap, yes, and ridiculously easy to cook. And, if the supermarket cheddar didn’t run out, very good with cheese. But still, pasta. Shouldn’t we have thought of something more inventive? Yet a spate of restaurants popping up round London with new enthusiasm now that we’re out and about again suggests that the Italian carb is enjoying a gourmet renaissance. Stevie Parle, founder of the fresh pasta restaurant Pastaio, speaks of pasta-making as an 'obsession'. The satisfaction of 'extruding pasta through bronze dies' and 'slow cooking delicious ragu' that he refers to when we speak sounds practically religious.

Easter is almost upon us and with it comes the mouth-watering prospect of roast lamb. It has become increasingly fashionable in recent years to eschew the leg and do a slow-cooked, meltingly tender shoulder of lamb for a Sunday roast. Rightly so, for the shoulder meat is rich and delicious, but when it comes to Easter there is something suitably grand and evocative of the new season about a whole leg brought to the table, pink in the middle and surrounded by spring veg. Rubbing it all over with olive oil, sea salt, garlic and rosemary is a classic preparation – adding some lemon zest too gives a welcome freshness.

Here to separate the good eggs from the great eggs, we’ve tasted the Easter treats from the UKs favourite retailers. The 2022 eggs range from the innovative to the slightly baffling but the good news is there’s great options here for every taste and budget. Autore Milk Chocolate Egg with Pistachios, £19.70 – Delicaro Upper crust food merchant Delicario is selling a selection of eggs made by Campaian cocoa ultras Autore Chocolate. This is the sort of website where you can buy Japanese beef that was pampered to death and special tuna fed exclusively on truffles (probably) so expectations are high. The thick, milk chocolate comes with a generous pebble-dashing of Bronte pistachios, nuts of protected origin grown on the slopes of Mount Etna.

Bringing something golden, sweet and uplifting into your kitchen and life is exactly what is required at this time of year. And it doesn’t get more golden, sweet or uplifting than a syrup sponge. A syrup sponge is a steamed pudding, laced with golden syrup. The pudding itself is made by pouring a cake-style batter into a basin or bowl, sealing it with paper and foil, and then placing it in a half-filled pan of water, where it is gently cooked by the steam, until the sponge is light and risen. Golden syrup is an inverse sugar, which means it is created in the process of refining sugar, or after a sugar solution has been treated with an acid. Its flavour is distinctive: lighter than honey, like the palest of caramels, with a clean sweetness which tastes almost metallic.

We all know about the perils of sugar. 90 per cent of us suffer from glucose (blood sugar) spikes every day. You may have even contended with the symptoms without recognising the cause: fatigue, cravings, mood swings, poor energy, bad sleep, acne and, crucially, weight gain. But what if you could mitigate the effects of glucose without forgoing sugar and carbohydrates completely? Starchy and sugary foods turn to glucose as we digest them. The resulting glucose then enters our blood stream. If too much glucose arrives too quickly in the bloodstream it causes a glucose spike. These spikes bring with them consequences: inflammation, premature ageing and fat storage. Many diets suggest cutting out sugar and carbohydrates completely.

Sometimes, when I am planning a pudding, it can feel like there is a hitch in my brain, a little sticky spot that I catch on, and have to release myself from before I can move on. That hitch, that sticky spot, is rhubarb and custard. I know that there are other pudding bases, sweet dishes that are more original, more popular. I know that there exist other marvellous fruits that deserve the spotlight, that there are chocolate concoctions that will ooze and impress, bitter caramels that will shock and delight. But in order to get to them, I have to move past my first instinct which is always: rhubarb and custard. It’s not simply that it is a default combination in my mind.