back home

After a month and a half of busy leave-taking, I've officially gone from London and spending some time back in my home ground in Pensacola, Florida. There was plenty of good food in those last days in London, but now my world has turned and it's biscuits and gravy all around.





This morning I participated in a time-honored ritual of grits and biscuits at the Coffee Cup, Pensacola's best food landmark. The woman at the griddle said she's been there 30 years; the two old gentlemen at the table next to us have probably been meeting there every Veteran's Day - or every Tuesday - for twice that long.



The biscuits were high, light and buttery; the grits were creamy and begging for the over-easy egg. Welcome home!

On a Soup Roll 2

Okay, people in this house are on the brink of colds, so I took it as my mission to stop that nonsense in its tracks.

The Get Better Bacon Soup:

1 large red onion, large chop
4 large cloves of garlic, chopped
thumb of fresh ginger, chopped
olive oil to cover and saute

salt, pepper
sage
2 dried red chili's

add water and stock to taste

simmer it for a bit

chop 1/4 rasher of bacon and pop it in

simmer it for another bit

Serve with a beautiful sunflower shaped pull apart bread from L'Epicerie deli on the corner, along with a dish of olive oil for dipping, with 4 cloves of chopped garlic sunk to the bottom of it, salt and pepper. And Whitstable Ale, the get better beer.

Feeling better already!

Soup's Ahoy!

I am on a roll with soup making, I don't mind telling you.

A couple of years ago, I worked as a cook at a conference center in Scotland, a place called Iona. It was a gorgeous setting and an amazing place, but what I really loved was the work. Along with a team of 4-5 volunteers, I churned out breakfast, lunch and dinner for up to 80 people a day. The team taught me so much about having fun with cooking and what a collaborative art it can be. But I also found my own style in the midst of the group and I love how it has stayed with me. I have a cooking sense now that I never did before, and sometimes recipes just appear in my head and I work them with a kind of natural ease that I find very delightful. Nothing complicated, mind you, but the results are sometimes just wonderful.

Take my soups lately. Very simple fresh spinach soup:
a couple of onions, some cloves of garlic, all chopped and sweating nicely in a good covering of olive oil
a bit of veggie broth mix
great handfuls of fresh spinach
enough water to cover
salt and pepper
a dab of butter to deepen the flavor
when the spinach is cooked down, blend with a stab mixer and serve with grated haloumi cheese and cracked pepper

It's so green and good you feel as strong as Popeye after a couple of bowlfuls.

Next time - the stilton and celery soup I brazenly copied - and improved - from my favorite buddhist restaurant here in London.

In honor of all things green, this pic from Cambridge last weekend.