Croutons are a quick and easy addition to any good soup. Yet they provide such a lift of texture and buttery goodness that they become a mandatory addition to any good soup.

Baking is one of my favourite winter pastimes.  What I may currently be lacking in vitamin D, I fully intend to make up for with homemade treats (safe in the knowledge that I don’t need to go near a swimsuit for some months yet).  With the oven on the kitchen is warm, and the smell [...]

I have recently developed a sort of fascination for bread. Several things about it pique my interest, not the least of which is eating it hot out of the oven generously smeared with salted butter.

I started making this bread as “baguette de tradition Français” – although by adapting the recipe I removed some of the details that make a baguette a baguette. I made the bread-making process a little simpler and although I have given specific resting times in the method, you don’t have to follow these exactly – you can always leave it to rest longer if you are busy with something else.

This office is full of passionate people – car enthusiasts, extreme mountain bikers, hunter/gatherers, rock-climbers, artists, musicians – but one passion most of us have in common is for good food. Simon, one of our senior engineers, has taken this passion further than most – travelling to Italy, Australia and around New Zealand indulging in [...]

My mother is Irish. She grew up in sleepy little Limerick, made famous by the story Angela’s Ashes. As children she always regaled my sister and I with stories from home and of our family that we were yet to meet. When I was six she decided to whisk us off to Ireland to meet [...]

The names of our holidays have a built-in memory all their own. In English, the word Easter preserves the name of a pagan goddess, hinting at the pre-Christian roots of all the eggy fertility symbolism. In Hungarian, the word for Easter—Húsvét (pronounced ‘HOOSH-veight’)—encapsulates the centrality of food to this religious holiday, serving as further proof [...]

I’ve always wanted to try making bagels; the thought that you have to boil them before baking always fascinated me. When the theme for this month’s blogging came up as lunch ideas, I decided ‘why not’ and went online to find me a recipe.

What could be more perfect than a sandwich with ham, watercress, aioli, fresh rocket pesto and crispy fried garlic on grainy bread?  It’s the 1st of January and if you have stored your ham safely (see Laura’s tips on how to get the best out of your Christmas ham in the Leftover vegetable torta recipe), [...]

This recipe comes to us from Karen, a former colleague and a great baker. Currently she is somewhere in the UK enjoying a white Christmas and catching up with family, but last Christmas she made this delicious fruit bread for the office and we are now all BIG fans!

I have a cookbook, the blank kind in which you write recipes you’ve stumbled upon which are too good to pass by.  My cookbook is old, its cover is beginning to come loose and its spine is cracked and in need of repair.  Fingerprints track their way through its browning pages, hinting at the recipes [...]

Pizza is an easy throw together meal that can feed the masses or make a feast for one. When considering what to cook for office favourites one of our customer interface engineers piped in with pizza and everyone in the blog team gave a resounding yes.