welcome to yumblog.co.uk

Another slightly involved yet very tasty recipe from the mighty Dan ‘Love Bites’ Lepard. The slightly involved element is both understatement and DL raison d’etre and doubtless all his recipes benefit from the multi-tiered preparation, but SOMETIMES you want to make something you can eat while you can still remember starting the recipe. These are [...]

[Read more →]

Ricotta & Parsley Ravioli with Tomato & Cream Sauce
The offer of some Valentine themed goodies from our friends at Interflora and a cooking apron from our latest chums at The Last detail, prompted us to cook up something which would make an ideal romantic dinner for two. Besides, it was the day before the day [...]

[Read more →]

The recent bracing wave of cold and snow prompted a frenzy of soup making here at Yumblog Towers. Of the many and tasty varieties produced few warmed the cockles more than this Colcannon, which is rich, smooth, buttery and fundamentally Bubble and Squeak in an easy to ingest liquid form.

So good you’ll want to stick [...]

[Read more →]

Recently BluSky Innoventions™ the ‘Pseudo-Science, Holistic Wellness, Quantum Synergy & Bio-Weapons Division’ of Yumblog Holdings Plc was given an obscenely large EU grant to investigate whether it is necessary to cook pasta traditionally in a large volume of boiling water, or whether it could be prepared ‘risotto’ style in the merest covering of liquid. Our [...]

[Read more →]

If our recent trip to Prague is anything to go by, it would appear the only vegetarian option available in the Czech Republic is deep fried Edam with boiled potatoes. Nothing wrong with that of course – cheese and spuds are two of my favourite food groups especially if the former is heavily grated over [...]

[Read more →]

Residents only.
Another HF-W recipe from the Guardian magazine. His ability to tap into the Blogger-D taste-psyche is uncanny.

[Read more →]

What better way to round off a sunday in which not only have you built the worlds most magnificent shelving ’solution’ from scratch (and wood) but also found the time to watch a (double) episode from the forth (and darkest) season of BSG than by sitting down with your (lovely) co-blogger and eating this hearty, [...]

[Read more →]

This is a recipe from the Hairy Bakers/Bikers. It’s meant to contain brown ale but we didn’t have any so instead I used an alcohol-free driving Cobra which was gathering dust in the fridge. Let’s be honest, it was never going to get drunk.

[Read more →]

I found this Lemony Cheese delight in a back issue of the excellent Donna Hay magazine – the eponymous title from food editor, best-selling cookery writer, and from what I can gather, Queen of Australia.

[Read more →]

If you follow the link you’ll discover this young Gorgonzola came to us from Sardinia via Acton.
Roasted Tomato and Gorgonzola Tarts with Balsamic Vinegar Caramel

[Read more →]

When God gives you lemons, make lemonade. Two things. Firstly everyone who blogs up a lemonade recipe starts with this proverb and secondly there is no God. There is however a Waitrose, which is where we got our unwaxed fruit. So more accurately, when you go to Waitrose to buy lemons to make lemonade, make [...]

[Read more →]

They had gooseberries at the fruit and veg stall on Saturday morning and so I just had to buy some. When I got home and set about working out what I was going to do with them I realised that gooseberries are generally cooked up and mixed with cream, just in various different ways. I [...]

[Read more →]

Butter & Rosemary
There is a pasta dish called ‘La pasta col tocca d’arrosto’ or literally ‘with a touch of the roast’ which is essentially made with the rich meaty/garlicy/herby juices left over from a Sunday roast. This is a clever approximation of that sauce which takes minutes to make and is very, very tasty.

[Read more →]

How do you take your olive oil? Pure, virgin, extra-virgin, hand-picked, first cold press, single estate, non-filtered, Greek, Tuscan, Andalusian, Carbonell, Bertolli, Filippo Berio, Il Padrone, Masia el Altet, Tesco’s finest? Boof, here at yumblog we have bespoke olive oil! Olive oil personally pressed and kindly donated by a handsomely moustachioed Frenchman who goes by [...]

[Read more →]

Butter & Tomato Sauce
A recent trip to the magnificent St John led to a visit to their website which in turn resulted in the purchase of a Fergus Henderson-endorsed cookbook called The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. It’s perfect bedtime reading and has an intriguing section on simple tomato-based sauces for pasta [...]

[Read more →]

In the light of ongoing shenanigans at Westminster and with the desire to be always open and transparent with you, dear reader, perhaps this posting should be called an ‘Advertorial’ or possibly a ‘Blogvert’. This is because the mixed organic fruit’n’veg box below was supplied to us completely free of charge; in a complimentary [...]

[Read more →]

A couple of weeks ago we had a slap up anniversary feed at St John in Smithfield, and this dish was on the menu. Obviously visiting the home of ‘Nose to Tail eating’ and plumping for the vegetarian option is like… (Note to Blogger-D: Please insert apt and amusing analogy here.) (Note to Blogger-R: Can’t [...]

[Read more →]

I know what you are thinking. Rhubarb soup? Savoury rhubarb soup? Never heard of that before. Sounds intriguing. Could be tasty. Could be unpleasant. Could be a toxic coupling of sour fruit and salty meaty water. Must get some rhubarb and give it a go. Well that’s what I thought anyway. Besides, the recipe was [...]

[Read more →]

The plan is at some stage to make our own Ricotta from the whey left over from Yumblog Amalgamated Dairy Industries yoghurt-making enterprise. However I suspect the quantities involved will be minute and certainly a lot smaller than our massive combined appetites.

[Read more →]

The obsession with yoghurt continues – this time using it to fashion a traditional Middle Eastern-style cheese called Labne. Once made it is rolled into small balls, coated with fresh herbs, placed in a jar and covered with olive oil. Simple and delicious.

[Read more →]

I got this recipe from an article called ‘Five ways with potatoes’ in this months OFM. Nigel Slater calls it ‘Potato pancakes with herb and youghurt sauce‘ but I changed the name as for me the feta was the main event and therefore deserved higher billing. I’m also not sure my brain can accommodate yet [...]

[Read more →]

As you might have guessed, I got a job lot of cucumbers from the market – three eye-wateringly large shafts of Cucumis Sativus for a credit crunching quid. Unlike the previous version, this soup is entirely prepared in the blender and requires no cooking – just a blender.

[Read more →]

Funny how you wake up one morning and decide that the thing you want to do most in the world (ever) is to make cucumber soup. Maybe it’s a form of neurosis that all food bloggers share and perhaps writing these blogs is a therapeutic, legal and relatively harmless outlet for our collective obsession. Who [...]

[Read more →]

The making of yoghurt has been the most exciting discovery in the yumblog kitchen since the finding of a forgotten and unopened Kellogg’s Variety Pack at the back of the cupboard. There are a multitude of techniques for transforming milk into yoghurt, but our objective was always to do it with the least amount of [...]

[Read more →]

There’s that fork again.

[Read more →]

Here’s a simple spicy little snack/starter from Gregg ‘beefy beefy mushrooms’ Wallace.

[Read more →]

Who’d have thought you could pickle and eat watermelon rind?

[Read more →]

There was a first birthday party to attend and we thought that, in the interests of encouraging the eating of biscuits from as young an age possible, we would make chocolate chip cookies. Thing is we had plenty chocolate but no chips, plenty cocoa powder but no desire to add nuts to the mixture, so [...]

[Read more →]

In accordance with government guidelines and the criteria laid down by the Foods Standards Agency (FSA) (and because you are all, dear readers, lazy obese mollycoddled porcine cretins incapable of making a decision unless the myriad complexities of an issue are reduced to a simple 3-digit number) yumblog will in future state the calorific value [...]

[Read more →]

Hi Guys,
Just wanted you to be the first to know that at 2:46 this morning, Jools gave birth to a beautiful baby girl!! She weighed 6lbs 10 and we have called her ‘Petal Blossom Herbal Essence Bonjela Aviva AmbiPur ScarletDivision Clinique FlavourShaker Twitter Pantene Pro-V Sky+ “Ooooh Danone” Sainsbury’s Tefal Yulumba Rainbow Oliver’. Both [...]

[Read more →]

I didn’t have high hopes for this soup when I started it, mainly because it contains little more than the humble sprout and onion. However, it turned out to be quite a clever ‘everyday’ soup and would be an ideal way to use up any sprouts you might have knocking around from Christmas. It’s a [...]

[Read more →]

‘Eating lots of white bread raises the risk of a cancer that kills thousands of Britons every year … those who eat five slices a day are almost twice as likely to develop the most common form of kidney cancer compared to those who have one and a half slices.’… or so says that putrid [...]

[Read more →]

Yet more allegations that Yumblog, 42, has been having a sordid (and utterly predictable) affair with a desperate publicity-seeking blonde slapper, 37. This is of course untrue, and to prove our innocence we bribed bought Mrs Yumblog, 33, a fucking massive diamond ring from fucking Theo Fennell!

[Read more →]

Rumours abound that Yumblog Holdings has breached its banking covenants (whatever that means) and that perhaps the Yumblog franchise is not the cash cow it once used to be. We would like to rigorously refute these allegations and point out that all of our ventures (including Yumblog at Claridges, Yum in Grosvenor Square, Ad Nauseyum [...]

[Read more →]

A double hit of carbs here – like a chip butty – only posher – innit.

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

It’s MasterChef final week, yeah. Such a shame that the nice Greek guy was dumped last Thursday as he was our favourite, we actively liked him. Now it’s down to the young one, the posh one and the beardy baldy cry baby one who sounds like Tony Blair. The posho is bound to win, but [...]

[Read more →]

… or cauliflower cheese in liquid form. A perfect winter warmer for the snowiest (and therefore the most exciting) day in 18 years.

[Read more →]

Ok, pay attention. Blogger D’s archaeologist sister (from hereonin known as ‘Sherdkicker T’) came to Yumblog Towers for dinner. She brought along her ‘friend’ who is also an archaeologist and so for continuity should be known as ‘Sherdkicker J-P’. However Sherdkicker J-P is a handsomely moustached Frenchman and so perhaps needs to be translated as [...]

[Read more →]

The appearance of a dessert on the Yumblog table can mean only one thing. Yes, we had guests. Others who might judge our food. By the time we got to the dessert the assembled worthies had already eaten firsts, seconds, and in one case, thirds of a rather tasty roast lamb and accompanying roasted goodies. [...]

[Read more →]