IF your idea of the perfect coffee house is a picturesque building, serving great coffee and cakes, where you can meet friends for a gossip or just sit undisturbed reading a book or the paper – or even watching the world go by, drop into Divine Wines at Wincanton. It is very much a European…
DAVID and Karen Richards, of Capreolus Fine Foods at Rampisham, have won the prestigious Champion Product Award in this year’s Taste of the West food and drink awards for their Guanciale, a Dorset version of an Italian classic. Chef and food-writer Mitch Tonks, who was the champion product judge, said: “This really shone out as…
TELEVISION cookery shows often give an unappetising impression of high tension and drama in the kitchen, with foul-mouthed testosterone-charged superstars splattering four-letter words like burning oil across the worktops. Masterchef paints a less aggressive picture but it is still pretty fraught and even the altogether gentler Great British Bake-Off ends in tears as well as smiles….
NEW Zealand famously has more sheep than people – and it also has a lot more cattle than human beings. So it is not surprising that the resulting surplus of dairy products has made this small country a major exporter of butter and cheese. And it’s not just a big export industry – many rural…
FANCY a cocktail? Forget James Bond’s martini (shaken not stirred, of course), the legendary Manhattan or some trendy new concoction from the latest hot mixologist – Blandford’s Hall & Woodhouse brewery wants you to try beer cocktails. The brewery’s Dorset Beer Festival not only offered a chance for serious beer lovers to try more than…
TRAVELLING chef Philippa Davis was home in Shaftesbury for a week recently and had a chance to discover the sweet allure of bee-keeping and honey harvesting. But before she could start dreaming of the delicious dishes she would make with the golden honey, Philippa, a private chef whose work takes her to exotic and beautiful…
FARMERS and food producers take their goods to markets across the region, giving them a chance to meet and talk to their customers and find out what they like and what they don’t. Customers have the chance to buy fresh, local and seasonal food from the people who grow and make it, at the same time…
I FIRST discovered Thalis 25 years ago at the Mandeer, a delightful vegetarian Indian restaurant hidden downstairs in a tiny alley behind the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. Their menu included up to seven different Thalis, each made up of a tray of six or seven katoris, small stainless steel bowls, with…
The first in an occasional series of suggestions for dining out in the region EVERSHOT might be seen as the quintessential Dorset village, with its history writ large on the main street and the rolling countryside that surrounds it. Eight miles south of the sprawling commercialism of Yeovil and the second highest village in the…
FORAGING is the fashionable word in food circles, but in fact country people have been doing this for centuries (for ever!) and the first, and still the finest, guide to foraging for wild food is Food For Free, by this country’s greatest natural history writer, Richard Mabey. But a new book from two women who…