A full version with recipes can be found at the Slow Travel Berlin website. more...
Full version with recipes can be found at Slow Travel Berlin. more...
I've been a big fan of Felicity Cloake's Perfect column for the Guardian ever since it started. more...
Many of the guests who come to Thyme Supperclub are fascinated to find out more details of precisely how we cook our dishes. In particular, people ask a lot about certain foods, keen to ascertain precisely how obsessive we are in doing everything ourselves, from scratch.
I should start with a brief explanation for natives of non-English-speaking countries: in the UK, America, Canada, and Australia, Shrove Tuesday (the last day before Lent) is Pancake Day. Supposedly, the reason for this is to use up all the perishable goodies that you're not allowed during Lent.
A very international crowd joined us last Friday for dinner, including people from America, Sweden, Croatia, Taiwan, Japan and, of course, Germany. Many of you chose to leave comments on the table in your native languages which are pictured below - we just hope you were all telling the truth to us when you said they were nice comments!
There were fewer people than expected, owing to last-minute cancellations, but fourteen people is still enough for a good time, and we had a great time with you all last Friday.
Thank you to all our guests for coming along and helping to make the dinner good fun. We hope you had a good time, as we certainly did ourselves. Contrary to normal, we didn't have a lot of table artists, but for those who were creative, your pictures are displayed below.
Thanks very much to all the guests who came along on Friday evening. We enjoyed the evening very much and hope you all did too.
About ten years ago, Toby, my then-flatmate and I had a homemade pasta disaster. At this time, we were both in our first jobs, not very well-paid and didn't have the money or the time to experiment in the kitchen prior to making a dish for friends. So whenever people came round for dinner, which happened quite often, it was a bit hit-and-miss if we were making something new. (I'm pleased to say that the pasta incident was, in fact, the only real disaster, though a few times we had to think quickly on our feet when something turned out differently to expected.)
Like many people, I suspect, I had long harboured a notion that ratatouille was a naff eighties vegetarian cliché. Sampling a few poor ones in restaurants just confirmed my opinion that it was essentially a tasteless vegetable slop.
It's been pointed out, with justification, that my recipes page didn't contain any desserts. I'm not sure I have any good reason to explain this oversight, but I have rectified it already with three of my personal favourites. I hope you like them.
As summer in Berlin just seems to be getting hotter and hotter, I have been growing increasingly attached to the idea of preparing food in advance, letting the kitchen cool down, taking a cold shower and returning an hour or so later, feeling fresh and relaxed, to my dinner.