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Give peas a chance
Ready to pop
Why do we grow peas at home? The fact is that frozen peas are about as good as it gets. I’ve been to a pea ‘factory’ in Norfolk and it’s a remarkable operation. The pea harvesting machines don’t stop day or night, the shelled peas are chucked into a lorry that comes alongside and then driven as fast as legally possible back to the units at the factory to be blast frozen minutes after arrival.
Speed is crucial because about fifteen minutes after picking, the sugar in peas starts to turn to starch. This means those peas in pods you see in some upmarket greengrocers and supermarkets are all but worthless. They may look pretty, and you may feel delightfully old-fashioned podding them, but they could be days old. The flavour will be virtually nothing. Eat more!
Cox Cookies & Cake Cookbook
If you haven’t handled a book with a squishy cover since the nursery, then the Cox Cookies & Cake cookbook may come as a bit of a surprise. It’s wonderfully tactile, very squeezable and rather erotic.
Which is not surprising really as cakes have always been a bit ‘naughty but nice’ and recently have moved into the realms of soft porn.
Anyone who has ever ventured into Cox Cookies & Cake shop in, where else but, London’s Soho will have marveled at the creativity on display there, with beauty and bestiality equally on offer.
With a foreword by Sir Elton John and David Furnish, this book was never going to be anything but high camp but the cakes also speak for themselves.
Wondrous cupcakes such as Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes with a chilli-flavoured frosting. Summer Flower Cupcakes and Orange and White Chocolate Chip Cookies are just some of the 75 recipes, on glossy black backgrounds, created by Eric Lanlard and designer Patrick Cox. Read more…
Nick Harman 