Ameer Kotecha is a British diplomat, pop-up chef and writer on food, travel and culture. He is the author of The Platinum Jubilee Cookbook (Bloomsbury).
Until this week I don’t think my mother had ever in her life watched a football game. Wednesday changed that, marking the start of her new-found frenzy and puns about England’s ‘Sterling effort!’ (to squeals of laughter from her female friends gang). Now they’re in a state of hysterical excitement and are busy planning their
Graphologists have long busied themselves studying Prince Charles’s handwriting in the ‘black spider memos’ for clues as to the personality of our future King. And in recent months kinesicists have been wheeled out from obscurity to sit on breakfast show sofas to opine on Harry and Meghan’s body language in that interview. But perhaps royal
Wimbledon is back. Having been cancelled last year, it is now one of the pilot events chosen as part of the Government Event Research Programme, with 50 per cent capacity crowds on the main courts at the start rising to full capacity for the semi-finals and finals. What is more, organisers have said Murray Mound
HP Sauce is a glorious thing. The French may have their five, gastronomic Mother Sauces but we in this sceptered isle have HP and that’s what counts. Because nobody wants a pool of hollandaise with their Full English. It first appeared on our dining tables in the late nineteenth century and has since grown to
The chance to enjoy a proper sit-down breakfast – or even, I daresay, the occasional breakfast in bed – on a weekday has been one of the (few) perks of lockdown. If I’m going to be under year-long house arrest then I’m going to have a three-minute egg on a Monday dammit. But as return
An iron is not your traditional cooking appliance. But then again nothing about TikTok cookery is traditional. TikTok users have grilled chicken with an iron, boiled meatballs in a percolator, and cooked steak in a toaster. And not only do they do these things, but they earn internet fame and sometimes create new livelihoods for
Almost anything can constitute a salad. Yes dictionaries variously describe salad as cold, consisting of raw vegetables, and featuring a dressing, and often these things are true – but not always. For there are warm salads, salads with grains or seafood, and salads where the pairing of ingredients is so precise and perfect – think
During a long year of lockdown, we have all been cooking at home like never before. It’s been a delight to be able to spend all evening stirring a pot of risotto with no social plans to feel guilty about missing. But these stretched-out times, be they languorous or languid, are coming to an end.
A cooker is not just for cooking. That is the starting point to understanding the Aga. It is impractical, environmentally unfriendly, and expensive. Everyone – including the Aga’s most ardent devotees – knows that. And yet the Aga cooker next year will celebrate its centenary. Despite all the modern appliances that should long ago have
Venison’s attributes are remarkable. It is the probably the most sustainable meat you can eat, given the unquestionable need to manage the country’s deer population to stop these elegant but pesky creatures from damaging woodland and wildlife habitats. And what of its health credentials? The deer’s free-foraging, cross-country roaming lifestyle makes it incredibly lean: higher
No-one is born knowing how to poach an egg. Indeed, the technique is hardly intuitive: the addition of a little vinegar, whisking the water to create a swirling vortex. Just as golfing enthusiasts barred from hitting the links have resorted to putting practice in their living rooms, a lazy lockdown weekend feels like an ideal
Next Tuesday the banal humdrum of lockdown life will be interrupted, however briefly. No longer the sad, soggy Weetabix while listening to the daily hospitalisation numbers or Special K eaten at your makeshift desk. No, even if just for a couple of hours, next Tuesday is an opportunity to block out the Outlook calendar and
Veganuary is not normally something I’d go in for. I’m sceptical of food fads at the best of times and these are sadly not the best of times. If I’m going to be stuck in lockdown I want a steak dinner to cheer me up after a hard day’s Zooming, and maybe just a rasher
The traditional Christmas meal takes on different guises around the globe. Our festive table groaning under turkey and all the trimmings would look quite unrecognisable to many. For Jewish people living in the US the tradition at Christmas is to eat Chinese food. And in Japan come Christmas you’ll find everyone eating KFC. Seriously—you have
Diwali, which falls this year on November 14th, is a festival of family, fireworks and food. Here are the dishes to try to keep the Diwali flame alive in a Covid winter. Covid has already put paid to regular Diwali celebrations. It was inevitable: eight people around the table to tuck into a Christmas turkey
Oh the avo. The fruit that launched a thousand tweets. This millennial Holy Grail has done more to divide generations than anything save perhaps Brexit. It has been three years since Australian property developer Tim Gurner became a hate figure for suggesting in a TV interview that it was not economic difficulty that was keeping
If you’re trying to determine someone’s class and the accent is hard to place, you could do worse than check the brand of their pans. Le Creuset has been a staple of upper-middle class British kitchens for years – the sort of Eurocentric brand that contains just a hint of francophile exoticism whilst conjuring up
The legacy of Greek antiquity extends to the country’s cuisine. One eats there as the Ancients would have done—Greek yoghurt and honey for breakfast, simply-cooked fish and cold wine for lunch and supper—as one reclines languidly on the klinai couch, grapes dangling from the mouth, like Dionysius and Adephagia. Greek food can sometimes be disparaged
