Olivia Potts is the Guild of Food Writers’ Cookery Writer of the Year 2025. She hosts The Spectator’s Table Talk podcast and writes Spectator Life's The Vintage Chef column
‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’ says Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, Part II. Mostly, this has been written off by literature undergraduates and fridge magnet makers as a joke at the expense of one of the oldest professions; but there’s another interpretation. Dick, although a comic character, was a
Turkey curry, as a means of using up festive leftovers, has become something of a joke: the turkey curry buffet in Bridget Jones is the true low point of Bridge’s festive calendar. The prospect can strike fear into the most Christmas-spirited of souls. But actually, on Boxing Day, or the day after, the last thing
If I had a pound for every person who’s told me they hate rice pudding, I would be a rich woman. It might be the most hated dessert in Britain, and we have our school system to blame for it. The rice pudding that is ubiquitous (and seemingly generation-crossing) in British schools is offensively bland,
Anthony Warner is angry. He’s angry about diets. He’s angry about detoxes. He’s angry about pseudoscience — and he has good reason. Fad diets are nothing new: for centuries, there have been charlatans whose dubious diets will help you lose weight, love life and beat cancer. But the rise of social media over the past
When it comes to the ultimate showstopper for an Easter Sunday lunch, it has to be roast lamb: as Spring has now truly sprung, it’s time to start enjoying British reared lamb, and treating it properly when we cook it. My favourite – and, I think, the easiest – way to cook lamb is to
There is something terribly cheering about Scotch pancakes. Even the best normal pancakes are a bit floppy, a bit (whisper it) flabby. They give the cook the choice of eating them one by one as they cook, or resigning themselves to the reality of a mostly tepid, slightly clammy pile. Scotch pancakes are not like
Finally, I almost have my kitchen back. I feel like during Christmas, we give our kitchens over to a higher power: one who insists that we fill our fridges with enough prosecco to see us through a nuclear winter, that everything is spiked with brandy, and followed with a chaser of cheese. We didn’t even
Sometimes I worry that I’m flighty. And not in a charming, no one can tie me down, I’m-a-free-spirit sort of way. But rather skittish, unreliable, inconstant. When I feel that way, I come home and bake spelt bread. Spelt bread is grounding. It is quick, physical work that you have to do with your hands.
Blancmange. Poor, maligned blancmange. The slimy, over-set staple of children’s birthday parties and school dinners, destined to be pushed around a plate and loathed for life. Blancmange has become shorthand for an age of blandness: the dessert equivalent of Chris de Burgh. Even its name sounds heavy on the English tongue. But we do the
