Turkey: food heaven

So I went on holiday to Turkey and was so consumed with stuffing my face with the amazing food I didn't stop for one moment to take you any pictures of it.

Instead I'll treat you to a few holiday snaps (let's face it, no one else is going to sit through them politely).

In short, Turkish food rocks. If there's one contemporary food trend we all know about it's taking fresh simple ingredients and not dicking about with them too much, and that's what they do in Turkey.

Istanbul turned out to be an Aladdin's Cave for greedy people, and for greedy people with a sweet tooth at that. Straight off the airport bus in Taksim Square I got myself a fresh pomegranate and orange juice and some warm roasted chestnuts. I had a discussion with a Turk about why I'd bastardised the pomegranate juice with orange, and claimed it needed some sweetness. I do believe that, but I also think that because pomegranate is so damn expensive in the UK, because of its "wonderfood" properties, I thought it would be too much just to go crazy and have a straight pomegranate juice.

Our first meal was something I'd choose for my last supper. A salad of chilis, coriander and tomatoes. A plate of super sharp and salty crumbled cheese, dotted with knobs of butter, came with one of those hot thin bread things that blows up like a balloon. It's called lavas, but you'll probably get by if you ask for balloon bread. Then came a gut-droppingly hot lamb kebab, layered with slices of hot oily bread to wrap it in and a charred aubergine, sliced in half so cheese and chili could be melted into its soft flesh. Joy.

Oops - missed out the bit about our first stop at a Turkish delight store. Hated the stuff (do you remember Fry's Turkish Delight? Jesus.) until tasted the real thing a few years' back. We had rose flavour, stuff with pistachio and hazelnuts in the middle, rolled in coconut...amazing. My sweet tooth even came out in one piece of it, which was gross, but didn't stop me eating.

Anyway, presumably you're after the book and the recipes. The book is The Huzur Vadisi Cookbook. I was on a yoga holiday [insert irony here] and the food was amazing and there was a bar too, which meant that despite five hours of yoga a day I came back fatter and as alcoholic as I was when I left.

As usual, can't really be bothered to cook any of this stuff, but the fact I ate it all while out there means I know it's good.

The first good things are a few salads which can be construed as wintry:

Carrot Yoghurt salad with Tahini and Walnuts

5 medium carrots

2 tbsps olive oil

3 tbsps yoghurt

3 tbsps tahini

3 tbsps chopped walnuts

2-4 cloves garlic

salt

1 tsp red pepper flakes or paprika

Grate carrots. saute in oil with some salt. Crush garlic and add to yoghurt. Mix the yoghurt with tahini, walnuts, half the red pepper and salt with the carrots. Melt rest of pepper in a bit of butter in a pan and drizzle over as a sauce.

Beetroot and Tahini Salad

6 beets

4 cloves garlic

4 dessert spoons tahini

4 dessert spoons lemon juice

4 dessertspoons olive oil

Roast the beetroot unpeeled in the oven in a bit of oil, at 200C for 45 mins or until soft. When cool, peel and grate. Add tahini, crushed garlic, lemon juice, oil and salt to taste.

Works as a salad or dip. Should make you feel healthy as the weather turns and everyone says they got one of those " the weather's turning" colds.

There's a tasty looking recipe for meatballs in a herby lemon sauce. Can't be bothered to write it all out here, but let me know if you want it. According to this week's papers, meatballs are just the thing right now.

I did make a couple of things from here. A grilled aubergine salad with yoghurt and cigar-shaped borek. Courgette, feta and dill fritters may be next.

Aubergine salad (more of a dip) - grill 4 large aubergines until skin crisped and insides soft. They're easy to peel if you hold them under a running cold tap, grip the stem and crack th skin off. Though you will probably burn your fingers at the same time. Mix together 4 tbsps each of olive oil and lemon juice, and mash the aubs in one by one until smooth(ish). Add in 4 tbsps yoghurt mixed with 4 cloves crushed garlic and a little salt.

The borek recipe calls for round sheets of filo pastry you can cut into triangles. I was sold rectangular sheets and couldn't quite work out how to make the right shape of triangle - you really need an isoceles shaped one or, as mine did, there will be too much pastry and it will suck up too much oil.

So: mash one packet feta in a bowl. Add 1/2 bunch each finely chopped dill and parsley and one beaten egg. The idea is to place one teaspoon of the cheese mix in the middle of the bottom of the triangle then roll it up so the tip ends up on the outside. Seal with a bit of water and fry in oil for a minute or so. Even if they turn out crap (mine were too oily, but still yum), they keep kids occupied for aaaaaages.

There is lots of great stuff to buy in the Spice Market, but I went overboard on the teas, which looked delicious (rose, green with ginger, green with jasmine, a gingery wintry mix) and they are all FOUL. Bitter, disgusting and undrinkable. The sun dried darker than usual apricots are amazing though.

Oh, I forgot to mention what I didn't pick up in Turkey: a man. Actually i didn't forget, but my newsagents were most disappointed that I hadn't come back with one. I'm not sure why it's any of their business either, or where they got the idea I was on holiday shopping for a husband, but they reliably inform me they know of two women who went to Turkey and came back with a husband. Did they read about these women in Take a Break? For the past few months they have asked me every week or so whether I have found a man yet. My accountant informs me I spent £1000 in their shop last year. I suggest they watch their step.

Teaching Dad To Cook Flapjack Green Tart Update

So the Green Tart has been cooked and eaten. I can report back that it was quite amazing. The pastry was buttery and flaky and the filling really quite clever - you're basically stuffing your face with all these healthy green herbs and therefore are allowed to feel virtuous, despite the fact they're sitting in a greedy eggy creamy mix.

I'm baking the Caramel Salties later for consumption tomorrow, so will report back, again...

...The Caramel Salties for the seal of approval from Nephlet Numero Uno, who pronounced them "yummy and chewy and lovely and chewy. And the dentist says I shouldn't eat chewy things which makes me like them even more."

His mother wasn't so keen on the salty aspect.

He also gave a Bacon and Egg Tart (made with bought pastry) a 10 out of 10, a grade he doesn't give out lightly, which his mother says she hasn't been awarded for a very long time.

Then I slaved over the Lemon Polenta Cake twice, because the first one fell apart and I knew AC wouldn't be accepting no crappy fall aparty sub standard birthday cake. My tips:

Grease the top and bottom, and perhaps the sides too, of your baking parchment WELL.

I could only find a revolting-looking block of cooked polenta in the supermarket, so I grated this into the mix.

Cook long and slow. Don't worry if the top of the cake is looking burnt, as - obviously - this will turn out to be the bottom of the cake. Put some foil or a baking sheet over it if you're gettin worried it is turning to a cindery crisp.

Going to cook some of these things with my cute old daddio tomorrow and write about it, so will post that then.

Which will add up to far too many posts about this one book. Whatevs.

Teaching Dad To Cook Flapjack

Ok, ok I admit it: I've been in a great big strop with this blog. How does one throw a strop with a blog? Turns out it works much the same as throwing a big old ranty ass strop with a person, but the potential success rate of the cold shoulder method is even more pitiful. In fact it is zero, hence my shameful return this sunny afternoon.

I was in a strop because I kept trying to write this post and the damn thing just kept on not saving it and losing it, making me feel like I was back in my first year of uni again (well, strictly speaking I only got the hang of a computer in my fourth year).

But I managed to leave the house for my Vitamin D hit today and so have charged up the bit of my brain responsible for bothering to blog. And in future I am going to "copy all' frequently and then it should be ok. Fucking better be.

Anyway, here it is. The top bit is old, the bottom bit new.

Cookery books, as you and I both well know, are as much about selling lifestyles as teaching you about cooking and revealing wonderful new recipes. And thank god, or otherwise what would be the point in buying endless new ones which, depending on the season, year and trends all spout very similar recipes for greedy full fat risottos, beetroot and feta/goat's cheese salads and variations on the sausage casserole theme?

Take the idyllic image above of Burgh Island, a teeny tiny spit of land off Devon famous for its art deco hotel, which you'll have seen in Agatha Christie. Or was it a Poirot?

Well now, this is the view (give or take a bit of neck-craning and excellent eyesight) that greets Miranda Gardiner when she packs her three children onto the school bus each morning from her beachside home in the village of Bigbury-on-Sea. Jealous? Me too. Better make that steaming with envy and inconsolable yearning that my front door opens onto disgusting overstuffed bins, some light fly-tipping, perhaps a jaded skaghead or two and, as of last week, blustering, head-swelling hayfever.

And not only does Miranda live in this beautiful place, her family has a Scandinavian summer house and her youth was spent hanging out in Sydney with her first love Diggory (now her husband), breaking into open air swimming pools for illicit swims and feasting on the sort of fresh, bountiful produce Brits pretend they're moving down under for when they know damn well they'll revert to the fried chicken habit two weeks after landing.

And yes, she's stuck out in the sticks, but that means she's surrounded by organic farmers and perfect little markets.

I hope this doesn't sound too much like sour grapes, because my intention here is to say what a lovely book Teaching Dad To Cook Flapjack (her first) is, both to accompany a good British summer if we have one, and imagine the good life and cook accordingly if we don't.

Anyway, your luck's in because since starting this blog first time around I've actually had chance to make some of the recipes. I'm a bit gutted I didn't take a picture of the beautiful Lime, Basil and Mandarin salad I made yesterday to go with my roast chicken. You'll have to imagine its lovely bright green and orange colours. I couldn't actually find any mandarins, so I substituted with an orange and half a pink grapefruit (even more exciting colour), and added some mint along with the basil because I had just bought some and I like it and it goes really well with basil. Then you sprinkle on some toasted pine nuts and a tablespoon of sesame seeds - and cucumber batons, which I almost forgot - then an amazing dressing of one tbsp of caster sugar mixed with one tbsp light soy sauce, juice of a lime and salt and pepper. Mmm.

I have Miranda's Green Tart waiting in the fridge for someone to come over and help me eat it. It is lots of fresh green herbs and pumpkin seeds stirred into a mix of two egg yolks, two eggs and 300ml double cream, but I've gone a bit easier on the cream.

So far the pastry case looks good. I try and use a different recipe every time I make pastry (see Rhubarb Tart and Madchester Onion Tart) to try and find one that works consistently for me. Miranda's is 180g plain white flour, sifted, whizzed in a food processor with 90g cold butter, cubed. When it's all blended and crumbly, add in two or three tbsps water to bring it together. Pick it up into a ball and chill for 30 mins. Then roll out (for 20cm tin), bake blind for 15 mins (putting something in to keep the damn stuff down...beads, chickpeas, rice, a saucepan), prick and bake for a further five, then slosh in your mix and pop it in for another 25 - 30 mins. All at 190/gas 5.

The pastry came together easily enough, but after I messed up the first attempt to roll it big enough, at the very last moment, it was quite tricky to keep in one piece from thereon, so the result is a patchwork affair, but has held together on cooking and isn't too thick.

Tomorrow I'm baking Caramel Salties for my nephew Olly's birthday. I think that's how he spells his name, it seems to change all the time. He and his sister also change the name of their guinea pigs at a whim, which I think is a bit mean. Olly is greedy but doesn't like overly sweet things. These are a sort of brownie cake and ode to posh salty chocolates, which I love. I'll let you know how they go down.

There now, that wasn't too painful, was it?

At least with Jamie we have some consistency

I've been away for a while. I think I'm back now. And I can't think of a better way to tend to the gloom of the first morning under Tory leadership than with an ode to Jamie.

Pictured above is the woman who taught me to share, give and have a social conscience. Yet she supports a party which does not have the same values. I can only blame it on misinformation, since my Mum and Dad are far more responsible citizens than most lefties I know. Fact. Apart from with those huge naughty burners in the backyard.

To be honest, the dude (Jamie, not Cameron) annoys the hell out of me. Yet the man's recipes do work, which cannot be said for every cook writing books, and he does good things, which cannot be said of many people at all.

Actually I didn't like him at all until all the Fifteen, school meals and Ministry of Food stuff. All that Naked Chef "Wurrrgghhhhhh, throw a wodge of that stripper hot chilli on yer bangers luv" bullshit was almost impossible to bear.

Yet I was proved wrong. (Yes - you have that in print). People can knock him for not managing to turn the entire country from turkey twizzlers to quinoa salad overnight, but he showed what could be done and taught a lot of folk a lot of stuff about cooking and health, which it's now their choice to ignore.

Better get on with it. Once he agrees to cook some la-di-dah banquet for the Cam-Vampires I'll have to strike him from my favourites.

So: the admirable Cook with Jamie (Michael Joseph, £26) is his comprehensive attempt at teaching anyone already interested in food what's what and how to cook it. A contemporary Delia's Complete Cookery Course (BBC Books, £12.99) if you will.

It is like an encyclopedia of food, but only the food you really want to eat. It covers all the basics for anyone who wants to take their cooking up a notch - what equipment to buy, how to understand flavours and textures and how to shop, which is particularly handy where fish and meat come in.

It includes salads, pasta, gnocchi and risotto, meat, fish, vegetables, desserts and some bits and bobs. He also gives some good chat on knowing where your flesh hailed from, which apparently cannot be said enough times. Even my flatmate, who doesn't eat red meat on account of it being made from animal, buys the cheapest misery chicken she can find. I think I'm close to giving up chicken and tuna entirely, then I could just announce this when people are cooking for me instead of feeling sick while eating the misery chicken dinner at the thought of all those poor, tortured battery chicks and wise old Mr Turtle who lost his life over a can of skipjack tuna.

I digress. But believe me, I am close to tears looking at his Black Angel Tagliarini with Scallops and Clam Chowder, Essex Girl-Style (Ah, the twattery knows not its own bounds. Give it up Jamie), knowing there is but smoked mackerel and eggs in the fridge.

I had to give up the cooking btw, as I was spending all my days cooking instead of earning money, and it turned out this wasn't a sustainable way of life.

Both the above recipes sound a bit posh, and indeed they are, but overall the recipes in here aren't. They just come out a bit special because Jamie bothers to up the ante on flavours. If you can bothered to put in a tiny bit of effort, you will be rewarded. Take this Asparagus, Mint & Lemon Risotto for example. It's the perfect spring dish. I make Nigella's Lemon Risotto often but it is much heavier and greedier and doesn't cash in on the yummy spring greens we have right now.

Ah, news just in that Theresa May is to be home secretary in this ludicrous coalition government. I am actually pleased with this. As pleased, at least, as one can be by a token woman in an otherwise shady set-up. And she is the home secretary for fuck's sake, a big job, so I will not resort to mentioning her name and her shoes in the same breath, like everybody else out there.

Jamie makes it clear that it only takes a little leap to swap your failsafe pasta sauce recipe for something more inspiring, such as Summertime tagliarini, with pine nuts, lemon and parsley. He makes salads exciting and desirable, demystifies cooking fish and the veg section will deter you from ever relying on plain boiled again.

There's advice on freezing and guides to herbs and spices.

I'm not sure Thatcher, were she still in her right mind, would know what to make of Jamie. On the one hand she would surely celebrate a society where flush youngsters can spunk cash on prime cuts of meat and four different herbs for a midweek meal. On the other hand, it might well all seem a bit, well, foreign.

Jamie is capitalising on the hard work of older chefs who began introducing the diverse flavours he uses to the UK years ago. If Delia encouraged us to consider pasta and Tiramisu staple dishes, largely thanks to Elizabeth David and Anna del Conte, then Jamie owes much to them and to Claudia Roden and Madhur Jaffrey too, for providing an education on Middle Eastern and Asian flavours. In Jamie's hands they are normalised and feel at home on anyone's kitchen table.

These inspirations are as evident in the meat and fish dishes as they are in the salads, pastas and risottos (there is instruction on making your own pasta; given the easy availability of quality pasta, dry and fresh, if you're considering this I'd advise you forget about it and read this instead). Look for the Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions and the Pot-roasted Poussins Agro Dolce.

Time for a few pics. I pitched up at my mum's a few weeks ago dried out like salty olive left in a jar all on its own from a hen weekend in the nearby peaks, and sat and watched her prepare Slow-roasted pork belly with the sweetest braised fennel without lifting a finger to help. She said she didn't want me to and I think she was probably telling the truth.

Here's dad, ready to carve. Yes, he does indeed resemble both Danny Alexander, our new Scotland minister, and Charles Kennedy, the boozy former Lib Dem leader, but I'm not sure he likes either man.

And here's mum's brand new nine trillion pound seventeen oven Aga wot cooked the meat so slowly and meltingly

And here's some on my plate, lit up by the March sun

I was about to commend Jamie's website for its archives of every single one of his recipes, but we appear to have come a cropper with Pot-roasted Poussins Agro Dolce. Which is sort of good, because you'll have to go and buy the book, and all profits go to Fifteen. If you were stuck with just this book, and lacked any sort of imagination to think up dishes yourself, you wouldn't get bored for a long time.

He has too many other books to go through on this post, but don't get the US one. Even if you enjoyed the series, the book is not good.

I'm enjoying Jamie's romp through Europe on Channel 4 at the moment. Tonight he hit the French Pyrenees, uncovering the contented rural communities we might still have here had Thatcher not broken all our grèves with her iron fist.

Heston's In Search Of Perfection Or Absurd Recipes and satisfying Reading

When I began this blog, as one of my four followers may, or may not, care to remember, the point was to write about food writing.

Derivative, yes. But incredibly enjoyable.

I have since realised a couple of things:

1. I've been doing far too much cooking for anyone's liking.

2. I need to focus more on the delightful writing, and name my blogs accordingly for ease of reference in the future.

I might go back and rename some but I'm not quite decided on that.

I am decided though that making all these damn cakes and tarts has made me incredibly porky so from tomorrow I am going to give up food entirely and survive on a diet of food writing alone (she writes with one hand clutching a pie).

I will keep you posted on whether this works or turns out to be as impossible and dangerous as it sounds.

For now a frollick through Heston Blumenthal's In Search Of Perfection (Bloomsbury; £25) from 2006, which tied in with his TV series.

Look at the photo above. Look long and hard. No cheating.

You guessed correctly: it is a pleasing pile of perfectly cooked steak. A good fatty cut just as I like them (always go ribeye if you can; fillet is for girls and the clueless) and pink in the middle. I'd actually go more bloody, but that's just me.

So who'd have thunk it took 30 hours of cooking time, an oven thermometer, digital probe and blowtorch to prepare what takes most people a few minutes on a decent griddle pan?

It has to be Heston.

The conceit of three Michelin stars and Fat Duck famed Heston's In Search of Perfection is that he picks eight British classics - the food we eat most, not necessarily of British provenance - and goes in search of the ultimate example of each dish: eight earnest foodie adventures to track down the best ingredients and finest cooking methods so that we comfort-food loving civilians can cook up the ne plus ultra dogs bollocks version of our favourite food.

Or not. Because even though I swore to myself I would have a bash at at least one of the eight - Roast Chicken & Roast Potatoes, Pizza, Bangers & Mash, Steak, Spaghetti Bolognese, Fish & Chips, Black Forest Gateau, Treacle Tart & Ice Cream, even the bangers and spag bog are so darn complicated I decided any attempt to emulate Heston ran the risk of making me a very angry little cook indeed.

Instead I just revelled in his attention to detail, taking solace in the fact I'm not the sort of pedant who would faff about with these absurdly complicated recipes, which call for 50 Euro chickens (the famous Bresse chickens, mmmm), paint guns and soda siphons.

But what Heston has done here, in a book which is essentially just the obligatory spin off from the TV show, is rake up a little food history - what we Brits love eating and why - and remould it according to contemporary tastes and availability, and of course daft don't-try-this-at-home techno whizzery jiggery.

This makes it a great read for greedy types (though may I suggest you skip the actual cooking method bits).

Yet I'm not entirely with Heston's choices. I do love a pork out on proper fish and chips and pizza is my favourite "junk" food, but seriously, who would make this stuff at home?

No one, unless you're trying to entertain kids by scattering ingredients on a ready made pizza base.

And no crumble? Or fruit pie of any sort? But we do have a black forest gateau?

Anyone who enjoyed a slice or seven of this cake in the eighties or nineties knows full well it came out of a Sara Lee box, which itself had come out of the freezer.

Where is the roast beef and yorkshire pudding?

I am guessing the great man corrects these omissions in the follow up book, but what he does deserve a highly commended for is creating a hefty scoop of ultimate food porn. It's ideal as by-the-side-of-the-bed gluttony, split as it is into the eight self-contained adventures.

What's more, In Search of Perfection is as close as I'm going to get to the afterglow of a family Sunday roast chicken and treacle tart on this boring Tuesday afternoon, punctuated only by some crappy crudites and the low fat and low fun dinner I'm going to eat now, at six pm, because those crudites for some reason left me feeling rather hollow.

Will this rhubarb tart bring me eternal happiness then? (I did make three just in case)

not yet cooked but already delicious-looking

I'm not sure if now is the right time to write about rhubarb. It is in season, sure. And it's as beautiful as ever, bright pink as pink as pink candy canes and as sour and sharp as Dorothy Parker.

But Easter is over. The whole long weekend whistled down the wind. I'm clean out of chocolate and still no sign of the Messiah.

I am hoping that writing about rhubarb will return some cheer to an otherwise gloomy reality.

Rhubarb picking was not one of the favourite jobs in my family home. It was one of the least favourite jobs, because one knew while picking that the rhubarb would be baked in a crumble and eaten every Sunday for the foreseeable.

We were too little to know that rhubarb is a right proper treat. When it doesn't grow in one's own garden, a bundle of those stiff glinting canes is manna from heaven. That's how I feel about them now anyway and wrote about it in The Independent here.

I'm not ashamed to say I never made of the suggested recipes. But the lines from Monty Python's Rhubarb Tart Song must have hung around in my subconscious somewhere because that's just what I found myself making this weekend.

Apparently,

"Eternal happiness is rhubarb tart

A rhubarb what? A rhubarb tart!

A Jean Paul who? A Jean Paul Sartre!

Eternal happiness is rhubarb tart"

I chose Oliver Peyton's Rhubarb and Custard Tart from Observer Food Monthly February 2009.

As he didn't specify a pastry recipe, I decided to borrow from Lucas Hollweg's Blood Orange Tart recipe in The Times, substituting Stork for butter, which was a complete sloppy disaster. It also meant I didn't struggle on with the intention of making mini rhubarb and custard, blood orange and lemon tarts to be sliced up and served reconfigured on the plate as a whole tart of three flavours.

A bit Masterchef yes, and a lot over ambitious and stupid.

The tarts did bring me happiness, though I can't say whether it will be eternal or not. Nonetheless I highly recommend making the effort. Buy in some pastry or stick to your own trusted recipe.

Beautiful Becca seems to be enjoying her's at least

I assisted my friend AC in making this Rhubarb and Ginger Fool last week, also from Hollweg, who I rate very highly. I helped her by zesting a few oranges and sprinkling it onto the tray of rhubarb the night before her dinner. See below.

AC tells me it was a huge success but at the time she was worried the amount of orange going into it was going to overpower the lovely rhubarb. AC does all things properly and cooking is no excuse. She would not be fucking about trying to resurrect sloppy pastry. Uh-uh.

She's also rather amazing and treated me to a posh birthday dinner on Saturday at Marcus Wareing's two Michelin-starred caff at The Berkeley. I love her for many reasons but her ability to chat food with passion, precision and unflinching dedication is high up there.

Her commitment to good food is partly because she is partly French (the hints of Northern European in her are evident in the zeal with which she falls about fried food). I also suspect it was ramped up a notch or seven the time she made a crumble with salt instead of sugar. God that was funny. I wasn't even there and it still makes me titter.

You can read with envy all the luscious nosh we noshed on Sunday here (except the main was venison with the cutest mini beetroots and sour cream) and I'll highlight the Pan fried foie gras, yoghurt, rhubarb muffin top, ginger crunch, thyme cress. Here it is -

Oh how we laughed at the idea we needed extra muffin tops, and would pay top dollar for the privilege. And obviously eating foie gras is several steps beyond my ethical interests. Who's that coughing?

Next week I'm going to make Riverford's Rhubarb & Cardamom Fool, but instead of the fool serve the rhubarb compote with my secret white cheese mousse recipe, which I will un-secret for you. It doesn't sound wildly exciting, but boy, it is.

More cakes - apologies - and Marguerite Patten

White choc and raspberry - tasted great since you ask

Oh dear. New readers to this blog (that's all of you) must think I am one crazed cake addict. Just a big soft ball of squishy sponge coated in a sickly sweet sugary coating who dissolves on contact into a puff of air.

Ok, if you know me you'll know there's no sugar coating. But as I've just spent the afternoon baking with Marguerite Patten, 94-year-old doyenne of baking, you'll forgive me for going on about cake one last time (for now).

The baking party was in aid of Stork's 90th birthday and Marguerite herself looked as pretty as the pastel cupcakes which fill the windows of kitsch bakeries, in a suit of the palest lavender, immaculate pink lipstick and a delicate ivory coiffure to top it all off.

Marguerite is most easily described as the original celebrity chef because she first hit the airwaves during the Second World War as an employee of the Ministry of Food, presenting Kitchen Front on BBC Radio to help housewives make the most of their rations. By 1947 she was presenting food shows on the TV and has sold 17 million copies of her 170 books.

Of which I own none. Which is a bit naughty given I'm writing about a revered cookery writer.

But what I can tell you is that the cakes and muffins I made today seem genuinely lighter than the ones I've baked over the last few weeks. So maybe Stork is the answer.

Telly chef and husband of Fern Britton Phil Vickery was there too and he appeared genuinely overcome by the wonder of Stork. Now, when you're at an event which is promoting a certain product, you would of course expect the hosts to do their best to champion whatever it is in return for their fee. But Vickery seemed so enthusiastic about the product I'm going to crown him the Messiah of Marg.

As for Marguerite, she says she wouldn't put her name to anything she doesn't believe in. She has been extolling the virtues of Stork for decades now and one could never accuse such a lovely and proper old dear of touting her name about for a quick buck.

She's no shy duck when it comes to voicing her opinion either. I asked her about Sophie Dahl's new cookery show and she said: "I couldn't believe my ears and I couldn't believe my eyes. She is very pretty but can she cook? The producers had no right letting her run riot in a kitchen when there are so many able cooks out there."

Here here. I said last week I was looking forward to watching Dahl goof about with some scrumptious puddings, but the poor thing was out of her depth. The food she made did look nice, but the premise was absurd and her cooking skills barely more developed than my own.

Giles Coren has already called her show a "crock of bogus mendacious shite", hammed up here by the Mail. Though look, the pair do have history.

I'm going to leave you with a Stork cake recipe, because that seems only fair. Lemon Drizzle Cake, bit of a surefire crowd pleaser -

322 calories per slice. Shite. That should make me think before I poke any more down my cakehole.

And after this I'm getting back to my roots of reading about cooking instead of trying to actually do it. I've learnt my lesson this week, what with the burnt rubber and the exploding pastry and the endless stream of cakes, and I don't have time to read about food, make it and then write it up here, so the cooking bit will have to be streamlined.

I am dedicating this post to my dear departed Grandma Shack (Nellie) who will today, looking down at me baking in the Good Housekeeping kitchen from her sofa in the sky, have been very proud indeed (I hope).