When my brother and I were youngsters my parents would often organise dinner parties. My memories of these dinner parties start with my mother cooking lots of lovely looking food, which we weren’t allowed to touch. As the time people were to arrive neared my brother and I would be lectured on how we were to not make any noise while we were upstairs and to leave them alone – and absolutely not to fight. We could stay downstairs to say hello but then we were off to bed! My mother would, for reasons we couldn’t understand, get more and more tense as the clock ticked closer to arrival time (not helped by my brother and I fighting of course). She’d be making sure the food was going to be ready, would get changed into smart clothes and ensure that the house was spotlessly tidy and all our toys were away. I don’t remember my father having much involvement with proceedings at this point, but it was another era where women generally ran the kitchen and men generally went out to work, so that may be why. Or perhaps he was sensible enough to go down to the pub to avoid my mother’s fretting.

Anyway, my mother would often make a special cheesecake for these dinner parties. The cheesecake was special for two reasons. One: she would only ever make this cheesecake for dinner parties and not for us to eat at normal times. And two: it was absolutely, positively, magnificently delicious. I mean unlike any store-bought cheesecake you could ever have – it was heavenly. These two factors tended to conspire against my brother and I since by definition the cheesecake would be eaten by those attending the dinner party – and that meant no leftovers for us to eat the following day. So we’d beg her to please, please, please make sure some was left for us and if not could she please, please, please make one for us next weekend?! We promise not to fight and to tidy our rooms! Being the wonderful parents that they were there most often were leftovers and we’d eat every last drop of the cheesecake and then crave more.

So fast forward 20 years (actually it’s more than that – but 20 years sounds better than the truth) to last Saturday. I’m attending a dinner party with my other half and in this particular case one couple is making the starter, one the main course and another – that would be us – the dessert. There’s nothing for it, I’m going to make a cheesecake! Now it’s a proud Conners tradition (that I made up) that only a Mrs Conners can make my mother’s cheesecake, and since I’m Mr Conners (to you), I thought I’d make a white chocolate cheesecake instead – a recipe from a friend of mine who has a sweeter tooth than I – knowing from making it in the past that it was delicious. I don’t actually like white chocolate but love this particular white chocolate cheesecake – which says it all. Except of course I’d lost the recipe and my friend lives in New Zealand and the only other person who has it isn’t around!

In an ironic twist I had a document called ‘Torrie’s White Chocolate Cheesecake’ that was in fact my mother’s cheesecake recipe mis-titled! Anyway, I had a look through several cook books for a similar white chocolate cheesecake recipe and finally found one that was more elaborate, but seemed to fit the bill. So cut to me on Saturday morning at 1am taking the cheesecake out of the oven (they take quite a while to make) and worrying if it was going to set, was going to taste nice, how I was going to decorate it and so forth, hearing my mother’s voice in my head laughing “see John, it’s not as easy as it looks, and you’re only making the dessert!”.

I decorated it with some white and milk chocolate and finished it off with some raspberries from the garden:

And you know what? It tasted bloody delicious! And even better, there were leftovers for the next couple of days which I happily polished off.

I always used to think dinner parties were formal affairs, somewhat posh and a bit pretentious. But they’re not. When you’re young you meet out at a pub, maybe get a burger or kebab if you’re hungry. As you get older your taste improves and you dine out at a restaurant. Then kids come along and you can’t get out as much (babysitters and what not) so instead meet up at friends houses for dinner – and voila, you have a dinner party. So while we were out on Saturday night at our friends I couldn’t help think of their young daughter upstairs and remember that being my brother and I. Sitting, hoping there would be some cheesecake left over in the morning. And there I was downstairs eating exactly as my parents would have all those years ago (albeit dressed a lot more casually). And so the circle of life – and cheesecake – is complete!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, when we’ve made my mother’s cheesecake since it still does taste just as good as I remember. Although it’s never quite the same without her telling me I’m not allowed any of it!

Pain is something that’s very difficult to describe. Many years ago I got a filling and decided to have it done without anaesthetic. My thinking was that the pain of a dentist drilling into my teeth would remind me to brush my teeth so I wouldn’t need another one (plus it wasn’t a deep filling so I was assured it wouldn’t be too bad). It was, perhaps predictably, very painful. I remember realising at the time why torturers liked drilling holes in teeth as the pain was excruciating and there was no escape from it. But trying to describe that pain – what it felt like – to someone else proved particularly difficult. No amount of description could really do justice to the sound and sensation of the drilling and the electric shock-like shooting pains that you just couldn’t prepare yourself for.

And it’s exactly the same with the other end of the spectrum describing intense pleasure. Like, for example, eating an amazing meal.

This weekend to celebrate my birthday, my brother’s birthday and our anniversary, my good lady, brother and I went to Gordon Ramsay’s Maze Restaurant in Grosvenor Square, London (England) for dinner. We’d given my brother a voucher for Christmas to go for a meal there and he reported afterwards that the whole experience was superb and the food was sublime so it was time to find out for ourselves if that was the case.

The first thing to note is that while the restaurant may bear Gordon Ramsay’s name, the executive chef is Jason Atherton so really the menu is designed, selected and created by him. Anybody who follows the world of chefs knows that Jason (a Michelin star chef) is straight out of the top drawer, and the fact that he’s a Yorkshireman makes him even better since that’s where I live!

Anyway, the restaurant itself was beautifully decorated, a real quality look without feeling overly posh (i.e. I didn’t feel completely out of place!). The service was probably the best I’ve ever experienced. Having been a waiter myself during my student days I can appreciate a slick operation when I see it and at the Maze they were like a well oiled machine. You never even thought about topping up your glass as it was perpetually filled, the food seemed to appear and disappear, we never felt like we were being hurried out at the end and there was none of this spending 15 minutes trying to attract someone’s attention to pay the bill!

And so to the food. This is where it gets tricky to articulate. We all went for the set 7 course meal where you had a choice of a couple of options on 3 of the courses. Each course was small, beautifully presented (like pieces of art on a plate), the ingredients were all top quality and the flavours were out of this world! Each course seemed to complement the previous one and we kept marvelling at how ingredients were put together in unexpected ways to create a taste sensation. Heck, one of the courses had mini shepherd’s pie and I’ve never tasted one like that in my life!

We quickly lost count of how many courses we’d had and how many were left. It was like eating the most amazing tapas one dish at a time and soon enough we got to the dessert (which I really should have taken a picture of) and our culinary adventure was over. As is always the case with tapas-style food I felt I could have eaten more but when I stood up later I realised I’d actually had enough.

Overall the experience was fantastic. The ambiance, the service and the wine were all tip top. But the food was indescribably good. It wasn’t like eating a meal, it was more like being injected with a cocktail of pure class A drugs. No wait, that’s a terrible analogy! Let me try that again… It wasn’t like eating a meal, it was like… Eh… You see, it’s not easy to describe what it was like, nothing I could say would do it proper justice. Let’s just stick with a single word – divine. If you find yourself tempted to go to one of Ramsay’s restaurants but think “that’s a lot of money”, I can assure you it was worth every penny!

In the continuing saga of us growing our own veg we’ve hit a major milestone. While we’ve been eating more lettuce and other greenery than you can shake a stick at (we’ve had to give some to our neighbours such is the amount we’ve grown) we’ve been really looking forward to our ‘proper’ veg being ready. I’m thinking traditional stuff like carrots, beetroot, onions and of course potatoes.

We’d been growing potatoes in bags – the sort you add more soil to when the potato leaves have found their way to the surface, bury them and let them break through again and so on until the bag is full. We knew that you’re supposed to wait until they flower before harvesting but ours hadn’t and the first couple of bags we planted were starting to go yellow as if they’d been hit with blight. Turns out that in fact this also means they’re ready for picking so we tipped the first bag out to see what we got – and personally I’m pretty impressed!

To a farmer growing potatoes is as trivial as breathing in and out, but since I’d never done it before it felt like a real novelty. We went with anya potatoes which are small, thin and tasty. We planted two in each bag starting back in March and that was long enough to wait! Anyway, have a look at the photos below to see what we did and ended up with:

This plant growing is definitely a learning experience and there are lessons we’ll be applying next year such as thinning the carrots and beetroots out more, what to plant from seed and what to grow indoors first and many other things. It’s been fun so far and it just makes me want to buy a house with a huge garden so I can fit poly tunnels and grow grow grow! I think I’ll need that lottery win first though…

I’m very particular about coffee. I don’t drink instant coffee because it tastes terrible. I’ll drink Starbucks coffee when I don’t have a choice as the coffee is OK (in my experience about 1 in 3 cups I buy from Starbucks has had the coffee burnt by the barista). If I’m out for a meal at a pub or restaurant (even expensive ones) I’ll always turn down the offer of coffee after dessert as I know it’ll always be average at best. I have my own espresso machine, only buy quality coffee that’s ground in front of my eyes and keep the coffee in a plastic container in the fridge to maintain optimal freshness. As I say, I’m very particular about coffee.

I’ve gone to many a cafe over the years and my absolute favourite has to be Bean Loved in Skipton. It’s a family run cafe that is exactly how I imagine Starbucks was when it started (before it became hugely successful, global and consistently mediocre worldwide).

For me a good cafe requires either good food or good coffee. Bean Loved has both. They have a selection of paninis which (unlike Starbucks paninis) are varied in terms of ingredients and always delicious (the minted lamb one is my current favourite). I should probably write a separate article some time about my obsession with muffins and my pursuit of the perfect muffin, but let’s just say the the blueberry cheescake muffin Bean Loved sell is right up there (it combines the classic blueberry muffin format with cheesecake mix in liquid state – delicious)! And the coffee is excellent, and looks as good as it tastes:

What I particularly like is the attention to detail. If you order a take-away coffee they do this pretty swirly pattern on the top – even though it has a lid on it! I’ve never had a burnt cup yet and I can see as the coffee’s being prepared that every bit of care and attention is taken (since I have my own machine I know how to get the best out of it and they certainly do).

The cafe itself has ample seating, some sofas, some wooden chairs, nothing uniform – which I like. The staff are very friendly and helpful and I can feel the real enthusiasm that comes from people who actually care about what they do (something you don’t get in certain global corporations I could mention).

So if your find yourself in Skipton and fancy a coffee then take a wander along Otley street, just off the high street (next to the pedestrian crossing) and go visit Bean Loved:

You won’t be disappointed! Oh and before you ask: no, I am in no way affiliated with Bean Loved other than being a happy customer.

We decided to take some of Jamie Oliver’s advice and grow our own strawberries in hanging baskets this year.

We have (or rather my good lady has) been taking good care of them as they’ve grown from little shoots. We kept looking out for little green strawberries to appear and when they did we were counting the days until we could eat them! Unfortunately the local bird population had other ideas so we netted them up after one particularly juicy strawberry disappeared without a trace one day (and my good lady swears she didn’t eat it).

More and more red strawberries looked almost ready for eating and then last night we decided enough was enough – it was time to harvest! As the title suggests, they really do taste sweeter when you grow your own. We’ve bought a few boxes of strawberries lately but they didn’t taste half as nice as the ones we picked – they were delicious!

Of course my good lady’s creative talents with food presentation made them taste even better:

So if you’ve got hanging baskets filled with boring pansies or some other tedious flowers then why not throw them in the bin and plant something you can later eat? That’s my kind of gardening! And if you don’t like strawberries then not to worry, invite me round your house and I’ll eat them for you!

Now that I’m predominantly working from home I am unrestricted in the amount of good coffee I can drink and the amount of singing I can do while listening to some of my favourite music. (In an office full of people it’s not really a good idea to burst into song unless you’re starring in a musical or can actually sing – I qualify in neither of those categories).

For the coffee I use my wonderful Gaggia Classic machine using freshly ground coffee from my local coffee shop (it’s one of those places that I love going to as the beautiful aroma of dozens of types of coffee fills the air when you walk in). And for the music I use my recently-bought iPod Touch (which is still a great piece of kit) wired up to play through my stereo.

Anyway, I just went downstairs to make myself a latte with some Hawaiian Kona as I’ve done many times before. The fun thing about making a latte is that you can create a pretty pattern like this one, although I don’t bother because every time I’ve tried I’ve completely failed. Until today where I managed to somehow create this:

If I’m not mistaken I’d say that’s a pretty good representation of the Apple logo… I’m beginning to think I like my iPod and Macbook just a little bit too much and worry that their iPhone ads on TV are starting to get to me…

For a few years before I moved from Scotland down to Yorkshire I used to do a lot of swimming at the University of Dundee pool. Not just a few lengths followed by ages in the shower, but hours in the pool every day training with a variety of interesting characters from accountancy students (maybe it’s the monotony of counting strokes and lengths that attracted them) to a former representative of Scotland at the Commonwealth Games (who was an awesome athlete – I could write pages on his flawless butterfly technique) to a triathlete who competed in IronMan races (he was a scaffolder by trade, was built like a bodybuilder but had endurance like you couldn’t believe – which is essential for a 2.4 mile swim followed by 112 miles on a bike rounded off with a marathon).

Anyway, I used to train with these sorts of people, battling to keep up with them and their punishing sessions while acquiring quite a physique in the process (I’m sorry to disappoint you ladies out there but the v-shaped back, washboard abs and powerful shoulders are no longer quite there). The irony was that I learned to swim late preferring to burst into tears as a small child when presented with water like the wuss that I was. What I realised when I was 21 was that if my parents had been the pushy sort that pushed their kids into sport, I might have actually made a decent competitive swimmer. Ah well, I can always dream!

Right, I’m digressing somewhat (rambling comes with the territory when I take trips down Memory Lane). So I’d walk out of the pool from a tough session and my arms would feel like they’re about to fall out, my legs would feel like jelly and the goggle marks around my eyes would make me look like I was wearing eye liner. I was ravenously hungry. At the time I wasn’t drinking alcohol, was eating wisely, steering clear of junk food and high fat stuff, generally looking after myself. Except for one vice I allowed myself. Full sized trifles.

The saying “Never go shopping for food when you’re hungry” is spot on as if I went to the supermarket after a workout I’d inevitably come back with a family sized trifle. I’d remove the lid, get a dessert spoon out from a drawer and devour the whole thing (which would normally feed 4) in a matter of minutes.

Digression Number 2: I was at a party once where I’d just finished explaining this piece of gluttony to the hostess who said “I’ve got a trifle in the fridge, I don’t believe you could just eat the whole thing like that”. Cut to 10 minutes later and a horrified expression on her face when I’d done exactly that!

The way I figured it, since I was burning thousands of calories per day and was eating very healthily in general, I could get away with such a high concentration of Trifles Per Week (or TPW) and indeed I suffered no ill effects. Sadly when I moved to Yorkshire I couldn’t find anybody to train with who was at the level I was at so I eventually hung up my trunks and moved onto other things. And curiously, my obsession with trifles went too. I’m not sure whether it was the chlorine or the tight-fitting trunks, but as soon as I was no longer exposed to that lifestyle my desire to gorge myself on trifles disappeared.

It’s a shame really as I’d become quite an expert on trifles having eaten so many varieties (things like varying the ratio of sponge thickness to custard to cream can make all the difference in advanced trifle design and manufacture). Strangely I’ve managed to replace the swimming / trifle combination with a similar football / tiffin obsession so I suspect that different sports have different complementary foods that you (or strange people like me) crave. I may have to do some experiments to find out – huge waistline here I come…

I’ve never really been that into food. Sure, the sort high quality food you can get in a swanky restaurant or hotel definitely gets me interested – such as a trip to my local Aagrah curry house. But things like going to a carvery, or eating pie and peas, or fish and chips or any of that sort of thing doesn’t enthuse me at all. They’re bland, average, uninteresting meals that I consider fuel rather than any kind of interesting eating experience and you’d never catch me fantasising about pouring gravy on a Cumberland sausage and mash. This attitude didn’t prepare me well for when I moved to Yorkshire however…

When I was originally courting my good lady we’d go out for meals with her parents or her family and the thing I noticed was that they talked about food all the time. We’d be eating a meal and they’d be discussing the next meal they were going to eat in intimate detail. I thought maybe it was just them but every Yorkshireman (and Yorkshirewoman for that matter) seems to be exactly the same. A conversation about a recent holiday in the sun can go along the following lines (you may find it easier to read the conversation aloud as I’ve tried to use the correct regional dialect where appropriate):

ME: “I say, how was the holiday? Did you get some jolly good sunshine?”.

THEM: “Oooooo. We ad a raaaa’t good taaam. The food were raaaa’t luvly. On the first naaat they ad plates of sausages as far as the eye could see. And buckets o’ gravy. And the potatoes – eeeeee. They had roast, boiled, jacket and loads of others I’d n’er seen before. Then we had a full English the next morning and the bacon were to die for! And then we went out for lunch at an all-you-can-eat carvery and……..”

ME (CUTTING IN): “Goodness me old bean, that sounds interesting! So did you go to <Insert Landmark Here>? I hear it’s one of the 7 wonders of the world and is quite a sight!”.

THEM: “Ye, it were alright. But on t’way back to t’hotel we saw a raaa’t good English pub in t’middle of <Insert Foreign Country Here> and we ordered scampi and chips and it were bloody luvly, joust laak home…….”

By this point my mind would have wandered off somewhere while they spent the next 10 minutes telling me about every piece of food they’d eaten without actually telling me a thing about the holiday.

I was brought up talking about pretty much everything except food when at the dinner table. Such topics could include any of the of the following:

• How our respective days went
• Some interesting piece of gossip or news
• My brother and I winding my dad up
• Being shouted at by my dad about our table manners
• A frosty silence
• My brother and I winding up my dad some more

But sitting talking, obsessing, fantasising about food would definitely not be one of them. Food just isn’t that interesting! I initially found it a culture shock sitting eating food and everybody talking about nothing but food.

However over time I’ve managed to adopt a strategy that allows me to blend in as though I were a Yorkshireman myself (albeit with a very un-Yorkshire accent). Instead of talking about blandiose food (note: I’m pretty sure I invented the word blandiose many years ago but I note that someone else thought of it too) I try to steer the conversation to food of a higher quality and reminisce about fine meals I’ve had in some lovely restaurants. Unfortunately the experience has slowly changed me and I now find myself eating out with friends who’re not from Yorkshire and having to stop myself talking about food!

You know what they say, “when in Rome….”. And I hear the food’s raaa’t luvly too!

It tends to surprise most people but actually – and I’m only saying this because I’ve been told, not because I have a sky-high ego – I’m not a bad cook.

This isn’t the result of any form of training or any skill that’s been passed down from generation to generation in my family and it’s definitely not as a result of me spending years trying to perfect the art. No, I have a tried and tested technique that pretty much never fails. It goes something like this:

1. Always follow the recipe exactly.
2. Never deviate from the recipe.
3. Stick to the simple stuff John, you’re not a chef and you never will be.

I don’t cook that often (my good lady does most of that since I’m too lazy) but when I do I try to do a decent job of it. For example, we had some friends round on Saturday night and this was the menu:

Starter

Seared scallops with black pudding served with
sweet red onion sauce and pesto

Main Course

My mother’s classic prawn pathia served with
long grain and wild rice

Dessert

Home made apple crumble (made by my good
lady who didn’t want to feel left out)

Followed by coffee from El Salvador (mmmm, nice)

Our guests agreed that the whole meal was delicious. I was genuinely thrilled to see everyone clear their plates and go on about how delicious it was. But frankly I don’t take any credit for things like that – it’s the person who wrote the recipe that did the work, I just followed it to the letter and didn’t get imaginative. If the recipe demands 100g of dessicated coconut, that’s exactly what I’ll add. If it says to sear the scallops for a minute or so until it’s golden on each side, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Any time that I deviate from a recipe with thoughts like “I’m sure another dash of cinnamon will make it better” or “ach, that’s way too much sugar, I’m not putting all that in there” or “yeah, this meringue’s fluffy enough – I don’t need to do all that whisking” then I’m always proven to have been wrong.

While my friend Stuart was beating me at squash for the umpteenth time a few years ago he told me the key was to “play the percentages”. I never did learn to do that with squash but with cooking that’s exactly what I do. Pick something pretty simple, follow the recipe, don’t get creative and while I’ll never create a masterpiece, I can knock a pretty decent meal together. So when I hear people say that they can’t cook – I know they’re just not trying hard enough and they’re not doing what the recipe says. If I can cook then anybody can!