Mmmmmmmmarmalade…  This marmalade is darn good.  Reminds me a bit of Rose’s Lime Marmalade for some reason.  (thanks to fab new website discovery The Middle Class Handbook for the pic) Do quinces taste like limes in some circumstances?  I do not know, because I’m not sure I have ever tasted quinces, apart from possibly in...

Every year since 2006 my chum Heather and I go on a romantic mini break.  It stems from the days we were both single and we got fed up with all our friends going away with their boyfriends for city breaks so we decided to go on one ourselves.  We take it in turns to...

This was going to be easy! The plan was to get it all prepared and tucked away into the oven early on in proceedings. I would then be able to assist our lovely host with her main course, before getting on with the more serious business of carving our pumpkin, dressing up as Vincent Price...

I have a few lovely pics and posts to put up for chums who made things for the Halloween Cookalong.  First up is from the lovely Gaz Bailey who organises the phenomenal Abertoir Film Festival in Aberystwyth.  I went to this in 2011 and it was FANTASTIC! As Gaz was just a few days away...

It was the second annual Piccalilli Saturday a couple of days ago and my house still reeks of vinegar.  Delicious. Heather came over the night before and we sat at the dining table like two old ladies chopping marrows and drinking vodka and having a good old gossip about our men.  Cucumbers, French beans and...

Pheweeeeeee!  What a night!  It was Vincent all the way with the following of his recipes being  rustled up at Silver Screen Suppers Towers for a Haloweeeeeen party: Bloody Mary, Liver and Bacon Pâté, Oxtail Creole and Pumpkin Pie. It was the inaugural Halloween Cookalong and at the end of this post will be links...

The lovely people at the British Film Institute invited me to be in a cooking demonstration film with the fabulous Nathalie Morris making a Vincent Price dish.  As it was linked in to the Gothic season it HAD to be Ghoulish Goulash!  It was so much fun to do and you can see the results...

Hatty’s Silly Radio Show was so much fun to do.  Hatty cracks me up. You can have a listen here – we talked a LOT about Vincent Price and his cooking prowess.  I took in some Vincent Price Brown and White Cookies as well as the aforementioned Pink Tonics. I was at my parents’ house...

I smuggled some cocktail supplies into the radio station but of course, we didn’t have any drinks anywhere near the equipment.  Oh no, I promise, we didn’t.  Of course not. These are very good little tipples.  Basically a gin & tonic (or vodka & tonic if you prefer) with some lime and Angostura Bitters.  I...

Just a quick note to say that I am thrilled to get a mention on the Turner Classic Movies blog – here’s the link – it’s an excellent piece about Vincent and his cooking prowess: In the Kitchen With Vincent Price So a big thankyou to Kimberly Lindbergs who has a fabulous blog here –...

Excitement is mounting at Silver Screen Suppers Towers about the forthcoming Vincent Price Halloween Cookalong.  Food blogger chums around the world have been sent a cherry picked Vincent Price recipe to make for Halloween and even if you are not a blogger, join us by making Vincent’s Pumpkin Pie (here at the Recipe of the...

My ten-boy curry was a huge success.  Lindsey said: “This is practically the best meal I have ever had” and she christened the sideboard that was heaving with condiments The Buffeteria.  Genius. I made most of this dinner for the ladies of the book group the night before with the assistance of my trusty new...

I was involved in a top secret mission last night – details will follow when the embargo is lifted but for now all I can say is this: Vincent Price – Goulish Goulash – British Film Insitute. Wanna see me weilding an axe? Wanna see me washing up with something scary trying to grab hold...

My darling Shellac Sister Jane sent me an email back in February which said: “I’m just about to attempt this … have all ingredients including two pineapples looking like they need rum and umbrellas … and one hopeful dog sitting on her mat drooling and wondering why we don’t just have the chicken raw ..”...

Oh YEAH.  This was just as delicious second time around, and this time cooked on the BBQ rather than in the oven. For yes, it is summer and I’ve been to my first BBQ for about 3 years.  It was lovely!  Here’s me pretending to be in charge of the cooking… (but of course, when...

Woah!  Television!  I have been on a three day writing retreat and as usual when I spend some time at somebody else’s house I get obsessed by television because I don’t have one of my own.  I allowed myself a 2 hour TV break each day.  My programme of choice?  Storage Hunters.  Ohmygawd I love...

Had a wonderful evening last night with two of my Shellac Sisters, our beaus and two lovely visitors from New York.  Film-maker Joel Schlemowitz and DJ MAC from the Vintage Phonograph Show on WFMU. It’s been quite a month for the Shellac Sisters.  We DJd at this earlier in the month which was huge fun…...

I offered to teach Mr R to make pastry so that he could make the apple pie.  This is beginning to sound like some kind of Rom-Com isn’t it?  I do apologise for all the mentionitis over the last few posts but I am frankly still surprised that this geezer is still around.  Anyhow, it...

Oh how decadent.  The central dish for Vincent’s birthday celebrations was a whole chicken poached in ¾ of a bottle of champagne.  The recipe for this dish is at the end of this post… Utterly divine.  Once the chook was cooked I made a sauce with the chicken-y champagne-y stuff in the bottom of the roasting...

You know when you make a perfect dinner?  Everything works like a dream and tastes delicious and is ready right on time?  Such was Vincent’s Toad in the Hole with onion gravy (made to Alastair Hendy’s recipe in Home Cook) with a bit of broccoli chucked on the side.  Rrrowwwr! It was a “night before...

Birthday celebrations for Vincent on Bank Holiday Monday kicked off with a batch of these. The blueberries I got from Sainsbury’s were particularly FAT and some of them burst during cooking and that only added to the deliciousness. Eaten in bed.

I LOVE it when other people cook! My darling friend Sanja recently cooked a Serbian feast which involved the most delicious thing anyone has ever made for me.  SAUERKRAUT with bacon and Romanian sausage.  Oh my word it was delicious.  And what’s more, she sent me home with a jarful of this precious slow cooked...

In The Treasury of Great Recipes Vincent announced: “Probably the most glamorous markets in the world are the Food Halls at Harrods in London” and I say hell yeah!  He declared the whole Harrods emporium to be akin to “The British Museum crossed with Les Halles!”  Well, you know how I feel about Les Halles…...

My recommendation for Valentine’s Night – whether you will be alone – like me – or cosied up with your significant other is this. It’s a GENIUS recipe and is designed to impress your guest OR make you laugh out loud if you are eating alone. This is probably my all time favourite Silver Screen...

I have three friends who have birthdays really close to Christmas and they don’t tend to celebrate. So I decided, as they are three of my very favourite people, to make them a birthday lunch. I love my Vincent Price “Beverly Hills Cookbook” and I am working my way through all of the dinner parties...

A lovely new year celebration with Corinna last night.  We ate pretzels, cashew nuts, mini sausage rolls, Vincent’s Goulash and a divine Sachertorte made by Corinna.  We watched Dinner For One as is tradition (Corinna reckons she as probably seen this every year for about 20 years – it’s a must in Austria on NYE),...

Mmm – this was lovely but I’m afraid there is no photographic evidence as I was too busy getting drunk with David & Katy.  I was a bit worried that Vincent’s curry powder would be clove-heavy but in fact once it was all cooked up it was lovely.  There is not a scrap left.  There...

I absolutely love my Vincent Price “push button cookery” lessons. The Beverly Hills Cookbook tapes were recorded sometime in the 70s and are just bursting with Vincent’s humour, knowledge and joy of cooking.  They are difficult to get hold of but Mike Vines has kindly bunged them up on the interweb here and I do...

For the pre-birthday dinner I also made a baked ham to Vincent’s specifications.  Here’s a picture of it when it surfaced from the oven.  Heather kept eating bits of the crust as I broke it all off.  She does love her proper pastry. I didn’t have time to decorate it in the crazy fashion of...

It was my birthday on Monday and I decided that I’d invite some friends for a Vincent Price related experience.  As part of my self-made-challenge to visit every single one of the restaurants Vincent mentions in his awesome Treasury of Great Recipes I decided that we should go to Boulestin. Vincent said of Boulestin in...

Because I got smashed on cocktails on Thursday at the Kinolibrary launch I was a bit under-prepared for my dinner party on Friday but Cathy came to the rescue with a pastry case for my apple tart.  There wasn’t enough pastry for a lattice but I think it looked just dandy without.  Mary forbid me...

This is what the Lasserre looked like in 1965 when Vincent and Mary’s Treasury of Great Recipes was published.  It looked exactly the same last week in 2012.  Except the hydrangeas have been replaced with orchids and there is a new – but very similar carpet.  Everything else stays the same, thank goodness.  I had...

In the best cookbook ever written (IMHO) Vincent writes eloquently about the wonderful food available in Paris.  As the lovely people at Eurostar offered me a cheap ticket to Paree recently I decided I would go on the second of my pilgrimages to walk in the footsteps of my food writer idol.  I went for...

Any guest who arrives with a Fanny Cradock cookbook as a gift is tops in my book and if my weekend house-guest visits again I will definitely cook him something from “Fanny Cradock Invites…” Maybe “Winged Victory” as I have always wanted to make something that requires the purchasing of cutlet frills… Vincent didn’t let...

It’s Halloween, one of my favourite nights of the year, and there is a vast amount of Vincent Price Goulish Goulash in the slow cooker.  My CHARGE is coming for dinner tomorrow evening, and like some Aunt in a PG Wodehouse novel I want to make sure he is fully fed.  He’s here from New...

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmuffins!  Muffinsmmmm.  That’s all I have to say about them really.  Vincent’s recipe was perfect – natch.  So there is not much more to say about it.  They were gorgeous – me and Lawrence and Nathalie just about ate them all.  So instead of raving about them I hereby post a playlist of the inaugural...

I’ve gone Quiche crazy. Preparing for the Highgate Horticultural Society competition on Saturday. I couln’t decide between Alfred Hitchcock’s and Vincent’s but my work colleague Obi just clinched it. He said of today’s quiche, “I’d rather buy your quiche than Waitrose’s finest”. What a compliment. I am going to follow his suggestion of using Hitch’s...

What a few days!  I cannot begin to express what an amazing day I had at the Paralympics on Thrilling Thursday.  I thought my eardrums would burst when David Weir won his race the sound in that stadium was unbelievable.  It was a day full of love and friends and their families and every single...

I passed the Amstel Hotel a couple of times on my way to and from business meetings in Amsterdam but I saved up my visit for Saturday morning when I could appreciate it to the full.  I was strangely nervous as I walked across the bridge.  It’s such an imposing building and I really felt...

When I first clapped eyes on the best cookbook in the world – Vincent and Mary Price’s Treasury of Great Recipes – I knew many great culinary experiences lay ahead.  The mighty tome arrived in a box in a huge postal sack from the USA, delivered to work as I knew it would be far...

It is day one in my new academic diary and it is time for this old kazoo to go back to school.  My intensive 6 month writing boot camp with Lisa Clark begins today.  I took the day off work and have been writing like a machine.  My new project Movie Medicine is now up...

And then the mice came…  I think my romance is well and truly over.  What a shame.  I was having a conversation with my 12 year old chum Jessie about it on the bus the other day and when I said it wasn’t going well she said, “Oh dear.  And you had such high hopes!” ...

It’s time to start eating things from the freezer.  First up, some of Vincent’s Tortellini.  It was good.  Real comfort food as yet again, someone has bust my balloons… I’m Tired I’m not exactly sure what happened but I have a pretty good idea.  Oh well, England are playing the Ukraine and there are bigger...

I am getting anxious about tomorrow’s party. It’s a big deal for me, a celebration of the end of the Vincentennial Cookblog and a gathering of most of the people who were at the party to launch it. I am worried about whether I’ll get everything done in time, whether people will like the food,...

Yes, it was as weird as it sounds and looks.  I’d been wanting to try it since I saw the recipe because I love avocado and I love liver.  I knew it would be weird though, fried avocado?  Hot avocado?  And yes, it was strange  But kinda good too.  I only managed to eat about...

Behold His Majesty The Loaf. I love making bread. You have to be having a spinster’s day in really, for all the sticking it in a warm place to rise and then kneading it and letting it rise again, but really it’s a lovely thing to do. Vincent’s recipe actually makes two loafs and I...

OK, so there were no noodles. I am English and the idea of having a chicken leg with noodles just seems odd, so I had it with Savoy cabbage instead. Yum yum. As Vincent observed, “The real secret of this recipe’s excellence is the red wine added for the last bit of cooking. That’s the...

Pineapples! I’ve been wanting to throw a whole Vincent Price dinner party for a long time and Easter Sunday seemed like a good time to do it. It was SPECTACULAR. First up were Rumakis (above), water chestnuts cloaked in chicken liver with a bacon wrap. Divine. I should have made more, 2 each was not...

After weeks of my planning and plotting and inventing clues, Heather & Nathan’s treasure hunt was BRILLIANT. When they arrived at the Palace of Solitude I greeted them at the door in a Sombrero with frozen margaritas in hand and so the fun began. I’ve written more fully about the food over at the Vincentennial...

Happy New Year to all my readers. 2012 is going to be a humdinger I can just feel it! Last night I saw off the old year in style with Corinna and Kate. We had Vincent’s New Year Vol-au-Vent which was a splendid looking mega pastry full of turkey, bacon, peanuts, raisins and onions in...

My heart nearly burst with pride this morning when I got an email from my mum praising my pastry! I’d taken up some mini apple pies I made to a Vincent Price recipe last time I visited and she said, “We had your tartlets yesterday, they were really nice, were they a SSS recipe? Lovely...

There has been much Cucumber Crocodile action this week over at the Vincentennial Cookblog and I’m very excited to tell y’all that I’ve got an article about Vincent Price on lovefilm.com today – Happy Halloween On the contributors page I am next to Jean Christophe Novelli!!! Would be great to have some followers as I...

For the Daring Cook’s Challenge this month I killed two birds with one potato. The task set was to make a “healthy potato salad” and I’m not sure how healthy it was but my guests sure liked it. I made it almost exactly to the recipe in “Cooking Price-Wise” except for the fact that...

Happy Birthday Palace of Solitude and Happy Birthday Vincent Price! This weekend marks the first anniversary of my move to Silver Screen Suppers Towers and the start of the Vincentennial. The 100th anniversary of Vincent Price’s birth was on Friday and last night I threw a big party to celebrate both of these things, plus...

This month’s challenge over at the Daring Cooks was gumbo. I’ve only ever cooked gumbo once before – for Rosalind and Montgomery many moons ago when I was cat sitting at the Tessa Cohen mansion. The challenge for us UK based cooks was not really making the gumbo, but actually finding filé powder – an...

Ooooh Roland’s Rissoles were GOOD! I have so much mixure left though. I may attempt to make little canape rissoles for tomorrow night’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza chez Charley and Corinna. I am so proud of myself. It’s been a busy night. Fed Paulette’s cats on the way home from work and tidied the place...

Oh how I am loving the spinster life! Had a fabulous day today. Wallowed in bed with coffee and The Archers until 11.15 then made myself some Fritters for brunch. Yum yum yum. Mooched up to Alexander Palace to go and see my friend Shane’s art installation. Fully intended to quickly show my face and...

To say that my housewarming was a humdinger would, I think, be an understatement. What a wonderful and crazy night it was. I tried to make a list of everyone who rocked up, I got to 61 people and then realised I was still drunk so had to stop… It was crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrazy and fabulous. I...

“I sometimes feel that I’m impersonating the dark unconscious of the whole human race. I know this sounds sick, but I love it.” I am learning a lot about the dark unconscious of the human race this week Vincent, but luckily I am also doing things to balance it out. Like running up and down...

“It’s as much fun to scare as to be scared.” It’s Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen. How exciting. The pumpkin is carved and on the doorstep, there are treats to be dished out to any children of the night that come round to call and I have a very, very, very large spider in my hair. I know for...

“A man who limits his interests, limits his life.” It warms the cockles of my heart (and believe me at the moment they need warming) to hear from test cooks who don’t know myself or Ruth, but just like the idea of being involved in our cooking project. I’ve been having a lovely email correspondence...