Test cook KSB in Michigan rustled up some asparagus Ed Begley Jr. style and sent me some great feedback. She said, “I shared it with my daughter and we both agreed that it was a little tart but had a great flavor. We even wondered how it would be as a salad dressing. One...
There’s always fun to be had when Columbo gets invited to a posh restaurant. Sometimes he offends the suited and booted waiters by asking for a bowl of chili, but sometimes he enters into the spirit of the thing by ordering vast amounts of fancy food. Such is the case in the episode Columbo and...
Natalie is in the news at the moment. Will we ever know what really happened on that boat? I doubt it. It’s making me very sad reading about it. I’ve written here before about how much I love Natalie, and I always think about her when I have Huevos Rancheros made to her recipe....
I am pleased to announce that I THINK I have finished the Cooking With Columbo book. I just have one tiny thing I want to fiddle with, that’s the page margins. I am so scared that I’ll change the margins and set off some kind of domino meltdown where my formatting goes completely wonky. But...
I love Haggis with a passion, so I adore Burns Night. This year, I didn’t make my traditional Haggis pizza, I went to Battenburgbelle’s place where we had an amazing Scottish feast. Cathy cooked a delicious chicken stuffed with Haggis a la Nigel Slater, it turned out so deliciously moist, I am going to COPY...
Greg of Recipes for Rebels has created ANOTHER wonderful graphic for the cook-along, feel free to include it in your blog posts, print it out and frame it (which is what I’m going to do) or just appreciate the splendor of it! Just wanted to remind y’all that it’s happening, everyone is invited, and all...
I am very lucky to have Mr Rathbone in my life. He’s really good at proofreading. On Sunday, he was in bed with the Cooking With Columbo proof copy, and I was in the kitchen making City Chicken. Living the dream! I really love this “Meat on a Stick” and I had about half of...
Ooh, much excitement coming soon in February! I do hope that lots of you will join in with the Columbo Bowl chilli cook-along… I’m organising this to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Columbo going out on TV – whoop! Columbo fan and one of my test cooks Ian Baxter designed this! Plus...
Do those photos make your mouth water? They do mine – if that’s the grammatically correct way of putting it. After much agonising over the differences between American and English grammar and much wordplay, I have FINISHED the Columbo cookbook. Eek. Waiting for my second proof, which will look very much like this… ..only with...
I love it when test cooks send photos of their dishes and ingredients they used, especially when they are not based in the UK. I am always intrigued by how different things look in different places. Plus, there are certain things that are nigh on impossible to get here, which are easy to get elsewhere....
Here’s a test cook report from my lovely writer chum Sarah Broughton in Cardiff. I don’t see Sarah as often as I would like, but I’ll never forget when we spent a long weekend working on our short novels during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) many moons ago. I hope I’m not breaking the official...
Here’s a report from my lovely fellow film archivist, and neighbour across the back lawn, Corinna. She made Fettuccini Alfredo à la Robert Vaughn for myself and my ex Vic and it was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DELICIOUS. The test cook report she sent over really made me laugh, and it’s great to look back on this summer...
I’ve got my head down making last minute tweaks to the Columbo cookbook – my goodness what a lot of work! It’s fun though, and I haven’t quite started panicking yet. I’m putting cooking on hold a bit and trying not to be tempted by fabulous new recipes that keep popping up in my periphery....
I had SUCH a lovely surprise in the post this week. Lovely food illustrator Miriam Figueras sent me this AMAZING illustration of Columbo in his chef’s hat! Isn’t it wonderful? He will forever be in my kitchen, keeping an eye on my cooking. Thank you so much, Miriam. Such a sweet and thoughtful...
I’m throwing a party and everyone is invited! It’s a Virtual Reality Book Launch Columbo Chili Cook-along Party! The Columbo Bowl for short… Cook up a chili wherever you are in the world and join in the fun. It’s to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Columbo being screened on TV –...
Just here for the recipe? Scoot down to the bottom of the post. I had problems when I made these cookies. Not problems in my life, problems with the cookies. They were really tasty, but very floppy. I blamed my oven, haha! Two things made me laugh reading that post from August 2016. Firstly I’d...
Happy New Year one and all. I am kicking off 2018 with something new – I made a cookery demonstration video! Yes I did! Zip right to the bottom of the post if you can’t wait to see it – haha. But first, an explanation as to why I made a Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato...
I love the fact that my work colleague Neil Owens tested this recipe for the Cooking With Columbo book with a couple of fish he’d caught himself, how cool is that?! Here’s his report. Mmm. I want one of these right now! Having caught two reasonable sized trout – mine were 2 ½ lb and...
Film historian and writer Vic Pratt comments: ‘I’m by no means a natural in the kitchen. However, Ian’s tasty recipe was straightforward enough that even a saucepan simpleton like me managed to knock this up for a party of four, and nobody complained. I did discover, though, that in the health conscious 21st century, it’s...
Rebecca and Jim emailed out of the blue and offered to test cook something for me. They both work at the awesomely named Choccywoccydoodah in Brighton and found the Silver Screen Suppers blog as they are Columbo fans and were looking for recipes. Brilliant. I’ve never been to Choccywoccydoodah but I am putting...
Wishing all my lovely readers a super-dooper festive season full of fun, laughter, good food, and plentiful booze. Thanks so much to all of you who have been in email contact over the past year, it makes me so happy to hear from you. Special thanks to all those who have been testing recipes for...
Report just in from my desk-mate Lucy Smee who tested William’s steak recipe for the Columbo Cookbook… Small review: I chose this recipe to test as I’m a big Star Trek fan, and hardly ever cook steak at home so thought it would be a nice treat. It was very simple and perfectly pleasant, but...
Here’s a lovely test report from my Shellac Sister Lady Jane. She rarely sets foot in the kitchen so this is quite an honour. Thank you, Lady Jane! ****** So, Trix went to London again today and I decided to test Janet Leigh’s recipe for my lunch. I’d found Epoisses at the farmer’s...
To celebrate the fact that Feud: Bette and Joan has its UK premiere TONIGHT I thought I’d suggest her recipe for Danti-Chips as a fun snack for you to rustle up. When I launched the Joan Crawford cookbook in 2014 I organised a virtual reality launch party and lots of folks all around...
As I have mentioned several times on this blog, I am not really well versed in different cuts of meat, so I was really interested in a test cook report from the lovely Gaye Fisher who is a fellow Bread Angel. Gaye is the proprietor of Sticky Mitts in Surrey and won a couple of...
This is a tricky recipe for those based in the UK as it calls for a lot of things we can’t easily get here, notably frozen orange juice. I wanted to give this another run through for the book as I’d read somewhere that BOOZE could be used in place of frozen orange juice and I fancied...
Had these last night to kick off my birthday celebrations. Why am I writing a blog post on my BIRTHDAY? Because Mr R is still asleep and I am over excited, so I am up and sitting by the gas fire waiting for festivities to begin. We have SNOW in London today for the first...
I am a Bread Angel! It’s a network of wonderful home bakers who teach, make bread to sell in their local communities, run micro-bakeries, and often do wonderfully altruistic things involving bread. Our motto is “Bake Well. Do Good”. Isn’t that fabulous? I have met lots of wonderful people through the Bread Angels network...
I’m hoping that my friend Michelle is going to test this one for me here in the UK because I have had to make a couple of major substitutions in this recipe for non-America based cooks. Firstly, we can’t get condensed beef consommé for love nor money here… and steak sauce is as rare as...
I love it when my test cooks follow the film star recipe EXACTLY, as I personally tend to rigidly stick to doing what I am told… But I also love it when they put their own take on a recipe. Work colleague and cake-baker-extraordinaire Neil Owens sent me a report on his version of this...
The wonderful and lovely Pamela Hutchinson from the most excellent Silent London website sent a really fun account of her testing of the Ed Begley recipe that will feature in the Columbo cookbook. The mention of Beyonce’s lemonade master cleanse really made me laugh! Pamela’s book about Pandora’s Box was published on the 8th November,...
I am a huge fan of Olympia Dukakis. I love her in Moonstruck (my guilty pleasure) and I love her as Anna Madrigal in Tales of the City. She’s just ace. Plus, I know now, she really can cook. Because these meatballs are divine. Oooh they were good! I knew they would be when...
Been thinking about my friend Greg today over at Recipes for Rebels and sent him good, good vibes from halfway across the world as I cooked this dish. I am loving my new cast iron frying pan… This is the first dish I ever cooked from his fabulous cookbook, and indeed the very first...
I have a lovely Diana Dors story to tell, and I have saved it until December because BEHOLD THE SPLENDOUR OF THE DIANA DORS ADVENT CALENDAR! Blog reader Sam Dwyer tipped me off to the existence of this bit of superbness, and I immediately bought two. One for me and one for Mr Rathbone. But do...
Date for your diaries UK based chums! Feud: Bette and Joan starts on BBC2 on Saturday, December 16th with a double episode – whoop whoop! I got a sneaky peak of the series when it aired in the USA and I absolutely loved it. It’s event TV folks! I just wanted to remind you, that...
When my chum Orlando Murrin heard that there were a couple of Ray Milland recipes in the Columbo cookbook he let his friend Rosie Jones know. Rosie is Ray Milland’s second cousin and she offered to test his Chow Mein recipe. How fab is that? I love Rosie’s photo of the finished dish – doesn’t...
This report comes from a blog reader based in Berlin. Thank you so much Vera Roth! First, here’s Peter’s recipe, then Vera’s notes on how she made the dish, then her fabulous photos. All of this makes me want to cook these ribs again RIGHT NOW, they look so delicious! Peter Falk’s Barbecued Spare Ribs,...
I woke up craving these today, and luckily I had the wherewithal about the place to make them. I’m on a writing retreat this weekend. But a writing retreat in my own bed. Lovely. Not – actually – me. I consider Buckingham Eggs to be my ultimate Spinster Saturday breakfast. A little bit self-indulgent, but...
It’s that time again… It’s the #ColumboTV tweetalong tomorrow night and the episode is… In this episode, the Lieutenant rustles himself up a Black and White Soda. I had no idea what this was, but the power of the internet has revealed it contains vanilla ice-cream, chocolate syrup, club soda, whipped cream and a cherry. So...
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. Love and miss you all, but especially my sister of the skillet Dr Caroline Frick! Something that rang true to me as a childless spinster, was something I read many years ago. When you don’t have children, you have to make your own traditions. Well, this is now...
Today we have a test cook report from the lovely Clive Smith. This did make me laugh! Clive liked Ruth’s Omelet so much that he had it two days in a row. I don’t blame him! For those who may not know. Brits call zucchinis courgettes. It also makes me laugh that Greg Swenson who...
My lovely chum Peter Fuller, curator of Vincent Price Legacy UK sent a very detailed report on his testing of the Roddy McDowall recipe so I’m going to post it here in full. I was having a conversation with Battenburg Belle over lunch about poached pears on Sunday, so it feels timely. I love the...
Fishy fishy! Two households recently enjoyed testing Jack’s excellent trout recipe. One in London, one in Hastings. Both sets of diners sent me excellent feedback for the Columbo Cookbook and some photos that made me exceedingly happy. First up – Dylan and Arike sent me feedback and some pictures of a “speccy div and...
I’ve had to do a last minute recipe switch for the Columbo cookbook. I realised that I’d included a recipe for Hayley Mills, but it is, in fact, Juliet Mills who appears in the No Time to Die episode. It’s a good thing I realised, not least because that would have been a big, big,...
Under Doctor’s orders, I am trying to eat liver once a week. This is no real hardship as I love liver, however, I am not confident about cooking it. Luckily my ex Vic, who lives downstairs from me is an expert in this field so he supervised the cooking of this dish. Corinna is...
If I met someone who had never seen an episode of Columbo, I think I would recommend Murder By The Book as the one to start with. It’s superb in so many ways… Not least… but also… Credit is due for the screengrabs to the amazing Colombophile But the best thing about it, for my purposes,...
Ooh, this was GOOD. I followed the recipe in this Sainsbury’s advert… But you know what? From the minute that advert starts, you realise that times have changed since 1992. I totally remember the days when you went to a supermarket and you got a weird looking slice of fish that looked like Ian’s, a...
I got a tip-off that the Museum of Soho radio show this month will be all about THE MARX BROTHERS so I thought I would share a Groucho recipe in tribute. This is a bit of a mad recipe, but what more would you expect? Groucho is very specific about the vessel in which this...
I’m on the home stretch with the cookbook and I’m beginning to get those long nights of the soul – waking up and panicking about how much there is still to do – eek! I have about 3 months before publication date. Can I do it? I hope so… This is just a quick post...
My fellow Shellac Sister Lady Jane is well known for being averse to cooking. But she stepped right up to the plate to test this recipe for the Columbo cookbook. Admittedly, there isn’t really any cooking involved, but when you are a LADY, this is all to the good. Mind you, even though she is...
My new favourite cocktail? Yes. This was utterly divine. The jalapeño flavour got more pronounced the more I drank, and the closer my schnozzle was to the wheel on the glass – ha ha! Here’s an article about the creation of this cocktail – respect is due to Jonathan Humphrey who invented this dream of a tipple....
Ooh, reading the report by Sarah Bailey of Sarah’s Cooker-ebook made me want to make some of these again, they are such tasty little meatballs. I love Sarah’s photos (all at the bottom of the post), and having them with roasted cauliflower and a tomato sauce is an idea I might pinch! Sarah’s feedback about...
Sometimes I fantasize about having chums round for a poker game and serving food like Oscar “Divorced, Broke and Sloppy” Madison does in this movie. He’s a filthy bachelor living in squalor and one of his card-shark chums observes of his disgusting, out of order fridge, “I saw milk standing in there that wasn’t even...
I think we’ll be talking about Vincent’s Goulash recipe on the Museum of Soho radio show tomorrow from 10am, so I thought I’d put the recipe up. It is such a great thing to cook for Halloween – you can call it GHOULISH GOULASH. At the end of the post, there’s a fun demonstration film...
I’m going to be on the radio on Sunday talking about Vincent Price, I’m very excited. It’s the Museum of Soho show on Soho Radio and you can listen to me make a fool of myself live between 10-11am. I’ll put the link to the show in this post after it has gone out too… I’ll be...
Whenever I see or hear the word pheasant, a Pavlov’s Dog type reaction occurs in my brain, and this exchange goes through my mind: Actor 1: “My father hath a pheasant.” Actor 2: “Hath he?” Actor 1: “Pheasant he hath.” Actor 2: “Hath he feathers?” Actor 1: “Yeth.” This was a pre-show warm-up exercise for...
Oooh, this was fabulous! I have blog reader and friend Zelda from Dinner With Zelda Manners to thank for this wonderful recipe. She generously spent time creating a vegetarian version of the Johnny Cash chilli for the Columbo cookbook, and it’s absolutely delicious. I know I have lots of vegetarian readers, and do hope they...
My lovely chum Peter tested this recipe for the Columbo Cookbook for me and I’m going to include his whole verdict on the recipe as a post. As a little update on how the book is going, I’m hoping to have the text finished by the end of this week. I’m still tweaking the recipes...
Who could resist a salad with a title like that? Not me! It’s not “Tomato Salad With Flair” you note, it is Tomato Salad With A Flair. Phyllis Kirk sounds like she could be a character in The Archers. Are you listening to The Archers at the moment? For overseas readers who might not...
One day after living in my rented fourth floor flat in a 1930s block for about 3 years, I thought to myself, “I wonder if I can get to the recycling bins through the back door of the fire escape?” I opened the back door and it was like this… there was a beautiful communal...
Like a small fussy child, there is absolutely NO WAY I would eat this bowlful of fruit if it was put in front of me. But mushed up into a smoothie I can handle it. Why is this? I have no idea. Maybe because it feels a bit like having a milkshake for breakfast?...
Hot on the heels of Vincent Price’s Waffles are Jane’s. Now, I have never heard of putting fruit IN waffles, but that’s the way Jane has them, so why not? I’ve been looking after Ringo, the dog from number 14, while Chloë and D-Fran have been in Paris and I have loved every minute. Ringo...
I can’t believe I’m only just now getting around to writing about these waffles as these were made YONKS AGO when my darling Caroline Frick was in the house, way back in April. Over from Texas for a short visit, I set Dr Frick on waffle duty as she is American and I am not....
Remember when I said a few blog posts back that everyone looks good in a cowboy hat? Well here’s another bit of evidence if you need it… and plus… my word! I absolutely love it when a reader of my blog or a recipient of my newsletter gets in touch. So I want to say...
It was almost dark when I got home from work this evening, so Spring, it definitely is not. Autumn seems to have descended upon London this week, and along with it a teenager-style attitude to cooking which effectively is this: “I can’t be bothered to cook when I get in”. We all feel like that...
Have you ever left something important on a bus? I once got all the way up to my fourth floor flat late on a very rainy evening, and realised the moment I closed the door that I’d left a 6 pack of cold beer on the bus. Oof. Tonight I realised the moment I stepped...
I’ve had a couple of these for breakfasts during Jane Fonda month so far… I know that Jane loves a smoothie, and her brother’s version has had to stand in for the one she demonstrates in her video about breakfasts, as I did not have any PROTEIN POWDER around the place… But I do now!...
I love Mondays. I never go out on a Monday evening. For me, it’s a night when I cook something nice to eat, and go to bed really, really early. Tonight was no exception. I made some of Jane’s spaghetti and I’m about to turn in – it’s 9.30pm. This recipe sounds a bit odd,...
I’ve done it my friends! I have done the Jane Fonda Workout! It was excellent fun. I loved it! Mind you, I was quite amazed at how flexible La Fonda was, and by contrast how feeble I was. She is AMAZEBALLS in the workout video and can get her leg right up to her ear....
If anything can scupper my month of living like Jane Fonda by trying to eat healthily and exercise, it is THIS. If I was a chocoholic, I wouldn’t have a chocolate fountain in my house would I? So why, oh why, as a self-confessed-guilty-pleasure-style-slightly-ashamed-of-myself-addict do I have a huge Kilner jar of Thousand Island Dressing...
I have a day off work today to do some editing on the Columbo book. As I’d heard Jane mention in her YouTube video about breakfasts that oats were good for the brain I decided to make myself some of her Apple-Raisin Oatmeal for breakfast. In fact, Jane’s headnote to this recipe reinforces her...
It is official. This month I am living my life like Jane Fonda. When my friend Sanja gave me this book, I vowed to spend a month eating and exercising like Jane. That month is now here. I am fully prepared and have pledged on social media to recreate this photo in the Silver Screen...
