Everything You Need To Know About Cheese With Paxton & Whitfield

Country & Town House | 6 Oct 2022

Cheese making was a gift of the gods, according to Greek mythology. And this course has been created by the Paxton & Whitfield gods of Piccadilly. If you’ve ever wondered how cheese is made, how to taste it like a pro, how to describe its character, when to eat it, how to serve it and with what, this is the class for you. It’s masterminded by the super knowledgeable folk from that shop that’s had the Buckingham Palace patent since Queen Victoria. And after closing the physical classroom door for the pandemic lockdowns, in-person meetings have just started again.

• Food

Sam Ashton-Booth & The Outside Oven

Country & Town House | 23 Aug 2020

Sam Ashton-Booth is newly redundant, so his venture The Outside Oven gives a new meaning to Eat Out to Help Out, whilst also giving a new spin to home-cooked meals. Plus, in these uncertain times, his feasts costs far less than any Michelin meal in a restaurant. The average food spend at The Ledbury was £125 per head, without alcohol. Caroline Phillips tells us more…

• Food

Myanmar is experiencing a gastronomic revolution

Straits Times | 31 Jan 2019

• Food,
• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

The Potting Shed

Our Man on the Ground | 18 Aug 2014

The Royal Triangle is like a sort of reverse Bermuda Triangle – so instead of aircraft and ships disappearing under suspicious circumstances, tasteful Highgrove daisy grubbers, maple-handled planting trowels, traditional Sussex trugs in which to collect your earthy organic carrots and wooden apple crates simply appear. Just like that. And everything is painted that sautéed sage colour. It’s like living in the brain of Lady Bamford of Daylesford fame, the high priestess of this sort of aesthetic.

• Food

The Restaurant at Cowley Manor

Our Man on the Ground | 18 Jul 2014

The Elder Daughter and I arrive an hour late – after driving into several hedges. The satnav doesn’t like the idea of going there and keeps ordering us imperiously to “perform a U-turn when possible” on roads the size of my little finger. When we get mobile reception – which isn’t often – we call to say we’re running late. Which might be as good a way as any to alert the staff to our table reservation. Wrong.

• Food

Picasso, Caviar and Mojitos

Lusso | 11 Nov 2013

Sometimes you find a place so good you don’t want to tell people about it. The Samling is one such. But its restaurant has just won a Michelin star, so it’s too late to keep schtumm…. The hotel can accommodate 24 lucky guests – in rooms and six cottages – in a gabled 1780s house in Windermere, the Lake District. All set on a steep hill and in 67 acres of gardens with giant genera, lavender and hemp. You may inadvertently walk past ‘reception’ – simply a bureau desk in the hall – but soon enough you’ll encounter the young, smiley, ever-solicitous staff. They’re doing great things. Since changing hands in 2011, The Samling has been snapping up awards. (‘Best boutique dining hotel in the world’ type monikers.)

• Food

The boil-in-the-bag dinner party

Financial Times | 22 May 2005

Online food delivery services are expanding into ‘gourmet’ ready-made meals, with mixed results, writes Caroline Phillips.

• Food

Lunch isn’t for wimps

The Sunday Times Magazine | 5 Jun 2004

When Faith MacArthur was a child, she’d pluck chickens and pick potatoes during the harvest. She lived in “Cow Town” – Calgary, Alberta – in the Prairies. Her mother, a minister’s wife, would hang home-made noodles around the house to dry. Sitting on her mother’s knee, four-year-old Faith would pummel bread dough and make carrot curls for garnish. Now Faith, 42, is standing in her fashionable Notting Hill kitchen, knee-high in ingredients for soups: cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, chickpeas, chillis. Rows of saucepans are steaming on an industrial oven and scribbled, half-complete recipes litter every surface.

Faith is half of the husband-and-wife team behind the EAT chain of cafes.

• Food

Heston Blumenthal: The big cheese of the Fat Duck

Financial Times | 31 Jan 2004

The former debt collector has some extraordinary kit in his kitchen. A rotavapor machine that distills natural essences, a water and oil bath, a canister containing liquid nitrogen and a gleaming machine that turns purees into edible shaving foam. There’s a desiccator and pump to suck moisture out of chips, test tubes, overhead stirrers, mini filtration units and magnetic mixers. And now he falls delightedly upon Fishers laboratory catalogue. “Heat pads! You put them in a beaker of water with magnets underneath and it keeps it stirred. Can you see the vortex it’s creating?” he asks ecstatically.

• Food

I like to go against the grain

Financial Times | 17 Jan 2004

Top chef Rowley Leigh starts his FT cookery column this week and tells Caroline Phillips about his robust, refined style.

• Interviews,
• Food

Sandwich man has an appetite for spreading

Financial Times | 6 Jan 2004

Niall MacArthur, the founder of Eat, tells Caroline Phillips about his ambitions to expand his 26-strong chain beyond its base in London.

• Food

The big cheese of the Fat Duck

Financial Times | 1 Jan 2004

Caroline Phillips meets Heston Blumenthal, the Willy Wonka of modern British cooking, and samples his distinctive brand of innovative and investigative cuisine.

• Food