Olivia Potts is a former criminal barrister who retrained as a pastry chef. She co-hosts The Spectator’s Table Talk podcast and writes Spectator Life's The Vintage Chef column. A chef and food writer, she was winner of the Fortnum and Mason's debut food book award in 2020 for her memoir A Half Baked Idea.
Chocolate cake comes in many different guises: from the dark and rich, to the sweet and simple. For me, it’s not like the ultimate cookie, or the perfect brownie: I don’t believe that there is one, definitive chocolate cake. I do not spend my days searching for the platonic version; trying to rank a chocolate
34 min listen
In this week’s episode: Who is Eric Zemmour – can he take on President Macron? In our cover story this week, Freddy Gray looks at the rise of Eric Zemmour, the TV presenter who looks set to stir up French politics ahead of next year’s election. Freddy is joined on the podcast by Sophie Pedder,
What is it about retro food? I don’t mean nostalgic food, from school dinner favourites to your grandmother’s signature dishes. I mean food you’ve probably never even tried. Thoroughly old-fashioned dishes that nevertheless light up your culinary imagination — or at least mine. I’m talking devilled eggs. Prawn cocktail. Beef stroganoff. Perhaps it’s because many
29 min listen
Laurie Woolever is a writer and editor, and for nearly a decade worked as the assistant to the late author, TV host and producer Anthony Bourdain. On the podcast, she talks to Lara and Liv about tending to garden peas from the age of four, finishing co-writing a book with Bourdain after he passed away,
According to recent reports, we might be looking down the sharp end of a turkey-less Christmas. Kate Martin of the Traditional Farm Fresh Turkey Association has warned that a lack of European farmhands means that Britain could be facing a turkey shortage this December. Turkeys have been synonymous with British Christmas dinners since the Victorian
It’s not terribly surprising that the apple Charlotte is often mistakenly attributed to French chef Marie Antoine Carême; the so-called first celebrity chef is credited with inventing everything from the chef’s tall toque hat to the taxonomic arrangement of sauces, via creating an entirely new system of dining and service. Some of these have more
38 min listen
In this week’s episode: with the energy crisis picking up pace who are set to be the winners and losers in this cold war for gas? Domestically we are seeing queues for petrol, rising gas prices all in the face of the Government’s net-zero agenda. And internationally things are looking just as turbulent, with China
Two years ago, I enrolled on a butchery course. I rather fancied seeing how the sausage was made, and also envisaged taking home handsome pork chops and having an ‘in’ when I needed to order my Christmas turkey. But the amateur course was no longer offered by my local college. So instead of a four-week,
I have always been a bit of a stew-pusher; it tends to be my answer to any of life’s dilemmas, culinary or otherwise. Friends coming round? Stew. Cold and dark outside? Stew. Feeling sad? Stew. To be honest, it doesn’t matter whether or not the weather demands it, I am always in the mood for
‘Casseroles,’ Julia Child wrote to her long-term penpal Avi DeVotos, ‘I even hate the name, as it always implies to me some god awful mess.’ On this, Julia and I are in full agreement: I have a real problem with the word ‘casserole’. And ‘stew’ for that matter. Both of them sound so unappetising, so
24 min listen
Grizelda is an award-winning cartoonist for publications including The Spectator, the New Statesman and Private Eye. She was Pocket Cartoonist of the Year in 2018. On the podcast, she tells Lara and Liv about her brother’s infamous cooking, how she comes up with ideas for cartoons, and why she only knows four recipes.
If you only read restaurant reviews, you might be forgiven for thinking that the North is a culinary wasteland: despite a few intrepid reviewers venturing further than the Watford gap, restaurant reviewing remains firmly London-centric. But there is life (and culinary prowess) beyond the outer zones of the London underground. Last month Moor Hall in
There are some fruits which, while lovely cooked, are probably at their best fresh: nectarines and peaches, raspberries, mango. But blackberries, as delightful as they are eaten fresh from the bush mid-forage, come alive when cooked. As you heat blackberries, and they break down and give up their juices, begin to smell like violets and wine.
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but somehow, eggy bread just doesn’t hold the same appeal as French toast, does it? The latter has become a bougie brunch dish, while the former languishes in second-hand student cookbooks. At heart, they’re the same thing: slightly stale bread soaked in an egg-based custard,
18 min listen
Ed Balls is an acclaimed broadcaster, writer, economist, professor and former politician who served as shadow chancellor from 2011 to 2015. On the podcast, he tells Lara and Liv about the importance of Sunday lunches growing up, his long history of making bespoke children’s birthday cakes and the times he turned his campaign team into
More than new pencil cases, name tapes, and the smell of school halls, back to school season always makes me think of proper puddings. There’s a category of pudding that seems reserved for properly old cookbooks, a handful of old-fashioned pubs, and dinner ladies. Spotted dick, cornflake tart, and jam roly poly. Perhaps its ubiquity
My daydreams at the moment follow a predictable theme. I am on holiday somewhere balmy, with a carafe of cold white wine in front of me. Someone handsome has just brought me a large bowl of salted crisps, unbidden but very welcome, and the greatest responsibility I have is finishing the book that I’m reading.
I’m not sure that many people would choose the unassuming garibaldi as their favourite biscuit. Garibaldis aren’t flashy: there’s no luxury chocolate, no pretty, brightly-coloured icing, no fancy-pants shapes. They aren’t squidgy, trendy cookies, or wholesome buttery shortbread. In fact, they’re often called squashed-fly biscuits because the currants baked into the dough resemble, well, squashed
41 min listen
Charlie Stebbings is an acclaimed food director and photographer. On the podcast, he talks to Lara and Liv about photographing M&S’s melt in the middle chocolate puddings, treating himself to baked beans and red wine and measuring mayonnaise from a syringe.
Being deeply unchic and uncosmopolitan, for a long time I assumed that croquetas were the same as the croquettes of my childhood: potato-based, probably a bit bland, and almost certainly coming from a bag that lives in the freezer. We’d often have them served with roast ham and cider sauce and green beans, as part