There was a particular little shop that used to exist on almost every French street corner, and although most of them have quietly disappeared, their ghosts remain if you are lucky enough to spot one. You will be walking through some entirely ordinary town or village, when your eye drifts upwards and catches an old façade, it's painted signage faded and faint, but sure enough - perhaps above a mobile phone shop, an estate agent or some other high street blandness, you will se

An exhausted pizzaiolo, weeps softly in the dim light of a kitchen corner. Floury head, in floury hands. The culinary heritage that was boyhood, manhood and his very lifeblood, just died on the table... ...Rest in Pizza. Gone now, but ever-remembered - the classic beauty of what he called pizza - the disciplined, ascetic stretch of dough, frugally flavoured with a thick slap of tomato salsa, hand-torn mozzarella; perhaps a lean slice of local ham and a leaf or two of basil

I am a sucker for things that are not really traditional food parings. I mean I love things that do go together - fish and chips, buttered toast, and cream on jam, but I do like a new challenge. Enter, Roquefort & Honey Ice Cream. Found on a menu at a not-very-posh bistro in the stunning town of Sant Malo. There were clearly less challenging flavours on offer, and I could very much have made a far more vanilla choice, but something about it made me want to dive headlong into

There is a fine line between what we understand as appreciation and what we immediately deride as snobbery. Somewhere along the way, we decided that knowing too much about wine, coffee, or olive oil, made us a bit "too" something. You will know by now, that I love to look at the roots of words. The Etymology. The Verbal archaeology that whispers through history, where words and phrases orginiated and how we have skewed them to suit modern purpose. Frustratingly, the origins o

It's hot here. The sort of heat that suggests any kind of movement is a bad idea. Last night I sat in the pitch-black kitchen, with the fridge door open. It was not as effective as I would have liked. It was like being interrogated by the faint smell of Melon. Now then, if we played a word association game, and I said "Summer".. chances are someone would respond "Ice Cream". It is a horse-and-carriage relationship. A friendly rebellion against the sun - saying "OK if you want

Like many British people, I came to goat's cheese quite late in life. I mean, when I was a kid, you could order fruit juice as a starter in a fairly posh restaurant... yes, children, it was once thus. Anyway, in our house, goats didn't produce cheese, cows did. And they made it all in a place called Cheddar. Britain in the seventies, was not a place where food was discussed with any particular reverence. It came either hot, or cold. Cold was for lunch, hot was for dinner. Bre

Aren't cherries just a wonderfully optimistic fruit? They arrive quite suddenly, unlike the well guarded blackberries of Autumn, which just take forever to ripen and seem to do so one at a time. Cherries just appear. Reckless and post-box red, they are a bounty of equal opportunity, for birds and beings alike. In France, cherries are not simply fruit. They are a seasonal event. A brief national orthodoxy that, for approximately three glorious weeks, has everyone smiling. Here

On the un-scratched surface, there are few things less glamorous than a bowl of potato chips. They occupy that curious corner in the picnic hamper of human existence, reserved for things people secretly enjoy but rarely defend publicly - like reality TV, cheap rosé, or the schadenfreude of watching downhill skiers wipe out. And yet, somewhere between Devon and the Dordogne, I stumbled into what can only be described as a minor, crispy epiphany. The culprit was a French compan

There is a very sober, serious show on the BBC called "Panorama". It covers studious subjects, in great depth and head-nodding sincerity. On April 1st, 1957, Panorama ran a segment calmly informing the British public that spaghetti grew on trees. Literally. It showed a group of Swiss farmers (you might think that would have been a red flag..) harvesting strands of air-dried spaghetti from the low hanging branches of, well...a Spaghetti Tree. The BBC, certainly then and I thin

There was a time, and I might be showing my age here, when butter became the subject of a deliberate, fatty witch-hunt. It seemed to be a hearing behind closed doors, for us butter lovers. It was accused and found guilty of shortening our lives and making us fat. The Western world fell under a wave of nutritional anxiety. Butter, which had been besties with bread for such a long time, was suddenly recast as the insidious villain of the kitchen. Into its golden yellow slippers

March 15th sits in that peculiar place in the French culinary calendar where winter has not quite finished and spring has not quite sprung. The markets still have a bit of an Irish feel to them - with much space still given over to leeks and potatoes. But you can sense that local market aficionados are sensing an arrival of sorts. The first crop of bright, green asparagus. The French love their asparagus. They have been cultivating them since the 15th century and their popula

This week, most calls to most restaurants on planet earth, will involve a simple request. "Could you do a table for 2 please".. From posh hotels to the corner curry house the world over, staff have already begun a giant redesign. A choreography of furniture configuration to suit that once-a-year waltz of Valentine’s Day, when the world re-arranges itself, into dining halls made for two. Firstly, I am not setting out to undermine the feast and fest of St Valentine. I am simply

JANUARY! You have to be in it, to win it... Hi again, to all of you darlings, standing patiently on Platform 13, nodding politely to 2026 and all she promises. The middle of January doesn't announce very much to the kitchen - the farm is not really yet on its way to our forks, AND... darlings..Kris and I are moving house.. Oh the stress and the strain of it. But good discovery... you really get to see all the stuff you have accumulated, not just kitchen stuff, darlings, but 9

Chef Kris Báhn Strydonck was born in Nong Kai, in Thailand and raised by his bar-tender Mother, who claimed to work for the CIA. His culinary journey started with a Street Food cart, which he refused to push himself, saying "Darling...my hands are my precious".. Hello darlings on Platform 13 and welcome to the New Year !! "Sawatdee Pii Mai"... as we say back home in Thailand. I send you greetings from my adopted home in France, that I love so much.. so many moustaches, so lit

Truffles have been around since the Pharaos were in short pants. Quite why the first sandal kicked the first truffle, prompting its wearer to bend down and take a mouthful, is another story altogether. But we have been loving them ever since... King Francis I of France (let's hope he didn’t endure the challenges of rhotacism) was the first noble notable to put truffles on the royal platter. His truffly gusto was duly noted by the brilliant lawyer-turned-chef, Jean Brillat-Sav

Hello and Seasons Greetings to all of you standing on Platform 13, in your woolly hats and Christmas knitwear. It's cold out there... Many of you will be looking forward to the usual Turkey for your festive holiday dinner this Christmas, which is fine - if you enjoy that dry old buzzard of a bird.

Hello again dear Platform 13 readers. Is it December already? Wow.. where did the year go? Christmas... Some, like my husband Kris, just don't like it, but most people love that dark period of the year where lights and candles shine and give us a special feeling. Our eldest son especially loves this time of the year, just because of the lights everywhere. On the streets, in the gardens strung around the house …

French supermarkets at Christmas-time are irresistibly mesmerising. Perhaps it’s the seasonal theatre of it all - quarries of oysters; gentlemanly rows of sincere-looking Champagnes, serious wines that require a quick chat before being chosen. Stockpiles of chocolate logs arranged like artillary ordanance. Or maybe it’s simply the Star Wars scale of the Hypermarché itself, which in December feels less like a shop and more like an obstacle course in Oz. "It's ok, I've got this

Our understanding of the contemporary meaning of etiquette is possibly aligned with what the dictionary tells us - "The mindful, intentional practice of creating respectful, kind, orderly interactions". It still feels like a term that will always be a little distant, perhaps the domain of the snobby English, the word itself residing in a tidy cottage, somewhere near Wimbledon. We see the meaning plainly - as the opposite of queue jumping or asking a woman how old she is. Thin

OK.. I will admit, I did not know that was what a pre-picked lentil looked like. Which got me thinking around what else I did not know about lentils - and don't imagine I am suicidally bored, or at the wrong end of a bag of California's finest gummies. There is always a tin in the cupboard, thanks to Vanessa, who will gleefully stir them into to pretty much anything. I saw lentils more as a food to be consumed when all else is gone. When the sirens blast, sending us scurrying