Food and drink

Easy Christmas pizza recipe

Food and drink
As this is a Christmas use-up meal you can make use of pretty much any leftover that you have available in your fridge. Simply chop it and chuck it on top of the base! My experiments included using Brussel sprouts, bacon and walnuts; they all turned out to be tasty.

Quick and easy croque monsieur recipe

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Food and drink
Many of the croque monsieur recipes which I’ve viewed feature béchamel sauce. Béchamel sauce – sometimes known simply as white sauce – is by no means tricky to make. However, preparing a sauce before I’ve sipped my first coffee of the morning simply isn’t something I’m willing to do.

Pizza Punks Newcastle restaurant

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Food and drink
The space now has a hip, contemporary feel. It’s very much decor of the moment. Picture brickwork walls, a concrete floor plus industrial-style metal piping on the ceiling. The restaurant’s white pillars bear Pizza Punks’ anarchist-style logo; a ringed, hand-drawn capital ‘A’. There's more elaborate graffiti-style artwork at the back of the room, near the steps down to the toilets. It is the company’s first restaurant in England, following openings in Glasgow and Belfast.

Spaghetti carbonara recipe with Parma ham

Food and drink
Spaghetti carbonara is a dish that I ate for the very first time in Rome years ago. It’s remained one of my favourite Italian dishes. That’s possibly because of my fond memories of dining in the Italian capital but more probably because it’s tasty and easy to cook....After a day exploring the Vatican Museums and being impressed by the vastness of St Peter’s Basilica, I ambled about looking for a suitable place to dine. Eventually I chose a traditional trattoria a few streets away from the Vatican. It had red and white checked tablecloths and a personable waiter who made me feel very welcome.

Saltbox Brewing Company in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia

Food and drink
The Saltbox Brewing Company’s beer names tend relate to aspects of the province’s heritage. For example, Make and Break double IPA takes its name from the marine engine used by fishing vessels in the early 1900s. The Loyalist Old English Ale is a tip of a tricorn hat to the 35,000 British subjects who resettled in Nova Scotia following the American Revolution. Blue Nose 1850 is named after the famous schooner that was built in Mahone Bay and features on the reverse of Canadian 10 cent coins.

Homemade granola recipe

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Food and drink
While I was out a few months ago, my girlfriend Helen baked a batch of granola. We ate it the next morning and I was blown away by the flavour and crunchy texture. It was excellent; significantly better than any shop-bought version that I’d tried.

Festival of Alpine Cuisine in Austria

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Food and drink
“The idea, actually, is that we give a stage to Alpine cuisine in its modern form, to show that the end product is based on signature, home-grown products; that it draws sophistication from things that are in essence simple. That’s one characteristic of the region’s cuisine and that’s why the Festival of Alpine Cuisine is here,” explained Klaus Buttenhauser, the organiser of the Festival of Alpine Cuisine.