If your appetite for food supplements (of the newspaper variety) has become unsustainable, have a look at Rocket and Squash. This elegant online food journal digests the weekend food pages so you don’t have to, assembling a mouthwatering menu from across the newsstands. Where do they find the time? (Incidentally, last weekend, three of Cook’s all-time favourites – Olia, Nigel and Ruby – coalesced to produce three-courses of near-perfect weekend feasting.)
A recent debate at Cook (about the storage of cucumbers, of all things) led us once again to The Kitchn, that most reliable of online repositories of general kitchen knowhow. Want to avoid “chilling injuries” (when the ends go all squishy)? Then don’t put your cucumbers in the fridge. Store them at room temperature, provided they are kept well away from ethylene-laden bananas, melons and tomatoes. Now you know.
Will Cotton, who has been making paintings from sweets since the late 1990s, has just opened a show of new work at Cornell University entitled Vistas of Candy Land. Witness gingerbread houses, drifts of icing snow, candyfloss clouds and peppermint stick forests, all rendered with an Old-Master painterly touch. If you are one of the 148 million (and counting) to have viewed the music video he did for Katy Perry’s California Gurls, you’ll know exactly what we mean.
Often spotted on particularly organised garage walls, the peg board (you know, hardboard with holes in), Cook has noticed, is slowly creeping into kitchens – and with good reason. Pegging your utensils, pots, pans (and cucumbers?) to your kitchen walls keeps everything within easy reach, creating a place for everything, while keeping everything in its place. Urban Outfitters is selling small runs in a range of seaside colours with large and small pegs at £45-£65.
