We never met a meatball we didn’t like, We l-o-v-e meatballs. The global meatball repertoire is huge; think polpette (Italy), kofte (Turkey), keftedes (Greece), albondigas (Spain), bakso (Indonesia), bun cha (Vietnam), frikadeller (Germany, Scandinavia and Poland), bitterballen (Netherlands) and the like…

Lamb. Soup. North African flavours. I. Am. So. Here. For. These. A soupy-stew with a lot going for it, we’re in love with the lamby, lentil-y, aromatic, nourishing goodness that is harira. Wiki suggests it can be eaten as a ‘light snack’ but this flour-thickened version…

1982 called and wants its chicken back… Chicken Marbella, to be exact. If you kids ever wondered how your forebears dinner-partied hard, look no further than this tasty relic from the beloved classic, The Silver Palate Cookbook…

Braising is one of the cornerstone techniques of cooking and once you understand how it works, you can go forth and apply the same, basic method to any suited ingredient, or cut of meat, with confidence. Braising is a wet method of cooking, and meat-wise…

Canned seafoods are quite the thing lately, aren’t they? Although the French (who pioneered sardine canning in the early 1800s), Spanish and Portuguese have known for quite some time that fish in a can is fab. While you can drop serious coin on boujee canned fish brands…

Use whatever sausages you darn well like here, although some are definitely better than others. The ones to avoid are the sort with super-smooth interiors, that cook to disappointing hardness and don’t really taste like much except maybe over-seasoned pureed meat. They’re full of fillers…

We genuinely love cooking with lentils, chickpeas, beans et al. They’re not only delish, they’re great contenders for filling, budget-friendly, delish dinners that are perfect for coping with the exhausting, ever-increasing cost of living spikes. We figured it was worth resurrecting the concept of home-made baked beans; yeha they’re cheap to buy…

It’s hard to make brown, stewed or plain-looking food look yum, and making food look yum is always the mandate in this crowded online space, no? There is just so much purdy food out there and we don’t pretend to compete. But what this humble soup lacks in Lights! Camera!…

Dahl. Basically mooshy, spicy, slightly soupy lentils, best served over fluffy basmati rice with tons of accompaniments. It’s soothing. Economical. Incredibly easy to make Just grab a bag of chana dahl (split chickpeas by any other name), rinse it off, boil it up, spice it up, then guzzle it up…

We love the layered flavours you get in an Indian curry, especially when they skew sweet-sour. Which they do here, thanks to jaggery, tomatoes and – yum! – tamarind paste. There are a few steps to making this but none are hard. It’s a perfect Sunday cooking project and you can make extras and freeze them for during the week too…

I’m flexing my mince muscles in anticipation of May, which I’m dubbing My Month of Mean. Or of Mince. Or of Misery. Or something. With the cost of everything going bananas and cash reserves shrinking (thanks, Reserve Bank!), I’m pulling my horns in. No more soothing retail, bye bye Binge account and see ya later exxie wine habit…

Can we talk about chicken skin? (That’s a rhetorical question; we’re bloody talking about chicken skin). Peruse supermarket fridges where assorted poultry parts lurk, witness the pallid, pink, skin-free horror and you’ll be asking the same question as we regularly do... where the heck does it all go?…

Lately, we’ve been making tomato sauce like there is no tomorrow; maybe there is no tomorrow? Existential crisis/neurosis aside, our freezers are full of the stuff. When it’s winter, and fresh tomatoes taste like shite, we’ll be ever so glad of a never-ending supply of sauce for pasta…

“Ooh yum, celery for dinner!” Said no-one ever. But when a mighty pert bunch costs two bucks, we’ll give the what-the-heck-do-you-do-with-bulk-celery challenge a red hot go. Soup is the most obvious solution, but if it’s hot, that’s not really a G.O.. There’s only so much celery you can eat raw, so braising strikes us as a good way to go…

Ah... Paula Wolfert. Or should we say... ah, Musa Dağdeviren. If you don’t know, Wolfert is a legendary American food writer who came to prominence thanks to her extensive knowledge of Moroccan food. Her seminal book, The Food of Morocco, reworked a decade or so ago, is essential for any keen cook; I’m sure Felicity at Cook the Books…