23 Jan Culinary Dilemmas – What is the correct use of saffron please? – Tessa

ED points out that ‘there are few spices or aromatics that possess and impart scent, taste and colour in such a high degree as saffron.’ Used cautiously it adds delicious pungency to rice, soups and sauces.  Administered poorly its strong pungent smell, and bitter taste can make it positively repellent.

18 Jan Culinary Dilemmas – I don’t really know any really good recipes with fennel. Rosie.

Fennel (Il Finocchio - sounds like Pinocchio) The entire plant is edible - the leaves, the bulb and the seeds. ’In earlier more wicked days of the wine business in Florence, when merchants poured samples of the new vintage for their customers, they first served them nibbles of sliced finocchio, believing that the taste of licorice to the palate would soften the edge of rough young wine.  The practice led to the coinage of a verb, infinocchiare, which means to hoodwink.’