Category: Check Out

The Bottle Bar and Shop came into being in December 2017, thanks to the husband-and-wife team of Xhulio Sina and Natalie John.

Rum! For me the very word conjures up images of sun-soaked Caribbean islands, or sailors waiting for their daily ration of rum. But now I have two more images– one is of a pub close to the sea in Cornwall, and the other of an elegant stylish bottle, and inside it a glorious rich amber […]

Ham and cheese are a winning combination. And when the ham is Prosciutto de Parma and the cheese Parmigiano Reggiano the combination is sublime, Mary Curry explains A light lunch of ham and cheese The traffic had been heavy and Andrea was running late, she had popped round with some shopping and had apologised for […]

‘Have you burnt something’ asked a young voice from next door’s garden. There was nothing for it, I had to confess, yes I had. I had been making granola, put it in the oven, came upstairs to the computer, and had completely forgotten about the oven until the smell not only reached me but next […]

I have to confess that when a colleague said ‘try some of these freeze dried peas, they’re nice and crunchy’ I was not entirely convinced. Fresh peas, tinned peas, mushy peas, frozen peas I can cope with, and enjoy. But ‘freeze dried’? I am ashamed to say I advanced on the proffered bowl cautiously. The […]

Jackfruit trees Left to its own devices, in ideal tropical growing conditions, a jackfruit tree can grow to a height of some 24m.  It also produces the largest tree fruit in the world, each jackfruit weighing in at an average of five kilos with many of them well over an astonishing 45kilos. Each tree is […]