Salt
80g pecorino romano, at room temperature (see step 6)
1 Warm the bowls
This is one recipe where Iâd go further than strongly recommending you read it through before starting; I absolutely demand it. It all comes together very quickly at the end, and any hesitation will make things a lot harder. Once youâve done this, put two serving plates or bowls into a low oven to warm up (or fill them with hot water).
2 Toast the peppercorns
As the dishâs name suggests, pepper is a key flavouring here, so although you could just use your everyday pepper grinder, I think itâs worth warming up the peppercorns first, so they pack as much punch as possible. Toast the peppercorns in a hot, dry pan and, once they start to smell fragrant, tip out into a mortar and roughly crush.
What I ve missed most, I think, over the past year, is eating outside with family and friends.
My long life has been punctuated with picnics, barbecues, cocktails and parties on lawns, terraces, at the beach, in the park, half-way up a mountain or in the woods. I can t wait to get back to some of that.
Just to sit on the terrace with my brother and his wife, drink in one hand, something delicious in the other, will feel like freedom at last.
And I know, come June, we will be desperate to have a summer garden party to make up for all the things we ve missed our birthdays, moving house, Easter and Christmas, our annual family sports day.
The number of people switching to a meat-free lifestyle continues to rise in the UK.
Driven by health concerns and environmental determination, Sainsbury’s Future of Food report found that vegetarians, including vegans, look set to make up a quarter of British people by 2025, and flexitarians just under half of all UK consumers.
Supermarkets are supplying more products than ever to cater for the trend and according to The Vegan Society 2020 became the year that “every one of the top UK supermarkets [by revenue] had their own vegan range”.
With products readily available, cooking up a vegetarian or vegan feast has never been easier. Here we pick out some of the best cookbooks you can buy to help with your at-home meal menus in 2021…
Festive bites: Felicity Cloakeâs perfect vegetarian sausage rolls. Photograph: Dan Matthews/The Guardian. Food styling: Loic Parisot
Though a sausage roll is certainly not just for Christmas, is it really a Christmas party without them? Frankly, Iâm not sure it is, unless youâre vegetarian, in which case youâre often expected to celebrate with fridge-cold hummus or fight over a brie and cranberry tartlet instead. These particular sausage rolls, however, are a true crowd-pleaser: meat-free, but not flavour-free. As an enthusiastic consumer of the classic variety, I can hand on heart assure you that they more than live up to expectations.