Blogs of the month - April 2011

I don’t know quite how it happened but I failed to post my blogs of the month last month. Which has meant that Closet Cooking, Crumbs, Paris by Mouth and The Wine Detective have all had a good run. (Fortunately they’re assiduous updaters so you won’t, I trust, have got bored. And nor have I but it’s time to move on . . .

This month’s quartet are:

Fort on Food
Matthew Fort used to be my editor on The Guardian so I suppose I’m biased but I do think he’s a terrific writer which makes it slightly ironic he’s now better known as a TV pundit. Anyway this new blog gives free range to his erudite and witty musings on ingredients such as asparagus, restaurants and pubs. He’s also a fine cook and writes a good simple recipe.

They Draw and Cook
I owe a fair number of my best blog finds to Twitter and this, which was flagged up by MiMi of Meemalee's Kitchen (a pretty good blog in itself), is an absolutely charming site* which features recipes illustrated by different artists. It was set up by brother and sister Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell who are both illustrators. They come from all over the world from the UK (see this lovely recipe for marmalade flapjacks) to Russia. A great way to encourage kids and teenagers to cook.
(* can't get it to update on my blogroll because I think it's technically a site rather than a blog. But do check it out.)

The Way we Ate
Another offbeat blog this time from photographers Noah Fecks and Paul Wagtouicz who make, shoot and post recipes from old issues of Gourmet Magazine, mixed in with ads from the period. I love this Gourmet cover from April 1951. It really underlines what an act of vandalism it was pulling the plug on such a great institution.

Cumbriafoodie
Cumbriafoodie came to my attention for managing to recreate Heston’s iconic new dish ‘meat fruit’ (a chicken liver parfait encased in what appears to be a mandarin but is actually a mandarin flavoured jelly made to look like mandarin peel) Anyway he obviously knows his molecular gastronomy and eats out in all the top places. I’m sure I read at one stage that he was a nuclear scientist but that may have been my imagination. Pretty clever anyway.