MaryLA

Bill Buford's Heat on cooking for Mario Batali

Great-looking lunch

With pork crackling, no need to toast the seeds first. Pork and fennel are soulmates. Yotam Ottolenghi has a marinade in Plenty for buffalo mozzarella that includes toasted fennel seeds, fresh origanum, lemon zest and basil I am planning to try the next time I collect seeds. If I can't get fresh mozzarella, feta might work.

Those walnuts do look tempting and I can imagine Rupert puts on weight! The stocking is a good idea -- one of my neighbours had a lacy fishnet stocking she used to store and dry almonds and pecans. I had a bottle of imported Jean LeBlanc Walbut Oil used sparingly for special vinaigrettes, kept it in the back of the fridge for more than a year. It went cloudy but tasted good all the same. Looking forward to the tarte tatin recipe, a favourite.

New here and I'm really enjoying your blog posts Dave -- made up some of the cream dressing using fresh garlic because I don't expect it to last very long!