11 Comments

Like you, I’m always ready to go where ever Diana takes me -- I appreciate her voice in food.

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It’s a glorious adventure. 😍

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Hazelnuts have a special place in my heart and history. I spent some summers in the Austrian mountains where my mother grew up. There were hazelnut trees a plenty, and as children we smashed the nuts with rocks to devour the raw nuts inside the shell. This recipe sounds delish.

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Hetty this looks great!

I am allergic to hazelnuts and walnuts but not legumes like peanuts. Do you have a suggestion to sub out the hazelnut elements where I can still get a nuttiness and crunch from somewhere? Thanks!

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Thanks! I would try seeds like toasted pumpkin seeds.

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I so enjoyed reading this. I have the American version of your stash of old recipe clippings, though mine are from an earlier era: Molly O’Neill, Pierre Franey, Craig Claiborne et al. I am a huge admirer of Diana’s food writing and recipes and have several of her books (and hopefully will be getting the new one for Christmas). Was introduced to her work by the owner of a (now closed) kitchenware shop here in Virginia.

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The American clippings must be intriguing. That’s a genre of food I don’t know. Would be fascinating to see. I think you will love Diana’s book. Her writing is so evocative.

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We've got a file stuffed with those early 2000s recipes - Nigel Slater, Ottolenghi, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall mainly - which we shipped from London to Perth when we emigrated, and has made it down to Margaret River. It survives each book cull, and still gets a look in beside the 100s of books on the shelf. Mostly from the weekend papers it's nice knowing that they'd have been spread across the bed (reading the papers in bed being a prime weekend activity), or a pub table as precursor to Sunday lunch.

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The early 2000s recipe writers, especially the ones from UK, are a special breed. And looking back at those recipes, they were also quite revolutionary and timeless. I think it’s also telling what we chose to clip and save. Says a lot about who we were back then!

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Absolutely. I wrote last week on Substack about a spiced lambs fry dish that I first made over 10 years ago from The Guardian. There’s so many of those recipes that stood the rest of time.

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October 29, 2023
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That’s so special. Yes the handwriting is precious.

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