That Hungry Chef

04/10/2026

First attempt at a layered jelly cake.

Raspberry & pink pepper jelly
Neroli-scented panna cotta
Ginger & Irish Black Butter cake

Layering needs a little refinement, but flavours are bang on.

Made for goddaughter #2 16th birthday 🙌🏽🙌🏽

22/09/2026

01/09/2026

Tomato, watermelon, cherry, cashew.

Slow roasted beefsteak tomato, fermented cherry tapenade, watermelon and a chilled cashew soup.

Inspired by the incredible ajo blanco that Xabi. makes and the centuries-old Mughal white gravy, this sauce comprises cashews and sweet spices, garlic, cucumber, mango & and a sherry vinegar. A little drizzle of Palestinian olive oil to finish.

The cherry tapenade sees olives replaced with lacto-fermented cherries, blended with pickled wild garlic capers and anchovies.

A whisper of lemon balm for aroma.

Eat. Sleep. Ferment. Repeat!

📷 Jolly Thompson Photography

Free 🇵🇸

31/07/2026

The first time I properly smelled ras el hanout — not from a jar, from a merchant's hands — I didn't think about food. I thought about the perfumer's organ and the expression of memory as a fine balance.

There are blends in Fez that trace their lineage back centuries. No written recipe - just a nose, trained over decades, knowing instinctively when something is missing. When the lavender is too loud or the long pepper needs pulling back.

I've been thinking about it ever since and the patience required in crafting something so balanced, the way complexity builds through process rather than addition. Ras el hanout teaches that more ingredients isn't more flavour, it's more responsibility.

If you want to go deeper into Moroccan spice culture, start with Mourad Lahlou's Mourad: New Moroccan. Marrakech-born chef, and his chapter on spice — titled 'Spice is a Verb' — is the best thing written on the subject by someone who actually grew up inside it.

21/07/2026

When I moved to London in 2002, I lived in New Cross. Curry goat was everywhere — Lewisham market, Rye Lane, the takeaways on the high street. I didn't know what I was eating, not really. I just knew it felt like home in a way I couldn't explain. Spiced the way India felt and yet, different in a way I could not pinpoint.
It took me twenty years to understand why.
Curry goat didn't start in Jamaica. It started with 36,000 Indian indentured workers who arrived between 1845 and 1917 — bound to plantations under contracts that the academic Frank Birbalsingh described as slavery in every other respect other than name. They brought spices and even introduced rice to the Caribbean.

Today it's the dish Jamaicans reach for at weddings, celebrations, every argument about food online. The national dish is ackee and saltfish and the soul food is curry goat.

The origin didn't really survive into the global narrative, but the dish certainly did.

02/06/2026

I grew up with a lot of Japanese kids. They'd return from the holidays with all kinds of new and exciting food. Careful packages with dishes their mums had sent back with them.

I didn't know what half of it was. But I remember the curry. Even then — tinned, reheated in a common room — it was different to anything I'd had before.
Sweeter, thicker and like nothing I’d eaten at home.

It took me years to understand what I was actually eating. A dish that was born in India, was changed by Britain, crossed an ocean on a warship, and became so completely Japanese that it took until now to dig into its history and discover a story worth telling.

But, how did a breaded cutlet from 16th century Portugal meet Japanese curry and end up on every high street in Britain? Part 2 coming soon.

14/04/2026

Part 1
Garam masala is one of the most misunderstood spice blends in Indian cooking. Not because it's complicated — but because there is no single version. There never has been.

Every region of the subcontinent has its own. Every family has their own. Mine has seven spices, including fermented Kampot black pepper and a cardamom ratio most blends wouldn't dare.

The name tells you everything — garam means warm. Not heat on the tongue. Warmth from the inside. Ayurvedic medicine was writing about these compounds three thousand years ago.

This is Episode 1 of The Blend — a new series going deep into spice blends, their history, their science, and the hands that make them.

Two recipes in the carousel. The science behind the ratios. And a blend from the Nawabi kitchens of Rampur that will change how you think about garam masala entirely.

Do you make your own blend?
Tell me in the comments.