Dabbler wine correspondent Henry Jeffreys reports on the new breed of wine merchants... Do you remember when bookshops started sprouting coffee shops? People will come for a coffee, browse and end up buying a book or so the logic went. Something similar is happening with wine merchants. Traditionally they were forbidding ... Read More...
Dabbler Soup
Food and drink
Elephant ears, or palmiers, are quick and easy to make snacks, ideal contributions to school summer fairs, village fêtes and church picnics. I rely on this quick and easy recipe to limit the time spent in the kitchen at this time of year. Sweet or savoury, palmiers are always popular ... Read More...
With our resident foodie Jassy still recovering from a horrendous-sounding operation on her poor eyes, guest blogger Monix steps into the Dabbler kitchen with a tip for making the most of the e.coli-free cucumber mountain... Cucumbers have had such a bad press recently that the shops are almost giving them away; ... Read More...
The Dabbler's wine correspondent Henry Jeffreys explains why rich people are fools and launches an occasional series offering tips on how you can buy very good wine without breaking the bank... Money is wasted on the rich. When I see footballers driving their identical Bentley Continentals I think how much better I could have spent ... Read More...
The first warm rains have cracked summer open and, as we contemplate the liquid blue sky and ponder what it means for the weekend’s barbecue, we’re forced to contemplate the vexed issue of raw vegetables. Salads are generally an after-thought in the British kitchen. The standard offering is a condensation-heavy bag ... Read More...
The Dabbler's drinks writer Ian Buxton – author of the bestselling 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die – uncovers some historic whisky... A most unusual whisky has just come to light after spending the last 100 years in the Antarctic ice cap. Explorer Ernest Shackleton prepared very thoroughly for his 1908 ... Read More...
Since acquiring two little boys and their accompanying paraphernalia we've tended to use the shooting brake (ok, our VW) to travel to our holiday destination in the South of France. As a consequence - and also because of the sometimes frequent stops required by said little boys, one of whom ... Read More...
Introducing The Dabbler's new wine correspondent... My name is Henry Jeffreys and I’m a wine bore. Few of my friends share my interest so I started a blog as an outlet for all the useless knowledge I was accumulating. I don’t drink good wine to show off and I don’t only ... Read More...
There were two high points to my Easter Sundays when I was a child. First, waking up to find that the Easter Bunny had indeed come a-hopping and left me a chocolate egg at the bottom of my bed. The second was the trip to Butser Hill to roll painted ... Read More...
Spring has sprung, the blossoms are in bloom and up and down the country the minds of fashionable foodies have turned to foraging. Where once an annual, autumnal blackberrying trip would satisfy modern man’s hunter-gathering urges, 21st century townies enjoy nothing more than presenting their guests with a pile of ... Read More...
