ABOUT LARDER & LADLE
I began my working life in the Royal Air Force at 16, the start of a 24-year military career that took me around the world and, along the way, introduced me to a great deal of food.
I have worked on all seven continents, eating, cooking and collecting ideas as I went, but Italy probably left the deepest mark. I spent three continuous years there with Ferrara as my home, while also having the considerable good fortune, courtesy of Her Majesty The Queen, to have access to apartments in Verona, Rome and Firenze. Living there rather than simply visiting taught me how much good cooking can depend on restraint, good ingredients and fiercely local traditions.
Larder & Ladle grew from those years of travelling, eating and experimenting. I am not a chef and do not pretend to be one. I am simply someone who enjoys food, has been fortunate enough to experience quite a lot of it, and has spent a lifetime adapting recipes to suit the kitchen and the people around the table.
Why Larder & Ladle exists
In 2021 I was diagnosed with terminal liver failure associated with hepatitis C (HCV) and was given three months to live, an unfortunate legacy of my early military career following service in Africa many years before. I am still here. I mention it not for sympathy, but because living with a life-limiting illness made one decision very simple: instead of continuing to think about gathering these recipes together, I should actually do it.
For my daughters
Larder & Ladle is ultimately a gift to my three daughters: a collection of recipes they can use as written, change, improve, simplify, get wrong and try again. They are starting points rather than commandments, which is how I have always treated recipes myself.
Being given three months to live turned out not to be a particularly reliable diary entry. I still have things I want to cook, food I want to understand and recipes I want to revisit. So this is neither a memorial nor a finished collection.
It is simply where I am putting a lifetime of food while I am still busy adding to it.