Home cooking, market finds and kitchen projects
A £12 oyster mushroom kit, a one-bed London flat and an airing cupboard that turned out to be far too cosy. Here is what actually happened, what I would do differently, and the quick garlicky supper that made the wait worthwhile.
A £2 end-of-day bakery bag is not just a bargain; it is a week of November suppers waiting to be planned. Here is how yesterday’s bread becomes ribollita, bread sauce, crisp crumbs, a savoury pudding and a sweet finish without any dreary thrift-shop heroics.
Forget the fantasy of a sunlit allotment. From a north London windowsill to a balcony in Peckham, winter salad is mostly about drainage, patience and a willingness to eat small leaves. Here’s a low-cost sowing plan for the dark months, plus how to dodge the damping-off that scuppers most first attempts.
The festive stalls are already charging £7 for a jam jar of spiced nuts. This November, take one Saturday, one London market route and three simple projects — spiced nuts, flavoured salts and quick biscotti — and make gifts that cost less and taste fresher.
Five homemade lunches for dark London commutes, built from one affordable market bag and packed to stay hot, thick and edible by noon. Includes a cost-per-portion breakdown, practical flask rules and honest notes on texture and food safety.
A bag of chestnuts from a London market stall is not just a bowl of autumn decoration. Here is how to choose them, roast and peel them without a fight, and turn them into soup, stuffing and a sweet finish.
The loaf in the window is only half the story. A growing number of London bakeries will happily sell you the flour, the starter and the know-how behind it — so we spent a week buying our bread at the counter rather than the till, and did the sums on cost, flavour and what actually ends up in the bin.
The cheapest thing in a London butcher's shop is usually the thing nobody asks for. A practical guide to requesting frames, bones and vegetable trimmings without awkwardness, what to say no to, and how to turn a carrier bag of odds and ends into stock, soup and risotto for the working week — even when your freezer is one drawer.
Boiled sprouts have a lot to answer for. This is the November project that fixes them: one kilo from a London market, split three ways — charred hard with anchovy, shredded raw with apple, and left to ferment in a jar for three days. Start with the jar on Friday night and you've got three different things in the fridge by Monday.
No dishwasher, no dining table, two rings and an oven: dinner for six is entirely doable, and it's some of the best cooking you'll do all year. A stress-free three-course template, the borrowing economy of chairs, and how to handle the washing-up without losing friends.
Every November the growers stop waiting for the ripening and start selling green tomatoes by the bowl. Here's the master chutney formula I use, a Saturday-to-Sunday market route for finding the glut, and how to sterilise jars when your kitchen is really a corridor with a hob.
All over London, home cooks are trading jars, gluts and herbs through group chats, allotment sheds and shelves by the front door. No money changes hands — but there are rules, and a few safety points worth knowing before you join in.
The final pods of the year rarely ripen in time, but they still make a very good small-batch ferment. A practical guide to finishing a windowsill glut — variety choices, salt ratios, bottling, and the safety bits that actually matter.
We asked readers across the UK to open their kitchen doors and tell us the truth about their starters, their flour and their flattest loaves. Nearly 1,400 of you replied. Here is what British home sourdough actually looks like in 2026 — plus the five fixes that came up again and again.
Can you really shop Borough Market for £15 and come away with a full weekend of proper cooking? We went in with a tenner-fifty and a five-pound coin to find out — and came back with a shopping list, a meal plan and some firm opinions about which stalls are worth your money.
Stir-Up Sunday falls on 22 November 2026, the traditional day for making Christmas pudding. This is the case for steaming your own, with a reliable recipe, London shopping notes and a low-key way to involve the family.
Knobbly, hard and easy to ignore, quince is one of the best things on a London farmers’ market stall in November. Here is how to choose it, prep it and turn it into membrillo, spiced poached fruit and a properly grown-up crumble.