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AI and Me

Why I don’t use Chat GPT. And why I don’t want my writers to use it either.

AI and Chat GPT has crept into my life like dry rot. Subsidence. I’m putting this out here for posterity—I will not use it. I don’t have a Chat GPT account, and I don’t allow my work to feed any AI machines. I’ve turned work down that would pay me well so that I don’t have to work with or train AI. I think it’s a genuinely Bad Thing for writers and artists, and it will only degrade the quality of the art we consume. Commodification? You wish. This is contentification. No respect for the reader, no fine turns of phrase, no elegance. Just easily-digested, loosely fact-checked slop.

As hard as I try not to let the idea of AI affect my work, I’ve noticed something—I am now trying too hard to write like myself. Terrified of seeming like I’ve run my untethered thoughts through a comprehension engine, I’m actively rethinking the wording of my sentences, second-guessing my descriptions, looking for points throughout my writing where anyone might feel as though things are getting a little uncanny. Are my thoughts too terminally online to be read as natural speech anymore? Is resistance not only futile, but moronic?

I have seen work as an editor that has clearly been written with the aid of AI in some form. The frustration I feel about this goes beyond anger: It deeply upsets me. I want to know how making writing easier for yourself by removing yourself from the writing is of any value to anyone. I want to know why any writer would want to extricate themselves from the problem-solving duties of turning raw thoughts, ideas, research, and emotion into coherent text. Is that not your job? Is that not what we do?

Writing, to me, is everything. It is the only thing I can do. I live to turn my experiences into stories, to discuss and dissect the world around me, to make sense of things in new and intriguing ways. I strive to connect with people through the words I write, which were born as mere feelings, just sounds, within my chest. Take this away from me, and I don’t know who I would be. To give it away all by myself? That’s another level of nihilism even I can’t comprehend.

Other Stuff

My Stuff

  • I’m writing a story about Old Peculier, it’ll be out soon

  • I’m working at Rivington Brewing Co. Farm Trip this weekend for Nightingale Cider—if you’re heading there, come and say hello

  • I’m running a meet the brewer and tasting session at Fell Brewery’s Oktoberfest at The Royal Oak in Cartmel. It’s going to be a super fun and delightful time in the Lake District, so come along if you can. Get your tickets here.

  • I’ve got some pub-related writing coming soon for the newsletter as I’ve been to some absolute corkers recently.

  • Keep an eye out in Ferment magazine—I’ve written about Wee Heavy for an upcoming issue

  • Want to book me for a speaking or tasting event engagement? Reply to this email and tell me what you’ve got cooking!

I have begun editing my first book as a freelance editor for an American author who I feel has the talent and passion to go very far indeed. I’m incredibly excited about this project, and if you’d like to talk to me about any future editorial work, I am now accepting editorial pitches for 2025.

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Drinking in Whitby & Robin Hood's Bay

Why do influencers hate people?

A few weeks ago I read something that wound me up so much, I’m still thinking about it. A travel influencer from the US visited Scarborough, and they did not like what they found.

“I thought it would be a real hidden gem,” they said. It turned out to just be Scarborough, a northern seaside town with pretty bits and rough bits and penny machines, just like everywhere else. It wasn’t that nobody had thought of going there, it’s that they already knew it wasn’t going to offer them Salcombe-level yachts or Cornwall-level surfing. In the end they left disappointed, which is a huge shame, because I lived in Scarborough for a year when I was 18/19, and I loved it. I’m taking Tom there soon, because he doesn’t believe me about how gorgeous the beaches are.

Hidden gems make it sound like places are only worth visiting if nobody else knows about them. It promotes the idea that exclusivity is a priority, and that other people only sully the experience. I don’t agree.

I can understand where this idea began—everybody hates a tourist. There are more tourists than ever now, and we want to stay away from them1. In a recent piece, Emiko Davies wrote about overtourism in Florence, and how it’s affecting local customs and culture. We can perhaps all agree that overtourism is a blight—it brings money, but it also brings destruction that this money, eventually, will have to pay for. How has it become such a problem? Emiko thinks it has quite a lot to do with influencers and TV shows offering magical visions of a destination that others can’t wait to emulate with their own trips. But there’s a difference between local authenticity and staged seclusion. So many of these so-called “hidden gems” are just facias. The best places are always busy. If you want to be by yourself, get take-out and go sit in the park or on the beach. Dangle your feet off the pavement in the Cannaregio and drink Prosecco from a water bottle filled up a bodega like everyone else. Make your own experiences, and stop expecting the confected versions of tourist destinations influence where and how you enjoy your time. You’ll have fewer blisters and even fewer arguments this way, I promise.

In Whitby, there are more tourists than I’ve seen in a long time. The streets were heaving with window shoppers, and every inch of the railings along the harbour was taken up by kids with strings and bits of bacon, fishing in the water below for crabs. It’s a holiday town, this is what it does.

On Church Street is one of Whitby’s oldest pubs, The Black Horse. Every day, thousands of people pass by on its busy cobbled road; there is no way you could call it a hidden gem. Inside, it is full of people. You find a seat, you get a pint, and eventually you get chatting. This is what I love about pubs. (I’m going to write more about The Black Horse later this week, don’t worry.) In Robin Hood’s Bay, the pubs are packed with holidaymakers having tea, and queuing at the bar for seaside drinks. We were lucky enough to step in on a night where a local musician was playing guitar to anyone and nobody, and we sat with him and whoever came into the room for the rest of the evening. These were not secret, tucked-away pubs nobody except clever old you knows about. The Laurel in Robin Hood’s Bay is literally the most photographed pub in the town. The Black Horse has 1,102 Google reviews, and it’s in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide. What made them great was the people we met while we were there, from the Landlady, to the man with his British Steel t-shirt on. If I’d have been looking for lesser-known pubs, I would have missed both of these off. But what for? In search of perfection? Surely this was it?

1

I’m being facetious, of course if you have gone somewhere to visit and travel, you too are a tourist.

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How to pair sparkling wine with food

Or: excuses to drink more sparkling wine

This piece is an extension/re-edit of a piece I wrote for my “wine wisdom” column in Glug magazine earlier in the year.

When you pop a bottle of sparkling wine, it’s usually to fill glasses full of celebratory foam, but what if we looked at fizz differently? After all, it’s wine, and therefore it has plenty to offer as a food pairing option. In Anita Brookner’s supremely poolside-readable novel Hotel du Lac, the imposingly rich widower Mrs Pusey and her bland daughter sip endless glasses of Champagne at every meal, refusing to choose a different bottle throughout their stay, no matter their choices at the supper table. Fair play to them, I say.

This book happens to be one of my all-time favourites, there’s a soothing melancholy about the whole story that laps at each page like the lake our heroin Edith has been sent to for “recuperation” (she had an affair and people found out.) The hotel itself is a bastion of old world gentility, the Puseys a last gasp of archaic excess in a Europe that has vastly changed since the Hotel du Lac was built. I love the detachment of it all, and the individual neuroses of each guest.

But anyway, back to the wine. Unlike Mrs and Miss Pusey’s bar bill, it doesn’t always have to be Champagne. Sparkling wine of all types can lift dishes and enliven meals, you just have to choose carefully depending on the flavours of your food, and adhere to the whims of your personality. One day I want Asti. On others I want something much drier. Get what makes you feel good, not what you think you should be rolling through the checkout.

Champagne & Food

It has to be said at this point that Champagne and fish and chips is the gold standard in food pairing full stop. I once travelled 240 miles to meet friends by Leith’s waterfront to enjoy this delicacy as the sun went down.

The reason this particular combination has me in such a chokehold is its balance between fat and salt, acid and citrus. Blanc de Blanc works best, with a drier, less fruity character. Blanc de Noir would have a little too much peach or pear notes, and I’d prefer it with goats’ cheese or ricotta. Maybe in a salad heavy on the olive oil and salt, or cheesy ravioli…ooh, or arancini.

Crémant & Food

It’s better to drink a good Crémant than a bad Champagne. It’s not a cliché, it’s a saying, and it’s a popular one. With fresh fruit flavours and a fine mousse, crémant is particularly good with paté, I think. Chicken liver and Armagnac, or chestnut and wild mushroom, with stacks of Melba toast. I don’t care if you’ve not eaten Melba toast since 1983. It was invented by Escoffier, you know.

If you’re not a paté fan, I’d like to see you give Crémant and eggs florentine a bash. The richness of a perfectly poached egg yolk, the buttery English muffin, the earthy spinach, all lifted by the joyful freshness of a glass of French fizz.

There’s a joy in finding a great Crémant that makes me feel like I’ve beaten the system. The prize is drinking it.

Cava & Food

When I was in my early twenties, I learned that Cava is just a normal wine in Spain. I’d always seen sparkling wine as its own entity—somehow barely even wine. A different drink altogether. But in cafés and bars I was offered regular-sized wine glasses of Cava alongside local white, red and rosé, and it clicked. Cava is just wine too. You can do what you want with it.

Cava brings brightness and cuts through fat with aplomb. That’s why it works so deliciously with traditional tapas dishes like fried calamari, patatas bravas, sobrassada, morcilla, chorizo and peppers roasted together in a pot… I could go on. You’d think the strong flavours and aromas of paprika and black pepper would overpower the wine, but it’s that all-important hot oil that makes the match here. The citrus-zest zip of your dry Cava removes the cloying greasiness and creates a delightful balance between fresh acidity and the sweet, fattiness of the food.

Please don’t feel you have to stick to Spanish dishes, however. Fried chicken and Cava is a vibe, and if you’re making garlic roast pork with tons of crackling and some sort of tomato or gratin-based potato side? Heaven.

Prosecco & Food

Slightly sweeter than our friends Cava or Crémant, Prosecco tends to move forward with crisp apple and juicy lemon flavours, sometimes even raspberry, making it more of a juicy, playful drink. It is perfect with a bag of those expensive sea salt crisps—eat while reclining for full effect.

Prosecco is also delicious with briny oysters, which always get lumped with Champagne but honestly? It’s not the best match. Loads of people agree. Try them with Prosecco valdobbiadene Superiore instead. See how it jams with the mignonette?

It also takes to creamy, sugary desserts particularly well. Panna cotta is a shoe-in. A classic trifle? Absolutely yes.

Cap Classique & Food

Full of soft orchard fruit and lemon curd aromas, a Cap Classique is a beautiful accompaniment to pork and poultry—think chicken thighs in a classic cream sauce rather than hot wings. Does that mean it would pair with a chicken and mushroom pie? I’m gonna say yes.

It’s also a go-to wine to pair with poached salmon with asparagus, which isn’t super exciting but is very, very delicious, so it’s good to remember that not all your pairings need to be ground-breaking.

Blanquette de Limoux & Food

Lobster, crab claws, langoustines. Get the whole ocean in on this. Sweet, fresh seafood, served on ice with lemon wedges is what you need with Blanquette de Limoux. Its flash of acidity works wonders, softened by peach and brioche flavours and refreshing aromas of blossom and green apples.

This is a pretty wine, but it’s also scarily easy to drink. Make a lunch of ham and cheese croissants and pop a bottle and you’ll see what I mean. Equally at home with cheese on toast as it is with elegant profiteroles, gelato or beignets, it’s hard to understand why Blanquette de Limoux isn’t everyone’s favourite wine. Maybe it just isn’t as fun to say as “Prosecco”.

My Self-Editing and Pitching workshop was so fun this week! It’s been a couple of years since I ran anything like it, so thank you to my students for their undivided attention over two hours of me talking non-stop.

I’m thinking about offering another one in a month or so. If you’re interested, please get in touch about dates.

Other Stuff

My Stuff

  • I wrote about Fernet Branca for Fernet Branca/Guardian Labs

  • I’m working on a piece about Old Peculier for Pellicle

  • I’m working on some zines — including a PROCESS zine

  • I’m editing a book! So I guess I’m a freelance editor now? Get in touch if you need some editing.

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I'm Running a Writing Workshop

Plus: A recipe for homemade cheese spread

On Tuesday 13 August at 6.30pm BST I will be hosting an online writer’s workshop. It costs £20 to book, and if you’re interested but don’t want to book right away, please do get in touch with me (you can just reply to this email, or message me directly) to ask any questions you might have. All are welcome.

What’s it about?

In my 15+ years of writing for clients and editors, I have some advice I’d like to share with writers hoping to progress their work. Perhaps you’re looking to make a jump from Substack and other self-publishing platforms into writing for other people and publications. Maybe you know you’re good, but you’re hoping to hone your writing further to get it closer to where you want it to be.

Whatever your writing goals are, this workshop is aimed at focusing your words into sharper, smarter writing, enabling you to form ideas and construct your arguments and stories convincingly and with style.

As Deputy Editor of Pellicle, I know what I want from writers. In this workshop, learn how to be a dream to work with (and then get more work because of it.)

What will it cover?

In this 2 hour online workshop, you will:

  • Find great hooks for your story ideas

  • Turn rough outlines into smart pitches

  • Gain confidence for writing + pitching

  • Get the skills you need to polish your first draft

  • Become an editor’s dream commission

When is it?

  • Tuesday 13 August

  • 6.30pm BST

  • £20

Book your place

To book onto the workshop, just click here and follow the instructions to pay for your place. Please make sure to send me your email address.

Once you have booked on, I will send you an invite to the video chat link, and more information on what to expect from the workshop.

Let’s do this!

This week has been difficult to wade through, so I’ve been referring to a lot of my favourite comfort foods to get through it.

I love cream cheese, and I had this idea to eat piles of it on toast with blackberry jam. It just so happened that this week we also had way too much milk delivered. I looked up some cream cheese recipes and none of them seemed very convincing. Online recipes so often have this feeling of farce about them—just add this one ingredient and magic happens, keep stirring and you’ll create something delicious. I’ve been burned before by “perfect” sauces and “simple” brownies, but I had convinced myself to try it and when that happens, nothing can stop me.

This method of making cream cheese, if you stop before the part where you get a blender out, is actually a super quick way to turn two pints of whole milk into a small lump of mild cheddar-tasting ricotta, and if that sounds like something you’re into, then I implore you to try it. However, I wanted something spreadable, so I continued to press the curds, as small as they were, and then added them to my Ninja bullet blender, which by now has seen so many small horrors I truly believe it is now cursed.

To the salted, lemon-juiced ball of curds, I added back some of the cooled whey by the teaspoon in the blender, and kept pulsing until I was faced with a spreadable white paste. It tasted sour, like cultured yoghurt, and I actually liked the cheesiness. It was unexpected, but not unpleasant. I think it turned out much more like a labneh than a mascarpone.

It spread well on toast, and it was delicious with jam—like a cheesecake. It’s not a cost-effective recipe in any sense, but if you have milk to burn, perhaps you’d like to give it a go. I think I might add paprika if I ever do it again, and serve it with roasted carrots like all those food influencers are doing at the moment with blended up butter beans (which actually suck, do not listen to them, it is not as good as hummus and never will be.)

Recipe

  • 2 pints of whole milk

  • Juice of 2 lemons

  • Salt

Method

  1. Pour the milk into a cold pan and heat it up to medium while stirring all the time. You don’t want it catching on the bottom.

  2. Once the milk is at a simmer—and not before—start adding the lemon juice a bit at a time. The milk should start to separate. It looks gross, but this is what you want.

  3. Once the milk is separated into yellow curds and white blobby whey, turn off the heat and let it cool a little. Again, don’t let it catch on the bottom of the pan while it’s still hot.

  4. Pour the curds and whey into a fine mesh sieve (or a colander with a clean, thin tea towel lining it, I’ll let you guess which I did) and drain all the liquids from the curds.

  5. From here you can either eat the strange proto-cheese you’ve made, or blend it with some of the whey to make a spread.

  6. If you make the spread, and I think you should, tell me how you ate it. On bagels? In a butty? I want to know.

Because everything is a bit mashed right now, there are no reading links today. I haven’t been reading. I’ve been sleeping, lying down, or playing a stupid colour matching game on my phone. Check back on Tuesday xox

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Great Langdale

A valley that shrinks me down and swallows me up. In a good way.

Somewhere near the top of Raven Crag, climbers are shrieking. From the rocky path far below, their brightly-coloured helmets are the heads of drawing pins, their voices carrying hundreds of metres across the valley floor. A Herdwick yow chews late summer grass without a single care. She’s seen it all before.

Today, I’m not walking up Stickle Ghyll to Pavey Ark. I want a smoother journey than that, something thinky and peaceful, more a meditation than a workout. If it was up to me, I’d have stayed in the van and napped while Tom ran in the direction of Esk Pike looking for steep descents and wide views. It’s better if I walk though, so I did, and half a mile in I’m already feeling the sepia tones drain away, replaced by slate, oak, moss, fern, and heather. I take the Cumbria Way from Stickle Barn car park and walk purposefully towards the far end of Great Langdale, with the vague idea to get as far as I can before having to turn back to meet Tom once he’s finished running.

Both Little Langdale and Great Langdale are beautiful places to be, and I’ve been visiting them as long as I’ve known Tom. In Little Langdale there are caverns and sheer rock faces created by dynamite and chisels, and an ideal little swimming pond so deep it’s said a horse and cart fell in some several hundred years ago, never to be found. It spooks me, this pond, and some days I can’t strike out to the middle. On those days I potter around the edge, watching tiny fish dart around the muddy rocks.

Great Langdale is towering. Pavey Ark is the gateway, a dorsal fin of slate 700m tall, looming over Dungeon Ghyll with a serious air. I turn my back on it and keep walking, Loft Crag rising up to my right, casting gravitas over the sheep-softened scenery. A field of Longhorns are completely unbothered by my passing through. I compliment their impressive headgear and get a tail swish in response. A walker in a bright red neckerchief gives me a cheery “good morning”. I ask him if he think’s it’ll brighten up—he says he thinks so. I think so too. I say it’s always good to keep the faith. I can still hear him chuckling to himself as I walk away. Perhaps he was joking.

I’m surprised by my brightness only a mile away from the van. Speaking to strangers, stopping to take photos of beautiful things—a far cry from my mood before I left. That’s the magic of the hills. Not that they appear to be doing any meaningful cheeriness themselves, as clouds continue to slowly drag themselves across the valley roof and Langdale Fell broods darkly in the shadows. I think about erosion, and time. I think about the fallen boulders on the valley bottom, as old as the Ice Age. The hills widen into a perfect scoop, as wide as a village, and soon there will be no other way to go but up. I don’t want to stop, but I have to turn back to make my walk a round hour and a half. The wind no longer at my back, I feel fresher and more awake. The sun tries so hard to break through the thick white Lakeland sky. For a moment it illuminates some far off crags enough to see each individual fascia of the rocks, and then it’s gone. Lost in thought as I reach the end of my trail, Tom runs up behind me. It’s only 11.30am. We’ve got the whole day ahead of us.

On Tuesday 13 August at 6.30pm BST I’m running an online workshop on Self-Editing and Pitching, and writers of all levels and experience are welcome to attend.

It will cover the following:

  • Finding great hooks for your story ideas

  • Turning rough outlines into smart pitches

  • Gaining confidence for writing + pitching

  • Honing the skills you need to polish your first draft

  • Becoming an editor’s dream commission

It is £20 per place.

To book, send me a message to confirm your interest.

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JULY

Everything worth chatting about in the month just ended.

This marks the start of a new project, a monthly round-up of my work, other people’s work, and the best things I’ve eaten, drank, seen, and done over the past few weeks. Consider this a perk for being paid subscribers to this newsletter!

July has been a busy month for me, with a lot of different events to visit. I tend to work at home in my office (the spare room) or in the garden (on the bench until I fall asleep) so travelling any distance at all and mingling is an unusual and sometimes frightening experience. But I did it all this month, so you can heap your praise on me for being a good and strong and brave woman.

Things I’ve Written

“The Swan with Two Necks is a sacred place. Literally—over a pint with the local vicar in the early 2000s, landlady Christine Dilworth organised a drop-in for villagers that couldn’t make it to church, who were offered communion in the function room. Pendleton locals happily took advantage of this hallowed opportunity, until the press printed a photo of the vicar outside the pub.”

“My new friend brings my breakfast to me, a pile of fresh, silky avocado barely crushed, on top of crusty bread studded with black olives. A wealthy side salad opens my eyes to new opportunities—a breakfast salad? Why have I never done this before? Everything is doused in greenly-glinting olive oil that tastes like how I imagine gold must taste as it melts on the tongues of gods. I try to savour it, to spend more time in this pocket of serenity, but before I know it my plate is clean, and my coffee is gulped. I have to return to the dirty streets.”

The content below was originally paywalled.

Things I’ve Done

WOT’s Summer Hop // Women In Beer advocacy

Right at the start of the month, I attended the Women On Tap’s Summer Hop, an event-forward-slash conference that dissected the Dea Latis research on women’s attitudes towards and careers in beer, as well as highlighted women’s work within the industry.

This event was a catalyst for me to reach out to Amelie Tassin at Women In Beer to start offering my help and advocacy in areas I care about again. Amelie was a great listener, and I feel like I am more able to step forward after having that initial meeting with her. For a while I’ve been too exhausted to do anything much except my day job. Now I feel motivated to start campaigning and supporting again, so thank you to Rachel Auty and the WOT team for re-igniting that for me., and thank you to Amelie for being so receptive to my thoughts.

American Cider Association L1 Cider Guide

Woo, I am now officially accredited as a L1 Cider Guide by the American Cider Association.

What this means is I attended their one-day course in Highbury & Islington, and then passed an exam based on what I’d learned that day. I was surprised to find that even though I’ve been studying wine for years now, cider tasting and evaluation is so much different. Tannins and bitterness appear differently with the presence of so much sugar. Apple types are classed by acidity and tannin—not by sugar content.

It was a pleasure to be taught by Gabe Cook, the Ciderologist, who clearly has an immense passion and endless patience for his chosen drinks of choice. The day refreshed my interest in cider and perry, and I’m grateful to the American Cider Association for allowing me to take this course free of charge.

Visited London (by bus)

I didn’t visit London once last year, in fact, it was a New Year’s resolution for me not to go there. I live in the north, and I usually like to prove that there is just as much to celebrate up here as there is in the country’s capital. However, even a die-hard northerner like myself can’t deny that so many events and businesses revolve around the city, and to avoid the place out of spite does nothing to help me.

It costs £145 return for me to travel to London and back on the train—regular class, no guarantee that my booked seat will actually be available—which is one of the main reasons I never go there. I wanted to take the L1 Cider Guide exam though, so I found a bus ticket for £25 return. I can get from London Victoria directly to Accrington in just over seven and a half hours. If you’re wondering how I coped spending that long sat still next to someone I didn’t know, a long chat with Lucy Dearlove from Lecker helped, as did two naps and a copy of Vogue.

I am desperate for England to stop revolving around London, but until it does, I’ll be taking National Express coaches. Hit me up, National Express, if you want to do any paid promotion work. I’m all ears.

Things I Read

  • I’ve been reading a lot of glossy mags this month. I’m poor, it’s escapism. Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Elle are my drugs of choice.

  • I’ve started both Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson, and Elmet by Fiona Mosley. Both very different, but cut from the same patch of turbulent sky. I blame the dreich weather we’ve been having.

  • Them magazine is basically my daily coffee break read at this point. Their profile on restaurant critic Soleil Ho—one of the best to ever do it—is fantastic.

  • I’m really enjoying Liberty Hodes’ CaffWalk substack.

Things I Saw

Things I’ve Eaten

In Highbury & Islington, I ate a bowl of lunch special spaghetti carbonara so rich, so baconny, so eggy, it felt like an English fry up. It was ideal, it was comforting on a rainy day in London when I felt so far from home, and it was only £6.90. A triumph.

I had a Greggs bacon butty for the first time in years on my way to the bus station in Manchester, and honestly, it was showstopping. How they continue to operate a business while giving each customer upwards of five rashers of bacon, I will never know. But I appreciate it.

The best recipes I followed this month were mostly accompanied by Maroulosalada, an incredibly simple but totally delicious Greek salad made, this time, by Instagram chef Chef Marinie, whose Greek recipes are always simple to follow and perfect in execution. She has a new series out where she is making Greek/Indian fusion and I’m going to try all of them.

I love making veggie lasagne, and I made a great one this month. I stole the tricks I use from my friend Bridie, who was once a chef. She says the best lasagnes:

  • Have as many layers as you can manage to pile

  • The white sauce is mixed with the meat or veg filling with some white sauce retained—this way each layer is creamy AND full of filling, and you have some white sauce left to pour on the top before adding your grated cheese for the oven

  • The filling is cooked down well, almost dry, so the white sauce can incorporate and won’t be too wet (this is especially important for vegetable-based lasagnes as the water content is so much higher to begin with)

As you know, I’m not much of an exact recipe cook, but here is how I made my July lasagne.

July Lasagne

Filling

  • 1 courgette

  • 1 red onion

  • 1 carrot

  • 2 Romano peppers (just use red peppers, these were on offer)

  • Handful of spinach

  • Four tomatoes or a can of plum tomatoes

  • Tomato paste

  • 4 cloves garlic

  • Dried oregano

  • Black pepper

  • Salt

  • Lasagne sheets

White Sauce

  • Like, 70g butter?

  • About 2 tbsp. plain flour—enough to make a roux but not crumbs

  • Whole milk (or oat milk, whatever you use)

  • A big load of finely grated Grana Padana

  • Nutmeg

  • Salt

  • Pepper

Method

  1. Chop all the vegetables except the onion and garlic roughly into small cubes and keep separate so you can add them to the pan at different times.

  2. Finely chop the onion and add to a large pan with olive oil or cooking oil of your choice. There is a cost of living crisis going on, sunflower oil is fine, so is rapeseed.

  3. Turn the heat to about medium.

  4. Once the onion is cooked but not browning, crush or grate or chop your garlic (I like to chop) and add to the pan. Stir and stop it from browning.

  5. At this point I add salt and pepper, not sure it’s important when you add it but it stops me from forgetting later.

  6. Add the chopped courgette and carrot and let them cook down until they are soft.

  7. Add the peppers—they don’t take as long to cook.

  8. Add the chopped tomatoes or can of tomatoes in juice. Add tomato paste and dried oregano and stir well. Turn the heat up a little so the pan is bubbling and the liquid is cooking down but do not let it catch on the bottom of the pan. Keep stirring often. Keep your eye on it.

  9. Add the spinach and again, let the veg cook down well. Turn the heat down if it’s getting a bit violent. Once it’s getting close to a thick sauce rather than a pan of veg stock, turn the heat down to a lower temp so you can make the white sauce without burning the filling.

  10. Add the butter to a saucepan and melt it at a low-medium temperature.

  11. Add the flour to the melted butter, and mix with a whisk. Keep it cooking on that low-medium heat until the mixture smells like pastry rather than raw flour. It takes a couple of minutes.

  12. Add milk bit by bit, and whisk as you go—the first half cup or so will interact with the flour and make a thick paste. Keep mixing so there are no lumps and keep going with more milk additions. It’s fine. This is what’s supposed to happen.

  13. Keep adding milk every time you’ve incorporated the last splash until the mixture is a creamy sauce. Don’t add too much, because you want a sauce, not white water.

  14. In total you’ll probably use about 3/4 of a pint of milk. Sorry for the imperial measurement, I get milk in pints. What’s that, about 350/400ml? Something like that.

  15. Add a dash of nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste, and then plonk a big great handful or two of grated Grana Padano cheese into the sauce and stir it in. This will make it a little thicker and incredibly delicious. (Secret cheat code: You can use any cheese, I just like this one and always have some in the fridge somewhere for making sauces like this. Try your cheapo mature cheddar butty cheese, it’ll be fine.)

  16. Get a lasagne-friendly baking dish out and turn the oven on to 180 degrees centigrade. My oven is a fan oven but is also temperamental as hell so I cook everything at 200 degrees and hail Mary. This is also why I don’t have exact timings for anything.

  17. Turn off the filling pan and give it a stir for good luck, and tell it how good it’s going to taste. Add in about 3/4 of the white, cheesy sauce you made from scratch, and stir it all together.

  18. Add a thin layer of this combined filling to the bottom of your dish, then layer lasagne sheets on top. Repeat as many times as you can.

  19. When you reach the top of the dish, instead of using the filling (which I would hope is all used up by this point unless you had the foresight to double batch it, in which case absolutely fair play), pour on the remaining white sauce to cover the pasta sheets, and grate over a whole lot more cheese. Again, use whatever you like, I just like Grana Padano for whatever reason. Gouda and its Dutch friends are always cheap in Lidl and melt really nicely. Mozzarella, imo, is too stringy and doesn’t taste of enough. It makes my lasagne taste a bit like pizza, which I hate. If I want pizza, I’ll have pizza.

  20. Bake in the oven for as long as it takes to brown the cheese. I would say give it at least 25 minutes in there, because you need to cook the pasta through too. If your oven is as much of an asshole as mine, put foil over the top f the cheese starts to brown prematurely so you can get it all to cook properly. Then whip it off for the last 5 mins for a bit of crust.

  21. This bit is vital: Leave it to stand for AT LEAST 5 minutes. Maybe longer. I like to make the salad once the lasagne is out of the oven, so I’m not tempted to cut into it too early. You want the layers to find their place in the world, and the filling to get a bit of structural integrity. Serve it up too early and you’ll have plates of sauce with pasta sheets floating on top, all of it hotter than a Lanzarote patio at midday. Chill. Pour a glass of wine. Throw some garlic bread in the oven while it’s still hot. Tell everyone food is ready—that’ll be another 20 mins before they get sat down anyway.

Serve this oregano lasagne with Maroulosalada and bread or garlic bread. I would probably drink a herbaceous and floral Trebbiano blend (crisp, dry white wine from Italy) to pair with the oregano and vegetables, or a bottle of Taras Boulba by Brasserie de la Senne (a lightly hopped blonde Belgian beer) to stand up to the cheese sauce and rich tomato.

Thank you so much for subscribing to The Gulp, I’m looking forward to August because I have a few food and drink-based adventures lined up. Who loves fish and chips?

Katie xox

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Fig Tree Cafe, Highbury & Islington

Finding secret gardens wherever I go.

It looked like it was going to rain, which was annoying, because I’d left my umbrella at my friend’s house. I found my way to where I was supposed to be joining my American Cider Association class, but I was 45 minutes early—it either takes half an hour longer to get somewhere in London, or considerably less time than you expect—so I did what any sane person does at 8am on a Wednesday, and I went looking for a decent cup of coffee.

My version of decent is different to yours. My husband Tom loves third-wave coffee, all acid and balance, that to me always tastes like peaches and apples left to rot in the fruit bowl. I like dark coffee, coffee that smells like full-roasted Italian breakfast beans, that pours the colour of liquorice, and tastes somewhere between dark chocolate and burnt toast. After breakfast I like it black, but early in the day I want milk in there, a touch of creamy, almost vanilla froth to set me up for the morning ahead.

The clouds held, and I walked down the arterial road that leads east from Highbury & Islington to Dalston looking for a café that looked good enough to stop for. I like to think I can tell if the croissants in the windows were frozen. I don’t tend to visit places with strong branding aimed at future franchising. At the corner of St. Paul’s Road I saw it: Fig Tree Cafe. Wooden, strewn with Mediterranean bric-a-brac, and dark enough inside to illicit a deep sense of curiosity, I crossed the road and entered through the open door.

It’s Greek in spirit, you can tell from the profusion of fresh vegetables and produce in the butty shop display counter that takes up most of the first room. It smells of fresh baking and house plants. I feel like I’m in a grandparent’s home, visiting someone who wants me to sit down and eat. I’m not wrong.

“A coffee for you?” the owner asks, adding, “You look like you’re in a rush. Only coffee is fast.”

I asked about the breakfasts he makes, and he says no. “I don’t make it quickly.”

That’s okay, I say. I’ve got time. He shrugs, and leads me to the rear of the tiny cafe into a second dining area, and then a conservatory, and then an outdoor terrace bursting with verdant green only a passionate vegetable gardener can achieve. On a blackboard were some of the most ideal-sounding brunches I’d ever seen. Before I can choose, he picks the avocado on toast for me, and tells me to sit. Again, he asks if I’d like coffee. I must look tired, because I am. Yes, please. Definitely.

He leaves me to explore the paintings and pottery and furniture, and I wander, carefully looking at everything as though I’m in a museum. The wooden decking of the outdoor space is not as creaky as I imagined (I have a fear of falling through, I’ve seen too many Instagram reels), so I take a seat under the heavy pergola of grape vines, sheltered from any passing showers that might come over. My coffee is brought to me—dark and frothy, a perfect cup—and I dunk a homemade almond biscuit into it while admiring the courgettes growing vigorously in a little window box balanced precariously on the edge of the platform. There is life everywhere. A magpie is chattering in the trees above. I can hear two restaurant workers further down the street panicking about a lack of mayonnaise. A train goes past totally hidden from view at the end of the lot. In my little garden, I feel like I’m spying on the rest of the city, secret and invisible in a cocoon of leaves.

My new friend brings my breakfast to me, a pile of fresh, silky avocado barely crushed, on top of crusty bread studded with black olives. A wealthy side salad opens my eyes to new opportunities—a breakfast salad? Why have I never done this before? Everything is doused in greenly-glinting olive oil that tastes like how I imagine gold must taste as it melts on the tongues of gods. I try to savour it, to spend more time in this pocket of serenity, but before I know it my plate is clean, and my coffee is gulped. I have to return to the dirty streets.

Inside again, I thank my host for the beautiful meal, and he complains that I didn’t spend long enough relaxing in the garden. I promise him I’ll be back, and I’ll spend all afternoon there. That he won’t be able to get rid of me. He smiles, I tap my card, and then he hands me another homemade almond cookie—a kavala, maybe?—in a napkin “for the road.” I eat it on my way to my engagement, thrilled to have been cared for so beautifully in a city I consider cold, that I’m often scared to visit. Food, coffee, biscuits, and kindness. They can be found anywhere. Even in London.

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Pellicle: A Drinks Magazine With Purpose

I want to tell you about this mag I work for.

This week, I was officially promoted to Deputy Editor of Pellicle. I’m extremely pleased about it—I love this magazine and I love editing.

Pellicle was started by Jonny Hamilton and Matthew Curtis with the shared ethos of showcasing beer, wine, and cider at its very best, and telling captivating stories about drinks culture that weaves in-between the drinks themselves.

Over the years, writing for Pellicle and being edited by both Matthew and Jonny sharpened my writing and taught me so much about telling stories. There is more to a tale than my own perspective, even in a personal essay—this is the main lesson I’ve learned from Pellicle. There is so much to share. Show, don’t tell.

I’ve been editing for Pellicle under the title of Associate Editor for a couple of years now, and it’s not an exaggeration to say I’ve loved it. In editing I feel like I’ve found a calling—something I thought I’d already found in writing. It’s true that I still love writing with all my heart and brain and body, but editing is just different. It’s a collaboration, but it’s more than that to me—almost an osmosis with the writer’s mind with whom you’re working with. You’re helping someone, but to do that you have to understand where they’re coming from: their point of view, their turns of phrase, their personality, their accent. Editing can be done successfully in a number of different ways, but for me, the process is most gratifying when both I and the writer are working together, learning something. I am not a red pen editor. I’m not a doormat either, but I like to see past what’s there and encourage confidence so that sentences can sparkle with the writers’ own wit, perspective, and talent.

Editing is not a chance for me to flex. Editing is an opportunity to sharpen my skills and help others to do the same.

Anyway. I wanted to use my Thursday newsletter this week to thank Matthew and Jonny for creating Pellicle, the first publication to commission, publish, and pay for my wine writing, and to say this: I am so proud to be a part of the team. I know we are going to do huge things. I’m excited.

Please be a part of it too by subscribing to our Patreon. Every penny we spend commissioning writers and artists comes from our supporters and main sponsors Loughran Brewers Select. We literally could not make this magazine—now one of only three of its kind in the UK—without you.

Apologies, but I am on le road and writing this on my janky phone using the janky Substack mobile web editor, so reading/art/music links will not happen this week. Stay tuned for links on Tuesday instead, plus a July round-up for paid subscribers to The Gulp before the month is out. Love ya!

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Underconsumption Core

Picky teas and slabs of beer. Is this it forever?

When I packed my van up for a weekend at a music festival, I didn’t realise what I was doing was highly trendy.

In years gone by I might have expected to spend upwards of £100 on beers at the festival bars over the weekend, and more on festival burritos, festival Diet Cokes, and festival burgers. You know I love a burger van.

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This time, however, I’ve finally learned how to superbudget, which is what I call living on the absolute bare minimum. It’s something I’ve been in training for my whole life, and I’m really good at it. We ate sandwiches and Pepperamis, a jar of gherkins (essential vegetable component) and multiple big bags of crisps. These sorts of “picky teas” are well-known in the North as somehow both an immense treat and the answer to being too skint and tired to cook a proper dinner. This peasant’s charcuterie served us well all weekend, and I am smug about it.

Underconsumption core exists because even the most exuberant of haulfluencers are starting to feel the constrictions of what is basically a national money shortage. When Broccoli is £1.20 a head in Lidl (one pound twenty pence!! for broccoli!!), there are many other things that have to get cut from our monthly budgets. Nights out become more infrequent. Takeaways become frozen pizzas. Beer turns into slabs of whatever tinnies are on offer at Tesco. We do what we can to keep ourselves afloat when the weekly shop increases by more than 20% over a year.

There are two reactions to a recession. One is to cut back to the bare bones of your budget, and enact control over your life this way—aka. the Picky Tea scenario. The other is to surrender to the cosmos and treat yourself, in a phenomenon well-known as “The Lipstick Effect”. (Of course this term was invented by a lipstick manufacturer for marketing purposes and picked up by journalists as an actual scientific theory—Leonard Lauder of Estée Lauder, in fact.) We buy small luxuries to make our lives worth living. We treat ourselves so that the daily drudgery of taking your own shitty coffee on the train and not having a pint after work feels less like penury. I bought a red lipstick this morning, because I decided I deserved it. As it happens, it was highly underwhelming and underpigmented. Don’t buy the Pixi +HYDRA LipTreat in Poppy, it is rubbish.

This brings me back to Underconsumption Core. Some darling young people have decided that being poor and acting like it is a core—a style to follow, a statement to make. Rather than take the indignant stance I’ve seen elsewhere that this is cosplaying as poor people, I’m happy for them, because it seems like a really cheap hobby, and it’s teaching others some good habits. They are sharing their minimal make-up bags featuring just foundation, mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick (so, my high school make-up bag,) and their worn-in trainers to show that it’s possible to live on less. The main tenet of Underconsumption Core, however, is to use something up until it is gone. You can make fun of this all you like, but to some this really is a radical notion. That a shower only needs one bottle of shampoo, one conditioner, one shower gel—revolutionary. That a skincare regime can be effective in only three steps rather than 9—unbelievable. The aim is to buy less, with the outcome of being more mindful in your daily life rather than wandering around with your big basking shark mouth open consuming everything in sight.

There’s one drawback to this fad, however, and it’s guilt. The idea of supporting local and independent businesses is engraved on the inside of my skull in florid Copperplate. Every time I avoid going out for drinks, I feel that hot little flush of shame. Every time I buy beer from the supermarket, I know that I shouldn’t be doing it. I should be supporting the good people who make better quality beer who I actually know and love. It’s tough out there for businesses—god knows I know that—but it’s also tough for customers too. Underconsumption Core only exists because people are struggling, no matter their outward optics. So what is going to happen to us all? Is this how we’re all going to live from now on? Surely not. There has to be something better on the horizon. There has to be a time in my future where heading out for a pint doesn’t require forethought. When will I never have to hear the soul-crushing phrase “Cost of Living” again? I honestly don’t expect answers, I just want to say these things out loud. When will things get easier? How much longer?

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Put fruit in your wine

Don’t think, just do it.

This piece was originally written for Glug magazine last summer. I have four monthly columns in Glug, and you can sign up for their wine club here.

I’m telling you this for your own good—put fruit in your wine.

A friend of mine from northern Italy met me in the park one day and while I had a can of something sparkling in my bag, she had brought a jam jar filled with Gavi and sliced peaches. The elegance! The rusticity! I was in awe of her resourcefulness, and of her attention to the simple, finer things in life. I had felt the day required bubbles for celebration. Her version of celebration was a true indication of the season—ripe stone fruits, cold white wine. Even the jam jar, now I come to overthink it, seems a sly remark against the preserves and penury of winter. Jam gone, the jar was now a receptacle for summer sunshine.

So, we’ve established that Gavi and peaches are an excellent pairing. There are many more wines to choose from, and fruits to pick.

Slice lemons and freeze them. Add the frozen slices, like circles of stained glass, into glasses of white rioja. Do the same, but with lime, in a Gruner Veltliner. Select the tiniest, sweetest strawberries and drop them into creamy Blanc de Noir champagne, or into the leesy, vanilla-rich folds of an oaked Chardonnay. Muscadet likes pears and green apple slices. Pale salmon-pink rosés love raspberries, and deep, sugary rosés enjoy cherries or frozen blackberries. Blueberries, even.

All of these combinations are suitable for jam jar park walks, but if you’re in the garden, I’d be tempted to bring out the big jug and stir up a sangria. The beauty of a sangria in your own home—you can do whatever you like. Taste the wine. What does it want? What do you want? Add sliced fruits, juice (if you like—I always like orange juice in my sangria), sprigs of aromatic herbs, ice, and a dash of liquor. Smile.

This week I’ve been suffering from a lingering chest infection, so my cooking hasn’t exactly been on-point. However I did make a riff of this pork chops and creamy mustard gnocchi dish on Tuesday—the weather has been wintery, so why not eat like it too?

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