Gilli Davies | |
---|---|
Born | Wales |
Culinary career | |
Cooking style | Welsh cuisine |
Television show(s)
| |
Website | http://www.gillicliff.co.uk |
Gilli Davies is a Cordon Bleu cook from Wales. Davies has been involved with food, food journalism and broadcasting since about 1975. [1]
At the age of 19, Davies ran her own bistro in Oxford. Davies has also run a restaurant in Berlin and an organic food restaurant in Cardiff and now lives in York. [2]
Davies has written numerous cookery books based on Welsh cuisine, Cypriot cuisine and organic food. [2] [1]
In October 2015 Graffeg published the Flavours of Wales, a collection of five pocket books, each with over 20 recipes on Welsh cuisine. [2]
In 1990, Davies wrote and presented a 10 part television series called Tastes of Wales [2]
Davies has run children's cookery classes, a training scheme to encourage restaurants to use local ingredients and a variety of other food events. Davies has been an advisor to the Food Standards Agency and is also a member and former chairwoman of the Guild of Food Writers. [1] [2]
Books by Gilli Davies include:
English cuisine encompasses the cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated with England. It has distinctive attributes of its own, but is also very similar to wider British cuisine, partly historically and partly due to the import of ingredients and ideas from the Americas, China, and India during the time of the British Empire and as a result of post-war immigration.
A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes.
Tandoori chicken is a dish made from chicken marinated in yogurt and spices and roasted in a tandoor, a cylindrical clay oven. The dish is now popular worldwide. The modern form of the dish was popularized by the Moti Mahal restaurant in New Delhi, India in the late 1940s.
Cawl is a Welsh dish. In modern Welsh, the word is used for any soup or broth; in English, it refers to a traditional Welsh soup, usually called cawl Cymreig in Welsh. Historically, ingredients tended to vary, but the most common recipes are with lamb or beef with leeks, potatoes, swedes, carrots and other seasonal vegetables. Cawl is recognised as a national dish of Wales.
Anglo-Indian cuisine is the cuisine that developed during the British Raj in India. The cuisine introduced dishes such as curry, chutney, kedgeree, mulligatawny and pish pash to English palates.
Heston Marc Blumenthal is an English celebrity chef, TV personality and food writer. Blumenthal is regarded as a pioneer of multi-sensory cooking, food pairing and flavour encapsulation. He came to public attention with unusual recipes, such as bacon-and-egg ice cream and snail porridge. His recipes for triple-cooked chips and soft-centred Scotch eggs have been widely imitated. He has advocated a scientific approach to cooking, for which he has been awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Reading, Bristol and London and made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy is a cookbook by Hannah Glasse (1708–1770), first published in 1747. It was a bestseller for a century after its first publication, dominating the English-speaking market and making Glasse one of the most famous cookbook authors of her time. The book ran through at least 40 editions, many of which were copied without explicit author consent. It was published in Dublin from 1748, and in America from 1805.
Jugging is the process of stewing whole animals, mainly game or fish, for an extended period in a tightly covered container such as a casserole or an earthenware jug. In France a similar stew of a game animal is known as a civet.
Ken Hom is a Chinese-American chef, author and television-show presenter for the BBC, specialising in Asian and East/West Cuisine. Having already appointed an honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2009 for "services to culinary arts", he was further appointed an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2022.
British cuisine is the specific set of cooking traditions and practices associated with the United Kingdom, including the cuisines of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. According to food writer Colin Spencer, historically, British cuisine meant "unfussy dishes made with quality local ingredients, matched with simple sauces to accentuate flavour, rather than disguise it".
Laverbread is a food product made from laver, an edible seaweed consumed mainly in Wales as part of local traditional cuisine. The seaweed is commonly found around the west coast of Great Britain, and the coasts of Ireland, where it is known as sleabhac. It is smooth in texture and forms delicate, sheetlike thalli, often clinging to rocks. The principal variety is Porphyra umbilicalis, a red algae which tends to be a brownish colour, but boils down to a dark green pulp when prepared. Laver seaweed has a high content of dietary minerals, particularly iodine and iron. The high iodine content gives the seaweed a distinctive flavour in common with olives and oysters.
Onion cake is a savory or sweet cake prepared using onion as a primary ingredient. Various onion cakes are consumed in Canada, China, Germany, Korea, Switzerland, Wales and other countries. Several types and varieties of onion cakes exist, including laobing, pajeon, the scallion pancake, Edmonton-style green onion cake, teisen nionod and zwiebelkuchen.
Known as The Garden of Wales, Carmarthenshire is a county of rich, fertile farmland and productive seas and estuaries, that give it a range of foods that motivate many home cooks and restaurateurs. There is a local tradition in brewing, milling, gathering shellfish from the coasts and meat production. Carmarthenshire has been described by The Daily Telegraph as a "worthwhile destination for foodies" with the county having a modest matter of fact excellence. Carmarthenshire has ambitions to become the premier food-producing county of Wales, based on its strong reputation for first-class products. and Carmarthenshire County Council produces its own on-line and hard-copy recipe book called Taste from Carmarthenshire, for those interested in learning more about the county's cuisine.
Colin Pressdee is a food writer, broadcaster and consultant living in London.
Welsh cuisine encompasses the cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated with Wales. While there are many dishes that can be considered Welsh due to their ingredients and/or history, dishes such as cawl, Welsh rarebit, laverbread, Welsh cakes, bara brith and Glamorgan sausage have all been regarded as symbols of Welsh food. Some variation in dishes exists across the country, with notable differences existing in the Gower Peninsula, a historically isolated rural area which developed self-sufficiency in food production.
Pembrokeshire has been called "the cottage garden of Wales", due to its good soil and the beneficial effects of the Gulf Stream, which provide a mild climate and a longer growing season than other parts of the country. The good climate and soil meant that the south of the peninsula was coveted by the Norsemen and Normans because it had "great plentie" of corn and cattle The county has prime agricultural land, much of which is located at about 70m above sea level, while to the north, the Preseli Hills rise to 500m above sea level and form uplands that are made up of heather and bracken, which are used for grazing sheep. Consequently, Pembrokeshire is classed as one of the most fertile counties in Wales, with its 392,300 agricultural acres having 14% of its land classed as of good quality, 67% being classed as medium quality and 19% being classed as poor quality. However, agricultural production is subject to market forces and in the 1890s, as a result of the Panic of 1893, a deep agricultural depression led to the area under cultivation falling by a third. Many labourers and farmers had no option but to emigrate to the New World and many of the large farming estates were sold. World War I brought prosperity again, but by the 1930s, as a result of the Great Depression, there was another agricultural depression which lasted until World War II. During the Post-war period agriculture has benefited from marketing schemes and marketing boards, which have helped in the regulation, marketing and distribution of the county's agricultural production.
The coast of Ceredigion is made up of a long coastal plain that contains high cliffs, coves, large bays and estuaries. The coastal plain gets narrower towards the more mountainous north of the county and is cut by the wide estuaries of the Teifi and the Dyfi. The broad and fertile Teifi valley is ideal for dairy farming and mixed farming. Heavy rainfall washes the minerals out of the soil and results in the mountainous areas of the county having relatively poorer, acidic soils. The plough line can be as low as 700 feet, which restricts cultivation.
Bobby Freeman was a writer, journalist, television presenter and cook who is known for her writing on Welsh cuisine.
The cuisine of Monmouthshire is historically associated with Lady Augusta Hall, who was also known as Lady Llanover. Lady Llanover published one of the first Welsh cookery books called First Principles of Good Cookery. The book uses a fictional Welsh hermit to give culinary advice to a visiting guest who is travelling though Wales.