Andrew Jamison

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter here for all my latest writing. What has happened to France? And should we be worried? The reason I ask is that on a recent holiday on the Opal Coast, driving back from a day in Le Touquet I saw a site I could hardly believe. I wondered if maybe my milky-white Ulster complexion had spent too long under the sun at the beach, or that maybe that funky cheese I'd eaten the night before was playing tricks on my mind, but no, it was there in broad

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter here for all my latest writing. Is a Mr Whippy now and again really that bad? On a beach? On a hot day? With strawberry sauce? And a flake? And maybe if you’re feeling extravagant chocolate sprinkles? Is it? As someone with a keen interest in cooking, a parent, and someone involved in education, I shouldn’t be promoting UPFs, and I’m not, but I think there should be a sense of perspective. There are certain foods which get a bye-ball from me

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter here for all my latest writing. ‘Happiness cannot consist in things governed by chance’ wrote Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy in 523 while imprisoned and awaiting execution. Admittedly not facing the same trials as Boethius (the poor soul), with the gauntlet of driving to Tesco to pick up the Click-and-Collect not quite registering on the same scale of misfortune, I couldn’t help but think of his maxim recently in relation to bread

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter here for all my latest writing. "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are" is one of the most famous quotes attributed to the eighteenth century lawyer-cum-politician-cum-gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, whose most notable work was The Physiology of Taste, paving the way for modern food writing. In short, he's an icon of food writing and this film, The Taste of Things, currently on BBC iPlayer is loosely based on the n

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter here for all my latest writing. The Fibre Factor Let's face face it: fibre isn't a topic to set your heart racing. But, if you're willing to give this programme a chance, you'll find it more than a little informative and maybe even transformative when it comes to your diet. And you may even find Fearnley-Whittingstall (hereafter referred to as Whittingstall) isn't actually all that bad as a host. As a child, I remember a box of All-Bran in

Subscribe to Andrew's monthly newsletter here for all his latest writing. A recent sourdough loaf (one that actually came out well enough for a photo). ‘Tis better to have loaved and lost, then never to have loaved at all’ wrote Tennyson... almost. Well, okay, maybe he didn’t but let’s not let the truth get in the way of a catchy opening. The original line ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ comes from his 1850 elegy ‘In Memoriam A.H.H’. It’s

Subscribe to my monthly blog here for free to keep up with all of Andrew's latest writing. My croissants (definitely not made by AI, although you can probably tell that...) ‘La-min-ate good times, come on! ... It’s a lamination’ – did you know these were the original lyrics of the hit song by Kool and the Gang? ... No? That’s because they weren’t, but doesn’t it sound great? If you’re like me, once you’ve replaced ‘celebrate’ with ‘laminate’ you’ll never be able to listen

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for news of all of my latest writing. My Grandfather is dead. He died of lung cancer when I must have been about seven or eight. My memories of him are vague, much as I try to recall them. But one memory I had with him sticks vividly in my mind: having a boiled egg and soldiers with him at the little foldable formica table by the window which looked out onto a very standard, quite small garden, commensurate with all of the other semi-det

Subscribe here for my weekly newsletter for all my latest writing. Friedrich Nietzsche at Beefeater, Milton Interchange (image created via ChatGPT) ‘ Intellectually productive and emotionally intense natures must have meat’ remarked Nietzsche. Despite the fact he said this, my gut feeling (and I might be wrong) is that he wouldn’t have loved Beefeater. Then again, Friedrich was partial to a bit of beef. For Nietzsche deciding to become a vegetarian – even though he did try

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. 1903 illustration of a moment from Anton Chekhov's 'Oysters' by Alexander Aspith All at once I began biting something hard, there was a sound of a scrunching. “Ha, ha! He is eating the shells,” laughed the crowd. “Lit- tle silly, do you suppose you can eat that?” from ‘Oysters’ by Anton Chekhov You’d think that eating oysters would be a Proustian moment for most food writers. Maybe they were stan

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. Match told us that after the armistice in Indo-China 'General de Castries, for his first meal, asked for chips'. From ‘Steak and Chips’ by Roland Barthes in Mythologies There is something victorious about chips. Barthes in his essay Steak and Chips from his collection of essays Mythologies, goes on to suggest that in eating chips after his victory, the General de Catries was asserting his Frenchness

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all his latest writing. A painting of a Hake. "It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me," reflects Ishmael in Moby Dick. While Ishmael was referring to the sublime – in the Romantic sense – and terrifying enormity of Moby Dick, for me there is nothing quite like the soft, flaky whiteness of a perfectly pan-fried piece of fish – it is among the most brilliant versions of the colour white we can hope

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here to learn all about his latest writing. What do you get when you cross a poet with a chef? I dread to think. A poety chef? A cheffy poet? How different are poets and chefs anyway? Earlier today I listened to Pierre Koffman: A Life Through Food (The Food Programme). This is the umpteenth episode of this BBC Radio series I’ve listened to and by now I’m starting to see quite clearly that perhaps poets and chefs are a very similar type

Subscribe here to Andrew's weekly newsletter and stay up to date with his latest news and writing. In this video Andrew introduces this category of his blog and explains the appeal of food writing to him, as well as some of his inspirations.

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. A ham and cheese sandwich in a back street Dublin pub (courtesy of ChatGPT) This never was my town, I was not born or bred Nor schooled here and she will not Have me alive or dead But yet she holds my mind With her seedy elegance, With her gentle veils of rain... From ‘Dublin’ by Louis MacNeice The otherness of the Ulsterman in Dublin has been well documented by some of Ireland’s greatest writers, but

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all the latest writing from his bog. W. B. Yeats with a plate of sausages, chips and peas (image courtesy of ChatGPT) Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. from 'The Stolen Child' by W. B. Yeats Every Thursday night we have sausages and chips. And by every Thursday night I mean every Thursday night. It started out as a b

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest news and writing. John Keats with a Baked Ham (AI generated image... in case you were in doubt) A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. from 'Endymion' by John Keats Was John Keats really thinking of a baked ham when he wrote Endymion? If we re

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. The following poem charts part of the fictional life of an apprentice baker, Georges Bertrand. THE BAKERY GIG It was my teenage summer job, the last resort. I left it late and all my friends had nabbed the waiting jobs, the bar jobs, in short the jobs with tips and regular hours. Nobody wanted the bakery gig. Ridiculously early starts, long shifts, in a basement, leaving you too knackered to go out d

Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing, or upgrade to The Jotter Premium Plan here for access to all past and future writing. Boiled, it steams into the world on a plate on a Sunday at the head of the table with butter after church before a man a father of five in a shirt and tie and polished brogues and Old Spice with rough hands from dairy farming stock near the north coast with a glass of red and carrots and beef who has a separate dis

Subscribe to Andrew's blog here for weekly updates on his writing. 'A Long and Messy Business' is the name of Rowley Leigh's latest cookery book, and it alludes to how describes his life as a chef. Attending Clifton College, he went on to study English at Cambridge before heading to London and working his way up from burger bars, through Le Gavroche, to opening his own restaurant 'Kensington Place' in 1987. While it may appear on the surface that Leigh lived something of a c