meemalee

Regular readers may be aware that I'm not a fan of baking, partly because I haven't got a particularly sweet tooth, and partly because I cannot be faffed with the precision of weighing everything out. But occasionally I'll see a picture or read a recipe that makes me go "Ooooooh" and consider whipping out my kitchen scales. Like this recipe which I came across in the Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Cookbook that I won in the Taste Test part of their 15:15 Challenge last year. A recipe for Olive Oil Chocolate Torte by Jose Pizarro , former chef partner at Brindisa and now chef owner of the new and wonderful eponymous Jose Tapas and Sherry Bar in Bermondsey. It sounds like it shouldn't work to be honest - curiosity was mainly why I wanted to try it. It contains no flour (yes, it's gluten-free), and no almonds either - in fact, the ingredients seem more suited to a tortilla. What really spurred me to make it, however, was when Rachel McCormack ...

I have this friend. Let's call her Rachel. She's one of the funniest people I know, in a charming, often acerbic but never cruel way. She also happens to be a wonderful cook and bilingual - Spanish is her second language, as she spent most of her youth in Catalonia aka Catalunya, in Spain. The fact that she's from Glasgow is just the icing on the cake, as it means that she'll slip from a Scottish brogue into perfect Spanish without a blink. So when she decided to start her own Catalan Cooking Class , I thought "Sign me up!". As far as the online food community are concerned, Rachel is the Catalan Queen . I was honoured to be invited to attend the inaugural class ... The Catalan Queen and Gareth Groves of Bibendum It's Tuesday evening - the venue is the lovely patisserie Bea's of Bloomsbury . I take my husband along as I think he'd have fun and it's a good decision as, within minutes, Rachel has us all laughing as she tells us stories about l...