bottom drawer

Again...another week, another report. This time its the Policy Exchange promoting some seriously muddled thinking about family housing in cities and a version of planning gain levy which would apparently promote more family housing rather than 'too dense' flats, save our green spaces and make 'communities' roll over with happiness every time a developer wanted to build something in their area, rather than standing up and complaining as they apparently do all the time now. There are two linked themes in here - the meaning of 'density' and how to provide a good urban environment for families. These themes cropped up a month or two ago in the ippr report on city centre living that concluded that city centres shouldn't try to accommodate families, and the myriad other attacks on 'density' that complain that the government's new targets are making our cities crammed and unsustainable, forcing families out. And many other recent pieces of commentary...

Another day, another damning report with no surprises: a 17% average wage gap between men and women. In fact, men will earn £2.6m over their lifetimes (averaging around £57,000 p.a. if working from 20 to 65) as opposed to women earning £1m (an average of £22,000). Nice. The depressing thing is that if you go back six years, you get an almost identical report . Nothing changes. And still, we don't get progress on equal paternity and maternity leave. In fact, it seems that the government is going to double women's right to maternity leave - to a year in 2009 - without increasing paternity leave at all. It will stay at two weeks, with the potential for six months unpaid leave only if the mother has returned to work. Regular readers will know my views on this. It is blatant and institutional discrimination. While we face a bad 'baby gap' that threatens our future economic health, and while other civilised countries find that having decent paternity leave reaps real bene...

I don't know what's gotten into me recently. Baking, all of a sudden. I made cheese scones last Sunday and today, my first oatcakes. Next it'll be soda bread for breakfast every day...or maybe not... I scratched around the kitchen, slightly hungover, looking for something to eat for lunch and found not much - some lettuce for a salad, and a quarter of a nice tangy goats cheese but no bread or biscuits to eat it with. Being in a somewhat oaty mood at the moment (porridge is breakfast of choice) oatcakes occurred to me...and a quick google revealed that they should be easy and fast to make with what I had in the cupboard. And indeed they were spectacularly easy and quick and will definitely be repeated. The recipe is an amalgamation of various found online and my own common sense. The recipes all called for plain wholemeal flour and a pinch of bicarbonate of soda, but the one thing I didn't have was the soda so I substituted half self-raising flour into the wholemeal and ...

I was forced to spend a day this week, as an experiment in whether it was a useful thing to do more often, at a terrifically dull conference at Earl's Court. Two things struck me: a) What a rip-off! at around £250 per delegate, someone is making a lot of money. All to watch a few big-wigs give the same old speech as they always give, answer a couple of questions and then run off before you get the chance to buttonhole them yourselves or network at all; and then hear a lot of non-big-wigs ramble on with bad powerpoints about their latest fantastically awful projects; partake of crap catering; half-heartedly try to network despite the total lack of interesting people there or a decent way to meet them; and wander around a load of crap stands telling you nothing at all. b) Everyone always says the same thing. Its voting for apple-pie and motherhood - we all want 'sustainable' 'communities', 'design quality', economic 'diversity', 'creativity', ...

For tonight's supper I have my mother to thank, who sent me a clipping with the kernel of this recipe on it. A northern Italian concoction, and very delicious for this time of year, a satisfying supper on a cold February night. Potatoes and pasta might seem a starch overdose, but you need very little potato, just enough to produce a change in texture in the dish and to adhere deliciously to the melting cheese. You could probably use chard instead of cabbage but again, the texture of the savoy, with its bite and nutty, nubbly flavour is rather perfect. Its also an economical dish to make in terms of washing up. I started off by cutting the potatoes (only two small-ish ones, and I made what was probably enough sauce for two although I gobbled it all myself) into inch cubes and putting them in a big pan of water to cook. Then, in a deep heavy frying pan, plenty of rough-chopped garlic (I prefer it not so thinkly sliced that it burns but in thick-ish wedges) to cook slowly in olive oil...

What more exquisite pleasure than becoming the first English team to ever beat Real Madrid at home. I hadn't dared hope; and by the looks of things, neither had the BBC or the Guardian who both gave limp and somewhat perplexed early reviews to the game. I could have been there - but my last minute ticket offer conflicted with meetings (not the equal of a date with Real, but necessary to attend) and I credit our win with my absence, having the feeling that my intense jealousy at the boy's attendance at the match would entail even greater jealousy at him witnessing us doing London proud. But, to counter the early reviews, it wasn't just about Thierry. The whole team put in exceptional performances, full of commitment. The number of tackles won, headers reached at the risk of injury, balls booted bravely out of play when needed - our captain should surely now sign a new contract, seeing the passion that can be ignited within the team when he gives them a chance. It should a...

Apologies again for lack of posts. I had a lovely break in Kerala last week, far from emails, computers, English grey February days. It was my first time in the most 'equitable' state in India, famed for its successful war against the caste system, its 91% literacy rate, welfare system and supposed equality of women, thanks to its communist government - the first democratically elected one in the world, dating to 1957. What I saw of Kerala certainly stood out against my previous brief visit to Delhi and Ahmedabad. Granted, this time I was a tourist pure and simple, not seeking out slum dwellers or sprawling rubbish dumps. But nevertheless, I saw less beggars, almost no street children and plenty of, if not wealthy, at least decently living people, even on the bus journey through the outskirts of the city of Cochin where you might expect to see endless slums and wretched poverty. We saw the famous, beautiful and ingenious Chinese fishing nets, dipping back and forth slowly on th...

Since coming back to Cheshire Street after over a year away, I've noticed a lot of changes on my beloved East End Sunday markets. Actually, they're really quite radical changes - seemingly having altered more in that year than in the three and a half previous years that I've lived in Bethnal Green. Firstly, you no longer have to get up at 8am to catch the best of the market. It used to be that all the good stuff was gone by 9 (well - all the really good stuff was gone by 6) and the whole market packed up around midday - at least, the bits I loved the most, being the dodgy stolen-goods flea-market super-cheap non-organic veggies and headless dolls bits. Now the whole thing barely kicks off before 10. Well, a few little bits do - but this is really symptomatic of the massive underlying shift in clientele and legality. No longer headless dolls and stolen bikes underneath my windows. No - the police have decided that the market can't happen any further down Cheshire Street ...

I've been following Go Magazine 's campaign to make Sheffield's cooling towers into Britain's biggest public artwork and the other day, I came across their more expanded manifesto for the future of Sheffield. In the clearest possible way, they say exactly the same things that we try to persuade our clients of, whether in Canning Town or Dorset - "If you want a city strategy, all you need to do is open your eyes." "It seems obvious to us: if you want your city to be famous, you have to make it different to other places. The greenery, the music, the friendliness: these make it different to other cities. So it's these that could draw people to Sheffield, make it a place to visit, an individual city...A strategy for the city has to be based on these things. It's the only way to make Sheffield stand out. All the brilliant plus points of Sheffield that you and I see every day, the things that make us love our city, brought to the fore instead of brush...

This Friday's Borough Market buys were huge bags of cherry tomatoes (about to go over the edge of saleable) for a pound, and a lovely Cornish mackerel, alongside some black pudding that I had for breakfast this morning and a huge globe artichoke. Mackerel is one fo my favorite fish - some people I know find it too strong-tasting, but I love its gutsy-ness, plus knowing that it's super good for me, being an oily fish and all. And they really are so pretty - the black stripes and rainbow lustre. Best, in my view, grilled or roasted as here in a hot oven, with oil and salt rubbed into the slashed skin. If you don't want your flat to fill up with fish-roasting smells quite so much, you can also wrap the fish in foil and bake it that way. I put the halved cherry tomatoes in the bottom of the pan at the half-way turning point, and had lovely but large-ish new potatoes sliced into pound-thickness rounds and boiled. Perfect Saturday lunch for salving my rather hungover self, being...

I'm a bit late in blogging this as actually, this was last Sunday's supper, inspired by Giorgio Locatelli in the Guardian , who gave the most meagre of instructions on how to make this dish but also made it sound utterly delicious and exactly what I wanted for a cold Sunday. I went off to the shops, buying a Savoy cabbage (one of my favorite vegetables - its dark, nutty taste unbeatable at this time of year) from the cockney Pete on Bethnal Green Road market (strictly an English root veg and greens man, sipping whisky from a hip flask, of indeterminate age between forty and seventy, always gives the girls a wink) and then went to Spitalfields to the organic meat stall. They didn't have the odd scrag ends of pig that Locatelli advises (ear, trotter, snout), these not appealing to the well-heeled of Spitalfields, but they did have ribs and I supplemented with belly pork, being probably my most favorite bit of a pig and one that I thought would go well with the slow-cooking r...