July is National Picnic Month - which makes sense in light of the fact that it is also National Baked Bean Month, National Hot Dog Month and National Ice Cream Month.

I love a good picnic (I am scheduled to attend two in the next week) but I can’t say I’m terribly excited about baked beans being on the menu.  I’m not a baked bean fan - never have been. I love bean salad or mashed beans or bean stew. But there is something about baked beans that I have always found slightly disquieting and a bit wrong. The texture maybe? Apparently July is also National July Belongs to Blueberries Month - which may or may not be true but is awkwardly phrased and just a bit presumptuous of the Blueberry Lobby. I’d like to know how the hot dogs, baked beans and ice cream feel about this territorial smack talking.

But I think we can all agree that making July National Culinary Arts Month is unlikely to cause a throw down between food or create culinary controversy (unless some other month feels slighted in some way). I think maybe NPR thinks June is National Culinary Arts Month because every other piece I seem to hear lately is food related. Not that I mind or am complaining. Just an observation. Here’s hoping it continues throughout this celebratory time in culinary calendar.

But what are we celebrating on the long July days? Lots of things, my friends. Lots of things and here are is a break down of the first few days to whet the food fun appetite!

• July 1 is National Gingersnap Day and my parents’ anniversary now that I think about it. I don’t know if they would accept a box of gingersnaps as the appropriate gift but I may give it a go.
• July 2 is National Anisette Day but I can’t imagine why.
• July 3 is National Chocolate Wafer Day and while I am never adverse to a bit more chocolate in my life, wafers are a bit lightweight and insubstantial for something as robust (or which should be as robust) as decent chocolate. A chocolate wafer always risks being - chalky or dusty.
• July 4 is National Barbecue Day which seems a logical extension of National Picnic Month. Good way to tackle two culinary holidays with one food festivity. Multi-tasking! That’s my motto
• July 5 is National Apple Turnover Day but I will be far too busy at my gargantuan family picnic to notice. Have a turnover for me.
• July 6 is National Fried Chicken Day and again, this makes perfect sense in light of July being National Picnic Month. Nigella has said - several times over the course of several series’ that fried chicken is the prefect picnic food. And she is not wrong.
• July 7 is National Strawberry Sundae Day for those who need more specifics than National Ice Cream Month. Or maybe just those who need an excuse for more ice cream. Don’t bother making excuses. It’s hot. That is reason enough. Dig in. Enjoy.
• July 7 is National Macaroni Day and there are many ways to celebrate it. Macaroni salads for - yes, you guessed it - picnics. Macaroni necklaces to keep children occupied and then beaming with pride when parents wear them. Come on, Dads! Macaroni jewelry isn’t just for Mom anymore. Pretend it’s puka shells and channel your inner David Cassidy (oh dear - I think I just dated myself)

So as you can see - July is a real heavyweight on the culinary calendar and I haven’t even mentioned National Milk Chocolate with Almonds Day (which strikes me as unnecessarily fussy), National Pina Colada Day (which I believe should be a weekly event), National Caviar Day (which seems oddly timed), and National Penuche Day (which I shall have to look up).

So see you ’round the picnic table and then back here soon for more food holiday fun!

Okay, not tripe itself, but rather what it seems to represent in British Cookery today. By which I mean an almost dementedly determined return to “old fashioned school dinners” and all that entails. I may not be able to follow the height or shape of this season’s hemlines, but I do try to keep an eye on food trends as they wash over these shores, and I have to say the news ain’t good.

Now I’ve never tried tripe itself, but would probably quite like it as I enjoy most offal. I have, however, tried Lancashire Hotpot, Chicken Pot Pie, Ham Terrine, Confit Duck, and just about every cheap cut of steak one could imagine. Whilst I have in various forms enjoyed all of the above, I have never enjoyed them when faced with a hefty price tag as a side order. And herein lies my gripe. Home - or school - cooked dinners of yore appear to have become the latest craze amongst the chefs and proprietors of the UK restaurant and TV cookery scene. Where once were featured “fresh” and “light” and “innovative” dishes, now we are faced with the old staples of either a penurious home, or an equally penurious school canteen. And it strikes me as a terrible sham.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Recently I was taken to dinner at one of Gordon Ramsay’s new restaurants — The Warrington in Maida Vale. I was very excited to find that we were not eating from the downstairs “pub” menu, but were in fact eating upstairs in the glam dining room. And what did I find on the menu? Well, for starters (and I do mean that literally) “potted duck” and a special of “ham hock terrine.” I was forced to opt for the English asparagus with home-made mayonnaise because it was the only option that didn’t arrive smothered in some form of aspic or in a novelty jar of some sort. (More on novelty jars later.) The asparagus - being in season here for its brief yearly fling - was gorgeous, as was the mayonnaise, but I had hoped for some fresh seafood other than the dreaded whitebait, or at least a dish that would deliver a crisp start to my meal and that didn’t require bread on which to be slathered.

The mains, from “hangar steak” to “chicken and wild mushroom pie” and “pork belly” all smacked horribly of a faux “credit crunch and back to tradition” aesthetic, by which I mean “famously cheap ingredients sold at outrageous prices in the name of nostalgia”. I opted for the pork belly and my companion the chicken pie. And how were they? Well, they were pork belly and chicken pot pie. Not awful (though the crackling on my pork belly was leathery and therefore rendered the meat a tad too salty for even my tastes), but not extraordinary either. Neither dish justified either its billing or its price, not only in execution but more importantly, in conception. They were quite simply simple food that could be easily reproduced at home, and probably with better results. They attempted to suggest home-cooked meals, but the point of home cooked meals is that you cook them at home, or they’re cooked for you at home by somebody who loves you. Which really is what makes them taste so good. Serve them in an environment with damask napkins and glam tableware and they become culinary fakes. A bit like the girl in the war years who could actually get silk stockings but drew a line on her legs so the other girls wouldn’t think she was a tramp.

My second example - and this is the one that really churns my gut - is this season of “The Great British Menu” on BBC2. This cookery (I should say Cheffery show, really) is an annual event that features chefs from various restaurants around the country competing in regional heats to have their dishes presented in a celebrative banquet. The first year it was the Queen’s Jubilee Luncheon, the next a luncheon banquet for the great and the good of France, and this year it’s the turn of returning service men (and women) from UK campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what has been the prevailing theme this year? “Home,” or if the starters are anything to go by, “Rationing, And How We Preserved For It Last Time.” No less than eight contestants have presented as their first course some sort of ham hock terrine or deep fried ham hock ball, confident that this dish will fill returning soldiers with a warm glow of recognition. Well of course they’ll bloody recognise it. The poor brave folk have probably been eating some sort of processed ham for months on end, and therefore deserve much better. Worse yet, these “ham hock terrines” or “duck shepherd’s pies” are presented in exactly the same sort of jars our real or imaginary grandmothers used to preserve jams and jellies and chutneys, and probably ham hocks too. It’s nothing more than an insincere form of nostalgia presented in a re-sealable jar. We viewers (though hopefully not the returning forces) then get “witty” versions of fish and chips, rabbit, and perhaps worst of all, a “Lancashire Hotpot” to share. What perhaps galls me most about this is not only that the chefs in question do not find these dishes in any way patronising, but that the judges (including Mathew Fort and Prue Leith) don’t either. Almost every time a dish with “high end” ingredients or a more esoteric approach goes before them, the judges ponder whether those who are “un-ranked” would appreciate said dish, as if just about anybody at a swanky banquet wouldn’t appreciate something a tad glam or out of the ordinary, what with it being a swanky banquet and all. They are in fact invited as guests to a feast, not a BBC Costume Drama. Which leaves the question of whether any of these soldiers don’t have homes to visit, and hotpots cooked by their actual families to savour. Of course, not all of them do, and certainly not all of them who do, have families who would cook said hotpot as a home welcome, but they’re not represented by these dishes either. Where then is a good curry, or a roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, or- cookery style heaven forfend - a good spag bol? Or, really, just egg and chips?

To finish, what galls me about the latest cheffie trend is just how dishonest it actually is. To be sure there have always been high-end restaurants that have prided themselves on serving the old standards (I’ll note the Shepherd’s Pie at the Ivy, for a start), but that’s because these eateries don’t slavishly follow trends to little end. But to pretend that because chefs have (in this more financially difficult age) glommed onto cheaper ingredients out of a sense of cultural and traditional home-coming is a bit like pretending that Messrs Galliano, Lagerfeld, Armani and the like have decided in the interest of cloth preservation that we should all be wearing corduroy and sensible shoes. At the same prices.

So go to a high-end eaterie for “trad” food if you must, but I pray you, go on a Sunday lunchtime, when most restaurants and gastropubs will serve you that all-time British classic, the Sunday roast. And best of these for me? The Pantechnicon Rooms, on Marbury Street in London’s Belgravia. A tad pricey, yes, but utterly delicious food, sides like you wouldn’t believe, and the most swoonsomely intoxicating choice of novelty martinis with which to wash down your meal.

I say “off the cuff”, because I quite pretty much had to make this one up as I went along. I’d never made it before- and to be honest had never really intended to- but my sister informed me on the phone today that she had fallen foul of Online Shopping, and had been the unhappy recipient of a glut of red and yellow peppers.

“Make soup!” I heard myself say.

“I don’t have a recipe.  Where would I find one?” she replied.

“Who needs a recipe? It’s easy!” I heard myself say.

“Fine,” she replied.” I’m on my way over with a bunch of peppers. Make me a soup.”

Could I find an actual recipe to hide behind? Could I buffalo.  But then I thought; you said you don’t need a recipe, so put your money where your mouth is. So I called her back, ascertained that she also had a glut of tinned tomatoes, and I was already armed for bear.  So what follows is the recipe I came up with; based in part of bits and pieces I’ve seen on TV, and also on the basic premise that soup really is never as difficult as you think it may be. Sure it can be time-consuming, but most of that time consumption is just the soup cooking away while you go do something else.  In this case, there is added roasting time for the peppers, and a bit of slightly fiddly pepper-peeling, but, as I hope you’ll see, less problematic than you might think, and the end result is utterly delicious.  It ain’t just me saying that. The sister was mightily pleased, as well as being a soup-making convert. One note before we start: You can use red, yellow, or orange peppers for this, but not green.

You will need:

• 4 red, yellow, or orange peppers, or a mix thereof
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic chopped
• 3 cans chopped (or peeled whole tomatoes) in tomato juice
• a small bunch  fresh basil ( if you have no fresh basil, 2 teaspoons dried oregano or marjoram)

Preheat your oven to Gas mark 6 (400f, 200C)

Once your oven is on the go, place the peppers directly onto one of the wire racks and leave to roast for between 30 and 45 minutes.  Check them every 15 minutes or so, and turn them (WITH TONGS OR SOME SUCH) as bits begin to blister and blacken. Once they’re quite blistered and soft- you’ll be able to feel and in fact see this because they collapse a bit- take them out and put them in a bowl. Then either cover the bowl with cling film, or just wrap it in a plastic bag. Leave for a good 15 to 20 minutes then remove the clingfilm/bag and leave to cool for another ten minutes, or until the peppers are just cool enough to handle but still warm. Then pull out the stalk and seed cases from the peppers, but make sure you do this over the bowl to catch any liquid that comes out.  You want to save this. Then just peel the skin from the peppers with your hands; you’ll find it’s terribly easy, and roughly chop the peppers.

Now it’s time for the soup proper.  In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil and throw in the chopped onion.  Sweat the onion until soft, sprinkling a slightly generous dash of salt as you go.  This will prevent the onion from burning, and anyway salt at the beginning means less salt needed at the end. Once the onion is soft add the garlic and sweat for another minute before adding the chopped peppers. Stir them round and let them sauté for a bit while you deal with the canned tomatoes.  Place a strainer over the bowl with the pepper liquids, and empty the cans of tomatoes into the strainer.  If you’ve got whole peeled tomatoes, chopped them up a bit while in the strainer, then stir them all about a bit- also in the strainer- so that the juice falls into the bowl below. Then add the chopped tomatoes into the saucepan, add about half the bunch of basil roughly torn, and stir well.

Leave this mixture cooking over a medium heat for about 10 minutes, then, straining through a sieve to remove seeds, add in the tomato and pepper juices from the bowl. Let it come to a boil, then reduce heat and leave to simmer fairly gently for about 30 minutes, or until the tomatoes don’t have that raw taste.

After 30 minutes tear up the rest of the basil and throw it in. Check for salt, and add a good grind of black pepper. Stir well, then turn off the heat and let the mixture cool down to just being hand-hot.  Then just whizz it in a blender and serve! This is another soup that is equally delicious hot or cold.

Serves 6.

It’s a funny thing; I loathe licorice.  Just cannot abide the stuff. But I quite like similar flavours, as long as they’re herbal in origin. Perhaps it’s just down to my tastes maturing as I, well, mature, but I’ve become a huge fan of fennel as a seed, a herb, and the bulb itself.  And tarragon is a favourite herb of mine. Its anise flavour goes famously well with chicken and fish, but tarragon is also the herbal core of bernaise sauce, that most delicious of accompaniments to a good steak. It partners beautifully, as I hope to demonstrate, with the tangy zing of citrus flavours.

One would think that tarragon - being a tender leaf - would be amongst the herbs that do not work well when dried.  But really a great deal of rubbish is talked about herbs that apparently don’t work well when dried, and it’s now very easy to get hold of freeze-dried tarragon, which is inexpensive and has of course a much longer shelf life than when fresh. So I offer here three recipes for this delicately delicious herb, only one of which requires that the herb be used when fresh. This one (a sorbet) came about simply because I’d bought a packet of fresh tarragon for a soup (see below) and had loads left over that I simply did not want to waste.

Zuchinni Soup With Lemon And Tarragon

This makes a very light and fresh soup. Zuchinni loves almost any herbal influence, but the slight sharpness of the lemon against the sweetly anise flavour of the tarragon is just divine.

You will need:

• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 4 medium-sized zuchinni, cut into large dice (about 1 inch)
• A small bunch of fresh tarragon, or 2 teaspoons dried
• 4 cups of chicken or vegetable stock (depends on whether you want to go totally veggie)
• the juice of 1/2 lemon (or a whole lemon, if small or unyielding, juice-wise)

In a large saucepan, sweat the onion in a glug of olive oil until softened. Throw in the zucchini and sweat that as well, stirring frequently to cook the veg evenly.  When the zucchini looks tender (the flesh will have gone from white to yellow) add the tarragon and stir well. Then add 3 cups of the stock, bring to the boil, then simmer with the lid half-off the pan for about 30 minutes.  At this point, take out a piece of zucchini and taste. Zucchini can be quite bitter until well cooked, so if it tastes at all bitter (and you may want to wait a moment or two after tasting to decide) then let the soup keep cooking for another 15 minutes before tasting again.  When you’re satisfied the zucchini is no longer bitter, take the saucepan off the heat and leave to cool a bit.  Then either blitz it with a hand-blender, or put it through a proper blender if you have one.  At any rate, process it until it is entirely smooth.

This is not a chunky soup.  This is also a lighter soup, so if the consistency seems on the sludgy end of things, slacken it with as much of the reserved cup of stock to get it to a more glamorous consistency. You can serve this soup hot, but it really comes into its own if you chill it in the fridge and serve it cold, perhaps with a little swirl of cream or yogurt. Then it’s a perfect starter or light summer lunch. (Serves 4)

Orange and Tarragon Rub For Roast Lamb.

Lamb is a richer meat, and can take the acid tang and stronger herbal tastes of this rub. While orange is mostly considered to be sweeter than lemon, its rind is actually a bit more bitter. The garlic gives a warm balance, and is always lovely with lamb.

You will need:

• 3 garlic cloves
• Salt
• The grated rind of an orange
• 2 teaspoons dried tarragon
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• Olive oil

In either a food processor or with a mortar and pestle, grind the garlic cloves with a bit of salt until they form a paste. Then add the orange rind and the herbs and keep on grinding or processing.  Loosen the paste with a glug or two of olive oil- but not too much.  This should be a loose paste, not a flavoured oil. Season with a touch of pepper, then rub all over your lamb joint- as the great Fanny Craddock once said of salt for crackling- as if into the face of your worst enemy.

Let the lamb joint sit for a half hour in the rub before roasting as usual. This would also be lovely on a roast chicken.

Tangerine And Tarragon Sorbet

This was the sorbet I made with the leftover tarragon.  I was genuinely thrilled with the result. Even surprised, because I usually like anise (or licorice) flavours least in a sweet context.

You will need:

• 8 tangerines, peeled, reserving a piece of the rind
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 small bunch fresh tarragon (must be fresh, I’m afraid)
• the juice of 1 lemon
• 1 large egg white, whisked into soft peaks.

Blitz the tangerines in a blender until they become a fairly smooth pulp. In a small saucepan, heat the water, sugar, tarragon leaves and reserved piece of tangerine rind over the lowest flame possible, until the sugar has dissolved and it just starts to bubble. You want to do this slowly to give the tarragon and tangerine rind time to properly infuse the syrup. Once the syrup has started to bubble, turn off the heat and allow to cool until just warm.  While he syrup is heating then cooling, push the tangerine pulp through a sieve into a plastic or ceramic bowl. Keep pushing the pulp firmly but gently until the pulp in the sieve is quite dry.  Discard.  Then remove the tarragon and tangerine rind from the syrup and stir the syrup into the tangerine juice.  Taste, and if it seems a bit too sweet to you (tangerines can very greatly in sweetness), add juice from the lemon until you get that desired hint of tartness.  Then pour the mixture into a freezeable container and freeze for about 3 hours, or until the center is thickly slushy.  It’s now that you whisk the egg white, and fold it gently but thoroughly into the semi-frozen slush, and freeze for another couple of hours.  Remove it from the freezer a good ten minutes before you want to serve it, depending on the heat of your kitchen. (Makes 8-10 servings).

I have been told that I make a damned good cup of coffee. I attribute this less to an actual skill (the coffee maker does most of the work) and more to the coffee I buy (Sinful Delight from Fresh Direct - which may or may not be the same as Sinful Delight from Irving Farm). It must also have a lot to do with the fact that most of my friends and I like the same type of coffee - which is to say strong (3 teaspoons per cup) and about half a step back from bitter (I said ’strong’ not ‘ulcer inducing’).

But after asking around and checking, it appears that there are a few things I do that aren’t in general practice. So, I offer these coffee-making tips and solicit tips from others.

How to you get your java jumping? Do friends and family love your coffee? Hate it? Have you ever sent a cup of coffee back in a restaurant? Which reminds me - have you noticed that a spectacular meal at a fine dining establishment can be ruined by a foul cup of coffee? I have. I don’t know why but restaurant coffee seems to be on the decline. Not in diners - which seem to have figured coffee out - but in proper, linen-tablecloth, chi-chi places. Fewer and fewer of them can produce a decent cup. Which explains why so often, we all end up back at mine where we know the coffee won’t disappoint.

What was I saying? Oh yes - coffee tips.

Water. Your coffee - regardless of brand, grind or process, your coffee is mostly water so start with water you like and would drink as is. I mean - if it’s not worth drinking as water, it’s not worth drinking with all that other stuff in it either so why bother.

Use with COLD water. I don’t care whether it’s bottled or tap but it should be cold. Bottled? Oh sure. I know some people do it. I used to think it was pretentious, wasteful and silly. Then I came slap up against the reality that ‘tap water’ is not all the same. Not at all. I realize that living in NYC means that I’m spoiled by having tap water that is among the finest in the land. Presumably, if you consider your tap water to be unfit to drink straight, it’s going to be a lousy base for a cup of coffee. This is a personal, local decision that must be made the individual. (Still - wouldn’t it be easier to just slap a filter on the tap? I don’t meant to get all tree-huggy but all those bottles? Come on.)

Keep It Clean. Any coffee maker, regardless of type or brand will work better and produce a better product if it is clean. So clean it. The whole thing - not just the carafe. The whole machine. I don’t know how much coffee you make a week or a month but I make approximately 1 pot a day and I do this once a month. Your mileage may vary. And don’t use dishwashing liquid. Use water and vinegar. Every few months - and never when the vinegar is out - I will scrub the carafe and filter parts with baking soda and rinse well. And unless you want flashback to junior high science class, don’t use the vinegar and baking soda together. On the other hand, if you want to amuse the children and don’t mind looking foolish, go on. Only don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Bothered by bitterness? Using the cold water to start will help a bit but try adding a pinch of salt to the coffee in the filter. A pinch, people. Not a lot. I know it sounds bizarre but it does work. I did it before stumbling across my current coffee which doesn’t need any such additive and believe me, no one is going to notice or get freaked out.

Storage. I know it looks hearty and hale but coffee does have a shelf life. It is perishable. You know how much coffee you get through a month. To ensure a decent level of freshness, try getting it from a coffee purveyor and not a grocery store (who knows how old that grocery store stuff is?) and don’t keep more than a couple of month on hand. It will go stale at some point and you don’t want that point to be on the day you REALLY need a good, solid, happy cup to start your day.

Keep the coffee in an air-tight container and out of the sun. I know some people keep it in the freezer or fridge - and I know people that take issue with this idea. I used to keep mine thusly though I’ve stopped and now keep mine in an opaque container in a cabinet. Either way, it’s out of the sun and that is the key. If I have any issue with the freezer/fridge thing - it is simply that the daily taking out and putting back in messes with the moisture content of the coffee and that can mess with the taste. But then, my father keeps his coffee in the freezer and still produces a very good cup-o-joe every day. So maybe I’m over thinking. I admit to sometimes doing that.

Getting the Right Grind. Listen, I know it sound even more obvious than using decent water but a lot of people get this wrong. Not all coffee makers and coffee making processes need the same grind level. Broadly speaking, if you are using a percolator then you want a coarse grind. Do you have an electric drip/manual drip or do you use a French press? You want a medium grind. Are you using an espresso machine? Get extra fine grind.

The truth is that coffee is subjective and – no pun intended – a matter of taste. What appeals to me may not appeal to you. Don’t feel trapped in a coffee rut. It’s coffee, people. not concrete. Go out and experiment. Get coffee from some place new next week. Get smaller amounts of different ones – flavored or not, mild or strong - and see if any of them “speak” to you. Try a different method. Coffee makers are not commitments. A cheap French press isn’t hard to find. And while you can buy all sorts of cold brew paraphernalia, you don’t actually need any special equipment for cold brew methods (the way I prefer if the end result is to be iced coffee - and iced coffee is a whole different kettle of fish).