Giovanni’s on The Hayes, Cardiff: ‘The smell of wine and hot tomatoes’ – restaurant review

The actor and writer returns to a childhood favourite for a large slice of family nostalgiaGiovanni’s on The Hayes, 38 The Hayes, Cardiff CF10 1AJ (029 2022 0077;giovanniscardiff.co.uk). Starters from £4.55; pizza from £12

How to turn excess egg yolks into an umami-packed flavouring – recipe | Waste not

Salt-cured egg yolks are incredibly simple to make and a great way to use up leftovers when you’ve used the whites in another dish. They are intensely savoury, umami-rich and a vibrant, golden colour, much like bottarga, or Italian-style cured fish roe. Once dried, they take on a firm, grateable consistency, and are ideal for giving dishes a final punch of flavour – I often use them instead of cheese: try grating over pasta, risotto or steamed greens.Salt-cured egg yolks are a fine project that I’ve been meaning to take on for a while. These golden orbs of deliciousness add an incredible burst of flavour to any dish that could benefit from a whack of umami

Noor Murad’s recipes for Gulf-style rice

The Gulf countries are known for their elaborate rice dishes, many of them inverted, so the bottom becomes the top and the top the bottom. Some of the best and most traditional ones are cooked over charcoal and palm wood in deep underground fire pits, so the smokiness takes over every grain. That isn’t practical in most homes, but I like to think we can still produce the most wonderful rice dishes with just simple ingredients and a lot of love.The name of this uniquely Bahraini dish means “bottom of the pot”, which is where all the good stuff happens. The meat (or fish or vegetables) is left to steam and cook gently without any liquid, and the rice is piled on top

‘Too sticky. Too saucy. Too weird’: could I persuade my son to eat the food of my heritage?

My family takes food very seriously. So seriously that when my mother’s family left Iraq in 1971, limited to 20kg of luggage each, they found room for not one but two rolling pins. The truth is that, having used the rolling pins, I think they were right. Born in England, I grew up on my father’s stories, too, of going to a Baghdad street stall to buy hot samoon, Iraqi bread shaped like a teardrop, with a puffy middle and a crunchy crust, with amba (mango pickle) oozing out of it. But he left Baghdad even earlier, in 1951, in a mass airlift along with most of Iraq’s Jews

Voyage with Adam Simmonds, London NW1: ‘A bit like eating at a weight-loss camp’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

It takes thousands of hours in a hot kitchen to cook like thisKing’s Cross in London is a place where a million voyages begin and end, each and every week. Which may explain why so much cash has been thrown at the area around the station to turn it into “an aspirational lifestyle destination”, rather than somewhere to stomp through grumpily while dragging a suitcase.By and large, however, this proposed glow-up has failed – the Euston Road will always be an unlovable, multi-laned traffic snarl-up – although now, if you creep into the Megaro hotel, you’ll find a minimalist Scandi restaurant, Voyage with Adam Simmonds. This plain, dark brown, oak-panelled room sits rather incongruously inside the recently restyled Megaro, which now has a Britpop, Austin Powers-esque, rock’n’roll theme and suites boasting names such as Groove Britannia and Pop Diva; Backstage Britannia comes complete with acid smiley face pillows.If the Megaro is a celebration of the 1990s London party scene, however, Voyage is a post-party detox in Gällivare, Sweden

What’s the difference between all the various paprikas? | Kitchen aide

Sweet, smoked, hot … What’s the difference between the various paprikas? And are there any substitutes? “Paprika brings warmth, it brings colour and it brings another layer of flavour,” says Monika Linton, founder of Brindisa. “Even just a sprinkling over goat’s cheese on toast, hummus or any kind of dip, along with a bit of olive oil, will bring it to life.” Crucial to both Spanish and Hungarian cuisines, paprika is made by drying peppers (generally speaking, Hungarian varieties are air-dried whereas the Spanish stuff is smoke-dried) and grinding them to a fine powder. The taste, meanwhile, depends on the variety of pepper used, although, as Linton points out, not all tins of paprika specify that.The Guardian’s journalism is independent