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

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

Crispy Dreams and Cotton Candy: why are there so many new kinds of grape?

When I first tried a Cotton Candy™ grape, I did a double take. Did someone swap out my fruit for fairy floss? The burst of sugary sweetness was so unexpected, it felt like I should have been picking at it from a stick, not plucking it from a bunch. This wasn’t nature playing tricks – it was the result of careful breeding.A steady stream of new grape varieties are popping up in Australian supermarkets and green grocers. “More than 15 new varieties have been available in Melbourne markets this season alone,” says Thanh Truong, Fruit Nerd and author of Don’t Buy Fruit and Veg Without Me

Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for spiced carrot soup with fennel, chilli and crab | Quick and easy

This is the perfect transitional soup. I often make it without the crab, because it’s economical enough that you could have it on a weeknight with enough left over for lunchboxes the next day. But if you’re having friends over, or just fancy a treat, the flavour of the soup works beautifully with the crab – you could even use tinned crab, too.If you’re cooking for one or two, the soup base will keep for up to two days in the fridge, or freeze it in portions. Add more stock when reheating, because the soup thickens in the fridge

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for sausages with braised chicory | A kitchen in Rome

From Tuesday to Saturday, Andrea Legri makes approximately three kilos of sausage a day for his stall on Testaccio market. At about nine on any given morning, he may well be in the back section of the stall, which is visible through glass, his hands steadying the tabletop machine that feeds the minced pork into opaque casings. If ordered in advance, Andrea will also prepare sausages al punto di coltello (point of the knife) – that is, the meat cut by hand, which, paradoxically, manhandles it less and makes a colossal difference, producing a juicier, chewier sausage. One customer, who has been a regular for decades and with whom I am on dog-walking-nodding terms, quite regularly orders 3kg of hand-cut sausages for his family.Andrea is a third-generation butcher: his grandfather took on the stall in the late 1950s, when Testaccio was still a slaughterhouse district, and passed it on to his son, Franco, who was later assisted by his own son, Alessandro, Andrea’s brother

Notes on chocolate: more Easter eggs, because these are quite special

Sometimes you just want to splash out on something a little more luxuriousI really think this has to be my last column on Easter eggs, don’t you? One egg had sat on my sideboard for a few weeks. I didn’t hold out much hope for it, but it was wolfed down in two sittings (not just by me) with a strong recommend from my testers to ‘write how good it is’, so here you go: Coco Chemistry’s Large Milk Honeycomb Crunch egg, £25. (A dark chocolate version is also available.) This is not a craft-chocolate egg by any stretch, but maybe that’s not what people need all the time.Melt has two cute eggs, one is just milk and in very simple packaging with a cardboard bunny cut out