Helen Goh’s recipe for rhubarb, pear and hazelnut crumble with browned butter | The sweet spot

Rhubarb brings its late-winter brightness to this favourite pudding, while ripe, buttery pears soften the edges and add a gentle creaminess. Instead of the traditional rubbing-in method, the crumble is made by pouring warm browned butter straight into the dry ingredients, creating a pebbly topping with a deeper toasted flavour. Leave out the crushed fennel seed, if you prefer, but this small addition, bloomed briefly in the butter, gives the whole thing a subtle aromatic lift.Prep 15 min Cook 1 hr 15 min, plus cooling Serves 680g caster sugar Finely grated zest of 1 orange, plus 1 tbsp juice 1½ tbsp tapioca flour, or cornflour500g rhubarb, trimmed and cut into roughly 2cm pieces2 large, ripe pears, peeled, cored and cut into 2cm pieces 1 tbsp orange juice 1 tsp vanilla bean pastePouring cream, vanilla ice-cream or thick yoghurt, to serveFor the crumble topping130g unsalted butter, plus 10g extra, softened, for greasing1 tsp fennel seeds, lightly crushed (optional)130g plain flour 80g light brown sugar 70g rolled oats 70g toasted blanched hazelnuts, roughly chopped ¼ tsp fine sea saltStart by making the topping: put the butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally until the butter has completely melted. Keep cooking until the butter smells nutty and turns golden; it will splutter and hiss at first, then quieten as the foam subsides

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for chocolate and rosemary panna cotta | A kitchen in Rome

The pungent and lingering aromas of familiar kitchen herbs – oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, bay, lavender, mint – seem purposely made to donate their landmark volatiles to our everyday lives and food. In fact, their design is not for domestic calm and onion basket or fridge drawer neglect, but for uncultivated wilds. In particular the limestone terrain of the Mediterranean, where their defining smells are hardcore chemical defences, with every small, tough leaf or needle loaded with enough volatiles to deter both predators and competitors.Rosemary is particularly kick-arse in this respect, with those volatiles (mostly organic compounds called terpenoids) synthesised and stored in minuscule glands that project from the surface of each dark green needle, which breaks when brushed against or bitten, releasing an intense, hot, bitter shot. It’s the evergreen equivalent of carrying personal defence spray

‘Food porn’: are sexy meal pics ruining the restaurant industry?

Name: Food porn.Age: Entered common parlance around the 1980s – Rosalind Coward used the term in her 1984 book Female Desire (one of its earliest documented uses).Appearance: A total restaurant killer.Your thesis is that nice-looking food is destroying the restaurant industry? Yes, and I’m sticking with it.Why? Because if you make your food look nice, it attracts the wrong sort of customers, that’s why

Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for ginger sesame meatballs with rice and greens | Quick and easy

I make variations of these meatballs every fortnight for my children, usually with chicken mince. The texture is fantastic and, whisper it, they’re even better made in an air fryer. Yes, I finally got one and it’s fantastic. You do, however, have to cook them all in one layer, which, depending on the size of your air-fryer basket, might mean cooking them in multiple batches. It feels more efficient to make them all in one go, though, so I’ve provided oven timings below

Koba, London W1: ‘I admire their chutzpah’ – restaurant review

Sometimes, my memories of a restaurant begin at the end, and at Koba in Fitzrovia, central London, the enduring image is the warm, fresh, sugary, bean paste doughnut served with a pot of buckwheat tea. It was an utter delight, but then, Korean sweet bean paste, which is made with adzuki beans, is so very satisfying: pleasantly claggy, almost nutty, and a little decadent, while at the same time still convincing you that it might count as one of your five a day, were it not stuffed inside a hot fresh doughnut with a whopping great dollop of whipped cream. It was a cold winter’s day – the sort where, by lunchtime, my own umbrella had blown inside-out twice and everyone else’s seemed determined to poke my eye out. Against that backdrop, this doughnut was a moment of pure bliss.Koba, a Korean restaurant by Linda Lee, has been providing moments of such joy for 20 solid years, not least with its traditional tabletop barbecue hot plates on which guests could grill their own dinner

​My love letter to Brittany’s best exports

Every February – or occasionally March – I get together with two friends to gorge on pancakes; I provide the pan, Caro does the cocktails and poor old Harry is invariably the chef because she never fails, even three ciders in. With two half-Frenchies in the room, we always start with buckwheat galettes, usually served complète with gruyère, ham and a fried egg (though the more we eat, the more adventurous the combinations become). Then we move on to softer, thicker British sweet pancakes with lemon juice and crunchy demerara sugar to finish. We rarely manage to meet on Shrove Tuesday itself, but apart from the year I went vegan for Lent, that’s no problem. After all, any cold, dark evening is improved by a pancake party