Nearly 500 cat figurines stolen from Gordon Ramsay’s London restaurant

Nearly 500 cat figurines were stolen in one week from Gordon Ramsay’s new London restaurant, the TV chef has said.The restaurateur, 58, recently launched Lucky Cat 22 Bishopsgate by Gordon Ramsay in one of London’s tallest buildings, which features the beckoning Japanese cat models called maneki-neko.He told ITV’s The Jonathan Ross Show there had been numerous thefts.Ramsay, known for his Hell’s Kitchen and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares reality TV programmes, said: “The cats are getting stolen. There were 477 stolen last week – they cost £4

Bored kids and empty cupboards? Try these child-friendly recipes this half-term

This is an extract from our weekly Feast newsletter, written by Felicity Cloake, Meera Sodha, Rachel Roddy and others. Sign up here to get it free to your inbox every Thursday.Happy half-term everyone! If you are a parent reading this, the chances are you are in desperate need of a snack/strong coffee/stiff drink. I start these school breaks with great intentions – lots of wholesomeness, baking, arts and crafts, and so forth. But the snack cupboard is now bare, the kids have had a side of cucumber sticks with every meal as a token bit of “green” and there are only so many episodes of Bluey I can take (actually, that’s a lie, but you know, we can’t have it playing all day)

This is my final OFM column. Here’s what I’ve learned about buffets, ‘clean eating’ and what not to serve food on | Jay Rayner

I have been writing this column for 15 years. That means there have been 180 of them, filled with wisdom, insight, whimsy, prejudice, contradiction and sometimes just outrageous stupidity, all of it interrogating the way we cook and eat now. As this is my last of these columns I thought, as a service, I should summarise the key points. Are you ready? Good. Let’s go

How to make rhubarb crumble – recipe | Felicity Cloake's Masterclass

When I last set finger to keyboard on this subject, I claimed that anyone can make a decent crumble. Age has made me slightly less generous; we’ve all chewed our way through dusty scatterings of flour and stodgy doughs that, delicious as they may have been, could, honestly, also have been a lot better. Fortunately, perfection here is not difficult.Prep 10 min Cook 40 min
 Serves 6-8800g rhubarb
 40g demerara sugar, or white sugarA pinch of spice (ginger, cinnamon – optional)For the crumble topping
150g plain flour
 75g demerara sugar ¼ tsp salt 75g ground almonds
 170g chilled unsalted butter
25g skin-on almonds, or other nuts (optional)Nigella reckons rhubarb is “the best crumble in the world”, but the recipe can, of course, be adapted to other fruit, according to both taste and season (or, indeed, to frozen fruit at any time of year); for other options see step 8. The fruit will be hidden underneath the topping, so crumble is also a great use for less lovely thicker or greener stems of rhubarb, underripe stone fruit, gluts of apples, etc

How to use up the remains of a can of coconut milk | Kitchen aide

I rarely use a whole tin of coconut milk in one go. What can I do with the leftovers?Happily, the warming sweetness of coconut milk is welcome in all the things you want to eat right now, sitting at home in your thermals (Curry! Soup!), meaning leftovers are no bad thing. When Mandy Yin, chef-owner of Sambal Shiok in north London, is faced with this same predicament, it usually means coconut rice: “It’s so straightforward, too: just replace half the water you’d need to cook the rice with coconut milk.” Otherwise, the excess milk could make an appearance in stews, even bolognese, or creamed spinach, she adds: “Replace the cream with coconut milk and a dash of fish sauce, and that’s really delicious.”The Guardian’s journalism is independent

Australian supermarket meat pie taste test: ‘What I want to dribble down my front at the footy’

Nicholas Jordan and friends wade through the gristle and the gloop to find out if there’s such a thing as a bad meat pieAfter years of eating the wares of service station hot cabinets, stadium menus and country bakeries, I never found a pie I didn’t enjoy. I doubted such a thing existed. But I thought maybe, somewhere in the depths of an Australian supermarket freezer, I would find it: a pie that would save me from the shame and utter plainness of writing an article that says “any pie is fine”.I bought every frozen or refrigerated pie labelled beef or meat and did a blind taste test with a team of Sydney bakers and chefs – Rob Pirina (Glenorie Bakery), Tom Mitchell (Shadow Baking), Andy Bowdy (Kiln), Justin Narayan (MasterChef), Toby Wilson (Ricos Tacos), Kimmy Gastmeier (Cherry Moon General Store) and Ryan Broomfield (Broomfields Pies).I cooked the pies according to their packet instructions then placed them in a pie warmer