Rachel Roddy’s homage to Anna del Conte and Vincenzo Corrado’s fennel with pistachio, lemon and anchovy sauce | A kitchen in Rome

I am looking after a pile of cookbooks at the moment. They belonged to the late cook and teacher Carla Tomasi, who wanted them to be useful, so gave them to the Latteria cooking studio. However, until the studio has more shelves, I have 15 of Carla’s 60 books sitting by my desk. They are a well-loved pile, but five in particular stand out as having been used and used. The first is Dan Lepard’s Short and Sweet, which, thanks to grey duct tape, is just about holding together, and the second is Thane Prince’s Perfect Preserves, also duct-taped

‘It was very difficult to hold on to’: are Michelin stars a blessing - or a curse?

The esteemed restaurant guide has struggled to stay relevant, with some leading chefs even barring reviewers or asking for their stars to be removed. Is this the end of fine dining?Time was, the ultimate honour for any ambitious chef was to gain a Michelin star or two. Better still, three. But these days, the world of fine dining is in a state of flux. Far from going to any lengths to schmooze critics or diners, restaurateurs are taking them on, from publicly berating customers who don’t spend enough to ejecting anyone who even threatens to leave an unfavourable review

From kumquats to lime caviar: UK foodies embrace a whole new world of citrus

When life gives you pithy cedro lemons and sweet Tacle mandarins, what exactly do you make with them?British chefs and home cooks are increasingly embracing new and unusual varieties of citrus in recipes, with supermarkets and greengrocers offering a rising number of speciality fruits. Retailers like M&S now offer punnets of kumquats, while Waitrose has reported a 27% rise in sales of yuzu juice.Riverford, which offers boxes of organic produce for home delivery, has noticed a similar trend. The company has seen steady sales of kumquats, with sub-varieties and hybrids like Tacle mandarins (a cross between a clementine and a Tarocco orange) and Ruby Valencias (which have the sweetness of orange but the flavour of grapefruit) performing especially well.“It’s generally unknown just how much variety there is in shape, size, flavour, and use of citrus,” said Dale Robinson at Riverford

Notes on chocolate: elegant treats for when the Easter eggs are gone

It’s Easter and this seems the right time to be talking about Christmas. Only joking! I’ll not be eating very much chocolate today because, see past columns and just how much Easter chocolate I have tested.My big weakness at the moment is Luisa’s Sicilian Orange. Although for Easter this came in a flat egg or bunny shape (both were £10.50), it’s the bijou bar I really love, £5

Dove, London: ‘inventive, unusual, tantalising’ – restaurant review

The designer Bella Freud waxes lyrical over a relaxed, elegant lunch with a fabulous friendDove, 31 Kensington Park Road, London W11 2EU (020 7043 1400; dove.london). Starters £4-£16; mains £12-£33; wine from £35I am a potentially dull person to eat with. However much I love and relish food, food is not my friend and I have a host of verbotens, ranging from garlic, onion and chives, which for me are headache-inducing, to butter, which I have always hated. Each meal in a new restaurant where I’m not familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the menu begins, “Do you have anything without garlic?” My meal might end up seeming plain to an onlooker, but this plainness divulges so many nuanced flavours – a grilled chop floods my nervous system with relaxing endorphins

Mediterranean producers unite in the face of dire adversity

Waitrose No.1 Castillo Perelada Cava Brut, Spain NV (£11.99, Waitrose) At a time when the world is being pulled apart by aggressively idiotic nationalism, examples of multinational cooperation, however small, can feel particularly precious and poignant. Nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the Mediterranean, where the savagery of war in the east and the brutality of border enforcement in the north make a nihilistic mockery of the very idea of togetherness. At their inaugural event in Catalonia’s Empordà last month, the organisers of the Mediterranean Wine Symposium hoped to offer at least some sense of a different world of pan-regional collaboration, however