Any foodie will know the difference between haute cuisine and your standard pub grub lies in the finishing touches that a chef gives to a dish to pull the ingredients together to go from being something good, to something extraordinary. It’s a subtle and delicate magic that chefs use which can sometime balance on the [...]

For the past few years, food has been developing in ways that has been incredibly exciting to watch. New food technology meant a rise in molecular food and the events of the past couple of years have really helped to shape the dishes that have been popular on our tables or at our events. Food could [...]

All across the country today eggs are being cracked, flour is being measured and flat bottomed frying pans are being heated to the perfect temperature to get the golden thin pancakes that we Brits associate with Shrove Tuesday. But why do we eat pancakes on this day? Shrove Tuesday marks the day before Lent begins [...]

Purple Grape has a keen eye trained on the food trends that are emerging in the UK. Last year we saw a resurgence of traditional ‘home-made’ British food influenced by the national events of 2012. With favourites such as Victoria sponges, fish & chips or pie & mash being ordered like hot-cakes (pun intended!), the [...]

Another year has begun and it’s at this time of year that we in the Purple Grape Office start to consider that we may have eaten one too many trifles of foie gras and brioche canapés or mince pie delights over December. (The chefs make them so delicious that it would have been rude not [...]

This year is rapidly drawing to a close with Christmas and New Year just around the corner. Our decorations have been hung, presents bought (or the mad dash of getting that perfect present for Auntie Dora) and wrapped. In our office, we’re all very much looking forward to spending time with our families, eating obscene [...]

Every year, as countless people do, my housemates and I chat over what we’re going to cook for our pre-Christmas dinner before we all head off in different directions to spend the actual day with our families. We take it as a given that on Christmas day there will probably be a turkey (or at [...]

True to word of last week’s blog I have popped along to Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland to enjoy some roasted chestnuts, mulled wine and the winter market so now feel suitably ready to embrace the festive season. We even had a little rendition of the 12 days of Christmas here in the Purple Grape office just [...]

Take a look outside. Chances are it will be raining. It is today and seems to be emptying more water onto our Purple Grape offices than I have seen for a very long time. This has reminded me that autumn has past and we are now into the chilly, darker months of the year where [...]

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely, singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.” Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae   This Sunday, 11th November 2012, the commonwealth commemorates Armistice Day, where people across the globe stand in silence [...]