Felicity Cloake’s perfect mushroom pasta AKA pasta ai funghi. Photograph: Dan Matthews/The Guardian. Food styling: Iona Blackshaw.Felicity Cloake’s perfect mushroom pasta AKA pasta ai funghi. Photograph: Dan Matthews/The Guardian. Food styling: Iona Blackshaw.How to cook the perfect ...FoodWhich mushrooms give the biggest umami hit? Which herbs and spices work best? The classic Italian sauce gets the onceover from our resident perfectionist
The Italians are a nation of mycophiles, pouring into woods and forests in their thousands each autumn on the hunt forchiodini, gallinacci and, most prized of all, porcini, to saute, preserve or, as here, turn into a richly flavoured sauce. Read More...
Life and styleHow to talk so teens will listenAdolescence doesn't have to be hell for parents or teenagers, say bestselling authors Elaine Mazlish and Adele Faber. The key? Knowing how to talk so they listen, and listen so they talk'At 12, my daughter would come home from a party and say, 'Mum, Louisa was smoking, isn't that terrible!' But by 13 she'd changed. She took up with these very wild twin girls, who smoked dope and hitched rides at night. Read More...
Work & careersIf you really want to enjoy your birthday - go to workDue to the quirks of print deadlines, by the time you finish reading this I'll be a year older than when I started writing it. In between will have come the annual festival of attention-seeking and gift-collection known as my birthday - and many happy returns to me.
I don't see how anyone could not love birthdays, though perhaps I only think that because I'm yet to endure any of the milestones that are apparently so traumatic. Read More...