Feast Newsletter

Transporting … the Manhattan restaurant Estela. A dark emerald puck on a white plate – our spoons disturbed its surface to break it down to its crystal components. Bright shards of green ice released their flavour as they melted on our tongues – vegetal, flowery, herbal, slightly honeyed and a lot saltier then any dessert should be.

Cream of the crop … Ravneet Gill’s poached apricots with almond cream. The Guardian. Food styling: Benjamina Ebuehi. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. The apricot orchards at Godshill Orchards on the Isle of Wight consist of 4,000 trees made up of six cultivars: sunnycot, tomcot, flavourcot, ladycot, perlecot and digat. Apricots like moderately cold winters, mild and relatively dry springs, and hot, dry summers.

Photo: Arx0nt/Getty Images While I adore almost everything about June, there is a brief window, round about now, where I get flashbacks to my childhood PE lessons. That’s right, folks: it is sports day season. And while I love cheering on my own kids (and trying to calm my inner Julia from Motherland), as a kid I hated it with a passion. I was not remotely sporty, but I have tried to quieten those hangups and encourage my girls as best I can.

DIY and delicious … Felicity Cloake’s cheese scones. Laura Edwards/The Guardian I got into a small and pointless argument with a friend recently when she announced that a certain bakery chain (expanding across England with astonishing speed) was the only place in her London neighbourhood where she could buy scones. Surely not, I said. Then I thought about where, if I wasn’t going to make my own (pictured top), I’d find them near my own home, and realised she may have a point.

Summer vegetables are ready … José Pizarro’s broad bean and mint tortilla with manchego crust. Matthew Hague/The Guardian June has arrived in a blur of train tickets, suitcases, book signings and half-finished cups of coffee. The publication of our fifth cookbook, Honey & Co Daily, has brought with it the strangest combination of feelings: delight, gratitude, nerves, excitement, exhaustion and, on occasion, mild panic.

Rachel Roddy writes in praise of polpette, Italy’s infinitely adaptable little balls. There’s no single recipe for these beloved ‘meatballs’ – just your own way of making them Jose Pizarro's lamb albondigas with oloroso and piquillo peppers. Ola O Smit/The Guardian by Rachel Roddy While the Italian word polpette is generally translated as “meatballs”, it actually has a much broader definition than that. In fact, the literal translation is “little balls of polpa”, or pulp.

You don’t have to buy a ticket to enjoy decent festival food, writes Georgina Hayden, here are a few ideas for bringing the party home Fun to put together … Georgina Hayden’s momos. Issy Croker/The Guardian by Georgina Hayden This weekend, my social media was flooded with swoon-worthy shots from the Ballymaloe Festival of Food in Ireland, one of my favourite events in the food world’s social calendar.

A real page-turner … kimchi fried rice is one of many memorably mouth-watering dishes described in our favourite novels. Matthew Hague/The Guardian When I first had the idea for my debut novel, The Underdog, which came out last week, I knew it had to include food. After all, the received wisdom is to write about what you know and, after almost two decades’ worth of recipes, features and restaurant reviews, it’s surely my specialist subject.

Summer crunch … Yotam Ottolenghi’s chopped salad with feta and yoghurt. Louise Hagger/The Guardian I have been pouring a lot of wine over this past month, talking a lot about wine, and tasting my fair share, too – or perhaps a little more than my fair share. It’s one of the perks of opening a wine bar on London’s Great Portland Street, a project that’s been brewing (although fermenting may be a more appropriate term) for years.

Seeking perfection … Felicity Cloake’s chicken pie. Lizzie Mayson/The Guardian “Chicken, leek, flour, a few more ingredients.” That was it: my grandma’s WhatsApp response to me earnestly asking if she’d mind sharing her time-honoured chicken pie recipe. She wasn’t being obtuse – well, not deliberately. She had simply never before committed a dish that was second nature to paper, let alone an iPhone screen. It wasn’t how she’d learned it and it wasn’t how I’d go on to learn it, either.