Tag: recipes

Summer Spritz! (Matching perfumes to drinks for perfect parties)

Summer is the season for sun-drenched gatherings, laughter with friends, and sipping something cool and delicious in the garden. But why should your glass have all the fun? This summer, let your fragrance be as refreshing and playful as your favourite cocktail. We’ve matched five fabulous perfumes to refreshing summer drinks, so you can spritz and sip your way through every party with style and flair.

Picture yourself at a garden soirée, the clink of ice in your glass and the scent of something wonderful on your skin. Here are our top picks for matching perfumes to drinks – each one as vibrant and irresistible as the cocktail it’s inspired by (which we’ve also provided links to recipes for). Cheers!

 

A classic G&T calls for Penhaligon’s Juniper Sling – a fragrance that fizzes with the energy of London in the roaring twenties. It opens with a sparkling hit of juniper berries, instantly conjuring the crispness of a freshly poured gin and tonic. As you linger, spicy cardamom and black pepper swirl through the air, like laughter in a secret speakeasy. The base – a delicious blend of brown sugar, black cherry and vetiver – leaves a sweetly sophisticated trail, perfect for those who love a dash of nostalgia with their evening tipple.

£175 for 100ml eau de toilette penhaligons.com

 

 

 

 

 

If a piña colada is your summer drink of choice, you’ll adore Kajal Aican. This scent bursts open with juicy pineapple, as if you’re sipping a cocktail straight from the fruit itself. Bergamot and apple add a zesty twist, while jasmine and ylang ylang bring a sun-drenched floral heart. The base of vanilla and musk is as smooth as a lazy afternoon, making this fragrance the ultimate choice for anyone who dreams of tropical escapes and poolside parties.

£191 for 100ml eau de parfum kajalperfumes.com

 

 

 

 

Fancy something truly indulgent? We’re LOVING the sound of this Bakewell Tart-ini, and it’s perfectly paired with EAU.MG Frangi Frenzy. Imagine biting into a sweet – yet tart – cherry and almond tart, the scent of rose absolute weaving through the air. A hint of bitter liquorice keeps things interesting, while creamy musk, woody patchouli and tonka linger like the last crumbs of dessert. This gourmand delight is for those who believe every party needs a little treat.

£95 for 50ml extrait de parfum in the Shop

 

 

For lovers of sangria, 4160Tuesdays Take Me to the River is a must. This fragrance captures the easygoing spirit of summer with a burst of ripe berries and citrus, just like the first sip of a perfectly chilled sangria. As it settles, a rich red wine and rum accord emerges, mingling with subtle spices and woods. It’s the scent of lazy afternoons, laughter, and stories shared as the sun goes down.

£100 for 50ml eau de parfum in the Shop

 

 

 

 

 

And if nothing says summer quite like a mojito, reach for Diptyque Eau de Menthe. This scent is as invigorating as freshly crushed mint leaves, cooled with a breeze of nutmeg and a whisper of sweetness. Geranium and patchouli add an earthy depth, grounding the fragrance like the muddled herbs at the bottom of your glass. It’s pure refreshment in a bottle – the perfect companion for sunlit patios and long, balmy evenings.

£160 for 75ml eau de parfum diptyque.com

 

So, whether you’re mixing up cocktails or simply want to capture the spirit of summer, these perfume and drink pairings are sure to make every party a little more fabulous. Here’s to a season of spritzing and sipping: hoorah!

Written by Suzy Nightingale

Taste & Flavour – FREE cookbook for Covid sufferers who’ve lost their sense of smell

Up to 80% of what we taste is actually relayed through smell, and a FREE cookbook, Taste & Flavour, has been written to help those who’ve lost their sense of smell following Covid…

When it first came to light that many of those people who’d had or were still suffering with Covid-19 were experiencing loss of taste and smell, Life Kitchen said, ‘our first thought was – what can we do to help?’ Having undertaken extensive research, and garnered the help of experts such as Professor Barry Smith, from the University of London, the anosmia (smell loss) charity Abscent, and Altered Eating; it was ‘discovered that Covid-related taste and smell loss has some distinctive features.’ These included people who ‘found they didn’t want to eat certain, quite common ingredients, including onions, garlic, meat and eggs,’ while additionally (and upsettingly), ‘certain foodstuffs seemed to trigger parosmia (changes to or distortion of the sense of smell), anosmia (loss of smell) and phantosmia (smelling something that isn’t there).’

The loss of smell (and therefore taste) has been devastating to those already suffering other symptoms and feeling isolated, and we’ve written several articles on anosmia and parosmia previously, including an explanation of the help Abscent can offer – with anosmic Louise Woolham writing a feature in our just-published edition of The Scented Letter magazine. The idea behind the book, the authors say, is to be ‘a collection of recipes, ideas and expertise to help you on your journey towards enjoying food again.’

 

 

As Life Kitchen comment, and we know from the reports of many post-Covid patients: ‘Any of these olfactory conditions can have a profound knock-on effect for physical and mental health.’ So, what to do for immediate and – most importantly – practical help if you’ve lost your sense of smell and can’t taste the food you once enjoyed…?

Ryan Riley and Kimberley Duke worked with the smell and taste experts, to produce this recipe and self-help book. And – SO generously – they’ve not only produced printed copies you can purchase on the website for only £3.00 to cover postage costs, but have made a digital copy FREE to download, so they can help even if you can’t afford the book right now, and no matter where you are in the world.

‘Using our five principles of taste and flavour – umami, smell, stimulating the trigeminal nerve (responsible for sensation in the face), texture, and layering flavour’ they explain, ‘we’ve taught over 1,000 people with cancer to enjoy food again. We wanted to apply these principles to create recipes for those people who have lost their senses of taste and smell as a result of Covid.‘

 

Taste & Flavour: A cookbook to inspire those experiencing changes in taste and smell as a result of Covid by Ryan Riley & Kimberley Duke

Dowload the FREE digital edition, here.

Print copies available at: lifekitchen.co.uk

By Suzy Nightingale

Forage – Stop to smell the flowers… then eat them, too?

Forage for your food, lately, or too scared to pick your own? There’s a whole world of edible plants growing around us, but if the closest you’ve ever been to foraging for food is scrumping apples (or more recently, scrabbling at the red-stickered items in your supermarket’s Reduced section), you need this beautiful book…

Yes, it’s another book we’ve eagerly added to our Fragrant Reads shelves, but although the publishers of Forage: Wild Plants to Gather and Eat say ‘Anybody can enjoy the increasingly popular back-to-nature activity of foraging’, the truth is, very few of us feel confident enough to start picking some of the foliage we see on our daily walks. Thanks to author Liz Knight’s clear descriptions, and the stunning botanical illustrations of Rachel Pedder-Smith, the identification is made far easier and reading this, you’ll really feel encouraged to explore and diversify with wild ingredients.

What’s more, it’ll certainly make you look at flowers in a different way. From honeysuckle cordial (which sounds like something the fairies would drink in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), pickled cherry blossoms, linden leaf madeleines, dandelion petal cake to damson and rose petal preserves, the accompanying recipes sound like a feast for all the senses.

 

Forage: Wild Plants to Gather and Eat by Liz Knight, illustrated by Rachel Pedder-Smith [Laurence King Publishing]
Buy it at Waterstones

There’s such an elegant and understated confidence to Forage, and no wonder – Liz has a wealth of experience, having spent years learning the ways of foraging, founded Forage Fine Foods – a business she runs from her kitchen in rural Herefordshire – where she teaches courses on foraging and cooking wild ingredients, and also sells some delicious foodie finds. You may also have seen her appearing on the eight-part series of Channel 5’s Escape to the Farm with presenter Kate Humble. But if you’ve the idea that Liz was born in the bosom of the country and learned such skills at her mother’s knee, it certainly didn’t come naturally.

 

 

‘I grew up in normal street in a normal town just outside London,’ says Liz, and it turns out she gradually grew to love freshly picked food having tasted the tomatoes from a neighbour’s greenhouse, and later, worked in care homes and talked to the older residents. Explains Liz:

‘These people knew food; they taught me how to make butter, what cuts of meat to buy and how to cook it, what leaves to nibble on and what food should really taste like…Thanks to them I got a fire in my belly about the wild, wonderful food of Britain and that fire turned into Forage.’

Nowadays we’re becoming used to seeing ‘foraged food’ celebrated on menus of fine dining restaurants, but really Liz wants everyone to feel confident enough to try their hand at picking ingredients growing wild locally. Because Liz’s life now truly is spent searching the local hedgerows in search of scrumptious finds, and we’re sure reading this book will sew some more seeds of the passion for foraging. Now you won’t only want to stop to smell the roses (and wild cherry blossom, linden trees, honeysuckle, gorse…) but eat them (once safely identified!) too.

By Suzy Nightingale

Gourmande Jayne: Ormonde Jayne get figgy with it

Linda Pilkington, founder and CEO of London-based niche perfumery Ormonde Jayne, is never one for sitting still. Whenever we meet her, she’s dashing back and forth at 100 miles an hour, always brimming with creativity and new ideas, the latest being Gourmande Jayne…

‘Gourmande Jayne’ is a natural extension of Linda’s scented world –  a blog ‘defining scent and good eating’ that features lifestyle tips, fashion and beauty, advice for gardeners, travel diaries as Linda hunts for new fragrance ingredients, how-to videos and deliciously scented recipes she’s constantly inspired by – showing the world how to bring fragrance into every area of life, to enhance to joy of every day. Quite frankly, we’re not sure how she find the time, but we’re awfully glad she does!

We’re especially loving the recipe for Baked Figs with Goat’s Cheese (and the serving suggestion – ‘serve warm with a glass of wine!’) which we first got to taste at the wonderful Ormonde Jayne Christmas Showcase (watch out for our Christmas issue of The Scented Letter Magazine for more new on the fragrant goodies in store!)

See the recipe, below, and watch Linda prepare hers by visiting the Gourmet section of the blog. We promise you it taste (and smells!) amazing, and it’s just the thing for warming your cockles when the wether’s a bit cooler, but you don’t feel quite ready for rib-sticking stews just yet. We’re holding off the donning of tights for a while, and holding on to thoughts of summer holidays by eating these, and quaffing wine while we’re at it. Only because it’s suggested, of course…

Gourmande Jayne Baked Figs with Goat’s Cheese

Ingredients:
Medium size figs
Soft goats cheese
Chopped walnuts
Chopped fresh sage
Clear honey
Salt and pepper

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 200 C – Cut off fig stems and cut an X at the top of fig half way down.
Using a teaspoon, stuff soft goats cheese into the fig. Sprinkle with the fresh fine chopped sage and chopped walnuts.
Drizzle with a little honey and small amount of add salt and pepper to taste.
Place in a baking dish.
Place in oven for about 5 minutes.
Serve warm with a glass of wine!

Written by Suzy Nightingale

[Recipe and photos by Linda Pilkington]