JournalLive - North East Taste - Recipes with Bill Oldfield

Home Taste Columnists Bill Oldfield

Why can’t food just be food?

I FOUND myself shouting at the radio. The people in the car next to me on the Tyne Bridge must have thought I was either bonkers or having a major argument on the hands-free. Read

Importance of close teamwork

IT’S all about teamwork. That’s what I was taught at school. It was then reinforced to me during my time in the Merchant Navy and again in other lines of work. Read

Now please remember to think before you eat

HOW do you shop? I mean, what sort of thought process do you go through, if any, when you decide to go out and buy something? Read

We’ve gone right off the boil here

SITTING in my history class in school, probably around the age of 13, I wondered what on earth the kings and queens of England had to do with my plans for extraordinary business success. Read

Pouring oil over troubled waters

HOW times change. I’ve just returned from a week in Italy, and it was one evening, while asking the waiter for some olive oil to pour over and around my carpaccio, that I remembered the first time I came across this idea of oil being liberally applied to the plate for direct consumption. Read

Changing times in restaurant trade

SO you think you can open and run a restaurant. Well many people do. Survey after survey shows that having one’s own restaurant is a dream for many. Read

Can anyone suggest a name for Bill’s plaice?

WHEN setting up a new business, there’s often more effort put into thinking up the name than there is into any one other aspect. Read

Keep it local and keep it real in 2008

I TAUGHT my daughters that they shouldn’t necessarily believe everything they were told. Once they’d left junior school, I instilled into them, to question that which is being told to them and for them to work out what’s real. Read

Boar the merrier

YOU know it’s real when it bites you. At least that’s what I felt like saying to the chap who found a tooth in his boar pie (and I ought to add that it was an actual boar’s tooth and so was easily explained). Read

An early start to festive season

HAVE you been to Durham City recently? Despite it being THAT time of year again, a draft economic strategy document for County Durham published this week paints a rather bleak picture of economic activity in the county. Read

Balance best in all areas of life

HOW much attention do you pay to the detail of your daily life? As you clamber out of bed in the morning and make your way blearily to the bathroom, do you examine the water coming out of the tap closely for signs of contamination? Read

We protect privacy of customers

I WAS off skiing for a week with my daughter who, at the time was only 10, and it was to be her first time on the slopes. Read

We’ll take a bite out of Pudsey ...

IT’S a stupid expression. It’s contradictory, confusing and without meaning. I mean, what’s the point of having a cake if you’re not allowed to eat it? Read

Variety of uses for ingenious inventions

WHAT are rocks for? I mean, what purpose do they perform other than just existing, forming the edge of oceans and getting together to give me something to ski on? Did our creator have a role in mind when He designed them? Read

Negativity is a sign of the times

PEOPLE who know me know that I’m a positive person. I’ve sometimes been described as motivational – not, I think, because I’ve any special techniques, but more likely because I always look on the bright side. Read

Stick to what you do best, that’s my motto

WHEN I started my first restaurant, in the Teesdale town of Barnard Castle, I was proud of the fact that I was Jack of all trades. Read

Kind to nettles? That’s just rash

YOU may not know it, but this week has been both National Sausage Week and National Chocolate Week. Read

Drink monitors blind to causes

THOSE who know me know that I believe we’ve a food problem in this country. That is, we know what food is but don’t actually know how to handle it. Read

Reward is so uplifting

I KNOW that many of us of a certain age have a tendency to moan about how easy school exams seem to be these days, but I think that in many other ways schools have improved. Read

Good companions deserve happy life

HOW hungry would you have to be before you’d eat one of your best friends? Pretty hungry, I’d guess, and it could be rather upsetting. Read

Culture

Culture - July

THE region goes festival mad in July and we can be thankful for that. It brings a wealth of exciting entertainment to our doorstep.Read

Exclusive!

North East Exclusive

Read the latest on key people and places in the region, to find the perfect restaurant or simply to indulge those designer shopping habits. Click here to visit the Exclusive website. Read