A Christmas deli shopping trip

Shopping well makes cooking easy + book gifts

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My cookbooks (there are five) are available here. The latest is Easy Wins - a Sunday Times bestseller. There are hundreds of free recipes on my website which you can find here.

All images: Rachael Pilston

December is a lot. A lot of good things, but still a lot. I wonder, if you put all the 2024 gift guides end to end, how far you’d get? Once around the world maybe? Who comes up with those stats? I digress.

So much focus is (certainly here in the UK) on one day, one meal, ‘the big day’. I love our Christmas - the dinner, our traditions - from PJs on Christmas Eve to potatoes in stockings - but I do often think - why just cram it all into one day?

This year I am resolved to seize the whole of December and create more small, simple and easy moments of joy. A lot of those will, naturally, be food. Decidedly not-fancy things to eat, that feel festive but are super-easy thanks to good ingredients. More an assembly of great things from the deli than actual cooking.

In December I lean in fully to my local shops. To the deli, the greengrocers, the corner shop. It's when I delight in a trip to the shops most, knowing I have the licence to buy all the things that have been catching my eye, but have felt too expensive/special/indulgent to pick up on a normal Tuesday with my baguette.

Today I’m showing you what I buy from my local shops and how I use all of those things in flexible, easy, impressive (sorry!) ways. In the hope that you too will find inspiration in your local shops. I love to see what people are buying, to me there is no greater insight into a person than what’s in their shopping basket.

An off-topic anecdote but John (my husband) is from Anglesey and once saw then Kate Middleton now Princess of Wales shopping in the local Waitrose (they lived there for a while). My first question was what did she have in her trolley. He’d not even looked. Blew my mind.

This trip to the shops filled two huge tote bags with everything from dark purple grapes to pink peppercorns, from orangecello to pappadelle. I’ve made a video of the whole thing this week so watch that for the full unpacking.

In the video I also talk you through the three things I made immediately and the recipes are below but my intention is for you to lean into a deli shopping trip yourself.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted to make. A pasta for the family (recipe coming on the 27th), a big jar of marinated olives and something fun on toast for having people over, a burrata salad for when my family come round. With that rough plan I took myself to the shops.

This is how I think about a Deli shopping trip;

• Go with a rough plan/list (separated into fresh, dairy, dry - always)

• And a budget

• Invest in a couple of fancy things

• Top up with less expensive things

• Buy something unexpected or a treat (for me that was pink peppercorns, and chocolate cherry-figs)

• Come home, unpack, delight

• Plan how to use it all over the coming days - wasting nothing

These recipes are for the days around Christmas. These are the things I make quickly with good shop-bought ingredients to bring small moments of joy and celebration without trying too hard.

The olives are a favourite recipe, but this year I’ve used pink peppercorns to give them a refresh. They could not be easier or more useful. I have a big jar in the fridge that I’ll top up as it wanes, I’m eating them as I type.

The burrata is something I’ve been making for 20 years, I made it first when I ran a little catering business. It’s just an assembly of some really good things with unexpected flavours. Watch the video for my all time burrata hack, which saved me money on those catering jobs.

The toasts are like a painting. A one-up on a cheese board or a great snack with a drink. If you have never roasted a grape let this be your invitation to. The picture the deep purple juices make on the tray always brings me joy.

The recipes for the toasts and burrata in this issue is for the very nice people who support my work with a paid subscription but as it’s Christmas I have kept the olives free for all.

This week also is the next instalment of my gift guide - books and paper, there are some discounts below the line for my favourite local bookshop Pages of Hackney and Persephone Books, a bookshop and publisher in Bath that reprint neglected works of fiction from (mostly) women writers.

If you would like to buy a copy of my latest book Easy Wins as a Christmas present I will be signing and personalising any books brought from Pages of Hackney before 15th December. This is only for UK postage this time. Please add a note in the order notes at checkout including the name of the person I should sign it for. Any queries please ask @pagesofhackney directly.

Gift guide: books and paper

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll find discounts for two of my favourite bookshops at the bottom of this email

• Recipes from the best of the London Food scene that’s doing immense good for street kids

• A calendar of good things and another one

• The home maker

• Read this to my children has been joyful

• French cooking

• A standout cookbook for me this year

• Londoners let this be your guide to eating out

• This is being wrapped for my kids and godchildren

• Many hands make a quilt

Orange and lemon marinated olives

I always use stone-in olives, I think they are always better quality and taste way better with the stone in. No judgement if you buy stoned.

500g mixed stone-in olives
The zest of 1 unwaxed lemon, peeled in strips with a speed peeler
The zest of 1 unwaxed orange, peeled in strips with a speed peeler
2 teaspoons of pink peppercorns or 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns
2 teaspoons of coriander seeds
1 clove of garlic, peeled and bashed
2 sprigs rosemary
100ml good extra virgin olive oil

Drain the olives from their liquid, if the olives are in oil you could save this for cooking with another time or for using in place of the olive oil here. Add all of the ingredients and mix well then store in jars in the fridge until you want to eat them.

Burrata with lemon, chilli and thyme