BLUEBERRY CORNMEAL MUFFINS

In for Dinner is coming to the USA + Canada babyyyy !!

I can hardly believe I’m writing this but my cookbook In for Dinner is going to be published in the U.S. and Canada later this year - and I am THRILLED to my core - you can pre-order it here !

In for Dinner promises 101 delicious and achievable, budget-friendly, vegetable-forward recipes made for communal eating and entertaining.

I’ve been really lucky to work with the team at Clarkson Potter on the US edition - a dream come true as they publish some of my favourite food writers, not least

Alison Roman

,

Molly Baz

,

Justine Doiron

and

Carolina Gelen

- company I am honoured to be in.

The CP team have done a phenomenal job of Americanising the book. You may be thinking, what the hell does that mean, and it would be a fair question. While the UK and the US speak a very similar version of the same language, they use a completely different measuring system: ounces, pounds and cups vs grams / kilograms / ml. Then there are the ingredients that vary in name, availability and variety. What we call double cream in the UK is heavy cream in the US, icing sugar is confectioners sugar, treacle is dark molasses, the list goes on and on. Butter in the US is very different to the butter we get here, and so all the recipes have been tested and adjusted to the American kitchen and ingredients. It’s so exciting to me that some of my very English old family recipes will be winging their way across the ocean and into the kitchens of American home cooks, I’m so excited to share them with you.

The Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins can be found in the In for Breakfast chapter and they are my answer to the classic American breakfast food. I like my baking to always be on the more savoury side, and whilst there is certainly some sweetness to these muffins, there is also a delicious savoury, salty, crunchy element to the crumble topping, with a good level of acidity from the sour cream and lemon. They are the perfect bake to batch make on a Sunday and have on hand for an on the go breakfast or snack throughout the week. Kids love them, teens love them, I may or may not have fed one to a guy I was dating in Rome as he left my apartment late one night… look guys, the results are clear, they are loved by all. I’m afraid you will have to pre-order the book to get the actual recipe, but you can see a video of me making them and eating them here.

I haven’t really ever written about this before, but I used to live in the states. Shortly after turning 18, I got a job working for the actress Samantha Morton as her PA. I finished my last A Level and then promptly moved to LA with her to start filming on a movie. I lived in Beechwood Canyon on and off for a year and spent a lot of that time shopping for food and cooking meals for Sam and her family. It was a wild time in my life, being so young and half way across the world, driving on the wrong side of the road and working a very grown up job, with a lot of responsibility. One of the things I remember the most vividly is the produce available in California and how much more vibrant the flavours were. We had a pot of basil growing on the balcony that was positively pungent, if I close my eyes I can almost smell it now (I lost my sense of smell nearly ten years ago and so cling to memories like this). While I was living in LA I fell in love with actual Mexican food and really learned for the first time what that meant, having been only exposed to the Old El Paso version so prevalent in the UK. I learned to love sushi, realised how good a salad really can be, what freshly squeezed orange juice should taste like and the beauty and deliciousness of steamed greens when they are fresh and in season. I went to the Hollywood Farmers Market every Sunday, the very first farmers market I had ever been to, and in a wild, seven degrees of separation situation, I met a goat’s cheese farmer who was from the village I called home, in the Peak District, that I had just come from - small world.

a blurry baby Rosie

Anyway, all this is to say, I feel like I got a rather crucial part of my culinary education in America and it feels very surreal and exciting to be having my cookbook published there. I’m really hoping I will be able to come out and do some events when the book publishes in the fall, and so it would mean SO much to me, if you are based in the US, if you pre-ordered a copy of the book. Pre-orders are so very important for new authors like me who don’t already have a reputation, especially when they’re coming from across the pond. I have so many exciting things in store for the launch and I can’t wait to share it all with you.

(sorry I catfished you with the title - but all the more reason to pre-order to get your hands on that the blueberry cornmeal muffin recipe!)

Sending love, Rosie x