At the risk of alienating a large proportion of my readership, I have a confession to make: I don’t really eat breakfast.

This is not, to be clear, a regular weekday supper. Even at my poshest, I can’t say that cooking — or even eating, for that matter — a rabbit has ever felt routine, and nor should it. No-one’s yet cracked the economics of factory farming bunnies, for better or worse, and so they’re unlikely to feature too often in anyone’s kitchen.

I cook a lot of pasta. We probably all do, but I suspect I lean on it more than most. Partly on purpose, mostly not, Italy is the country I’ve most travelled around, its language the one I speak best after English, and its food what I first learned to cook.

One of the quirks of my day job is that there are a few cities I return to again and again, driven by the vagaries of the tech trade show circuit. Three trips to Las Vegas, four to Berlin, a few to Los Angeles, and more besides. But my first, and most frequent, is Barcelona, a city I’ve now been to six times, exclusively consisting of 3-5 day visits in late February. I’ve never been to the beach, have made a single trip round La Sagrada Familia, and have been to more conference centres and ‘eve

It’s a running joke between my partner and I that almost every argument we’ve ever had has been sparked by food. What we’re eating, who’s cooking it, and why did you slice the green beans like that? Of course, nine times out of ten we’re not really arguing about the cooking. It’s work, or money, or the cashmere jumper that accidentally made its way into the washing machine. Food is simply the spark that ignites the flame, ever-present in our life together and so ever a risk for disagreement. T

There are few pleasures quite like making really the best coffee for yourself at home. It’s warming, it’s delicious, it wakes you up, and you get to start your day by throwing a metaphorical middle finger at the Starbucks and Costas of the world. What could be better? UPDATE:Pret has revealed that it is now offering a coffee subscription service. The first month is free, then you pay £20 a month for as many drinks as you want - it's not just for coffees, either but frappes, teas and other thing

Fresh, handmade pasta is all the rage in restaurants up and down the UK right now. It has left plenty of burgeoning home chefs wondering if they can clear their cupboards of half-empty bags of penne and make the good stuff themselves. There’s a huge variety in the types of machines available, though, from traditional hand-cranked mechanical rollers all the way up to fully automated devices that do just about everything except cook the stuff. The best mechanical roller we tested is the Marc