There are few kitchen disappointments quite like cutting into a mango you’ve been saving for three days, only to find pale, fibrous flesh that tastes of nothing much. Or the opposite tragedy: leaving it a day too long and discovering brown mush. Mangoes are wonderful fruit, but they don’t make ripeness obvious — they won’t go soft and fragrant the way a peach does, and their colour, confusingly, tells you almost nothing. The good news is that judging a mango is a learnable skill, and it mostly comes down toRead More

Ask for “a shot” in a British pub and you’ll get a straight answer — but the price of that answer varies wildly depending on where you’re standing. A single shot of own-brand vodka in a Wetherspoons in Wigan might cost you £2.50; the same measure of a premium single malt in a Mayfair cocktail bar could be £12 or more. So how much is a shot, really? It depends on what you’re drinking, where you’re drinking it, and — crucially — what counts as a “shot” in the firstRead More