I am genuinely amazed at how much both my girls love kale chips – it’s like child catnip. I cannot leave a bowl unattended for five minutes and expect a single crumb to remain. It must be a super food indeed to get children squabbling over who has eaten more than their fair share of the kale. Continue reading
I love applesauce – such bright, cheerful stuff, and a great way to reduce a trug of apples from our trees down to size. Every autumn, I make several batches to freeze for the winter. Our apples are pretty tart, so I generally add some sugar, but it’s not necessary.
I always make applesauce in a pot on the hob. My mum used to make it in the pressure cooker. I’m not sure why, as it’s so quick to make, but she did. In one of my earliest memories, I was sitting at the kitchen table while Mum was making applesauce. There was a problem with the pressure cooker lid, and she called for my dad to help. Continue reading
This chickpea green bean salad completely transformed my previously poor opinion of bean salads. It’s nothing like the mixed bean salads – tough kidney beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, and mushy tinned green beans swimming in oily vinegar – that I always avoided at potlucks and salad bars.
The recipe calls for two separate dressings – a garlicky one for the chickpeas, and a gingery one for the green beans. If time allows, it’s worth making the chickpea part of the salad a few hours ahead so they can marinate, then doing the green beans when it’s almost time to eat.
While it’s not much extra work to make both dressings, sometimes I just make the green bean dressing, and toss it all together at the same time. Another Madhur Jaffrey recipe from my trusty World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking. Continue reading
As much as I love the flavour of rosemary, and as happily as it thrives year-round in our garden, I don’t actually cook many dishes that call for it. Roast lamb, beef stroganoff, maybe a couple of stalks in a tray of roast potatoes – that’s about it.
Which is why rosemary loaf cake was one of the first recipes I cooked from Nigella Lawson’s How To Be a Domestic Goddess. Continue reading
October 21st is my mum’s birthday. After she died in 2003, my brothers and I established a tradition of preparing her favourite dish – coquilles St Jacques – on October 21st each year. It’s become a way of marking the day – and of connecting with one another. It isn’t always possible, but more often than not, we all sit down to this meal on her birthday. Continue reading
Mapo tofu stirs up a lot of memories for me… Many years ago, I spent the best part of a month in China. It had only recently opened its borders to independent travellers, and hadn’t quite worked out what to do with them. This resulted in a mind-bending mixture of bewildering petty controls and anarchic freedom.
Prevented from disembarking with the other passengers on a long-distance bus journey because a particular town was off limits, we were left free to wander off along the Great Wall with a sack full of bedding and sleep overnight in a watch tower. Continue reading
Baking the ultimate loaf of bread is an ongoing quest – and something I am a long way from attaining. Mostly, I make sourdough loaves, with varying degrees of success, depending on how long I’ve neglected my starter for. When I opt for the (relatively) instant gratification of a yeasted loaf, this Finnish rye bread (or ruisreikäleipä) is one I often go for. Continue reading
Spaghetti with meatballs is one of the girls’ favourite suppers. It’s a bit time-consuming for a weekday meal, so it doesn’t feature as often as they would like.
After trying various recipes, I’ve pretty much settled on the one in Nigella Eats. I like the simplicity of the tomato sauce, and cooking the meatballs directly in the sauce means one less pan to wash up afterwards.
The word “chowder” has such a North American ring to it. You don’t seem to get chowders much in the UK, which is a shame because its a perfect match for the English climate and local ingredients. There is nothing fancy about this tuna chowder – just potatoes, onions, tuna, corn, dill and milk, transformed into something supremely tasty and satisfying.
This was one of my favourite dinners as a child. Mum had a big china tureen she would transfer the tuna chowder into before bringing it to the table. I don’t own a tureen myself, and probably wouldn’t use it if I did. But I always liked the way she took that extra bit of effort to make family dinners feel special. To make us feel special really… Continue reading
I’ve looked at this Ottolenghi recipe for chargrilled broccoli with garlic and chilli a number of times, but have never summoned up the enthusiasm to grill individual broccoli florets before today. Blanching, chilling, drying, grilling – it seemed a lot of trouble for a bowl of broccoli.
I don’t know what tipped the balance, but I’m really pleased I finally gave this dish a try. It turns out that chargrilled broccoli is delicious, especially tossed with sautéed garlic, chilli and slivers of lemon. And because I halved the quantities, it wasn’t as time consuming as anticipated. The original recipe comes from Ottolenghi, The Cookbook. Continue reading
Some close friends of ours moved to Bahrain last year. Having never visited the Middle East (Turkey is the closest I’ve come), I know embarrassingly little about the countries in that region. For example, I did not know that Bahrain was a kingdom. I did not know that it was an island. And I did not know anything about Bahraini food.
Continue reading
These baked spiced plums are wonderfully easy to make – plus they make the house smell of mulled wine. Good hot or cold, they keep for a week in the fridge, and freeze well too.
Another recipe from Nigella Lawson’s How to Cook, I cut back on the amount of honey after making it the first time, as I found the sweetness masked the flavour of the plums. They are delicious served with a spoonful of Barbados cream.
Much as I’d love to add another country to my country list, there is no evidence whatsoever that the delicious concoction known as Barbados cream originates from Barbados. I’ve now learned that Barbados sugar is another name for muscavado sugar – the lovely, molasses-rich, dark brown sugar used in this recipe. However, the name applies only to muscavado sugar that originates from Barbados, while mine is from Mauritius.
The recipe comes from Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat. I doubt she’d approve of my use of fat-free Greek yogurt, but the end result is plenty rich and delicious enough for me. Its tangy, creamy sweetness goes beautifully with cooked fruit and crumbles – I use it anywhere I would dollop a spoonful of creme fraiche or vanilla ice cream. Continue reading
Flipping through cookbooks for ways to use a package of frozen lamb I’d unearthed from the freezer, I came across this recipe for lamb uppakari in Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Bible. Uppakari is a lamb curry originating from South India – which I’ve always associated with vegetarian food. But apparently the Chettinad region of Tamil Nadu is renowned for highly spiced meat and fish dishes such as this one. Continue reading
I ate a lot of soup as a university student – particularly onion potato soup. This was mostly because it cost about $1 to make an enormous pot that I could live off for days. This leek and potato soup is pretty much the same soup, all grown up – just like me…
Butter instead of oil, leeks instead of yellow onions, and a splash of cream for the silky finish it brings. I sometimes add chunks of Polish sausage after puréeing the soup, which makes it more of a meal and adds a appealing smoky element to the flavour. But it’s not necessary – it’s delicious just the way it is. Continue reading
Tucked into the corner of my birthday veggie bag was something heavy, oval-shaped, and pale yellow. I lifted it out and laughed in happy disbelief – a spaghetti squash!
I adore spaghetti squash, and cooked with it all the time when I lived in Vancouver. But since moving to the UK, I’ve had it exactly once. When I arrived almost twenty years ago, it was very difficult to get any type of squash in the supermarkets. Over time butternut, acorn and kabocha squash have found a regular place in the produce section. but there have been less sightings of spaghetti squash than the Beast of Bodmin Moor. Continue reading
My first thought on seeing this recipe for kimchi meatloaf was “why didn’t I think of that?” I tend to find meatloaf a bit meh – too often it’s dry and lacking in flavour. Because meatloaf is my dad’s favourite meal, mum would serve it for his birthday every year. Otherwise, it seldom made an appearance. Continue reading
I seriously over-estimated the quantity of limes needed to make 30 litres of sayonara baby for my birthday bash. As a result, limes have been featuring pretty large in our meals recently. Vietnamese chicken salad, salmon phyllo parcels, caipirinhas of course, and still a towering heap of limes dominates the fruit bowl…
…which inspired me to make a lime meringue pie. After reviewing a number of lime pie recipes, I opted to include some lemon juice to ensure the filling was tart enough to balance the sweetness of the meringue and biscuity base. Four more limes down, fourteen to go… Continue reading
Mum made two kinds of grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. The first was a crappy, open-face sandwich that involved slapping a plasticky cheese slice on a slice of bread and melting it under the broiler. This was always adorned with a little ketchup smiley face.
The second kind involved two slices of buttered bread and real cheddar, and was cooked slowly in the electric frying pan until it transformed into crispy-melty-cheesy deliciousness. To my disappointment, we ate a lot more of the first kind… Continue reading
I was given a wonderful bag of produce from my friend Rachel’s allotment for my birthday last week. Courgettes, tomatillos, piquillo peppers, nasturtium flowers, electric daisies (which make your mouth tingle in a slightly alarming fashion), squash, French and runner beans – a generous sampling of their bountiful harvest.
Whenever I find myself with runner beans, this salad is the first thing I make. I love the vibrant colours and contrasting tastes and textures – crunchy croutons, tender chicken, just crisp beans, juicy tomatoes – high summer eating at its finest. Continue reading
I wanted to slip this recipe for summer blueberry tart in before summer officially ends on Monday. We’re having a lovely September, but there’s no escaping the feeling of something ebbing away. The warning bite in the morning air, the lingering mists, the falling leaves. Even at midday, the sun no longer packs an espresso punch – it’s filtered coffee sunlight for us from now on… Continue reading
At the end of July, we decided to throw a party for my birthday in September. So we sent out a raft of invitations… and then pretty much forgot about it until last weekend when it struck us, “Ay caramba! We’ve got several dozen people turning up next Saturday!”
We had the first requirement for a successful party – lots of people – sorted. Which left the second requirement… a killer cocktail. Get lots of people drinking cocktails at the same time and a great evening is pretty much guaranteed. Continue reading
To my regret, I have yet to visit Indonesia. The closest I’ve managed to get so far is watching The Year of Living Dangerously – and eating delicious Indonesian dishes like gado gado.
Making gado gado is all about the preparation – boiling potatoes and eggs, steaming green beans, blanching cabbage and beansprouts, frying the tempeh, and achieving a perfect balance of flavours in your peanut sauce. After that, simply a matter of a few moments to pile everything on a plate and tuck in.
This black bean salad has a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a salad? A salsa? A filling?
When I worked in central London, I’d regularly pack this black bean salad for my lunch. It travels well and the flavours improve over time. I’d eat it as it is, maybe with some crackers, or use it to fill a wrap. It’s also good mixed with an equal amount of cooked quinoa or other grain.
This potato and spinach dish is what I call a dry curry – there is no liquid used in the cooking, resulting in no sauce. It’s an easy weekday, store-cupboard meal. I prefer it with fresh spinach, but frozen also works.
The original recipe is from Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking, one of my all-time favourite cookbooks. Continue reading
A steaming bowl of wonton soup is a very satisfying supper on a cool autumn evening. I put Lyra to work assembling the wontons – her little fingers are very good at pinching the wrappers together. The recipe makes enough filling for about 50 wontons. Leftover filling can be formed into meatballs and dropped into broth unwrapped, or else saved for another day. Continue reading
My mother used to say, “use a new word ten times and it’s yours”. She applied the same method to teaching me to cook. When I was eight years old, she had me make baking powder biscuits ten times over a couple of weeks, until I mastered them.
Many years later, I still remember the recipe and adapt it to all sorts of things. I make them larger and smaller, thicker and thinner. I sometimes add cheese or herbs to the dough (cheddar and dill biscuits are particularly nice). I always save any bacon fat or chicken fat in the fridge, and it makes a delicious biscuit when swapped for the margarine. Continue reading
This spinach, date and almond salad from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem cookbook was all over the food blogs a couple of years ago. With good reason – it’s a stunner of a salad, and relatively straightforward to prepare.
Dates and onions are marinated in a little vinegar, chunks of pitta and almonds fried in butter and dusted with chilli flakes and sumac, before being tossed with baby spinach. I ottolenghed it up for my brother and his family when they arrived visited from Canada. Continue reading
I could live on soup, especially thick, puréed ones like this butterbean and tomato soup. Cooked butterbeans have a soft, floury texture, which makes them a great soup base, though I imagine cannellini beans would work here as well.
This is one of those dishes that tastes like more effort has gone into it, which I attribute to the addition of sundried tomatoes. The recipe comes from Rose Elliot’s Vegetarian Fast Food. Continue reading
A good Vietnamese salad roll is one of my all-time favourite things. When I lived in Vancouver, there was a great Vietnamese place called Vina round the corner from my apartment, and I would regularly pick up an order of salad rolls for dinner on the way home from work. Continue reading
I found this recipe for basil-lime sorbet in a magazine I was leafing through in the doctor’s waiting room. I thought it sounded interesting, and jotted it down. The first time I tried it, I didn’t much like it, but decided to try it again with Thai basil.
What a transformation… The liquorice-cinnamony Thai basil combines beautifully with the sweet lime syrup to produce a palate cleansing, mouth tingling, refreshing sorbet. I often serve it with strawberries, but blueberries also work really well. Continue reading
Grasmere gingerbread is something I make when supplies are running low. It has only five store-cupboard ingredients – and doesn’t even call for an egg. I came across the recipe in the Observer newspaper years ago, and remember they included two versions – one simple, the other slightly fussier. (I’ve since discovered the original recipes are from Jane Grigson’s English Food).
I tried the simple one first, and decided after only one bite that it was plenty good enough for me. The recipe is so easy, it sounds like the crust one might make for a cheesecake or square. But there’s definitely more going on here. The crumb is exceptional, with an initial give before you encounter a chewy resistance in the middle. Continue reading
The recoleta clericot is a clever cocktail, with a careful balance of tastes and flavours – bitter Cinzano, acid-sweet orange juice, delicate herbal notes and the alcoholic wallop of gin, the distinctive flat melon flavour of cucumber, and ginger ale’s dancing top note. I came across this recipe in Waitrose Food magazine a couple of summers ago, and we’ve been quaffing them regularly ever since. Continue reading
Linguine with sardine pesto isn’t the most visually appealing dish, but it is so tasty I overlook that shortcoming. A regular tin of sardines makes enough pesto for two, so Adam and I will often have this while the girls go for the basil version. I don’t remember where I came across this recipe – I think I may have clipped it out of the newspaper way back when… Continue reading
We’ve been making banh mi sandwiches for a while now, and have eventually settled on a house version. It calls for little meatballs instead of grilled meat, doesn’t include paté, and features cabbage in the pickle instead of the usual daikon radish – works for us! Continue reading
Mackerel paté is not one of the recipe world’s natural beauties, and it’s beyond my limited photography skills to make it look any better than this. On the plus side, it is dead simple to make and tastes great. To quote Meatloaf, “two outta three ain’t bad”.
My mum would make these little mushroom piroshki at Christmas, where they were a welcome counterpoint to all the sweet treats. I have no idea where this recipe came from originally – I found it on a handwritten card in mum’s recipe box when I was gathering recipes for Fern’s Food. Continue reading
Somebody gave me a copy of Annabel Karmel’s Baby and Toddler Meal Planner when Nova was born. Once I got past the freezing purées in ice cube tray stage, I moved onto her recipe for macaroni cheese. I’m pretty sure it’s the only recipe I ever made from it, and have long since given the book away.
The squirt of ketchup in the cheese sauce is something I wouldn’t have thought of myself, and the crispy topping is a nice touch. I’ve always made my macaroni cheese with a good, strong cheddar – and all the many children I’ve fed this dish to have happily scoffed it down. I eat mine with a good dollop of Dijon mustard on the side.
This blueberry crumb cake is the first thing I’ve baked in the new oven. While I’m obviously very happy to have a new appliance, I was used to the old one’s idiosyncracies and adapted my cooking to accommodate them. It’s going to take while to suss out this new kid in town… Continue reading
This turmeric chicken dish was one of the first recipes I made when our new cooker was installed. I was so used to our almost fifty-year-old gas hob (recently condemned by the gas man) that I’d long adapted my cooking to its idiosyncracies. What a treat to cook on a hob that is actually level! To reduce a sauce in five minutes instead of fifteen!
This dish would be delicious whatever you cook it on. I served it with steamed couscous tossed with chopped herbs and feta cheese. The original recipe comes from the Five and Spice website, who adapted it from The New Persian Kitchen by Louisa Shafia. So I’ll cite them both – to give credit where credit is due. Continue reading
Ten More Bites 