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
I turned the too-soft butter beans from the other night’s dinner into this impromptu dip. You could easily make it with a tin of butter beans instead. Definitely one to make again – it will be a nice change from the girls’ regular lunch of hummus-olive-pitta sandwiches. Continue reading
I consider this steak salad to be the summer version of a roast beef dinner – grilled meat, roast potatoes, steamed green beans, and a horseradish-based dressing to dollop on top. I often make it with boiled potatoes, but as our stove top was condemned(!) by the gas man a few days ago, that wasn’t an option.
I serve the tomatoes, beans and onions in a large bowl; the meat and potatoes in another; and the dressing on the side. This works visually and also prevents the warm ingredients from making the fresh vegetables limp. It also cuts down on complaints from the girls, who are still “learning to like” horseradish – which is what I always say about those foods they currently shun. Continue reading
I’m very surprised that we’ve made it to August before I made this chilled pea mint soup, especially as we’ve been enjoying such atypically sunny weather. This recipe is usually one of my summer staples.
I love cold soups, but I know they’re not for everybody. Happily, this soup tastes equally good served warm, and garnished with a sprinkling of fried pancetta cubes. Continue reading
These Mexican pork wraps appears in Fern’s Food. As I’ve never come across Cajun seasoning in my local supermarket, I went with a mix of oregano, chilli powder, cumin and garlic instead. I’ve also used jerk seasoning when I have it. Otherwise, I was pretty much true to the original recipe.
I served the pork wraps with a watermelon feta rocket salad. Only when it was on my plate did I notice that both dishes featured the colours of the Mexican flag. Continue reading
This butter bean salad recipe comes from Yotam Ottolenghi’s vegetarian cookbook Plenty. (Apparently, so many Londoners are cooking his food these days, that a columnist in the Financial Times recently suggested that “to ottolengh” should become a verb.)
I’m always on the lookout for recipes that make use of sorrel (and lovage for that matter – I have a entire bush of that stuff…) The combination of feta and sumac sounded intriguing as well. Continue reading
Prawn malai curry (or chingri malaikari) is a classic Bengali dish. Prawns simmered in a coconut milk sauce that is fragrant with cinnamon, cloves and cardamom. It’s meant to be mild, which worked for the girls. My version is based on the recipe I found on the Something Special website.
Sri Wasano’s infamous rice salad featured regularly in my veggie years, when the Moosewood Cookbook was my go-to source of inspiration. The recipe sounded impressive, looked exotic, and tasted great.
I’ve always wondered who Sri Wasano was and whether the salad has any connection whatsoever to Indonesia. A two-minute web search uncovered an interview with author Molly Katzen. She revealed that the recipe was a version of a version of a dish someone she knew once ate in an Indonesian restaurant in the Netherlands – and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with anyone called Sri Wasano.
While the list of ingredients seems long, the salad comes together quickly, the dressing is sensational, and the texture contrast between the chewy rice, juicy pineapple, and crisp vegetables is interesting (in a good way). If you’re concerned about eating raw beansprouts, blanch them in boiling water for a minute or so, then drain and refresh under cold water before adding to the salad. Continue reading
Done well, nachos are a wonderful thing. And when it’s so easy to do them well, it’s frustrating how often they are a disappointment.
Here are some tips, based on my experience of making nachos at home:
The smell of grilling yakitori takes me straight back to Tokyo, and late nights spent in izakaya bars with friends and colleagues. Plate after plate of skewers would arrive – not always identifiable, always delicious. But however many I’d eat, it never seemed enough to absorb the amount of sake I managed to drink…
I usually make my yakitori with chicken thighs, but breast meat works too – especially if you allow a bit of time to marinate the meat before grilling. Continue reading
While I’d never let ketchup anywhere near my eggs, I do love the combination of eggs and spicy ranchero sauce. I always poach my eggs in those little poaching pods – my ‘open water’ poaching results are pretty variable – while Adam and the girls prefer their eggs fried. Continue reading
Once I’d decided to make nachos, knocking up a batch of margaritas was a no-brainer. For the first round, I followed the family recipe in Fern’s Food – 3 parts tequila, 2 parts Triple Sec, and 1 part Roses lime cordial. Drinkable, but too sweet for my palate – and didn’t quite tick the margarita box either.
For the second round, I went 2:1 tequila to Triple Sec and replaced the lime cordial with freshly squeezed lime juice… and it was just right. Salud! Continue reading
Laksas always go down well around here, as long as I don’t overdo the chilli. I usually make this recipe with prawns, but occasionally do a chicken version instead. After frying the paste, I sauté pieces of chicken for several minutes, before simmering it in the stock. Continue reading
This lemon ice cream is a stunner. It’s unanimously our favourite ice cream around here – and that’s including chocolate. The salt is absolutely key to this dish – creating a perfect balance between sugary sweet and lemony sour.
I was given this recipe by a friend, after she served it at a dinner party, so have no idea who to credit for this marvellous creation. It’s delicious with fresh strawberries. Continue reading
I was going to steam some mange tout to accompany the salmon phyllo parcels, but decided to shred them into an Asian-style slaw instead. I just go with whatever vegetables I have on hand – cabbage, carrots, peppers, bean sprouts, celery, and daikon radish are all options.
I usually add grated ginger to the dressing as well, but I thought the fish had that base covered. Continue reading
I make these baked peaches every summer without fail. They take only ten minutes to prep, smell wonderful while cooking, and are delicious warm or cold. I also enjoy the cleverness of adding an edible “pit”. Elizabeth David includes this dish in Italian Food, but my version is based on the recipe in Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. Continue reading
Tzatziki is something I’ve made ever since I left home for university – and something I’ve never tired of eating. My tzatziki is pretty stripped back – just Greek yogurt, cucumber, garlic, olive oil and salt, with maybe a squeeze of lemon juice if it needs brightening up. I have no interest in adding dill, mint, parsley, vinegar, sour cream, mayonnaise… or anything else I’ve seen in other tzatziki recipes.
Now that our cucumber vines are bearing fruit, I expect we’ll be eating a lot more tzatziki in the weeks ahead… Continue reading
Ten More Bites 