I’ve made this curry a few times now, as it proved popular with both girls. I like the way the flavours and textures remain distinct – the soft sweetness of cauliflower, fresh pop of peas and crunch of cashews make for a very satisfying dish. Continue reading
Kabuli pilau is my first foray into Afghan cuisine. Considered Afghanistan’s national dish, Kabuli pilau is usually made with lamb, though I also found recipes that used chicken as well as meat-free versions. Continue reading
Parsnips don’t feature very often in Indian recipes – but they should. Their sweetness works really well with curry spices, and adding chunks of parsnip to red lentil dhal provides an interesting contrast in texture. Continue reading
Cooking the aubergines until they are soft and charred is what gives baba ghanoush its lovely smokey flavour. I achieve this by either roasting the aubergines under the grill or cooking them on the barbeque. Continue reading
This spinach and abura age miso soup makes a change from the tofu and wakame version I usually serve when we have Japanese food. Continue reading
These Gujarati green beans with mustard seeds and ginger make a lovely side dish to an Indian meal. The combination of stir frying and steaming results in vibrant green, crunchy beans. Continue reading
I’ve been taking things easy on the drinks front since our cocktail-tastic Christmas. But as the end of a busy work week loomed, the thought of a TGIF cocktail was pretty tempting.
The Manhattan has only three ingredients – rye whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters. As a Canadian, I have a nostalgic fondness for Canadian Club, but there are a lot of rye whiskeys to choose from these days, and bourbon works as well. Continue reading
Very spicy delicious chickpeas is one of my favourite curries, and something I’ve been making forever. It seems like an excessive quantity of spices as you’re making it, but in time the sauce transforms into something thick, rich and delicious. Continue reading
A bowl of vivid orange carrot and miso soup is a cheering sight on a chilly grey day. I really like how the Asian flavours of miso, ginger and sesame play against the natural sweetness of the carrots.
I’ve never seen the point of adding sugar to carrot dishes – honey-glazed carrot coins, tzimmes and the like – as they are sweet enough already. Of course, carrot cake is another matter entirely…
This avocado lentil salad is one of my favourite lunches, and something I make whenever I have cooked lentils leftover from another dish. Actually, I enjoy eating it enough that I sometimes cook lentils in order to make it. Continue reading
Chapatis are such an easy and satisfying thing to make, and so much better than the ones you buy. I make up the dough while my curry is simmering, then cook the chapatis when it’s almost ready to serve.
A basic chapati is made with just two ingredients – flour and enough water to turn it into a dough. I prefer to add a pinch of salt to the flour, and use milk instead of water, which produces a softer chapati. I also work a bit of oil into the dough while I’m kneading it to make the dough more pliable.
This quick cabbage and carrot salad is a pared-back, vegetarian take on goi ga (Vietnamese chicken salad). It’s a nice accompaniment to a piece of simply grilled fish or chicken.
There are lots of recipes for red lentil soup out there. Having tried a few, I’ve pretty much settled on this lemony red lentil soup, which is adapted from a Sophie Dahl recipe I came across in Waitrose magazine.
Falafel are another standby from my student days. With one tin of chickpeas you can produce a dozen crunchy little nuggets to eat alongside a salad, or stuff in a piece of pitta bread with tahini sauce.
Traditionally, falafel are made with uncooked chickpeas or fava beans that have been soaked overnight before being coarsely ground. This results in a nuttier texture than these falafel. While the outsides are crisp, inside they are soft – almost fluffy.
Spicy, creamy with coconut milk, and the most gorgeous deep yellow colour, this Indonesian squash and spinach soup is loved by the whole family. Plus, we have prawn crackers with it (served in individual bowls to avoid disputes over who’s had too many).
The original recipe comes from the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook.
After a couple of weeks of indulging myself with cocktails and Christmas baking, I find myself craving things like this green lentil soup for supper.
Like many young girls, I converted to vegetarianism in my teens. This wasn’t a straightforward thing to do in northern Canada in those days. The supermarkets had only recently started selling yogurt – tofu, hummus, and soy mince had yet to arrive. There were no veggie burgers, sausages or nut cutlets in the freezer section, and Quorn hadn’t been invented.
All things must pass – the holiday season, our friends’ visit, the twelve cocktails of Christmas – and it seems fitting to wrap it all up with a Blue Christmas cocktail. Continue reading
This Christmas, our great friends Margo and Aaron travelled from Canada to spend holidays with us. They are both cocktail lovers, and their visit was a big part of my idea to do the twelve cocktails of Christmas.
One of our gifts to Margo was a copy of Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails With a Literary Twist. She thanked us by mixing up a round of A Cocktail of Two Cities. Continue reading
I’ve enjoyed listening to my Christmas in New Orleans CD throughout the holidays, which is enough of a reason to make the sazerac my tenth cocktail of Christmas.
The ones we make aren’t as authentic as you’d be served in the Big Easy – we coated the glasses with Pernod instead of absinthe and use Canadian rye whisky, although I have recently got my hands on some Peychauds bitters. Continue reading
Sloe gin is delicious, and sipping a little glass of it neat while watching Alastair Sim’s Scrooge discover the spirit of Christmas makes a perfect holiday afternoon.
But a shot of sloe gin isn’t a cocktail. This led to the idea of using sloe gin in a negroni – where it cosied right up with the red vermouth, and stood its ground against the bitterness of the Cinzano.
Essentially a screwdriver gussied up with an indulgent splash of Galliano, the Harvey Wallbanger is definitely the cocktail of Christmases past for me.
My parents always made Harvey Wallbangers during the holiday season. They probably made them year-round – the Harvey Wallbanger was a happening drink in the 1970s – but in my memory they are associated with our annual Christmas carol singing party. Continue reading
Cranberry juice is the reason the Scarlett O’Hara makes my Christmas cocktail list – plus it’s very tasty. It’s also a good way to use up any Southern Comfort you may have lurking at the back of your drinks cabinet.
Now that you can buy anything year round, it seems strange to recall that when I was growing up in northern Canada, satsumas were available only during the holiday season. Getting our annual 5lb crate of mandarin oranges, as we called them, was an eagerly awaited Christmas treat.
Each orange was individually wrapped in green tissue paper, like a little present. I imagine there would have been about thirty oranges in the box – or six each – and we were allowed one a day to make them last. Sometimes I’d remove the tough skin from each segment and eat it cell by juicy little cell.
So the citrusy sidecar in its festive, sugar-frosted glass is an easy choice for my Christmas cocktail list. Continue reading
The whisky mac is a is a wonderfully warming mix of whisky and green ginger wine. Named after a Colonel Macdonald who invented it while serving in India, the whisky mac is a great antidote to the cold, damp British weather.
I make it with a 1:1 ratio, but some recipes call for up to three times the amount of whisky to wine.
A ruby-bright, festive mix of prosecco, pomegranate juice and fresh pomegranate seeds. I love the way the bubbles cause the seeds to float to the top instead of languishing at the bottom of the glass, the way fruit usually does in a mixed drink. Continue reading
Well, I finally solved the mystery of gin and It this weekend… In my teens, I read a lot of British crime novels – Agatha Christie mainly. It was all quite exotic to a thirteen-year-old Canadian who’d never set foot in the UK.
Country houses where retired military men were forever being poisoned, village fetes and cricket greens, debutantes and domestic servants. And the food – tisanes, gin and It, barley water, beef tea, crumpets, violet creams. I had no idea what any of them were… Continue reading
“It smells like Japan!” Lyra said when she walked into the kitchen. And so it did, that inimitable simmering dashi smell. We ate hijiki no ni mono pretty regularly when we lived in Japan. It was one of the only dishes Adam cooked and his main contribution to house meals.
Hijiki has a slightly liquorice flavour that works well with the carrots, and the chewiness of the fried tofu provides a contrast to the softness of the vegetables. It looks so pretty too… Continue reading
I used to make sautéed potatoes quite regularly, but until recently I’d fallen out of the habit.
When one of the girls has a friend round after school, the accepted thing is to feed the child some dinner before they are collected at 6pm. Our family normally eats quite late, so for playdates I’ll usually cook a separate kids’ meal.
I play it safe on these occasions, ever since I made a little girl cry by serving her a bowl of chickpea pasta soup. Schnitzel, meatballs, pesto pasta, fish fingers and chips, sausages and mash are all good bets. Continue reading
It’s taken a while, but the UK has finally embraced Halloween. For years, ours was the lone jack-o-lantern in the neighbourhood, and four or five kids might knock on the door all evening. Last night, we had more than 150.
These days our neighbourhood association publishes a “trick-or-treat trail” of participating houses, and crowds of little witches and ghouls traipse round the route. The high street shops get in on it too, decorating their windows and handing out sweets.
This year the local dentist erected some scaffolding outside their premises to create a raised platform, and grinned maniacally at the kids as they passed below, complete with smoke machine adding to the atmosphere. Halloween is firmly on the calendar now, it would seem. Continue reading
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
Ten More Bites 