Pasta cacio e pepe is the most Roman of dishes for me. With only three ingredients – pasta, pecorino and pepper – it sounds deceptively simple. The trick lies in successfully transforming the grated cheese and pasta water into a creamy sauce. Continue reading
Ever since our World Cup cooking experience last summer, I’ve been on the lookout for new African recipes. When I came across this video about the Ugandan rolex, I thought it seemed right up our alley.
A rolex is a thin vegetable omelette rolled up in a chapati, and is a popular street food in Uganda. They proved pretty popular around here too, when I made them for brunch last weekend. Continue reading
This is my go-to vanilla ice cream, and after lemon ice cream it’s the one we’re most likely to have in the freezer. I’ve made more complicated vanilla ice creams involving egg yolks and custard, ice baths and sieves, which produced delicious results. But in terms of time and effort needed to turn out a great vanilla ice cream, this recipe is hard to beat. Continue reading
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
This is a very satisfying smoothie, and the addition of oatmeal means you don’t end up wanting a second breakfast half an hour later. 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.
In spite of the watercress, this is a hearty, wintery sort pea soup. Not as rib sticking as the split pea soup I grew up eating in Canada, but very different to the chilled pea and mint soup we eat all summer.
Even after blending, I find that the soup still has a certain amount of texture. I like it that way, but if you’d prefer it smoother, you can always push the puréed soup through a sieve before serving. Continue reading
Snickerdoodles… the name alone is reason enough to make them. They are also delicious, with a cakey, almost doughnuty, texture. They are sturdy little numbers, well suited to packed lunches. When I worked as a bush cook, I would often make snickerdoodles for my tree planting crew. Continue reading
This carrot raita is a real favourite of mine. I love the way that gently cooking the carrot gives the yogurt a golden colour, and the earthy taste of the asafetida. It pairs really nicely with diced potatoes and spinach. Continue reading
Still working my way through the dregs of the Christmas cheese, I decided to make these comté and rosemary crackers. (Why I thought we’d eat our body weight in cheese over the holidays, I now have no idea. Perhaps all those cocktails I was imbibing clouded my judgement…)
The crackers went down a storm with the girls, who had been a bit sniffy about the Comté, despite my efforts to pass it off as “French cheddar”. According to Lyra, they are “even better than Goldfish crackers”, which is high praise indeed coming from her.
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.
These roasted pears with warm butterscotch sauce pull off the clever trick of being both light and decadent. They also make the kitchen smell wonderful while they’re cooking.
Until recently, I couldn’t have you the difference between butterscotch and caramel. But having Googled it, I now know that caramel is made with white sugar and butterscotch with brown. Continue reading
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.
We had this spinach and onion yogurt dip as part of a Middle East inspired meal I pulled together the other night from bits and bobs in the fridge.
Considering it’s essentially a bowl of yogurt mixed with spinach and onion, this dip tastes surprisingly rich. The original recipe is from my trusty Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking. Continue reading
This is my mum’s oatcake recipe. She used to divide the dough into four, roll each piece into an 8″ circle, then cut it into quarters before baking. I prefer to make round oatcakes using a biscuit cutter.
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.
Since running out of turkey, we’ve been adding a spread of cranberry sauce to our grilled cheese sandwiches. But at the rate it was going, we’d have been eating cranberry sauce in April…
So I decided to knock the rest of it off by making cranberry oat muffins for breakfast this morning. I just substituted a cup of cranberry sauce for the usual mashed banana in my oatmeal muffin recipe.
It’s mid-January and I’m still incorporating Christmas leftovers into our meals…
When I discovered a forgotten wedge of Stilton at the back of the fridge, it inspired me to make this potato, leek and Stilton soup. While I’ve never really warmed (ha!) to vichyssoise, a bowl of this soup is my idea of a perfect winter meal.
Continue reading
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.
Apparently, savoury porridge is having a moment. I’m hailing myself as a breakfast pioneer for topping my porridge with hot sauce, butter, salt and pepper rather than sugar since childhood.
After twenty-five years of scoffing at me rather than with me, Adam tried his first bowl of savoury porridge a couple of days ago. “This is delicious!” he said. “Where have you been all my life?”
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.
This delicious, hot buttered rum certainly hit the spot after a cold, wet evening at the football. It’s beyond my photography skills to make this drink beautiful, but I promise it tastes far better than it looks.
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
Cola de mono (or “tail of the monkey”) is a Christmas drink from Chile. It’s pretty similar to a white Russian (or Kahlua and milk), but tastes cleaner and less cloying than my memory of that drink. 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.
Sometimes, a beer-based cocktail hits the spot. Especially, after we’d popped into the pub for a pint after ice skating. And were having sausages and mash for dinner.
Plus the dark colour of the Dandy Shandy goes perfectly with the long, dark nights of December.
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
There’s something very Christmassy about a deep red bowl of tomato soup, especially when it has a dollop of creme fraiche and a scattering of fresh green herbs. (Actually, the girls wouldn’t agree with that – Christmas is all about chocolate and baked goods (preferably involving chocolate) for them. 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
This tray of cherry slice officially opens the Christmas baking season in our house. Each year, I bake a number of the treats my mum and my sister-in-law always made. Cherry slice, butterscotch fudge, date squares, Nanaimo bars, shortbread and fruit cake are the definites – Christmas wouldn’t feel the same without them.
But that pair didn’t stop there… Continue reading
I’ve tried a lot of brownie recipes over the years — cakey brownies, gooey brownies, fudgy brownies, “ultimate” brownies — but the one I make most often is this family standby.
These brownies tick all the right boxes for me. The cocoa powder and flour give them some cakeiness, and adding chopped chocolate to the mixture ups the goo factor. The tops are nicely dry and crackly, and the insides moist and melty.
Also, while I’m all for using good quality ingredients, I’m a bit skeptical about recipes that call for 400g of top quality chocolate and six eggs to produce a pan of brownies… Continue reading
I adored these cookies when I was a child. We didn’t have them often – I imagine my mum considered them too sugary to make them regularly. I even remember her telling me she’d lost the recipe, and making her usual granola cookies instead. 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
There are lots of recipes for Dorset apple cake around. Having tried a few, I’ve settled on this one.
This lovely cake is surprisingly light, fresh and lemony. I always make it with Bramley apples, liking their tartness and they way they become so fluffy when cooked. Plus we have a tree in the garden… Continue reading
Ten More Bites 