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
We’ve been making these muffins pretty much every weekend since I included them in Fern’s Food more than ten years ago.These are known as Margo muffins around here – after the family friend who provided the original recipe.
The fruit varies with what’s in the house. Banana walnut with a slug of maple syrup is good, as is grated apple and cinnamon, chopped pear and ground ginger, or even a couple of handfuls of raisins.
We make a serious dent in them the morning they’re baked, then add any that are left over to packed lunches over the week. Continue reading
At the supermarket yesterday, I saw a pack of twenty cherries on sale for £3.99. That’s 20p a cherry! Growing up in British Columbia, we ate delicious Okanagan produce all summer long – especially Bing cherries, peaches and tomatoes. My grandmother’s cherry tree produced so much fruit she could scarcely keep up with it, and she dried bucketfuls of cherries each year.
Stopped at the Iranian grocers on the way home and picked up two kilos of cherries for £7 – a much more reasonable price. We scoffed half of them straightaway, after which I made this cherry sorbet. The recipe comes from David Liebowitz’s cookbook, The Perfect Scoop. Continue reading
I think Adam must be the only person who eats bananas around here. Or at least who eats bananas that have a single bruise or brown spot. Which is why I always end up with overripe bananas sitting sadly in the fruit bowl, while the nectarines, flat peaches, grapes and kiwis disappeared around them.
I sliced up two and stored them in the freezer to add to smoothies or make banana “ice cream” with. The other two I mashed up and made into banana bread. This is the banana bread my mum made. The recipe comes from The All New Purity Cookbook, the bible of Canadian cooking – at least when I was growing up.
Now that school’s out for summer, I don’t have to worry about adding nuts to my baking. Like the nuts, the rum is optional. I like the way it works against the sweetness of the banana, and the kids don’t seem to mind… Continue reading
When I went to make Lyra’s packed lunch for her multisport club this morning, I found we were out of bread. Not even a freezer-burnt pitta or bagel that I could call into service… Instead of getting dressed and walking to the corner shop, I decided to bake something.
This basic white loaf is dead easy to make. It uses instant yeast, has a single rise in the pan while the oven preheats, and bakes in about half an hour. From a 7am start, I was able to pack her off with her sandwiches at ten to nine. Continue reading
Of the three or four potato salads I make regularly, this pared-back French version is my favourite. With only five ingredients, quality matters – small salad potatoes, a grassy olive oil, fresh herbs, and tarragon vinegar (though a nice white wine vinegar works too). The original recipe comes from Nigel Slater’s Real Food. Continue reading
Martini, mɑːˈtiːni/, noun. A cocktail made from gin (or vodka) and dry vermouth, typically garnished with an olive or a twist of lemon. (Oxford Online Dictionary)
So strictly speaking, this isn’t a martini at all, but a frosty glass of vodka-spiced fruit pulp. It is also delicious, and just the thing to mark the start of the school holidays. (For me, that is – Lyra had a J2O…) Continue reading
This unaccustomed spell of hot weather has my basil plants growing like they’re in Italy. And with Adam and Nova both away, I had another good reason to make Lyra’s all-time favourite supper of pesto pasta.
Fresh pesto is so much nicer than the stuff in jars, and takes only a few minutes to make. I don’t bother measuring the ingredients. If I don’t have pinenuts, I’ll use almonds or hazelnuts, and am equally happy with pecorino or parmesan cheese.
The quantities below should make enough pesto for a pasta dinner for four. If you have pesto left over, store it in the fridge with a thin layer of olive oil poured over the surface to keep it from oxidising. Continue reading
It always makes me happy to find a culinary use for things – like strawberry tops – that would otherwise be wasted. And when you read that more than 500 British children a week are admitted to hospital to have teeth extracted as a result of too many sugary drinks and fruit juices, it makes me even happier that my girls seem satisfied to drink this strawberry water. I wouldn’t call it a recipe – I’m pretty sure I just saw a picture of this on Pinterest and worked things out from there… Continue reading
This is what I feel like having for dinner tonight – but I’ll probably have some World Cup food leftovers first… I always make this ice cream when strawberries are in season. The recipe is David Lebovitz’s strawberry sorbet from The Perfect Scoop – I just add some cream before churning. Continue reading
And with this caipirinha recipe, we bring 2014’s World Cup food project to an end. The whole family has enjoyed the variety it has introduced to our family meals – without it, we may never have shared a communal bowl of pounded yam for our lunch, or discovered the amazing deliciousness of those peanut-coated Nigerian suya or Colombian barras de limón.
That’s why we’ve decided that we are going to continue trying new recipes from around the world. Not at the same pace as the last month – more like once or twice a week. I’ll post them here for anyone that’s interested, and maybe by the time World Cup 2018 rolls around, we’ll have eaten something from every country that has competed in the qualifying rounds… Continue reading
I served this cabbage salad along with the panqueqas de carne for our Brazilian World Cup dinner – something fresh and healthy to balance out all that meat and cheese. I found the recipe on the Two Little Chefs website. Continue reading
Brigadeiros are little balls of chocolatey deliciousness rolled in sprinkles or shredded coconut. The girls were very happy indeed when I produced these a second time in just over a month. I followed a recipe I found in the June 2014 Waitrose magazine. Continue reading
Made baleadas for lunch to represent Honduras in our World Cup cooking challenge. This dish was right up our alley – the tortillas were soft and fluffy, and delicious filled with refried beans, cheese, slices of avocado and topped with chismol – a fresh vegetable salsa. I followed the flour tortilla recipe on the This is Honduras website, but just made my usual refried beans. Continue reading
I was surprised to notice that the recipe I’d found for chismol didn’t contain any chilli. But when I looked at a few others they had little or none, so I stuck with the version on the This is Honduras website. Nova loved this salsa, and polished off the leftovers with a spoon after we’d finished the baleadas. Continue reading
This puréed beetroot salad is another recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian cookbook that I’ve been making for years. We eat it with blini, and with oatcakes as an appetizer before our Burns Night haggis. Continue reading
There are lots of recipes for stamppot, using different combinations of root vegetables and greens. I opted for “boerenkool stamppot”, mainly because it used up the rest of the kale I bought for the caldo verde. Most of the recipes called for bacon, but as I was serving the stamppot with slavinken, I left it out and added some diced gouda cheese instead. Continue reading
This is the first time I’ve ever made chocolate mousse. I looked at a few recipes before deciding on this one by Raymond Blanc. It’s pretty straightforward, though I should have been a quicker about stirring the egg whites into the melted chocolate, and ended up doing more folding than I otherwise would have (and it was still a bit lumpy). Continue reading
For our Portuguese World Cup meal, we had caldo verde. I served it with some Ponte Nova cheese, chourico (Portuguese chorizo), Portuguese bread and pastéis de nata for dessert. Continue reading
These Portuguese custard tarts were surprisingly easy to make, and delicious to eat when sitll warm. Another Simon Rimmer recipe I found online. Continue reading
These are very easy to make — Lyra often does them by herself once I assemble the elements for her. Continue reading
Not sure if this is specifically Argentinian, but apparently it is South American. Continue reading
When I was looking for Argentinian potato dishes to accompany the lomo asado, this recipe from Argentinian chef Francis Mallman kept coming up. Essentially it’s a quick-cooked potato galette that serves as a base for the grilled meat. Continue reading
Nova asked me to make a black forest cake for her 13th birthday – which worked out neatly as Germany were playing France in the World Cup that evening. Baking is not my strong point, and I found this cake a challenge. For the cake layers, I followed a recipe from The Prawn Cocktail Years by Simon Hopkinson, but went off piste when it cake to filling and decorating. As I didn’t have a 20cm cake pan, I used one that was a little bit bigger. This was a mistake – if I make this again, I’ll opt for a smaller pan, which should make slicing the cake into three layers a whole lot easier. Continue reading
Making ajvar to go serve with our Bosnian meal of cevapi and somun was a last-minute decision, when I realised that making proper kajmak took a day and a half (a few hours before dinner).
A flavourful purée of roasted vegetables and garlic, versions of ajvar are made throughout the Balkans. It keeps well in the fridge. Continue reading
I often make tortillas to use up leftover boiled potatoes or green beans, reheating the vegetables in a frying pan then adding beaten eggs and allowing it to set.
For our Spanish World Cup dinner, I followed the recipe in the Moro cookbook, slowly caramelising the onions, frying the potato slices in olive oil, and turning it half way through to fry both sides instead of just sticking it under the grill.
More work, but a much tastier tortilla. Continue reading
Expecting better things of Spain, I put them on day 22 of our World Cup menu plan. This recipe takes about three minutes to make –– about as long as it took Spain to crash out of the World Cup…;-)
Nova has never liked gazpacho much, which dragged the family score down considerably. Continue reading
Gallo pinto is the national dish of Costa Rica, making it the right choice for their World Cup dish. I was originally going to serve it for lunch with a fried egg on top, but we were all feeling a bit egged out. The fried plantains were a good way to go as well. My gallo pinto looks more brown and mushy than the pics I’ve seen. I think this was because I used freshly cooked rice, which was still soft and absorbent, instead of leftover cooked rice. I followed the recipe I found on The Hot Plate website for this meal. Continue reading
This Colombian recipe was dead simple to make – in fact, Lyra did most of it. I found it on the My Colombian Recipes website. Continue reading
I wanted to try this recipe because I remember eating it at our Yugoslavian neighbour’s house when I was little. Kind of a faff to make – you need to start it the day before – but it looked great and tasted pretty good too. Recipe from the Eatori website. Continue reading
We eat bimbimbap at least a couple of times a month. In fact, Lyra was surprised to discover that her friends don’t eat it at their homes. The name means “mixed rice”, and one of the most satisfying things about the dish is stirring the carefully arranged rice, gochujang, egg and vegetables into a delicious, sticky mess. The only “speciality” ingredient is the gochujang, which is available from Asian grocery stores. Continue reading
Made these cheese and onion empanadas for our Ecuadorian World Cup meal. I was skeptical about the idea of sprinkling something savory with sugar, but it works. The recipe comes from Laylita’s Recipes, and goes into great detail about the different types of empanada dough. Continue reading
Fifteen years ago, I tried making the drink from pineapple skins in Delia’s Summer Cooking, and it was horrible. This time I followed the instructions on Laylita’s Recipes, and it came out much better. It has a subtle pineapply flavour, and is excellent with a shot of rum. Continue reading
Chile’s version of salsa. Looking at a few recipes, the key elements are tomatoes, onion, garlic, cilantro and vinegar. I stuck with my version of the recipe from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, which I’ve been making for years. It keeps for several days in the fridge. Continue reading
We all liked the contrasting textures of the avocado and celery in this Chilean salad. Recipe from The Latin Kitchen website. Continue reading
These are the pancakes my mum used to make, which I included in Fern’s Food. We’ve played around with different recipes over the years, but have pretty much settled on this one now. Continue reading
We ticked Ghana off our World Cup list with this dish of oto and hardboiled eggs. Traditionally eaten for breakfast, I opted to serve it for lunch, when I thought it might get a better reception. We ate with our hands, scooping up little clumps of oto and squashing them together, and added to the overall experience. I definitely liked it more than the rest of the family, none of whom scored it more than five. For the recipe, I looked at a few versions and came up with my own version. The Skinny Gourmet website goes into a lot of detail about how oto is often served for birthday or wedding breakfasts, and includes pictures of it being prepared. Continue reading
We had this tiramisu for dessert on Italian World Cup night. I don’t follow a recipe for this — I just thin a tub of mascarpone with cream, flavour and sweeten it to taste, then layer in a bowl with coffee-soaked biscuits or cake, and top with grated chocolate. The longer it sits, the better it gets… Continue reading
Ten More Bites 