You can happily enjoy Easter without being carnivorous, what with some of the best things about Easter being non-meaty (chocolate and hot cross buns, loaded with butter obviously). But if you fancy Easter roast lamb, then let me convince you that making your own mint …
I think we all need a little sweetness at the moment. Summer holidays, and the little dash of optimism and refreshment they deliver, feel like a long time ago indeed. Luckily, I have this spiced plum shortcake recipe stored up from my own summer holiday, …
Happy New Year! I was lucky to have a pretty decent 2021, and I know I am in the minority here. It was a shocker for many of my favourite people. Wherever January 2022 finds you (ideally somewhere relaxing and on holiday with many tasty beverages), I hope that a better year is ahead for you.
When I look back over the year that was, the Delta outbreak is the main stand-out memory. I’m positive I am not alone in this. Cooking has played a significant part in my lockdown experiences, both because I am a greedy-guts in general, but also because it is very comforting. I know people may expect themselves to have cooked a range of intricate and gourmet dishes with all of the extra spare time available when locked down, but for me I found that living in a pandemic is quite enough mental load all on its own, thank you very much. It’s a time for tried-and-true comfort. In our house, I put aside any expectations and we pulled out the old favourites that feel like a pair of well-worn slippers.
I love Nigel Slater an awful lot. I like to call him Uncle Nige, because honestly, how great would it be to have him as your uncle? Since discovering his roast chicken recipe from his Appetite cookbook, I have never followed another roast chicken again. He calls it “Unmucked about chicken” and I heartily recommend it. We ate this more than once – photos below.
I love making stock with leftover bones. I think it makes me feel good about myself. So, following many roast chickens, there were many bowls of my noodle soup with the stock.
Leftover roast vegetables lend themselves very nicely to a lunchtime frittata.
Ham and cheese sandwiches are generally pretty great. My husband got excited about ham and cheese about halfway through our lockdown and tried out BBC Good Food’s Croque Monsieur. It involves a lot of butter and cheese. It was good.
The other stand-out cooking memory for me is that 2021 is the year I finally put on my big-girl pants and braved making a bundt cake. I was gifted the beautiful bundt tin pictured below about four Christmases ago and I was always too scared to use it. Despite writing Lick Your Plate, I am not an overly skilled baker and a lot of stuff I bake winds up stuck to the tin. It was too upsetting, picturing half a bundt cake slopping out onto a plate with the rest remaining stubbornly welded to the intricate mouldings. Well, I felt the fear and did it anyway…and was really happy with the results. I used the lemon bundt recipe from the Chelsea sugar website. I recommend it – the cake was very light and lemony and came out of the bundt tin perfectly.
I’m looking forward to another year of cooking and writing about it – it’s a very enjoyable creative outlet for me, and one I want to indulge more often. My goals are to pick up the Edmonds cookbook again (still in the A section of the index, sigh), to write up more pudding and cake recipes and to include some quick-and-easy meals I make a lot.
Happy new year again and take care wherever you are x
My parents are amazing gardeners and I couldn’t resist this little scallopini left over from their crop. Mainly because, what a cute vegetable, everyone! How could you not want to take it home? Little and frilly and kind of like a flying saucer. I’ve eaten …
Butternut is such a sweet little name that, even if I didn’t much fancy the taste, I would still have to create a recipe or two in its honour. So, luckily I find it delicious as well as cutely named. Butternut is lighter, softer and …
It was a pretty crappy Summer season in my garden overall, with the grand total of 12 manky-looking tomatoes and two cucumbers (there were three cucumbers, but something ate one of them). The outlier here has been my herb collection. These little guys have gone gang-busters. Verdant is not a word I use often, but it’s wholly appropriate in this case.
My oregano has been particularly enthusiastic and we were unable to eat or give away all of it. Seeing as I hate to let anything go to waste (just ask my husband about my left-over wrapping paper collection), I’ve had a go at drying it so I can enjoy it in warming, hearty dishes as we slip into Autumn.
I began this little exercise five weeks ago as this is the recommended length of time for drying out herbs, according to far better gardeners than I online (how lush and gorgeous do the herbs in these photos look? Definitely a candidate for ‘verdant’). Harvesting several bunches of my oregano provided a thoroughly gratifying and pastoral afternoon down in my little courtyard. The bees were all over the oregano flowers which made me feel happy, thinking that somewhere out there, someone could be in line for some honey assisted by my oregano crop.
The method is pretty simple. Cut stems of oregano and tie into bunches, with 2-3 stems per bunch. When knotting the string or whatever you are using to tie the stems together, leaving 5-10 centimetres of string before cutting. Suspend the bunch or bunches upside down from a rail or ceiling, using the extra length of string from the knot. I suspended mine from a curtain rail, over some sheets of paper to catch any early-falling leaves. Check after 4 weeks and leave until thoroughly dry (mine took 5 weeks). Once dry, harvest by holding each branch over a piece of paper or cloth and brushing downwards to remove the leaves from the branches. Rub the leaves with your fingers to break up into smaller fragments and store in an airtight container. Use in cooking or as a garnish.
For the second recipe in my ground-breaking series on the humble carrot I bring you…honey and balsamic roasted carrots. This recipe is especially useful if you have a number of the little orange critters languishing in your vegetable drawer and they’re getting on the soft …
Happy New Year! Munching on carrot sticks, brimming with enthusiasm for a year of healthful habits? Nope, me neither. And I need to tell you right now that if that’s what you’re after, you’re probably reading the wrong blog. But, I am enjoying some carrot …
I invented these bad guys because I really dislike making traditional pancakes. Delicate thin batter getting stuck to the pan, wedging itself into odd shapes, lumps, burnt bits. The whole experience makes me hot, sweaty and angry. Especially as I am usually over-caffeinated, flapping around in my dressing-gown and burn myself on the fry pan at least once. It’s not a relaxing start to the day in my book, and unless I include something filling alongisde or on top, I find I have had a sugar crash by mid-morning and need something else to eat.
So, welcome to these guys, which I find give me the pleasure of something hot and cakey at breakfast time but without the angst. The batter is much thicker and chunkier than a traditional pancake or crepe mixture which makes them a lot more predictable in the frypan and has greatly reduced my burning incidents. And another bonus – all of those oats and fruit keep me feeling well-fed until lunch. If all of this seems too healthy to you, you can certainly top them with cream or Nutella or a whole lot of syrup, and accompany them with some crispy fried bacon or vegetarian-friendly protein. Indeed, these examples in the pictures have a healthy dollop of old-school golden syrup on top of the Greek yoghurt.
This recipe makes four hotcakes, so enough for one by themselves or for two with some sides.
Ingredients: 1 mashed banana; 1 lightly beaten egg, 1 cup of rolled oats; 1 teaspoon of baking powder. You will also need oil spray or a little fat for the frypan.
Heat a non-stick frypan to medium hot and spray will oil spray or lightly grease.
Combine the egg and banana. Whisk in the baking powder and finally add the oats. Mix until all ingredients are incorporated.
Once the pan is hot, place dollops of the mixture into the pan and spread out with the back of a spoon. I usually get four cakes into the pan. The mixture is not runny, so they will not spread out but you will need to flatten them a little so they cook through evening.
Once you see some bubbles in the cakes, flip them over and cook until brown.
Hey friends, how are you all hanging in there? Okay I do hope. We are trucking along well Ngaio. The cats remain delighted with having their humans on tap. The husband remains delighted with our hard-working craft beer industry and its willingness to home-deliver. And …