Jump straight to the Overnight Spiced Roast Shoulder of Lamb recipe.

I love good food and I love to cook, often labouring over something until it is just how I want it. Some dishes take 10 minutes, others hours. It depends on the day and my mood, how much time I have and what I fancy. It is a luxury I know, and I am often cooking just for myself. Something that I really enjoy doing and also isn’t it the ultimate in self care? I love to cook for friends too though and don’t do it anywhere near often enough.

I am a social animal and as much as I love to cook I don’t like being trapped in the kitchen when friends come round. At least not until I have one of those massive kitchens that I so desire and then we can all spend the whole night in there. For now, I have my tiny London kitchen, and if people come over to eat, I make a meal that avoids that. I like to make something that more or less cooks itself but that delivers on flavour and impresses. I always serve it family style on a big platter surrounded by vibrant sides. Porchetta, leg of lamb, pork shoulder, pork belly, that kind of thing. Continue reading

Jump straight to the Chicken Noodle Soup with Pancetta, Pumpkin and Pak Choi recipe.

How many times have I talked or written about or extolled the virtues of chicken soup? Too many and yet not often enough. It is the very best thing. Soothing, rich but not heavy, and receptive to so many things. Chicken noodle soup loves to be just itself, but is also loves spice, a little curry, and most vegetables deal very well with being here. It is fond of carbs, as we all are. I adore a noodle but some pumpkin is beautiful in here too. Soft and slippery but still firm, and full of the gorgeous flavour of the chicken broth that it has cooked in. Continue reading

I love travel. You know that. There are some places that have got under my skin and that I love to return to. Places that inspire because of the place, the people, the light and often if not always, the food. There is a long list of places that I want to go to.

Sydney is one of my favourite cities to visit. I returned in November, my first visit in (their) Spring. I had few plans, not even where I would stay. I was coming out of an intense period of travel for work – which I love – but I knew that a schedule was the last thing that I would need.

Sydney is Sweetest in Spring

It was a gorgeous time to be there. The streets lined with bright purple jacaranda trees, heaving with blossom and intensely fragrant. There was so much jasmine lining the streets and bright pink rhododendron clinging to the ornate metal balconies on the front of Sydney houses. The sky was bright and the temperature was my ideal, between 20 and 24 deg C. I walked every day, soaking it all in.  I love getting out by the water, and sipping coffee or wine by the beaches. Most of all I love the food. Sydney has some terrific cafés and restaurants.  Continue reading

Jump straight to the recipe for Cranberry Ham Hock with Maple Syrup and Rosemary

Christmas ham is a tradition and there are many ways of doing it. I love tucking in on Christmas Eve, most regularly at my sisters. They do a superb traditional ham with cloves and honey and mustard. It is divine.

It is an excellent idea to do a big ham if you have a group of people mulling around grazing over Christmas, and isn’t that what Christmas is all about? But what if there are not so many of you, or you just want something a little different? What about a small ham of your own or a tray of individual hams for a group for supper? Ham hock is the one, it is so good and so underrated. Terrific value too, I buy mine for roughly £3 from the farmer at my local farmer’s market. 

Ham Hock

You can get ham hock smoked or unsmoked, I prefer unsmoked for this recipe. Ham hock makes a wonderful soup allowed to bubble gently with carrots, celery and onions, a bay leaf and a bouquet garni or whatever suitable herbs you have like rosemary. A couple of hours should do it. Make sure you soak it first or your broth will be very salty. When almost finished dunk in frozen peas and you will have a sublime pea and ham soup. Shred the meat from the bone, it should just fall off, and serve with the broth, some veg and the peas, brighten it with some mint).  Continue reading

Jump straight to the Handmade Pappardelle with Sausage Meatballs, Kale & Carrot recipe.

Oh my! I do love homemade pasta. And I love a slippery handmade noodle, be it la mian from China, or Italian pappardelle. It almost always tastes better homemade and as with anything you make yourself you can adjust it to your taste, be that thickness or adding additional things to the dough. Normally I like my papardelle thin and silky, but today I wanted it toothsome, and so I rolled it a little thicker than normal.

Making handmade pappardelle

Handmade pasta is a frugal thing and pappardelle is just a noodle thickness crafted from an egg pasta dough. Just pasta flour (which most supermarkets carry now, all Italian delis, and it is certainly easily available online), eggs and salt, that is it. The rest is time and a little effort, but really it doesn’t take that much time at all, and the effort is very satisfying. If you don’t have a pasta machine, panic not, in Northern Italy it is more common to roll it by hand using a rolling pin on a wooden board. I have done this and it is so satisfying. Equally, it is more common to make the dough by hand, making a nest of flour and putting the eggs in the middle, slowly introducing them to each other before kneading until soft and elastic. At home for speed and to free myself up to do other things, I usually use my mixer with dough hook, and I roll the pasta with a pasta machine, as I have no space for a pasta board (and how I would love one, like I have seen in Italian homes used weekly). Continue reading

Jump straight to the hot and sour soup recipe.

This soup won’t solve all of your problems, but it will come pretty close. On a day that requires it, this soup will warm you up from your toes to your fingertips. Especially on a gorgeous snow day like this. The rich gorgeous stock, the sparkle of white pepper, the marinaded pork, smoked tofu, sweet pops of tomato and shiitakes. Those slivers of egg. It will fight the cold, be it physical or mental. People, you need this hot and sour soup in your repertoire.

Every soup is only as good as its stock and the stock I made for this is special. If you don’t have time to make it, substitute it with the best chicken stock you can find. The flavour and the goodness is in the broth. I like to make it with a combination of chicken wings and pork ribs, but honestly, whatever you have to hand or like. Broth from a ham hock will do a mighty job here too (and isn’t it ham hock season?! Deep joy). 

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This is the second in a two post series in a happy collaboration with Vitamix to celebrate the launch of the Vitamix Ascent Series blenders. This unique blender series combines power and precision, future-forward technology and an all new design to ensure fast, consistent results that are bursting with flavour. I have really enjoyed experimenting with this very impressive piece of kitchen kit and I can heartily recommend it. It has won coveted space on my tiny kitchen counter and I now use it regularly. (The first recipe in the series is my Gorgeous Dairy Free Beer Cheese Dip).

I am committed to the cause. Several causes, I am a little obsessive, but let’s focus for now on Christmas.

Now, I am not one of those Christmas types who throws out the pumpkins and wheels in the tree and all other festivities on November 1st. Nor am I a Michael Bublé cd toting menace (you know who you are). But I do love the build up in December, and all the things that winter brings at this time. Seeing people I rarely see, having fun, and indulging.

Christmas is all about luxury and intensity, seeing friends, taking stock, and eating and drinking more than is necessary. Everything that passes your lips should have a hint of luxury, or a lot of it. Christmas is all about food and drink and food at Christmas should be festive and a little different. Turkey is fine, but Christmas is all about the midday and all day snacks, the cheeky glasses of wine, and we can do those better. Continue reading

This is the first in a two post series in a happy collaboration with Vitamix to celebrate the launch of the Vitamix Ascent Series blenders. This unique blender series combines power and precision, future-forward technology and an all new design to ensure fast, consistent results that are bursting with flavour. I have really enjoyed experimenting with this very impressive piece of kitchen kit and I can heartily recommend it. It has won coveted space on my tiny kitchen counter and I now use it regularly.dip

I am dairy free these days. It is temporary for now while we isolate the troublemakers via an exclusion diet. I have known that I was lactose intolerant for a while, at least that is what I thought I was, but my doctor says that we need to do a thorough exclusion and make sure. Because things aren’t right.

When people hear that I am on an exclusion diet, a mild panic flits across their face and they inevitably say: but cheese! I don’t know how you can live without cheese. I couldn’t. The reality is if cheese is suspected of making you ill, you cut it out. (Even if you LOVE it, as I do). I do have pangs, and moments of weakness especially after a glass of wine. But for now, cheese is completely off my plate, and I need to seek alternatives. Continue reading

This post is a happy sponsored collaboration with Sherry Wines UK with 3 new festive recipes for you: a clementine and rosemary manzanilla cocktail, sherry cream and rosemary pork chops and PX, dark chocolate and coconut panna cotta. For further inspiration, check out my Sherry summer picnic feature with recipes for peach and manzanilla slushie, smoky pork rillettes & olive tapenade.

It is December 1st! And so yes, now we all can start raving about and planning Christmas. Today I went out and bought pine branches and red berries and lots of clementines. Tis the season, and it is freezing to boot so I need no excuses.

You know how much I love sherry, that most underrated of drinks. I am delighted to be working again with Sherry Wines UK, and here I present 3 festive recipes for you, for your Christmas. A bright easy but full flavoured lunch, a gorgeous dessert and a cocktail to get you through.

I wax lyrically about my favourite dry sherries all the time: bone dry fino, briney manzanilla and nutty oloroso regularly grace my table. I am such a fan. There are many sherries though, and sweet sherries are perfect to consider for winter and also for festive celebrations. They are rich and deep and reassuring. They speak of time and luxury and relaxing. For this piece I will focus on three of my favourite sherries and three recipes and recommendations. Continue reading

Sausage, Mushroom & Spinach Flatbread with Dairy Free Lemon Hollandaise Recipe 

My local farmer’s market is a joy. Compact and varied, I do most of my weekly food shop there. I know the farmers and producers well by now, and I have a few favourites that I never miss. I know that when I get home to London there will be pumpkins and squash aplenty. I also look forward to visiting my local farmer and seeing what he has got. The meat and the cuts vary week on week based on what comes from the farm. Sometimes he has pork cheek, the whole jowl, and I love to roast those or stick them on the BBQ. He always has veal, minced and escalope, brisket, steaks, and sublime minced beef. I know that whatever he has, it will be delicious, it always is.

I bought these spiral sausages from him before I left for Australia and their twistiness made me think of nothing else but round bread. I wanted to embed those sausages in a flatbread and make a meal of it. Brunch, of course. Making bread is easy when you have a mixer with a dough hook, it literally makes itself, and so I make batches of dough reasonably often. The same batch of dough can become many things: pita, pizza, lahmucun, bread rolls. This time, it became a sausage flatbread. Continue reading

Those of you who know and love Turkish food will find this flatbread familiar. You might have even thought that it is lahmucun. It does look very like it and for good reason, it was directly inspired by it. In fact I started making lahmucun and then diverted to this. That is generally how it goes in my kitchen. 

I love lahmucun, a wonderful very thin Turkish flatbread covered with spiced meat, usually lamb, and baked until crisp. I used to live near Green Lanes in London for a few years, a 7 mile strip of street that is packed with Turkish restaurants. If you want to explore proper Turkish food culture, and you want Londons best kebabs, this is the part of London you should head to (Dalston also). Are you still here?

When I would head out to do my groceries, I would often indulge in a lahmucun. £1.30 was the princely sum for a takeaway one from one of my favourites there, Antepliler. I would stand at the till and watch while they would fill it with salad and roll it, wrapped in paper. They were divine. Manti also in a little Turkish cafe neary, those gorgeous tiny Turkish filled pasta served with yogurt. Before fermentation was a thing – what I mean is before Hackney discovered it – I found wild garlic kefir there, fermented vegetable drinks, and all sorts of other things. Treat yourself if you are in London and go explore. Make sure you pop into Yasar Halim when you do, a terrific local Turkish grocers and bakery, as well as Antepliler.  Continue reading

My visit to Parma and the Festival of Parma Ham was sponsored by the Parma Ham Consortium. This is the second of two posts on Parma ham. The first was a post on the Festival of Parma Ham in Parma, which I visited recently.

Italy is one of my most visited countries and I make a lot of Italian food at home. Yet my first bite of gnocco fritto was not in Italy nor my tiny frenetic home kitchen, it was in Toronto (more than a few) years back. I was at a restaurant that I have come to love over several visits, Buca. The first time was one of my meandering solo lunches that I indulge in when I travel (and often at home). The menu was bright and interesting, my eyes were drawn to the pasta but also to the gnocco fritto, which were served at the time with an excellent house cured lardo. 

Thus sparked an obsession. I seek gnocco fritto out wherever I can and I make them at home. Gnocco Fritto simply translates as fried dumpling. They are a simple yeasted hollow bread that is fried not baked, traditionally in lard but oil will do. The dough is allowed to rise, pummelled and then rolled flat before being cut into rectangles which puff into glorious crisp pillows when fried that are hollow inside (apart from your expectation and some glorious sweet doughy air). Continue reading

Go straight to the recipe for your new twist on Brunch Eggs – Courgette, Carrot and Sesame Egg Menamen

You know how it goes. You are cooking brunch. It is the weekend. A sleepy start, slower than normal. Hatching plans. Just what will be the perfect soldier to dip in to your runny egg yolk? I take great care with my eggs to avoid any potential problems. The yolk is the very best bit and I need it to be runny and perfect, I also need my white to be set. This, I figured out years ago. The trick is simple, just add a lid and cook it just long enough.

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Pure beef meatballs? What do I even mean? I mean a meatball that has nothing but beef in. Isn’t that a burger? No! Bear with me.

This speedy supper was inspired by my lush little chilli garden. 8 plants in a raised bright yellow planting table (I have about 16 chilli plants scattered around the garden, just call me hot head). It comes with a transparent deep lid, and like a mini greenhouse, helped my chilli plants off to a rich start. My plants are bushy and lush, and are laden down with gorgeous hot chillies. They are starting to turn red, but have been wonderful green too.

My favourites are the jalapeños sliced fine and placed the other day on my juicy intensely red Santorini tomatoes which had grown a metre away, and a little parasol of neighbouring nasturtium leaves on top. Crisp large flakes of sea salt made these a perfect bite. I also love the serrano chillies, fever hot and intense, they were perfection in the sauce that accompanied the meatballs. Enough to wake my senses on that crazy rainy day we had earlier in the week.

My chilli table, and surrounding vociferous tomato plants (which I will prune today!).

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Jump straight to Seaweed Cornmeal Soda Farls recipe

I love soda farls. Speedy Irish soda bread cut into triangles and fried, quicker than the time it would take to go to the shop for bread. And SO fresh. As the name implies, the bread is raised with soda (bicarbonate of) as opposed to yeast, the bicarbonate triggered by the acidity of buttermilk.  I have played around with the recipe many times in the past, making black pudding soda farls, bacon soda farls, and farls with spring onions and herbs. These new versions are my current favourite. 

Buttermilk can be difficult to source here, real buttermilk at least. In Ireland it is sold in the milk fridge in most shops, even small ones, in litre cartons the same size as milk. Here in the UK, it is more likely to be sold in a small cream carton, if you can find it. No need to worry though, it is easy to replicate it by souring some milk with yogurt, or a squeeze of lemon. Dairy free? No problem either. In fact these farls are dairy free as I am currently on a medical exclusion diet (the details of which are too boring for here). I used coconut milk with a generous squeeze of lemon. The coconut milk replicates the texture of the buttermilk perfectly when diluted down a little with the lemon, and the farls don’t taste remotely coconut-y. Perfect. You can also substitute a good almond milk, or any other dairy free milk of your choice.  Just don’t forget the lemon.  Continue reading

Jump straight to Cucumber, Avocado and Basil Soup. 

What do you think of cold soups? Some people absolutely rage against them, don’t they? But they can be so good. Gazpacho? CHECK. Aja Blanco? Hells YES. That delicious confection of almonds, raw garlic, extra virgin olive oil and sherry vinegar, with green grapes halved on top to finish. And of course, vichyssoise, aka wonderful leek and potato soup. We usually eat it hot here, but the tradition in France is to have it cold and it is gorgeous. 

It isn’t hot I know, at least it feels cool at 22 deg C with a breeze. My internal thermostat was forever reset by those days early in the summer in the mid 30’s and a few days over 40 in Ottawa in June. Yet, I wanted something cooling, and my friend, who is ill with a poorly intestine did too. 

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Jump straight to the Pasta e Ceci recipe

My love of beans, lentils, and all pulses has been expressed many times. They are nutritious, delicious and so flexible, they are a dream for anyone who loves to cook. They can become soups, dips, stews, patties and burgers, the dried beans can be ground into a flour and become pancakes and lots of other wonderful things. Take the humble chickpea, and all its possibilities. Falafel, chickpea burgers, hummus, panelle, socca, before we even consider what we can do with it when it is simply its joyful self. 

I wrote about my love for beans in my first book and how I batch cook them and freeze them to be used as and when I need them. Home cooking dried beans may seem like a fiddle, but all it takes is time, no intricacy, and the results are far superior, cheaper too. Beans are the ultimate frugal food, and for this reason maybe they don’t garner as much respect as they deserve. The underdog of the kitchen cupboard, some countries know how good they are and they elevate them. Principally Spain, I adore wandering through markets dotted with sacks of varied pulses, proud and shiny, and I always bring kilos of them home. Italy too, also France, and that is just looking at our nearest neighbours.  Continue reading

Jump straight to the Tomato and Paprika Braised Sausages with Charred Lettuce recipe

Let’s talk more about simple things and speedy suppers. Now in this time of glut when markets and gardens are full of wonderful things to eat we can be indulgent, but why would we be when letting perfect and simple ingredients shine is often the best way? In summer I like to eat lighter and simpler. I feel that way generally these days. 

Summer Sunshine Captured on a Rainy Day

I eat tomatoes more than anything all through the year, but especially in summer. My kitchen garden is packed and the tomatoes are flying but I have only a few tomatoes nearing red (and over 25 tomato plants growing, so exciting!). My counter is still stacked with tomatoes of all colours shapes and sizes from my local farmers market though. Rough and tumble beef hearts, wobbly and one sided. Bright round enormous yellow tomatoes, perfectly smooth and sweet as a mango. Small pops of colour and joy in every shade, green and tiger striped, reds approaching pink and gorgeous cherry tomatoes, plump and bulging from red to yellow to purple.

Tomatoes growing in my kitchen garden

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Jump straight to Lemon and Coconut Tadka Dal recipe

Dal is a favourite of mine, I have blogged about it more than once. Sometimes as a whole meal with egg (you know I love them), often with tadka (a perky mixture of spice and aromatics), always a cheerful sunshine yellow (although I am partial to a black spiced dal makhani too swirled with a little cream and I will share more on that soon). 

This dal is cheerful and elegant with lemon and coconut. It is one to make in a big pot for friends for a summer weekend lunch, or one to make and store in the fridge for comfort, or in the freezer for a later date. I must have had four bowls of this. I don’t bother soaking the dal, which means it takes longer to cook it, but it will still be done in 40 minutes. And it just cooks away, right? It needs little attention.  Continue reading

Jump straight to the Proper Spaghetti with Tomato and Chilli Sauce Recipe

My heart feels heavy today and so I need something light. The past few weeks have been intense in a busy and complicated kind of way, and it all takes a toll eventually. As it did today. Tomorrow will be brighter.

On a gorgeous summers day like today (27 deg C in my part of London), my body calls for something fresh and bright and breezy. I didn’t want complications but I did want to eat something fresh and delicious and soothing. I wanted spaghetti and I wanted it with tomatoes, some fragrant basil and the punch and flavour of a hot red chilli. Fresh chilli would only do, I wanted more than the heat, I wanted the fruitiness and the gorgeous aroma. I wanted it to taste of summer and sun, and not of something that had been dried some time ago. 

Tomatoes at my farmer’s market. The two central rows are the tomatoes that I bought for this week.

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