21 September 2009

Recipe for Autumnal Apple Crumble

I love the melancholic atmosphere of this late summer time.  The leaves are beginning to turn a beautiful orangey-red and the air is turning cooler, yet it has a warm, damp smell to it. 

15 September 2009

Recipe for Saturday Was Shepherd's Pie

Back closer to the brief, I made shepherd’s pie on Saturday morning.  Typically, Saturday turned out to be the last blast of the summer with one of the best day’s of the whole year – no wind, unbroken sunshine and a really relaxed day with friends an...

10 August 2009

Recipes for Peppermint Creams and Chocolate Strawberries

It’s been a weekend of baking and cooking for Jay’s birthday.  He had some specific requests for things plus we needed to get the sausages and baps for the proper “hot dogs”, ie not with boil in the bag frankfurters but real sausages and decent bread...

07 August 2009

Recipe for Lasagne with Traditional Ragu

As promised, here is the meat lasagne for the committed carnivores out there.  It uses an old ragù recipe from Bologna.

06 August 2009

Recipe For Vegetarian Lasagne With Spinach

Personally, I have never been a great fan of lasagne even if it is one of those firm family and probably national favourites.  But then again, I don’t like spaghetti bolognaise.  I am in a minority of 1 versus several hundreds of millions of people i...

05 August 2009

Eat More Greens

In recipes that people talk about and write about, there always seems a big focus on the extravagant meat dishes, a bit about fish and almost never that much about vegetables.  We certainly eat far too much meat for the balanced human diet and should...

31 July 2009

Recipe For Meatloaf - Ideal for a Cold Summer's evening!

The weather has been truly awful over the last few days – rain, rain and more rain.  It’s turned my mind towards thinking about terrines.  Terrines are really versatile – you can have the cold on a warm summers day served with new potatoes and salad,...

24 July 2009

Recipe - Sweet Oriental Duck

Cooking your own Chinese style food is amazingly easy and tastes a load better than buying something from the supermarket.  There are some truly simple & quick meals that you can make.

22 July 2009

Recipe - Fennel Braised In Milk

This is an unusual, but great, Italian style way of making fennel as a vegetable.  It’s really great with a traditional English roast chicken.

20 July 2009

Recipe for Fennel Salad

I love fennel.  It’s one of those underused but truly delicious vegetables.  I love its aniseed-like flavour and its texture.  It tastes delicious cold in a salad or warm cooked as a vegetable.  The Italians love it, so I love it.

14 July 2009

Recipe for Yellow Sunny Quiche Lorraine

08 July 2009

Recipe - Wild Harvested Samphire

For many, the sign of summer is the first swallow or the sound of a cuckoo or the sound of cricket being played or perhaps Glastonbury of the Summer solstice.  For me, it is samphire.  Samphire is one of those truly old foods from the wild that peopl...

07 July 2009

Recipes: Macaroons – part 3

This is the final recipe that I think is worth using for macaroons.  It came from a Women’s Institute charity cookbook.  It came with a tale that the word “macaroon” stems from the Greek makaria which means happy, and was introduce by the Greek to Na...

04 July 2009

Another Macaroon Recipe - this time from Betty Crocker

02 July 2009

Almond Extract - Recipe for Almond Macaroons

29 June 2009

The Healing Powers of Home Baked Cakes

I (Sophie)  was recently convalescing at home and by about the second week (apart from getting frustrated about not being out and about and having very little voice) I was very privileged to receive three delicious home made cakes.

27 June 2009

Recipe - Summer Vegetable Tart

25 June 2009

Recipe - Rediscovering Ratatouille