25 October 2010

A Journey Through Back To True Korma Recipes (Part 1)

When I made the Chicken Tikka the other day, I also made a Lamb Korma.  The end result was nothing like the British Kormas that I had been used to, so I decided to investigate the concept of the korma further.  The first thing to say is that I liked...

20 October 2010

Recipe For Chicken Tikka Masala

14 October 2010

Perfecting A Carrot Cake Recipe

12 October 2010

Blending Christmas Tea

It is that time of year when customers are after our Christmas tea which is made to my own special recipe. 

08 October 2010

Recipe For Rich Apple Cake

The idea for this cake comes from the wonderful cook book "European Peasant Cookery" by Elisabeth Luard; it is her recipe for Apple Cake or Æblekage, which comes from Denmark.  "European Peasant Cookery" is one of those great cookbooks that is packed...

02 October 2010

Recipe For Fruit Teabread Revisited

For whatever reasons, I have not been quite happy with the original teabread recipe that I created and posted a few weeks back, so I have been playing around with the recipe now and baking away.  Now several teabreads and a family of very happy taste...

28 September 2010

Recipe For Traditional Gingerbread

26 September 2010

Apples, Bloody Apples And An Apple Cake Recipe

We only have three apple trees in our garden, but they have been massively fruitful this year.  In fact, they have produced so many apples I cannot even hope to use them all, even with friends and family taking them.  Nature has been so very fecund t...

25 September 2010

Recipe For Oven Cooked Smoky Barbecued Ribs

We love spare ribs at home and have started eating them even more recently.  It's the primaeval joy of chomping on your food while holding it in your fingers; something our kids truly adore.  In these straightened times, it is also great to use one o...

22 September 2010

Recipe For Pears In Rooibos With Vanilla And Saffron

One of the classics of British cuisine is to poach pears in red wine or syrup.  As a variation on this, I sometimes create a sweet spicy syrup to poach the pears in, then reduce these to a thick, sweet sauce.  Recently, however, I have been...

20 September 2010

Simpler Venison Casserole Recipe

Having gone through the fuss and carry on of marinading venison in stock per the previous post, I wondered why you do not just make a stew in the normal way as you would for beef or lamb.  Also, I still had some of the Hornby Castle venison in the fr...

17 September 2010

Recipe For Yorkshire Fruit Tea Bread

We have always loved teabreads here at home like those made by Elizabeth Bothams of Whitby, but I reckoned that some of those homely, comforting cakes could not be too difficult to make.  So this weekend I set out to make a traditional Fruit Teabread...

15 September 2010

Vanilla - A Beautiful And Sensual Spice

Vanilla comes from the vanilla orchid, called Vanilla planifolia, which is native to Mexico, but is now indigenous in many tropical parts of the world, for example Madagascar and surrounding islands.  There is a second vanilla orchid called Vanilla t...

06 September 2010

A Big Shout Out To Small Business Owners

We, the small business owners and micro-entrepreneurs, are the forgotten, ignored and trodden upon solid foundation of the British, American and every other economy in the world.  We employ most of the employed people and generate much of the new, gr...

03 September 2010

Recipe For Luxury Chocolate Gateaux Or Pavé

This is another recipe that I have followed from Pierre Hermé's inspirational cookbook "Chocolate", which I have reinterpreted for a British audience.  The only tweak I have made to it was in the use of edible gold as a garnish on top of the chocolat...

26 August 2010

Recipe For Wild Salmon With Pink Peppercorn Sauce

This recipe began as one of those serendipitous events when on holiday this July in Scotland.  We had one of those small kitchens that has no equipment and a very temperamental cooker, plus we had brought almost no ingredients with us.  Then around a...

24 August 2010

Recipe For Business Success Cake

I am a fan of those little self-published recipe books as within them you often get real recipe gems that have been handed down from generation to generation within families.  You also get a lot of rubbish, as well, but a recipe book with even only o...

22 August 2010

Life Really Does Begin At Forty

I am 42 now and I have finally worked out what the phrase "life begins at forty" means.  It came as a Pauline moment as I was driving home the other day.  It really means that you only ever plan your life until you get to about 40 years old*, so now...