Taralli are savoury or sweet snacks from Puglia in the south of Italy. I have recently returned from Puglia where I travelled around for a few days before joining a cookery and yoga retreat in Conversano, about 40 minutes drive from Bari, one of the main cities in Puglia. Our cookery teacher, Lucrezia, taught us…
Category: Baking
Afternoon tea
This is an afternoon tea with a difference because it’s deliberately lighter and healthier. There are no jam and cream laden scones as you’d normally expect from a traditional British tea. This is because I was making a healthy tea for a friend who was recovery from heart surgery. Sweet treats I made chocolate beetroot…
Soda bread
I have a regular routine of making my own sourdough bread and a loaf usually lasts me a week, but occasionally, like today, I run out and find I don’t have any bread for breakfast. So instead of running to the Co-op, I make soda bread instead. Soda bread can be made really quickly, no kneading…
Vegan sausage rolls
This recipe is from Miguel Barclay’s latest book ‘Vegan One Pound Meals’. I love his ‘One Pound Meals’ series – a cooking philosophy very much like mine – easy, freshly cooked food at a reasonable price (and you can’t get more reasonable than a pound per person). One of the cheap, fresh and easy mantras…
Sourdough bread
About four weeks ago I made my first sourdough bread and I haven’t bought bread from a shop since. I now have a regular routine of baking at the weekend and I’m loving the whole experience. There’s something really comforting about the simple rhythm of baking my own bread, taking my time and drawing mental,…
Lemon tart
Lemon tart is by far and away my favourite dessert. It’s not just the taste – although that’s a big part of it – it’s the whole look and texture and the exquisite beauty of the end result, whether large tarts or small, delicate pastries. I love looking at lemon tarts and pastries on Instagram…
Christmas clear out
This is a good weekend to clear out the fridge to make room for the Christmas food shop. There are lots of ways to cut waste by using up scraps of food in different ways, or turning leftovers into something freezable. Use vegetables which are past their prime for the Christmas lunch gravy (Jamie Oliver’s…
Chocolate brownies with cranberries and hazelnuts
This is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe and works really well every time. You just need to make sure you don’t over bake the mixture as brownies should be soft and gooey in the middle. So there should still be some mixture on the skewer when you test it (the traditional way of testing…
Cheap, fresh and easy 