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…
Creamy chicken and mushroom pappardelle
The inspiration for this recipe was the ingredients I just happened to have in my fridge. It’s a bit like the TV show ‘Ready, Steady Cook’ where contestants have to create a dish from four or five random ingredients. I used to love watching ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’ when I was in between work contracts (a…
Chilled leek and courgette soup
In my house soups happen more by accident than by design – usually because I need to use up some vegetables before they go off. Having said that, on Friday I made gazpacho as the weather had been sweltering and a friend was coming for lunch so I planned to make that traditional cold Spanish…
Mushroom Wellington
This is a recipe from Miguel Barclay’s book ‘Vegan one pound meals’ and like all of his recipes it’s beautifully simple and easy to make. I love the way he creates tasty food with a small list of ingredients and all his recipes are for one, so you just multiply quantities for more people. I…
Smoked mackerel pasta
This is my version of a Nigella recipe (from her Nigellissma book) which in turn is based on a traditional Sicilian recipe – pasta con le sarde (pasta with sardines). I’ve eaten pasta con le sarde in Sicily, in a small village, in a traditional family run restaurant where it was the house speciality. The…
Carrot and coriander soup
Carrot and coriander are two ingredients I always have in my fridge and often need using up. This soup is so easy, quick and dead cheap (and it’s vegan too). It has been a godsend recently when I was running out of ideas for lunch and didn’t want to go to the shop (trying to…
Soy and sesame salmon tray bake
I normally love cooking but I currently have a kind of lockdown lethargy where I want to eat delicious fresh food without spending any time in the kitchen. Tray bakes are the answer and I’m kind of obsessed with them at the moment. What could be easier than spending five minutes washing and chopping some…
Lentil cottage pie
This used to be one of my staple meals but I haven’t cooked it for a while. But then my son requested it for dinner a couple of Saturdays ago (he’s in my lockdown bubble so he comes over most weekends at the moment). Lentil cottage pie is such a comforting recipe and I think…
Tiramisu
I made tiramisu twice over Christmas. The first time I managed to achieve a lovely peaked effect with the topping but the next time I think I over did the coffee and marsala and the result was more like a cocktail – but just as delicious. I’m not keen on Christmas pudding or mince pies…
Roast fennel salad
I think fennel has gone to the top of my list of favourite vegetables (nudging courgettes and then runner beans into second and third place respectively). I can’t seem to get enough of fennel at the moment. I’ve been making a traybake most nights for dinner at the moment to save time on cooking. This…
Seafood chowder
The starting point for this recipe was my craving for the type of chowder I ate on my last big summer holiday, in 2019. This was a holiday of a lifetime whale watching trip on Vancouver Island with my son and daughter. We stayed in a gorgeous apartment in Victoria and nearly every other day…
Roast squash
I was trying to think of a Halloween themed recipe but in all honesty I almost never cook pumpkins. When my children were small we loved growing our own pumpkins to carve for Halloween, or getting them from the local pick your own farm. But unlike other people who made soup or desserts out of…
Paprika chicken
Recently I’ve been looking for recipes which are really quick, as well as cheap, fresh and easy. This paprika chicken recipe only takes about 15 minutes but doesn’t compromise on flavour. Using chicken thighs also adds to the depth of flavour – I nearly always prefer chicken thighs to breasts (they’re cheaper too). I absolutely…
Ratatouille
You couldn’t get more cheap, fresh and easy than ratatouille. In fact I’m struggling to think of a recipe in this whole Cheap, Fresh and Easy blog (which I’ve been writing for four years) which is cheaper and easier than ratatouille. How fresh it is, depends on you. Ratatouille is in fact a great way…
Tabouleh with chargrilled aubergines and peppers
The base for this tabouleh is a mix of grains – bulgar, freekah and white and red quinoa (bought as one mixed pack from Sainsbury’s) but a more traditional tabouleh would just use bulgar wheat. My idea of a good tabouleh is to pack it with loads of fresh mint and parsley – in this…
Cobb salad: a quick and healthy summer meal
I’ve just come back from a few days away on the coast in Deal in Kent, spending time with my son and meeting up with my daughter who lives nearby in Canterbury. On the first day we went to Broadstairs, to Botany Bay, as the weather was lovely. We were starving after spending time on…
Mushroom and broccoli curry
I made this curry for dinner last Thursday. I usually shop on a Saturday so often find myself at the end of the week scouring the fridge to use up leftover vegetables, trying not to throw anything away. I had a whole unopened packet of mushrooms about five days past its sell by date (as…
Jackfruit in barbecue sauce
This is the first time I have eaten jackfruit. I’ve had a tin at the back of my cupboard for a while and fancied creating a vegan alternative to pulled pork – and last night I finally got around to it. I wanted to make a completely vegan recipe so had to improvise with the…
Chargrilled baby gem lettuce
I’m always trying to avoid food waste but so often I don’t succeed and I get very annoyed with myself. Just this evening I threw out half a big bag of spinach I’d completely forgotten about – the spinach was way too yellow to salvage. And I’m always finding bags of soggy and yellowing bags…
Vegan paella
I’d really like to be in Spain now, sitting at a beachside restaurant and eating paella filled with chorizo, langoustine, chicken and clams. Who knows when we’ll be able to go off on our foreign holidays again? In the meantime here’s a dead easy vegan version of paella from Miguel Barclay’s Vegan One pound Meals cookery…
Thai yellow curry
This is based on a Miguel Barclay recipe from his Vegan One Pound Meals book, except my version isn’t anywhere near as photogenic (and definitely not as yellow). Miguel Barclay keeps to a basic list of ingredients using aubergines and baby sweetcorn as the main vegetables but I’ve piled in some other veg which needed…
Stuffed courgettes
I love courgettes and I’m always looking for new courgette recipes. Stuffed vegetables like courgettes, peppers or tomatoes are a very Mediterranean style of cooking and very healthy (as well as cheap, fresh and easy). Usually rice or cous cous would be used as part of the stuffing but I used borlotti beans as the…
Roast cauliflower with anchovies and garlic
This is a recipe I made a couple of weeks ago when I fancied a roast which I had been craving all day, but I didn’t have any meat. I had a couple of cauliflowers in the fridge which needed using up so I made this recipe with one of them. I broke the other cauliflower…
Turkey meatballs
Lockdown is a great time to do batch cooking. Over the long Easter weekend I had planned to make a whole load of different meals for the freezer using the food from a home delivery from about 10 days before (not sure when I’ll get another delivery slot). In the end I just made a…
Pasta salad
This is a pasta salad I made just before the lockdown restrictions came into force – which seems like forever now, but it’s only actually about two weeks ago. At the time there was a wave of panic buying and I was having real trouble finding anything in the shops. Things have calmed down a…
Cheap, fresh and easy 