This is an Antonio Carluccio recipe which sounds so much better in Italian – croccante di nocciole e pistacchi. I followed the recipe to the letter so head to the Antonio Carluccio website for the instructions. Now that it’s mid November it’s probably acceptable to start making something a bit Christmassy. The recipe is very…
Tag: Food bloggers
Happy halloumi burger
I had a brilliant day last Saturday. I met up with some of my best friends to watch the fireworks at the end of the Lord Mayor’s show from a boat on the Thames (followed by a little cruise up and down river). Before that I wandered around the food stalls on the South Bank…
Pretty herb pasta
I’ve started making my own pasta. I bought a pasta making machine for around £25 a few weeks’ ago and I love it. It’s a relaxing and therapeutic process and you can prepare pasta dough to keep in the fridge for a few days so you can make it in advance for when you are…
Tarragon chicken
Tarragon has a mild aniseed flavour and pairing it with chicken is a classic French dish (poulet a l’estragon). This recipe is from one of my favourite old recipe books – Pan-cooked chicken dishes around the world. I bought the book years ago at a charity shop and would never want to be without it. In that…
Chicken, chickpea and chorizo stew
I can make this from scratch in about 40 minutes which is enough time to cook on a weekday evening after work. It’s perfect comfort food on an autumn evening. There isn’t very much work to do – just a bit of chopping and slicing and then stewing everything for around 35 minutes. You don’t…
Figs with Roquefort and walnuts
These are perfect as canapés or a first course. The salty cheese is delicious with the sweetness of the honey and the crunch of the walnut contrasts with the soft flesh of the fig. They are dead easy to prepare and only take 10 minutes in the oven – make sure to get them out…
Antonio Carluccio’s beetroot lasagne
I was very sad to hear of the death yesterday of Antonio Carluccio. I loved watching him in cooking programmes over the years and listening to him talk about growing up in Italy during the war and foraging for food – to make meals from mushrooms and nettles. His cooking reflects so much of the…
Chicken liver paté
I love paté but hate the look of all those unidentifiable ingredients listed on packs of the shop bought stuff. I’d much rather make fresh paté myself without preservatives (it tastes so good it doesn’t last very long anyway). Different recipes will suggest you use different spirits or fortified alcohol to give it an extra…
Quick and easy mushroom stroganoff
This is one of my regular recipes. I prefer it to beef stroganoff as it’s incredibly cheap (the mushrooms only cost around £2 or £3) and so fast you can rustle it up in about 10 minutes. I like to use a mixture of mushrooms, in this case chestnut mushrooms and some large Portobello mushrooms…
Rosti topped fish pie
The use of grated potatoes to create a crispy rosti topping turns this fish pie into something a bit special. You can use any fish really but I used two large haddock fillets which were reduced to £2.90 in Sainsbury’s. I also bought a packet of raw prawns for £3.90 – the prawns make the…
Chicken with fennel and orange
This is a slightly different version of a Nigella recipe (from Simply Nigella) which I used when I was on the look out for fennel recipes this summer. Fennel is really expensive in the supermarket – about £3.50 per bulb – but at Surrey Street market in Croydon I could buy three bulbs for £2. Bargain!…
Spicy pumpkin soup
This tasty seasonal soup uses small eating pumpkins/butternut squash, not the giant Jack o’Lanterns people use for Halloween. I used a pumpkin the size of a large grapefruit and half a butternut squash I had left over from another meal. I also bought a couple of adorable munchkin pumpkins but I struggled to chop them…
Spaghetti with minty aubergine and sun-dried tomato sauce
Aubergines are cheap and nutritious and make a great base for a spaghetti sauce. I watched Rick Stein make something similar to this recipe based on a Sicilian dish but he used tinned tomatoes which I didn’t have (very unusual for me) so I made it with a few sun-dried tomatoes and tomato puree instead….
Celebrating a win with slow cooker beef bourguignon
I made this on Saturday to have something for myself and my son to have ready to eat after football (we support Crystal Palace). I wanted something easy and comforting to come home to after what we thought would be yet another demoralising defeat – we were yet to score a goal (or gain a…
Chicken Caesar salad
I love Caesar salad and I love its origins. A quick look on Wikipedia attributes the salad to Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who owned restaurants in the US and Mexico in the early part of the last century. The salad was invented in 1924 when a Fourth of July rush depleted the kitchen supplies…
Big batch vegetarian chilli
Batch cooking is one of the best ways to keep costs down and you don’t have to lose out on flavour just because you’re on a budget. I regularly make up a big pot of vegetarian chilli which I freeze and then cook with other ingredients to bulk out the meals. Using this recipe as…
Focaccia
I struggle a bit making my own bread as so often it doesn’t rise very well. It frequently ends up dense, heavy and a bit sad. But I still really love the whole process of baking bread because kneading dough is so relaxing and most shop bought loaves lack character and are full of additives….
Stuffed aubergine rolls
I made this regularly when my children were growing up because my son used to be a vegetarian. Aubergines are cheap (45p each at Aldi), versatile and nutritious. They absorb different flavours very well and provide enough bulk and fibre on their own so you don’t really need to serve an additional carbohydrate. Having said that…
The first supper
I was away in North Yorkshire at the weekend and on the way home my friend and I started talking about what we were going to cook for our respective suppers. I always think that first supper home after a trip is important – you want something easy and tasty but also something that keeps…
Cheap, fresh and easy 