Cooking is a Game You Can Eat

Rhubarb Eton Mess

2011-05-16T16:08:00.000+01:00

I made this for pudding on Sunday to follow roast chicken with green garlic and herb stuffing and a big pile of spring veg. I'll blog my lazy stuffing recipe at a later date but the pudding was a triumph so here is the recipe.

Rhubarb Eton Mess

Pick a good armful of rhubarb (or one of those packs from the supermarket) and cut into cubes. Sprinkle over a couple of tablespoons of sugar and roast in a hottish oven (Gas mark 5/375 degrees F/190 degrees C) until the rhubarb is soft and surrounded by syrupy juices. Leave to cool completely.

Whip 300ml double cream with the grated zest of an orange and a tablespoon of icing sugar until stiff. Resist diving into it face first (maybe try just a little... mmm.)

Break up five or six shop-bought meringue nests (or home made if you've got them) and make sure you've got a big pot (450g) of Yeo Valley strawberry yoghurt.

Put everything in the fridge until just before you are ready to serve (except the meringue nests, of course!)

Just before serving reserve a spoonful or two of the rhubarb and combine everything else in a big bowl. Don't over mix, you want a nice melding of flavours not all churned up like cement. Spoon the saved rhubarb over the top and serve.

This served six greedy people (two children, four adults) and all of the adults had thirds (having begun with "oh, just a little" we ended up with an unseemly fight over who was to lick the serving spoon).

The suggestion was made that it could be improved with the addition of crumble, either as crumbled digestive biscuits or hob nobs but I have the rest of the cream, loads of rhubarb and another pot of yoghurt in the fridge so I plan to make another batch with the addition of a home made crumble.

Rhubarb Crumble Eton Mess

Follow recipe as above but also prepare a crumble at the same time you roast the rhubarb.

Rub together 75g plain flour, 50g butter and 50g soft brown sugar, add a little ginger if you like. Spread onto a baking tin and bake at gas mark 5 (375 degrees F/190 degrees C) for ten minutes. Leave to cool and then break up and fold into the Eton Mess just before serving.

Battenburg cake

In other news I found a packet of marzipan in the cupboard and finally achieved my ambition to make a Battenburg. Not difficult, more a feat of assembly than culinary skill, but fun to do. It was a nice addition to our Eurovision Song Contest TV picnic and it tasted delicious. I used the recipe from Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy.

Chocolate spice cupcake

2011-03-19T10:52:00.001Z

This little beauty is a chocolate spice cupcake. It is a thing of gorgeousness yet its looks do not even begin to describe the delight of its taste.

It's also a bone of contention. This cupcake was made by my dear husband from his family's secret recipe (for a larger cake) that he has tweaked to produce these marvels.

I accepted, during the years we were together before we married, that I was not able to have the recipe. Then we married, in 1998, and still the recipe was not forthcoming. I had his children. Still no recipe. They're now nine and seven. Still no recipe, although he has hinted that he will pass it on to his daughters. One day.

Me? Frustrated. Furious (and curious).

I have observed the baking process. It involves many processes, the separating of eggs, the mixing up of three different mixes which are combined at the last minute. It involves the careful incorporation of air, the melting of chocolate. I know what goes in but not the order. It's that which is vital.

The recipe is written in longhand in a little black book which is kept hidden from curious wives. Except last week when it lay, alluringly open, on the worktop. I considered theft. I considered this blog and the posting herein of said recipe.

Then I considered the consequences.

I quietly ate my cupcake. Well, three. Maybe one day I will get that recipe.

Maybe.

Cookies and Cream Brownies

2011-03-11T14:24:00.000Z

These brownies were almost impossible for me to photograph. I baked them - they vanished.

They are inspired by Lorraine Pascale's recipe in her lovely book Baking Made Easy crossed with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's ultimate double chocolate brownies from The River Cottage Year.

What you do is cream 125g soft butter with 200g caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in two eggs and 50g cocoa powder.

This is where my recipe diverts with Hugh's. He melts 100g good chocolate with two tablespoons of warm milk and beats that in. I opened my chocolate cupboard and found that I had fed the cooking chocolate to the children in the form of a fondue and all that was left was a bar of Green and Black's sublime 85% plain chocolate. Now that is officially The Best Chocolate in The World and no way was I going to put 100g of it into brownies. Instead I meanly broke off a few squares (having tested it first, just to check) and I melted it with the milk and a good dollop of Tesco Value chocolate spread.

How big is a good dollop? Ah ha. I used a dessert spoon and I scooped with enthusiasm. Having cooked the brownies I can confirm it adds a certain wonderful fudginess, so don't hold back. Pause to lick the chocolate spread spoon.

Next beat the chocolate or the choc-spread mix into the butter, sugar, eggs and cocoa, fold in 75g of self-raising flour and then add a 154g packet of Oreo cookies broken into at least quarters. Spread the mixture into your brownie tin (approximately 15cm x 25cm) lined with baking parchment.

Bake at Gas mark 3/170 degrees C until nearly cooked - a skewer inserted into the middle will come out slightly sticky. Actually I overcooked the ones in the picture a little, but the chocolate spread kept them delightfully gooey.

Pile on a plate and watch them disappear!

Simple pleasures: Welsh cakes

2011-03-02T09:20:00.000Z

This post is for Sticky Fingers The Gallery and this week's theme is simple pleasures. Yesterday was St David's Day and, as my two traditionally dressed Welsh ladies hurtled off to school, they ~~ordered~~ reminded me that I usually make Welsh cakes.

Yummy Welsh cakes.

Then the day ambled off like days do and I did other things. At 2.15pm I remembered the Welsh cakes - half an hour before the school run. Fortunately being a simple sort of pleasure they are quick to make. Cheap too. I learned to make them by watching the ladies cooking them in Swansea market - the secret is to cook them just enough. Too long and they'll be dry in the middle.

All you do is rub 125g of butter into 250g of self-raising flour, stir in 75g caster sugar, 100g of sultanas and half a teaspoon of all spice and then mix in a large beaten egg and enough milk to make a soft dough. Roll out as you would for scones - they should be about a centimetre thick - and cut out. I use a 6.5cm fluted cutter.

Pop them on to a preheated griddle (or frying pan - no fat) and cook on each side until golden brown and still slightly soft in the centre. Sprinkle with more golden caster sugar and serve warm with a cup of tea. Blasus!

Sizzling gently on the griddle.

Naan bread

2011-02-24T17:18:00.000Z

I mentioned on my other blog about running out of LPG and necessity being the mother of invention so last night I was still without a cooker. As supper time approached and I had left over dahl from the night before, I looked at the fire and contemplated the idea of cooking naan bread on it somehow. The germ of the idea had been sown by Chris Stovell of Home Thoughts Weekly who had suggested that the sloping lid of her wood burner would be possible for such a thing.

I consulted the internet for a recipe, read several and then made up my own. Cooking methods varied from frying to grilling. I think authentic naan is slapped on the inside of a melting hot tandoor oven and if my ship ever comes in I'm buying one of these. My sister-in-law used to live in a flat in High Wycombe and my big memory of visiting her in that flat is of the tantalising smell in the evenings of all the tandoors being fired up in neighbouring homes. The aroma of the spices, curried meat and bread carried on the warm evening air was mouth-wateringly delicious.

I used my trusty Kenwood for the mixing of the dough which was my basic foolproof white bread but with slight variations. It's about three cups of strong white bread flour, a good heaped teaspoon of dried quick mix yeast, a teaspoon of salt, two tablespoons of plain yoghurt, a shy teaspoon of sugar, a handful of black onion seeds and enough warm milk (about two thirds of a cup) to make a soft dough. Knead for five minutes until smooth and then leave to rise in a warm place.

I then divided it into eight pieces, rolled them out into rough ovals and started them cooking on my cast iron griddle on top of the wood burner.

Four little naans in a row.

It was hot but not nearly hot enough so (bearing in mind past experience of cooking flat breads, roti and chapattis) I grabbed the toasting fork, opened the wood burner and held the naan inside over the hot coals.

It immediately fluffed and puffed up into a very authentic looking naan bread. I was so surprised I nearly dropped it. I puled it out, ripped it open and tried it. Delicious, fluffy and unmistakably naan.

If you look closely at the one at the front on the left you can see the shape of the toasting fork.

I carried on with the other seven by which time my face was nearly melting from the heat and the dining room was like the inside of a pizza oven. Brian was stripping off layers of clothes (we're unaccustomed to warmth) and repeatedly mentioning that he was hungry (the house was full of the smell of naan bread).

It was delicious, everybody loved it and from now on I won't be buying any more naan bread. Who would have thought it could be this much fun to make? Like most other things it's nicer homemade and freshly baked too. I think I'll probably start it off on top of the stove though, I couldn't quite get the griddle hot enough on top of the wood burner, but I can see me fluffing it up on the toasting fork again - I think it was the aroma of wood smoke that really nailed the flavour.

Pesto pizza rolls

2011-02-16T20:50:00.001Z

These were very much inspired by the Snazzy Pizza Rolls entered into English Mum's Fresh Bread Bake-off by Arlene of The Fuzzy Times. I also made Gluttony For Beginners' dough balls, but those got eaten before I could take their picture.

Anyway this is my take on the pizza rolls thing. Not quite the same as the snazzy ones - these are more like the ones made (I think) by Tana Ramsay and they're basically just a Chelsea bun with a savoury filling.

First you need a bread dough. I tend to make mine intuitively - I have a plastic cup measure and I use two of those of strong bread flour, a teaspoon of quick mix yeast, a teaspoon of salt, a glug of olive oil (in this case a nice basil favoured one) and enough warm water to make a soft dough. I added a teaspoonful of dried herbes de Provence too for extra flavour. You could use some left over pizza dough or my focaccia dough would work just as well (but would make a bit more than this, perhaps).

Once that is kneaded and risen you need to roll it out into a large rectangle. I then spread mine with a whole tub of fresh pesto (in lieu of tomato sauce which makes me itch), some ham and emmental cheese (because that's what I had to hand).

It will then look something like this:

Next roll it up from the nearest long side into a long sausage shape (or start and then let your nine-year-old daughter take over):

Next cut it up into rounds. The knife flattens the circles, so squeeze them back into shape again. Tuck them into a suitably sized tin so they are snuggled up close enough to hold a conversation:

Leave to rise again for a little while longer (while the oven heats up to Gas Mark 6) then bake them until golden brown and sizzling:

Serve warm as a tear and share bread. Delicious!

Delia: Not just for Christmas

2011-02-14T20:29:00.000Z

Boxing Day pie - on Valentine's Day

It was the usual scenario - Monday's fridge was full of little bowls of cling-film wrapped leftovers from the Sunday roast.

"Could you make a Boxing Day pie?" asked H9 as I pondered possibilities.

Of course I could! Boxing Day pie is an institution in this household. I make it every year with the leftovers from Christmas Day. It is, to all intents and purposes, the Turkey Flan with Leeks and Cheese from page 214 of my very battered and adored copy of Delia's Christmas. My children have always called it Boxing Day pie because we don't have turkey at Christmas - usually a big chicken (or two) or one year a big salmon.

Why not make it on Valentine's Day? We all love it after all!

It's basically this. First you make a cheese pastry (175g self-raising flour, 75g butter, 50g cheddar, mustard, salt and pepper, water) which Delia rubs in and grates but I just blitz in a food processor. Line a 25cm quiche tin with the pastry and bake for 15 minutes at Gas mark 5/190 degrees C. I prop up the sides of the pie with foil and prick the base with a fork.

Into that you pile some leeks (cooked in butter on Boxing Day) or whatever green veg you have left over (I used steamed Cornish greens), bits of sliced chicken, leftover roast vegetables and about 400ml of thick Bechamel sauce to which you have added some grated cheddar and a beaten egg. Sprinkle cheese over that and bake again for 25 to 30 minutes.

It's lovely eaten warm or cold and is, to quote H9 "basically just a roast dinner in a pie".

SPICED BREAD AND APPLE PUDDING

A new Delia recipe wandered into my repertoire on Sunday, this time into the pudding department and from her recently refurbished Frugal Food book. I'm a big fan of bread and butter pudding (a good way to use up excess eggs from our enthusiastic hens).

This B&B pud is a layer of buttered wholemeal bread triangles on the base (butter side down), a layer of apple slices (I smugly used spiced ones I'd bottled last autumn - otherwise cook apple slices until soft in a little butter), then another layer of buttered bread triangles (butter side up). Dredge with soft brown or demerara sugar and cinnamon, then pour over 275ml of semi skimmed milk mixed with two beaten eggs. Leave to soak for a while and then dot with butter and bake at Gas Mark 4/180 degrees C until golden brown. Serve with vanilla ice cream or single cream.

It was delicious with a lovely custardy-appley flavour and golden crunchy spicy top. No picture because once it was cooked, we ate it!

How to bake focaccia

2011-02-09T19:38:00.000Z

Englishmum is running another bake-off and this time it's bread. How could I resist! Bread is one of the reasons this blog is called what it is and it is very much a game you can eat. It's so simple, quick and foolproof and is one of the things I make most often - either on my own or with my children helping. I'm a bit of a bread obsessive - I even have a paving slab to put in my oven to bake loaves and pizzas on.

My great-grandfather was a baker - family legend has it that he delivered bread to Sudeley Castle, near Winchcombe in the Cotswolds in the latter part of the 19th century and he is buried in the churchyard near the castle.

Focaccia is my favourite bread to bake to go with homemade soup. It's a simple, easy and quick bread and you can get on with making the soup while the bread rises. I love the way the olive oil pools deliciously in the indentations and mixes with the salt to form a lovely crispy crust flavoured with the spikes of rosemary.

INGREDIENTS

500g bread flour

1 tsp salt

5g quick mix yeast

325ml warm water

olive oil

METHOD

Mix all of the ingredients in a mixer with a dough hook or knead together until smooth - adding a good big glug of extra virgin olive oil. This dough is quite soft, so kneading it is easier with a mixer.

Shape into a ball, put into the bowl and leave to rise in a warm place for about half an hour.

Then knead briefly and press into a baking tray - I use my brownie/flapjack tray. Push it out into a rough rectangular shape, cover with oiled cling film and leave to rise again until puffed up. Turn your oven on to its hottest setting.

Use your fingers to push indentations in the dough - as many as you like. Then drizzle olive oil into the indentations. Scatter over sea salt and rosemary - chopped if you wish - then put into the oven for ten minutes. After 10 minutes turn the oven down to Gas Mark 6/200 degrees C until the focaccia sounds hollow when you tap it.

I normally cut it into fat fingers to serve.

Press your fingers in to make indentations, drizzle over olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and rosemary.

Bake until golden and aromatic. It should sound hollow when tapped.

The salt and oil give it a lovely crispy crust.

I usually cut it into fat fingers to serve.

Roast chicken and stuffing

2011-02-07T09:23:00.000Z

Roast chicken and stuffing is possibly the best example - in this kitchen anyway - of KISS (keep it simple stupid).

You see my Other Half was pretty convinced that only Paxo could make good stuffing for roasted birds. So on Christmas Day, much against my better judgement, we had a packet stuffing to please He Who Would Like to Be Obeyed. It was okay but it didn't please the smaller more demanding palate (ie my eldest daughter) who, for her ninth birthday, insisted I make home made stuffing for her roast chicken.

I love a good stuffing (stop giggling at the back...) and I'm a big fan of Delia's chunky American style Christmas turkey stuffing and her chestnut stuffing. OH (foolishly) dislikes both. Actually it's not really a dislike, they just disappoint him, which is possibly worse.

So for Sunday's birthday lunch it was back to the drawing board. I consulted Delia, Tana, Gordon, Nigel, Nigella, Sarah Raven and (finally) Rachel Allen. In her Home Cooking book she has a simple sage and onion stuffing with variations.

"Oooh chorizo stuffing," I said to the OH, thinking of the lovely garlicky paprika aroma that would bring to the roasted result.

"No," said OH.

"Smoky bacon?"

"No."

"Oh."

So I applied the KISS principle. Straightforward sage, onion and breadcrumbs stuffing.

I followed Rachel's recipe which was to soften a chopped onion and a clove of garlic in a big lump of butter and a glug of olive oil and mix that with 100g of white breadcrumbs and come chopped sage and thyme from the garden. I put the result into a bowl and looked at it alongside my 2.4kg chicken. It looked insufficient.

So, dredging up long-lost memories of family roast dinners and the things my mother used to make, I remembered her method which was to chuck everything - slices of bread, onion, herbs, butter, sea salt, pepper - into her Kenwood blender and blitz. I used my food processor and the result was a pleasing stuffing mix which clumped nicely together.

I made pockets in the bird's breast and tucked most of the stuffing in there and the neck and there was still more, so I popped a fist-sized amount into the bird's cavity. (Writing all this seems a little like writing culinary porn...)

I roasted the bird (two hours, gas mark 5) and the result? Fabulous. A huge hit with everyone and decreed 'nearly' as good as school's* by the birthday girl.

So another kitchen lesson learned. KISS applies to stuffing birds too and (probably, but don't tell her...) mother knows best.

*School dinners set a very high standard here (Jamie take note).

Passion fruit curd marbled frangipane muffins

2011-01-09T15:25:00.000Z

These are delicious muffins. They're based on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe from River Cottage Everyday (which I highly recommend - full of good stuff).

They don't rise quite like an ordinary muffin due to the ground almonds but are sweet and delicious and perfect for Sunday breakfast (which is always pancakes or muffins) or for a post-run treat.

Recipe makes 12 big muffins.

Line a muffin tin with cases and put the oven on to Gas mark 4/180 degrees C.

In a large bowl mix 100g ground almonds, 125g plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder and 100g caster sugar. Whisk with a fork to combine well and add air.

In a glass jug measure out 125ml plain yoghurt, top up to the 250ml mark with whole milk, beat in an egg and add 75g of melted and slightly cooled butter.

Quickly combine the wet and dry ingredients and put a spoonful into each case, only half filling them.

Next add a spoonful of passion fruit curd to each muffin case (if you've got a big sister who has given you a lovely pot of home made passion fruit curd for Christmas. If not use lemon curd or chocolate hazelnut spread). Top up each case with the rest of the mixture. Then use a skewer to quickly marble the mixture.

Pop in the oven for half an hour until golden brown. Eat while still warm.

Notes: If you haven't got enough (or any) ground almonds, use plain flour instead, and if you adore a really marzipanny flavour add a few drops of almond extract.

Dog biscuits

2010-11-21T16:30:00.000Z

These lovely treats were taken from the book Cooking for Your Dog by Ingeborg Pils and make a lovely Christmas gift for that special pooch. They are a honey-sweetened digestive type biscuit baked in dog bone shapes, and so are just as suitable for humans (in my case children) to eat if they can't resist trying them too (mine couldn't.)

Honey Dog Biscuits

Ingredients

150g wholemeal flour
150g porridge oats
2 tsp baking powder
30g butter
2 tbsp honey
2 eggs
100ml milk

Method

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl
Rub in the butter
Add the eggs, honey and milk and knead to a soft dough
Roll out to about 1cm thick and cut out with a bone shaped cutter if you've got one (for the kids, the dog won't care much) or circles
Bake at 200 degrees C/400 degrees F/gas mark 6 for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown
Turn off the oven and leave the biscuits in the cooling oven to dry out
Serve to lucky dog or wrap up and give as presents (to other lucky dogs)

Autumn baking

2010-10-22T14:37:00.000+01:00

It's bake off time again, or, to be precise English Mum's Great Big Autumn Bakeoff. Autumn to me is the prefect time for baking, not that I don't stop baking any other time of year but there's something about autumn, its misty mornings and berry-laden trees that sends me into the kitchen.

Bread is my number one for autumn baking. Summer is somehow time for fast things like focaccia and flat bread to wrap around salady stuff, but autumn is for soup and soup needs bread. This is a split pea and ham soup accompanied by bread rolls with honey and sesame. The sweetness of the honey and the nuttiness of the sesame seeds (which are on the inside of the rolls as well as the outside) make for the perfect accompaniment to the salty smokiness of the soup. R6 loves helping to shape them too so we get all kinds of faces, hedgehogs and plaits.

Autumn is crumble time too and who could resist the fragrant delights of an apple and blackberry crumble? I'm delighted to say that the apples are from our own trees and the blackberries were picked from around the farm. There's something wonderful about picking and then cooking your own produce and I'll never get tired of it.

It's been such an unusually bumper year for our apples that I keep making Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstalls apple and almond pudding cake too. This lovely thing - which is my official entry for English Mum's bakeoff - was featured on River Cottage Every Day a few weeks back. Freshly baked and still warm from the over it is divine with custard but I almost love it more cold from the fridge the following morning for (a very decadent) breakfast served with a spoonful of natural yoghurt.

Chocolate courgette cake and lime courgette muffins

2010-09-27T11:51:00.001+01:00

This is a my take on a recipe from BBC Good Food's website for chocolate courgette cake. I had a look at their recipe and decided to add a few tweaks here and there. For a start I decided wholemeal flour would be a better bet. I often use wholemeal flour in recipes which use fruit or veg as I find it mops up the extra moisture better than ordinary plain flour. If you don't like the bran bits, sieve them out. I also reduced the sugar a little, changed the oil and left out the nuts. It takes about ten minutes to mix up and about an hour to bake.

Ingredients:

350g plain wholemeal flour
2 tsp baking powder
half a tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g Green and Blacks cocoa powder (you can use other brands, but this is the best for this cake)
175ml sunflower oil
350g golden caster sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
500ml (by volume, measured in a jug) grated courgettes

Method

Combine the flour, baking powder, bicarb and cocoa powder in a bowl and whisk with a fork.
Beat the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla together and add the courgettes.
Mix the wet into the dry and pour into a greased and base-lined 24cm cake tin.
Bake at Gas mark 4/180 degrees C for 55 to 65 minutes. (Check after the first 45 mins to see how it's doing - your oven might be faster than mine.)

The original recipe tops it with a chocolate ganache which would be lovely but it's nice just sliced and served with a cup of coffee.

Lime Courgette Muffins

These are based on Flora's Famous Courgette Cake from Nigella's How to Be a Domestic Goddess. As usual I can't bear to follow a recipe to the letter and sometimes muffins are more convenient than a cake. I made these to hand around at a picnic at St Anne's Lighthouse this summer.

Ingredients

60g sultanas
250g grated courgettes, drained in a sieve
2 large eggs
125ml sunflower oil
150g golden caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
half a tsp bicarbonate of soda
half a tsp baking powder

Method

Mix the eggs, oil and sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy.
Sieve in the flour, bicarb and baking powder and beat again.
Add the courgettes and the sultanas.
Spoon into muffin cases in a muffin tin and bake at gas mark 4/180 degrees C for 15 to 20 minutes.

Icing

Mix icing sugar and lime juice (I use the ready squeezed stuff from a bottle that I always have in the fridge) to a thick paste.
As soon as the muffins are done spoon on dollops of icing while they are still hot from the oven.
If you have an actual lime to hand, grate over a little of the peel onto the tops of the muffins.

Muffins for breakfast

2010-08-11T09:35:00.000+01:00

I read somewhere, which was probably Nigella, that Italians eat cakes and puddings for breakfast. That seems an excellent idea to me and you'll often find us eating up the leftover Sunday pud - apple crumble and custard or sticky toffee pudding and ice cream - for breakfast on a Monday morning. It gets the week off to a great start and it feels slightly naughty (especially the ice cream bit!)

Why not though? It can't be worse than some of the sugary breakfast cereals currently on sale. I often make muffins too. They're quick and easy to make and I usually make them to use up whatever fruit is about to go rotten in the fruit bowl before we can eat it. This is usually bananas, but can be strawberries or nectarines. I usually use wholemeal flour too as it feels more wholesome and breakfasty.

Today it was two bananas. They had passed the just-spotty-and-totally-delicious phase and were well on the way to falling-out-of-the-skin-in-a-very-bananary-way phase.

So I made muffins, but not without my orders. R6 doesn't like the brown bits that really ripe bananas leave in muffins but doesn't mind the flavour so subterfuge is the order of the day. "Make them really choclatey," I was told, so I did.

Bananachocanilla Muffins

MAKES: 12 big muffins.

INGREDIENTS:

(I always make muffins in ounces for some reason...)

7oz plain wholemeal flour
1 oz cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4oz dark soft brown sugar
4oz melted butter
1 large egg
4 fl oz milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
two very ripe bananas
chopped plain chocolate - about a couple of ounces, whatever is to hand.

METHOD:

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, break up any lumps and whisk with a fork to get some air into the mix.
Mix the wet ingredients together.
Mush the bananas and add them with the wet ingredients and the choc chips into the dry ingredients.
Stir briefly until just about mixed. Too much mixing makes them tough.
Spoon into muffin cases and bake at Gas mark 5 (190 degrees C) for 10 to 15 minutes until springy on top. Eat for breakfast with a glass of milk.

If you're feeling really self-indulgent you could spread a bit of Nutella on these as you eat them but that would be VERY naughty indeed, and don't even think about putting ice cream on these too as the Diet Police will be hammering on your door...

One pot meal: Chicken with courgettes and green olives

2010-07-20T13:52:00.000+01:00

This is one of those handy little recipes which kills a few birds with one stone. It's all done in one pot, which I'm a big fan of (less washing up) and it's a good use for courgettes of which there is already a glut (and they've only just got started.) It's also fairly low fat and children like it.

I bought a wide cast iron pan with a lid from Aldi and it is such a lovely thing to cook meals in. (The posh, the rich and those with generous friends who bought them one for a wedding present will have similar pans made by Le Creuset.)

INGREDIENTS:

1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
glug of olive oil
Four or five courgettes
1 pack of chicken thighs (or chicken breasts) - about 250g to 300g cubed chicken
1 cup (about 200g) rice
Pinch of saffron
1/3 cup sherry
1 and 2/3 cup water or chicken stock
handful of pitted green olives
fresh thyme

METHOD:

Chop the onion and garlic and soften in the olive oil.
Chop the courgettes and add to the pan.
Use scissors to snip the chicken thighs into bite-sized pieces straight into the pan.
Add the rice, saffron and sherry and bubble until the liquid is reduced.
Pour in the water or stock (I use half a Knorr chicken stockpot) and add the chopped thyme and the green olives.
Put the lid on and leave over a low heat for 15 to 20 minutes until the chicken and the rice are cooked through.
When it's cooked leave to rest for about 10 minutes. Then check the seasoning and grind over some black pepper before serving.

This makes a nice big pan full and serves four to six people.

Baking on the Edge...

2010-07-18T16:50:00.000+01:00

I love a competition me, so imagine my joy at news of the delicious Miss English Mum's latest Big Bakeoff: Baking on the Edge baking competition with the fabulous prize of a Green and Blacks choccy hamper.

Of course I had to get my oven gloves on and have a bit of a bake. The rules are that there are no rules. Excellent. I like things to be clear from the start.

So here goes.

Entry number one:

This is a piece of the Millionaire's Shortbread I made for the Brownies' end of term party. Look at the way it is rudely sticking its little toffee tongue out at you, daring you to eat it. Cheeky thing.

Entry number two:

Coalition cake. I have previously blogged about this cake having first made it just after this year's General Election. It's basically a chocolate and vanilla marble cake, but until further notice I'm calling it Coalition Cake.

The amount of coalition depends on the current political climate and this one, for some reason, was slightly heavy on the Conservative (represented by the rich, dark chocolate cake). The fragrant, vanilla Lib Dems are obviously not having such a good week this week. It is smothered in vanilla icing, an addition requested by my children. It has already been on charity duties where it was declared "lush" and raised £14.50.

Bake off!

2010-07-07T09:03:00.000+01:00

That title almost sounds rude doesn't it? But it's not, it refers to English Mum's Big Bakeoff which has the rather fabby prize of a stonking hamper from Green and Blacks.

The rules are that there are no rules, you just have to bake something and email it (a picture, not the actual thing!) to English Mum by the end of July. So I will.

Hmmm. The question is, what to cook?

Wild strawberry and orange muffins

2010-07-03T10:25:00.002+01:00

We had these for breakfast this morning, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you. The garden is full of wild strawberries at the moment - mostly the tiny alpine variety, but also some that are bigger fruited, ripe when pale pink with red pips and with a lovely fragrant taste.

Ingredients:

225g (8oz) plain flour

2 tsp baking power

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

grated rind of 1 orange

100g (4oz) melted butter (or same weight of sunflower oil)

100g (4oz) caster sugar

1 large egg

the juice of the orange topped up to 125ml (4 fl oz) with milk

approx 1 big handful of wild strawberries or chopped ordinary strawberries (or other berries).

Method:

Combine all the dry ingredients. Whisk them with a fork to get some air into the mixture.
Combine all the wet ingredients, then add with the strawberries to the dry ingredients.
Stir briefly to make a lumpy batter, then spoon into muffin cases and bake at Gas 5 (180 deg C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

Eat while still warm!

Vegetarian sausage rolls

2010-06-18T12:25:00.001+01:00

Today's baking has been vegetarian sausage rolls for the Brownies trip to Carew Castle tomorrow. It was all rather last minute, having only found out about the need for such things when I got back from my shopping trip yesterday but a rummage in the freezer yielded some useful ingredients.

I worry about the pig in pork sausage rolls. Which bit of the pig is one concern as all pig parts are considered edible. If the reasonably attractive bits are the ones packed into polystyrene or displayed on the butcher's counter you can be pretty sure that the unattractive bits are the ones that end up in sausage rolls. I'm pretty certain that the sausage roll is at the end of the food chain when it comes to choice of bits for the 'pork' content. If you read the ingredients of a pack of sausage rolls the actual 'pork' bit is horribly low and the definition of what actually constitutes 'pork' is worrying too.

Then there's the question of the welfare of the pig and cheap frozen supermarket pork sausage rolls aren't likely to feature even the worst bits of British pigs reared in happy conditions outside rooting about in the undergrowth. These are more likely to be their foreign counterparts reared indoors in unspeakable conditions of the sort that were banned in Britain years ago.

But there is an alternative to pork in a sausage roll role helpfully provided by Delia in her seminal Christmas book years ago. Christmas isn't Christmas without Delia's book and when I got it down from the shelf this morning it helpfully fell open on the vegetarian sausage rolls recipe.

The alternative is what is called a Glamorgan sausage - breadcrumbs, onion, Cheddar cheese and chopped fresh garden herbs mixed to a paste with milk or cream and seasoning. It behaves exactly the same as sausage meat but without the dubious content.

My hurried freezer rummage found several bags of cheesy breadcrumbs - useful freezer bounty made by whizzing left over cheese sandwiches in the food processor. This gives a handy bag of breadcrumbs for gratins and breading fish, but always label it so you don't make a cheesy apple Charlotte by mistake (although that one might actually work!) I also found a sheet of ready rolled puff pastry and there was a block of cheese in the fridge and herbs in the garden. Bingo. All it needed was a bit of mixing, roll the pastry out a little thinner, cut in half, add the long rolls of Glamorgan sausage, egg glaze, cut into slices and bake at Gas 7 until golden brown.

Hopefully acceptable for the Brownies tomorrow but also perfect for picnics. Delia's vegetarian sausage rolls are - like dogs - not just for Christmas!

A political statement in cake form

2010-06-16T10:12:00.001+01:00

I've been making this cake - coalition cake - since the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats became best friends after the General Election. I suppose the joke is wearing thin now and I'll have to go back to calling it plain old chocolate and vanilla marble cake but for now I like calling it coalition cake so that's what it is.

Although who is the chocolate and who is the vanilla? Perhaps Cameron is the chocolate, because he's rich (but not that dark) and Clegg is the vanilla? I don't think I have quite thought this one through but, whatever, the two mixes go together well in a tasty and satisfying way.

The recipe is your basic Madeira sponge mixture. I use Rachel Allen's recipe for her wonderful 'Bake' book, which is 225g (8oz) butter creamed with the same quantity of caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in four eggs and two teaspoons of vanilla extract and then fold in 225g (8oz) plain flour and two teaspoons of baking powder. Finally add 50ml (1.75 fl oz) milk and then put half of the mixture in spoonfuls around the prepared 20cm (8 in) cake tin. To the remaining mix add 50g (2oz) sifted cocoa powder and then dollop that into the tin with the vanilla mix.

Use a skewer or the tip of a knife to swirl the mixture around until marbled. Don't go mad - you're looking for a coalition with two distinct identities not one bland homogeneous whole. Politicians take note.

Bake at 180 degrees C (350 degrees F or gas mark 4) for 45 minutes, leave to cool in the tin for ten minutes, then turn out and leave on a wire rack until completely cold.

I like to ice mine and I use a basic vanilla butter icing. Use half and half unsalted and salted butter and use up to twice the amount of sugar than butter. I start with 100g of each (50g of each butter and 100g of sugar) then add an extra 50g of sugar if I think it needs it. Scrape the seeds out of a vanilla pod and add those too. Whip it all up with electric beaters until really fluffy and add a teaspoon of just boiled water at the end.

Smother the cold cake in the icing and serve in slices. Sadly no picture of this one. I have made it twice in recent weeks and twice it has been eaten before I have remembered to take its picture. I'll have to make it again...

Oaty bread rolls

2009-12-14T19:48:00.006Z

Sometimes things turn out perfectly and with me it's usually an accident. The same can be said for bread which is a moody beast at the best of times. It seems to be affected by the weather and humidity and the temperature of the room and the position of the moon in pisces. Actually I made that last one up, but I might be right!

Anyway I made a batch of bread on Sunday having been shamed into it by Pipany who, besides making pretty hand sewn and embroidered things also bakes bread almost every day. I used to, but then I went back to work and a few daily habits (bread making, dusting, tidying up, mowing the lawn) have been lost on the way.

The basic recipe I use for bread is in Bread: River Cottage Handbook Number three by Dan Stevens, which is such a brilliant book. He explains exactly how to make excellent bread and my breadmaking has improved since I got it.

His basic recipe is for a kilo of flour with 10g of yeast, 20g of salt, a handful or two of extras (like oats and seeds), 600ml of warm water, maybe a glug of oil or a knob of butter and then the magic of kneading.

For Sunday's rolls I use white flour and 10g of dried yeast which I start in the warm water with a teaspoon of golden caster sugar. I leave that in a warm place to froth up while I add the other bits to the flour: salt (but I only use 15g, not Dan's 20g), one tablespoon (or so) of runny lavender honey, a good big glug of sunflower oil and two handfuls of porridge oats. I then pour in the water and yeast and leave it in the Kenwood mixer to knead for ten minutes.

I then put the dough to rise until it reaches the top of the bowl, then let the mixer gently knead it again - and you must be gentle with the dough. Dan Stevens has got me out of my kneading and pounding at dough frame of mind and into a much gentler one. I then leave it to rise for a second time, again to the top of the bowl. I think it's the double rising that really develops the gluten and makes good bread. It can't be rushed.

Next it's time for shaping (again gently) and I cut this dough up into 16 pieces and shape into rolls. Then you need bowls - I use wide soup bowls. The first is for milk and the others for whichever coatings you want on your rolls. I use porridge oats and poppyseeds. What you do is submerge the rolls in the milk and then into the coatings, patting it in all over. Then put the rolls onto a baking tray and leave them to rise for a third time until - as Dan Stevens puts it - they're absolutely bursting to be baked.

They then go into a pre-heated oven at it's hottest temperature (I manage Gas mark 9, but hotter is better) for ten minutes. Then you turn the oven down to Gas 4 to 5 for another 10 to 15 minutes and they're done.

The Way Things Are

2009-11-13T16:02:00.005Z

I could never really say what we actually eat from day to day. I'm not a great planner of meals. Most of the time I tend to just cook whatever happens to be to hand. Sometimes, though I'm organised and that's great.

Last night is a good example of The Way Things Are. I found a packet of prawns in the freezer. I didn't know they were there because Brian bought them. He does most of the supermarket shopping and I do most of the cooking which can lead to Old Mother Hubbard moments when there's nothing in the house except Marmite and bran flakes.

These prawns were the fat, juicy frozen uncooked type. What a find! I had some risotto rice and a head of broccoli, so it seemed to suggest a risotto.

I sweated off a finely chopped onion in a bit of butter, added the chopped broccoli with the tender parts of the stalk, and then a cupful of rice and let that lot toast and sweat in the butter for about five minutes.

Next I added a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and let the rice drink it up before adding a couple of mugfuls of hot chicken stock made from those lovely little Knorr Stockpots - dinky little pots of jellied stock without the powdery taste of previous fave Marigold bouillon.

Then I left it to cook. There is a school of thought that says you should hover over a risotto, stirring it lovingly and adding ladles of hot stock as the rice drinks it up. Then there's another school of thought which says bung the whole lot in at once. I belong to the latter.

Then the cat arrived among the pigeons - or rather the mobile fishmonger arrived and I'd not only forgotten he was coming, I'd also neglected to make sure I had the requisite cash to make a purchase. Granny in the Annexe took pity and procured me half a kilo of mussels. Perfect to add to my seafood risotto.

So I did, along with the prawns, a pinch of thyme and a bit more butter and very delicious it was too (I was told).

So that was The Way Things Were last night. Tonight's going to be much the same, except I haven't got a nice bag of prawns to discover any more.

There is, however, a rather charming lobster...

Halloween cupcakes

2009-10-23T17:23:00.003+01:00

H7, no longer the teeniest Brownie in the pack, has decided it is time for her to do her cooking badge. This requires her to complete a number of cooking-related tasks and to understand that hands must be washed and that knives are sharp.

She has had to cook a healthy meal (leek and potato soup - her current signature dish) and some cakes or biscuits that she can take and share with her fellow Brownies.

Hence the Halloween cupcakes (yes, they're fairy cakes, but 'Halloween fairy cakes' sounded odd).

This is your usual run of the mill fairy cake recipe: two large eggs, a slosh of vanilla extract and 125g each of butter, caster sugar and self raising flour. H7 mixed it all in the new Kenwood; the first time she has used it and extra-exciting because of it. Then the mix is spooned into cake cases and baked for 15 minutes, which is about the time it takes to lick fingers, spoons and bowls clean.

She then topped them with glace icing and spirals of black icing dragged out into spider web shapes with a toothpick. (I helped with the spirals - the icing tube was a bit tough to squeeze for little hands, but she did manage three.)

All it needed then was a bag of jelly spiders (actually some of them are bats - we ran out of spiders) and there you have it - Halloween cupcakes and a step in the direction of a Brownies cooking badge.

Really fast courgettes and pasta

2009-10-10T13:00:00.004+01:00

Finally the courgette plants have started producing and, as usual, after a complete drought we now have a glut of the things.

I plant two varieties of courgettes: Genovese, a pale green skinned variety, and Cocozelle, a stripy traditional Italian style one. I don't grow the dark, green skinned ones any more because they just used to get overlooked because we adore the taste of the other two varieties more.

Generally when we eat them with a meal I just roughly cube the courgettes and put them into a pan with about a tablespoon of butter and let them cook until they're soft.

Sometimes, though, I serve them with pasta and this is how:

Fusilli with courgettes and crème fraiche.

(This method is loosely based on a River Cafe recipe from the new River Cafe Classic Italian Cook Book which was previewed in the November issue of Red magazine, although it's something I've made before, but without a recipe. The River Cafe recipe uses 150g of butter which might be authentically Italian, but it's too much for me!)

Boil the fusilli according to the packet instructions in boiling salted water. I use 9oz for the four of us - two adults and two children. The River Cafe uses 320g, is that about 9oz? Probably.

Add a slug of olive oil to a pan and cook a sliced clove of garlic for a few minutes.

Add to that 250g (or so) of courgettes chopped into rounds, halved or quartered if the courgette is a little rotund.

Add a slice of butter. How much does this weigh? About 50g or so, but it's not important.

Leave to cook, turning the courgette and garlic over in the buttery oil, scraping the bits off the bottom. Use a medium to lowish heat - not too high, if it browns it'll taste bitter.

When the courgette is soft, take the pan off the heat and let it cool for a few moments. If you've timed this correctly the pasta will be about done by now too. Often it isn't, but the courgettes don't mind hanging around.

Add a couple of tablespoons of crème fraiche (I use the lower fat version) to the courgettes and stir. It will seem a bit thick, so add a couple of ladlefuls of the pasta cooking water and stir again. This will give you a lovely silky sauce.

Toss the fusilli into the lovely creamy courgette-y sauce and serve in bowls with plenty of freshly grated parmesan and black pepper.

Simple suppers

2009-09-30T19:13:00.003+01:00

Just a couple of aides memoires for me really.

These are two suppers from the past week which got the thumbs up from the family.

The first was a Pork Pastry Plait.

250 g minced pork

Place in a bowl and add all/most/some of:

Chopped spring onions

Grated apple

Generous handful of chopped fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, sage, rosemary)

Salt and pepper

Worcestershire sauce

Soy sauce (actually tamari)

Two to three cream crackers whizzed to crumbs in the processor (or breadcrumbs or porridge oats)

Mix together and shape into a stubby, fat sausage.

Unroll a sheet of puff pastry and roll it out a little thinner. Place the pork on top and cut horizontal slashes in the pastry. Bring the ends up and then lattice the pastry strips across the meat, crossing them over and tucking the ends in as you go.

Place on a baking tray, brush all over with beaten egg and bake at Gas Mark 5 for about half an hour, until it is golden brown and cooked through.

I served this with some courgettes, fresh from the garden, which I cubed and then cooked quickly in about a teaspoonful of butter in a pan.

The second is Creamy Store Cupboard Pasta

This is a really fast tea and is perfect for one of those happy moments when you find the tail end of a tub of creme fraiche in the fridge, along with odds and sods of other tasty little treats.

Boil a handful or two of pasta per person in a big pot of salted water for 10 minutes, until al dente.

Raid the fridge for: Mushrooms, ham, cheese (soft or semi-soft, preferably blue), leftover olives anything really that goes with all of the above. Chop them up a bit. Toss the mushrooms into a pan with a little butter and some garlic, if you've got some (and you're not going to the dentist tomorrow. Although last time I went to the dentist she had definitely been eating garlic!)

When the pasta is cooked scoop out a cupful of the cooking water, drain the pasta and put it back into the hot pan. Add the creme fraiche and the mushrooms and all the other yummy bits you could find, stir around so that everything gets hot. If the sauce is a bit thick, add some of the water you reserved (which also helps the sauce to meld with the pasta).

Add some lovely fresh chopped herbs too, a good handful and some pepper and a swipe or two of nutmeg on the grater.

Pile into bowls and top with freshly grated parmesan and lashings of ground black pepper. This is never the same twice (it varies from fridge to fridge!) but it's always delicious!

Sunday pancakes

2009-09-27T10:00:00.000+01:00

Sunday is always pancakes day. We don't rush out of bed, so it's usually at least 8am by the time I'm digging the blender out of the cupboard. The coffee maker goes on and bubbles away to Aled Jones on Radio Two's Good Morning Sunday while I make the batter. Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs generally accompanies the actual cooking part. It all makes for a mellow, relaxed Sunday morning, before I charge off on a long run. Today it's an eight miler, so I feel quite at liberty to smother at least four of these pancakes in maple syrup or Nutella.

These are based on Nigella Lawson's banana buttermilk pancakes from 'Feast', but as ever I have tweaked things to suit the way I like to cook them.

RECIPE: Banananilla Sunday Pancakes

Place the following into a blender and whiz:

Two (or three) VERY ripe bananas, the sort that are so black they're falling out of their skins in a banana-type strip tease. Less ripe ones work too, but are less bananary. Green ones are foul. Just don't.

1 egg. Or two, if you've got hens and they're showing off. I have been known to add up to four eggs to this.

250 ml plain yoghurt. (The original recipe specifies buttermilk, if you've got a pot of that, use it. I've always got yoghurt and rarely got buttermilk. If you've got neither use milk, perhaps a little less to begin with, you can always add more. Acidify the milk with a little lemon juice - the acid reacts with the raising agents and makes the pancakes fluffy.)

150g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

(Last Sunday I forgot to add the baking powder and the bicarb. The pancakes were still edible, but they tasted slightly sour - no alkaline agents for the acids in the yoghurt to react with and make carbon dioxide bubble to make the pancakes fluffy. Not just a recipe - a science lesson too!)

30g (about a tablespoonful - life's too short to measure this!) melted butter.

A good slug of vanilla extract.

Whiz together until nicely blended, then dollop spoonfuls (about one and a half tablespoonfuls per pancake) onto a hot griddle. Wait until bubbles appear...

...then flip over to cook the other side.

Pile onto a plate and serve.

Serve with maple syrup, golden syrup, Nutella, strawberry jam, peanut butter, chocolate sauce, toffee sauce, honey, etc!

Variations.

Add: More bananas, less bananas, very ripe pear, tablespoonful of peanut butter, blueberries (drop onto the surface of the pancakes before flipping), wholemeal flour, handful of porridge oats, chopped plain chocolate (choconananilla pancakes), the sky's the limit, play!

Simple autumnal supper

2009-09-19T19:26:00.000+01:00

Has anyone else been enjoying Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers? It's on BBC1 in the early evening on a Wednesday, I think, but I've been missing it and catching up on iPlayer.

I love Nigel Slater. Not least because he's a good cook, not least because he's from the same neck of the woods as me and used to pass my childhood home on his school bus every day (according to his autobiography, Toast), but mainly because he cooks like I do and now he's got a programme all to his lovely self passing on all his brilliant tips.

He's not a slavishly follow a recipe man, just as I'm not that sort of woman. Who ever has all the ingredients to exactly follow a recipe? I don't and I'm sure most other people don't either. He cooks instinctively: What's in the garden? What's in the fridge? What's about to go off? What's just perfect for now? And then he wings it.

Tonight I wung it as usual. I was faced with a hungry man who wanted 'chicken, but tender' on a plate, and two equally hungry children, one of which has been clamouring for mashed potato for weeks. I ignored the latter (she hadn't been digging new steps in the garden) and I made up a chicken thing using a punnet of chicken thighs from (dratted) Tesco, the tail end of a chorizo from Narberth's glorious Spanish deli Ultracomeda, a couple of fabulous onions (proper boo-hooers these) and some nice maincrop spuds. Into the mix went some black olives and a jolly good glug of Taffy Apples cider, made in Wales and absolutely delicious (though it pains me to admit liking Welsh cider, being a Worcesetershire girl.) I remembered the lovely Nige and headed out into the garden for its contribution: A big handful of broadleaved thyme seemed to fit the bill.

I sizzled the chorizo, then added the chopped onions and cubed spuds. The thighs were already skinless and boneless so I snipped those into cubes with a pair of kitchen scissors (I find that much easier than using a knife) and added those to the pan. I then shared the Taffy Apples between the pan, the hungry husband and me (it was a 500 ml bottle), popped in the olives and the thyme and slapped on a lid. It was done, I decided, when the chicken was tender and the potatoes had gone soft and thickened the sauce a bit. I peppered it, but not salt as the chorizo is quite salty already.

While the chicken thing simmered I tackled a bowlful of mixed plums (Victoria, greengage, damson) that was slowly turning to honeyed mush. These I halved and tossed in a pan for a while with a tablespoon of butter and two of caster sugar. Result: thick, sweet, chunky plum sauce the colour of unicorns' eyes (which is a deep ruby red, by the way).

The chicken thing was lovely in bowls with steamed broccoli, the plums were beautiful as well as delicious with vanilla ice cream.

It was a simple, cheap, autumnal supper. I think the lovely Nigel would have been proud of me!

Happy Days...

2009-06-26T19:37:00.000+01:00

I've been neglecting my cooking blog! Not because I haven't been cooking, but just lack of time. Anyway I was in receipt of a lovely shiny new cook book yesterday. (Mr PM: "Of course, you really need another cookbook. Quite obviously you haven't got enough already..." Sarcastic rolling of eyes, etc. See photo. It's not that many...).

But food, like clothes, develops over time. There are fads and fashions. Things go out of date. Why am I justifying myself?

So, I'm not going to review the new book (which was Rachel's Favourite Food by Rachel Allen, for those who want to know) instead I'm going to revisit an old favourite and tell you the tale of a favourite recipe from it.

Here it is:

This was from the days when young Jamie was still 'nobbut a lad', before he got into the politics of school dinners and the fact that people may watch his programmes by the million, but they don't actually cook (mostly because they can't).

It's an excellent book, full of lovely stuff that I love to cook (as the fact that it is bristling with green Post-It notes testifies).

So which recipes have I cooked most often? Beef Stew with Newcastle Brown Ale and Dumplings; Roasted Cod with cherry Tomatoes, Basil and Mozzarella; Baked Cod with Avocado, Prawns, Cream and Cheese; Chicken Breast Baked in a Bag with Cannellini Beans, Leeks, Cream and Marjoram; Chicken Breast Baked in a Bag with Mushrooms, Butter, White Wine and Thyme, are the ones I have cooked more than once without really altering them, although we do have Smush Ins, which is more of an idea than a recipe, but the king of recipes is Rosemary Skewered Monkfish with Pancetta and Bread.

Actually I have never cooked this one with monkfish or pancetta and I don't use the rosemary skewers or the recommended ciabatta either. Mine's a more British version.

What I do (for four) is buy a couple of nice fat skinless, boneless salmon fillets from the fishmonger (okay, I'll admit, it's in Tesco. Sigh.) Cut these into neat cubes, then cut up some nice white bread from an unsliced loaf (or an uncooked garlic bread) into similar-sized cubes. Thread them alternately with the fish on to metal skewers.

Take some nice smoked streaky bacon from kindly-reared happy British pigs and stretch it and wind it around the kebabs. Them bash a few needles of fresh rosemary (about a tablespoonful or two) and a clove of garlic in a pestle and mortar until, well, bashed. Add some green extra virgin olive oil, stir and then drizzle over the kebabs. (You can leave this bit out if you've used garlic bread, which is a really fast cheat's version of this recipe.)

Bake in a pre-heated oven at Gas Mark 6 (Jamie says 7, but I always cook it at 6)/22o degrees C/425 degrees F until the fish is cooked and the bread is golden brown and crispy. I usually serve this with some steamed broccoli or a green salad and I remove the skewers in the kitchen.

If we're feeling really hungry I might par-boil potato wedges for nine minutes, then spread them on a tray, spritz with oil and cook them on the highest shelf in the oven (and definitely as Gas 7 - or even 8 - this time.)

A great meal, loved by all the family (you can make dinky cubes for small children) and one we have at least once a month, if not more often. It could probably be barbecued in the summer too. I've known fish-hating children eat this (it has bacon sandwich flavours with lots of garlic and the fish is well hidden) and the bread soaks up all the good Omega oils from the fish, so even if they don't actually eat the salmon, they get all the good stuff in the crispy bread cubes (and I've never known anyone turn those down).

Bread and butter pudding - again!

2009-02-23T12:01:00.000Z

Now we have new enthusiastically laying hens my thoughts keep turning to things to do with all these lovely brown eggs we're getting.

I don't do weekday puddings, but a weekend wouldn't be a weekend without one (just as Sunday mornings aren't proper without pancakes).

So this weekend found me heading in the direction of the bread and butter pudding yet again, having plenty of eggs, various bits of sliced white from the local bakery and, serendipitously, a pot of double cream.

This time I did the jam sandwich method. You begin by rootling around in the fridge or the cupboard for suitable jam. Marmalade is also more than suitable and actually preferable in many cases, but not this one as I had marmalade-haters (who'd have thought there's such a thing?) to feed.

This time I found a pot of Andrew's strawberry and rhubarb jam, a jam of such stupendous deliciousness I did toy with the idea of not using it, but I knew it would be fabulous.

What you do is butter the bread and make rounds of jam sandwiches and cut into pretty triangles, enough to fill your dish in a single layer (squeeze them in like passengers in economy class - they don't need to breathe).

I put them pointy side up, but it's not really vital. If you like the crusty bits to be crusty try the other way up or alternate, whatever.

Next empty the 284 ml pot cream into a bowl or jug, fill the pot up again with milk and add that to the cream. Crack in three eggs and whisk it all together with two tablespoons of golden caster sugar.

Now add a tot of whiskey. This is fabulous in the marmalade version of the pud. Go mad and add two tots if you wish. I restrained myself to one as there were children present. Whisk the creamy whiskey mixture and then sniff. It smells like fabulous egg nog. Pour over the sandwiches in the dish and press down.

I hadn't enough of this lovely mixture to quite fill the dish and cover the sandwiches, so I whisked up another egg and half a pot of milk and poured that over too. It doesn't seem to mind this sort of treatment thankfully. I have been known to forget to add the sugar and then have to stir that in afterwards too. Press the sandwiches down into the creamy custard and leave it to stand for about an hour. It is vital the bread has time to soak up the yummy custard.

Heat the oven to Gas mark 4, sprinkle the pudding with a handful of soft brown sugar and bake until the middle is just set and the sugar had caramelised to a lovely crunchy golden brown.

Serve with single cream or ice cream.

A simple pleasure

2009-01-27T13:35:00.000Z

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has a lot to answer for. Last night I watched the Channel 4 programme in which HFW attempted to persuade Tesco to change its policy and stock free range chicken instead of those poor flabby barn-raised ones.

What really incensed me was Tesco's attitude in general (making Hugh foot the £85,000 bill for the postage costs; on-camera and off-camera interviews etc). It is far too easy to rely on Tesco. I'm forever banging on about this, but then 'just popping in' for something (pesto, for example) and coming out with our food shopping. (I was going to describe it as our weekly shop, but I only manage to get to a supermarket about once or twice a month - it's 17 miles away and local shops are just more convenient. It almost makes going to such a palace of consumption a bit of a treat. I said almost.)

So this morning, in need of a bit of green grocery I popped out to Narberth (a mere 11 miles away) a nice little town, twinned with Ludlow no less, and filled a bag full of lovely things from the oddly-named Wisebuys. Its name makes it sound like a pound shop, but it is a large deli-style place. Possibly the only place in Pembrokeshire you can get wasabi, for example. It also sells bunches of herbs in buckets, smoked things from local farmers (and Scottish ones too). It probably sells pesto (I must check).

It sells good quality fruit and veg too, such as the monster comice pears I bought this morning. These pears would be far too big for the likes of Tesco, but are pears like I remember from our comice tree in Worcestershire. On slightly breezy sunny pear ripening days the ponies and I used to stand beneath the mighty comice waiting for it to drop its fragrant bounty (it was about half a mile tall - or seemed so.) One gust of breeze and a soft, perfectly ripe pear the size of a small football would plummet to the ground. If it hit you it bloody hurt. Then you'd have to fight two ponies for it, but the taste was worth it... ah, memories.

Anyway, also available today was purple sprouting broccoli. I phoned my husband to brag and then ate all of it lightly steamed with a poached egg, lots of black pepper and a dash or two of tamari. A simple pleasure, a lovely treat, and all thanks to the hard work of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the stubborn intransigence of bloody Tesco.

Taking the pesto

2009-01-20T13:36:00.000Z

I have a longstanding fascination with what other people eat. This overflows into supermarkets where I love to indulge in trolley gazing and in close analysis of other shoppers' shopping as it flows along the conveyor belt to the checkout.

The old ladies, for example, with their cakes and pouches of Whiskas. Fat chavs, in low slung jeans with low slung bellies clutching sulky sullen kids, with their heaped trollies of biscuits and burgers and smiling fried potato slices.

What do they think of the contents of my trolley? Well Tesco is pretty sure that I'm a vegetarian as I never buy meat there, but I do occasionally buy fish, so what does that make me? A piscatarian? (Or possibly a 'taking-the-piscatarian'.) Anyway, I don't buy many veggies there either as I either grow them or buy them from the Farmers Market.

So what do I buy from Tesco? Those round Finn Crisp crispbreads for a start. These I top with low fat soft cheese (NOT the high fat stuff which is too tongue cloggingly bleurch) and then a scrape of pesto. This is a case in point. It MUST be Tesco's own brand fresh pesto to which I am addicted. It is, in fact, the sole reason I go to Tesco and not Morrisons, Lidl or Aldi. And Delia Smith is totally to blame. I know in the past I was scornful of Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking book, but I did get a copy and she did recommend this pesto and (as expected) Delia was right and now I'm addicted. Which means I must occasionally darken the door of my nearest Tesco to get my pesto 'fix'.

This is quite simply the best pesto I have tasted. I could eat it from the pot with a spoon (and quite often do!) My children love it too, particularly dolloped into homemade minestrone soup or stirred into a quick tortelloni pasta supper. It's also lovely on top of cottage cheese on a nice crunchy skinned baked potato.

Which takes me back to the reason for this blog. What do you eat when you're in a hurry? If it's just me I'll probably eat the crispbread/cream cheese/pesto combo, but if there's a family to feed I have a couple of store cupboard fallback positions.

One is tuna noodles: Take a couple of sheets of dried egg noodles, chop a head of broccoli and add both to a pan of boiling water. Simmer for four minutes, drain and add a tin of drained tuna and a knob of butter. Top with plenty of ground black pepper. This quantity serves two adults and two small children. It's ready in five minutes and is a bit of a life-saver.

Tortelloni gratin: This is for those packs of filled tortelloni that supermarkets offer, but NEVER the ones with meaty fillings (too much like Whiskas). Ricotta and spinach is the best, or maybe the four cheeses or pesto versions. The beef ones are far too spooky. Simmer in boiling water for the recommended time. Meanwhile sweat shredded savoy cabbage, onions, leeks and chopped garlic in a little butter or olive oil until soft and unctuous. Add half a tub of creme fraiche (soft cheese or even cottage cheese) and as much of the aforementioned Tesco pesto as you wish. Mix in the tortelloni. Now you can either serve it as it is (which is quickest) or you can pile it into a gratin dish, top with a mixture of grated Parmesan/Cheddar/Gruyere and pop into a hot oven (gas 6, 200 degrees C) until golden brown and bubbling. This is lovely with a watercress/spinach/rocket type of salad. Serves four.

Throughly yummy sandwich for a Tuesday

2009-01-13T14:34:00.001Z

I had this sandwich for lunch today. It was one of those lunches forced on me by happenstance. Hannah, you see, in reaching for carrot peelings to feed to the Guinea Pigs, had knocked over the eggs and one cracked.

"Mummy you're going to be cross," she said, leaving the kitchen at a sprint.

Lunch, therefore, began with one slightly cracked egg from our lovely bantam who came into lay, quite festively, on Christmas Day and has honoured us with a daily egg ever since.

I poached said egg and its brother from the day before in a small pan of boiling water. Being so tiny and so fresh, they're a joy to poach, setting to a pleasing oval shaped white with a shocking jaffa orange yolk.

I had a handful of spinach, so I washed it and wilted it in a pan. Meanwhile I toasted two thin slices of white bread and lightly buttered it.

Sandwich assembly time. Place the bottom slice of toast on a plate. Top with spinach and a grind of black pepper, then a dollop - small one, it's January - of Hellman's mayonnaise. Top with the eggs and then the final slice of toast.

Apply, as Nigella would say, to face. If you can eat this without getting egg on your chin, then you're a better woman (or man) than I. Either that or you cooked your eggs for longer. Any which way, it was delicious.

A snuggly pear and almond pudding for a chilly day

2009-01-12T13:42:00.000Z

I made this last night for to follow a Sunday dinner of Shepherds Pie and Savoy cabbage. It began life as a bag of four rather attractive but hard pears. They were the sort that go from 'hard and inedible' to 'rot' without passing 'yummy and ripe'.

So, something cooked with pears it must be. I'd seen Rachel Allen's BBC2 programme earlier in the day and she had done a very yummy thing which began with peeled chunks of eating apples happily sizzling in a pan of butter, involved a panful of toffee sauce and ended with a heap of crumble topping. Not really what I was after, but I began with the pears in chunks in butter in a lidded frying pan, thinking, possibly, tarte tatin, but veered off into the realms of frangipane.

This is the recipe:

Start with four hard and hopeless pears. Peel, core and cut into chunks. Add to a small frying pan with a heaped teaspoonful of butter. Toss about a bit and then slap on a lid. Leave on a low heat while you make the frangipane.

Weigh two eggs. Remember how much they weigh and put to one side. You then use that weight for the butter, sugar and ground almonds/flour mix. I used two bantam eggs. If you've got monster eggs, use one or be prepared for slightly more frangipane than you bargained for! (Any extra could always be baked separately as a cook's perk.)

Put the eggs to one side while you weigh out the butter and sugar. (I used Clover buttery spread as I had run out of butter.) Beat together until light and fluffy, then add the eggs one by one and a good teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Then fold in the ground almonds and self raising flour (in the ratio of about four parts almonds to one part flour, more or less) and a teaspoonful of baking powder.

The pears should now be softened and sitting in a pool of peary buttery juices. Tip them into a shallow oven proof dish, top with the frangipane and cook at Gas Mark 3 for about 45 minutes. It's done when it's golden brown and springs back when pressed.

Serve with lashings of lovely custard.

Birthday cake

2008-08-31T18:39:00.001+01:00

This is not a recipe as such, more a bit of shameless bragging! You see being of the 'roast-chicken-and-veg-followed-by-apple-crumble-and-custard' persuasion, it's nice when I make a cake and it actually comes out as planned.

This one is Nigella's Chocolate Malteser Cake from 'Feast' (page 283) which is an interesting recipe in which you whisk up eggs and an indecent amount of sugar, add what is basically a hot mug of Horlicks and a tablespoon of butter, fold in a bit of flour and cocoa and bake it until it's cake. The icing has a heap of Horlicks in it too, with a bit of cocoa again for good measure and you slap it into the sponges with as many Maltesers as you can squeeze on.

For once I didn't burn it (despite it taking 20 minutes longer to cook than Nigella's recommended 25 minutes); for once it rose all the way up to the top of the tins, and for once it actually looks like the one in the picture opposite the recipe in Nigella's book.

It tasted good too, which was nice as it was to celebrate not one but three birthdays: Mum's 70th, my 42nd and Dad's 68th. Rosie wants one for her 5th birthday in December too, so I only hope that one will be as successful.

Cakes, generally, confuse me. Like mayonnaise they seem to involve some kind of kitchen alchemy that is affected by temperature and humidity as well as quantity and quality of ingredients. On this occasion, despite not having much in the way of an actual kitchen (like cupboards or sink, for example), I got it right.

Strawberry muffins

2008-07-19T10:45:00.000+01:00

So. It's the first day of the summer holidays. Eventually we drag ourselves from our beds.

"What would you like for breakfast darlings?" I trill at my two sweet urchins, pulling on my domestic goddess apron, plimming my bosom and tossing my hair in the style of Nigella.

"A treat," demands R4.

Rightyho. Is this the way summer is to pan out? Am I making a rod for my own back? Will they expect me to cook something from scratch every breakfast time?

Ptooey, as whatshisname says in the film 'Ratatouille'.

Anyway, today 'breakfast' is a loosely applied term, it being already pretty late. Not quite late enough, perhaps, for it to have become 'elevenses', but not quite the normal crack-of-dawnsiness one would really associate with the term.

A treat it is then. I survey the wreckage of my kitchen. I say 'wreckage' because last evening Brian took out two of the cupboards, the work surface and the radiator, then dug a big hole in the floor. No matter. I have a cooker and the top of the dishwasher, so off I go.

Yesterday was Farmers Market day in Haverfordwest, and I have a large punnet of fragrant strawberries from Manorbier. Muffins are breakfasty, so strawberry muffins it is. I turn, of course, to Nigella, at breakfast-times in need of treat, so I begin with her Orange Breakfast muffins recipe from Nigella Bites, and add strawberries.

INGREDIENTS AND METHOD

75g butter

* Switch the oven on to Gas Mark 6 (200 degrees C) and pop the butter into the oven to melt (use an ovenproof bowl! Doh!). Then pop twelve cake cases into your muffin tin.

220g self-raising flour
25g ground almonds
half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
one teaspoon baking powder
75g caster sugar

* Combine in a large bowl.
* Rescue the butter!

100ml orange juice
100ml milk
1 large egg

* Mix together in a jug, then add the cooled butter.

Strawberries

* Not an exact science this. Start off with about 16 big juicy strawberries. Fend off small, hungry children. Fail. Chop the eight remaining strawberries into cubes.

* Roughly combine the wet and dry ingredients and the strawberries. Pile into the muffin tins.

* Any mixture that you can't squeeze in can go into the oven in the oven proof bowl you used for the butter. The children won't know about this big, flat muffin cake. Cook's perk!

* Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown. Serve hot with butter (or, better still, clotted cream).

Makes 12 big fruity muffins (and a spare!).

Raspberry oaties

2008-07-07T15:44:00.001+01:00

Today's recipe is one I found on www.bbc.co.uk/food this morning when I had a big punnet of raspberries from the garden and a head empty of ideas as to what to do with them.

Things like cranachan sprung to mind, but I thought I'd better not give whisky to a six year old and a four year old. Anyway I hadn't any double cream and, now that petrol is gold-plated, 'just popping to the shop' needs careful consideration; will the journey cost more than the thing you are about to buy? Yes. Go without then.

So my search led me to this recipe for raspberry oaties by Berry Scotland.

What you do is rub 175g of butter into 225g of self-raising flour to make nice rubbly crumbs. Then stir in 175g each of rolled oats and golden caster sugar. Squidge and squeeze with your hands until you've got what, to all intents and purposes, is a oat crumble topping mixture.

Next press half of it into a swiss roll tin or a tray bake tin and press it down. Then get your lovely fresh raspberries, about 300g or so, spread them out over the mixture in the tin and press.

Then, if you're like me, panic that the tin you have chosen is too small, shrug and carry on regardless. Sprinkle the rest of the crumble mixture over the surface, catch up the bits that missed the tin and are on the work surface and put them back. Then press, press and press again (until it more or less is squeezed into the tin.) It will look like this:

Next bake at Gas Mark 5 (190 degrees C) for 20 to 25 minutes until it is golden brown.

Leave it to cool in the tin for ten minutes or so before cutting into squares. I don't make my squares all beautifully even - I do some big, some tiny. This is really so that I can say 'oh no, I shouldn't, oh go on then, just a little one...' but in fact I have one and then think, 'well was was just a tiny one...' and eat another three.

What can I say? Great recipe. A different way to use raspberries when there's a glut (I'm not a jam-maker). What you get is a pastry-like base, soft and fragrant with the juice from the fruit, a layer of soft raspberry-ness, and a crunchy, oaty topping. Very tasty.

Of course I then got to thinking about variations. Other berries, for example. I'm sure strawberries, blueberries and blackberries would all work here, and blackcurrants too as there is quite a bit of sugar to offset any sourness. You could use frozen fruit too, just thaw and drain, then carry on with the recipe as above. I have a whim to replace some of the flour with cocoa powder and add chopped dark chocolate to the topping too. Maybe next time!

Fish pie and Hot Cross Bun pudding

2008-06-16T09:59:00.000+01:00

We had Easter again on the Preseli Hills on Sunday - not the actual choccy eggs day, more a culinary nod thanks to the freezer and a bag of Hot Cross Buns I found lurking in its murky depths.

Easter always means a fish pie and a bread and butter pudding made with hot cross buns. I'm not sure how it came to pass but it's one of those family traditions I have made which are now set in stone (but possibly only inside my own head!)

Anyway the fish pie first. Fish pie is one of those things that it is tempting to throw everything at. I've seen all kinds of fish, plain, smoked, flat, round, whatever, gherkins, capers, bells and whistles (not literally!) but the best advice I can give is KISS! Keep It Simple Stupid!

So just the one kind of firm white fish, some lovely prawns, a fabulous sauce, fluffy mash and cheddar cheese. Anything else is, in my opinion, de trop, but I'm willing to be proved wrong on that.

I begin with a couple of fillets of haddock. Lie them in a roasting tin on top of a couple of bay leaves, almost (but not quite) cover with full cream milk and pop in the oven, Gas Mark 4, until just about cooked (but not quite). The fish will finish cooking when the pie goes back into the oven, so err on the side of caution now.

Meanwhile, make mashed potato. Non-purists may prefer to leave this part, like Delia, to Aunt Bessie. I can't see what's wrong with peeling a few spuds, boiling them and mashing them with a bit of milk and butter, but then I have gardener's hands and nails. If I had a beautiful manicure, then perhaps I'd call on Aunt Bessie (but probably not!) Anyway the thing is the mash must be soft and fluffy, not big dry lumps (like school mash - ugh!). It must sit in big fluffy clouds atop the fish and sauce looking as if it might fall in at any moment. Or, in other words, it needs to be a bit sloppy.

Right. The fish should be done now. If you've got a bag of defrosted raw king prawns (from Tesco - natch!) put them into the hot milk around the fish and they will almost cook. Leave them for a few minutes and they blush a lovely pink. Then drain the milk off into a jug and pop the fish and prawns on a plate, covered, while you get on with the sauce.

Make a basic white sauce with a spoonful of butter (I just dig it out of the butter dish - it's about a heaped tablespoon) and the same of flour. Use the milk from poaching the fish and a little extra to make a nice smooth sauce. Again not too thick, it should be velvety and voluptuous, not so thick you can stand the spoon up in it. Next season with pepper and a little salt, then add the secret ingredient.

I'm not sure where I got this from, it might be my own idea or (more likely) I read it somewhere and assimilated it into the dark recesses of my brain. Anyway, the first time I added this it was to please my two little girls to whom pink is practically perfect, but it was an enormous hit with everyone, male, female, young and old. So add a goodly dollop of tomato puree and whisk it into the sauce. It turns it a pleasing corally pink, but also adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the flavour of the sauce too. It makes it more, um, saucy and I do love a saucy sauce.

Now, flake the fish and break up the prawns (I do this as I'm feeding small children with little mouths. If you've only got adults - or teeny prawns - skip this bit). Put into an attractive dish and pour over the pink sauce. Float clouds of mash on the surface. Astonishingly they don't sink. Smooth over with a fork. Rough it up again. Bits of pink sauce will peek through, but that doesn't matter. Finally grate some lovely cheddar cheese in a nice thick layer over the top, then pop back into the oven, Gas Mark 5, until all golden, bubbling and delicious.

I always serve this pie with a mix of steamed broccoli and cauliflower as they are perfect little vehicles for scooping up the lovely sauce.

For the pudding I use a pack of six hot cross buns. Split, butter and sandwich with some lovely jam. This time I used some of my friend Andrew's gorgeous greengage jam, but, as you probably don't get lovely homemade jammy gifts from Andrew, any good quality jam or marmalade will do.

Layer the buns attractively in your dish, cutting them in half as need be to fill up any gaps. Next grab one of those small pots of double cream, 284 ml I think they are, and pour it into a bowl. Fill the empty pot with some full cream milk and add that too, along with another splosh of milk for luck. Add three large eggs and two big tablespoons of golden caster sugar, whisk and pour over the buns. I sometimes add a tot of whisky to this mix, which is nice too.

Leave it to soak, pour over more of the creamy mixture and repeat until you can't get any more in. Put the dish into a roasting tray in the oven at Gas Mark 4, then pour boiling water into the roasting tin so it comes half way up the side of the bowl. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and the custard is almost set. Serve with some cream poured over.

Assembly Line Delia

2008-03-12T10:04:00.000Z

Delia’s Monday night cooking programme on BBC2 was, excuse the pun, food for thought. Not the Delia we’re used too. Not Christmas, Summer, Winter or How to Cook Delia. Instead this was Assembly Line Delia. Open a packet of this, a tin of that, add some frozen mashed potato and here you are, delicious food.

We were treated to, perhaps quite unnecessarily, visits to the footballing side of Delia and, poignantly, we visited the ‘Shed of Delia Past’. A museum of previous cooking series, with serried ranks of bowls, plates, spoons and serving platters lined up on shelves. I have to admit I looked at those and foresaw the auction in years to come as Delia fans fight over the sainted one’s wooden spoons the same as fans eagerly bid for Elizabeth David’s culinary history.

But Delia isn’t usually wrong. This is the woman who knew we would all want to scoff cranberries by the truckload. Supermarkets have talked of the ‘Delia effect’ where avid cooks rushed to buy the latest must have ingredient, like white eggs from the How to Cook series, chosen not because they taste better than the brown-shelled variety, but more by design as they looked stylish on the cover of the book.

Now Delia has turned her eye on ready-prepared ingredients where all the ‘boring stuff’ has been done by someone else in an industrial kitchen. To a purist who likes to know the exact provenance of his or her ingredients, it must have looked like madness. I cringed when she opened the tin of mince, for example. But, perhaps, I would have cringed less if the label on the tin had promised that it was British beef. I worry about such things. I also live in an isolated rural area. The nearest supermarket is 16 miles away and I don’t work. I can fry up a batch of mince and onions and I often do. I also cook in bulk, freeze it in family sized portions and assemble it at the last minute, exactly as Delia was doing on Monday. I also remember as a kid with a working mum, that mum did exactly that. Including the mashed potato. Mum used to make a big batch of mash, pipe it into rosettes on grease proof-paper lined trays, freeze it and use it exactly as Delia was doing on Monday.

And isn’t that better? That little bit of preparation, that extra bit of care, than just buying an off-the-peg ready meal shepherds pie and pinging it into the microwave?

Delia made a lovely looking fish pie with hot smoked salmon and quails eggs with a pot of ready made cheese sauce and the ubiquitous frozen mash. My sister’s a dentist with two kids and a non-cooking husband. I can see her making that pie. She can afford the ingredients, but not the time, and I could see her making that on a weekday. She can cook brilliantly, but who would want to after a day in which they had done 65 NHS dental check-ups? I’d make it too, but I’d probably cook the components myself because I have the time, but not the money.

I think that is where the genius of Delia lies. These recipes are cook-able by the non-cook and the strapped-for-time-cook as well as they competent time-rich cook. Buy all of the ready-prepared ingredients, or pre-prepare your own. It’s your choice, your kitchen and you are in charge.

Last night I made chicken and rice. In fact it was a Delia recipe, a variation on her famous Chicken Basque. I did a quick cook version using the Swiss Marigold stock she was seen to use on Monday. I used white basmati rice not brown, I did cook the chicken thighs from raw, but I have been known to make it with leftover chicken, and I used dried herbs. Had Delia been cooking it on Monday she would perhaps have bought ready-cooked supermarket chicken thighs. What is the difference? Perhaps what she was really doing was the equivalent of gourmet food from leftovers? Something that seems to have been forgotten these days when food is tossed away because some have forgotten about thrift and the art of using up what is left.

I’m a Delia fan and I’ll probably watch the whole series and buy the accompanying book. But I won’t slavishly follow her directions. I might use her ideas, but I can’t see me buying a pot of ready made cheese sauce. Oh, and I’ll freeze my own mash too.

Frozen Mashed Potato

Also known as Duchesse potatoes from the Good Housekeeping Home Freezer Cook Book 1972

6lb old potatoes peeled and boiled
2 oz butter
1 egg
1 level tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper
¼ level tsp grated nutmeg

serves 10

Mash the potatoes and add the remaining ingredients (no milk) and beat well. Line a baking tray with non-stick paper. Using a forcing bag fitted with a large star nozzle, pipe onto the tray about 20 raised pyramids of potato with a base of about 2 inches.

Freeze uncovered until firm. Remove from the freezer and pack onto a foil plate or container. Cover, seal and label.

TO USE: Use in Delia’s recipes or put on a greased baking sheet and brush lightly with egg. Put into a cold over and cook at 400 degrees F (Gas mark 6) until heated through and lightly browned.

Black tagliatelle with tomatoes, garlic and olives

2007-09-07T02:23:00.000+01:00

You know how it is - husband pops into Lidl, spies black squid ink pasta for sale and comes home with a bagful as 'something interesting for the girls'. The girls, Hannah, 5, and three-year-old Rosie were, respectively, dubious and fascinated.

The pasta, meanwhile, sat in the cupboard for a week or two, daring me to think of something to cook with it.

Recipe books seem to err on the side of a seafood sauce, suggesting things like clams, prawns or, appropriately, squid. Unfortunately such delicacies are not thick on the ground on the Preselis! But then I was in my local Spar which happily stocks lovely veggies from the local biodynamic farm, Plas Dwbl, and there was a lovely carton of yellow egg tomatoes and a bag of mixed differently sized cherry tomatoes, with a couple of the yellow ones thrown in for good luck. How could I resist!

We had some of these jewel-like delights for lunch tossed around in a little olive oil in a frying pan then popped into a sandwich with smoked bacon and crusty granary bread.

But I couldn't resist them at tea time either and the black tagliatelle sort of jumped out of the cupboard at me. So I cooked this:

Black tagliatelle with tomatoes, garlic and olives

Set the oven to Gas mark 6-7, and put a good handful of mixed cherry and yellow tomatoes into a roasting tin. Cut up some of the bigger tomatoes, the rest can be left whole.
Roughly chop one garlic clove per person, and a couple of shallots or red onions too. Add a few glugs of good olive oil, stir and put in the oven.
Meanwhile cook the black tagliatelle, a nest or two person according to greed, in boiling salted water according to the packet instructions.
Chop a nice big handful of parsley, preferably the broad-leaved type.
When the tomatoes are blistering and soft, add a handful of green olives per person to the roasting tin, swirl it around and put back into the oven until the olives are heated through.
Drain the pasta, reserving a few tablespoonfuls of the cooking water, then toss the tomatoey contents of the roasting tin and the parsley into the hot pasta. Add some of the cooking water to loosen up the lovely tasty sauce.
Pile into dishes and top with freshly grated Parmesan and ground black pepper.

Green soup

2007-07-16T12:24:00.000+01:00

This is a summer soup. I make gallons of it once the courgettes kick in, mostly at the request of Rosie who calls it "proper soup". It is a bit difficult to write a recipe for it as I usually just use whatever is to hand, but I'll have a go!

I usually head off into the veggie garden in my stripy apron and fill the lap with cucumbers and courgettes, dropping a few on the way back to the kitchen. I might grab a bit of flat leaf parsley on the way too.

It really is great for using up the glut of courgettes - but is at its best once the cucumbers are around too. In fact, 'proper' green soup is probably made with 100% cucumbers, even when served hot it tastes cool somehow! I suppose it could be served as a chilled soup too, but I'm not much of a fan of chilled soups and I have never tried it.

When there is a glut of courgettes I chop them up into chunks and put them in the freezer in plastic bags in the right quantities to make a batch of this soup. I don't bother with blanching - I'm not sure really what that is for - and it doesn't make a difference to the soup. Just grab a bag out of the freezer and put them into the pan frozen, then follow the recipe as normal.

INGREDIENTS

An armful of green things: courgettes, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, nettles etc. Use singly or in combination. The minimum quantity is the equivalent of about four large cucumbers.

A knob of butter or 1tbsp of olive oil

500ml chicken stock (or water and a sachet of instant miso soup)

100g of soft cheese (approximately half a 200g tub of Philadelphia light) or use creme fraiche, or one of the soft goat's cheese logs they sell at Farmers' Markets. I once made it with Feta cheese and that too was delicious.

Freshly grated nutmeg

Black pepper

METHOD

Chop the courgettes/cucumbers etc into chunks and put them in a large pan with the butter/oil. Slap on a lid and leave to sweat until soft and transparent.

Add enough stock to make the desired soup consistency.

Grab one of those stick blender jobbies and buzz the soup in the pan until it is smooth (or put it in a blender/food processor, but that's more washing up!)

Add the soft cheese, as much nutmeg as you dare and the black pepper and buzz again.

Serve with oatcakes for a delicious healthy low fat, low GI meal.

NOTES

Swirl with double cream if you are really posh/showing off/not on a diet.
I once made it with yellow courgettes - yellow soup!

Squidgy banana cake

2007-07-02T14:11:00.000+01:00

This is one for toddlers and small children. It is based on Nigella Lawson's banana bread on page 33 of 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' but my method is slightly different. The result is a deliciously fragrant loaf cake that can be served with custard for a lovely winter pudding or eaten cold. I love wholemealy things, so can't resist adding a bit of Dove's organic wholemeal flour, but make it with all white flour if preferred. This definitely is cooking as a game you can eat!

Ingredients:

4 really ripe bananas

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

150g caster or soft brown sugar

125g olive or sunflower oil

100g plain flour

75g wholemeal flour

2 tsp baking powder

half tsp bicarbonate of soda

half tsp salt

100g sultanas

Method:

Scrub your toddler/small child, put aprons on everything and possibly newspaper on the floor too, according to the child's temperament. More than one toddler/child may be used.
Get a really big plastic bowl.
Peel the bananas. Throw into bowl and set toddler/child to attack. Get them to squeeze and squidge.
Next you need two large eggs. Give them to the children to crack into the bowl. Fish out bits of shell - use other bits of shell to pick up the fragments, for some reason this seems to work. Allow the children to feel the texture of the egg white and the slippery yolk, then break the yolk and watch the yellow run into the banana.
Continue squidging the mix. Add vanilla extract. Smell the yummy vanilla.
Add the sugar. You could reduce the amount of sugar a little as it is quite a sweet cake. Squidge!
Weigh 125g of olive or sunflower oil and pour in.
Add 100g plain flour and 75g of wholemeal flour. Squidge!
Add 2 tsp baking powder, half a tsp bicarbonate of soda and half a tsp of salt.
Add 100g sultanas and squidge until thoroughly mixed.
Put handfuls of the mixture into a lined loaf tin, scraping the bowl/hands/arms etc with a spatula.
If 100% sure about the freshness of the eggs, leave the children licking their hands and arms while you put the cake into an oven preheated to 170 degrees C/gas mark 3 for an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.
If not sure about provenance of eggs, try to prevent children from licking arms etc. Try!
Give toddler/child washing up bowl full of bubbly water and the dirty bowl and spatula and a plastic jug for 'water play' (aka 'washing up'!). Make yourself a cup of tea.
The cake is cooked when a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Wait a few minutes before slicing and eating.

Optional:

Add chopped plain chocolate for a choconana cake.
Add 1tsp of cinnamon or mixed spice for a spicynana cake.

Instant banana ice cream

2007-06-26T14:21:00.000+01:00

This is based on an idea from TV chef James Martin. This is a lovely alternative to shop bought ice cream as you can control the amount of sugar and fat. The result is a soft scoop ice cream, but you must eat it straight away. Left overs can be frozen, but will need to spend a little time in the fridge to soften up before serving. The bananas must be properly ripe with nice spotty skins, otherwise you don't get a lovely creamy result.

Ingredients and method:

4 ripe bananas - slice, put in a thin layer in a plastic bag and freeze, perferably overnight but you can do it in the morning and make this ice cream after school.

When you are ready to serve the ice cream put the bananas into a food processor and add:

250 ml natural yoghurt (I use approximatley half a large tub of Yeo Valley organic) 0r 250ml buttermilk (or a mixture)

2-3 tbsp (or to taste) maple syrup or runny honey or soft brown sugar

Slap the lid on and process until you have a nice thick ice cream, but not too long or it will turn into a smoothie!

Scoop into cornets or bowls.

Options:
Replace a banana or two with frozen mango, strawberries or other soft fruit.
Use flavoured yoghurt, eg strawberry, but reduce the amount of syrup/honey.
If just using banana, add 1 tsp natural vanilla extract for a banana and vanilla ice cream.

Rosie's favourite sausage bolognese sauce

2007-06-26T13:58:00.000+01:00

Ingredients:
1 large onion
450g sausages
1 tsp mixed herbs or 1 tbsp fresh herbs such as thyme, rosemary, sage
1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 dash tomato ketchup

Method:
Finely chop the onion and brown it in a frying pan with about a tablespoonful of olive oil.
Meanwhile skin the sausages and squeeze the meat out into the frying pan. Push it about and chop it up with the onion until both are starting to colour.
Add the herbs and the tomatoes, then fill the can up with cold water and add that too.
Leave to bubble away until it is a nice thick sauce.
Stir in the ketchup (this is optional, but child-pleasing).
Serve over pasta, baked potatoes or boiled new potatoes and top with a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan (or cheddar if preferred).

Serves four.

Options:
Add grated carrot as a hidden vegetable.
Add a can of red kidney beans and some chilli powder for a sausage chilli and serve with boiled rice.
Layer it up with lasagne sheets and bechamel sauce to make a sausage lasagne.