Easy and deluxe prawn, spinach and gnocchi recipe
I adore prawns. Could eat them everyday. Two favourite recipes are Donagh’s Gambas al pil pil and Clare’s prawn gnocchi. Prawns are expensive but often there are great reductions to be found in the frozen food section of the supermarket. Yesterday I discovered through MySupermarket.com that Tesco Finest Canadian prawns were half price. Perfect. With a limitless budget I probably would have bought uncooked prawns for added flavour but the cooked prawns tasted fine. The beauty of Clare’s dish is that it can be assembled and cooked in 15...
read moreSuperb slow cooked lamb casserole recipe (posh lamb stew)
I used not to be much of a fan of lamb casserole or stew. I think that I made it once for Danny and didn’t like it as it tasted bland and fattylike all the lamb casseroles I’d tasted before. Back then I didn’t have a slow cooker/crock pot – which is great for enhancing the flavour of cheaper cuts of meat. This week the scales fell from my eyes when I used some lamb shoulder neck chops at the Highgate Farm Shop. Six chunky chops (900g) for just over four quid. Feeling thrifty I bought them, determined to make something...
read moreEasy recipe for rissoles – best left over Sunday joint recipes
The joint of wild boar was excellent. I chose a recipe from the superb Italian cookbook The Silver Spoon as my starting point for the leg joint. Although it was delicious, the sauce was a bit too strong for home reared wild boar (and I left out the vinegar!). The flavour of our joint was good and gently gamey and I’m definitely going to buy it again for a special treat meal. I’ll use white wine for the marinade and post my recipe then. Meanwhile – what to do with the leftovers? I decided to branch out and try making some rissoles,...
read moreNew flavoursome spaghetti bolognaise sauce recipe cooked in the slow cooker/crock pot
Danny is picky about pasta. Won’t eat macaroni and the thought of penne has him panicking that I might actually have finally got up the nerve to cook it for him. “I like linguine, spaghetti, angel hair.” “Tagliatelle?” “Maybe.” I don’t ever mention ravioli since this terrible disaster. We eat a lot of spaghetti bolognaise. Frozen in flat ziplock bags it takes just half an hour max from freezer to plate. We’ve been eating versions of our patent recipe for years and I decided to see if I could make it tastier. I have to let...
read moreCelia’s baked pork chops with crackling squares
I’ve come rapidly to the conclusion that Celia – of Purple Podded Peas fame – is an excellent and intuitive cook. And Danny wholeheartedly agreed when he tasted her recipe. “Wow, this dish is exceptional,,” he said, as he guzzled his chunky Old Spot pork chop. “The idea of cooking the crackling separately in small squares is just pure genius.” Celia had told me her method of cooking pork chops on our recent girly day out. “Cut of the skin and about a centimetre of the fat and cut it into squares. Brown the chops in a...
read moreTwo easy apple sauce recipes
Apple sauce is so easy to make and it’s versatile too. Fabulous with pork, duck or goose it can also be added to cakes, pastries, used in crumbles and as a topping for cereals or yoghurt. Here are two apple sauce recipes. One making apple sauce from scratch and the other using leftover apple must from making jelly. Way back I would have chucked the apple must but now we are trying to use everything that comes our way and it’s fun. There’s a word of warning though if you are an apple sauce making virgin. Having made your own apple...
read moreMint jelly recipe
I slipped on my golden boots (only joking) and rustled this up yesterday when rain stopped play in the garden. I’d researched apple mint jelly in the meantime and discovered that cooking apples give a better overall flavour (Bramleys ideally if you live in the UK). I also needed to use and a lot more vinegar than I thought. This recipe tastes like a jelly equivalent of homemade mint sauce, minty and full of flavour but much more delicate than the in your face commercially produced mint sauce. I also ‘saved’ the jars of mint jelly that...
read morePumpkin jam recipe
Sweet, tangy with a good ginger fizz, I’m delighted with this recipe. It uses the type of pumpkin grown for carving rather than eating. So you can make your pumpkin Jack O’ lantern and then recycle the pumpkin flesh into jam. Perfect for spreading on toast on a cold winter morning or hot jam tarts for a bonfire night party or even dressing a special steamed sponge pudding. To be quite honest with you, the flesh of a carving type pumpkin is pretty neutral tasting but it does infuse flavours very well and gives the jam a good texture....
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