Zingy lemon and lime marmalade recipe for grownups
This is a zingy marmalade that can be made at any time of year – a sweet gel with tangy strands of lemon and lime. Be warned it’s very moreish – whilst Danny was on a conference call this morning I slathered it on slice after slice of toast. A jar of this superb marmalade would be a perfect in a Christmas hamper or just produced with a flourish as a present for someone very special. A few jars kept at home on a larder shelf would give you a taste of summery freshness during those short dark winter days. My mum used to mention the...
read moreYummy lamb steak recipe: lamb, halloumi, couscous and summery salad served in warm pitta/pita envelopes
Sometimes I get sick and tired of conventional meat and two veg sit down suppers. I want something that I can pick up in one hand and eat beside the pond or balance a plate on the arm of the sofa and guzzle whilst I watch a bit of TV. I know that there’s a big move to get people to sit down at a table and eat together so I’m bucking the system a bit here. What I’m saying is that as Danny and I always sit down to eat together – sometimes it’s good to have a meal that just needs a fork simply our hands to eat. This sort of meal is a...
read moreLunch brunch snack recipe – easy, fast and delicious
This ham, cheese and tomato brunch snack was ridiculously easy to make. Five star comfort food. The secret of course is putting grated cheese and tomatoes under the ham as well as on top. This gives a glutinous squish that perfectly counterbalances the crisp underside of the toast. I really enjoy making savoury snacks and came up with the cheese under the ham idea this morning whilst I was lying in bed thinking about brunch. Perhaps I need to explain a little more about why we eat brunch everyday. It’s an important meal – we eat just that...
read moreRecipe for rare fillet steaks with a green peppercorn and cream sauce
I spotted a fillet of beef joint on the Tesco butcher’s counter. It had a good dark colour and I reckoned that it would taste great. As a payday treat I asked for two small fillet steaks about 2cm/0.8 inches deep. I rushed home with the bounty – Danny would cook the steaks and I’d make the green peppercorn and cream sauce. Green peppercorns are sold ‘wet’ in small jars of brine. They are crunchy and reasonably hot but don’t have the kick of dried black peppercorns. I love them. One of the easiest sauces to make is a...
read moreSucculent meatloaf recipe
“Have you ever cooked meatloaf, Conchita?” Meatloaf sounds so vile. It has never jumped out of the cookbook pleading “Cook me, eat me.” “What I mean is that we haven’t got a meatloaf recipe on the website. I had it once in America and it was good. It’s supposed to be economical…” “OK I’ll give it a go.” I have a vague memory of being served cold meatloaf as a child. The hostess whipped off its cover with a flourish. It lay on a giant oblong serving plate, looking very large and brown and dead. I can remember the pattern...
read moreRaspberry recipes on The Cottage Smallholder site
I love raspberries. Could eat them every day. When I was working in London and dining out a lot, I would often order fresh raspberries with a sprinkle of castor sugar for dessert. Friends tucking into waist expanding desserts would think that I was mad or on an impromptu diet. They didn’t realise that each savoured mouthful took me into the heart of a long summer’s day. Luckily for me, raspberries are packed with vitamins and minerals and are classed as a super food. But the time that it takes to harvest them makes them rather expensive to...
read moreRecipe for oven braised celery – how to love/hate celery
Celery is so good for you. Apart from many other benefits it helps to lower blood pressure naturally. Danny suffers from high blood pressure but actively avoids celery. Even when I buy a delicious blue cheese and munch it on beautifully prepared sticklets of washed and de-strung celery to try and tempt him to give celery a go, he reaches for the crackers to enjoy his share of the blue cheese. “I just hate celery. The crunchiness, the strings – everything about it. Yuk!” It was an impasse until I introduced him to stove top braised...
read moreUpdate on the superb easy Yorkshire pudding recipe
I was waiting in a check out queue at Tesco yesterday when I spotted that the check out lady looked familiar. I was 95% certain that this was the person that had shared her foolproof Yorkshire pudding with me. I was impatient to get to the top of my queue, not to check out my shopping quickly and motor home but rather to thank her for the recipe and find out her name. “Were you the generous lady that shared your Yorkshire Pudding recipe with me?” She was initially a bit evaisive. “It could have been me.” “The fabulous recipe with the...
read more
FD