Recipe for Fiona’s fabulous watercress soup
Watercress is packed with vitamins (A, C and K). It is a great source of iron, calcium and is full of beneficial chemicals such as glucosinates. It’s also quite pricey to buy, so when I saw a couple of packs reduced to 20p on the Tesco *CFC, I grabbed them with a chortle. Most summers we grow our own watercress in pots in a shady area of the garden but our plants are still babies at the moment. If you like watercress it’s well worth growing your own. You can see how to grow watercress at home and an update here. The secret to the deeply...
read moreRecipe for traditional slow cooked cottage pie: slow cooker/crock pot
Ever since my mum was sent a box of meals from Abel and Cole I haven’t forgotten her comment when she reviewed the cottage pie. “It was a really good traditional cottage pie with no fancy or far flung additions. Delicious!” This was several years ago and I’ve been meaning to make a traditional cottage pie since then. Of course I wanted to see if my recipe came up to scratch the in A&C stakes as far as mu mum is concerned. Yesterday I had minced beef in the fridge and as it was a chilly day I reckoned that cottage pie would be...
read moreRecipe for Danny’s easy, tasty, rare roast rib of beef
Years ago during the great BSE scare in the late 1990s I gave up eating beef for a year. I’d never been a big fan of burgers but rare roast beef was an all time treat for me. Bone in beef was believed to be an even bigger no-no back then. People and cows were dying from this disease. I also gave up butter for a few years before the beef boycott. Until one happy day I saw an advertising hoarding on my way out of London. “Welcome back to butter!” It announced. I drove home with a pit stop at the dairy section of the local supermarket. I...
read moreRecipe for Fiona’s scrummy bread and butter pudding
“Why this is wonderful!” My mother quickly took another mouthful. “I wasn’t sure that it would be OK. I couldn’t be bothered to look up Delia’s recipe.” “Well never look it up again, Darling. Just note down how you made this.” I was thrilled. Some of my best recipes have been created out of laziness or by mistake. This recipe is one of those. I usually follow Delia’s recipe for luxury bread and butter pudding – replacing the currants and crystallised fruit with sultans and raisins. It always goes down well and is a...
read moreRecipe for quick chicken, broccoli and yacon stir fry
One of the highlights of the veg growing year is the harvest of purple or white sprouting broccoli. OK they take a long time to mature – the plantlets go into the soil in early July and they are harvested from March the following year. But the flavour is wonderfully sweet – totally unlike the PSB available at great expense in the shops, which can be a bit bitter. This stir fry took advantage of the sprouting broccoli from our allotment. It also uses chicken left over from the Sunday roast and of course yacon from last year’s harvest. If...
read moreRecipe for pork tenderloin in a tomato and pepper sauce
Every year we bottle/can loads of tomatoes for use over the winter. These are sweet and the flavour is delicate. But however many jars I make we find that they always run out by Christmas. Luckily we love good quality tinned plum tomatoes. They have to be whole tomatoes rather than the chopped ones. These tinned toms are more expensive than the value brands but they taste so much better. Over the last few months there have been loads of half price offers in the supermarkets and I cashed in big time. A few days before I invented this recipe, I...
read moreRecipe for pork fillet and yacon stir fry with sweet chilli sauce
Pork fillet can sometimes be a bit disappointing – especially when it is sold as medallions. We’ve discovered that if it’s marinaded for an hour before cooking, sliced and cooked very quickly it’s delicious. In fact I think it is one of my favourite types of meat for a stir fry. I’ve been making quite a few stir fries recently. They are quick and it’s fun to play with the ingredients. For years I got the wrong end of the stick regarding stir fries – imagined that everything had to be fried in oil. Of course you can use...
read moreRecipe for delicious and easy chicken and ham risotto
We eat a lot of risotto in the cottage. It’s a great way of padding out small leftovers of meat and totally vegetarian risottos are great too – all that creamy rice with just a little bite is gorgeous. Generally I am the one who makes it. Danny tried it once using some duck fat that he found lurking in the bottom of the fridge. I’m not sure how old that fat was but it tasted like something from Tutankhamen’s tomb. I strongly suspect that he did this accidentally on purpose. He’s never been asked to attempt the dish again. In fact...
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