Fresh tomato salsa recipe. How to turn your party leftovers into treats
This is my second recipe in the series of how to turn your party leftovers into something delicious that you’d actually like to eat. This is a fun challenge and everything has been great so far. I was faced with a small bowl of sliced tomatoes left over from the party. There were loads of whole tomatoes too but they can easily be incorporated into other dishes or even frozen in bags – no need to blanch – to pop into stews during the winter when no home grown toms are available. Normally a bowl of sliced tomatoes that could be turned into...
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 moreEasy recipe for Yorkshire puddings – the puffiest in the world
I’ve always been rather proud of my Yorkshire puddings. But this recipe new puts my usual offerings totally in the shade. These puds puff up, keep their shape and are 100% guaranteed to be a success. I was given this recipe by a checkout lady at Tesco many months ago. It is such an easy, no fuss recipe that I didn’t even bother to write down the measurements of ingredients. This weekend I decided to finally test it out. I put the trays into the oven to heat up. It’s well known that the secret of great Yorkshire puds is to have the fat or...
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 Celia’s potato pancakes: canapés, starters, light lunch
We don’t tend to have a starter on Christmas day as I prefer to serve canapés if people are feeling peckish. Traditionally these are smoked salmon on thinly sliced brown bread. Danny is a bit picky about the sort of salmon that he likes, ideally the salmon should be wild and not farmed. But as we were having a budget Christmas this year I secreted a pack of farmed smoked salmon trimmings in the fridge and planned a different sort of canapé. Initially I considered making blinis and asked on Twitter for a good recipe. Celia – of Purple...
read moreDanny’s yummy homemade garlic bread
Spaghetti bolognaise is one of our staples. Our recipe is more like the traditional Italian one with lots of vegetables and not so much meat as the UK version. It tastes delicious, you are not aware of the vegetables and isn’t as sickly and dense as some UK recipes can be. The great thing about our recipe is that it already has loads of veggies in it so there’s no real pressure to serve veg on the side. Although I do like a really fresh green salad. Danny loves it too but insists on garlic bread. Up until last week we always bought...
read moreDelicious crispy potatoes transformed from cold left over spuds
We are going through a craze of eating Rooster potatoes at the moment. These are red skinned and extremely floury. The trick with Roosters is to wash them but not to peel them. The skin stops the spuds breaking up in the saucepan and can be easily peeled off before serving if you have time on your hands. Even the skin of a Rooster potato is tasty so there’s no prinky peeling here at the cottage. Last weekend I discovered that D had a lot of cold, boiled leftover Rooster potatoes. The perfect excuse for making these fried potatoes. They are...
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