What I Ate Today

I wanted to make a very very quick birthday cake – we were on holiday and time was of the essence and the local shop not very big.  I wanted to keep it real simple – so sponge cake.  But how to make it just a bit more exciting than a Victoria sponge?  I opted [...]

May’s In the Bag was hosted by Real Epicurean and consisted of Broccoli and Blue Cheese. Over the past few weeks we’ve been getting some gorgeous Purple Sprouting Broccoli from our veg box which seemed perfect for my attempt. I really wanted to try and challenge myself to come up with something less obvious again. [...]

We held a dinner party for six people over the Easter weekend and were keen to plan a menu which could be prepared completely in advance and require only heating, plating a serving on the night.
Sundried Tomato, Spinach & Feta Filo Pastry Pie
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Vegetable Mousakka with Greek Salad, accompanied with Black Olive & Rosemary Flatbread.
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Orange Passover Cake [...]

Traditionally Lent and Easter must have been a bit of a culinary rollercoaster.  Indulgence on Shrove Tuesday followed by fasting from Ash Wednesday through to the Easter Weekend, followed by a feast and chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday.

Easter isn’t Easter without Hot Cross Buns.  The smell of the fragrant spices and fruit as you bake/toast them [...]

Each month, Masterchef’s Jon Torode writes an article in BBC Olive Magazine ”Meat Masterclass” where he focuses on less common or less popular cuts of meat.  This month was Shin of Beef. 

Shin of beef makes an ideal cut for pies, stewing and slow cooking, as the connective tissue breaks down during cooking to enrich the gravy.  It [...]

More adventures in baking with Andrew Whitley’s Bread Matters book. This time I tried out some Italian pie technology (or is it pizza technology?). The calzoni were really fun to make and tasty too.

You need:
* 160g of basic savoury bread sponge – there’s plenty of recipes for this on the web.
* 120g plain [...]

I’m not entirely sure if this is technically a pizza or a tart. It’s was a pretty nice lunchtime snack though. Firstly, cook and mash 4oz potato, let it cool. In a pan melt some butter and fry a sliced onion until golden. Let it cool. Rub 3oz butter into 5oz plain flour. Once you’ve [...]

A while ago now, whilst visiting some of the local asian shops I found a jar of Date Syrup. Being quite into Dates I decided to buy some without anything particular in mind to use it for. It’s sat at the back of our cupboards for a few months now, partly because I keep forgetting [...]

I watched an episode of the Hairy Bikers‘ recent TV series “Hairy Bakers”.  It was about Pies and Pasties.  I was inspired to make my own Pasty because it looked so incredibly simple.   
I loosely followed the recipe from the programme which can be found here.  I par-boiled  the potatoes and swede (which were in small [...]

This recipe is a king of thrift and simplicity. Quite often if we’re making a quick meal utilising some time saving pie technology (shop bought pastry) we end up with a surplus of puff or shortcrust. We’ve started trying to use it up by making lunch time snacks.

There really wasn’t much to it – roll [...]