I love having friends for dinner. Some people hate the idea of spending the day cooking, but I really enjoy pottering in the kitchen, making (hopefully) tasty things for people to eat. I also like planning the menu in advance – poring over my cookery books, choosing different starters, main courses and puddings which will […]
garlic
Lambs and lemons
We had friends come over for Sunday lunch a couple of months ago (Sunday lunch is the new BBQ considering the weather in this country, don’t you know!) and it got me to thinking of what my favourite Sunday lunch is. Actually, it might not be surprising to discover, I like them all. Except roast […]
Cassoulet a la Knatt
Okay, let me first say that even French people from different regions of France argue about what constitutes a cassoulet, so it is unlikely that anyone from Toulouse will mark mine out as just like grandmere used to make. But my cassoulet has most of the requisite ingredients, it’s easy to make and it tastes […]
Viva Espana
Apologies for the recent silence (which you may, in fact, be grateful for) but I have been away in beautiful Brugge and also been suffering with a nasty cold, so not really fancied being sat in front of the laptop typing about food. I am still sick with that nasty taste in your mouth you […]
- Dinner
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Hainanese Chicken Rice
I am basically a lazy cook. Recipes which appeal to me are those which have ingredients already in my house; that are simple enough for me to cut corners with (I don’t want to have to get the food processor out to chop those ingredients when I have to spend ages washing it up afterwards); […]
- Baking
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Easter eggstravaganza
Okay, so I don’t even know why I decided to cook so much food this weekend, considering I knew that I would be eating one or two teeny weeny bits of chocolate egg … but I did, and in between bouts of Easter egg gorging (the less said, the better), the following made reasonably balanced […]
Is little and often really the way to go?
Last week was my first attempt to curb my evening chocolate snacking by eating little and often throughout the day. Usually I eat my weekday breakfast (porridge made with skimmed milk, mixed with a grated apple and cinnamon) before 8am, and then don’t eat again until 1pm when I have my packed lunch (soup with […]
Pho-nomenal leftovers
I love it when a recipe comes together, and as I do have a tendency to keep going back to my old favourites, that doesn’t happen as often as I would like. Last week I made a Vietnamese Pho (noodle soup) for the first time, and it was a fantastically successful experiment, so I repeat […]
Comfort food
I have been feeling poorly these past couple of weeks with a chest infection. It’s slowly starting to clear (I think), but I have been a bit lazy with my cooking because I haven’t felt 100%. Looking back at my diary I see that I didn’t eat as badly as I imagined and did start […]
Cake, bread and more cake
I made my mum’s 60th birthday cake on Sunday using the recipe described in my last blog, and also decorated it on Monday. In fact, the sponge was a slight disaster, because I added a packet of caramel chocolate drops I had been given at last year’s Cake and Bake show, and I forgot to […]