Homemade Beef Wellington Recipe with Donald Russell. Gentle reader, I am not a great follower of recipes. Most of what I cook I’ve made in one form or another for years – and what I do has evolved to suit my palate, culinary expertise (or lack of) and patience. I’ve made individual beef wellingtons for […]
Lamb Crown from Donald Russell and a red wine and mushroom jus.
Stuffed lamb crown with red wine and mushroom jus: There are few dishes that celebrate Spring better than lamb. Donald Russell, Scotland’s finest butcher and by appointment to the Queen, has created this stunning celebratory lamb crown stuffed with a light earthy mushroom duxelles. Made from English lamb, a crown is one of the best […]
Healthy Spicy Pork Tostadas – How to Cut Calories and Save the Planet
Spicy Pork Tostadas with Baby Corn and Peppers: It’s that time of year when everyone I know wants to lose a few pounds…and it’s also the time of year when we are all making resolutions. Everything from what can we do to improve ourselves to how can we slow down global warming and save the […]
Skinny Toad-in-the-Hole for 5-2 Diet
5-2 diet recipe for Toad in the Hole and low-calorie recipe planning: I think it is much easier to diet when the weather is good. At this time of year, I really want comfort food, warm starchy things that fill me up with a kind of internal heating system. And if I wasn’t following the […]
Low Calorie Bolognese with Vegetable Spaghetti
Cutting Calories for the 5:2 Diet – Spaghetti Bolognese: I’m back in the UK after a couple of trips abroad and on the 5:2 diet trying to lose some of the weight I’ve gained and to continue to lose a bit more. For me, restarting a diet is the hardest time, so I try my […]
Mum’s Classic Beef Stroganoff
Classic Beef Stroganoff – My Mother’s Dinner Party Dish: My mother was a woman of great character. Cookery was not something that she ever wanted on her personal CV but when my father became the GP in a small seaside town, she was thrown into ‘Entertaining’. It was expected that the doctor had a formal […]
Mum’s Cornish Pasties Recipe
How to make Cornish Pasties – the Somerset Way When we were little, one of my mother’s staple dishes for weekday suppers was Cornish Pasties. She made her Cornish Pasties with flaky pastry which took an inordinate amount of preparation, but which she thought hid her poor pastry skills. My grandma was a dreadful cook […]
Venison Sausage Pasta
Venison Sausage Penne Pasta – How 2 sausages can feed 2! Sausages tend to come in packs of 4 or 6. If you are me and cook mostly for yourself or one other person, that can mean three or four days of sausages and chips. Or far too much toad in the hole. One solution is […]
Ignite and Excite – a Sichuan Style Noodle Dish
Tears of Joy – Spicy Pork Stiry Fry with Chilli Oil: There is, apparently, a traditional Sichuan recipe called ‘Tear in Eye’ which comprises rice noodles, chillis, crumbled peanuts sichuan pepper and scallion. I’ve googled. I can’t find it. But I can find reference to a dish served in a Chinese restaurant in the US which looks […]
Spiced Beef Casserole with Guinness and Orange
Spiced Beef and Guinness Casserole with Orange: It’s winter. And I have a brand new slow cooker thanks to the lovely people at Crock-UK. I’ve been dying to try it out and the other day I christened it using one of my family’s favourite recipes, a warming Spiced Beef and Guinness Casserole with orange. I’ve […]