This one-pot dish is basically a spicy casserole that requires a minimal amount of cooking liquid. The conical tagine lid seems to generate its own microclimate in the oven, so you can cook a lot of ingredients in what seems like a tiny amount of stock, and it won’t boil dry – in fact it [...]
I’m very pleased with this. It took a couple of attempts to get it right but I reckon this recipe is pretty reliable now. It’s fragrant and spicy, thanks to the addition of some ras el hanout spice mix that came loaded with rose petals and chilli (Seasoned Pioneer brand, if you’re interested). Every ras [...]
Raw lettuce is the most boring of salad ingredients, but cooked like this it’s a gorgeous side dish. You need small, fairly compact lettuces such as little gems, plus some sweet peas to bulk it out and complement the natural bitterness of the leaves. Very little work, and very good indeed.
Here’s a slightly different way of serving asparagus and wild garlic – which is still in late season, thanks to the cold weather we’ve had this year. It’s a simpler recipe than it looks. You need to make a lot of different things but none of them requires any skill or takes any longer than [...]
This is what I had with the flatbreads I made the other day. I’m not sure if it’s an entirely authentic version, since I hadn’t heard of this dish until last week, but it went down very well. According to the internet, the real deal should probably contain parsley, but I’m more of a coriander [...]
This takes maybe 10 minutes to make first time. Five minutes when you know what you’re doing. I used gram flour (aka chickpea flour or besan) because I wound up buying a massive bag of it when all I needed was a couple of spoonfuls for another recipe. It does taste good in these flatbreads, [...]
Smoked fish and horseradish is a brilliant combination that happens to go very well with peppery watercress. For this very simple and rather pretty pasta dish I’ve also used wild garlic, since it’s in season and quite abundant in this part of the world. If that’s not the case where you are, substitute some spinach [...]
Visit a dozen different Spanish restaurants and you’ll get a dozen different variations on the classic patatas bravas. Sometimes it comes with fresh tomato salsa, other times with a sort of spicy Marie Rose sauce, but my favourite type is the one that’s cooked in a rich, hot, chunky tomato and chilli sauce. Which is [...]
This was an experiment to get rid of some of our veg box carrot mountain without making the usual carrot and coriander soup, and it turned out to be pretty delicious. It’s spicy and a bit curryish. This recipe makes enough for four portions as a starter or maybe two as a main for lunch. [...]
Since wild garlic makes a tastier (and completely free) stand-in for spinach, here’s a garlicky variation on a classic spinach-based recipe. I used conchiglioni pasta – giant shells, big enough for stuffing – but if you can’t get those then you could easily turn it into canneloni by wrapping the filling in cooked lasagne sheets, [...]