Category: 5 ingredients or less
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Handmade Pesto Without Equipment
I think it is time to confess. Dear reader, I must admit something… something I have been trying to conceal from you all this time. Here it goes… I don’t own much kitchen equipment. I am so ashamed. As a chef I am embarrassed to admit that no, I do not own a pestle and mortar,…
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Homemade butter
Once again, I am late to the party. Sometimes I don’t get the memo or in other cases, I snobbishly reject it. In this case, I’m sorry to say, I rejected it. The most popular food of the next three years just didn’t appeal. And when this food is a jar of old cabbage and…
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3-Ingredient Homemade Lemonade
The Roundabout of Death has sprouted flowers. This seems like a juxtaposition – something that symbolises doom and demise has born new life. These little white, yellow and purple fronds flutter in the constant breeze from the cars’ slipstream, their sweet scent completely overpowered by petrol fumes. Oh to lie amid you flowers, to playfully…
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A slice of bread
Somehow, tartines passed me by. For someone who claims to be a food-obsessive and, for that matter, work in the food industry, this is quite embarrassing. I think I was confused as the word looks so similar to ‘tarte tatin’ (it does), which is structurally the same – a carby chewy base, topped with flavourful…
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How to make the perfect scrambled eggs
The first lesson at Leiths School of Food and Wine taught us how to scramble eggs. Our tutor was meticulous, regularly repeating, ‘Now, this is VERY important’ which I would immediately scribble down in my notebook margin, ‘very important!’ with lots of aggressive capital letters, and, like the good pupils we were, we all leaned…
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The perfect Christmas hamper and Buck’s Fizz Marmalade
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the obligatory food gift. Whether it’s a caddy of fancy tea or some homemade relish, we hope to extend the period of gastronomical indulgence beyond the last week of December. Long-life preserves, granola or spiced fudge can be stored in the stuffed ‘junk food cupboard’ (which, of course, everyone has)…
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Eton mess ice cream sundae
After a sad and surreal week, returning to the nest is always the ticket. A mother’s love always makes things better, along with a shared punnet of juicy strawberries and her saying I ‘deserved a night off’ and could go and relax instead of helping her clear up after dinner. She knows the way to my…
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Yorkshire puddings
This Sunday I cooked for a dinner party. The party was more personal than usual because it was to celebrate my dad’s birthday – a milestone birthday, I’ll add. Fiona went full party-planner when it came to the decorations. Only gold was allowed, no multi-coloured numbered confetti, no sparkly pink balloons, no shiny foil bunting.…
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A perfect ingredient: eggs
Our fridge is always overstocked with eggs. Sometimes we may have as many as twenty-four, a twelve-pack on top of the other creating a double-decker army of yolks and whites behind their amour of shells. Within hours this number depletes. How, I really don’t know, either we love them or we have an egg-stealing ninja…
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Guacamole
My dad works away from home, spending most of his week near Birmingham. Every Thursday he drives back to be the out-numbered male in a house of three women and spends the weekend cooking up a storm. He is a very good cook – throughout our family life he has taken the reins of providing…