Category: Easy Dinners
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Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder with Ras El Hanout
I was thinking about this the other day – does everyone have a signature dish? Is there a food you are known for? If you went to a pot luck or, if you’re a generous guest and you don’t like to turn up somewhere empty handed, what would be your dish of choice? For me,…
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French recipe: Dauphinoise Potatoes with Thyme and Nutmeg
This weekend, I made two dishes of dauphinoise potatoes in two days. A tale of two gratins. We mustn’t compare or pick a favourite – just like a careful parent soothing their offspring who are indignant to know the truth by saying ‘we love you equally.’ This makes no sense to the children who always…
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Easy Oven-Baked Risotto with Leek and Sage
This week’s oven-baked risotto came about because of the snow. I woke up this morning at 7:15 all of a fluster as I do every time my alarm rings. It’s a soothing alarm tone, one with bells and bird song, it’s very meditative rather an a literal alarm which rings like a screaming siren, but…
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Bangers and Mash with the Best Onion Gravy
Smoothies are all well and good, but I can’t escape the fact it is January. I didn’t expect the south of France to be sunshine and rainbows 12 months a year, but honestly, the other day it was warmer in Edinburgh than in Toulouse. And so, understandably, I’m in hibernation. The shutters are down, metaphorically…
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Comforting Miso Chicken Soup
If self-care had a physical form, it would be in the shape of chicken soup. You might be thinking that you self-cared yourself enough this Christmas – eating all that cheese would be anyone’s ideal form of self-care (besides anyone with lactose intolerance that is), all smug and warm like dipping into a bath of…
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The 4 Best Toast Toppings
The easiest snack in the world. It’s a piece of cake, or should I say, toast. If there is a snack that can withstand all weathers, it is toast. From Welsh rarebit dripping with cheese in the winter to summer bruschetta with tomatoes and basil, toast is an ideal vehicle for taking those toppings from…
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French recipe: Creamy Leek and Potato Soup
To quote Elizabeth Gilbert, since living in France, “I’ve been doing rude things to my body.” However, it seems unlikely that this leek and potato soup will help. While Liz made sweet love to pizza and pasta and gelato in Rome over the course of four months in her book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, I have…
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Classic lasagne with three cheeses
Before you immediately click off this recipe because of course you know how to make lasagne, or you may be apologetically shrugging as if to say ‘so sorry Ally but my mum’s recipe for lasagne is unbeatable’, I’m just going to quickly say – you haven’t tried this lasagne. And I’m also going to place…
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How to Make the Best Charcuterie Board
It was during my first visit to see Gaylord in France that I realised how seriously the French take charcuterie. While it took me another year to eat snails, then a whole year after that I finally encountered frogs legs, charcuterie has been a weekly snack since my plane touched down in 2020. As you…
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Cheat’s Prawn Ceviche with Avocado
Our evening binge-TV is Modern Family. There are 11 seasons so it looks like we’re covered until next summer (who am I kidding, we’ll be finished within a month). In an episode we watched the other night, a character lamented, ‘Do you remember when summer meant fireflies, cut-off shorts and ice cream trucks?’ Do I…