Category: Easy Dinners
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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…
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Burrata Salad with Courgette, Basil and Pistachios
At the beginning of the summer, the thought that one day I might be sick of salads was a laughable concept. Fresh, cold and crunchy, salads was everything the weather was not as here in the south of France, the temperature has been balancing on the cusp of 40C for more days than I care…
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Easy Spaghetti Vongole
Many great spaghetti dishes come together in under 15 minutes. Aside from a slow-cooked ragu or a Bolognese, a spaghetti dinner gives you little time to prepare yourself, whether that’s finishing an email, video game or conversation before it’s on the table, steaming its way into a gluey tangle. Carbonara, spaghetti aglio e olio (the…
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Spaghetti with Prawns and Whisky Cream Sauce
In my opinion, it’s not a habit to serve spaghetti with prawns and whisky. Correct me if I’m wrong. To me, whisky is that unfathomable drink, ferociously harsh and unapologetically alcoholic, that lawyers manage to knock back without even a grimace in courtroom dramas. But this unusual combination of spaghetti with prawns and whisky sauce…
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French recipe: Crab Soufflés
To conclude February, my food bucket list of 2022 begins, commencing with these light, creamy crab soufflés, an easy yet outrageously decadent lunch for you to treat yourself! In case you missed it, I’ve chosen 10 delicious recipes to make this year – a hopefully easy-to-achieve number, especially as I’ve waited until 27th February to…
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Juicy Carne Asada Steak with Loaded Nachos
Carne asada nachos isn’t the recipe I was expecting to post at this time of year, but here we are. Veganuary, which you may know or have heard of, has no doubt settled under my skin. My sub-conscious urges me to eat salad after a month of gorging myself (see last month’s confessions of a…
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French cooking: Tartiflette
I’ve eaten an eye-watering amount of processed meat recently. They say a diet of processed meat is bad for you, but when push comes to shove, I bet whoever ‘they’ are would submit to that meat coma with the rest of us. I emerged from this pork-induced fog after eating four-days’ worth of rillettes, saucisson,…