Category: Easy Dinners
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Quick and easy one-pot pasta
This is a story of two extremes. On one hand there is my compulsion to be extravagant and a show off, versus my need for ease and convenience. This dichotomy is reminiscent of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, except focused on food rather than evil. One will overrule the other in the end. And it’s…
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Vegetable and pearl barley soup
January is a month of slurping soups. There are thick parsnip and apple soups, practically white with cream and a brightness of flavour that makes you suddenly sit up and eat your lunch more alertly than usual. A butternut squash soup drizzled with turmeric yoghurt, in an attempt to coerce flavour into this despondent vegetable…
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What to eat this January
We’re back at that time of year – oh happy January! After Christmas, I often feel like a lump of lard. December is a reckless month for eating, one that I fully support of course, but it’s really no wonder the hashtag idiom #newyearnewme popped up a few years ago. With the fresh new year…
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Roast chicken, lime and herb salad
This year we have all made a new friend. That friend is called Lockdown. He’s not a friend to everyone – he’s quite smothering and bossy, to be honest. He says he has your best interests at heart. But if that best interest is me eating my body weight in baguette and not taking any…
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French cooking: Crêpes
As I predicted, moving abroad has its hurdles. I write this still awaiting my SIM card and with no bank account, not for the lack of trying. Administration in France is not easy at the best of times but add a pandemic and doors start gently closing with a perfunctory, ‘Désolé!’ Unlike French bureaucracy, that…
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Goat’s cheese and coriander salad
Lockdown has been a peculiar time. Like many others I’m sure, my normally eager productivity has sunk into the depths of a swampy quagmire, struggling to stay buoyant. Cooking for myself is suddenly hard work and my cool night time habit of reading cookbooks has worryingly disappeared. People have been proudly nurturing their sourdough starters…
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Lentil and olive ragu
I don’t mean to break any hearts but here is a cold hard truth – it is a myth that you lose weight while travelling. In fact, it is more likely you will gain weight. I know this because of my reflection in any full-length mirror is ultimately a depressing sight these days. There have…
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Kūmara hash with goat’s cheese and fried eggs
Greetings from Wellington! It’s been a while, dear reader, I hope you’re still there. And just like that, I’ve been in New Zealand for a month. There have been picnics and wine tasting on Waiheke Island, cake on the beach in Paihia and hiking through dripping rainforests to Cathedral Cove. I have watched the sun…
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Tomatoes, basil, breadcrumbs
Finally, the sun is out. England is basking in a humdinger of a heat-wave and there are a lot of grouchy faces because of it. Britain simply can’t cope in extreme weather. We’re used to the sultry heights of 25°C which is an excuse for us to strip down to swimwear and sunbathe. Right now,…
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Dining solo: cooking for 1
Inevitably, couples develop routines and habits that naturally evolve during their relationship. They’re usually quite tame, a little dull, for instance, he takes out the bins, you take the recycling. It’s the knowledge that you share the drudgery of daily life with someone which makes these tasks that iota more pleasant. I don’t know if many couples…