Lemon Linguine

In the bleak mid winter…you need a bit of sunshine. You know when you leave for work, and it’s dark, and set off for home, and it’s dark, and you barely see sunlight in between. This is the food for those days, in my book at least, this counts as sunshine food. I think it’s because of the lemons - all yellow and happy – and the rocket - a crown of green loveliness…I think the lack of sun might be going to my head!

3 tbsp olive oil
1 medium potato, in about 1 cm cubes
Linguine – for two
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 small handful of sunflower kernels or pine nuts
1 lemon, zest and juice
50g Parmesan, grated
Bag of rocket

Start by putting a pan of salted water on to boil and heating a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan. Once the oil is hot add the cubes of potato to fry and turn the heat down to medium hot – stir frequently.

Once the water comes up to the boil add the linguine and cook according to packet instructions. Drain when cooked, reserving a cup of the cooking water.

Once the potato is golden brown and cooked right through – about 5-10 minutes - turn the heat down to medium and add the garlic to the pan. After about a minute add the sunflower kernels or pine nuts and fry briefly. Next add the juice and zest of the lemon and the remaining oil. Plonk the linguine in after them, season well with salt and pepper (remembering that the parmesan is quite salty) and give everything a good stir and adding some of the reserve liquid if its needed.
Serve in two warmed bowls, sprinkle liberally with the parmesan and top with a good handful of rocket – sunshine in a bowl.

Christmas pudding muffins

Bizarrely I don’t cook over xmas, I eat lots but it is always at other people’s houses, in restaurants or a quick snack of cheese and biscuits. So when my few quiet days before new year came around I took the opportunity to do some baking.

I’d ended up with some left over Christmas pudding, and, much as I love it, didn’t fancy the full on richness of it on its own. Just before Christmas I had half seen Rachel Allen (I think) making Christmas pudding muffins so I thought I would do the same by tweaking my usual muffin recipe.

As an aside I claim not to like muffins – but as there are two muffin recipes on here I think that might be a lie. Instead I think I don’t like shop bought blueberry (yuck) muffins – what a snob I am!

300g Christmas pudding, chopped/crumbled into small pieces
100g caster sugar
300g flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
200ml milk
100g butter, melted and then cooled

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Sift the flour into a bowl and mix in the sugar and baking powder then stir in the Christmas pudding. Beat the eggs, milk and butter together. Roughly combine all the ingredients.

Spoon the mixture into 12 muffin cases and bake for 30 minutes.

Eat with a big mug of tea or with warm with brandy butter.

Mushrooms with rice and dill

Been very bad at updating this – life has just been a bit crazy and I’ve not had time to cook let alone write about it!

This was one of those use-up-all-the-left-over-bits-in-the-fridge meals which either turn out to be amazing or awful. This, thankfully, was the former.

I do have an admission to make, the rice was a couple of the Uncle Ben’s heat-up-in-the-microwave jobs. Very lazy but on the plus meant this only took 10 minutes from start to plate. I realise that cooking rice wouldn’t have taken much longer but it would have doubled the washing up!

1 tbsp oil
1 large potato
250g Chestnut mushrooms
2 spring onions
1 clove garlic
Splash dry vermouth (or white wine if you refer)
150ml crème fraiche
Salt and black pepper
½ a pack of dill
Enough rice for two

Start by heating up the oil in a frying pan, and putting on your rice (if you are cooking it rather than just reheating it!)

Chop the potatoes into approx 1 cm chunks and put them in the frying pan. Stir them occasionally, while you prepare the other ingredients.

Slice the mushrooms and spring onions fairly thickly and finely chop the garlic. Once the potatoes are golden and just cooked through (check with a skewer), turn the heat down a bit and add the mushrooms, onions and garlic.

While everything is cooking, stir frequently and finely chop the dill (discard the thick stalks). When the mushrooms are soft, add the vermouth and let it bubble away to about half.

Stir in the crème fraiche, season to taste and warm everything through. Add most of the dill and give it a final stir before serving with the rice. Garnish with the remaining dill and enjoy.

Serves two.

Spinach, chickpea and tamarind stew

It’s November, so, quite rightly, it’s cold, dark and a bit wet. I have been counterbalancing this with hot, bright, delicious food. Stews are kind of ideal November food however, veggie stews can be a bit bland and dull. Yotam Ottolenghi’s swiss chard, chickpea and tamarind stew is anything but.


The tamarind adds a sharp, sunny-ness to everything, and the colours - the green spinach, golden chickpeas, red sauce and white yoghurt - are bright and cheerful. It’s wonderfully exotic while also being fantastically warm and comforting. It is also one of those things where you can have 90% of the ingredients in the cupboard and freezer (the only things I needed to buy were yoghurt and coriander).


This is something I make fairly regularly, this time I made it with spinach, rather than swiss chard, and baked potato ,rather than rice. I then followed it up with Felicity Cloake’s Perfect Rice pudding - which is well worth a try. All the kind of food to banish the cold, miserable month on the other side of the curtains.

This makes enough for four – (or two and two portions in the freezer)

Mushroom and onion pie

I was in M&S the other day (stocking up on Vanilla Fudge bars which t-o-h buys, and eats by the dozen) and the person behind me was buying a roast mushroom and onion pie. That sounds good I thought, I reckon I could do that …so I did.

250g mushrooms, cut into mouth-sized chunks (I’ll let you decide how big that is)
2 onions, sliced
2 tbsp oil
2 small knobs butter
1 tbsp flour
400ml stock
Splash red wine
1 star anise
1 tsp marmite (or tbsp soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce)
3 largish potatoes, mashed with a little butter (i.e. ‘baked’ in the microwave, scooped out and mashed with a fork)

Start with a tablespoon of oil and knob of butter in a hot-ish pan. Throw in the mushrooms, season and leave them to get a bit of colour. When they are soft and just golden (about 5 minutes) scoop them out and put them in an oven proof dish.

Next, put the remaining oil and butter in the same pan and reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the onions and cook until golden and sticky, stirring regularly, which will take about 15-20 minutes (a pinch of sugar and salt will help everything along).

When they are golden brown add the flour and stir for a couple of minutes to cook the flour (add a drop more oil if you think it needs it). Pour in the wine and allow it to evaporate before adding the stock, marmite and star anise. Cook for 5 minutes and check for seasoning.

Remove the star anise and pour the onion mix over the mushrooms. Top with the mash, roughing up the top with a fork. Cook in a preheated 210C oven for about 25 minutes until browned and bubbling.

Dole out onto two plates and serve - with pickled onions and beetroot if you like.

Autumn warmer

It has gone very cold and dark all of a sudden, so comfort food is on the menu. And by comfort food I mean stodge. I think this was designed for autumn, the colours reflect what is happening outside, in a ‘crisp autumn morning’ rather than a ‘bloody hell it’s miserable’ kind of way, and it is really warm and satisfying.

Half of this dish is basically Nigella’s double potato and halloumi bake, served, to up the stodg-osity, with polenta. Really it probably shouldn’t work but, like chip butties, I think it does. To make it even more seasonal you could use pumpkin instead of, or along with, the sweet potato.

For the bake
1 sweet potato, chopped into large-ish chunks
1 potato, or a similar amount of new potatoes, cut into slightly smaller chunks
1 onion, cut into six long ways
4 cloves garlic, in their skins
8 mushrooms, whole or halved
8 peppers from a jar
3 tbsp olive oil
½ block of halloumi
Salt and pepper

For the polenta
½ cup quick cook polenta
2 cups water
Salt
Few slices halloumi, diced up
Pinch cayenne
½ tsp smoked paprika
Salt and pepper
Knob butter

Pre-heat your oven to 200C.

Put the potatoes, onion, garlic, mushrooms, peppers and oil in a large baking tray, give it a good grind of pepper and mix everything up. Put it in the oven for 45 minutes.

After 45 minute, whack the heat up, and top the bake with the halloumi and put back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

Meanwhile bring out 2 cups of water to the boil, pour in the polenta in a slow steady stream, stirring continuously. Cook for 1 minute (you want it to be soft) then remove from the heat and stir in the other ingredients.

To serve, put a blob of polenta on two plates, and top with the bake. Eat and then relax, feeling very full and happy.

Serves two greedy people.

Pumpkin and Tarragon Soup

Very excitingly I recently got a pressure cooker. I was lured in by the idea of making dhal from scratch in 5 minutes - maybe it is my rebellion against the slow cooker thing. Anyway this was the first thing I cooked in it, and based on this alone, I think me and my pressure cooker are going to be very happy together. And it is very shiny - I do like new toys.

The recipe came out of the book that came with the pressure cooker, which I obviously then tweaked a bit. I must say I never thought to put pumpkin and tarragon together (I usually just go for sage) but it really really works. The tarragon (which I think is my current favourite herb) just makes it all very savoury, which can be a challenge with pumpkins; I didn’t even feel the need to add any parmesan.

1 onion finely, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 tbsp oil
750g pumpkin, peeled and chopped into chunks
250g potato, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp tarragon, chopped
850ml stock
Salt and pepper
3 tbsp yoghurt (or use cream and also add a squeeze of lemon)

Start by frying the onion and garlic in the oil until the onion if soft. Then add the pumpkin, potato, tarragon and 600ml stock and season. Bring to 12lb pressure, cook for 5-6 minutes and then reduce the pressure quickly. If you are making the soup in a pan cook for around 30 minutes or until the pumpkin and potato is soft

Liquidise the soup, then add the remaining stock and yoghurt and check the seasoning.

Eat in warmed bowls with lots of crusty bread.

Makes around 6 portions