It’s been a while since I shared a 15 minute Meal! So I thought I’d share one of my favourites. This is a classic midweek meal for me. I will often do variations of this, using fish and making the mash using other vegetables like peas and parsnip. “Crunchy chicken – without the mess or guilt of deep frying!” To make fast meals from scratch, you need to use some nifty shortcuts and this dinner is packed full of them!...
Tequila Sunrise Am I the only person who wonders why it’s called a Tequila Sunrise when it looks just as much like a sunset when it’s certainly more appropriate to be drinking these??! 😂 Name aside, this is one of the most popular Tequila Cocktails around, the other being margaritas. Orange and tequila is a classic combination and it’s a refreshing drink that even people who don’t like tequila will enjoy drinking because really, you can’t taste the tequila at all!...
Quick pasta recipes are a midweek lifesaver, and this tomato pasta recipe with bacon is a 15 minute meal that’s great as is but can be loaded with extras – like vegetables and chicken! Bacon Pasta This is a quick pasta that’s made with a tomato pasta sauce and bacon. It’s a great way to turn some bacon into a quick dinner and you can fill it out with more vegetables if you so wish....
Serve these with store bought or homemade Flatbreads and a side of Pilaf or a spiced Middle Eastern Lentil Rice would be wonderfully on theme! Turkish Lamb Kofta Kebabs I was watching the latest Food Safari series called Fire the other night which showcases food from around the world cooked over charcoals and in wood fired ovens. I have neither a charcoal grill nor a wood fired pizza oven, but when I saw these Turkish lamb kofta kebabs, I knew straight away that these would be still be fabulous made on the stove or on an ordinary gas BBQ....
Jus is more savoury and complex in flavour than say a typical gravy. If you have homemade beef stock or chicken stock on hand, this is a deceptively easy sauce that will elevate any dish to fine dining levels! What exactly is jus? If the word “jus” conjures images of Masterchef and fine dining restaurants, you’re right on the money! Jus is a French culinary term for what you can think of as the posh cousin of gravy....
These fritters are ideal to make with fresh corn cut off the cob, but can be made with canned or frozen corn. Serve for breakfast, lunch, dinner! Crispy Corn Fritters Regular readers know I hate recipes that make false promises. And I’d say that the greatest offender in this online world is exaggerated declarations of crispiness. So let me just get this out of the way first – you can’t do THIS ↓↓↓ with soggy corn fritters!...
Blini with smoked salmon If there is ever a time to get a little fancy, New Years’ Eve would be it. Break open the bubbles, toast the new year in…….. and let’s make a canapé that will impress the pants off your friends: BLINIS! Blinis with smoked salmon are a hors d’oeuvre that often appears on the menu of caterers and function venues a-like. And the reason is simple: it’s a classic that everybody loves....
After a show stopper Blueberry Cake? Try this one – 3 layers, studded with blueberries, plus a lemon cream cheese frosting! Sneaking in a quick blueberry recipe before the prices start hiking up again!! I get childishly excited when berries come into season. Specifically, blueberries. Raspberries never seem to be a bargain – or is it just me?? You’ve never seen a raspberry specific recipe on my site for exactly that reason....
Brazilian Chickpea Curry The sauce for this curry is swiped from Brazilian Fish Stew, a traditional Brazilian dish that’s been a reader favourite for many years now. It tastes like a coconut curry, yet it’s made with just 2 spices – paprika and cumin. Far simpler than most of the from-scratch curry pastes I’ve shared over the years! That fish stew really is all about that sauce, so it was inevitable that I’d start playing around with other ways to use it....
CHOCOLATE Zucchini Bread?? Are you MAD?? If you’re new to this whole Chocolate Zucchini Bread concept, here’s all you need to know: it is a “thing”. Probably initially born as a way to use up an abundance of zucchini when they’re in season, dolled up to entice little people (and big people who are as fussy about greens as little people). But then once people realised how ridiculously FUDGY zucchini makes it, the idea stuck....
This is the sort of salad that’s ideal to serve on the side of rich roasts roasts like Pork with Crispy Crackling or a Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder. It’s versatile enough to be equally at home alongside other cuisines, like spice-laden Indian curries such as Chicken Tikka Masala or Goan Fish Curry, or Middle Eastern food like Chicken Shawarma. Creamy Cucumber Salad We don’t ordinarily associated creamy dressings with the word “refreshing”, but that’s exactly what this salad is!...
Fish cakes Fish cakes make a refreshing change from the usual pan-seared methods that I typically default to when it comes to fish recipes. It’s also a good way to make less fish go further because the fish is mixed with some kind of padding starch – potato in this case. 500g / 1lb fish used in these fish patties will comfortably feed 4 adults, if not 5, compared to a standard serving size for a piece of fish is 180g / 6oz per person....
Flourless Chocolate Cake This recipe is how I make flourless chocolate cake which is not the usual way but I think it yields better results with the bonus that it’s easier to make. That’s a double win in my books! Usually, flourless chocolate cake is made by beating egg whites then folding it through the batter to make it rise. However, I almost always found that the cake would rise while baking, but then collapse into a crater while cooling....
Serve with French fries and potato with gravy for an epic homemade KFC experience at home. Fried Chicken I’m going to call it (obnoxious as it is) – this fried chicken is better than KFC. There’s not a trace of soggy skin anywhere (all you closet KFC lovers know exactly what I’m talking about!) and the crust is thicker and craggier. Every inch of this crust is insanely crunchy, and there’s loads of those nubbly bits that get extra crunchy....
Homemade French Onion Dip Confession time: I’ve made shortcut French Onion Dip using a packet of French Onion Soup mix many, many times…. and in fact, here’s the recipe! BUT a REAL Homemade French Onion Dip, made from scratch by making your own caramelised onion trumps the shortcut soup mix version 10 times over. Thank you Ina Garten! I will never give up the packet soup mix French Onion Dip....
Served with Caribbean Rice with Peas (actually, it’s beans – but the dish is called “peas”!) One of the best nights I remember from my holiday to the Bahamas was at a beach bar where we drank cheap beer, danced barefoot on the sand and lined up in long queues for dinner served on paper plates. It was an extensive banquet consisting of peas ‘n rice, corn on the cob, a green salad and jerk chicken…....
Pressed for time? Make this quick Lemon Cake with Lemon Glaze. Lemon Cake This is a three-layer Lemon Cake with a beautifully tender crumb that’s adapted from my Vanilla Cake batter. The Vanilla Cake batter is one of my master recipes that I adapt to all sorts of cakes. It could be blueberry-studded ones, a pink, real strawberry cake (in the works!) or even a layered chestnut cream Mont Blanc Cake....
Malfatti – rustically delicious! I love being proven wrong when it comes to food. As I dubiously fished the totally unimpressive-looking, slippery dumplings from the poaching liquid and plonked them in tomato sauce to pop into the oven, I was mentally preparing for what I could do to save the dish if it came out as bland as I was expecting. Bury in cheese and stick it back in the oven, I thought to myself....
Pearl Couscous Salad The immature child within wants to call this a Giant Couscous Salad. But the proper name is Pearl Couscous Salad, so I went with sensible. But now I’m kind of regretting it! Pearl couscous is the big brother of the more common tiny couscous that I use as a side dish for Moroccan and African dishes like tagine. Commonly mistaken as a grain, couscous is actually a type of pasta, and is ideal used in salads like in this recipe, or as a side like in this Syrian chicken....
Roasted Pumpkin Side Dish The really good thing about this dish is its sheer simplicity, that it’s something a little different but the flavour has universal appeal. I mean, roasted pumpkin is already a good thing. But you’ll love it even more with a creamy garlicky-lemony yogurt sauce casually drizzled over it. Add pine nuts for texture a dash of of the exotic – and boom! People are always impressed. And then you can trot out that line we cooks love to casually say to guests, “Oh, it’s just a little something I threw together quickly……” (Don’t tell me I’m the only one around here immature enough to still get a thrill out of saying that!...
