banana and bran muffins

Who stole the muffin? We always have a surfeit of bananas here – Riverford deliver them regularly, and I’m not a big fan.  We generally make banana bread or banana muffins, and I found a new recipe on the back of the bran flake box that I tried out yesterday for breakfast. I suspect they…

asparagus and brie quiche

Somebody on CIX drew my attention to this recipe on Great British Kitchen yesterday.  We had all the ingredients in the house, amazingly, so I thought I’d cook it last night.  Although, I must confess that after an hour and a half of Wii Fit and Sport, I ran out of steam a bit, and…

boeuf stroganoff

I hate waste, and we had a bunch of flat leaf parsley which looked a bit tired. So what to do? We also had some mushrooms, and so I nipped, or popped, to the Local Shop and bought some cream. And then I remembered there was a fillet of Dexter beef in the indoors freezer….

indian spiced cabbage

One of our favourite dishes, this – especially when we’re in a hurry. The weather here has been quite warm recently, and neither perlmonger nor I are particularly keen to stand over the stove in that sort of weather. Riverford brought us a pointy cabbage last week, so we turned it into Indian Spiced Cabbage…

asparagus and feta risotto

I didn’t take a photo because, to be honest, I was exhausted from too much Wii Tennis in the heat! So you’ll have to be satisifed with a repeat of the asparagus photo. I’m a big fan of risotto, although I must confess here to generally doing them in the oven as [whisper] Delia Smith…

lunchtime salad

A warm May day in Somerset, so we rummaged in the fridge and larder, and concocted a salad: Red pepper, borlotti beans, spring onions, shredded cabbage, cucumber, feta cheese, walnut oil, tamari, lemon juice, packet of seeds. Accompanied by pitta bread lightly toasted, then cut into strips. Just the job.

upside down pear pudding

Peel core and quarter 3 or 4 pears – enough to cover the bottom of a 20cm/8 inch cake pan. I use a silicon one, but if not, grease it well, and I’d line it with baking parchment. In a food processor, combine 175g of butter and 175g of caster sugar until fluffy and soft….

broccoli stirfry

Another of those deceptively simple meals, which take less time than required to phone for a pizza. Take some (lots?) of broccoli, remove the florets from the stems, and boil/simmer/steam for about seven minutes.  Drain. Peel and chop some garlic – we like Lots, so we did about four fat cloves; you might not want…

moussaka

Last night was moussaka, loosely based on this recipe. Things are pretty much always loosely based on recipes here, depending on what we have and what we feel like eating. I suspect adding a layer of spinach into the dish in between the meat and the aubergine is not authentic, but we had it, and…

mushrooms with cumin, coriander and spinach

This recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian Cookery, an excellent tome. It’s quick and simple to cook – served with basmati rice, it takes about 30 minutes from start to plate. And it’s delicious!