Recipe ideas for budget meals, everyday cooking and a little indulgence. Travel inspiration and restaurant reviews too.
I really like duck; usually in a pancake with plenty of spring onion, cucumber and hoisin sauce. If it’s on a menu in a restaurant I will normally order it because I love the flavour. Gressingham (the remarkable duck people) got in touch to see if I’d like to come up with a recipe with some of their duck and I thought it was a great opportunity to have a go at cooking something I enjoy eating but don’t cook that often. Ramen is something that I find both cleansing and filling and love that you can add whatever you like to it. This pulled duck ramen is a great way to use leftover duck and is really quick and easy to make.
You will need (for a good platter of nibbles):
500g turkey mince (not lean)
1 1/2 tbsp garam masala
200g cranberries
125g granulated sugar
250ml water
1 red chilli, finely chopped
Mix the garam masala into the turkey mince until well distributed and well mixed together. Form into mini meatballs then cover and refrigerate until needed.
Put the water and sugar into a pan and heat slowly until the sugar dissolves. Add the cranberries and chilli and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15-20 minutes or until thickened and the cranberries have burst.
Put the sauce to one side to cool.
You will need (for four):
| For the burgers – | |
| 2x 400g cans of mixed beans, drained | £1.58 |
| 50g breadcrumbs | £0.30 |
| 2 tsp ground allspice | £0.10 |
| Few sprigs thyme, leaves only | £0.10 |
| 1 egg | £0.35 |
| 3 spring onions, sliced | £0.35 |
| Salt and pepper | £0.02 |
| For the pinepple sauce – | |
| 1x 227g canned, chopped pineapple in juice | £0.43 |
| 125g caster sugar | £0.19 |
| 175ml water | £0.00 |
| 4 tbsp white wine vinegar | £0.18 |
| 2 garlic cloves, crushed | £0.05 |
| 1/2 scotch bonnet chilli, roughly chopped | £0.08 |
| 2 tsp cornflour | £0.03 |
| Salt and pepper | £0.02 |
| 4 crusty white rolls | £1.20 |
| Total | £4.98 |
Put the drained beans into a large bowl and roughly crush them with a masher or the back of a spoon.
Add all the remaining burger ingredients, except the egg, and thoroughly mix together.
Taste the mixture to check the seasoning and when you are happy crack in the egg, mix well and then form into burger shapes.
Put to one side while you make the pineapple sauce.
Drain the pineapple and then put into a saucepan with all the remaining ingredients except the cornflour.
Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring occasionally, and boil for around five minutes.
Mix the cornflour with a little water to make a paste and then mix this into the sauce.
Bring the mixture back to the boil then remove from the heat.
Blend the pineapple sauce until mostly smooth but with some pineapple chunks still left.
Put to one side to cool down.
You will need (for two as a side):
Peel the cucumber and then cut into sticks; I got 12 sticks from mine. Melt a big knob of butter in a pan on a medium heat and add the cucumber. While the cucumber softens slice the wet garlic thinly and then add this to the pan with the cucumber.
Keep stirring everything in the pan until the cucumber and garlic are starting to brown; the cucumber is surprisingly strong and doesn’t break down.
While you’re waiting slice the chillies and chop up the chives. For the final minute or so of cooking add a few of the chillies, the chives and some salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and serve with the remaining raw chillies.
You will need (for two):
150g beef cut into strips
A few tbsp flour, seasoned with salt, pepper and cayenne
Groundnut oil
A few large purple kale leaves, cut into thin strips
1 large chilli, sliced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
4 spring onions, sliced
3 tbsp dark soy sauce mixed with 2 tbsp sugar and 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
Noodles to serve
Get a wok on a high heat and add about 1cm of groundnut oil. While the oil heats up mix the beef with the seasoned flour until it’s all coated. When the oil is smoking add the beef and fry for about a minute or until cooked and crispy. Remove the beef from the wok and place to one side. Pour away any excess oil but leave a little to cook the vegetables.
Add the kale to the wok and fry for about 30 seconds before adding the chilli, garlic and spring onions. After a minute or so add the soy sauce mix and then put the beef back in. Serve on top of some noodles.
A tip: this stir fry tastes great because everything is cooked in smoking oil but this can lead to slight choking as the kitchen fills with smoke. I would put the extractor fan on full blast and tape down any toupées.
To kick the picnic off to a good start I made some spiced cider. The reason for this was twofold; it’s a marriage made in heaven when mixed with cinnamon and I thought if my guests drunk a little cider they might get their cider jacket on and forget it’s cold.
When the BBQ is good and hot, put the cider into a saucepan and add a few cloves, a stick of cinnamon and some star anise. Keep on the heat until lovely and warm and then pour into cups and warm up your hands and your insides.
You will need (for two big bowls):
Fry the onion in a little oil until starting to soften and then add the garlic. Fry for a minute more and then stir in the curry powder.
Keep frying for a few minutes to allow the spices to warm up and coat the onion.
Add the squash, give it all a final mix and then add the stock and coconut milk.
Leave the squash to soften for 20-30 minutes before blending. Check the seasoning and keep it warm until you’re ready to serve.
Take your spices, adding or removing any that you deem fit and add them to a dry frying pan with the pumpkin seeds.
I suppose I was what you would call a late flavour bloomer; I think my olfactorary centre and taste buds started to develop with my wisdom teeth. Indeed not only had I grown some physical wisdom I also had some previous culinary knowledge on which to build, and now, more teeth to eat things with. I have always cooked; biscuits with my Granny, cakes and pastry with my Mum and barbeques with my Dad but it wasn’t until 2008 that I really started to experiment.
At University you become extremely good at procrastination. One of my favourite time wasters was trawling the internet looking for cookbooks. For someone who found flavour offensive I had a pretty large collection of cookery books; I found great pleasure in cooking for others things that I wouldn’t touch with a bargepole. I came across a particular cookery book that sounded pretty good to me; it was over 500 pages long which is a lot of bedtime reading. I ordered it.
What I didn’t know when I ordered it was that it was a book about vegetables; pages and pages of green, red, orange and purple things which were all alien to me but they were organised alphabetically so I liked that. There was one particular recipe that caught my eye, mostly because it seemed cheap. It was green beans with roasted tomatoes. I made it and the textures and flavours were like nothing I’d ever had; the beans were still slightly crunchy and squeaked when you chewed them, the tomatoes were sweet but also acidic. I probably ate more beans at that moment that I had ever eaten cumulatively in my life before.