Summer breakfast

I am a great advocate of the high protein cooked English breakfast. I know that if I eat eggs and bacon for breakfast I don’t think about eating again for hours, but in the summer I often succumb to the sheer sensual pleasure of natural set yoghurt (not low fat obviously) with whatever fruit I…

Fish pie

Everyone loves fish pie – the ultimate comfort food. I shot this last month as part of a job for a large pub chain, commissioned by JWT, so although I can’t give you this exact recipe, I can tell you it was jolly good! Here however is the recipe for my own fish pie so…

Mincepies and notes on suet

Not being quite English I have a problem with the classic Christmas mince pie. Certainly the standard mincemeat mixture is far too sweet for my palate and the usual thick doughy pastry has always seemed most unenticing, and then they have always given me indigestion, which I used to put down to the rich mix…

Little Almond Cakes

I’m gluten and lactose intolerant so use a gluten free flour mix and Lactofree lactose reduced milk to make these fragrant little cakes but it’s impossible to tell that they are not made with regular ingredients. They work perfectly well however with ordinary wheat flour and milk. ● 4 oz olive oil based margarine ●…

Pork larb with lamb and mint

I love the way the internet has brought dishes I’d never heard of onto my table. I always try something that sounds interesting and different, especially when the dish uses something basic and simple as this dish from Laos. I hope I found an accurate recipe to follow when I first made this but have…

Carrot cake for tea

I was given a pack of Glebe Farm’s gluten free carrot cake mix which I made up today. I had to add 3 eggs and 6ozs of margarine so there were quite a few ‘real’ ingredients in it and it tastes great. Instead of making it in two sandwich tins and adding buttercream, I made…

Mung beans for lunch

I have recently discovered Mung Beans and how quick and easy they are to cook compared with most beans. They are also much easier to digest and have a fresh and delicate flavour. I spent ages looking for appealing recipes for cooking Mung Beans, but what I found was mostly rather hefty and didn’t seem…

Janssons Frestelse

  One of my favourite suppers, the Swedish classic dish Janssons Frestelse (Jansson’s Temptation) is a wonderful example of a few simple tastes blending perfectly together. A description doesn’t do it justice, only by tasting it does it become clear! It can be served as one of the hot dishes on a Swedish smörgåsbord, as starter…

Buckwheat Flatbread

I had the endoscoy to test for coeliac disease last week and although I am still waiting for the official diagnosis, the weeks of enforced gluten eating before the test has convinced me that it is at the root of my problems and as soon as I got home from hospital I embarked on eating…

Slimming

I watched a fascinating programme on the box (BBC) last night: ’10 Things You Need To Know About Losing Weight’.  A doctor testing the latest scientific theories about weight loss used these techniques to lose about 11 pounds painlessly in 3 months. And he did check the theories rigourously before he started to show that…

Buckwheat pancake and hidden gluten

Still waiting to have the endoscopy that will confirm (or not?) that I am coeliac but in the meantime I am meant to eat gluten so they don’t get a false negative. This is getting increasingly difficult as I seem to be getting ever more sensitive to it. I find that I can only manage…

Almond cake recipe recovered

I’ve been emptying and clearing out our departing fridge (a glamorous looking but deeply inefficient retro Smeg which after 6 years of annoyance has finally ceased to function) in the course of which various post-it notes attached to its side have emerged, including this great recipe from my Swedish mother. I have to transcribe it…