Spookalicious: Strawberry ghosts
Oooo the nights are drawing in and shadows are getting longer. All Hallow’s Eve is creeping closer so here are two recipes to really make the most of the season…
Halloween Strawberry Ghosts
Serves: makes 10
Preparation time: 20 minutes plus chilling time
You’ll need:
What to do: Continue reading
Mums Helping Mums: Rachel Stevens’s Flourless Chocolate Mini Cakes
Tilda Rice is partnering with the World Food Program (again!) and donating a meal for every bag of Pure Basmati Dry (5kg, 1kg) and TSB sold in the UK to new and expectant mums in Bangladesh.
To support the campaign, celebrities and influencers have donated recipes to create the Mums Helping Mums cookbook, which can be downloaded at tilda.com
But to get you started here are some of my favourites…
Rachel Stevens’s Flourless Mini Chocolate Cakes
I love to make these for my two girls, they’re so easy and guaranteed to please. My mini chocolate cakes are delicious and so quick to make. I love my tea, so these cakes are the perfect treat to accompany a cuppa. Continue reading
Salad: With three tomatoes
Here’s an odd thing. Until about two months ago, I didn’t like tomatoes.
I was that annoying person who would actually pick them out of sandwiches – and moan that they’d left tomato “gunk” in there.
Then my toddler started loving cheese and tomato on toast. And, I don’t know if it’s the repeated exposure to them, the eating them and saying “yuuuuuum” with enthusiasm, or what, but suddenly I’m loving tomatoes. I’m literally eating them by the handful.
So when the British Tomato Growers’ Association, in a bid to raise awareness of the British tomato industry, sent me these lurvely tomato-based recipes, I was more than a little interested.
The association wants to get us shoppers to specifically chose British toms when doing their weekly shop – and as it’s currently the height of British tomato season, there are a wide range of locally grown tomatoes in stores.
And to be honest, if these recipes don’t get the tastebuds tingling, I don’t know what will… Continue reading
Super cute: Chicks on a plate
When it comes to cooking, I’m not the greatest. However, I *am* a total sucker for recipes that look so lovely they make you smile. And these from British Lion Eggs (www.eggrecipes.co.uk), ahead of Easter, certainly do that.
Hands up who is feeling inspired to hold an Easter Sunday gathering, after looking at these? Yep, me too…
Little egg chicks
Serves: 8
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Ingredients:
• 8 British Lion eggs
• 3tbsp Greek yogurt
• 2tsp Dijon mustard
• ½ carrot, sliced thinly into rounds
• Chives or green peppercorns to decorate Continue reading
Yummy: Baby beetroot tarte tatin
Purple food is apparently set to be a big trend for 2017 (I know, who knew?)
And while, right now, I’m unlikely to find myself with time to whip these up (Sonny Jim has just cut his first tooth AND figured out how to pull himself up!) these recipes are just too lovely looking not to share.
Dan Doherty, Chef Director of Duck & Waffle has partnered with Love Beetroot to launch their Don’t Skip A Beet campaign (www.lovebeetroot.co.uk) by creating unique sharing plates showcasing the versatility of beetroots and how it adds a new vibrancy to a meal.
And here are two of them… Continue reading
‘Simplicity is the key to greatness,’ Marco Pierre White tells me as I join him in the kitchen…
Things are heating up in the kitchen on Marco Pierre White’s Kitchen Wars (Channel 5, Thursdays 8pm).
The former enfant terrible of the UK restaurant scene is back (knife in hand and strut in situ). So I joined him at the stove to find out his pet cooking hates and top foodie tips.
Me and Marco Pierre White
Over the course of the afternoon I sat in the kitchen at his Stamford Bridge restaurant and watched him at work.
As the delicious scents of pumpkin soup and then risotto filled the air he told me, ‘Cooking is a philosophy unless it’s pastry in which case it’s chemistry.’
