A few years ago I went to Phuket, Thailand on holiday with the family. I love Asian food and especially love the flavours and combinations of Thai cuisine. It is all so fresh and simple and they use the most incredible strong flavoured ingredients to create delicious and easy to recreate dishes.

I had the privilege of taking a private cooking lesson with one of the local beach bar owners. It was arranged in conversation when I expressed how much I loved the food and that I’d love to learn how to cook it! The owner of this beach bar offered me a 5 course cooking lesson, learning some of the most popular Thai dishes and I was so excited! The experience of learning how to cook a dish from someone who had been cooking it their whole lives and the recipe was passed down from generation to generation is something I will feel eternally grateful for.

This soup is so delicious. Also known as Hot and Sour soup, it is a genius blend of sour limes, hot chillies, and a few other essential ingredients. I had made a chicken stock from a leftover Sunday roast and I recommend that you give that a try, the flavour is far superior to stock cube stock. It also has the benefit of being virtually fat free, as you don’t use any oil to cook it, and it includes vegetables and chicken with are both healthy and delicious.

I can imagine that the prep work involved in a lot of Asian dishes can be off-putting, but once you get into the habit of preparing all your ingredients in advance, the actual cooking time will be stress free and quick. Most of these ingredients are available at your local store, but if not I will provide some alternatives.

The central ingredient is of course the stock, and I was very excited to be using my lovely stock that I nurtured for hours for this soup, what a difference it made! After preparing all the ingredients it is as simple as heating the stock to a simmer, adding the flavourings and allowing to simmer gently to infuse all their deliciousness.

After about five minutes, you add the chicken and vegetables and simmer gently until the chicken is lightly poached and the vegetables have softened a little.

The soup will take a sum total of 20 minutes to make so there is no excuse! Get your ingredients ready and make this delicious, warming, fragrant soup today!

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My lovely Riverford Veg box arrived!!!! The excitement at receiving such a treasure of fresh, organic hand nurtured vegetables is just a little much. That might sound overboard, but I think the whole joy of cooking and eating is appreciating the love and care that goes into a meal. And I know that these vegetables were tended to and cared for, and now they have made their way to my house!

Now there are a lot of vegetables in this box, far too much for just me! I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to make loads of delicious vegetable meals that I could freeze, providing me with loads of ready meals! And since Spring has still not really arrived, soup is what I need. A carrot and coriander soup that is!

I do love soup, it is a simple dish, but you can turn it into anything you like. I took some inspiration from the Riverford website, seeing as though they are my new found love and I found a carrot and coriander soup recipe over there, but I’ve decided to make my own version of it by roasting the carrots with some onions and garlic. I love the subtle flavour that roasting vegetables give to a soup, it’s a more developed flavour as the carrots roast away releasing their natural sugars and slightly caramelise too. It also means that you can just bung the carrots into the oven and leave them for an hour or so.

The smell of the roasting vegetables is gorgeous and you just know that you are creating a delicious heart-warming meal, it’s good for the soul.

When they have roasted, I put them in a pot and added a litre of stock, vegetable or chicken will do depending on what you prefer, but I would recommend using good quality stock.

Let that bubble away for a few minutes. The carrots are already cooked, but  you just want to let the flavours blend for a bit.

Take them off the hob and add a healthy bunch of chopped coriander and then whizz the soup away until smooth with an immersion blender. Check the consistency for your liking, I prefer a thicker soup but smooth and silky. Add in a big knob of butter too, this will just increase the richness of the soup a little.

Et voila! A beautiful healthy soup with the depth of roasted carrots and onions and the freshness of coriander, I couldn’t think of a more perfect Spring dish to battle away these grey days

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Roasted carrot and coriander soup

Now I am partial to a cookie, and I have to say that my preference does lie with a soft chewy cookie, with a slight crisp. You know, those giant discs of sugar and diabetes that you get from Sainsburgers, 5 for £1 or whatever they cost. They are reeeeaally good. And it just so happened that I was craving cookies just like that last weekend.

The fabulous thing about cookie dough is that it is so versatile. You can add a bit of this or  that to make it just how you want it, mostly it’s just the ratios you need to get right. What I’ve discovered is that to get a soft chewy cookie, you need to melt the butter first, which also provides the added bonus of making it easier to cream with the sugar. I used Muscovado sugar for this which is a really strong treacle kind of sugar and very dark, and it has really added to the yummy chewiness!

For a different type of double chocolate chip cookie, I used half milk choc chips and half white choc chips. This makes them look a little different. This recipe makes  36 cookies, which works out perfectly at 9 cookies per tray, two trays in the oven at a time and a total of 36. I like it when recipes work out perfectly like that Simple recipes are the best!

You can of course make giant choc chip cookies if you so wish, they will need longer in the oven, but to be perfectly honest, there is no need to be greedy and by making them smaller you get more! The cookies really well too, about a week if they even last that long! I reckon you could also try rolling the cookie dough in a tube like the Black and White heart cookies I made, and freeze them for use as cookies on demand, a concept which I just love!

This is such an easy choc chip cookie recipe so gather the kids and get a baking!

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Best chewy choc chip cookies

My dad very kindly bought me the new Wagamama recipe book for Christmas, simply titled The Wagamama Cookbook (available on Amazon here). My new obsession with Wagamama’s began when I was working in Richmond and frequented the Wagamama’s there all too often. The first time I went to Wagamamas was about 5 years ago, and I just didn’t get it, I couldn’t understand the menu, it seemed needlessly complicated and I didn’t ever go back. But as I’ve matured and my cooking and eating style has changed, Asian food features heavily on our weekly menu!

My favourite Waga’s small dish is the chicken gyoza. They are beautiful delicate little nuggets of fresh, steamed goodness and I can’t get enough of them. In fact all types of Asian dumplings I love, dim sum dumplings, won tons and of course these delicious gyoza. So I went straight to work poring through my Waga’s cookbook to learn all about it!

This cookbook is hard to say the least. I was inundated with pages of foreign sounding ingredients, and every recipe seemed to take a day to make, referring back repeatedly to the impossible list of ingredients, and I felt disheartened. And then one Saturday coming home from Ikea, I drove past a Chinese Supermarket Mecca (my favourite place, Wing Yip Store in Croydon! They sell their ingredients on Amazon here) and went in to see if I could find some of the ingredients.

I bought 2 packs of gyoza skins, amongst many other eastern wares, and really, I recommend that you buy pre-made skins as I wouldn’t even know where to begin with an explanation of how to make them! They come in packs of 50 or a hundred and I keep them in the freezer and take 10 or so at a time to make the gyoza.

I did quite a bit of research about gyoza, which is the Japanese name for them and then jiaozi, which is the Chinese name for them. There is also a differentiation in how they are cooked, either boiled (‘shuijiao’ literally meaning water dumpling), steamed (‘zhengjiao’) or shallow fried ’guotie’ which translates to ‘pot stick’, hence the American name for them, potstickers! The Wagamama technique involves both gentle frying and steaming, so who knows what that makes them!

The basic elements for this dish are super easy: meat (or not, if you are a veggie), vegetables, seasoning and the gyoza skins! I am not one for following rules, so recipes very seldom get adhered to in my kitchen, and rather I go with what I have.

I did follow the quantities in the book, which make about 30 because I wanted to have some in the freezer ready for when a craving hit! It does seem a lot, but the mixture freezes well, ready for the next time you want some. 5 or 6 per person as a starter or a snack is sufficient.

There are quite a lot of vegetables in the mixture, and obviously they need to blended quite finely. One good tip from the book says to drain the mixture to try and get some of the liquid out. You don’t need to be fastidious about this,  a quick squeeze will do, as long as the mixture isn’t swimming in liquid you’ll be ok! I used chicken for these gyoza, and didn’t buy minced chicken, I just blended the chicken thighs I had, obviously skinned and boned!
 Get prepared for the actual gyoza making: tear off some greaseproof paper and lightly dust with flour and get a little bowl of water to use as glue to stick them closed. Don’t over fill the gyoza as it just makes it impossible to close up. I watched some videos on YouTube to practice the technique and I honestly think it is whatever feels most comfortable for you. After placing a teaspoon of mixture into the pastry, wet your finger and paint it around the edge of the gyoza skin.

Fold it in half and pinch one side closed and then with one hand fold and pinch it closed with the other hand. It takes practice so don’t fret if you can’t get it right straight away. You’ll notice that by the nature of the crimping, the gyoza naturally forms a half moon shape, which appeals to me Place the folded gyoza on the floured paper and continue!

In a big pan with a lid, heat some oil and once heated place the gyoza into the pan quickly so they all cook at the same speed. You might need to dust the bottoms a bit if there is too much flour stuck, but don’t fret if there is a little, it adds a bit of crunch  Cook for a few minutes, literally 2 or 3 and check the progress of the gyoza by picking them up and seeing how done they are on the under side. Then, take them off the heat and add 2 tbsp of water, swirl around and put the lid on. After a few seconds, put the pan back on the heat and cook for another minute or so, until most of the water has evaporated.

Turn off the heat and leave to stand while you quickly make the dipping sauce.

Serve on a plate with your dipping sauce and enjoy that home made restaurant style goodness

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Chicken gyoza dumplings

Now don’t all skip reading this because it starts with the word microwave. I am not a microwave cook, except for the following scenarios:

• Cooking frozen veg (when I am having a NAAFI* cooking day)
• Reheating my tea (I know some find this a sin, but I always forget to drink my tea and it reheats really well!)
• Melting butter
• Popcorn
• I can’t even think of a 5th use!

So now that we have established that I do not cook meals in the microwave, we can move on to how to make a chocolate brownie in the microwave! (I know, but you *have* to try this!)

I had a bolt of nostalgia a few nights ago, remembering when my childhood friend I were allowed to bake cakes. In the microwave! We were probably about 10 years old, and my friend’s mom was an amazing baker and of course, we had to pretend to be moms and bake cakes! We would make the recipes up and surprisingly, as far as my memory serves me, they were mostly not too bad! Some never actually turned into cake, and others ended up being more biscuity but it didn’t matter, we were being independent bakers in the kitchen and it was fun

So the other night, a chocolate craving hit bad. I didn’t want actual chocolate, I wanted cake. But I didn’t want to faff around with making a whole cake, it was about 21:30. So I figured: brownie. When this happens to me, I usually hop on the internet for a bit of inspiration and end up creating a unique ‘me’ version of a recipe, depending mostly on what I have in the kitchen. This particular day I was without eggs and guess what? This recipe don’t need no eggs!

I guess the main thing here is the the size of the cup you use. I bought these oversized tea-cups from Ikea to actually use as pot plant holders, so they are quite big and a nice bowl shape. Here’s a pic so you can see the size you want to go for:

I am pretty confident you will have all the ingredients to make these microwave brownies, butter, cocoa powder, sugar and flour pretty much is all you need. I have a little mini whisk that is perfect for miniature jobs like this, although a fork will work just fine. This makes 1 brownie, and if I’m honest, it is so easy that if anyone else wants one, they can get their lazy asses into the kitchen and make one themselves!

My microwave is 800W and I tentatively microwaved for 30 seconds, took it out to check it out and then zapped it for another 20 seconds. Don’t be afraid to stop and check as you go along, using a toothpick to test the done-ness of the brownie. And remember, this will be boiling hot when you take it out the microwave so don’t be a fool and wolf it down as you will surely have 3rd degree burns in your mouth! Let it sit for a few minutes, while the ice-cream melts to spoonable consistency, and then you can dig in

*NAAFI = No Ambition And F***-all Interest

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So, I’ve been hearing a lot about Black Garlic in the UK recently, and managed to get hold of some in Tesco of all places! It just intrigued me, as I love garlic and had to try it out for myself. I figured a simple dish would work best so I could taste the flavour well so I decided on a simple seafood pasta!

The black garlic came in a a little pouch and frankly looks like a really old shrivelled up garlic! If we were judging this on looks there would be no prize! The black garlic bulb itself is very soft and squishy, very strange to take in. I pulled out a clove and peeled off the skin, which comes away very easily, and inside was a very black soft and jelly like clove of garlic!

This little soft black nugget has quite an earthy smell to it, but also a richness like….. molasses? Yeah it is a very nice smell however it is that you might perceive it! it is very soft and even quite sticky so a bit more difficult to chop up. The more I was exploring this black garlic, the more I looked forward to how it would work in my dish!

I had some lovely fresh baby squid in the fridge, the proper stuff with the tentacles and all. It could have made some gorgeous calamari rings but I just love the tubes and the tasty little tentacles! Make sure you give it a good rinse and pat dry.

I decided to make a little marinade, nothing too extravagant, I was keen to keep the flavours simple. I mixed the squid with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, the black and white garlics, a chopped chilli and seasoned with fresh black pepper and salt.

I griddled the calamari tubes on a hot griddle pan to cook and then poured in the rest of the marinade to sauce it up. I served it over some fresh linguine pasta, some halved  sweet baby plum tomatoes and a scattering of spring onion, and I have to say that the black and white garlic combination was gorgeous with the fresh calamari! It was a lovely Spring dish and I intend to use the black garlic in my cooking more often.

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Black and white garlic seafood pasta

We eat a lot of stir fries! Mostly because they are a perfect combination of my 3 most important elements to weekday dining and that is fast, flavourful and cheap! Stirfries really are an economical food to eat; you can use any kind of meat, chicken, beef strips, prawns or even lose the meat altogether! They are a great way of using up any small quantities of vegetables you may have left over, anything can go in really and they are so quick, which means I can whip up a tasty healthy meal in next to no time and still cath a bit of telly .

Donald Russel, the organic meat company has a special on for April: 7 generous servings of finest quality grass-fed, naturally reared steak with a special reduced price in April from £66.00 to just £29.00! Offer is valid until the 30th April. Get your reduced steak pack here!

In my kitchen, just about every stir fry starts with the holy trinity of ingredients; garlic, chilli and ginger. The ultimate Chinese recipe staples. I’ve used beef strips for this stir fry but otherwise sometimes I will use a steak and slice it up myself. A big bowl of healthy vegetables make the perfect addition to a stir fry, I love mushrooms so they usually go in, but use whatever you have in the fridge. And noodles. Everyone loves noodles! The trick is to make sure you cut everything up in about the same size so that A. they cook at the same speed, and B. they are small enough to fit in your mouth.

 

I like to marinade the beef steak for a little while, 20 minutes or so will do. The marinade is a mixture of teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, sugar and cornflour. The cornflour is  a great way to thicken up your stir fry sauce, so that its not just watery. Just stir it all up together in a bowl and leave to marinade while you prepare the vegetables.

Now the trick with how to make a stir fry, is to let the pan/wok get hot enough first. You should let the pan heat up for at least a minute but more likely two. The reason for this is that you want to cook everything quickly, ans the moment you start putting things in the pan the heat starts to dissipate. Once your wok is hot enough, pour a splash of oil in and stir fry your garlic chilli and ginger for 30 seconds, then add the beef. Keep stir frying for a minute or two, the beef will change colour and cook very quickly.

Now add your vegetables. Look at the beautiful colours! Add a tiny bit of water to the pan to sauce things up a bit.

Lastly, add your cooked noodles, and give everything a good old stir, to heat up the noodles and coat everything with the sauce. Divide between two bowls and serve with chopped coriander scattered over the top, chopsticks f you dare!

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Ooh Flapjacks! Naughty syrupy oat bars, so delicious! I have to say though, sometimes the ones you get in the shops have a slightly ‘fried food’ whiff about them, which always makes me wonder just how many mouthfuls of pure cholesterol I am eating, and inevitably I feel a bit sick afterwards.

The thing is, flapjacks are are so easy to make that it makes you wonder why you ever hand over that Pound coin for a slice of cholesterol! They have to be high on the list of things to bake with the kids, as they’ll enjoy patting down the oat mixture into the baking tray!

Ingredients for flap jacks are basically oats, butter, sugar and syrup. I’ve pimped mine up to make them a bit more posh and added pistachios and coated them with dark chocolate! A grown-ups version!

I’ve roughly chopped the pistachios and added them to the oats in a big bowl. Melt your butter, sugar and syrup over a low heat and then pour over the oats.

Give the oaty syrupy mixture a good stir to combine

Line a baking tray with lightly greased baking parchment and turn the oaty mixture out onto it. With the back of a spoon spread it around and flatten it into the nooks and crannies of the baking tray and bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

While the flapjacks are in the oven, break up a slab of dark chocolate into a glass jug. Heat some water in a pot that the glass jug can fit into and melt it gently over a low heat. THe smells in the kitchen by this time are decadent and luxurious, not long now!

Take the flapjacks out of the oven and then pour the chocolate over the top. Using the back of a spoon make sure you spread the chocolate out across all the flapjacks. Leave to cool for about 2 hours (if you can wait that long!). I cheated and stuck them in the fridge for 20 minutes to give them a head start!

Slice up into squares or rectangles and enjoy!

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Coq au Vin literally translates from French to ‘Cock of the wine’, which really just means ‘chicken cooked with wine’. Long ago in rural France, chicken keeping was an essential source of food for families, they ate the eggs and when the rooster had passed his prime, he would be killed and eaten. By this stage however, the meat would be tough and stringy, so the best way to cook it to get the maximum flavour and benefit from it, would be cooking it long and slowly with wine, hence Coq au Vin.

These days, very few of us rely on an old rooster for a meal as we have access to beautiful fresh meat and actually chicken pieces on the bone work beautifully in this dish.

Recipes for this dish vary, but the one ingredient that is always present is wine. I’ve chosen to use white wine instead of the usual red, as I think it gives the dish a lighter feel and your tastebuds a better chance to experience the flavours individually!
  

I love the vegetables in this dish! So delicate and as their flavours build upon each other, you are transported back to a rural little French village. Lovely little shallots are cooked whole, becoming so sweet and tender and the leeks, carrots and mushrooms add their earthy peasanty feel to the dish! Don’t forget the fresh herbs; I’ve used sage and thyme for this Coq a Vin recipe.

So, you start the dish off in a deep pot, that has a lid and can go in the oven. I have a cast iron Le Creuset casserole dish for this job. I’m cooking for two in this recipe, so I have used two free range chicken leg portions (drumstick and thigh) with the skin on. This can easily be multiplied up to feed more. Dusting the chicken pieces in seasoned flour gives the skin a lovely colour and contributes to thickening the sauce. Fry off the chicken pieces for about 5 minutes each side until golden. Remove when done and place on a plate.

Next, gently fry off the shallots, bacon/pancetta cubes and shallots for about 5 minutes until some of the fat has rendered out of the bacon. They don’t need to go crispy and you don’t want the garlic to burn either. Add in the wine to deglaze the pan, which just means that you want to get all the stuck bits off the bottom of the pot. Let the wine cook for a little while, about 5 minutes and then add in the stock.
  

Now all you need to do is place your chicken pieces back into the pot, scatter the vegetables and herbs over and put in the oven with the lid on for about an hour, until the chicken is cooked.

After an hour, take the casserole out of the oven. To thicken the sauce a little, I made a Buerre Manie, which is basically as mixture of equal parts butter and flour. In a small bowl, add a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of flour and stir to mix for about  minute. Take the chicken pieces out of the dish and turn the hob plate on low. Add a tsp of the butter flour and stir gently allowing it to melt into the cooking sauce. Keep adding and stirring as required. Return the chicken to the dish to coat with sauce and serve up! I served the Coq aux Vin with sauteéd potatoes and steamed broccoli.

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French Coq au Vin Recipe

There are some memories of childhood that will never stop giving me joy. Back in South Africa in the ’80′s, the biggest treat as a kid was to be taken to Mike’s Kitchen where we could tuck into the juiciest, stickiest tastiest spare ribs, get as messy as we liked and not get in trouble for it!

BBQ Ribs are so delicious, and maybe our love for them is a hangover from our caveman days! The best BBQ spare ribs are those that you don’t have to work too hard for to get the meat off the bone, although the meat shouldn’t just flop off either, you need to be able to pick up each rib and easily bite off the delicious sweet meat. Pork ribs work the best for this dish.

In my opinion, unless you have an industrial flame-grill, like you get at Spur and Nando’s, it is not very easy to create the right environment for good pork ribs on the braai (this is the South African word for BBQ), unless you are only braaing (Yes, its a verb too ) ribs and nothing else. But I can tackle that one later, outdoor cooking is another whole world of fun! The trick to getting perfect ribs in the oven, is to cook them long and low.

Now for the sauce. I’ve been some places where you are served up a rubbery quick cooked rack swimming in a sickly sweet and slightly orange bottled BBQ sauce. Yuck! The BBQ sauce needs to cling to the pork ribs, not drip from it. It shouldn’t be sweet, or rather too sweet. The sweetness should be there, but not the main flavour. And I think an element of smokiness is required to give the ribs an authentic flame grilled flavour.

I’ve made a rub / sauce for these ribs. The rub allows you to coat the ribs nicely and get into all the bits. As it it cooks, the rub melts down and mingles with the meat juices to create the best BBQ sauce to drizzle over the ribs, so its a win win! The rub consists of dark muscovado sugar, smoked paprika (it has to be smoked!), garlic salt, olive oil and some tomato sauce. Before you put the rub onto the ribs, you need to remove the membrane that covers one side of the ribs; it can be a tricky job, but it is definitely worth taking it off! I used the end of a teaspoon (the handle end) to work under the membrane and lift it up, then it was as easy as tearing it off.

I cooked the racks in a baking tray on top of some lemon slices. This infuses the slightest citrus flavour into the ribs which complements the rich rub really well. Cover them with a tent of cling-film, this keeps the steam in which keeps them from drying out.

I cooked them at 130°C (250F) for 5½ hours, basting the ribs every so often with the BBQ sauce juices. Take the foil off for the last 15 minutes and turn the heat up to 200°C to create a few nice charred bits. Serve with triple-cooked chips and a bowl of warm water with lemons in to clean your fingers

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How to cook BBQ ribs in the oven