All posts tagged: recipe

Maple, Banana & Dark Chocolate Tray Cake

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You will never need another banana cake recipe once you have tried this. It’s so easy rustle up and is the perfect way to get rid of the bananas browning in your fruit bowl. The finished result is a sticky sweet banana bread that’s still spongy and light, perfect served hot with ice cream or custard, or enjoy cold with a cup of tea. 130g butter, softened 100g golden caster sugar, plus extra for dusting 2 medium eggs 3 medium ripe bananas, well mashed or pureed using a hand blender 45 ml milk 1 tsp vanilla bean extract 100g dark chocolate, broken into small chunks 1 tsp cinnamon 250g self-raising flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 pinch of salt 3 tbsp maple syrup   Preheat your oven to 180C and butter a small deep baking tray. Using a wooden spoon, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Now crack in the eggs, add the mashed/pureed banana, milk and vanilla extract and beat until until smooth. Into the wet mix pour the chocolate chunks, …

Mango & Lime Lassi Possets

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My inspiration for this dish came from the delicious mango smoothies (lassis) you find all over India, freshly made on the roadside by wallahs who hand pick the sweet mangoes from the trees and hand squeeze them to a pulp. Over in India there are lots of different ways to prepare lassi; sweet, salted fruit based or yoghurt based- but they all contain lots of sweet spices. My favourite combination is mango with earthy cardamom and cinnamon, sharp lime and savoury, salted yoghurt. I’ve taken these key elements and come up with a set dessert for a perfect post spice sweet. It’s rich but still light, and not too sweet. Such a crowd pleaser! Serves 4 Ingredients 100ml mango pulp from a can (works just as well as fresh mango) 2 limes 150g soft light brown sugar 300ml double cream 200g full fat greek yoghurt a pinch of salt 1/2 tsp ground ginger 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp ground cardamom a pinch of ground nutmeg a pinch of dried rose petals (optional) Add the zest and juice from both …

Halwa Spiced Carrot Cake with Condensed Milk Icing & Gold Leaf

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Styled and shot by Lauren Miller (www.laurenmiller.co.uk) (@millerisere) and Faye Wears (www.forksknivesblog.wordpress.com) (@forks_and_knives) Halwa is the most amazing Indian dessert – it’s a carrot-based, nut ridden version of our rice pudding made with loads of condensed milk, saffron, cardamom and golden sultanas. I thought how amazing it would be to have all of the flavours that make halwa taste so fab baked into a  light, spongy carrot cake. So I tried it. And it worked a dream! My fool proof carrot cake recipe has taken many forms in my kitchen (usually depending on what dried fruit and nuts I have in my cupboards) but this version is very special. It has a bold, aromatic taste that works really well with sweet carrots and orange zest. If you can’t get hold of cardamom powder, you can use ground cinnamon or allspice instead. Condensed milk is an essential ingredient in halwa, and here it gives a lovely shine and gooey texture to the icing, which trickles beautifully down the sides of the cake. It’s a perfect wintery treat Ingredients For the …

Turmeric Glazed Pulled Lamb Samosas & Green Chutney

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Styled and shot by Lauren Miller (www.laurenmiller.co.uk) (@millerisere) and Faye Wears (www.forksknivesblog.wordpress.com) (@forks_and_knives) Say goodbye to deep fried soggy samosas this Diwali! My lamb samosas are baked instead of deep fried and are made using filo pastry, creating a perfectly light, crispy case for the juicy, slow cooked lamb shoulder inside. An egg wash mixed with turmeric is a great way to achieve a fantastic bright yellow finish to these samosas, as well as making the pastry extra crispy when you tuck in. Green chutney is the perfect dip – crammed with fresh herbs, chillies and zingy lime! (Makes 12 samosas) 400g lamb shoulder, diced 5 tbsp yoghurt 3 shallots, peeled 3 garlic cloves, peeled  3 inch piece of ginger, peeled  2 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp garam masala ½ tsp red chilli powder 3 tbsp groundnut oil 1 lamb stock cube 1 large onion, peeled and really thinly sliced 1 small bunch of coriander, finely chopped 12 sheets of filo pastry 3 tbsp oil, for brushing 1 large egg 1 tsp …

Mean clean beefburgers

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Cooking as a couple can go one of two ways: either you get into an argument over how fine to dice your onions and you end up eating the finished product 4 hours late in complete silence (all been there?). Other times you take tips from each other in order to create something truly epic. We’ve been making burgers together since we started dating, taking influences from our favourite restaurants and cook books, in an attempt to create the perfect home burger. Our burger recipe is the product of lots of different trials (and some catastrophical fails) until we had developed the perfect formula. What to do and what not to do: We’ve used Jacobs crackers in the past (a la Jamie Oliver) – I don’t really rate this. They dont provide much flavour and the texture is a bit crumbly. I’ve tried raw onions mixed through the mince and it is horribly wrong. Onions never go soft if they aren’t cooked properly, and stay acidic and unpleasant We’ve used BBQ or Cajun seasoning in the beef mix before now. …

Cooking with matcha

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I have recently rekindled my love of green tea after discovering matcha – a powdered green tea made from specially selected green tea plants, which are shade grown for a few weeks before being ground up. The result is a clean, smooth-tasting tea that doesn’t have that horribly bitter after taste that first put me off regular green. It’s really easy to drink and has helped me through many a starvation lull on one of my fast days, as i’m currently trialing out the intermittent fasting (or the fast diet) in an attempt to (pun-alert) have my cake and eat it too (sorry.) But I’m more interested in matcha being used as an ingredient in cooking. The first time I tasted matcha was in a life changing dessert at So Japanese, Soho. This place was recommended to me by an ex colleague for its unbeatable sushi (and at a reasonable price for sushi) but I would also highly recommend the Japanese desserts. The Matcha & White Chocolate Cake with Black Sesame Ice Cream & Fruit Mousse   This was ordered …

Leek bhajis

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For me, onion bhajis are one of the things I get most excited about when I go for an Indian meal. Their like a little explosion of everything I love about Indian food- the staples of a great curry paste (onion, ginger and chilli), carefully selected and delicate spices, and plenty of fresh coriander. In India, bhajis are more commonly known as pakora (fritters), and don’t exclusively contain onion. Some have potatoes, spinach, peas, chicken, or anything you fancy. The Onion bhajis that we know and love in this country have a distinctive taste and smell from ajwan and nigella seeds, and can range from big boulders served in chip shops to tiny delicate nests. In any case, When done properly they have a crisp fried onion shell and perfectly cooked batter and soft onions in the centre. I recently had the opportunity to learn how to make Spinach and Onion Pakoras with head chef Rakesh at Cinnamon Kitchen. His trick was to combine the chopped onions and spinach with spices and salt before leaving it …

green coriander chutney

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I’m working on some lovely Indian dishes in my little old kitchen at the moment and here’s a little taster of things to come. A punchy, green chutney full of chilli, curry leaf, lemon and herbs! It’s perfect with poppadoms, naan bread, drizzled over BBQ meat or kebabs or stirred into soup or dhal! Serves 4 1 big handful of coriander 1 sprig of curry leaves 1 garlic clove 2 green finger chillies 1 sprig of mint mint the juice from ½ a lemon a glug of groundnut oil a pinch of salt a pinch of sugar Roughly chop the herbs, chillies and the garlic and blend everything in a mini food processor to a puree. Taste and add more seasoning if required. Done.

Black & White Pudding Pasties

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Hello, I’m Beth and I’m addicted to black pudding. I regularly exceed my RDA of iron and I am constantly looking for new ways to get my next fix. Last weekend, with an abundance of black and white pudding I have in my fridge from The Bury Black Pudding Company, I decided to find another excuse to ‘go to town’ on blood pudding and created the perfect lunch for my cousins to enjoy whilst working hard on their allotment! If you’ve never had white pudding i’d highly recommend it. It’s like black pudding, but without the blood (so basically a sausage, with plenty of pepper, spices and a firm, meaty texture). Ingredients 1 onion 2 medium potatoes 1 large black pudding sausage, chubb 1 large white pudding sausage a good glug of rapeseed oil 1 tsp English mustard 1 bay leaf a small sprig of thyme a handful of parsley 5 sage leaves 1 sheet of shortcrust pastry 1 egg salt and pepper a punnet of cress, for garnish Preheat the oven to 180°c Peel and dice up the …