Braised Pheasant

This is one for a cold autumn evening when you’ve been out on the hills. You can throw it in the oven in about 20 minutes and it’ll be ready an hour and a half later…plenty of time for a drink and a chat before dinner! I try to keep some pheasant thighs in the […]

Autumn Soup

This is a tasty soup, with the rich orange colour of autumn leaves. It makes a quick, tasty lunch served with a hunk of No-Knead Bread.

Recipe: Autumn Soup Ingredients a slosh of olive oil 1 clove of garlic 1 medium onion, chopped 12oz / 340g butternut squash, diced 3 carrots, diced 1 large sweet […]

Tasty No-Knead Sunflower Seed Bread

I have been playing around with the no-knead recipe over the last few weeks and here is one of the best variations so far. This is by far the easiest and cheapest way to have delicious seed bread for toast and sandwiches. My kids love the toasty taste of the seeds on the outside.

Folllow […]

Mince Goblins

OK, so it’s proper name is mince cobbler, but we’ve known it as mince goblins ever since my elder daughter misheard me years ago. The “goblins” are savoury herb scones which are used to top a tasty mince dish. It’s a little more fiddly than some meals: you have to wash up an extra pot […]

Pancake Day!

We all love pancakes in this family, so of course, we have a recipe which you can use for sweet or savoury treats. Having experienced Breton galettes (the huge, buckwheat savoury pancakes made in Brittany) I like to make a full meal out of pancakes. We start with two – or maybe three!- savoury pancakes […]

Christmas Chutney or Why I’ve Been Quiet for So Long!

I am still here, really! It’s been a while since the last post principally because I’ve been making jam and chutney like it’s going out of fashion. I somehow ended up responsible for making for/with the kids in my children’s lower school enough jam and chutney to sink a reasonably large ship. Unsurprisingly, this has […]

Balti-style Lamb

This is a great meal to make with leftovers from the weekend’s lamb joint. As it uses cooked lamb, the cooking time is fairly short, so it’s a good choice when you fancy something tasty (that isn’t just cold lamb and veg.), but you don’t have much time.

We cook Indian food in a flat-bottomed […]

Curried Parsnip Soup

This is very easy to prepare. The parsnips have a lovely sweetness which goes really well with the spices. If you use a pressure cooker, this is ready to eat in under 20 minutes!

For this recipe you will need either a pressure cooker or a large, heavy-bottomed pan/flame-proof casserole (eg. Le Creuset) and a […]

Sausage casserole

This is one of our family favourites for a weektime dinner. It scores highly on several fronts: it is easy and fairly quick to assemble; it is tasty; it can be thrown in the oven to look after itself. What more could you ask?

You need to go for good quality sausages for this. I […]

Midwinter Venison

This is a recipe for the cold, dark winter evenings. It is rich and satisfying and has the added bonus of being a dish which does most of the work for you and can be made in advance, which means that you can cook this for guests and still get to talk to them before […]