So after the virtuous fruity summer salads earlier in the week we deserve a treat, right?

This is one of the nicest desserts I’ve made and so simple! All you have to do is either griddle or barbecue some fresh wedges of pineapple. In a seperate pot make a syrup from brown sugar and rum, add a few fresh or dried chilli flakes. Serve pineapple with syrup over the top with good quality ice cream.

Fruit in a salad, I’m probably way behind the times but it’s a revelation. Here are two of my favourites;

Feta & Pineapple Salad

Ingredients;

Feta
Fresh pineapple
Fresh mint
Salad leaves

Dressing – lemon, olive oil, sea salt, pepper

Watermelon and Goats Cheese Salad

Watermelon
Goats cheese
Salad leaves
Pine nuts
Croutons

Dressing – lemon, olive oil, sea salt, pepper

By Guest Writer Julie

I recently added Eric Lanlard’s Home Bake to my ever expanding collection of baking books and have been enjoying experimenting with some of his ideas. One of the recipes is for Malteser Squares which I thought was a fun twist on the traditional tiffin! I have used Eric’s idea with my own tiffin recipe as I thought the one in the book was a little light on the sugar! It’s such a simple recipe that it’s ideal for making with little ones.

Ingredients

Ingredients:

100g unsalted butter
250g milk chocolate
4 tbsp golden syrup
4 tbsp granulated sugar
4tbsp cocoa powder
225g Maltesers plus extra for decoration
225g Digestive biscuits

and one cheeky child!

1. Put the butter, 200g of the milk chocolate, golden syrup, granulated sugar and cocoa powder together in a pan and melt together over a low heat.

Bashing!

2. Finely crush the digestives in a large bowl, you don’t want any chunks of biscuit left unlike a normal tiffin recipe as the crunch comes from the Maltesers!

3. Mix the digestives and the melted ingredients together thoroughly then quickly stir in the Maltesers.

4. Press the mixture in to a lined 8″ square cake tin and pop it in the fridge to set (not forgetting to lick the spoon!)

5. Once the tiffin is set firm, lift it out of the tin using the lining paper. Sprinkle the top with crushed maltesers and drizzle with the remaining 50g of melted chocolate.

The End Result

6. Cut the tiffin into squares – Mr Lanlard suggests you can get 20 squares from this quantity but that gives you rather mean portions. We ended up with 12 squares which disappeared so rapidly I didn’t get chance to photograph a piece!! Here’s some I made earlier – topped with white and milk chocolate chips this time.

I love this idea so much I am now dreaming up other goodies to add to my tiffin mix – I’m thinking of trying bashed up Crunchies next! What favourite sweeties can you think of that might work with tiffin?

Ok so it sounds a little weird but this is an adaptation of Jamie Oliver’s ‘Coley Korma’ and my husband professed it the best thing I’ve ever made! And no, that’s not because I’m a rubbish cook!

Ingredients

Haddock Fillet
Basmati rice
Korma paste
Low fat coconut milk
Coriander
Chilli
Spring onion
Lemon

1. Gently fry 1/4 of a jar of korma paste.

2. Add the haddock fillets and spread the paste over the flesh so the spices flavour the fish. Fry for a few minutes.

3. Add the coconut milk and simmer gently for about 15 minutes or untile the flesh flakes away from the skin.

4. Boil the rice

5. Add half the coriander and a bit of chilli (depending on how hot you like it), season to taste.

6. Serve with additional coriander, some spring onion and a wedge of lemon

Enjoy!

Englishmum and I have decided to have a little soup swap today. I made this fragrant chicken soup of hers when she first published it back in 2007 and it was delicious so we’ve pulled the recipe from the archives just for you

Once you’ve devoured this one check out my onion soup over at hers.

Fragrant Chicken Soup with Lentils

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 spring onions, sliced thinly
1 tsp Garam Masala or curry powder would do I guess
1 bowl cooked chicken, shredded
2 chicken stock cubes crumbled into 1 litre boiling water
1 carrot, finely chopped
Couple of large handfuls of lentils

So heat your oil in a nice heavy saucepan or Le Creuset casserole if you?re that loaded (I want a pink one please, Santa). Finely chop your onion and add to the pan along with a generous sprinkling of salt to stop them browning too much. When they?re slightly softened and translucent add the spring onions. Then sprinkle over the Garam Masala and stir well. Meanwhile, boil the kettle and make up the stock. Add this to the saucepan and then bung in your chicken, carrots and lentils (I used green), plus any other leftover veg you might have floating around.

Cover your soup and leave it to simmer away gently on a low heat until the vegetables are soft and the lentils cooked (nothing worse than chewing on an undercooked lentil) and your whole kitchen is steamy and fragrant. Season to taste, sprinkle on a final flourish of chopped coriander, then trough with mountains of brown bread. Yurrrrmmm.

This is a slideshow of my chilli beef stir fry, very simple, very tasty.

One of my favourite things to do on christmas eve is cook lots of yummy picky bits, here’s a few things I’ll be making this year, not difficult but should be very tasty

Chicken Satay

100ml Soy
4tbsp Peanut butter
Chicken fillets

1. Heat soy and peanut butter in a pot, once it’s melded together leave to cool completely.

2. Pour marinade over chicken and leave for up to 24 hours.

3. Bake chicken for 15-20mins or until cooked.

4. Thread onto skewers and serve.

Coronation Chicken Vol au Vents

Mayonnaise
Curry Paste
Grapes
Chicken
Mango Chutney
Vol au vent cases
Lettuce

1. Bake vol au vent cases as per recipe and leave to cool.

2. Mix mayonnaise with tbsp of curry paste. Add spoonful of chutney and quartered grapes.

3. Line cases with lettuce and add a spooful of coronation chicken to each and serve.

Goats Cheese & Red onion Vol au Vents

Goats Cheese (welsh)
Red onion
Olive oil
Vol au Vent cases

1. Bake vol au vent cases and leave to cool.

2. Gently fry onion with a little olive oil until soft.

3. Add a small amount of onion to each case and crumble over a little goats cheese. Grill for a couple of minutes and serve.

Dipped Strawberries and Marshmallows

Hardly a recipe required as it’s so straight forward, I use milk chocolate for the marshmallows and Green & Black’s white chocolate for the strawberries.

This one is completely my own recipe made up of leftovers, it wasn’t perfect – please see possible improvements at the bottom

Ingredients

Slice of Crusty Brown Bread
Potato
Red Onion
Chorizo
Olive Oil

1. Par-boil diced potatoes.

2. Fry onions, add potatoes and chopped chorizo

3. Once everything is golden. Set aside.

4. Place the slice of bread into pan to toast in juices from chorizo and onions, add a little olive oil if necessary.

Serve toasted bread topped with chorizo hash.

Although tasty it was a little dry, I’d suggest either adding some fresh buffalo mozzarella at time of serving or spreading the toast with some roasted tomato sauce from your store. Some nice fresh chopped herbs would have been nice too.

This recipe involves using a base roast tomato sauce which came about when I accidentally bought six punnets of tomatoes online. The base sauce can be frozen and used for any tomato based dish.

Base Sauce;

Roast Tomatoes
Salt
Sugar
Pepper
Olive Oil
Garlic

1. Line up tomatoes and garlic cloves, sprinkle with a teaspoon of sugar, a couple of teaspons of sea salt or rock salt, grind over some black pepper and coat with olive oil.

2. Roast at 180 degrees for an hour, or until tomatoes are soft.

3. Remove tomatoes and oil, blend, sieve and freeze until use.

Spaghetti;

Base Sauce
Half an onion
Garlic
White Wine
Tabasco
Spaghetti

1. Dice the onion and fry in a little olive oil, add garlic and a glug of wine, then reduce.

2. Add base sauce, a couple of drops of tabasco and cooked spaghetti.

Parmesan Chicken;

Slice of Bread
Chicken Breast
Parmesan
Egg

1. Blend bread (the end works well) and mix with grated parmesan on a plate.

2. Beat an egg and put on a plate.

3. Dip chicken into egg and then parmesan breadcrumbs, shallow fry until golden.

4. Place chicken onto baking tray and pour the rest of the breadcrumbs over and around, put in the oven at 180. Bake for around 10-15 mins.

Serve spaghetti with parmesan chicken and sprinkle left over breadcrumbs all over for extra crunch

This mousse recipe was one I got from Good Food magazine. It’s one of the easiest and tastiest I’ve made to date and I think the little extra garnishes with this dish make it ideal dinner party fodder.

Serves 7

60ml milk
5 Mars Bars
4 Egg Whites
4 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
Chilli chocolate
Strawberries
Green & Black’s White Chocolate

1. Melt mars bars, milk and cocoa powder together in a pot. Once melted leave to cool for 15 minutes.

2. Whisk egg whites to soft peaks (get husband to do this if you don’t have electric whisk)

3. Fold in a little of the mixture and then gently add the rest – don’t beat the air out.

4. Leave to set in fridge for at least two hours.

5. Grate a little chilli chocolate (I used Lindt) over the top and serve with strawberries dipped in white chocolate (leave these to set too)