Food In My Home

So I have finally made it to New York, which I have dreamed of going to since I was about six. My Dad promised me that he would take me when I was nine and I gave up asking after 17 years, so I booked a ticket to go for three months, with the presumption that I would love it. I am one week in, and so far I have... had a slice of pizza, seen a rat the size of a cat, had lots of terrifying late night taxi experiences, been to the NYC Ballet, a gig, shopped, visited pretty much every touristy spot, seen celebs, shopped, had brunch at a diner…with portions which made me understand the American weight issue...been to markets, had my nails done, seen a man perform some sort of Star Wars saber knife slicing champagne bottle neck off trick, stepped on a cockroach, shopped, drunk lots of coffee, been to secret bars where you drink out of teacups and eaten in lots of trendy cool restaurants…and tomorrow night I am even going to a Yankees game, all far to much excitement!

This is a recipe I got from Paris and I hadn't tried it yet until this weekend. We had millions of pears in the garden a few weeks ago and my Mum manically poached them all so she was dying for me to use some up. I decided to make them small in the style of petit fours to be tres French. Makes about 24 100g Butter 100g Sugar 100g Ground Almonds 2 egg 20g Flour Drizzle of booze, cognac, rum etc Preheat the oven to 170˚C Cream the butter and sugar with an electric whisk, when light and creamy whisk in the almonds and eggs then fold in the flour until all mixed well. Grease a small cupcake tin depending on what size you want to make. Spoon in the mixture ⅔ rds full and add any poached fruit like pear and apple. Or you could use any berries and just put them on top of the mix and they will soften in the oven. Cook at 160-170 for about 15 mins until golden.

This is a really simple and tasty recipe, great if you have people over for dinner as everything is pretty much done ahead. Serves 6 6 Guinea Fowl breasts..can also use chicken supremes or pheasant breasts, must have skin on! 1 tub ricotta Bunch of Thyme 2 Bags Spinach 1 Pomegranate, seeds only 1 Glass of white wine Preheat your oven to 200˚C Trim your breasts of any extra fat, peel back the skin on one side to create a pouch to put your filling in. Take the leaves off the thyme and finely chop them, mix in with the ricotta, salt and pepper. Stuff  about 2 teaspoons of the ricotta mix under the skin and smooth the skin down on the side to help stop it from squeezing out, season genourously. Get a pan nice and hot and fry the breasts skin side down until they are a really good golden brown all over, then flash fry for a few seconds on the other side just to seal them. Place in a deep oven tray with the glass of wine poured over. They take around 15-20 mins to cook, so when...

I recently returned from a girls surf trip to Biarritz. I say surf trip but it was more of a food, wine, shopping, lying horizontally on beaches and perving on lots of incredible male surfers torsos trip. We were six girls, and I think we scared the locals from our noisy behaviour talking loudly about all kinds of inappropriate subjects and drinking too much of the local Basque liquor Manzana, which they seem to just hand out and act surprised when one of you is spider pigging on the ceiling. Biarritz is located in the Basque region next to Spain so the food has a massive Spanish influence with loads of tapas bars and Spanish meats, plenty of seafood and salt cod around the place as well as the famous spice piment d'espelette and the delicious Gâteau Basque. We shopped in the market which is open everyday till 1pm to get all our food and cooked up a storm most evenings when we stayed in, however there are loads of really good restaurants and bars which we of course had to sample to...

I went to beautiful Provence last weekend for my friends Phil and Aneta's wedding in Tarascon. It was a gorgeous day and thankfully not as scorching as it had been the days before. They spent most of the service giggling with each other and then we all got stuck into drinking zee Pimms, playing games in the garden and taking ridiculous photos in fancy dress and then a great big feast of frenchie food...and of course wild dancing!

Home sweet home for a few days with our newest edition to the family Nacho the terrier. And just like an episode of the good life I made dinner with that was totally home grown, lamb from our sheep, and all veg from the garden. I made Lamb fillet with a broad bean pesto, roasted beetroot with balsamic and roast new potatoes with caramalised onions. Broad Bean Pesto I cant give an exact recipe because I can't remember the amounts I used but a rough guide is: 200g cooked broad beans 1/2 lemon juiced 4 tbsp olive oil handful of basil and mint leaves pinch salt and pepper Unfortunatley broad beans are fairly labour intensive but after you have podded them, boil for around 2 - 3 mins and then refresh in ice water. When cold shell them. Pureé the beans and add a little lemon juice, olive oil and herbs, seasoning and tasting, it may need loosening up so you can do this by ading more lemon juice or olive oil, or a splash of water. Get whole raw beetroot and give it a wash and take of the s...

All kinds of fun going on in London this summer, on Friday night I met up with some friends on the river to check out Tom Aitkens summer terrace bar outside somerset house which was buzzing with people on the clear summery evening, drinking lots of delicious cocktails and less delicious shots that the barman was mixing for us. The riverside was packed with other stuff going on with pop up restaurants, bars and outdoor theatres all over the place. On Saturday I discovered a great little farmers market just behind Notting Hill Gate which is so close to me that I am very angry with myself for not knowing about it before. It only had about 10 stalls but all filled with delicious produce, I got some yummy goats cheese from a man who just sold goats cheese with all sorts of different kinds, textures, rolled in lemon, ash, chilli and ones stuffed with figs, he even had photos of which goat it came from..extremely personal goats cheese shopping! They also had lots of veg stalls with amazing va...