Food In My Home

I made this tart in Spain where I was working for a family and it was very summery and delicious, also looks very pretty. You can use any other kind of fruits to suit the season too. Sweet pastry I use the Ottolenghi recipe, same as post below Almond paste 250g Butter 250g Sugar 250g Ground Almonds 5 egg 45g Flour 3/4 tbsp of booze, cognac, rum etc Cream the butter with an electric whisk, when light and creamy whisk in sugar, then almonds, eggs then flour until all mixed well. For the plums use about 15-20, cut them in half and then cut the halves into 3 wedges. Put in a bowl with a  good sprinkling of caster sugar and leave for 10 mins. Spoon the almond paste into the tart case and then push the plums in making a pretty pattern. Bake in the oven for about 30-40 mins so that the mixture is golden, set and not wobbly. Leave to cool or serve warm, it looks amazing finished with a glaze so heat up a few tbsps of jam until runny and lightly paint over the tart with a pastry brush. Serve wi

If you haven't tried salted caramel before then you really need to! I never quite understood how good salt with chocolate could be until I went to Pizza East on Portabello, where the pizzas are just amazing and if you have room at the end their salted caramel and chocolate tart will quite literally rock your world. I found a Rachel Allen recipe and blindly tried it out for a dinner party. A little worried at winging a new recipe I tried a bite before sending it out to the masses and wow it was insanely good, even think I could be giving Pizza East a run for their money! You must try this recipe and invite all your friends over because they will think you are some sort of baking rockstar. For the pastry use whatever sweet pastry recipe you like, I personally love the Ottolenghi recipe: 330g plain flour 100g icing sugar ¼ teaspoon salt 180g cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes 1 egg yolk 2 tbsp cold water Put the flour, icing sugar, and salt into a bowl and add the cold butter.

I have been wanting to make this cake for AGES!! I saw it on a blog I follow called flourishing foodie and it looked like the funnest cake ever, so I made it for my friend Phil's surprise 30th birthday which we had at Santo an amazing fun mexican on Portabello. It did take about a day making all six layers, I even had to go out and by an extra cake tin or it really would have taken forever. After about 4 bottles of food colouring...voila! Unfortunalely food colouring tastes grosse so licking the bowl almost made me barf. So to cover up all the E numbers I made a ginormous bowl of cream cheese frosting to spread between all the layers and all over which must have worked as everyone liked it, or maybe it was all the margaritas and tequilas numbing the taste buds. The most scary part was once I finished it I had to drive it down the road to the restaurant, being quite an eratic blonde driver I was sure it was going to fly through the windscreen at some point, but I managed to keep it

I saw these pops on a blog a while ago and they looked so fun and cute so I had to make them. You don't have to use brownie you could do whatever you like. Chocolate biscuit cake ones would be good, or just thought of doing cheesecake balls and rolling them in biscuit, that would be amazing! Apparently people do cake ones but I read a recipe where it says you make the cake and then crumble it and squish it back together which absolutely doesn't work. You just need to have something that will go hard in the fridge or freezer so the sticks stay on. They would be amazing for a kids party, a sweet canapé or just a funny different way of serving pudding. I have had a plumber here fixing some leak all day who must of thought I was mad covered in icing and sprinkles all over the place, but he was very impressed with them and said they were delicious. He still hasn't fixed the leak though, maybe hanging around in hope of another one. makes about 35 pops You need Brownies Icing suga

I have just spent the week doing a stage at The River Cafe which was amazing! I absolutely loved it and learnt so much and I now have a million ideas and recipes I want to try, I think I am going to have to have people over for dinner every night so I can get out all the things i've learnt while it's all fresh in my head. This is just one side dish that was served with spinach, roasted monkfish with lemon and marjoram.  Braising the fennel like this makes it really soft and has the most delicious flavour. You could serve it with anything you like, as a vegetable side or just do a big bowl of it cold with a salady lunch would be perfect. serves 5 2 fennel bulbs 1 large garlic clove, chopped finely chicken stock about 500ml olive oil tbsp picked thyme leaves Cut the fingers off the fennel and then cut it in half and slice into thickish pieces. take the green hairy bits off the fingers and put aside for later. Chop the fingers in chunks too. In a heavy based pan with a lid heat up

If your looking for a simple, fruity, summery, light pudding this is so delicious. The yogurt needs to be drained for 4-6 hours minimum but best left overnight to get it really thick, rich and creamy. 800g greek yogurt 80g icing sugar a few pinches of cinnamon 1 sliced mango 1 pomegranate, seeds removed 20g coarsely chopped pistachios 5 tbsp runny honey Mix the yogurt, icing sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl. Get a clean bowl and place a sieve resting in the top of it. Lay a clean tea towel on the sieve and spoon the yogurt into it, fold over the excess tea towel to cover the yogurt and place in the fridge overnight, or for at least 4-6 hours. This will take most of the moisture out of the yogurt and turn it into labneh. The yogurt should be nice and thick by now and all you need to do is spoon it into a bowl and scatter it over your fruits and nuts. The honey you can either drizzle over cold or heat in a pan so it goes really runny. The labneh is also really good for brunch with s

Gnudi gnudi gnudi, it's a fun word to say and a fun thing to eat. No one seems to know what this delicious little ball of amazingness is but I am going to share it with you. They are little balls similar to gnocchi rolled in semolina and filled with ricotta and parmesan which when boiled create an unusual pasta coating, served with brown sage butter, you cut through the pasta layer and out oozes this cheesy yuminess. I discovered it having dinner at The Spotted Pig in New York with a friend who took me there on my last week saying I couldn't leave without going. Well he was right we had the the famous Gnudi and it was oh sooo good. I have been thinking about it for a while, trying to work out how to do it when I came across a recipe in The River Cafe Classic Italian Cook Book. It makes sense that they would have a recipe since the head chef at The Spotted Pig is April Bloomfield who trained at the River Cafe before moving to NY. I made the River Cafe version but as I write this