Food In My Home

I ate this salad the other day and it was so delicious, I'm always looking for interesting new salads and this is one of my new favourites. Its incredibly fresh, crunchy and simple. 3 courgettes, grated 2 fennel bulbs, shaved thinly with a mandolin 2 avocados, diced sunflower seeds 3 lemons, juiced any oil, unflavoured or olive oil salt and pepper Grate the cougettes into a big bowl with the shaved fennel, add the diced avocado and pour over the lemon juice, this is important or the fennel and avocado might start to brown. Season and add oil and stir in seeds then its ready to serve. It's a great side salad otherwise you could have it for dinner with fish on or something.

This is a super simple salad, you hardly have to do anything with it because it's so tasty already. I make it as a salad to go with lots of other things at lunch. Beetroot is one of those superfoods which is supposed to be incredible for you, its a big antioxidant so I always eat it after I've drunk too much, makes me feel like I'm curing myself, and I read somewhere that it makes you skinny too...amazing! 4 raw beetroot peeled and grated, small bunch coriander/parsley, roughly chopped juice of 1 lemon a few glugs of good olive oil, any other oils fine too plenty of sea salt and pepper Peel and grate the beetroot, if you have a magimix you can use the grater setting and it takes seconds. Season and stir in the chopped coriander, oil and lemon juice. Season and you can add anything else you fancy, goats cheese, nuts, seeds to jazz it up.

If you are having a party and need an easy canape which makes you look like you have made more of an effort than you actually have these are pretty good, also a great vegetarian option. You can buy mini pastry cases in lots of places now which are great, or you can make the pastry yourself. I used pea and leek but you can use whatever fillings you like, other good ones are caramelised onion and goats cheese, Mediterranean veg, bacon and Stilton and whatever else you might fancy. Makes around 25 2 leeks, quartered and sliced thinly large handful of peas fresh or frozen 1 small shallot, diced finely Pastry cases Parmesan 2 eggs 284ml double cream Preheat the oven to 180˚C. On a very gentle heat sweat the onions and leeks with a knob of butter and a drizzle of olive oil for around 15-20 mins until nice and soft and season, you don't want them to get any colour so just make sure there is enough butter and the heat is low. Put aside while you make the quiche mix. Crack both eggs into a

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