It’s still courgette or zucchini season here for another while yet. If you grow them yourself you probably have more than you know what to do with. They are such a versatile vegetable and can be cooked in so many ways. I love them cooked until almost caramelised, like these Courgettes with Whipped Feta. I’ve often cooked courgettes by roasting in the oven for a long time. I recently discovered the method below of cooking them in the pan. It cuts the cooking time at least in half. And as you know by now, I avoid turning on the oven as much as possible. These are delicious as a meal in themselv ..read more

This blog was 10 years old last month and it completely passed me by! Stunned I’ve managed to keep it going this long to be honest. I don’t think people even read food blogs anymore and a lot of my favourite bloggers have stopped publishing new recipes. But as I’m not a video type person and hate talking on camera, I’ll stick to my old school blog for another bit yet.  Anyway, enough about that, you’re here for the recipe, my One Pot Chicken with Creamy Pasta. I don’t know about you but I hate seeing a recipe for one pot something and then it turns out you fry the onions in one dish and ..read more

This recipe is on high rotation in our house so I thought it deserved a post. It’s so tasty and we both love it. I’ve said before I like tomato sauces with pasta, himself likes creamy sauces. I love this very simple Tomato Sauce with Butter but himself wanted something with more body. So this recipe is the perfect compromise dish.  It’s very simple and while it takes a bit of time for the sauce to cook, there’s very little actual work to it. I make a big pot of the sauce and freeze the leftovers. When re-heating just do it very gently so that the sauce doesn’t split.   Useful tips ..read more

Ratatouille, now there’s a blast from the past! My mother used to make this regularly in the 80s when it was fashionable and I thought it was so fancy. She used a recipe from a huge Marguerite Patten cookbook that she got as a wedding present.  I hadn’t really thought about it in years. Then it seemed to pop up everywhere this Summer on social media. We went for a meal recently and it was served as a side on himself’s roast chicken dish. I was taken down memory lane and had to try to recreate the recipe from my childhood. It’s a real summer dish but I think we can all so with some sunshi ..read more

Risotto is one of my favourite foods to make. I think of it as an indulgent treat to stand mindlessly stirring dinner to switch off from the day and the result is a creamy delicious treat. It is so versatile and can take any flavours. For this recipe I’m using courgettes, which are still very much in season now.  In this Courgette Risotto with Pancetta, the grated courgette melts into the rice adding to its creaminess and the salty pancetta cuts through the creamy risotto. For me this is a perfect meal in itself but you can serve it as a side with white fish, duck or chicken.   ..read more

I’ll give you two guesses where we were on holidays this month! I’d never been to Turkey before and spent a week there with friends in a gorgeous town where there were very few tourists. This meant plenty of beautiful local restaurants serving the most amazing traditional food. Heaven.  While I didn’t see any of these style of Turkish Eggs on menus, Our hotel served up delicious menemen or Turkish scrambled eggs every morning.  I came home determined to replicate some of the flavours and delighted that himself is open to yoghurt sauces now. As you know I make some form of chicken sa ..read more

Apologies in advance to any Italians who stumble across my blog, this is not a traditional carbonara. I’ve been making different versions of Spaghetti Carbonara for over 20 years. When I first met himself, it was his favourite dinner. Being keen to impress I used to make it fairly regularly. But that version of carbonara was the Irish version of the dish, with lots of double cream. Very rich, stodgy and leaving me barely able to wash up after! When I first had proper carbonara it was a revelation. Then I started using Nigella’s recipe from How to Eat.  To be fair, the internet needs anot ..read more

I know, another aubergine recipe again so quickly. It’s such a versatile vegetable though and I do love it. In the last year on holidays I had an absolutely gorgeous dish of aubergine carpaccio in a restaurant in Ibiza, called Aubergine, funnily enough. If you’re ever there I highly recommend it for a really special meal. That dish was the inspiration for this one but despite several attempts, I could not cook and finely slice the aubergine as needed. So it became a dip! I did not want to call this baba ghanoush or mutabal as it is not an authentic recipe. To be honest it is a mashup of the t ..read more

A nice rich meat ragu is very popular in my house and I make sure to always have some in the freezer for a quick dinner. As I have cut back on meat for several reasons, I wanted to master a vegetarian version to rival my Bolognese Sauce for flavour. I realise the very phrase vegetarian bolognese is horrifying for some, so purists should look away now. I’ve been playing around with vegetarian versions of my Bolognese Sauce for some time now. And in that time I’ve eaten a lot of bland and nondescript meals. I think I’ve finally cracked it with this Mushroom and Aubergine Bolognese! I tried seve ..read more

While I don’t wan’t to talk about bloody c*v*d, we started the new year in isolation. Not the best start to 2022 but thankfully we were both fine, bored but fine. As part of the endless cooking that happened for the week, I made this Baked Eggs with Beans again. We were lucky to get to London for a few days in December and I had a gorgeous brunch of baked eggs. I’ve been recreating it and playing around with recipes ever since. There are endless variations, see tips and links for suggestions. I’ll be honest, I usually like to make this with nduja. But one of my last posts was for Nduja Fried ..read more