Chopped salad with Ginger Dressing

This is a delicious salad which is great on his own or as a side dish.  

Crunchy, healthy and delicious.  Great vegetarian food or a side dish with spicy grilled prawns.

Goats Cheese Salad

I love salads which combine warm and cold ingredients and this super special salad takes delicious, creamy, melting goats cheese and mixes it with a spiced dressing and pepperly leaves.  Delicious.

Edible Flower Salad

This light savoury salad was inspired by the beautiful flowers responding to the sunshine in my garden.  I combined three different types of edible flowers into a really light early summer salad.  This was great as a really light meal or starter / appetizer on its own but would also be great as an impressive looking side dish.

The cucumber gives a lovely texture and removing the skin helps the flavour of the herb flowers sing out.

I wouldn't use commercially sold flowers for this as you don't know if they're ok to eat or if they've been sprayed with pesticides, only use ones you've grown yourself and know haven't been sprayed.

Slow Cooked Chunky Beef Chilli

I love chilli made with minced beef but I love this recipe even more with meltingly soft and tender chunks of beef in a rich, spicy sauce.  You get far more texture and variety making chilli this way and the slow cooking makes the flavour awesome.  Smoked paprika may sound like an odd ingredient but it gives a sweet smoky depth to the stew.  Just make sure you use sweet smoked paprika or test the flavour first as you can get spicy versions.

Chilli flakes and powders vary (mine was a pretty new jar and the more recently the jar or pack is opened, the spicier it will be) so you may find this less spicy than you like.  My top tip though is to use some tabasco or other hot sauce to bring up the spice at the end if you feel that it needs it.  The problem with slow cooking is it tends to intensify the flavours of chilli so it's easy to end up with a chilli at the end which is more "blow your head off" than "gently warming" so I'd err on the side of cautious then correct the flavour at the end.  The other benefit being you then have a more multidimensional flavour.

Roasted Vegetables with Feta Cheese

This past week I've been full of cold and generally off my food.  All I've been eating is anything with loads of spices to try and shift the bunged feeling.  Today, at last, I'm starting to feel better but the weather for the year is still cold and miserable so I put together this dish of lovely summery roasted vegetables.

My herbs are looking fabulous right now with all the wet weather this week and it helped cut through the lingering dullness from my snotty nose.

I mean, look at that?  How you can still feel anything but summery and healthy when that was your lunch?

Chorizo Rice

I've been making this recipe for years.  Traditional paella does not contain chorizo but after trying an inauthentic recipe with it in, I realised that if I just made a rice dish with the chorizo, it would be a pretty tasty.  Also as you miss out the saffron, this makes this recipe pretty cheap.  The extra smoked paprika flavour means you don't need much chorizo for this dish either.

Chicken with Haricot Beans

I love haricot beans, pulses are a great way to contribute towards your 5 (or 10 a day) while also getting a great source of energy, a fantastic alternative to pasta, rice or potatoes.

This recipe is not exactly healthy but it is delicious and reheats surprisingly well.

Slow Cooked Chinese Style Pork

I had some pork belly strips in the fridge and wanted to treat them so they'd end up in a sweet, sticky and spicy glaze.  This is what I came up with, with the crunchy vegetables it turned out to be a delicious feast.

Edamame Bean Salad

I love edamame (or soy) beans.  I had a delicious dish recently of some edamame beans in chilli sauce at a Japanese restaurant, they were utterly addictive.

This salad is less messy but no less tasty.  What's great as well is despite being all vegetables, the dressing brings it all together to make it taste like more than it is.  Super healthy.

Beef Pot Roast

Pot roasts.  Gloriously, flavourful, delicious, falling apart beef gorgeousness.  Are you with me yet?

Is it pretty?  Not really unless you love hunks of meat (sorry veggies, sometimes I do, everything in moderation).  Does it taste great?  Absolutely.

I have to get my disclaimer in first.  There is no making a pot roast for one.  There, I've said it.  So why am I posting this recipe?  Well despite the fact I made this in my weeny household, I did seriously cook 1kg of beef and it was so blooming tasty I certainly didn't mind eating leftovers for a few days but see tips towards the end for more on that.

Mixed Bean Chilli

I love chilli, I particularly love vegetarian chilli, slow cooked meat chillis, frankly I just love the heat.  What is great about this chilli though is as well as being vegan, it also contains mostly store cupboard and "likely to be in your fridge" ingredients.  It's so cheap as well and freezes brilliantly making it the ideal recipe for when the month is nearly up and your bank balance doesn't look quite so healthy.

You could mix up the beans in this; I would have used pinto beans if I'd been organised enough to soak and cook them (I couldn't find any in cans in my local supermarket.)  Of course you can use dried beans here which would make this even cheaper, just soak and cook them first as I find cooking them with something acidic like tomato if they're not already cooked through makes them a little tough.

Nuoc Cham

Nuoc cham is a dipping sauce served as a condiment in Vietnam.  It is frankly delicious and sums up that sour, spicy, salty, sweet combo which is so great.

I will give you the recipe here for how to make nuoc cham yourself and also give you a couple of ways it can be used.

Spicy Chicken Salad

This dish is something I've been making and tweaking for years.  It started off as a Vietnamese chicken salad with poached chicken breasts and a spicy dressing.  Over the years the recipe evolved to using thighs and baking the chicken then using the dressing as a marinade and here is where I am now.

Nothing authentic about it; in a way it's like a Vietnamese chicken salad meats caramel chicken mash up; sorry for the mish mash of influences.

Most of all though, it tastes great.  The harshness of the garlic and chilli are mellowed out by them being cooked.  The chicken thighs are much juicier and flavoursome than the poached breasts but benefit from the oven cooking to give them flavour and cook out some of the fat.  The freshness is still in the dish from the salad.

Venison and Chestnut Stew

When the weather is chilly outside, I often look to my slow cooker for something delicious, hearty and filling.  Venison may not be the most obvious choice but I bought some wild venison from my local supermarket.  Some people get very squeamish about eating it presumably because deer are prettier than cows?  I don't.  We have several deer parks in the UK and deer are a pest in many areas, especially Scotland.  I also can't see a better life to lead than a completely wild one.

That said, venison is a lean, delicious meat but not a cheap one.  This is why I bought cheap pieces of venison for slow cooking and also had the idea to include chestnuts.  I've included chestnuts once or twice in stews before and if you've not tried it, I urge you to.  They add a textural difference and a delicious, sweet note, they also make 300g of expensive venison into 3 portions.

Chicken and Vegetables with Sticky Honey and Ginger Sauce

I decided to do a chicken and vegetable stir fry which was more veg than chicken.  Sometimes it's great to have a small amount of meat in a dish, it's a great way to make it a bit healthier and count towards your 5 a day.

This dish contains a whopping 170g of lovely vegetables, more than 2 of your 5 portions a day.

Quick Cassoulet

Ok, ok, natives of the South of France will be hollering and calling me names, saying this is "inauthentic".  I know, I know but this was inspired by trying to make something with all the delicious flavours of cassoulet but without slaving away at it for hours.  It is meant to be something possible to make at the end of a work day for 1 or 2 people not the "feeding of the 5000" that a good batch of proper cassoulet can be.

And do you know what?  Part of me is feeling pretty robust about this because it tasted bloody good.  So good in fact that I ate the whole lot (oops) but it does reheat pretty well if you can resist...

I don't suggest the duck or goose fat to be obtuse, it's a nod back to the duck or goose confit you would have in a traditional cassoulet and adds a really lovely flavour.  I also have loads of goose fat in my freezer from Christmas dinner, I mean loads.

Prawns with Quick Pickled Cucumber

I hadn't made quick pickled cucumber for a while but it is absolutely delicious in a salad like this or accompanying a stir fry.  This is a sensational, light starter but you could make it more substantial by adding more vegetables or noodles.

I love the mixture of the soft, tangy pickled cucumber, the gentle spicing from the pickle and sweet chilli sauce and the hot prawns and crunch of peanuts.

Slow cooked lamb curry

This is a cracking frugal recipe which you could adapt to what you have available.  It makes the most out of quite a small amount of lamb.

If your lamb is on the bone, cook it in the curry bones and all and take them out later (if you like) as this improves the flavour.

Chestnut and Mushroom Soup

I'd recently bought some cooked vacuum packed chestnuts and I had some chestnut mushrooms in my increasingly dwindling fridge stocks so an idea came to life to combine these most seasonal of ingredients.

The flavour of mushrooms is great but the slippery texture in a soup isn't ideal unless you combine it with something starchy.  I'm not a fan of potato in soups but I love using other vegetables to thicken soups and stews and why not chestnuts?

Chestnuts are a bit of a faff to prepare from raw which is why I used pre cooked ones here but they are bang in season and make this delicious, filling and thick soup which is a delight of wintery flavours and also smooth as silk.

Sea Bream Rice Bowl

Christmas and all of its rich food is approaching.  I think it's great at this time of year to be a bit more pared back in our food choices, perhaps not so many fatty meats and deep flavours so we appreciate the tastes of Christmas all the more when they come?  In some cultures it is traditional to fast until Christmas Day, I'm not proposing this as an idea but eating fish with spiced flavours does feel "right".

There is something I love about raw Asian style dressings like this added after cooking, the flavours are so fresh.

If you prefer you could cook fish fillets instead of baking the fish on the bone but personally I always think fish cooked on the bone is a bit better in flavour.