Size does matter!

Sometimes (just sometimes) you don't want to make a family-sized pudding. I'm not much good at maths, but I know that if there are only two of you at home and you make a pudding that feeds six, one of the two will succumb to temptation. Stephen Hawking would probably put it like this:

6 - 2 = 4 ÷ by 2 = 2 + no self control + plenty more vanilla ice cream in the freezer = T(emptation) x [insert large number of choice] = G = guilt + self-loathing in the morning when you have to lie on the bed to get your jeans done up

2 ÷ 1 

I had some gooseberries and raspberries in the freezer which I'd cooked briefly with a load of sugar. But they were still tart and unappealing. So I hid them under a duvet of buttery-sugary-oaty crumble and they were transformed. A taste of summer in a warming pudding. With no leftovers!

Crumble for 2

35g butter
45g plain flour
20g sugar (any kind)
25g oats

Pre-heat oven to 180/gas 4. Roughly cut the butter into pieces and whizz it with the flour in a food processor until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and oats and whizz again briefly (or stir in). Tip over fruit of your choice* and bake for about 20-25 minutes until the crumble is lightly browned and the fruit is bubbling up at the edges.

*Best to use cooked fruit as this isn't in the oven for long enough to soften most fruit, though softer berries (strawberries, raspberries and blueberries) would be fine from raw. I'm a great fan of Peach Compote which you can buy in a jar. That makes a lovely crumble with a handful of raspberries thrown in.

Morning glory

Wake up children!

It's hard for me too, you know... The summer holidays are a distant memory: lazy mornings reading in bed while you ate white bread weighed down with Nutella and peanut butter and chocolate sprinkles. Now you need something sustaining and healthy to boost your brains and power you through the long mornings of letters, numbers and fighting in the playground.

And so we start the healthy-breakfast-bartering. I open with poached eggs, kippers and wholemeal toast; they come back with Coco Pops. After protracted negotiations we agree on granola. Enough sugar to appeal to them, plenty of nuts and fibre to placate me.

My recipe for Ginger Granola stars oats, maple syrup, honey, nuts, dried fruit and little pieces of zingy crystallised ginger to sweeten and surprise. Eat it for breakfast with milk, straight from the jar for a snack, with yogurt for pudding - or give it away in pretty jars.

Ginger Granola

125ml maple syrup (or a combination of runny honey and maple syrup)
25g caster sugar
25ml sunflower oil
half a teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
500g oats (preferably a mixture of jumbo and porridge)
175g mixed seeds
150g pecans
50g whole almonds
150g dried fruit
100g crystallised ginger, chopped finely

Heat the oven to 170/gas 3. Put the first six ingredients in a large bowl and stir together. Then add the oats, seeds, pecans and almonds and use your hands to mix everything really well*. Tip into two roasting tins and spread out evenly. Bake for about 15-20 minutes, stirring once or twice, until it is a light golden brown colour. Let it cool down completely before adding the dried fruit and ginger.

* When you've finished mixing, wring your hands like Lady Macbeth, then wash them. The combination of oil and sugar will leave them feeling beautifully soft.

A bit on the side

What does Sunday lunch mean to you? Steamy windows, expert timing and congealing fat? A lazy booze-fuelled, chat-fest with friends, or a fraught encounter with the family?

The Sunday lunches of my childhood were preceded by a trip to church. Thus spirituality and roast meat have always been inextricably linked in my mind. At first I found mass unintelligible, then I moved on to bored, but my divine interest started to pick up as I became interested in boys and church became a good scouting venue.

There's no need to be slaving over a hot stove on a summer Sunday. Instead, get your meat in the oven when you're having breakfast and give it (and you) time to relax before serving for lunch with cold salady vegetabley dishes - such as crunchy and colourful coleslaw or tastebud-tickling wasabi potato salad. Both recipes serve 4-6.

Wasabi potato salad

Wasabi Potato Salad

500g new potatoes
6 tablespoons mayonnaise
½-1 teaspoon wasabi powder*
6 spring onions, sliced

Mix together the mayo and wasabi powder. Cook the potatoes, allow them to cool a little, then cut into chunks and mix them carefully into the wasabi mayo while they are still warm. Add the spring onions.

*Remember that the flavour and heat of the powdered stuff develops slowly!

Coleslaw

Coleslaw

Half a small white cabbage (outer leaves and stalk removed), sliced finely
3 or 4 carrots, peeled and grated
8 spring onions, sliced

100g mayonnaise
2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon cider vinegar

Mix together the wet ingredients then add the cabbage, carrot and spring onions and mix some more. I like to add a handful of raisins, though my children spit with disgust if I do.

Carrot and Nut Salad

Another one you can knock up in a few minutes is my Carrot and nut salad. Again, I like it with a handful of raisins thrown in.

Really Welsh Rarebit

March begins with St David's day, celebrated in olden-days England by lynching life-sized effigies of Welshmen and eating special gingerbread biscuits baked in the shape of Welshmen riding goats. My mother has always been suspicious of the Welsh, and for years our family enemy was 'The Red Dragon', a local woman with an extravagant flame-haired updo and a pronounced Welsh accent. Then we moved house and my mother zeroed in on another hapless Celtic sister. This one had OCD, though in the 1980s she was just known as 'mental' - forever polishing her glass table tops and only allowing her 2 children to bring one toy downstairs.

Lured to Wales by the promise of a very cheap holiday soon after leaving home, I was surprised and delighted by its breathtaking views, mountains, sweeping bays, waterfalls and RAF jets blasting down the valleys.

Welsh rarebit is delicious for breakfast, lunch, tea or dinner and the sneaky leek makes it even more Welsh and even more delicious. Make the topping and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days, so it's ready when you are. This is enough for 3 hungry people.

Really Welsh Rarebit

1 leek
30g butter
30g plain flour
150ml beer
1 teaspoon English mustard
2 teaspoons Worcester sauce
1 egg yolk
150g cheese, grated
Chilli jam (optional)

Chop the leek and cook it in a pan with the butter for about 5 minutes, until softened. Add the flour and stir well, gradually adding the beer until you have a thick sauce. Add the remaining ingredients and some black pepper, then stir well over a low heat until everything is combined and the cheese is mostly melted.

Toast bread of your choice (mine is M&S fig and hazelnut bread) on both sides then spread with a little chilli jam and a lot of cheesy mixture. Make sure it goes right up to the edge of the toast or the bread will burn. Grill until puffy and brown.

Bad Romance

Love is a pretty big deal. It's what makes babies and poetry, books and songs. So it deserves its own day of celebration. But it isn't always champagne, hearts and flowers. Whether you're in love, out of love, or suffering the miseries of unrequited love, I hope you won't be getting any of these today.

Love is blind (but likes a good lunch):

Aaah, cute furry animals (that stink and scratch and bite):

'Vinegar Valentines' for those you love to hate:

Or go a step further to creep your Valentine out, and threaten to kill yourself... 

... or give up stalking them

Love makes people do silly things - like having an Argos tattoo on your leg:

The language of love can be inexplicably corny:

and poetic:

But nothing says "I love you" more than shaving your body hair into heart shapes:

Or buying your lover some fancy pants:

And if you thought those were tasteless...

Finally, for your favourite misogynist:

XXX

Sultana and almond slices

Temptation, shame, denial, nudity, lust, obsession... the perfect ingredients for a romantic novel or a rousing Sunday sermon. Just as Adam wished he'd never eaten that apple, I wish I'd never eaten the almond and sultana slice my neighbour gave me. My clothes did not fall off, nor did I feel shame like Adam & Eve, but I knew I had to have more. My neighbour's recipe is a closely guarded secret, so I set off to recreate this little slice of paradise on my own: Soft, yielding almondy sponge strewn with juicy sultanas and a crunchy sugar topping. It's a very superior version of Mr Kipling's Country Slice - and exceedingly easy to make.

Warning: contains tempting fruit

Sultana and almond slices

200g sultanas
110g butter
110g caster sugar
2 eggs
1½ teaspoons almond essence
110g plain flour
25g self raising flour

Pre-heat oven to 170/gas 4 and grease and line a 20cm square tin. Put the sultanas into a pan with half a mug of water and simmer until the liquid has been absorbed, then set aside to cool*. Cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs one a time (beating after each addition) and then the almond essence. Tip the flours and sultanas into the bowl and fold them in. Bake for about 40-45 minutes until the sponge is an even golden brown. Cool, remove from tin and sprinkle liberally with caster sugar.

Exceedingly good cakes

Time saving tip

* Cool the sultanas quickly: tip onto a plate and spread out into a single layer.

Zingy lemon chicken

The most notable thing about January used to be the January sales and the ads for holidays. Now it's the diets. This Christmas, the weather was so dire that we all had to hibernate and nibble our nuts whilst watching telly programmes about the morbidly obese. These shows revile, shock, inform and (perhaps) titillate, but they also normalise extreme fatness and make anyone under 20 stone feel slightly smug. If you are trying to lose a few pounds without resorting to bariatric surgery, this fresh and zingy ultra-low-fat chicken dish will brighten up the dullest of winter days and revive palates jaded by excessive consumption of Quality Street. Children love it too.

Zingy lemon chicken

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

3 garlic cloves, crushed

grated zest and juice of 3 lemons*

½ - 1 red chilli, finely sliced*

4 tablespoons clear honey

2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 packets of Ainsley Harriott's spicy couscous
A handful of fresh coriander

Mix together all the ingredients (except the chicken) to make a marinade. Pour it over the chicken in a non-metallic ovenproof dish, cover and leave for at least 2-3 hours or overnight in the fridge.

Pre-heat the oven to 200/gas 6 and bake the chicken in the marinade for 35-40 minutes, until the chicken is tender and cooked through.

Add the required amount of boiling water to the couscous, plus a handful of chopped coriander and some of the lemony-garlicky juices from the chicken when it has finished cooking.

Chop chop

Time-saving tips

*A Microplane grater will make easy work of the lemons.
*Don't de-seed the chilli; simply hold it by the stalk and slice from the other end.

Beef stew and dumplings

Pesky guests landing themselves on you this Christmas? The holy grail of entertaining at any time of year is a dish which tastes good, is reliable, and which can be made in advance. This rich and tasty beef stew ticks all those boxes, and just needs a green vegetable to go with it (and maybe some mashed potatoes to soak up the gravy). What's more, it's one of those elusive dishes which is equally well received by adults and children.

Whip it out with a "Here's one I prepared earlier" flourish: Make the stew and leave it to cool, or freeze it. The dumplings can be made several hours in advance and kept in the fridge (but for best results allow them to come to room temperature before cooking), or made as needed - they only take a few minutes. Heat the stew slowly on the stove, dropping in the dumplings when it starts to boil. Cover with a lid and cook for 20-30 minutes. Alternatively, prepare the stew on the hob, then tip it into a slow cooker and leave for about 5-6 hours on a low setting, throwing in the dumplings half an hour or so before you are ready to eat.

Beef stew and dumplings - serves 6

2 onions, chopped
1 kg casserole beef
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 x 500ml can Stella Artois
2 beef Oxo cubes
1 large leek, chopped
5 carrots, chopped

75g Atora vegetable suet
150g self raising flour

Pre-heat oven to 150/gas 2. Fry the onions in a splosh of olive oil in a cast iron casserole dish. Remove them when they are translucent and sweet. Add a bit more oil, turn the heat up and brown the steak in a couple of batches. Reduce the heat to medium and return the onions to the pan with the meat, sprinkle over the flour and stir well, slowly adding the beer. Crumble in the Oxo cubes, then add 250ml cold water and the leek and carrots. Season. Stir well and bring to the boil, then cover with a lid and transfer to the oven for a couple of hours.

To make the dumplings: Put the suet and flour in a bowl together, season generously and add 6 tablespoons cold water. Mix well to form a sticky dough and shape it into 12 balls. Place these on top of the casserole and return to the oven for another 20-30 minutes.

Eat your freezer

We're all hiding something - a few pounds under a baggy jumper, an indiscriminate purchase from a partner, or a freezer-full of frostbitten bogofs and leftovers. Now that freezers never seem to need defrosting, there is no reason to confront their contents - but there is a very simple law of science that says you cannot keep putting more in if you don't take some out. So with the C-word (Christmas, of course) in mind, I am putting myself into reverse-hoarder gear and eating the freezer. I urge you to do the same; if not to make some room for all the festive goodies you will be making in advance of the big day, then simply to save money.

Yesterday I took out some very frosty home-made tomato pasta sauce, half a rustic loaf, a bag of chicken stock, 2 M&S vegetarian Kievs, some poached apricots and some ham. So what did I make with this motley selection?

I used the pasta sauce and ham on a pizza with a drizzle of chilli oil, mozzarella and dolcelatte
(dough recipe here);
the rustic loaf became garlic bread, served with carrot soup made with the stock
(chicken stock);
the apricots were pureed with some icing sugar and folded into whipped cream to become a fool
(more on fools);
and the veggie Kievs are for dinner tonight with couscous

Baked apples

I'm sure you share my delight in knowing that the human race has progressed to the point where we have invented the self-cleaning cat litter tray (which automatically activates 7 minutes after kitty leaves the box) and a portable UV disinfecting scanner so you can "protect yourself and your loved ones from harmful micro-organisms found in your home, during travel or in public places".

On the kitchen front, it seems there's an implement for everything. I have tried, tested and thrown away a great deal of them, but one I've hung onto is a melon baller. Originally bought to make Gordon Ramsay's tequila-marinated melon balls, it also makes an excellent apple corer - perfect for this recipe.

Fill 'em up

Oaty Baked Apples

4 large-ish apples

60g brown sugar
20g oats
20g plain flour
30g cold butter
¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Pre-heat oven to 180/gas 4. Cut the apples in half and gouge out the cores using a melon baller. Sit the apples (cut side up) in a bun tin. Whizz up the other ingredients in a food processor until they resemble large breadcrumbs then spoon them into the holes and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Serves 4

Eat 'em up

Tricks for easy Halloween treats

Will you be turning off the lights and hiding behind the sofa when the neighbours' kids come knocking, or will you be dressing up and joining in? Tasteless is the new scary, apparently, and while Miley Cyrus' twerking outfits are taking this Halloween by storm, I prefer the 'pregnant schoolgirl' costume which I read about in a list of what not to wear this year. Here are a few tricks for some easy, last-minute Halloween treats which are certainly not tasteless...

Easiest of all, arm yourself with a packet or two of plastic flies and use them to adorn some cakes. The more delicious the cake, the greater the yuk factor.

If savoury's your thing, chow down on Dead Man's Fingers

Or whip up a batch of Rice Krispie Halloween cookies

Terrifically terrifying treats

Halloween will be here in a couple of weeks, but far more scary than that is those magazines which have started appearing... The ones that tell you how to have a stress-free Christmas (!) whilst showing you how to over-decorate your house, create themed buffets and make gift boxes decorated with semi-precious stones you've mined yourself.

But what if you're domestically challenged or just plain lazy? Here's an idea for Rice Krispie Halloween cakes which you can make in a few minutes or which kids can probably make on their own. (Unsupervised children in the kitchen always guarantees gruesome results of one sort or another.) Plus these might be the most delicious Rice Krispie cakes you have ever tasted. Let me know.

Decorated by Bea, 9 years old

Rice Krispie Halloween cakes

110g butter
110g marshmallows
110g toffees (weighed without wrappers)
140g Rice Krispies
Icing pens

Put the butter, marshmallows and toffees into a saucepan and stir over a medium-low heat until melted. Tip in the Rice Crispies and mix well, then transfer to a lined tin measuring about 22 x 32cm. Press them down firmly until the top is smooth and place in the fridge to cool. Peel off the greaseproof paper and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Decorate with icing pens or - for a more discerning palate - melted chocolate (spiders, cobwebs and witches' hats).

This made 15 - with plenty of tasty offcuts

Decorated by Alice, 9 years old

Chocolate and Ginger cake with a surprise

"I am literally going to be sick" said my daughter as she watched me make a cake with a grated courgette in it. To be fair, the finished article looked and tasted like something you'd eat in a vegan cafe, so I gave it away in pieces - but no-one could identify the mystery ingredient.

A couple of weeks later I served up a sumptuous chocolate and ginger cake which met with great approval and requests for seconds. I kept quiet until they'd finished, then crowed "You've just eaten courgette cake!" (in a childish playground kind of voice). But there were no retching noises, no shrieks of horror, for they had actually enjoyed it.

A divine combination of moist, light chocolatey-gingery sponge topped with gooey chocolate studded with pieces of sweet ginger - and ludicrously easy to make.

Chocolate, courgette and ginger cake

Chocolate, Courgette and Ginger cake

90ml mild and light olive oil
200g caster sugar
2 small eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
150g grated courgette (peel the skin off and discard any seeds)
175g self raising flour
25g cocoa powder
1½ teaspoons ground ginger
¼ teaspoon salt

Icing: 60ml double cream
100g dark chocolate, chopped
A tablespoon of chopped stem ginger in syrup

Heat the oven to 180/gas 4. Put the olive oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and courgette in a bowl and mix well. Add the flour, cocoa, ginger and salt and mix again. Transfer to a lined 20cm cake tin (or an 18cm square in my case) and bake for 30-35 minutes. Turn out to cool after 10 minutes.

To make the icing: Bring the cream to the boil in a pan. Take it off the heat and stir in the chocolate. When it's melted, add a heaped tablespoon of ginger (not too much syrup), mix again and spoon it over the cake while still warm.

This cake has been entered in the We Should Cocoa recipe challenge hosted by JibberJabberUK (lip-smacking family food) and (the heavenly) Chocolate Log Blog!

Lazy Sunday lunch

Once a teenage girl, always a teenage girl and the mention of 'pulled pork' just makes me want to snigger. But that's what we had today, although I'm calling it 'slow roast pork'. It's the perfect dish for a lazy Sunday - put it in the oven on Saturday night, wake up to a house that smells mouth-wateringly amazing, and eat it at lunchtime (whenever that happens to be - the timings are very elastic). My recipe and method are adapted from one of Nigella's.

I served it with a windfall apple sauce, a simple coleslaw and some roast potatoes. The meat fell off the bone with minimal fork action and we fought over the crisp and chewy crackling. The children were unfeasibly excited to find a large piece of cartilage as well as a sizeable bone - a kind of biology lesson and meal all in one.

Cracking crackling

Slow roast pork

A piece of pork shoulder (bone in) - mine was roughly 3 kilos
6 garlic cloves
A small piece of fresh ginger
2 red chillies
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons sherry vinegar

Serves 4-6

Nigella tells you to start by heating your clean oven to its maximum temperature. Heat your [insert own adjective] oven to its maximum temperature.

Prep the beast: Whizz up the garlic, ginger and chillies in a blender, then add a tablespoon of oil and another of sherry vinegar to make a paste. Sit the pork skin side up on a rack over a roasting tin and score the skin with a sharp knife if it hasn't already been done. Then rub the paste all over the meat, working it into the cut lines of the skin (I wear a pair of rubber gloves whilst doing so). Mix together the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil and 3 of sherry vinegar and set aside.

Cook it: Put the pork in the hot oven for 30 minutes, then remove it and turn down the oven to 110/gas mark 1/4. Turn piggy over (skin side down) and put it back in the oven. After about 5 hours I sloshed about a pint of water in the roasting tin and went to bed. I gave it another pint when I woke up, about 9 hours later.

Perfect the crackling: Half an hour before you're ready to eat, turn the pig over again (skin side up), crank up the oven to max and blast it for 30 minutes (be careful not to let it burn).

Shaken not stirred

The pursuit of food has left me with bloody hands and superficial skin wounds today. No, I haven't been scrapping in the aisles of Waitrose, but foraging in the hedgerows. Most of the blackberries have rotted on the bush, but there are still some fine specimens to be had if you have a high pain threshold and a high reach.

Blackberry vodka in the making

This time last year I posted a recipe for blackberry vodka; I finally got round to making it today. It's ludicrously easy and very economical because you can use the cheapest vodka known to man. Perfect given as Christmas gifts, or mixed with tonic for your own festive celebrations. And it's so quick you can make it while waiting for the kettle to boil.

Black beauties

Blackberry Vodka - the recipe

Put 600g blackberries, 200g sugar and 1 litre vodka in a bottle with a tight seal (I used a 2 litre glass storage jar). Shake it up a bit, put it in a cool, dark place and give it shake once a week for the next 12 weeks or so. Then simply strain and re-bottle it.

Inedible, but beautiful

If you go down to the woods today...

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But when life gives you a tin of cherries which you've opened by mistake what do you do? No second thoughts required: make Black Forest gateau!

Black Forest gateau

A simple fat-free chocolate sponge sprinkled with Kirsch, then laden with cherry jam, cherries and whipped cream, all topped with a glossy, rich chocolate ganache. Sounds a lot of fuss, but you know I wouldn't have made it if it was. 

I served this for pudding at a recent dinner party. I'd invited several opinionated food-loving friends and as the date grew closer so I grew more terrified about cooking for them. I eventually decided to serve a 70's meal - starting with Snowballs and mushroom vol au vents followed by prawn cocktail, coq au vin, Black Forest gateau and Matchmakers with coffee. 

Black Forest gateau

3 large eggs

175g caster sugar

175g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

5 tablespoons hot water

350ml double cream

450g tin pitted black cherries, drained

4 tablespoons Kirsch*

3 tablespoons cherry jam (I used St Dalfour no sugar added

100g dark chocolate

Pre-heat oven to 190/gas 5. 

Make the sponge: Whisk the eggs and sugar together in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. When the mixture is pale and thick and you can just see the trail of the whisk, remove it from the heat and whisk for another 2 minutes. Sift and fold in the flour, cocoa, baking powder and hot water. Transfer to a 23cm cake tin and bake for 30-35 minutes. Slice it in 2 when the sponge is cool. 

Assembly: Sprinkle each cut side with 2 tablespoons Kirsch, then spread the bottom piece with jam, 300ml whipped cream and cherries. Sandwich the cakes together.

The icing on the cake: Bring the remaining 50ml cream to the boil, then remove from the heat and stir in 100g chocolate. Allow it to cool a little and spread over the top of the cake. Decorate with a few reserved cherries and some icing sugar.

*For a non-alcoholic version use cherry juice

One slice or two?