Quesadillia

Mmm.. the perfect snack and a great way to use up any veg lurking in the bottom of the fridge. Feel free to experiment with this recipe, its all about using up what you have. I didn't have tortillas so used pitta instead and it worked perfectly well.

Ingredients
Serves 4

Black Bean Paste
1 can black beans (borlotti beans will do), drained
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cumin
1 bunch coriander, chopped, stalks and all
Juice of 1 lime
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ tsp Maldon sea salt

8 tortillas

some spring onions, sliced
4 tomatoes, chopped
2 avocados, diced
125g cheddar, grated
2 handfuls spinach, finely sliced
1 small tub soured cream
Some jalapeño chillies in vinegar or sliced red chilli as garnish

To make the black bean paste, either blend or mash all the ingredients together. Preheat a griddle pan. To assemble the quesadilla, spread 2tbsp of the bean mixture on the tortilla, makingsure you leave a border, add a tbsp of the soured cream and spread also. Next sprinkle over some cheese, tomato, spring onion, avocado and spinach. Finally topping with the chilli. Fold the tortilla in half and carefully place onto the griddle pan, cook for a few mins on each time, until the cheese is bubbling and the filling is warmed through, cut into slices and eat with plenty of napkins! Read more...

Egg mayo sandwich

This is a slightly posher version of your standard egg mayonnaise sandwich. Use good quality bread, add some herbs and capers and you're onto a winner. Its also about boiling the eggs so they're just set and the yolk is still creamy.

Ingredients

makes 2 sandwiches

3 eggs
1tsp capers, chopped
1tsp chopped chives
4 slices sourdough
1tbsp mayonnaise
handful salad leaves
cucumber and tomato, finely sliced

Cover the eggs with water and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat, cover and leave for exactly 7mins. Meanwhile toast the bread and butter lightly. Peel the eggs and mash, season generously and add the capers, chives and mayonnaise. Stir thoroughly and sandwich with the lettuce, tomato and cucumber. Enjoy! Read more...

Fatty Sandwich

This sandwich literally dripped with fat (well, oil) and therein lies the beauty. Thankfully, I wasn't eating this, I had the lighter cheese sandwich option, this was for my friend who incidentally is a boy and therefore has an insatiable urge to ingest calories. Anyway this came about by me frying everything that looked tasty in the fridge. Namely, onions, cooked slowly in thin slices, then bacon and finally a fried egg, sandwiched in a thick ciabatta roll, one side with melted cheese on. Like I said, a fatty sandwich, but amazing all the same, you could remove the bacon to make this veggie and lose none of the fatty goodness. It could probably have done with some salad, but we didn't have any, oh well...

Read more...

My Favourite Cheese Sandwich

This is the ultimate Saturday afternoon snack. Well actually its a pretty good snack any time, I just always end up having it on a Saturday afternoon. This is no ordinary cheese sandwich. Its grilled cheese, and the cheese should be very strong cheddar (try Montgomery cheddar)topped with slowly cooked onions, some chopped gherkins and a little salad if you're so inclined. Amazing.

It all about the onions and gherkins, so don't be tempted to miss them out, believe me, it all works. This sandwich also benefits hugely from good quality bread. When I used to sell bread for the Born and Bread Bakery at Clapham Farmers' Market, I would come home and make this with their amazing sundried tomato sourdough. Mmmm

Ingredients
Serves 1
2 slices of sourdough
enough cheddar to cover one side, about 50g
1 onion, halved and cut into rings
3-4 gherkins, chopped
1 tomato cut into slices
handful salad leaves
olive oil

Cook the onions, drizzled in a little oil very slowly for about 15mins until they're completely soft. Meanwhile toast the bread under the grill on one side, turn them over and toast the other side lightly, then top one slice with the cheese and the other with a couple of slices of tomato, a drizzle of olive oil and some pepper. Grill until the cheese in molten and bubbling. Top with the salad leaves, onions and chopped gherkins. Enjoy. Read more...

Time for Tea

The most pleasant thing to do of an afternoon in my opinion is to have afternoon tea. The most important things are lots of tea, scones, clotted cream and plenty of time spent. When I was in Oxford, the best place by far was The Rose, possibly my favourite place in the whole world. They have wonderful leaf teas (my favourite being the vanilla tea) and the scones are seriously the best I've ever tasted. They make them all in the kitchen daily. And, crucially, they serve them warm, with lots of clotted cream and homemade jam.


The picture above isn't actually taken in the Rose, it was a lovely tea room I found on a country walk with my friends Jamie and Jen. They had clotted cream, but the scones weren't amazing. Anyway, I'm sure I'll writing a lot more about The Rose in the future.

What follows is the recipe from The Rose itself, should you be inclined to make your own...

Ingredients
750g organic self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
50g caster sugar
250g unsalted butter
a pinch salt
320-350ml milk
1 egg, whisked to use as egg wash

Sift the flour with baking powder, salt and sugar. Cut the butter into dice, rub the butter into the flour with a very light touch, ensuring your finger never touch the butter, always keep the flour in between. Continue until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs.
Add milk, cut into the mixture with a palette knife a few times to distribute the milk better. Then gather the mass together gently rather than kneading. Roll out onto a floured tabletop to a thickness of 2½cm. Stamp out with a scone cutter. Place on a baking tray and brush the top with egg wash. Bake for 20min at 180-190°C. Read more...

Stuff on Toast

Ahh, the perfect after work snack. Now everyone knows how to make toast, I'm not going to wax lyrical about, more just share a few ideas that I gathered (mostly from my flatmate Rose). My current favourite is to mash half an avocado onto a piece of toast, sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with a little oil and a squeeze of lemon juice et voilá! Another good one is to rub the toast with a little garlic, slice some tomatoes, sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with a little oil and balsamic. This obviously benefits from using good quality tomatoes, not cold from the fridge. Also, you can't really beat cheddar and sliced gherkins, seriously.

The 'toast' part can make all the difference too, good quality bread is an obvious one, but you can also get delicious rice cake, crispbread things too, honestly. Try Dr Karg Crispbread, amazing! I can also always go in for rice cakes spread liberally with cottage cheese (Longley Farm is the best) or hummus. Read more...

Olive Hummus

Another recipe I tried at the fabulous Piece of Plenty. I do like homemade hummus, but somehow my own never tastes quite right, anyway this recipe worked perfectly. Its best to use good quality olives in this as you can really taste them. Although we blended everything, I think this could be really good if you blend everything bar the olives, chop them and stir through at the end.

We also talked about doing a beetroot hummus as well, if only for the amazing colour, I'll keep you posted...

I tend to always have hummus in the fridge, its the perfect snack food, and healthy too, pulses count as 1 portion of fruit and veg, use carrot, cucumber or celery to dip into it and you're sorted!

I also always buy chickpeas (in a can) from ethnic food shops (Indian or Afro-Caribbean) as they are generally much bigger and softer than the supermarket versions. I'm yet to master the art of cooking soaked chickpeas...

Olive Hummus

• 125g olives
• 2 cans chickpeas, drained
• 8 cloves garlic
• 80ml balsamic vinegar
• 1-2 lemons
• 3 tbsp tahini
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp salt

Add all the ingredients to a food processor, with the juice of 1 of the lemons and 3tbsp water. Blend and that's it! Add more lemon juice to taste. Read more...