Sorting out a corner of my office, I found a box file of old recipes. I remembered baking this cake, making notes and changes. Its origins are Hungarian and, as George Lang writes in The Cuisine of Hungary, poppy seeds are ‘the Hungarian housewife’s common ingredient’. Never much used in English cooking, it seemed appropriate…

This recipe comes from Ben Tish’s book, Moorish, which The Times reckoned to be the best cookbook of 2019. It is very simple but delicious. Try it with lamb chops sprinkled with sumac. 750g King Edward of Red Rooster potatoes, peeled About 130ml extra virgin olive oil 3 cloves garlic (unpeeled), crushed 2 green peppers,…

Friday evening and William’s old Army habits die hard. No meat 🙂 One pot 🙂 Easy 🙂 Not macaroni cheese 🙂 This dish would have ticked all the boxes but then a new category, No Bones, was declared. No problem as the seabream could be filleted before it was served. The recipe was inspired by…

I had been planning to make this tart for a while and was delighted to find that Felicity Cloake, in the Guardian (4 August 2018), had done all the research. Her recipe comes after trawling through, comparing and trying out the recipes other cookery writers have published. It makes sense, for example, to only use…

It seems to me that the best thing about recipes for salads is that I do follow them, though perhaps not slavishly, and take extra care; a salad for guests has to be good with the contents and flavours well balanced. It also needs to look attractive. This salad was a great way to start…

I have become a convert to baked soft cheese. A Christmas present of a cheese baker – an earthenware round bowl with a domed lid – has proved a revelation. I checked the whole idea of baking soft French cheese with Stephane, the Frenchman who runs the cheese shop in the Guildhall market in Bath.…

‘Six eggs’ means a big cake and this is great for a crowd. Rich enough to be a pudding but also good at tea time. The recipe comes from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple where he acknowledges a recipe in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cake Bible. It is a ‘pound cake’ which I first tasted when the owner…

This is almost the best part of Christmas. The stuffing is so good that one year Henry, my youngest stepson, made it his entire Christmas meal. 450g potatoes, peeled, blanched and dried 2 onions, chopped 2 cooking apples, cored and chopped (no need to peel) 3 tbsp chopped parsley 2 tbsp chopped sage Salt and…

This dish is so quick and easy that I never thought to put in on the website. Here it is by popular request (frozen peas always win hearts). It is a recipe by Meera Sodha that, as it has been published in The Guardian several times, I would guess is a staple in her household too.…

We made a gesture towards celebrating Thanksgiving with turkey escalopes (the only choice in our local Waitrose was between fillets and a whole turkey), all the trimmings and a pecan pie. The cranberry sauce gave authenticity! This would be a good sauce to have a child help make as it is fun and quick. 300g…