Sometimes you just know when comfort food is going to be required. A couple of weeks ago, England had their last chance to qualify for the European Championships--lest there be confusion, I'm talking about football (or soccer)--and I knew...
Continue reading "Cottage Pie" »
Lately, I've taken to menu planning as a means of (a) reducing food wastage and (b) ensuring that I keep up my enthusiasm and love of cooking. It's working on both counts, I must admit, and I get a...
Continue reading "Venetian Apple Cake" »
Do you know what I miss most while dieting? Cheese? Nope. Chocolate? Nope; you can still make amazing low-fat chocolate desserts while dieting. What I really, really miss is pastry. Pies, tarts, pasties, and quiche. Oh, how I miss...
Continue reading "Experimental Rhuarb-Lemon Tart" »
When I'm hungry, I'm hungry and the ravenous beast that is my stomach must be appeased. This deliciously meaty--yet healthy--pasta dish really did the trick for us last night. Pasta with olive oil, garlic and broccoli is a classic...
Continue reading "Pasta Pronto!" »
Leaves of russet fall, Rustle and crackle underfoot. Frost shimmers on cars, Yes, it's autumn once more! Excuse my feeble attempts at poetry, I don't know what came over me. The fact remains, however, that it is autumn. The...
Continue reading "Gingerbread Muffins" »
Jambalaya... it's such a happy sounding word. Even better, it's a happy taste, too. Full of joie de vivre. Each fragrant, spicy-sweet mouthful conjures up daydreams of sitting in a bustling New Orleans diner. The sort of place where...
Continue reading "Creole-style Jambalaya" »
I don't think I've ever cooked with dried sage, let alone fresh, which is pretty shocking when you consider how much sage and onion stuffing I've scoffed in my time. I picked up some in Sainsbury's earlier this week...
Continue reading "Butternut and chorizo linguine (WHB #72)" »
I love cheesecake and I love lemon curd. Using the magic of culinary mathematics, that means that I also love... lemon curd cheesecake! If you squint ever so slightly you can see the lemon curd at the bottom of...
Continue reading "Lemon curd cheesecake" »
I remember the huge chimichangas that TGI Friday's used to serve... piled high with fresh guacamole, salsa, delicious sour cream and dirty rice. Mmmm. Alas, delicious as this dish was, it was completely non-diet friendly, so I was delighted...
Continue reading "Skinny Chimichangas" »
I don't just eat stew for comfort in the depths of winter, I eat it for pleasure, and the best stew imaginable in my opinion is stifado. It boasts big meaty flavours, a sweet and subtly spiced sauce, and...
Continue reading "Beef stifado with rosemary roasted potatoes" »
Upside-down cakes are culinary classics; pineapple upside-down cake is certain to feature in almost every novice cook's early attempts at cooking as it's pretty much foolproof and damn tasty to boot. I certainly remember making one in home economics...
Continue reading "Apricot upside-down cakes" »
Red pepper pesto? Heresy, I hear you cry! Well... not really. Pesto simply means a pounded sauce, or in these modern times--blitzed in the food processor. Sure, the classic Ligurian sauce contains basil and pine nuts, but you can...
Continue reading "Roasted Red Pepper Pesto" »
I remember a time when carrot and coriander soup used to be considered almost exotic. Sure, Brits made carrot soup, but coriander? Now that was fancy. These days, carrot and coriander suffers from being commonplace and supermarket shelves and...
Continue reading "My carrot and coriander soup" »
Yesterday marked the inaugural session of Cooking With Mummy. I popped Lucas in his car seat, strategically placed him in a corner so that he could see everything but still be safe, and cooked away! This Cajun Chicken recipe...
Continue reading "Cajun Chicken" »
This year, the weather forecasters have been warning of an incredibly hard winter. Looking out of my window, I am forced to concede that they may be right. At noon today, the pavement outside is still liberally dusted with...
Continue reading "Baked Penne with Beef" »
Until I started cooking from American cookbooks, I'd never heard of crumb or coffee cakes. Which is a great shame, but I'm making up for lost time! For the Brits, as far as I can tell, a crumb cake...
Continue reading "Cinnamon Crumb Cake" »
Succulent chicken, spicy raspberry sauce and sweet caramelised onions... doesn't that sound wonderful? And it's light, too! Tonight's speedy dinner came from the hallowed--and much thumbed--pages of Cooking Light. I used my latest find--Belazu Smoked Chilli Jelly--to cut the...
Continue reading "Caramelised Onion Chicken" »
When dieting, I find it a good idea to keep myself supplied with plenty of cake and other goodies. It's for the protection of those around me, you understand, as when deprived of the great joys of food, I...
Continue reading "Carrot Cake" »
Also known as, "Too-Lazy-to-Go-Shopping Pilaf". Dave is away tonight, and as I failed to take this into account when I planned our menu for this week, I've had to scrounge around to make dinner--I'm compulsive enough to hate making...
Continue reading "'All By Myself' Pilaf" »
They say that when the cat's away, the mouse will play. And this is often the case when Dave's away, and I'm cooking for myself. This Moroccan-influenced vegetable stew is a prime example of what I'll cook when I'm...
Continue reading "Moroccan-influenced vegetable stew" »
I eat a lot of ice-cream (a slight understatement, you understand) but I rarely get around to making my own. In fact, my poor ice-cream machine has been shoved to the back of a cupboard since we moved house...
Continue reading "Banana-Rum Gelato" »
I've had a pack of pistachios lying around since the time I got an urge to make pistachio gelato (which came to nothing as I couldn't find a good recipe). Anyway, whilst flicking through Sally Schneider's "A New Way...
Continue reading "Pistachio-Chocolate Cakelets" »
Apologies for the lack of entries recently; I haven't felt like cooking anything new or inventive! We've been relying on old favourites that I can cook without having to actually employ any brain-power. One such recipe is my favourite:...
Continue reading "Italian Meatballs" »
I recently invested in a copy of Rose Reisman's "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Light Desserts" after some long email chats with Renee about light baking. It's packed with loads of really delicious sounding recipes and I'm enjoying cooking...
Continue reading "Light Coconut Layer Cake" »
For some time now, I've been trying to acquire a copy of Alice Medrich's "Chocolate and The Art of Low-Fat Desserts" (a mouthful of a title, if I ever heard one!), but with no success. Renee has baked several...
Continue reading "Semi-Disastrous Chocolate Pound Cake" »
I've been planning to make peperonata all week, but somehow I just haven't managed to get around to it. As you can see, tonight I finally managed to make time and all I can say is that the wait...
Continue reading "Peperonata" »
What do you do with a bunch of over-ripe bananas? Do you stash them in the freezer and eventually make some yummy (calorific!) banana bread, turn them into ice-cream or make them into a banana split? This was my...
Continue reading "Banana Muffins" »
Our new healthy-eating regime has vastly curtailed our ritualistic Monday night takeaway, so after yearning for pizza, curry and Chinese, I decided to try my hand at making pizza. (Lightening pizza seemed much more achievable than trying to make...
Continue reading "BBQ Beef Pizza" »
This isn't authentic jerk chicken by any stretch of the imagination! It is, however, a very good approximation of it which neatly bypasses hours of marinading and the terrors of handling scotch bonnet chillis. Surprisingly, this recipe comes from...
Continue reading "Jerk Chicken with Sweet Potato" »
This month's theme for IMBB (Is My Blog Burning) is dumplings of all shapes, sizes and flavours and is hosted by Jarrett of Food Porn Watch. I had great plans to make some lovely pork dumplings with water chestnuts...
Continue reading "Gnocchi Al Forno (IMBB 7)" »
This is my ultimate cheesecake. A veritable tower of smooth ivory satin.... Perfect on its own, but also equally as nice with a fruit coulis. Unbelievably this cheesecake is low-fat (doesn't look it, eh?) and hails from Sue Kreitzman's...
Continue reading "New York Cheesecake" »
Having guests for the weekend is always a fantastic excuse for baking, and this weekend was no exception. I flicked through How To Be A Domestic Goddess for some inspiration and as usual, ended up drooling over Nigella's Boston...
Continue reading "Triple Butterscotch Boston Cream Pie" »
This is my new favourite way to eat chicken. Moist, succulent and with a spicy-sweet glaze. Very, very yummy and best of all it's seriously quick to prepare. The recipe comes from Cooking Light 2004 (my new best friend)....
Continue reading "Hoisin Barbequed Chicken" »
Stuffed peppers have always appealed to me, however, I've never actually gotten sufficiently organised to make them. Whilst flicking through my new Cooking Light Annual, I came across a recipe which stuffs peppers with a mixture of beef and...
Continue reading "Stuffed Peppers" »
Yes, yet another cheesecake! I'm going through a definite cheesecake phase just now.... This one is also low-fat and my very first cheesecake with topping (although, it is the easiest topping in the world). The unique thing about this...
Continue reading "Apple-Topped Cheesecake" »
I'm a big fan of traditional snacks like flapjacks, however they don't fit very easily into a low-fat diet. Even WeightWatchers flapjacks use a hefty amount of butter and thus become treats rather than snacks. I decided to defat...
Continue reading "Orange and Sesame Flapjacks" »
Dieting is so often a dismal business, but occasionally you do find a ray of hope. For the past few years, my occasional diets have been cheered considerably by my discovery of Sue Kreitzman's low-fat cookbooks. She may be...
Continue reading "Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake" »
My previous attempts at low-fat baking haven't been entirely successful. I can make a deliciously fudgy and intense chocolate cake but my attempt at a ultra low-fat mocha cake last month was disastrous to say the least. Evaporated milk...
Continue reading "Lime and Coconut Cake" »
This boozy jelly, by it's very nature low-fat, made the perfect dessert to follow the Tandoori Chicken I made a few nights ago. Jelly is one of my standard desserts when I'm dieting; and now that I've discovered how...
Continue reading "Peach and Amaretto Jelly" »
In keeping with my newfound healthy eating ethos, this is yet another healthy dinner. The only added fat is olive oil, which is heart healthy and full of virtue (as well as taste). Todays recipes, come from my Big...
Continue reading "Tandoori Yoghurt Chicken with Aromatics Wedges and Cachumber" »
I've been feeling a bit bloated recently; well, more than just bloated. I feel like a hippo. A hippo with cute reddish hair (hair dye is my new addiction), but still very hippo-esque. So, to try and combat this...
Continue reading "Garlic and Spinach Pilaf with Lamb Chops" »
This is my belated contribution to Alberto's proposal for a blog cooking day - sorry Alberto! I dreamt up this soup a few years ago out of sheer necessity (i.e. the cupboards were bare) and liked it so much...
Continue reading "Tuscan Bean Soup - Is My Blog Burning?" »
Its been very grey and dismal recently. I've been waking up each morning to find that its pouring with rain. Perfect weather for making soup, really. I decided to be ultra-healthy and make a red lentil and vegetable soup...
Continue reading "Red Lentil and Vegetable Soup" »
Ragu is one of those things that I'm terribly fond of, but am too lazy to make very often as a really good ragu takes hours on the stove (or in the oven). So, when I do make it,...
Continue reading "Ragu bolognese" »
LiveJournal feed
