Strawberry Ice Cream

Strawberry Ice Cream - 3

I’m hoping a suitably refreshing ice cream recipe in this scorching weather will make up for radio silence the last few weeks. We’ve just got back from two weeks in Italy split between three locations – a dear friend’s wedding, my parents’ house up in the Tuscan mountains and down by the sea in Senigallia, a sweet little town in Le Marche we’ve been visiting since I was seven. Nino stayed up well past his bedtime on multiple occasions, got to play properly in the sea and sand for the very first time, dined in a Michelin starred restaurant and ate mussels, clams, whole prawns (sucking the ‘prawn brains!’ from their heads with unabashed glee), wild boar and rabbit for the first time. We ate equally well, soaked up plenty of sunshine and indulged in the gift that is grandparental babysitting including an – unheard of – day of lunching and lounging by ourselves. All in all, it was bliss.

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Mint Oreo Cookies & Cream Popsicles

Mint Oreo Popsicles

At its outset, summer seems so long and lazy and full of endless possibility. My birthday falls at the end of July and I’m this season’s baby through and through: the summer months are my absolute favourites and, as August draws in, I start to get twitchy about the darker evenings, the slowing of the sunshine and the way summer produce slowly begins to disappear from the shops. Sometimes I have to remind myself to live in the moment and enjoy each sunny day and outdoor dinner for what they’re worth.

Ice cream, incidentally, isn’t something I feel needs to be constrained to the summer months, but I’m definitely more inclined to want something cool and creamy for dessert when its warm outside. When Oreo got in touch while I was on holiday in Italy to see if I could develop a recipe using their brand new Mint Oreo flavour, I knew that an icy treat was on the cards.  Continue reading

Malteser Ice Cream Bars

Malteser ice cream bars

Like the Banoffee Pie I posted a few weeks back, I hadn’t planned to put this recipe up on the blog, but an enthusiastic response on Instagram (my most likes ever, where did all you people come from?) led me to believe I should share the details. In fact I’m thinking of starting an Insta-recipe series (Izy does something similar) of treats I haven’t had time to test multiple times or capture with anything other than my iPhone, but which I’d like to log recipe details of for a future me – and for you to try, of course. Continue reading

Watermelon, Three Ways

Watermelon cucumber mint juice

I’m back! It’s been just over three weeks since I last blogged a recipe and I’m bringing you . . . watermelon. Not a cake or cookie or seductive fingerful of chocolate in sight, just sweet, crisp, seasonal (in as far as anything imported can be, but until the end of August is when it’s at its best) watermelon served up three ways. Continue reading

10 Ice Cream Recipes for Summer

Lemon sorbet

July is just a couple of sleeps away and with it my birthday, a much needed summer holiday and the promise of sun on my skin. The weather – in London at least – has finally sorted itself out and this weekend just gone was spent flopping around in minimal clothing, barely turning on the oven and indulging in plenty of ice cream.

The simple lemon sorbet from my cookbook (pictured above, photograph by Helen Cathcart) features in Psychologies magazine this week, which got me thinking about all the other lovely ice cream recipes on this blog which deserve another outing. Below are current top 10 ice cream recipes for summer . . . what are you craving this week? Continue reading

Chocolate Coconut Sorbet Bars (aka Frozen Bounty Bars)

Chocolate_Coconut_Sorbet1

Back in March we spent a week in St. Lucia. As well as making it a blissful place to flop flat out and drink cocktails, the blazing sunshine gives the island the perfect climate to grow sweet bananas, pineapples, papaya and coconuts. Every day at the beach the same elderly man would walk past touting the ‘best water in the world’, and each time he cracked open a fresh coconut and inserted a straw I felt like we’d escaped into a Bounty advert (minus the dodgy ’80s hair and make up). Continue reading

Strawberry, Chocolate & Pistachio Ice Cream Bars

strawberry ice cream

Smooth strawberry ice cream encased in dark chocolate & toasted pistachios

While I’ve not quite reached the age where I’m ready for children, I often wonder what it will be like to have them around: how I’ll bring them up, how their personalities will develop and, importantly, what I’ll feed them.

I want my children to understand where food comes from, how important it is, to realise that meat doesn’t just arrive pre-packaged and devoid of all fat and sinew and that the investment of just an hour or so a week can produce better bread than you could ever buy pre-sliced and stacked sky high on the supermarket shelves. Continue reading

The River Café, Hammersmith: Sublime or ridiculous?

river_cafe_menu

Like it or not, we live in a consumer culture. Whether it’s Prada or Primark, foie gras or filet-o-fish, we’re a society that knows the meaning of money and (with some exceptions) we like to spend it. Some more than others. What exactly is it that makes people fork out for a designer dress, an eye-wateringly expensive hair cut,  a £100+ bottle of wine? Is it an assurance of quality that we often seem to accept as going hand-in-hand with a high price tag, the status and sense of self-importance that comes with flashing one’s flexible friend, or are these products actually better, more rare, made from finer products and with more love, care and attention?

Any review of The River Café is going to mention price, so I’m not going to pussy-foot around it. Renowned for its incredible approach to food and fabulous ingredients, this Michelin starred restaurant is also much maligned for its extremely expensive menu. Jay Rayner has described it as peasant food at plutocrat prices, and there seems to be a great divide in the foodie world as to whether it falls into the category of the sublime or the ridiculous. Or as A.A. Gill puts it in his full marks review for The Times, ‘Depending on the delicacy of your own social digestion, the River Caff either fills you with syrupy feelings of excitement, warmth and nameless intellectual superiority, or it makes you want to join a nihilist terror cell’. . . Continue reading

Thai fish curry

thai_fish_curry_pasteEvery year as summer starts to approach my eating habits begin to change. Gone are the warm, comforting dishes of the winter months, replaced by simple salads, fresh ingredients and anything that can thrown on the BBQ and chargrilled to perfection. While the BBQ lends itself to strong, hearty flavours, I also crave dishes that zing with spice, and the delicacy of a beautifully cooked fish dish. This curry is the perfect summer supper – clean, fresh flavours bound with beautiful spices in a silky, refreshing sauce.

beautiful_fresh_fishNowadays you can buy perfectly good pre-made curry paste in the shops, but if you have the time I’d definitely recommend making your own. Not only is it hugely satisfying, but you can use exactly the combination of flavours you like, and if you read the recipe below it’s really very simple. You can also double or triple the quantity of paste and freeze it for future occasions – as quick and easy as popping to your local shop.

thai_curryIn this recipe I’ve used some beautiful whole prawns and meaty chunks of haddock, but you could use any combination of fish and shellfish – pollack, gurnard (an ugly fish but so delicious), strips of squid, scallops or even  handful of crabmeat for a really indulgent curry.

For the curry paste

2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 shallots, chopped
3 small green chillies, seeds included, chopped
50g fresh ginger, chopped
1 lemograss stalk, finely sliced
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
Juice of half a lime
2 kaffir lime leaves, chopped
1/2 tsp shrimp paste
Scrunch salt & pepper

For the curry

1 tbsp groundnut oil
1 x 400ml tin coconut milk
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
3 spring onions, thinly sliced lengthways
Bunch of asparagus, each stalk sliced in 3
300g haddock, cut into bite-sized portions
Large handful king prawns, shelled and deveined
Handful coriander, roughly torn

Thai fish curry

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and blitz til smooth. You could do this in  pestle and mortar if you’ve got a bit more time on your hands (or a muscley sous chef . . .).

Heat the oil in a heavy based saucepan or wok. Scrape in the curry paste and fry for 3-4 mins over a medium heat. Add the coconut milk, fish sauce and sugar and bring to a simmer. Cook for 5 mins.

Add the asparagus and spring onions and cook for a further 2-3 mins. Then add the fish to the pan, cover with a lid and simmer for another 5 mins or so until the fish flesh flakes easily and is just cooked through.

Remove from the heat, scatter with the coriander and serve with steamed rice.

Squid stuffed with garlicky prawns

This month Carniverous Boyfriend has decided to ramp his protein obsession up a notch by moving onto a strict no carb diet. A kind of crazy cross between Atkins and Dukan, it’s intended to turn him into a lean, mean, muscle-beach-bound machine in time for our trip to Spain in early June. Good for him. Possibly a little less good for me as I’ll no longer have a partner in crime to share the breads, brownies  and other spoils of my baking obsession. Never mind, I guess my inner greedy child should see that as a positive anyway.

spicy_prawnsOn another positive note, this new-found protein obsession means I’ve been experimenting a little more in the kitchen. Although CB seems pretty content to chow down on multiple chicken breasts, tins of tuna and dozens of eggs, I think it’s nice to tuck into something a little more adventurous of an evening. This weekend, I stuck my nose into our local fishmonger and came back laden with beautiful specimens; a crab shell packed with freshly picked meat, a dozen giant head-on prawns, thin opaque fillets of gurnard, some gorgeously glossy squid tubes and a little pot of tiny peeled prawns.

squid_prawnsOne of my favourite blogs at the moment is Food Stories written by Helen Graves. I’ve been eyeing up her various recipes for stuffed squid for a while now (recipe here), and thought this was the perfect opportunity to give it a go. Squid is one of my all-time favourite ingredients – flash-grilled with chilli, lemon and rocket a la River Cafe or slow-stewed with soft, melting ingredients like fennel and chorizo – but can be so easy to get wrong.  A few minutes over or under and the resulting rubbery consistency is as pentitential as it gets. I was therefore a little concerned as Helen’s recipe called for baby squid, and my tubes were more of the giant variety. However a little common sense prevailed and I got the cooking time pretty much spot on, creating a dish of wonderful contrasts – melt-in-the-mouth squid packed with firm, textured prawns and punchy flavours.

What follows is  recipe I pulled together using a few basic ingredients – pungent crushed garlic, fiery chilli, a zing of lemon and freshly torn parsley. If I hadn’t been under strict no-carb intructions from CB, I’d be inclined to throw in a handful of breadcrumbs or pulses (lentils or the black beans that Helen uses would be good) to help bind the filling (it slightly fell apart as you cut into the tubes), but if you’re looking for simple, strong flavours over presentation, what follows is more than adequate. My photo of the finished article is a little dodgy as by this point I was more interested in eating than snapping, but please take my word for it, these really are very nice. Perfect with some steamed woody green veg and a splash of fruity olive oil.

Squid stuffed with garlicky prawns
(Serves 2)

2 medium squid tubes, cleaned
Olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 birdseye chillis including seeds, chopped
Handful pinenuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
2 large handfuls tiny prawns, shelled and finely chopped
Juice of half a lemon
Large bunch parsley, chopped
Handful breadcrumbs or lentils (optional)

Heat a lug of olive oil in a small saucepan and gently fry the crushed garlic and chilli til coloured. Add the pinenuts and prawns and continue to cook a couple more minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice, parsley and breadcrumbs/lentils if using to form a thick, coarse mixture.

Stuff each squid 3/4 full with the mixture, securing the end with a cocktail stick. Heat a heavy based grill pan with a little oil until smoking, then grill the squid for around 3 mins each side, adjusting depending on the size of your tubes. This would also work really well on the BBQ, with the black grill marks adding extra flavour.

Test that the contents are warmed through by inserting a skewer. Serve drizzled with fruity olive oil and accompanied by earthy rich greens.