Category: home cooking

It is a simple, but a very good dessert. Peeled and chopped apples simmered with stoned cherries in a mix of creme de cassis, lemon juice and orange squash (no sugar added). Cooked until the apples are soft, then cooled and chilled. Brilliant with cream. It does help to...

The great thing about having goose for Christmas is that it tastes brilliant. Turkey can be bland and dry, but not goose. The second thing is that you get jars of lovely goose-fat. This year I had five. I use it throughout the year for roasting potatoes and sweet...

  This Christmas was full of the usual treats, Turkey, Mince Pies and family arguments but on boxing day i love to cook a Gammon joint with honey. It’s important to get a piece of Gammon with the rind intact. You start by scoring the rind in a diamond...

I bought a fresh 5 kg goose from Waitrose (about 11 lb). I pricked the skin, rubbed oil over it and rubbed in sea-salt. It took about 3 hours to cook in a 170 fan oven, lightly covered in foil, and basted occasionally. No stuffing. I par-boiled the potatoes...

It could be diced lamb, but this time I chose minced lamb. I pre-cooked it on the hob until it was brown, then spooned off the fatty liquid. I fried the chopped red onions in a separate pan, then added them to the mince with a little water, powdered...

I had one jar left of the pumpkin purée I’d made and frozen. I defrosted it and poured it into a pan with about half a pint of chicken stock. I added about half a cupful of evaporated milk, a pinch of salt, half a teaspoon of grated nutmeg,...

I do not often eat pasta. Occasionally I eat ricotta and spinach tortelloni, and sometimes in a restaurant I will order ravioli. I had some wholewheat spaghetti in my cupboard, so I made a bolognese sauce of minced lamb, onions and tomato, with Italian herbs and garlic to flavour....

This has to be one of the quickest to prepare. Cold lamb slices from yesterday’s roast leg, with rock salt sprinkled over them. Then a salad from Sainsbury’s help-yourself salad bar, the smallest size at £1.50. It included tomatoes, boiled egg, sugarsnap peas, feta cheese, spiral pasta, beetroot and...

I lined a pie dish with my usual shortcrust pastry. The filling used about 400 gm of the pumpkin purée I made, plus a cup of milk, a spoon of brown sugar and one of golden syrup. I used two large eggs and whisked it all up. Then I...

I cut a pumpkin into segments after scooping out the seeds. After peeling them with a potato peeler and chopping them into roughly 1″ pieces, I simmered them for about 15 minutes until tender. Then I zapped them in a blender with just enough liquid to for a purée....