Category: home cooking

Still on my pie theme, this time I made bramble and apple pie. The bulges in the pastry are the brambles (aka blackberries). I added only a sprinkle of brown sugar, but it needed a liquid to allow the apples to cook, so I added a mix of creme...

Punnets of cherries were going quite cheaply, so I bought one and stoned all the cherries with my handy little device that pits both cherries and olives. I used two Pink Lady apples, cored but not peeled and chopped up into roughly half-inch pieces. The pastry was white flour...

Among my birthday presents was a tin of Captain Cat’s seafood rub from Pembrokeshire in South Wales.  It’s a light brown/orange colour, and is intended to be rubbed into fish before you bake it or fry it. I tried putting it into a prawn quiche, and it worked very...

In Southern England the fruit is called blackberries and the bush brambles. In Scotland, however, and some parts of England ‘bramble’ means both the fruit and the bush. Either way, it goes well with apples in a pie. I made the pastry as usual with 4oz flour plus bran...

The idea came from my BBQ. If I can wrap bacon round medjool dates for devils on horseback, could I put them in a quiche alongside bacon? I made a normal quiche, adding a spoon of bran to the white flour and using goose fat for shortening. In went...

With Autumn in the air, I doubt there’ll be many more barbecues this year. I held two last week, cooking the usual hamburgers and hot dogs, both Frankfurters and Lincolnshire sausages. I made skewers with prawns, onions, mushrooms and green, red and yellow peppers. I also did devils on...

I pre-cooked the bacon in a microwave and cut it into small pieces.  I whisked up two eggs while the pan was heating up with just a tiny amount of butter in it.  When the butter began to turn brown I knew it was hot enough.  In went the...

I made myself a rather nice frittata. It took 4 eggs, whisked up with half a cup of goats’ milk, two big spoons of yoghurt and some cream. I put in bacon pieces, chopped red and green peppers and onion, plus seasoning. Crucially I lined the oven with a...

The base is puff pastry rolled into a rectangle.  I use ready-made puff pastry because it’s too labour intensive to make my own.  I score an inner rectangle about three-quarters of an inch in, and spread green pesto inside it.  Then come the chopped tomatoes, the torn basil leaves...

I make a quiche as a way of using up leftovers.  In this case I had cold sliced lamb I cut into pieces of about half an inch across.  After lining my dish with shortcrust pastry, I put strips of cheese to cover the bottom, then the pieces of...