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All tagged family cooking
I want to call this a good friend in the kitchen, a real multi-tasker to make ahead. Rhubarb and ginger are amazing together. This is such an easy simple sample to make in winter, especially with the ginger coming through. It stores really well in a mason jar in the fridge. Everyone loves it in my house. It’s delicious with a warm porridge, perfect with greek yoghurt and nuts and makes the ideal base for a crumble. A keeper for sure.
If you’re after a simple high protein meal, this asian inspired omelette with prawns is the easiest most fabulous lunch or brunch for 2, or even a quick midweek dinner. All the flavours of Asian cooking and packed with nourishing protein and portions of veggies! Serve with a side salad, stir fried pack choi or brown rice if higher carbs needed.
Omelettes or frittatas are your friends! They can be breakfast, brunch, lunch and can be eaten hot or cold! Eggs are a great natural, simple, complete and affordable source of protein teamed up with any seasonal vegetable you may have to hand. An omelette takes 5 minutes to make for a quick lunch at home. Made ahead, they are ideal cold in a wrap with extra salad leaves.
This slow cooked miso pork and butter bean is super easy and the meat can easily be swapped for chicken or lamb. Who doesn't like a one pot recipe? Even better when prep is minimal and it all cooks while you’re at work to come back to your own homemade “ready meal”! I love my slow cooker all year round but especially in autumn winter. Perfect recipe to cook once and eat twice!
This super tasty salmon stir fry recipe is a perfect quick and easy midweek or friday night dinner. The miso marinade can be made ahead and also used with chicken. Stir fries are a quick delicious way to add a large variety or vegetables, colours and nutrients in your diet. This marinated salmon is also delicious served with steamed veggies and even eaten cold for lunch the next day with this asian style slaw.
Kat and I pride ourselves with how simplicity is the key to eating well and creating healthy habits for the long term. That is why, sometimes, as is the case for this recipe, it barely feels like a recipe! A marinade doesn’t have to be “chef” like or complicated with loads of ingredients. Just 2 staples here :plain yoghurt and a good quality harissa paste! In the summer, this is perfect for a BBQ and for the rest of the year, I grill those in the oven. Add to a wrap with hummus for a delicious picnic or lunch at work.
A Tian is a classic dish from my beloved childhood southern France. It is perfect served alongside grilled meat or fish, or just aside salad for a light lunch. It is perfect to use up all of your summer vegetables. I like to use mixed provencal herbs and garlic for the seasoning but dried oregano works brilliantly too. A super easy one to make vegan by simply skipping the cheese. It’s a bit like a structured ratatouille!
When you love asparagus, the season is not really long enough, so I really try and come up with new recipes to include them at least a couple of times a week. This new recipe could very quickly become a seasonal staple for my family. It is quick to prepare, nutritionally balanced, can be adapted, can be eaten hot or cold, makes a perfect picnic or lunchbox item and when cut into squares it's a great finger food for the younger ones. What are you waiting for?
Good old fashioned oat cakes are so so delicious and versatile. They are also super easy to make, as a batch and keep. With the main ingredient being pinhead oats (or steel cut oats) they make the perfect high fibre savoury snack teamed up with our smoked mackerel pâté or French sardine pâté. Another French way to enjoy those is with a little butter, some sliced radishes and a little salt. I like to vary the herbs or spices I mix in them; I have tried and tested rosemary, oregano, garlic, turmeric, curry powder, cumin and paprika. If you want to have them with cheese, I recommend to stick to herbs.
With BBQ season kicking off soon and 2 teens looking forward to make up for lost social time, weekend gathering around food will hopefully be regular occurrence. There seem to be more and more vegetarians amongst my teens’ friends so I am busy creating, planning and testing some new recipes to suit all dietary requirements. This is so so tasty with a nod to my home country with French goats cheese and caramelised red onions! And no processed fake meat in sight!
When trying to get clever and time efficient with meal planning and food prep, we often go for the simple crowd pleasing classics that you can batch cook and freeze. And what better than a batch of meatballs. Turkey mince is very affordable too. The beauty of meatballs is that they are so so versatile: added to a lunchbox, to comforting pasta bowl, served with simple mediterranean roasted veggies, one pan meal. Leftovers are perfect sliced in a wrap with salad and avocado for lunch!
When it’s all about meal planning, food prep and making sure you have good nutritious home cooked food ready when you need it, these are perfect to make all year round. Very quick and easy to assemble with no blender or processor, those lamb koftas can be served with a side salad or some quinoa and steamed greens. I like to serve them with a side of cumin and parsley yoghurt.
Roast chicken on a Sunday is my ultimate comfort food. What’s even better is knowing that nothing will go to waste. First make a stock/broth with the leftovers and then make the ultimate comforting and immune boosting chicken soup. Full of the warming goodness of ginger and turmeric, packed with vegetables, this soup is a winner every time. I have also added pearl barley to make it go further , but you could ommit or swap for brown rice, giant couscous or quinoa.
Salmon is a popular fish in our house - but when I add a teriyaki sauce then it’s even more popular. Rather than the traditional brown sugar found in teriyaki sauces I have swopped to a maple syrup - so it maintains its sweetness without adding any refined sugars. I marinade the salmon for 30 minutes - but if you are short of time then you can shorten to 10 minutes. I like to cook this with one large piece of salmon fillet. I ask the fishmonger for a piece to feed 6 as my teenage sons eat more than most adults!! I serve this with buckwheat noodles and stir fried vegetables.
This is hand on heart the easiest flatbread you can make and it’s naturally gluten-free! Socca is a traditional French dish from Nice where I partly grew up. It was probably my favourite street food. Cooked on very hot grills, they were usually served in a cone of brown paper with a sprinkling of coarse sea salt and pepper, maybe thyme or rosemary. It it was one of those South of France classic for which everyone has their own technique for cooking, but the ingredients however are pretty much always the same: equal parts chickpea flour and water, add olive oil, that’s it. That simple!
Mussels are usually something I don’t prepare at home. I tend to have them as a foodie treat when I go back home to France. But as I write, we are in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic and the restaurant trade has collapsed. So local fishmongers normally selling to pubs and restaurant are selling direct and have an amazing selection of seafood, including mussels. Please don’t be scared by them as they are the easiest to prepare. I hope you have a go!
This recipe is for all of you out there who like a simple tasty one pot that keeps on giving! We all need those one-pot recipes in our busy lives. Simple, yet delicious heart warming, ideal to prep in advance and…packed full of vegetables, plant based protein, fibres and all round goodness. Leave the chorizo out for a vegetarian option. Delicious served with a warm corn tortilla wrap, mashed avocado and soured cream.
Nothing beats a stew when the shorter darker cooler days arrive. It is not only delicious, warming and comforting, it is also so simple and a real time saver. I chose venison from our local farm and butcher for this recipe. Being wild and grass fed, venison is much leaner than beef, and contains less saturated fat. Diced venison from your local butcher is also very affordable. We have used a slow cooker to cook this dish, which means that you can prepare it all in the morning and then get on with the day coming home to a perfectly cooked meal. For a conventional oven place in a low oven for 4 hours until the meat is tender.
If you have never tried a savoury crumble, now is the time with this recipe! This is a fun, really quick and easy vegetarian meal you can put together in the evening for kids. It can be used as a side or as a main dish. Add Oregano as you herb of choice and it will taste like a pizza! Add olives and Herbes de Provence and you’ll find yourself in sunny South of France. I’ve had massive thumbs up and great success with kids with this recipe and you could turn it into a pick and mix where kids make their own veggie choices and share the crumble topping in individual dishes!
This is hand on heart the easiest most delicious bake you could ever make ahead and keep for a healthy and balanced lunch.
Growing up, in France, I probably had something like this once a week! The flavour combinations are endless, vegetarian or not, you can go with the flow of seasonal veggies, add spices and even play around with flours. What’s not to like? My favourite is olive with anything.
