Slim-ish recipe inspiration

There's something so wonderful about getting a new cookbook. I love the first lazy look, the second thorough pore and the third detailed scour with pen and shopping list at the ready.

My latest is Skinny Weeks and Weekend Feasts by the lovely Gizzi Erskine. The concept is based around slightly lighter, fresher, lower calorie food during the week with blowout menus for the weekend (a sort of epicurean version of 5:2). I stumbled across it first in delicious magazine, in which a few of the recipes were previewed. One in particular, satay chicken Thai curry, was so easy and delicious I made it twice within a week!

Gizzi's pork and chorizo meatballs

My next obsession was pork and chorizo meatballs with spelt spaghetti. Admittedly chorizo is quite hard to squish into a meatball and yes, I had a slightly bigger than stated portion but it was surprisingly delicious and didn't feel at all stodgy.

The best bit of this was actually the tomato sauce - easy, cheap and flavoursome. Soften some chopped onions; add crushed fennel seeds, garlic and chilli; throw in chopped tomatoes, sugar and red wine vinegar; leave it all to become lovely and mushy for 15 minutes or so.

So, what to do if you have all the ingredients except for the pork mince - key bulk of a meatball? Simple - make the sauce anyway, add in a few slices of chorizo towards the end and enjoy an even skinnier version. I discovered it by accident this evening when I was just about to cop out and stir tinned pesto lazily into some flabby fusilli. What a save, eh?

Yummy sausage-based discovery

I'm always after new food ideas and I scour delicious magazine avidly each month. I fold over the corners for anything I fancy trying; I judge the success of each issue by how many foldy corners wadge together at the top.

Of course, many corners represent foolish pipe dreams - sashimi plates I'll never dare to make and ice cream for which I don't have the requisite equipment. But, each issue, there will be a gem. Usually noodly, sometimes salmony, but increasingly sausagey.

A couple of months back I found this: sausages with creamy lentils. It takes around 40 minutes to make, so it's just about achieveable as a quick mid-week meal. And, boy, is it easy! Minimal chopping, hardly any stirring, plenty of leave-it-and-see time. I pimped it slightly, of course - I didn't bother twisting the sausages into smaller versions (because that's just weird), I left out the garlic and fresh coriander and used creme fraiche rather than yoghurt. But whatever - do what you will. That's the joy of food, as far as I'm concerned - we all know how to make things for our own taste.

Anyway - go and try it. Get the recipe here: http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/sausages-with-creamy-lentils

PS: makes good leftovers too.

A slice of Madrid at home

So you knew it was just a matter of time, right? Before I got ideas above my station? And felt the need to recreate the Estado Puro tapas at home? Don't you hate always being right?

I didn't feel adventurous enough to try the tortilla in a glass. But I did try out the cute little patatas bravas with a swirl (or in my case, dollop) of sauce.

I consulted the Book of Tapas - otherwise known in my house as the 'big yellow book of chomps' - for a standard salsa brava recipe and followed it to begin. It's a bit of white wine vinegar, a dash of worcestershire sauce, some crushed garlic, chilli flakes and a whole load of paprika mixed together. But it wasn't thick or rich enough, so I took drastic steps.

First I added one teaspoon-full of salmorejo mixture, which I was making at the same time. Salsa brava doesn't traditionally contain tomato, but it feels as if it should! To thicken the sauce I heated it intensively, stirring constantly until it made a deep red paste. A quick taste - similar enough to the restaurant's original. I selected same-size, neatly shaped small potatoes (I can't remember which kind, but ones suitable for baking, not boiling). Once the potatoes had baked in their skins for about 40 minutes I took a scoop out of the top of each and plopped in some sauce. Another five minutes in the oven unites potato and sauce nicely, and they're ready to serve.

Also on my twee plate (pictured above): a small ramekin of salmorejo, asparagus spears, slices of tortilla, jamon iberico and onion-stuffed mushrooms. Yum, eh?

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Fastest cake in the world

I felt a bit domestic goddess-like this morning - up and about very early and in the mood to fuss aeound in the kitchen. I was also starving by about 10am so I decided to rustle up some scones, one of the easiest cakes to make.

To start I rubbed 60g of slightly salted butter into 220g of self-raising flour. This is the messy bit where you need to take all the rings off your fingers and end up with something resembling breadcrumbs. Next mix in 50g of golden caster sugar and a handful (your hands or mine? Who cares?!) of sultanas. Then use a wooden spoon to mix in 150ml of semi-skimmed milk until it makes a soft but held-together dough. If it's too gooey to lift out of the bowl in one piece, add a sprinkling of flour.

Knead it very lightly for hardly any time at all on a floury surface, then roll it out to a thickness of about 2cm. I prefer square, rustic-looking scones so I used a bread knife to cut it into 8 pieces. I baked them on a non-stick tray for about 15 minutes at 180 degrees.

Of course, the real reason for making them is the joy of butter or spread sinking slowly into hot, crusty scones. And to use up the last of the Fortnum and Mason luxury cherry jam from Christmas!

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Not just snacks

It's tapas time again. Well, it was for me on Saturday. A friend and I cooked up a storm using recipes from The Book of Tapas.

This meaty tome, by family act Simone and Ines Ortega, is a bit of a tapas bible. It cuts straight into business-like and easy to follow recipes for everything under the lovely Spanish sun.

We made patatas bravas, potato salad with tuna, crab and tomato bites, asparagus and ham toasts, spicy chicken brochettes and some delicious stuffed potato skins. All within an hour and a half while avoiding an 18-month-old baby playing with cars underfoot!

It's a pretty expensive book and perhaps not as visually appealing as some cookbooks, but well worth it. If you like tapas. Which I do.

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Hot off the press

I didn't like bread when I was a child. I wasn't very keen on sponge cake either; my childhood was a non-stop succesion of left crusts and party food forced down with a cup of tea (not a big fan of fizzy drinks either).

As a grown-up I've learned to tolerate bread, although I still don't much like the flabby sliced stuff. So, no sandwiches for me, which means lunchtimes are a constant challenge of imagination and resourcefulness!

Since discovering the panini press in our kitchen at work I've worked out that almost any kind of bread is better if you toast it. Even an uninspiring cheese and tomato sandwich becomes bearable after 2 minutes of heat and squishing. But, of course, the strong suit of the press is the panini itself. Oh, the endless variations of fillings! I've become so addicted to making paninis that I've even bought a press for my kitchen at home, too.

So, what should you fill it with. Well, funny you should ask! You know how good Thai food has a perfect balance of the four flavours - salty, sweet, sour and spicy? I've worked out the formula for a perfect panini: something meaty, something tangy and something melty.

Try it: you can't go wrong! The meaty thing doesn't have to be meat, it's essentially anything with a lot of umami, like mushrooms. The melty thing is usually cheese, and a particularly robust cheese could be both meaty and melty. To get you started, here's my five favourites.

• Bacon, brie and onion relish.
• Chicken, goat's cheese and yellow pepper.
• Ham, mozzarella and sun-dried tomatoes.
• Tuna, mozzarella and rocket.
• Portobello mushroom, mozzarella and spinach.

There, that'll get you on your way. Now, go and be creative. Then come back and tell me your favourite inventions.

Tarty piece

The apple tree in our garden has been looking a bit over-burdened lately. Some branches hang out onto the road and we'll only need one pretty windy day to cause a traffic nightmare. Not to mention the fact that our garden's a bit of a kitty highway, and an apple on the head probably wouldn't do a cat much good.

So it's nice to see a glut of apple recipes in the food magazines this month. October's delicious. magazine arrived last week featuring a tempting French-style apple tart. On closer examination it turns out to be a quince and apple tart from Rick Stein's latest book. Helpfully, though, it does give an apple-only alternative.

It's dead easy: make an apple puree with some apples, caster sugar and a splash of water. Roll out some ready-made puff pastry and cut around a medium sized plate (the magazine recipe does give exact sizes and quantities, but I just used a large-ish side plate and about 4 small apples for the puree). Lay the pastry onto a greased baking sheet, prick it with a fork all over the centre and spread the apple puree over the top. Leave a little perimeter round the edge. Stick the whole thing in the fridge for a while.

In the meantime put the oven on - about 200c or whatever that is for gas ovens. Peel and thinly slice another 2 or 3 small apples. Take the tart out of the fridge and lay the slices on top in circles, overlapping slightly. Sprinkle a hefty amount of caster sugar over the top and bake it all for 30 minutes.

And that's it. There's something in Rick's recipe about glazing it with jam, but life's too short. It's nice hot, but better cold with a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Just sit back and think of Paris!

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Look what I won!

I always enter a couple of delicious magazine's prize draws without giving much thought to whether I'll win. So I was delighted when I recently won a copy of Yotam Ottolenghi's fantastic new book, Plenty.

Ottolenghi isn't a vegetarian but has become well-known for his sumptuous meat-free recipes. His upbringing in Israel and Palestine has armed him with fulfilling recipes starring vegetables and pulses in abundance.

The book is divided into chapters based on the main ingredient, such as squashes or aubergine, so you can base your choice on what's in season or what you've got growing in the garden.

The recipes seem straightforward and don't require masses of extra speciality ingredients. My favourite so far is 'tomato party' - a jumble of tomato varieties, some cooked, some raw, with couscous and fresh herbs.

Even if you aren't in the mood for cooking the book provides a great teatime read, the words just as sumptuous as the beautiful photos. It may not turn me into a vegetarian but it'll certainly encourage me to make vegetables the star turn more often.

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Delicious but disappointing

I'm a subscriber to delicious magazine; this is my third year as a regular reader. I'm not a big magazine reader, but I do enjoy articles about food. Plus I collect as many recipes as I can, and theirs are usually appealing and easy to follow.

I feel like it's been in an ever-so-slight rut just lately, though and I've noticed two worrying trends. For the first I blame Delia and her 'I'm too old for this - let's all cheat instead' campaign. To illustrate: I saw a recipe for jerk chicken with Caribbean rice. I though "ooh, I'd like to learn how to make jerk seasoning - that'd be handy". Imagine my disappointment when the first listed ingredient turned out to be jerk seasoning! Well, I'm not stupid - I know that if I buy some jerk seasoning and add it to chicken it'll become jerk chicken. What I don't know is how to make the seasoning from scratch. I do understand: the magazine is catering for all kinds of cooks, from the highly skilled to the 30-minute-throw-together-after-work. But wouldn't it be better to give the full recipe, then mention that there's a cheat if you can't face mixing and grinding spices?

The second trend is a strange reluctance to dictate food choices. Recipes end with a sentence along the lines of "Serve it with some mango chutney, if you like". If I like? Well yes, I can do anything I want if I like. I could serve my chicken curry with strawberry ice cream if the mood took me. When I buy a food magazine I'm really hoping it'll recommend the best accompaniments, or tell me how a chef has or would serve the dish. Not just give me permission to have chutney. I'm old enough to decide that myself!

NB: I'm still a delicious subscriber and I still thoroughly enjoy the magazine, which now has a brand new editor. Perhaps she'll help to brush it over the recent mini-rut.

Spring, spring, spring

Spring is in the air and Easter is here, which immediately makes my food-brain turn to springy food. Eggs, asparagus, mushrooms, cabbage, watercress, beetroot, spring onions, etc.

One of my stand-by Easter lunches is scrambled eggs on toast with asparagus. It's dead easy to make and deliciously light. Add a bit of smoked salmon, if that's your bag.

Another favourite at this time of year is savoy cabbage and spring onions mixed into mashed potato, served with roast chicken or sausages. I may also try it with an oven-baked salmon fillet.

This evening's dinner will be tagliatelle with assorted mushrooms, spring onions, asparagus and a creamy sauce. Again it's awfully easy to make - just remember to add the cooked pasta into the sauce and vegetables, rather than pouring the sauce onto the pasta. It's the Italian way, apparently!

There: a whole post with no splash of red wine! Well, it's spring - rose or white would be far more appropriate ...

Cottage with an orange roof

I've just discovered cottage pie with sweet potato mash on top. Yes, I know I'm well behind the times!

Folk say it's better for you, but I'm not sure exactly why. In my book it just makes a nice change and tastes more interesting.

Cottage pie is surely one of the easiest and most satisfying things to cook. Just bung lean mince, chopped onions, carrots, beef stock and a bit of red wine in a frying pan and fry it until the mince is cooked. At the same time peel a couple of sweet potatoes, chop them into small cubes and boil them until soft and squishy. Mash the potato (on its own - no need for butter or any of that malarkey). Then you layer it all in an ovenproof dish with the potato on top and shove it into an oven for 20 minutes.

It makes great lunch leftovers too, and I've got a cunning tip for transporting it effectively. Set aside a small portion of each (mince mixture and potato) before it all reaches the oven. Place them side by side in a tupperware container to make sure it doesn't all go mixed-up and soggy. The next day, microwave the whole thing for a few minutes and layer it onto a plate, like a little orange-roofed cottage!

I can't remember anything by The Cranberries

I can't be alone in my cranberry sadness. Every time I open the kitchen cupboard in January (sometimes even February and March) I look glumly at a languishing half-full jar of cranberry sauce, collecting dust.

I can't not buy it for Christmas dinner - roast turkey just wouldn't be the same with one trimming missing - but what does one do with it afterwards?

Well, never fear: I've discovered the delights of a brie, bacon and cranberry panini. Slice up some brie, add small pieces of cooked smoked bacon and smear on a dollop of cranberry sauce. Toast the whole thing in a sandwich or panini toaster and chomp it up! If you don't have a sandwich toaster, you could have the same filling in a baked ciabatta or just a sandwich.

And if you haven't got any leftover cranberry sauce? Make your own - it's incredibly simple. Put two handfuls of fresh or frozen cranberries into a saucepan with the juice of half an orange and one dessert spoonful of caster sugar. Heat it until the cranberries burst and it starts to look 'saucy'. Let it cool down a bit, then have a taste and add as many squirts of honey you need to make it sweet enough.

In fact this whole blog post has been a sham: I made my own cranberry sauce last Christmas and I don't even have an abandoned jar in the cupboard. But I can still sympathise with my former, cranberry-sad self.

Middle eastern delight

I spotted a dish I didn't recognise on the tapas menu in a restaurant recently. I'm quite nosy and inquisitive when it comes to food (well, when it comes to most things!) so it's unusual for me not to have at least some clue what's in a recipe. But in this case, I hadn't.

'Imam bayildi with Greek yoghurt and flatbread', it said - nothing more. So I asked what it was and the head waiter was sent over to explain. He described 'a middle eastern dish of aubergine cooked down with spices and dried fruit'. Well, that was good enough for me - put me down for one of your finest, good sir!

His description turned out to be accurate but he forgot to say it would be amazingly delicious and a teensy bit addictive! The next day I was online searching for imam bayildi recipes (of which there are many and varied) and it has now found its way into my repertoire. So here's my version, for your delight.

First chop a smallish aubergine into inch-sized cubes and place them in a colander sprinkled with a little bit of salt. Leave it for a while, then cook it over a high heat on a griddle pan for 5 minutes, with a tiny bit of oil.

At the same time, toast some cumin seeds in a large dry frying pan. Once the smell of the cumin starts to waft, add some olive oil and a very finely chopped red onion. Add a splodge of tomato puree, some sultanas, a shake of ground coriander, a pinch of ground cinnamon and the griddled aubergine. Pour over half a cupful of water and leave the whole thing over a low heat (covered if possible) for half an hour or so. It really can't cook down enough, so you can get away with leaving it for longer as long as it doesn't 'catch' on the bottom of the pan.

When you're ready, add the juice of half a lemon and serve it with flatbread and sour cream.

*The restaurant was St Alban, near Picadilly, and is always fantastic.

If you can do without the MSG

Sticky beef with cashews

Go on then - have a recipe. Half borrowed from the June issue of delicious magazine and half improvised the night before last.

'Toast' some cashew nuts in a dry frying pan for just a moment, before adding some chopped ginger (according to personal taste - I add loads). Fry it for a couple of minutes, then add four dessert spoons of light soy sauce, two dessert spoons of tomato ketchup, a teaspoon of honey and a pinch of chilli flakes. You could try adding some sweet chilli dipping sauce, if you felt adventurous! Add 50ml of water and turn up the heat, then add some broccoli florets and cook the whole thing until the broccoli is done.

Separately, pan grill a sirloin steak until it's slightly underdone for your own preference (but I think you'll find medium rare is correct ...!). Leave it for a moment, then cut it into long, thin strips. At the last minute, stir the beef strips into the other ingredients. Serve it all on top of some egg fried rice with a squeeze of lime juice.

Stick a fork in me ...

Hope springs

I know autumn is my favourite season, but spring really is very nice too! It's such a pretty month and the weather gives one hope for the summer ahead.

It also means English asparagus is in season - hurrah! It has a far woodier taste than the bright green stuff we ship in, and goes well with some pasta and pesto, or with scrambled eggs.

Tickled salmon pink

Pan fried salmon with wasabi and soy

Nyeh, you've gotta try this ... as the fat-tongued Oliver boy would say.

I think I got part of this recipe from Gordy, part from a noodle packet and part from my imagination.

Mix some wasabi paste with about an equal amount of light soy sauce, the juice of half a lime and some brown sugar (white sugar will do if you don't have brown). I don't know quantities, but it's best to start with about three dessert spoons of soy sauce and go by taste and judgement from there. Place two salmon fillets in the marinade and leave it to soak for a while.

In the meantime, finely slice some salad onions and fry them gently in a wok with some ginger and beansprouts. Add some ready-to-go rice noodles (I prefer thin ones) and splash in a dessert spoon of mirin, a drizzle of sesame oil and a bit of soy sauce.

Once the noodles are more or less ready, prepare a griddle pan over a very high heat and fry the salmon for about 2-3 minutes on either side (without oil, if your pan is non-stick enough). Serve the salmon on top of the noodles straight away, with a wedge of lime on the side to make it look like you've made an effort!

Crazy egg

Just a quick thing about scrambled eggs. Have I spoken about them before? Possibly, but who knows? Who cares?! It's not as if you read every day! Oh -perhaps you do! In which case I feel a scary sense of obligation to inform, educate and entertain, like the BBC.

Anyway - make them in the microwave. Just take them out every 20 or 30 seconds to do the scrambling bit with a fork, otherwise (as my colleague pointed out) you end up with an omelette.

Scrambly eggs, as I call them, should be a bit on the gooey side and are best eaten as hot as possible on some ciabatta toast with olive oil and black pepper.

PS: turns out I had talked about them before!

Cake!

My favourite cake recipe, for low-fat apple cake, is probably the recipe I most frequently pass on. So I thought I'd dredge it up again here!

I recently made a new-Delia-like discovery, too - if you have no cooking apples handy, you can use a jar of bramley apple sauce instead! Hurrah for convenience!

The recipe can be found right here.

Every little helps

No, I'm not on commission from Tesco. Yet!

It's the month of diet and detox, so I thought I'd throw my two penn'orth into the ring. I'm not a fan of 'proper' diets of any kind, but I firmly believe that small, manageable changes make a difference. So here's my top tips for small changes to create a better way of eating.

1. Don't peel potatoes before roasting them or making oven chips or wedges. The skin is the best bit! Worms won't grow out of your face.
2. Use reduced-fat olive spread instead of any other kind of butter or butter substitute.
3. Add pine nuts, pumpkin seeds and sultanas to food as often as possible. Sprinkle them on top of salads or pasta, for instance.
4. Don't buy salt. Most food is salty enough without it and you can't be tempted to add it if there's none around!
5. Eat soup as an easy way to consume more fruit and vegetables.
6. Have crumpets for breakfast, with a bit of peanut butter or honey. They're relatively low in fat and calories, quite filling and also yummy.
7. Buy loads of plastic storage containers so that you can easily save and freeze leftovers rather than feeling obliged to eat them!
8. Make a low-fat apple cake on a Sunday morning and have a small slice whenever you want a snack or treat. It should last until elevenses on Wednesday!
9. Mash potatoes with a tiny bit of wholegrain mustard instead of adding milk, butter, cream, cheese, etc.
10. Go out for dinner frequently - it gets you out of a food rut, can inspire new recipe ideas and usually means you'll eat a balanced meal rather than a lazy home-cooked one.

Stick a fork in me - I'm done.

Celebrate in your own style

It's 'birthday weekend' among my friends, acquaintances and loved ones. So what should one cook to celebrate?

Well, in some cases you can do no better than ham, egg and chips with some English mustard. I do great fried eggs, too. We used to own a deep fryer and I made my own fat, crispy, delicious chips. I miss them, but I don't miss the whole house and all my clothes smelling of chip fat!

For some, the onion soup I made last weekend would be the perfect celebration treat. It's ridicuously easy, too - chop up three or four onions (a mixture of red and white), cook them softly in a saucepan for about 20 minutes so they're see-through and squishy rather than brown and crispy, then add a pint of beef stock and some seasoning and simmer it all for half an hour. And that's it! I also made massive Paris-style croutons with some French bread rings toasted with Emmental on top. Some people, however, find too many onions annoying ... so it's best to check with the birthday boy/girl first!

Some like a picnic and we're having some splendid weather at the moment, so it's ideal for finding a quiet spot outdoors and bringing some sandwiches, cakes or pork pies. The problem there is that all the 'quiet' spots are overrun with other people trying to enjoy the last (and indeed first) of the nice weather.

Many people have a sweet tooth and for them I'd recommend the low-fat apple cake with some lovely tea. One year, for my dad's birthday, I made some cappucino and espresso cupcakes. They're basic fairy cakes made with instant coffee powder mixed in, and topped with creamy toppings - chocolate-flavoured for the cappucino and vanilla for the espresso. I think they're from Nigella's Domestic Goddess book, or at least one of hers.

If it's your own birthday, though, and you don't fancy cooking (and can't find anyone else to cook for you), I'd recommend getting a massive curry from Tesco's Takeaway range. It's normally next to the deli counter with those ready-cooked chickens. Just shove it in the oven and eat it with loads of naan bread and some beer!

Happy birthdays.