Island curry
Imagine a little French island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Then imagine a curry that has flavours different from any curry you’ve enjoyed before… Cari de poulet à la Reunion.
Turkey for Christmas lunch
A large Christmas lunch takes time to prepare. Here, we use standard industrial time and motion methods to speed up production while maintaining quality.
Christmas trifle
This is without doubt the simplest dessert recipe I know, with the exception of vanilla ice cream. The only skill demanded of you is to make the trifle look elegant and tempting in the glass dish. A second optional skill involves actually making the custard.
Fabulous fish pie
You don’t have to live on the beach to enjoy this delicious meal, since the fishy parts come straight out of the supermarket freezer. And to make it even easier, the main ingredient in the crust is breakfast cereal.
Cauliflower mash with chicken livers
To make cauliflower mash with chicken livers and chorizo sausage for four, you will need:
For the mashed cauliflower:
1 head of...
Thai-style steak and salad
Eat more plants, we’re told. An excellent idea, especially with the wide choice of delicious greens available these days. But we love our meat too, don’t we? So here’s a Thai-influenced salad – served warm, unlike most salads, and augmented by succulent rump steak.
Hellfire chicken
This is the stage name for grilled chicken in red chilli sauce. The red chilli sauce is a variation on a riff on an improvisation on a South East Asian folk recipe with a couple of notes added from the classic Durban spice repertoire.
Roasted prawns with dipping sauce
We all know the traditional image of prawns: palid specimens covered in red goo, heaped in a sundae glass dish or even a wineglass. Oh, I nearly forgot the ‘bed of lettuce’. Instead of this gustatory let-down, here are two great dipping sauces designed to enhance rather than obscure
the oceanic pleasures of roasted prawns.
Pork belly: cooked twice, eaten often
Twice-cooked dishes are usually Chinese in origin, with the raw ingredients getting two treatments instead of one. While a little heavy on the cook, the effects on the diners make up for the extra work. Give it shot with this recipe.
Feta and broccoli lasagne
This is a huge blast of flavour created with little effort, and a regular hit in my household.
Be sure not to skimp on the whisking action to ensure the perfect white sauce.
Pasta with brinjals and tomatoes
Spaghetti with a sauce is a family staple throughout this nation of ours. Instead of working a can opener, here’s a more hands-on pasta meal for four that is easy to cook and pleasantly novel in flavour.
Caramelised onions
Is it a condiment? Or merely a vegetable? The fact of the matter is that caramelising onions is a great kitchen skill to learn: this delicious ingredient adds layers of flavour to all meat-based meals.