What's cooking? :

Loaf of the day: Islay white sourdough with oat flakes and spelt

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It's quite hard to transmit my passion for bread into words. The ingredients, proportions etc. don't vary that much from one loaf to another, and although there are a range of techniques, I make most of my bread in the same way. On top of that,[...]

Homemade baked beans

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I got back from a great day at the beach and, although Gemma had supper in hand, my creative juices were flowing so I decided to have a bash at making my own baked beans. (I can buy the Heinz variety here, but they are fiendishly expensive and my[...]

English pancakes

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I've given up trying to convince the rest of my family of the superiority of Scottish over English pancakes (which, needless to say, are really French anyway). These are the ones Carmela makes for breakfast, although once the first pancake has[...]

Perfect pizza

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There is a lot of mystique around pizza - wood-fired ovens, special blends of Italian flour and so on - and while all of these things no doubt help, the key to a good pizza is a well-made dough. It should be light, so the hydration or[...]

Carmela's BBQ chicken kebabs

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As Sammy has his own kebab recipe , I thought it only fair that Carmela should have one too, so this is what we came up with. We took these camping with us and we didn't get any shots of the food, but I did catch Carmela loosing off an arrow.[...]

Thrice-tweaked scones

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I've been making scones with Sammy for a while and over time he has gradually taken over more and more of the process, and also introduced a few little improvements of his own. Here is the (for now) definitive version. Ingredients 300g[...]

Sammy's chicken kebabs

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Sammy and Carmela are gradually doing more and more cooking, and right now this is Sammy's favourite thing to do with chicken. Ingredients 1 kg skinless chicken breast juice of 1/2 lemon 6 tbsps of natural yoghurt 2 tbsps of chickpea[...]

Chicken curry with cardamom

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This year I finally bit the bullet and brought back a whole suitcase of spices from Edinburgh to Cadiz: garam  masala, ground coriander, curry powder, chilli powder, black mustard seeds, cardamom, fenugreek ... Appropriately enough,[...]

Loaf of the day: white sourdough with rye

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This is currently my standard sourdough recipe. I've changed a few things and worked out a baking routine which involves spraying the loaf before and during cooking instead of using an oven stone or complex steaming techniques, but still gives[...]

Pork ribs with chilli and ginger (pressure cooker version)

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I got market inspiration the other day, and after clam and potato stew , and rabbit dhansak I thought I would try to pressure cook some spare ribs. I wanted this to be really simple and quick, with just a couple of clear, strong flavours.[...]