Stuffed Pork with Lemon Asparagus Couscous

Cooking this and writing it up in mid-March, Summer seemed to actually be on the way. For once my cooking thoughts weren’t 100% set on comfort food, comfort food and more comfort food and I stumbled across this recipe for stuffed pork chops. They seemed perfect for the spring days we’ve been enjoying for the last week or so. With a little tinkering I resolved to have them very soon. The couscous...

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Mongolian Beef

You will find a lot of recipes online when you do a lot of searching for recipes that are designed to give you copies of favourite chain establishment dishes: copycat or clone recipes for the likes of Olive Garden, Red Lobster, IHOP, Chilis - all places that I have never stepped foot in but know of in the main because of the existence of all these copycat recipes. And of course there is PF Changs,...

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Pad Thai

The bf & I both love pad thai but in all honesty I’m really not sure that I love cooking it. Rice sticks (and rice noodles generally) are a beast to work with. No matter how hard I try I always seem to get an unwieldy tangled lump that doesn’t want to incorporate the other ingredients. Which of course results in a beast to photograph too. As you can see. Luckily it tasted pretty good so...

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Tarragon Chicken

I’ve made various versions of tarragon chicken over the years and in some sort of poulet a l’estragon mental block have always failed to blog it afterwards. That was nearly the case on this occasion too but on serving I managed to remember to snap a couple of shots and then hastily scribbled down the recipe when we were done. Poaching the chicken in the stock after you have browned the skin...

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Chorizo & Chickpea Stew

I’m pretty sure that I bought a bag of chickpeas specifically to make this which of course does lengthen the cooking time somewhat making it more of a weekend than weeknight meal (unless of course you cook in advance). In all honesty I don’t think much would be lost by using a decent tin of chickpeas and a lot of time would be saved. I made this with chorizo and sherry to give it a Spanish edge...

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Gorgonzola Gnocchi with Parsley Salad

A brace of Olive mag recipes, as often seems to be the case when I cook from it. Here we have a very simple gnocchi dish served with just as simple salad. You could use any sort of cheese with the gnocchi but as we’re talking shop bought gnocchi here it is best to use something quite robustly flavoured, the gorgonzola works well but other blue cheeses would be equally good or maybe a herbed...

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Lemon Buttermilk Chicken with Piccata Sauce

This was a recipe in one of my Olive mags earlier this year and one which was completely delicious and well worth the little bit of effort you need to put in (and it still isn’t that much really). Buttermilk is reasonably easy to get hold of these days: certainly in the larger Tescburys and also in Waitrose you shouldn’t have a problem. I’d bought some Kewpie mayonnaise back from Japan which...

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Red Lentil Dal & Coconut Rice

A very good standby veggie staple here (standby staple? Hhm.) and one where you could probably use any sort of pulse really. I use red lentils though, apart from the fact that I like them, because they cook quickly and don’t need any soaking etc. For the rice I cooked some basmati with a couple of cardamon pods and a tin of coconut milk (about twice the volume of rice I think) - the creamy and...

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Beef & Broccoli Noodles

Unfortunately the beef I bought for this came pre-prepared in a soy & ginger marinade - it was all I could get, weirdly, unless I wanted to spend a fortune on fillet or get a massive sirloin steak - which I didn’t. However if yours comes unadulterated (as I’m sure it will, I think I just shopped on a bad beef day), mix the strips with some soy as well as the rice wine to marinate for 30...

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