Italian Sausage & Chilli Pesto Pasta

This was inspired by a picture I saw on Pinterest that looked delicious but had no real accompanying recipe as such. The sauce has a base of fresh chilli pesto, bought from a stall at a weekly farmer’s market in the quadrant bit at the back of Guy’s Hospital (its a lovely space actually, a hidden part of London). I also grabbed some Italian sausages there, skinned them and crumbled up and fried...

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Mozzarella & Pesto Stuffed Chicken

This is another recipe where you have an excuse to pound away at chicken breasts with a rolling pin: being a good stress reliever if you need it. We had this with some broccoli roasted with garlic but really you can have whatever you like: spuds, salad, even pasta. And of course the same really goes for the chicken: it stands to reason that you can stuff it with all sorts of goodies rather than...

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Tarragon Gondi

This is yet another good Ottolenghi recipe that he has himself adapted from one in Gideon Kalimian's The Persian Kitchen (a book that I have not been able to find any reference to on t’internet). I think what drew me to this - apart from the fact that despite the criticisms he gets (usually related to long lists of weird ingredients, which I quite like) I like to cook his recipes - is the fact...

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Casarecce with Asparagus, Sausage & Ricotta

Casarecce is a fairly new pasta shape for me: basically short lengths of pasta that have been rolled across their width, with each side rolled in the opposite direction. The rolled length is then slightly twisted so that the pasta is in the shape of a "S" when viewed from the end. You could however use any short pasta for this - the original recipe (I can’t, unfortunately, remember where that...

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Spicy Taiwanese Chicken & Celery

Another great dish to cook if you have a bit of a glut of celery - this is from a reader recipe on Food 52: I’ve changed it slightly, mainly in upping the amount of chicken and sauce as, if I’m serving over a rice, I like it nice and saucy. As it turns out there wasn’t actually a massive amount of sauce even with me increasing those ingredients, but the rice was a welcome relief as my chilli seems...

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