Beautiful beetroot and radiant orange give your table a serious colour injection! Our dressing for this one has orange blossom water which is pretty flowery stuff so if you don’t like it feel free to leave it out or experiment with something else! …
olive oil
Pizza!
Pizza, is usually thought of as junk food these days but if you think back in time to when pizza was first made, it was actually pretty healthy. A slab of bread with lots of tasty vegetables on top and a wee bit of cheese – less of the mountains of mozzarella and greasy slick of oil across a thick stodgy base! We’ve gone back to basics here for a gluten free pizza that really does work. It’s very quick to make with rising time not really required. Perfect for a summer picnic!…
Chocolate Pear Cake
This is melt in your mouth stuff! Ground almonds and oil help make this cake moist and the delicate flavour of the pears is complimented brilliantly by cocoa. The cake holds together very well and keeps for a few days (if you can keep the hands off it)! Serves 6-8. …
Garden Pesto
Everyone loves pesto made with basil and pine nuts in its traditional form, but as pesto literally means ‘pound’ or ‘ground’, you can just chuck the basil version out of the window – especially at this time of year when it is not in season – and blitz up something else that’s green. We make our pesto from just about anything at any time of the year – spinach, sorrel, rocket, coriander, parsley… whatever! You also don’t need pine nuts or parmesan – you can vary the nuts and leave out the cheese altogether. Serve with pasta, spread on toast, with new potatoes, or as a salad dressing… the options are really endless. Here’s what we did this week – a bunch is a small handful!
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Farinata
Vegan recipe of the year!! Farinata is like a vegan omelette or frittata. Originally from Genoa in Northern Italy, it’s another strand of the French socca, but is a lot thicker, cooked in the oven and benefits from having extra ingredients added to vary the flavour and texture – add in or take out whatever you fancy. It makes an excellent main dish along with salad or you could serve it as an appetiser in smaller slices at room temperature. Remember to prepare the batter in advance as it sits for at least 2 hours before you can start cooking….
Wild Garlic Pesto
We went foraging! While the snowdrops are still out, the wild garlic has poked up its first shoots in search of sunshine. We are lucky to have carpets of this delicious green stuff growing just round the corner in a relatively dog free haven! Pick your own and put it into all kinds of savoury dishes. The flavour may at first appear strong, but is easily tempered with other flavours. Serve with pasta or in a pancake or on a piece of toast!…
Green Olive Tapanade
This is another version of tasty and super easy to make tapanade. The taste is very different and great spread on a flat bread or a pizza (recipes coming soon!). Shove all the ingredients in a food processor and blitz it up – done!…