Turmeric sweet potato wonder pots

Turmeric Sweet Potato Wonder Pots

Gavin Wren Main Dishes, Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

The Wonder Spice Recently, turmeric took top position in the ingredient-of-the-moment hit list when it suddenly leapt to prominence due to the emergence of it’s overwhelming health giving abilities, which make it an all round super-spice. Before reading about this, I was primarily aware of it’s abilities to instantaneously stain anything it touched yellow, along with it’s presence in pilau rice and other Indian dishes I’d cooked. I once had a go at making turmeric …

how to make gravadlax

How to make gravadlax

Gavin Wren Basic Ingredients, Fish & Shellfish, Food Techniques, Main Dishes, Recipes, Small Bites, Writing

Today I’m talking about gravlax, or gravalax, or gravadlax, or even Gravad laks depending on where you are, who you are and why you’re here. There might be other spellings that I’m missing out, but so far I’ve covered Norwegian, Swedish and Danish as well as the slightly confused situation in England where it seems to go under a few of those names. However you spell it, this is an absolute peach of a recipe, …

baked sweet potato with humous and za'atar

Simple sweet potatoes with houmous and za’atar

Gavin Wren Main Dishes, Recipes, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian

If ever there was a meal that had “I can’t be bothered to cook tonight” written all over it, this is the one. It’s been widely employed in this household for a few years as a simple, low ingredient weeknight dinner that requires almost no preparation and extremely small amounts of your precious, valuable time. It came about almost by chance. I’m not going to pretend there was any deep sensory analysis of ingredients or …

Charred roasted roots & spinach hot winter salad

Charred roasted roots & spinach hot winter salad

Gavin Wren Main Dishes, Recipes, Salads, Vegan, Vegetarian

You know when your marriage is going down the pan, because you get home from work and your partner shouts “Dinner’s in the oven!” You say “Great, what is it?” “Salad” (I think this is © The Mary Whitehouse Experience c.1990) It’s that time of year when making cold, summery salads really doesn’t cut the mustard, not to mention comprising highly unseasonal produce. Consuming light, frilly layers of crunchy, cold, raw vegetables just sounds like …

autumn beetroot and chestnut salad

Autumnal warm beetroot and chestnut salad

Gavin Wren Main Dishes, Recipes, Starters, Vegetarian

Don’t make this recipe. Understand? Just don’t do it. It’s self harm, it’s painful, agonising and frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, it tastes fantastic and I’ve been looking forward to remaking it for the blog so I could eat it again. It’s really easy to put together, only a few ingredients and if you use pre-cooked beetroot and chestnuts then it really is an honest 10 minute make. But the real pain comes if you …

Mackerel with beetroot, apple and horseradish

Pan fried mackerel with beetroot and apple salad

Gavin Wren Fish & Shellfish, Main Dishes, Recipes, Salads

There’s everything to like about this dish. Thin slivers of just-cooked beetroot doused in a simple red wine vinegar dressing, crisp apple, fresh pan fried mackerel and finished with some nutty, leafy and tangy adornments. It’s a simple recipe for success that I can’t believe has sat in my recipe notes, remaining unpublished for so long. I wrote this recipe in the summer of 2014 and was instantly taken with it. It was made few …