I’ve visited Italy twice in my life, or even three times if you count the occasion that I arrived at Milan after a few months in South East Asia, then immediately booked myself onto the next flight to London without leaving the airport because my ‘friend’ stood me up, hence I decided to simply go home instead. Aside from that minor dalliance with Milan airport which I’ll choose to ignore in the context of this …
How to make gravadlax
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, …
Slow roasted root vegetable tian
Back in 1984 when Whitesnake released a song called ‘Slow An’ Easy’, big, permed hair was everywhere on grown men, along with awful double entendre permeating almost every sing title. Everything they created was about either love, or, errrr, loving. I’m dragging this questionable music, which seems to have aged in a way I never expected (i.e. well), back to the fore because I’m listening to it and the song ‘Slow N Easy’ has just …
Dark & fiery ginger cake
This cake is an absolute winner. A real, bona fide winner. It’s because of this cake that I won the Blognix Retreat Scholarship competition, being the recipient of a free ticket to the weekend blogger conference/retreat which is held at a spa hotel in Northamptonshire during February next year. The competition simply asked entrants to make a video only 90 seconds or less, explaining why they should win the scholarship. In an underhand tactic, I …
Coconut & date vegan frosting
I often make cakes that are either dairy free, with no refined sugar, or both, then finish them and think, oh, that would really benefit from something on top. What can I use? Whipped cream? No. Buttercream frosting? No. It becomes a whole new juggling act trying to create dairy free and refined sugar free frosting ideas which will sit on top and stay there, without it being utterly contrived. I could, of course, just …
Avocado prawn wraps on khobez with mint yoghurt
I’m in a lucky position. I live in a part of North London where there’s a strong Turkish community and just down the road there’s a lot of Greeks as well. That means I’m tripping over mediterranean delis and restaurants and there’s an abundance of new ingredients to discover that seem to magically fall into my shopping basket on a regular basis. It also puts me in the unique situation of never having any trouble …