Omelette with Double Gloucester Cheese and Chives

A simple two egg omelette topped with roasted Double Gloucester cheese with chives, and served with buttered toasted wheat free bread. 

Beat two eggs thoroughly after adding half a teaspoonful of water to the mixing bowl. Allow to stand. Slice 75 grams of the cheese into squares, or grate it if you prefer (I chose to grate the cheese in this case). Put a little sunflower oil into an omelette pan, and brush evenly over the surface. Once the pan is hot, beat the eggs again, and pour into the pan. Turn down the heat so the omelette does not burn, and cook for two minutes. Cover the surface of the omelette with the cheese.

Remove the pan from the hob and place under a preheated grill. All grills are different, so this part of the process needs to be watched by eye. The pan should be just a couple of inches under the grill element, with the handle facing outwards. Turn  the pan left after a couple of minutes, and then right after a couple more, keeping the handle away from the element as far as possible. Grill until the surface of the omelette is golden brown. 

Serve with buttered wheat free brown bread, black pepper, and brown pickle (Branston pickle in the picture) or ketchup. 

Omelette with Double Gloucester Cheese and Chives

Copernicus Sausage Stew (Torunska)

A simple and delicious stew made with Copernicus sausage, which is a popular branding for the traditional sausage which has been made for hundreds of years in the now Polish city of Torun, on the river Vistula.

The ingredients are: one Copernicus sausage, one Spanish onion, half each of red and green Pepper, a stick of celery, green beans, half a courgette, and about 100g of tomato passata, plus herbs and ham or vegetable stock. 

Chop the sausage into chunks, and chop and slice the vegetables reasonably finely (the peppers in strips). Stir-fry in a saute pan at a low heat for ten minutes or so, until the onions are just beginning to brown. 

Add the tomato passata to the pan and some boiling water, and stir thoroughly. Simmer for half an hour to forty five minutes, until the volume of liquid is considerably reduced. Add oregano and the ham or vegetable stock to the stew fifteen minutes before cooking is complete, and stir thoroughly. Serve with boiled potatoes (unskinned in this case). 

 Adding the tomato passata 

Copernicus Sausage Stew (Torunska)

Cheddar Cheese on Toast

A classic supper time snack, in this case with toasted home made wheat-free bread. 

The recipe for the wheat-free bread is here. About 100 grams of mature cheddar cheese sliced into squares for the topping (you can choose to grate the cheese instead, which gives a more even melt). The bread was made into toast using a standard toaster, then buttered with slightly salted butter. The cheddar topping was laid on top of the toast, and the cheese was sprinkled with Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce, and dusted with black or white pepper. 

The toast was put into a roasting tin and loaded into a grill. Depending on the temperature and how close the toast is to the element, the cheese should be melted in less than ten minutes. It is best to watch the process, to avoid the risk of burning the cheese. Served with tomato ketchup. 

So delicious! Nobody ever won a cookery competition by offering cheese on toast. The Transcendental Kitchen is about glorious food, which sometimes is a dish often taken for granted, and cheese on toast is one of those. 

Cheddar Cheese on Toast

Bacon Broth

A simple and delicious broth recipe, made with 3 carrots, 1 large leek, 2 sticks of celery, 1 potato, a third of a cup of lentils, and 150 grams of cooking bacon. 

Chop the carrots, the leek, and the celery. Peel the potato, and slice into pieces. Add to a pan of boiling water. Add the lentils. 

Chop the cooking bacon into small pieces, and add to the pan of vegetables. Add some ham stock, and black pepper. Simmer for half an hour to 45 minutes. Mash the contents of the pot. Simmer again for another 20 mintes to half an hour. The soup is ready to serve, either by itself, or with buttered wheat-free bread. 

Bacon Broth

Bacon and Tomato Pasta

A relatively simple dish, related in essence to a pasta dish which apparently is a favourite of Sophia Loren. 

Some thickly cut cooking bacon cut into 1 inch long strips, stir fried in olive oil along with sliced Spanish onion, and sliced red and green pepper (half a pepper each). Once most of the moisture from the onion, peppers and bacon has evaporated, add a 400g tin of coarsely chopped tomatoes. Stir together, with a little boiling water, and simmer for 25-30 minutes, until the bacon is tender. 

Slice 75g of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese into thin squares, and stir in to the pan. Add black pepper to taste. Shred a dozen fresh basil leaves and add to the contents of the pan. Stir. Cover the pan and simmer for another ten minutes or so. 

During the final simmer, prepare wheat free penne pasta in boiling salted water. This usually takes around nine minutes. 

Add four wooden spoonfuls of the bacon and tomato salsa to a pasta serving bowl, and drop the drained pasta on top with a slatted spoon. Mix the pasta into the bacon and tomato salsa with a dessert spoon, and garnish with a sprig of Basil. Extra grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese can be added according to taste.

A slightly different version of this dish without peppers and onion can be found here.  

Add the tomatoes to the saute pan.

Bacon and Tomato Pasta

Chicken Stir-Fry with Water Chestnuts and Bamboo Shoots

There are endless ways to stir-fry food, but if a meat ingredient is present, I always cook that first, in order to be sure it is properly cooked through. So for this stir-fry I cooked the chicken breast pieces in preheated sunflower oil at a high heat, along with cashew nuts, sliced garlic, and chopped red chillies, until both the chicken and the cashew nuts were slightly browned. 

I added a teaspoonful of Nam Pla fish sauce (Squid brand), and stirred the contents of the wok for a further minute. 

Then the vegetable ingredients were added: bean sprouts, cabbage, shredded carrot, chopped water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, onion, and mixed peppers. Often I put together the vegetable selection myself, but if I want bean sprouts in the mix, I often buy a stir-fry pack from the supermarket, since bean sprouts don't keep, and a much of a large bag would go to waste, unless I'm entertaining guests. 

Stir-fried until the vegetables were cooked - 3 minutes at Chinese kitchen high heat levels, and much longer (up to 7 minutes) at medium heat. Served with dark soy sauce. 

Adding the vegetable ingredients to the chicken pieces

Chicken Stir-Fry with Water Chestnuts and Bamboo Shoots

Eggplant Soup

Made with an aubergine (eggplant), half a sweet potato, three spring onions, three sticks of celery, a courgette, a clove of garlic, and five chestnut mushrooms.

All the vegetables were chopped into chunks, and stirfried in olive oil for fifteen minutes. Boiling water was added, and the contents of the pan were allowed to simmer for twenty minutes until soft.

The vegetables were blended with a Mouli blender. A vegetable stock cube, white pepper, and a large pinch of rosemary were added. Served with slices of home made wheat and gluten free bread.

Can be served with some grated blue Stilton cheese.

Eggplant Soup

Green Pesto Soup

Made with Spring Onion, Red Onion, Tomatoes, Spinach, peas straight from the pod, Oregano, and some Sacla brand Green Pesto (which is essentially a mix of soft cheese, ground basil leaves, in olive oil. Wheat and gluten free). Served with home made wheat and gluten free bread.

Chop the spinach and onions (one spring onion, one red onion), and shred the tomatoes (three), add the peas from about twenty pods, and stir-fry until the volume is reduced. Add one dessert spoonful of green pesto, a teaspoonful of white pepper, and some oregano. Plus boiling water and some vegetable stock. Allow to simmer and thicken over half an hour. Add some more oregano, and serve. 

Green Pesto Soup

Wheat and Gluten Free Brown Loaf

Brown loaf made with Dove's Farm Wheat and Gluten Free Brown Flour. This recipe produces a loaf with taste and texture virtually impossible to distinguish from a loaf made with a variety of wheat. Can be eaten as it is sliced, or as toast. 

Made with 500 grams of the wheat and gluten free brown flour, two eggs, half a teaspoonful of vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar (or honey), 450 mls of whole milk, 6 dessert spoonfuls of olive or sunflower oil, half a teaspoonful of salt, and 7 grams of yeast. Topped with poppy seeds (optional). 

Weigh the 500 grams of flour into a bowl, add the yeast (I use Allinson's yeast, since it is one of the quickest acting) and fold it into the flour. In another mixing bowl, add the 450 mls of milk, half of the oil (3 dessert spoonfuls), the eggs, the sugar, the salt, and the vinegar. Whisk together. 

Add the whisked liquid to the bowl containing the flour and the yeast, and stir together with a wooden spoon. Then mix the dough thoroughly with an electric mixer for five minutes, in order to get as much air into the dough as possible. Add the remaining 3 dessert spoonfuls of oil, and fold it into the dough. Mix again with the electric mixer for a minute. 

Allow the dough to rise a little before pouring it into a silicon bread tin. Texture the surface, and add the poppy seeds. Put the bread tin in a warm place, and leave until the dough has risen close to the preferred height.  Bake in an oven preheated to 220 deg. C for 50 to 55 minutes. 

For baking bread (and any kind of baking for that matter), an accurate oven thermometer is recommended, since that will give reliable and repeatable results. You will find that the temperature on the dial is often significantly different from what the thermometer tells you. 

I used the latest Dove's Farm recipe (in the past I made a successful loaf using this flour with a different recipe, which can be found on this blog), and it came out beautifully as you can see, The comments on the Doves' Farm page for this flour suggests a lot of people have been unsuccessful in baking it. This may be a combination of not leaving the dough long enough to rise, using a slow-acting yeast, or not using an oven thermometer. 

Wheat and Gluten Free Brown Loaf

Beef Olive

A popular favourite in Scotland, beef olive is rather mysteriously named, since it contains no olives. The essence of the dish is thinly cut beef which is wrapped around a filling, usually of some kind of sausage meat enriched with herbs. So it has been suggested that the association is with olives, which are often stuffed with pimiento once the olive stone is removed. So in a sense a beef olive is beef stuffed with sausage. 

The filling can be either beef or pork sausage meat, mixed with soya flour, rice flour, oat flakes, or something else which isn't wheat. The proportions should be about 50 per cent meat, 30 per cent flour, and about 20 per cent finely chopped red onion, enriched with lots of herbs. If the stuffing is pork, one of the best choices of herb to use is sage. The choice is yours. Add a little salt. 

Place the thin cut beef on a chopping board, dust the inside with a little flour and a small amount sunflower oil,  add the stuffing, rolled, and wrap it in the beef. Press the olive a little (with the overlap of beef on the bottom) to ensure that it will stay in its wrapping in the casserole dish (a bed of vegetables helps secure this). 

Place Beef Olives in the dish (with the lid on, otherwise the olives may dry out) and add  half an inch of water. Add seasonal vegetables (in this case curly kale and slices of red onion) and dress with some salt and pepper. Cook for approximately 50 minutes at 180 deg. C.  

Beef Olives

Raw Beef Olives on a bed of Curly Kale and Red Onion

Tomato and Celery Soup

Vegetable soup made with spinach, curly kale, chopped tomato, leek, celery, red onion, and garlic, with basil, oregano, vegetable stock, and fish sauce (Nam Pla).

The soup base was made with chopped celery, red onion and leek, plus one half of the spinach. Stir-fried until the onion and leek are slightly browned. Water was added, and the soup base ingredients were blended with a mouli blender. 

The chopped tomato, remaining spinach, and the curly cale were added, and more water,  The soup was simmered for an hour, before adding fresh basil, oregano, white pepper, the vegetable stock, and a teaspoonful of fish sauce.  

Served with two quarters of potato bread. 

Tomato and Celery Soup

Dahl

A selection of Dahls, the basis of many Indian meals, now resident in my freezer. The red ones are made with blended lentils and red kidney beans, plus tikka spices. The yellow ones are mainly lentil and onion, plus spices (garam masala). I made an excellent green one with lentils and spinach, not included in the picture.

Making dahl in advance can save a huge amount of time in the preparation of dishes, which is why it is good to have some of these on hand, ready prepared.

Dahl

Wheat and Gluten Free Pizza

Home-made wheat-free pizza. Made with 'Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pizza Crust Mix from the US, though it can be ordered from UK stockists.

Unproblematic to make. Just add eggs, water and olive oil. The mix contains a yeast packet and bakes just like a real wheat crust. Great texture and taste. It’s crispy and chewy and has the wonderful yeast flavor of a wheat crust. You can add basil, oregano, garlic, or finely chopped rosemary to the mix to expand the flavour range. Makes two 12 inch pizza bases.

Serves 8 people. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time is between 22 - 27 minutes. Resting time is 20 minutes.

Ingredients: whole grain brown rice flour, potato starch, whole grain millet, whole grain sorghum flour, tapioca flour, potato flour, evaporated cane juice, xanthan gum, active dry yeast, sea salt, and guar gum,

The topping contains tomato, tomato passata, sliced red pepper, sliced button mushrooms, spring onion, anchovy fillets, mozarella cheese, and lots of grated cheddar. With no added salt.

Wheat and Gluten Free Pizza

Venison Sausage in a Red Currant Sauce

Low fat venison and pork sausages in a red currant sauce, served with boiled swede and potato, and a parsley garnish.

The sauce was made with cornflour and water, with some pork stock, which was boiled until it thickened. The red currant component came from a jar of red currant jelly - two teaspoonfuls of it. The dish has a delicious combination of flavours.

Venison Sausage in a Red Currant Sauce

Frittata with Chorizo

Fritatta with chorizo, haricot beans, tomato and onion. Onions fried until golden brown in olive oil, sliced garlic, and chorizo sausage, haricot beans and tomato salsa was added. After ten minutes or so, the scrambled egg was beaten in a dish with a little black pepper, added to the chorizo and other ingredients, and allowed to stand until nearly firm. Then the contents of the pan were moved around until the egg was firm.

Thanks to Lyn P. for the main parameters of this authentically Spanish recipe.

Frittata with Chorizo

Grilled Lamb Steaks with Basmati Rice.

Two lamb rump steaks, coated with Dijon mustard on one side, grilled for ten minutes each side, with boiled basmati rice, and  a side serving of refried canelloni beans in a tomato and rosemary sauce.

The canelloni beans were soaked in cold water for six hours, and then boiled until soft. They were then fried, and added to a tomato and rosemary passata.

Delicious and totally wheat-free.

Grilled Lamb Steaks with Basmati Rice.

Chicken Tikka Massala

Stir fried (or steamed) chicken breast pieces. The sauce was made separately with Tikka spice powder, with tomato puree, chopped mushrooms, onion, orange pepper, chicken stock, chopped chilli peppers, and some chopped boiled potato. The chicken pieces were added to the Tikka Sauce, and cooked for fifteen to twenty minutes before serving. The ingredients listed below can be added too (yoghurt, coconut, ground almond, etc). And you can start with a lentil and onion dahl.

What is a tikka massala? Normally this is understood to be a chicken dish, marinated in spices and yogurt, which is then baked in an oven, and served in a masala sauce, which is a mix of spices, whose main basis is tomato and coriander, but there is no standard recipe for chicken tikka masala.

The spices which are used commercially are hard to discover, which suggests that the story that Chicken Massala is a dish invented in an Indian restaurant in Glasgow sometime during the past 50 years,  may be true. The Tikka spices I used were bought in powder form (as Tikka spices) from a large supermarket. It's a good guess that if you start with the standard curry spices, add tomato and more coriander, yoghurt, shredded coconut, ground almonds, and tomato puree, lentils and onion, you will have an excellent tikka massala dahl. 

Chicken Tikka Massala

Lorne Sausage

Square Lorne sausage with fried tomato, mustard, with (in this case) a spring onion salad. The Lorne sausage was fried in a glass-lidded vessel, to retain moisture. Better if it is cooked slowly at a lowish heat for seven minutes each side (if at room temperature at the start), to minimise buckling of the sausage. A Scottish breakfast favourite, usually with fried eggs. Black pepper to taste.

Lorne sausage was invented sometime in the last hundred years, but the basic principle of cooking food (including sausage) on a hot griddle has been part of the Scottish cooking landscape for centuries. Essentially the sausage mix is put into a rectangular or square tin, and then cut into squares. Lorne sausage comes ready cut. Juniper is one of the flavourings.

Lorne Sausage with Fried Tomato and Mustard

Pork and Beans

Served on Genius wheat free bread, The photograph was taken before Genius had production problems in 2015, I was not convinced they had a proper grip on what those problems were (they blamed the bakery, rather than the production process. Though they did talk to me during that period, when I was trying to find out why the quality of their bread had declined). Now, I would make my own wheat free bread.

Cumberland pork sausage (fried or grilled), baked beans in tomato sauce, with white pepper. Served without butter. Not a wheat free meal, since pork sausages usually contain wheat. I used to live close by a supermarket which supplied wheat free sausages. These outlets appear and disappear.

Tinned pork and beans used to be normal before WWII on both sides of the Atlantic. After the war started, baked beans were available as just that in the UK, and in the end became a favourite.

Pork and Beans

Feta Cheese and Rocket Salad

Feta cheese, pitted olives, turmeric rice, chopped red pepper, vine tomato, baby leaf rocket salad, olive oil dressing, crushed garlic, black pepper and a twist of lemon. That might be worth doing with spelt grain instead of, or in addition to the rice.

Feta Cheese and Rocket Salad

Sweetcorn and Turmeric Rice Salad

A simple salad made with turmeric rice, sweetcorn, chopped red pepper, chopped mushroom, and three spring onions. Dressed in olive oil. Tasty enough to eat without pepper or anything else!

Sweetcorn and Turmeric Rice Salad

Pork in Gravy with Potatoes

Sliced pork joint in gravy made with pork stock and sage.

The joint of pork was cooked in the oven in a roasting dish for the time specified on the packaging. At first wrapped in aluminium foil, and for the final twenty minutes with the foil wrapping open. When the joint was cooked, it was allowed to cool for twenty minutes, and then the pork juices were decanted.

The joint was cut into thin slices using an electric carving knife, and a number of slices were put into a pot with a pork stock, and the pork juices from the joint. The pork was allowed to cook in the gravy for thirty minutes until tender. Then the sage was added, together with some cornflour in cold water. Cooked for another ten minutes until the gravy had thickened.

 Potatoes boiled for twenty minutes or so, and the peas (unfrozen or thawed) were cooked for five minutes at a moderate heat.

Pork in Gravy with Potatoes

Beef Steak in Gravy

Beefsteaks in gravy, with caramelised onion (cooked in a little butter for twenty minutes until properly browned, stirring frequently) and boiled potatoes. The beefsteaks were browned in a saute pan with a little sunflower oil, before being cooked in an onion gravy with beef stock and bay leaves. After half an hour, the gravy was thickened with the addition of a little cornflour mixed with cold water.  Cook for at least another half an hour, stirring frequently. Served piping hot.

Beef Steak in Gravy

Turkey Tikka Massala

Hot curry made with diced turkey breast, a tikka massala flavoured dahl, made with lentil and onion, tomato puree, coriander, yoghurt, ground almonds and shredded coconut. The turkey breast was stir fried in sunflower oil, and was then added to the tikka massala dahl, and cooked for twenty minutes at a moderate heat. Served with basmati rice. Also great to eat with Naan bread.

What is a tikka massala? Normally this is understood to be a chicken dish (for which turkey breast is a good substitute), marinated in spices and yogurt, which is then baked in an oven, and served in a masala sauce, which is a mix of spices, whose main basis is tomato and coriander, but there is no standard recipe for chicken tikka masala.

The spices which are used commercially are hard to discover, which suggests that the story that Chicken Massala is a dish invented in an Indian restaurant in Glasgow sometime during the past 50 years,  may be true. The Tikka spices I used were bought in powder form (as Tikka spices) from a large supermarket. It's a good guess that if you start with the standard curry spices, add tomato and more coriander, yoghurt, shredded coconut, ground almonds, and tomato puree, lentils and onion, you will have an excellent tikka massala dahl. 

Turkey Tikka Massala 

.

Brisket with Potato and Vegetables

Roasted the brisket joint for 110 minutes, allowed it to relax, and put it in the slow cooker for ten hours or thereabouts. Beef stock from the joint was added to caramelised onion and more beef stock. Three bay leaves added, and a dash of smoked paprika. Served with potatoes, broccoli, carrots and parsnips.

After the slow cooking, the beef was allowed to cool, and was sliced cold. Added to the gravy and allowed to simmer for twenty minutes before serving

This used to be a cheap dish, which rewarded a long stay in the pot with a delicious flavour. The dish is still delicious, but no longer a cheap option.

Brisket with Potato and Vegetables

Pastrami with Cabbage and Curly Kale

Steamed white cabbage and curly kale, with thin-cut pastrami. 

Pastrami is essentially pressed beef plate, brined, partially dried, seasoned with herbs and spices, then smoked and steamed. It's a forequarter cut from the belly of the cow. The beef navel is the ventral part of the plate, from which pastrami is made.

Serve with black pepper or German mustard. 

Pastrami with Cabbage and Curly Kale

Fiery Chicken and Red Pepper

Chopped roast chicken breast, red pepper, onion, mushroom, and sliced stem ginger. Cooked in a fiery chilli sauce (tomato, paprika and crushed chillies). Served with long-grain rice. Hot!

Fiery Chicken and Red Pepper

Sweet Potato in a Blue Stilton and Haloumi sauce

Ingredients are: half a large sweet potato, one courgette, one red onion, olive oil, plus a sauce made with blue Stilton cheese and a finger of Haloumi cheese. Plus cornflour and some vegetable stock

The sweet potato and the courgette should be cut into large pieces, which are stir fried in a wok or saute pan for five to ten minutes, along with thinly sliced red onion, until slightly browned. The courgette pieces should be added to the pan after the sweet potato has been frying for five to seven minutes. 

Boiling water is added, and the contents of the pan should be simmered for another ten to fifteen minutes until the sweet potato is soft. 

At the same time prepare the Blue stilton sauce with around 200ml of cold water and  a dessert spoon of cornflour. Mix together, and pour into a small saucepan. Add about 100g of Blue Stilton, chopped, and a finger of Haloumi cheese, also chopped. Plus vegetable stock. Heat for ten to fifteen minutes until the sauce has thickened, and the Stilton has dissolved, stirring frequently. The pieces of Haloumi cheese will not completely dissolve.

Serve the vegetables with a slatted spoon, dust with white pepper, and pour on the sauce. Delicious!

Sweet Potato in a Blue Stilton and Haloumi sauce

Peppered Sausage Stew

Sliced peppered german sausage, chopped onion, potato, haricot beans, tomato puree, chopped red pepper, green chilli. The onion was cooked first in olive oil until golden brown. The chopped potato was added, followed by the peppered sausage. After a few minutes I added the sauce of tomato puree, haricot beans, red pepper and one green chilli.

I sweetened the combo with a dash of a quality cider, though the same result could have been achieved with sliced apple.

Peppered Sausage Stew

Pineapple and Blueberry Fruit Salad

Fresh pineapple chopped into cubes and halved blueberries, mixed with soft honey and left to stand for fifteen or twenty minutes. Add ground cinnamon and white pepper, plus a dash of grenadine. Stir and serve.

Tinned pineapple in juice will be fine as an alternative to fresh pineapple, though you might want to reduce the quantity of honey if you use the juice.

Pineapple and Blueberry Fruit Salad

Smoked Ham and Leaf Salad

Smoked ham salad. The ham came from Sainsbury's, and was served with sweetcorn, tomato, and a leaf salad dressed in olive oil and lemon juice. Condiments were ground white pepper, Mayonnaise,  and Tabasco sauce. I'm trading on my mother's food preparation skill here :-). A simple al fresco meal, accompanied by Pimm's and lemonade.

Smoked Ham and Leaf Salad

Egg and celery salad

Chopped celery, thinly sliced boiled egg, spring onion, black olive halves, sliced cucumber, yellow pepper, quartered cherry tomatoes, and some fresh Greek Basil leaves. Served with black pepper. Delicious, with lots of crunch. I actually prefer it without the tomato.

This recipe dates from 2012, when a number were posted on Facebook. I got some responses for these. Someone suggested that this recipe might be 'lovely in a pitta bread'.  It could have been served that way, but initially it was served and eaten as a plain salad. The remains of the salad were eaten in the evening in a tortilla wrap, with some salsa.

Egg and celery salad

Pork and Leek Risotto

Chopped pork loin (originally roasted in the oven) cooked with leek, onions, pork stock, and white pepper, with a little mustard powder. Served with basmati rice. For a subsequent meal I added to the meat and the stock small red chillies (hot!), thinly sliced ginger, and smoked paprika.

Pork and Leek Risotto

Salad with Potato Dauphinois and Danish Salami

Sliced Danish salami, babyleaf salad leaves from Tesco, spinach leaves, and sliced cucumber.

Served with Potato Dauphinois, made with chopped onion and potato, in a mix of milk, yoghurt and mustard powder (as an emulsifier), cooked in in a glass roasting dish in the oven for 40 minutes. There is garlic with the onion and potato, finely chopped. Plus some Thyme.

I coated the onion, garlic and potato in a little olive oil first, and put them under the grill for fifteen minutes, before adding the milk/yoghurt/mustard powder mixture.

Salad with Potato Dauphinois and Danish Salami

Red Grape, Honey, and Pecan Salad

Food of the Gods. Halved red grapes, sliced nectarine, half an apple, finely sliced, diced dates, pecan nuts, a dash each of mixed spice and cinnamon, and a dash of white pepper.

Mix into the fruit a dessert spoonful of soft honey, and allow to stand for 10 to 15 minutes. Add the pecan nuts, and stir in Greek yoghurt. Serve.

Seeing this recipe, a friend said: 'Greek yoghurt is fabulous, and even more so if you use Greek honey... [it has] quite a distinctive, herby flavour...' Which is true. Greek honey is worth trying with this recipe.

Red Grape, Honey, and Pecan Salad

Pan-fried Steak and Vegetables

Thin-cut beef steak,  pan-fried for one and a half minutes each side.

Steamed vegetables - strips of red pepper, thinly-pared carrot, green beans, spring onion, and a large sliced mushroom. Steamed for six minutes. Ground black pepper to taste. Delicious and quick!

Pan-fried steak and vegetables

Pork and Vegetables in a Black Bean Sauce

Roast pork in a black bean sauce, with chilli paste.

Spinach, onion, mushroom, chilli, fresh sliced ginger and garlic, cooked slowly. 

Raw red pepper, spring onion, garlic and sliced cucumber, stirred into the pork and black bean sauce, along with the spinach and onion, shortly before serving.

Pork and Vegetables in a Black Bean Sauce