The original version of this dish contained chicken, so I have substituted it with black beans here. It makes for a more filling meal, and a cheaper one, too, as beans and pulses are generally far cheaper than meat and pulses. Dried beans work out even cheaper, but they require a degree of organisation to remember to soak them the […]
I knocked this together from some scrappy bits left kicking about on Boxing Day – the kind of thing that is usually found at any kind of gathering, extended to feed a few more for an extra day. A bit of bread, some tomatoes, some greenery, a dash of oil and lemon and you have yourself a perfectly delicious side […]
This is a recipe adapted from my second cookbook, A Year In 120 Recipes, using turkey instead of the lamb in the original. I no longer eat meat, and haven’t done for around two years, but my job is to teach people to cook and make the most of what they have on a small budget, and it is impossible […]
An ideal place to smuggle leftovers – for today or for the freezer, these pasties are as versatile as the scraps of whatever you have left over from your dinner – just knock up (or buy) a quick shortcrust pastry and you’ll have lunch in a jiffy for not very much at all. Serves 6 at 13p each 250g fat […]
Winter is coming, the time of year where perpetual colds and snuffles are imminent, the nights draw in darker, and I start to crave a little bit of heat and spice. Usually I spend my winters making long slow curries, but, ambling around the Caribbean section of a supermarket I don’t usually manage to get to, I started to rifle […]
Sometimes all you need is a little nursery-soft sloppy comfort food, and for me, rice pudding usually does the trick. Over the years I have made rice pudding in many kinds of ways, on the hob, in the oven, and scooped from a tin, but last night I decided to give the slow cooker a go. And my oh my […]
Cooking anything for 12 hours, when on the most stringent of budgets, sounds like an eye-popping luxury, but fear not bootstrap fans, there’s only as many hours actual cooking as you want to stretch to, and done in a slow cooker, it costs less than keeping a lightbulb on. For the last few years readers have been asking me to […]
On Thursday morning, off school and recovering from surgery, my Small Boy announced he wanted ‘dippy bread’ for breakfast. Bread with something to dip it into, I surmised. Seems fair enough; who doesn’t enjoy dunking warm bread into something soft and viscous, and ramming it in their gob? I made a yoghurt dip and whipped the last nights leftover roasted […]
Last weekend, Small Boy and I headed out to a small area of marshland around a mile from our home, on a blackberry picking mission. We had been promising ourselves for some time that we would do it, and so, armed with tough gardening gloves and plastic bags, we set off. However, pickings were slim, and despite hunting for an […]
This loaf first appeared in my first cookbook, A Girl Called Jack, and is a favourite weekend recipe of mine. It was based on a similar loaf from Economy Gastronomy, by Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merrett, using mashed chickpeas and sun dried tomatoes, but mine is, as ever, the more austere version. It is delightfully accidentally vegan, and robust enough […]
This beautiful, bold, soup is full of goodness and vitamins and vitality, and reminds me of a gentle, grandmotherly hug. It’s a brightening tonic, a perky pick-me-up, and a simple sushine injection for a hangover or a cold or a bluesy day. You can blend it all together for a more substantial meal, but here I have strained it for […]
This particular recipe doesn’t strictly fall within the ‘bootstrap’ range, owing to its use of ludicrously beautiful blue petals as a finishing touch, but if you’re willing to abandon them, then it’s a different – and simpler – prospect entirely. I try to keep the recipes on this blog to easily accessible ingredients for as many people as possible, but when I posted a photograph of this on Twitter and Instagram, I was inundated with requests for the recipe. Cornflower petals are admittedly a little specialist (once you’ve been cooking for a living for a few years, your shelves do acquire all sorts of oddments…) the more humble kitchen could replace them with chopped parsley or mint for a similar eye-popping colour contrast, without the hit to your wallets. Serves 4 as a side dish at 18p each – including the stupid and entirely unnecessary bright blue flowers A generous handful (100g) of cabbage, kale or spring greens, 14p+ (Sweetheart cabbage 70p/500g, Spring greens 85p/200g and kale £1.20/250g – take your pick!) 1 carrot, 5p (75p/1.5kg, Basics carrots) 1 onion, 9p (80p/1.5kg, Basics onions) 1 beetroot, fresh or pickled, 20p (Vac-packed 80p/250g, fresh £1.65/200g) 1 tbsp red or white wine vinegar, 3p (at a push, malt vin will do if you don’t keep the fancy stuff kicking about…), (£1.15/500ml, Sainsburys own) A few pinches of salt, <1p (40p/750g table salt) 1 tsp/4g sugar,<1p (80p/1kg Fairtrade granulated white sugar) 4 tbsp […]
This afternoon one of my readers got in touch via Twitter to ask me how to make these cookies vegan, for a friend. This is one of my favourite recipes for a rainy-day activity with my small boy, and as the weather draws in around us and we will be looking for more baking days than beach days, it seemed […]
I joke that ninety-seven percent of the spontaneous conversations that my friends start with me – especially mid afternoon or early in the evening – are panicked cookery conundrums, photographs of burned pans, musings about what to have for dinner based on photographs of their kitchen cupboards, or emergency cake queries. This afternoon was no exception. It started off innocently […]
This beautiful recipe was born of a Sunday morning trying to impress my still-quite-new but comfortingly familiar paramour, that settling in period where weekend pancakes with the newspapers have become a routine, but I still want to pull the proverbial rabbit (!) out of the hat every now and then. She had never had banana bread – never – and […]
Autumn is rolling back around, and with it, my love of all things hot and spicy and bean-stew-y. This recipe is one of my most popular, often cropping up on Instagram and Twitter in the delightful way that my readers love to share their dinner with me. Keep them coming folks, I genuinely love receiving photos of my recipes made […]
When I need easy but comforting food, I always turn to a large bowl of warm, flavourful rice – and using red wine as a base works beautifully. In the winter, serve this risotto in a deep bowl with a spoon, whilst snuggling under a thick blanket. Or it can make a special meal for two served with some lovely […]
Baba ghanoush is a popular Middle Eastern dish, often served as a dip with flatbreads or pitta. I sometimes add cooked chickpeas to mine for a simple, flavoursome supper, or toss it through pasta with fresh mint for an easy lunch. I highly recommend cooking the aubergines over an open flame for a deep, smoky intensity – I hold mine […]
I first discovered brown bread ice-cream in an old copy of Mrs Beeton’s Everyday Cookery, and as an avid maker of simple ice-cream and brown bread, decided to combine my two recipes. You don’t need an ice-cream maker for this one, I don’t own one. If you have an electric whisk or cake mixer, it will come in handy, but you can make this without – you just need a little patience and a firm hand. Makes around 8 portions at 24p each. Prices based on Sainsburys, Basics where available, and correct at time of writing. 100g wholemeal or brown bread, 5p (40p/800g loaf, Basics) 200ml milk, 9p (44p/litre) 3 egg yolks, 56p (£2.30/12 eggs, free range) 100g sugar, 8p (80p/kg, Fairtrade) 300ml double cream, £1 (£1/300ml) A fistful of sultanas, 10p (£1/400g, Basics) For the topping: 2 tsp breadcrumbs 1 tsp sugar, <1p (80p/1kg, Fairtrade) Few pinches ground cinnamon, <1p (80p/100g, Natco) Soak your bread in a little milk and stand to one side for an hour or so. Separate your eggs – I pour my whites into a jar and use them for meringues, egg-white omelettes and egg-fried rice – and beat the yolks in a large mixing bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat well. Pour in the cream and whisk until the mixture has almost doubled in size. Run a finger through: it should feel airy, light and fluffy, and not fall off […]
This recipe seems and sounds too simple to be true, but sometimes the best dishes are those that allow their ingredients to sing at the tops of their voices without too much complicated fannying around drowning them out. I love a mushroom, especially when I can find exotic varieties reduced to clear in the corner shops and supermarkets, taking them […]
These little weighty wistful whirls of whimsy came about entirely by accident. I was going to stay with friends in Manchester for the weekend, to all fling our small boys at one another for a raucous time, and I never like to accept hospitality empty handed. So, I set about making a hulking great fruit bread big enough to energise […]
This is one of my favourite comfort meals, quick to assemble, using ingredients that I generally have kicking about the house, and can just be slung in the oven and forgotten about, left to slowly pull itself together in a haze of blissful creamy soft salty rich glorious goodness. I’ve just polished off my second bowl of it, and frankly, […]
For the last few months, I have been spying little jars of soffritto paste in the specialty foods aisles of various supermarkets. Snuggled next to such exoticisms as ancho chillies, dried porcini mushrooms, and other things that it is ‘nice to have but not essential’ (although Waitrose now feature artichoke hearts in their Essentials range, for the love of God!). […]
I love the general enthusiasm that Veganuary generates across my social media (an annual challenge to try vegan for January), and this year with 40,000 people signing up and support from Stella McCartney and other fabulous animal lovers, the buzz created has been gorgeously warm and supportive. I am busy finishing my book at the moment – and thank you all […]
Last night I really, really fancied cookies, in that way that sometimes the sweet tooth takes a hold. Usually it’s late at night. Usually when I have resolved to be healthier, and better, and eat less baked goods in the smallest hours. Like, on New Years Day. Succumbing, I pottered downstairs to the kitchen, and rummaged in my […]
There comes a time in most of our lives when we receive a small wake-up call about the kind of person we really are, and my deliverance came in the form of a tarka daal. I had been whisked away by friends to a cabin in the woods by the sea for my birthday back in March (and half wrote […]
I made a pizza tonight, and dolloped some of last night’s leftover baba ghanoush on top – although minus the tomatoes, as it is traditionally made. The baba recipe in my first book is based on a baba/imam-bayildi cross that a friend of mine used to make, and I long believed that baba ghanoush is always made with tomatoes. A few years […]
This applesauce bread-that’s-a-bit-cakey is based on my original vegan banana bread recipe from my first cookbook, A Girl Called Jack. Photographs of that banana bread are sent to me on a near-daily basis, with an especial flurry at weekends, and I am delighted to receive them. It remains one of my favourite recipes, but every now and again a reader gets […]
Last night I fancied a curry, a nice hot curry to warm the very cockles of my draughty flat, but like so many evenings of the dreaded ‘cooking for one’, I just couldn’t decide what curry to have. I opened the fridge, glowered at a bunch of onions and a handful of mushrooms, and took to Twitter with a poll. […]
These beetballs are based on a beetroot burger recipe from Lee Watson’s incredible vegan recipe book, Peace And Parsnips. If you follow my social media, you might have seen me evangelise about this book once or twice; in fact, such is my vim and vigour for this beautiful culinary bible that I put it on the desks of the country’s […]
