Plant-Centric

There can be a real joy in revisiting recipes – and this one is a case in point.  It is a few years since we first cooked this dish but it really is worth coming back to!  You can find the original cook here –…

We first published this recipe about 18 months ago – you can find it here.  Since then we have regularly dipped in to this dish.  In so many ways I am always surprised when eating it that there is no meat!!!  It certainly doesn’t feel…

As much as anything this is a ‘reminder to self’!  There are so many wonderful vegetables available in the middle of summer that with or without a recipe we should grab and use them.  Here is a perfect example of that – we had a…

Having played with our Aubergine/Gnocchi and Parmigiana bake we have also played with a number of variations over the last year or so.  One of the best has moved it a little closer to a puttanesca sauce with anchovies, capers and olives, and for us…

This is such a good sauce and a perfect foil for so many pasta dishes.  Not only that but it is very simple to make.  We first came across it on a pasta making course led by Theo Randall.  The course was organised by Banquest…

Over the last couple of years we have been eating more and more aubergine based dishes.  Usually Italian in style, they always seems to be made with tomatoes too.  When we came across this recipe in our local supermarket’s food magazine it seemed like too…

I love pasta, I love making pasta but I really struggle making good looking tortelloni! We were fortunate that La Tua Pasta make great tortelloni!! We were trying their pumpkin and ricotta tortelloni with nutmeg butter tonight. The tortelloni are large and very generously filled…

I can’t believe that we haven’t published this recipe before! This dish became one of our staple dishes during the 2020-21 UK lockdown period. It works well cooked in  a conventional oven as you would expect with a dish from Nigel Slater.  It is however…

This cook is based on a recipe from Boxxfresh, a UK company supplying really great fresh fruit and vegetables. They described Mole (pronounced ‘mo-lay’) as the ‘quintessential chilli sauce native to Mexico’. It apparently literally means ’everyday sauce’!   As such it is ladled over nachos, tacos, enchiladas, burritos or…

Our youngest daughter has been a French citizen for more than 20 years and when I said I was going to cook a vegetable Bourguignon her reply showed the initial contempt one might expect from a French woman!  The term for the brilliant

We have probably done a greater variety of cooking this year as we have largely been confined to home during the Covid pandemic in 2020.   I have intended to use the time to do more writing for the site – but in the end…

We have been playing with meat free dishes for a while and although it is taking us out of our comfort zone we are having fun with the step by step exploration.   We have really enjoyed refining our Aubergine Parmigiana but one day we…

This week we had too many French beans to cope with and so we needed to be a little inventive!  We therefore combined some of the dishes we have tried over the last couple of decades travelling over Europe and were delighted with the outcome.…

We have written before about the glorious ‘Melanzane alla parmigiana’ We first came across it in Italy in the summer of 2017 when travelling through the Dolomites in Northern Italy.  Taste wise it was a plant based dish that absolutely took my breath away ………..…

We could spend ages debating if this dish is a frittata or a tortilla – but that would miss the point of the dish!  I think of it as a frittata – but do have a look at the footnote!  We had been baking the…

Last year we had had every intention of highlighting recipes from Genevieve Taylor’s book – “Charred”.  I really think that this is a great book for those of us wanting to try more vegetarian  cooking. Especially those of us wanting to explore it when cooking…

The question in the title is a little facetious but potato skins cooked on the Big Green Egg are something of a revelation!  Just before the Covid Pandemic lockdown we were lucky enough to get a 12.5Kg box of Linda (1951) potatoes from Carroll’s Heritage…

Sometimes it is the simplest of dishes that give the most satisfaction.  This is very much one of those dishes!  It is hard to better simple roast potatoes – but this is a dish that does that!.  Indeed it would be a lovely simple supper…

We have returned to this dish so often – in so many ways it has been the ‘go to’ dish of the summer!  It has also been popular with friends who have adopted the dish and have added it to their own regular cooking repertoire.…

When we were in Italy we were very fortunate to be given some Mazze di Tamburo (Parasol mushrooms).  These were found in the local chestnut groves and although we had seen them growing, our knowledge of wild mushrooms is such that unless we are with…

We have been playing around with a few meat free dishes, such as our slow roasted caramelised fennel dish and our roasted cauliflower with truffle oil and toasted flax seeds.  But although we like vegetarian food our experience is limited.  Finding the book “Charred” by Genevieve…

I have to say I was a little sceptical about the idea of roast cauliflower cooked directly on the plate setter.  But food friends came across it once on their travels and my friend Nic Williams has always said this is one of the best…

Focaccia is a great bread to make on the EGG and works really well on the large BGE.  We have also made it on our Mini BGE when travelling, but that is more an act of bravado than practicality because of the size of the…

Whilst I have come to love the taste and aroma fennel seeds bringto many Tuscan dishes, I have only occasionally cooked with fennel bulbs. So with some fennel bulbs to use it was time to search the internet for something simple.  This is therefore based…

My friend Nicola has been playing with last month’s pumpkin recipe a little but to great success as you can see in the pictures.  She made a couple of small modifications from the one we published a couple of weeks ago and I thought they…

Autumn is a time of year when the shops seem to be full of pumpkins – but sadly most are destined to make ‘pumpkin lanterns’ for Halloween rather than be eaten.  Well here is a really simple autumn alternative and would be perfect for any…

This is a very simple dish that we have done a few time now as a way to use the remaining heat in the Big Green Egg once it has been shut down.  This is one of the endearing qualities of the EGG and we…

Perhaps it was all too inevitable – if it works well for cannellini beans it would probably work well for borlotti beans too!  

The simplest of simple Tuscan dishes.  Slow cooked Cannellini beans infused with sage.  Two hundred and fifty grams of dried beans were soaked for about 12 hours overnight and then put into the our small cast iron Le Creuset casserole dish.  This will just fit onto…

Melanzane alla parmigiana This is such a sumptuous dish and a perfect vegetarian dish to serve to anyone who says they do not like vegetarian food. We first had it in a hotel in the Dolomites in Northern Italy. In winter, a mountain ski lodge,…