Cooking for the people you love
Delighted to be mentioned in this months Waitrose Weekend. Anna Shepard’s excellent feature is all about how to use your cooking skills to help cut food costs, and batch cooking is top of the list!
I was absolutely delighted to be asked to contribute a new recipe to Waitrose Weekend for their excellent Food Waste Action Week issue. I decided to create an easy recipe which was suitable for batch cooking and freezing, and uses leftover bread and herb stems as well as the leaves, to minimise waste.
I was delighted to contribute a recipe to BBC Good Food’s Cook Smart podcast, and chose one of my favourite recipes from The Green Batch Cook Book. This frittata recipe is quick and easy and very adaptable to whatever ingredients you have in the fridge!
Click the link below to find the recipe. You can also listen to the recipe by clicking the link on the BBC page. Happy cooking!
It was great fun joining Mallika Basu and Zena Kamgaing on BBC Good Food’s latest Cook Smart podcast. We chatted about batch cooking, leftovers and lunchboxes, and how they can help you save money and time whilst still eating delicious food!. Oh, and we ate a lot of cake too..
Click the link below to hear the programme.
I’m always honoured to be asked to contribute to The Week Junior. It’s exactly the kind of magazine I would have loved to read growing up. This time, they featured Cornflake florentines, a super-easy recipe from my latest book The Green Batch Cook Book.
So excited to see The Batch Cook Book pop up in Waitrose Weekend in their excellent feature on how to save money (and help the planet too).
This month’s fab Stylist magazine features three of their favourite recipes from The Green Batch Cook Book
When I started scribbling down my recipes years ago it was simply with the intention of creating a collection of fail-safe dishes for the kids to use at college. I couldn’t have ever imagined that one day my recipes and photos would be in The Times. But then, last week this happened!
The Green Batch Cook Book - Delicious vegetarian and vegan batch cook recipes for busy people!
The phenomenal rise in the popularity of veganism, plant-based meals and flexitarian diets means that more of us are regularly choosing to cook meat-free dishes. Concerns about waste and budgets have ensured that making conscious decisions about using leftovers and root-to-shoot eating is becoming mainstream.
But as traditional batch cook recipes often lean towards meat-based meals, finding brilliant vegetarian and vegan ideas can be tricky. That's where The Green Batch Cook Book comes in, harnessing the vibrant fresh flavours of fruit and vegetables in an innovative and breezy collection of 70 meat-free recipes.
Start your day with beautiful breakfasts - sweet potato and feta frittata, Marmite and cheese loaves, rose-pink rhubarb and custard pancakes or simply bake a batch of cranberry and brown sugar rusks to eat on the run. Lazy make-ahead lunch recipes include slow roasted thyme and tomato soup, garlicky mushroom sausage rolls, spring green pot stickers, and a simple but irresistible Broccoli, lemon and almond salad.
Feeding a crowd? Check out the family friendly big batch chapter with tempting recipes for kale, spinach and leek lasagne, Summer veg patch risotto, sticky aubergine bao buns or wild garlic pesto. And if it’s sweets or treats you’re after, you’ll love the ridiculously easy cornflake florentines, huge buttermilk chocolate orange cake, tangy lemon and elderflower slices or the wild jumbleberry sorbet.
The gorgeous Plum Cottages asked me to create three recipes using local produce, and with the cornucopia of delights on offer at Petworth’s The Hungry Guest stores to choose from, it really wasn’t difficult!
The dishes are easy to prepare and perfect for making during a stay in one of their stunning cottages. We hope you’ll feel inspired to try them out!
SERVES 2
2 branches of cherry vine tomatoes
6 rashers smoked streaky bacon
1 tbsp olive oil
3 medium eggs
1 tbsp milk
50g finely grated mature cheese
1 tbsp chopped chives
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1-3 tbsp butter 8 thick slices cut from a small baguette
2 handfuls of wild rocket
Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan.
Place the tomatoes and bacon on a baking tray separated by a small ‘wall’ of foil. Drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
Bake for 20-30 minutes, turning occasionally until the tomatoes are soft and the bacon is crispy. Turn the oven off, cover the baking tray with foil and keep warm.
Beat the eggs in a large bowl and add the milk, cheese and chives. Season well with salt and pepper.
Melt a large knob of butter in a non-stick frying pan until hot.
Dip both sides of a baguette slice in the egg mixture then place in the hot frying pan. Cook for 3-4 minutes on each side until golden, then remove and keep warm. Repeat the process with the remaining slices, adding more butter if needed.
To serve, arrange the tomato branches alongside the eggy bread and bacon and scatter with a few handfuls of rocket. Eat and enjoy!
Produce supplied by @thehungryguest
Shot in Plum Cottage in Henley, West Sussex
Weekend recipes for Plum Cottages with The Hungry Guest
Step by step: Cheesy ‘Eggy bread’ with roast tomatoes and crispy bacon
Very excited to be a guest on Judi Love’s brilliant Sunday morning show on BBC Radio London. The show was all about money management so we chatted about how batch cooking can help you save money whilst still eating tasty, nutritious food. Judi is such a warm and welcoming host, so it felt as if we could have chatted for hours! Catch up with the show until the end of February 2021 on BBC iPlayer.
Never thought I’d be sharing a page with the brilliant Ottolenghi, but this weekend’s Yorkshire Post Magazine has changed all that!. They have just published their favourite cookbooks of 2020, compiled by food editor Elaine Lemm, and The Batch Cook Book is included alongside Ottolenghi’s Flavour. I am speechless!
From frozen toasties to cookie dough - batch cooking at its best!
Read MoreIt’s been a crazy few days… The Batch Cook Book was finally published on October 22nd and since then it’s been a bit of a whirlwind. Amazon sold all their copies within 48 hours and Waterstones soon after that. You can still pre-order a copy though or shop around as plenty more online booksellers have copies available. I am absolutely thrilled with the response and so grateful for all the lovely messages of support and congratulations. Batch cooking is so topical at the moment and this book is a soothing, comforting antidote to winter chills and drizzly days. It makes being inside so much tastier!
So excited to see The Batch Cook Book across the middle of today’s editions of the Daily Express and Daily Mirror. It was a complete joy to chat with the lovely Debbi Marco about my book and talk through top tips for the best batch cooks. But I had no idea that it was going to run across the centre pages of both papers, It was such a lovely surprise. The Batch Cook Book is out on October 22nd and available for pre-order now!
So happy to see The Batch Cook Book in Surrey Life magazine’s list of favourite things this October.
I love creating recipes that can be made by mini-chefs, so when I was asked for recipe ideas for The Week Junior, I knew exactly what would be top of the list. Cornflake cracklet cakes have been a staple at birthday parties in our family through several generations. They are so easy to make, require no baking, just a little stirring, and are a huge hit with kids and adults alike.
The Week Junior loved my recipe for Cheesy Clouds so much that they included it in their ‘How To’ feature. It’s a wonderfully easy recipe that kids love to make and eat, and you can find it, along with lots of other great ideas in my first book, Food for your Brood.
Today’s sushi lesson @applegarthfarm cookery school was a complete joy to teach. So nice to meet this talented lot! From the very first temari sushi ball to the biggest futomaki roll I’ve ever seen - their sushi looked amazing. Thanks to Kate and her team at the cookery school for making it all run so smoothly and keeping me fortified with lots of tea!
Applegarth Farm Cookery school sushi lesson
