Begin by peeling and boiling the potatoes in salted water until just soft, small potatoes can be left whole, bigger potatoes should be cut into halves or quarters. Drain, cut into thick slices and put to one side.

While the potatoes are boiling cut the bacon into strips and grill until crispy. Also heat a large saucepan of water to boiling point, keep it on the boil, ready for the poached egg.

Once the potatoes and bacon are cooked it’s time to cook the haddock fillet and poach the egg. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan and fry the haddock fillet for about 4 minutes, skin side up. Whilst the haddock is cooking add the potato slices to the frying pan to crisp up a little and turn golden brown.

Once the haddock is cooked remove from the pan and flake the flesh with a fork, removing the skin and discarding. Add the crispy bacon, and the potaotes to the fish and serve over a bed of lambs lettuce.

To poach the egg crack it into the saucepan of boiling water you prepared earlier – in good old Blue Peter fashion! Poach the egg for approx 3 minutes, for practically perfect timing begin poaching the egg just before you remove the fish from the pan for flaking. When everything else is on the plate the egg will just need placing on top.

Enjoy!

Score the skin of any number of your favourite toms. Then dip em in boiling water for no more than 20 seconds. After that, the skin should come off easily.

Halve the tomatoes and scoop out the wet bits. Eat the wet bits — they’re packed with vitamin C — or add them to your bolognese. Arrange the tomato halves on a greased baking tray and sprinkle with “hard” herbs, fresh garlic and some sea salt. Roast in a cool-ish oven for many hours. Four hours at 120°C is a nice start, but 24 hours @ 80 degrees is better. The end result depends on your oven, but the lower you set it, the better the outcome (providing you’ll roast em for longer). And of course your toms are less likely to burn in a cool oven.

At some point you may want to turn the tomatoes over. Also, be sure to discard most of the herbs and garlic after roasting.

Dried tomatoes like these will keep for a couple of weeks when immersed in oil. However: why not add them all to your mediterranean-style salad or eat the leftovers as tapas with a glass of wine?

First of all, choose a nice, cone-shaped, oven-proof bowl. The only thing I could find was a stylish oriental soup bowl, but it did the trick. Line the bowl with overlapping slices or strips of bacon, while making sure there are no gaps.
Next, take a good fillet of pork and slice it thinly. Start with a layer of pork on the bottom.

Finely dice a red onion and chop about 3 leaves of fresh sage. You can use more, but it will overpower the subtle pork flavour. You’ll also need a good handful of breadcrumbs. Of course I am lazy so I used a blender/chopper to whizz the onion, sage and breadcrumbs all at once.

Take a good dollop of the onion/sage/bread mix and layer it on top of the pork. Keep stacking until you’ve almost reached the top of the bacon lining. You can now also add some seasoning, like nutmeg or mace, but I’m not a fan of that so I left it out.

Make a little lid of more bacon, again making sure there are no gaps. My bacon was round so that was pretty easy. Put it in the oven for 40 minutes at 160 degrees or so. If your oven is a bit feeble, leave it in longer. The bacon is not really supposed to crisp up, but the pork inside should be cooked.

Let the bowl cool and put something heavy like a tin of beans on top to press it down. Leave to chill and set in the fridge. 4 hours will do, but you can also leave it for a day or two.

Gently take the terrine out of the bowl, wipe off some of the excess fat and cut into neat slices.

Finally, I presented mine on a little bed of a julienne of carrot and cucumber, but it will also go well with fruity stuff like apple or melon. Alternatively, go for some peppery leaves like field lettuce or rocket.

Coleslaw can be served in a variety of ways, for example; alongside a green salad, as a dip for fried chicken or french fries, or as a filling for a jacket potato, which is one of my personal favourites.

The coleslaw I made today, like all coleslaw recipes, was quick and easy. I didn’t really plan the recipe, I simply used what I had available in the kitchen. That’s the beauty of coleslaw, you add whatever you like and in whatever quantities you have. The only vital ingredient is the mayonnaise to bind everything else together.

I started by shredding about a quarter of a small white cabbage, and placed that in a bowl, to it I added half a grated carrot, a little celery, finely chopped, a little red onion, finely chopped and a few slices of apple finely chopped. I mixed them together then added a few drops of lemon juice, and a little salt and pepper
.

Finally I added enough mayonnaise to cover all the ingredients and mixed well. To finish off I sprinkled a little paprika over the top, it’s not necessary but it’s how I like my coleslaw. Once made you should let the coleslaw rest in the fridge for half an hour or so before serving.

Enjoy!

The salatrio (the clue is in the name) provides 3 different types of lettuce from one root ball, which I think is quite cool. Now this isn’t a lettuce produced from a magic bean, it is simply three different lettuce varieties grown together in one plug, still the concept is kinda cool because it means you can have a fresh lettuce mix without having to buy three separate lettuce heads. Some thought has also gone into the choice of lettuce used, because what salatrio offers is a colourful mix of red and green leaves, which is great for any wanna be chef out there who wants to impress friends and family with a colourful salad.

From the producers website…

Salatrio is the name for a concept of three different, young, fresh lettuce types in one bag. The advantage is that the user doesn’t need to buy three different heads of lettuce of pre-cut letttuce mixes to make a colourful and tasty salad.

Salatrio won the Innovation of the year award 2008, at the Fresh Awards, during a gala dinner at the Marriott Hotel in London, England.

The producers, Deliscious, say that the salatrio is best kept inside its plastic wrap with the root ball intact. I think this is a good idea, obviously because a root ball means soil, which although is compacted, as you can see from the picture below, can still be quite messy especially in a fridge.

So, I’m going to use my trio of lettuce leaves today, but not all, I do want to see if the salatrio does indeed last longer than a regular head of lettuce.

The salatrio did cost more than a regular head of lettuce, the one I bought cost £1.20 from my local supermarket, but it did cost less that buying 3 separate lettuce, so depending on taste and longevity it may be something I buy regularly.

My reasons for wanting to grow microgreens was to have garnishes for salads that were both flavoursome and attractive. I planted 4 different varieties, Basil, Rocket, Beetroot and Broccoli.

The first to make an appearance on my kitchen windowsill was the Broccoli, the Beetroot and Rocket following behind. the Basil however is a shy herb, only making an appearance after 4 days.

The image above is of the beetroot, you can see that growth has been quick, and in a few more days I will be able to harvest both the beetroot and the broccoli. Then the rocket and finally the basil, which is great because I had planned to have a continuous supply. You can see from the photo that the seed leaves have developed, I now need to wait for the first true leaves to appear and then they are ready for harvest.

I am keeping notes of the planting to harvest times, so I can plan my future crops.

I will do another update in a few days, hopefully with a salad using my crop of microgreens as a garnish.

Microgreens or micro leaves are vegetable seedlings harvested between 6 and 21 days old for their intense taste. Think back to when you were a child and grew cress in dampened cotton wool inside an empty egg shell, or was that just me? Anyhow, growing micro greens is essentially the same – easy and quick. So that is exactly what I am going to do, grow some micro greens.

The excellent flavour of microgreens is not the only reason I want to grow them. Seedlings of many vegetables have wonderfully coloured stems, for example the Swiss chard has red, yellow, orange and purple stems. How good will they look garnishing a salad?

Microgreens can be grown all year round, all you need is a windowsill. Obviously during the winter months when there is not as much light as in the summer months, growing times may be a little longer, but not much longer. With some planning and a ready supply of seeds, there is no reason why you cannot have micro greens growing on your windowsill all year round.

I’ve decided to grow my microgreens in small containers, this way I won’t ever harvest more than I need for my family at one time, and will have the space on my kitchen windowsill to have trays of greens at different stages of growth, giving me a continual year round crop.

This time I am going to grow, Basil, Rocket, Radish and Broccoli.

I started by making a mix of 2 parts potting compost and 1 part Perlite, Perlite is great for retaining moisture, which will help prevent the compost from drying out.

The next thing I did was put a shallow layer of the compost/perlite mix into empty plastic fruit punnets, the type with holes in the base, which will be used for watering and drainage. I then stood the containers in a some water and let the compost and perlite take up the water until the surface was clearly damp.

Once the compost was thoroughly wet I liberally sprinkled some seeds over the top, and then placed the containers on the windowsill.

Now, I just need to wait for the seeds to germinate and begin to grow, and also make sure the compost doesn’t dry out, and if it does begin to, stand the container in water again.

I will be posting again about the progress of my micro greens, hopefully in a few days when the seeds should have started to grow. Once this happens I will start some more off, this will make sure I get a continuous supply. Update on growing microgreens.

Lemon olive oil is useful in so many ways, it can used as is, as a dressing for salad, or as an ingredient in a more elaborate salad dressing. It is excellent for cooking, especially fish. It is probably something you should make on a regular basis so that you always have some to use when needed. And there really is no point buying those expensive infused olive oils, when you can make your own easily and for a fraction of the cost.

For Lemon Olive Oil, you will need 1 bottle of olive oil, or rapeseed oil, or any other type of oil, the choice is yours. Add to this bottle some lemon zest, about 2 – 3 tablespoons. Leave the bottle of oil with the lemon zest to stand for about 2 weeks at room temperature. Shake it occasionally.

After two weeks or thereabouts, strain the oil through some muslin or any other fine strainer. You want to remove the zest from the oil. Discard the zest and pour the Lemon Olive Oil back into the bottle, and it is ready to use.

Of course we all have our favourite herbs and spices, and at the same time we have those that we are not so fond of, after all taste is a personal thing. There are also those times when we are following a recipe and find we do not have a particular herb or spice to hand, and in those situations we need an alternative, just as we would want to find an alternative to herb or spice we are not keen on.

With that in mind, here is a list of common herbs and spices and suitable alternatives for each, which will give a similar flavour or aroma;

Herbs and their alternatives

Basil – oregano or thyme
Chervil – tarragon or parsley
Chive – spring onion, green onion, onion, or leek
coriander – parsley
Marjoram – basil or thyme
Mint – basil, marjoram or rosemary
Oregano – thyme or basil
Parsley – chervil or coriander
Rosemary – thyme or tarragon
Sage – marjoram or rosemary
Savory – thyme, marjoram or sage
Tarrogan – chervil, fennel seed or aniseed
Thyme – basil, marjoram or oregano

Spices and their alternatives

Allspice – a blend of cinnamon, cassia, nutmeg, mace, cloves
Aniseed – fennel seed or a few drop of anise extract
Cardamom – Ginger
Chili Powder – hot pepper sauce plus a combination of oregano and cumin
Cinnamon – Nutmeg
Cloves – cinnamon or nutmeg
Cumin – Chili powder
Ginger – cinnamon, mace or nutmeg
Mace – Cinnamon, ginger or nutmeg
Nutmeg – cinnamon, ginger or mace
Saffron – for colour use a dash of turmeric