Flour Tortillas
Creamy Au Gratin Potatoes
Brown-butter toffee blondies
The addition of smashed up slabs of toffee and chopped walnuts add a crunchy but oh- so-chewy texture when you bite in to each piece.
These blondie bites are one of my wife’s favourite desserts that I make about once every six months for her. I’ve also distributed these bites amongst colleagues when I have been working on-site with a client.
When you serve these toffee blondies you can either cut them larger (100mm/4″ squares) in size as an individual serving or bite-sized about 40mm square. Either way, the obligatory glass of cold milk should be included.
I find the blondies more than sweet enough as-is, but if you have a very sweet tooth, or you just like the look of the dust treats, a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar adds a nice touch.
Rum Sauce
Rum sauce poured over Christmas pudding can bring even the most lacklustre of store bought puddings to life.
The sauce also works on apple pie, pumpkin pie, or anything that requires a thick, pourable custard to add a little moisture and flavour dimension.
I serve rum sauce alongside my sticky toffee pudding, a peach upside down cake, and even on my bread pudding when I don’t want the Amaretto infused cream.
Cream cheese Wellington
Warm or cold, this cream cheese baked in puff-pastry and layered with Cremini mushrooms, bacon and shallots pairs well with a small bottle of Lambrusco and some left over ciabatta that you have toasted up.
This is one of those dishes you want to take it easy on because you aren’t fooling anyone when you say you are on a diet and then proceed to eat half of this appetizer. It is about as healthy as it sounds. My wife kids herself that this dish is healthier when I make this with “reduced fat” cream cheese.
This is a perfect appetizer spread when you have friends over and is incredibly easy to prepare. I’ve laid out the instructions so that your time actually cooking is kept to a minimum if you can chop whilst keeping an eye on a pan on the stove.
There is no Nutrition Label for this recipe yet.
Slow and steady pizza dough
This is a long slow rise pizza dough. It is the kind of dough that you find in good pizzerias. The kind of dough that has good stretch.
The dough develops its stretch and a lot of its flavour from the long, slow rise that you give it.
Quick French onion soup
This is my quick French onion soup recipe. It comes together in about two hours of cook time, which is ideal for a late dinner, or even lunch.
This is a recipe that is perfect for “when the mood strikes you” rather than having to plan ahead with my slower French onion soup recipes.
Quick and simple pasta dough
The second worst thing I’ve learned in cooking is how to make fresh pasta. Because at 2 AM in the morning when your wife wanders in to your office and says “I’m peckish, could you make me some pasta?” it doesn’t do your waistline any good.
This pasta dough comes together in just a few minutes, has a short rest time, and can be rolled out by hand.
The reason this dough is so quick to work with is the reduced number of eggs in the mixture. Just three eggs doesn’t leave a lot of room for moisture to be hanging around.