Home Cooking Made Easy

LORRAINE PASCALE

Home Cooking

Made Easy

100 fabulous,

easy to make recipes

Photographs by Myles New

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction

Starters, Soups, Canapés & Snacks

Bacon & mature Cheddar cheese twisties

Sausage roll’s big night out

Goat’s cheese truffles

Roasted butternut squash soup with chilli & ginger

Herbed baked Scotch eggs

Caramelised spiced nuts

Duvet day chicken noodle soup

Pea soup with minted mascarpone

Hot & spicy Bloody Mary soup

Deep-fried Camembert with a cranberry, Burgundy & thyme sauce

Light & crispy tempura prawns & soy chilli dipping sauce

Prosciutto & Brie toastie

Satay chilli chicken

Breads

Sea salt & olive oil pain d’epi

Twenty-first century ham, cheese & chive bread

Old-fashioned English muffins

Hamburger baps

Puffed-up pitta bread

Mrs Stephenson’s dinner party bread rolls

Spring onion & red chilli cornbread

Really quick ‘Danish pastries’

Mains

Decadent rosemary & Worcestershire sauce shepherd’s pie

Lemon, tarragon & garlic quick roast chicken with oven-baked potato slices

Cracked black pepper pasta

Really slow-roast pork shoulder with crispy, crispy crackling & garlic roast vegetables

Five-spice baked ribs

Beer-battered fish & baked chunky chips

Pad Thai

Thai green chicken curry

Oven-roast salmon with a mustard & parsley crust

Rosemary & sage pork chops with caramelised shallots & cider

Quick brown sugar & spring onion chicken teriyaki

Stove-top haddock with fennel seeds & basil

Creamy pancetta pasta with mushrooms & Parmesan

Simple pan-fried lemon sole with parsley & browned butter

Warm & cosy coq au vin

Pot-roast beef with port & juniper berries

Rack of lamb with a rosemary & parsley pesto crust

Sweet potato & salmon fish cakes with chives & lime

My dad’s really very good lasagne

Heart-warming ‘boeuf bourguignon’ (with a touch of something Italian)

Not-so-Cornish pasties with sturdy shortcrust pastry

Mum’s chilli con carne

Lamb, chickpea & pear tagine

Chicken Paillard with herbed warm butter & crushed new potatoes

Minted lamb & coriander burgers with cucumber yoghurt

Paprika baked fish with chorizo, lemon & thyme

Rioja-braised lamb shanks with chorizo & garlic

Pan-fried balsamic pear salad with pancetta, Gorgonzola & a warm honey dressing

Hearty Spanish paella with sherry, chorizo & prawns

Mini beef Wellingtons with morel mushrooms, sherry & thyme

Prawn bisque with basil & brandy

Twice-cooked chicken Kiev

Not-so-slow roast leg of lamb with thyme & plum gravy

Vegetables & Vegetarian

Gruyère & mustard cauliflower cheese

Pan-fried asparagus with toasted flaked almonds

Hot buttered green beans with spring onions & pomegranate

Tarragon, parsley & mint crushed buttered new potatoes

Roast carrots with lemon & thyme

Red cabbage with pears & garlic

Paprika baked sweet potato wedges with honey-glazed bacon & herby crème fraîche

Oven-roast broccoli with chilli & mint

Hasselback tatties

Root vegetable rosemary rösti with a chive & cracked black pepper crème fraîche

Baked mushroom, chestnut & pea ‘risotto’ with truffle oil

Extra thin & crispy goat’s cheese tart with spinach & thyme pesto

Lemony basil spaghetti with mascarpone, chilli & chives

Roasted beetroot salad with orange, goat’s cheese, mint & toasted hazelnuts

Asparagus, tarragon & mint omelette

Spinach, rocket & Parmesan roulade with sun-dried tomato & pine nut filling

Stilton, pear & poppy seed tartlets

Desserts

Caramelised banana bread & butter pudding with toasted pecans

Shameless, flourless, moist & sticky chocolate cake

Sauternes, cardamom & ginger poached pears

A very spotted dick

My big fat tipsy trifle

Frozen raspberry ripple parfait ‘ice cream’

White chocolate mousse with crème fraîche & stem ginger

Extra gooey pecan pie with brown sugar pastry

Chocolate digestive cheesecake with white icing

Steamed chocolate pudding with warm Mars bar sauce

Cakes & Cookies

Party time chocolate fridge cake

Raspberry muffins with brown sugar topping

Caramelised pineapple, rum & vanilla upside-down cake

Chewy white chocolate fudge cookies

Winter Swiss roll bowl cake

Graffiti cake

‘Oat couture’ granola bars

Really very naughty chocky rocky road cake

Sweets, Jams & Other Good Stuff

Apple, blackberry & cinnamon chutney

Bubble wrap sugar

Chocolate marshmallow brown sugar fudge

Asian chilli jam

Peanut butter truffles

Peppermint creams sugar rush

The nutty brittle brigade

Winter spiced lemon curd with cinnamon & vanilla

Flavoured butters

Toffee caramel popcorn

Lollipops

Index

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

From scrumptious soups to sizzling lemon sole, cheeky cheesecakes and perfect peppermint creams, here are a hundred of my favourite recipes for relaxed home cooking.

I love nothing more than collecting recipes, testing them and sharing them with people – well, actually, I have to confess that eating the delicious results does give me a bit more pleasure…

Recently I’ve been like a mad food scientist in the kitchen; conducting culinary experiments using everyday ingredients and putting a wicked spin on some familiar traditional recipes. I’ve also drawn inspiration from my travels to Barcelona, Sri Lanka, Corsica and chilled-out Byron Bay, so be ready for a few surprises!

In this book are the kind of recipes that I like to cook on autumnal afternoons and cosy winter evenings. You’ll find comfort in duvet day chicken noodle soup when the dark skies seem just a little too foreboding, and braised lamb shanks with Rioja and chorizo will bring the warmth and passion of an Iberian summer into the nippiest of seasons.

At one in the morning, standing in the kitchen covered in flour, I came up with another of the recipes that I’ve included here. While making a sugar syrup for toffee apples, I rifled through the cupboards and found some red food colouring. As I dropped a few beads of the scarlet liquor into the sugar syrup the mixture fizzled a bit. I swizzled it around in a heatproof glass jug and through the fog of a sugary fatigue I started drizzling crazy shapes on a sheet of baking parchment. When I lifted the band of now warm and hardening sugar and wrapped it around a freshly iced sponge cake sitting forlornly in a corner of the kitchen, graffiti cake was born!

For me, cooking can provide pure escapism into an aromatic realm of flavours, zests, glazes and textures. Sometimes this inspires me to reinvent recipes drawn from childhood memories, such as my sausage roll’s big night out, which reminds me of the salami sticks my mum used to put in my school lunchbox.

It’s important to me that I use ingredients that don’t require a trip to an exotic foods store, and to include recipes that even the most inexperienced or reluctant cook can have a go at. Both my busy thirtysomething sister and my retired seventy-year-old dad have successfully cooked some of the recipes in this book.

I hope that there’s something for everybody here. Whether you like an old-fashioned English muffin spread with lashings of butter, a not-so-Cornish pasty to take on those long winter walks, an oat couture granola bar for a quick-grab anytime snack, or the wonderfully retro and revamped caramelised pineapple and rum upside down cake to finish off the day.

In this book you’ll also find recipes for homebaked breads, cakes, cookies, muffins and bars; soups, starters and canapés when you feel like making that extra effort and easy main meals for lunch or dinner that can cook slow or be rustled up super fast. If you’re vegetarian or fancy a meat-free day, there are also some ideas for new slants on serving up your favourite veg. Not forgetting the sweet stuff; desserts such as my steamed chocolate pudding with warm Mars bar sauce that I could eat all by myself in one sitting, and a few of my favourite little extras – chutneys, sweets and other fine stuff.

Cooking at home, whether for family and friends or just for yourself, is one of life’s great pleasures, and hopefully with these recipes I can show you that it can be relaxed and easy, too.

Starters, Soups, Canapés & Snacks

It’s not every day that I serve starters and canapés, but when I do it’s usually something quick, easy and super tasty. Bacon and mature Cheddar twisties have become a firm favourite in my house, so much so that I often make a large batch and store them in a plastic container for people to grab on the go. Needless to say, they don’t usually last very long. My sausage rolls have a special twist, and the herbed Scotch eggs have a special place in my heart! On those I-don’t-feel-like-going outside days, my duvet day chicken noodle soup gives edible relief, while roasted butternut squash soup with chilli and ginger is real food for the soul.

‘One cannot think well, love well and sleep well, if one has not dined well.’

Virginia Woolf

Bacon & mature Cheddar cheese twisties

When I made a batch of these they were gone before they were even cool! These are in my top ten all-time favourite foods and are fantastically easy to make. For a little extra spice, sprinkle on some paprika or cayenne.

Makes 14 twisties

1 x 375g puff pastry

Plain flour, for dusting

1 tbsp English mustard

100g mature Cheddar cheese, grated

Freshly ground black pepper

14 or so slices of really good-quality thin bacon (sadly, the regular stuff is just too salty) or 14 slices of prosciutto or pancetta

1 egg, lightly beaten, for the eggwash

Line a large baking tray with baking parchment and set aside.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured work surface to a large rectangle that is as long (when I say ‘long’ I mean the height from top to bottom) as one of the slices of bacon and as wide as you can roll it. The pastry should be about 5mm thick. Turn the pastry so that the longest side is facing you and spread the mustard over, then sprinkle with the cheese and black pepper. Lay the pieces of bacon down side by side as if they were all lying in bed together, leaving a 2mm gap between each piece. Then use a sharp knife to cut between each piece. Pick up one piece and twist it about 4–5 times so it looks like a curly straw, then put it on the prepared baking tray and repeat with the rest of the twisties, arranging them spaced apart, as they will spread a little during baking.

Put the trays in the fridge for 15–20 minutes to firm up, or in the freezer for 10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 220°C (425°F), Gas Mark 7. Remove the twisties from the fridge and brush the pastry with the eggwash. Put the baking trays into the oven, turn the oven down to 200°C (400°F), Gas Mark 6 and cook for about 20 minutes, or until the pastry is well risen and looks golden brown. Preheating the oven at a higher temperature compensates for any lost hot air when the oven is opened to put the twisties in. Otherwise, the oven temperature may drop to 180°C (350°F), Gas Mark 4 and it would not be hot enough to give the twisties that big blast of heat they need.

When they are cooked, remove them from the oven and leave to cool.

Sausage roll’s big night out

I don’t have people over for dinner too much these days, as there do not seem to be enough hours in the day. The few times a year I do, however, these sausage rolls make a regular appearance. I know salami sticks are not everyone’s cup of tea, but all tucked up in puff pastry then lightly cooked they remind me of my youth, when Mum would put one in my lunch box along with egg-and-salad-cream sandwiches, prawn cocktail crisps and a carton of my favourite blackcurrant cordial.

Makes 6

1 x 375g packet of puff pastry

Flour, for dusting

6 skinny regular-sized salami sticks, cut in half

1 egg, lightly beaten, for the eggwash

Preheat the oven to 220°C (425°F), Gas Mark 7. Cut the pastry in half and roll one half out on a lightly floured surface to a rectangle about 42cm wide and 9cm high (or the height of half the salami stick). Trim the edges with a sharp knife to neaten them a little if necessary. Lay a salami stick half on the pastry about 1cm from the left-hand side edge, then take another one and lay it 4cm away from that one. Repeat until you have four sticks lying side by side (but spaced apart on the pastry). This will use up half of your 42cm piece of pastry. Brush the side with the salami sticks with the beaten egg, brushing it well in between the gaps and all around. Fold the other half of the pastry over the sticks like a neat book and press down in between them so they are nicely covered and the pastry is fitted all around. The salami sticks may roll round a little, but gentle prodding will get them to their right place in the end. They should look like they have been tucked up in bed!

Now place this in the fridge to firm up, then repeat with the other half of the pastry and the remaining salami.

Once the pastry is firm enough, remove from the fridge and put one block on a chopping board. Place the pastry so that the salami sticks are horizontal like the rungs of a ladder. Using a sharp knife, cut a slice vertically about 1cm thick. Repeat all the way along with both blocks of pastry, then place each slice onto a baking sheet, spacing them about 2cm apart because they tend to spread during baking. Brush the pastry (try to avoid the salami sticks) with the eggwash and place in the oven. Turn the oven down to 200°C (400°F), Gas Mark 6 and cook for about 20 minutes, or until the pastry is well risen and golden brown. Have a peek through the glass at 15 minutes to see how they are doing, just in case they have cooked more quickly.

Goat’s cheese truffles

Really cute and tasty little balls of yumminess.

Makes 18–20

300g rindless goat’s cheese log, fridge cold

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Few squidges of honey

Suggested coatings

(Each amount coats about 2 balls)

2 tsp crushed pink peppercorns

1 tsp sesame seeds

½ tsp paprika

1 tbsp finely grated Parmesan cheese

1 tbsp finely chopped fresh chives

1 tbsp toasted and finely chopped hazelnuts

Prepare your chosen coating ingredients and put each one in a separate small bowl or ramekin. Choose a good combination of colours, flavours and textures.

Put the goat’s cheese in a bowl and season, blending the salt and pepper in well. Break the cheese into bite-sized pieces, each about 15g (1 teaspoon) each and roll them into smooth balls measuring about 2.5cm in diameter.

Mix the honey with a few drops of water to loosen it a little and brush it all over a truffle. Place the ball in one of the coatings and swirl it around until it is evenly coated. Arrange on a serving platter and repeat until all the balls are coated.

Either eat at once or cover and refrigerate until almost ready to serve. The beauty of these is that they can be made ahead of time and then taken out of the fridge half an hour or so before guests arrive.

Roasted butternut squash soup with chilli & ginger

This is the soup that broke me – it turned me from being a model into wanting to be a chef. I made it one autumnal day in Battersea and the sweet, deep, slightly spicy taste blew me away.

Makes about 1.2 litres, serves 4

1 medium butternut squash, about 800g, unpeeled, deseeded and cut in half from top to bottom

1 clove of garlic, unpeeled and squashed

2 tbsp olive oil

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

50g butter

1 large onion, peeled and finely diced

1 x 2cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated

Pinch of dried chilli flakes (optional) or 1–2 chillies, deseeded and finely chopped (I like my chillies quite hot), plus extra to serve

900ml of liquid chicken stock (veggie stock is good but chicken stock usually has a better flavour)

Squeeze of lime juice

To serve

Splash of coconut milk

Few fresh coriander leaves

Preheat the oven to 220°C (425°F), Gas Mark 7. Put the butternut squash halves on a large roasting tray with the garlic. Slash the squash with a knife, then drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil and season well. Roast in the oven for about 30–35 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the squash slides through easily and it is nice and soft.

While the squash is roasting, put the remaining tablespoon of oil and the butter in a large pan over a low heat. Add the onion and seasoning and leave to soften right down, stirring occasionally. This is a little time-consuming and can take up to 20 minutes or so, but it is worth it for the sweetness of flavour.

Remove the roasted squash from the oven and leave to cool a little, turn the oven off and pop some bowls in to warm. As soon as the squash is cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh from the skin and set aside, discarding the skin.

Once the onion is soft, squeeze in the roasted garlic clove, discarding the skin, then add the squash, ginger, chilli and stock. Bring to the boil then take it off the heat.

Next, get another large pan at the ready. Working in batches, blitz the soup in a blender, pouring the smooth soup into the clean pan. I like to blitz it until it is really, really smooth. Once all the soup has been blitzed, return the soup to the hob to heat through until piping hot. Taste and season with salt and pepper if you think it needs it. At this stage I often add a squeeze of lime juice, which really lifts the flavours of the soup.

Ladle the piping hot soup into the warmed serving bowls and serve with a little coconut milk drizzled over the top and a sprinkling of coriander leaves and finely sliced chilli.

Herbed baked Scotch eggs

I have a penchant for Scotch eggs. I buy them at the petrol station in the middle of long car journeys – I just fill the car up with petrol, then go into the shop and grab a Scotch egg and a packet of prawn cocktail crisps. However, when I have time, I like to make my own, and I use different types of sausagemeat to give them something a bit extra. Dipped in some mayonnaise or a large blob of salad cream, they really make my day.

Makes 4

Oil, for oiling and drizzling (you can use light oil spray if you like)

4 medium eggs

1 egg, lightly beaten

75g natural or golden dried breadcrumbs

Small handful of fresh thyme leaves

Pinch of ground nutmeg (optional)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Plain flour, for dusting

Pinch of mustard powder

6 good-quality sausages, with their ‘skins’ removed

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F), Gas Mark 6 and line a baking tray with oiled foil. Put the whole eggs in a pan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Once the water is boiling, turn it down to a robust simmer and cook for 5 minutes. When the eggs are ready, remove the pan from the heat, take it to the sink and run cold water over the eggs for a minute or two to stop them cooking. Peel the eggs and set aside.

Put the lightly beaten egg in one bowl and the dried breadcrumbs, thyme and nutmeg along with a bit of salt and pepper in another bowl. Season the flour with salt and pepper and the mustard powder.

Put some clingfilm on the work surface, take 1½ sausages and squidge the meat down on the clingfilm. Squish it until is becomes a roundish flat circle, then take one egg and dip it into the seasoned flour. Put the egg in the middle of the sausagemeat and draw up the clingfilm around it so you have a little ‘sac’. This is a great way of covering the egg with the sausagemeat and I find it beats trying to do it without. Now carefully peel away the clingfilm, leaving the sausagemeat around the egg. You may need to squish it down and around slightly on the egg if there are any gaps.

Now dip the meat-coated egg into the lightly beaten egg, making sure it is covered all over, then dip it into the breadcrumbs, rolling it around and pressing to secure any bits that are not sticking properly. Place the Scotch egg on the prepared baking tray and repeat with the other three eggs. Spray or drizzle a little oil over the eggs, then cook in the oven for about 20–30 minutes, or until the sausagemeat is cooked and the Scotch egg looks golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper.

These are lovely to take to work, or just to have in the fridge as a treat.

Caramelised spiced nuts