The Recipe Archive

1. Guacamole

2. Pesto Packets

3. Salmon en Croute with lime and ginger

4. Mediterranean-style vegetable hotpot

5. Three-Fish Pasta Bake

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Guacamole

Probably the easiest thing you'll ever make, unless you've not got a blender/whisk and have to mash it by hand......

Ingredients: (makes about 1 pint)

Preparation: (5 minutes if you own a blender, 20 and lots of elbow grease if you don't)

  1. Firstly, a note about avocados. Guacamole made with unripe avocados is gross. The ripeness test for an avocado is performed on the little dimple where the stalk once met the pear. If it pushes in easily and stays in, it's ripe. Most avocados sold in the shops are sold one or two days before full ripeness, so plan ahead. Also bear in mind that guacamole is still nice with avocados a day or two past their peak ripeness. After that it starts to go black and bitter.
  2. Chop the avocados in half, remove the stone and peel off the hard outer skin. Then chop everything up into little pieces and mash or blend it altogether (leave it a bit lumpy however - too smooth a puree is boring). Honestly - that's all there is to it. Add the herbs and spices gradually to taste as you blend.
  3. Serve as a dip or a topping to Mexican food. And don't bother trying to store it - it might last a day in the fridge under a covering of lemon juice but even that's dodgy. Eat it immediately, and eat it all.

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Pesto Packets

A versatile preparation; serve as a starter, a lunchtime snack, or a main meal with salad. More of a summery thing.

Ingredients:(makes 16 packets - about 4 packets per person is enough to comprise a full meal if served with salad).

Preparation: (15 minutes)

  1. Chop the onion, garlic, pepper, mushrooms and (if used) anchovies. Fry the first three over a medium-to-high heat in olive oil for about two minutes, then add the mushrooms and anchovies and keep frying until the mushrooms are fairly brown.
  2. Turn the heat right down, add the jar of pesto, and stir in. Also add salt if desired. Keep simmering over a very low heat.
  3. Take each tortilla and cut in half, leaving 16 semi-circular pieces. The idea is that each will be filled with a bit of the pesto sauce, folded over and gently fried (not deep fried) on each side in the vegetable oil. The tricky bit is the logistics of getting all 16 done at roughly the same time and properly drained of oil. I have my routine - find your own!
  4. So, as I said: fill each packet with about a tablespoon full of the pesto sauce and fold over. (Don't bother trying to stick the edges together like it was a pastie: they won't). Fry each side gently in the vegetable oil for about 45 seconds, until golden brown.
  5. Serve hot or cold.

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Salmon en croute, with a lime and ginger sauce

I've gone posh on this one. Well, it sounds posh and when served up, will certainly impress anyone whom you would like to consider you posh. But it's surprisingly straightforward to make for something that is so nice. For two people it will cost less than a fiver.

Ingredients (serves 2):

Preparation (about 30 minutes):

  1. First of all, a note about the pastry. I am crap at pastry, it's the one thing in cookery I have definitively given up on. If you reckon you can make a good puff pastry, then by all means go ahead. In the absence of any such talent, my favoured brand (and they're not paying me for this, honestly) is Jus-Rol who do two frozen sheets of puff pastry for about 99p. You need one for this recipe, but if you're serving more than two you can of course use both (increasing the amount of the other ingredients correspondingly). Make sure the pastry is thoroughly defrosted before starting. This is a pretty quick meal too: shouldn't take more than about 30 minutes start to finish.
  2. Pre-heat the oven at Gas Mark 4. (I don't know what that is in electric, but a medium-to-low heat, anyway.)
  3. Put the butter in a mixing bowl and chop into small pieces, this makes it easier to blend in with the limes and ginger.
  4. Grate the rind of the limes into the butter, then squeeze all the juice over it as well, unless you're like me and just can't resist squeezing some fresh lime juice straight down your throat as an instant wake-me-up.....
  5. Remove the hard skin from the ginger, and grate that over the butter as well.
  6. Blend the lime rind, juice, and grated ginger into the butter. You don't need to stay there for hours; just a couple of minutes' mixing up should do it.
  7. Take the pastry and roll it out into a rectangle approximately 12 inches by 8. In each of the shorter sides, make horizontal, 1-inch long incisions into the pastry, about an inch apart. This is to plait the pastry over the filling.
  8. In the centre of the pastry place the salmon (it doesn't matter if it's not all in one piece). Then cover this with half the butter/lime/ginger mixture. Fold the cut ends over the filling and plait them together, folding one plait over the one from the other side, alternately, until the filling is sealed up inside. Then bung it in the oven for 20 minutes.
  9. Meanwhile, cook the potatoes (new are best) and veg. Melt the rest of the butter mix in a saucepan over a very low heat.
  11. Garnish the potatoes with the parsley or coriander and serve with the melted butter mix poured over the potatoes. A sieve will be needed to strain out the grated ginger from the melted butter.
  12. Eat, and impress people, hopefully!

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Mediterranean-style vegetable hotpot

An absolutely delicious winter warmer, easy to make for as many people as you have to feed if the pot is big enough. I've managed to do it for a party of 7. It's vegan - so works brilliantly if you have any vegan guests or want to prove to someone that vegan food can be delicious (NB I'm not a vegan).

Ingredients (serves 4):

Preparation (allow about 90 minutes):

  1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400C/gas mark 6.
  2. Chop the olives, onion and garlic into little pieces. Do the same to the red pepper, taking out the centre and seeds first. Slice the aubergine and courgettes. I love the senseless slaughter of innocent vegetables.
  3. First task - fry the aubergine. Do so fairly gently in quite a lot of olive oil, making sure all the slices have a decent covering, until they are more purply-black than green. Once done, take them out and set them aside.
  4. Use the oil then to fry the onion, garlic, red pepper and courgettes in a large pan for about 5 minutes. Then add the tomatoes, beans, olives and aubergine. Bring to the boil then simmer gently for about 10 minutes, adding salt, black pepper, herbs and parsley to taste.
  5. Transfer to a casserole dish big enough to take it all, cover with foil, and bung it in the oven for 40 minutes.
  6. Cut the french stick or ciabatta into slices - you need enough to cover the top of whatever you're cooking the hotpot in. Remove the hotpot from the oven, place the sliced bread over the top, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with herbs (basil or oregano are nice), cover with the cheese if you're using it and put back in the oven, uncovered, for 20 minutes or until golden.
  7. Pig out.

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Recipe number five: "THREE-FISH" PASTA BAKE

Quite simple and tasty. As long as you like fish and pasta, of course.....

Ingredients: (serves 4)

Method: (preparation and cooking time about 1 hour)

  1. Chop the garlic, onion, pepper and four of the anchovy fillets into a largish saucepan and fry them, over a medium heat, in the mixed herbs and the oil from the tuna for about a minute. Add the chopped mushrooms and fry for another minute or so, until the mushrooms are beginning to brown. (You might be thinking that a lot of my recipes start this way. And you'd be right.....)
  2. Turn the heat down to the lowest possible and add the tin of tomatoes, the kidney beans, the tuna, the oyster sauce and the pepper and thyme to taste. (Don't be tempted to add salt to this - there's quite enough in the tuna already.) Simmer over a low heat for about half an hour.
  3. While it's cooking, cook the pasta - don't over do it, al dente (still slightly firm) is enough. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4.
  4. Drain the water from the cooked pasta and stir it into the sauce, then put everything in a baking tray. Cover with grated cheese and lie the last two anchovy fillets on top as decoration.
  5. Bung in the oven for about 20 minutes. Serve with salad.