5 VEG FRITTATA

There are certain vegetarian dishes I cook for friends that I could quite happily eat every day and frittata is one of them. It's yummy and healthy! And pretty easy to cook. This makes enough for at least 4 people, served with a side salad.

2 medium onions
1 courgette
1 red pepper
1/2 a broccoli
Handful of mushrooms
1 tbsp sunflower oil

7 medium eggs
Welsh goat's cheese

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Start with your vegetables. Chop the onions, courgette, red pepper, half a stem of broccoli and mushrooms into small ish cubes (bigger than 1cm). Fry the onion in a spoon of sunflower or vegetable oil in a medium size frying pan. Add the rest of the vegetables after a couple of minutes. Fry the vegetables over a medium heat, for 5 minutes, or until they are starting to soften.

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CHOCOLATE RUM BROWNIES

These brownies are SO good, every time I've made them they've been devoured (once one person ate 8 of them in half an hour!) They are gooey and boozy, and delicious warm with a scoop of organic vanilla ice-cream.

1 tin of prunes, destoned
4 shots of Captain Morgan dark rum
250g caster sugar
200g soft salted butter
3 large eggs, plus 1 yolk
150g organic fairtrade dark chocolate
100g organic fairtrade milk chocolate
60g plain flour
60g cocoa powder, or dark drinking chocolate
1 tsp baking powder

Drain a tin of prunes and put them in a bowl. Cover the prunes with dark rum. Leave to soak for up to an hour.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
 

A food processor is helpful but not essential for the next stages. Mix the sugar and butter. If you don't have a processor do this with a spoon, and mix until light and creamy. Add 3 large eggs and the extra yolk to the mix and beat lightly.
 

Bash the dark and milk chocolate so it breaks into little pieces (the best way to do this is to leave it in its wrapper and bash with a rolling pin). Place all the chocolate in a dry bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (make sure the bowl doesn't touch the water). Leave over a low heat until most of the chocolate has melted - it's nice to have a few bits unmelted as they make chocolate chunks.
 

Once the chocolate is nearly all melted, slowly add it to the butter and egg mix. Then, by hand, mix in the rum soaked prunes. The final stage is to add the dry ingredients. Sift the flour and cocoa powder (or organic drinking chocolate) with the baking powder into the chocolatey mix. Gently fold the flour and cocoa into the wet mix.
 

Pour the mixture into 20cm baking tray, greased and lined with greaseproof paper, and cook for 30 minutes.
 

Remove from oven - even though they might not look cooked, they are! Leave to cool in the tray you cooked them in. Do not try and take them out of the tray. Once the brownies are cool, put them in the fridge, still in the tray they were cooked in. You can remove them from the tray once they have been in the fridge for a few hours.
 

These brownies keep for up to a week and you can re-heat them just before serving.

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GAS MARK CONVERSION

I've just moved to a beautiful cottage-style house, with a massive garden that's already got healthy rosemary, sage and parsley plants, where I'm also going to plant beetroot, spring onions, tomatoes and more - updates on that soon!

Anyhow, my beautiful new house has a very old cooker, which is stuck in the gas mark age (with most of the numbers missing off the dial!)

So for anyone who needs it here is a conversion chart:

¼	½	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
110	130	140	150	170	180	190	200	220	230	240

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STICKY SPICY CHICKEN WINGS

Last year, when cooking roast chicken for friends, one of my very fussy friends ended up  with a plate with chicken breast and a wing on, before moaning about being served chicken on the bone! A couple of weeks later though and he devoured two portions of these sticky chicken wings and said it was one of the best things he'd eaten!

You need to marinade the chicken for as long as possible before hand - half a day is ideal.

2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil
Handful thyme
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp allspice
1 lemon, juiced and zested
700g free range chicken wings

Mix the soy sauce, honey and oil together. Add the chopped thyme, nutmeg, ginger, chilli, garlic, allspice and juice and zest of the lemon and pour the marinade over the chicken wings. Cover the dish with foil and put it in the fridge. Leave to marinate for up to 6 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Tip the chicken wings and marinade out onto a pre-foiled baking tray (make sure you cover the baking tray in foil; the sauce is so sticky it's a nightmare to wash off the tray!) and cook for 30 minutes. Remove the wings every 10 minutes so you can spoon the sauce back over the wings.

I serve 3 or 4 chicken wings per person and are delicious with mashed buttery sweet potato and steamed cabbage or peas.

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KOREAN GREENS

At the lovely Korean restaurant in Soho PAN, 58 Great Marlborough Street, I had a delicious cold greens side dish. After a few practices I think I've come up with a pretty similar version. It takes ten minutes max and can keep in the fridge for 5 days so make lots!

Serves 6, as a side dish

2 packs of green beans, cut into thirds
3 packs of spinach, roughly chopped
Tbsp sesame seeds
Tbsp sesame oil
Tbsp light soy sauce
Rice vinegar

Steam the green beans for 3 minutes. Add the spinach and steam for 2 more minutes. 

In a dry wok toast a spoon of sesame seeds, tossing them in the pan for a couple of minutes. Tip them into a bowl. 

Heat the sesame oil with the soy sauce with a small splash of vinegar. Add the steamed beans and spinach and toss in the oil and soy. Sprinkle the whole thing with the toasted sesame seeds and remove from the heat.

Once the greens have cooled down transfer to tupperware and put in the fridge until cool. These greens are good with fish, meat or as a salad for lunch.

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GREENS and VEGGIE PIE

I wanted to make a chicken and mushroom pie for some friends, but one of them was a vegetarian, so I used all the vegetables I had available to me and the pie was delicious. 

You can use any combination of the following vegetables:
1 pack of mushrooms, chopped into quarters

3 leeks, washed and chopped into 2cm chunks

2 handfuls of peas, left in a sieve to defrost

1 pack of asparagus, chopped in half

Broccoli, chopped into pieces the same size as the chopped mushrooms

Pack of green beans chopped in half

2 courgettes, chopped in half, then into 2cm chunks

Sugar snap peas, chopped in half

Olive oil
300ml pot of creme fraiche
1 vegetable stock cube
1/2 tsp grainy mustard
1 roll of shop bought puff pastry
1 egg, beaten

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.

Take a large deep frying pan and add a little olive oil. Tip in all the vegetables you have chosen and prepared, and gently cook for 4-5 minutes. Add a pot of creme fraiche, and then make some vegetable stock in the creme fraiche pot and add that too (do this twice). Season with salt and pepper, and add half a teaspoon of mustard. Mix the whole thing and let it bubble gently for another 5 minutes.

Roll out a sheet of shop bought puff pastry and lightly score it. 

Tip the vegetable mix into a rectangular pyrex dish, and lay the sheet of pastry on top - tucking it in at the edges. Beat a small egg and brush  it all over the pastry. If you don't have a pastry brush, you can use kitchen roll to smear the egg over the pastry.

Cook in the oven at 190C for about 35 minutes. Take it out when the pastry is golden and slightly crisp. The pie should be enough for 8 people and is lovely with mashed potato.

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OYSTERS

Oysters divide people into three groups - those who've tried them and love them; those who've tried them and don't like them; and those who've never tried them at all. Until two years ago I was in the third group, but I am now very much in the first!

The first time I tried oysters was a very special experience. Trudging back to the office after a long day out on project, conversation between me and my two colleagues turned to oysters - both oyster fans, they were shocked to hear I had never tried them.

So that was it. We stopped off at Cape Town Fish Market on Argyll street, Soho, and picked up a dozen oysters, 6 cans of Red Stripe, and headed back to our beautiful mews office. There I sat, on the desk, and had my first taste of heaven! Even though Cape Town Fish Market's oysters aren't the best, the experience was truly unforgettable. Just a squeeze of lemon over them before the wash of fleshy sea - pure delight!

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GOOEY BANANA BREAD

Where better to start than with desert?! This is one of my favourite puddings to serve after a hearty Sunday roast. You can make it the day before and have it cold or pop it back in the oven after you've taken your roast out to warm up while you eat your mains.

This recipe is very easy, and a great way to use up bananas that look well past their best.

75g soft salted butter
200g soft brown sugar
1 large free range egg
Vanilla extract
5 medium brown bananas
170g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. 

Take 3 mixing bowls - in the first one mix the soft butter, sugar, egg and a few drops of vanilla extract.

In the second bowl, mash up the bananas - the browner and older the better!

In the last mixing bowl sift the plain flour and 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.

Tip the mashed bananas into the butter mix bowl and then gently mix in the flour. 

Banana bread is normally cooked in a loaf tin, but I like to cook mine in a round pyrex dish. This is for two reasons - you can see when it is all golden and cooked to perfection through the glass, and secondly, it means the bananas move to the centre of the cake, creating a gorgeous, sticky middle. 

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