HOMEMADE ELDERFLOWER CORDIAL

Elderflower cordial is one of my favorite soft drinks. I've never been one to drink fizzy drinks and occasionally have a Ribena, but I always make sure we have a bottle of elderflower cordial at home. So last year, when the elderflowers were out and blooming I was determined to make some cordial. Unfortunately it rained and rained and rained during their flowering season, so the flowers didn't seem as fragrant as they normally do, and I left it, promising myself I would make some this year. Which is exactly what I've done.

Elderflowers are best picked on a sunny late May/early June day, when the flowers are creamy white.

Elderflower cordial is pretty easy to make. Other than the initial mixing process, all it then involves is the patience to let the flowers stew in the syrup for 48 hours - our fridge smells delicious when I open the door!

You want your flowers as fresh

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CHOCOLATE CHERRY COOKIES

Cookies are something I rarely eat. I never buy them from shops, and hardly ever make them, but I whipped up a batch to take with us to a rented cottage in the New Forest a couple of weeks ago. And they were really yummy! They're full of nuts, fruit and chocolate and are nicely soft and chewy.

You want to make the cookie dough about half an hour before you cook it, as the dough's better after a quick chill in the fridge.

Makes 15 palm size cookies

130g unsalted butter
125g light brown soft sugar
75g caster sugar
1 large egg
Zest of 1 orange
200g plain flour
1 slightly heaped teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 flat teaspoon table salt
20g almonds
30g orange chocolate
20g golden sultanas
20g dried cherries

Mix the butter with the sugars and beat until light and creamy. Add the egg and stir in with the sugar mix. Zest the orange into the mix. 

Put the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a separate bowl and mix. Pour into the sugar mix and stir until all combined. 

Chop the almonds, chocolate orange, sultanas and dried cherries and add to the cookie dough mixture.

Lay a piece of cling film out and tip the cookie mix onto it. Flatten out and roll into a long cylinder, wrapping the cling film tightly around it. Refrigerate this for half an hour or so.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Once chilled, slice the cookie dough into discs, about an inch thick. Place 6 discs on each well greased baking tray, spread out as much as possible.

Cook for 8-9 mins until lightly golden at the edges.

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FRESH SALSA VERDE

Well made salsa verde is one of my favorite things. It is great with white fish, such as coley and pollack, and with oilier fish like mackerel and sardines. It also really compliments cooked and cold meats, and is fab with roast chicken, slow roast pork belly, barbecued lamb or Spanish hams. It is equally as good tossed through buttery pasta for an easy mid-week supper. Or just a dip with some nice homemade bread.

Make a lot of it, as you will want to put it on everything you eat (if you're anything like me!), and as long as it is covered with a thin layer of oil in an airtight jar it will last for a couple of weeks in the fridge - not that it ever lasts that long in my house!

1 large bunch of parsley
1 large bunch of basil
Either 1 bunch of tarragon, 1 bunch of corainder, 1 bunch of mint or 1 bunch of spinach
Handful of capers and a bit of their juice
1 tin of anchovies
1 clove of garlic
2 spring onions
Olive oil
1 lemon, juice and zest

Roughly chop the parsley and basil. Depending on what you will serve your salsa with you can also add a bit of tarragon or coriander (great with chicken), mint leaves (for lamb) or spinach (for serving with white fish). It's up to you what variety of flavour combination to go for. 

Next chop the semi drained capers, spring onions and anchovies. Add this to the herbs and blitz for 2 seconds in a food processor with one crushed clove of garlic. When blitzing, try not to over blitz the salsa as it will become a bit slimey if it's chopped too much. Add a glug of good olive oil and the oil from the tin of anchovies, the juice and zest of a lemon and some black pepper. Blitz for ten seconds and transfer to an air-tight jar, cover with a thin layer of olive oil and it's ready for whenever you want it!

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CRAB & HOMEMADE MAYONNAISE

This recipe isn't really for crab - I bought the crab already picked from the fishmongers at our local farmers market. But crab is in season now and any excuse to eat it is good with me.

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ENOUGH FOOD IF...

Last night I went along to an Action Aid bloggers' meet up to talk about the Enough Food IF campaign, which is being supported by over 170 global charities and organisations.

The campaign has come about due to the fact that the world produces enough food for everyone, but not everyone has enough food.

On June 8th Enough Food IF are inviting you, me and everyone who can get there to come to Hyde Park, to make a noisy and visual petition, so loud and large that world leaders can't ignore it, and are forced to act on world hunger NOW. It is absolutely unacceptable that 1 in 8 people in the world go to bed hungry. And by hungry I mean they haven't eaten all day.

Last night Action Aid brought along various guests to talk to us about world hunger problems. First up was actress and cookbook author, Fay Ripley. Fay talked to us about her involvment with Action Aid, which stemmed from her exasperation with the cost and waste involved with children's birthday parties, and her and her 6 year old's mutual decision to request donations rather than presents, which would fund her sponsorship of an African child. Fay has since visited schools in Africa with Action Aid, and has seen for herself how much difference food makes to a child's ability to learn, and go about day to day life.

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STICKY BBQ SAUCE

You may have seen the recipe I put up for barbecue sauce a couple of months ago. And while that is still my go to recipe for barbecue sauce, I came up with something at the weekend which is quicker and easier to make, but still tastes really good. You can get a batch of this ready in 20 minutes, and it will keep in a sterilised jar in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

I made this to go with our Big Lunch that I hosted yesterday with Grub Club, and it was the perfect accompaniment to the warm and cold meats, and salads that we ate. I've already had a couple of requests for the recipe so thought I'd put it up here.

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'THE BIG LUNCH', 'NOSE TO TAIL' AND 'ENOUGH FOOD IF'

Sunday 2nd June is Global Sharing Day and this year's theme is food. The idea behind it is to get as many people across the world sharing food together, whilst also highlighting the food surplus and waste we produce. There are loads of events going on to get involved with including The Big Lunch, which aims to get people to arrange a meal to share with their neighbours, by holding street parties.

I'm doing my bit by teaming up with Liv from Grub Club to host a lunch as part of 'People Who Share' - a partner of The Big Lunch, who asked us to join tens of millions of people across the world in sharing food with each other for a day, and to think about the tonnes of edible food that get sent to landfills - in the UK alone nearly 7 million tonnes of purchased and edible food goes to waste every year. 

I'm also going to an evening that Action Aid are putting on to talk to bloggers about Enough Food IF, a campaign to reduce and eliminate world hunger (that affects nearly one in six globally). More on that campaign to follow....

Grub Club are also doing more than just our lunch to highlight the issue of food waste. From the 1st - 14th June, Grub Club are hosting a Nose to Tail fortnight. They, like so many of us, are fed up with the amount of edible food that is sent to waste while people are going hungry. So they've teamed up with Ethical Eats and Slow Food London to put on a range of events to get you inspired. They've got foraging and fishing cookery courses, a series of '2 dinners, 1 lunch' pop up restaurants in Peckham, an informal butchery masterclass, learning about the less commonly used cuts of meat, with Hill Street Chews in Hackney, and so much more. 

As a little treat, Grub Club are running a competition to give away a couple of pairs of tickets to their kick off event, It's Ghana be Nasty, this Saturday. For your chance to win, either sign up for Grub Club's newsletter here or share their facebook post here. 

What are you doing to get involved with food sharing campaigns?

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CHEESY BEEF NACHOS AND DIPS

It was the last game of the Premier league season on Sunday, so I cooked up some food we could eat while we watched the games, nervous for several teams results (I'm an Arsenal fan) and sulking over a game that couldn't make any difference in the boys case (he's QPR). I wanted to cook something I could heat up at half time to serve, and this is the perfect dish for that. I served it with a rack of BBQ ribs, cooked in my BBQ sauce. It's also great if you got friends coming over and want to serve them some snacks to nibble on.

Serves 6.

6 shallots
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp dry oregano
1 to 2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 level tsp chilli flakes
Half tsp salt
1 tsp garlic granules
500g minced beef
200ml beef stock
100g cheddar cheese
Pot of sour cream
Large bag of nachos chips

For the guacamole:
2 avocados
2 limes
Handful coriander

For the salsa:
8 cherry tomatoes
4 spring onions
1 lemon

The thing that makes this recipe taste SO good is the spice mix for the beef. I know you can buy premixes in the supermarkets for fajitas and tacos, but this mix tastes much better than those. You can make lots by doubling or tripling the quantities, and store it in a spice jar.

Measure out all your spices and salt. Grind into a fine powder with a pestle and mortar. If you don't have one, just use ground cumin.

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QUICK PEACH PUDDING

This is a complete cheats pudding. It's something I make on nights we haven't planned to have pudding, but I can whip it up from what I already have in the cupboard and fridge. Of course, you can use fresh fruit for this, but when you don't even have that to hand, tinned works fine.

Serves 6.

1 pack of shop bought puff pastry
2 tbsp soft brown sugar
2 tins of peaches
2 tbsp agave nectar
1 free-range egg

Preheat the oven to 220C (200C fan).

Roll your puff pastry out to about 5mm. Lightly score a line about 1.5cm in from the edge of the rectangle. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the small rectangle you have created. If your peaches are in halves, slice each half into quarters and lay the slices in lines inside the scored rectangle until the rectangle is full of peaches. Drizzle the peaches with agave nectar. Whisk the egg and brush it onto the exposed outer rectangle of pastry.

Cook for 20 minutes or until the pastry is golden.

Serve with vanilla or honeycomb ice-cream.

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PERFECT STEAK TARTARE

When I'm in France, there are 2 things I make sure I eat while I'm there - mussels with frites, and steak tartare. And if raw meat is up your street, then there's no reason you can't make it at home. As long as you have good quality meat (see my post on good meat suppliers here), and fresh, free-range eggs, then it's actually really easy, and you can adjust the seasonings to your own taste.

Serves 2.

200g fillet steak, free-range, organic
2 ping pong ball sized shallots
3 cornichons (about 3cm long)
2 large caper berries
Half a handful of parsley
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper
1 free-range egg yolk

All this recipe really requires is a lot of chopping. Chop the steak into small cubes, about 3mm square. Chop the shallots, cornichons and caper berries into slightly smaller cubes, about 2mm square. Chop the parsley as finely as you can.

Mix the oil together with the mustard and Worcestershire sauce, and stir in the chopped steak. Add the rest of the chopped ingredients, season, and mix together. 

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TIBITS - VEGETARIAN in the WEST END

Tibits is a purely vegetarian restaurant, nestled just off Regent Street, in the Heddon Street food court, and is a cross between a sit down restaurant and a fast food take away place.

I was invited to try the food at Tibits and chose to go on a weekday evening. Despite it being a school night, it was really busy, and although it's right in the middle of tourist-ville, it felt like there were quite a lot of regular customers there too.

We started the evening with a fresh fruit juice cocktail - both going for the Apple and Cucumber mojito, that I thought was really good. It was really refreshing and I can imagine how good it would taste sitting in the sun outside the restaurant (the day we visited was sadly not one of the 3 sunny days we've had so far this year!)

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BEST BREAKFASTS...

'Breakfast is the most important meal of the day', we're often told. And although I rarely wake up hungry, once I've got ready for the day I am ready for my first meal of the day. Breakfast during the week involves a big bowl of tropical fruit and a black coffee. Not great, I know! But the weekends are when I can really indulge on breakfast, and make something special, and healthy. Though there's not really much cooking involved with these recipes. We normally end up having a late breakfast/brunch and one more main meal on weekend days, which allows us to pig out a little, whilst not overdoing it completely!!

My favorite weekend breakfasts vary, depending on how much or little sleep I've had the night before, but they generally include one of 3 or 4 ingredients - berries, fish, avocado and sweetcorn. Not necessarily all together! Here are some of my favorites.

TUNA, EGG, AVOCADO

This is best if you've had a night out and a long lie-in, as I don't think even I could eat a tuna steak before 11am - so think of this one as more of a brunch! It's a big smack of protein to get you right and ready for the day.

For 2.

2 responsibly sourced tuna steaks
2 free-range eggs
1 avocado
Pinch dried chilli flakes
Sea salt
Lemon juice
2 slices of rye bread
Olive oil

Put a small pan of water on to boil. Once boiling add the eggs, and cook for 5 minutes.

Heat a small amount of oil on a medium to high heat in a frying pan. Once hot, add your tuna steaks and cook for 90 seconds on each side. Remove from the pan, and put to one side.

Mash the avocado, chilli flakes and sea salt together with a squeeze of lemon juice. Smear onto the toasted slices of rye bread, and serve alongside your halved egg, and seared tuna steak. Drizzle with a little olive oil to finish.


BACON with AVOCADO and SWEETCORN SALSA

For 2.

6 rashers free-range bacon
1 small tin of sweetcorn, no added sugar and salt
1 avocado
1/2 red onion
1 red chilli
Lime juice

Heat a large frying pan. Add the bacon and put another pan on top, to flatten it out and make it really crispy. Fry over a high heat for a couple of minutes. Lift the top pan off, turn the bacon over, replace the pan and continue to fry for a couple more minutes, until crispy and cooked.

In the meantime, make the salsa. Chop the avocado and red onion into cm chunks. Finely slice the red chilli. Mix together with the sweetcorn, avocado, onion and lime juice.

Serve the bacon piled high with salsa.

FROZEN BERRY YOGHURT BOWLS

This takes about a minute to prepare, but once ready, tastes like heaven and you can actually feel the good it's doing you.

For 1.

200ml natural probiotic yoghurt
100g frozen berries
Teaspoon of manuka honey
Handful chopped basil and mint

Pour your yoghurt into a bowl, top with berries, honey and chopped herbs. The frozen crunch of the berries is particularly delicious on a lovely sunny morning. Tuck in, and feel better about the day!

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