Vegetarian Recipes

Living as we do at the very epicentre of the rhubarb triangle – the mysterious 30-square-mile area formed between the three cities of Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford famous for early forced rhubarb and the unexplained disappearance of countless ships, planes and whippets – it seems only appropriate that we should make more use of this [...]

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Needing as we did to both satisfy a craving for something sweet and shift some particularly average Christmas chocolate balls from Lidl, these ChocChip™ Cookies perfectly fulfilled both requirements. Obviously you don’t need to rush to Lidl and rummage through the ‘end of line’ slop bucket in search of the last remaining net of stale [...]

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Well I never, I’ve just discovered our local Morrisons now sells packets of fresh yeast for breadmaking… and at the very reasonable price of 50p for 126g. This was unexpected because a) as far as I know you can’t even get it at Waitrose, and b) Morrisons is very much at the (Sp)Asda end of [...]

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Although the fridge has now all but emptied of Christmas goodies the cheese compartment is still heavy with half-eaten lumps, wheels and wedges of every variety of soft, hard, blue, holey, mature and goat. It has become clear that the occasional lunchtime snack is never going to make much headway into this cheesey surplus and [...]

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At the last count Yumblog Junior had an impressive vocabulary of 38½ distinct words*. These range from the traditional and vital Mummy, Daddy, Dog, Cat through Cheese, Spoon, Cock-a-doodle-doo to more personal choices such as Shoes, Crumpet and Cheers (accompanied by the touching of the parental beer glasses). One of her first and still most [...]

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The inverted commas are there because this loaf contains no yeast and is actually more of a savoury cake than a bread. This has the added advantage that as well as being pleasantly toothsome, it can also manifest from a wishful inkling to an incontrovertible plateful in just under an hour and a half. That’s [...]

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Lately crabs have become very much the decapodic crustacean of choice here at Yumblog Towers. This is a preference very much aided by the fish stall at Roman Road Market which sells big brown locally caught (Mile End Road at low tide) specimens for under four (s)quid. Having recently made this magnificently delicious crab tart [...]

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As well as a handsome moustache and a penchant for white trousers, The Frenchman also has a strong liking for desserts. We made him this HF-W dish. He had three helpings.

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This is a variation on yet another recipe from Rick Stein’s current and excellent Spanish cookbook. Variation because gone is the tarragon (tarragone?) as we didn’t have any growing in the Victorian walled garden here at Yumblog Towers and ditto the carrot*. Plus we decided to construct one big fat tart rather than 12 individual [...]

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What do you do when you’ve been engauntleted by a friend regarding the potentiality of high quality picnic foodage? Why you go to your most recent recipe font and seek out something large and sublime that will sate the masses. And it has all the food groups too, cream cheese, cream, sugar, eggs.

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Watching Michel Roux eulogising the virtues of hand-crafted bread on the ‘Great British Food Revival‘ reminded me that shamefully I hadn’t baked a loaf for several weeks. Thus suitably laden with middle-class guilt I put on a pinny, grabbed a jar of Mathos Organic Polygonum Honey (dark, strong and liquorice-ee) and made this simple white [...]

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This is less of a recipe and more of a reminder to shove a Camembert in the oven once in a while for a fast fatty indulgent treat … and do it soon before this world inexorably unravels to a lawless (and cheeseless) wasteland.

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Despite heroic efforts on our part, post-Christmas still found us with a substantial wedge of a 3 tonne wheel of Stilton left uneaten. This tart was one of several tasty ways we found to remedy the problem.

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Fellow bloggers… is it a crime to recycle an old post?

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It’s ok, put the dogs back in their kennels, tether the steed, the search is over, we’ve found it. The perfect white bread f’toasting is here and even better hardly any kneading is needed. Brilliant.

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It was a on a particularly high-achieving day of culinary endeavour that the cheese and rosemary biscuits came into being. The original idea had been to make cheese scones, but these were rejected for being too little cheese per bite. Then came the rosemary and black pepper and suddenly they were biscuits. They can of [...]

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I’d never made a lemon cake before and we have thyme aplenty on the balcony so how about a lemon thyme cake as featured in the Observer mag a few weeks ago? Oh and the cake master herself was coming to visit Yumblog Junior, perhaps I could show off my culinary skills – she’s tasted [...]

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Bored with biscuits out of off of the cupboard? Want to eat a flapjack that will taste nothing like the dense sugar marathons that you can get in packets labelled ‘Mrs Futtocks’ home-baked country goodness treats’? Have you a spare half hour? I have the answer.

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In our new guise as parents we have entered a world where being invited to someone’s house for lunch doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be leaving at midnight having drunk the Rhone valley dry. It’s novel and despite our underlying fatigue, sensible drinking on a weekend still seems inherently wrong. So we had been [...]

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In the lull between milk extraction and nappy changing I remembered the vast amounts of 85% plain chocolate I had bought and sought to put some of it to work. I was looking for a chocolate biscuit with a melty bit as I’d never made one before and none of my books could help. A [...]

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Victor: A scone and tea at half past three, makes the day a little brighter. So you can keep your cakes and fancy tarts…. Jack and Victor: …and stick them up your shiter.

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This recipe is from the poetically titled and yet to be published ‘Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume‘ by Silvena Rowe which was featured in the latest OFM. If this and the other published recipes are anything to go by, this particular publication could well be joining the myriad cookbooks gracing the West Wall of the [...]

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This recipe was the result of a pioneering scientific experiment to recreate something similar to Dr. Karg Crispbreads which, despite their medical honorific and Teutonic wholemeal worthiness are surprisingly tasty and addictive – especially if topped with a wedge of Extra Mature and a dollop of Branston. And so to the experiment…not being experts in this [...]

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Another Simon Hopkinson recipe, although this time one he borrowed from a cookbook written by Roald Dahl, who in his turn took it from a nice man in Arnhem who made these tasties at his patisserie. Judging by the photo in the (subsequently purchased and truly delightful) Roald Dahl book, these biscuits aren’t quite the [...]

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Ok, so if your beloved pussy approached you for a friendly lick and offered a tongue as mis-shapen as any of the examples below, you’d probably recoil with disdain, bundle it into a sack and rush it to the nearest canal vet. In our defence, this was our first attempt at such butter-rich chocolate-filled biscuits, [...]

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Hmm, onions, hmm, bread, hmm, onion bread, hmm, onion bread in individual portions, hmm, lovely lunch.

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What to do on Easter Sunday when you’ve already filled the cupboards with tasties but there is a sweet tea-time shaped hole in the kitchen – it’s actually a hatch, but I saw Doctor Who and I know all about holes and cracks in walls and time/space continua and giant eyes. So anyway, hot cross [...]

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Cornish Yarg is a mild yet flavoursome firm cheese not to be confused with the Cornish ‘Yarp’ – the only word uttered by Michael in ‘Hot Fuzz’.

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Well I suppose that’s the surprise spoilt already.

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Residents only. Another HF-W recipe from the Guardian magazine. His ability to tap into the Blogger-D taste-psyche is uncanny.

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Here’s a great idea – why not get up early on Saturday morning and spend an hour baking for a cat? After all it has to be a rewarding experience, our feline colleagues are renowned for their un-fussy attitude to food and the appreciative way they savour every meal lovingly placed before them. What could [...]

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This is a recipe from the Hairy Bakers/Bikers. It’s meant to contain brown ale but we didn’t have any so instead I used an alcohol-free driving Cobra which was gathering dust in the fridge. Let’s be honest, it was never going to get drunk.

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I found this Lemony Cheese delight in a back issue of the excellent Donna Hay magazine – the eponymous title from food editor, best-selling cookery writer, and from what I can gather, Queen of Australia.

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If you follow the link you’ll discover this young Gorgonzola came to us from Sardinia via Acton. Roasted Tomato and Gorgonzola Tarts with Balsamic Vinegar Caramel

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The plan is at some stage to make our own Ricotta from the whey left over from Yumblog Amalgamated Dairy Industries yoghurt-making enterprise. However I suspect the quantities involved will be minute and certainly a lot smaller than our massive combined appetites.

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I came across this recipe in last month’s Wa’ro magazine and it looked so tasty I had to give it a try. It also gave me the opportunity to photograph it alongside this stylishly knackered old fork which I bought recently in a charity shop purely for use as a prop. Everybody’s doing it – [...]

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There was a first birthday party to attend and we thought that, in the interests of encouraging the eating of biscuits from as young an age possible, we would make chocolate chip cookies. Thing is we had plenty chocolate but no chips, plenty cocoa powder but no desire to add nuts to the mixture, so [...]

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‘Eating lots of white bread raises the risk of a cancer that kills thousands of Britons every year … those who eat five slices a day are almost twice as likely to develop the most common form of kidney cancer compared to those who have one and a half slices.’… or so says that putrid [...]

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The appearance of a dessert on the Yumblog table can mean only one thing. Yes, we had guests. Others who might judge our food. By the time we got to the dessert the assembled worthies had already eaten firsts, seconds, and in one case, thirds of a rather tasty roast lamb and accompanying roasted goodies. [...]

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It’s all very well making a tasty loaf of brown bread for your toast and sandwiches, but sometimes bread has to be a bit different. Sometimes it has to be made out of mashed potato. Think bread. Think potato. Think Walkers new Onion Bhaji flavoured crisps, between brown bread. You are of course nowhere near [...]

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