Vegetarian Recipes

Another recipe purloined from Dan ‘Pour some sugar on me’ Lepard, which was in turn of other provenance, but such is cooking, dishes are passed from one to another and in doing so they evolve. Talking of Darwin, he was 200 the other day you know and Google honoured this on their homepage. I wonder [...]

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This Saturday I had the urge to spend all day in the kitchen and there is no better way of achieving this than embarking on one of Dan Lepard‘s more involved and elaborate recipes. This loaf takes the best part of a day to create and requires the making of two separate doughs – one [...]

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The first rule of owning a freezer is always have some puff pastry in it. Other than that you can include what you want, though be sure to have at least one novelty ice-cube tray. Here at Yumblog Mansions it’s a toss-up between the Lego piece tray and the green Ampelmann tray, though for the [...]

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Here we have another superb and satisfyingly time-consuming recipe from Dan Lepard. This one caught my eye because two of the ingredients are cream and golden syrup.

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And so it came to pass in dying chill days of October that the idea of soup for lunch started to grow in its appeal and so it was that a pair of Thermos was bought. And then Blogger D did make a rather tasty spinach and rosemary soup. And it had been recommended even [...]

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At Christmas I like a mince pie and a few years ago I found the perfect recipe in my Katie Stewart book. Last year I took the bold step of also making the mincemeat from scratch so this year I felt duty bound to do the same, only this time I held back and made [...]

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If you’re making a multitude of mince pies for a mulled wine gathering and you just happen to have a large Kelner jar sitting in the cupboard then the excuses for not making your own mincemeat can be but few. It’s super easy to make, you get to marshall what goes in, to avoid any [...]

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Always on the look out for novelty bread flours, I came across a packet of Doves Farm organic Barleycorn in Way’ro. It’s a mixture of wheat and barley flours, malted barley flakes and linseed. Apparently this loaf was one of two things named in honour of Prince Albert.

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I had to give this one a try, if only because it contains treacle, soggy Ryvita and onion. What’s more, it takes a whole weekend to make.

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After the sourdough fiasco I felt the need to purge the memory by baking something successfully. This is a handy recipe as it uses only store cupboard essentials: flour, salt, yeast, honey and lager.

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What do you do when you want to contribute something to a party being held in the name of a 1 year old but which quite naturally will be dominated by adults drinking wine and getting the munchies. And when the mother of the host is a fantastic cook and will have covered all bases [...]

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Ok, so we now have our sourdough starter sitting ominously in a jar at the back of the fridge gently seeping brown water. Time to make some bread. For a recipe I turn to the Observer Organic Allotment Blog and follow their elaborate and long-winded instructions to the letter.

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If you believe the hype (well in my narrow Guardian reading world anyway) everyone in credit crunch UK is now an artisan baker spending their precious downtime in the kitchen fashioning crusty bloomers and squeezing out granary torpedoes. Generally (and childishly) if I find myself on a bandwagon I have the irrestable urge to jump [...]

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On Saturday we went to a rain-drenched Oxford and had lunch at the highly recommended Branca Restaurant. Before tucking into fried calamari with lemon and chilli dressing followed by a big fat skate wing with scallops and mash, I soaked up the house red by nibbling away at some fine rosemary focaccia. So fine in [...]

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There’s nothing finer than getting up at 05:00 on a Sunday morning, amassing on Clapham Common with 27,000 other Lycra-clad humans, and pedalling off on a six-hour ride to Brighton. To help us reach our destination we packed the traditional sausage and Branston sandwiches, a bunch of bananas, 2 gallons of Lucozade and, for the [...]

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Regrettably, and I feel unreasonably, Tower Hamlets Council won’t let us keep sheep on the balcony so making our own feta cheese is out of the question. We do however have a healthy and ever-expanding mint plant and so at least were able to locally source half the ingredients in the title.

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I knocked up these whimsical little critters one Sunday morning partly because I was in the market for a bread product less brown and worthy than the usual, and partly because it was an effective way of delaying various foreboding DIY chores. Four of the five fancy shapes are illustrated below. The fifth, a curly [...]

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Somewhere round the end of March I saw my friend Hazel for the first time in nearly three years. She married an Australian chap back in 05 and opted for a warm climate and good standard of living over London – crazy but true. Anyway we had lunch and talked about food and then she [...]

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Now it seems it’s no longer middle class enough to simply bake your own bread. To be a fully paid-up member of the bourgeoisie takes more time. We have to allow our dough to slowly ferment overnight to encourage friendly bacteria which will protect our delicate constitutions from bloated, irritable bowels and leaky gut-type conditions. [...]

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According to Babel Fish couronne is French for crown, and according to the title this loaf is meant to be couronne-shaped. But it was snowing, I got over excited, couldn’t concentrate, and failed to read the recipe properly. As a result I missed out one small, but essential, step and by way of punishment the [...]

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I’ll tell you what bugs me, people who travel to work in the morning drinking their tea/coffee from those aluminium thermos mugs. They’re designed for camping in the woods, not commuting from Forest Hill. Are we supposed to look on enviously and wonder at the cool, impulsive, incandescent lives led by these urbane creatures? Probably. [...]

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Working until 7 on a Friday is never what I would class as fun. And when there’s a gig to go to then even less so – a gig with a 10pm curfew too. So I got to the pub at 7.30, inhaled two pints of Pilsner Urquell and then to the gig. The Only [...]

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Well, we’d done a spot of shopping down the road and as we passed the local baker – Percy Ingle – I thought of Scotch Pancakes, it was, after all, tea time on a Saturday in the rain. Then I thought of that being a greedy thing and simply walked on by. Then I got [...]

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If you came here in search of an American-style muffin to accompany your tall caramel macchiato, then you’ll be disappointed. They’re not muffins, they’re cakes. If however you are in search of an English muffin which is light and yeasty and perfect for toasting and smothering in butter, then you’re in luck. A word of [...]

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We had guests so there would have to be pudding. The day before the Guardian magazine had featured a rhubarb and custard tart and it sounded so lovely and looked so pretty that I just had to give it a go. And so to Borough Market where the pricing on rhubarb varied wildly from £4.50 [...]

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As well as being very tasty, Soda Bread is also great when you need a loaf in a hurry or can’t be arsed with all that kneading and proving. Unfortunately on such occasions you’re unlikely to have soured cream (a major ingredient) and a desperate trip to your local urban Costcutter is guaranteed to prove [...]

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Searching through my book of breads I came upon black bread. It brought back fond memories of the rush to join the throng following the bread van as it arrived with fresh warm supplies, back in the pre-Lukashenko Minsk of 1993. And then I had to get rye flour which meant another trip to Holland [...]

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A lunchtime trip to Holland and Barrett for sundry dried fruits and seeds meant there were now things to put in things for extra flavour/texture/goodness – I believe the term is ‘value added’. And so to my value added loaf. Not merely a humble malthouse loaf but one now boasting bonus tasties such as pumpkin [...]

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Another recipe from the much used ‘The Bread Book’ by Sara Lewis. This time I turned towards the back where the more fancy bread-based products can be found. Essentially this is a loaf which can magically be torn into individual rolls. We live in exciting times.

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I had the yen to make some Cornish pasties, but not having all the necessary ingredients and not wanting to brave the ugly madness that is Bethnal Green on a Saturday afternoon to get them, I made these instead.

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Ah, the weekend of baking. It was the day before my first day at work for over two weeks. We’d sworn off booze for three weeks (soon to be somewhat foreshortened to one week) and the weather was its usual dull hue so the only thing for it was to cook like fiends. The dinner [...]

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I realise the photo below looks like an unappetising plateful of deep-fried Spam fritters, however they are actually a tasty full-fat medley of oat biscuits heavily laden with blue cheese.

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And so to Sunday afternoon. The first of the new year. The first in a very long time not to come accompanied by even a hint of the previous night’s activities. Unless of course you count the ‘Nam flashbacks from watching The Deer Hunter. Sisisisi…sixth of January. We were going to go for a nice [...]

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It seemed like everywhere you turned there was someone eulogising about the magnificence of spelt. They featured a farmer who had gone back to growing the stuff and was now coining it due to some middle-class fad of using an ancient relative of modern wheat in their constant search for the secret to life itself. [...]

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Well I’d opened the packet of spelt flour you see and not wishing for it to sit in the cupboard forgetten and rapidly staling, the fate that had previously befallen the buckwheat flour, I sought out another recipe. And what do you know, my bread book (called The Bread Book, published by Hamlyn) had just [...]

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Count them. Not one, not two, but three varieties of chocolate are involved in the creation of these aptly named triple chocolate biscotti. Not only that, but they are ‘Double baked for added crispness’ â„¢

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It must be Christmas soon. Walk past any eatery at lunchtime and you’ll witness the depressing sight of work colleagues sitting around tables self-consciously wearing party hats…having fun. Not having to suffer this annual humiliation is one of the benefits of being freelance. Speaking of Christmas, this year I’ve decided to make, or rather bake, [...]

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Every December Dresden holds its annual Stollen Festival. It is a celebration of all things Stollen and involves among other things, electing the Dresden Stollen Maiden (Dresdner Stollenmädchen) and baking the world’s largest Stollen in accordance with the standards laid down by the Stollenschutzverband. This is a recipe for a stollen of more modest proportions [...]

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If the true meaning of Christmas is giving gifts which credit you with the greatest amount gratitude for the least amount of effort, then these truffles are a winner.

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Now I’m a big fan of Delia, although I appreciate that some people are less enthusiastic. Whatever your opinion, compared with the current crop of TV cooks whether they be two hairy geordies on bikes, a simpering goddess on prozac, or a Michelin starred narcisist on EVERYbleedinTHING, Delia shines out as a beacon of understated [...]

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