This is one of my favourite summer salads and it is so quick and easy to make. Crunchy cabbage, apple and fennel work perfectly with a light tangy dressing and if you fancy a little more heat in your slaw then just add a finely diced chilli. You can make this salad up to a day in advance, stored in the fridge and taken out an hour before you want to serve it.
Spiced Rice Pudding
Rice pudding may be old fashioned but is the perfect cure to this cold weather and doesn’t require any special ingredients. The great thing about this pudding is that you can really add whatever flavours you like, I love the warm spices in this one and the coconut milk gives a lovely creaminess without being too rich. This is best served straight away but if you do want to make it ahead just cook it until the rice is nearly cooked but not quite and then cool quickly. Just before you want to serve it put it back on the hob (you may need to add a little more milk) and cook it for another 5 minutes. This is also delicious with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses instead of the Demerara sugar at the end.
Blood Orange Jelly, White Chocolate and Cardamom Mousse, Roasted Rhubarb
This is an ideal dinner party pudding as everything can be made in advance and is served at room temperature so leaves plenty of time to enjoy the party! This pudding makes the most of seasonal fruit and despite the white chocolate is incredibly light and refreshing. I use little French yoghurt pots for this but martini glasses would work a treat for a more formal occasion.
Asparagus, Courgette and Ricotta Cappelletti with Lemon Butter sauce
Fresh pasta has to be one of most delicious foods out there. Comforting and filling I would eat it every day if I could and I regularly eat it two or three times a week. It’s not the quickest meal to make but once you have the hang of making the pasta dough it’s incredibly easy and you can serve it with all sorts of different sauces and fillings. The key is making sure the dough is the right consistency, it should be firm and slightly tacky and not too soft, and when you get it right you’ll have incredibly silky pasta.
Asian Chicken Salad
For a salad with so much flavour this couldn’t be easier. There is quite a lot of chopping but if you have a food processor with a slicing attachment this salad will take minutes. This is a great salad for using up leftovers, and you can adjust the amounts of the vegetables depending on what you have. You could even use your left over roast chicken using the same marinade and warming it through.
Ginger and Lime no-churn ice cream
It’s no understatement to say I love ice cream and I mean really love ice cream. There is always some stashed away in the freezer and in my opinion it really shouldn’t just be limited to summer, it’s never too cold for ice cream in my eyes! I am lucky enough to have a proper ice cream maker and it does make such a difference compared to hand churned ice cream. However, for those of you who don’t have an ice cream maker this is the perfect ice cream for you.
Irish Soda Bread
This must be one of the easiest and quickest breads to make and in my mind one of the most delicious. It is a great one to make if you are just starting out with bread making as you don’t have to worry about proving the bread or kneading it for a long time and you can have a freshly baked loaf on the table in under an hour. I prefer a darker soda bread so I use a higher proportion of wholemeal flour but there is nothing to stop you using only white flour or using half wholemeal and half white flour, it really is just a matter if taste.
Clementine and Pistachio Madeleines
Madeleines are one of my favourite quick bakes, they are sometimes overlooked and thought of as being fiddly but they are incredibly easy and can be on the table in less than 30 minutes – perfect for when you have unexpected guests. These always remind me of driving through France on family holidays when we would have a stash of madeleines to keep us going on long car journeys and they were a sure way of keeping me and my sister happy.
Pear and Apple Chutney
It’s that time of the year again when apples and pears are in abundance and I have to start thinking of what to do with them all. On a catering job last weekend I was given a lovely mix of pears and apples from the orchard so I decided to use the cooking apples in this spiced chutney. The brilliant thing about chutney is you can more or less put whatever you like in it. If you have more pears than apples then just swap round the quantities and if you don’t like one of the spices then replace it with one you do.
3 months in…
I started the Two-Term Diploma at Leiths thinking I would have so much time to take everything in and I can’t quite believe that we are now in our last week of term. To say that it has been a whirlwind would be an understatement!
Anna cooks, Anna eats 