20 Ways with Pesto (other than pasta)

Articles, Recipes

Everyone knows pesto is perfect with pasta but did you know that you can do so much more with it? Here are just 20 ideas to liven up your meals and the list could go on…  Mix into minced meat to make meatballs or burgers Use as a pizza sauce instead of tomato Mix with...

Recipe: Halloumi Lentil Salad

Recipes

Our Halloumi Lentil Salad is very much a ‘fridge foraging’ recipe as in, ‘what would go together to make something tasty’, so it can be as flexible as you want to make it. Having a good chunk of halloumi cheese to play with, we chose ingredients that...

Recipe: Make a Simnel Cake for Easter

Recipes

There are many versions of the story of how the Simnel cake originated, so it is difficult to ascertain which one is actually true, so to save confusion we’ll not go into the details. What is known, is that nowadays it is made for Easter and decorated with marzipan...

What is Blind Baking?

Kitchen Tips & Tricks, Recipes

Blind baking is when a pastry case for a pie or tart is baked before adding the filling – it’s most important when you’re going to use a wet filling, such as custard. If a wet filling is poured over raw pastry it prevents the pastry base from cooking properly and will...

How much pastry do I need?

Kitchen Tips & Tricks, Recipes

Unless you are working to a specific recipe for a pie, tart or flan it’s not always easy to determine just how much shortcrust pastry is required. We can hear you asking, “how much pastry do I need?” Although the process of making a batch of shortcrust pastry is...

Tips for making surefire shortcrust pastry

Kitchen Tips & Tricks, Recipes

Shortcrust pastry has so few ingredients and should be a breeze to make but why does it sometimes not turn out the way you expected? It can either become all gungey and unworkable or keeps breaking when you try to line your pie dish. And then there’s the finished...