When the seasons change and the cold, wet weather starts coming in there’s only one thing for it: comfort food!

My other half, James, suggested an apple pie. I’m a crumble fan myself so I compromised and set out to make a crumble pie!

Ingredients

350g shortcrust pastry – recipe
crumble topping (200g plain flour, 150g butter, 100g brown sugar)
4 bramley apples
2 handfuls of blackberries
a spinkle of ground cinnamon
a few tablespoons of caster sugar

Method

To make the crumble topping combine the flour and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Gradually add cubes of the butter and mix the ingredients with your hands until it forms a sort of breadcrumb consistency. Add more flour and butter if you need more crumble topping.

To make the filling, peel and core the apples. Chop them into medium sized cubes, then place in a large pan and gently heat them for a few minutes or until they go soft. Add the blackberries and stir for 2 minutes.

Roll out the shortcrust pastry so that it will line your pie dish / cake tin / whatever you’re using to cook it in. Pour the apple and blackberry mixture into the pastry-lined dish, sprinkle with some caster sugar and cinnamon.

Cover the fruit mix with the crumble topping and bake in the oven for 30-50 minutes at 200 degrees (gas mark 6). It’s ready when the crumble topping is crispy and golden.

Serve with some yummy custard or just sprinkle some caster sugar on top.

(More spicy recipes coming soon, I promise!)

Chicken is great; it’s so versatile and you can combine it with many different herbs and spices to get a huge variety of dishes.

I love a traditional Sunday Roast but sometimes it’s nice to try something a bit different. This is where Jamie Oliver steps in… His latest series (Jamie at Home) is great for picking up new ideas and this recipe is based on his “Tender and crisp chicken legs with sweet tomatoes” dish.

Ingredients

4 or 5 chicken thighs with the bone removed
5 potatoes, peeled and chopped in half
5 juicy, red tomatoes
1 lemon
4 cloves of garlic
a nice big handful of fresh oregano
a few sprigs of fresh thyme
salt & pepper (to taste)
some olive oil

Makes enough for 3 or 4 people

Method

Chop the chicken roughly into finger sized strips and chop (or crush) the garlic cloves. Heat up a large pan with a splash of olive oil, then add the chicken, garlic, the fresh thyme and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

If I was going for a spicy version of this dish, I’d add a few chopped chillis at this point.

While your chicken is cooking, blanche the tomatoes – put them in a bowl and pour boiling water over them, leave for around 20-30 seconds, drain water, then pour cold water over them. The skin of the tomato will now be easy to peel off.

You’ll also want to par-boil the potatoes – place the peeled potatoes into boiling water for around 10 or 15 minutes until they’re quite soft.

Remember to stir your chicken around while it’s cooking so that it browns up nice and evenly. When the chicken looks pretty much done, put it into a roasting tin (or any deep oven-proof dish you have) and add the blanched tomatoes with skins removed and the potatoes.

If you have a pestle and mortar, place the fresh oregano leaves in it and give it a good, hard bashing! Really beat it up – imagine it’s the face of someone you despise! This will help release the flavour and make it taste wonderful. Add a bit of olive oil to the oregano – roughly three tablespoons – stir it around and then pour this ‘oregano oil’ over the chicken mixture.

If you don’t have a pestle and mortar, you can try to bruise the oregano by placing it on a wooden chopping board and mash it with a rolling pin or spoon. Once looking mushy, pop it in a bowl and add the olive oil.

Squeeze the juice of a lemon all over the food and place in a pre-heated oven for about 35 minutes at about 220 degrees or gas mark 7.

I made a tasty gravy from the discarded bones of the chicken thighs – any old gravy will do really.

If you like, serve this with steamed green beans and carrots. Enjoy as an alternative Sunday Roast!

Yum!

Pasta is one of my other half’s favourite dishes so he always suggests it when I’m at a loss for dinner ideas. We usually end up deciding to have some sort of “pasta tomato thing”.

This sauce is fantastic for a quick and easy (not to mention cheap) pasta meal.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts (optional if you fancy a veggie meal)
1 green pepper
1/2 an onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 red chillis (or as much as you want)
1 tin chopped tomatos
a handful of green beans (aka haricots verts)
a handful of okra (optional)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Enough for two or three people

Method

Chop the chicken breasts, pepper, onion, garlic and chillis however you want to (not too finely chopped).

Fry the onion and garlic until slightly browned in a large frying pan or wok, then add the chicken, chilli and green pepper.

When the chicken is looking as if it’s nearly cooked through, chop the ends off the green beans and add to the pan. Cut the (optional) okra into smallish pieces and add this too.

I added okra because I had a load of it in the fridge which desperately needed using up – feel free to add any other vegetables you fancy (sweetcorn, mushrooms, aubergine or chickpeas all work well).

After a few minutes add the tin of chopped tomatos and the cayenne pepper. You may want to boil off some of the liquid from the tin of tomatos. Stir for a few minutes until the chicken is cooked and the tomatos are nice and warm!

Serve with any type of pasta you fancy and perhaps a bit of garlic bread too!

Welsh cakes – yummy. Not to be confused with scones! I suppose they’re a kind of mixture between a scone and pancake and they’re so, so easy to make.

Welsh cakes remind me of my favourite teacher from Primary school, Mrs Hill. I’m sure we did the odd bit of learning from time to time but the only thing I remember about her was constantly being in the classroom kitchen, making Welsh cakes. Oh to be six again…

A good Welsh cake will have a touch of mixed spice added to give it a good old Welsh kick! Mixed spice usually contains nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, caraway and cloves.

Ingredients

230g self-raising flour
125g butter (unsalted)
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
75g caster sugar
75g raisins and/or currants
1 egg

Makes around 15 Welsh cakes

Method

Combine the flour, sugar and spice in a mixing bowl and add the butter. Using your hands, mush the butter into the mixture. It’ll eventually end up as a crumbly mess and should be quite dry to the touch. Then mix in the currants.

Beat the egg and add it into the mixture. Again, using your hands, mush it all together until you get a doughy consistency.

Sprinkle some flour on a flat surface and use it to roll out your dough to less than 1cm in thickness. If like me you’re lacking a rolling pin, try wrapping cling film around a baseball bat or bottle of something – it works a treat!

Use a cutter (or the open end of an empty jam jar) to cut the dough into circle shapes.

Alternatively you could roll bits of dough into balls and use your hands to flatten them out.

Grease a non-stick frying pan with a bit of butter and warm it up to a medium heat. Cook each Welsh cake for around 3 or 4 minutes each side.

Serve warm with a sprinkle of sugar and a smidge of cream or butter.

The perfect snack for during tomorrow’s Welsh rugby game! Blasus iawn (very tasty)!

I remember visiting a friend of mine from an Indian family. It was about 9 o’clock in the morning and I was amazed to find her mum in the kitchen chopping onions, peeling vegetables and marinading chicken. I thought ‘wow, curry for breakfast, I’m glad I popped by!’

But no, she was preparing the evening meal. From then on, that’s what I’ve considered making a ‘proper’ curry to be; long hours of hard work and preparation – but boy is it worth it!

Don’t get me wrong, half the time I make curry it’s done in a rush within an hour but when I’m feeling inspired (and bored) I know it’s time to make an all-day curry!

Jalfrezi is one of my favourite curry dishes because it has this amazing flavour to it and it’s nice and spicy!

To make this version you’ll need some time, some big pans and a food processor.

Ingredients

The sauce:
1/2 a large onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 green chilli, chopped
a lump of chopped ginger – roughly half the size of your thumb
1 tin plum tomatoes
1/2 pint of water
1 tbsp ground corriander
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp turmeric

The meat & veg:
2 chicken breasts, diced up
1 red pepper, chopped
1/2 a large onion, sliced
2 red chillis (optional)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp garam masala (spice mix)
a handful of fresh, chopped coriander leaves

Makes enough for two hungry curry monsters.

Method:

First off, you’ll want to take the chopped chicken and coat it in the cumin, ground corriander and turmeric then leave it to marinade in the fridge for a few hours (or overnight).

To make the sauce, fry the roughly chopped onions with the garlic, ginger and green chilli in a large pan until they’re slightly browned. Add the water to the onion mixture and simmer this for around an hour. Then allow it to cool down.

While that’s simmering, put the plum tomatoes in a food processor and give it a good whizz – aim for a smooth consistency. Heat another large pan and gently fry the ground coriander, cumin and turmeric in a splash of oil for about a minute.

Then add the tomato ‘paste’ and simmer for around 30 minutes.

Give your cooled onion mixture a good whizz in the food processor and add it to the spiced tomato sauce. Give it a stir and simmer for 20 minutes.

You can make large batches of this sauce and freeze it for later use.

Fry the marinaded chicken in hot oil (chilli oil or olive oil will work) and stir continuously. After a few minutes, turn down the heat and add the other half of the chopped onion, the red pepper and chillis. Stir this until the onions and pepper soften (and the chicken is cooked, of course).

Then add the earlier prepared sauce to the fried chicken and simmer for around 10-20 minutes. Just before you dish it up, stir in the garam masala and chopped coriander leaves.

I serve my jalfrezi with basmati rice (add a tsp turmeric while it’s boiling to get a fabulous yellow colour) and a dollop of lime pickle – delicious!

I admit that this isn’t a particularly easy recipe but it will taste divine! I promise to add some more easier and quicker curries.

Chili con carne is definitely one of my favourite dishes. It can be made in so many different ways and you can mix in a variety of ingredients.

Apparently traditional chili recipes don’t include any beans and to serve it with rice is a travesty. Bugger the traditionalists, I say! Chili is so versatile that you can make it exactly what you want it to be.

This is my tried and tested (and yummy) version:

Ingredients

500g minced beef
1 finely chopped onion
1 chopped red pepper (or green, if you fancy a change)
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tin kidney beans
1/2 small tin of sweetcorn (optional)
200 ml beef stock (fresh if you’re lucky, cubes if you’re not)
2 tsp of ground cumin
2 tsp of cayenne pepper
1 tsp of ground coriander
1 red chilli pepper (optional, add as much or little chilli as you can handle)
a smidge of ground black pepper (and salt if you like)

Enough for four people, or two with plenty of leftovers!

Method

In a nice big pan, on a medium heat, brown the onions and add the chopped pepper. When the onion and pepper are softened add the garlic but be careful not to burn it or you’ll lose its beautiful taste!

Around a minute after adding the garlic, add your mince carefully. By carefully I mean that you should add it in small chunks, seperating the strands of meat as best you can – this will help prevent it from clumping together.

Once the meat is nicely browned stir in the cumin, cayenne pepper and corriandor. Fry for a few minutes and then add the chopped tomatos, then the chilli pepper. Allow the juice from the tinned tomatos go in the mixture too; this will help to make the sauce. Stir the tomatos into the mince then add the beef stock and black pepper (and salt if you want to) and stir.

Once you’ve got to this stage in the cooking, you can be as quick or slow as you like. Chili con carne likes to simmer. Leave it to simmer for as long as you can stand waiting! (I usually leave it 20 or 30 minutes but feel free to leave it to up to an hour if you want). You’ll want to get a relatively thick consistency so if your chili is a bit watery slowly bring it to the boil and wait for it to thicken up.

The wonderful aroma of cumin should be waltzing around your kitchen at this point. You’ll want to have a taste to see if you want to add anymore cumin or chilli (if you’ve had a chilli accident and find that it’s too hot, try adding sugar in small amounts, until you can cope with the heat – you weakling!).

As soon as you’re happy with the taste you can add the kidney beans and (optional) sweetcorn. When I’m using up ingredients from the back of the cupboard I sometimes add in chick peas.

Then it’s up to you to decide how you want to eat it! My favourite is with rice; it really fills you up. Or you could serve it in tortilla wraps with a salad. Of course, you could always have it on top of a baked potato and a sprinkle of grated cheese on top – yum!

“Whenever I meet someone who does not consider chili a favorite dish, then I’ve usually found someone who has never tasted good chili.”

Jane Butel, author of ‘Chili Madness’

Growing your own food is a fantastic way to save money. Not only is it relatively easy but there’s a great deal of satisfaction watching it grow and eventually being able to cook and eat your own produce.

My garden (I should really say ‘patio area’) is pathetic for growing vegetables so I’ve decided to grow my own herbs, rocket leaves and, of course, chilli peppers in window boxes.

A good chilli plant needs plenty of natural sunlight; not a common occurance in the UK but they somehow grew well over this year’s terrible Summer. Make sure the plant gets enough water but don’t drown it! Get a pot with good drainage; if plant roots are left to sit in large amounts of water they may eventually rot away (yellow leaves is a good sign of this).

Different varieties take different amounts of time to germinate, flower then fruit. As a general rule if you plant the seeds around March time you should have edible chilli peppers by August at the latest.

Read my simple guide to growing chillis for more info.