Daffodil Soup London

I may have said this before but I am not a lover of sweet desserts. This is probably a good thing in a pastry chef – I wholeheartedly agree with the tutor who warned us, during a chocolate demonstration, to “lick and be sick”. Surrounded by chocolate, cake mix, icing, cookie dough and all things sugary most days, I would most certainly be the size of a house and have serious blood-sugar issues by now. The fact that I am addicted to cheese is another issue altogether. I made these little tartlets for a client whose husband is a big fan of pears. Because it was a buffet-style function I served nibbles instead of a starter, and wanted a nibble-style dessert that would be easy to eat standing up. They turned out so well – the pastry was crisp with a hint of cinnamon coming through, the pear was tender and juicy and the frangipane filling added a not-too-sweet hit of nutty almond. It may have been that my energy levels were low at the end of the day, but to me they were exactly what a pudd...

I made these this morning out of dough left over from a catering job, for which I made cinnamon whorl Danish pastries  (sustenance for the adults attending a children's birthday party). Most people, even pastry chefs, will look at you funny when you admit to making your own breakfast pastries. And I don't mean the Pillsbury ones you buy in a cardboard tube, or construct from ready-rolled puff pastry (not the same thing at all).  This is the real deal: sweet yeasted dough, rolled and folded to incorporate the (don't look now) tons of butter, rested, rolled and folded and then left to rest yet again. I won't lie to you, it's not a quick short-order meal ... but if you're in the kitchen anyway (I usually am) doing other things, then you won't notice the workload and the result is definitely worth the effort. It's really not difficult, or labour-intensive. With sweet yeasted pastry dough the options are endless: basic straightforward croissants or the posher...

A little jar of this home-made condiment is now a staple in our household - it's quick and easy to make and rewards with flavours that are out of all proportion to the effort and cost involved. I add a splash to soups and sauces - especially salad dressing -  or to mayonnaise for a chicken sandwich filling, or use as a condiment or dipping sauce for spring rolls etc. Seriously, you will never again be able to settle for a bottle of over-sweet gloopy orange goo from the supermarket shelf. I buy galangal, lemongrass and frozen lime leaves in Chinatown but any Asian shop should have them and you can freeze what you don't use, for next time. It is important to get the ginger, galangal and lemongrass pulped as finely as possible, because they can be quite fibrous and stalky. You can double, triple or quadruple the recipe - it makes a great gift if you pretty up the jar with a nice label. Ingredients Sugar 300g Water  75g Coriander  (leaves and stalks)  50g Ga...

SOMETIMES, the planets align to create a perfect day. You will not know when this is going to happen. All the signs were really quite bad. A friend and I had booked a day-trip to Paris (only 2.5 hours away on the high-speed Eurostar shuttle) at the bargain-basement fare of £69 each, return. There are a couple of drawbacks to this fare: you need to book quite a long time in advance, and you need to travel early. This can mean a very long day on the move, so you need to plan carefully, but it is quite doable - I set myself the challenge at least once a year. My advice is to go midweek, on the cusp of the seasons, avoiding peak holiday periods. And don't be too ambitious. Prioritise; you can't do everything. The first challenge was lunch. My friend is very vegetarian (no exceptions), and Paris fine dining is not kind to vegetarians. In the main it is either/or, not both in the same establishment. French chefs may love vegetables, but a meal is not a meal without meat, so a decent ...

I cook and bake for a living and in recent years, two American imports have dominated the cake and coffee scene. Cupcakes, getting ever larger and more diverse, and brownies, both of which my clients never seem to tire of. I had a bright idea the other day, still to be tested, to combine the two and make a brownie cupcake ... it's probably already been done, but I should still give it a go. Now you can do a lot with a cupcake ... flavourings, icings and, most obviously, decoration. I have even seen a cupcake inside a cupcake, complete with icing ... if you want to investigate some of the myriad incarnations have a look at the Cupcakes take the Cake blog. All of life is there. But it is very hard to pretty up a brownie. That's what it is ... brown. And while most people would be happy with a straightforward, up and down chocolate brownie, there are those that would tinker with it. I would never put icing on a brownie - it's OTT for something so rich, so sweet, so comple...

This is a winter warmer that gets right to the heart of slow cooking. I am introducing you to the wonders of the cartouche - essentially a layer of wet, scrunched up grease-proof paper that sits on the surface of a slow simmering stew, to keep any evaporating liquid circulating and stop the meat or surface from developing a hard, dry crust. The tagine principle, in effect. Cut a circle of GPP or baking parchment to a size just larger than the pot, scrunch it up into a ball and run it under the cold tap. I was delighted to find Galloway beef at a farm shop in the Lake District and took it as a apposite sign. Brisket is a cheaper cut of meat that is perfect for slow cooking, and it was whisked back to London and straight in to the pot. Ingredients, to serve 4 people 900g beef brisket 1 tbsp sunflower / vegetable oil 1 large onion, sliced 1 bulb fennel, sliced 2 sticks celery, sliced 2 carrots, peeled and sliced or diced 2tbsp plain flour 1 bay leaf handful of fresh chopped rosem...

It's really an understatement to say that I love hot, spicy food. Having grown up on a well-cooked and tasty but bland diet of meat and potatoes - the family table staying true to my father's Scottish roots - I didn't discover spice until I left home but have more than made up for it since. Along the way, from mild kormas and dhals to flaming hell-fire curries, I have learnt to appreciate the nuances that spice and a bit of heat can add to food. A lot of people are scared of "hot" food - when hearing that it's curry for supper a typical guest response is "I hope it's not too hot". When cooking for clients I always err on the side of caution, keeping the chilli quotient down (but offering extra chopped or dried chilli at the table for personal adjustment). An irascible (but lovable) member at the private club where I used to cook always complained that spicy food made her ears hurt, and she would make her displeasure loudly known ahead of the m...