Recipes

Jake Cohen · Jew-Ish: A Cookbook: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch

I’d love to take credit for thinking of this idea, but I didn’t. Julie Resnick, cofounder of Feedfeed, saw a matzo icebox cake I posted on my Instagram a few years ago and thought to do a tiramisu-inspired version for Pesach. Pure genius! Think about it: matzo is just as dry as ladyfingers, so why not make one swap and be set with your Passover dessert? While her kids call her creation matzomasu, I’ve stepped in with my own punny variation — it’s known in my house as tiramatzu. In my recipe, a creamy mixture of zabaglione and whipped cream is layered between coffee-soaked sheets of matzo for probably the most decadent dessert in this entire book. If you’ve never made zabaglione (known as sabayon in French) before, it’s the king of custards. Though it’s traditionally made with sweet wine, I sub in coffee liqueur and whisk it with egg yolks and sugar over a double boiler until the mixture has thickened and tripled in volume. To make the zabaglione even richer, I fold in whipped cream an

Jacob Kenedy · Gelupo Gelato

Muscovado sugar is an unrefined sugar with a strong molasses taste. This recipe is essentially a fior di latte made with brown sugar, but its character is reversed – comforting, complex and autumnal. It makes for a great accompaniment to cakes and roast fruits.

Jack Monroe · A Girl Called Jack

This is my favourite curry, my go-to, easy but perfect comfort food. I used to make it with turkey - a large drumstick would serve four people easily (pre-roast the drumstick and just peel the meat off the bone) - but now I use chickpeas instead so it's a deliciously wholesomely vegan dish. I soak my chickpeas overnight, or first thing in the morning for that evening. You can use tinned ones to speed things up, but they are usually more expensive. Serve this gorgeous fruity curry with simple plain boiled rice. These quantities make dinner for 2 people with enough leftovers for lunch.

Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich · Honey & Co: Food from the Middle East

This makes about 25 small fritters, which is enough for 6-8 people as a generous mezze, or for 4 as a vegetarian main course (as we often serve them in the restaurant) with some green salad and a dipping sauce. It seems silly to halve the recipe, as any leftover fritters can be stored in the fridge overnight and will be great the next day in a lunchbox or a sandwich. You can prepare the fritters in advance and warm them up in a medium-hot oven for 5 minutes before serving, but they are also great at room temperature.

Irina Georgescu · Carpathia: Food from the Heart of Romania

To me, this dessert has the resonance of the elegant world of our royal family. Queen Marie of Romania was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and she was born in Kent, England. One of their family homes outside Bucharest was the marvellous Peles Castle, built in a flamboyant Renaissance-revival style. I can imagine this decadent dessert being served there after a long dinner due to its light yet velvety texture, just enough to satisfy a sweet tooth. If you don't want to make your own pastry, you can use 2 x 320g (11½oz) ready-rolled puff pastry sheets.

Edd Kimber · Small Batch Bakes

If I were to choose a death row dessert, a classic and perfectly made tarte tatin would definitely be on my shortlist, and would quite possibly be my final choice. The combination of crisp pastry and buttery caramelized apples could only be improved by adding a scoop of vanilla ice cream. These individual tarts would be a wonderful end to a date night dinner, especially when you realize they’re not too difficult to make. To keep things simple, I like to use shop-bought puff pastry.

Aoife McElwain

Putting a Tunnock’s Tea Cake into my hot chocolate is one of my proudest creative achievements. Am I a hero? I really can’t say … but yes. Yes, I am.

Alice Zaslavsky · Salad For Days

I love roasting grapes: the flavour becomes magically meaty and broody, which makes them a perfect candidate for a trans-seasonal salad. You can serve this up in autumn with the grapes cooled, or keep them warm for winter. The gorgonzola pops against the acidity of the sticky sherry vinegar, which is reminiscent of a sticky wine you’d drink with a cheese board. If you’re in the market for sherry vinegar, I like Jerez, or if you can find a PX (Pedro Ximénez) vinegar, charge at it like a bull at a red rag! Roasting the radicchio, and including a creamy, funky cheese plus acidic dressing, helps to mitigate its bitterness.

Amy Newsome · Honey

Honey on toast is right at any time of day or night. It doesn’t need infusing and freezing into this delicious, comforting ice cream to pass at 10pm on a Thursday when you’re having a difficult week, but sometimes only ice cream will cheer you up. Make this for those times. I once had (untoasted) brown bread ice cream, half chewy with flecks of blitzed, malty wholemeal. It tasted a little like if you froze a bowl of soggy Weetabix, only creamier, and was kind of incredible, but that’s not the sort of bread to bring much pleasure at any time of day. For this ice cream, I suggest a good crusty slice or end of white or wholegrain bread to get all the toasty caramelised flavour from its Maillard-ed outer. If you want to use sourdough, go for a mild one. Bread ice cream is indeed ‘a thing’, from at least the 17th century in England and Ireland, then popping up in Jane Grigson’s English Food as an ice cream that works without churning, even with the traditional custard base. Fergus Henders

Poppy O'Toole · The Actually Delicious Air Fryer Cookbook

This is a throwback to one of the first dishes I made in my first ever kitchen job. Shoutout to the Scotch eggs of The Queen’s Head Inn, Bromsgrove, that I’d make time and time again back in 2011. I wish we’d had an air fryer to speed up the process for equally delicious results.

Hetty McKinnon · To Asia With Love

Fried rice was one of my mother’s signature breakfast dishes when I was growing up. Comforting and filling, it was the perfect breakfast to get me through dreary school mornings. My mum made a range of simple fried rice dishes, always with eggs, often with peas and sometimes using frozen “mixed vegetables” (you know, the packet with carrots, corn and peas). When I got older, she introduced me to ginger fried rice and this zesty version quickly became my favorite. Fried rice for breakfast is a great reason to have leftover rice in the fridge—freshly cooked rice works too, but make sure you cool it for an hour or so; otherwise the rice will get clumpy when fried. I love the toothsome, chewy quality of brown rice, but use whatever rice you have on hand.

Sabrina Ghayour · Flavour

Don’t let the recipe title put you off because until you make them, you won’t know what I mean. These lovely little halloumi and herb pastries inflate when you fry them, making them feather-light, crisp and delicious. They are best enjoyed freshly made, so fry them just before you intend to eat them.

Melissa Thompson · Motherland

If you like custard tarts, you will love this. I first had the idea for it a few years ago, while drinking some Guinness punch and wondering if it would translate into dessert form. The answer was a resounding yes. The flavours work really well in a tart and you can adjust the intensity of the Guinness flavour by using slightly less or more. And if you don’t drink alcohol you can use 0% Guinness: it works, I’ve tried. Stout is a really popular drink in Jamaica, with Guinness and Dragon Stout cornering the market. Guinness followed the British Empire — it is also huge in Nigeria — and the company first exported a West Indian porter from Dublin to the island in 1801, with the first export of proper Guinness going out in 1830. Its long-standing history on the island is immortalised in Guinness Punch and this tart takes on those flavours beautifully. The slight bitterness of stout is softened by sweetness here, while the spices in the custard are really reminiscent of the stout itself. Th

Debora Robertson · Notes From A Small Kitchen Island

These are so delicious with drinks. Do not deprive yourself.

Graham Kerr · The Galloping Gourmet: The Graham Kerr Cookbook

I have found from experience that an old heavy-based frying pan makes the best pie dish — that is, for a top-crust pie like this one. The handle has to be taken off but this doesn't prove too difficult once you make the decision, and the end results are worth the trouble. (Parramatta Chicken Pie shown coming out of the oven in the photo)

Alison Roman · Something from Nothing

This is the type of soup that, at first glance, might seem a little . . . unexciting. But what you’re likely underestimating is the power of mushrooms (naturally high in umami, a fever dream of mixed textures, visually dazzling in all their shapes and sizes), which are doing most if not all of the heavy lifting here. Technically this recipe can be done with all button or chestnut (cremini) mushrooms, but I can’t say it will look or taste as good as it does with a mix of the more exotic types, such as oyster, maitake or chanterelle. The simplicity of this soup means you do have to be vigilant about seasoning (especially if you’re so bravely using water instead of stock), salting, peppering and adjusting with fish sauce as you go. That said, I really enjoy the monk-like restraint of the mushroom-garlic-water magic that occurs (with a fish sauce assist, of course), creating a broth that is delicate and earthy, evoking a very good, robust mushroom tea.

Zena Kamgaing · Dinner Time

Spicy, sticky, crunchy, fresh — these lettuce wraps are everything I want in a quick dinner. The pork gets beautifully caramelised, ready to bundle into little gem leaves with lots of lime and fresh herbs. It’s bold, bright and very delicious. If you’re especially hungry, serve the wraps with a side of sushi rice. Feel free to switch up the protein — beef, lamb and chicken mince and grated extra-firm tofu all take on the glaze beautifully.

Thomas Straker · Food You Want To Eat

Don’t burn the sage: burn the butter, add the sage and the aromas will create a wonderful sense of calm in your home.

Becky Excell · German Baking

Two of the most common questions I get asked about my Christmas pudding recipe (in my second book) are: how do I make multiple smaller Christmas puddings in a 1-pint tin? And how long do I steam them for? In case you didn’t know, the original recipe was for one big Christmas pudding, so here I give timings and instructions to make 3 smaller puddings instead. From Gluten Free Christmas by Becky Excell (Quadrille, £22). Photography: Hannah Rose Hughes.

Becky Excell · German Baking

Nothing says Christmas like a wreath of garlic bread dough balls that are crisp on the outside, cheesy, chewy and bready in the middle, dipped in hot cheese with sweet cranberry sauce. This is the festive, tear-and-share crowd-pleaser that us gluten-free folks always miss out on. From Gluten Free Christmas by Becky Excell (Quadrille, £22). Photography: Hannah Rose Hughes.

Tony Tan · Tony Tan's Asian Cooking Class

This is my version of a famous Yunnan dish often called ‘ants climbing a tree’ noodles. It is made with minced meat, often pork, but whatever mince you use it’s the way the meat clings to the noodles as you lift them that gives it the rather poetic name. I’m using mung bean noodles (also called cellophane or bean thread noodles) for this recipe, but any kind of noodle is fine, such as thin rice or wheat noodles. You just need to adjust the timing for the noodles to cook through.

Gizzi Erskine · Restore

Boulangere is a gratin of potatoes made by cooking potatoes in the juice (stock) and fat of lamb - the unsung hero of the potato dauphinois. Playing around with root vegetables in a gratin is a great way to really understand them. I've replaced the lamb stock and fat with a chicken or vegetable stock pumped up with miso and oat cream, that you can buy or make yourself. The flavour of the oat is what I want here, not the creaminess, and oat and parsnip are dreamy together. This dish is a good way to show how we often overlook the flavours of the modern plant-based movement. This gratin is superb as a main dish for a supper or served as a side dish, and if you make it with vegetable stock, your vegan friends will thank you.

Gizzi Erskine · Slow: Food Worth Taking Time Over

The original incarnation of this stew would have used mutton in place of lamb, so if you can find it, please don't hesitate to use that instead. To get the best out of mutton, you have to cook it really slowly, so this is the perfect recipe for it, but lamb neck also works well, and the stew benefits from the extra fat you find in younger lamb. The first recipes for hotpot can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century, when few people would have had their own oven, so it's likely that this was cooked in clay pots in the communal bread oven as it cooled. Despite this dish's rustic origins, this recipe takes the cheaper cuts of lamb and transforms them into something really rather beautiful.

Ponpailin 'Noi' Kaewduangdee · A Child of the Rice Fields

Who says oil and water don’t mix? All noodle soups benefit from a generous spoonful of Gio Mak Phet, Chilli, shallot and garlic oil. When a dollop of this fiery chilli oil hits the broth, a beautiful orange slick spreads across the surface with the promise of lip-tingling heat. It’s also a great flavour enhancer, adding not only spice but a smoky sweetness from the fried shallots and garlic. And there’s no need to reserve it for your noodle soups. It’s a good way to add an extra kick to Naem Khao or Naem Pa salads.