Recipes

Alexina Anatole · Sweet

This requires a few hours to set and dry out (the more it dries out, the better it gets). Molasses is my preference, but you could also use treacle here. Fudge is the pure embodiment of sugar, and not for the faint of heart. I loved it as a kid and my obsession is still going strong. This fudge is intense, with the molasses lending a slightly bitter-umami taste (not dissimilar to coffee) that ups the ante from a flavour perspective but avoids a sickly-sweet aftertaste. Fudge can be smooth, creamy and slightly chewy (Cornish clotted cream fudge), or sandy and crumbly (Scottish tablet). I’m personally with the Scots on this one, and this recipe reflects that.

Jeremy Pang · Jeremy Pang's Chinese Kitchen

I’ve been trying, testing and tweaking this recipe since my university days – endless hours of deep-frying bits of squid of all shapes and sizes in different batters. I’ve tried making it with egg, without egg, with different flours, in different oils, and yet I ALWAYS come back to the simplest option: no egg, just plenty of seasoned cornflour or potato starch and a vat of high-heating oil. The oil must be nice and clean to ensure you get a good golden brown finish, which is especially important for something as waxy and delicate as squid.

Jeremy Lee · Cooking

This ancient dish makes marvellous use of abundant seasonal produce. The ingredients listed will make an epic, splendid salad, so very much worth a great effort. Fear not adding, subtracting, swapping and tailoring the salad with other salads and leaves, herbs and vegetables along the way. Prior to assembly, have ready all the prepared ingredients, each in their own bowl.

Sally Clarke · First Put On Your Apron

This is such a rich and filling dish, especially if a deeply flavoured meat stock has been used, that very little is required either before or after it. Perhaps a lovely selection of raw vegetable crudités beforehand or a crisp bitter leaf salad with or after would be all that is needed. Either way, a bottle of full-bodied red wine is the perfect accompaniment.

Sabrina Ghayour · Simply

A classic tiramisu is one dessert I can rarely resist, but this recipe offers stiff competition — white chocolate and raspberries are made for each other, and the vibrant green pistachios add a nutty flourish that makes this dish the absolutely perfect way to round off a meal.

Sabrina Ghayour · Persiana: Recipes From The Middle East & Beyond

No matter what form of squid I have eaten - whether in curries, chargrilled, stuffed, baked or deep-fried - I adore the stuff. It is still relatively cheap to buy, especially when frozen, which is perfectly fine. I like to use the smaller squid tubes rather than the giant ones, which I find comparatively tough. In this dish, the squid is crunchy and delicious. The same cooking method and coating also works well with tiger prawns.

Sabrina Ghayour · Sirocco: Fabulous Flavours from the East

Call me biased but I love feta. I always say, ‘Feta makes everything better’ – I’m aware that rhyming doesn’t help my cool factor, but feta is cheap, easy to find, incredibly versatile… need I say more? This recipe is fun and couldn’t be simpler. The preserved lemon jam comes together in minutes and works incredibly well with the deep-fried salty feta. I kid you not – this delicious dish impresses everyone and is perfect for sharing.

Ryan Riley · Life Kitchen: Recipes to Revive the Joy of Taste and Flavour

Beetroot and goat's cheese is a well-known pairing (and for good reason), but it's actually the maple syrup (a Life Kitchen key ingredient), chilli and chive dressing that makes these croquettes special. You'll need a goat's cheese with a soft rind and chalky centre for the best results with this recipe. TASTE AND FLAVOUR FACT: Maple syrup provides sweetness but also richness and depth of flavour. This is because maple syrup contains significant levels of sotolon, a powerful aroma molecule that at higher concentrations has the scent of fenugreek and curry.

Russell Norman · Polpo

For this recipe it is easy to convince yourself you are being virtuous. The zucchino is, after all, a vegetable. (Yes, I know it is actually a fruit, but let's not split hairs, eh?) It counts as one of your five-a-day, right? Well, I'm not so sure that the batter and deep-frying would convince a nutritionist but, good golly, these are tasty. Several of our customers come back to the restaurant specifically for this dish, happily admitting that they are addicted. Your habit starts here.

Russell Alford and Patrick Hanlon · Hot Fat

You may think we’ve gone down a weird path with this one, but hear us out! Cookbooks can have this compulsion to instruct you to make everything from scratch, but sometimes convenience needs to be encouraged to get the job done. So be kind to yourself and take the easy route here. Pop into the supermarket and get your paws on the best ready-made lasagne you can find, then you’re going to create culinary magic by portioning it up and deep-frying it. Think mac ’n’ cheese bites, but better. Think oozy, creamy, rich lasagne but hand-held and crunchy. The ideal little bar snack, indulgent treat or crowd-pleasing canapé, we bet you never thought lasagne could be this lavish!

Andi Oliver · The Pepperpot Diaries

An ice-cold, 10-year-aged English Harbour Antiguan rum with ginger ale over ice. This is the way I was introduced to rum, and it’s still my favourite way to drink it. This recipe is my go-to rum drink in a cooking pot. The sugars from the ginger ale and the rum work on the ribs during the slow-cook, until they are melting and unctuous.

Rukmini Iyer · The Green Roasting Tin

This is such a pretty spring dish, perfect for a light dinner or weekend lunch with friends - and a good way to use up asparagus if you've overbought in season. Use blanched almonds if you haven't got hazelnuts - you need the crunch to finish off the dish. Note: This dish, like most, lives or dies by the seasoning you add at the end - taste and adjust the lemon and salt to your taste until it's just perfect.

Ruby Tandoh

Tahini, a paste made from sesame seeds, has a powerful flavour - reminiscent of peanut butter but far more bitter. Yet, lightened with lemon zest and well sweetened, it mellows to a gentler nuttiness. The result is a delicate biscuit, as tender as shortbread but without the heaviness. You'll find tahini in the vaguely named 'World Foods' section of most supermarkets, and in many North African, Turkish and Middle Eastern grocery stores.

Dr Clare Shaw · The Royal Marsden Cancer Cookbook

Both these recipes have deliberately been made quite soothing, so should hopefully be useful if you are dealing with a sore mouth. If you don't have ice lolly moulds, you can use small paper cups and spear them with lollipop stick. You can also freeze them in small ice-cube trays or bags to eat smaller quantities more regularly.

Royal College of Art · The Artists' Cookbook

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Ross Dobson · Australia: The Cookbook

I’m not a gambling man, but if I were, I would bet that if you randomly chose a pub in Australia, you would find chicken parmi (parmigiana) — also called ‘chicken parma’ — on the menu.

Roopa Gulati · India: The World Vegetarian

This variation on a classic dish from Rajasthan is made with relatively few ingredients by Indian standards. Pounded chillies are blended with yoghurt and cooked with caramelised onions and shedloads of garlic in ghee. Whole black cardamom is the lead spice here and its naturally smoky flavour is a good match for the robustly flavoured masala and softened potatoes. This is not a dish for the faint-hearted. I've opted for Kashmiri chillies (milder than the traditional mathania used in abundance throughout Rajasthan), which also bring a lovely reddish hue to the finished dish. Don't be too finicky about removing every seed - a couple of stray ones are good for emboldening the masala. Serve these potatoes with a crisp salad, cooling yoghurt and chapatis.

Romy Gill · On The Himalayan Trail

When I was travelling in Kashmir, many restaurants, hotels and home cooks were using paneer and cooking it in ways I wasn’t used to. This particular recipe was inspired by my friends Amit and Prateek’s parents, whom I met when they were visiting Kashmir. I had never eaten paneer this way before. This beautiful, tasty bowl of yellow sunshine is so good that you will be going back for seconds. A simple yet delectable dish.

Romy Gill · Zaika

Momos were a huge part of my life growing up in Bengal, as they were affordable and tasty. I still love making them today, and I eat them until I can’t eat any more!

Rob Allison · Homemade Takeaways

A classic biriyani is a multi-layered rice and meat dish. As delicious as it is, it is also laborious to make. Consider this as more of a single-storey, bungalow biriyani. The recipe may look complicated but once the lamb is in the oven it really is very easy and the resulting dish is resplendent in both taste and appearance – a worthy centrepiece to any table. Try this as an alternative to your Sunday lunch, served with naan bread and watch as children leave their toys and teenagers forget their phones for a brief, but delicious few moments.

Mat Lindsay · Ester

My first taste of a mango was of a warm, overripe and, I’m now guessing, slightly fermented specimen straight from the tree in the middle of a hot Australian summer. It was an experience I was not keen to repeat. So it came as a pleasant surprise to me that cooked is something well worth considering. When the mango is just cooked and has still not quite returned to room temperature, the heavily caramelised fruit has the texture of a condensed crème brûlée.

Gennaro Contaldo · Gennaro's Hidden Italy

I discovered this example of Ancient Roman cuisine through the Historical Italian Cooking Blog, which quoted it from the Apicius, a collection of Roman recipes, which may date back to the 5th century. The original recipe uses a whole suckling pig and the herbs lovage and rue in the sauce. However, I have adapted this, preferring fennel seeds and rocket in place of rue, a very bitter herb no longer recommended as edible. In Ancient Rome, garum (a fermented fish sauce) was widely used as a condiment for this feast. The modern-day equivalent, colatura di alici, is made from fresh anchovies. It has quite a pungent flavour so should be used sparingly, but combined with runny honey, herbs and spices, it really works.

Paola Bacchia · At Nonna's Table

I introduced Mamma to the idea of cooking risotto directly in passata when she was living alone after my father had passed. She was open to new tricks in the kitchen well into her 80s and loved the simplicity of it. You can leave out the sausages in this dish to turn it into a simple vegetarian tomato risotto.

Rick Rodgers and Heather Maclean · The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Sixties Cookbook

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