Recipes

Richard Snapes, Grant Harrington & Eve Hemingway · Bread & Butter: History, Culture, Recipes

I first tried sourdough treacle tart at Silo in Brighton, I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before – a classic recipe, staying true to the age-old ethic of using up old bread, but doing it in a more delicious way. It goes without saying that this is a very sweet dessert. I’ve offset it here with a lot of lemon, and the tang of the sourdough also goes some way to balancing it, but ultimately this is for those with a really sweet tooth.

Richard Sax · Classic Home Desserts

This recipe has been adapted slightly from the snowy white coconut cake that’s long been served at Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Sprinkling the baked cake layers with coconut milk keeps them moist and adds another coconut dimension.

Sabrina Ghayour · Bazaar: Vibrant Vegetarian Recipes

To say that aash is merely a soup would be underselling it – this hearty staple of Persian cuisine is much more than that. Always herb-based, there are many varieties: some with meat, some without, some with barley, rice, tomato or pomegranate molasses… all equally delicious. Aash is the best comfort food on a cold day, and virtuous enough to be the perfect meal all year round. This is my Western version, but it is still every bit as delicious.

Trine Hahnemann · Simply Scandinavian

In Scandinavia, the first rhubarb stalks are a sign of spring; therefore, anything made with rhubarb makes people happy. It is a sign of the new season, a change in the light and the temperature, and the knowledge that fresh produce will shortly emerge from the land.

Michelle Evans-Fecci · The Seasonal Baker: Baking for all Seasons

If you’re like me and spent your pocket money buying rhubarb and custard sweets as a child, these puff pockets with the classic flavour will not disappoint!

Eleanor Ford · A Whisper of Cardamom

These are very quick to make using ready-made puff pastry. Shape the parcels in any way you want — fold squares into triangles, circles into half-moons, or go as I have with rectangles that fold into fat little pillows. Their stuffing is gently sweet, tart and creamy with a waft of green cardamom. Eat these parcels as a pastry with coffee or serve with lemony whipped cream to make into a dessert.

Donna Hay · One Pan Perfect

With its crisp cake-like crust and super-soft centre, this cake truly is the sweetest of both worlds. Serve it for dessert or afternoon tea.

Ravinder Bhogal · Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen

When the temperature nose dives and the world is looking grey, few things provide more comfort than shepherd's pie. Our version at Jikoni is made with scrag end of lamb - that's the neck - rather than mince. The long, slow cooking this cut requires results in a deep, hearty flavour and intensely soft meat. A whack of spcies will warm you right through to your shivering bones - and, of course, there is still the thick insulating layer of buttery mashed potatoes. This is foodie anti-freeze!

Bee Wilson · The Secret Of Cooking

No one would be disappointed with a big bowl of raspberries or strawberries, a jug of cream and a bowl of sugar. But this meringue is spectacular and very easy — a pavlova flavoured with toasted hazelnuts and filled with cream rippled with raspberries. I got the idea from Jeremy Lee, the chef proprietor of Quo Vadis restaurant, who makes a similar meringue but with almonds and whom I am not alone in considering the king of puddings. The addition of the nuts makes the meringue twice as nice, in my view, but obviously if you are serving to anyone who can't eat nuts, you can just leave them out and it's still a thing of splendour. The meringue itself can be made ahead of time (even 1-2 days ahead), and then all you have to do is whip the cream and assemble it with the fruit.

Rachel Saunders · The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook

I call this jam "children's" because of its simple, unembellished strawberry flavor; with neither herbs, flowers, extracts nor alcohol, this is the classic straight strawberry jam we all know and love, in an especially bright-tasting version. As with all strawberry jams, the key is to use an ample amount of lemon juice to balance and sharpen the natural sweetness of the berries.

Rachel Roddy · An A-Z of Pasta

If you are familiar with vitello tonnato, veal with a tuna, egg and caper sauce, then that will give you some idea of this tuna sauce enriched with egg yolks which clings to the shells, and also shines. The recipe is an adaptation of one by Lisa Biondi, a prolific recipe writer and author of numerous stylish and trend-setting books in the 60s and 70s, who turned out to be the entirely fictional creation of a publishing house.

Rachel Ama · Vegan Eats

My mum spent many summers in Sierra Leone, where her dad comes from, and this peanut stew was one of her favourite dishes. She usually had it with chicken, but when I made this plant-based version for her to try, she had the biggest smile on her face. This recipe is a definite winner in our house, perfect for when you want a really hearty and comforting dinner with a nice touch of spice to set your taste buds tingling. My favourite way to eat this is with plantains and coleslaw or a light fresh salad. Scotch bonnet chillies can be really hot depending on where they're from and how ripe they are. For a more gentle heat, you can place half a Scotch bonnet - deseeded but not cut up - into the stew to cook, then simply remove it before serving. This way the chilli flavour can infuse the stew but without adding too much heat. This is a great option if you are new to this quite fiery chilli pepper.

William Lander, Daniel Morgenthau and Shaun Searley · The Quality Chop House

Our confit potatoes have become rather legendary. They are the only dish we haven’t once taken off the menu since their happy conception in spring 2013. We’d just opened the restaurant and needed to find something to serve with the chops. Shaun was adamant that QCH didn’t need chips — next thing you know we’d have squeezy ketchup on the tables — but we obviously needed something indulgent, and probably potato-based. We started making layered potatoes and after much trial and error and refrying leftovers, Shaun landed on these crispy golden nuggets. What with the slicing, layering and overnight chilling, these are something of a labour of love — but they’re worth it. Do use Maris Pipers: they have the perfect sugar-starch-water content to prevent collapse while cooking. The mustard dressing may look fairly prosaic but it's completely crucial in our kitchen. No confit potato leaves the pass until it has been dressed in this, so if you want yours to be the real deal you will need this d

Alissa Timoshkina · Kapusta

This delightfully simple dish is a staple in the cuisines of the Volga Tatars as well as of the Chuvash people, a fellow Turkic ethnic group residing in the Eastern European part of Russia. These flatbreads would be the identical twins of the Turkish gözleme were it not for the filling. They are traditionally filled with rice or millet porridge, but mashed potatoes are sometimes used instead. This recipe was kindly given to me by Firuza Yusupova, a pastry chef of a Tatar-Jewish origin, whose family story spans the area between Bashkortostan and Samarkand, and is written through recipes and food memories passed down from one generation to the next, preserving and celebrating their Tatar heritage.

Alice Zaslavsky · The Joy of Better Cooking

My babushka Raya and I didn’t always see eye to eye. She’d say, ‘Your room should be like a candy’, when it more resembled a wasteland of discarded wrappers, but one thing we both loved was thrifting. In my teens, I’d walk with her to the op-shops down the road, where they’d know her by name, but in my twenties, I’d treat her to a drive down the highway to the biggest op-shop within a 100 km radius: Savers Frankston. Two storeys of second-hand shmatters that we would both enthusiastically trawl for mohair cardigans and plaid skirts. We’d cap off the trip by visiting the teeny Turkish cafe next door, for the jewel in the weekly crown: a tub of mujadara. Sweet with caramelised onion, with chewy lentils and fluffy rice, this was another thing we could both agree on. She’s no longer with us, but those cardigans and skirts still hang in her room, which remains tidy like a candy. My housekeeping skills never improved, by the way…but I make a mean mujadara.

Julia Busuttil Nishimura · Good Cooking Every Day

If you see beautiful heirloom varieties of pumpkin in autumn, this is the recipe for them, particularly the Musquee de Provence variety. Its flesh is dense and a deep orange with a sweet flavour, almost with a scent of nutmeg. The result is a soup that is incredibly orange in colour and beautifully perfumed. While roasting the pumpkin is an extra step, I do think it is worth it. I don’t like to blitz the soup, but rather leave the pumpkin to cook down in the stock, which gives a rough yet pleasing consistency. Topped with crispy sage leaves, mascarpone and Parmigiano Reggiano, this soup is heavenly and a true celebration of the season.

Poppy O'Toole · The Potato Book

If my research is right, poutine means ‘hot mess’... I’ve never related to a potato dish more. I am the poutine of the cheffing world. I love it. You’ve got golden chips (I’m using my oven chips, but feel free to use classic fried chips) topped with squeaky cheese curds and doused in thick, velvety brown gravy. Basically, it’s an upgrade on that classic post-night-out order from your local takeaway. My kinda meal. In 2023, I was lucky enough to be in Montreal, Canada, where this dish comes from. Authentic poutine is incredible. I’ve found just one place in the UK where you can buy cheese curds, and that’s Borough Market, in London. If you’re there, get me some, will ya?

Jane Lovett

This is one of my favourite ways of using up leftover cooked ham, or the end-y bits of a large ham. Potted ham should be highly seasoned, otherwise there is no point to it, so keep tasting and adjusting the spices until you have a good savoury balance. It is also delicious pepped up with a teaspoon of (drained) green peppercorns stirred through the ham mixture. It’s very good as a starter, for lunch, or as a filling for sandwiches, and it’s excellent as a canapé (or snack!) served on small croûtes or in mini croustades. Made in a pretty Kilner-style jar, it makes a lovely present, too.

Regula Ysewijn · Dark Rye and Honey Cake

This sugar and custard tart has an excellent velvet-like mouthfeel with the sandy sugar topping as a contrast. One of our contestants on Bake Off in Flanders was from the Flemish Limburg region, where vlaai are most popular today. Four years later I found myself by chance in the bakery where she buys her favourite vlaai and I talked to the baker. After I tasted it, it is now a firm favourite in our house too. The potsuiker in the name translates to ‘bowl of sugar’, which is rather interesting as potsuyckere was used as the name for sugar scraped from solid sugar loaves (cones) in 15th-century cookery texts. In Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen, the first printed cookery book in Dutch, I found saenvladen, a flan-like custard tart (without a crust) sweetened with potsuyckere. The recipe right before it in the same book is gouwieren, a cheese and egg bake — it’s unclear if it has a crust or not — topped with egg yolks and sugar. After it is baked, potsuyckere is added on top. Maybe a rea

Clare de Boer, Jess Shadbolt and Annie Shi · The King Cookbook

A potato salad for all your grilled beef, fish, or bird needs.

Ursula Ferrigno · Cucina Del Veneto

This is an old favourite of mine. It is so appropriate for the Veneto, where the Gorgonzola is a gift, that it had to be included here.

Suzie Lee · Simply Chinese Feasts

This recipe is based on a very traditional pork trotter, ginger and vinegar dish, which was made for confinement mothers because it was believed to provide nourishment and replenish energy. However, it required a lot of ingredients. So, I decided to showcase this pork belly and black vinegar recipe in a nod to the confinement dish. The pork belly is boiled first, then plunged into cold water and cooked again. This gives the pork a wonderful texture, reminiscent of the pork trotter dish. The flavours of the sweet and sour are there, but an extra layer of flavour is added by the garlic.

Lara Lee · Coconut & Sambal

I first tasted the Chinese-influenced dish of kwetiau in the city of Medan, North Sumatra, at the restaurant of Ibu Huey, a lady whose name means 'fire' in Chinese, and one which seems apt when watching the flames lick up the edge of her carbon-steel wok as she stir-fries. Standing in front of her restaurant in a leopard-print blouse and knickerbockers, she flash-fries to order, serving up steaming plates of flat rice noodles with slices of marinated pork, prawns and scrambled duck egg. A signature dish of Medan, this is one of my all-time favourite stir-fries, a dish I return to again and again.

Poppy O'Toole · Poppy Cooks

So classic, but so good! I’ve found that gnocchi are something you might order in a restaurant, but not necessarily make at home. There’s something about making pasta that seems super-scary... but making gnocchi is so easy! Think of it as kinda one step beyond making mashed potato. Even successfully pronouncing the word gnocchi makes you feel sophisticated. It’s like ‘nyoh-kee’. Doesn’t that sound fancy?