I’m off to Finland next week; super excited to venture into the Arctic Circle. I wonder if that’s the lengths we should now go to in order to see a bit of snow? Nah – we can easily get another Beast from the East next year.
Here are suggestions for the next two weeks then, while I eat herring and knock back shots of vodka (sorry, Finns – I KNOW there will be much, much more interesting things to eat). From the other end of the world, consider the Vietnamese cabbage and prawn salad bowl for one night this fortnight. Note the rice cooking method there – it’s absolutely fool proof and the outcome is better than from a rice cooker. Make some extra for crispy rice with chorizo and mushrooms on another night, though the dish is so good it’s worth cooking rice from scratch for it.
Cook a shakshuka for a weekend breakfast or a salmon shakshuka for dinner one night of the week. Oily fish as we know is The Thing in nutrition so also a grilled mackerel with spice crust is worth noting. It might be nice with spicy fried aubergines.
For a winter warmer nothing better than a pie. It’s admittedly a staying-at-home or a weekend thing, but so worth the effort if made from scratch. I suggest pork and girolle pie – for some obscure reason pork never features in a pie unless it’s a pork pie (for those from outside UK: it’s an English thing and makes perfect sense). Other than a pie, there’s cassoulet which can be made ahead as a meal plan and divvied into freezer portions.
A pasta bake – baked aubergine ziti, or penne. For a noodle dish, one of my favourites: Thai cinnamon noodles. Fancy a chicken stir fry? There’s the kung pao chicken; a peanut overload but so good. Or make a batch of garlic fried chicken. With shaved Brussels sprout salad perhaps? Why not. Make sure you stuff the leftover chicken in sandwiches.
And so onto desserts: plain simple cakes are sometimes the best so how about the doughnut cake? Tender batter and just a coating of sugar on top but it’s such a lovely thing. Or try this super-easy lime and condensed milk cake which tastes like a very buttery pound cake.
Keep warm and keep cooking; subscribe to the newsletter or accept push notifications for new recipes and posts. I’ll be back here in two weeks.