Recipe collections

Fancy making Danish pastries without the fuss of laminating dough with butter? This is a revelationary shortcut to making Danish pastry the easy way, plus recipe for homemade apple and raspberry fillings.

Easy kouign amann, butter pastry from Brittany. My recipe is a cheat’s kouign amann, easier to make and not quite as calorific as the traditional Breton pastry

Ebi fry, Japanese style breaded and deep fried shrimp with tonkatsu sauce. Ebi-furai can fortuitously be pronounced ‘ebi fry’ and that’s what it is: shrimp fry. It’s not katsu - I’ve spent some time around various websites featuring katsu, tonkatsu and such, only to find that there is no ebi katsu.

Posh restaurant-style muffins with blueberries and tender, moist crumb. This is a recipe out of Professional Chef. It’s good, it’s cheffy, the muffins stay fresh several days and they are not really muffins but more cakey things that you see in fancy restaurants for petit fours.

Fennel and gorgonzola fettucine - I love pasta. I could eat pasta every day, if it only didn’t contain carbs. Since it does (hell, what other reason it tastes so good?), it’s an occasional treat.

Fennel and orange salad. The best thing about raw fennel is that it’s really a wonderful and versatile background for endless variants. I’ve used orange but any other large citrus fruit will do nicely. Ah well, you can even skip the citrus and just dress it with lemon juice...

Fennel and spinach lasagne rolls, a pasta bake with salty feta mixed into mild fennel, and creamy spinach sauce as a background to the rolled up, stuffed lasagne sheets.

Fennel and Taleggio cheese pie with savoury crust made from scratch, this is an easy and excellent vegetarian comfort dish recipe.

Fermented buckwheat bread: the most natural and the healthiest loaf possible, with a great flavour, and wholly gluten free.

Fermented red cabbage with chillies and ginger, Europe’s answer to kimchi. Red cabbage sauerkraut is made exactly like the white but it’s vibrant and a bit more crunchy.

Feta and za’atar scones, with fluffy crumb like a proper English tearoom classic but suffused with Middle Eastern flavour of za’atar: oregano, thyme, sumac and sesame seed.

Feta saganaki with caramelised figs. Saganaki is a Greek dish of anything cooked and served in a small skillet, cheese saganaki the most popular.

Feta cheese, roasted grapes and crunchy walnuts are the perfect combination of juicy, sweet, crunchy and salty. It's a fantastic autumnal salad, to serve for lunch or as a starter.

Fideua, Spanish pasta dish with fish and seafood, is cooked exactly like paella: in an enormous pan, only with short vermicelli pasta replacing rice.

Fig and prosciutto tart with ready-rolled puff pastry takes about five minutes to prepare and twenty to bake. A divine, seasonal lunch or starter dish, best made with gorgeous Bursa figs.

Fig confit with fresh fig chunks in madeira syrup, great with cheese or charcuterie. Something with figs but not jam was the objective. Why not jam?

Filipino beef tapa with brown rice, sweet and sharp marinated beef strips, stir fried and served as part of a breakfast dish of tapsilog.

Ice cream cones made from sweetened, layered filo pastry. Deliciously easy, they can be also filled with cream, mascarpone or custard.

Filo pastry snails with mushroom, spinach and cheese filling. The original recipe for these snails calls for feta cheese. It actually calls for roasted fennel instead of spinach but here I think my improvement has worked – spinach in filo pastry is a classic after all.

Filo wrapped asparagus with Parmesan are a crunchy, golden, irresistible vegetarian snack or appetiser. Asparagus filo parcels rolled up like cigars - a must before the asparagus season ends.

Financier biscuits, French mini almond cakes made with brown butter are deliciously moist, light and tender, a little like madeleines and really easy to make.

Classic English fish and chips: crispy chip shop style batter and double cooked chips. I consulted Heston Blumenthal’s recipe for perfect fish and chips in order to produce mine; with the batter sans vodka (we don’t waste spirits in cooking).

Creamy fish pie with layered sliced potato topping. Chunky fish and prawns, Mornay sauce and crispy layer of sliced potato topping finished with bubbly cheese..

Fish with mushroom gratin: haddock, turbot or sole fillets baked au gratin, covered with delicious mushroom sauce topped with crisp breadcrumbs.

Chinese five spice duck breast with perfectly rendered fat seared in a pan, atop aubergines and mushrooms stir fried with oyster sauce, is the kind of brilliant recipe that is quick and easy but very impressive.

Five spice shrimp with greens and crispy noodles. This is different to your usual stir fry: it’s a warm stir fried salad. The crispy noodles are totally optional: you can do soft noodles or no noodles.

Quick bread, ready within two hours from mixing to baking. There is quite a lot of yeast to speed up the rise and the tricks to make it taste like a longer-proving loaf are adding raw potatoes, vinegar and a bit of fat.

Flash pickles made with cucumber and carrot slices. These quick refrigerator pickles are ready in 3 hours and keep more nutritious elements than ordinary pickles.

Flat iron mushrooms, a mix of cultivated mushrooms pressed flat whilst cooking, to concentrate and wonderfully enhance their flavour.

Mixed flavoured meringue kisses, mini meringues with lemon, raspberry, chocolate and pistachio flavour. The quickest, burnt sugar meringue recipe.

Flourless sponge cake with ground walnuts and a layer of apricot jam with grated dark chocolate topping: exquisite, elegant, delicious and gluten free.

Flower rolls with caraway and onion seeds, baked in a cloche. Very crusty, golden in colour, tear-apart rolls sprinkled with seeds taste much better than an ordinary loaf baked in a tin.

Flutes, similar to baguettes but not as crusty and a bit richer, are made of soft and chewy dough generously flavoured with sage and Parmesan.

Fondant carrots are cooked in a water and butter emulsion, seasoned with carraway and cinnamon. Starting off in lots of sizzling butter, they are then soused with hot stock to become tender and fullest of flavour.

Celeriac fondant makes a great side dish. Recipes featuring celeriac are usually for mash or puree, but dicing the celeriac root and cooking it in butter brings out the great flavour.

Fougasse with grated Emmental cheese, chewy and crispy French flatbread, the cousin of Italian focaccia. Make it with sourdough starter or bakers’ yeast – equally delicious and not at all difficult.

Fougasse au Roquefort - flat bread with blue cheese, quite like focaccia. Fougasse can be salé or sucré, with lardons, olives, both, Roquefort – or covered with a thick layer of crisp, almost caramelised sugar. All strictly Provençal.

Fragrant fish stew with mixed fish chunks and seared scallops, crunchy vegetables and herbs. Easy, healthy and incredibly tasty.

Pain the campagne, sourdough bread made with wheat starter. Sourdough starter I find fickle – I know it can live for ever, only refreshed every now and then, but my best results have been with fresh, four days old leaven so that’s the approach I suggest here. Veteran sourdough makers though – please use whatever wheat starter you have on the go.

Old fashioned molasses cake? Think again – this one has fresh grated ginger added for the zing, and you don’t even need an electric mixer to make it.

Fresh, raw porcini salad with minimal seasoning is an epic treat. Sliced porcini, aka ceps or penny buns only need a sprinkling of salt and a drop of olive oil.

Courgette flowers (fiori di zuccha) in light batter, shallow fried in olive oil with a touch of mint inside each blossom. It’s pan-fried poetry!

Fried sliced mushrooms, cooked in butter and a little oil, perfect for breakfast or as a side to steak. Cook them for 10-15 minutes until caramelised and crisp.

Homemade granola, easy and healthy with just the fruit and seed mix you like; only waiting for milk, yoghurt or fresh fruit. Take back control of your breakfast!

Fruity, nut free mince pies made from scratch: the best shortcrust pastry and delicious fruit filling. I never used to like mince pies until I made them at home. The fact is that all shop-bought pies, even the posh, fancy, Hestonised and overpriced numbers taste mainly of too much orange peel and too much booze. As much as I’m the last person to complain about too much booze, I like to keep it separate from cakes. And orange peel is usually nasty, unless you make it yourself (I don’t) or spend quite a bit more money than even Waitrose Cook’s Ingredients charge.

Fruit scones, light and fluffy, with a good raisin count are perfect for a cream tea. The secret: don't twist the cutter and don't overbake the scones.

The best pizza made at home is born between the frying pan and the grill. Easy dough, basic toppings, thin crust; no pizza stone, no wood fired oven. Beats takeaway every time!

Galette des rois, an elegant treat for the night of Epiphany, or any other time during the twelve days of Christmas. There are some lovely traditions associated with the galette: a ‘fève’ is hidden inside the cake - a tiny china figurine or an almond - and the lucky person to find it (and not choke on it) is crowned a king or queen for the carnival.