The art of a good fridge raid

Sometimes supper is a last minute affair. I think everyone finds themselves in this situation, suddenly you realise that you have bugger all planned for supper and nothing really in the fridge except for odds and ends and really can't be arsed to go to the supermarket or even the local shop.

These fridge and cupboard raiding suppers, where random ingredients are collated together on the table and picked through until an idea springs to mind, are often some of my favourites. I am pushed to make something yummy from what I have, rather than a pre decided feast - a brilliant way to use up half open packs and wilting, slightly sorry looking veg and to test my creative cooking skills.

Building blocks

Pasta, rice or beans is often a good starting point I find - always lurking in the cupboard they just need a few other ingredients to turn them into a feast. I have all three in mind as potential building blocks for my supper as I pull out the contents of my fridge (sadly having to ignore the tantalising ingredients that are not on offer as they are for my shoot the next day...). Today I find that I have the following to work with...

Half a bag of kale, half a bag of watercress, some wilty herbs (parsley, tarragon and sage), the scrapings of a tub of crème fraiche, a heel end of Parmesan, 3 rashers of bacon, a stumpy piece of red cabbage, a cucumber that when I pick it up turns to liquid so goes straight in the bin and then I hit the jackpot... a pack of forgotten hot smoked salmon!! Ok... so it’s quite a bit past its sell by date but I'm not a great one for putting faith in those anyway - it’s smoked, and vac packed so I'm hoping its going to be ok!

Believe in your senses....

The trusty sniff test tells me that it's still good - really truly, trust your eyes and nose when you are on a fridge raid. So often something says it’s past its date and actually its completely fine! I once had an unopened tub of Greek yoghurt nearly 2 months past its date and it was 100% perfect. If it looks fine and smells fine then it really probably is!

A plan is forming

Now I know what I have to work with, a plan is forming... for the hot smoked salmon I'm thinking either chickpeas or pasta... I love chickpeas and haven't eaten them for ages and I'm working along the lines of tossing watercress and salmon through warmed chickpeas with a lemony mustardy dressing, but really the watercress is only enough for a garnish and the bag of kale is nudging its way into the running. I really want to use up as much as I can (one of the aims of any good fridge raid) and my thoughts turn to pesto... a great way to use up all kinds of greenery from herbs and spicy leaves to denser brassicas like kale.

kale, tarragon and almond pesto

I finally settle on the idea of pasta with a kale and herb pesto and the hot smoked salmon and the rest of the bits go back in the fridge for another day's fridge raid.

The resulting dish is (even if I say so myself) pretty darn delicious! This is one of those recipes that could be adapted so easily for what you have languishing in your fridge, I will give you some ideas for what could be swapped in and out in the recipe so you can give it a go for yourself! 

Pasta, pesto and hot smoked salmon

Pasta with kale pesto and hot smoked salmon

Serves 4

100g kale (try rocket, watercress, spinach, Brussels sprouts)

handful flat leaf parsley (try curly parsley, basil, oregano, mint)

few sprigs tarragon (try dill, chives, rosemary)

30g blanched almonds (try pinenuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, macadamia)

dollop of crème fraiche (cream, soured cream, cream cheese)

good squeeze lemon juice

1 clove garlic, peeled

rapeseed oil to blend (olive oil, groundnut, vegetable)

150g hot smoked salmon (try smoked salmon, hot smoked mackerel, smoked trout, crab)

350g dried long pasta (spag, linguini, tagliatelle etc)

a little olive oil

handful of fresh breadcrumbs (white, brown, sourdough)

Blanch the kale in boiling water for 30 seconds to slightly soften and bring out the colour. refresh under cold water then pop into a blender with the herbs and whiz together. Add the almonds, crème fraiche, lemon juice and garlic and then whiz as you trickle in the rapeseed oil. You want to add just enough to bring it all together to a soft and dollop-able pesto. Season with sea salt and lots of black pepper.

Cook the pasta in boiling salted water according to pack instructions and when just cooked, drain and return to the pan with a splash of the cooking water to stop it sticking.

Heat some oil in a pan and fry your crumbs until golden, season with sea salt.

Flake the hot smoked salmon and add to the drained pasta with the pesto and toss all together. Divide between bowls and sprinkle with the crumbs and serve.

behinds the scenes of Christmas

It is out! Thursday 9th of October was the day that many publishers release their autumn offering onto the nations bookshelves and I am completely over excited to be one of those new books hitting the shops! Christmas is my second book with the lovely people at GBBO and BBC books and I am SO thrilled with how beautiful it is!

This wasn't just your ordinary book commission, where you have months, or even a year, to think about, write, develop, test and shoot a book, oh no. Like Winter Kitchen before it, this was a race for the finish line. Eight weeks to write and test 70 recipes and 12 days to shoot the most beautiful Christmas book EVER was all I had!

After years in food mags I'm now pretty used to Christmas in the middle of summer, it has now got to the point where I'd actually really miss having two Christmasses a year but every so often you catch yourself, in the middle of roasting a ham or making mince pies in the sweltering heat of July and you think, what on earth are we doing?!

So, when you look at Christmas, and think just how beautiful a book it is, how warming, frosty and full of festive cheer it is, with roaring fires and snow flakes falling, spare a thought for  us all in mid summer, creating Yuletide magic in the sunshine.

Christmas begins

It all starts with ideas, as every good book does. Once the chapter titles have been agreed i busily got writing recipe ideas and recipes. Mostly i knew in advance which recipes were coming from Paul and Mary and the Bake Off contestants, so from there it was just a simple matter of coming up with 70 new Christmas baking recipes to cover all the occasions of Christmas. The weather was glorious as i sat with Eric the cat, writing hearty pies, Rudolph cakes and eggnog tarts. It isn't the easiest thing to do, get into the mindset of cold dark nights and log fires when you are sitting in the garden in a bikini, surrounded by lazily buzzing bees!

test, test, test

There is nothing more upsetting than a cookbook who's recipes don't work. Sadly there are many which look beautiful and inviting, with delicious sounding recipes that lure you in, only for you to find that the recipes are wrong, with ingredients or method missing or poorly explained or where you can see that for some reason, the recipes just haven't been tested. It isn't always the authors fault, money is tight and often an authors fee doesn't include any kind of budget with which to test the recipes. It is as if it is thought that just because you can cook wonderful dishes, your recipes will automatically work for someone else making them at home.

My years as the food editor of the wonderful delicious. mag taught me that this is definitely not the case. No matter how good or important a chef you are (or think you are), or how well established a food writer, every single recipe needs to have been tested properly. Not just cooked, tested. That means every ingredient is weighed and measured, timers are set, method is thought about and explained. There are wonderful people out there who test recipes for a living. So along with two of my best testers, we set about cooking up every single one of the recipes that i had written. Sometimes more than once!

For weeks my kitchen cupboards were covered with recipes I was testing, my neighbours thought I was bonkers as I knocked on their doors to offer them caramelised onion and Stilton tarts, salmon wellington and advent calender biscuits.

Shooting madness

Once all the recipes are tested, we selected the ones we wanted to shoot. This is an impossible task as we would love love love for all the recipes to have pictures and this just isn't possible. So we sift through the chapters, working out what would look the yummiest, which ones will jump off the page and lure people in. It is true that the recipes that are mostly likely to be the ones that readers cook, are the ones with images, so this decision is one that matters! 

Not only did we have to shoot 70 recipe pics, we also wanted to make the book look extra special, shooting dedicated chapter openers, mood setting pictures, incidentals and a full day of shooting with the wonderful bake off contestants! It was going to be a full on 12 days.

We decamped to Kent for the majority of the shooting to make use of both my prop stylist (and sister) Polly's house as well as my parents house for locations. Being a totally bonkers Christmas obsessed family made it easy to turn boiling hot July into cold and crisp December with a little help from the Christmas drawer, several fireplaces and a large box of fake snow. We are pretty damn good snow technicians after all the years of practice. A few water sprays and chucking it around with gay abandon seems to work for us! Looking at the snowy pictures in the book there is almost no way of telling that just out of shot is a garden in full bloom and a load of people standing around in shorts and summer dresses.

Winter is also the time of wooly jumpers and fireplaces so there was a lot of time spent setting up shots before quickly lighting the fire or wood burner (any longer than a few minutes had us all melting) and diving into festive knitwear and wooly socks.

The Day of the Bakers was one of the hottest imaginable and there we were, trying to convince John Whaite and Cat Dresser to put on Christmas jumpers and cosy up next to a roaring fire! They were all amazing and happily got into the spirit and dived into baked ham and potato gratin at 4pm on a baking (no pun intended) afternoon.

Even the animals got roped in to lie by fires and stand in the snow, all aided by a heavy amount of bribery with smoked salmon and cooked ham or turkey. Much of this action had to wait till 8 or 9 in the evening to get a suitably 'dark at 3pm in December' kind of feel.

Little corners of Christmasness were popping up all over the house as we set up scenes for our beautiful shots whilst in the kitchen I cooked up all the dishes we had chosen to photograph and iced and decorated like a whirling dervish.

The team all worked harder than you can possibly imagine. There were moments of madness, hysteria at the end of a 12 hour day shooting knowing that there is still hours of prep to do for the following day, a small amount tears of rage and frustration as icing slid and melted in the heat, laughter and happiness and rather a lot of singing of Christmas songs. I love this book with all my heart. It is pure Christmas joy and deliciousness. I hope you will all love this book as much as i do and cook heartily from it and keep warm and cosy over the winter.

sausage ragu with sherry, paprika and soured cream

I love the moment that the seasons change. Suddenly there is a different feel to the air, a sense of anticipation for what delicious treats are in store just around the corner. Autumn has arrived, a crisp bite to the morning air and the need to go delving into the jumper drawer to find something a little bit more cosy, though apparently I am not allowed to have the heating on yet, which I think is  just plain mean. The change in the weather means supper needs to be something more comforting to warm the toes. This supper is a bit of a random collection of things I found in my fridge and freezer and mostly came from my desire to have a really lovely glass of sherry... but the finished dish is completely delicious and one i will definitely make again!

Sausage ragu with sherry, paprika and soured cream

serves 4

sausage ragu

olive oil to fry

2 shallots, finely sliced

3 cloves garlic, crushed

6 free range sausages

200g pork mince

1tsp sweet smoked paprika

1tsp hot paprkika

pinch chilli flakes

good glass of sherry (i used palo cortardo but any dry to medium dry sherry would be yummy)

400ml chicken stock

400g rigatoni or other pasta

250g tender stem or purple sprouting broccolil

5tbsp soured cream

handful parsley, chopped

grated Parmesan to serve.

heat a good splash of oil in a large saute or frying pan and gently fry the shallot for 10 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and cook for a minute more.

Squeeze the meat out of the sausages and add this and the pork mince to the pan. increase the heat and fry, breaking up with a wooden spoon until well coloured. Add the paprika and chilli flakes and cook for a minute before pouring in the sherry. allow to bubble for a minute then add the stock. Season well and turn down the heat to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. If it starts to look dry add a little more stock.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in boiling salted water for 10 -12 minutes. Cook the broccoli in boiling water for a minute until just tender. Drain both and set aside, adding a little of the cooking water and some olive oil to the pasta to stop it sticking.

Add the soured cream and parsley to the ragu. Slice the ends of the broccoli and add to the ragu then fold in the florets. Serve the ragu over the pasta with lots of parmesan cheese and black pepper.