KUMPULAN MASTER BLOG

Watermelon and feta salad- a light refreshing salad, perfect for lunch or as a side dish. Sweet fruity watermelon with feta cheese, cucumber and fresh mint, drizzled with a home-made balsamic dressing. Jump to Recipe I absolutely adore watermelon. Nothing beats it for pure juiciness and it's not overwhelmingly sweet. That makes it perfect to be served with a savoury flavours. The classic combination of feta and watermelon doesn't need too much adding too it. I simply chop some cucumber and fresh mint and then add a little home-made balsamic dressing. And there you have it, the perfect salad for your next BBQ or a nice lunch on a hot day; quick and easy to make.

Avocado Salad Pittas- pitta breads stuffed with creamy avocado salad and fresh coriander- a quick and easy vegetarian lunch option, ready in 10 minutes. Jump to Recipe We have just had a very brief respite from this year's heatwave and now it's back with a vengeance. When it's hot like this, I really struggle to think of anything that appeals to me food-wise. These quick, avocado salad pittas did the trick though. I could have eaten double the amount, easily! To make Avocado Salad Pittas, you just need avocado, cherry tomatoes, spring onions, cucumber, mayo, fresh coriander and lime juice. There's very little prep- just a bit of chopping, mix it all together and then you've got a refreshing filling for a summer lunch. Put it in pitta bread like I do or pop it on crackers, use as a crumpet topping- it's very versatile. On a cooler day, it makes a nice topping for a jacket potato too. I prefer my pitta breads lightly toasted. Two reasons- 1) it gives them a bit of...

Bruschetta Brunch Crumpets- an easy brunch recipe for summer, using some classic bruschetta flavours, and it takes less than 10 minutes to make. Now that's a quick meal! Jump to Recipe I don't often get the chance to have brunch but it's always a treat. That perfect mix of breakfast and lunch foods- yum. This is such an easy brunch recipe, but it looks just a little but fancy, as though you've made lots of effort. So, if you serve it up to others they should be impressed! To make Bruschetta Brunch Crumpets, you simply toast your crumpets, spread a good layer of cream cheese on them, top with cherry tomatoes and red onion and finally drizzle with some pesto. See- such an easy recipe! Serve it with some fruit and you've got brunch in just a few minutes. It's so quick that you can decide to make it on a whim, no need to plan ahead. If you want it to be truly vegetarian, you'll need to get a special pesto as most are not vegetarian due to the parmesan content.

Warm Mediterranean Couscous Salad with Roasted Aubergine and Feta- a warm, vegetarian salad, perfect for summer lunches. Warm Mediterranean Couscous Salad with Roasted Aubergine and Feta is a new recipe that we have eaten regularly in the last few weeks. It is a light, summery (and vegetarian) recipe that I created to solve two problems 1) I just can't get enough of roasted aubergine and different ways to eat it 2) Britain's hottest weather since 1976 means I just can't face cooking anything heavy. I have used my favourite giant couscous yet again for this recipe, rather than the more conventional kind. It's more substantial and mixes much better with a sauce due to being naturally slippery, rather than having a rough texture. The Mediterranean Couscous Salad is rich with tomato sauce, garlic, onion and peppers and is perfectly topped off with nutty roasted aubergine and some creamy feta cheese. Fresh coriander makes the perfect finishing touch. We have eaten it warm f...

Feta Cheese Salad with Balsamic Dressing- a simple feta cheese salad, quick and easy to make for lunch or a starter, with a home-made balsamic dressing. Jump to recipe With the warmer weather over the last few weeks (and the heatwave that I really wasn't a fan of), all I have wanted to eat is salad. That has encouraged me into looking for a bit more variety in my ingredients. Lettuce, tomato and cucumber on their own gets old fast, and there's really no excuse for a boring salad! This weekend, I was in the mood for something Greek-style and I had a block of feta cheese in the fridge. I added a few delicious salady bits to contrast with the soft saltiness of the feta, whipped up a garlicky balsamic dressing and hey presto- a simple feta salad. The feta really is the star of the dish. If you can't be bothered to roast the peppers you can either put them in raw, or buy roasted peppers in a jar. It's absolutely delicious served as a starter, or with some crackers for lunch...

Mediterranean Summer Salad with lemon and garlic dressing- a bulgar wheat and lentil based salad with beetroot, roasted red peppers and home-made lemon and garlic dressing. I am SO excited about this Summer Mediterranean Salad recipe! It's fresh and so full of summery flavours, I could eat it all day and not get bored. The inspiration for this salad came from a recent visit to a brasserie ( The March Hare, Guildford ) with my parents. It was a really hot day, and their 'Summer Salad' was the only thing that appealed as a starter in that sort of heat. When it came, I couldn't believe what I was eating because it was so delicious. How excited can you really get about a salad? Pretty excited as it turns out! I left determined to create my own twist on the idea. After a week of tossing ideas around in my head, I came up with the Mediterranean Salad recipe I wanted to use. It uses the base idea from The March Hare salad of starting with bulgar wheat and lentils and topping t...

I tend not to be very imaginative when I order starters in an Italian restaurant. I go for the Bruschetta almost every time. I'm so predictable on this front that I could even rank all the chain restaurants by how good their Bruschettas are (Pizza Express- excellent, Zizzi- terrible). Bruschetta is a beautifully simple dish- some type of bread, chopped, sweet, fresh tomatoes, red onion, fresh basil and away you go. I like to use different colours of tomato, like the red and yellow cherry tomatoes, because it looks so pretty when it's served. Some people like the bruschetta topping to be warm, almost like pizza, but traditionally it's cold, with the warm bread underneath. That's the way I like it- it makes me think of summer! Making your own bruschetta is very easy. Take any good bread like French stick or ciabatta and drizzle it with garlic oil or spread it with garlic butter and grill until crisped a little. Then serve straight away with the tomato salad topping and a ...

This week I made a batch of one of my favourite slow cooker dishes- Brown Sugar Gammon . We had it for dinner, then the next day in sandwiches, but there was still some leftover! It's absolutely delicious, so I couldn't let it go to waste. I decided to make some ham and leek pies to use it up, as I had plenty of leeks ready to make soup. These ham and leek pies are individual portion sizes with a creamy, garlic, ham and leek filling. The creamy sauce is really what separates them from just any old ham pie. It's essentially a classic white sauce but with garlic and double cream added. I used my leftover brown sugar gammon for the ham filling, but you can buy a ready-cooked bacon joint or use leftovers of any type of ham you have cooked recently. I used ready-made shortcrust pastry but you can, of course make your own. I recommend this recipe: Shortcrust Pastry Recipe from BBC Good Food. The traditional enamel pie dishes with the blue edges are the ones I use for cooking my...

The Best Chicken Marinade- a simple marinade for chicken, packed full of flavour. Perfect for when you want to chargrill your chicken. Jump to recipe You're about to read about the BEST chicken marinade (in my humble opinion) and once you try it, I promise you'll keep going back again and again and again. I'm not usually one to boldly proclaim that my recipes are the 'best ever' because there are so many amazing recipes out there and it really depends on personal preference. That being said- you must try this marinade! I keep trying to describe the flavour and just coming up with yummy, delicious, juicy (is juicy a flavour???) er delicious... and other hopeless descriptions. All I can really say is that it's the ultimate chicken marinade and you won't be disappointed if you try it. I love marinated chicken. I have a couple of marinades on the blog already: Spicy Maple Chicken and Sweet Smoked Paprika Chicken and I quite often have a lot of fun playing ab...

Mini Cheese and Onion Quiches- small cheese and onion quiches, perfect for children's parties buffets and afternoon tea. Jump to recipe When me and my sister were young, and my mum first went back to work, one of our standard after-school dinners was cheese and onion quiche with jacket potato and salad. It was also one of our first food technology lessons at secondary school- how to make cheese and onion quiche. I vividly recall a girl in my class dropping hers on the way to the oven and spending the whole rest of the lesson mopping up the eggy mess! We took our quiches home and had them for dinner. Mine wasn't half bad, but I probably didn't really eat quiche again until I was first teaching. That was when I first ate the (frankly amazing) quiche that the school caretaker makes for the staff training day lunches. So, when someone asked me if I would make them a quiche last week, I wondered, why haven't I made one since school? Maybe it's trickier than I remembered...

Do you ever make your own bread? I first made some when I was at university and I remember being very proud of it! It was a lovely white crusty loaf. The only problem was that the crust was quite salty and I suspect that I hadn't followed the recipe I was given correctly. I was a bit slap-dash in those days! I didn't make bread all that often after that day but, when I was getting married, I took the opportunity to put a breadmaker on my wedding gift list. My lovely sister and brother-in-law were kind enough to buy it for me (ahem, I mean us!). It was one of my most favourite gifts and it made me so happy when my sister was pregnant and craving cinnamon, that I could make her a home-made cinnamon raisin loaf. It took me a little while to brave making bread rolls, because I was a bit scared of trying things that weren't baked in the breadmaker, particularly getting the second rise of the dough right. It's actually not that scary, you just need to tackle the kneading wit...

Slow Cooker Broccoli Cheese Soup- a slow cooker version of the classic soup recipe, that makes a warm and comforting lunch. It also freezes beautifully. Syn-free on Slimming World and under 300 calories. Jump to recipe Today, I'm sharing a recipe for one of my childhood favourites, broccoli cheese soup. It's the only soup I remember my mum making on a regular basis- enormous saucepans full of broccoli boiling away on the hob with cheddar cheese stirred through. As you know, I am a big fan of making soup in the slow cooker, so I don't have to stand over it, or even check on it regularly. In fact, I can even confidently go out leaving something cooking, which I would never do with a pan on the hob. Broccoli cheese soup works beautifully in the slow cooker. Broccoli, carrot and onion are pretty standard in a broccoli cheese soup, but I also use potato to add some creamy thickness. Many recipes will ask you to make a traditional cheese sauce to add to the soup, but my feelin...

Well, we're back to school after the long summer holiday and that means I have to start thinking in advance about what I want for lunch. No more deciding on a whim, no more choosing what I fancy at the time, no more lazy mornings with no lunch prep. I actually don't like getting my lunch ready in the morning, I find it strange thinking about lunch while I eat my breakfast! Soup is my go-to lunch, especially for the Autumn and Winter. You can make it in big batches, it freezes well and you don't have to put much thought into it. This recipe is for Slow Cooker Carrot and Coriander Soup. Carrot and coriander is a classic flavour combination that works beautifully; the sweetness of the carrot and the spice of the coriander are perfect. It's full of veggie flavour and goodness with the bonus of not having to stand over it while it cooks. Thank you, slow cooker! I added an orange pepper for additional veg and some potato to bulk it out and make it go further. This recipe make...

Slow Cooker Smoky Butternut Squash and Pepper Soup- an easy slow cooker soup spiced with smoked paprika and cumin, perfect for lunch. Under 200 calories and syn-free on Slimming World. Jump to recipe Slow cooker soup is something that I think of in Autumn and Winter, ready for all my work lunches on those cold days. However, my Leek and Potato Slow Cooker Soup recipe gets just as many repins and views during the summer as it does in the winter, and it remains one of my most popular posts. So it would seem that slow cooker soup is popular no matter the time of year or the weather! Coincidentally, today my husband requested a batch of soup ready for when he goes back to work next week, and so this recipe was born. The idea of butternut squash and pepper soup is already delicious, but add a little little cumin, smoked paprika, garlic and chilli powder to give it some punch against the sweetness and you've got a winner. I use red peppers as that's usually what I have to hand, but ...

Warm Smoky Bacon Couscous Salad- a warm couscous salad with fresh tomatoes, smoky bacon and smoked paprika. Makes a nice lunch or BBQ side dish. Jump to Recipe I am constantly looking for new things to have for work lunches, especially now my husband regularly works away and needs a packed lunch to take with him. I am very into couscous right now, because it feels summery and a bit lighter than pasta. The key thing with couscous is that, like many grains, you need to add lots of flavour to really make it work. It can be terribly bland otherwise. I wanted to add smoky flavours to this and serve it as a warm salad, so I added smoky bacon and smoked paprika along with fresh tomatoes into the giant couscous. The sweetness of the tomatoes went really well with the smokiness of the bacon. It's lovely warm, served fresh from the pan, but my husband liked it cold as well. As with most grains, make sure you cool this quickly to be safe, and then keep cool. If you do that, it will be safe to...

Tuna Crunch Pasta Salad- a twist on the classic tuna mayo with sweetcorn. Chopped fresh peppers and spring onion add some crunch to this summer recipe. It makes a quick and easy lunch and is Slimming World Friendly. Jump to Recipe Pasta salads get quite a bad rap at times- gloopy, bland and so on, but I love them, especially in summer. It took me a few years to realise how much I loved them though, due to bad experiences at school. This was because there were often pasta salads served in the summer and they were truly revolting; very sweet and always tasted the same, no matter what the ingredients were. I found out later that they had been making the pasta salads with salad cream... I know, the very idea is revolting. Can't believe I ever managed to eat it! Pasta salads can be absolutely delicious, if you get the balance right (and don't use salad cream!) Given that pasta is soft, it works best if you balance that with some other firmer textures. For this pasta salad, I wanted ...

Potato Salad with Bacon- new potatoes mixed with bacon and spring onions and dressed with mayonnaise. A quick and easy summer side dish for your buffet or BBQ. Jump to Recipe I love potato salad, really love it, especially if it's a delicious home-made one with new potatoes. The first time I ever had potato salad, it was a packaged one from a supermarket. Inside were little cubes of almost hard potato, pieces of white onion and a very watery, acidic sauce, which I am guessing was supposed to be mayonnaise. Needless to say, I didn't like it. I was quite young at the time and it was only a few years later, in a Home Economics lesson, when I made a real potato salad for the first time, that I realised it wasn't supposed to taste like that! Last weekend I was making a buffet lunch and I wanted to pep up the side dishes a bit. I started with the Lemon and Garlic Giant Couscous Salad and then moved onto the potato salad. New potatoes, check. Spring onions, check. Mayonnaise, che...