This week’s veg box from Riverford contained a large bag of spinach. Now, there are two recipes for creamed spinach in The Prawn Cocktail Years, both very different. I decide to make the first, and simplest, of the two, which basically has you cooking the spinach slowly in a pan and then adding butter. I […]
This is one of those recipes that has just never appealed to me. It sounds sweet and sickly, and if I ever saw it on a restaurant menu, it’s certainly not something I’d order. But, I have an awful lot of egg whites left over from yesterday’s Peach Melba, so here goes. The recipe starts […]
Peach Melba is another of those recipes in The Prawn Cocktail Years that I’ve just never bothered making. This time, not because it looks too complicated, but because it looks too simple. I mean, it’s peaches with ice cream, topped with raspberry sauce – not exactly fancy. In fact, it always sounded a bit boring. […]
Despite the fact that it’s June, the weather has been more reminiscent of November recently. Endless greyness, constant drizzle, periodic full-on downpours. I was in the mood for something warming and hearty to eat. Carbonnade of beef sounded a good option. It’s been a good while since I made a carbonnade, but I always enjoyed […]
The plan was to have syllabub after dinner on Sunday night, so, Sunday afternoon I decide I’d better get on with it – I know it needs a couple of hours in the fridge to chill. I open up the book to read through the recipe. The first thing I notice are the words “leave […]
With good ingredients, this is an impressive dessert. It’s also one of the simplest recipes in the book. You really can throw it together in a couple of minutes. I ordered some strawberries from Riverford in this week’s veg box. I wasn’t sure at the time what I was going to do with them, but […]
Home-made cream of tomato soup doesn’t look very much different to the stuff that comes out of a tin, but the flavours are worlds apart. I’ve made this a good few times, but not for a while now. I have some chicken stock left over from last week’s duck, so this seems like a good […]
The Prawn Cocktail years describes this as “possibly the best example of a dish that ‘just isn’t done any more, dear!’” It’s true, I can’t remember when I last saw it out in the wild on a restaurant menu. I only have dim recollections of having ever eaten it, and they aren’t some of my […]
I’ve always found The Prawn Cocktail Years recipe for Seafood Pancakes to be a little off-putting. It sounds delicious, but there are so many extravagant ingredients and so many steps. Many’s the time I’ve looked over the recipe, thought to myself that it looked way too hard, and moved on to something else. But, I […]
Green Salad has to be one of the strangest recipes in The Prawn Cocktail Years. It opens with a rant about how hard it is to find a Green Salad, and how everybody seems to adulterate it by adding things that simply shouldn’t be there – such as cucumber, cress or green pepper. Or horror […]