Blue Cheese Nachos with Peach Salsa

This recipe is not only paradise for nacho lovers in quest of something that transcends the standard, but is superb from July-September when peaches are in season. Meaning not only good taste, but cheaper price wise compared to the rest of the year. Often fresh peaches are only available in punnets, so as a tip you can use the remaining ones to make a drink such as a smoothie or perhaps more suitably for the average student predilection – a cocktail! Salsa provides a refreshing accompaniment for humid summer days. Even though it may be autumn now, peaches blissfully compliment blue cheese.

Serves 1 as a main meal or appetizer for 2

100g tortilla chips

150g strong blue cheese, crumbled

For the peach salsa:

½ red onion, diced

1 red chilli, finely chopped (optional)

2 peaches (or nectarines)

1 tomato, seeds removed and diced

3 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp fresh mint, chopped or 1 tsp dried mint

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6.

2. Cut an X at the bottom of each peach. Submerge them in a bowl of boiling water for 10 minutes, or until the skins start to loosen. Then place in cold water for a few seconds so that they are cool enough to handle. Peel the skin off both peaches, cut them in half, remove the stones and dice.

3. Mix the chopped peaches in a bowl with the rest of the salsa ingredients. If it’s watery, I recommend placing in a sieve before serving, as the last thing you need is soggy nachos!

4. Place a thin layer of the tortilla chips onto a baking tray lined with foil. Sprinkle over half of the blue cheese. Repeat this process with the rest of the tortilla chips and blue cheese.

5. Place the baking tray in the oven for 5 minutes or until the cheese melts. Then serve with the salsa and indulge!

Stem Ginger Vegan Scotch Pancakes with Blueberries and White Chocolate Sauce

This was designed for vegan magazine "Off The Hoof", but you can adjust the ingredients if you're not one such as using eggs instead of oil, and cream with the white chocolate sauce to improve the consistency. You can also foster other fruit rather than blueberries if you prefer, but these were picked due to their excellent partnering with white chocolate.

Makes approximately 9 pancakes

225g plain flour

1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

250ml soya milk

A pinch of salt

25g sugar

3 tbsp vegetable oil

3-4 pieces of stem ginger, finely chopped

100g dairy free white chocolate, broken into small pieces

200g blueberries, washed

1. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl and add the baking powder and salt. Add the other ingredients and whisk together until the flour forms a smooth batter. If the mixture is too thick then keep adding a little more soya milk at a time, until it does form a batter.

2. Heat a frying pan and add approximately 2 tbsp of the batter (aim for circular shapes). Cook gently for approximately 2 minutes until firm and golden brown. Whilst the bottom side is cooking, sprinkle over some of the ginger on the facing side (make sure you do not sprinkle too much as the taste will be too overpowering otherwise).

3. Turn the pancake over and cook gently for 30-60 seconds. Place in the oven to keep warm. Repeat this process with the remaining batter.

4. Bring to the boil about a cm or so of water in a saucepan and place a bowl on top. Add the white chocolate to the bowl and allow to melt. You can melt it in the microwave, but since white chocolate burns very easily it is better to do this method where you can keep an eye on it.

5. Grab the pancakes from the oven and divide them and the blueberries between plates. Elegantly drizzle over the white chocolate sauce and relish!

Salmon with Kiwi Dressing and Roasted Vegetable Couscous

Now you may be thinking how incredibly outlandish this idea is, and you may even concur with my brother that kiwi fruit looks like “mushed up brains”. But au contraire! Like how sweet chutneys can sometimes make the perfect partner to savoury dishes, the salmon practically bows down in praise of the kiwi’s sharp sweet tang. Go on - just try it!

Serves 4

200g cooked couscous

1 pepper, diced

1 red onion, diced

1 courgette, diced

3 garlic cloves, crushed

Salt

Pepper

Lemon juice

4 salmon fillets, scaled

4 kiwi fruits, peeled

Juice of ½ a lime

1 tsp. olive oil, plus extra for roasting

1 tsp. white wine vinegar

2 tbsp. honey

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6

2. In a baking tray place the diced pepper, onion, courgette and garlic. Sprinkle over some salt and pepper, a splash of olive oil and rub evenly over the vegetables.

3. In another baking tray place the salmon with the skin facing down. Sprinkle with a splash of water, lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Cover with foil, and place both baking trays in the heated oven for 20 minutes.

4. Whilst the salmon and vegetables are cooking, make the dressing by chopping 3 of the kiwi fruits into large chunks. Puree finely with the lime juice in a food processor. Throw into a bowl and mix with the honey, vinegar and 1 tsp. of olive oil. Dice the fourth kiwi fruit and mix in with the other ingredients.

5. Once the vegetables and salmon are cooked, turn the oven off and leave the salmon inside. Warm up the couscous with the roasted vegetables by stirring around in a low to medium heated saucepan for a minute or so. If it’s a little dry just stir in some lemon juice and olive oil. Season to your liking.

6. Serve the salmon and couscous, drizzled with the kiwi dressing. Watercress also makes a fantastic side accompaniment.

Dark Chocolate Muffins with Peanut Butter Filling and White Chocolate Chips

For many, peanut butter symbolises America. But having such a unique taste, how else can one even describe it? It’s nutty, sweet but not sweet. It comes in crunchy and smooth varieties. Like Marmite really, you either love it or hate it. Nevertheless, my friends on the other side of the pond tell me that you only get cupcakes, not muffins, using this ingredient. So being a chocoholic I came up with this recipe. I justify to myself the high calories in this recipe by the nutritional value in peanut butter - it wards off heart disease says Harvard Medical School (Daily Mail 2009).

Makes 20 large muffins

For the muffin batter:

200g white chocolate, chopped

200g dark chocolate

250ml milk

100g butter

450g self-raising flour

1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda

2 eggs, whisked

250g light muscovado sugar

300ml yoghurt

For the peanut butter filling:

125g smooth peanut butter

1 1/2 tbsp butter, softened

65g icing sugar

1. Heat the oven to 180^oC/350^oF/Gas Mark 4. Line 20 muffin cups of a muffin baking tray with 20 muffin paper cases.

2. To make the peanut butter filling, beat the butter with the peanut butter in a bowl until smooth. Sift the icing sugar into the mixture and beat until light and fluffy.

3. For the muffin batter, melt the dark chocolate in a small pan with the butter and milk. Whilst leaving to cool, sieve the flour and bicarbonate soda into a bowl. Stir in the rest of the muffin batter ingredients including the melted chocolate mixture.

4. Spoon the batter into the muffin paper cases, filling them about one third full. Spoon in the middle of the third filled muffins a large heaped teaspoon of peanut butter. Top the peanut butter with the remaining batter.

5. Bake the muffins in the oven for 15-20 minutes until just firm to touch. Allow them to cool for 5 minutes in the tin, and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

African Sausage Stew

For a long time I was trying to think up something a bit more original to do with sausages, giving that there isn’t a huge variety of recipes around for this cheap ingredient. So I came up with a stew that uses sweet potatoes (often part of West African cuisine). Besides sausages forming part of North African cooking, the spices and raisins are also a flavour of this region. Hence, I give you “African Sausage Stew”.

Serves 2

1 1/2 tbsp. olive oil

4 sausages

½ onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tsp. balsamic vinegar

300ml chicken/pork/vegetable stock

1 red chilli, deseeded and sliced

1 green pepper, deseeded and sliced

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and chopped into 1cm cubes

1 tbsp. tomato puree

A handful of raisins

2 tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. mixed spice

1. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. When very hot, fry the sausages until browned. Remove to a plate.

2. Add the onions to the saucepan and gently fry for 5 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and fry for another minute.

3. Add the turmeric, mixed spice, balsamic vinegar and tomato puree. Quickly stir together. Then add the chilli, peppers, raisins, sweet potato and sausages. Cover with enough stock.

4. Bring to the boil and simmer for approximately 10 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked. If the stew is too runny for your preferences, you can add a thickening agent such as corn flour. Then serve with some side vegetables if you like!

Tuna, Cannellini Bean and Tomato Soup

This is a very simple dish, suitable for those on a low budget and easy to make. Cannellini beans are a great partner to tuna, besides their popularity in Italian soups. If you enjoy tuna melt sandwiches, I recommend sprinkling over some grated cheese such as cheddar too!

Serves 4

1 tbsp. olive oil

½ onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 medium potato, peeled and chopped

½ lemon, zest and juice

2 tsp. dried oregano/mixed herbs

3 tbsp. tomato puree

1 tsp. caster sugar

400g chopped tomatoes

850ml fish stock

Salt and pepper

410g tinned cannelloni beans

370g tinned tuna, broken up slightly

Handful of cheese, grated (optional)

1. Heat the olive in a large saucepan. Sautee the onions and garlic on a low heat for 5 minutes or until soft.

2. Add the potatoes, lemon zest, dried oregano/herbs, sugar, tomato puree, stock, chopped tomatoes, season and stir together. Bring to the boil and leave to simmer for about 20 minutes.

3. Take off the heat to cool for a few seconds and blend in a food processor/blender. If you don’t have one you can place the mixture through a sieve, chop the vegetables more finely before starting the recipe or you can leave it as it is instead of a smooth texture.

4. Place the soup back in the saucepan and add some milk/water if the mixture is too thick for your likening. Stir in the cannelloni beans. Bring to the boil and simmer until the beans are cooked. Add the tuna and heat for only a minute or so until the tuna is warm. Add the lemon juice and season. Serve and sprinkle over the cheese.

The Ludlow Food Festival

It was only a few weeks ago that I went in with the new by taking a trip to see the young Ludlow Food Centre. Now I was going in with the old by attending the 15^th Ludlow Food Festival this year. Unlike the Food Centre situated outside, I had to venture into the centre of Ludlow to see the festival. The town has an agreeable archaic form to it with its black and white pubs, quaint shops, cafes and teashops. One could quite easily imagine their self in a Jane Austen or Charles Dickens novel whilst strolling down its cobbled lanes.

Alas, my view on the festival is not quite so optimistic. It was about 10 years ago that I last went. At that point in time very few were familiar with this culinary gala, or at least not on a national scale and you could amble around quite easily. I remember my eleven-year old self being fascinated by the quality of food sold. It probably had some influence in my education of gastronomy since I had never been to anything like this before. But that comes as no surprise when the Ludlow Food Festival was in fact the first of its kind in this country. Fast-forward to the future, and walking around the stalls is a nightmare. Hardly any samples are available, unlike in its early years, and it is a very effortless process to observe the huge proportion of vendors selling chutneys and pickles. I can appreciate that this festival is a chance for local producers to make sales, but really for about 75% of them to flog the same type of product is not only uninspiring for the visitor, but only makes competition harder for they themselves. Why could the organisers just not have allocated an x number of stalls to chutney and pickle producers, and selected which ones on a first come serve basis? They could then have given the spare stalls to manufacturers of other culinary substances. What is more, I was shocked to find how dull in taste the breads were from the bakery exhibitors.

The only creation I was really taken aback by was Welsh producer Condessa’s “Praline Welsh Cream Liquor”. It was a bit like sampling Baileys but with an after hint of the praline flavour. Since my father is very patriotic of his Welsh heritage, I thought I would find out a bit more for him on their website www.condessa.co.uk. Having been the liquor caterer at his 21^st Birthday, I discovered through my investigations that another fan of this firm is Prince William. And before you assume anything, no the prices are not extortionate just because the royals drink it - a 50cl bottle costs £13. Otherwise, I believe that the Ludlow Food Festival was once an ultimate pilgrimage for the foodie. Now I am sorry to say that it has become an overrated and touristy food exhibition, where produce in terms of diversity is just too unbearably insipid.

The Bell at Yarpole, Herefordshire

Yarpole is just like what you see on the British postcard of a village. Cottages and black and white houses opulently decorated with vibrant flowers, a timber framed church, an old red phone box and a pub. But Yarpole’s local The Bell is not just any pub – it is owned by Michelin-starred chef Claude Bosi’s brother Cedric. I guess you could say it is the cheap and nonchalant alternative to Bosi’s Hibiscus in Mayfair, London. But when I say ‘cheap’, I certainly do not mean this in the degrading sense. I have been to The Bell for lunch a number of times since the new owners took over and I can certainly say that the food deserves such positive words that it has received from reviews in the national newspapers. The menu as a whole can come across as very simple, and perhaps even uninspiring, fare. But once sampling the food, I think you will find that it delivers beyond this preconception.

Yesterday when I was treated to the delights of The Bell I was more than impressed by my Battered Haddock with Chips and Mushy Peas. In fact I would say that it was the most pre-eminent fish and chips I have had in a seriously long time, if not in my whole existence. The batter was fresh, un-greasy and crisp. The thick cut wedged chips were seasoned so perfectly, not over salty, that there actually was no need to even use any sauce with them (this is coming from someone who likes plenty of sauce). The mushy peas were pure, unlike the distasteful tinned version that so many fish and chip shops make the mistake of using. It may have cost £9.95, but when the average chippie now charges about £6 for an over greasy portion, I would much rather pay the additional £3.95 as an occasional treat. A Coffee and Chocolate Liégeois, an adaptation of the French’s sweetened coffee sauce, coffee ice cream and Chantilly cream dessert Café Liégeois, followed this. Not only was the sauce and dark chocolate ice cream intensely divine and non-sickly, the coffee ice cream made by local producers September, was more than just superb. For £5.25, this was an excellent bargain when you consider how chain restaurants often charge more or less the same price for their sweets, which are no where near as superior in quality. Overall The Bell is an outstanding pub for food, charming scenery and value.

Minted Creamed Corn Pasta with Spring Vegetables

So you have some sweetcorn that needs using up, you have no idea what to do with it, you want to make something quick but you don't want it to be average like tuna sweetcorn pasta bake. This is your answer! Creamed corn is very much a primary element to midwestern American cuisine and as you've guessed, it's creamy in texture and taste. I've put a twist on it by adding some mint, which makes the meal really light and refreshing. The crispy feel of the bacon gives it that little something extra, but if you're vegetarian feel free to omit it and you'll still enjoy this recipe.

Serves 2

4 rashers bacon, diced

Butter, large knob

Sweetcorn, corn removed from 2 kernels or 150g tinned

½ onion, finely chopped

150ml crème fraiche

Salt and pepper

Mint, 2 large handfuls finely chopped

200g pasta

Broccoli cut into small florets, a handful

Peas, 2 handfuls

Parmesan, 2 small handfuls grated

1. Heat a frying pan on a medium to high heat and fry the bacon until cooked and crispy. Leave aside on kitchen paper.

2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan on a low heat. Add the onions and the sweetcorn, and sauté for 5 minutes. Mix in the crème fraiche and seasoning. Cover and leave to cook for 10 minutes, then stir in the mint and bacon.

3. Place the pasta in a saucepan of boiling water. Cook according to cooking instructions, but in the last five minutes of cooking time cook the peas and broccoli florets in another pan of boiling water. After the five minutes drain both.

4. Divide the pasta between plates. Spoon over the minted creamed corn, top with the spring vegetables and sprinkle over some Parmesan.

Ginger and Apple Pork Pasties

Not only is it the season for apples, but also sausagemeat is ideal for those on a low budget. Pasties are great to eat both for dinner or lunch. However, it can be time consuming rolling out individual circles of pastry to make pasties, so if you haven’t got much time you can roll out the pastry into one big rectangle, place the filling on one half and fold the other half over to make one big roll. Just remember to brush over the top and around the seal with egg. You can also purchase pre-rolled pastry that’s now available in supermarkets, to speed things up even more. I suggest serving this meal with some pickle or chutney.

Makes 8

Ingredients:

Olive oil

1 cooking apple

1 medium red onion, diced

Root ginger, 1-2 tbsp. crushed

1 ½ tsp. ground ginger

2 garlic cloves, crushed

500g pork sausagemeat/sausages, skins removed

1 tsp. dried mixed herbs

Salt and pepper

1kg shortcrust pastry

Flour, for rolling pastry

1 egg, beaten

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas Mark 7/425°F.

2. Heat a small drop of olive oil in a frying pan and sauté the red onions for about 2 minutes, until softened.

3. Peel the cooking apple and dice into medium chunks. Mix in a bowl with the sausage meat, mixed herbs, onions, ground ginger, crushed garlic and ginger in a bowl until combined evenly. Season with salt and pepper.

4. On a floured surface, roll the pastry out. Using a small plate or saucer, cut the pastry into circles. Spoon a small amount of the mixture onto one half of each of the pastry circles, but not covering the edge by at least 1 cm. Brush the edge of the other half with the beaten egg, then fold it over to form a semi-circle. Pinch the edges together to seal. Repeat until all the pastry and filling is used up.

5. On top of each pasty, indent 2 lines and brush over with the egg. Cook on a baking tray in the oven for 15 minutes,

6. Lower the heat to 190°C/Gas Mark 5/375°F, bake for a further 25 minutes and serve.