My spinach dip of joy…

This is something I’ve been whizzing up weekly recently, it’s tasty, and healthy, and wonderfully simple to make! I eat it as a dip, as a topping over cooked grains, on bread alongside freshly made homous (as above), or just by the spoonful!

All I do is blend up a couple of peeled garlic cloves, with lots and lots and lots of baby spinach leaves, and I mean lots!

I then add olive oil, ground toasted cumin, salt and pepper, and pomegranate molasses.

I also throw in different things on occasion depending on what I’ve got in the fridge: sometimes I add spring onions, sometimes wild garlic leaves, sometimes flat leaf parsley. And sometimes I add Aleppo chilli flakes.

It takes several refills of my small bowl blender to get through all of the spinach, but it’s worth it. Plus it keeps in the fridge all week, if it lasts that long!

Enjoy!

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Lots of lovely food! Dips and salads…

I’ve been washing and chopping and blending and tasting today and thought it was way beyond time that I share some of my recent concoctions…

This morning I was very excited to discover wild garlic leaves coming up in the secret place that I found it growing locally last year. I came home from walking Bob with some fresh leaves and added them to some of today’s creations.

I didn’t weigh and measure things but I can tell you what went into them..

Roasted butternut squash and sweet potato with chopped fresh leaf parsley and coriander, baby spinach leaves, garlic cloves, chopped spring onions, ground roasted cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice

Peas, chopped fresh leaf parsley and coriander, wild garlic leaves, garlic clove, ground cumin, coriander and caraway seeds, sumac, Aleppo chilli flakes, salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice. Lovely eaten with some grains and tahini & buttermilk sauce 🙂

A huge bag of baby spinach leaves, a couple of garlic cloves, ground roasted cumin, seasoning, olive oil and pomegranate molasses. I sometimes add spring onions this mix, and various spices

Roasted butternut squash flesh, homemade harissa, tahini and lemon juice

Peas, wild garlic leaves, tahini and lemon juice

Homemade harissa, buttermilk and tahini

All to be eaten with some lovely sourdough of course!

Have a great week 🙂

Happy New Year!!!

I have sadly neglected my lovely blog, but I have been cooking as much as I ever, I just need to get back to posting my dishes!

Our Christmas meal was a feast of my favourite Middle Eastern inspired dishes, below, including my most favourite cauliflower and chickpea dish and lots of dips!!! It was so good! Served with roasted vegetables and crunchy roast potatoes….very happy tummies!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and wishing you all wonderful New Year 🙂

I did plan to have some leftovers but I ate SOOOOO much of the cauliflower and chickpeas there wasn’t much left at all…

Lavender and Lovage new cookbook…

I am forever in awe when one of our blog family writes a cook book, it seems like such a massive achievement to me, an investment of so much time and effort and belief…and now the lovely Karen from the equally lovely blog Lavender and Lovage has produced her first solo cookbook…and here it is, available to buy this week!

The cover design alone is beautiful!

This is not only a cookbook, it is a book full of food memories from Karen’s childhood, all the way through her life and her travels around the globe, woven between an array of recipes that have been inspired and influenced by those experiences. Karen brings those memories to life for us with her writing, and we are virtually at the table with her…

I’ve got a list of recipes I want to try, including the “auberge” marinated goats cheese (I LOVE goats cheese!)…

..the “Maghreb” chicken, apricot & chickpea tagine, full of beautiful flavours (I’ll leave out the chicken for me :)), the smoky Mexican bean soup (perfect for winter where I am!) and the Sri Lankan egg hoppers…

And that’s just the beginning!

I suggest you get the book for yourself and see what you fancy, but also to read Karen’s story…

Visit Karen’s lovely blog for more details.

My sourdough buttermilk scones/biscuits…

I’ve just published a recipe that I devised for these sourdough biscuits/scones on my sourdough blog, and I think some of you would like them too, so I thought I’d share the link here for you…

Sourdough buttermilk scones/biscuits

They come with a warning: they’re very moreish!!!

Roasted butternut squash with green sauces…

The temperatures have dropped, there’s a chill in the mornings, the grass is slowly turning back to green, and I can comfortably have the oven on again…yes, autumn is arriving in the UK! Hallelujah!

I say the same thing every year about how much I love autumn, it’s my favourite season, and I celebrated its imminent arrival this year with my first tray of roasted butternut squash of the season..

Skin on, the lightest drizzle of olive oil, and a hot hot oven!

Is there truly anything much better in life!??

On this occasion I ate it piping hot with a mixture of accompaniments..

The totally green sauce is a mix of fresh spinach, mixed herbs, garlic, spring onions, olive oil, lemon juice, ground cumin, Aleppo chilli flakes, a pinch of cinnamon, salt & pepper.

The other green sauce is fresh coriander, leaves and stalks, garlic, tahini, lemon juice and mixed roasted seeds.

And all with a buttermilk and tahini sauce.

Yep! My kind of heaven!!!

Green sauces have figured a lot in my dishes recently, they’re a variation of salsa verde really, always with added spices, all very similar, but different! This one was with quinoa, baby plum tomatoes and homous. With a sprinkling of Aleppo chilli flakes and toasted sunflower seeds.

Happy Autumn northern hemisphere dwellers!

Shakshuka, sourdough and sharing..

Things have been a bit busy recently, I’ve launched some sourdough baking classes, been sending my dried sourdough starter around the world, created a new sourdough Facebook group, baked lots of loaves and done lots of sharing!

Packets of dried starter ready to go to their new homes

I love the fact that all of this is happening purely as a result of this little blog, thank you to everyone who has read my blog and supported and encouraged me xx

The temperatures in my part of the world have finally started to fall which means I can also start cooking more and indulge in my love of hot food, my body really does like hot food!

And what better than a pan full of fresh vegetables, homemade harissa, toasted sesame seeds and eggs..

What better to eat with a slice of fresh sourdough?

If you’ve been following my blog, this kind of dish isn’t new, I know, but it never fails to make me happy. You can use whatever vegetables are to hand to create your own version, this one includes spinach, spring onions, garlic, peppers, baby plum tomatoes, as well as my harissa, eggs and toasted sesame seeds.

So good! I highly recommend it any time you’re looking for inspiration and you’ve got a box of eggs handy 🙂

Wherever you are, have a great week!