We heard you wanted some dead-easy sides for Christmas feasting. You didn’t? You’re getting some anyway. Such as this recipe from the ‘so-Frenchy-so-chic’ school of vegetable thought, which translates to not splashy, not majorly ‘on trend’…

Mussels. So simple to cook, so delicious to eat and so darned good for you. An excellent source of lean protein, iron, selenium, iodine and omega-3 fatty acids, we should all be eating them more. There’s so much healthy stuff lurking in those shells…

Holy banging bangers, Batman; can sausages actually get better than their lovely, snag-y self, or what? We reckon they can and here’s Exhibit A… our sausage ragu. Perfect for tossing through pasta, it’s easy to make and is brilliant during these…

You don’t have to travel in Turkey very far before encountering this dish; it’s popularly served as a mezze. And – here’s a quick language lesson – ‘mercimek’, Turkish for the red lentils, is pronounced ‘mer-ji-mek.’…

Translating to ‘brothy rice’, this soupy brew is yummo, like all Spanish cooking generally is. Simple, with direct flavours and not a tonne of ingredients, it’s easy to whip up. The Moors brought rice to Spain in the 8th century and today it’s cultivated in Andalucía…

If your Mum, like many Mums, committed culinary crimes against leeks, you might be scarred for life. We’re talking boiled, suffocated in white sauce and… oh, shudder. We just can’t with the leek memories. Happily there are entire cuisines who cook this skinny green veg with…

This type of rustic soup, often topped with shreds of the region’s famous radicchio, is popular in the Veneto region of Italy in winter. An example of cucina povera, literally the ‘cooking of the poor’, it speaks to a frugal approach and using what you’ve damned well got on hand…

We never met a meatball we didn’t like, We l-o-v-e meatballs. The global meatball repertoire is huge; think polpette (Italy), kofte (Turkey), keftedes (Greece), albondigas (Spain), bakso (Indonesia), bun cha (Vietnam), frikadeller (Germany, Scandinavia and Poland), bitterballen (Netherlands) and the like…

We can’t lay claim to this fabulous dish; it’s based on a Palestinian recipe from Joudie Kalla’s stunning book, Balaidi Palestine (Quarto UK, 2018). We’ve tweaked and played with it a bit, amping up the garlic and using a stick blender to emulsify the heck out of the dressing…

1982 called and wants its chicken back… Chicken Marbella, to be exact. If you kids ever wondered how your forebears dinner-partied hard, look no further than this tasty relic from the beloved classic, The Silver Palate Cookbook…

Braising is one of the cornerstone techniques of cooking and once you understand how it works, you can go forth and apply the same, basic method to any suited ingredient, or cut of meat, with confidence. Braising is a wet method of cooking, and meat-wise…

Canned seafoods are quite the thing lately, aren’t they? Although the French (who pioneered sardine canning in the early 1800s), Spanish and Portuguese have known for quite some time that fish in a can is fab. While you can drop serious coin on boujee canned fish brands…

Use whatever sausages you darn well like here, although some are definitely better than others. The ones to avoid are the sort with super-smooth interiors, that cook to disappointing hardness and don’t really taste like much except maybe over-seasoned pureed meat. They’re full of fillers…

We genuinely love cooking with lentils, chickpeas, beans et al. They’re not only delish, they’re great contenders for filling, budget-friendly, delish dinners that are perfect for coping with the exhausting, ever-increasing cost of living spikes. We figured it was worth resurrecting the concept of home-made baked beans; yeha they’re cheap to buy…

It’s hard to make brown, stewed or plain-looking food look yum, and making food look yum is always the mandate in this crowded online space, no? There is just so much purdy food out there and we don’t pretend to compete. But what this humble soup lacks in Lights! Camera!…

Barely-cooked broccoli is the absolute worst in our world – such a punish to eat, with tough, chewy stems and that trail of vegetal matter settling so attractively between your teeth. Our remedy? To finely chop the broc (leaves, stems and all), combine it with lemon juice, a tonne of garlic and anchovies…

Unleash the corgis and guzzle the Pimms… it’s coronation time! Well it was.  Concocted by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume from the London Le Cordon Bleu for Elizbeth 2’s anointing, coronation chicken was a mess of cold chicken, curried mayonnaise sauce, dried apricots and almonds…

Ah, quinoa. Remember the tiresome mania for quinoa? When the Western world ‘discovered’ it (despite about 7000 years of quinoa domestication) and hipsters practically snorted it for breakfast? Who can forget how the price for the poor bloody Bolivians, who rely on it as a nutrient-rich staple, went utterly bonkers? We hate food trends…

We love lamb, especially a roast leg, either cooked long, slow and on the bone, or boned, rolled, tied and blasted at 200C. This is a very simple take on a fast roasted boneless leg but for the sake of all that’s cute, woolly and goes ‘baaa’ when you pat it, do not overcook your lamb…

Now here’s a combo I’ll bet you never saw coming. But jeebus, is it delicious or what? And we don’t have much more to say than that... and nor is there really a recipe. It’s more a concept. You know, the vibe of the thing. “In summing up, Your Honour, it’s melon, it’s tomato, it’s feta, it’s rightness, it works, it’s the vibe..