This is a lovely recipe that I've used from HelloFresh. I do find nowadays that HelloFresh is becoming less reliable in their recipes (with far more frequent mistakes and sometimes a completely different recipe to what the title says) but this is one that we used years ago and saved because we enjoyed it. 

The hash is made up of potato, pepper, onion, and sweetcorn, with the steak plated on top, and the sauce is poured over. You can make it look nice but if you're serving it right you should be drenching it in sauce, which makes it look less impressive. The sauce is made with crème fraiche - in a pinch you can substitute with Greek yogurt (which is what I did this weekend) but it makes the sauce look a bit separated despite not affecting the flavour. It's useful having someone to help you out in the final stages of this recipe, as it can get a little overwhelming cooking the steak as the potatoes are coming out of the oven, and at the same time as the chicken stock is being prepared.

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I use this focaccia recipe whenever I have a day off, and it's never failed me. This week I tried making a garlic focaccia - I wrapped some garlic up in tinfoil, added some oil and stuck it in the oven at 180 for half an hour or so. I then added the softened garlic and some parsley to some butter to make garlic butter. When I reached the toppings stage, I added some butter and some sliced mozzarella to the centre third of the bread and folded the sides of the dough over the toppings (like a book) to encase them inside the bread. My learning experience this week was that I shouldn't add too much garlic butter, otherwise it'll spill out from the dough into the pan while cooking. Nevertheless, it was very tasty and it felt so luxurious to be eating garlic focaccia while watching The Fugitive. I would call it a successful experiment!

This butternut squash flatbread recipe is one with a fairly long cooking time, but very little prep time. It's super low effort, and is very tasty. The most important tip I can give about this recipe is that you absolutely must get proper flatbreads - it doesn't matter if they're cheap or expensive - instead of trying to use tortilla wraps. The ratio of bread to filling is important, and should not be reduced. The amounts listed below make roughly 6 small flatbreads (or 3 large ones) and therefore serves 2-3 people depending on appetite. 


( Read more... )4. Assemble the flatbreads with the cooked ingredients, the hummus, and the salad.

I enjoy baking, but have never quite worked out the perfect cake-making strategy. Birthdays only come around once a year, and I'm rarely allowed to make my own birthday cake! Still, for this chocolate cake recipe I cobbled together three different 'recipes' and came out with an incredibly moist, rich chocolate cake. I took a recipe for a chocolate cake, a recipe for a whipped ganache, and an old tip I'd learnt - replace milk in your recipe with buttermilk. The acidity of the buttermilk helps your cake hang onto moisture instead of drying out.

Chocolate Birthday Cake Recipe:

Optional: put some raspberries over the top of the cake to add some tartness.