Charred lamb leg, creamy skordalia and herb salad
Let’s talk skordalia – part sauce, part dip, and all kinds of delicious. The name comes from the Greek word skordo (σκόρδο), meaning garlic, which tells you everything you need to know… if you don’t like garlic, trust us when we tell you this isn’t for you so just jog on. Creamy, rich and punchy…
Nonya chicken curry
Yes, a curry paste from scratch, but hear us out. This curry is delicious, but not if you shortcut things. It’s our take on a Nonya curry; the Nonyas (also called the Peranakans) are communities descended from Chinese immigrants who settled in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, intermarried with locals, and blended their heritage with Malay influences. Their food is a true fusion cuisine…
Big beefy borscht
A real meal-in-a-bowl, you can easy scale this recipe up, increasing everything by a half or even doubling it. As the soup freezes well, you can then have plenty to pull out for an easy meal when time runs short to cook dinner. We like roasting our beets separately, adding them to the soup near the end of cooking...
Potato-stuffed flatbreads
These flatbreads are fun to put together and they’re versatile too. You could serve them as a side for a soup, or with a Middle-Eastern themed roast lamb dinner, or even as leftovers for breakfast, reheated in the oven until the bread-y part turns crisp. We like serving them as part of a mezze (also spelled ‘meze’) spread. We have an entire repertoire of veggie and pulse-based dips...
Loaded cheesy potatoes
We’re still banging on about Father’s Day with these. We were thinking about the ultimate dinner feast to whip up for a deserving dad, and as cliche as it sounds we kept coming back to steak. But a really great steak, crusty and seared, dripping in basting butter and served simply with sea salt and fresh grinds of the pepper mill...
Everything bagel tattie scones
Take a Scottish classic, sprinkle over a popular American seasoning, then serve with eggs and smoked salmon and let the deliciousness flow! Tattie (for ‘potato’) scones are more like flatbread or griddle bread than an actual scone and they don’t rise too much. But they’re wonderfully potato-y and easy, and are the perfect foil for everything else going on here....
Braised gochujang chicken and vegetables
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that this kind of a bung-together-and-forget simmered recipe would be made for the slow cooker, wouldn’t you. So did we. But THREE tests and many chicken legs later (many bloody legs), we can hand-on-heart report that it is, in fact, way better and far less hassle to just simmer it on the stove…
Salmon with lentils and hot bacon dressing
Some ingredients just have a natural affinity which shouldn’t be monkeyed with. Lentils. Bacon. Vinegar. Spinach. No amount of yuzu/tahini/maple syrup/pickle juice/smoked paprika/bee pollen/hot honey/Reece’s cups or whatever other flavours are currently smashing it on Reels, can possible be an improvement. Full stop, end of story, no arguing…
Tourtière - It’s a pie
If you’re on the prowl for a weekend cooking project, how about making a pie? From scratch? Including pastry? And not just any old pie but a Canadian Christmas one. Meet tourtière, a trad dish from Quebec, whose name comes from the type of deep dish used to bake it…
Hot smoked salmon platter with potatoes and olive brine dressing
When you want to bring those plattered-up, generous, help-yourself vibes to the table, think smoked salmon and potatoes. It may not be a revolutionary combo but honestly. You can not go wrong with a dish like this when you need to…
Double salmon chowder
Allegedly there are people who don’t consider soup a meal, but we are not those people. We love soup. And here’s a particularly hearty, meal-in-a-bowl soup, chockers with veggies, salmon and big, boofy flavour. We’ve used smoked and fresh salmon for the fish part, but you could use fresh, white fish fillets (tarakihi, snapper, ling, for example) if you’d prefer…
Curry leaf and peanut roast potatoes
Looking for a fresh, new spin on the humble roast spud? Try these! You can use whatever floury or all-purpose potatoes you like, they don’t have to be baby ones. Cut them into whatever size you prefer and adjust the cooking time accordingly. And look, we get it…
Roast capsicum, feta, olives and oregano
We’re doing our best to slip in as many vibrant veggie-based dishes as we can before the dark days of winter set in. Not that we have anything against braises, pies, soups, root veggies and all that comfort food you generally hoover through in winter. (Did someone say ‘roasted kūmara’?)…
Salmon fish cakes
Loads of cuisines have their take on a fish cake; in Thailand they're called tod mun pla and are infused with red curry paste; in Malaysia they’re called otak otak and involve grinding fish to a paste with coconut milk and spices, wrapping in banana leaves, then grilling. Delish…
Greek-ish potato salad
Potato salad. Just yum. We love us a classic version, complete with mayo, chopped boiled egg, a hint of powdered mustard and chopped chives/parsley – we don’t even mind if a smidge of very finely chopped celery finds its way in…
Braised chicken marbella-style
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…
Coronation chicken salad
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…