There’s a new way to cook lamb shanks in town; trussed up in paper. The idea is, the baking paper packaging traps all the juices and steam inside, keeping the shanks super-succulent and tasty as they cook. We don’t think you could possibly over-cook these as there is no way they can possibly dry out...

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....

This isn’t our first slow-baked salmon rodeo, as you’ll know if you saw our recipe for Roasted Salmon with Dried Tomato and Walnuts a month or so back. Delicious. Because we loved the results so much, we’ve riffed off the same theme again, this time using harissa and some orange as complimentary flavours. (Our orange was a blood one but use whatever you have. We like the slightly spiky flavour of…

We’ve yet to meet a dhal we disliked and, as the Subcontinent is filled with variations on the theme of spicy, soupy lentils, we’re far from done with this pulse-based dish. Dahl is dependably easy, filling and delicious, and a dish you can generally whip up using affordable pantry staples. It’s quick too…

Welcome to Fellah Köfte. With roots in Turkish and MIddle Eastern cuisine, it’s a humble kind of a dish using everyday staples that would traditionally have been super-cheap and constantly on hand. Depending on what burghul and semolina cost in your vicino, it’s still pretty cheap to make and if you can get Turkish pepper paste all the better…

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…

We never jumped on the kale-as-superfood bandwagon but TBH we don’t jump on too many bandwagons, food or otherwise. We’re just not bandwagon jumpers. (Kale chips? Remember them? Pffft). Kale was always just another cruciferous vegetable to us, and one that got annoyingly stuck in our teeth whenever we ate it…

These are so satisfying to make. You simmer onions whole until they turn tender, carefully scoop out the innards, chop them up, mix them into a cheesy, bread-based stuffing, then pile this into the outer onion shells and bake until they’re deep golden and crusty on top. Yum. This is the kind of dish that comes from the Italian cucina povera tradition…

Hands up who has memories of their Mum making shepherd’s pie? Us too. Ours minced the cold roast lamb using a hefty metal mincer with a crank handle. It screwed onto the edge of the bench or dining table and made short work of reducing the lamb to teeny tiny bits; yes, kids, there was life before food processors…

Why use the Italian name for this dish? Because when translated, ribollita means ‘reboiled’ and we don’t know about you but a dish with that name would not exactly entice us to the dinner table. “What’s for dinner, Mum?” “Reboiled!!” “Ooh…

Did you know that when chefs in NZ discovered filo pastry, sometime in the 1980s, they kind of lost their minds? It was the newest shiny thing in town and they used it in all kinds of ways, many of them completely strange. For example, there was a dish involving…

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…

If you’re looking at this recipe and wondering why we just didn’t use chicken mince, it’s because we don’t like it. Like, we r-e-a-l-l-y don’t like it. That stuff you get from the supermarket? It’s mushy, pallid and has a really sloppy texture and who knows what sad part of the bird it actually comes from. So yeah, we chop our own…

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…

This easy bread is a delish way to use up packet-ends and other odds and sods in your fridge. You know, the ones that are teetering on the cusp of their BBD but that you can’t bear to chuck out. And yes, we deliberately used the word ‘easy’ here; if you’ve read our…

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…

We can’t decide which of this pair of complementary recipes we love the most... we adore tender slices of juicy beef fillet, but those stir-fried, vinegary potato shreds? They get us every single time. And if you’re not familiar with this rustic Chinese approach to potato cooking…

Here’s a dish that’s not a new idea; sometimes, you don’t need to reinvent wheels. Tried and true flavours simply work, and they work for a reason. PB and J. Pineapple and ham. Chocolate and mint. Lemon and fish. Maple syrup and bacon. They go together. That’s it. No need to overthink it. Beetroot and barley are another timeless combo…

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…

We love a winter salad! And, as fundamentally lazy types, we like one that’s shaved and raw because it’s nice to have a break from the stove. The key here is in the fine shaving; did you know that the way your food is cut affects the way it eats and tastes? Well that’s our theory anyway, and it’s very true here…