Top of the MORNING to ya! I love St Patrick’s Day, me, and not just because of my Irish mother and her large and characterful Irish family, but because it’s also my BIRTHDAY. And how wonderful it is to walk into the pub on my birthday and be greeted with an Irish band singing Chieftains covers, a loud bunch of […]
This delicious ham casserole is adapted from a favourite old recipe of mine – where I would boil the ham joint whole to make a stock, before shredding it into the casserole. This faster version is no compromise, making a delicious hearty dinner in less than half the time. For an extra special twist, serve with crusty bread topped with […]
Griddle scones can be a simple weekend breakfast to make those lazy weekend mornings feel special and luxurious. Although these are extraordinarily easy to make, when I taste the sweet crunch of fried greens with melted butter or see a mixing bowl and spoon in the washing-up pile I feel like I’ve achieved something, even if it’s almost midday. I […]
Colcannon is a traditional Irish recipe made with kale, spring greens or cabbage – depending on what you have available. (I generally have kale kicking about, for those controversial kale pestos and the occasional grimacing penitence of a green juice on ‘the mornings after the nights before…’) Colcannon was a staple of my childhood but my mother, born and raised in Belfast, simply called it ‘champ’ – readers have been in touch in droves to explain the differences between the two, and Mum’s seemed to be a hybrid depending on what we had in the veg drawer. We used to eat it with a pile of sausages and gravy, and fought over seconds. Serve with sausages, chicken or eat as it is straight from the pot. The quantities are easily doubled, for larger families or appetites. Serves 2 as a side dish at 25p each 350g white potatoes (fresh or tinned – I use tinned as they’re FAR cheaper, AND already cooked), 20p a handful of kale (30g), 15p ½ an onion (100g), 6p a generous knob of butter (25g), or more to taste, 9p If using fresh potatoes, wash and dice them. If using tinned potatoes, drain and leave them whole. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil, pop the potatoes in and simmer until super-tender – 20 minutes for fresh potatoes, 5 minutes for tinned ones. Finely chop the cabbage, greens or kale and peel and finely […]
Firstly, for the budget-conscious among you raising eyebrows at the use of a bottle of the authentic black stuff in a batch of brownies, fear not, for this recipe makes 24 of the little tinkers, and uses a little over half a can at that, so you could stretch to 40ish from a single can if you’ve a crowd to […]
I’m mad about herring roe, but since I moved away from sunny Southend to the tropical climes of London last year, I hadn’t seen it in any of my local supermarkets. I even strayed away from the big orange one to a blue one and a green one in search of a cheap can of this salty, creamy goodness (oo-er…ah, […]
This recipe was one of my favourite, simple ones from my first cookbook, A Girl Called Jack. Originally borne of a way to use up a bulk-buy bag of carrots (in the days before the guinea pig!), and to make veg exciting for a then two-year-old boy, it’s a simple, bright staple in my home today. In fact, I’ve just […]
As part of the ongoing Joy Project, here’s some of the things that have made me laugh, smile, and feel joyous this week… Starting with the rogue cheeky pigeon in the bathroom that kept a good few Twitter followers entertained!! Jack […]
This recipe from my microwave series is based on a recipe from my book, A Girl Called Jack, that I see popping up on my Twitter feed and Facebook pages time and time again – it seems to be a definite favourite among my lovely readers! And so, I wondered if it was possible to make a portable microwave version, […]
I’m very honoured to have been a part of this book, along with many friends and other cooks, chefs, dieticians, and nutritionists. I have lost two good and important men in my life to Cancer recently, and know that if this book had been around before now I would have given it to them, their families, and many other […]
A few weeks ago I received an invitation in the post to the 25th birthday party of BBC Good Food – and squeaked with excitement. I credit the BBC Good Food website as being one of the main ways I taught myself to cook, by looking up and poring over recipes online, studiously copying them into notebooks that I still […]
Friends will know that my Marmite obsession is almost as out of control as my peanut butter obsession. In leaner times, I would substitute Marmite, which was well out of my budget range, for a paste made from a crumbled Basics beef stock cube, mixed with boiling water, and allowed to cool. Smeared onto toast with butter, it delivered that […]
I love making a mushroom stock when I have a few shrivelling up in the drawer of the fridge, cooking them long and slow with some garlic and onion and some dried or fresh herbs, before freezing it to use as the base of a flavoursome risotto or stew… Pungent and almost truffley, at just a fraction of the […]
Bear with me folks, because this baby sounds a lot posher and more complicated than it actually was. You can make it go further by blitzing a slice of bread in the blender or grating it, and mixing it with the mince to pad it out. There’s a scarce amount of onion and garlic in this, because of the short […]
It would be remiss of me not to include this ‘not really a recipe’, as I have eaten it almost every day since the microwave project began. It came around by accident, like so many of these things do – I was trying to make banana chips in the microwave and ended up with a hot banana mush… Undeterred, I […]
Some of the things that have brought me joy this week… Jack Monroe. Twitter & Instagram @MsJackMonroe
COOKING ON A BOOTSTRAP 