Macaroni Peas

A nice, relatively quick and quite unusual pasta sauce recipe. I (slightly) adapted this from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's excellent cookbook 'River Cottage Veg Every Day!'.. which as I have said on a number of occasions, is currently my favourite cookbook, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you don't have macaroni, any other pasta shape will do, really.

Artichoke Pasta Sauce

This is a relatively simply (in terms of flavour) but quite satisfying pasta sauce that I came across in another one of my many, very old, cookbooks that I got second hand from a charity shop at some point. You could use fresh artichokes if you can find them, but I used tinned for ease of cooking, since it makes the dish much quicker to cook. Not many photos on this one (or from now on, in fact) as the days have gotten so short I can't get any decent light in my kitchen when cooking.

Mango and Clementine Tarte Tatin

A while back I had an overly ripe mango and wanted a recipe to do something with it. I found a recipe for mango tarte tatin online, but as I started to cook it, it had all the measurements completely wrong, with too much pastry and too little fruit. So I played it by ear a bit and modified it, adding in a clementine. The result turned out nicely, though you may want to add more fruit. As always, if you prefer to use ready made pastry, go ahead.

Wholewheat Banana Nut Loaf

I credit this recipe with introducing me to the joys of baking. High praise indeed, and worth it. Cake is one of my big weaknesses and this particular cake is, to me, everything a cake should be: moist, tasty, with the walnuts adding a lovely bit of crunch. Back in the 2006/07 academic year, I was studying for my masters and during exam time needed something to do during my revision breaks. That something was baking this cake. Once I perfected this recipe, I started experimenting with other baking recipes, and the rest, as they say, is history.