Tuna poke bowl
The great thing about poke bowls is that they’re easy to prepare, you can put whatever you want in them and they’re generally quite a healthy meal whilst also being so tasty and colourful. I’ve used tuna here but salmon is another favourite. If you can’t get sushi grade fish that you can eat raw then you could always just use cooked fish.
Tuna kimchi fried rice
This tuna kimchi fried rice is so flavourful from the Korean staples of gochujang, gochugaru and kimchi. You can control the heat with the gochugaru (Korean pepper flakes) and either keep it relatively mild or make it as hot and spicy as you like! This is a really quick and easy dish to make and so versatile. If you don’t fancy tuna you can substitute in prawns, tofu, chicken or whatever you prefer. A fried egg with a runny yolk finishes this dish off perfectly.
Nigella’s Thai noodles with cinnamon and prawns
Another great Nigella recipe, I’m a big noodle fan and this is a twist from the norm. Cinnamon and celery give the dish a new dimension but the flavours of ginger, garlic, soy sauce and oyster sauce bring a comforting familiarity.
Simple pan fried pak choi
The last dish from my recipe archive. Simple pan fried pak choi, this goes with pretty much every Chinese dish as a side. It’s so quick simple, you really can’t go wrong!
Fish flavoured aubergine (Yu xiang qiezi)
I came across this dish during my travels in China, it’s spicy and fragrant, typical of Sichuanese food and was an instant favourite of mine. I had to try and make it myself when I returned home to the UK. This is another original retro recipe from 2013 that I wrote up along with my mum’s baked pork recipe.
My mum’s baked pork and egg
I found this old recipe on my computer, it’s actually the first recipe I ever wrote up, way back in 2013 for another friend’s blog! I thought this might be a good time to repost and give it a new audience. It’s a recipe from my mum, one of the dishes she used to always make for me when I was a kid that was always happily received.
Sweet potato, chorizo and feta salad
This is one of those salads that people who don’t really like salads tend to like. In that sense it’s a crowd pleaser as it’s a great salad for salad lovers too! It’s full of goodies, salty feta, spicy chorizo, sweet potatoes, toasty pine nuts, the only real green is the baby spinach.
Seared tuna, avocado and cucumber salad
Use sashimi grade tuna for this salad and all it needs is a quick sear. This salad is light and fresh with a distinct hint of East Asian flavour.
Thai stir fried noodles (Pad See Ew)
This is a popular type of fried noodles in Thailand. It has a relatively simplistic flavour profile, heavy with soy and oyster sauce. In contrast pad thai tends to have lighter zingier flavours with peanuts, lime and chilli.
It took me ages to find nice wide rice noodles to make this dish with, I finally found some in a really big Asian supermarket that had a 20 metre long aisle of different types of noodle! For this dish, the wider the noodles the better in my opinion.
Halloumi, chickpea and lentil salad
I’m a big halloumi fan, whenever I have it in any meal, I never miss having meat. This salad includes both lentils and chickpeas which makes it really substantial and suitable for a main meal.
Chinese chive omelette
What makes this omelette special is the Chinese/garlic chives. They impart such a wonderful flavour which just can’t quite be matched with any substitute. Though they can bit a bit tough to find unless you have an Asian grocer nearby, once you do have these, the rest of the omelette uses just 3 other ingredients and some oil to fry, super simple and fast to make! Perfect for lunch, dinner or as part of a larger multi-dish meal.
Chicken and white bean stew
They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. This was the first dish I ever made for my now hubby, so I’d say it’s a winner!
Tteokbokki (spicy Korean rice cakes)
This is a Korean street food snack made of spicy, chewy, moorish rice cakes. It’s unlike anything I could really compare to any Western dish. When my husband and I first tried it in Seoul we were immediately hooked. The cooking of this dish is actually incredibly easy, the biggest effort will probably be made sourcing the ingredients!
Burrata, potato, cannellini bean and pesto salad
This isn’t really a salad, it’s more the chance to eat crispy fried potatoes and burrata without feeling it’s totally indulgent.
Roasted cauliflower and hazelnut salad
This salad is surprisingly delicious, in fact it is so good that it reinvigorated my use of cauliflower in my cooking altogether. This salad made me realise how versatile cauliflower can be and how flavoursome it is when roasted.
Miso glazed salmon with pak choi
A simple midweek meal, the miso does the heavy lifting in terms of flavour and it makes a really quick and easy marinade with the quick stir up of a few key ingredients. In my opinion the salmon is best served simply with plain rice and some greens.
Griddled halloumi, courgette and peach salad
I really enjoy fruit in a savoury dish, mainly as it usually brings a lovely juiciness, this salad is no exception. The sweet juicy, tangy peaches surprisingly go really well against salty halloumi. Griddling the components of this salad add a nice charred flavour and looks nice too!
Beetroot and feta pasta with walnuts and dill
This has got to be one of the prettiest pasta dishes, plus a beetroot lover’s dream! This dish comes together in not much more time than it takes to cook the pasta but looks so special.