My grocer, just down the road, has become inundated with squashes of all shapes and sizes, just waiting to be devoured. Orange, yellow and green, their vivid colours signify the season in which they are most fruitful (if you’ll pardon the pun). The large chunks of sliced fruit atop this Squash and Feta Puff Tart could scarcely be more reminiscent of autumn; their vibrancy almost atoning for shortened evenings and colder weather. Almost.
Though a lot of what I enjoy about food blogging lies in the creation and development of new recipes, it also pleases me greatly to write recipes for classic dishes and timeless combinations. This is where recipes like Pumpkin and Sage Soup come into play. Trust me, you’ll not be able to help but enjoy this autumnal favourite.
It’s that time of year again; pumpkin has burst unabatedly onto the culinary scene to become, for one month only, more popular than even chocolate is. There are sweet pumpkin pies, bowls of pumpkin soup and loaves of pumpkin bread aplenty, but here you’ll find something a little alternative. I give you my recipe for a thoroughly savoury and utterly delicious Pumpkin and Chorizo Pie.
There are dishes in life for which everyone has a recipe – this is one such dish. However, as with most, it is eminently possible for one to put in a little more effort and have ones mouth reap the rewards. In my experience, macaroni cheese is best when it isn’t overpowered by the flavour of a catastrophic quantity of mature cheddar; that’s not to say that it shouldn’t contain cheddar, but it needs a little more complexity to become truly exceptional. By far the best way of accomplishing this feat is to infuse the milk used to make the cheese sauce – it adds a surprising depth of flavour which gives the dish a certain gastronomic eloquence.
Minestrone, which when translated literally means ‘big soup‘, is a seasonal soup that can be made of whatever ingredients are at hand. The only fixed characteristics of minestrone are that it should containpastaandplenty of delicious stock. As such, it is to be expected that a dish so undefinable would have myriad different variations and this, of course, is true. However, tomatoes are unlikely to be found high up on the list of ingredients that really make minestrone sing.