Butter Chicken

The very best curry is fairly time consuming but so, so worth it. That’s how I categorise this meal; it’s more of a delicious weekend effort than a weekday meal. It involves juggling a few things and throwing in a lot of ingredients.

Served with some Nigella seeds and I reserved a little of the fried garlic for a topping

But during the cooking process it smells INCREDIBLE and the end product is one of the best curries I've ever eaten - woooooorth it!

Vareniki - Russian Mashed Potato Dumplings

My favourite thing about travelling is eating new cuisines. In Russia last year I was super hungry and late one evening we stopped into a little diner. I ordered what is basically a bowl of comforting delights - mashed potato wrapped in dough. Perfection. Carbs on carbs, my kind of cuisine.

I have been meaning to make these for AGES but honestly, folding dumpling wrappers can be a little bit tedious. Then I saw a thing. A gadget. The coolest thing ever!

DUMPLING PRESS OMG

So this was an absolute breeze. Easy, delicious and kind of quick for dumplings! I don't think my recipe is strictly traditional but it was really really good. Usually you'd just have this on your own but I served it with some sausages for a little extra protein.

Chocolate Oreo Cake

So, it was my BIRTHDAY recently. And my lovely boyfriend sourced some cake for me. Now that’s a hard task, because I have high standards for cake. But he found some absolute gems from a local cake shop - one of which was a chocolate oreo cake.

I ate it. It was life-changing. I immediately planned to make my own.

I was really keen to make a square cake, because I could easily chop it up into portions for work, and we want to reduce the number of people touching the baked goods (ie cutting a round cake has a little more contact that picking up a cut slice).

I think that coffee adds the perfect complement to the heavy chocolate flavour here, without making the final cake taste like coffee at all. Also, no matter how fine you process the biscuits, they’ll still probably be too big for a traditional shaped piping nozzle, so I just used one of my faves – the big round one that makes lovely Hershey’s Kiss-shaped dollops of icing.

No Knead Bread

I’m going to make a confession. I really like kneading bread. I don’t understand when people want to do less kneading.

Maybe I LIKE the misery..

So I’ve always ignored these no knead recipes. But I got sucked in the other day, browsing bread recipes in lockdown, as we all are. I saw some pictures of some bread that just had the best crust and looked artisan-bakery perfection.

Can't argue with that crust

It was no knead. I gave it a go.

And it turned out GREAT. The best part is that it takes almost no time to prep the dough, then you can leave it in the fridge for up to 7 days before baking! This means I can have fresh bread in the morning. Don’t underestimate how wonderful that is.

The secret of the crust is the steam generated from cooking it in a pre-heated lidded dish. Magical.