My favourite recipes

Try these white choc & apricot cookies

I have a ring-bound recipe file bursting at the seams with clippings from newspapers and magazines as well as recipes handwritten onto its pages. It was a thoughtful gift from a friend - Izzy - when we were studying journalism at City University 18 years ago or so. Even then as a busy student (the tutors kept us diploma students busy), I found cooking provided a way of switching off. This is the one…

It contains mum’s best chocolate cake, a brilliant hainanese one-pot chicken recipe by Rukmini Iyer, a ginger and chilli lentil salad, notes on jointing a chicken, John Torode’s sausage rolls and a delicious tandoori salmon and cavolo nero kedgeree, among other things. I had the luck (thank you Katie) to have a Leith’s tutor teach me some basics years ago, and made notes on everything we did in its pages.

The other night, I actually dreamed - or should I say had a nightmare - that I lost it prompting me to revise its importance and mention to Dom that I’d save it in a fire! Ok, maybe a little dramatic. Especially since I did actually manage to find many of those recipes online (see links above).

It’s not terribly neat, there are far more clippings than handwritten recipes and it is bursting at the seams. I have tried to find a new one, but somehow nothing seems quite right.

There is something comforting about having recipes on pieces of paper or written where I can follow them without a screen. It’s messy and scrappy, but I take a some pride in knowing I have placed recipes in the correct sections. Small win.

I don’t use it every week - not least because I like testing out different ideas in cookbooks – but it has come to say something about how I cook, what I prioritise and come back to time and again. I’d be lost without it.

The very first recipe recorded in the baking section is for these apricot and white chocolate cookies. They are good. So good in fact that Dom started quizzing me about them randomly the other day, which acted as a little reminder. Over our years together I have baked a lot of sweet things and the fact they stuck in his mind means these are WINNERS. Quick, small, snackable and very tasty.

An article that caught my attention this week…

Was this piece in The Guardian by journalist Bee Wilson Ultra-processed babies: are toddler snacks one of the great food scandals of our time? I follow Bee on Instagram so quickly found myself getting sucked into the comments, adding my own thoughts. I used to buy a bag of Organix rice crackers and a pack of their oat bars most weeks when the boys were toddlers, but it does seem to me that the snack aisle has got completely out of hand. I also realised fairly early on that the boys would not eat their nutritious meals if they were full up on snacks.

One of the factors behind their rise includes parents worried about choking - something a baby and child first aid course really helped reassure me on. I also have a sneaking suspicion that we are taught as mothers to breastfeed our babies on demand - all well and good - but then when it comes to weaning, that little and often message carries on with food. At some point you have to make a call on whether your child has an appetite for their meal and trust your instincts.

It’s a fraught area and one I applaud Bee for researching and writing about. She co-founded a children’s charity called TastEd in 2019, which is all about teaching children to explore food using all five senses, a brilliant idea, and one that more schools would ideally embrace. They provide free resources and it can start with some simple fruit and vegetables in classes - a message worth sharing.