The smooth filling hits all the zingy high notes and is a gorgeous contrast to the crunchy base

If you like key lime pie, you’ll like this. It hits the same notes, but is even more fragrant and fruity, thanks to all the passion fruit, lime and the crunchy ginger biscuit base. Condensed milk is one of the best things that comes in a tin and I welcome any opportunity to use it. Incorporating it into the filling helps this tart bake much faster than a traditional custard, and brings a delightfully creamy, silky texture.

Discover this recipe and many more from your favourite cooks in the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: The Guardian. Food styling: Benjamina Ebuehi. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Lara Cook.

💾

© Photograph: The Guardian. Food styling: Benjamina Ebuehi. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Lara Cook.

Controversial, maybe, but these sandwich fillings dial up the taste factor and fit pretty well in a soft white roll

If I was forced to choose, I’d say I’m a butter, cheese and pickles man. I love mine open and I tend to go for sourdough, even if that does induce eye-rolls from many. I’m talking, of course, about sandwiches, a subject on which everyone has wonderfully strong opinions. What bread to use? Cut it on the diagonal or straight down the middle? Is it OK for anyone over the age of seven to cut off the crusts? And that’s before you even start discussing what’s going inside. Slices of tomato: sublime or soggy? A handful of crisps: critical or criminal? A lettuce leaf or two: lovely or limp? Fish finger sandwiches: right or wrong? Such seemingly innocent questions, yet ones that incite such firm feelings. (My reply to that last question, incidentally, is revealed by today’s first recipe, which takes the concept, dials it up and feels pretty strongly about the presence of a soft white roll.)

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Eden Owen-Jones.

💾

© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Eden Owen-Jones.

Fluffy, moreish, teasingly sharp, crusty brown on top and bubbling at the edges …

Self-saucing puddings are magic, and we should all have a recipe up our sleeve. The transformation from a soggy batter (in which it is hard to see the potential) to a fluffy, moreish pudding is something to behold. I have made many iterations of them in my time – some with dates and ricotta, others with apple and toffee,chocolate fudge and beyond. This one, with elderflower and lemon, is for citrus fans. It is wonderfully sharp, and can be put together at a moment’s notice.

Discover this recipe and many more from your favourite cooks on the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: The Guardian. Food styling: Benjamina Ebuehi. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Lara Cook.

💾

© Photograph: The Guardian. Food styling: Benjamina Ebuehi. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Lara Cook.

A meat-free barbecue feast: charred leeks with pecorino sauce and pickled oyster mushrooms, grilled hispi cabbage with a classic French sauce, and barbecued chestnut mushrooms with habanero, lemon and rocket pesto

When it comes to barbecuing, subtlety is often overlooked amid the sizzle of sausages and the char of burgers, but it takes only a light extra touch to elevate your alfresco meal into something really special. I love fire cooking, because that lick of flame turns even simple ingredients into something greater than the sum of their parts. You can take something as ordinary as a leek, say, and transform it over hot coals into a dish that is unrecognisably delicious. Of course, it also helps that you’re then covering that leek in a rich pecorino sauce, but I’m telling you, without those flames, it just wouldn’t be the same. Today’s recipes, which are all taken from our restaurant menu at the Parakeet, show there’s magic to be had in the seeming chaos of smoke-infused vegetable cooking. For those who can’t resist the allure of traditional barbecue fare, they’re all also designed to pair with sausages (wild boar, ideally), thick-cut pork chops or flame-grilled fish.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Lizzie Mayson/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Kitty Coles. Food assistant: Immy Mucklow.

💾

© Photograph: Lizzie Mayson/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Kitty Coles. Food assistant: Immy Mucklow.

The Basques work wonders with fresh peas: try them with fried cod, fino and jamón, pork belly with fried eggs, goat’s cheese toasts or in crab and pea rice

As with any proud Basque, peas have played a huge part in my culinary education – they even feature in one of my earliest kitchen memories, of five-year-old me podding peas with my mother. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that peas are one of the most important ingredients in our cooking tradition, and we happily eat them for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner, as well as a raw snack. Every spring, we Basques turn into pea-obsessives, because that’s when guisantes lágrima come into season. They’re much smaller than regular peas, and much, much sweeter, and we cook them every which way, from roasting and frying to stews and salads – they’re so revered that we call them “green caviar”. Lágrima peas are next to impossible to get hold of in the UK, but that’s not to say you can’t use fresh British peas in similarly delicious and varied ways.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Lizzie Mayson/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Kitty Coles. Food assistant: Immy Mucklow.

💾

© Photograph: Lizzie Mayson/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Kitty Coles. Food assistant: Immy Mucklow.

These small, soft balls make for a speedy supper – serve them with a generous grating of parmesan and a well-dressed green salad

The combination of ricotta, wilted chopped spinach, grated parmesan or pecorino, egg and a good grating of nutmeg is a familiar and typical filling for ravioli. In today’s dish, though, there is no pasta covering, hence the nudità (nudity) of the little lumps (gnocchi simply means “little lumps”), which is neatly captured by the Tuscan dialect word gnudi. They have other names, too. In Casentino, in the province of Arezzo, for example, they are possessive and call them gnocchi di Casentino, as well as gnocchi di ricotta, while in the provinces of Siena and Grosseto gnudi are known as malfatti (“badly shaped”), which is a reassuring name, as well as a charming one.

That said, my gnudi are well formed, ever since I learned an entertaining and satisfying technique (I wish I could remember who to thank for this): you put a walnut-sized lump of the spinach-speckled gnudi mixture into a small bowl along with a little semolina (or plain) flour and move the bowl in a circle, so the cheese mixture rolls around like a ball bearing in a slot machine and eventually turns into a satisfying oval. Another way of shaping is simply by rolling the balls between floured hands, or the two-teaspoon method, which involves turning and smoothing each side until it forms a neat lump, then dusting it in flour.

Continue reading...

💾

© Photograph: Rachel Roddy/The Guardian

💾

© Photograph: Rachel Roddy/The Guardian

Some poultry growers are turning to innovative tactics to protect their flocks, deploying deterrents like drones, air horns, balloons and decoy predators.

© Tim Gruber for The New York Times

Some poultry growers are turning to innovative tactics to protect their flocks, deploying deterrents like drones, air horns, balloons and decoy predators.

© Tim Gruber for The New York Times