ENGLISH MUM

Like many things in cooking, barbecue sauce is one of those things that you buy, until you finally make it yourself, then instantly realise that home made is ten times better than bought. This sauce gets made all the time in our house.  It’s scrummy poured over meat, like pork belly strips, or sausages, before you cook them, or you can bubble it away a little to thicken it up, then serve it as a condiment...

There’s no getting away from it: brownies are yummy.  They’re also incredibly easy to make with basic ‘store cupboard’ ingredients.  I make these at least once a week, if not more, and their gorgeous, slightly squidgy fudginess is just perfect as an afternoon treat or poshed up with some whipped cream as an easy dessert.  Here’s how it’s done. A word about chocolate Firstly,...

Pastry always seems a bit terrifying.  But honestly, have a think about it: it’s really just a vessel to hold delicious contents, all of which will spill out over your pastry making it all taste yummy anyway.  And if it’s a little thick or a bit uneven, who cares? That’s what home made food is all about.  So come on, let’s dive in: practice makes perfect! Pie dishes A quick word about...

Let’s face it: Easter just isn’t Easter without hot cross buns. And chocolate. But mostly hot cross buns. If you’re feeling a bit daunted by the whole prospect of making your own, don’t be. Let Auntie English Mum guide you through the whole process.  Think of me as a little friend hovering at your shoulder in the kitchen.  Actually don’t.  That’s a bit creepy. Anyhoo,...

We love pancake day.  Let’s face it there aren’t many days in the year when we go ‘sod it, let’s skip dinner and go straight for dessert’ so being total gluttons, Shrove Tuesday  (21st Feb) is a big favourite in the English household. Even if you’re not very confident at cooking, it’s really easy to make pancakes. Here’s a little step by step guide. I usually...

I’ve written at length (and ad nauseum, probably) about Christmas cake before.  There are all sorts of Christmas cake recipes out there – those ones that have been handed down from grandparents and great grandparents, and others from Delia or Nigella that people swear by. As I’ve said before, I’ve got a bit of an aversion to food snobbery, and a healthy addiction to the ‘bung it all in and see what...

So we’ve trifled with titles: roast lemon chicken, poulet au citron… whatever.  In our house it always comes back to ‘roast chicken with a lemon up its bum’.   Anatomically correct? Probably not, but it’s kind of stuck. Roast chicken is the easiest of meals.  A quick fiddle, bung it in the oven and your work is done.  First things first, though, you must choose your chicken...

My boys aren’t bad at cooking.  I’m pretty sure that if they were let loose into the big wide world right this instant, they’d be able to cook themselves decent food, know how to shop for ingredients, and appreciate (if not exactly adhere to) the rules of nutrition.  Not bad for 13 and 16, I think.  Like most fellas, though, they’re not particularly keen on baking.  Well, they want...

Friday was a roast chicken kind of day. We lazed around, watched the Royal Wedding (which incidentally, I thought I’d feel really ‘meh’ about, but loved every minute and even had a bit of a blub – wasn’t she divine?) and did very little. Our dinner was a chicken, roasted with a ‘lemon up its bum’ (won’t make a page in my recipe book, admittedly, but it’s...

There is nothing, I think, quite as delicious as the smell of bread baking.  I know there are times in the kitchen when you want to rush in, whip up something quick, and rush out again, but there are other times when a quiet potter is just fabulous.  For those times, breadmaking is ideal.  I love kneading bread – there’s something quite hypnotic and soothing about it – and producing a home-made...

Righty ho, then, so two days to Stir-up Sunday, which gives me carte blanche to get all Christmassy even though it’s still not December.  Bonus. This is a two-day kind of Christmas pudding so I’m not sure about the logistics involved – do you start on the Saturday then finish on the Stir-Up Sunday?  Or do you start on the Sunday and finish on the Monday? Anyhoo, I’m sure there’s...

One of the things that fascinates me about cooking is the alchemy: why you need x when you bake with y, or how one ingredient affects the others in a dish.  This nosiness (teamed with an endless desire to be baking), often leads to disaster, but hey, if you don’t make mistakes you never learn. I dislike the snobbery surrounding food, and, like Nigel Slater, believe a recipe is a guideline, not a set...

I have absolutely no idea why we calls these ‘milk rolls’.  Well, apart from the fact that they obviously contain milk, but then so do an awful lot of other bread recipes. Anyhoo, whatever their name they’re a firm favourite here.  Their soft texture makes them ideal for breakfast, toasted with a little of our favourite Whole Earth peanut butter and a dollop of bramble jelly.  The boys...

Wow it’s hot.  If you’re in Ireland, where I spent several summers bemoaning the fact that the south of England was always about 8 degrees warmer than us, then ahahahaha erm, I mean you’re probably not experiencing the epidermis-melting heat of the last few days here in England, but trust me, it’s hot. And when it’s hot, all thoughts of chocolatey desserts go right out the window....

So one of my happier experiments in the garden were these little beauties.  They did have a name, but I’ve bloody forgotten now, although I’m sure Poppy’s Mum or GrowUp, my gardening gurus, will let me know in due course.  Yesterday, then, we decided to pick one and test it out.  ‘Ooh’, said #1, ‘cauliflower cheese!’.  ‘Yum’, said I.  ‘Bleurgh’,...

A funny thing happened on Friday afternoon. A chap knocked on the door and delivered an enormous wicker hamper, stuffed with every possible seasonal vegetable you can imagine. I was in the garden, and was, frankly, slightly confused when #2 came out to find me and declare that ‘some bloke just dropped off a big box of broccoli and stuff’. Anyhoo, it turned out not to be an anonymous food parcel...