All posts filed under: Sides and Salads

Jersey Royal Potato and Roasted Sweet Pepper Salad

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Presentation-wise, this recipe is unlikely to be a winner. Pull this out at a picnic, though, and you’ll fast be receiving marriage proposals and/or bestie requests. People will be all like “this is the best potato salad I’ve ever tasted” and “what? There isn’t even any mayo in it so it’s basically the healthiest thing ever? That’s amazing”. They’ll all love it. So will you. I stopped using mayonnaise in potato salads a few years back – going back to essentially being a child here – when someone let me in on the fact that a shitload of mayo is actually kind of a heart attack in a jar. Delicious in moderation, obviously, but I don’t do moderation when it comes to potato salad, I like it saucy. So I started using greek yoghurt, and it massively works. Obviously, it’s a very different taste and texture, but yoghurt is much plainer than mayo, so it’s easier to manipulate the flavour – in my opinion that is. A note on jersey royals They’re awesome. They’re so, …

Brussel Sprouts with Bacon, Chestnuts and Cranberries

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I don’t like sprouts, I don’t think any of us do if we’re really being honest with ourselves. But it’s part of our great British stoicism to suck it up and serve them with Christmas dinner all the same, so here’s a recipe to make them bearable. It’s quite easy to give this recipe a vegetarian or vegan makeover; vegetarians: ditch the bacon, vegans: ditch the bacon (obv) and swap out butter for coconut oil or walnut oil. This recipe will serve 4-6 as a side dish. 750g brussel sprouts 160g bacon lardons 200g cooked and peeled chestnuts (the vacuum packed ones), chopped roughly 75g dried cranberries 25g butter Boil your sprouts according to pack instructions, about 5 minutes is the norm. While they’re on the boil, get a non-stick frying pan going on a high heat and start sizzling those lardons. Drain your sprouts and melt the butter in the same pan on a gentle heat, then start cooking the chestnuts and cranberries. Once they’ve been warmed through (3-4 minutes should do the trick) …

Tangy Red Cabbage

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The slow carb diet (which I’m currently following, read up here if you didn’t know) recommends repeating meals a fair bit. I haven’t read the science bit behind this yet, although I plan to, but I trust Tim Ferriss so that’s what I’ve been doing. But repeating meals kind of sucks unless you’ve got some kickass dinner components to come home to every night. While I was planning my meals this weekend I thought about the red cabbage recipe my Grandmother used to make that I always adored. So I dropped her a text to ask for the recipe, and she said it was in the Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook. It’s about as vintage as vintage gets, check out Mary Berry looking all young and composed in the picture of  the inside cover to the left. The original recipe contains apple and sugar, both of which are no-nos for slow carbers. It also calls for bacon, which is a yes as far as the diet is concerned but I didn’t much fancy that combo. So …