Tabula Rasa

Mincepuffs

In the run up to Christmas things can be a bit challenging. This recipe didn’t quite go to plan as the puff pasty was a little more puffy than I was expected so instead of getting mini mince pies, I got mince puffs…but I didn’t have enough ingredients or time to remake them. But they still tasted good and so the mincepuff was born

Camembert and Cranberry Toasts

Do you want a tasty canapé that you can make in 15 minutes using items which at Christmas you probably have tucked away in your fridge? If so this is a great little canapé to use

Southern Fried Cauliflower bites

I’ve covered these cauliflower florets in a southern spiced mix. The cauliflower is marinade overnight to extract some of the moisture from the cauliflower and add flavour. The marinade then helps to make the spice mix stick and I’ve added panko (a very light dry breadcrumb) to ensure it is crispy.

Crispy Sweet Potato Fries with Chilli Mayo

This year I have bought some purple sweet potatoes to grow in the allotment. I will probably grow them in the poly tunnel as they need a slightly better climate than the UK can offer, originally coming from central/South America. The purple sweet potato is one of the staples of the Okinawan diet in…

Quesadillas with refried beans

I found out today that quesadilla means little cheesy thing which I rather like. I like these too! Serves: 6-8 as an appetiser, 4 as a light lunch, 32 canapé 5 a day: 1 per quesadilla Time: 20 minutes Ingredients 8 medium corn tortilla Olive oil 1/2 onion, finely chopped 1 clove garlic, crushed 400g…

Not quite a Nacho Canapé

What do you call cheese that isn’t yours? Nacho cheese!

In this case though this a cheese-less nacho (except for the joke)! Just one week until the big day! To celebrate we are swapping continents again and this time over to the America’s and specifically in this case to Mexico.

Kale Bhajias

I’m turning to another staple of the UK Indian restaurant for this canape/appetiser. We consume vast quantities of Bhaji in the UK but did you know that we’ve been spelling them wrong. The closest snack that they resemble is the bajji from the South West of India or the pakoda/pakora (still with me??) from the North where apparently it is eaten during monsoon so what better way to cheer you up in the drizzly autumn and winter here.

Chilli Paneer

You could have knocked me down with a feather when I found out that one of my favourite Indian dishes was actually Indochinese, an Indian homage to China, found in many Chinese restaurants in India. The Chinese equivalent I suppose or chips with curry sauce, the chow mien or the UK’s favourite dish, chicken tikka masala.

Papadam Bites

I bought a pot of Coconut Collaborative natural yogurt the other day and loved it’s coconut flavour so was looking out for a recipe to use it in. This non cook canapé idea, inspired by the papadam you are served in nearly every Indian restaurant in the UK is perfect. If you don’t like coconut you could use normal yogurt or Oatly Oat Fraiche.

Polenta and Rosemary Fries

Polenta is one of those things that has definitely fallen out of fashion but I love it, not as a mashed potato style side but made firm and then fried and served with a variety of sauced from tomatoes to creamed fungi…..and maybe a shaving of truffles. Yum!

The secret to cook polenta is plenty of seasoning. Parmesan helps but if you are vegan you can substitute this for nutritional yeast which has a cheese flavour but is totally vegan.

Brave Potatoes

Having been a bit sniffy about deconstruct foods like deconstructed apple pie being blobs of apple, crumble and custard on a plate I’m going to give you today a deconstructed patatas bravas only so that you can use it as a canape. Pop a cocktail stick in to the potato to save your guests sticky fingers and use the tomato sauce as a relish, for this reason I’ve made it a bit more chunky than the traditional Madrid recipe which is more like a pouring sauce. For that reason I don’t think you can really call this Patatas Bravas but it’s really good, trust me!

Pea and Mint Bruschetta

oday I’m continuing on with the bruschetta theme, this time topped with peas and mint. The bonus of this is as long as you have some good quality bread, some frozen peas in the freezer and some sprigs of mint in the garden or in a pot then you can make this. Very useful if some unexpected guest turn up. If you are not needing to keep this vegan then you can include some Parmesan in the mix for added flavour and if you are not a big fan of mint then do not include it and top with some lightly toasted pine nuts instead.

Tomato Bruschetta

The origins of bruschetta are ancient, dating back probably to Roman times if not before and was either a way to revitalise stale bread or in it’s most basic form, bread, fire toasted with olive oil, a method to test the quality of olive oil. In London it, along with sun-dried tomatoes became super fashionable in the late 1980’s and early 90’s soon after the River Cafe (a famous Italian restaurant in London) shot to fame.

Pepper, Red Onion & Halloumi Skewers

I’m cheating with this canapé a bit as it isn’t 100% vegan so doesn’t quite fit in with the advent plant based canapé theme for but you could swap the halloumi for firm tofu if you prefer. Again this is really simple to make and most can be prepared well in advance so all…

Falafel and Hummus Canapé

Normally at Christmas people would be cutting biscuits in to stars but I wondered whether you could do it to flat breads to give these canapés a bit more of a festive feel. I certainly had fun making them and they tasted great if I do say so myself. You can use pre bought hummus and falafel in which case this recipe should only take about 15 minutes to knock up.

Cucumber Hummus & Olive Canapé

This canapé is a twist on the hummus dip with crudités you often see at parties. It is probably one of the fastest and easiest canapé to put together and many will have all the ingredients in the fridge already. Buy the best quality olives you can and a good quality olive oil based hummus…

Vegetable Spring rolls

Today is my final day of asian inspired plant based canapé for the run up to Christmas. Vegetable spring rolls are often seen at parties and you can buy them in bulk from oriental supermarkets and many supermarkets party party selection. If you are serving vegan guests make sure that you check the packaging as they may sometimes contain egg. To make them stand out from the crowd, serve with a homemade dipping sauce and cut them with a pair of scissors on the diagonal. If you do want to have a go at making them yourself then follow the recipe below.

Vegetarian Makizushi

If you went to a Japanese restaurant with my parents it wouldn’t be too long before they started telling you of the infamous evening when, as a young child, they took me to a friends house for dinner. The wife had spent hours lovingly preparing a meal of her native Japanese cuisine. I obviously didn’t…

Pineapple Chilli Salt (Muối ớt)

This is a play on the ubiquitous cheese and tinned pineapple hedgehogs that graced our tables in the 1970’s and 80’s. Secretly it is still one of my favourites!

In this case you are bringing the pineapple canapé bang up to date and adding a little heat to your party by swapping the cheese for sugar, salt and chilli in the Vietnamese style where if you have dessert after the meal it will generally be fruit with this dip (Muối ớt)

Spring Vegetable Gyoza

Gyoza are the Japanese version of Chinese pot sticker dumplings and both make ideal canapes or appetisers.

In supermarkets now you can buy a variety of ready made gyoza, both meat, prawn or vegetable based to keep in the freezer until cooking. Itsu is a brand that you will often see. In oriental supermarkets you will get a much wider choice and you can also buy gyoza wrappers to make you own.

Summer Rolls

For todays canapé I’m going back to Vietnam and although these are served all over Vietnam, rather specifically in this case I’m thinking of the Mekong Delta. We stayed in a wooden homestead on the delta and were served on our first night, make your own summer rolls with pineapple and a fish which looked a little like a piranha! I’m not going to show you that but suffice to say the addition of pineapple to the rolls is now something I always do as it brings a lovely sharp, sweet tang.

Thai Corn Cakes (Tod Man Khao Pod)

I’ve always loved these corn fritters since I first tried them in a local Thai restaurant. They are best served straight away but for ease you can precook them up to a couple of days before and then warm through just before serving which is idea when having a party or people round for dinner.

Vietnamese Salad Cups

Some of you might be quite surprised by my day job which has nothing whatsoever to do with gardening or food other than I work for one of the UK’s largest supermarkets. One of the perks of my job however is to get to see the food that is going to hit the shelves before it comes out. In our food cascade this year the trend is going to be vegetarian and vegan party and Christmas food. This wasn’t much of a surprise but what was a surprise was that the food developers were having difficulty developing plant based party food that didn’t look generally brown. I suppose that when canapés are meat or cheese based we expect them to be brown, but are expecting a little more from a plant based canapé.

Cucamelons

Cucamelons have got to be one of the oldest and oddest crops I’ve ever had on the allotment. Known in their native Mexico as Sandiitas de Raton which translates as mouse melon they’ve been cultivated since before Christopher Columbus set sail.

French Bean – Blauhilde

If, like many people, you have a small garden or even just a few pots on a balcony but still want to grow vegetables you many turn to the idea of a potager, an ornamental kitchen garden.For a potager you need varieties that not only taste great but look fantastic as well.

Beetroot – Golden Detroit

Love beetroot but fed up with you and your kitchen looking like a bloodbath after? If so then you could try giving yellow beetroots a try. There are two main yellow varieties, Burpees Golden which dates back to the 1970’s and Golden Detroit from the 1820’s.

Gnudi with pumpkin and panchetta

The biggest difference you will see between the UK and the USA/Canada at this time of year are the halloween decorations. Even though the UK was the home of the pagan Samhain which is the father of halloween, it generally passes most people by. In contrast in the US and Canada there were streets of…

Peppers – Shishito

In the USA growing increasing popular it is the Japanese cousin of the Padron tapas pepper, called the Shishito. In Japanese the name is Shishitōgarashi the word translates to chilli pepper that looks like the head of a lion

Tomato – Ildi

As a young child I hated tomatoes. In the early 80’s tomatoes in the UK were horrible things, flavourless and often underripe to stop them being damaged in transit. Gradually people started asking why the tomatoes eaten on holiday in Europe were just so much better than you could get here and things started to change.

Coconut & Whole Fruit Ice Lollies

It seemed a little like summer was drawing to a close with mist in the morning and lengthening evening but unusually for the bank holiday an Indian summer seems to have come across us with weather forecast to be a respectable 26 – 30°C. I suspect there will be a few BBQ’s on the go.

Scallops With Blue Corn Tortillas

One of my favourite activities is browsing through recipe books. Not necessarily because I’m going to cook anything in them, in fact I have a French Laundry recipe book which, as each recipe is about 5 pages long has never been anything other than a coffee table aspirational decoration. Why I like recipe books is for ideas and inspiration and to find out about new and unusual ingredients or food history and is where I first saw a photograph of blue tortillas. They looked amazing, a rich blue green colour and I thought I really had to have a go at that.

Cucumber – Cucino F1

Do you ever get a bit fed up of buying massive supermarket cucumbers, wrapped in layers of plastic to make them grow straight and prevent them going floppy in a few days which inevitably you can’t eat all of it and find it mouldering a few days later in your salad draw? If so why not give growing some of the new baby cucumbers a go? Each one is perfect for a snack or in your lunchbox.

Tomato – Orange Banana

Its not been a great year for outdoor tomatoes. In June we had record breaking rain and many varieties shivered or just gave up. Orange banana however which originates from Russia and dates back to about 1930 however thrived.

Broad Bean – Karmazyn

I’m always a bit sceptical about novelty vegetables. So many times you might get an unusual colour or shape but insipid taste. There are a couple of novelty broad beans including the crimson flowered, dating back to the 1800’s and recently saved from extinction, there are some purple seeded beans too, all of which seem to be as good as the more normal green beans. Therefore when I saw Karmazyn and its unusual antique pink colour, I thought I would give it a go.

Strawberry – Mara Des Bois

If you want to watch a pastry chef drool just mention the strawberry Mara Des Bois. This French variety bred by Jacques Marionnet in 1991 was bred specifically to have the flavour and scent of wild strawberries but with much greater productivity, especially in spring.

Potato – Casablanca

Here’s looking at you spud! Of all the allotments in all the world, you had to walk in to this one! Cook it Sam, if you can cook it for her, you can cook it for me!

I spent some time trying to find a little about this darling modern variety of potato including how it got its exotic name. Is it named in honour of the film, the city? Does it originate from Casablanca (unlikely)? If anyone finds out then do let me know.

Grow Your Own – Lemongrass

If you’ve ever spent any time in southeast Asia or if not at least visited your local Thai or Vietnamese restaurant you would almost certainly have tasted the perfumed taste of lemongrass. You might not realised it but it is an actual grass, but one with a fragrant citrus and slightly coriander taste and scent.

Chargrilled Asparagus with Parmesan

It’s time to put my asparagus to bed for the year but there is still time for one last meal and to take advantage of the box of free range eggs given to me by a friend from his own chickens so what could be better than asparagus dipped in to a a freshly boiled Legbar or Plymouth brown rock egg?

Crispy “Fried Seaweed”

When is crispy fried seaweed not crispy fried seaweed?

Go to any Chinese restaurant in the UK and you will find crispy fried seaweed on the menu but in my travels around China where we ate many weird and wonderful things, including hot pots, Beijing duck, tofu shaped to look like tripe, apples grown in the shape of Buddha, shrimp paste fermenting in vats and dumplings that looked like goldfish but not once did we see crispy seaweed.

Super Breakfast Porridge

Late winter to early spring can be a funny time for weather in the UK. In February we enjoyed record temperatures in the UK and for one day were hotter than the Caribbean. The same time last year we were under blankets of snow and had a howling storm nicknamed “The Beast from the East”….