The Botanical Kitchen
Recipes, travel and the occasional rant
I was recently invited to supper at Pho by their PR people. I was in two minds whether to go because I’d been many, many times already. In the end I couldn’t resist because quite honestly the food is pretty awesome. I was also rather intrigued with the origins and story of the place. Pho […]
When I was in Amsterdam over Easter I came across these amazing ‘speltbolletje’ which I have been trying to get a recipe for. They were little, round balls of bread filled with apricots an figs and covered in pumpkin seeds. Sadly I haven’t been able to find a recipe (despite lots of help from Twitter […]
I have been looking into making this recipe since a recent visit to Amsterdam. I tasted these amazing rolls called ‘Speltboletje’ made with spelt flour, figs and apricots covered in pumpkin seeds. These aren’t quite like the ones I tasted but their are close. I bought Doves Farm Wholegrain Spelt Flour and it was lovely. […]
This is a recipe I tried from the Great British Chefs website by Vineet Bhatia. Instead of the walnuts, I used pecans. I’ve made this a few times now with different coffees. Last time I used a Union Coffee Espresso as I’d been to the London Coffee Festival. I’ve also tried it with Cafe Direct […]
We have a family tradition which we observe most weekends. Pizza Saturday. It’s rather silly really but we like but it’s a good excuse to leave a little dining formality behind and enjoy a TV dinner with The X factor, Britain’s Got Talent or most recently The Voice. My girls are rather obsessed with Jesse Jay. […]
It’s Election Day for the Mayor of London and my daughters’ school is closed as it is being used as a polling station. I’d just like to take a moment to say how ridiculous it is to close a whole school – for a whole day – when to be frank a marquee in the car […]
My little Amy loves carrots. She’ll eat them pretty much any which way they come. She’s been asking to bake cupcakes and as we only had these orange cases left on Election Day when their school was closed, I decided to go with carrot flavour. Carrots are a great source of beta carotene which is […]
I love eating fresh carrots but I read that more of the lovely beta carotene is released during cooking. I had a few old ones lying around that I decided to use up for a quiche style supper. To make them (About 6) For the pastry 200g plain flour 100g cold unsalted butter Pinch salt […]
I thought I’d do a quick tour of the main spices we use in Gujarati food which most Gujaratis would keep in a ‘Masala Dablo’ or spice tin. My masala dablo was part of my dowry along with other household items like my ‘velun’ (rolling pin), ‘lodhi’ (chapatti frying pan) and other ‘dabla’ (tins). It’s […]
I had some cherries left over from a lovely Clafoutis I tried from Pascal Aussignac of Great British Chefs. I threw them into these super quick muffins for my girls to have for breakfast. YOU’LL NEED 75g unsalted butter 250g self raising flour 25g ground almonds 75g light brown caster sugar 0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda 1 […]
This recipe was inspired by Gennaro Contaldo’s recipe in The Two Greedy Italians Eat Italy book. I couldn’t find any chestnut flour and so tried it with the vacuum packed or tinned variety by Merchant Gourmet. It worked rather well but you might want to add the vacuum packed chestnuts to the potatoes at the […]
This recipe is inspired by Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo from their wonderful book Two Greedy Italians Eat Italy. You can find their recipe in the book or on the BBC website. This cake is rich and filling so don’t do what I did and cut yourself a huge slice because you will struggle to […]