The Botanical Kitchen
Recipes, travel and the occasional rant
The author of this book, Michael Paul, sums up exactly how I feel about Paris – “The more I roamed the streets, the greater my passion for the pastries, chocolates and desserts of Paris became.” I love gawping through the windows of patisseries as much as wandering around the Louvre and this book brings back all […]
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. […]
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 […]
It doesn’t smell like garlic. It doesn’t taste much like garlic. It looks like garlic but it’s black?! Black Garlic? Hmmmmm…. I must admit I was rather dubious like most people who probably walk past it in the many places this is now available. But I was also fascinated at the same time. It is […]
I was sent some Black Garlic to try recently. It was during a savoury biscuit phase I was going through while freelancing at home. I was determined to create great tasting savoury biscuits for my girls to enjoy with a glass of milk. I came up with these. Enjoy! You’ll need 50g butter 100g oats […]
I’m so excited to see all the Spring flowers coming into bloom. Hopefully the snow forecast this week won’t wipe them out. Did you know that a lot of these are edible? Let’s start with tulips. Here’s a recipe I tried out from Great British Chefs which uses tapioca, mushrooms, sugar snap peas and spring […]
This recipe looks complicated but it honestly isn’t. You can even buy the pastry cases if you really want to. I found this fabulous supplier on Amazon who does all sorts of shapes. Personally I make pastry in batches and freeze it so there is always some handy. You can do this pre-baking which is […]
Loaf cakes are brilliant everyday cakes because they keep for ages and you can serve them in so many different ways. A cold slice with hot custard, a warmed slice with ice cream or crème fraiche, cubed pieces with a chocolate fondue are some favourites in our house. I struggled to get this cake right because the […]