Must-try recipes for 2021

Friends and colleagues know that I love food. When I told them that I started a blog, many of them asked why I didn’t start a food blog. I did consider it, but after navigating the home buying process as a first time buyer, I wanted for the first time in my life, to have a voice online to help others by sharing our learnings and raising awareness of the wealth of information available online about buying a property. 

I thought it would be nice to try something different today and share with you all another passion of mine on the blog! Food. 

It’s one of the reasons why I love living in London. When it comes to restaurants, there is so much choice! 2020 has been a very different year to what I was expecting. We haven’t been to a restaurant since March as we just don’t feel comfortable eating at a restaurant yet. This meant that we have spent a lot of time in the kitchen and I wanted to share some of our favourite recipes! 

Our favourite quick and easy recipes for weekday meals

1. Cod parcels with tomatoes and pesto from Delicious Magazine

This is so convenient on a busy WFH day as once I have prepared the parcels, I can just pop them in the oven and continue working! 

We prefer to use salmon and to save time, I don’t make the pesto from scratch.  I use the store bought pesto and add in 2 tbsp of parmesan. Depending on the weight of the fish, you’ll need to adjust for the cooking time in the oven. It’s so quick and easy! I serve with cous cous and it makes a great quick dinner.

2. Spicy lamb flatbreads with tabbouleh from Donna Hay

We absolutely love this recipe! My colleague first shared this with me over a year ago and ever since then, we have been cooking it regularly!

It takes me just under 30 minutes to make which is great! We try to be healthy and choose to use 10% fat lamb mince.  

The recipe adds the tomatoes raw onto the flatbread but we like to cook the tomatoes briefly too, after the lamb mince has browned in the pan. I think it adds to the flavour of the mince more.

I initially bought the toasted pine nuts from Sainsbury’s because I thought it would be a lot of effort and have to toast nuts in the oven. I mentioned this to my colleague and he told me it’s really simple to toast the pine nuts in a pan on the hob. It really is very easy so now we toast the nuts ourselves.  This blog has three ways to toast pine nuts!

We’ve also discovered flatbreads from Deli Kitchen. Such a game changer.  Both the Greek Style Flatbread and the Sliced Focaccia work great for this recipe! 

3. Spinach, sweet potato & lentil dhal by Sophie Godwin from BBC GoodFood

Ok, so this is more one of my favourites. Hubby prefers to have a meal with meat but I have persuaded him to eat this with me when I’m cooking because he doesn’t want to have to cook a separate meal! I first stumbled across this recipe when a vegetarian friend was visiting us (pre Covid) and I love it because it counts for 3 of our 5 a day!

We don’t always have sesame oil so I replace with olive oil and I skip the red chilli as I don’t like spicy food. To keep the number of ingredients to a minimum, I also skip the spring onions and Thai basil. Still tastes great!

In the lockdown, I’ve found that this is a great recipe to cook in a pressure cooker. I’m still experimenting with how long to pressure cook for to get the best texture. Will update the blog when I have it figured out!

I usually serve this with rice but sometimes we replace the rice with paratha! It’s cooked straight from frozen and they have a flaky texture which is delicious!

Weekend treats

4. Chicken Katsu Curry

I’ve definitely missed eating at restaurants this year and have craved eating chicken katsu curry. I wanted to be healthy and avoid deep frying chicken so this meant I’ve been exploring how to make a healthier chicken katsu curry at home!

We think the S&B Golden Curry mix is similar to the chicken katsu curry from Wasabi. It comes in curry cubes and you add it into boiling water and gradually it thickens. We follow the instructions on the back of the pack for cooking the onion, potato (we use baking potato) and carrots.

I have seen that you can get S&B curry mix from Waitrose but they don’t have the mild version that we use.

For a healthier version of the chicken katsu without having to deep fry the chicken, I cook it in the oven after adjusting this recipe from SpendWithPennies.com and not adding the parmesan.

To reduce time spent in the kitchen, instead of pounding the chicken breast to 1/2 inch thickness, I find using mini chicken breast fillets work really well! 

When I use 640g of chicken for this recipe, I halve the breadcrumb mix ingredients (panko breadcrumbs, garlic powder and parsley flakes). Even then, there is some mix left! The 640g of mini chicken breast fillets usually means we have 16 pieces of chicken which is enough for two meals for Hubby and I. 

I couldn’t find cornflake crumbs at Sainsbury’s so ended up just using panko breadcrumbs. Still delicious! Our favourite panko breadcrumb is the JFC one. We tried the Blue Dragon one too but found that it wasn’t as good.

We love the crispy coating and it’s delicious with the curry sauce and rice! If you try it, I hope you love it as much as we do!

5. Duck and prosciutto ragu pasta bake by Donna Hay

I know I’ve mentioned this recipe before but it is just so flavoursome! It is another recommendation from my colleague and the first time I made it, Hubby said it tasted like it was from a restaurant!

You have to cook the duck for 1.5 hours and that put me off making this dish initially but I can confirm it is worth the wait!

We don’t have any brandy so we just replaced it with more chicken stock.  If like me, you can’t get hold of stracchino, you can use mozzarella!

Snacks

I love baking more than cooking so here are some of my favourites in the lockdown!

6. Cinnamon buns from ScandiKitchen

I absolutely adore the cinnamon buns from ScandiKitchen and used to buy it from their store in Fitzrovia.  I’d never used cardamon in cooking until this recipe and wow, it is definitely worth adding in the cardamon.  I also like the date and golden syrup mix too!  

Once baked and cooled, I freeze some of the buns so when we want to eat them, I simply heat it in the microwave for 40 seconds on high (our microwave is 800W) to defrost. It tastes so delicious!

If you don’t have fresh yeast, I find the Allison’s easy bake yeast really good!  With this yeast, I don’t need to activate it with warm milk. I just put it directly in cold milk and the buns still came out super fluffy!

Tip: Oddly, the golden syrup and date syrup is listed under filling but if you read the recipe, you add the syrup after the buns have come out of the oven - don’t add it in the filling :)

7. Ben's Cookies recipe by marmaladeandme.com

For those who love Ben’s Cookies, I’ve always wanted to make a similar cookie at home! After searching online,  I found this recipe from marmaladeandme.com. It is very similar to Ben’s Cookies! We love them so much. They're soft in the centre which is slightly chewy and tastes so great!

The cookies have chocolate pieces rather than chocolate chips which makes a difference! I use Lindt dark chocolate with 70% cocoa or Green and Blacks dark chocolate (70% cocoa). After the first time we used them, I couldn't go back to chocolate chips for cookies.

The recipe is for ginger and dark chocolate cookies but we wanted cookies with dark chocolate and white chocolate instead so I replaced the 100g of stem ginger with white chocolate! Hubby loves white chocolate so I do also make a version with just white chocolate.

Over time, I’ve also preferred to use light brown sugar instead of dark brown sugar but it’s up to you!

They are so quick to make and you can freeze them once you have rolled the dough into balls.  That means you can have freshly baked cookies without having to make them from scratch next time! Simply bake from frozen at 180 degrees Celsius for few minutes longer than the original recipe. I usually bake for 3-4 minutes longer but it depends on your oven and how you like your cookies!

Hope you love these recipes as much as I do!

Jess