I don't know about you, but for myself, with these Spring days that are warming up and the gorgeous sunshine we have been enjoying of late, I find myself craving salads.
I adore salads. They are one of my absolute favorite things to make and to eat, and this is the time of year that I drag my salad spinner out from my kitchen store cupboard and blow the dust off of it!
Honestly, I could eat salad any time of the year, but in the winter months I tend to gravitate more towards ready made salad kits. Probably because there is a general lack of fresh local produce to choose from.
We are not quite enjoying much in fresh local produce yet, except for the tomatoes and cucumbers which are grown in a local greenhouse, but it won't be long, so I thought it would be fun to share some of my absolute all-time-favorite salads today!
Yes, I am whetting my whistle for summer salads!
Before I actually start sharing any recipes, let me say that you can build a salad out of just about anything.
Most people don't really need a recipe to make a salad . . . salads are generally quite easy to throw together. What we do need though are ideas on how to put salads together. Salads can be very boring, or they can be fabulous. The choice is up to you really!I shared a really great tutorial here, on HOW TO BUILD A BETTER SALAD. Do be sure to check it out for all of my hints, tips and ideas!
One of my favorite main meal salads is this one that I made several years back. It is considered to be a composed salad. This simply means that that it is a salad which has been put together with a variety of ingredients and then served with a simple, yet delicious dressing.
In this case it is a delicious fresh Tarragon, Chervil and Chive Dressing. On the plate there is a delicious mixture of crispy tender vegetables (peas, tender stem broccoli, and baby carrots). I have also added some crisp salad leaves, boiled new potatoes and leftover cooked chicken. Nobody complained.
CHICKEN TACO SALAD - This is a real favorite salad. I love taco salads of any kind, but they can often be loaded with fat and calories. This is a low fat version composed of plenty of tasty coated chicken pieces, loads of vegetables, crisp lettuce, baked tortilla crisps and a zesty Tex Mex spicy dressing to drizzle over top.
GRILLED CHICKEN CAESAR SALAD - This has always been my favorite of all salads. Far too often I have ordered one in a restaurant only to be disappointed when it arrives, with limp lettuce which has seen better days, chicken you have to hunt for and a less than flavor-filled dressing.
This homemade salad will not disappoint! Lovely seasoned and grilled chicken, crisp romaine lettuce, pieces of crispy bacon, homemade crispy croutons and a tangy flavor filled Caesar dressing!
TURKEY, SOUR CHERRY & ALMOND PASTA SALAD - With its delicious sweet and sour poppyseed dressing, this salad is a really winning combination of cooked shredded turkey, tangy sour cherries, farfalle (bowtie) pasta, and blue cheese crumbles. Serve on a bed of shredded ice berg lettuce which adds an additional layer of crispness.
BACON AND EGG SALAD - Another main dish salad. Here you have crisp hearts of romaine lettuce, topped with rich quartered boiled egg, crispy bacon, grilled tomatoes and crisp homemade buttery croutons. With its fabulous creamy dressing, you can have your bacon and eat it too!
MOM'S POTATO SALAD - My mother always made the best potato salad. Everyone always asks me for this recipe and it is a salad that I am often asked to bring to Pot Lucks. It is the perfect balance of potato, crunch, dressing and of course topped with slices of perfectly boiled eggs.
CLASSIC COBB SALAD - A delicious salad which comes from the days of the Brown Derby Restaurant in Hollywood. Chicken, tomatoes, lettuce, bacon, boiled egg, cheese and avocado, delicately placed in a delicious manner and drizzled with a lush sherry vinaigrette dressing.
TUNA NICOISE SALAD - Another classic salad. Individual ingredients are dressed and then arranged on a plate. Crispy tender haricots vert (thin string beans), boiled new potatoes, chunked albacore tuna, boiled egg, sliced tomato. Great quality ingredients, simple, simple dressing. All composed together into a really delicious salad.
BISTRO POTATO SALAD - You will picture yourself sunning yourself on the French Riviera when you sit down in front of this delicious version of potato salad. Perfectly cooked potato, chives, egg, radish, all on a bed of mixed salad greens and dressed with a lush and light vinaigrette dressing.
BIG FAT GREEK SALAD - With plenty of fresh garden vegetables . . . ripe tomatoes, cucumbers . . . red peppers. Add some lovely salted Greek Olives, plenty of salty crumbled Feta and a beautifully herby Greek Salad vinaigrette dressing. This always goes down a real treat. It is the perfect combination of crunchy, salty, creamy and tangy! It goes wonderfully along side any kind of grilled meat, fish or poultry!
And there you have it, some of my salad favorites to fill your salad cravings for these early days of Spring!
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One of the most iconic and popular dishes in the UK has to be Classic Bangers & Mash. Its right up there with Fish & Chips and Curry and Rice. And let's not forget, Sunday lunch Roast Beef.
And really, in my opinion, the British have some of the best sausages in the world. I totally fell in love with British sausage, and by that I don't mean the cheap and nasty ones. They are pretty blah everywhere. I mean the nice and thick, meaty, butcher's style of sausage.
Most localities in the U.K. pretty much had their own variety of sausage. Newmarket, Lincolnshire, Cumberland, etc. My favorites of all were the Cumberland sausage, which were nice and spicy.
You can actually tell a good Butcher in the U.K. by his sausages. We had some very good local butchers where I lived and I would have chosen any one of their sausages over a store market brand any day of the week.
A favorite way of enjoying those sausages was this very classic dish of Bangers & Mash. Beautifully cooked and browned thick pork sausages in a lush onion gravy, served alongside of fluffy, buttery, mashed potatoes. Its a dish that you just can't beat!
This recipe which I am sharing today comes from a cookery book by Tamasin Day-Lewis entitled Tamasin's Kitchen Bible. Tamasin is the sister of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and is an excellent television chef and food critic who has written more than a dozen cookery books.
I always loved watching her on the television and I loved her no-nonsense approach to cooking and food. Very simple and non-pretentious and very classic, comforting, rural and seasonal. I have never cooked one of her recipes that was not delicious.
Her books are some of the British ones that I chose to replace when I moved back here to Canada. I have this one, as well as one called Supper for a Song, and another called Food You Can't Say No To. All are excellent and highly recommended.
This recipe for Classic Bangers & Mash is an excellent one. It is a simple, simple recipe that will turn out as good as the ingredients you choose to make it with, so choose wisely, and you will be rewarded with one very delicious meal!
WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE CLASSIC BANGERS & MASH
Simple every day ingredients. Choose quality and you cannot go wrong.
- 2 - 3 top quality pork sausages per person
- oil
- butter
- 1 medium to large onion, per person, peeled and thinly sliced into rings or half moons
- 1 tsp dark soft light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (120ml) red wine, Madeira or Marsala
- 10 fluid ounces (300ml) chicken stock
- dash Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard (smooth or seeded as you prefer)
- fine sea salt and black pepper
- fluffy white mash to serve (see recipe here)
You will want to buy the very best sausages that you can afford. My sister and I have made our own sausages from scratch in the past and were really pleased with how they turned out. We made apple sausages and Cumberland sausages. We really need to make some more.
The sausages I chose to use today and which I choose to always use are the PC Free From Bangers. They are a thick and meaty sausage made by President's Choice. They are made from vegetable grain fed Canadian pork which has been raised without the use of antibiotics.
They have just the right proportion of fat to lean in them. I hate greasy sausages, or sausages which are made with too many fillers. These are just right.
Also if you don't have the wine, you can use a good apple juice. That's usually what I do and the gravy always turns out beautifully flavored.
HOW TO MAKE CLASSIC BANGERS & MASH
It might seem a bit complicated, but really its quite easy. Just read the recipe through a few times. It doesn't get much simpler than this. The oven does much of the work, yielding perfectly cooked tender sausages, in a beautiful flavor filled onion gravy.
Heat a little bit of oil in a large shallow flame-proof casserole, or oven proof skillet . Add the sausages and brown lightly over medium low heat. Take care not to break the skins. Remove the sausages to a plate.
Add a lump of butter (about 1 TBS) and an equivalent of oil to the pan. Add the sliced onions, turning to coat well in the fat. Sprinkle with some sea salt. Cook, stirring, over medium-low heat, allowing them to cook down gently for about five minutes. Stir in the brown sugar, mixing it in well.
Pour the wine in over the onions. Let it bubble up for a few minutes. add the chicken stock and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to the boil, then leave to simmer gently for about 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350*F/180*C/ gas mark 4.
Add the sausages to the casserole, along with the mustard and a good sprinkle of black pepper. Place into the preheated oven.
Roast for about 30 minutes, turning the sausages every 10 minutes or so. Serve with the mashed potato and some vegetables on the side.
The gravy for these is really delicious. If you think it is too thin, you can thicken it with a cornstarch slurry. Simply whisk together about 1/2 TBS of corn starch (corn flour) and some cold water to a paste. Whisk this into the casserole and cook over medium heat until everything thickens up and turns glossy. Simmer for about 2 minutes and serve.
Don't be put off by all of the spring onion scattered over top. Brown things just look much better with the contrast of the green. Parsley would also have worked. Brown things photograph very poorly.
This makes for a deliciously comforting supper dish that everybody loves. The link is there to the mashed potato recipe. You can be making those while the sausages cook in the oven. I would serve peas and/or carrots on the side, but any vegetable will do!
I am feeling much better after my bout with Covid. I am still not 100%, but my brother says it could take a few weeks before I actually start to feel like myself again. Thankfully my taste and smell was not affected in any way!
To someone who cooks for a living, I would call that a HUGE blessing!
Some other sausage recipes which I have served here in my English Kitchen are:
SAUSAGE ROLLS - Buttery flaky pastry rolled around a rich sausage filling, cut into short lengths, glazed and baked to perfection. Ain't nobody going to turn down the offer of one of these. As a snack or as a part of a buffet meal, these are everyone's favorite!
SAUSAGE & VEGETABLE SKILLET DINNER - A complete sausage dinner cooked in one skillet, composed of tasty sausages, crispy browned potatoes, sliced cabbage and sweet carrots. Delicious served with some grainy mustard for dipping your sausage into. No fuss. No muss, and very little to clean up!
Yield: 4
Classic Bangers & Mash
Prep time: 65 MinTotal time: 1 H & 5 M
This is a great recipe from Tamsin Day Lewis. Delicious perfectly cooked sausages with a flavor filled gravy, served with a pile of fluffy mash.
Ingredients
- 2 - 3 top quality pork sausages per person
- oil
- butter
- 1 medium to large onion, per person, peeled and thinly sliced into rings or half moons
- 1 tsp dark soft light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (120ml) red wine, Madeira or Marsala
- 10 fluid ounces (300ml) chicken stock
- dash Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard (smooth or seeded as you prefer)
- fine sea salt and black pepper
- fluffy white mash to serve (see recipe here)
Instructions
- Heat a little bit of oil in a large shallow flame-proof casserole, or oven proof skillet . Add the sausages and brown lightly over medium low heat. Take care not to break the skins. Remove the sausages to a plate.
- Add a lump of butter (about 1 TBS) and an equivalent of oil to the pan. Add the sliced onions, turning to coat well in the fat. Sprinkle with some sea salt. Cook, stirring, over medium-low heat, allowing them to cook down gently for about five minutes. Stir in the brown sugar, mixing it in well.
- Pour the wine in over the onions. Let it bubble up for a few minutes. add the chicken stock and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to the boil, then leave to simmer gently for about 20 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350*F/180*C/ gas mark 4.
- Add the sausages to the casserole, along with the mustard and a good sprinkle of black pepper. Place into the preheated oven.
- Roast for about 30 minutes, turning the sausages every 10 minutes or so. Serve with the mashed potato and some vegetables on the side.
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I felt a bit better today and so thought I would cook myself some pasta. I had pinned this pink pasta sauce a few weeks back that I found on a site called The Dinner Bite.
It looked very simple and effortless. It also uses store cupboard ingredients. I haven't been out shopping really so being able to use store cupboard ingredients is important!
I also didn't need to make a full recipe as there is only me, so I cut the recipe in half!
I really would have liked to have some garlic bread with it, and a nice salad, but I have had to make do with what I have to work with, so no garlic bread or salad for now!
Creamy and delicious, this is such a wonderful comfort food recipe and was just what I needed to lift my spirits. I had tried to make myself a pizza at the weekend. I only had a boxed pizza mix and when I went to top it, there was nothing to put on it but onions and cheese.
I don't mind saying it was the worst pizza I have ever made! BLECCH! That sauce in the packaged mix is really rank! Well, I think so at any rate. I would have been much better off making my own sauce.
My cousin owns a pizza place here in town. They have a new pizza on the Menu. Cheese Steak Pizza. It sounds really nice. I am going to get one on Saturday and am inviting my family over to enjoy it with me! I'll let you know how it goes!
WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE PASTA WITH PINK SAUCE
Very simple store cupboard ingredients. Very simple.
- 1 1/3 cups (160g) dry rigatoni noodles
- 7 fluid ounces (175g) tomato passata (pureed tomatoes)
- 1/2 TBS butter
- 1/2 TBS light olive oil
- 2 TBS finely chopped onion
- 1 large clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
- 1/2 tsp dried basil
- 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
- pinch of red chili flakes (optional)
- 1/4 cup (60ml) milk
- 1/4 cup (60ml) heavy cream (whipping cream)
- 1/4 cup (45g) grated Parmesan cheese
- salt and black pepper to taste
I am sure you could use any tubular shaped pasta, or pasta that has ridges to hug the sauce. I just was lucky enough to have some rigatoni in my cupboard which worked beautifully.
Lots of holes to collect the sauce and ridges to hold onto it.
Passata is a type of tomato product which is basically pureed and sieved tomatoes. It is not tomato sauce, but is much thicker than tomato sauce. It is not like tomato paste. It is pure tomatoes, very finely pureed with no lumps. It usually comes in jars. The brand I used was Mutti.
I wish I could get Cirio here in Canada, but I cannot.
3 TBS finely chopped onion is about the same as one small onion, very finely chopped. Make sure your garlic is a nice big fat clove so you can get lots of garlic flavor into the sauce.
She used some dried jalapeno pepper in her sauce. I thought hot chili pepper flakes would do about the same thing. Just a pinch, but if you are not a fan of heat, leave them out altogether.
She used semi-skimmed milk. I used whole milk. I only keep the one kind of milk in my house. Whipping cream is good to use. In the UK I would use double cream.
If possible grate your own cheese. If not, at least use a very good quality already grated and by that I mean NOT the green can.
I liked that the recipe used dry herbs. Its not fresh herb season in my garden yet, and of course I can't go to the store.
There is no substitute for real butter. I use light olive oil for cooking purposes. Save the extra virgin olive oil for dishes where you really want to taste its rich flavor. This is not that dish.
HOW TO MAKE PASTA WITH PINK SAUCE
This really was very simple, quick and easy to make!
Cook the pasta according to the package directions in lightly salted water, just to al dente. Reserve some of the pasta water when draining for later. Set aside and keep warm.
Heat the butter and oil together until the butter starts to foam. Add the onions. Sauté until soft and translucent without browning. Stir frequently. Keep a close watch. Once the onions have softened stir in the garlic. Cook for a further minute until quite fragrant.
Add the tomato passata, milk, cream, basil, Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, stirring to combine. Reduce the heat to a slow simmer and simmer for 5 to 7 minutes.
Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in the grated cheese, stirring it in until it has melted completely. Add the drained pasta. If the sauce is a bit too thick you can add a bit of the reserved pasta water. Heat through.
Serve and enjoy with additional cheese to sprinkle on top if desired. A nice salad and garlic bread on the side would go wonderfully!
This was so delicious that I found myself dipping into it after I enjoyed my single serving. I couldn't resist sticking my fork in again and again. It was so tasty and I am such a glutton! Especially when it comes to pasta and sauce.
If you wanted to you could add some chicken to the dish, or even beef. I was quite happy with it just the way that it was. I was missing some😠garlic bread however. I love bread and pasta together. Guess its time to dig out the bread machine and get it going!
Some other pasta recipes here in The English Kitchen which you might enjoy are:
PASTA E PISELLI - Simple ingredients put together in a simple way. Pasta, peas, water and cheese. It doesn't get any simpler or easier than this. You wouldn't think that simple things like this could come together in such a delicious way, but like magic, they do! I love this.
LEMON & GREEN OLIVE PASTA - If you are looking to try out a new pasta dish this week look no further. This one is a winning combination all round. Although the quantities are for only two people, you can very easily multiply them to feed more! It always amazes me when a few simple ingredients come together in an unbelievably delicious way. If you love the flavors of lemon and good green olives you are going to adore this simple pasta dish. Incredibly tasty and very special.
Yield: 2
Pasta with Pink Sauce (for two)
Prep time: 5 MinCook time: 15 MinTotal time: 20 Min
Rich, creamy, delicious and comforting. This is very simple to make. It also used basic store cupboard ingredients.
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cups (160g) dry rigatoni noodles
- 7 fluid ounces (175g) tomato passata (pureed tomatoes)
- 1/2 TBS butter
- 1/2 TBS light olive oil
- 2 TBS finely chopped onion
- 1 large clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
- 1/2 tsp dried basil
- 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
- pinch of red chili flakes (optional)
- 1/4 cup (60ml) milk
- 1/4 cup (60ml) heavy cream (whipping cream)
- 1/4 cup (45g) grated Parmesan cheese
- salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Cook the pasta according to the package directions in lightly salted water, just to al dente. Reserve some of the pasta water when draining for later. Set aside and keep warm.
- Heat the butter and oil together until the butter starts to foam. Add the onions. Sauté until soft and translucent without browning. Stir frequently. Keep a close watch. Once the onions have softened stir in the garlic. Cook for a further minute until quite fragrant.
- Add the tomato passata, milk, cream, basil, Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, stirring to combine. Reduce the heat to a slow simmer and simmer for 5 to 7 minutes.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in the grated cheese, stirring it in until it has melted completely. Add the drained pasta. If the sauce is a bit too thick you can add a bit of the reserved pasta water. Heat through.
- Serve and enjoy with additional cheese to sprinkle on top if desired.
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