Toad in the hole: rainy English weather food

So it's 5 days to go until I head off to Australia for a month. I can't wait for the Asian inspired food and fresh fish over there. I thought I'd leave with a scrummy English meal for you all to make while cuddled up with the rain lashing down: Toad in the Hole...

So, first, I part roasted the sausages and made the Yorkshire pudding batter to go with it (225g  plain flour, 4 eggs, 250ml milk). Heat oil in the dishes for 15 mins in a hot (180 degrees) oven. When oil is hot, put the sausages in and pour the batter around them. Bake for 30 mins until the batter is all puffed up.

To serve, mash some carrots and suede. Onion gravy goes down well here.

Enjoy the cold weather!

ZP x

Staying in while the storm blows

So England is having a hard time fighting the storms with all the rain coming our way. Not to mention the cold freeze that has taken a hold of America. I hope you're all keeping warm over there! What a perfect time to stay in, wrap up warm, watch movies, read, write, and cook!

I used my new quill. Great way to write and hark back to old days when all they had would have been a quill and a candle to write with ( I do think sometimes that I would have loved to have been living like that - simple pleasures and all that!) Makes me appreciate what we have now and how lucky we are.

Going back to warming up on these blustery evenings, I find hearty soup one of my favourites. It fills you up and gives you a hug. 

I simply boiled up the chicken carcass with lots of water, onion, carrot, celery, leek, bit of bay leaf from the garden, and peppercorns, then strained after a few hours. It's best to roast off the bones first to get the most flavour out of them. Putting the strained golden liquid back on to boil, simmer with lentils and other pulses (I use the soup mix you can get from health food shops) and then finish off with left over torn chicken, finely diced carrot, and thin slices of leek. Bit of crushed garlic wouldn't go amiss either. Season to taste: 

Serve with crusty bread and an evening snuggled up with a book.

Have a great weekend readers.

ZP x

Mini blackberry crumbles

Now is the time to bring out the berries from the freezer picked back in summer.


You could do all sorts with berries. Duck breast with blackberry sauce, raspberry pavlova, elderflower cordial, strawberry jam, and much more. This time, I've stuck to tradition and made mini blackberry crumbles. I've mixed them with whatever I could find leftover in the fruit bowl: here, it's apricots, plums, and peaches. For the crumble topping, it's easy: it's just butter and flour mixed together with your fingertips and then sugar added. There's more related recipes here.


Serve with custard in front of the fire on a bitterly cold evening. Beautiful.

ZP x

Sausage stew

This is now a Preston favourite. I cooked this up in the lakes for the family and they loved it. It's just what you need this time of year: filling, heart-warming, and just generally yummy.

I like to take the skins off my sausages and then roll up into balls but to save time, you can just leave them whole (however, putting them into balls makes the meat seem like it goes further). Sear the sausages in a very large saucepan (the biggest one you’ve got). I used two packets (so 12 sausages) but if its just for one or for two people, then use one packet and you’ll have plenty left over. Once slightly browned on all sides, take out of the pan onto kitchen paper and then add 2-3 onions sliced in half moons, 3-4 garlic cloves chopped up, 2-3 peppers chopped, a fennel chopped, a few diced carrots and any other hardy veg (such as squashes etc) you fancy. Stir and colour them off slightly then add a glass of red (if you have any left over). Let the wine simmer down to almost nothing and then add 2 tins of chopped tomatoes (or if whole then use a knife and chop up in the can). Add half a tin of water too. Put the sausages back in, add a few bay leaves, salt, pepper, and any hard herbs such as rosemary or thyme.

The good thing about this dish is that you can add anything you have in the cupboards so if you’ve got some flavoured ketchup, mango chutney, fruit chutney, purees, then add them in and see how it tastes. I find a bit of balsamic vinegar and a pinch of sugar makes it tastier. You can use it to use up your leftover veg and those sausages that have been sat in the freezer for ages. There really isn’t a time in which it needs to simmer for either – once the ingredients are in then just let it simmer until it tastes and looks ready to eat. If the vegetables are soft, the sausages are cooked, and the sauce has turned into a reduced tomatoey-richness, then eat away! A steaming stew is what everyone would come home for.

Serve with jacket potatoes, cous cous, mash or anything you fancy.

ZP x