This Cauliflower Cheese and Leek Pithivier was a winner at our Winter Solstice supper clubs – a super comforting vegetarian main course to see you through the coldest days. We’ve found it wins over even the most enthusiastic carnvivores! The layer of tapenade helps cut through the richness of the cheese and pastry.

We developed this recipe for our Winter Solstice Supper Club and so many of our guests asked for the recipe I thought I should pop it up on the blog. This is perfect as a side of greens with your Christmas dinner but it also makes a great stand-alone lunch on top of a slice of toast. I love greens on toast!

If you are a sprout lover you will love this, but I think it will convert sprout-dodgers too, as because of the quick cooking you don’t get the ‘sulphurous’ smells and flavours or boiled brussels! If you are making for Christmas dinner you can slice all the greens and garlic the day before if you need to and store in a tupperware in the fridge so you have minimum prep to do on the day. The dish only takes about 5 minutes to cook, so make it just before you serve everything else.

I am a massive fan of mince pies! I am all here for the boozy, sugary, dried fruit of Christmas time. This babka makes a very festive and extremely delicious alternative to mince pies and because it is a ‘bread’ you could definitely get away with having it for breakfast! A babka is an enriched, yeasted bread dough which is rolled out and then spread with a filling, before being rolled back up and twisted into a loaf. It was developed by the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe; traditional fillings include chocolate, poppy seeds and cinnamon. I’ve used a mix of butter and mincemeat.

I’ve been experimenting lots with using different flours in my sweet bakes this year, it adds a bit of goodness to cakes and lots of additional flavour. In this recipe the rye flour and the olive oil give the cake a nutty, almost spicy flavour and the apple keeps everything moist. otherwise I find bundt cakes can sometimes end up a bit dry as there is much cake to relatively little icing.

In our opinion there are few better ways to eat beetroot than roasted whole in their skins with a bit of oil and salt. If the beetroots aren’t too old and if you make sure to roast them in a dish with a tight fitting lid the skins should slip off easily. Then chop them into chunks and they are the perfect addition to wintry salads (though to be honest we eat them all year round). If you can’t be bothered to roast your own beets, then pre-cooked beetroot can be used here, though I do think roasted beets have a better flavour.

Inspired by Polish chlodnik, I made this chilled beetroot soup for one of our Twilight Gardening dinners this summer. It was surprisingly popular, I often think chilled soups can be a bit divisive – but that might be because Jo is always a bit suspicious when I suggest a chilled soup. The colour is so gorgeously pink and the earthy beets are balanced out with the tangy buttermilk and little sweetness from the date syrup. If you don’t have date syrup in the cupboard you can use a little honey instead.

Larb (or laap) is a Laotian dish traditionally made with minced meat (either raw or cooked) mixed with lots of chilli, lime juice, fish sauce, herbs, ground toasted rice and other aromatics. It is often very, very spicy and was one of our favourite dishes to eat with a side of sticky rice when we were travelling in Northern Thailand and Laos. Somehow I find eating really spicy food in tropical climes makes you feel cooler, especially if you have a cold beer to sip alongside.

This recipe was a big hit at our Summer Solstice Supper Club in June 2021. It’s a vegetarian adaption of a recipe in the gloriously summery and brilliant cookbook, Taverna by Georgina Haydon.

I was asked by Adam at Seedhead Arts if I wanted to do a talk for this year’s Out To Lunch festival (part of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival). He suggested ‘Preserving for the Apocalypse’ might be an amusing and timely title. With over-buying during the early (and some of the later) stages of lockdown and Brexit bumps (or almighty earthquakes) causing custom hold ups it definitely feels like an appropriate time to rediscover some of the forgotten skills of food preservation. I can’t promise you will be able to live off jam and chutney should the apocalypse actually come – but a really good jar of chutney might make those bugs we’ll be eating a bit more palatable!

Chutney is really easy to make. You don’t need to worry about setting points or pectin or anything tricky. You basically just chop up the veg you have and boil it up with some sugar, vinegar and spices until is starts to break down and reduces by about half of the original volume.

Making ketchup is not a dissimilar process to making chutney – you are basically simmering ingredients up with vinegar and sugar. But I think it something most people don’t think to do as it seems like a product made in a factory, rather than something you can easily make at home. I first make ketchup at Ballymaloe Cookery School, and ever since then I’ve been hooked. I discovered that a staple (often ultra processed) product that we eat all the time was actually super easy to make, lasts absolutely ages and was way more delicious when homemade!

Making jam is super rewarding (the jars look so beautiful) but it can be tricky if you have never made it before or no one has shown you how to do it. Here are a few tips I have found really useful.