Birmingham Independent Food Fair

Birmingham’s first independent food fair, site here

A steak dinner

This is not the most traditional of steak dinners. Mostly because there aren’t that many ingredients apart from steak.

One of my closest friends often says that the meat is the least important part of the meal, the vegetables and side dishes are the difficult part. That is often very true, but this recipe is all about the meat! This is my occasional treat, steak and caramelised onions.

Vegetarian Toad in the Hole

This is also a nice twist on the classic toad in the hole, using vegetarian sausages. This is not just a straight swap of vegetarian sausages for meat sausages though, I have added a few tweaks to make this work better. This works especially well with Linda McCartney sausages.

Toad in the Hole

The bizarrely named comfort food. A great winter evening meal as it is very hearty. Also great for most picky eaters. This is a slight twist on my mum’s recipe, as I wrap bacon around the sausages and add mustard to the batter.

Yorkshire Puddings

Always a favorite of mine. These work very well with roasts of any kind (not just the traditional beef) or as an accompaniment to most dishes.

The batter can be used as the base for other dishes such as toad in the hole or even home made fish and chips.

Fatless Sponge

This is my great-grandmothers recipe for a fatless sponge, passed down my family. The secret ingredient in this recipe is air. Without fat you need to really incorporate air into the mixture to get a really light fluffy cake. This means that steps 5 and 7 need to be done very carefully so that you end up with a very light mixture.

American Style Pancakes

This is one of my favorite breakfasts, big fluffy pancakes. While I am English, I must say my favorite breakfast pancake are the fluffy american ones. I reserve the British/European thin pancakes for pancake day.

This is an unusual recipe because it includes bacon cooked inside the pancakes. While many people serve bacon with pancakes, I decided it is best cooked together. This gives a better mixture of flavors, and must be tried!

This recipe can be made vegetarian by omitting the bacon and using only 130ml of milk.

Glazed Gammon/Bacon Joint

This is a recipe for marinaded roast gammon or bacon. It has a real sweetness with some edge from the mustard which cuts right through the natural saltiness of the meat.