#entertaining

Salads: Potato, Chorizo, Prawn and Paprika Salad

Salad doesn’t have to be something on the side or a bit of greenery bringing up the rear. It can be a starter or the main event and it...

Chocolate: Pressed Chocolate Cake

This is a River Café Cookbook recipe. Over the years, I have tried varying it by adding chopped crystallised and stem ginger, rum-soaked...

Chocolate: Dark Chocolate Orange Mousse

This may lack sophistication as a strategy, but experience has shown that there are two surefire ways to success when giving a lunch or...

Boozy Food with Spirits: Fish en Papillote with Vermouth

An effortless way to cook whole fish, either one per person or sharing. Just put the fish in a foil parcel with herbs and liquor and put...

Boozy Food with Spirits: Petits Pots de Chocolate

Aka irresistible chocolate mousse with rum. It's another simple classic that we could all be making instead of more elaborate cakes. And...

Boozy Food with Spirits: Garlicky Prawns Flambéd in Whiskey

Irish whiskey may sound unlikely, but trust me. Ideally you should buy live prawns and cook them yourself, but I’ve been known to use...

Boozy Food with Spirits: Syllabub

Why aren’t we all eating syllabub? It’s a breeze to make and delicious. This one, based on Elizabeth David’s classic Everlasting...

Boozy Food with Spirits: Tuna Ceviche with Vodka and Lime

Far be it from me to suggest that anyone should find cooking with wine in Britain off-puttingly expensive, but I do concede that, thanks...

Cheap Entertaining: Pears in Moscatel

Anything this lacks in colour compared with pears poached in red wine it more than makes up for in flavour - and on the budget front it...

Cheap Entertaining: Pork Chops with Mustard & Honey

Pork is cheap, but chops are often so lean (obsessively so in supermarkets) they need remedial treatment to stop them being dry. The...

Cheap Entertaining: Milk-Braised Lamb with Fennel

If the sound of meat and milk sounds odd, remember that pork braised in milk has a impeccable pedigree from both Venice and southwest...

Cheap Entertaining: Lazy Baked Chicken with Soy and Ginger

Another from my Sunday Times recipe series, again very relevant right now - November and the run-up to Christmas are definitely a time...