Red amaranth, enoki mushrooms, cashewnuts and black quinoa on a hot hotday

London is sizzling. No, I don't mean 23 degrees C going down to 10 at night, I mean a proper heatwave. Though they do say we'll be going back down to our usual, civilized 23-with-showers in the coming week. Thank god. That's not an ironic "thank god" either - the pregnancy means I'm really sensitive to everything and massively overheating. It took three tries to get into my lido. I'd trundle up there like a man in a desert only to find my cool oasis swarming with hipsters, forming an unmanageable queue. I finally managed to get in yesterday after getting up early, but it was still much busier than usual, even at 9.15am, a lot of idiots, a lot of road rage. Not your usual, calming "isn't this nice?" atmosphere at all. Luckily, in this weather I am not craving sausage sandwiches but things like this...

This was a particularly attractive and successful version of the kind of dish I usually throw together; a combination of whatever I have lying about my kitchen cupboards and whatever I pick on my way home. I stopped off at my favourite Vietnamese supermarket on this occasion and bought fresh red amaranth and enoki mushrooms. I cooked the black quinoa separately and used a wok to toast the cashewnuts slightly before adding the amaranth, enoki mushrooms, light soya sauce, a little bit of oyster sauce and Ghanian shito paste (basically a chilli oil).

After all my moaning about the heat, I leave you with what I love about London in the summertime. The luscious, wild nature all around. Now, if I could just get wild flowers to grow in my garden...

Spelt pancakes with stewed vanilla strawberries

I love Ridley road market with it's African fabrics, cheap food stalls and fishmongers. Even the sheeps' heads add a little "je ne sais quoi" to the atmosphere. This is where you come to get cheap fruit and veg in east London. Unfortunately, it's not always the best quality. Yersterday, I was walking through Ridley Road when a torrential downpour started. This wasn't your usual London drizzle, it was like  monsoon had hit us. Fortunately, it was still warm and somehow all the people caught in it - like yours truly - were in good spirits. The market stall holders were trying to get rid of all their produce as quickly as possible and pack up, so I got 2 big bowls - one of cherries, one of strawberries -for £1.50. The cherries were delicious, but the strawberries were a bit squashed by the time I got them home. I ate the solid strawberries whilst contemplating what I could do with all the squashed ones. Half of the squashed ones went into a healthy shake with yoghurt, almond milk, maple syrup and maca root. The other half were made into strawberry and vanilla sauce that went on top of spelt pancakes this Sunday morning, for brunch.

I won't lie to you, it was divine. I simply  simmered the strawberries with a teaspoon of good quality vanilla essence, a tablespoon of brown sugar and 3 tablespoons of water. I won't patronise you with a detailed description of how to make pancakes because I'm sure you know. I just whizzed all the ingredients down there together and fried each ladlefull in little knobs of butter. I also added a dollop of mascapone and a drizzle of maple syrup for that American brunch feel. This will make 2 pancakes.

Ingredients

50g spelt flour

1 egg

150ml almond milk (aprox)

15g butter

Large handful strawberries, chopped in half

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Dollop mascapone

Maple syrup to drizzle

Mango-mascapone semi-freddo dessert

The world has woken up. Little buds are appearing on trees, the sun's out almost every day, if only for a short while and there are even some cherry blossoms that are in full bloom, though not the ones in Victoria Park, which always take a bit longer for some reason. Last weekend, I was in Eastbourne on the coast and for a few, very brief moments it felt almost like Summer. One of those brief moments was sitting on the warm, sun-filled, wind-protected porch, eating this mango dessert and washing it down with champagne. 

This is just a step on from the Thai mango lassi and yes, yellow mangos are the best. Just blend all the ingredients down there to a smooth-ish consistency. It's nice to have a few tiny, juicy mango bits I find.

Champagne because we were celebrating my book deal. In my heart, I knew it was meant to happen, but it's still the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me. Now I have less than 6 months to produce the book. At the moment I am easing myself into it but very soon, I may have to give up everything else in my life.

Ingredients (makes 3)

2 yellow mangos

Handful ice cubes

150g mascapone cheese

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Mango lassies on Koh Lipe

I'm going to come clean straight away - this is a cheat post, because I'm not making or cooking anything here in Thailand. I'm also not eating bugs or anything else out of the ordinary. I am however drinking these mango lassies every single day.

That up there is the beach on Koh Lipe that I'm drinking them on (the quieter Sunrise Beach). If you want to make one of these healthy, refreshing, wonderful drinks this is what you need to blend: yellow mangos (much more flavour than their green counterparts), natural yoghurt, ice. That is all.

Caramelised pecan and red maca frozen yoghurt

As far as Januaries in London go, this one's not so bad. It's brisk but not freezing. There's wind and rain, yes, but then there are also dazzling blue skies and vivid sunsets... So whereas during your average kind of January I probably wouldn't dream of making fro-yo, this January it seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do

I made this one by grilling the crushed pecans with some coconut oil, sea salt and maple syrup for about 5min, then adding them, along with more maple syrup, and a couple of tablespoons of powdered red maca, to Greek-style bio-yoghurt. It froze in about an hour. If you have an over enthusiastic freezer like this one, remember to keep stirring every 10-15min and don't leave it in overnight. Just put it in there about 1 hour before you want to consume it. Alternatively, you may just want to eat it all in one go, since it's so healthy and so mapley, malty, more-ish

Sweet potato quinoa salad

One of things I love about cooking is that paradox of nostalgia and newness. For example, I write this blog whilst munching on a warm, slightly crispy tortilla with Marmite. The reason I eat Marmite on tortillas rather than on toast like normal people, is because when I was in the Himalays aged 17, we ate ate marmite and chapattis every morning of our trek over Pin Parvati Pass. By the end of the 14 days I couldn't stand the sight of them, but now... It's the nostagia, clearly. At the other end of the scale we have this salad I made last week, which I've never made before but, from experience, knew was going to work

It's a blend of 3 different types of quinoa - red, black and pearl. You can get a ready mix in (some) Waitrose, with home grown cherry tomatoes and chillies (luckily I have a man who grows these, because I still haven't quite got my head round that part), toasted almond flakes, coriander and cinnamon sweet potato (roast the chunks of unpeeled sweet potato in the oven with olive oil, honey and cinnamon). The dressing consists of lime juice, mild olive oil and fish sauce. We ate it with southern fried chicken a bit like this one, but with more spices in the marinade. Yas says the trick is to add a little a bit of cornflour to the flour and breadcrumbs and the oil you fry them in should be hot but "not too hot". Having made this chicken about 5 times in a row now, he's the expert

Grandma's sorrel and yoghurt soup

Whenever I eat sorrel now it reminds me of this lovely day, a couple of years ago, when my grans were still alive. It was just ordinary summer's day then, mooching about, cooking, sunbathing... yet it will always live on in my memory as something extraordinary and special, a reminder that all things pass and to cherish the moments we have with our loved ones. This sorrel soup is different to the cold one I made that day

Once you've got hold of the sorrel, either by foraging or by buying some in an online shop like this one, the soup is very simple to make. It tastes just like the one my Babcia Ziuta used to make, yet the recipe comes not from her but from this lady's grandma

That's the lady who sold us the sorrel at the market. We always wash the sorrel thoroughly first. Fry it in a large knob of butter until it wilts. Allow it to cool for about 20min, then blend. The old method is to push it through a sieve with a wooden spoon, but blending is much easier, so I suggest to do that. Put it in the biggest pan you can find and fill half-way with cold water. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for half an hour. Near the end of the cooking time, we season the soup with salt and pepper and thicken with plain flour, stirring all the time. Bring it back to the boil for 5min, allowing the flour to do it's job.

Before adding the yoghurt, we allow the soup to cool down a little bit again, for about 20-30min. The lady's grandma would have used thick cream rather than yoghurt I expect but the lady uses yoghurt and it works very well. Not to mention being healthier. So you do it like this: put the yoghurt you intend to use in a large cup and add a tablespoon of soup, stir it in. Add another tablespoon and stir it in. Repeat about 5 times. Finally, pour the whole thing into the soup and stir vigorously. Heat the soup a little before serving. Hard boiled eggs inside each bowl are a necessary addition, the potatoes with dill are optional but highly desirable

Ingredients

1 large bag of sorrel
50g butter
3 tablespoons flour
150ml greek yoghurt
Salt and white pepper
Hard boiled eggs

A big, fat Polish salad with wild girolle mushrooms

Intense weather. August in Poland is hot, close and stormy.  I kind of like it. Intensity is a bit underrated in the UK I feel. The UK is all about cool, while Poland is a land of extremes. Perhaps the weather is more important in the formation of national attitudes than we realize. In this intense heat it's difficult to eat warm food, so I made a big, fat salad for dinner yesterday, making use of the local "girolle" mushrooms and adding crunchy goat's cheese croutons. I should have poached an egg and put that on top, but I didn't think of it at the time. It was delicious none the less and an unusual way to eat these wild mushrooms that start popping up around now

The base is a mixture of salad leaves with fresh dill - Warsaw style. The croutons are simply Polish bread, grilled on both sides with a hard goat's cheese grated over one of them. The girolles are fried with plenty of garlic, salt and white pepper. The vinaigrette is flaxeed oil/olive oil mixed with some lemon juice, cider apple vinegar, salt and white pepper again. White pepper gives a salad a distinct East European flavour

Three grain mango salad and swimming against the tide

There's no denying that I'm swimming against the tide here. London is a city where most people work hard and party hard, then when they've had enough they settle down and start a family. Which is fantastic if that's what you actually want. After 8 years on the treadmill of London life I realized that I didn't know what I wanted anymore: I was tired, my diary was filled with plans I had no energy for and my choices were coming from a strange place. I was rushing from one commitment to another, going along with the current, but not being fully present anywhere. I was disconnected from my body and my spirit, while my mind was working overtime. I felt like a machine. I decided that I needed to re-establish my sense of personal freedom and individuality. Slowly, like a child working out who they are and what they like, I started. On the outside nothing changed at first, it was a simple inner choice to commit to myself. It turned out that what I was looking for was this: That feeling of anything being possible, of life as an adventure... Long, meandering walks through the quiet city streets when everyone is at work... Waking up each day at a time that is right for my body and deciding what my goals and priorities are according to how I feel... Being able to stop work and go for a run when the sun comes out... Working solely on projects I believe in... So far so wonderful. Here's the catch: it's not bloody easy. You need to somehow make money in order to survive, your sense of self is constantly tested, you feel judged often, at times you doubt everything, you make mistakes, you loose your balance... There is no safety net. You know all those uncomfortable feelings you'd rather distract yourself from? They're all here, waiting for you. You have to be strong if you want to go this way. One day you wake up and take stock:  I'm still here, surviving; I've learnt that I have the capacity to love myself unconditionally; I feel physically and mentally better than I did 5 years ago (no more chronic back ache for a start); I'm more present, more myself; I drink less alcohol (most of the time) and my diet is healthier, not because I'm trying to be healthy but because it feels natural to me. So I've gone all the way back to the simplest and most important thing of all: health. With that in mind, here's a lovely three grain mango salad for you

Cook all the grains together, as that makes things super easy - they all take about 25min. Then just leave them, covered, in the pan to steam for a bit, before cooling. All the vegetables and herbs need to be chopped quite finely for this. Enjoy, preferably in the sunshine.

Ingredients

Quinoa

Pearl Barley

Bulgur wheat

Mango

Cherry tomatoes

Cucumber

Coriander

Celery

Chia seeds for topping

Lemon juice

Olive oil

Celery salt and pepper 

Bulghur, broccoli and blue cheese salad, with a dream of sustainability

There is nothing quite like the feeling of eating something that you have grown yourself. Unfortunately, the only things I can say that about at the moment are my mint and rosemary, yet I milk this glorious feeling for all it's worth with Moroccan mint teas, mochitos and today, with this fresh tasting bulghur wheat salad

I have just returned from a camping trip in Cornwall with a new found vision of sustainability. Places like Henry's campsite and The Eden Project are my inspiration. And probably also my boyfriend, who is one of those green-fingered people. I have never been part of the green fingered club myself, but I'm (slowly) learning, and trust me, if I can become more green-fingered, then so can anyone. I'm starting to realize that it's more of a skill than a talent. The way I think of it is, you need to treat your plants like you do your pet: make sure they have food and water, talk to them, love them etc. This slightly mad method is working well for me, even though one of my favourite plants has just been ravaged by a snail in the few days I've been away (the said plant is recovering in a sunny spot inside the house now and I am confident it will survive)

To make this salad, cook the bulghur wheat, fluff and cool. Crush the walnuts by banging them with a rolling pin, inside a plastic bag and add to the wheat. Cover the broccoli with some boiling water and add sea salt. Leave for 3-4mi,n then drain and immediately place under cold running water, until cool. Chop into centimeter pieces and add to bowl. Chop the mint very finely and add. For the blue cheese I used a delicious, blue goat's cheese from L'eau a la Bouche. Place all the vinaigrette ingredients in a jam jar and shake vigorously for a few minutes before pouring over the salad. I used half a lemon, about 3 tablespoons of olive oil and a heaped teaspoon each of the wholegrain mustard and mayo, but do just play it how you feel it

Ingredients

Bulghur wheat
Tender-stem broccoli
Walnuts
Fresh mint
Blue cheese

Vinaigrette

Olive oil
Lemon juice
Celery salt
Black pepper
Wholegrain mustard
Mayonnaise

Courgettes stuffed with cinnamon lamb

When I was working all the time I imagined that having free time in London would be massively productive. In actual fact, I have become a cat. I sleep, I sunbathe, I eat, I meditate, I run in the park, make love and stretch, write a little bit. OK, so cats don't write, but you get the picture. I thought that I would be blogging every day, but no, I am too busy stretching and meditating, apparently this can  take entire days. At times I feel that familiar, suffocating feeling start to creep in - guilt. I then remind myself that I had been working full time for over 8 years, that I deserve to live a little, even a lot, that life is short, that I need to enjoy my freedom, and I try and let that suffocating feeling go, to feel grateful that I've had this beautiful Summer in London. Being brought up a Catholic, it's not easy letting go of guilt, but I won't give up trying. I want my actions to come from a place of love, and not of guilt or any other negative emotion. I'm still cooking all the time, but right now it always seems to be late at night, when I can't take good pictures. Yesterday, I finally managed to cook something before the sun set - it was these lovingly stuffed courgettes

They seem Middle-Eastern in flavour with the lamb and cinnamon flavours, yet this is a (heavily modified) Polish recipe. Often these two worlds meet in the kitchen, due to many factors - Arab traders in the Middle-Ages swapping spices for amber from the Baltic sea, Jewish and Armenian influences from the movements of people through this land over many centuries, and constant wars with the Ottoman Empire when Poland was still great...

Wash and dry the courgettes, then slice them in half and scoop out the insides carefully (I used a small, sharp knife and my fingers). Chop these bits and blanche in boiling, salted water for about 5min. Meanwhile, chop the onion as finely as you possibly can. Fry it in the olive oil, then after 10min, add the lamb mince. Use a fork to mash these together while they are cooking. Add the cinnamon, salt and pepper. Keep mashing and cooking for about 5min, then add the drained courgette meat. Cover and allow to simmer for about 10min, then take the lid off and keep mashing. Finally, remove from heat and add a tablespoon of breadcrumbs to soak up the juices. Allow to cool slightly before stuffing the courgettes with the mixture. Bake for 30min at about 150 degrees C, serve with white rice

Ingredients (serves 2)

150g minced lamb's meat

3 courgettes

1 red onion

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Breadcrumbs

Salt and pepper

Olive oil for frying

Seafood by the sea, the way it should be

This is how I like to eat when I am by the sea

I really can't recommend this fish shop on the seafront in Eastbourne enough. I cooked the clams simply, in cider, adding a bit of crushed garlic, seasoning and a bay leaf, and simmering until they all opened up (of course, as with mussels, you need to chuck any ones that are already open beforehand). The prawns and scallops were fried together on a large pan with olive oil and more crushed garlic. Once they were nearly ready, after about 4 min (2 each side), I squeezed half a lemon on top, seasoned them with sea salt and freshly ground pepper and gave them one more minute, covered. They produced this lovely, seafoody, orange sauce all by themselves. Clever prawns

Refreshing bean salad

Ah those dreamy days... 

You know the ones I mean - when it feels like you are receiving a special gift from the universe: the sun is shining, you are in the right place at the right time, old friends reappear as if by magic and you happen to be in the most perfect, remote, rural setting. Sometimes you forget that these places even exist while living in London

So it was on one of those days that I decided to make this bean salad, shared with me on the beach in Birling Gap by my old pal, Lou Lou, who I hadn't seen in two years but just happened to be at her parents' house at the same time that I'd decided to visit my dad

A bean salad may not seem like the most refreshing food on the face of this earth, and yet this one really is. It's that East European combination of sour cream, cucumber and dill that does it. You blend the sour cream with the crushed garlic, salt, pepper and dill first, then pour over the beans and cucumber

Ingredients

Tin of cannellini beans, drained

Tin of butter beans, drained

Cucumber, peeled and chopped

Handful chopped dill

250ml sour cream

2 garlic cloves, crushed

Salt and white pepper

Malty snickers iced-coffee aka probably the best iced-coffee in the world

After an impromptu barbeque last week, I found a freezer filled with mini Snickers ice-creams, which inspired me to make this particular iced coffee. I've been messing about with various recipes all this week, and finally today, I have arrived at the perfect one which I would like to share with you. I prefer to use instant coffee, using a strong-tasting filter coffee gives it a much stronger coffee flavour obviously, and I prefer it when it tastes more like a milkshake. The maca root powder adds not only health benefits, but also more maltiness. Just blitz all the ingredients down there in a blender until smooth and fluffy

Ingredients

1 cup of coffee

1 teaspoon honey

1 mini Snickers ice-cream

1 tablespoon maca powder

1 cup of almond milk

Handful of ice

Summer spaghetti with cherry tomatoes, basil and crayfish

Life is full of unsung heroes - invisible people that make your life better in small ways and don't ask for anything in return. And food is the same. Normally, I don't blog about every little thing that crosses my lips, every ordinary pasta dish or pedestrian pasty, but sometimes you eat something so simple, so ordinary and it's just so bloody perfect that it would be a massive shame to forget about it. Perhaps it's the moment more than the actual dish: waking up after a nap on a hot Summer's evening, starving, still mildly euphoric from a beautiful, intense Saturday night spent getting to know someone new and quite special, having no idea what to eat or how to acquire that food in your dazed and sleepy state, then remembering a conversation from the previous night about simple pasta dishes, and realizing that this is exactly what you need. Then, making the said pasta dish, with love and care, creating something that fulfills all the unspoken needs and desires of that particular day... this is it

It's wholewheat spaghetti, cooked al dente. The sauce is garlic and good cherry tomatoes fried in olive oil, with fresh basil and ground, smoked crayfish, which I buy from the Wholefoods section at Tesco or in a Caribbean shop. Obviously, you need to season the sauce with salt and pepper, and I also added some Caribbean hot sauce at this point and squeezed in half a lemon. Finally, I transferred the spaghetti to the pan with the sauce and fried it all together for a few minutes, making sure all of the pasta was coated, before adding a bit more freshly ground black pepper. Super easy

Ingredients

Wholewheat spaghetti
Cherry tomatoes
Garlic clove
Big handful fresh basil, chopped
Handful ground crayfish
Half a lemon
Caribbean hot sauce
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Jamaican Summer beer cocktail

This is the most refreshing cocktail I've ever had, perfect for a Summer evening, or even afternoon. It is only beer after all (with the tiniest bit of rum). I adapted the recipe from the one I tried at The Rum Kitchen a few weeks ago, which, incidently, is a really fun place for a night out in West London

Ingredients

1 part ginger beer to 2 parts beer (Red Stripe is obviously ideal)

1 teaspoon (or more) Spiced Rum

Few drops of Angostura Bitters

Lime juice (about half a lime per big glass)

Quinoa blackberry porridge for the Spring/Summer breakfast in bed

During my long search for the perfect breakfast, I realized that my reasoning was inherently flawed. What is obvious to me now is that the perfect breakfast depends on the time of year, on where you are on the planet, and where you are in your mind. Whereas in the heat of Thailand the perfect breakfast might be a banana, some watermelon and pineapple with yoghurt and honey, in London in the midst of a long, damp Winter, nothing quite hits the spot for me on a day-to-day basis like congee. However, if you add a party night to mix, then my perfect breakfast suddenly turns into a BLT on ciabatta with mayo and a fresh OJ. As it gets warmer and the berries starting popping out, I start to crave red fruit with porridge or oats with yoghurt. In this in-between period that we have now, warm quinoa with berries is just perfect

The quinoa gives this a lightness that you don't get with oats, and the blackberries give it tang and that specific British flavour. You could just as easily replace them with another soft berry though. I cooked the quinoa in water, then when it was ready, added some goat's milk (I can't drink normal milk anymore), a pinch of salt, lots of honey and the blackberries. I cooked it all until the blackberries fell apart and the milk turned pink and frothy

My mum's gherkins

On first meeting you, people often ask what you do and where you come from. I dislike both those questions for different reasons. The "what do you do" question I feel limited by, because what I do in my day job isn't all that I do. And the "where are you from" question is difficult for me to answer. It feels inappropriate to go into the intricacies of where I really feel I come from on meeting someone for the first time. To keep it short and polite I tend to say "Poland" when I am in the UK, however when I come here it's immediately clear to me that although this place fills me with nostalgia, it's not home any more... That's not to say that I don't feel "at home" here, because I do. I love the place and I have never stopped missing it and, of course (as any ex-patriot will immediately understand), certain foods. Like home-made gherkins. We made these the first day that I arrived

You will need a leaf from an oak tree, and some horseradish leaves. We took the first from a tree in our garden and the other from the neighbour's garden, my mum making some elaborate excuse as to why this was OK (something to do with the original land ownership apparently) the whole time we were lifting the wooden fence in a way she's clearly well practised at. The gherkins need to be packed tightly together so you need to have lots of them and a container where they fit snugly together, you will also need a round, heavy stone that you can fit on top of this container (in a plastic bag) to squish them down. It sounds a bit faffy, but trust me -once you get all the gear together it couldn't be simpler

Ingredients

Lots of small cucumbers -  20-30

Dill that has flowered - lots

1-2 leaves from an oak tree

2-3 horseradish leaves

Garlic - 1 bulb, peeled

2 Tablespoons salt per 1 litre of water

Bring the water to the boil and add the salt. We used 2 litres for about 20 cucumbers. Place all the other ingredients in your container. Allow the water to cool slightly (about 15min) before pouring it into your jar. Make sure everything is covered with the water and put the stone on top. Normally, you will leave these for about 48 hours, but you can try them after 24 and see how pickled you like yours. Once ready, transfer the cucumbers and the garlic into a jar, pouring the brine over the top. You can eat these now for another couple of weeks, or keep the jar closed for a couple of months if you prefer to eat them at a later time. When you feel like a taste of another country and way of life, get them out and eat with buttered rye bread, grilled Polish sausage ("Mysliwska" for example), "Sarepska" mustard, and washed down with the obligatory Polish beer

Sweet potato gratin and burnt aubergine salad from Ottolenghi

All year I miss the sunchine, I crave it, and then when it finally comes, like the weekend that I made Ottolenghi's sweet potato gratin and burnt aubergine salad, I turn into a complete wuss and can hardly move. I have become too accustomed to British weather now clearly. I need a breeze and the odd cloud

We went over to LT's parents house to pick up the car to go to the beach, had a glass of champagne, and that was it really. I ended up looking through his mum's cookbooks for hours. Needless to say the beach plan never crystallized. I went home and cooked this for LT and my mate Rob instead. We ate it in the garden and talked until day turned into night. That's when we realized that we had become prey to the thousands of hungry mosquitoes and transferred our conversation to the pub down the road instead

I changed the recipes from this book up here (slightly) to suit what I had (e.g. I subsitituted whipped cream in the gratin for single cream), so here I give you the versions that I made. I also forgot to put the red onion in the burnt aubergine salad

Ingredients

Sweet potatoes
Sage
Single cream
Garlic salt
Pepper

Aubergines
Peppers - red and orange
Cherry tomatoes
Parsley
Cumin
Olive oil
Lemon juice

You do not peel the potatoes, which I love, you just slice them and combine with all the other ingredients in a mixing bowl, then bake for about 40 minutes. The aubergines you cook straight on the stove. Actually, I 'd learnt this method from an Indian friend of mine years ago, and it gives a superb chargrilled flavour to any dish. Once the aubergine is cooked, you remove the flesh and combine with the other stuff, which has been chopped into bite-sized pieces. We ate this with grilled chipolata sausages, which were meant to be barbequed, but we never even got round to starting the barbeque. That day was such a wash out, but in a pleasant kind of way in the end. When I was standing on my road in the midday heat earlier, irritated, with mascara running down my face, I didn't think anything could save it, but this meal did just that. It was that wonderful kind of simplicity, where the food is easy to make and comforting to eat - real food

Peruvian quinoa stew with salsa

I have recently joined Hackney Library, which has a surprisingly wide and varied selection of cookbooks. As I am embarking on the massive project of writing a cookbook myself, I'm really interested in reading other peoples' work, seeing all the many different ways you can approach this subject, learning what I like and what I don't. Although I have read three cookbooks in the past fortnight, cover to cover, there is only one which has actually inspired me to cook something - The Food and Cooking of Peru, by Flor Arcaya de Deliot

Perhaps it's the fact that Peruvian cooking is completely new to me. They approach ingredients in a completely different way to what I'm used to, which fascinates me. I mean, have you ever thought using quinoa as a base for a stew? I know that this is something that would never have even occurred to me had I not read about it here, but I'm really, really glad that I did. The recipe down there serves four

Ingredients

250g quinoa

1 litre water

250ml goat's milk

60ml olive oil

2 eggs, beaten

250g feta cheese

chilli powder

salt and pepper

tomatoes

spring onions

chilli 

lime juice

Combine the tomatoes, chilli, spring onion (all chopped) with the lime juice and some salt, to make salsa. Rinse the quinoa, then cover it with boiling water and allow to simmer, until the water has been absorbed. Slowly add the milk, stirring gently, then the oil and then the eggs. Finally, add half a teaspoon of chilli powder and sliced feta cheese. Cook for another 2 minutes stirring all the time, then serve with the tomato salsa. I substituted the normal milk for goat's milk, as (yawn) I seem to have developed a lactose intolerance after a bout of gastric flu. I won't bore you with the details, but, apparently it happens like that sometimes. Luckily, I can still eat cheese. I don't know what I'd do without cheese