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

Lazy brunch east-european style: placki with tomato salad

So, it's my first day off in London in a looong time. It's boiling hot. I slept in deliciously until about 11am, then rolled out of bed and warmed up the placki I made for my friend, Ayesha, yesterday. Ayesha loves potatoes. This morning I ate them with salted yoghurt and a slightly spicy cherry tomato salad - just some cherry tomatoes, basil, good olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and some fresh chilli thrown together. Life's feeling pretty good...

Placki are one of the most simple and brilliant things to make. You grate some potatoes (1 per person and 1 extra on top) and an onion, making them as mushy as possible, add an egg, some flour and season with salt and pepper. For 3 potatoes I added about 2 tablespoons of flour. Heat some oil up on a large frying pan and spoon on the mixture on to the hot oil. Fry until brown on both sides, which takes approximately 10min. I make them all first, keeping them in the a warm oven until they're all ready to be eaten, but some like to eat as they go, the choice is yours

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