Trusted British chef recipes, tested at home
Jamie Oliver’s cheese puffs are golden choux-style balls made with Parmesan and Lincolnshire Poacher or Cheddar, plus a little semolina in the dough. The batch makes 24 to serve 8, from his book Together (2021). They’re Jamie’s take on the first canapé he ever tried, at 13, on work experience at The Starr in Dunmow. …
Nigella Lawson’s Parmesan shortbreads are little savoury cheese biscuits made from just four ingredients: flour, Parmesan, butter and an egg yolk, sliced from a chilled log and baked pale gold. It makes 35 to 40, from her book Nigellissima. The recipe reached her, she says, from Australia via Brazil. A Brazilian friend, Helio Fenerich, the …
Nigella Lawson’s panettone stuffing squares are savoury Christmas canapés: panettone blitzed with pancetta, apple, shallot, chestnut, sage and lemon, baked in a tray and cut into little squares like savoury brownies. It makes 48 small squares, from her book Nigellissima. She’s written a panettone stuffing before (the fruit bread cubed, toasted and mixed with Italian …
Nigella Lawson’s devilled eggs are halved boiled eggs filled with a smooth, piped yolk mixture spiked with mustard, Tabasco and paprika. The recipe makes 18, from her book At My Table. She’s unashamedly devoted to them, calling them retro but no exercise in irony. They’re one of the few things that get her reaching for …
Nigella Lawson’s burnt onion and aubergine dip is a smoky, silky vegan dip of roasted aubergine, scorched onions and caramelised garlic, blitzed with tahini, cumin, smoked paprika, lemon and mint. It makes about 600ml, from her book Cook, Eat, Repeat. It’s the very first recipe in her “A Loving Defence of Brown Food” chapter, and …
Nigella Lawson’s beetroot and chickpea dip is a vividly pink dip of home-roasted beetroot blitzed with chickpeas, garlic, tahini and lemon. It’s a five-ingredient, no-cook-once-the-beets-are-roasted dip that makes about 900ml. In Cook, Eat, Repeat (2020) she calls herself a dips-with-drinks devotee, and this is a new regular in her stable. The beetroot turns the chickpeas …
Nigella Lawson’s halloumi with chilli is a four-ingredient sharing plate: slices of salty halloumi dry-fried until golden, then doused in a chilli-steeped olive oil and finished with a squeeze of lemon. It uses two 250g packets of cheese, takes under 10 minutes, and makes about 30 pieces for people to graze on, drink in hand. …