Simple fruit bread

I really fancied some fruit bread in the week, so I thought I’d adapt the regular soda bread I’d made previously here.

Soda bread really is my go-to bready saviour, and I tend to keep a little stock of ingredients at the ready in case I want to whip up a speedy loaf. In fact, I liked this bread so much I’m planning to make it again over the weekend!

In terms of the dried fruit, it's all just down to personal taste. My fruit mix had cherries, pineapple and sultanas, but I think figs could be lovely. 

You will need:
500g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp fine sea salt
Approx 400ml buttermilk or live yogurt 
A generous handful of mixed dried fruit 
A little milk (if necessary)

1. Preheat the oven to 200oC/gas mark 6
2. Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing box and stir in the salt and dried fruit. Make a small well in the centre, pour in the yogurt or buttermilk and stir. The mixture should form a soft dough so if it’s a bit dry, add a dash of milk until all the ingredients combine and it becomes a bit sticky.
3. Lightly flour your worktop and tip out your dough. Knead your dough for roughly a minute and shape into a round. 
4. Dust your baking tray with flour (this will prevent your bread from sticking), place your dough on the tray and then dust generously with flour.
5. Mark a deep cross in your loaf with a sharp bread knife and then place in the oven. Bake for 40-45 minutes. If you get a hollow sound when you tap the underneath then you know it’s done. Tip: If your loaf starts to brown too quickly, simply cover loosely with foil.
6. Place your bread on a wire rack to cool a little and then serve while still warm with butter. 

Makes 1 medium loaf or 2 small loaves

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 40-45 minutes

Forced Rhubarb Jam

All images ©Heather Wilkinson 2011-12


Filled with enthusiasm after my marmalade success, I decided to try my luck at making jam. I’m literally obsessed with Forced Rhubarb at the moment, and I really liked the idea of being able to still enjoy it after the season finishes. 

I opted for Pam ‘The Jam’ Corbin’s (River Cottage) recipe. According to Pam, this is supposed to be a soft jam, but that seemed open to interpretation. I mean, how soft is soft? To me, that seemed like crucial information for a novice jam-maker.

I followed the recipe to the letter and soaked my rhubarb in layers of sugar and orange juice overnight.  The following day, boiling the jam and setting it literally took less than 30 mins, although it might have been quicker if I hadn’t spent so much time fiddling about while trying to sterilise my jars. 

My finished jam was indeed soft, but so not much that it slides off your bread. And the taste, my goodness this stuff is heavenly! Add a generous spoonful on top of your morning porridge for a scrumptious start to the day. 

Moroccan-style Bean Stew

All images © Heather Wilkinson 2012


I’ve really got into combining sweet and savoury flavours recently, and I thought I'd use these as a basis for creating a dish for Meat-free Monday. This is a Moroccan-inspired bean stew, healthy, tasty and incredibly simple to prepare. I made sure to make plenty so there was enough left for lunch the next day. I really wanted to try making flat breads but ran out of time, so I served the stew with toasted wholemeal pittas and a yogurt dip.


You will need
400g (dry weight) of mixed beans and pulses (I used chick peas, kidney and flageolet beans)
400g of good quality chopped tinned tomatoes (+ half a tin of water)
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp dried chilli flakes (or fresh chilli if you prefer)
½ tsp paprika
A handful of sultanas
1 handful of dried chopped apricots
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp dried powered ginger
1 tsp tomato puree
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 generous glug of olive oil
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
Salt and pepper to taste


1.) Heat the oil in a large pan. Add your onion and allow to soften before adding your garlic, carrots, cumin, ginger, paprika, cinnamon, chilli and coriander. Cook for about 3 minutes.
2.) Add your beans, tomatoes, tomato puree, sultanas, apricots and half a tin of fresh water. Stir gently to combine all the ingredients together. 
3.) Leave on a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 30 mins to allow the stew to cook down.

Foodie book reviews and some snow business

I took a little time out this week to enjoy the snow in Brighton’s Stanmer Woods. Besides, I've been doing so much cooking and eating recently that I needed the exercise!

The woods were deserted when I arrived, and all you could hear was the creaking of the branches weighed down with snow. It was the kind of peaceful tranquillity that makes you happy to be alive. That was until a lady with a voice like a foghorn came stomping through the woods and stood calling for her dog, aptly named ‘Dodger’, non-stop for about 5 minutes. Dodger eventually emerged reluctantly from a nearby bush and I could swear he practically rolled his eyes at me as he trotted past.

Snowy weather is the perfect time to snuggle up indoors and catch up on some reading, and I thought I’d recommend a couple of books I’ve enjoyed recently.

The first is Seasonal Food by Paul Waddington

There's no shortage of cookery books featuring seasonal recipes, but the more I’ve got into seasonal cooking, the more I’ve wanted to know about the history of seasonality. I'm a bit geeky like that.

Seasonal Food is a month-by-month guide, covering veg, fruit and meat. It tells you when foods are in season and a bit of background as to why those foods are good to eat in that particular month. There's a handy seasonal calendar towards the end of the book too.

There are a few recipes dotted throughout the chapters, but to be honest I found some a little basic and that’s not really what I bought the book for. I think I'll be sticking with my Nigel Slater ‘Tender’ books for seasonal cooking inspiration!

Anyway, it’s a fab little book, reasonably priced and I’ve learnt loads about seasonality.

The second book is Food for Free by Richard Mabey. No, it’s not a book about shoplifting, but it is a handy little guide to foraging. It was listed in the further reading section of Seasonal Food, so I borrowed a copy from my local library before finding it so useful that I bought my own.

This book really is a marvel and lists a lot of things I’d never even thought about eating, plus a lot of really handy facts for identifying mushrooms, something that does scare me a little. There’s also a guide to seasonal availability and some ‘picking rules’. It's the kind of book I'll dip into again and again.

You can pick up a copy of the pocket edition for just over £3 – a total bargin!

S0 that's it with the book reviews. I've got a nice 'n' spicy recipe to share with you in my next post, but for now I'm off to make some Rhubarb jam!

Spicy sweet potato soup

All images © Heather Wilkinson 2012


I know my last post was a soup recipe, but the weather has been so ridiculously cold and snowy here in Sussex this week that I’ve been eating little else. Knowing that I’ve got a warm and satisfying lunch to look forward to is about the only thing that makes braving the arctic temperatures in the morning bearable.


I think this has to be one of the simplest soups I’ve ever made: quick to prepare, healthy and a really short list of ingredients. My kind of recipe.


You will need
A glug of olive oil
1 onion, chopped 
½ teaspoon of dried chill flakes or ½ fresh red chilli, deseeded.
1 tsp ground coriander
2 garlic cloves, crushed and sliced
750g sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into medium chunks
1 pint of warm vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste.


1.) Warm the oil in a large pan, add your onions, garlic, chilli flakes and ground coriander and cook until soft.
2.) When your onions have softened, add your sweet potato and mix it in with the other ingredients. Leave it to cook in the pan for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.
3.) Pour your warmed stock over the mixture, bring to the boil and then turn down to simmer for about 10/15 mins, or until the sweet potatoes soften.
4.) Blend your soup until smooth. Serve with fresh crusty bread (this soda bread is ideal). If you find the soup too spicy then add a dollop of crème fraiche.

Cosy winter vegetable soup

All images © Heather Wilkinson 2012


The temperature has really plummeted here this week. It’s the kind of cold weather that means you have to hop from foot to foot just to generate enough heat to stop your toes going numb. I basically live off soup when the weather’s like this, and I luckily had enough root veg to whip up a batch today. Soups of this nature can be a tad bland, so I add just a pinch of dried ginger to give it a subtle lift.


You will need

2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 stick of celery, sliced
1 leek, sliced
150g potato, peeled and diced
150g swede, peeled and diced
½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg
½ tsp dried ground ginger
1 litre milk
Single cream


1.) Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the onion and fry until soft.
2.) Add your garlic, carrot, leek and celery, stir it all together and continue to fry for about 5 minutes.
3.) Next, add your swede, potato, nutmeg and ginger, salt and pepper. Add the milk, bring to the boil then turn down to a simmer for 25 minutes, or until all the vegetables have softened.
4.) Add your soup mixture to a liquidiser and blend together until it is smooth. You can run it through a sieve if you want it extra smooth.
5.) Return the soup to a clean pan, add a little cream, mix and heat thoroughly. Serve with fresh crusty bread.