Quick chickpea, spinach and turmeric curry

Having been reading a lot recently about how incredibly good turmeric is for you I’ve been devising ways of upping the quantity I use. It turned out particularly well with this super-easy (and frugal) chickpea curryServes 22 tbsp light olive or vegetable oil1 medium to large onion peeled and roughly chopped2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed1 1/2 tsp ground turmeric1 tsp ground cumin1/4 tsp chilli powder or hot paprika or a shake of hot pepper sauce1 small can or 1/2 a 400g can of tomatoes or 200ml of passata1 400g can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed2 handfuls of sliced fresh spinach leaves...

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The lure of old cookbooks

I finally got to post about the two old cookbooks I picked up for a song in Topsham the other day. Do I need them? Absolutely not - the shelves are already bulging with cookbooks but for less than the price of two glossy magazines, how could I resist?The first - for which I paid a princely £3.50 - is Len Deighton's quirky and original 'Où est le Garlic' first published by Penguin in 1965 (this is the '67 edition). Deighton was a successful thriller writer who turned his hand to cookery writing. The appeal is equally though in the charming comic strip illustrations (below), done not by Deighton...

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So what did you cook when you were a student?

My publisher Absolute Press released details of our new student book yesterday which is called The Ultimate Student Cookbook. It's a big claim but we make it because it combines my 6 years experience of writing for students in the Beyond Baked Beans books and website with that of three current students who have been contributing videos, recipes and tips to our Facebook page this year.As a bit of fun I thought I'd ask my fellow tweeters on Twitter what they used to cook at uni and got a flood of fantastic replies. There were all the usual suspects such as spag bol (or Slag Bol) as Oliver Thring...

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Spring vegetable, herb and goats cheese risotto

I've been editing a new bumper edition of my Beyond Baked Beans student cookbooks recently (of which more later) and once again wondered where to place risotto. Is it an everyday recipe or a special occasion one?What makes most people treat it as special occasion eating is that it needs pretty much full-on attention. Not that that's problematic - all you need is a glass of wine and someone else to chat to while you're making it but it creates the impression it's difficult. It truly isn't - the two things you need to remember are to cook the rice sufficiently (2-3 minutes) before you add any liquid...

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Another supermarket pricing rant

I was going to blog about the two fabulous old cookbooks I picked up for a song in Devon last week but this week has been so manic I'll have to content myself with whingeing - once again - about supermarket pricing which almost matches MPs expenses claims for its deviousness.My husband who was cooking supper last night doesn't really believe in veg so I nipped down the road to get some from Tesco (Yes, groan) We were having grilled mackerel and I fancied broccoli and it was on special offer so that seemed the perfect solution. Except for the fact that even with 20p off it cost 79p. I know this...

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Is cheap food acceptable?

Like many bloggers and food writers I went to the debate at the Real Food Festival on the Future of Food and have to say it was a bit of a wasted opportunity. With one exception (the corporate affairs director of ASDA, Paul Kelly) the speakers - Patrick Holden of the Soil Association, Raymond Blanc, Mark Barthel, director of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign and environmental campaigner Zac Goldsmith - were all of fundamentally the same view: that the way forward must be organic and sustainable. Speaker after speaker outlined the apocalyptic future facing us. No-one really provided any solutions.There...

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Veg boxes revisited

Even though I've decided that veg boxes are not for me every so often I feel I have to give them another try. So many people (including my daughter) swear by them that I feel I'm simply not trying quite hard enough. This time I ordered a box from a local Bristol supplier Wrington Greens whose produce Ive bought and liked from the farmers' market. Only I rarely manage to get there in time to get the salad greens which is what they do best.I ordered the so-called 'super-healthy' option which meant extra greens and fewer roots - appealing at this time of year. There were baby spinach leaves, mixed...

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My credit crunch lunch

The one upside of the credit crunch is that there are some amazing lunchtime bargains around currently. I've just had a two course lunch for a fiver at a Bristol fish restaurant called Fishers which was predictably packed.The first course (above) was a simple but clever salad of mixed leaves and fresh anchovies with a pesto dressing. The second a salmon fishcake with a lemon butter sauce (half eaten before I remembered to take a pic, below). Neither portion was huge but then you don't want a vast lunch if you need to work in the afternoon. I'd say the accompanying 175ml glass of Muscadet while...

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