Carrot cake

I pinched this recipe from Rachel Allen's excellent book, Bake. It's one of the best carrot cakes we've made - really light and fluffy, and dead easy to make. It was very popular...as you can tell by the small amount I was able to photograph.

You'll need:

300g grated carrot
100g raisins
200g soft brown sugar
180g self-raising flour
140ml sunflower oil
2 eggs
a pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarb
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

Stick the oven on at about 150 degrees C, and find a deep baking tray or a loaf tin (I lined mine with greaseproof paper).

Sling the eggs in a large bowl, beat and then chuck in the oil, brown sugar, grated carrot and raisins. It will look like a disgusting mess, but bear with me. Pour in all the dry ingredients (you should probably sift the flour, but life's too short) and mix everything together.

Tip the mixture into your baking tray/tin, and bake in the oven for about an hour (you may need to add another 15 minutes or so - you'll be able to tell it's done when a skewer pushed into the middle of the cake comes out nice and clean).

Cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes or so, then carefully transfer to a wire rack. You could faff about with icing this (an orange glace icing would be nice, or traditional cream cheese frosting), but it tastes wonderful on its own with a nice cup of tea.

Carrot and marmalade muffins

(a) It was a good way of using up the old scraps of marmalade before diving into our new, homemade pots. (b) You picked the recipe, out of the old Women's Weekly muffins book.

Makes 12 enormous muffins, plus about 6 small fairy-cake sized ones. You'll need:

3 medium carrots, grated
385g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda
100g brown sugar
55g raisins or sultanas
150g marmalade, warmed up a little so it's runny
100g butter, melted
125ml milk
2 eggs

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C.

Sling the flour, bicarb, sugar, raisins, carrots and marmalade in a bowl. Stir well, to create an unholy mess. You loved this bit.

Beat together the butter, milk and eggs in a mixing jug. Pour into the muffin mix, and combine everything together. It'll still look horrendous.

Spoon the mix into your muffin tins/cake cases, and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Obviously, if you're making fairy-cake sized ones, they'll bake faster than large muffins.

Cool on a wire rack.

They're delicious warm - especially for breakfast with a little yoghurt.

Chicken in ale stew with thyme dumplings

This was one of those stew/casserole hybrids necessary to get rid of some of the odder ends of the vegbox (kale and swede). We spent the afternoon making Christmas cake, while this bubbled away on the stove.

You'll need:

a couple of chicken thighs per person
1 medium swede, peeled and cubed
1 large onion, sliced
a couple of carrots, chopped
three or four handfuls of kale, shredded
half a bottle of slightly flat ale, that your Dad didn't really like much
a good pinch of thyme
lots of black pepper
a good slug of olive oil

Drizzle a decent slosh of olive oil into the bottom of a casserole dish, and brown the chicken thighs. Decant to a plate for 4 or 5 minutes while you fry the onion until it turns translucent. Tip the chicken thighs back in the dish, and add the swede, carrots, ale, thyme and lots of black pepper. You'll probably have to add a mug or two of hot water (or even better chicken stock) as well, depending on how much ale is left.

Bring all this to the boil, and then simmer for an hour or so, until the swede is tender and the chicken is cooked. Add the kale, turn the oven on (to about 200 degrees C) and then get started on the dumplings.

You'll need:

vegetable suet
self-raising flour
a teaspoon of dried thyme
a little cold water

As it says on the side of the Atora suet packet, your basic dumpling involves a ratio of 2:1 flour: suet (so if you have 100g flour you'll need 50g suet). Chuck the suet, flour and thyme into a bowl and mix. Add a little cold water until you have a slightly sticky dough. Roll into small balls, flatten slightly, and place on top of your stew.

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or so, until the tops of the dumplings have turned golden brown. Eat at once, fighting over the last dumpling.

Lentil and bacon soup

I think this is probably your Dad's favourite soup. You quite like it too.

Makes enough for three. You'll need:

3 rashers of bacon, snipped into pieces
an onion, finely chopped
3 or 4 carrots, sliced
a leek, sliced
some chicken stock
3 handfuls of red lentils
dried thyme, black pepper

Chuck the bacon and onion in a large saucepan with a little olive oil, and fry for 5 minutes until the onion is translucent.

Add the carrots/leek and fry for another couple of minutes. Pour in the chicken stock, add the lentils, and scatter some dried thyme and black pepper with abandon.

Bring to the boil, and simmer for half an hour. You'll probably have to add some more water - it all depends on how much chicken stock you have, and how soupy you like your soup...

We ate ours with some doughballs hot from the oven and slathered in melted butter.

Lamb hotpot

We spent the afternoon at the library today, and returned home in desperate need of a cup of tea (me, after an hour of reading aloud), and something warming to eat. Lamb hotpot hit the spot.

Makes enough for 3. You'll need:

4 or 5 medium-sized pieces of lamb (we had a right old rag-bag of pieces on the bone)
an onion, sliced
3-4 sticks of celery, chopped
a large carrot, chopped
the remains of a bottle of red wine that wasn't quite at its best (probably a glass)
dried thyme and lots of black pepper
5 or 6 large potatoes

Stick the oven on at about 160 degrees C.

Brown the pieces of lamb in a casserole dish (you may need to add a little olive oil so that they don't stick). Add the onion, celery and carrot, and cook for a couple of minutes. Add whatever wine you've got left and some boiling water, until everything's completely covered and there's no bits of lamb poking out the top.

Season with thyme and black pepper, bring to the boil, sling a lid on and shove in the oven for 2-3 hours. Check it occasionally, just to make it has enough liquid.

After 2-3 hours, start on the potatoes. Peel them, then boil for 15 minutes. Drain, slice and then place in a pretty pattern on top of your stew. Dot with butter, turn the heat up on the oven to 200 degrees, and sling the casserole dish back in for another 20-30 minutes until the potatoes are crispy.

Eat with something green - you can't beat a few frozen peas. Cooked, obviously.

Coleslaw

This one's dead easy, and a good winter recipe. It's also the sort of thing you make in your first cookery lesson at school.

You'll need:

a couple of carrots, thinly sliced (you could also grate them)
a good wedge of white cabbage, very finely sliced
a tablespoon or so of mayonnaise (Hellman's will do fine)
a couple of tablespoons of Greek yoghurt
salt and black pepper

Mix the carrots/cabbage together in a bowl. Whisk together the mayonnaise, yoghurt, salt and pepper, and drizzle over the top of the carrot/cabbage mixture. Done!

Spiced carrot and lamb salad

I can't claim credit for this one - it's pinched from the Sainted Jamie, who I saw extolling the virtues of carrots on his Jamie at Home programme.

Sadly, I didn't have the delightful purple/white/yellow varieties of carrots to play with (the allotment doesn't seem to like carrots very much), so my version didn't look quite so pretty as the original salad.

Makes enough for 3 greedy people. You'll need:

400g lamb mince
1 1/2 heaped teaspoons garam masala
3 or 4 large carrots, peeled
1 large teaspoon sesame seeds
lots of fresh mint leaves, shredded
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 large spring onion, finely chopped
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 teaspoon ginger (freshly grated or powder)
lots of olive oil

Tip the lamb mince into a large pan, and fry until the fat comes out. Add the garam masala, and then cook the mince until crispy.

In the meantime, make your carrot salad and dressing. You'll need to peel the carrots to get rid of the outer skin - then just keep peeling, so you get lots of very thin strips. Shove these in a bowl.

To make the dressing, toast the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan for about 30 seconds. Stick in a pestle and mortar, and grind up. Tip into a bowl, add the finely chopped spring onion, lemon zest, lemon juice, ginger and a pinch of salt. Pour in 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, mix well, and have a taste. If it's too lemony, add a little more oil.

Toast the sesame seeds in the dry frying pan too, until they go golden (should take a minute or so).

To assemble, tip the dressing over the carrots, and add the shredded mint (Jamie also suggests coriander as well, which I think would make things even better). Mix well. Decant onto plates, add the lamb mince, and then sprinkle the sesame seeds on top.

This goes well with bread (we only had baguette, but naan bread would be better), and aubergine or lime pickle.

Carrots with orange, garlic and rosemary

This one's adapted from a Sainted Jamie recipe. We had toad in the hole for tea, and I wanted a little something to jazz up the veg.

You'll need:

enough carrots for three, sliced
a few stems of rosemary
three or four whole cloves of garlic
a little butter
an orange
a teaspoon of sugar

Cut the orange into eight, and place the pieces in some boiling water, together with a knob of butter and the carrots. Add a teaspoon of sugar, and then the rosemary and garlic.

Once the carrots are cooked, drain, and discard the herbs. Keep one of the pieces of orange, chop it into small pieces, and add it to the carrots. Squidge out the innards of the garlic, and add that too, together with another small knob of butter and lots of salt and black pepper.

Mini carrot cakes with lemon drizzle icing

This was an an attempt to cheer you up, and distract you from the spots. It seemed to work - you had a ball drizzling the icing everywhere.

Makes about 12 little fairy cakes/cupcakes.

You'll need:

4oz butter
4oz sugar
4oz self-raising flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
3oz grated carrot
1 tablespoon raisins

Stick the oven on at 175 degrees C, and line your tins with baking cases (your favourite bit).

Put the butter, sugar, flour, mixed spice and eggs in a food processor, and blitz until everything's well combined and smooth. You could do this by hand - it'll just take longer and need more elbow grease.

Take your blade out of the food processor. Add the grated carrot and raisins, and mix by hand (you don't want to do this bit with the processor, as you'll end up with shredded raisins) to create a fairly sloppy batter.

Spoon the batter into your cases, trying not to drip. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or so, until the cakes have risen, and turned golden brown. Take out of the tins, and place on a rack to cool.

For the lemon drizzle icing you'll need:

1oz icing sugar
a little lemon juice

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add a couple of splashes of lemon juice, and mix to a smooth paste. Thin this with a little more lemon juice, until it drips nicely off your spoon, and can be drizzled dramatically over the cakes, plate and worktop.

Chicken and root vegetable stew

I tried doing this in the slow cooker that Gran and Grandpa gave us for Christmas...it's dead easy to use, but it turned out a little like soup. So beware - reduce the liquid if you're going down that route.

You'll need:

leftover cooked chicken (say hello, Christmas capon)
an onion, sliced
a couple of potatoes, peeled and chopped into small cubes
a couple of carrots (ditto)
half a small swede/turnip (ditto)
a parsnip (ditto)
some leftover white wine (about half a glass)
vegetable stock (I made mine from some stock powder and hot water)
dried thyme, black pepper and a little salt

Fry the onion in a little olive oil until it softens. Chuck into a stew pot, or slow cooker, and add all the other vegetables and chicken. Season with the herbs, pepper and salt. Add whatever leftover white wine you have in the house/freezer, and top up the liquid with some vegetable stock, until the mixture is covered.

Stick a lid on, and put in the slow cooker for 4-6 hours on high (but leave off the lid for the last half hour or so, or you'll have soup), or in the oven (at about 160) for a couple of hours until the vegetables are soft.

If you don't have many potatoes, and you like a slightly thicker stew, you could add some pearl barley or spelt as well.

Carrot and lentil soup

It feels like the middle of autumn at the moment, so I made soup for lunch from some chicken stock that was lurking at the back of the freezer.

Makes enough for three or four:

one onion
a couple of sticks of celery
some chicken stock (or failing that, a stock cube/vegetable bouillon powder)
a couple of handfuls of lentils (red are good for this, as they go nice and sludgy)
four or five carrots

Chop up the onion and celery and fry together in a little olive oil until they are softened. Add the carrots (chopped), the lentils, and the chicken stock. Depending on how concentrated your stock is, you may need to add some more water - you want about a litre of liquid.

Season with salt and black pepper. You could add some cumin to this, but I've never really found it enhances it much.

Chorizo and carrot pasta

Your godmother Jane gave us the recipe for this - she cooked it once for lunch at their flat when you, Wulfrun and Eafa were starving.

For one person you'll need:

half an onion
a carrot, very thinly sliced lengthways
spicy chorizo - however much you think you can eat (in your case, probably a lot)
pasta of your choice - twists or bows are always popular

Slice the chorizo thinly, and put in a frying pan to brown. Meanwhile, stick the pasta on. Once the chorizo is browned, take it out of the frying pan, and chuck the onion/carrot in. Cook in the chorizo oil until the onion is translucent and the carrot is softened and sweet.

Drain the pasta after 6-8 minutes once it's al dente. Throw into the pan with the carrot/onion, and the cooked chorizo. Grate a little parmesan cheese over the top, and season with lots of black pepper.

It's nice with a green salad and a sharp, lemony dressing. Tomatoes marinated in a little balsamic vinegar also go well.