Mango Kulfi

The weather is threatening to maybe get hotter in the next few days, and the huge tins of mango pulp were on special offer at the supermarket.

Time to make this quick Indian kulfi-style mango icecream, in the hope some survives long enough to eat in the sunshine...

If you don't have an icecream maker, just pour the mixture into ice lolly moulds and freeze as individual portions.

Marmalade (again)

The problem with my first recipe for making marmalade is that peeling and preparing the raw fruit throws up a lot of the volatile oils in the orange peel that I cannot stomach, leading to needing to round up a helper to do that bit for me.

This time I tried another method in which the fruit is poached whole so that the peel is already soft and cooked when it is chopped up, and doesn't therefore spray orange oils around the place.

Crumpets

If I'd realised they were so easy to make, I'd've made crumpets years ago!

Crumpets are yeast-leavened pancakes that are cooked on a girdle, supported by a metal ring. The name is believed to possibly be a borrowing into English of the Welsh word crempog, meaning a pancake.

Freshly-baked crumpets make you realise how stale and old the ones you buy in the shops really are. So next time you fancy some crumpets for tea, get cooking.

Basboosa

I found a bottle of rose flavoured syrup for a few pence in the reduced to clear section in Tesco just before Xmas. It was perfect for this Lebanese cake, made with semolina and yoghurt, and soaked in a flavoured syrup.

It was quick and easy to make - but also quick and easy to eat! I didn't manage to get pictures before it was scoffed! The picture is of a later batch made another day.

Buckwheat Kasha

Buckwheat is one of those things you find lurking with the other unusual whole grains in places like health food shops. It is not actually a true grain at all, but the seeds of a plant related to rhubarb.

Once or twice as a student, I had attempted to cook buckwheat by boiling it like rice, but it tended to just turn into an unappetising mush.

When I bought a rice cooker, I went looking for books on how to cook different grains in it. I discovered The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook. And therein, I discovered the secret of how to cook buckwheat without turning it to mush: just add an egg or two.