Recipes

This addictive and highly flavoured flat bread really packs a punch with onion, garlic, rosemary and Parmesan cheese. Enjoy alongside a salad for lunch or serve it instead of garlic bread on your next pasta night.

This traditional tapas bar snack is sometimes served between two slices of rustic crusty bread. It’s just as delicious served plain. Either way, the bright pickled tomatoes steal the show. This is the sort of dish you’ll quickly come to crave.

Looking for more simple and delicious recipes to make for breakfast, school lunches, and weekday dinners when you are short on time? Check out my latest cookbook, Family Meals, for 99 more recipes that will help make mealtime fun and get your family involved in the kitchen.

Light, crisp salad greens, fresh vegetables, and a tangy, well balanced dressing tastefully completes any meal. Skip the store bought croutons and impress your table with this homemade version. Chewy on the inside while irresistibly crisp on the outside, these croutons bake in the oven while you get the rest of the ingredients ready. Finish by adorning this versatile salad with unbeatable crunch.

In the middle of winter, few dishes comforts cold hands and empty stomachs like a big bowl of steaming chili. This vibrant vegetarian version is bursting with bright flavours and stick-to-your-ribs heartiness. It's jam packed with veggies, beans and barley, which fills you up without weighing you down.

This is one of my favourite variations on a classic rice pilaf. It's spiced up with vibrant curry, colourful saffron, and succulent sweet potatoes which, ounce for ounce, are one of the most nutritionally dense vegetables readily available.

For a meal befitting of the lords and ladies in your life, pack this fragrant rice into small bowls and ramekins, then inverse onto the serving plates. Top with a sprig or two cilantro before surrounding the rice with some sautéed shrimp or steamed mussels.

Since salmon is a fatty fish, it’s often cooked quickly with high, searing heat that gives it a crispy crust. But salmon is just as delicious when it’s cooked slowly. Gentle, patient heating gives it a tender, melt-in-your-mouth texture that is truly memorable - especially when it’s brightened with a simple honey mustard glaze.

Fruit baked under a topping is delicious and so is fruit baked in the topping. Easier too. Just mix the works together into one tasty jumble. Half fruit, half crumble, all easy. Locally delicious too, especially during the seasonal sweet spot when your local strawberries line up with longer-season fresh rhubarb. Make the most of this classic good cop/bad cop duo contrasting sweet and tart personalities!

You can create this dessert with any of the season's berries. Unless you have strawberries fresh from your backyard or the local farmer’s market though, use frozen strawberries for the best flavour. Fresh from away is a waste of time. Just saying.

Can you make a butter tart taste like a pumpkin pie? Yes! These tarts evolved from basic butter tarts, but they’ve come so far that they’re really more like little mini pumpkin pies. But does it really matter where they came from? It’s where they’re heading that counts. In this case, your table!

Thrills and chills will abound when you present this chicken to your little ghouls, ghosts and goblins. You'll feel like Dr. Frankenstein putting together your very own monstrous creation, and you'll feel good fuelling your family for an evening of trick-or-treating fun with this simple roasted spider, I mean chicken.

To turn this into a full meal deal, you can roast the chicken over a bed of root vegetables. Cubes of potatoes or carrots, thick slices of onions or whole cloves of garlic are all fair game. They'll soak up the tasty juices that drip off the chicken and give you a complete meal in one pan.

This treat is so rich and deeply delicious that no one will know you took a shortcut! The secret is the custard-like texture of silken tofu.

Jump out of bed and hit the ground running with a glass full of goodness. This homemade breakfast treat is a nutritional jump-start. Feel free to vary the base and mix in whatever you have for a jolt of creativity to kick start each and every day. This smoothie tastes so good you’ll forget it’s healthy!

Searing sweet briny scallops to give them a golden brown crispy crust is an essential cooking method for any cook’s seafood repertoire. The secret is a hot pan, a high-heat, rapid cooking trick mastered by busy restaurant line cooks. A hot pan not only browns the scallops but allows you to whip up a tasty wine sauce too.