After trying this Nigella recipe just once, I’ve decided that these will be one of my most frequently used “go to” meals when I am short of time and hungry. The hardest bit is grating the cheese, which if I am to be honest, I get my husband to do as I am too lazy. Just slapping this Mexican sandwich together and throwing it (not literally) in the pan or griddle is as far as you need to go.

I used two different kinds of meat fillings, one with chorizo (pan fried as it was raw) and one with triple smoked ham. Of course you could make it vegetarian and use a mashed bean mix spread over the tortilla.

I didn’t have any salsa to hand so I did what any Not Quite Mexican cook would do and made guacamole. Let me just say first off that my guacamole isn’t authentic by any means but it is really tasty if I can be immodest. The two are gorgeous together and as I tend to do when I am enjoying a meal, I ate more than my share.

Quesadillas

For each flour tortilla wrap (makes three triangles):

• 1 flour tortilla
• 30g thinly sliced cured ham
• 3 coin slices pickled green jalapeño peppers, from a jar
• 50g grated cheese
• 1 spring onion, finely sliced
• few leaves of coriander
• 1 tsp olive oil (not extra virgin)
• ready-made salsa or guacamole (see below), to serve

Method
1. Heat a ridged griddle pan.

2. Place the tortilla wrap on the counter in front of you and cover with the ham.

3. Over one half only, sprinkle the pickled jalapeño slices, grated cheese and chopped spring onion. Scatter over the coriander leaves over the top.

4. Carefully fold the tortilla wrap in half, that’s to say, fold the uncheese-topped half over the cheese so that you have a fat half moon.

5. Lift this up carefully and brush each side with oil before putting it onto the hot griddle, grill for a minute on each side

6. Using a steady hand and a wide fine spatula or fish slice, transfer the tortilla to a board or plate and cut into 3triangles. Eat with some salsa on the side. And please feel free to play with the fillings as you wish

Recipe by Nigella Lawson from Nigella Express

NQN’s Not Quite Guacamole

• 1 small avocado
• 1-2 tablespoons of lime juice
• 1-2 tablespoons of sweet chili sauce
• very small pinch of salt

1. Scoop out avocado from shell and discard pip. Add 1 tablespoon of the lime juice and 1 tablespoon of the sweet chili sauce.

2. Taste and add other tablespoon of lime juice and sweet chili sauce if needed.

This has got the be one of the easiest but most gratifying dishes from Nigella Express. With a sum cooking time of 3 minutes (ok you could add on 2-3 minutes for getting the mixture to a boil) it will make a seafood chef out of the most reluctant cook.

I don’t want to mislead though, there is some time necessary for preparing the mussels. Firstly I rinsed them several times in clean cold water and debearding them and removing the barnacles was something that I found oddly therapeutic. I didn’t “knock them off” as Nigella said with the back of a short sharp knife as the barnacles were more flat than raised, rather I scraped the shells with a short sharp knife which seemed to do the job.

As I used spanish onions, I started off by sauteeing them lightly in butter and oil along with the garlic and then added the curry powder before adding in the white wine and bringing that to a boil. After that I added the mussels and it was 3 minutes with a bit of pot shaking (also therapeutic, simply imagine you were throttling or shaking about an annoying colleague) and it was done. And if you’re more organised than me, have some gorgeously crunchy Sourdough at the ready to mop up the briney, fragrant soup.

I leave you with a photograph of a kookaburra on our balcony, taken by my husband. Perhaps it was lured by the sweet smell of the Mouclade!

Mouclade from Nigella Express

• 2kg mussels
• 4 baby leeks (or spring onions) finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled nad finely sliced
• 500ml white wine (or 250ml Noilly Pratt and 250ml water)
• 2 teaspoons Madras curry powder
• 125ml double cream

1. Soak the mussels in some clean, cold water and -if they haven’t been dealt with in the shop-sort through them, debearding and knocking off any barnacles with the back of a small knife

2. Take a large pan with a lid. Add the sliced baby leeks, sliced garlic, white wine and curry powder, bring to the boil.

3. Tip the mussels into a colander, discarding any that haven’t closed and tumble the rest into the pan, clamp on the lid and cook on a high heat for about 3 minutes. Shake the pan around as they are cooking.

4. When you lift the lid, the mussels should have fully opened. Discard any that haven’t. Add the double cream, and then turn into a bowl to serve, or take the pan straight to the table. Remember to put out a bowl for the shells.

Serves 4

Recipe by Nigella Lawson from Nigella Express

One thing that helps lull you back into the rat-race after the bliss of Christmas holidays are the January Domain concerts. Its been a while since I went to one but it used to be a regular yearly thing to see either the Symphony, Opera or more recent addition Jazz, for free and flinging your picnic blanket onto the lush green grass of the lawn. Its always a battle to get there and back as driving is not really a great idea and it inevitably rains but that, I keep saying to friends and family, is all part of the charm. And perhaps they’ll believe me one day…

I have many memories of eating pâté with water crackers, not the fantastic kind you get from DJs but the tinned kind, but when you’re young, do you really know the difference? Now that I am “grown up” I am a big fan of trout or salmon pâté and will any excuse to make this rather than buy the version from the supermarket, no matter how excellent it might be. For this recipe I used smoked salmon as that was just what I happened to have in the fridge which I lightly steamed to get the same texture as smoked trout.

Smoked Trout Pâté from Nigella Express

Smoked fish was an absolute staple of my childhood-I used to have smoked mackerel with horseradish in my lunchbox-and if I have some form of smoked fish in the fridge, I feel there is always going to be, instantly, something to eat. Pepper and lemon, that’s all you need to add to it. And its a gift to the cook in a hurry: this pâté takes the merest moment to make and yet it is a wonderful start to a meal or, indeed, a whole meal in itself. I don’t even need a salad with it: I’m happy with toast, crusty bread, or maybe even some good shop bought English muffins or cheese scones, along with a few cornichons (baby gherkins) and any other tangy pickle.

This doesn’t make very much, but its filling and also-which is obviously how I like it-full of pep. If you want something a little milder, with less boisterous heat, then add a mere sprinkling of cayenne.

• 2 smoked trout fillets , approx. 125g total weight
• 50g of Philadelphia cream cheese
• 15ml horseradish sauce
• 30ml lemon juice
• 30ml olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1. Put all the ingredients into a blender or food processor and blitz until smooth and pâté like

2. Spoon the mixture into a vow (I used a small terracotta dish of about 12cm in diameter), scraping out any mixture remaining in the processor with a spatula. Cover the bowl with clingfilm, and place in the fridge to chill.

Recipe by Nigella Lawson from Nigella Express

Once I have a new cookbook, it doesn’t take me long to get out my pad of post it note tags and mark recipes that I want to make. Christmas this year was particularly good for me cookbook-wise with my sister giving me Nigella Express, Deceptively Delicious, Pork & Sons and The Borough Market book. Nigella Express is of course the one that I am most likely to cook out of, the others providing fabulous recipes and gastronomic porn.

I was given a fabulous set of gourmet curry pastes from a friend last Christmas by Serious Salsa and I was eager to use them. They are a vast improvement on other pastes that I have used and lovely and fiery with a complex blend of flavours.

Christmas also gave us a huge tray of lovely mangoes from my sister in law and her husband. My husband can usually polish off a tray quickly but with all of the good food around, eating them has been a little slower. I secured a mango for this recipe from his prodigious and well guarded stockpile and the lovely woman behind the fish counter gave me three times the amount of prawns for the price of one so it felt like the stars and planets and culinary cosmos were aligned to make this curry. You believe in karma, fate or whatever you will, I subscribe to Culinary Cosmos.

Nigella’s Red Prawn and Mango Curry

This is one of the easiest suppers to make, but somehow, however much I know this, it always surprises me. Not in the cooking, so much as in the eating: I can’t believe, each time anew, how deep and textured and full-throttle, in a sweet, comforting way, this tastes, when all I’ve done is a bit of shopping and some light stirring.

Obviously it helps if you can use some of the convenience stuff I list below: The ready peeled, cubed squash and sweet potato, and the mango I get at the supermarket make this a breeze. But if you can’t find them, no matter: add a few drained canned chickpeas and perhaps, for a sour edge, some pineapple that’s been in its own juice, no syrup. Add if you’re not familiar with wok oil, see recipe below. As for the coconut milk, I often use the whole can rather than the mere half below; it really depends on whether I feel like eating out of a deep bowl, soupily, or a shallow one. To go with it, I suggest either plain rice or some wide rice noodles cooked according to the packet directions (all of about 2 minutes) and tossed in some toasted chopped unsalted peanuts.

If you have some fresh prawns, so much the better, but I stipulate frozen ones below since I regularly keep them in the freezer for an evening when you feel like eating gorgeously with very little forethought.

Red Prawn and Mango Curry

• 1 x 15ml tbsp wok oil* recipe below
  
• 1 x spring onion, finely sliced
• 1 1/2 x 15ml tbsp red Thai curry paste (or according to taste)
• 1/2 x 400ml can of coconut milk to give 200ml (I used a whole tin of coconut cream for a really indulgently good restaurant standard curry)
• 250ml chicken stock (made from concentrate)
• 2 teaspoons fish sauce (nam pla)
• 1 x 350g packet butternut squash and sweet potato cubes (I used Jap pumpkin cubes)
• 200g packet frozen king prawns (mine weren’t frozen so I butterflied them which is how I prefer them as it makes them look fatter and juicier)
• 1 teaspoon lime juice (I used a big squeeze from 1/3 of a lime)
• 150g mango cubes, diced
• 3-4 x 15ml tablespoons chopped fresh coriander

1. Heat the wok oil in a large, heavy-based frying pan and fry the sliced spring onion for a minute, then add the curry paste.

2. Whisk in the coconut milk, chicken stock and fish sauce and bring to the boil.

3 . Tip in the butternut squash and sweet potato cubes and simmer, partially covered for about 15 minutes or until tender.

4. Drain the prawns under running water to remove excess ice and tumble them into the pan. Let the sauce come back to the boil. When it does, add the lime juice and diced mango and cook for another minute or so until the prawns are cooked through.

5. Sprinkle with the chopped coriander as you serve over plain rice or wide rice noodles, or even both.

Serves 2-4, depending on how hungry you are and whether you’re expecting to eat anything else at supper

Wok oil:
Don’t use olive oil but 450ml sunflower or other vegetable oil, plus 50ml toasted sesame oil, 4 sliced cloves of garlic, a 6cm piece of ginger sliced and strain after 48 hours of steeping.

Recipe by Nigella Lawson from Nigella Express

This is one of those dishes that you just need to have up your sleeve. Its ridiculously easy, takes about 10 minutes from start to finish and only has 3 ingredients but will have your guests swooning over it. I’m not suggesting that you make your own gnocchi although I have done so on a couple of occasions but that drove me slightly insane and floured up my whole tiny kitchen.

Ready made gnocchi lasts for ages and I always have a few packets in my cupboards. The reason why I suggest Danish blue cheese is that its much milder and creamier than some blues that can almost knock you out (I once tried this with a King Island Bass Strait Blue and had to halve the amount of cheese it was so strong).

This dish is vegetarian (I’m stating the obvious here as you can see for yourself from the ingredients) and I am always on the lookout for tasty vegetarian meals as my family in law are all vegetarians. But I find meat eaters and gourmets will feel well satisfied with this dish and the smell of this using the mild Danish blue will have people poking their head into your kitchen wondering what that fabulous dish is! And you can also add a drizzle of truffle oil to give it that extra touch.

Blue cheese gnocchi

500gram packet gnocchi
50-75grams danish blue cheese cut into smaller chunks
150ml cream (light or full fat)

1. Boil gnocchi in plenty of salted water until it comes to the surface (about 5-8 minutes)
2. In non stick pan (or if you can’t be bothered to wash another pan, the same one that you cooked the gnocchi in) heat blue cheese until it melts.
3. Add cream and simmer until thick
4. Return gnocchi to pan and coat with blue cheese sauce and serve

Serves 2-3 (depending on level of hunger)