RECIPE | Pasta with chestnuts, mushrooms and a parsley pesto

pasta with chestnuts, mushrooms and a parsley pesto, paired with Veuve Clicquot's Extra Brut Extra Old

Here's a pasta recipe I think you might all want to try. Assuming you like mushrooms, that is. Fun fact: I really used to dislike mushrooms as a child; now they are one of my all time favourite ingredients. I always gravitate towards a mushroom dish when choosing from a menu, or mushrooms in my kitchen. Hooray for acquired tastes!

cooking up the feast - note that amazing
hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano

The nice folk over at champagne maison Veuve Clicquot challenged me to pair a dish with their latest bottle of bubbles, their Extra Brut Extra Old. This new cuvée is drawn from the maison’s famous collection of reserve wines, which is in fact one of the largest in Champagne. 

Whereas Veuve Clicquot's famous Yellow Label bottles are made up of 35-40% of reserve wines, 100% of Extra Brut Extra Old is made from reserve wines, from six different vintages –  1988, 1996, 2006, 2008 and 2010. All the wines have been aged for a minimum of three years in stainless-steel vats, then matured for at least a further three years in bottle in Veuve Clicquot’s cellars. 

The tasting notes go well with mushrooms and nuts, so I honed in on those two ingredients to make a very tasty pasta dish: linguine with chestnuts, mushrooms and a parsley pesto. It's in fact a much loved and used (by me) recipe from Delicious Magazine, and as I'd hoped, pairs fantastically well with the Extra Brut Extra Old bubbles.

You can find the recipe below if anyone fancies giving it a go; it's supremely easy, and a nice alternative to standard pesto. I bought those stellar mushrooms from Borough Market, but feel free to use chestnut mushrooms if they're easier to find. Please note from my pictures: the fabulously sweaty hunk of 36 month old Parmigiano Reggiano I brought back from Bologna and used with wild abandon in the pesto. Oh yes.

Pasta with chestnuts, mushrooms and a parsley pesto

Serves 4

stunning 'shrooms
from Borough Market

Ingredients
35g pack peeled and cooked chestnuts (I use Merchant Gourmet)
2 garlic cloves
4 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1 tsp lemon juice
125ml extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for frying
20g Parmesan, finely grated, plus extra for serving
Large knob of butter
250g mushrooms, sliced
350g pasta (I used linguine)

In a food processor, blitz the chestnuts, garlic, parsley, lemon juice and some seasoning to a course paste. Slowly add the oil as it continues blitzing, then stir through the cheese.

Heat a splash of oil and a knob of butter in a frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and fry for around five minutes until golden.

In the meantime, cook the pasta in a pan of boiling water until al dente. Drain and add to the pan the mushrooms are in, including a splash of the cooking water. Add the pesto to the pan too, and toss everything together whilst still on a low heat. Serve, and top with more Parmesan.

Tip: if you're enjoying this with Veuve Clicquot's Extra Brut Extra Old, I'd recommend keeping your champagne glasses in the freezer to frost up a little first, before pouring the bubbles. What a fab dinner - enjoy!

definitely had at least one cheeky glass while cooking this

Note: This is a sponsored post in partnership with Veuve Clicquot. It's been great fun and a pleasure to collaborate on - not to mention all the lovely bottles of bubbly they sent over. All views remain my own, as always.

RECIPE: Mumbai vada pav with chutneys, and a fried egg

vada pav, with a fried egg!

I LOVE EGGS. The world loves eggs. Instagram especially loves eggs - how can anyone resist a bit of golden #yolkporn? It's hard, so most of us can't. 

If you were to ask my favourite standalone ingredient ever, I may well say the humble egg; possibly the single most versatile food item that has ever existed. All hail its simplicity and mighty existence, and just how well it goes with tapenade.

To celebrate British Egg Week taking place from 10th - 17th October, the lovely people from British Lion Eggs have collaborated with Farang London chef Seb Holmes, to come up with some tasty Thai street food-inspired recipes, all celebrating this year's theme of #putaneggonit. Think of Beyonce's 'if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it', but replace ring, with egg. It's not a bad culinary motto by which to live.

The idea is to encourage people to eat eggs in more unusual ways, by putting an egg on dishes they wouldn't normally think to try. It if was up to me, I'd put an egg on almost everything. Maybe even my cereal.

They've then asked me to take inspiration from Seb's collection of egg recipes, and come up with my own street food-inspired concoction that would work great with eggs. Now, I've eaten a heck of a lot of street food on my travels, and when I was presented with this challenge, one immediately popped into my head - Mumbai's world-famous vada pav. 

I'd arrived in Mumbai having already heard about vada pav (here's more about my first visit to Mumbai, and then another visit about a week later). They're sometimes referred to as the city's take on a vegetarian burger; seeing as it's fast food, cheap, and a filling betwixt two buns, that's sort of accurate. But let me tell you, I'd have these over a burger most days.

the vada pav I had in Mumbai - so very excellent

They are spicy potato balls deep fried in gram flour (vada), with a lick of hot garlic green chutney, all between two halves of a soft bun (pav). 

They involve bread, they're salty and they're spicy - all perfect pairings for a lovely fried egg. In fact, when I first ate these in their home city, my immediate thought was 'these are fabulous, but they could do with a little lubrication'. 

Allow me to introduce that lubrication via the medium of a runny yolk.

And so, I present to you, my recipe for vada pav with the glorious addition of a fried egg. Let me tell you, this is truly a thing of beauty. Please everyone, make it.

Mumbai's vada pav sandwich, with chutneys and a fried egg

Makes six vada pavs

For the green chutney

Mint leaves, small bunch
Coriander, small bunch (including stalks)
1-2 green chillies, roughly chopped
1 tbsp ground almonds
Juice from 1/2 lemon
Salt

For the red chutney

3 tbsp desiccated coconut, dry roasted
1 garlic clove, finely sliced
1-2 tsp chilli powder
Salt

For the vada fillings

3 potatoes, boiled and mashed until smooth
2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp turmeric
3 green chillies, finely chopped
1/2 tsp asafoetida
Handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped (including stalks)
Salt

For the batter and frying

150g gram (chickpea) flour
1/4 tsp turmeric
80ml warm water
Salt
Sunflower oil

To serve

Six small and soft white rolls
Butter (optional)
Six green finger chillies, deep-fried
Six eggs, fried

First make your chutneys. For the green, combine the mint, coriander, chillies and ground almonds, add some of the lemon juice, and blitz. Keep adding lemon juice until you have a consistency that is spreadable - you don't want it too wet. You might not end up using all the lemon juice. Add salt to taste.

For the red chutney, ensure the coconut gets a nice colour from the dry toasting, then combine with the garlic, chilli powder, and a pinch of salt, and pound using a pestle and mortar. Add a splash of water if needed to loosen the mixture slightly. You should end up with a dry and crumbly chutney. Set both the chutneys aside. 

making the green and red chutney

To make the vada fillings, grate the garlic and ginger. Heat the oil in a frying pan on a medium to high heat. When it's hot enough for a mustard seed to sizzle in it, add the rest of the mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard seeds start popping vigorously, reduce the heat to low to medium, and add the ginger, garlic and chillies. Cook for one minute, then add the turmeric and cook for another minute.

Now add the mashed potato and fresh coriander, fully combine, and cook for another minute. Add salt to taste. Remove the mashed potato from the pan and set aside to cool.

flavouring the vada mashed potato

Weigh the total amount of potato you have, and divide this number by six so you know how much each portion should weigh - mine were about 75g each. Measure out one portion and roll into a ball with your hands. Do this for all six portions, and set aside.

To create the batter for frying the balls, combine the gram flour with the turmeric and a pinch of salt. Add the water a little at a time, continually mixing with a whisk, until you have a smooth and fairly thick batter. Set aside.

Fill a heavy-bottomed saucepan with enough sunflower oil to reach half way up the vada balls. Heat on medium to high. To test if the oil is hot enough to fry the vada balls, add a little batter and if it sizzles and cooks to a golden colour, then it's ready.

First drop in the six finger chillies for serving. When they've cooked and blistered, remove and let them rest on kitchen paper.

Coat each ball in the batter, and gently drop into the hot oil. Turn the ball around in the oil until the whole thing is cooked and golden in colour. Remove with a slotted spoon and allow to drain on kitchen paper. Repeat for all the vada balls.

To serve, slice each soft roll in half and butter, if desired. Smear on some green chutney, and add a vada ball. In the meantime, fry an egg how you like it (runny yolk all the way), and add on top of the vada ball. Sprinkle on some of the dry red chutney, serve with a deep-fried chilli, and devour!

making and frying the vada balls

This is a sponsored post in partnership with British Egg Week, as part of their #PutAnEggOnIt campaign, to encourage people to eat eggs in more unusual ways. I hope you get to try this recipe - it's GOOD. 

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Recipe: Chicken saag with coriander chapatis

RECIPE: Vegetarian vine leaf dolma stuffed with rice and herbs

vine leaf dolma stuffed with rice and herbs
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Whenever I'm entertaining a number of people, and I've got the time on my hands, my go to party dish will always be meze. Any sort of meze is a great option for a casual gathering, as they’re often small and can be eaten with fingers. But there is surely no better meze than little plump and juicy dolma. My goodness, I do love a lemony stuffed vine leaf.

I recently knocked a few of these up to take along to a family shindig, and took a load of snaps of the process with the intention of writing this up as a recipe on the blog. But I sort of never got round to it. Then the nice folk from Expedia got in touch, asking if I had a Greek-inspired dish I'd like to share (these guys have some great holidays to Greece going on - my advice is hit the Med in September to November - sublime weather, not too hot and no crowds), and I was like - DO I!

So now I've had the push to finally get this up on the blog. Which is handy, because people asked me for the recipe, and now I have something to send them.

Dolma is a generic word given to any vegetable stuffed with something, usually rice, meat or a combination of both. The most typical and recognisable dolma is that of rice, herbs and spices encased in a vine leaf, rolled up into a short and fat cigar. As well as it being a favourite of Greece, you’ll find this dish in many other countries around the Mediterranean including Turkey, heading east to the Middle East, and also heading back west to Eastern Europe (common in Bulgaria, I hear).

It’s a lot of fun to make and not difficult, if a little time consuming. This recipe is one that I’ve flavoured to my own palate and I think it works well. Follow the technique but feel free to adjust the amount of herbs and spices to your own tastes.

Vegetarian vine leaf dolma stuffed with rice and herbs

vine leaves in brine from TFC

Makes about 40

450g vine leaves pickled in brine (either from a jar or vac-packed)
2 medium onions, diced
A handful of pine nuts, dry toasted 
370g white rice, washed in cold water and drained
Juice from 3 1/2 lemons
Dried mint flakes

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 large bunch of flat leaf parsley, chopped finely (including stalks)
1/2 large bunch of dill, chopped finely (including stalks)
1/2 large bunch fresh mint, leaves chopped finely
120ml good quality olive oil

Tip You'll find the vine leaves in any Mediterranean supermarket. TFC (Turkish Food Store) is a great one and where my vine leaves are from; there are a few dotted about London.

The most time consuming part of this process is finding usable vine leaves from your pack and preparing them. I find the easiest way to tackle this is to put the mass of squashed leaves in a big bowl of warm water and swish them about a bit – this helps to separate them. 

You then need to pick out ones that are not too big (otherwise your dolmas will be huge) and are not torn. Rinse these under warm water to remove the brine, pat dry, break off the stem and repeat until you have a decent pile of leaves ready to use. When you do come across ones that are torn or a funky shape, use these to layer the bottom of a large saucepan. This will be the pan you cook your wrapped dolmas in and the layer of leaves at the bottom will stop them from burning.

layer the base of a heavy-bottomed saucepan with a load of vine leaves - use the torn ones
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Use one tablespoon of the olive oil to gently fry the onions on a medium heat in another saucepan, until cooked and softened, but not browned. Add the already toasted pine nuts and sauté for a few more minutes. Add the rice and stir constantly for 5-10 minutes until the rice begins to turn translucent. Now add the juice from two and a half lemons and the dry spices – a good pinch of cinnamon and around three heaped tablespoons of dried mint. At this stage, season with a decent amount of salt and pepper too. Stir thoroughly.

Add 1-2 cups of boiling water and simmer on a low / medium heat for 15-20 minutes until the water has been absorbed. At this stage, your rice will be half cooked.

Turn the heat off and add your finely chopped dill, parsley and mint and stir thoroughly. I blitzed these herbs in a food processor to get them nice and fine. Be sure to include the parsley stalks - it's where most of the flavour can be found. Allow your rice mixture to cool before handling it.

you can either finely chop or blitz your herbs in a food processor
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Tip As this whole process is quite lengthy, you can split it up into two parts as I do. In the morning I made my rice mixture and while that was cooking, I separated out the leaves, rinsed them, dried them and kept them in a little pile. Once your rice is cooked and has cooled, be sure to transfer it to the fridge until you're ready to start the assembly of the dolmas which can be done later on in the day.

Now you have the task of hand rolling 40-odd vine leaves, which isn't as daunting as it initially sounds. Get your leaves and rice filling and sit somewhere comfortable like the dining table.

Now you can begin.

Step 1 | Lay a vine leaf flat with the veins facing upwards
Step 2 | Place about a tablespoon of rice mixture in the middle of the leaf and shape into a fat cigar
Step 3 | Fold the bottom of the leaf up to meet the rice, fold in the sides, and then roll up towards the point of the leaf. You should be presented with a short and fat dolma

Repeat until you've used up all of your rice mixture.

Step 4 | As you create the dolmas, place them in your saucepan (that you've already lined with leaves) with the open fold underneath and pack them in tightly so there are no gaps between them, or they'll unfold during cooking. You'll probably end up with two layers.

steps 1 - 4 of hand-rolling the dolma, from top left
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You now need to cook (steam) these dolmas until the rice is tender. To do so, add water to the pan until it reaches about half way up the sides of the dolmas, the juice of one lemon, and the rest of the olive oil. Put the lid on and bring the water up to the boil then turn it down so it's gently bubbling. Leave this for 40-50 minutes or so, or until the water is absorbed or the rice is cooked, whichever comes first. Take a dolma from the top and test it to check if the rice is tender. Be sure to keep an eye on the water level - if it runs out and the rice is not yet cooked, just add a bit more.

When cooked, remove them from the pan and allow to cool. Serve with lashings of lemon juice - don't allow anyone to eat one without it. As so often is the case with lovely food coming out of the kitchen, expect these to disappear in a fraction of the time it took to make them *heavy sigh*.

It's worth mentioning that Expedia have a nice little blog area that combines two of my most favourite things in life - travel and food. Check out their World on a Plate for the best type of inspiration - international food!

I'm glad Expedia asked me to share this recipe - thanks for the writing push guys!

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RECIPE: Almond and thyme-crusted macaroni cheese muffins

A recipe for macaroni cheese muffins with an almond and thyme crust

I don't need much of an excuse to eat cheddar, a cheese that's most definitely in my top five favourites. So when the nice folk over at Danish cheese brand Castello asked me to come up with a simple recipe that 'breaks the rules', using one of their three Tickler cheddars, I needed little persuading.

macaroni cheese muffins
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I've taken inspiration from a classic Cypriot dish called firin makarna (oven-baked macaroni cheese), where grated halloumi is used to make a cheese sauce, it's layered with lamb mince, baked in the oven, allowed to cool and harden, and served at room temperature portioned up into cubes. It's a different baked take on what is one of my favourite plates of food in the world: halloumi pasta with lemon and mint. 

Instead, I've stuck with a classic cheese sauce using Tickler Extra Mature Cheddar, omitted the lamb so it's good for veggies, added some spinach to help with the fibre quota, and jazzed them up with a thyme, almond and breadcrumb crust for extra flavour. I've also made them into individual muffin portions, so they're perfect picnic and party finger food. They're really very good. But then I guess it's hard to go too wrong with pasta and quality cheese.

RECIPE: Almond and thyme-crusted macaroni cheese muffins 

Makes around 18 muffins

For the cheese sauce
600ml whole milk, room temperature
50g unsalted butter
50g plain flour
350g block of Castello Extra Mature Tickler Cheddar, grated (keep 30g aside) (pic 2)
Fresh nutmeg
Black pepper

For the muffin crusts
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp olive oil
1tsp butter
1//2 tbsp of thyme leaves
50g panko breadcrumbs
30g of grated Castello Extra Mature Tickler Cheddar (what you kept aside from above)
20g toasted almond flakes

For the muffins
400g elbow macaroni

70g baby spinach, roughly chopped

Here's the link to the step-by-step recipe for these macaroni cheese muffins with almond and thyme crusts on the Castello website for you to try at home. If you do, we'd love to know how it went! You can share your cheesy pasta muffins on Instagram and Twitter tagging @CastelloUK, or using the #DiscoverTickler hashtag. And tag me as well please - I'd love to see too. 

This is a sponsored post, in partnership with Castello, as part of their #DiscoverTickler campaign. I hope you get to try this recipe - it's GOOD. 

ingredients for almond and thyme-crusted macaroni cheese muffins

making the macaroni cheese muffins

making the macaroni cheese muffins

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RECIPE: Madeira loaf, lemon curd and blueberry trifle pots

A recipe for lemon curd and blueberry trifles made with low-fat quark cream cheese

Madeira loaf, lemon curd and
blueberry trifle pots

The Queen is 90 this year - three cheers for Her Majesty! I'll tell you who else has turned 90 this year, Sir David Attenborough. As wildlife and nature are my biggest passions after food and eating, David has been one of my all time heroes since I was a kid. And so, I'd like to dedicate this bake to both of these elderly but mighty great British institutions. 

The Queen is celebrating with a big bash today - The Patron's Lunch. The Mall in St James’s Park has been transformed for its largest ever street party, to celebrate Her Majesty's patronage of over 600 charities and organisations.

There'll be many more parties happening up and down the country, and Stork intend to provide the best baking inspiration for them.

As part of that, they got in touch with a few bakers to come up with fitting recipes for the occasion, to share on the Stork website. My brief, trifle! 

Now I'll be honest, I've never been much of a trifle fan. I don't like things with too much cream, and I really don't like jelly. So I took this as a great opportunity to come up with something that would appeal to all, even those who think they might not like trifle. 

Meaning “curd” in Slavic, quark is a soft, white and un-aged cheese made from whey. It has a much lower fat content than other cream cheeses (99.8% fat-free) and is popular in Scandanavia and Eastern Europe. Where a dish requires a voluptuous creaminess, I often use quark in place of higher fat alternatives, such as in this beetroot and quark dip. It both cooks well and is also excellent used in desserts. Best of all, you'll find it in all the standard supermarkets.

Quark sweetened with lemon curd makes up the white layer, and the rest is Madeira cake, more lemon curd, and blueberries. What you end up with is a clean, light, and refreshing trifle, that contains a lot less fat than its classic counterparts. 

This really is a great recipe, even if I do say so. I looked so forward to scoffing these every evening until my portions ran out. I'll definitely be rustling these up again.

stages of making the Madeira loaf, lemon curd and  blueberry trifle pots
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What I've done is use Stork with Butter to make the Madeira loaf, and used cut up slices of that as the layers between the quark mix and lemon curd. This is the link to the step-by-step recipe on the Stork website for you to follow at home. I've been a long time fan of using Stork when baking sponges - it's a versatile ingredient, and the fact it can be used straight from the fridge is always a bonus. 

Here's the link to my Madeira loaf, lemon curd and blueberry trifle recipe for you to try at home. If you do, the lovely folk over at Stork would love to see how it went. You can share your trifles on Instagram tagging @bakewithstork, Twitter tagging @bakewithstork, or Facebook tagging the /bakewithstork page. And tag me as well please - I'd love to see too. And feel free to leave a comment below, letting us know how it went - I'd love to know what you think!

This is a sponsored post, in partnership with Stork, as part of a street party campaign to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday and The Patron's Lunch. I hope you get to try this recipe - it's a corker! 

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RECIPE: Jamie Oliver's granola dust breakfast smoothie

My thoughts on sugar, and a great breakfast recipe with no added sugar

I find myself joining the sugar debate quite a bit these days. I sat next to a nutritionist at dinner this week, and the first thing I asked her was what her thoughts were on the white stuff. 

I think its power to infiltrate and detriment whole societies and cultures really hit me during the four weeks I spent in Mexico last year (Mexico City, Oaxaca, Merida, and Tulum), where in the poorer parts, I regularly witnessed babies being fed Coca-Cola instead of milk or water. I was surprised at just how uncomfortable this made me; it's an incredibly jarring image.

breakfast smoothie made with
Jamie Oliver's granola dust 

Out of the more populas nations (so, excluding the little Pacific islands that even manage to surpass US and Mexico when it comes to inches around the waist), Mexico is now the fattest country on the planet. 

They've overtaken the Americans, with a whopping seventy percent being overweight, and almost one-third registering as obese. In the poor districts, there are obese parents and malnourished children. And it doesn't help that in Mexico, the fizzy pop is cheaper than a bottle of water or milk.

And then when I returned to the UK from my eight months of travel, I watched Jamie Oliver visit Mexico in Jamie's Sugar Rush, a programme he presented that investigated sugar's contribution to global health problems, such as type 2 diabetes and obesity. He discovered that in 2014, Mexico introduced a 10 per cent tax on sugar sweetened beverages, in a bid to reverse the trends which helped it take the accolade of being the most obese country in the world. 

And just in January this year, the British Medical Journal reported that Mexico's sugar tax has resulted in a 12% drop in sales of sugary drinks, and an increase in sales of bottled water. Which can only be a good thing.

So good old Jamie put his balls on the line, and decided to take this same idea to the UK Government, to prevent the UK going the same way as the USA and Mexico. After months of campaigning, he finally succeeded - the UK Government announced that a sugary drinks tax will be introduced in the UK in 2018.

Why am I ranting about all this? I'm not anti-sugar, not in the slightest. The last two recipes I published attest to that - gluten-free hazelnut and coffee cookies and 'The Elvis Sandwich' peanut butter, banana and bacon mini cakes. 

There is always a place for sugar. In sweet treats - cakes, biscuits, chocolate. And who doesn't love a dessert after dinner? We go to these things because we fancy that sweet hit. And they should be treated as just that - treats. The occasional reward we give ourselves because we've earnt it, and there's nothing wrong with that.

me and JO, just hanging

My main problem with sugar, is when it appears in places it just doesn't need to be. Like pasta sauces, daily drinks, and a real gripe of mine, cereals. Especially the ones that try to market themselves as 'healthy' - *rage*.

Turns out my good pal Jamie Oliver (pretty sure this picture 👈 means he's ok with me calling him that) has the same bugbear. 

Jamie mentions in his ace book Everyday Super Food, that he and his wife get particularly frustrated over how most breakfast cereals are full of added sugar, and nutritionally aren't the best start to the day. So with his nutrition team, he developed this epic megamix of great ingredients - oats, nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. There are also a couple of pages covering the number of ways you can use this magic granola dust. 

The guys over at personal healthcare providers Benenden asked me if I had opinions on sugar and if I wanted to take part in a blogger challenge they're running, to help spread the word about their Sugar Hub. Clearly, I have opinions on sugar that I'd been meaning to write about anyway, and I wanted to share how great JO's granola dust recipe is as a part of that. So I said, why not.

Unless I'm out of the country or in a restaurant for breakfast, this is the stuff I start every morning with, throughout the year. 

In the winter, I heat it up on the stove with milk and make porridge, and maybe throw on a sliced banana if I'm feeling fancy. It tastes so much better than standard porridge, because the toasting means the natural sugars present have begun to caramelise, adding a whole new flavour dimension. I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to un-toasted oats when it comes to porridge. Plus, it's gloriously nutty.

In the summer, I blitz up the powder with milk, fresh fruit and cinnamon, for a gorgeous morning smoothie.

However you decide to use it, make up a big batch, store it in a jar, and use 50-60g per serving.

Jamie Oliver's awesome granola dust - nuts, seeds, oats and fruit galore

Makes about 15 servings

500g porridge oats
125g unsalted mixed nuts, such as walnuts, Brazils, hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios, cashews
50g mixed seeds such as chia, poppy, sunflower, sesame, linseed, pumpkin
125g mixed dried fruit with no added sugar, such as blueberries, cranberries, goji berries, mango, apricots, figs
1.5 tbsp quality cocoa powder or raw cocoa nibs
1/2 tbsp freshly ground coffee
1 large orange 

Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F/Gas 4. Places the oats, nuts and seeds in a couple of large roasting trays, toss them together, and roast for around 15-20 minutes, until they start to golden and caramelise.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then add the dried fruit, cocoa and coffee to the mix. Finely grate over the orange zest, then in batches, blitz the whole lot to a rough powder in a food processor. Tip it into a large airtight jar for storage.

For my smoothies, I take 60g of the dust and blend it with one fresh banana, a handful of frozen berries, around 200ml of milk, and a teaspoon of cinnamon.

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