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I have never had a whoopie pie in my life. In fact, I am still not entirely sure what they are, except for being told by several people that they are overly sweet. These are not overly sweet – in fact, the reason I chose to make them as my contribution to Thanksgiving dessert this year was that I saw they had cream cheese filling, and, given how good a nice, tart cream cheese icing (frosting) is, I decided that, whatever their origins, these would either be good, or I would make them good. The biscuit (cookie) is soft, and the filling is thick and tart – someone pointed out that they taste like carrot cake with cream cheese icing (frosting), and this seems to me to be a pretty accurate description.

Mini Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

(Makes about 25 larger ‘pies’ – which is what I did – or 36 small ones)

60 g (2 oz) unsalted butter

1 vanilla bean

200g (7.75 oz/ 1 cup) dark brown sugar

1/4 cup grapeseed or canola oil

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon Angostura bitters

140g (5 oz/ 1 cup) plain (all-purpose) flour

70g (2.5 oz/ 1 cup) whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon grounded (powdered) ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1 ½ cups canned pumpkin puree*

The very first thing to do, before you have gotten together all your ingredients, is leave out 145g (8 oz) of unsalted butter – this is the butter for the biscuits (cookies) and for the filling, and it should all soft, at room temperature. Next, pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius (350 fahrenheit), and line some baking sheets with greased baking paper (as in, grease it yourself, just to make sure that nothing sticks).

In a medium bowl, cream together (i.e. mix together with a wooden spoon, or with hand-held beaters) the butter and brown sugar. (Remember you are only using 60g (2 oz) of butter for this part of the recipe – the rest is for the filling). Slice lengthwise down the vanilla pod, and scrape out all the seeds into the butter-sugar mixture (you can still use the pod in another dessert so don’t throw it out). Mix until combined. Slowly drizzle in the oil, mixing until it is combined. Add the egg, vanilla extract and bitters, and mix together until smooth.

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Add 1/3 of the butter-sugar mix, and mix in. Then add 1/3 of the canned pumpkin and mix in. Continue, alternating between the two, until you have mixed in all the butter-sugar mix, and all the canned pumpkin. Scoop (or, if you want it to be less ‘rustic’ looking, pipe) the mix onto your greased baking paper in rounds about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. I made them a little bigger than this, but next time I would probably do the properly mini version. Place in the preheated oven for around 8 minutes, if small, and around 15 minutes if larger, until they are still soft, but a skewer or toothpick comes out dry. Put to one side to cool completely.

Cream Cheese Filling

85 g (3 oz) unsalted butter. Note: I thought this was actually a little too much butter, and would probably cut it down by a third next time.

4 tablespoons of icing sugar (confectioners sugar). Note: The recipe called for 6 tablespoons, but I felt that would be too sweet. Do feel free to add more – you can taste as you go.

The zest of half an orange

1/2 teaspoon of ground (powdered) ginger

170 g (6 oz) cream cheese

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the orange zest and ground ginger, and mix in well. Mix in the cream cheese.

When the filling is made, you can store it in the fridge for a day or so. We iced the first batch just by scooping a dollop of the filling between two of the biscuits (cookies) and then pressing them together, but this made for less pretty end products. When I did the second batch (or five remaining ‘pies’) I used an icing bag. It was a little difficult a first, because the filling was a little hard having been in the fridge overnight, but it quickly softened as I worked with it, and I thought there was a much better end result. Just do a big swirl in the middle of one biscuit (cookie) – there is a lot of filling, so you can be pretty generous – and then press another one on top of it.

I would think these only keep for 2-3 days at most, as the cookie is likely to go stale pretty quickly. But who knows – this lot got eaten up too quickly to put it to the test.

* This is an ingredient I have only seen in the USA, and it only ever comes to my attention around Thanksgiving, when it is all over the supermarkets here. If you have difficulty finding it, I know you can substitute for fresh pumpkin, though I don’t know the details of how you would prepare it.

Mashed potatoes are extremely easy, and there is no great secret about how to make them good – just use the right kind of potatoes and add lots of cream. We tend to make them at home a lot when we want an easy, satisfying addition to lunch or dinner. If you have some pesto lying around, stirring a couple of tablespoons of pesto through it makes easy pesto mash – top with a fried egg and you have a great, simple breakfast or lunch. But, as I have learned since living with someone who had no real cooking experience before we moved in together, there is a first time to learn even the simplest of recipes – so if you have never mashed a potato, this recipe is for you.

Creamy Mashed Potatoes

(Makes enough for 6-10 people)

2kg (roughly 4.5 lb) of good mashing potatoes (eg. Russet or Yukon Gold)

400-500ml (14-17 fl oz/ approx 2 cups) double cream (heavy whipping cream) – You can use milk if you like, or less cream, but the more cream the better if you ask me.

55g (2 oz/3 tbs) salted butter

Sea salt

Place a large pot of water on the stove top to boil, and add a few pinches of salt. While the water is heating up, peel the potatoes, and make sure to remove any dark patches. When the water starts to boil, add the potatoes. Allow to boil until they are soft (you can test this by stabbing them with a knife). If you have large potatoes this will take around 30 minutes. When the potatoes are soft, drain completely and return to the pot you boiled them in. Cut the butter into small cubes and add that with the cream, and then mash with a potato masher until really smooth. Add 1/2 tablespoon of salt and mash that in. (Mashed potato needs quite a bit of salt, so you should taste it and adjust the salt to your taste).

If you want it extremely creamy, you can push the mashed potato through a sieve. For garlic mash, mash in two cloves of garlic, crushed. Once mashed, you can also stir in cheese (make sure to do this while it is still warm) or chives for a bit of variation.

Here is a great tip: While you can reheat on the stovetop (in which case you will need to add a little more cream or milk to stop it from getting dry), the most delicious way to reheat mashed potatoes is to fry it. Melt 1/2 tablespoon of salted butter in a frying pan, and add the cold mashed potato, flattening it down. While you are cooking, add a little more salt (it loses some of its saltiness if you store it for a few days in the fridge), and allow it to brown on the bottom, before flipping it over. Cook until the potato is warm and soft, and you have lots of delicious golden crispy bits.

(From Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Bon Appetit)

On a cold, rainy Wednesday morning, we decided to take some time out of our busy schedules and bake an enormous batch of cookies (I mean, this makes a lot – I distributed half  to one of my classes, we ate many of them, naturally, and there are still some left over to take in to work for lunch). Nick, whose banana bread pleased at Athens and Rome, and is still admired in Paris and London today (ok – bad, nerdy joke – no need to get the reference), is still in the early stages of learning how to cook. As is common to many first-time cooks, he is particularly getting into baking, so this was a nice opportunity to practise his skills. (I suspect that one of the appeals of baking is that you mix a bunch of things together, place them in a box, and out pops real, cooked, delicious food.)

These turned out wonderfully – a little crisp on the outside, a little gooey on the inside. You can either use commercially produced bars of chocolate-coated english toffee (Smitten Kitchen suggests for US readers that you can find Heath bars at Duane Reade), or (as we did) some nice delis may also sell chocolate-coated toffee (such as the hazelnut toffee we got, below, from the wonderful Bedford Cheese Shop in Williamsburg). The toffee does tend to melt into the rest of the cookie, and I was a little disappointed that you didn’t just get nice hard chips of it throughout a soft cookie, but the result was pretty great nonetheless.

Chocolate toffee walnut cookies

65 g (2.25 oz/half a cup) plain (all purpose) flour

A teaspoon of baking powder

A pinch of fine salt

455g (1 lb) bittersweet or semisweet dark chocolate

57g (2 oz/quarter of a cup) unsalted butter

385g (13.6 oz/ one and three quarters of a cup) brown sugar

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

200g (7oz/ about 5 chocolate bars) chocolate-covered toffee (alternatively, just use toffee if you can get it – you don’t strictly need the extra chocolate)

1 cup walnuts

Begin by roughly chopping the walnuts (I liked having decent-sized chunks of walnut in the cookies, so advise not to chop them too small), and dry-toast in a frying pan until they are a little more golden in colour, and are beginning to smell toasty and delicious. Put to one side to cool. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking-powder and salt, and mix together well. Put to one side.

To melt the chocolate, heat up a pot of water to simmering, and over it place a heat-proof glass or metal bowl. Make sure the water isn’t touching the bottom of the bowl, and that the flame (if you are using a gas stove-top) is not directly heating the bowl. Break up the chocolate and chop up the butter, place in the bowl, and mix they have melted and combined. (Melting chocolate is a delicate process. For more instructions, look here.) Put the melted chocolate to one side to cool.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until thick. If you have electric beaters, this will take about 5 mins, otherwise you can do it with a whisk, but the mixture is quite heavy, so your arm will hurt a lot by the end (I say this from experience – we really need to get electric beaters!). Beat in the melted chocolate and vanilla. Then, mix in the flour and, when that is fully combined, mix in the toasted walnuts, and coarsely chop the toffee, mixing that in as well. Don’t chop the toffee so coarsely that you have massive chunks, though, as they become harder to mould, and the toffee may run out of the cookie while baking.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and place in the fridge for about 45 minutes until firm. We made two batches, and by the second one the mixture was so firm it was rather difficult to scoop out – if this happens just leave out of the fridge until it softens enough to be workable, which shouldn’t take long. When you are ready to cook, make sure that the oven racks are in the middle of the oven (too high up and the toffee is more likely to burn) and pre-heat it to 180 degrees celsius (350 degrees fahrenheit). Line large baking trays with baking paper (you may end up needing to cook in batches depending on how many baking trays you have – we made enough cookies to cover four of them). As the toffee has a tendency to run out of the cookie while cooking sometimes, and then the paper sticks to it, I would also grease your baking paper – even if it already claims to be greased.

Scoop a small fistful of dough, make it into a ball, and place on the baking paper, spacing the balls of dough at least 2 inches apart and flattening them slightly. These are very rich, so you can make them smaller if you like (we made two sized and I slightly preferred the bigger ones not for any reason other than the fact that you get more every time you eat one of them). Bake for 12-15 minutes – the tops will be a bit cracked, but the middles will still be soft – don’t worry if they seem a little soft, because they cook more as they cool. For the same reason, leave them to cool entirely before consuming.

I can’t help but turn having people round for lunch into an excuse for making something extremely complicated that I have never made before. This is against the rules - if you have guests for lunch or dinner, this is exactly the time when you are not supposed to attempt something for the first time. You can’t be sure that it will turn out well (or at all), and if you have made mistakes, there is no time to correct them before your poor guests must sit through an unappetising meal and pretend that the food is great. In this instance, the food was very good, though there were modifications I would make (aren’t there always?). Home-made gnocchi does take a long time, but (at least with this recipe) it does not last for more than 2 days (in terms of keeping its shape – you can reheat it later and you will have a tasty mush), so if you are going to embark on this, make sure you have a full day to cook before you need to serve. That said, it is a fun process, so it is time well spent.

  Porcini Gnocchi

(Makes 4-6 serves)

  1kg (35 oz) potatoes (roughly 4 medium-sized potatoes – try to get good baking potatoes such as russet and sebago)

40g (1.5 oz) parmesan cheese

30g (1 oz) dried porcini mushrooms

100g (3.5 oz) plain white flour + a little extra

Coarse sea salt (Kosher salt)

Fresh black pepper

2 egg yolks

  Begin by preheating your oven to 180 degrees celsius (350      fahrenheit). Stab your potatoes a couple of times with a fork,  and place them on a baking tray. Bake for an hour or until    they are soft. While the potatoes are baking, rehydrate the  dried mushrooms according to the instructions on their packaging (this will include soaking in hot water until they are soft). There are often little bits of grit and stones in dried mushrooms, so when they are soft make sure you feel them with your fingers and remove any little hard bits.

While you are waiting for the potatoes to bake, finely grate the parmesan, and finely chop the rehydrated porcini mushrooms. When the potatoes are done, allow them too cool a little, slice in half, and scoop the soft insides into a large bowl. Mash the potato until smooth and add the parmesan, porcini mushrooms, flour, some pepper, and then a significant pinch of the salt. (The gnocchi I made was not salty enough, but I loved the idea of finding little crunchy crystals of salt in your soft gnocchi, so be generous with salting). Mix together until combined, and then add the egg yolks, stirring together until it comes together in a ball.

Place your mixture on a large lightly-floured surface (you will need a lot of space to roll it into a long rope), and knead for a minute or so until it comes together like a dough. Divide your ‘dough’ into two, and continuing to dust with flour where needed (the gnocchi sticks easily, but does not suffer from being continuously dusted with flour), roll out your ‘dough’ until it forms a long, even rope. It doesn’t matter so much how thick the rope is – you do not want it to be too thin, but you can be the judge of what size gnocchi you want. Generously flour a tray, or plates, where your gnocchi is going to go before you cook it. I did not do this (as you can see from the picture below) and the gnocchi stuck to the plates I had put it on, making it very difficult to get off. Then cut your rope up into pieces roughly 3cm long, and place on your floured tray or plate. You can do this several hours in advance (at this stage I started to make sticky date pudding, something else I was attempting for the first time, which we were going to have for dessert).

Thyme, Wild Mushrooms and Lemon

80g (2.8 oz) salted butter

600g (21 oz) mushrooms (I used a combination of shiitake and portobello – but any wild mushrooms would work just as well)

1/3 cup fresh thyme leaves

60mL (2 fl oz) balsamic vinegar

60g (2 oz) pecorino cheese finely grated

1 lemon (you will only be using the rind)

When you are around 40 mins from serving, put a large put of salted water on the stovetop to boil. When the water is boiling, cook the gnocchi in batches for about 3 minutes, until they float to the surface of the water. Drain the cooked gnocchi well and put to one side, trying to keep it warm. Clean and slice up the mushrooms (you don’t need to slice them finely). The next step will include frying lots of things together – you want the mushrooms to brown a bit, but if you have too much piled up in a frying pan it will be inclined to sweat. So, if you have two frying pans, I would actually try to make this divided between the two so that everything gets brown and slightly crisp – or do it in batches. Place the butter in a frying pan (or divide between two) and melt on medium heat. Add the mushrooms  and cook for 5 or so minutes (cooking time will vary a little depending on what mushrooms you use) until they brown a little. Add the gnocchi and thyme (make sure you don’t get water in the frying pan from boiling the gnocchi) and fry for another 5 minutes until everything is browned. Add the vinegar, and cook for another 1 minute.

When serving, sprinkle with pecorino, and finely grate a little lemon zest over the top. (The lemon zest not only gives a wonderful tart flavour, but adds a little colour).

This is why I haven’t been posting a lot recently. Well, this was one of the reasons – I have just arrived home after a month and a half away, where travel and work got in the way of blogging. So, while I get some new posts ready, have a look at the beautiful time I have been having without you.

I spent just a few days in Santorini with my parents. We stayed in beautiful rooms in the town of Oia, with this stunning view from the balcony.

Greek food is wonderful – growing up in Sydney, which has a large Greek population and hence many Greek restaurants (many of which had scenes from Santorini painted on the walls which made it all familiar in a very strange way), we ate a lot of it when I was younger, and it was only coming to Greece that I realised how much I missed it. I must start making Greek food more often.

Stunning architecture, clear skies, everything in blue and white – it was so photogenic it was felt almost too easy to take good photographs.

We ate a lot of seafood, and I am ashamed to admit that this did include octopus. I have a lot of respect for octopuses – they engage in highly creative problem-solving, game-play, and other activities that we strongly associate with animal intelligence. [For a good, even-handed account of the research on octopus intelligence, click here.] Delicious as they are, I feel guilty about having eaten such an intelligent creature, and shall refrain from doing so in the future.

This is just a picture of the beautiful church in Oia – but let’s say it ties in to the theme of guilt. Or just the theme of how beautiful this Greek island was.

I ended the trip stuffed, sun-drenched and relaxed, ready to return to hard work. (And with a new hat.)

Sometimes the biggest mistakes lead to your best discoveries. This is the third time I have made this cake (I mean, nutella cake? Who can resist something like that!). The first time was shortly after I had moved to the States (well, over six months after I had moved to the States, so really this is no excuse). I made the cake according to the recipe, put it in the oven for 40 minutes (the recommended time) and it was still completely runny; left it in for another half an hour, still basically batter; left it in for another hour and it was only beginning to develop some body. It was only after several hours that I realised I had set the oven to 180 degrees fahrenheit rather than celsius (this is about 82 degrees celsius – not hot at all). But by then it was too late – the cake was mostly cooked, and I had to get it out of the oven to take to the birthday party I had made it for, so I just had to work with what I had. It was one of the most delicious cakes I had ever tasted.

Cooking on a low temperature for a very long time causes it to become very fudge-like. Of course, if you do not have 5 hours to wait around for your cake to cook, you can make it as suggested, but I did that the second time I made it and found it a little bit dry, so this time I actually tried to replicate the baking conditions from my first attempt.

Nigella Lawson’s Nutella Cake

6 large eggs

Pinch of salt

125g (4.5 oz) unsalted butter (plus a little more to grease the cake tin)

 1 medium jar Nutella (Australia and UK: 400g; USA: 13oz/371g)

1 tablespoon water (you can also use Frangelico which does sound delicious)

100g (3.5oz) ground hazelnuts (hazel meal)

150g (5.3oz) chocolate (the original recipe recommends dark, but you can also use milk or a combination of both as I did)

Start by preheating the oven either to 180 degrees celsius (350 degrees fahrenheit) – this will take 40 mins – or 100 degrees celsius (210 degrees fahrenheit) for a fudgy cake that will take many hours to cook. Take the butter out of the fridge so it can soften a little before you use it. You should also melt the chocolate at the start so it has time to cool before you use it – to melt chocolate, chop it up and place in a metal bowl over a pot of hot water (the bowl should not touch the water). Put the pot over a medium flame on the oven, and stir continuously until it has melted completely. Chocolate burns really easily, so you have to be careful not to leave it for an length of time. (More detailed instructions here) Put melted chocolate to one side to cool a little.

Separate the eggs, putting the yolks to one side. In a large bowl sprinkle a pinch of salt over the egg whites and whisk until they are firm and form stiff peaks (see picture above). Six eggs is a decent amount, so I recommend that you use electric beaters. As I don’t (yet) have these I had to use my wonderful boyfriend, Nick, who has a strange talent for whisking egg whites. If you have neither of these things, you will just have to whisk by hand (this is helpful information for people who are not that comfortable with whisking egg whites).

In another large bowl beat together the entire jar of nutella and the unsalted butter (this will be easier to do if the butter is soft and cut into cubes). Add the ground hazelnuts, egg yolks and water (or Frangellico) and mix together to combine. With a metal spoon, fold the cooled melted chocolate into the mixture.

Add a large dollup of the egg whites and mix together. Then carefully fold in the rest of the egg whites with a metal spoon, one third at a time. You might find that at the bottom of your whisked egg whites, it has become liquid again – this is normal, just try to re-whisk it as best you can.

Grease a round springform cake tin and line with baking paper (the lining might not be entirely necessary, it did make the cake easier to remove). Pour the batter into the tin. Now, if you want the original Nigella version, then place in the oven you have preheated to 180 degrees celsius (350 degrees fahrenheit), remove after 40 minutes and put on a cooling rack to cool.

If you want to try the experimental fudgy cake then you will have pre-heated your oven to 100 degrees celsius (210 degrees fahrenheit). Place your cake in the oven and after about an hour prod the top of it to see that it is not extremely runny. It will probably take about three hours before there is a bit of body to it, but make sure to check regularly. You want to take the cake out when it is not quite set, as it will set a little more when you have removed it from oven – the softer it is, the more fudge-like it will be. (Note: my cake sweated a little in the oven, causing some liquid to drip from the cake tin, so make sure that you have an oven tray positioned underneath it to catch any drips just in case this happens.)

Allow the cake to cool and then turn it out and allow to cool completely before covering with icing (frosting)…

Chocolate Ganache Icing

125 ml double cream (4.5fl oz heavy cream)

1 tablespoon water (or Frangelico)

125g  (4.5 oz) dark or milk chocolate (broken up into small pieces)

100g (3.5oz) hazelnuts (for garnish)

Place a heavy-bottomed sauce pan over low heat and add the broken up chocolate, water and cream, stirring constantly until the chocolate has melted and everything has come together. Take off the heat and whisk – the original recipe says to whisk until it is thick enough to ice the cake, but I whisked a lot (well, Nick did) and it was still pretty runny. If this happens then stick it in the fridge for a little while and it will become thicker as it cools.

While the icing (frosting) is cooling, place the hazelnuts in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and toast them (remembering to shake it around regularly so they don’t burn) until they are browner and smelling delicious. If you have bought them unpeeled, it will be easier to get the skin off when they are toasted (you don’t have to be really fastidious about this). Put to one side and allow to cool completely, otherwise they will melt the ganache icing (frosting).

When everything is cool, you can ice the cake and cover with hazelnuts.

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*This is just a personal interest, not a legal one. The copyright issues surrounding recipes are quite interesting, and, in brief, you are allowed to re-post someone else’s recipe if you put it in your own words (the writing is copyrighted, not the recipe itself) – though it is always best to put a citation where appropriate. For a more detailed account you might want to read what Smitten Kitchen has to say about it.

When I first met Nick he really could not cook (he had never so much as fried an egg), but since moving to New York he has been slowly mastering recipes that I have suggested to him. Banana bread has a lot going for it – it is easy, the preparation is very quick, you can make it using bananas that are too ripe to eat (using old fruit rather than throwing it out – brilliant), and once you have the dry ingredients in your pantry you can usually make it without needing to go to out to buy extra ingredients (so long as, like us, you always have butter and eggs in the fridge). If there is a loaf in the fridge a couple of slices can be a delicious breakfast, but it is also great for taking into work for lunch or a snack.

Banana Bread

3-5 over-ripe bananas (see discussion below)*

75g (2.5 oz; 1/3 cup) salted butter; plus a little more for greasing the bread tin

1 egg

200g-250g (7-8.5oz; 1 cup) white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon baking soda

A pinch of salt

200g (7oz; 1 cup) plain white flour

100g (3.5 oz; two large handfuls) walnuts

Before you begin, pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius (350 fahrenheit) – remember that whenever you pre-heat your oven you should check that the shelves are where you want them (in this case you want the banana bread in the middle of the oven) and also make sure that there aren’t any pans or trays in there that you would need to move when you put the banana bread in, as this will all be harder to do if the contents of the oven are hot. I find it easier to grease baking tins with softer butter, so you might want to take the butter out of the fridge as well at this point.

In a large bowl mash your bananas. *It doesn’t matter exactly how many bananas you use (the more banana, the more banana flavour), but it is important that they are quite soft. That said, I like to add one that is slightly less soft as this will create little banana lumps in your bread, rather than being mashed into a smooth paste. You can also freeze your bananas if you want to keep them for longer, or if they are still bright yellow and you want to make banana bread right away – freezing bananas will make them very soft (once defrosted they look a bit like soft-serve ice cream), which is what we did this time, but they don’t keep all of their original flavour. When defrosting bananas, make sure that they are on some kitchen paper or something that will catch the water released in the defrosting process.

Melt the butter on low heat, stiring constantly to make sure it doesn’t burn. Add the melted butter to the mashed banana and mix together with a wooden spoon. Beat the egg a little, and add that to the butter/banana mixture along with the sugar, vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon. Mix to combine. Sprinkle with the salt and baking soda and mix in. Mix in the flour.

You don’t have to add nuts, but I think they really improve the banana bread – you can really add any nuts at this point. I suggest roughly chopping walnuts and throwing them into the batter, but I have also tried slivered almonds which I toasted in a frying pan, and this was also very delicious. Just make sure that if you do add nuts (particularly walnuts) you do it when all the dry ingredients have been mixed in, otherwise you are likely to find pockets of flour in the crevices of the walnuts.

Grease the inside of your bread tin, and pour in the batter. Put in the preheated oven and bake for an hour and 10 minutes. Turn the bread out of the tin and place on a cooling rack – serve the first few pieces warm from the oven, spread with butter.

The Barefoot Contessa’s Parmesan Broccoli

(Serves 2-3 as a side-dish)

3 smallheads of broccoli

4 cloves of garlic (or less – I couldn’t bring myself to reduce the quantity)

3-4 tablespoons of olive oil

1 lemon (you will need half the zest, and less than half the juice)

1 cup pine nuts

1 cup (or a little less) of finely grated parmesan

Salt and Pepper

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees centigrade (425 degrees fahrenheit). Cut broccoli into large florets and peel and slice the garlic cloves. Line a medium baking tray (or casserole dish – something large enough that the broccoli isn’t piled up) with aluminium foil. Place the broccoli on the foil, pour over oil, sprinkle with a teaspoon of salt (less if that looks like it is going to be a lot), and evenly grind black pepper over the top. Toss together making sure that all the broccoli gets covered in oil. Place in the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes until there are browned patches on the broccoli.

While the broccoli is baking, place pine nuts in a non-stick frying pan (actually it is fine to use a frying pan that is not non-stick, so long as you keep an eye on it) without anything else. Place this over medium heat to dry-toast pine nuts, shaking about regularly so they do not burn. When they are browned and smelling delicious, take off the heat and put to one side.

Take the broccoli out of the oven and add the finely grated parmesan, finely grate in the zest of half a lemon, queeze a bit less than the juice of half a lemon and mix through. Toss in the toasted pine nuts and serve.