Banana & Chocolate Chip Bread with Maple Glaze

We get free bananas at work, something about keeping us alert and healthy making us more productive. I don’t know if it works, but bananas are nice and they’re usually gone by the middle of week. However, occasionally you get a batch that go brown quicker, and fickle as people tend to be, the less appealing ‘nanas remain uneaten, getting even browner under the icy blast of the office air conditioning. Well rather than let them go to waste, myself and our office manager squirrel them away; their fate is to become delicious and decidedly less healthy, productivity sapping banana bread.

Pig Cheeks Braised in Cider

With my parents visiting and funds low, a tasty but good value meal was needed. I usually cook a casserole, an old family favourite, for my parents and this certainly a good fit for the budget conscious cook. But then inspiration came at the butchery counter in Waitrose, looking rather lonely was a tray of pig cheeks. Now I’ve eaten pig cheeks in fancy restaurants, but never cooked them at home. The theory is similar to casseroling cheaper cuts; muscles that work a lot are flavoursome but incredibly tough, so animals cheeks which have been used to chewed food throughout their life are a joint prized for offering maximum flavour – slow cooking is essential though.

 

Speculoos Biscuits

This recipe is my version of Speculoos, a traditional Belgian biscuit I created for the CoffeeSaturday Speculoos Bake-off.