Hubble bubble, soup’s in trouble
Riding a broomstick can be breezy work, especially at this time of the year, so to ward off the winter chill I decided to conjure up a warming brew. Jamie’s English onion soup seemed a good place to start but it looked far too appetising to serve my creepy coven.

Ditching the conventional crouton, I fashioned a skull shape out of a thickly set crust and topped with a generous helping of grated Gruyere. After a few minutes under the grill my skull was starting to soften, scrumptiously oozing with strings of slimy cheese.

Ready for service and bored by my selection of bowls I turned my attention back to the pumpkin. Sturdy enough to withstand heat and cavernous enough to act as a cauldron, I hollowed out the insides leaving the wall at least an inch thick. A punctured pumpkin would lead to a messy kitchen so any creative carvings were left for the lanterns but the creepy cauldron made a great centrepiece.

A witches’ brew
Now for the drafts: every witch likes a drink especially a spicy one to put hairs on her chest. I grabbed some bottled potions and some sticks of festive spice and brewed up some blood coloured mulled wine. Devilishly delicious but not quite spooky enough, I drizzled my glasses with dark red damson jam and added a sprinkle of sugar to make them sparkle in the night.

Bobbing for body parts
With supper sorted it was time to get my entertainment in gear. No spectre worth his salt would go dunking for fruit so I decided to give apple bobbing a slimy twist. Instead of filling my bowl with water I bubbled up some lime jelly and instead of apples I used fruity eyeballs fashioned from blueberries and grapes. This jellied eyeball recipe looked gruesome and tasted great. OK, so my guests had to nibble their way through rather than dunk into the dessert but we were all left deliciously messy and on a slight sugar high.

Hungry for more fiendish feasting? Check out all 4Food’s Halloween recipes

Treat your tastebuds to some butterbeer

Unlike Midge and Bono, we stopped short of trying to feed the world and instead concentrated our efforts on feeding our office, with the various odds and end left languishing in our cupboards at home. Rather than splash our cash in the local lunchtime eateries we vowed to make the most of leftovers that otherwise would end up in the bin.

The request got a mixed reception initially, with schoolday memories of pilchards and custard needing some heavyweight PR. But after exorcising various Harvest Festival horrors with some gruelling group therapy the office eventually got on board.

Here’s what we got:
1 x tin beef and vegetable soup
2 x tin sweetcorn
1 x tin tuna
1 x tin sardines
1 x tin chickpeas
1 mini tin spicy chilli paste
1 x packet boquerones
1 x box pasta
½ packet couscous
½ packet polenta
½ jar curry paste
½ packet spinach
5 mushrooms
2 chillies
Some anya potatoes
1 x tin of mystery
1 x tin peaches
Garlic paste
Creamed coconut
Some cinnamon sugar
The remnants of a bottle of port
Half a pot of Hellmann’s mayo

Cinnamon sardines
We had 10 hungry mouths to feed and had promised them a lunch of at least two courses. With no concoction utilising all the ingredients immediately springing to mind, we opted for some Spanish-style tapas action served up buffet style with a humble peach pud for dessert.

The menu included a beef chilli pasta utilising the canned soup and port, some spicy chickpeas with shredded spinach, sardine pasta with the blow-your-head-off chilli paste, grilled polenta cakes with a little extra spice, couscous with tuna, sweetcorn and chilli, mushrooms, spinach and garlic boqerones, all finished off with grilled coconut peaches topped with cinnamon sugar.

OK so it was a bit of a spicy carb fest and admittedly the plates came across somewhat beige (as every buffet lunch should) but on the whole it was a success. It’s amazing the difference a little spice makes and forcing ingredients to work harder often makes for crisper, cleaner tastes.

Perhaps our office is an atypical bunch of frivolous, throw-away folk who care less than the average man about hunger and waste. But I doubt it. All of the ingredients were the classic contenders left festering forgotten at the back of the cupboard. With £10 billion of food wasted in Britain every year it’s time to make the most of those pilchards and pickles.

Check out our recipes below and let us know if you think you could have done better.

Browse 4Food’s luscious leftover recipes

Read more about Britain’s food waste

Recipes

Curried chickpeas with spinach
Boil the chickpeas in a pan of water for about 5 minutes or until tender.
Drain then stir in two handfuls of pre-washed spinach and a generous teaspoon of curry paste.

Spicy tuna couscous
Make the couscous as per packet instructions. Finely chop a fresh red chilli, drain 1 can of tuna and two cans of sweetcorn and stir through the couscous. Feel free to perk up the couscous with vinegar and stock should you have any to hand.

Chilli beef pasta with port
Cook the pasta as per packet instructions. Pour over a can of beef and vegetable soup. Add a generous splash of port and heat through, stirring occasionally.

Spinach, mushroom and garlic boquerones
Scatter uncooked spinach across a plate. Heat a tbsp olive oil in a pan, add chopped mushrooms, garlic paste and parsley (if you have some). Remove from pan and scatter over spinach. Place boquerones into pan and return to heat for 2 or 3 minutes. When heated through add to the spinach and mushrooms.

Spicy sardine pasta
Cook pasta as per packet instructions. Stir in tinned sardines, 1 tablespoon spicy chilli paste and a handful of washed spinach.

Curried potato salad
Wash potatoes and cook in boiling water for 20 minutes or until tender. Drain and leave to cool. Stir in 4 tablespoons mayonnaise and 2 tablespoons curry paste.

Grilled coconut peaches with cinnamon sugar
Drain peaches and place in an ovenproof dish. Crumble creamed coconut into a jug and add a splash of milk to make a runny paste. Pour over the peaches, cover with a generous sprinkle of cinnamon sugar and grill until golden brown.

What a magnificent blur of caramel-salting, muffin-mixing and erm, wooden lolly stick sourcing my life’s become. My kitchen increasingly resembles a bomb site and I’ve devoted an intensive five hours of my life to answering searching questions about hazard analysis and listeria. I’m the proud owner of a Food Safety and Hygiene Level 2 certificate and what I don’t know about napkins and disposable gloves ain’t worth knowing. When I merrily signed up for the UKFBA Covent Garden Real Food Stall earlier this year I had no idea August 13th would come around quite so soon, but upon me it looms and quite frankly I’m giddy with excitement.

There’s a lot more to running a food stall than knocking up a few fancy butties. I’ve enlisted fellow food blogger Scandilicious to share and we’ve roughly divvied up into sweet (her) and savoury (moi). I’ve factored in the type of crowd we’ll be punting to (mainly office workers/tourists) worked out pricings and pain-stakingly scribed out ingredients labels. Then there’s the presentation – hours spent pondering stall size and how our groaning table of goodies will appear from every bountiful angle.

Food-wise I’ve gone for quirky and seasonal whilst ensuring that the portable luncheon factor is high. So, between 12- 8pm tomorrow I’ll be flogging spinach and Coolea rolls, a Salcombe crab, saffron and broad bean quiche (using fresh, hand-picked brown meat), Ottolenghi’s salted caramel and macadamia nut cheesecake and a savoury feta and olive cheesecake – perfect summer time grub all divided into take-away friendly wodges.

There’ll be packets of ginger chocolate-coated cherries (a doddle to make) and as part of my anti-cupcake backlash I’ll be serving up hot smoked salmon and chive muffins, and Gruyere, sage and spring onion muffins.

I’ll also be showcasing my keema lollipops. These were inspired whilst watching “There’s Something About Mary” on Film4 the other night. At one point Mary laments the veritable dearth of meat snacks on sticks and it struck me how very perfect it would be to have a spicy, lamby treat in pastry-coated lolly form. I reckon I’m on to a winner with these little hotties.

As this is all about the culinary-love, I also thought it would be nice to donate to charity so will be slipping any profits over to Amnesty International.

Right, the muffins have risen, the quiche has been sliced – let the trading begin!

Rejina’s tips for ginger chocolate-coated cherries

1) Whack on Channel 4 news
2) Melt a bar of ginger chocolate
3) Dip in cherries.
4) Chortle at Jon Snow’s tie.
5) Leave to set overnight. Seemples.

Find a world of treats for eating on the streets

More food blogger fun: When 4Food met MsMarmiteLover

When I hear the word homebrew, it’s impossible to forget my dad’s numerous failed attempts when I was a toddler to put our family name on the real ale map (I haven’t checked although there probably is one). One of his worst efforts turned our house into a battle zone with my mum chasing me out the front door after I knocked over a vat of his ‘finest’ gunk. The kitchen smelt like a John West tuna factory for a week.

So this was a chance for me to have a crack at it myself and I felt pretty damn cocky as I printed off the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s elderflower champagne recipe. But the first problem I had was locating some elderflowers. How hard could this be? Unfortunately, all the fields near me were completely elder-less so I was reduced to the less than dignified act of trying to sniff some out.

“Pssst. You got any elderflowers? Hey, hey, keep it quiet man…”
In the end I lucked out as my girlfriend’s mum came up trumps with a big bag of the beauties. I was on my way…

The trip to the hardware shop for equipment was a real experience. I’ve just hit the ripe old age of 31 and I wondered why I’d not spent a Sunday in this haven of delights before now. (Screw you Alton Towers, this is my retreat now.) I marvelled at the array of buckets, gasped at the selection of funnels and glass bottles, and fantasised about brewing up enough to give as gifts to all my friends. I relayed this to my girlfriend and she looked at me like I’d just slapped an orphan. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.

My only hope for the champers was that it would be drinkable. Not tasty. Not even memorable. Just bog standard drinkable. There’s a certain rustic charm to making any food or drink from scratch and the frustrated caveman within me certainly came to the fore as I lashed hot water into the bucket and aggressively mixed it up with the sugar. That animal feeling pretty much evaporated as I scraped the zest of lemon into the mix and tossed the flower-heads around like a culinary version of Morrissey.

I had forgotten to buy any muslin so an old tea towel was used to cover the mix. This brought on a wave of anxiety as my sensible side told me I was already flirting with failure by not following the rulebook. But I was caring enough to check on my baby and add some yeast when it looked exactly the same two days later. When the time came to sieve and decant into the bottles there was a strong but not unpleasant fruity-chemical odour emanating from the bucket, like a packet of Starbursts doused in Lynx Java.

To prevent any explosive ‘incidents’ as experienced by some users of this site, I carefully carried the bottles to my garage, handling them as if they were grenades. Whilst doing this I loudly whistled a happy tune to diffuse any of my on-looking neighbours’ fears that I may actually be a terrorist. Then came the waiting game…

A week is a long time to wait for a drink, especially one you’ve brewed yourself. Despite still having a suspiciously murky green colour to it, the brew smelt and tasted OK – very tangy, sweet and quite thick for a Champagne, but definitely drinkable. Hurrah! Job done! I’ve given a couple of bottles to friends who’ve seemed less than grateful so far, but for a first effort it’s not half bad.

So, I’m off to neck a bottle in the car park – who’s with me?

Try Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s elderflower champagne recipe for yourself.

View Sam’s step by step guide to making elderflower Champagne.

I really love chips shops. Not just because of the crispy batter dripping in fat or the scrumptious squidgy chips, though those are mighty fine. But for me it’s all about the curious array of chip shop extras you find languishing in jars or vats behind the counter.

I once dated a man from Wigan who actually asked for ‘pea wet’ – the watery juice that’s left behind when you dish out mushy peas – with his chips. (He also called a steak and kidney pudding a ‘babby’s head’ but we won’t go there.) Whatever your taste persuasion; pickled eggs, gravy, curry sauce, there’s a host of opportunities behind that counter, all for under a £1.

Chippies are one of the things that make me most proud to be British. They’re an institution other nationalities can only look upon with envy. What’s the Swedish equivalent of a battered sausage? Do the Dutch feel bereft without mushy peas? Eager to understand the woes felt by our foreign cousins I went on a hunt to discover the dirty and divine chip accompaniments served around the world.

Turning fries French
Now the French obviously know a thing or two about fries so I was expecting their offering to be impressive – and I wasn’t disappointed. Remoulade is a bit like a mixture between tartare sauce and mayonnaise and is commonly served avec frites across the Channel. Fresh, light and luscious, it tasted delicious with chips and would make a winning partner to any battered fish.

The Dutch go nuts
When I think satay I think chicken, but not so in the Netherlands. It’s common practice in Holland to purchase a portion of chips with a side order of peanut sauce. Sweet and savoury, on soggy chips? I wasn’t convinced. The texture of semi-soft sauce and squidgy chip set my teeth on edge but my opinion was by no means the mainstream. Lots of my tasting panel loved it. Maybe one for the walk back from the pub?

Now to get really filthy
A popular chip accompaniment in Quebec is poutine; a rich sauce made from gravy and curd cheese. Now, I love gravy and I love cheese, but together, on chips? According to the Canadians on the panel you’d only eat it if you were very cold or very drunk. I was neither but astonishingly it didn’t taste too bad. It didn’t look great but it had a creamy, spicy quality that was not altogether unpleasant. In fact the Scottish members of the panel loved it. But then we all know what happens in their chip shops…

So the verdict: mayo and pickle, good; peanuts and chips, less so; and gravy with cheese, curiously, maybe. Hats off to the brave contenders; they gave it their best effort. But rest easy curry sauce, your job is safe.

Try them for yourself…

Remoulade recipe
Ingredients
2 tbsp chopped cornichon
1 tbsp chopped capers
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp chopped tarragon
1 tbsp chopped chives
1 tbsp chopped Dijon mustard
Approx 4 tbsp mayonnaise or to taste

Method: How to make remoulade
Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl and serve.

Click here for our satay sauce recipe

Poutine recipe
Ingredients
A handful of cheese curd diced
A cupful of gravy
Portion of chips

Method: How to make poutine
Scatter the cheese over your chips and pour on the gravy. It really is that simple and, erm, delicious.

Consumers with a conscience have food packaging in their sights. This year everything from Easter eggs to egg fried rice has had its cardboard cut out, in a bid to minimise the mountains of waste we create just by buying food.

For the next week I will be trying to reduce my food packaging waste by keeping a close eye on what I buy. To get an idea of the challenge ahead, I kept hold of all the packaging I amassed with one week’s typical shop. I think of myself as a pretty switched-on consumer so it was a shock to see, sitting boldly on the kitchen table, undeniable evidence of how much rubbish I really produce.

“Hold on,” you’re probably thinking, “you can probably recycle most of that junk.” Think again optimistic one, a quick scan of the offending articles revealed 11 non-recyclable packets, with the berries I tuck into as my first way to 5 a day proving the biggest packaging pests.

Steeled by this revelation, I’ll be going less wild in the aisles in an attempt to cut back on cartons and starve my bin of packaging nasties.

Day 1
First shop of the new regime and it turns out keeping packaging to a limit is not going to be easy. Breakfast is looking decidedly less healthy as all the store’s berries come in plastic boxes. In fact, the whole fruit and veg aisle is a festival of plastic. There is not a single organic vegetable that doesn’t come wrapped in a plastic bag. Tomatoes, courgettes, lemons and limes are loose. This could make for an interesting dinner.

Day 2
Busy day in the office means it’s a grab and go sarnie from the high street for lunch. Chucked the packet without thinking, then forced to fish it out from the bin to salvage the recyclable parts. Eew.

Day 3
Not all plastics are created equal it seems, nor are all recycling schemes. Some councils will take your plastics and give them a new life but others might not. Happily mine does. That in mind I bought some strawberries with a clearer conscience – but while the plastic box is recyclable, the label isn’t. The label. It’s not an easy peeler either so I leave it in my (yuk) dirty dish water to soak overnight – no point wasting water. By morning it still won’t budge so I spend an hour attacking it with a knife. There’s a lot of sticky residue which makes it tough to know whether or not it can legitimately go in the recycling bin. Will a whole slab of plastic really end up in a landfill because of a leaf of gummed paper?

Day 4
Hurrah for the market – loose cherries! In the supermarket the fresh-veggies-in-plastic situation is still so grim I head for the frozen aisle. The packet on my broad beans says, in the standard rubbish disposal system, it will break down in four years as opposed to 10,000 years for a regular plastic bag, so that’s a boon.

Day 5
I can’t hack the lack of fruit and veg so I’m abandoning chemical-free-but-plastic-wrapped organic for possibly-insecticide-heavy-but-packaging-light standard veggies. To avoid using the little plastic bags I usually pop veggies into to take to the till, I carry them loose in the basket and hit the self-checkout where I can weigh them and then carry home in a re-usable bag. Semi-success! My fridge is better stocked than it’s been all week and not a single bit of plastic made it into my house.

Few things spruce up a salad better than a subtle summer dressing, but a cruise down the supermarket condiment isle throws up all the subtlety of a glamour model’s wedding. From blue cheese and garlic dressing to strawberry and Champagne vinaigrette, there’s no end to the pungent creations you can pour over your picnic.

So if Champagne can be used to snazz up your side dishes, why not a bit of port on your cold potatoes or some cider on your salad? Much like Jordan in a bridal shop, 4Food laughed in the face of subtlety and created some mouth-watering marinades way beyond the mainstream.

Gorging on garlic
Red wine and garlic taste delicious in a warm jus – but how would they fare as a cold condiment combo? Having mixed them together with a little Dijon mustard we tried them over salad leaves, potatoes and bread. While the pungent bulb made our lettuce wilt in fear, the sauce tasted delicious sprinkled over spuds. It would also make a great marinade for barbecued meat.

A cider of salad
Inspired by a myriad of apple and celery marinades, we got to wondering how a celery dressing would fair with a little scrumpy kick. A mix of cider vinegar, celery and a bit more cider to boot created a delicate little dressing, perfect for perking up a simple bean salad. You could add a little mustard too for a more substantial drizzling sauce.

Should I cocoa?
You wouldn’t eat a Twix with your lettuce, so the idea of chocolate on salad seemed pretty grim. But in homage to Channel 4 chocolatier, Willie Harcourt-Cooze, we thought we’d give it a try and mixed some liquid dark chocolate with a generous helping of balsamic vinegar. Having predicted a thick, gloopy sauce that would drown any delicate meal, we were delighted to discover it made the perfect partnership. Taking the edge off the acidic vinegar it left a rounded robust flavour that worked surprising well with delicate leaves.

Last port of call
Just like Morecambe and Wise, port and Stilton are a brilliant duo only appreciated at Christmas. The rich, heavy tones make them perfect winter treats, but how would they fair as a lighter, summer dressing? We mixed the pair with a little crème fraiche and red wine vinegar to create a sauce that looked like blueberry smoothie. Despite the confusing appearance, it tasted light and luscious and was perfect drizzled over potatoes.

The nation’s cupboards are home to a host of forgotten ingredients that, with a little creative thinking, can help spruce up the simplest of salads. We’re not suggesting you start daubing your rocket with a bucket load of ketchup. But there’s nothing wrong with a little trial and error. Go forth and experiment.

Garlic and red wine dressing recipe
Makes 275ml

Ingredients
4 cloves garlic crushed
50ml red wine vinegar
75ml red wine
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
150ml olive oil
Salt and black pepper to season

Method: How to make garlic and red wine dressing recipe
Put the crushed garlic into a measuring jug and pour over the red vine vinegar, red wine and mustard. Stir to make a thin paste. Add the oil, stir and season to taste.

Cider and celery dressing recipe
Makes 350ml

Ingredients
3 sticks celery
100ml cider vinegar
200ml olive oil
50-100ml apple cider
Salt and black pepper to season

Method: How to make cider and celery dressing
Finely chop the celery sticks, then crush 2 of the sticks in a garlic crusher until you’re left with the juice and a little pulp. Add the cider vinegar and oil and mix together add the cider to taste and the remaining celery. Stir and season to taste.

Tip: To thicken the sauce, try adding a teaspoon of Dijon mustard.

Dark chocolate and balsamic vinegar dressing
Makes 200ml

Ingredients
2tbsp liquid dark chocolate or freshly melted chocolate
100ml balsamic vinegar
50ml olive oil

Method: How to make chocolate and balsamic vinegar dressing
Mix the chocolate and balsamic vinegar together and stir in the oil to make a smooth, thin paste.

Port and Stilton dressing
Makes 250ml

Ingredients
100g Stilton
2 tbsp crème fraiche
50ml port
50ml red wine vinegar
50ml olive oil
Salt and black pepper to season

Method:How to make port and Stilton dressing
Mix the Stilton with the crème fraiche and stir to make a smooth paste. Pour the port and red wine vinegar into a separate jug and then gradually add the Stilton paste, stirring out as many lumps as possible. Stir in the oil and season to taste.

Serve your dressings with these salads from 4Food

I love fish. Fish grilled with butter; hearty fish pie; fresh sushi; fish and chips. I love it all. But even with all the doom and gloom stories about fisheries crashing down about our ears it was still a bit of a shock to discover that in less than 40 years all commercial fish could be off the menu. All of them. No more fish suppers.

So what will we eat with our chips? According to the scientists I interviewed recently for an article in New Scientist magazine, the fish supper of the future could be something of a rubbery slimefest, with squid, jellyfish and blooms of microscopic algae moving in to fill the gaps in ecosystems where the fish used to be.

This is worrying for all kinds of reasons but, food-wise, the good news is that if we can’t save fish stocks in time, squid, jellyfish and algae are all edible. Squid in particular can be delicious, and as long as they are cooked (in the words of 4Food’s Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) ‘fast and short’, or ‘long and slow’, don’t have to be rubbery. Even microscopic algae are edible – the Aztecs used to scoop it off lakes and turn it into a delicious and protein-rich kind of cake, which apparently tasted like cheese. Something similar is still eaten today in parts of Central Africa. And believe it or not, jellyfish can be eaten too – in China they are a common addition to salads, in Japan they are eaten as sushi and in Thailand they are made into a kind of crunchy noodle. Delicious flaky fish, however, they are not, and being more than 90 per cent water and full of salt, they are nowhere near as nutritious.

Try this jellyfish tempura recipe.

So given that fish could be on the way out, should we all start experimenting with squid, jellyfish and algae recipes to get ahead of the crowd? Well, we could. But since the fish aren’t beaten yet, the most useful thing fish-lovers can do right now is make sure it never gets this bad by ONLY buying fish from sustainable sources. That means looking for the Marine Stewardship Council logo in the supermarket, or downloading their pocket guide to the best fish. There are enough alternatives to endangered stocks out there that you shouldn’t have to do without completely, and it’s always good to have a new recipe to play with.

Search through Hugh’s fish recipes on 4Food