Cheese, onion and potato pie

Sunday was a pie baking sort of day. Cold, with lying snow on the ground. Head a little delicate from the previous night's excess.

A big plate of carbs was the order of the day, something filling but frugal. This pie really hit the spot. Cheap to make, satisfying, cheesy, savoury, and lighter than you'd imagine thanks to the delicate, flaky pastry.

Good pastry is essential for this. Stodgy pastry with a cheesy potato filling would all be a bit heavy going, but Delia's flaky pastry recipe is just perfect. Butter-rich but thin and with a lightness that belies the fat content. It's ridiculously easy to make too.

This will serve 3-6 people depending on greed and accompaniments. It will take around 90 minutes to cook, not including the time taken to make and rest the pastry.

What you'll need:

1 batch of flaky pastry made using the recipe here
2.5 lbs of good mashing potatoes
milk and butter for the mash
2 large onions
6-8 ozs of strong tasting cheese (mature cheddar with a bit of parmesan added is good)
salt
vegetable oil
white pepper
one egg (not essential)

What to do:

1. Put the oven on at 180 deg C then finely slice the onions. Warm about 1 tbsp of oil and a knob of butter in a large heavy bottomed pan then add the onions. Keep the heat low as you want them to sweat without browning until they're very sweet and tender. This will take up to 45 minutes.

2. Get out a large, deep oval or round pie dish. Roll out about two thirds of the pastry so that it will cover the bottom and sides of the pie dish. Push the pastry case into the dish then put it in the oven to blind bake for 20 minutes. If you haven't got baking beans any dried bean or pulse should do the trick. Put the remainder of the pastry back in the fridge.

3. Remember to keep stirring the onions to make sure they don't stick and start to colour. Peel and chop the potatoes then put them on to boil in salted water until tender (about 15 minutes).

4. After 20 minutes remove the blind-baked pie case from the oven. Drain the boiled potatoes and mash them with a little warm milk, plenty of butter and loads of white pepper. Add more salt if it needs it. You want the mash to be very moist, but not wet. Just so it can't quite hold its own shape.

5. Grate the cheese. Check the onions for doneness. They should be very soft and sweet, give them longer if they need it.

6. When the onions are done everything can be layered up in the pie dish. First spoon in the mash, then the onions and finally the cheese.

7. Roll out the rest of the pastry to make the pie lid, then add it to the top of the pie. Seal the lid and brush it with egg wash if you've got an egg to hand. Otherwise just squash the lid into place. Prong a couple of holes in the top with a fork then bake the pie in the oven until golden brown, about 35 minutes.

8. Serve hot with peas, or even better, with baked beans. This is also good served cold, sliced into wedges, maybe with some salad.

Herby cheese scones, vegetable stew

It took me a good couple of hours to work out what I wanted to eat on Sunday. It had to be warming winter food, the weather was foul and I was hiding under cover on the sofa. None of the obvious things were appealing. Not lamb hotpot, not cottage pie, not toad in the hole, not roast meat and gravy, not even a curry which is rare for me.

Eventually it came to me, I wasn't in the mood for meat. I wanted a hearty meal that was hot and nourishing, but not rich, fatty or stodgy. My default setting in such circumstances is to reach for the lentils and get a pot of dal on the go, but that didn't appeal either. Instead I made some herb and cheese scones to serve with a simple vegetable casserole. The casserole was ok, but the scones turned out really well so I thought I'd write up the recipe.

It's a basic scone recipe, so hardly original, but the addition of fresh herbs and some sharp cheese makes them a fantastic accompaniment to a stew or casserole, vegetarian or otherwise. They are light, savoury and gently fragrant. Best served when they're fresh, warm and slathered with butter.

What you'll need to make 6 good sized scones (I made 8 but a couple were rolled too thin):

8oz self raising flour
pinch of salt
scant tsp of baking powder
2oz butter
1oz grated cheese (use something sharp and fairly strong, mature Lancashire would be good)
150ml milk, plus extra for brushing
1 dessertspoon mixed finely chopped rosemary and thyme

What to do:

1. Set the oven to 220 deg C and grease a baking sheet.

2. Finely chop the herbs and grate the cheese.

3. Put the flour, salt and baking powder into a mixing bowl.

4. Rub the butter into the flour.

5. Make a well in the middle of the flour/butter mix and pour in the cheese, milk and herbs.

6. Mix the whole lot together into a soft dough. Handle it as little as possible.

7. Roll out the dough to about 2cm thickness, cut out the scones and place them on a baking sheet.

8. Brush the tops with a little milk then bake in the oven for 12-15 mins.

9. When they're done they should be golden topped and will sound hollow if tapped on the base. Leave them to cool for a few minutes then eat warm.

English Muffins

I don't bake very often because I can't usually be bothered following recipes, mistakenly thinking it's too much like hard work. I always forget that whilst a recipe may be involved it often needs only 3 or 4 ingredients and little effort. Cooking Staffordshire oatcakes the other week reminded me how simple and rewarding it can be to mix up a batch of dough or batter, and if everything goes to plan how delicious the results.

With these thoughts in mind, and a cupboard full of yeast and flour it was only a matter of time before I got the mixing bowl out again. It had to be muffins. I love English muffins, simply toasted with butter, or butter and cheese, or butter and jam, or in a home-made version of the McMuffin. The McMuffin is a great idea, just executed badly. Sausage meat of dubious quality and an egg cooked solid. No-one in their right mind chooses a solid yolked egg. I like to make my own version with proper sausages and a runny egg, and it always goes down a treat.

I used Delia's recipe for my muffins. I won't recreate it here because I only changed one thing from the original. I forgot that I didn't have any strong white bread flour, so I used strong wholemeal instead. It worked just fine although I think white is probably better for muffins.

The method couldn't be simpler. Mix your dough, knead it, then leave it prove. This is the dough, kneaded but unproven.

Here it is after proving. It's twice the size as in the last picture, honest.

Then you can roll it out and cut it into muffins, then leave it prove again.

After the second prove they are cooked on both sides in a greased pan. Greased with lard, says Delia.

Leave to cool, then split and toast whenever you want one.

I split one straight from the pan, toasted it and buttered it. Lovely. It's all about the texture with muffins, that crisp, slightly chewy crust on the outside and the soft, yeasty inside that's just airy enough to soak up the butter.

The pièce de résistance was the breakfast muffin. I've been craving black pudding for a while so used this in place of the sausage. A toasted, buttered muffin, Bury black pudding, a runny egg and a squirt of ketchup. I fried the egg in the cutter used for the muffins to get that neat and tidy 'McMuffin' effect. Imagine a world where McDonalds served runny eggs and black pudding!