Celebrate Chinese New Year With Alan Coxon’s Oriental Banquet

‘Kung Hei Fat Choy’ or ‘Happy Chinese New Year’! The Year of the Ox is celebrated on 26th January and with Chinese households cleaning, repainting and handing out Lai See (lucky money); Alan Coxon has developed a menu for those who want to join in with the festivities. Food is an integral part of the celebrations and Alan has scoured the Orient to come up with a delicious menu for all to enjoy.

date and walnut cake

We all do it, there is some madness which happens to us just before Christmas and we become domestic goddesses, with the need to fill the house with everything and anything that anyone could possible crave over the holiday. Come January, we find ourselves with bowls of nuts waiting to be shelled and those ubiquitous boxes of dates, bought because Granny always likes them

Even an award winning dancer likes a good cheese pie

Popular recipe website MyDish.co.uk is celebrating the success of celebrity member, Camilla Dallerup, who has just been crowned Queen of the Dance floor in this year’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. Proving that fitting into those tiny dresses has not required a cut back in excessive cheese eating, Camilla reveals her favourite calorie topping meal of “Three Cheese Pie”.

Canapes to make waiting for Santa a treat in itself

Canapés add elegance to every celebration and they are an especially welcome treat on Christmas Eve while everyone is passing time waiting for Santa to arrive. One way to make sure you are ready to whip up a lovely selection of tasty bite-sized treats is to keep some Peppadew Peppers on hand. They are a Christmas store cupboard essential for anyone planning to entertain friends and family over the festive season. These spicy yet sweet little peppers from South Africa are deseeded and then bottled in a secret brine recipe to retain a crisp texture and give just the right balance of flavour. Here are four recipes from Peppadew to help you create an elegant first course for your holiday meal.

Home made cranberry sauce

As we carve our traditional roast turkey this Christmas Day, how many of us will be treating our families to proper cranberry sauce as an accompaniment? By all means keep a jar of ready-made sauce in the cupboard as a standby, but when there are lovely fresh cranberries so readily available, and they taste so much more delicious, surely it makes sense to make your own? And when you are using fresh cranberries, be sure to maximise their delicious flavour: By using Fruisana Fruit Sugar in your recipes you will find that the flavours are enhanced.

Cheshire cheese melt with apple and red onion relish

Had enough of those Christmas prawn cocktails? Why not try something a little different? This tasty cheese on toast with a twist can be fixed up in just a few minutes. The apple and red onion relish is easy to make, and you could double the quantities to keep some extra in the fridge for up to 3 days. Then you can make more of this delicious bite at a moment’s notice.