Dad's Cuisine

Christmas spice cake Laced with deliciously warming spices, this Christmas spice cake is the perfect way to kick off the holiday season. Mum would spend the weeks leading up to Christmas frantically getting everything ready. Food, gifts, decorations: no-one did Christmas like my Mum. As was traditional, she would get the Christmas pudding started weeks in advance, on Stir-up Sunday ; one of my earliest memories is standing on the stool at the kitchen counter and giving the Christmas pudding the traditional stir while making an earnest wish. That was the start of Christmas when I was a child.  Christmas is one of the hardest periods of the year since Mum left us - it's never been the same as when I was a child. But I'm determined to make sure my kids have the same special memories of Christmas traditions that my Mum gave to me, because they last forever and bring comfort on some of the darkest days. So, I find myself running around frantically getting everything ready, just lik...

  Spicy prawn stew This spicy prawn stew is filling, as fiery as you like, and couldn't be easier to put together when you're pushed for time. One of my abiding memories from childhood is my parents' dinner parties. It didn't matter who they had invited - family, old friends, new acquaintances or work colleagues - they were always raucous affairs that lasted for hours. Mum generally made curries on these nights for two reasons: first, curries are fantastic dishes for sharing; and second, due to my childhood aversion to anything resembling spice, it meant my parents could enjoy a curry without me flailing around dramatically in reaction to the merest hint of heat (my brother and I would have to come and say hello to all the guests before being packed swiftly off to bed, with strict instructions to stay upstairs).  On those evenings, the dining room would come alive with exotic sights and sounds - oranges, reds and yellows crashing into each other;  the cracks of ...