Around 100 recipes designed to impress family and friends

Starters Mains – Sides – Desserts
I collected and developed these recipes to impress my family before serving them to friends at our regular dinner parties.
Each one is a little different to what you would normally serve without being too pretentious ….and you don’t need to be a chef or have specialist equipment to prepare them.

All the recipes are UK based but I have included a handy UK/US conversion guide and an oven temps guide.

In the Starters section, we have a Puff Pastry Pesto Sundial Tart that is so easy to make that you can serve as a starter or serve it alongside your pizzas. Your friends and family will be amazed at this. It looks and tastes great as is, but like all the recipes here, there’s room for you to adjust them to your own taste. I also included my favourite fluffy Yorkshire Pudding with Mint Sauce as a starter recipe.

In the Mains section, we have two of my favourites: Korean Beef Bulgogi where the sauce/marinade contains a tinned pear which adds to the depth of brilliant flavour and takes just 10 mins to prepare and 15 mins to cook and a Peach and Pork Picante which includes salsa and a peach preserve to make a really flavour filled dish.

In the Sides section, I included several potato recipes such as Boulangere, Gratin and Dauphinoise and a couple of Foccacias that will make you wonder why you never served them before.

The Desserts section is very important to my friends, as is chocolate, and I tried my best to impress them with a Syllabub, a couple of Parfaits and an Apple Pie with Cinnamon swirls in the actual pastry. An hour and 45mins total to make but it can be made well ahead of serving.

I hope you enjoy cooking these recipes as much as I did and as much as my friends and family enjoyed eating them.