Share your family recipes to win a copy of Rachel Allen's Recipes From My Mother PLUS a £100 Lakeland voucher

[SorchaMumsnet]

Full of warmth and nostalgia, Rachel Allen's Recipes from My Mother is a book of culinary inspiration passed down through the generations. To celebrate, we're asking you to share your own family recipes.

Rachel’s food is heart-warming. She uses gorgeous ingredients in abundance to create comforting, vibrant meals. Her love of food started when she was very young, sitting in the kitchen with her mother, helping and tasting. Her mother taught her their Scandi family recipes, as well as those she picked up from living in Ireland. Rachel became more and more passionate about food as she grew up, and she drew inspiration from her childhood memories of helping her mother cook and sitting around with her family enjoying delicious meals and treats.

In Recipes from My Mother, Rachel celebrates the food memories of her childhood, alongside those of friends and other members of her family. Packed with much-loved recipes and stunning photography, this is the book to make you fall back in love with cooking.

One of our favourite recipes from the book is the mouth-watering Mother's Plum Shortcake. See how to make it for yourself.

For a chance to win a copy of the cookbook and a £100 Lakeland voucher, just share the recipes that have been passed down to you from your mother or family.

This discussion is sponsored by HarperCollins and will end on midday, 29 March

Books T&Cs apply

Cheese and potato pie - from my nana, and mum used to cook it a lot. We still love it.

Fry up some onions and some leeks.
Make some mashed potato.
Grate a load of cheese.
Mix them all together with butter and a splash of warm milk.
You then have three choices:
a - stick in a dish, top with more grated cheese and bake until golden
b - bake a pastry case blind and then shove the cheesy mash into it, top with more grated cheese and bake until golden
c- as above but in jam tart size mini tarts (these don't need baking blind)

Without pastry, it's best hot with vege or salad and HP sauce! With pastry it's great hot or cold with salad.

Carrot and lentil soup. It's a delicious, hearty, warming soup, easy to make and a vibrant orange colour. Not to mention it's vegan - so it's good for the environment. I recommend it to anyone, even lentil haters! When I eat it, it instantly makes me think of home.

My Mum was an amazing chef and her whole emphasis was on low fat , low sugar high quality cooking! She's 90 now, but still makes salads and things she can manage, she loves fish.
I also really love cooking and most of the regular recipes I make I have developed to be quick, easy and inexpensive. I have fibromyalgia which is a painful disability, so I cannot spend ages standing in the kitchen, everything has to be easy for me, so I cut down on pots and pans even as they are heavy! I like to make very healthy food which is also delicious such a this fish curry which you can make in one large pot which Mum taught me to make! It actually has been handed down from my Nana who learned it from her French Grandma! I also have Indian blood on my Dad's side, so of course he loved this dish. I have made it my own because now it is so easy to get coriander, which is very good for you.
The sultanas and apple add a twist of sweetness and exotic texture.

Nana's Smoked Haddock Curry

Ingredients

Tin of organic cherry tomatoes
Large piece of smoked haddock
Sultanas
Tomato puree
1 chopped peeled apple
2tspns hot curry powder
3 chopped fresh tomatoes
Fresh chopped coriander
I large chopped onion
Chopped red pepper
I large clove garlic, chopped
2 -3 tspns olive oil or coconut oil

Method.

1. Heat pan and soften onions and garlic and chopped pepper. You are not using much oil so keep the lid except when stirring. Get them really soft and luscious. Add the curry powder and stir for 1 minute to release the aromatic oils.
2. Add all tomatoes, apple, sultanas and puree and simmer slowly with lid off to reduce the liquid by about a 1/4.
3. Add the piece of skinned haddock whole. It will flake as it cooks. Put the lid on and let it steam on top of this beautiful sauce.
4. Flake the fish into teh sauce and serve this beautiful colourful aromatic stew with coriander and soft and some lush Basmati rice.

Can you smell it?Mmmmm.

I've been baking with my mam for as long as I can remember. This has led me to have a passion for baking and I regularly bake for the family. I have recently had a daughter and I can't wait to start baking with her, and creating magical memories. I know it's simple, but the earliest memory I have of baking with my mam is this:
Chocolate Cornflake Cakes:

Melt 100g of broken chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of hot water.

Once melted, remove the bowl from the saucepan and mix in 100g of Cornflakes.

When all the Cornflakes are covered, spoon into cupcake cases.

Simple but perfect!!

Australian crunchies! Not sure where my mum got it, but I now use it for my family.

200g margarine - I always cook with butter now, except this recipe which I revert to marg
140g self raising flour
140g sugar
80g desiccated coconut
75g crushed cornflakes
1 tbsp cocoa powder
200g of chocolate

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl
Melt the marg and then add to dry ingredients and mix well
Pour into a shallow tin and squash it down with the back of a spoon
Bake at 180c for 30 minutes.
Allow to cool.
When cool, melt the chocolate and pour over the Crunch.
Leave to set

Turkey stew in the microwave. It's soon easy. Potatoes carrots onion peas and sweet corn . Fry off Turkey pieces first then throw it all in. HP Brown sauce and black pepper to mix together. Make dumplings put on top and back in microwave till cooked. Nice crusty bread to eat alongside on a cold day mmm amazing

Great pancakes is what my mother did best and taught us how to do too! :)

My Mum did not like cooking - there was no sitting on the bench tops as she lovingly made cookies or anything like that. Cooking to her was a necessary evil to bringing up two well loved kids and she cursed her way through it on a daily basis. She had a stock reportoire of recipes that got repeated on a weekly basis throughout my childhood. Fish pie. Shepherds Pie. Lamb chops and when, in the seventies, she got adventurous, Lasagne. The other thing she made was Chocolate Cake. Always the same recipe, which I grew to love, and would race my younger brother home from school to get the last slice of. For it you need:

1/5 cups of flour.
1 tsp of baking powder
3 tablespoons of cocoa
1 tabspn of golden syrup
i tsp of baking soda
I cup of milk

Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa. Add sugar. Melt butter and golden syrup together. Add half a cup of milk. Mix. Add half a cup of cold mil in which 1 tsp of baking soda has been dissolved. Turn cake into greased and floured 8 inch tin and bake at 180 for 30 mins. Ice when cold.

I did not get to learn many recipes from my mum, (mainly due to setting fire to an oven glove and then I wasn't allowed to cook, ☺️) but a simple and tasty meal I did learn is Parma ham pasta.
One pack of Parma ham, full fat creme fraiche, courgettes, farfalle pasta, cheddar cheese, Parmesan cheese and optional red onions. Put the pasta on to cook in some
boiling water. After a couple of minutes of the pasta cooking, chop the onions and courgette and cook in a little oil of your choice. When they are cooked add in the Parma ham and cook until crispy. Take the vegetables and Parma ham off the heat. Gently stir in the creme fraiche and grated cheddar cheese. Add desired amount of cheese to taste. When the mixture is warm, add the cooked pasta and mix all ingredients together. Add Parmesan cheese for more flavour.

We didn't bake as a family, but my mom showed me the best way for mashed potatoes and how to make a mean apple crumble!

Too many to mention that I learnt from my Mum. My five year old has already been passed on the standard 4442 recipe for cake and makes very fine cakes indeed.

proper steak and kidney pie with real pastry,curcled thick at the corners for the extra yummy bits

tuna in pastry

pasta splodge
oh so many and so many smiles brought with them too

Cheese and Potatoe Pie is the warming filling recipie passed on to me by my mum.
Ingredients-
1large potato per person
1 white onion chopped
Large knob of butter
Salt and pepper for seasoning
1 rsp of ready made mustard
2oz of strong chedde per person plus 2oz for topping

Method.
Peel and chop potatoes
Boil until soft
Mash in butter, mustard and pepper and salt.
Gently fry chopped onion until soft.
Mix in with mashed potato.
Add grated chesse and mix throughly.
Place in ovenproof dish and scatter over the top of the potato mixture.
Place in oven at 180 for approx 20 mins until topping is bubbly and crispy.

Enjoy!

So many but one I did just the other week.

Ingredients for the basic recipe as I remember: Potatoes, onions, bacon, tinned tomatoes & cheese

I mixed it up with sweet potato slices, & celery etc to add some veg to it.

Basically thinly slice potatoes & onions & start layering up the dish as though you are making a lasagne or moussaka. Sprinkle with basil & cheese on top.

Really is delicious!

My mum taught me how to make Floddie, which I have never come across elsewhere. It is a fried grated potato side dish and I've since come up with other variations. You can see my Tuna and Cheese version on my blog
blogmumjd.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/tuna-and-cheese-floddie/

In my childhood home in southern Poland baking has a long tradition. I especially like our family tradition of baking cookies for Christmas. These are very special family recipes, handwritten years ago by my grandmother with my mum and myself adding to them over the years. I remember from my childhood boxes and boxes of cookies, all different, all fragrant and delicious, waiting for Christmas, the more varied the better. I still bake them using my grandmother's and my mother's original recipes. I involve my daughter and son in the baking process, hoping that the tradition will live on.
Here is one of the recipes, a favourite with my friends and family:

RUM BALLS (BOMBS)
150 g melted butter
100 g icing sugar
1 tbs cocoa
250 g plain biscuits (crushed)
2 tbs dark rum (or more)
Chopped walnuts, hazelnuts, raisins, apricots, glacé cherries, almonds, prunes etc.
Mix well and form into balls (about 2.5 cm in diameter)
Cover with coconut flakes and leave to dry
No need to bake!

Anything with mince. Spag bol was the first dish. Then cottage pie. Lasagna. Mince and gravy and then the Sunday roast. Though she always cooked every joint of meat way too long as she hates rare meat. So i won't be passing that on

My mums regularly used recipes that i still use are
Ginger biscuits
12oz SR flour
8oz gran sugar
4oz marg
1 egg
1 tsp bi-carb
2 tsp ground ginger
2tblsp golden syrup
melt syrup sugar and marg, add dry ingredients to pan, mix egg in well. blob onto try and press flat , bake 15 minutes in a moderate oven. i usually add more ginger

lemon sponge gateaux
Packet sponge cakes (trifle sponge)
4oz butter
6oz castor sugar
4 eggs
rind and juice of 1-2 lemons
Cut sponges in 3 long ways and line dish keeping some back
separate eggs whisk whites
beat egg yolks with rind and juice
cream butter and sugar really well
beat yolk mix into butter mix
Carefully fold in stiffly beaten egg white
add more lemon juice if needed
pour over sponges , layering with remaining sponge
Refrigerate 12 - 24 hours
turn out and cover with whipped cream

When I went away to university my mum gave me a pretty notebook to write down recipes in, so I was well prepared with loads of hers (and have added to it since). There are many I now make for my family, but in particular my year is punctuated by the three times I always bake: tunis cake at Christmas, Easter lemon cake in a couple of week's time, parkin for bonfire night. None of those occasions are right without having baked the cakes to mum's recipes.

Minestrone soup:

Onion, celery, leek, carrot, potato, swede, smoked bacon, tomato puree, 2 tins chopped tomatoes, chicken stock, pasta, cabbage and italian herbs with parmesan on top!

Winter porridge

Apples skinned and chopped.
Cinnamon
Ginger
Porridge
Butter
Brown sugar

No measurements as it's a family by mouth recipe.

Chop apples into 1cm square
Fry in a pan with butter and brown sugar until soft.
Add cinnamon and ginger
Cook porridge separately.
Dash of golden syrup

Beautiful in cold winter months.

Vegetable hot pot.

Par boil potatoes, slice lengthways.
Lightly fry mushrooms, onions, peppers and aubergine
Layer potatoes with vegetables and chopped tomatoes. Add seasoning, paprika.
Grate a little cheese over the top. Bake in oven for 20-30 mins

Pancakes (dropped scones) every Saturday morning!

4oz SR flour, 1oz sugar, 1 egg and enough milk to to make a smooth thick batter. It was a ritual when we were kids and still is with my own!

Oma's Appeltaart

Adapted from my Dutch mother in law's apple pie recipe.

Dough:
185g butter, softened
250g plain flour
75g caster sugar
2 medium or large eggs, beaten: use about 3/4 of this for dough and keep some back to brush the top of the pie
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling:
About 1 kg apples. Tart varieties work best.
100g sultanas or raisins
50g white sugar. Caster is best, but regular is fine.
About 2 teaspoons cinnamon, depending on your taste.
Generous pinch of nutmeg

Mix the dough ingredients until they come together in a ball.
Roll out about 3/4 of the dough to about 1cm thick and press into a spring form tin (about 24cm diameter)
Peel, core and slice the apples into a bowl. You want them fairly chunky - about 1cm thick.
Stir in the 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, nutmeg, dried fruit and 50g of sugar. Spoon on top of dough in cake tin.
Rollw out the leftover dough and form into strips about 1cm wide.
Arrange these in a lattice pattern on top of the apple mixture. Press ends of strips onto edge of tin and trim off the excess.
Brush top of pie with remaining egg.

Bake at about 180c for about an hour.

If you find that the bottom of your pie is a bit soggy - as might happen with juicier apple varieties - next time you make it, sprinkle the dough in the bottom of the pan with dried semolina before adding the apples.