Three Proudly British Recipes – With a Herby Twist!

The recent platinum jubilee celebrations got us hankering for some good old-fashioned British food recipes. But us being us, we also wanted to add a smattering of fresh herbs and ingredients wherever possible!

So we’ve sifted through some of our favourites, and come up with this post. These are three of our favourite traditional British food recipes – with a fresh and herby twist!

What is the most popular dish in the UK?

If you’re thinking about traditional British food recipes, you might think fish and chips, bangers and mash, or toad in the hole. So you might be surprised to learn that a chicken tikka masala has been voted the British Isles’ most popular meal!

There are absolutely tons of ways to approach cooking a tikka – many of which you’ll find over at BBC Good Food. Some of the most popular fresh ingredients that go into it include ginger, green and red chillies and coriander. In our experience, the fresher the better!

Three British recipes with summer herbs

A curry is always great, but for this post we’ve gone for three recipes that could make up a good old-fashioned three-course family dinner.

Enjoy!

Creamy leek and potato soup with rosemary and thyme

How to make

1. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, then add the leeks, potatoes and garlic. Stir occasionally for five minutes.
2. Fold in the bay leaves, the whole rosemary and thyme sprigs (keeping the half sprigs back for garnish later), and season with the sea salt and white pepper. Then pour over the stock and cover with a lid. Bring the mixture to the boil, then lower the heat and cook with the lid slightly open to let the steam escape. Keep this going for around 20 minutes, or until the vegetables are cooked through.
3. While the veg is boiling, heat a large skillet and toast the hazelnuts until lightly browned (up to five minutes – keep a close eye on them!). Once they are, cut them into halves and set aside until they’re ready to serve. Then go back to the boiling pot, remove the bay leaves, rosemary and thyme sprigs, along with a handful of the leeks and potatoes.
4. Adjust the seasoning to your taste, pour in the milk of your choice, then blend the soup with a blender until the mixture has a smooth consistency. If the soup is too thin, put pot back on the heat and simmer until it thickens, if the soup is too thick, add a little extra stock and give it a stir, leaving it on the heat until you get the right consistency.
5. Chop the reserved crispy leeks and cut the potatoes into small cubes, then pour the soup into serving bowls. Place the leeks, potato cubes, chopped heated hazelnuts on top of the soup, and the half sprigs of both rosemary and thyme as a garnish. Add more salt and pepper to season, and serve to your dinner guests!

Beef wellington with parsley and thyme

The main course amongst our British recipes with summer herbs is this delightful English classic from food blog Kitchen Stories.

Ingredients

• 10g of parsley
• 10g of thyme
• 10g of marjoram
• 1kg beef tenderloin
• 1 tablespoon of pepper
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 shallot
• 1 clove of garlic
• 300g mixed mushrooms
• 50g of butter
• 100ml of white wine
• Half a teaspoon of salt
• 120g of bacon
• 400g of puff pastry sheets
• 1 egg yolk
• Flour for dusting

How to make

1. Rub the beef tenderloin with freshly ground black pepper, then heat some olive oil in a large frying pan until hot. Brown the beef on all sides for around 10-12 minutes, then set it aside to cool.
2. Finely chop the garlic and shallots, then chop the herb leaves roughly. Finely cut the mushrooms into cubes, then add the shallots and mushrooms to a large frying pan, pre-heated with the butter and the remaining olive oil. Sauté until the mushrooms and shallots turn translucent.
3. Pour white wine over the mixture then add salt and the roughly chopped herbs. Keep sautéing for around 10 minutes until the alcohol has evaporated. Remove the pan from the heat, allowing it to cool.
4. Lay plastic wrap on a cutting board and place half the bacon slices in the centre. Spread the mushroom paste over the bacon, then put the beef tenderloin on top. Spread the remaining mushroom paste over the beef and cover it with slices of bacon. Tightly wrap the beef with mushroom paste and bacon by wrapping up the plastic wrap. Cool it all in the fridge for around half an hour.
5. Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F. Lightly flour a work surface and roll out the puff pastry into a rectangle. Take the beef from the plastic wrap and place it lengthwise in the middle. Wrap the pastry around the beef so the long sides overlap. Fold in short sides and tightly seal to create the pre-cooked beef wellington.
6. Place the wellington on a lined baking sheet, brushing it with egg yolk. Bake the wellington in a preheated oven at 180°C/350°F for around 10-15 minutes. After that time, reduce the heat to 120°C/250°F and continue to bake for another 10 minutes, until the wellington has a golden finish. Remove it from oven and allow to rest for around 10 minutes. Enjoy with other delicious roast dinner food – like that in our ‘herby little Christmas’ blog post.

Royal summer trifle with fresh mint

How to make

1. The first step is to make the jelly. Place the gelatine in a small bowl and cover it with water before setting it aside to soak. Then, taking a pan, tip in the sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice and 400ml of water. Put the pan on a low heat and simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Once it has, add the 500g hulled strawberries and bring the mixture to the boil before reducing the heat again for another five minutes. Once the hulled strawberries have broken down completely, pour the whole mixture into a jug through a sieve. Next, take the gelatine bowl you set aside earlier and squeeze the excess water into the strawberry mixture until dissolved, then stir in the drop of red food colouring.
2. Take the custard and pour it into the base of a big trifle bowl and put the cake pieces on top. Drizzle over the berry cordial and scatter the raspberries on top. Then, being very careful, pour over the jelly mixture. Place the trifle bowl in the fridge to chill for around five hours until set.
3. Once the jelly layer sets, it’s time to make the orange cream layer. For this, put the sugar, cream and orange zest in a pan and simmer over a low heat until simmering, then turn up to a medium heat and stir in the orange juice. Pour this mixture through a sieve over the jelly layer in the bowl, and place it back in the fridge to set. This should take another four or so hours.
4. Finally, whip the vanilla bean paste, double cream and icing sugar together using an electric whisk, and dollop the newly whipped cream over the trifle. Put this back in the fridge yet again to chill for a round an hour. While this is chilling, take around half of the 250g fresh, non-hulled strawberries and cut them in half vertically as per the image above, scattering them on top of the trifle. Last but not least, place the orange slices and the remaining whole strawberries in a bowl, and scatter the mint leaves over them and the trifle!