September 2025 favourites list

Welcome to this month’s collection, focussing on recipes. The change in season has brought with it a change to what I want to cook and eat. The start of the new academic year has brought with it a new cohort of keen, enthusiastic students. Unfortunately, it has also brought with it the dreaded start-of-term bugs. I have succumbed to a cold-flu-Covid type bug which has messed with me in ways I won’t be sharing any further.

To all my friends who are involved in education (be they teachers, lecturers, students, or pupils), I wish you Happy New Academic Year. To my Jewish friends, Happy Jewish New Year! I hope we all have a healthy, happy, successful, and fun year ahead! If you are not involved in education, consider this a friendly mid-year boost to your motivation and energy. 

Casserole pot with beans, tomatoes and Nduja

I hope you will enjoy these seasonal selections, and my photos of recent home cooking adventures. 

White beans with tomato and Nduja

Food articles

Jay Rayner reviews Apna Punjab in Southall and now I want kulchas and daaba dahl. https://archive.ph/BibI1

Kavey reviews the new edition of Sri Owen’s famous and influential cookbook on Indonesian food. https://www.kaveyeats.com/indonesian-food-sri-owen

Recipes

We’re getting into soup weather, so here are some high protein plant based soup ideas to snuggle into: https://www.stylist.co.uk/fitness-health/nutrition/high-protein-plant-based-soup-recipes/1017645

Lentils always make great protein rich soups, here Meike shares her recipe for a fennel and garlic flavoured lentil and tomato soup: https://www.dorothy-porker.com/filling-easy-fennel-lentil-soup/

The Man In Black Johnny Cash shared his recipe for Old Iron Pot chili, and now I an imagining him and June Carter Cash tucking in at home when he wasn’t on tour: https://www.uso.org/stories/86-from-the-uso-cookbook-johnny-cash-s-old-iron-pot-chili

Recipes for Salsa Macha, Salsa Verde, Salsa Roja and Pico de Gallo to bring colour and flavour for your next taco dinner: https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/cooking/salsa-styles-recipes

 

Nduja and tomato tagliatelle

Sticking with the theme of Mexican inspired food, here is a recipe for Fajita inspired chicken stuffed peppers (the spicing and flavouring echo those used for fajitas): https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/7923409/fajita-inspired-chicken-stuffed-peppers/

Bibimbap, the colourful Korean dish, is the perfect way to get all your food groups in, while also looking great. This is Judy Joo’s recipe from her show Korean Food Made Simple: https://www.lovefood.com/recipes/57355/simple-traditional-bibimbap-recipe

Why do meals in a bowl seem ultra cosy? I can’t explain it, but this recipe for sesame chicken thighs, sesame ginger sauce, and cucumber salad sitting on a bed of rice is just what an autumn evening dinner is all about. https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a64020043/sesame-ginger-chicken-bowls-recipe/

Harissa and herbs flavour the tinned butter beans overnight in this marinated butter bean salad; one to make and take to work: https://www.realsimple.com/marinated-butter-bean-salad-11774401

 

Bangers and mash with veg and Yorkshire pud

The Urban Rajah shares his Uncle Guddu Chachu’s beloved family recipe for Gunpowder lamb patties; spiced mince lamb parcels encased in pastry: https://www.lovefood.com/recipes/57931/gunpowder-lamb-patties-recipe

Rukmini Iyer’s Cooking Tin cookbooks have made quick dinners for families easy. Here is her recipe for Crispy butter bean, chorizo and cos salad with coriander: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/aug/25/crispy-butter-bean-chorizo-cos-salad-quick-easy-recipe-rukmini-iyer

What you might have missed at Snig’s Kitchen

My recipe for Italian sausage pasta using the high meat content pork sausages available in Italian delicatessens:  https://snigskitchen.blogspot.com/2025/09/italian-sausage-pasta-recipe-post.html

 

Lamb and squash tagine with couscous

My mini blog post on Tom Kerridge's Spanish inspired recipe for Barbecue pork chops with spicy white beans: https://www.tumblr.com/snigskitchen/790710841641205760/barbecue-pork-chops-ms-recipe-ms

My Doll brand Hello Kitty Dim Sum Japanese prawn flavour instant noodle review: https://snigskitchen.blogspot.com/2025/08/doll-hello-kitty-dim-sum-noodle-review.html

Please note: as with every monthly Favourites List, all of these items have been selected by me simply because I love them. I do not receive any money, benefits in kind or other incentive for posting these links or recommendations.

Italian sausage pasta – a recipe post

This has been a recipe I’ve been messing with and tweaking around for some time. There have been several scrawled hand written ingredient lists and methods left around on dog eared bits of paper. I am a fiend for reusing paper, so some versions were written on the back of printouts of Powerpoint slides for my classes. It’s all reusing, right? But when I dig them up again, they’re always a funny reminder of how the facets of my life are so very different.

The variations I have explored are: fennel sausages or plain? Garlic or no garlic? Wine or no wine? Cream or no cream? Tomato puree and tomatoes or just fresh tomatoes?

 

[Other variations could be: basil or oregano? Wine, vodka, or no alcohol at all? Parmesan or Grano Padano?] 

 

The sausages here are not just British bangers. These are Italian sausages with very high (pork) meat content, making them very dense. This is why I think they’re perfect for skinning and crumbling up into a sauce. I like the fennel flavoured Italian sausages, but if you don’t like this flavour, use plain.

 

In the end, this is what I arrived at. The tomato stem part of the recipe was inspired by seeing “Roasting Tin” cookbook author Rukmini Ayer on the TV saying that her top cooking tip for intensifying tomato aroma and flavour was to save up the stems and add to soups, sauces and stews. It was a solid cooking hack I have been using ever since. (Don't forget to fish them out before serving, though!)

 

 

 

Serves 2

 

Ingredients

2 echalion shallots, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, peeled, sliced across their width with the slices cut into 3 or 4

4 Tuscan sausages or 5 smaller Fennel Italian sausages

250-275g cherry or similar small, ripe tomatoes, diced

Any tomato stems you may have

1/4 (quarter) teaspoon dried oregano or half a teaspoon of fresh

60 ml white wine

1/2 teaspoon plain flour

60 ml double cream

3 tbsp fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

250g dried pasta of your choice, I used bronze die extruded fusilli

4-5 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

If you don’t have fennel sausages and like the flavour, a pinch of fennel seeds

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

 

You will need

Two saucepans, a colander, a fine grater, Knife/chopping board

 

Instructions

Put some water on to boil to make your pasta. Add salt to the water.

The sausages need to be peeled and crumbled up first. I use a sharp knife to cut the skin along the length of the sausages very shallowly, so the skin can just be pulled off. Break up into chunks.

 

 

 

Add the olive oil to a frying pan on a medium heat. Fry the shallots for 5 minutes.

 

Then add the garlic and lower the heat. Cook for 3 minutes.

 

At around this time put your pasta on. Cook it to the Al Dente time on the packet if you like it cooked. Or take a minute or even two off the Al Dente time if you like it Al Dente. (It will be cooked again at the end.) Drain the pasta and reserve a little pasta water in case you need to loosen up the pasta and sauce later. Do not rinse the pasta!

 

Now add the sausage meat, raising the heat back to a medium heat. If you want to add the pinch of fennel seeds, add them now.

 

Fry off for 7-8 minutes, until they have changed colour. If you've crumbled up into small pieces, you might need less time here.

 

Turn the heat off and take everything out of the pan, leaving on a plate near the hob.

 

Put the heat back into a medium high heat. Now add the wine to the pan. When bubbling, add the flour. Stir thoroughly. Keep stirring until you can't smell raw wine any more.

 

Add the tomatoes and any stems and oregano and cook for 5-7 minutes. You want the tomatoes to start breaking down and for the juices to escape the tomatoes and begin to thicken.

 

Add the sausage meat back in and combine thoroughly. Make sure the meat is heated through.

 

Once warmed through, add the cream, stirring constantly. Once combined, reduce the heat to low.

 

Now add the chopped basil and mix through. Remove the tomato stems.

 

 

Add the cooked pasta. Mix everything together, keeping it moving. If you think it needs loosening up, add some of the pasta water and mix through to the desired consistency. When all warmed through, and at a hardness you like your pasta at, serve in bowls. Top with the Parmesan cheese.

 

 

Enjoy immediately.