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When the weather is hot and you’ve been working hard all day, the last thing you want to do is spend hours in the kitchen prepping and cooking a hot meal. If you feel like something light (that isn’t a salad) and super quick to prepare, try this delicious, fresh prawn stir fry for a healthy quick fix summer meal. Feel free to add or switch out any of the vegetables to suit.

Good things take time, and this traditional Christmas Pud is no exception. It’s not exceptionally labour intensive to make, but there are quite a lot of ingredients and you do need to allow a day before cooking for all the flavours to merge and develop. Plus, you may want to make it well in advance if you are super organised. We provide vegetarian options and substitues for a gluten-free version of this recipe in the ingredients section.

Fruity, spicy and oh so Christmassy, mulled wine may be more traditional in the Northern Hemisphere where the festive season is much colder and more suited to the warm festive beverage. But we recommend you try a glass or two later on Christmas Eve, once all the presents are wrapped and the kids are tucked up in bed, or at the end of the Christmas day when you finally get to put your feet up. You won’t regret it. There are a few unoaked soft and fruity red wines available in New Zealand including Cleanskins Australian Shiraz and Old Fat Unicorm Pinot Noir from South Australia that won’t break the bank, both are available at vineonline.co.nz where you can search for unoaked varietals.

Gingerbread houses are a delicious Christmas decoration, that’s fun to make with the kids and you get to create your own designs with whatever icing and lolly decorations you like. Just make the dough and bake a day ahead to allow your house to harden (no one wants a collapsing gingerbread house!) then assemble with royal icing and go mad with your decorative skills the next day. Maybe you want to do your rendition of the family bach, or if you feel like creating your own grand design there’s plenty of inspiration online. Have fun building.

This colourful salad is a real showstopper and is so easy to make. A little bit fancy and very tasty, It will appeal to even the fussiest of eaters and convert your ‘non-salad eaters’ into salad lovers.

There’s something reminiscent about Lemon Drizzle Cake, spending time in your grandparents kitchen, helping mix bowls of ingredients together, before emptying into a tin and waiting patiently for the baking to be done. Combining the lemony icing and licking the spatula once you get the nod from nana and watching as she expertly ices and cuts serving you the biggest slice of course! This soft, golden, crumbly tray bake so easy to prepare, the hardest thing will be waiting for it to cool before cutting to serve.

If you’ve always wanted to make marmalade but have been too afraid to try, then this fail-safe Annabel Langbein recipe is for you. A great way to use up any extra citrus you may have grown, or picked up in bulk for a bargain. You can use any combination of citrus, even just using grapefruit, as long as it makes 750 grams in total weight. The whiskey gives is a fuller flavour, but you can leave out if you want to, however, it is cooked off so it won’t be boozy!

You don’t have to sacrifice a tasty home-cooked meal, even on those busy weekday nights when you are short on time. It’s a common misconception that risotto takes forever with all the stock adding and gradual stirring until absorbed. But this quick, easy and utterly delicious no-stir risotto recipe has you add the stock, cover with a lid and walk away for 2o minutes. You could bathe a child or even yourself during that time, and return to perfectly cooked risotto that’s ready to serve.