Last week I talked about the simple pleasures of autumn and I hope you enjoyed the read and possibly picked up a few ideas? This week I thought I would share some comforting recipes with you, some are tried and tested and some are new to me that I will be trying this season - enjoy!

A huge favourite in this house is Simple Beef & Vegetable Casserole - this is a slow cooker recipe and is best done this way as the flavours develop beautifully over time:

Simple Beef & Vegetable Casserole

Ingredients:

1.2 Kg Braising steak chopped into chunks

50g Plain Flour

Olive Oil

2 medium onion cut into wedges

2 medium carrots chopped coarsely

2 stalks of celery chopped coarsely

1 medium parsnip chopped coarsely

1 medium swede chopped coarsely

3 cloves of garlic - less if you prefer!

70g tomato paste

400g canned chopped tomatoes

250ml beef stock

2 dried bay leaves

Handful of fresh thyme

Method:

Coat the beef in the flour and shake of the excess and add to a frying pan with the olive oil. Fry off in batches until browned all over, then transfer to the slow cooker.

Heat a little more oil in the pan and cook the onion, carrots, celery, swede, parsnip and garlic until it starts to soften. Add the tomato paste and stir, transfer to the slow cooker. Add the tinned tomatoes and stock to the slow cooker and stir the mixture together and add the bay leaves and thyme. 

Cook on low for 8 hours. Serve with a green veg and mash or just in a bowl as it is!

Italian Chicken with Cream Cheese and Spinach

A BBC Good Food recipe that never fails and is extremely tasty, you can find the recipe here

Sausage & Cannellini Bean Hotpot

I mentioned this in an earlier blog post as being one of my top 7 go-to meals and it remains one of the tastiest easy dishes you can do! Here it is again:

Serves 4

Ingredients:

8 sausages of your choice

2 large red onions cut into wedges

2 garlic cloves

Pinch of dried chilli flakes

Fresh rosemary

300g can of cannellini beans, drained

150ml chicken stock

160g spinach.

Method:

Fry or grill the sausages until cooked through completely, set aside. Add onions to a pan and cook for 7-8 minutes, add garlic, dried chilli flakes, and rosemary and cook for two minutes. Add the cannellini beans.

Cut each sausage into 3 or 4 pieces and add into the pan and add the stock. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 4-5 minutes. Add the spinach and some pepper and stir through to wilt the spinach then pile into serving bowls. Enjoy!

Butternut Carbonara

This lovely looking recipe is in the latest Tesco Free magazine and you can find the details for it here. I'm hoping to try it out very soon! Yum....

And a lovely sweet recipe now, just perfect for this time of year and simple too, doesn't get much better!

Apple & Blackberry Cake

A recipe from Woman & Home, you can find the details here (doesn't it look so good?!)

Happy cooking....and eating!