Dad's Cuisine

PUMPKIN CAKE You don't have to wait for Halloween to enjoy yourself this tasty pumpkin cake! Spicy and moist, it's the perfect treat now that the nights are drawing in. We invited Dad round for some Halloween fun with the kids. We never really celebrated Halloween when I was a child, so this was a bit of a novelty for him. And since we only really started celebrating Halloween a couple of years ago, it's a bit of a novelty for me too - at least if my pumpkin carving skills are anything to go by. They were truly horrific, and not in the right way. After telling Dad that we were busy carving pumpkins (badly), he told me how much he dislikes pumpkin. Under no circumstances was I to make pumpkin soup. Or pumpkin pie. And if I did, I was not to expect him to eat it.  So instead I made a pumpkin cake and didn't tell him what was in it until after he had exclaimed how delicious it was. After briefly grumbling about being hoodwinked, he asked for the recipe. S

GARLIC PRAWNS IN COCONUT SAUCE Want to impress your friends and family with a succulent dish? Try this easy-peasy dish of garlic prawns in coconut sauce!  I've had a few people comment recently that I haven't added a recipe for a while (rightly so), but this is mainly because Dad has become such a deft hand in the kitchen in the months since we started this project .  He has become an exceedingly enthusiastic cook, looking up recipes and techniques online and ordering obscure spices and ingredients that come with a minimum eight-week delivery period. He practices his recipes a few times, then tests them on me and my family. The results are always highly satisfactory. Admittedly, he sometimes takes experimentation a little too far, as with this particular recipe, when he added chick peas on the second attempt (insider tip: don't add chick peas to this recipe).  I'm not sure where Dad came across this dish, but the whole family is delighted when he announces