Hi! Thank you for reading the first ever post here at Amuse Your Bouche. This will be a place for me to share some of my favourite recipes – a combination of simple home cooking that I make up as I go along and more complicated dishes that I actually have to look at a recipe for (even though it pains me to do so). I thought to get started, I’d share some recipes that demonstrate my 5 favourite ingredients, so that you can get an idea of what you can expect from this blog, and so that I have an excuse to cook some of my favourite foods over the next few days.
1. Garlic
There are some foods that I am not willing to make sacrifices for. For example, I’m rarely willing to spend hundreds of calories and inflict a lot of sugar on my teeth just so I can eat a biscuit. I don’t like biscuits; it’s just not worth it.

If it means I can eat something involving garlic, however, I will happily sacrifice human contact for the remainder of the evening to avoid ending up with some sort of garlicky reputation. If I had my way, every savoury dish would involve at least a few cloves of garlic. It’s one of those flavours that I never get sick of, even after a garlic-heavy dish like the one that follows. I may or may not have also served this with garlic bread. 


This creamy pasta dish feels incredibly indulgent, but in reality the small amount of cream is the only guilt-inducing element. Because the flavours in this sauce are so strong, you only need a small amount; you don’t need to completely coat the pasta in the same way that you would with a blander sauce. The juicy mushrooms stop the pasta feeling dry, even with only a drop of sauce.


Creamy garlic and mushroom tagliatelle

Serves 4
400g tagliatelle
50g butter
300g mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 onion, finely diced
6 cloves of garlic, finely minced
Black pepper
200ml double cream
1 vegetable stock cube
Handful of parsley, finely chopped
Cook the tagliatelle in a pan of boiling water according to the packet’s instructions.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large frying pan, and gently soften the garlic, onion and mushroom over a low heat. Season well with black pepper (no salt is needed because you’ll be using stock). After a few minutes, crumble in the stock cube and add 3 tablespoons of water. 
Continue to heat gently until the vegetables are soft (around 10 minutes).
Immediately before serving, add the cream, the parsley and 100ml water. Bring to the boil, and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
Drain the pasta and serve immediately with the sauce and a little extra fresh parsley.