Fabulous Three-Course Welsh Menu

This recipe for Crab Welsh Rarebit makes a wonderful snack, or starter. Made with fresh Llyn Peninsula crab, Welsh cheese and Ale, it is so easy to make, and highlights some of Wales's best ingredients and produce.

Use 1 slice of sourdough or good thick, sliced bread per person for a main meal or substantial snack, or half a slicer per person for an elegant starter dish.

Serve with salad leaves, watercress or mustard & cress, and a glass of Welsh ale for the win!

When wild garlic is in season, add chopped wild garlic to the rarebit mixture in place of parsley. Chopped chives also works well in this recipe.

Once the rarebit mixture has been made, you can store it in the fridge for 2 to 3 days, once it is cool. If you are preparing the crabmeat yourself, the extracted crabmeat can also be store in the fridge for 1 to 2 days too, making it a fabulous recipe to pre-prepare.

This recipe for Welsh Chicken in a Mead & Honey Sauce with Leeks is served with Pembrokeshire baby potatoes, and has an option to add baked dumplings for the winter months.

The mead and honey adds a wonderful sweetness, which marries so well with the salty bacon, and enhances the sweetness of the leeks and succulent chicken.

Using locally sourced Welsh ingredients with provenance, this recipe is a real winner, and would be perfect for any family supper to celebrate St David's Day. It would also make a fabulous Sunday lunch dish, as well as a hearty mid-week family supper dish.

Organic Welsh chicken is paired with locally grown Welsh leeks and shallots, which are cooked in a rich mead and honey sauce, before being served with baby or new potatoes.

I try to cook seasonally and shop locally, and when you have some of the world’s best meat, poultry, vegetables and seafood on your doorstep, it makes sense to utilise it, whilst supporting your local community and the people who grow and produce it all.

Living at the neck of the stunning Lleyn Peninsular, as well as vegetables, cheese, sea salt, butter, Welsh mountain lamb and Welsh beef, I have access to the most amazing seafood too, of which our favourites are the Menai oysters and mussels in nearby Anglesey.

Wales, as a whole, and especially where I live in North Wales, is a veritable cornucopia of food and drink, which can be enjoyed in Wales, as well as outside Wales too, of course.

This recipe uses one of Wales’s most popular vegetables, as well as being one of the national emblems of Wales, the leek. Having lived with my maternal grandparents in Northumberland in England when I was little, I know and understand the importance of this humble vegetable, as it is an important symbol of growing and providing food for your family there, as it is in Wales.

There are numerous traditional Welsh recipes that use leeks, such as Cawl (Wales’s national dish), Glamorgan Sausages (Selsig Morgannwg) and Leek Pudding.

The optional baked dumplings are very reminiscent of Welsh oatmeal dumplings, and have herbs added for extra colour and flavour.

And, you don’t have to be in Wales or Welsh to enjoy my recipe! You can use chicken breasts in place of chicken thighs, but I prefer chicken thighs for texture and flavour, and they hold up better in a casserole and don’t dry out.

These delectable and very moreish Welsh Cheeseboard Crackers are made with ready-made puff pastry and Welsh Cheddar cheese.

To get the flat and very crisp finish and texture, you simply bake them in a very "cheffy" way, by placing a baking tray on top of them whilst they cook.

This ensures they don't puff up too much, but, you can cook them without the baking tray if you want a puffy finish.

I used Snowdonia Black Bomber Extra Mature Cheddar cheese last time I baked these. However, any mature or vintage Cheddar (or hard cheese) will work.

These Welsh Cheeseboard Crackers are fabulous with all sorts of cheese, but especially a selection of Welsh cheeses, such as Perl Las (a blue cheese), Y Fenni (a beer and wholegrain mustard cheese), Gorwydd Caerphilly (a farmhouse style Caerphilly chese), Drewi Sant (a mead washed cheese) and Black Bomber of course.

For more Welsh cheeses, that you can buy online, visit The Welsh Cheese Company, who stock over 60 Welsh cheeses, as well as a selection of chutneys etc.

I also served these Welsh Cheeseboard Crackers with some Welsh rhubarb chutney, although I have lots of fabulous homemade chutney recipes on Lavender & Lovage here: Chutney and Pickles.

These crackers stay crisp and fresh in an airtight tin for 2 to 3 days, but as they are so easy to make, I think they are best served on the day of baking, as they do lose some of their crispness after a couple of days.

You have to use the block puff pastry to get the best results, as you can slice off what you need before adding the cheese, rolling and then baking, which keeps the lamination more intact.