Colour on the menu

Blue risotto: Make risotto with blueberries, an Italian specialty.

Browning chicken: Add a teaspoon of sugar in the margarine/fat when you fry the chicken. This makes the skin a lovely brown and deliciously crisp.

Browning meatballs: Add 1 teaspoon sugar in the meat mixture, this gives you beautiful brown meatballs.

Carrot coloured butter: In the Middle Ages they used carrot juice to give butter a more appetizing yellow colour in the winter when the cows weren’t grazed. This is still a really simple way to put a little pep in the butter.

Cocoa brown icing: Add a couple of drops of colouring; the icing will be a lovely brown colour without affecting the taste.

Coloured homemade pasta: Add carrot juice if you want yellow pasta; ink if you want black pasta; tomato paste if you want red pasta; spinach if you want green pasta.

Colourful vegetables: Add 1 tsp baking powder to the cooking water; this helps them keep their colour.

Dark brown sauce: Add a little tomato paste for a deeper, more intense brown sauce.

Envious green bean: If you add 1 tbsp of oil or a little baking soda to the boiling water, your beans will be as green as envy.

Gravy: If you want your gravy to be appetizingly brown, brown the flour in the oven first.

Purple eggs: Boil the skin from red onions together with the eggs.

Red beets and yellow carrots: If you have to cook them together, wrap them in aluminium foil. This prevents the colours from leaking and transferring over to each other.

Red icing: Decorate your birthday cake with icing coloured with raspberry juice.

Red rice: Buy Chinese red yeast rice, grown with the yeast, Monascus purpureus, on the rice. Don’t worry. It’s non-poisonous of course.

Violet coleslaw: Use beet coloured carrots instead of the usual orange ones.

White rice: With a few drops of lemon juice to the boiling water, the rice will be impressively white.

Yellow cakes: Add a few strands of saffron to your pound cake to make the batter a beautiful yellow colour.

Yellow rice: Add turmeric, this gives you an inviting yellow rice.