Never Mind the BBC — Here Are 14 Years of The Flexible Chef Recipes. All 1,018.
Fourteen years. 1,018 published recipes. Nineteen more in draft, because apparently I can't stop.
I started The Flexible Chef in 2012. The site is older than my wood-fired oven, older than my campervan Florie. It has outlasted three WordPress rebuilds and at least one post I wrote in a moment of romantic optimism. The butterflied sardines. More on that shortly.
What hasn't changed is the cooking. Flexible, curious, mostly solo, always honest about where an idea came from. If I adapted someone else's recipe, I say so. If I substituted an ingredient because that's what I had, I say so. If I ate it standing over the sink because there was nobody to impress, I probably said that too.
So. Fourteen years. Here are six recipes that, for me, mark where the food — and the life — was at the time.
The Butterflied Sardines (2013)
The first recipe I'm still proud of. Gutted, de-headed, butterflied by pressing the backbone out with your thumb, then crumbed with Parmesan, fresh herbs and a little red chilli. Two minutes a side. Serve immediately.
The original version signed off with: "P.S. To all males. If she doesn't fall in love with you after this then you may have to think of moving on."
It was 2013. The sardines survive. The sentiment has been quietly retired.
Butterflied Sardines Recipe with Crispy Chilli Pepper Breadcrumbs
Pasta Farfalle with Smoked Salmon, Prawns and Tangy Tomato Sauce (2014)
A year later and I was eating this on my roof terrace. Farfalle with smoked salmon, king prawns, butternut squash, carrots and a tomato sauce with enough edge to balance the richness of the fish. It sounds complicated; it isn't. The URL is a small novel but the dish is straightforward.
Some recipes are documents of a moment. This is one of them. A roof terrace, good pasta, the sun going down somewhere over Jaén.
Pasta Farfalle with Smoked Salmon, Prawns and Tangy Tomato Sauce
Boxing Day Escabeche — A Light, Bright Prawn Starter
Most people spend Boxing Day finishing the leftovers. I'd rather start fresh. This prawn escabeche — sharp, fragrant, cold from the fridge — is the antidote to everything heavy that came before it. The sort of dish that makes you feel virtuous after two days of doing nothing of the sort.
It also happens to be one of the most Spanish things I cook, which, after fourteen years in Andalucía, feels about right.
Boxing Day Escabeche — A Light, Bright Prawn Starter
The Nearly Series — Homemade Condiments and Sauces
Not a recipe. A philosophy. The Nearly Series started because I kept making my own versions of things I couldn't buy — or couldn't buy here — and wanted to be honest that they weren't exact replicas. Nearly Colman's Mint Sauce. Nearly Lee Kum Kee Black Bean Sauce. Nearly McCormick's Umami Seasoning. Nearly Deroni Lutenitsa.
There are twenty-four of them now. It's become, without quite meaning it to, one of the things TFC is most known for.
The series generates its own conversations. A reader named Paula, writing from Australia, recently suggested an improved method for the Nearly Branston's Pickle — steam the vegetables separately, mix the sauce, combine and refrigerate to mature rather than boiling everything down together. She's right that it produces a better result. That's the best kind of feedback: a reader who's cooked it, thought about it, and made it better.
The Nearly Series — Homemade Condiment Recipes
Vanlife Spain — Steak, Shade and Sanity in the Sierra de Gredos
Florie is a Fiat Ducato with a two-ring burner and an 85-litre fridge with a small freezer compartment. Cooking in her requires economy, ingenuity, and a willingness to eat at a folding table with your feet in the grass.
The Sierra de Gredos post — steak cooked on the burner, eaten in the shade with the mountains behind me — is the one I reach for when someone asks what the campervan cooking series is really about. It's about eating well in unlikely places. That's all it ever was.
Vanlife Spain — Steak, Shade and Sanity in the Sierra de Gredos
Aubergine Curry with Base Gravy (2025)
Fourteen years in and I'm still learning. This one came out of a proper deep-dive into British curry house technique — the base gravy method, which sounds industrial and tastes extraordinary. Aubergine soaks up the gravy better than almost any other vegetable. Serve it with rice or flatbread and tell nobody how simple it actually is.
If the 2013 sardines show where the cooking started, this one shows where it's going.
Aubergine Curry with Base Gravy
What Comes Next
The gut health strand is growing — fermentation, resistant starch, prebiotic ingredients woven into the everyday cooking rather than treated as a separate dietary category. The campervan series keeps running as long as Florie does, which at six years old and 115,000 kilometres, should be a while yet. The Cooking Through History series has 13 posts and a lot of civilisations still to cover.
And there are 19 recipes sitting in draft right now, waiting to be finished. I mention this not as a complaint but as a statement of intent. The curiosity that started this hasn't gone anywhere. Neither have I.
More than 4,500 people find their way here every month. That number is rising. Fourteen years of free recipes, no ads, no paywalls — and if you've ever cooked anything from those 1,018 and want to say thank you, you can now buy me a coffee. It would mean a lot.
Here's to the next thousand.
Phil The Flexible Chef, Casa Adora, Jaén
Wonky photos, proper food, genuine adventures — The Flexible Chef.
Phil Morrison has been cooking and writing from Casa Adora in rural Jaén, an off-grid plot in Extremadura, and the road — since 2012. This is his 1,018th published recipe.
