"Intestines" (Halloween Food)

(Pictured near the middle there...)

This is just long slips of puff pastry stuffed with whatever you want, squirreled up into a baking dish to look like neatly-packed intestines. The key point is that after you've packed it all in, you get a thin brush and paint on 'blood' with red food colouring - it's surprisingly effective.

The stuffing can be anything from savoury mince mix to nuts and custard. Just not too runny to be packed in. Could be fruity, could be sausagey, could be stuffing mix with apricots and pinenuts.

The sheets of puff pastry should probably be cut no thinner than about 15 cm wide, or you'll have trouble keeping the stuffing in. A lot of recipes for this insist that you lay the whole thing out into one long strip before winding it up - this isn't exactly necessary and makes it very difficult to transfer to the baking dish. Just flummox the seams in when you put it into the dish and save yourself a lot of trouble - spend a little more time painting on the fake 'blood' instead, much more worthwhile.

Mummy Dogs (Halloween Food)

Hot dogs, wrapped in pizza dough, and baked.
(remember to let it rise first after wrapping, of course).

You can make suspicious-looking eyes with dobs of mustard.

Perfect for the Halloween season.

Spider Bread (Halloween Food)

Just pizza dough (or really any bread dough you want), shaped into a ... yes... spider shape.

Well if you really want a pizza dough recipe...

450g bread flour
1 tsp instant yeast
1.5 tsp salt
1.5 tsp sugar
280 ml water
3 tbsp olive oil

Bread makers are usually best, aren't they?
Enjoy.

Savoury Paris-Brest

Small amount of choux:
100g flour, 80g butter, 160ml water, 2 eggs 200c.

This is a marvellous discovery. It’s so unusual and tasty I’d definitely recommend it as a vegetarian dish that confirmed carnivores will be more than happy with. Looks cool, too. We served it with a mixed four-bean salad to make it a very rounded (ha ha, just saw the inadvertent pun) dish nutritionally – went together nicely, too.

OK, so what it is is a large choux pastry ring stuffed with roasted veg. I looked up the curious name, and found it was made (typical French style) in honour of one of those endless bicycle races they have – the ring is meant to look like (you guessed it) a bicycle wheel. Usually this is a sweet dish: cream, custard, nuts and stuff.

Further – and oh joy of joys – all pain has now been taken out of making choux pastry! I was encouraged to attempt this (after decades of leaving choux well alone) by the extraordinary prowess of Leo and his choux buns (six years old for anyone who doesn’t know and happens to be reading this). Hats off, Leo. However, I couldn’t be bothered to do the whole manual thing with the eggs, and instead bunged the roux into the magimix and tack tack tack add the eggs as it does the work. The other thing I hate about making choux is the horror of piping the sticky stuff through bags and getting covered with it, bags splitting, straining and puffing. Well, instead of that, I just tipped the stuff into the lovely Kugloph mould the Camel cave me a while back, and retired. It rose up beautifully – perhaps not quite traditional shape result but does one care? Looked cool. Ten minutes from getting the ingredients out to having washed up the dishes. Now that’s easier.

As for the roasted veg – the usual suspects. Aubergine, peppers, courgettes, roast, peel, chop up into bit-sized pieces. I mixed them on this occasion with some chopped basil and a good amount of sun-dried tomato. Cut the choux ring in half when its done, and stuff the bottom with the veg mix, top with grated cheese (I mixed ours with some fresh oregano, made it rather tasty), return to the oven until the cheese has melted and pop the other half of the ring back on. Serve.
Oh, some measurements: for the choux (I did half quantities of this for us three, it was more than ample):

• 10tbsp butter, 1 cup water, 1 ¾ cups plain flour, 6 eggs, pinch of salt.

Melt the butter with the water in a pan, bring to the boil, take off the heat and add all the flour to make the roux, mix until it forms a nice ball. Introduce to magimix. Stir a little to cool down, add the eggs one at a time. If you want you can pipe, if not spoon into the prepared tin, bake at about 200 in the first instance and turn down little after its risen a bit. Takes about 30 minutes in all. Make sure the pastry has had time to dry out properly on the inside.

I don’t think you need quantities for roasted veg, do you now :)

Corned Beef

Now by Corned Beef I mean the Australian style of corned beef, which is a large slab of beef that has been salt cured, just like a gammon – NOT the British tinned stuff. First time we cooked this we had no idea what it was, so we shoved it on the barbecue – actually even that was nice but by jingo dingo this’ll blow your socks off.

Like a gammon, it goes very well with cloves. Put the whole thing into a pressure cooker, brown it off, then add a couple of cups of wine and a cup or so of water, some onion cut into large chunks, some bay leaves, plenty of cloves, a generous dollop of golden syrup (yes you heard me), pop the lid on and go away for the next couple of hours. That’s it, really, extract and slice and serve with veg of choice.

You can also make a divine sauce with some of the cooking juices and some mustard and brown sugar – just thickened down, not a great deal else. It’s already so tasty you don’t have to do a thing. Absolutely lip-smacking.

Ovened bean-veg with Nutty Rice and EggMato

You’ll need:

• Butternut squash, red onion, garlic, lima beans (broad beans), corn kernels, brown rice, random chopped nuts, an apple, 1 tomato and 1 egg person, possibly a bit of fetta and pesto.

For your ovened veg:

• Chunk up your butternut and red onion, oil up with some crushed garlic, make introductions with the oven until they soften to the idea of being comestibles. Meanwhile have your corn kernels and double-podded broad beans ready- and add them when the other veg are nearly done.

For your Nutty Rice:

• Cook your brown rice in plenty of salty water, drain if necessary, heat it up again with your random chopped nuts and a chopped apple. Season.

For your EggMato:

• Get a LARGE tomato per person, slice top off (reserve), hollow out, season, add a smidgeof feta and pesto if there’s room and the ingredients, break an egg into each tomato (whole), put the reserved top of the tomato back on and pop in the oven. It does take a surprisingly long time considering it’s only tomato and egg – I’d allow them 20-25 minutes of cooking time in the general scheme of things. If you don’t put the fetta in be sure to season well.

The whole lot makes a very interesting-textured ensemble, lots of stuff going on there. Good health points too, I’d imagine. Have fun!

Lentil Lasagna

First, catch and immobilise your lentils. You need to do this by boiling them slowly in some very good stock – I had some excellent beef stock and it did the trick nicely. On this occasion, using a mix of Green lentils and Red lentils – the green ones take far longer to cook, so simmer these slowly until almost completely done, then add the red. Don’t cook the red for any longer than 20 minutes or they’ll turn into mush.

Once this is done, prepare your sauce base – a nice bit of mirapois, can of tomatoes, good bit of seasoning, and a generous cup of red wine – simmer it down, then add the lentils. The longer they can sit there with the heat turned off (possibly even in the fridge overnight) the better – it takes time to get to know a lentil properly.


Armed with this sauce, make the lasagna as usual – the white sauce and the lasagna sheets rarely change. Cooking it slowly on quite a low heat gives it all time to mulch through without burning on top. You can also prepare it quite a while ahead, and it can just sit there, quietly expectant in the oven, ready for you to turn the heat on. Always lovely served with a nice salad. Enjoy.

Italian White Bean and Chicken Stew

Rather nice one, this – very hearty, but still quite nice and ‘clean’. Recommend for cold days when you want to set the grumps aside.

Need:

• plenty of chicken red meat, off the bone and cut into chunks

• Cannellini beans

• Onions, fennel, garlic, fresh tomatoes diced, plenty of courgette

• Basil and oregano (fresh).

1. Coat the chicken chunks in oregano, season, brown. Extract from pan.

2. Thinly slice onion and fennel, soften (I added a carrot – didn’t do any harm and a bit of colour).

3. Return chicken to pan, add a bit of stock, simmer down (the broth, not you).

4. Add cannellini, chunked tomatoes and courgettes, minced garlic. Season to taste.

5. Mix in reserved fennel tops chopped, and the basil (actually I forgot the basil – was really nice anyway).

Served this one with little bread-balls from a basic pizza dough.

Poached chicken in citrus Wakame Broth

All the comfort of Jewish Chicken Soup, minus the schmaltz, plus Thai freshness and clarity. One to be enjoyed in health and in sickness.

1. Prepare a stonker of a good chicken stock. Any free-range chicken carcass will do.

2. Soak 5g of wakame in some water, drain when rehydrated, and chop coarsely (swearing optional but keep the chunks to about 2-3 cm square).

3. Chop and mince the Usual 3 (garlic, ginger and chilli). Also add a couple of kaffir lime leaves… Just discovered they sell these things in jars, shredded and preserved.. SO much better than the desiccated items we’ve been forced to use so far, really give a kick.

4. Add to the 1 litre of the stock, and poach a couple of chicken breasts in it (this is for 3 very hungry people). For about 10 minutes, then let cool in the broth for another 10 while you:

5. Cook the soba noodles (100g approx). I see no reason why one wouldn’t do this in any residual stock you may have left – plus extra salt.

6. Strain the noodles. Extract the chicken from the stock and slice/shred thinly, and then strain the poaching stock of its store of solids. Return to pan.

7. Chop some bok choi, put into the strained stock, and simmer ever so slightly just to take the rawness of – heat it up, even.

8. Montage time. Combine wakame, some fresh bean sprouts, the bok choi, the strained noodles and the chicken together with the stock and add 80ml of zesty fresh lime juice, and a couple of spoons of Nam Pla. Technically you’re meant to assemble this in the dish and pour a bit of the stock over it but judicious scooping from the well-mixed pan should probably do it. Fresh, zingy, light yet satisfying. I believe the Health Points are at pretty much maximum level. Enjoy!

Baconed Pui lentils with Garlic Cabbage

Fantastic Autumn dish, I thought. Note of caution, I think it was the stock that really made this one, I don't think I'd make it with stock cube. I tend to chuck stock-bones in the freezer just as they are these days, and use them for stock when we need them. You don't even have to defrost them, just bung them in a return a few hours later, it's very easy and the stock is better fresh, I reckon. Yesterday did some pork stock with some gristly, fatty bones and just an onion and loads of very wilting celery – onion with skin on, just chopped. Plenty of salt pepper and bayleaf. How unappetising can it sound... it was just divine stock. Slow simmer in the background for nearly two hours. Well enough about the stock, I'm sure you can make your own, and all you have to do then is:

Soak the pui lentils in it or not, as you feel inclined – soaking will of course reduce cooking time and tend to make them cook more evenly. Cook until tender – hopefully you'll measure your lentils and stock so that most of the liquid is absorbed.

Fry up some chopped red onion and bacon – quantities as you see fit. Tip the result into the lentils.

Boil up some finely shredded cabbage (not too much). Meanwhile deglaze the fryingpan with a bit of white wine, and as it's reducing in the onion and bacon juices squeeze in plenty of crushed garlic, so it cooks through but doesn't get burned. Leave a bit of liquid in there. Then tip in the drained cabbage. Serve with the lentils.

SO tasty.

Corn Fritters

We rarely do stuff like this as I tend to view it as 'fiddly' - was very pleasantly surprised by these. A bit of a different serving of carbohydrate when you just want a little something to be a pleasant side-kick. Would happily have them as a snack in themselves, actually, with a bit of mango chutney or something. Didn't take long at all. For really-quite-enough-and -leave-some-over for three people, we did

• one corn on the cob
• 1/2 cup flour + 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 90ml milk
• 1 egg, separated
• bit of green onion

Take the kernels off the cob. Whisk the egg white. comine the flour and so on with the milk and egg, then add corn kernels and egg white. Dollop spoonfulls of batter into a frying pan - large as you like but I guess about like oversize blinis or... well, small patties. Shallow fry a few minutes on each side - you don't need much oil at all, they don't stick much - rather like pancakes, I suppose.
We had these with steak, green beans, and I think a salad - it all went rather nicely.

Fenel and blood orange salad

Slice your oranges (or ruby grapefruit, in this case) into bit-size chunks, and arrange on plate with thinly-sliced fennel.

Add rocket, black olives. Drizzle over with olive oil lightly. Tasty-zingy-yummy.

Gnocchi

Oh well, this is a staple but worth posting. They turned out rather well today, actually.

• 450g boiled, mashed old potatoes
• 175g plain flour
• 1 egg yolk
• 15g butter (melted)
• Salt and pepper

(serves about 3-4, depending on how hungry you are)
Combine ingredients into a nice dough, roll into a sausage and thence cut up into suitable bite-size gnocci. My grandmother used to roll them on a cheesegrater to make them bobbly on top, and I believe nowadays they are sold in packets with a sort of slash-marking on them. It doesn't actually make a difference - I usually just chuck them straight into the salted boiling water until they float nicely and then scoop them out. Done. Very easy and un-fiddly.

Serve with pasta sauce and a nice sprinkling of cheese. Or you can do the whole pesto-starter thing, or in fact use them for anything you want. One word of caution - I swear these things grow in size after being ingested so don't eat until you're full or you'll be in trouble later. Take it easy on the portions, although usually they're very tasty so it's a tough thing to do.

Mediterranean Oodge-whack Pasta

Well what is one to call it. This was one of those fortuitous discoveries - we had a lot of grilled peppers and aubergine salad left over so we chucked it in with some pasta and feta. My goodness, tasty or what. Anyway, to recreate the experience...
make your 'salad' (and yes, this is a great salad in itself...) - roast slices of aubergine in the oven , slice. Grill all sorts of peppers until their skins blacken, let them cool and taken their skins off, slice. Mix these two up with chopped good quality  fresh tomatoes, a squidge or two or fresh garlic (I do ours through the garlic press), dress, and hopefully let it stand for a little while. You can add some basil if you want, but it's got plenty of flavour already.
If you haven't already eaten your delicious salad, then boil up some pasta, and combine the two - if you've got some feta or halloumi all the better. A dob extra of olive oil never goes amis, eh? Enjoy!

Braised chicken with Lemon and Honey

Another lemon-chicken variation - different enough though to have a seperate entry. You cut up a chicken into pieces, and fry off and brown them on a high heat, extract. Fry up a sliced red onion on a lower heat, in the same pan. Add 12 cloves of garlic (peeled but not cut up) during the last minute of frying. Return the chicken to the pan with the garlic and red onion, add 1 lemon cut into cubes, 200 ml ish of chicken stock (we didn't have any fresh so we used powdered stock and wine instead), and 125 g honey, and simmer away for a good 15 minutes or until the chicken's done. Then extract the chicken once more and put under a grill to toast up again while you turn the heat up on the remaining sauce and bubble and reduce away. Serve the chicken with the reduced sauce poured over and some fresh organo leaves on top.

It's a right hum-dinger of a way to serve chicken, and we had it with 'Shepherd's' salad with feta and some slices of sourdough bread (homebaked today, mind you, homebaked...).... divine.

Greek 'Shepherd's' Salad with Feta

Don't know why this is particularly pastoral (except perhaps for the feta thing) but it's DAMN tasty, really recommend it with the Braised Chicken with Lemon and Honey (or indeed, just on its own - I could eat this till the sheep come home).

Combine: a tin of chickpeas, a good-size cucumber (non-seed variety), a decent chunk of feta, a bit of flat-leaf plasley (actually we fogot this, it was lovely without), 1 chopped green pepper, and a good handful of black olives. Dress them in a standard and pedestrian manner, and serve.

This is a truly excellent salad. It's so delicious and moreish you quite forget how healthy it is - which is, sickeningly healthy.

We had it with the Lemon and Honey chicken and it goes perfectly.

Lemon Steak with Tomato and Garlic Beans

Not much to this, but pretty damn tasty. Just the way we like it.

Beans: boil your beans briefly, and add them to a mix of lightly oil-fried crushed garlic plus tomtatoes chopped (or even tinned ones) and reduced down somewhat.

Steak – do as you will.

Serve with lemon.

Here we also had with two types of salad (though small), the main of which was baby spinach, peas, red onion finely diced, bit of feta, very light dressing. Yum.

Hope you all have as fine a repast of it as we did!

Barbecued Prawns with Melon, Spinach and mint Salad

Well we also served these with quite a few other things but actually the best ones were as follows:

Skewer your prawns, either shelled or not. We found shelled and marinated in a mix of garlic, sesame oil, ginger, soy and honey was pretty good. Barbie.

Cube your 'rock melon' (I think it's honeydew in the UK), mix with baby spinach leaves and a small amount of fresh mint. No dressing necessary at all.

We also did a dip of garlic, olive oil, and basil. The mild flavours seemed to set off the prawns admirably. Recommend.

Also served with a side of roasted whole sweet potatoes, simply sliced lengthways when very done and buttered and seasoned. Then sliced into …. well, slices. We're not technical here.

Deliriously engaging dish. Palate-ticklingly tasty. Enjoy.

Citrus Steamed Barramundi with Potatoes

A good dish, and a simple – with the one caveat that you really, REALLY must season the potatoes very well. They absorb a terrific amount and really need it.

Original recipe says foil parcel lined with greaseproof paper – I assume this is so that the potatoes won’t stick to the foil but really we found it was fine just with the foil. First, peel, slice and boil some potatoes so that they’re reasonably tender. Then prep and grease the foil the dish will be baking in. Layer the potatoes on the bottom (seasoning very well). Then lay your barramundi fillets (or whatever white fish you have to hand) on top, and put in some lemon balm, or mint, or even basil - or a combo – knock yourself out. Top with segmented (peeled) citrus slices – orange and lemon in this case I think. Finally, add your beans (we believe these just went on raw, and cooked very nicely in there). Wrap up nicely and cook in manner of your choice – oven or barbie.  Dish out at table. You can also do these in individual portions, of course. We went for family style.

Pork in white wine and milk

Now the pic for this one does NOT do it justice. This is an absolutely divine dish and we can’t wait to do it again. Thoroughly recommend.

Season your bit of pork (meant to be shoulder but I think we just had a portion of leg), brown it with some onions and garlic. Add some white wine, perhaps a bit of water. Then pressure cook until tender. Extract pork and chop up into bite-size pieces. Meanwhile add some milk to the sauce and reduce. Add some Worcester sauce and a bit of nam plah (hardly traditional Veneto ingredients but sure as hell worked wonders.) When reduced, return the pork to the pan.  We served it here with some salad with grapes (went very well with the pork) and some beans.

UPDATE: Porked this up (rather than beefed it up) with some carrots and aubergine, added vegeta and lots of fresh oregano, and after extracting post-cook, thickened the sauce with cornflour, and shredded rather than cubed the pork. Was pretty good with Gnocchi alla Romana and the green beans. Holy cow that photo looks frighteningly authentically Roman, but seriously, it's cool. 

Citrus Pork with Barbecued Fruit and Veg

I thought I was following a recipe here but can't find it at all - must have been drunk at the time. Turned out pretty darn good so here it is.

Get a hunk of pork (suspect ours was some part of leg from the huge bone in there but don't actually know) and pressure-cook it generously with a fair deal of orange juice, some wine, seasoning, thyme and bay, and zest and flesh of an orange and a lemon. While that's doing, put some peeled, cubed and seasoned bits of sweet potato on the barbie and start them off. Also, peel and segment some apples, toss in lime juice, skewer, and sprinkle with sugar. When the time is right, put these on the barie too.

When the pork is cooked very nicely, remove the meat and set aside. Strain the remaining sauce through a sieve and proceed to boil down like there's no tomorrow. While you're doing this, trim the cooked pork of any excess skin/fat and put it  on the barbie together with the other stuff to crisp up nicley. Meanwhile, put in a load of pak choi in to boil (it only takes a short while).

Serve drizzled in the reduced sauce - it's really tangy and tasty.

Divine Bonito with Chard Mountain and Citrus Salsa

Simply fantastic meal, can’t remember if we’ve ever had bonito before – lovely sort of cross between tuna and mackerel, gorgeous. All we did for this was:

Fillet your bonito, season, oil up the fish-sandwich barbie thing (see pic) and cover the flesh side with slices of lemon. Put on barbie.

Boil up copious quantities of chard, and dress with olive oil, lemon juice, seasoning. Actually though in retrospect we discovered that wasabi goes extraordinarily well with the earthy flavour of chard, and will endeavour to work this into our future dressings – in moderation of course so we don’t blow our heads off.

Make your salsa of diced grapefruit and ripe tomatoes.

Serve all in a fantastic and colourful pile of deliciousness. Don’t even think of putting any carb on here, it’s absolutely unnecessary. Really tasty stuff.

Panzanella (bread salad)

Lovely salad that we had with the octopus and rocket (below). I'd thoroughly recommend it when you want some greens but also want just that little bit of carb to kick things in, the bread is much more amenable to absorbing flavours and juices than, say, potatoes, and is lovely for an added texture as well. Very simple, just:

Get some nice tomatoes (as nice as you can get), and cut them up with some cucumber, tear in a good load of basil, dress (plain on salt-olive-oil-pepper-balsamic), then toss in nicely crisped croutons. Was meant to be sourdough in my recipe but I was too mean to shell out specially for it so we just toasted a Vietnamese Roll all cut into chunks - was divine. That's it. Don't be fooled by the simplicity, it's great - try it!

Rocketing Cephalopods (a.k.a. Octopus and Cuttlefish Salad)

Fantastic stuff, much recommended. We mixed the two different ones as they only had one octopus at the fish market when we went, but actually it’s a nice combo.

For the octopus –

Clean, segment more or less, and you’re meant to marinate in thyme, lemon juice oil and wine ... but we didn’t get round to it. I would recommend doing it though. We were short of time so we pressure cooked it. Stuck it in a broth of red wine, bit of oil, seasoning, thyme, lemon (well more or less like the marinade would have been) and cooked away for a good half hour of pressure so it’s all nice and tender. Then drain, and set aside.

For the cuttlefish –

Clean, and cut into long ‘worms’ sideways on – and marinade briefly in lemon juice, olive oil and seasoning. We just left it sitting while the octopus was busy in the pressure cooker.

Once you’ve got the cooked octopus and the marinated cuttlefish, grill them all on the barbie. (or flash fry, if you’re in colder climes).

Meanwhile, wash some rocket, and arrange on a plate. Also prepare a dressing, we went with:

Lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, a smidge of garlic paste, a bit of dill paste, a bit of chilli – anything to give a bit of zing and a bit of lift, choose as you please.

Serve the cephalopods dumped on top of the rocket and spoon on the dressing as you please yourselves individually. Gosh this was good, and went exceptionally well with Panzanella (which I shall endeavour to stay awake to type out too).

Lemon chicken

Lemon chicken

Pre-heat oven to 160 gas mark (very slow if elec.) Put chicken pieces (preferably thighs) several unpeeled cloves of garlic, fresh thyme, two lemons cut in eight pieces in roasting tin , sprinkle with oil and white wine and pepper; mix all together, make sure chicken pieces are skin side up, cover tightly with foil and roast for 2 hours. Remove foil and roast for 30-45 minutes longer at 200 temp. Turns out brown and almost caramelized. Scatter more fresh thyme on top. Delish and simple.

Guanciale di manzo (o Maiale)

Guanciale

Put a 2 inch thick layer of smallish pieces of onion, celery and carrot at the bottom of the saucepan with a knob of butter and a spoonful of oil, cook for a short while. Dredge in flour some pieces of cheek of either beef or pork or veal and brown. Place on top of the vegetables, pour over a generous glass of white wine and cover with vegetable stock (stock cube and hot water quite acceptable) . Simmer gently for 2 hours, the chunks of cheek will be very tender and tasty. (Alessandra’s recipe).

Courgette Ribbon Salad

You've seen this before no doubt with additions of carrot, possibly steamed, all the like. Well it's fine on its own as well, and quite raw. Use your potato peeler to great effect to cut thick, long ribbons of courgette - probably avoid the seedy middle bit. Dress - pleb salt oil pepper and balsamic works beautifully. Serve.

Asian-ish Slaw

Actually very nice indeed. Usual slaw base of grated carrot and finely shredded white cabbage. Ah but it's the dressing. Good dollop of peanut butter (yes, peanut butter), and loosen it up with plenty of lime juice and a bit of balsamic vinager. Pop in a spoon of sugar or so to taste. Bit of salt too. Bit of oil - was meant to be sesame but we didn't have any yet so I just used olive - was fine. Dress your salad and add some salted peanuts. Cruncha-yuumalisious.

Minty Watermelon Salad

Just that. We were short on salad materials (or so I thought) so I looked up watermelon salad and it apears that this is a modern staple. Very nice - only mainly they serve it with feta. Now I'm not sure about feta, but I'd do halloumi - and black olives would be nice as well. Or you can do it with basil if the mint is too strong for you. Cube your melon and add ingredients as desired.

Spag Sauce

Now, no-one needs a recipe for Spag Sauce - but it's top-comfort-food of millions and as we had it tonight I thought I'd put an entry in. There's no need for a reipe but here are some offerrings of Thoughts on the Subject of Spag Sauce.

• As a personal preference, I like to soften the onions and then whizz them with the tomatoes - I think it makes the sauce a bit more inclined to stick to the spag.
• Please don't 'hide' vegetables in the sauce. Carrots don't belong, as far as I'm concerned. Ratatouille with mince is not my idea of spag sauce. It's just not right. If you want your family to eat more veg, give them some fruit to start with, or some crudites with a nice dip, serve them summer pudding for afters, give them a fruit shake, anything  - or just have a different dish. (O.K., re-reading this, I may have been a bit extreme. Very finely diced carrots, in moderation and cooked very thoroughly, are pleasant and add to flavour. It's when harrassed mothers use it as a cloak for sneaking in several bus-loads of vegetables that simply don't belong there that I have an objection).
• If you have very young clientelle, it's a good idea not to brown the mince on putting it in. If you mix it in raw when you've (as above) whizzed the onions and tomatoes, it'll not form any of the mincy-lumps that toddlers don't like at all, and will be ingested more readily.
• Plenty of herbs, plenty of tomato puree, plenty of wine, and plenty of bubbling. Spare not on the bubbling. And don't leave out the wine on account of small children - by the time it's bubbled down there's not a trace of alcohol left but the taste is infinitely improved, which can only lead to better culinary education of the young.
• Reasonable quality mince is I think the best. Gourmet super-lean stuff just tastes too aggressive and doesn't give enough comfort on the grease front. Super-cheap rubbish at 25% fat is just disgusting. Standard run-of-the-mill workaday mince is the best in my opinion.

What are your opinions on Spag Sauce?

Barbecue Chicken with Chermoula Rub

Turned out pretty darn tasty. Definitely recommend - very nice way to add some interest to our old friend the Chicken. (Cluck.) Now, the recipe I have says just to spatchcock the bird, marinate, and barbecue like that. We found (as is so often the case) that of course the breast cooked much faster than the brown meat - not aided by the fact that spatchcocking brings the breast in closest contact with the grill in the first place. So next time we'll be jointing it up and putting the brown meat on first, so that it all finishes at the same time (don't want to overcook the breast either, do we). What you'll need to do is:

• Get a chicken (free range, please, we're not into torturing birds, just eating them) and joint it up.
• Make the rub, of:

Fresh herbs: coriander, parsley, 3 cloves of garlic, chopped fresh ginger (plenty of all the herbs) and
Dried herbs: 1 tsp each of paprika, cumin powder, coriander powder, salt
Combine into a good rub with the juice of 1/2 a large lemon and good slosh of olive oil, and add chopped chili as well to taste (I put some in and Lara was fine, seems to blend in quite nicely).

• Ensure that the chicken and the rub become very intimately acquainted and cover them to consider matters together for at least an hour. We left it for about two hours while we went to the beach, seemed to work just fine.
• When you're ready, stick it on the barbie. We served this with rice but you can of course do as you please. I would however recommend the salsa we made to go with it, which was:

a base of finely diced tomato, green pepper and red onion, seasoned with salt, lime juice and olive oil - with the particular flavour of the day being fresh mint and sultanas. Went really nicely with the spicy chicken. Make plenty of it as everyone wants more!

Grilled sausages, squash and sweet potato with salsa

Pretty straightforward stuff but thought I'd whack it on as it's always nice. Looks sparse to say the least on the plate but actually turned out to be extremely filling.

You'll need:
Sausages, some butternut squash and some sweet potato, a bit of thyme, and stuff for the salsa.

• Peel the squash and the potato, season and dress with olive oil and some fresh thyme. Introduce to barbie.
• Slightly later, introduce the sausages to the barbie as well.
• Meanwhile, prep the salsa - I think this day it consisted of finely diced tomatoes, yellow peppers, scallions, a bit of fresh basil, and later I mixed in some chili just to spice things up (but left it out of Lara's).
• Serve.

Osso Bucco

First time I've cooked this so was expecting a horrid mess of huge toughness and tastelessness - but actually it was OK. Italian people, please correct us and tell us what horrid mistakes and transgressions we've made - I'm sure there are plenty, but in the meantime the result was pretty pleasant.

Also, many thanks to the Woofie, who has added the following details to the piece from a Proper Italian point of view, and they sound very sensible:

"My bible suggests a couple of additions to your recipe, dredge the meat pieces with flour as well as seasoning before browning, and add 3 or 4 anchovy fillets with the garlic at the end before sprinkling with parsley and grated lemon rind. As it is a Milanese dish it should be served with yellow rice(saffron, if you should become rich one day)."

Prepare:

• Chopped carrot, celery, and red onion (it said leek but I didn't have any - red onion turned out rather nice). I did one of each for a three person serving, turned out OK. Also finely chopped garlic, and some nice fresh thyme sprigs.
• A pot with chicken stock (about 750ml for three portions), a couple of bay leaves, grated rinds of a lemon and an orange, and a good blurge of passata (the recipe said finely diced and seeded tomatoes but I had forgoten to buy any).
• And of course, your osso bucco pieces. You'll also need a load of parsley for later.

Then:

• Get your osso bucco pieces and season and brown them, then take out of the pan.
• Brown off your prepared and chopped veg, then add 100ml of what was meant to be Madeira but actually turned out to be just white wine (that's all we had), reduce a bit.
• Add in the browned osso bucco pieces and  cover the lot with the chicken stock/bayleaf/citrus zest/passata or tomato scenario.
• Bubble quietly for an age and a half (about 2 hours at least) until everything is looking extrememly mulched and thick.
• While it's bubbling away in a very fragrant manner, prepare a gremolata by chopping up a load of parsley very fine, adding to it the juice of half a large lemon and a finely chopped clove of garlic and some olive oil. It's meant to be either combined in a food processor or pestle-and-mortared into a pulp but as we currently have neither option I just chopped slightly manically and combined with vehemence. It seemed to work just fine, cannot say for certain whether verbal imprecations add any material fineness to the product but it's always worth a shot.
• Served on this occasion with boiled potatoes and carrots (with the aforementioned gremolata drizzled seductively on top). Pretty damn fine, actually.

Ocean Jackets with Random Linguini

Ocean Jackets are the most extrodinary looking creatures when they've got their heads on, but they're inevitably sold without heads or insides here are are also (very pleasantly) incredibly cheap. I believe that's because they're local and available year round. They've got fantastic meat, which I would personally value far above boring bream or much more expensive stuff like that. Anyway, they work very nicely foil-wrapped on the barbie, just slashed across, seasoned and sauced in chopped dill with a dash of white wine for company. Nothing else to it.

• Get your white fish, season it and slash it as above mentioned with finely chopped dill and parcel it up with some moisture to keep it going on its 15 minutes or so on the barbie / oven.
• Get some linguini going, you can add stuff like diced tomaties and some basil and olive oil once they're cooked to liven them up a little.
• I seved these with some snow peas, but you can do exactly what you want with them.
• Enjoy.

Can I just say...

No recipes to contribute today as we only had store-bought pizza and a variety of salads - all very nice and convenient and tasty but not of culinary note. HOWEVER, it really does strike us that the pizza-cutter / pastry-cutter that we recently acquired through purchase of a K-mart 'homestarter' pack of kitchen utensils is JOLLY USEFUL. Why in the world it would cut pizza so much better than a very good quality knife, we are at a loss to fathom. We don't know. Nevertheless, it does. I recommend one. We both agree that in the general course of things, we would never have bought one as we would regard such items as useless frippery and pointless outlay of expense for something we could do very well with other utensils we had already. Our opinions stand revised. Pizza cutters rock.

Condiments to the Chef (a.k.a. Veg and Tofu Rice)

Well well, this was surprisingly OK actually - especially after being condimented and generally pepped and whaleboned to the hilt (hence the alternate name). It's a permanent problem when you've got very differing degrees of heat-tolerance among your clientele. We meant to serve it as rice/tofu with barbecued veg, but it was raining so we called that off and just fried the veg instead.

First:
Make a marinade of 2 tbs honey, a crushed garlic clove, (meant to be preserved lemon juice but I couldn't find preserved lemons so used lime juice instead, always nice), balsamic vinegar, bit of fresh chopped chili, possibly harissa (couldn't find any again) and marinade the tofu in it while you cook some rice and either grill or fry your chosen veg (think peppers, red onion, courgettes, that sort of stuff).

Then:
Combine. Serve.

We recommend serving with a selection of the following: crushed chilies from a jar, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, lots of fresh ground pepper. I'm sure you could think of other things as well. Fact is it's pretty mild but a good base to pile zing on, and really you can't score many more points for healthiness than this one so go for it.

Glazed 'monkfish' skewers with udon noodles

Well I've never seen monkfish on sale here so really any firm white fish. On special offer today at our local was hake, so we used that and may I say they were delicious. I didn't even bother to cube them, just sort of cut and trimmed the fillets into equal-thickness slabs about half a fillet wide (important to get them the same thickness when you're barbecuing or they don't cook properly), and skewered them. Saves them falling apart later. Anyway once you've laid hands on your 'firm white fish' what you've got to do is:

• Skewer the fish (as above mentioned) nicely for the barby / grill.
• Make a basting sauce of 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp tomato puree, Juice of 1 lime, 1 tbsps clear honey, 1/2 tsp (teaspoon, just in case you get carried away with the tablespoons, it's powerful stuff) nam pla, 1/2 tsp chili oil (actually I didn't have any and just dropped in a little Tabasco, works a treat), and some fresh chopped coriander - as much as you like I guess. Lather it onto the fish and grill at an appropriate time.
• For the noodles, boil/steam up your udon noodles with pak choi added appropriately (the noodles will generally cook in about 10 minutes, the pak choi in about 5). Serve the fish atop finished noodles.

n.b. There was a lot of the marinade left when we did this, so I gave it a good little sizzling in a pan and poured on top. Well worth it, lots of flavour there.

This was a good little dish, very tasty but mild and I think some interesting textures there, a little different and quite appealing to a wide palate, I'd imagine. We'll certainly be having it again!

Lamb deliciousness in Pittas (vaguely Middle-Eastern)

Sorry there's no pic for this but we ate it before I could whip the camera out. Anyway not really a thing of beauty but damn fine.

First:

• Marinate your fantastic Australian Lamb Slabs (still haven't actually read what it calls them on the packet) in copious lemon juice, fresh chopped mint, seasoning and supposedly harissa but I didn't put it in for Child reasons. If you can't get fantastic Australian Lamb Slabs do your best with whatever flat cut of lamb you have.
• Prepare some rocket and if you will some other salad leaves. (That means washing). (Vaguely).
• Open a packet of Pitta breads to hand, just in case you get too drunk later to lay hands on them.
• Make sure you've opened the tub of tasty hummous and laid it out somewhere to hand.

Then:

• Locate your husband and get him to fire your barbecue up. (ooh er). The Lamb Slabs will then miraculously appear cooked in about 10 minutes. In the meantime, lay the table and pour some more drinks.
• Get the pittas grilled up too, and combine the lamb, pittas, salad leaves and some hummous in an extremely messy and delicious envelope ensemble.

Now do you understand why there were no pics?

Chicken Peanuts (Satay Chicken with Oriental-ish Rice Noodles)

Bit of a cheat really, as I only used a packet of satay marinade. However, I believe these are readily available world-wide so:

First:

• Marinade your chicken-chunks in satay sauce (mine said two hours - what does yours say? I ignored mine and marinaded for about ten minutes, it was great).
• Prep up some sliced peppers, mange tout, fine-sticked ginger, whatever you feel like putting in with your rice noodles. Probably don't make it more complicated than a couple of veg).
• My recipe said some lemon zest and some scallions as well - they go in after you've fried up anything you want to fry.

Then:

• Skewer your chicken chunks and barbecue / grill.
• Prep your rice noodles - mine said 2 minutes' soak in water and and don't expect yours will be much different.
• Fry up any of the veg you want to.
• Drain your rice noodles, add to the veg, add the scallions and lemon, pour on some soy sauce/peanut oil, and add some nuts - preferably dry salted peanuts in this case, I'd guess. Arrange on a plate.
• Put the ready chicken on top. Serve. I find alcohol usually helps as an accompaniment.

N.B. - This is the very-tame-version for those with children not accustomed to anything hot. Naturally, chili flakes/slices etc would certainly not go amiss in this. However, as our circumstances differ, I just served it with a bottle of chili sauce on the side. Works wonders.

Seared Squid with Citrus and Mango Salad

Prepare:

• A mango, peeled and sliced.
• Squid tubes (about 1 largish one per person, depending on how hungry you are) - sliced down the side and into halves, then criss-crossed
• A mix of 1 tsp Nam Pla, 1 tbs soy sauce, juice 1/2 lime, and plenty of chopped fresh coriander
• 1/2 a red onion, finely diced.
• Some salad leaves of your choice.

Then:

• Gently fry the onion and once it's soft add it to the fish sauce mix.
• Arrange the salad leaves (no need to dress) (the salad that is - the rest is your choice) and the mango on plates.
• Fry the squid rapidly on a high heat (or barbecue) - take off heat as soon as it curls up. Should be no more than 3 minutes max. Don't cram them, fry or grill in batches if necessary.
• Return all the squid to the pan, add the fish sauce mix and stir. Take off the heat at once and arrange over the plated salad, pouring over the pan juices. Serve with wedges of lime.

You wouldn't believe how filling this is, and no carbs to speak of! Lovely, recommended.