One Sunday In January

A cup of tea to wake me up…


...then a mushroom omelette to start my day...



…grapes for vitamin C…

...time for a little snack...

...a chicken in a pot…

…then feet up with a glass of champagne and trashy TV.

Tuna Steak with Chilli Lemon Rice and Balsamic Rocket

Lemon and chilli are great flavours with tuna and this dish is zingy and fresh.

Chop up a red onion and a pepper and fry them in chilli olive oil (or a chopped chilli in plain olive oil) for a few minutes. Stir in however much rice you want and the juice of about half a lemon, ensuring the rice is coated well. Add enough water for your amount of rice (usually twice the amount of water to rice), bring to the boil then put on a lid and simmer for about 10 minutes until the rice is cooked through. Drain the rice then add more lemon juice to taste and some chopped parsley.

Pan fry the tuna steak for a few minutes each side (depending on the size of your steak). It won't take long to cook at all and be careful not to over cook it - keep it still pink in the middle.

Serve with rocket drizzled with a little balsamic vinegar.

Mmm....Marmite

Good old British Marmite. According to the marketing campaign people fall into one of two categories; they either love it or they hate it. There is no in between. And I think that’s absolutely right. This is not the sort of taste you sit on the fence about. There is nothing subtle about this dark, sticky spread made from yeast extract; it’s strong and full of punch and it will produce an equally strong reaction when it hits the taste buds.

Personally I love Marmite, but one way and one way only - spread not too thickly on hot, generously buttered toast. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. THAT’S the way to start the day, along with a mug of steaming tea or coffee. Perfect.

Leek and Potato Soup

Chop 3 or 4 leeks and roughly the same amount in weight of potatoes. Purists use only the white part of the leek but I’m not fussy about using it all, unless perhaps I’m hosting a dinner party.

Put a knob of butter in a pan on a low heat. Add the leeks and potatoes and sauté for a few minutes. Add about a litre of vegetable stock, or just enough to cover the leeks and potatoes. Bring this to the boil and simmer until the potatoes are tender. Season and blend.

If you want a richer soup add some cream just before you blend.

Sunshine After The Storm

We’ve had some beautiful weather this weekend, here in the South Eastern outskirts of London. Stunningly beautiful clear blue skies and glorious sunshine with cold, crisp winter air. Such a contrast to the terrible storms of last week.

According to the weather reports though, a cold snap is about to bring the first true winter weather to Britain in the form of plummeting temperatures and snow. I think I’ll make some soup to take into work tomorrow, to give me some home comfort in the office and warm me up from the inside.

In the meantime I’m going to savour the wonderful sunshine while it lasts.

Good Things Come In Small Packages

Dinner this evening was roast poussin. I’d picked up one each for Rob and I and they’ve been sitting in the fridge since I brought them home looking small, plump and delicious.

Poussins are young chickens which are usually spatch-cocked or roasted whole and served one per person. They are tender and succulent with a delicate flavour.

It seems wonderfully decadent, having a whole chicken to yourself, even if it is a very small one. Add small, whole potatoes and carrots and you have a whole roast dinner all to yourself on one plate! Fabulous.

Lemon and Herb Poussins Wrapped in Bacon

Put slices of lemon and a few herbs, such as sprigs of thyme and rosemary, into the cavity of the poussins. Go careful with the herbs - you don't want to overpower the mild flavour of the poussins. Season the birds and place slices of streaky bacon over the breast.

Parboil some new potatoes for about 5 minutes then put them in a roasting tray with the poussins along with some whole, peeled shallots and small carrots such as chantenay carrots.

Pour a glass of white wine into the tray and drizzle some olive olive oil over the vegetables.

Roast at 200c for 40-50 minutes until everything is cooked through and the poussin juices run clear. If the vegetables need a little longer remove the poussins from the tray and turn the heat up to finish the vegetables off. Just cover the poussins with foil to keep them warm.

Make a gravy with the juices from the roasting tray by removing the excess fat and adding a little chicken stock. The flavour from the wine, shallots and lemon make this a delicious gravy.

Who Ate All The Grapes?

On my way into work this morning I picked up a box of seedless white grapes* from Marks and Spencer to eat at work. They had to be seedless, I can’t be doing with pips - far too much hassle. And very undignified to be spitting out pips at your desk, don’t you think?

I do like grapes and these ones looked particularly good – plump, crisp and firm. Irresistible. I’d barely sat down and turned on my computer before I began mindlessly picking the grapes off one by one and popping them into my mouth, my eyes leaving the screen for the briefest of moments. Biting into their crispness and bursting them in my mouth, savouring the sweet juice as I read another email. Delicious. Addictive. Very addictive. ‘There are a lot there’ I thought to myself at one point, ‘Better not eat them all’. Hmmm...by the end of the day they were gone - all 600 grams of them. Now that’s just pure greed. Still, better grapes than chocolate.

Grilled Swordfish, Buttered Spinach and Crushed Charlotte Potatoes with Spring Onion

I put this together for dinner this evening and really liked the combination of ingredients. The potatoes tasted creamy and were boosted by the sea salt and slight kick of the spring onions. Buttered spinach and lemon juice are perfect with fish anyway but they also complimented the potato dish.

I adapted the potato recipe from a Gordon Ramsay one. I used charlotte potatoes which I boiled until tender and drained. I then crushed them with a fork and mixed in sea salt and a couple of sliced spring onions.

The swordfish was pan fried in olive oil for about 5 minutes each side and then I squeezed over some lemon juice. I wilted the spinach in a saucepan over a low heat with a knob of butter, and squeezed the excess liquid out before serving.

Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Mozzarella and Wrapped in Bacon

You can see why this dish is so popular, it's easy, it tastes good and it's something a litle different to do with chicken breasts which, lets face it, can be a bit boring.

Rob prepared this tonight by cutting slits in the breasts lengthways, stuffing them with sliced mozzarella and then wrapping them in bacon. You could use a different cheese for this and parma ham instead of the bacon if you like.

Once the chicken breasts are prepared, into the oven they go, on a baking tray or in a dish in case of spillage, at 180c for around 30-40 minutes until cooked through. Simple!

Good Home Cooking On A Blustery Night

Britain has been battered by storms over the last two days. Yesterday saw the kind of wind that pushes you along faster than your feet can keep up with when it's behind you and stops you in your tracks like an invisible wall when in front of you. It eased off today but picked up again this evening.

The sky has been grey, trees fell on train tracks, teenagers on the dark streets shrieked in mock terror, rain flooded parts of the country and umbrellas broke against the wind. This is the kind of weather that you shut the door against and shelter from.

I had one thing on my mind as I travelled home tonight - major comfort food in the form of chicken risotto (with kale, which I decided to add when I saw it sitting in the fridge). This has perfect comfort food ingredients – butter, chicken, rice – and it left me feeling full, sleepy and happy, which is exactly what I expect from comfort food.

Chicken and Kale Risotto

Put some chicken stock in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. I'd say put on about a litre of stock but you may need less or more, depending on how much rice you're using.

Next, sauté a chopped onion in butter and olive oil until a little softened, then add risotto rice (I used 160grams for 2 people) and stir well to coat the rice with the butter. Add a good slosh of vermouth and again stir well.

Chop 2 chicken breasts into bite size pieces and add to the pan. Fry until the chicken turns white, stirring the rice to ensure it doesn’t stick or go dry (if it starts to just add a little stock to the pan). Now add a ladleful of the hot stock to the pan. Stir until the rice absorbs the stock then continue to add the stock a ladleful at a time, stirring all the while. About halfway through add chopped kale and seasoning.

Once the rice is al dente and creamy and the chicken is cooked through add no more stock and take the risotto off the heat, then stir in a knob of butter and parmesan cheese. Check the seasoning and serve.

Food Sin Number 6

In this heavenly world of food us foodies pride ourselves on wholesome, home cooking with good, fresh produce. Let’s be honest, there can be a certain smugness that comes with knowing that we don’t survive solely on ready meals, takeaways and oven chips, that we know how to whip up hearty meal from scratch and that our saintly shopping baskets are filled to the brim with vegetables, herbs and pulses.

But take another look at that basket. Move in closer, push the olive oil to one side and lift up the organic fish. What’s that underneath? Could it possibly be……no, surely not? Not JUNK FOOD? Oh yes my friend, guilty as charged.

You see there’s a seedy underworld in this gastronomic paradise. It’s the dark side, where temptation lives and submission is rife. Debauchery, that’s what it is. Shocking.

For some, it’s the sweet, sugary chocolate (or candy bars for our US friends) that breaks them. For others, the salty snacks and for others still it’s the towering takeaway giants that beckon – the burgers, the fried chicken, the (horror of horrors) kebab in the early hours of the morning. You won’t hear a foodie admit to this very often, of course not, it goes against the grain, it’s the unspoken, it’s everything we abhor…isn’t it? Well yes, but even us foodies are weak sometimes. It’s true and I hang my head in shame. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

Now I’m not saying that ALL foodies submit to the odd, er…what are we calling it…indulgence, but its out there you know – it happens. At the end of the day, some of the junk just tastes so damn good. It does, it really does. OK we wouldn’t want to live on it, goodness no - what an atrocious thought, but every now and then is ok, isn’t it? Sort of a reward for being so good the rest of the time. Yes, I think we can talk ourselves round to believing it’s ok. But, um, don’t tell anyone will you? Let’s keep this confessional to ourselves.

Crispy Roast Pork Chinese Style

Belly of pork is fabulous for a chinese meal. The piece I used for this still had the ribs attached so I cut off them off first and cooked them along with the rest of the pork.

Cut the belly of pork into strips and rub them with Chinese 5 spice powder. If you're using the ribs too treat them the same way and put all the meat in a roasting tray skin side up. Roast in the oven on the highest shelf at 200c for 20 minutes. The skin should be nice and crispy at this stage.

After 20 minutes turn the ribs over and remove the fat from the tray. Add a glug of light soy sauce and rice wine vinegar along with some water (make sure the water doesn't cover the skin). Roast for a further 30 minutes or so until cooked through.

Remove the pork from the roasting tray and spoon off as much of the fat as you can. Reduce the rest of the liquid until you are happy with the taste, not too much or it will be very salty.

Spoon the cooking juices over the pork and garnish with sliced spring onions. Serve with egg fried rice and greens, such as purple broccoli, stir fried with sliced garlic.

Creamy Sausage Linguini

Half an onion, then slice each half, and fry slowly until softened and taking on some colour. Remove the onion from the pan, then fry off a handful of pancetta (or a couple of chopped slices of bacon) and again remove. Now add 6 chopped sausages and brown them.

Once the sausages are browned put the onion and pancetta back in the pan and turn up the heat to colour the onion a little more. Add a small pot of double cream (about 284ml) and the same amount of beef stock, along with the leaves of a couple of sprigs of thyme and a bay leaf. Season, using a good amount of pepper.

Bring the mixture to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook until the sauce reduces and thickens. Remove the bay leaf and woody sprigs of the thyme.

In the meantime cook some linguine, then serve it with the sauce.

This is filling and will easily serve 4.

Breakfast.....Any Time

Bacon and eggs (in the form of a plain omelette) make a great breakfast. Or lunch. Or light dinner, or late night munchies snack, or....

Tea for One

I’m not a big tea drinker. I don’t like heavy, strong teas and I can’t stand tea with milk. But the one tea I really do like is the light and aromatic Earl Grey. A few years back I was very much into aromatherapy and it was the essential oil of bergamot in Earl Grey that enticed me.

Rob is a fan of the stronger English Breakfast tea, which he likes milky with sugar, so we have opposite tastes where tea is concerned. To make things easier and to accommodate our different tastes we use tea bags. Most mornings I have coffee anyway.

But every now and then I like to indulge in a small pot of loose Earl Grey tea. I bought myself a pretty china ‘tea for one’ pot which makes me feel rather elegant. I like the ceremony of counting out the spoonfuls of tea into the pot, pouring on the hot water, stirring it, popping the lid back on the pot and leaving the tea to brew. I feel like I’m winding back the years and embracing the very English tradition of making and drinking real tea. On these occasions I like to sit back in the afternoon with a book and the tea pot on a table beside me, taking a little time out to be still whilst sipping the soothing drink and inhaling its beautiful scent.

A Delicious Steak Marinade

Massage your steak with soy sauce and crushed garlic cloves and leave to marinade for at least 30 minutes, but the longer the better.

This really is tasty and although it uses soy sauce, it doesn't have to have Chinese accompaniments such as rice - I often have it just with chips. It's a variation on a Nigella Laswon steak marinade and it's fabulous.