roast pork

Delicious, savoury roast pork. The porky prince of Sundays. Except I had this on Saturday. Er.....

I watched Jamie's programme on British pork, and immediately raced out for some Freedom Food British shoulder of pork from Sainsbury's. Can't recall ever having roast with shoulder before, usually loin or leg. So it was an experiment.

Following Jamie's recipe, I scored the fat for crackling and smeared it with coarse salt. It went in the oven on a very high heat, then after half an hour turned it down to a normal-ish 180C. At this point the skin was all puffed up. After another hour I piled the baking tray with celery, carrots, red onions, sage and bay and plonked the pork back on top. After about another hour and a half the pork was as above, golden-dark and dripping with flavour. Crucially it was also possible to pull the meat apart with fingers - therefore done. I put the meat to one side and covered with foil to rest. (I didn't actually eat it for perhaps another hour and a half).

Meanwhile the tray went on the hob and I put a splash of Marsala in with the veg, scraping away to get all the yummy black bits off the bottom. Once reduced I added veg stock and stirred until I was left with a thick, rich dark gravy. After pushing through a sieve I had a gloriously savoury meat juice.

Served with cabbage, carrots and - what else? - roast potatoes, it was great. Nice one Jamie - support British pigs!

chorizo hot pot

One of those "Feed Your Family For A Fiver" things from Sainsbury's. I can't help but embellish though.

Two onions (two onions? Insanity!) and my old friend, sliced chorizo are fried together til crispy. Then tinned tomatoes, veg stock and some conchiglie are added. This is where I chuck in oregano and paprika, cos it just sounds too bland. Twenty minutes later there's frozen peas in there, and once they're done, we're done.

To my surprise it didn't need any seasoning at all. Nice one J Sains.

chicken and chickpea casserole

I saw this recipe on a low GI recipe website, but it was a little under-developed and felt sure it wasn't going to quite come together. So I embedded a few ideas: a sofritto base of onion and carrots, but that wasn't quite enough. I remember doing an Italian pasta sauce starting with basil stalks, infusing the whole thing with a deep flavour. For this I felt coriander would be  good fit. Whaddya know, tastier than expected: red onion, carrots, and coriander stalks sweated off, then diced chicken, chickpeas, button mushrooms, tin tomatoes, tabasco and chicken stock are added. After 45 mins simmering some lemon juice, soy sauce, salt and pepper and coriander leaves are added for seasoning.

Served with greek yoghurt mixed with lemon juice and more coriander, this was quite satisfying and pretty simple.

chicken curry

Can the world take another generic 'curry' recipe? At least one more it seems.

We kick off with ginger, onions, lentils, turmeric and cumin with 2 pints of water. This is left for 40 mins, then diced chicken is added for a further 25 mins. As seasoning right at the end, cumin seeds, ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt is fried until aromatic, then pounded to nothing and added to the curry with some lemon juice. Turned out pretty good.

The little beige puddle in the corner is one of my fave accompaniments: cashew butter. It's just toasted cashews and cumin seeds blitzed with oil and salt. Yum!

hot cross buns

There was no breakfast for Sunday :( So I refused to go to the shop and make something instead.

I had no idea where to start - I remember Paul Hollywood making some on the superb Good Food Live years ago, and that's as far as I went. I decided to start at a malt loaf recipe and work outwards from there.

I'm writing the ingredients here for my own benefit really: 350g bread flour, packet of yeast, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, 2 tsps cinnamon into which I rubbed in 15g butter. Then I added a couple of handfuls of mixed dried fruit, 200 ml water, 2 tbsps golden syrup and blended until bound. Then turned out, kneaded and stretched until smooth and elastic. After proving and shaping into buns, I gave 'em a milk wash and ovened.

Hot cross buns are traditionally basted with thinned down apricot jam. I possess no such odd preserve so improvised a caramel glaze: water and sugar and a tablespoon of golden syrup boiled until sticky, then the freshly-baked buns were doused in sugary gloop whilst cooling. I have to admit, they were great! Nice toasted the next day too.

garlic bread

Another in the continuing saga of a-bread-a-week: this week, king of doughy accompaniments, much undersold as sweaty baguettes, garlic bread.

Polite Notice: please leave Peter Kay-related gags in 2003, many thanks.

My typical BBQ standby is to slice up a french stick, dip it in parsley and garlicky-infused oil and stick it on the bars of a searing-hot grill until blackened. Chomp and watch oil dribble down your chin.

However I wanted to start right at the beginning today, dough first. A little different to regular batter, a fair gloop of olive oil in the mix, and some dried oregano. As Saturday was a very sunny day the conservatory gave the yeast a real party; the dough had risen enormously! Whilst the second proving went on I gently fried some minced garlic in a freakish amount of olive oil. Not so it coloured, just so it was allowed to sweat aand develop a bit of flavour. I slashed the bread a little to allow the garlic juices to seep in between the bread, then drizzled the oil all over, plus a sprinkle of sea salt. 20 mins in the oven later, I had some pretty bloody good garlic bread. It ended up as a kind of fougasse. It was a real success, it's coming out again.

chorizo and lentil soup

Hot diggity, I love chorizo. So meaty, spicy and god-darned irresistible. I hate those pre-packed sweaty little plastic things, so I always buy mine from the deli counter. Except there I have to plead with the assistant not to slice it into bits, it's always finger-thick slices or rough dice for me.

This wintry soup is a real cracker: fried leeks and chorizo, cooked until softened, joined by red lentils, paprika and stock, then allowed to simmer until everything's tender. Followed by the obligatory blitz. Just to finish it off I seared some reserved chorizo slices until blackened, then rested on top to allow its savoury blood-red juices to drip into the chunky soup.

cornbread

Told you I was only making bread. Though Liam did most of this. We were having a jambalaya and inspired by Simon this was the natural compliment.

I ordered corn meal from Tesco, not realising it's actually polenta, which I have tons of anyway. Ho-hum. Otherwise, it's bread-baking as usual except for the addition of, well, polenta.

Doing it again I'd add more sugar to balance the flavours. It went dry pretty quick, good excuse to squeeze some golden syrup over then.

bagels

I bought a bread book the other day. I've made little else ever since.

I had to try making bagels, such a satisfying and fun food, and so versatile. The bread recipe is fairly standard, flour, yeast, water, yadda yadda, leave to prove etc. But the difference is just before baking to poach the batter in boiling water.

It made for fascinating cooking though the end result wasn't quite like the bagel I expected. Next time, I'd boil them a little longer, allowing the moisture to seep right in before baking out via steam. Whatever happened, they were gorgeous with full-fat Philly.