29 June - fig salad and quick pasta

A few days ago, I bought some peaches to make a peach and mozzarella salad I'd seen when I was flicking through a Jamie Oliver book. Sadly though, they're still rock hard - never believe all this "ripen in bowl" nonsense! So instead, I used a couple of figs. There were some pea shoots, the figs, mozzarella and a couple of slices of bresaola, drizzled with a bit of simple lemon and olive oil dressing. To go with it I had a couple of slices of fabulous fresh wholemeal and sesame bread from Hart's. With hindsight, the dressing was perhaps a bit too sharp, but otherwise a great combo.

I was out early evening, so dinner was late, some quick pasta; orecchiette with fresh broad beans, some fried pancetta and mascarpone, seasoned with just a little finely grated lemon zest. It's one of my favourite types of pasta, shame it's so difficult to get hold of.

28 June - Thai green prawn curry with noodles

Tris is working late quite a bit at the moment, so my challenge is to come up with dinners that I can cook and eat at the normal time (before I fade away!), but can then sit happily for him to reheat when he gets in. Last night's pasta worked well and tonight I decided to go for a Thai green curry. The mangetout are growing by the day, so I wanted to include some, but didn't want to overcook them. So I made the curry, adding half of the picked mangetout right at the end. When I served up my half, I fished out all of the cooked mangetout, leaving the remaining uncooked ones in a bowl for Tris to add to the rest when he heated it up. A bit of a palaver, but worth it to appreciate precious home-grown veg at its best!

The recipe I use for the curry is based on one from Nigel Slater's Appetite. When I was buying some of the ingredients for the paste, the girl behind me in the queue commented on what exciting shopping I had. I explained that I was making Thai green curry, to which she exclaimed "What! You make the paste from scratch?!". It's actually really not that difficult, you just bung everything in a blender and I think it tastes so much better than ready-made paste. being a bit of a chilli-wimp, it also means I can control the heat - a bit less chilli, lots of other lovely flavours coming through.

Thai Green Prawn curry
For the paste, blend together:

• two cloves of garlic
• a knob of peeled fresh ginger
• a stick of lemongrass (soft centre bit only)
• some fresh red chilli (I used about 1/3 a big one)
• a big handful of fresh coriander leaves
• a few coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• a little groundnut oil (1-2 tbsp) - enough to make a paste

1. I fry a few chopped spring onions in a little oil in a big wok-like pan, the add the paste and stir it about a bit.
2. Add about 100ml chicken stock and a tin of coconut milk. Simmer gently for about 5 mins.
3. Add a handful of fresh peas - simmer another 5 mins.
4. Cook the noodles (50g per person) in boiling water (according to the packet) and drain under cold water.
5. Add the prawns and the mangetout to the sauce and cook for just a couple of minutes till the prawns turn pink.
6. Season with a squeeze of fresh lime juice, a pinch of salt, a tsp of Thai fish sauce and some fresh mint leaves.
7. I pile the noodles in a deep bowl and pour over the curry.
8. Eat carefully without flicking the sauce because of the bright yellow turmeric!!

27 June - mint tea & sausage and pepper pasta

It was another really hot day today, up around 30C, but very close and sultry. I try to drink plenty of water when it's hot, but it gets a bit boring, so this afternoon I made myself a pot of fresh mint tea. I roughly follow the way I was taught in a cookery workshop in Morocco last year, using gunpowder green tea and fresh mint leaves. You're supposed to pour a little boiling water over the tea first and swish it around until the leaves open out. You then pour that water away, because it's quite bitter. I use my glass Bodum teapot with a built-in infuser, so I put the green tea in the infuser, then the mint leaves in the main body and let it all brew together. With a bit of sugar and served in one of the little glasses we brought back from Morocco, it tasted spot on and really refreshing.

This evening I used up the couple of sausages in the fridge to make a favourite pasta sauce.

Sausage and pepper pasta

• Grill a red, orange or yellow pepper until the skin's blackened. Pop it in a container with a lid for a few minutes (to help steam off the skin), then peel and chop into chunks.
• Fry a chopped onion (mine was red today) in a decent pool of extra virgin olive oil (I think it's needed for the flavour here), with a little chopped or sliced garlic.
• Peel the skin from the sausages and crumb the sausage meat into the pan. If I'm using more sausages I leave it in quite big chunks, but with only two today, I break it up into smaller pieces. Fry gently until the meat is starting to brown.
• Add about 250ml of white wine (although I used an open bottle of rose today and it came out fine), plus some fresh herbs (oregano, parsley) and a couple of slices of lemon peel. Let this simmer gently for a few minutes. As you add the wine, it forms a kind of milky emulsion with the oil, which gives this sauce a slightly different feel from a standard tomato-based sauce.
• Now add a tin of tomatoes and the pepper.
• Leave to bubble away gently - 30 mins is good, but if you put the water on to boil for the pasta now, it'll probably be enough.
• Serve with some pasta - papadelle is good, but tonight I had big twists.

26 June - chicken curry outdoors

Today was a proper hot, summer's day and it was mostly spent out on the roof terrace. We watched the F1 grand prix sat outside with the TV in the doorway and a sausage sandwich halfway through for lunch. Then after the race, we set about finishing off some kind of 'raised beds' to go around my French beans, which do at last seem to be growing and are twisting their way up their poles.

I'd got some chicken in to make curry for dinner. I was going to try something different, but the day ran away with me and all of a sudden it was getting late and we were hungry, so I went for an old favourite: Madhur Jaffrey's chicken with cream - but as I didn't have any cream, it was chicken without cream!!

• Sprinkle four chicken thigh fillets (I usually use breast fillets, but picked up the wrong thing and they actually worked really well), cut into chunks with 1/2 tsp ground cumin, 1/4 tsp ground coriander, 1/4 tsp turmeric, a pinch of cayenne pepper and some salt and set aside for as long as possible.
• Put 3 cloves of garlic and the same amount of fresh ginger into a belnd with 60ml water and blend to a paste.
• Fry the chicken pieces in vegetable oil to brown and remove.
• Fry a chopped onion in the same oil until soft, then add the garlic and ginger paste and stir until the water has gone.
• Stir in another 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp coriander, 1/4 tsp turmeric and a pinch of cayenne, then add about 1/3 tin chopped tomatoes. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes.
• Remove the pan from the heat and stir in a good couple of teaspoons of natural yoghurt gradually, so that it makes a creamy sauce.
• Return to the heat, add the chicken with any collected juices and about 100ml water. Add salt and bring to the boil.
• Turn low, cover and leave to simmer for 20 mins.
• Remove the lid towards the end, stir in half a teaspoon of garam masala, turn up the heat and let the whole thing bubble a bit until the sauce is nice and thick.

Served with boiled rice and some fresh peas cooked with garlic and spring onion in a bit of butter, then a splash of water and some chopped mint and coriander, we ate out in the terrace enjoying the last of the evening sun.

25 June - courgette & feta salad and fillet steak with Thai dressing

The theme for today was definitely "home-grown"! My first courgette was a bit small and misshapen, but I wanted to pick it to encourage more to grow. It wasn't quite worth eating on its own, so for lunch, I mixed it in with some shop-bought golden courgettes. I sliced them thinly and griddled them to make a simple salad, dressed with a little lemon juice and scattered with chunks of feta cheese and toasted pine nuts.

For dinner I wanted to do a favourite dish of beef fillet with a Thai dressing from Jamie Oliver's The Return of the Naked Chef. After visits to several butchers, I couldn't get the right-sized piece of beef fillet to cook as one chunk as I usually do, so I had to go for a couple of chunky ready-cut fillet steaks. I find that supermarket steaks tend to be a bit tasteless, but these ones from Waitrose were actually pretty tasty. The Thai dressing has a long list of ingredients, but they just need all mixing together and the result is well worth the effort:

• 2-3 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
• pinch of brown sugar
• 1/2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 1/2 clove of garlic, thinly sliced
• some chopped red chilli (I only use about 1/3 a big one)
• lots of chopped coriander and mint

I made up a salad of freshly-picked spinach and the first of the home-grown mangetout (just very briefly blanched in boiling water), with some thinly-sliced, grilled red pepper.

I griddled the steaks for about 5 mins, then sliced each one, laid it on top of the salad and poured over the dressing. Served with a bowl of home-made chunky chips, it made a scrummy meal - such a wonderful combination of flavours and textures. And the spinach and mangetout really were completely different from those you buy in the shops, or even the stuff we get in the vegbox - just so much greener-tasting and absolutely melt-in-the- mouth tender!

24 June - a customised burger

A busy day didn't allow time for any food shopping. Lunch was made up of some of the cold meat from yesterday, the remaining corn on the cob that was in the fridge and a few new potatoes. I couldn't magic anything more out of the fridge for dinner, so we decided to go for take-away. We got burgers from a really good little place round the corner called the Burger Joint. You get to choose what you want in the way of filling and sauces to go with one of their decent, chunky burgers, plus chips, of course. Today somehow none of the many options seemed to appeal to me though, so I went for a lamb burger with nothing on it and customised it at home with some spinach, beetroot and melted goat's cheese ... mmmm!

23 June - nice bread and a misunderstanding with a waiter

My parents were visiting today and it being a rather busy mid-week, I opted for a simple lunch of fresh bread from Hart's Bakery (a fabulously tasty sourdough loaf) with some cold meats and fresh figs. Nice and easy, but it went down well as a slow help-yourself lunch to chat over.

In the evening, I'd booked a table at the Lido, one of our local favourites and somewhere that's relaxed and easy, but has some interesting food too. Unfortunately, although most of the meal was well up to the usual standard, a misunderstanding with the waiter over a couple of our orders meant that me and my mum ended up with rather boring main courses that weren't really what we thought we'd ordered. I went for roast pork that came with "salsa mojo" - when I asked the waiter about it, he said it was a basically a mix of garlic, oil and herbs, which sounded great, but when it turned up, the main ingredient was actually green chilli and it was way too strong for my taste. My mum went for roast poussin with peppers, aubergines, yoghurt and flat bread, but because she was having flat bread with her starter, she asked if she could substitute it for some potatoes instead. The waiter, whose English wasn't great, misinterpreted her request as being for just the chicken with potatoes - thus missing out all the nice veg and yoghurt, which were what really made up the dish. He did apologise about his mistake with my sauce and offered us a free drink, but he wouldn't back down on my mum's, I think because he still didn't really understand when I tried to explain the mistake. It was a real shame, as it did slightly mar what would've otherwise been a great meal. I've got nothing against foreign waiting staff - who, to be honest, often have a better feel for what good service should be - but it's no good if their English isn't good enough to understand the customers.

22 June - chilli beans, guacamole and sweetcorn fritters

I ordered a couple of avocado's in last week's vegbox, which have been sat in the fruit bowl for nearly a week and are now rather soft and definitely need eating. So the starting point for dinner is some home-made guacamole:

• Mix together mashed avocado flesh with a good squeeze of lime juice, a crushed clove of garlic, a bit of finely chopped tomato and a good handful of chopped coriander.

To go with it I make up some chilli beans:

• Fry a small red onion, add a pepper (mine was orange today) in chunks and some chopped garlic and fry gently until the pepper has softened.
• Sprinkle in half a tsp of cumin powder, a good pinch each of paprika and cayenne pepper and a bay leaf.
• Add a small tin of drained kidney beans and a tin of chopped tomatoes and leave to simmer (15-20 mins is enough, but can be left to bubble away as long as you want on a low heat).

Then the bit that really makes this meal is the sweetcorn fritters, based on a recipe originally from Waitrose Food Illustrated, but adapted, these are always great:

• Make a batter from 50g plain flour and half a tsp of baking powder beaten together with about 75ml milk and an egg yolk, until smooth.
• Add the sweetcorn cut from one fresh corn cob, a shake of dried chilli flakes, some chopped coriander, a few chopped chives and a pinch of salt.
• Whisk the egg white until fluffy and fold this gently into the batter mixture at the last minute.
• Dollop the batter into a hot non-stick frying pan with a bit of oil to make four big fritters. Fry for about 3 mins on each side, until nice and golden.

21 June - Herman, parsley and harissa chicken

Today's been a bit of a marathon cooking day. A couple of weeks ago, we were given 'Herman' by a friend ... Let me explain. He arrived as a rather unpromising pot of brown, yeasty-smelling gunk together with some instructions. Over the course of about 10 days, we had to stir him as he gradually expanded, then at various points, we had to feed him. This involved stirring in quantities of milk, flour and sugar. Finally by today, he had expanded to fill a large mixing bowl and it was time to divide him up. The idea is to divide the mix into 5 and give four of the new little Herman's away to friends to start the whole process over again. You then use the fifth pot of mixture to make a cake by adding more ingredients (more flour, sugar, eggs, oil, flavourings, nuts and apple).

I've never been particularly good at baking and don't really own proper cake tins, so I poured the resulting mix into a loaf tin and popped it in the oven. After an hour (as per the instructions), it was still distinctly sticky in the middle so I left it a bit longer. When it finally came out, it was a probably a bit crunchier round the edges than it should've been. It didn't look wildly promising, but actually a slice with a cup of tea wasn't too bad. No idea who we're going to pass the remaining 'Hermans' onto though!

Next I cooked up some bulgar wheat. Along with the spinach, the parsley on the terrace is getting a bit out of control and the most obvious use for it was some tabbouleh. I'm not actually a big fan of too much parsley myself, but Tris loves it, so I made him up a big bowl to take to work for his lunch. I then had a bit of the plain bulgar wheat with some salad and the leftover, cold lamb for my lunch.
By the time it got to thinking about dinner, I was a bit out of culinary inspiration, so I turned to my usual favourite, Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. For 21st June, he has a recipe for harissa chicken, which quite appealed, so I went with it. You mix up some yoghurt with harissa paste and a bit of olive oil, then use it to coat some chicken thigh fillets. Then you simply grill them and sprinkle over some mint. Very simple, but it came out great with a big pile of green veg (peas, broad beans and asparagus).

20 June - pasta with spinach

There's still asparagus from Friday's vegbox in the fridge, so I have that for lunch with a couple of slices of parma ham, a few cold potatoes leftover from yesterday, fried up and a dollop of mayonnaise. You can't beat a classic combination!

The spinach on the terrace is starting to bolt, so I pull up a load to have for dinner. I get some fresh pasta from the supermarket and serve it simply with some pancetta, the spinach and some cream.

19 June - braised lamb shanks and gooseberry & apple crumble

I went to the supermarket yesterday with a rather vague "meat" written on my shopping list for today's dinner and I came home with a couple of lamb shanks. I knew I wanted to slow cook them, so I turned to Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries and found a recipe for braised lamb shanks with mustard. I browned the meat gently on the hob in a little oil, then added a couple of sliced onions, 3 peeled and squashed cloves of garlic, 3 bays leaves, some rosemary, 250ml stock and 250ml red wine. When it all came to the boil, I covered the whole thing with foil and a lid and popped it in the oven at 150C for a couple of hours. Halfway through I turned the meat over and added a good dollop of wholegrain mustard. It came out lovely and tender and went nicely with some simple boiled potatoes, green beans and spring greens. There was rather a lot of meat, so I pulled a few bits off before I put it on the plates, to keep for lunch one day in the week.

To use up the rest of the gooseberries while they're nice and fresh, I mixed them with some apple to make a crumble. My usual crumble mix is, again, based on a Nigel Slater recipe. I whizz together 90g plain flour with 65g cold butter in a mixer, then add 3tbsp caster sugar, 3tbsp ground almonds and a few chopped hazelnuts. I put the gooseberries and apple (one big Bramley) in a dish, sprinkle over a tbsp sugar, then tip on the crumble mix and cook the whole thing for about half an hour. Even with custard, the gooseberries still had a nice, tangy kick!

18 June - scallops with peas, broad beans and asparagus

Right now, we're in that brief but wonderful window where asparagus, broad beans and fresh peas all in season at the same time. They make such a fantastic combination that I couldn't resist cooking a big pile up altogether, draining them and tipping them back into the pan with a good knob of butter and some chopped mint, just to mix. I served them with some pan-fried scallops, slices of crispy pancetta and a dollop of plain risotto on the side. Hard to beat!

17 June - pork with gooseberry sauce

I got a box of gooseberries in today's organic vegbox; small, pinky-green and face-pullingly sharp! I ordered them on a bit of a whim when I was choosing this week's box contents and I wasn't quite sure what I planned to do with them. I rather fancied them as an accompaniment to something savoury, perhaps pork, rather in the vein of apple sauce. I found a recipe for gooseberry sauce to go with savoury dishes on the Riverford website, then I came across a recipe from another food blogger (Girl Interrupted Eating) for pork with gooseberry and sage sauce. I went for a combination of the two as below:

Gooseberry sauce: I put c. 150 g gooseberries, a tablespoon of sugar, a small knob of butter, a splash of water and some chopped sage into a small saucepan and heated it gently until the berries were starting to burst and collapse, but a few were still just keeping their shape. Because the gooseberries were quite pink in colour, the sauce came out a fairly nice yellowy-pinky colour, not the nasty green snot colour my fellow blogger found!

When I tasted the resulting sauce, I not only pulled an incredible face but did a little dance at the exquisite sharpness! I was a bit cautious about dolloping a big blob onto our pork chops, but somehow the sweetness of the caramelised pork managed to balance out the tartess of the gooseberries wonderfully and made a really top combination served with some simple new potatoes and summer greens. Definitely one I'd recommend and to try again.

16 June - broad bean salad and miso salmon with noodles

Lunch today was both beautiful and tasty - a whole supermarket bag of broad beans, podded, briefly boiled then slipped out of their skins, with some chopped tomato, then some chorizo briefly fried with some sliced garlic and parsley, all mixed together with a bit of oil and vinegar. Great colours and a really good lunch with a few new potatoes on the side.

I've had a pot of leftover sweet white miso paste in the fridge since almost the start of this blog. So I did a bit of online searching and came up with a recipe for salmon marinated in miso paste on the BBC Food website. I'd put a couple of salmon fillets in to marinate in the miso paste (I had about 150g left), c. 100g sugar, 100ml sake and 100ml mirin yesterday evening. You take the fish out and wipe off the marinade (which seems a terrible waste, but it's done its job). Then you simply place it on an oiled baking tray and pop it in the oven (180C) for about 10 mins, turning it over halfway through.

When it comes out, it looks fairly unexciting, but the flavours have definitely worked their way in and make a really tasty, but not overwhelming dish. I served it with some udon noodles, a pile of fresh peas and asparagus and a slice of lime, which worked really well squeezed over the salmon and noodles.

15 June - chicken and spinach curry

The salad the other day doesn't seem to have made much of a dent in the spinach on the terrace, so this evening, I went for a chicken and spinach curry recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible to use up more spinach and the chicken breast in the fridge. Tris is out for the evening, so the below is curry-for-one.

• Cook a big handful of spinach in a pan with a couple of tablespoons of water until wilted, then chop.
• Blend together a small chopped onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, about the same quantity of fresh ginger and a couple of tbsps of water to make a paste.
• Heat some oil in a frying pan, add a small cinnamon stick and a couple of cardamom pods, then add the onion mixture and stir and fry for a few minutes.
• Stir in 3/4 tsp ground coriander, 1/2 tsp ground cumin and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
• Add the chicken, cut into cubes and stir for a minute or two.
• Gradually add 2 tbsp natural yoghurt, a chopped tomato and the spinach.
• Add 75ml water and some salt. Cover, turn low and simmer for about 20 mins.

The result was really tasty and with no one else eating, I was able to play around a bit more than usual taking photos, playing with some lighting ideas from one of the tutors on my photography trip, Lone, who happens to be a professional food photographer. I've brought down my daylight lamp, that usually sits on my desk through the winter, to create a slightly more natural light in the evening rather than resorting to a flash. It's quite difficult to make a sludgy green curry look attractive, but I quite like the black background.

14 June - chickpeas with tomatoes and harissa

It was a lovely sunny day today, so both lunch and dinner were al fresco - hooray! It was a quick lunchtime favourite; peas and pancetta with linguine. Unfortunately, I wasn't really concentrating and undercooked the pasta.

This evening's dinner was from Sunday's Observer magazine; Nigel Slater's chickpeas with tomatoes and harissa. I roasted 8 medium tomatoes cut into 6 pieces each with a red pepper chopped into large chunks mixed with some olive oil, a splash of red wine vinegar and a pinch of cumin seeds at about 200C. I left them to cook while I was on the phone and when I went back to check after nearly an hour, they were a bit charred around the edges - oops! I picked out some of the very blackened bits of skin and tipped the lot into a pan, added a splash more olive oil, a teaspoon of harissa paste and the chopped rind of preserved lemon and let it heat through. Meanwhile I cooked up some giant couscous that I came across in the supermarket the other day. Finally, I stirred some whole basil leaves into the chickpea mix. The stew was really tasty - the lemon and harissa really gave it a tang. I was a bit less convinced about the giant couscous; rather back to that frogspawn feel again!

13 June - homegrown spinach

Back home, after a good long sleep in my own bed, today's been all about the veg! I had a good pile of asparagus for lunch with a bit of parma ham and some new potatoes. While I've been away, apparently there's been a mix of sun and rain which has made some of the veg on the terrace go mental, especially the spinach:

So this evening, we had a chicken and chorizo salad with freshly picked spinach leaves as a base, plus some cherry tomatoes, blanched green beans and beetroot. I cooked a chicken breast in the oven (just one between two), then gently caramelised a red onion in a frying pan, added some sliced cooking chorizo and a bit of sliced garlic. Once the chorizo was browned, I tipped in a splash of balsamic vinegar to make a lovely hot dressing to pour over the salad and sliced chicken. The whole thing was served with some saute new potatoes on the side. I could almost feel all that green goodness flowing back through my veins!

12 June - a hotdog at the airport

A day of travelling today with snatched food; a prawn sandwich in Bergen for lunch, then a hotdog and a beer at the airport while we waited for the flight home. Looking forward to getting back to my own bed and my kitchen too.

11 June - a fjordside barbecue

Our last day at Hardangerfjord today and thankfully, it was a brighter evening, so we were able to eat outside again for a barbecue of salmon and fantastic lamb with rosemary – tender and really tasty.

Rupert examines the wine bottle, while Pat gets on and drinks it!

Sadly, it only came with a salad of mostly lettuce and raw spring onion which I passed on, because raw onion disagrees with me. As interesting and tasty as the food’s been since I’ve been here, I’m really looking forward to getting home to some decent amounts of veg!

10 June - caviar and bacalao

For dinner this evening, we had the most beautifully presented caviar. It’s one of those things that for me, often verges on being over-strong, but small mouthfuls mixed with sour cream just hit the spot. In the spirit of a photography course, I tried a bit of food photography this evening with shots of the plates from all angles!

The caviar was followed by bacalao - a kind of fish stew of salt cod, tomatoes and peppers, which is best known in Spain and Portugal, but apparently Norway too. Quite tasty and actually not as salty as I'd expected.

9 June - slow-cooked lamb and frogspawn

Today was soup again for lunch; this time a creamy cauliflower soup, perfect for a slightly damp, chilly day.

Sadly, the cold and rain drove us indoors for dinner this evening, but a hearty dish of slow-cooked lamb with swede and potatoes warmed us up after a busy afternoon snapping outdoors. A huge glass dish of lumpy white stuff arrived for pudding that none of us felt quite sure about. Venturing the first taste, my instinctive description was that it felt a bit like frogspawn, which didn't really inspire the rest of the group to try it! It was actually a chilled creamy pudding, a bit like rice pudding, but made with barley instead and although we were all a bit uncertain about the texture on first taste, it grew on us and with a fruit sauce made from cherries and strawberries, we all ended up with a good bowlful.

8 June - home-smoked salmon by a fjord

For the next five days, I'm on a photography course, based in a fantastic wooden lodge right next to a fjord; Hardangerfjord. Our host and chef, Jarle (below), is cooking us three traditional Norwegian meals a day. Breakfast was a spread of bread, cheeses, jam and eggs, then lunch was hearty pea and ham soup.

For dinner, we were outdoors at a long wooden table in the lovely evening light. We started off with salmon that was home-smoked by Jarle's mum and had to be the best smoked salmon I've ever tasted. Served in lovely thick slices with soured cream ... mmmm! Then there was pollock cooked with loads of veg and served with boiled potatoes. And of course, a glass of Jarle's home-brewed cider to wash it all down!

7 June - salmon and lentils

Right now I'm sitting in a Cafe Opera in Bergen, killing time after getting off the train from Oslo and waiting for the pick-up for the next part of my trip. I've got four hours to wait, so I was quite pleased to find a cool little, studenty sort of cafe with free wi-fi and good food. I just had baked salmon with stewed lentils and a creamy garlic sauce - hearty, tasty and just what I needed after seven and a half hours on a train on a rather grey, murky evening in Bergen.

6 June - raw salmon and reindeer

After expensive lunch and dinner over the past couple of days (practically double the price of the UK), we go for just sandwiches for lunch, plus a few coffee and cake stops as it’s turned rainy. Tris has a fancy for some reindeer before he leaves tomorrow, so we find a traditional Norwegian restaurant for dinner – the oldest in Oslo apparently; Engebret café. It’s old and dark, with a very different vibe to the trendy waterfront, but the service is excellent and the food just what we’re after. I start with a selection of raw, marinated salmon done in various different and delicious ways and Tris has the pickled herring he’s been wanting. Then we both have reindeer tenderloin with a rich red wine and berry sauce; a great end to a foody weekend in Oslo.

5 June - halibut with the beautiful people

After a late start and a longer-than-expected walk to find the Munch Museum via the opera house, it gets to almost 3 by the time we’re heading for lunch and I’m feeling wobbly and grouchy and desperate for some food, so we just go into the first place we find and I opt for burger and chips! Not very Norwegian, but actually quite tasty and once the food starts to filter through and my mood improves, not a bad spot to sit.

It’s another beautiful sunny evening, so we opt for seafood again, this time on the other side of the harbour in a really cool restaurant called Solsiden; which translates rather aptly as ‘sunny side’ as it catches the evening sun. More beautiful people and a really nice vibe in what’s essentially just a dockside shed, but feels wonderfully light with the sun streaming in through the huge open windows and the light sparkling on the water reflected on the white ceiling.

I go for the fish of the day, which is halibut with a lobster cream sauce with creamy mashed potatoes with spring onions – really good. Then we share a dessert; chocolate mousse on a chocolate brownie base with passion fruit sorbet. The rich chocolate and sharp passion fruit are a perfect combination.

4 June - Oslo lobster

We arrive in Oslo in more fantastic sunshine and just in time for a late lunch. We pick more-or-less the first outdoor café we come to and manage to work out goats cheese salad from the Norwegian menu (the words chevre and salat are enough to give us clue!). I also spot that the people at the next table have a carafe of some really nice pale, rose wine, so we go for some of that too. Great start to the weekend!

After a look at the little city guide in our hotel room, we head down to the harbourside for dinner in one of the seafood restaurants. It’s clearly the place to be on a bright sunny evening and there are several cool bars full of beautiful people. We opt for an in-between sort of place – not super-cool, but not TGI Friday’s! D/S Louise turns out to be a good choice. I start with beef carpaccio, then lobster thermidor, which is delicious.

We sit watching the world go by and waiting for the sun to go down, but give up at about 11 and wander back to our hotel, still in daylight!

3 June - leftovers for lunch

We're heading off to Gatwick this evening ready to fly to Norway in the morning for a week away. So lunch is using up the last bits in the fridge; a couple of leeks and some ham together with a dribble of cream and some pasta. Not actually too bad with a sprinkling of parmesan on the top eaten out on a sunny terrace.

Savoury tarts from Chandos Deli on the train to London for tea.

1 June - mushroom pasta and kedgeree

With one more portobello mushroom left in the fridge, I couldn't resist baking it again; this time coated in a simple mix of garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and a bit of parsley. I then chopped it up, mixed it with some cream and some lardons and stirred it into some pasta for lunch.

A busy day didn't leave much time for shopping and I nipped into Waitrose feeling completely uninspired about what to cook for dinner, so went for an easy fall-back option of kedgeree.

• Boil enough basmati rice for two (I use a 1/3 measuring cup and fill it twice with rice and three times with water) with some salt and a few cardamom pods.
• Fry a sliced onion in some butter until soft, then stir in a good teaspoon of curry powder. The curry powder I happen to have in the cupboard has a nice flavour but is very mild, so I add a pinch of chilli powder too.
• Add a small bag of spinach and let it wilt down.
• Tip in the cooked rice and stir it until coated and yellow - you need a low-ish heat at this point to stop it sticking.
• Flake in some hot-smoked mackerel fillets, stir in, then add a squeeze of lemon juice.
• Serve with boiled eggs and a scattering of parsley.

I used to cook this with Sainsbury's Taste the Difference smoked mackerel which was absolutely delicious, but sadly, they don't seem to do it anymore. It's never been quite the same with any other brands, but still makes an easy, tasty supper.