28 July - frittata and fishy fish

At book club last night, a couple of friends were talking about frittata and the idea must've stuck in my head, so I whipped up something eggy for my lunch. I boiled a few sliced new potatoes, some peas and broad beans and popped them all in a frying pans with a few beaten eggs and some chopped mint. It all looked and smelled beautiful in the pan, but sadly, didn't make it onto the plate very elegantly! It still tasted good though and made a nice change for lunch.

I picked a lovely big pile of beans for dinner, they're almost growing quicker than we can eat them at the moment! I made the mistake of buying supermarket fish though. As I opened the packaging of my trout fillets, they turned out to be horribly slimy and I had a frustrating fight trying to skin them. I'm not great with raw fish at the best of times and by the time I'd cooked the trout (coated in herbs, breadcrumbs and lime zest and oven-cooked with lime butter), I'd really gone off the whole idea. The beans tasted great at least!

27 July - salad and lemon polenta cake

I've had some peashoots and a second sowing of spinach growing on the terrace and today there was just enough for a first picking. Together with some tomatoes, also homegrown, some green beans, broad beans, new potatoes and a bit of mozzarella, it made a great lunchtime salad.

This evening was Book Club and I was providing pudding, so I tried out the lemon polenta cake recipe I brought back from my cookery workshop.

It seemed to go down well, even with the girls who weren't meant to be doing pudding!

26 July - spicy sausage pasta

The other day we heard a sports commentator mention having had spicy sausage pasta and it's been on my mind ever since! So today I was in St Nick's market in town and picked up a couple of Moroccan lamb sausages from the Bristol Sausage Shop.

I fried a chopped red onion with a bit of garlic and some chopped red pepper. Then I skinned the sausages and crumbled the sausagemeat into the pan. Plus half a tin of tomatoes and a few chilli flakes and hey presto, spicy sausage pasta sauce. The sausages were a good choice and the result came out just as hoped.

25 July - hot chicken salad and plum tart

Dinner tonight's a Spanish-inspired hot salad; red onion, butter beans, green beans, tomatoes, sweetcorn, new potatoes, a bit of chopped chorizo and some hot chicken.

We got some lovely English plums in Friday's vegbox that I didn't get round to cooking over the weekend, so I make them into a favourite tart - another Nigel Slater recipe, from Appetite, and one of the very few times I ever make pastry.

• For the pastry put 90g butter and 150g plain flour in a food processor and whizz to 'breadcrumbs'. Add an egg yolk, 2tbsp sugar and just enough water to make a dough. Wrap in clingfilm and pop in the fridge.
• Make a caramel with 50g butter and 4 tbsp flour in a small ovenproof frying pan. Push the plums, cut in half and stoned, cut-side-up into the caramel.

• Roll out the pastry and lay over the plums, roughly tucking in the edges. Bake at 190C for about 45 mins.
• Leave to cool a bit in the pan before turning out.

It's sweet and naughty and even better served with a bit of cream!

24 July - haddock chowder and fillet steak

I'm not always convinced about fishy soups and stews, but there's something romantic-sounding about a chowder. This recipe for haddock and sweetcorn chowder is roughly based on a couple of different ones I found online and came out pretty well:

• Fry half a chopped onion and a few cubes of pancetta.
• Add a couple of new potatoes peeled and finely diced.
• Then add about 200ml vegetable stock and 225ml milk and simmer for about 5 mins.
• Add the corn from one fresh corn on the cob and simmer for another 10 mins.
• Finally add one small smoked haddock fillet cut into chunks and simmer another 10 mins.
• Season with parsley and cives to serve.

Dinner was fillet steak with some baked portobello mushrooms that came in the vegbox with garlicky buttered spinach and some chunky chips.

23 July - a packed lunch and pork with mustard sauce

Today we went out to the Forest of Dean for a bit of fresh air and countryside. We were quite late getting up, so rather than go looking for a pub lunch, we took a good old-fashioned packed lunch with us; tuna and sweetcorn mayo sandwiches in nice soft sliced bread with a packet of crisps - to be squashed into the sandwiches - and a flask of tea ... great! A lovely day and some fantastic forest walking too - although a less-than-flattering photo!

As we were back relatively late, dinner was straightforward meat and two veg, well, three actually; pork steaks with a creamy mustard sauce (a la Nigel Slater) with a big pile of green beans, carrots and broad beans.

22 July - Cafe Maitreya

This evening we were booked in for dinner at Cafe Maitreya. It's a vegetarian restaurant that we've been meaning to try for as long as I can remember, but because it's a taxi ride away on the other side of Bristol and we've got so many good places nearby, we never seem to get round to it. It's won lots of awards and came well recommended by friends, so I was quite excited about going.

I love my veg, but I was actually quite surprised when I checked back through this blog so far at how many actual vegetarian meals I cook. Looking just at main evening meals, over the past three and a half months, only 5% of my meals have been properly vegetarian. Another 14% have been predominantly veg, with just a bit of pancetta or chorizo added. 21% have been fishy, leaving a shocking 60% of meat-based meals!

Anyway, my verdict of Cafe Maitreya was a bit mixed really. My starter of courgette flowers stuffed with goats cheese was really nice and the wine, a South African chenin blanc, really stood out. But my main course had that rather 'mushy' texture about it that makes me think of nut roasts and baby food and often puts me off "vegetarian" dishes. It was described as "aubergine escalope", which was slices of aubergine fried in a couscous coating - not bad. But it was served with a rather large dollop of mushy, slightly sweet pepper and almond pate and rather too much sweet cherry sauce (even though it was described as 'sour' on the menu). By the end of which I just felt a bit sicky. Which was a shame as it was a really cool spot, with a nice atmosphere and really friendly staff. If it was nearer, I'd probably give it a second chance, but as it is, I don't think we're likely to spend 20 quid on taxi fares to get over there again.

21 July - scallops with minty peas and apricots with pistachios

I've just realised that I'm a whole week behind with this blog, so I thought I'd better sit down and have a catch-up! So, a week ago today ... Tris was out for the evening, so I bought myself a handful of scallops from the fish man, them pan-fried with a bit of pancetta and ate them on a pile of crushed minty peas ... you can't beat a classic combination!

I'm not generally a big fruit fan, but I'd seen some apricots the other day and I was drawn to pop them in my basket more by the lovely colour than anything else. This evening, I got round to cooking them up for pudding. I cut them in half and baked them, covered in foil, with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of orange blossom water. Then I had them with a dollop of Greek yoghurt and a few chopped pistachios scattered over the top. It was an idea borrowed from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries and proved really delicious.

20 July - minestrone and leftovers stew

Last night, I made up a pan of the minestrone we made on the Bordeaux Quay course last week, or at least from the recipe sheet I brought back, which was a bit different. I made it early so Tris could take some for his lunch, but when I took the lid off the pan at lunchtime, it looked a bit grey and unappetising. Thankfully, it tasted much better than it looked, especially with a good dollop of homemade pesto!

For the minestrone soup:

• Gently sweat some finely chopped onion, leek and carrot in olive oil.
• Add some sliced garlic, pancetta and finely diced potato.
• Add a good pile of fresh broad beans and some sliced tomatoes.
• Add enough chicken stock to easily cover the vegetables and some broken up pasta (I used linguine snapped into short lengths).
• Simmer for 20 mins or so.

Note: I really should have blanched the broad beans first and slipped them out of their skins - a bit of a faff, I know, but it really would've been worth it.

For the pesto; chop up a big handful of fresh basil, a handful of toasted hazelnuts, some crushed garlic and a grating of parmesan. Add a good slosh of extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

We were meant to be going out to a comedy event this evening, so I hadn't got anything in for dinner. By the time Tris got home though, it was absolutely tipping it down with rain and I really couldn't face an evening sitting in a cold, damp tent, so I bailed out and he took his brother instead. That left me at home with an almost empty fridge. After a bit of rummaging through the cupboard, I made up a stew with chorizo, lentils, tinned tomatoes, a leek and a bit of carrot. The result was another rather unpromising-looking bowl of splodge, but it was actually really tasty and warming on a chilly evening.

19 July - gardening and garlicky chicken

After lots of rain, there was a rare patch of sunshine this afternoon, so I spent a bit of time out on the terrace pulling up the mangetout, which had finished doing their thing, and planted some carrots, spring onions and kale in their place. I'm quite getting into this whole veg growing thing now!

After last night's stodgy rice, I decide to go back to a low carb dinner; garlicky chicken with a big pile of leeks and carrots. I pan-cook chicken thighs with some whole cloves of garlic - browning them first, then covering them and turning down the heat to let them cook through slowly for about half an hour. I remove the chicken from the pan and tip out the fat, then add a big handful of parsley, a slosh of white wine and a squeeze of lemon juice to make a sharp, herby sauce to go over the chicken, with the soft, caramelised garlic cloves on the side.

18 July - a warm tomato salad and chorizo & broad bean "paella"

There was another handful of tomatoes ready to pick today, so I used them in a favourite warm tomato and basil salad. I have to admit that the home-grown tomatoes have been slightly less impressive than the other veg, with slightly thick skins and not quite as flavoursome as I'd hoped. This treatment just softened them slightly and brought out their sweetness perfectly. I warmed a good pool of extra virgin olive oil in a small pan and gently fried a couple of chopped spring onions (I usually use a shallot, but didn't have any), with some thinly sliced garlic. Then I added a squeeze of lemon juice, a splash of vinegar (I used raspberry vinegar today) and a pinch of salt, followed by the tomatoes - chopped in half - and a few shredded basil leaves. Just stir them around for a minute or so and then tip onto a plate with a few new potatoes and some mozzarella - yum!

For dinner, I cooked up some chorizo and broad beans with paella rice. Just a chopped onion and a couple of cloves of sliced garlic fried gently with some sliced cooking chorizo so it releases its red-orange juices, then a cup of paella rice stirred in with a few threads of saffron. I gradually added chicken stock until the rice was cooked, adding a few peas and chopped green beans (literally just a couple from the garden), then a nice big pile of broad beans and some chopped parsley. Simple, tasty and comforting on another damp evening.

17 July - jamie's italian

A branch of Jamie's Italian opened on Park Street in Bristol a while ago, but we've been avoiding going there because you can't book and there always seems to be a queue. But we thought that a rainy Sunday evening might be a good time to get in, so we took a big brolly and ventured out. We'd reckoned right and got a table straight away.

I'd been to the one in Bath a couple of times for lunch and really enjoyed it, so I was a bit disappointed as I looked through the menu and nothing jumped out. In fact, I really struggled to find anything I wanted to order at all. There was a lot of fish, of which I'm not a huge fan anyway and which I wasn't in the mood for tonight. Everything else seemed to involve chilli - in almost every dish, even including the vegetable side orders! I know Italians like a bit of punch to their food, but what's wrong with letting the natural flavours of the ingredients speak for themselves?

I started off with some crispy squid, which was nice - once I'd picked off the huge chunks of raw red chilli it was garnished with (and which wasn't mentioned on the menu - bit of a pet hate!). For my main, rather against my better judgement, I went for feather steak. The meat itself was pretty chewy and tasteless and it was only rescued by the sage garnish. It came with a tomato sauce which the waitress assured me was made of roasted tomatoes, but I'd be very surprised if the pile of sliced tomatoes I had were anything other than raw.

Tris had sausages and lentils which were much tastier, but would've been too peppery for my taste. As we chatted and tried to decide why we were unimpressed, we decided that perhaps had we popped in for lunch, it would've been fine - and we probably would've been been happy with different dishes - it just didn't quite cut it for a proper evening meal out.

16 July - scrambled eggs and lemon and coriander chicken

After a grey, drizzly start to a Saturday morning, a comforting brunch of scrambled eggs with a few chunks of hot-smoked salmon mixed in, piled on a delicious thick slice of toasted sourdough bread was just perfect.

For dinner I fancied a curry, but something light and fresh. I tried out a Madhur Jaffrey recipe for lemon and coriander chicken which fitted the bill just perfectly.

• Brown four boneless chicken thighs in oil and remove.
• Fry 3 finely chopped cloves of garlic and add a good dollop of grated ginger mixed with a tablespoon of water.
• Stir in a large bunch of chopped coriander (about 100g, which is a very large bunch), plus 1/2 a chopped green chilli, a pinch of cayenne pepper, 1tsp ground cumin, 1/2tsp ground coriander, 1/2tsp turmeric and some salt.
• Return the chicken to the pan with about 150ml water and a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice (c. 1-2 tbsp).
• Cover the pan, turn low and simmer for 30 minutes+, turning the chicken over halfway.

Served with some spiced rice and peas, it was delicious; tangy, green and with just the right amount of kick.

For pudding, I tried to recreate something like the fabulous 'savoury' dessert I had at Opus last weekend with some mini goats cheese and gooseberry cheesecakes. Sadly, the cheesecake mix came out slightly curdled and the (supermarket) gooseberries just weren't as tart as I'd hoped. All a bit disappointing, maybe one to come back to another time when better gooseberries are available.

15 July - roast lamb and pesto

After last night's lamb taster, I fancied a bit more tonight. There wasn't much in the way of decent chunky steaks at the supermarket, so I went for a small joint instead to roast. I'd intended to make the meat last over a couple of meals, but after I'd carved up enough for a decent serving each, there wasn't really enough worth keeping, so we ate it all! I'd brought home a small pot of pesto from last night's workshop (although, I think probably not the one I made as they got mixed up), so this made a nice fresh sauce to pour over the lamb. Together with some roasted new potatoes with rosemary, a bit of tenderstem broccoli and some green beans, plus a glass or two of chilled rose, it made a rather decadent Friday night dinner.

14 July - italian cookery course at bordeaux quay

For my birthday, my friend Ange passed on a spare voucher for the cookery school at Bordeaux Quay, so this evening I went along for an Italian Provincial Cookery workshop. I went to another workshop there, on Spanish tapas, last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like then, this evening was really more interesting for the little hints and tips picked up from seeing a professional chef at close quarters than the actual recipes. Last time, I completely changed my chopping technique and this time, I think it was a better technique for crushing garlic that I think'll stay with me.

The evening started off with a demonstration - linguine with crab and chilli - looked quite good, but perhaps a bit too crabby for my taste!?! Then we moved onto some fresh pesto - made with basil and hazelnuts (as pine nuts are super-expensive and difficult to get at the moment). I've made my own pesto before, but it was really good to learn a bit more about balancing the flavours and the result I mixed up together with my partner was great. We then made a chunky minestrone soup which was served with a good dollop of the pesto on the top - really tasty and one to remember for summer lunches.

Next came more herb chopping, with a salsa verde to go with some lamb. It was a bit ironic that I'd made a salsa verde just back at the beginning of the week, but again interesting to see the balance of ingredients suggested for this one.

After polishing off our efforts with a glass of wine, the evening finished off with some delicious lemon polenta cake. Unfortunately, we'd run out of time for a proper demo, but there was "one he'd made earlier" to taste and the recipe to take home and try.

All round, a really enjoyable evening and a few culinary nuggets of inspiration brought home with me. Thanks, Ange!

13 July - spicy pork noodles

With pork mince left over from yesterday, I looked up a recipe I'd used before in an old Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine for spicy pork noodles. Whilst pulling the various ingredients out of the cupboards before I got started, I noticed that the sweet chilli sauce was looking a bit worse for wear and when I checked the best before date, it said March 2009 - oops! It normally goes in the sauce with the oyster and soy sauces, but I substituted some fresh red chilli at the beginning and a spoonful of sugar to the sauce.

• Stir-fry a few chopped spring onions, some chopped red chilli and some grated fresh ginger.
• Add about 250g pork mince and fry until browned.
• Mix together a good tablespoon oyster sauce, the same of soy sauce and a pinch of sugar, then mix in with the mince. Stir and simmer for a couple of minutes.
• Mix a good teaspoon of cornflower with a couple of teaspoons of Chinese cooking wine to a smooth paste. Add it to the mince and stir to thicken.

I served the spicy mince with a small pile of noodles and some tenderstem broccoli - lots of nice flavours in the mince with the simple noodles and clean-tasting broccoli worked well together.

12 July - chickpea salad and a fruity chilli

Lunch today was a chickpea salad with goats cheese. I mixed half a tin of chickpeas with a grilled pepper cut into thin strips and a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, crushed garlic and chopped parsley ... oh yes, and a few more tomatoes from the garden.

For dinner I was going to try out a recipe I saw on a TV cookery programme the other day. It was a version of chilli con carne on Channel 5's Mexican Food Made Simple. I checked the Channel 5 website - I found the episode which included the recipe, but not a list of exact ingredients or quantities. So when I went out to the supermarket, I dropped into Smiths and found the book to go with the series by Thomasina Miers. I had a flick through, but rather oddly, it contains a completely different chilli con carne recipe. Anyway, I gave it a go roughly based on the programme with a few changes:

• Roast a couple of whole tomatoes, a whole green chilli and a chopped onion, then whizz them together in a blender to make the base of the sauce.
• Brown about 100g each of beef and pork mince in a pan, then add the sauce.
• Stir in a teaspoon of cumin and a pinch of cinnamon, plus some fresh chopped oregano.
• Add about 250ml chicken stock, then throw in a chopped banana (yes, a banana!) and the corn from a fresh corn cob.
• Simmer for 20 mins, then add a teaspoon of smoked paprika and a little chilli powder (it could have done with a bit more).
• Simmer a bit longer, season and serve with rice.

The result was quite good, with some nice flavours, but not enough kick for a chilli.

11 July - fresh tuna with salsa verde and homegrown beans

The veg on the roof terrace are still flourishing; the mangetout are, I think, coming to an end now, so I picked what will probably be the last decent picking, with a few starting to get a bit overlarge and misshapen. The beans are coming along though and even though the dwarf French bean plants have never really got going, they're still managing to produce some decent-sized beans on really pathetically weedy plants! The climbing beans look much healthier, now reaching up to the top of their canes and producing their first handful of beans too.

To go with the veg, I had in mind some kind of fish with a variation on salsa verde, to use up some more of the parsley, which is starting to take over. Again, I wasn't very inspired by the fish on offer, so ended up with a couple of tuna steaks, which wasn't really what I had in mind, but actually worked okay. For the salsa verde, I whizzed together in a blender:

• a large bunch of flat-leaf parsley
• a small handful of mint
• a good tsp smooth Dijon mustard
• a couple of anchovy fillets
• a good glug of extra virgin olive oil
• juice of half a lemon

Very green and tangy dolloped over the tuna steaks.

10 July - scrambled eggs for breakfast

The trip to Birmingham was for an athletics meeting - the Diamond League meeting at the Alexander Stadium - in the afternoon/evening, so we knew we wouldn't really get a proper evening meal. As we were staying in a hotel (Malmaison), this made the perfect excuse for a big hotel breakfast to start the day. As someone who needs a decent cup of tea before I can think straight in the morning, I often find hotel breakfasts rather frustrating. Today though a pot of tea arrived reasonably promptly, so I was ready for a nice big plate of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. We also turned out to be sitting almost next to Steve Cram, and Tris spent most of breakfast watching various BBC sport folks to-ing and fro-ing, getting ready for the day over their toast and coffee!

Lunch was at Cafe Rouge - not for the food, which was just about passable, but just because it was a nice spot to sit outside in the on-off sunshine and watch the world go by before we headed off for a great evening of athletics.

9 July - Opus in Birmingham

We were in Birmingham for the weekend, so a very quick bit of online searching threw up a restaurant called Opus. From the website and online menu, it looked good and it didn't disappoint. Nice place, nice atmosphere, professional but friendly staff. I had asparagus with poached egg and hollandaise to start; a bit boring I know, but I'd ordered venison for my main so wanted something light. The venison when it arrived was a tad peppery again, but really nice and pink. It was served with what was described as a "spring bean cassoulet". Now to me a cassoulet is a slow-cooked, stewy affair with pulses - what arrived was a mix of fairly crunchy spring veg! The whole thing was very nice, but just not the rich stewy sort of dish I'd expected. Any slight sense of disappointment though was completely forgotten with the pudding - possibly the best I've ever had!! I haven't got much of a sweet tooth, so I was in heaven with what I can only describe as a distinctly savoury dessert ... goats curd mousse scattered with a sprinkling of something like granola (think plain cheesecake with a hint of goats cheese in the background) with gooseberries (wonderfully tart!) and elegant little cubes of elderflower jelly (melt-in-the-mouth!) ... just perfect! I'm already contemplating trying to make a goats cheese and gooseberry cheesecake.

8 July - a savoury tart and supermarket lamb

I had lunch with a friend today at the new Papadeli cafe at the RWA. It's a nice spot and my warm goats cheese and red onion tart was just what I fancied for lunch.

I was a bit rushed to think about dinner, so I went for the nearest to pre-prepared food I ever really get - lamb with a herb and balsamic crust from Waitrose. Quick, easily and tasty, and all the better with a big pile of home-grown veg!

7 July - linguine with queen scallops and peas

I'd started off today with the idea of making squid linguine that I'd spotted flicking through a Jamie Oliver book the other night. But neither the fish man nor the supermarket had any squid, so I ended up doing something similar with some small queen scallops instead. I mixed the scallops with some olive oil, garlic, chilli, lemon juice and chopped parsley and left them to marinate for a bit. I fried a bit of pancetta, then added the scallops and their marinade. Then in went a couple of handfuls of fresh peas and a glass of white wine to bubble away for a few minutes. Mixed together with some linguine, it worked quite well.

6 July - homegrown tomatoes and chicken noodle soup

I've been holding out until a proper handful of tomatoes were ready to pick and today I harvested six cherry tomatoes (a mix of red and yellow), which definitely constituted a handful! So they went in a salad for lunch with some beetroot, new potatoes, goats cheese, bacon and pine nuts.

For dinner I used up the last of the cold chicken together with a decent picking of mangetout with some noodles in a soupy broth made from the rest of the stock, flavoured with chilli, lemongrass, ginger, soy sauce and Thai fish sauce. Tris was late home from work again, so it was made in two batches. I'm definitely not going to keep this up for much longer!

5 July - squash risotto

The chicken and spinach pie was just as good second time around for lunch today. The beans are just starting to appear on the French beans on the terrace, but as with lots of veg, the first couple appear and then get quite large before there's enough to pick for a proper serving. So I picked my first three beans, blanched them very briefly and mixed them in with some tomatoes to make a bit of salad to go with the pie. As with the other home-grown veg, it's the wonderful silky texture that stands them apart from the stuff you get in the supermarket, or even the vegbox.

Although I love all the summery green veg, I fancy a change, so dinner tonight is butternut squash risotto - a bit out of season, I know. It's adapted from a recipe in Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie. I don't follow his rather long-winded way of making risotto, but the method of cooking the squash works really well.

• Crush a few shards of cinnamon (from the bottom of the jar) together with some salt and dried chilli flakes in a pestle and mortar. Cut a small butternut squash into quarters and remove the seeds. Coast the squash in olive oil, then rub in the salt and spice mix. Roast in a hot oven for 30-40 mins.
• Fry a chopped shallot gently in butter. Add a couple of large handfuls of risotto rice and stir to coat. Pour in a good glug of white wine and let it bubble for a minute or so.
• Add chicken stock a slurp at a time to the rice, letting it gently bubble and be absorbed. I'm not sure how much stock I use, I just keep going and testing the rice occasionally until it feels nearly cooked.
• Scoop out the flesh of the cooked squash into the rice, stir it in and finish off cooking. Taste and season - home-made stock is less salty than stock cubes.
• Stir in a small knob of butter and a handful of parmesan at the end.
• Serve with crispy fried sage leaves and a couple of slices of pancetta. The sage is so good, I must remember to do more next time!
  

4 July - chicken and spinach pie

Last night I stripped the rest of the chicken off the bones and this morning I pile the carcass into a big pan with an onion, a couple of carrots and some parsley to make stock. It bubbles away for an hour or so, the smell wafting up through the house. I wouldn't normally have the same thing two nights running, but I decide to use up the leftover chicken straightaway in a pie. It's another hot day and a traditional pie doesn't feel quite right, but I find a recipe for an interesting Moroccan inspired chicken and spinach pie using filo pastry on the Waitrose website which I can adapt. I've never cooked with filo pastry before, so I decide to give it a try.

• Line a spring-form tin with the filo pastry, brushing a sheet at a time with melted butter, then draping it into the tin, leaving the edges hanging over the sides. The pastry I've got is in long sheets which you cut in half to make squares. I put in a few sheets as squares, then a couple of full length pieces that I can use to wrap over the top and make a lid.
• Wilt a whole bag of spinach in a large frying pan, add a knob of butter and some of the cold chicken. Stir in a small teaspoon of ground cinnamon, some grated nutmeg and a handful each of raisins and pine nuts, to give it that Moroccan flavour.
• Put the filling into the pastry and fold over the pastry to cover, bunching it up in the middle into folds. Then bake at 180C for about 20-25 mins.

It looks fantastic when it comes out the oven and I leave it, as instructed, for about ten minues before I attempt to take it out of the tin. Served with some broad bean and tomato salad and a few potatoes, it makes a really nice, summery dinner. I was a bit worried that it'd be dry with any sauce, but the spinach and raisins keep it moist.

3 July - roast chicken with lemon, sage and garlic

I didn't consciously plan to cook a Sunday roast, but roast chicken is a a regular favourite and it makes sense to cook it when you've got a bit of time to potter around. It was a fabulously sunny afternoon, spent mostly out on the terrace doing some gardening and DIY, so it was nice to have a meal that I could pop in the oven then just wander in occasionally to check. I usually do variations on the same theme with roast chicken; sometimes I use butter, sometimes olive oil and the herbs vary too thyme and sage both work well though.

• I mix some chopped sage with some slightly softened butter and a bit of finely grated lemon zest. I smear it all over the chicken and pop it in a roasting tray. I slice a lemon in half, put half inside the chicken, then squeeze the other half over the top and throw the shell in the tin.
• I roast it for an hour and a bit (depending on the size), in a hot oven (c.200C) basting occasionally and adding a few whole, unpeeled cloves of garlic about half an hour before the end. If you put them in from the start, they just go brown and shrivelled.
• When it's cooked, I take the chicken out and leave to stand covered in foil, while I make the sauce. I put the pan on the hob and add a glass of white wine, stirring up the sticky bits from the bottom, and squeezing the lemon shell and garlic.

The moist white chicken with the sharp, rich sauce is great as usual. Today we have it with more home-grown mangetout and some carrots, plus some new potatoes to mash into the juices - yum!

2 July - Clifton Kitchen

We were out this evening for a friend's birthday at a local restaurant that we haven't tried before, the Clifton Kitchen. It's actually the site of Keith Floyd's first restaurant in Clifton. It's a tiny little place, rather tucked away and although it's gone under a couple of different incarnations since we've been in Bristol, we've never got round to going there. As a big group, we had more-or-less the whole of the little basement room to ourselves, which was nice and the food started off well. I had a nicely-presented boiled duck egg with tenderstem broccoli soldiers; fun and tasty too.

Sadly, my roast lamb came in a particularly peppery sauce. I struggled through most of it, but ended up leaving the last bit as the peppery taste built and built. It's one of those things I've sort of got used to being a pepper-hater. I try to remember to ask for no pepper on things that I know often have it sprinkled over the top (like eggy brunch dishes) or if I spot it liberally added to other diner's plates. But you just can't predict when it's going to be in a sauce. I wouldn't have let it put me off the restaurant (it's not their fault I don't like pepper!), but Tris's sole was rather uninspiring too - a bit plain with just a few capers for flavouring and no veg to speak of. Would we go back? With so many good restaurants about, we probably wouldn't make a special effort to revisit.

1 July - peach and mozzarella salad and a pork chop

The peaches still don't feel wonderfully ripe, but are at least a bit softer, so I go for that peach and mozzarella salad. I try a slightly sweeter dressing this time; oil with raspberry vinegar (home made by popping a handful of fresh raspberries into a small bottle of white wine vinegar), which works better. It looks so lovely, I can't resist another picture and it tastes pretty good too, even with slightly crunchy peaches.

Tris is out for the evening, so I have an easy pork chop with some creamy mushroom sauce and a big pile of fresh veg; homegrown mangetout and peas, broad beans and new potatoes from today's organic vegbox. Still can't get over how amazing the homegrown mangetout taste!

30 June - Moroccan chicken and couscous

The parsley is growing by the day, so today's dinner started off as wanting to use some herbs. After a bit of browsing, I came across a recipe in a little cookbook from Bordeaux Quay, a local restaurant and cookery school. It's described as Moroccan chicken tagine, although I'm not sure it's really a tagine, more chicken with a Moroccan sauce. It didn't actually include any parsley, but I reckoned it would probably go quite well!

It's another dish that starts with a paste made of a list of ingredients whizzed up in a blender. The paste is called chermoula:

• 1 tbsp fresh coriander
• 1 lrg clove garlic
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• c. 1/3 chopped red chilli
• pinch of saffron
• 50ml extra virgin olive oil
• juice 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 tsp paprika
• pinch salt

1. You brown two chicken breasts in a little olive oil on both sides (just a couple of mins) and remove.
2. Fry a chopped onion gently in the same pan. The recipe asked for celery (yeuck!) and carrot, but I used a leftover golden courgette, diced, instead.
3. Chop the skin of 1/2 small preserved lemon (you really don't need more as it's quite a strong flavour) and add about half to the pan, together with 1 tbsp of the chermoula paste, 2 chopped tomatoes and 250ml chicken stock.
4. Return the chicken to the pan and leave to simmer for about 20 mins.
5. Finally, stir in a good handful of chopped coriander, parsley and mint, the rest of the chermoula and preserved lemon.

Served on top of a pile of couscous mixed with some more chopped herbs, it was really delicious - great flavours; fresh and zingy - definitely one to come back to.