27 August - roast chicken

A busy day of marking was rounded off with a good old-fashioned roast chicken, cooked with butter, garlic, a bit of sage and some lemon, the juices boiled up with a glass of wine to make a lovely sharp gravy. We had it with a bit of cabbgae, some little carrots, a handful of beans and some simple boiled potatoes to soak up the gravy. As good as ever.

26 August - quick paella and a chewy steak

Looking at the ingredients in the fridge, I came up with a kind of quick paella for lunch, with mushrooms, a bit of pancetta, fresh sweetcorn and paella rice. A sort of posh savoury rice, but really tasty.

We went out for a Friday night dinner at Cote in Clifton. We'd been before and it didn't seem bad for a chain, but sadly, this time it was distinctly disappointing. I had a really nice tuna carpaccio to start, but things went downhill from there. We'd both gone for sirloin steak with Bernaise sauce, but when they arrived, the steak was cold, chewy and pretty tasteless and the cold pot of sauce was more like mayonnaise from a jar - it certainly didn't melt into the buttery sauce it should be when dolloped on the steak. The waitress made the usual perfunctory enquiry about how our food was, but when I told her what I thought, didn't really have a reply. She said she'd tell the manager, but no one ever came to speak to us and nothing more was said. Even when we asked for the service charge to be removed from the bill, no comment was made and certainly no apology was forthcoming. I did think of making a fuss, but didn't want to end the evening on even more of a sour note, so let it pass. A poor steak is disappointing (especially at almost £20!), but such rubbish service is unforgivable ... don't think we'll bother going back.

25 August - sausage and cabbage

I had some cabbage to use up and for some reason had a fancy for some sausages, so came up with a dish that involed 'roasting' the sausages with some pancetta and whole cloves of garlic, then adding the shredded cabbage with a splash of sherry and a bit of chicken stock and popping it back in the oven. After about 30 mins, it came out looking promising ...

At this point though, Tris texted to say he was going to be late. Thus it went back in the oven for another 20 mins or so on a low heat, but sadly then came out as a rather shrivelled, burnt, unappetising mess. Bit of a "dinner in the dog" moment!

24 August - quick mushroom pasta

Another busy day at "school", so tonight was a real quickie; pasta with a creamy mushroom sauce, made with chestnut mushrooms and a good shot of garlic.

23 August - thai prawn green curry

Another Tuesday and Tris's turn to cook - tonight he did a Thai prawn green curry, with the paste made from scratch. The result was really nice if a bit milder than intended - my fault as I cautioned him to go easy on the chilli.

22 August - pork chops and homegrown kale

I planted some black kale, cavolo nero, from seed some time ago and the little kale plants have been growing healthily on the roof terrace.

The little plants were getting a bit crowded though, so I pulled up a few little plants in order to thin them out. I decided to cook up the young leaves for dinner. I blanched them for barely a minute, but they reduced to almost nothing. I still tossed them with a little oil and garlic and served them with some pork chops and a blob of rosemary jelly. Looking forward to some more substantial kale later ...

21 August - nicoise light and creamy chicken curry

Back home, it was a nicoise "light" for lunch (no potatoes), after that huge breakfast, out in some beautiful afternoon sun.

Then in the evening, I went for an old favourite creamy chicken curry recipe from Madhur Jaffrey with spicy cabbage. Managed to get just the right balance of creaminess, spice and kick - always good.

20 August - the pilgrims at lovington

I'm super-behind keeping up this blog, so I'm just going to try and add some very brief posts to catch up ...

We went to a wedding reception near Castle Carey in Somerset and stayed at a great little pub called The Pilgrims at Lovington. We arrived in time for lunch which was fab - I had scallops with black pudding to start, followed by veal wrapped in sage and parma ham. Great food and a lovely room too. Wonderful breakfast the next morning and a shower you could stand in all day!

19 August - lamb and aubergine stew

I've been meaning to have a go at this slow-cooked lamb and aubergine stew from For Every Season for a while. Stew is generally a wintry dish, but the recipe promised this one was more summery and in the sense that it's got quite a North African feel to it, I think it is. The original recipe includes black olives, but as I'm not a big fan, I just left them out.

• Fry c. 300g cubed lamb in oil and remove to a dish.
• Do the same with a cubed aubergine.
• Next fry (in the same pan) a sliced onion until soft, then add 2 crushed cloves of garlic and a bit less than half a tin of chopped tomatoes.
• Stir in 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp ground cumin, then add a glass of water.
• Return the lamb to the pan, cover and simmer gently.
• After about 1/2 an hour, add the aubergine and continue to simmer for another hour or so. So a good hour and a half in total, so that the lamb goes wonderfully tender.
• Sprinkle with chopped coriander and serve with couscous.

It smelled great while it was bubbling away and once on the plate, lived up to expectations. Definitely one to do again.

18 August - homegrown tomatoes and a rabbit burger

The tomatoes on the terrace are ripening nicely and I'm now picking a good handful every couple of days. They've been building up a bit, so today I had a nice big Nicoise salad for lunch with lots of tomatoes, some green beans and some fancy tuna from a jar instead of a tin. The tuna was quite nice; a kind of halfway house between tinned and fresh.

This evening, we had an easy meal out at Deco Lounge, just round the corner. They always have good specials and today they were even more interesting than usual. I had a rabbit and pancetta burger! I have to say it tasted more porky/bacony than it did really of rabbit, but it was still really nice and a bit different.

17 August - double lunch and kedgeree

We have a staff meeting on a Wednesday lunchtime. I knew I wouldn't make it through to after the meeting without something to eat, but I hadn't been organised enough to get anything in for a packed lunch, so I stopped off at Hart's on my way in this morning and picked up a courgette and feta danish. It made the perfect savoury snack just to get me through. It wasn't quite enough to last through the rest of the afternoon though, so after the meeting I went into Chandos Deli for a goats cheese and red onion tart which I had when I finally got home at about 3.

Dinner was another quick favourite, kedgeree with smoked mackerel, spinach and peas. I think I've complained before that my kedgeree hasn't been as good since Sainsbury's changed their smoked mackerel. Tonight, I used some new curry powder though, from Steenbergs, which gave it just the right amount of kick and flavour. I think it went some way to making up for the less flavoursome fish.

16 August - being cooked for

Tuesdays are my busiest teaching day, so last night I made up a packed lunch; saffron rice salad with dill and broad beans. I was intending to have it with a splodge of yoghurt, but then discovered this morning there was none left in the fridge. I'd feared it might be a bit dry, but was actually spot on for a quick lunch break.

Tris was cooking this evening, quite nice to just sit down and have my dinner put in front of me for a change - salmon wrapped in proscuitto with spinach and lentils - a Jamie Oliver recipe and tasty as always.

15 August - pea & ham soup and harissa chicken

Yesterday evening, along with all my other baking, I made up a batch of fresh pea and ham soup for lunch today. Really nice to come home to after a busy morning before heading out again.

With lots of other things on my mind, I was feeling a bit uninspired about dinner. Tris had requested something "without meat or cheese" after he'd overdosed on both during his trip to Switzerland. I came up with some quick and easy harissa chicken together with corn on the cob and a nice big pile of spinach. It was really tasty, but by the time I went to bed I realised I was still a bit hungry after having no carbs all day.

14 August - cold pork, a baked potato and orange polenta biscuits

For lunch today I had the leftover pork from last night, which I think was even better cold as the sticky sweet-vinegary coating stood out without the other strong flavours. It went went with some vegetable couscous; with tomatoes, green beans and broad beans.

I really like a baked potato, but I rarely cook them because it seems such a waste to put the oven on for an hour plus just for a single potato (and we don't have a microwave). This afternoon I was baking biscuits though, so popped a potato in at the same time and didn't feel quite so guilty! I had it with a mix of leeks, bacon and mushrooms in a creamy sauce - basic food but tasty and comforting.

The biscuits were little orange polenta biscuits from a Jamie Oliver recipe. As I'm teaching at the moment, I often take a flask of tea with me to slurp through the day. My flask has a funny little compartment in the lid, just about 3cm across. I'd often thought that it'd be fun to slot a couple of tiny biscuits in to snack on. In the book, these looked just right, but I found that getting them to come out the right size was more of a challenge. The recipe was supposed to make 25 biscuits, but in the end it made double that number! I had to bake them in two batches as I only have one large baking tray. The first batch came out really too big, so I tried to make the second batch smaller. I ended up with a handful just small enough to fit in, put some in a tin and took the rest in to leave in the staffroom. They disappeared pretty quickly!

• Mix together 170g butter, 170g sugar, 255g polenta and 100g plain flour, followed by the zest of two oranges and 2 eggs. I did it all in a food mixer.
• Cover the mixture and put in the fridge for an hour.
• Spoon small teaspoons of mixture (a rather variable measure!!) onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake for c.6mins at 190C.

Very easy and tasty.

13 August - balsamic pork belly with caramelised figs

I usually have a list when I go out food shopping, but today I just couldn't think what I wanted to eat, so I went out 'listless' hoping to be inspired. I came back with a bit of pork belly, from Ruby & White which is becoming a regular haunt, but not sure what I was going to do with it. I had a couple of figs in the fruit bowl that needed eating and wondered about combining them. I did a bit of online searching and came up with a recipe for balsamic pork belly with caramelised figs on another blog; Gourmet Recipes. I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but did something similar and it came out really rather well.

• Mix together a 1/4 cup of brown sugar, the same amount of water and half the amount of balsamic vinegar with a crushed clove of garlic and pour this over the pork belly in an oven dish. Cover with tinfoil and roast for 30 mins at 160C.
• Take off the foil and turn the heat up to 200C for another 45 mins or so.
• Cut the figs in half and dip the cut side into brown sugar, then caramelise in a hot frying pan for about a minute.

I chopped up the pork belly, drizzled over a bit of the juice from the dish and served it with the figs and some leeks and carrots. Pretty good.

12 August - frittata and shepherd's pie

After my slightly crumbled attempt at frittata a couple of weeks ago, I had another go today and did it properly this time, cooking the top under the grill, rather than trying to flip it in the pan. I used a couple of cold potatoes, some bits of bacon and a big pile of fresh peas, with a couple of eggs and some mint. Looked much better this time!

I know it's rather unseasonal, but this evening I used up a little bit of leftover mince to make an individual shepherd's pie. I cooked the mince up with some onion, garlic, mushrooms and a bit of diced carrot, plus some beef stock (thickened with a bit of flour), popped it in a mini oven dish with some mash on the top and Bob's your uncle. With some homegrown beans on the side, it was fantastically tasty in a retro sort of way :)

11 August - meatballs and spaghetti

I had a colleague round for dinner this evening, for meatballs and spaghetti. It's a recipe I found in a WFI magazine a couple of years ago and it always goes down really well - it creates great smells and tastes good too, but without being too fancy.

For the sauce:

• Put a tin of tomatoes, a small chopped onion, a couple of garlic cloves, a splash of olive oil and some torn up basil in a saucepan. Bubble away for as long as possible (an hour if you can), cool, then liquidise.

For the meatballs:

• Mix together about 200g beef mince, 50g fresh breadcrumbs, 40g grated parmesan, some chopped garlic, parsley, a handful of pine nuts and an egg. Shape the mixture into balls - I did 8 from these quantities, so four each.
• Fry the meatballs in olive oil for about ten mins, then plop them into the tomato sauce to finish cooking for another 15-20 mins, along with some more fresh basil if you want and a spoon of the frying oil (this really adds to the flavour!), while you cook the spaghetti.

It's not the most elegant of dishes, but it went down well over an evening of chat. No photos because I was being sociable rather than putting a plate by the window in search of natural light!!

10 August - a packed lunch and more splodge

I'm teaching at the university for the next few weeks, so I'm not always at home for lunch. Today we had a lunchtime staff meeting, so I made myself a quick packed lunch last night to keep me going; a pot of salad - new potatoes, beans and tomatoes from the garden, some mozzarella, basil and olive oil.

Tris is away again for a few days and there's some of last night's vegetable splodge left over. I'm not very excited about having the same thing two nights in a row, but I know if I leave it in the fridge, I probably won't get round to eating it. At least it's quick after a busy day.

9 August - vegetable splodge!

It's a busy day and I'm a bit uninspired about dinner. I've got some nice cooking chorizo in the fridge that I bought the other day and a rather oversized courgette left in the vegbox, which somehow leads to a big pan of what I can only describe as 'vegetable splodge'! It's sort of 'ratatouille plus'; made up of onion, garlic, pepper, courgette, aubergine and tomatoes, plus some chorizo and a tin of cannellini beans. It's not very attractive, but it makes a tasty bowl of vegetably stew.

8 August - smoked haddock fishcakes

Lunch today is rather unoriginally chicken and sweetcorn soup, using much the same recipe as the creamy chicken stew from the other night, but this time without the leeks and with much more stock to make it, well, soupier!

For dinner, we have smoked haddock fishcakes. I simply poach a couple of smoked haddock fillets in milk with a couple of bay leaves, then mix up the flaked fish with some mashed potato and a bit of chopped parsley. I mould the mixture into 'cakes' (two each), dust them in flour and fry them carefully for a few minutes on each side. I make up some sauce from a bit of white wine bubbled with some more parsley, plus a splash of cream and some of the milk that the fish was poached in. It's not spectacular, but a tasty enough supper for a Monday night, with some fresh peas and carrots.

7 August - vegetable Thai green curry

There's so much veg floating around the kitchen today, it really has to be a vegetarian dinner. Lots of it seems to be green, which by a process of association leads me towards a green curry! I use a Nigel Slater paste as my base, mixing up in a blender:

• a stalk of lemongrass (centre bit chopped)
• a couple of cloves of garlic
• some galangal from a jar in the fridge
• a shallot
• half a green chilli
• a handful of fresh coriander
• a squeeze of lime juice
• a splash of fish sauce

I fry up a chopped courgette and a couple of spring onions, then add the paste, some veg stock and a small tin of coconut cream. Then in go some sugarsnap peas, green beans and some fresh sweetcorn (just to add a bit of yellow). It all comes out as a fairly tasty bowl of flavoursome green stuff and the sauce doesn't overwhelm the individual flavours of the veg.

6 August - creamy chicken with leeks and sweetcorn

Tris is down in London for the weekend, leaving me with a whole vegbox of stuff to get started on alone! After a brunch of scrambled eggs on toast with a few tomatoes from the garden lightly fried, this evening, I cooked up what was originally a soup recipe into a creamy chicken stew with leeks and fresh sweetcorn.

• I gently fry/sweat a small chopped onion, some chopped garlic and red chilli, with a sliced leek and a few bits of bacon.
• Then I add some chopped chicken just to brown, before pouring in a slurp of cider (still leftover from the other day), followed by about 150ml chicken stock.
• I cut the corn off a fresh corn cob, add this and simmer the whole lot for about 20 mins.
• Towards the end, I add a slurp of double cream and some chopped parsley.

It makes rather a generous plateful (I'm too used to cooking for two!), with some new potatoes to mash into the sauce.

5 August - more goats cheese and singapore noodles

We seem to have fridge full of bits of leftover cheese; goats cheese, halloumi and mozzarella! So for lunch today I used up the goats cheese with some of the roast peppers left over from last night, mixed with some chickpeas, tomatoes and basil.

Dinner was Singapore noodles based on Ching-He Huang's recipe in Chinese Food Made Easy.

• Tonight I fried a couple of chopped spring onions with some grated ginger and a tsp turmeric.
• I added a red pepper cut into strips, a carrot and some sugarsnap peas that came in today's vegbox.
• Then in went a few small chunks of bacon and a chicken breast cut into thins strips.
• Meanwhile I boiled some noodles, drained them and then added them to the wok with a few chilli flakes, 2 tbsp light soy sauce, 2 tbsp oyster sauce and a tbsp rice vinegar.

Tasty with just a hint of a chilli kick in the background.

4 August - leftover tart and roasted veg

For lunch today I had the leftover slice of courgette and goats cheese tart - just as good second time around with a pile of spinach wilted with some garlic and butter.

Dinner was a big pile of roasted veg; peppers, aubergine, beetroot and tomatoes (from the garden). I made up a bit of vaguely Moroccan-inspired sauce; a chopped onion, chopped garlic and red chilli fried up with some toasted and crushed cumin and coriander seeds. I then added some tinned tomatoes and a splodge of harissa. It seemed to work quite well along with a pile of herby couscous.

3 August - lamb with salsa verde

Another wonderfully sunny summer day meant dinner on the terrace; lamb and salsa verde (using a bit more of the still prolific parsley), with homegrown beans, carrots and new potatoes.

We also got a delivery of Camel Valley wine today, so it seemed only fitting to have a chilled glass of Atlantic Dry in the evening sun.

2 August - courgette and goats cheese tart

After finishing a big batch of work late afternoon, I had a bit of time to potter about in the kitchen, so I made a courgette and goats cheese tart from For Every Season. It's actually a combination of two of the recipes in the book. The courgette and goats cheese recipe contained both cream and creme fraiche, but I settled on just eggs and cream for my filling, as per another tart recipe. The pastry was super-easy to make, although quite tricky to handle as it was so crumbly, it completely collapsed on first attempt and I had to squidge it back together and try again.

• Whizz 110g plain flour with 55g cold butter (cut into chunks) and a pinch of salt together in a blender until like breadcrumbs. Then dribble in a tbsp of good olive oil through the hole in the top. It forms a lovely shiny ball. Wrap in clingfilm and pop in the fridge.
• Line a smallish flan case with the pastry and bake blind (filled with baking beans on a piece of greaseproof paper) for 15 mins at 180C. Remove the beans and cook for another 5 mins.
• For the filling, mix together 2 eggs, 2 egg yolks and 150ml double cream.
• Fry 2 small sliced courgettes in olive oil and add to the filling mix.
• Pour the filling carefully into the pastry case (I actually had a bit too much, so maybe one less egg and a bit less cream). Crumble 50g goats cheese over the top.
• Bake for 25 mins, sprinkling a few pine nuts over the top 10 mins before the end.

It came out looking fantastic. We had it with a salad of beetroot, broad beans, peas, mint and peashoots - back out on the terrace on another lovely summery evening. The crumbly pastry was just wonderful, well worth the challenge of getting it from board to tin!

1 August - goats cheese on toast and pasta with spinach

Another cheesy lunch today, this time goats cheese on toast with a pile of salad. And a quick supper of orecchiette with spinach, pancetta and a slurp of cream to make a simple sauce.

31 July - halloumi, curry and greengage jam

On a lovely hot summer Sunday, we lazed around and had a late lunch of fried halloumi and warm tomato salad.

Yesterday, Tris had brought back a big bag of greengages from the French market in town - part of the Bristol Harbour Festival. Unfortunately, lots of them turned out to be split, so needed using quickly. After a bit of online searching, I found a very simple recipe for greengage jam and decided to give it a go - having never made jam before.

• Put 750g of whole greengages in a large pan with 150ml water and a whole vanilla pod. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 30 mins until really soft.
• Off the heat, stir in 650g sugar and a tiny knob of butter (c.8g), stir and return to the heat.
• Boil hard for 10 mins and skim off the stones that have risen to the top.
• Keep boiling for about another 10 mins, remove the vanilla pod, allow to cool a little, then spoon into sterilised jars. This amount filled two standard size jam jars and two smaller jars.
  

I wasn't sure initially whether the final result was a bit runny, but once it had cooled properly, it had set to a nice jammy consistency and tasted really rather good. I'm not a big jam eater, so I might have to think about giving at least one of the jars away, but I'm sure we'll get through the rest.

Tris was in the kitchen this evening, cooking up a really good lamb curry from Anjum Anand's Indian food Made Easy. We had it out on the terrace with some beans from the garden cooked up with ginger and spices. A great end to the weekend!

30 July - melon & mozzarella and spicy meatballs

The weekend started with another trip to Ruby & White for some more meat - I think it's going to prove quite difficult to resist! Lunch was a lovely, summery salad of canteloupe melon with parma ham and creamy mozzarella, scattered with a few basil leaves and dressed with a little olive oil and lemon dressing.

For dinner, I made meatballs based on a Nigel Slater recipe:

• Mix 300g pork mince, a handful of lardons, a chopped shallot, some chopped lemongrass, chopped red chilli and a handful of fresh chopped coriander. And shape into small (walnut-sized) balls - today I made 10.
• Gently fry a few mushrooms with some sliced garlic and chilli in a wok.
• Add about 500ml chicken stock and a bashed stalk of lemongrass. Throw in a good handful of fresh peas and simmer.
• Fry the meatballs in vegetable oil for a few minutes until cooked through and nicely caramelised on the outside.
• Boil a few noodles. Add some chopped mint, coriander and basil to the broth.
• Serve a pile of noodles in the bottom of a large bowl with the meatballs on the top and the broth poured over.

The first time I came across the idea of meatballs in soup, it seemed a bit odd, but it's actually a really good combination - substantial (with the meatballs and noodles), but fresh and herby too.

29 July - a new butchers and a pork chop

Over the past few days, I've been watching as a new shop was fitted out just across the road and today I was very excited to venture into a new local butchers for the first time. It's called Ruby & White and it's a very classy-looking outfit - all Farrow & Ball woodwork and cool branding. It has a very impressive main meat counter, with just about everything from the usual pork, beef, lamb and chicken to venison, veal and pigeon. Then there's a deli counter with cold meats and cheese (although not a huge range), a bit of wine and things like marinades, spices and sauces. I've been losing interest in supermarket meat for some time and the other nearby butchers are neither very nearby nor often seem to have what I'm looking for. So this is quite an exciting development.

I was so overwhelmed by the choice, not to mention all the staff who were a bit overeager to tell me all about what they were doing, I played it safe with just a couple of pork loin chops to start off - all nicely wrapped in classy waxed paper - okay, so I'm a sucker for some nice packaging, esp. when it doesn't involve nasty plastic trays!

I fried them up with some chestnut mushrooms, took the pork out of the pan (to a warm oven) and added a good glug of pear cider, followed by some cream to make a sauce. Served with baby leeks and new potatoes, not only was the sauce tasty, but the flavour of the pork really shone through. A very promising start.