2 February - squash soup, pork bolognese and wonderful rhubarb

There's been a large squash hanging around for weeks and the last chunk was starting to go a bit mouldy, so I finally used the last of it up in some soup for lunch. I roasted the squash, then added the flesh to some sweated onion in a pan, added some chicken stock and liquidised the whole lot before adding a slurp of cream. With a few bits of fried bacon on the top, it actually wasn't too bad.

I went back to Ruby & White as they'd said they'd put some pork mince aside for me today. As usual though, I somehow managed to come away with more than I really wanted. I was going to use half and keep the other half for something else, but then I was a bit late getting started on dinner and in my rush to get it going, I dumped all the mince into the pan - d'oh! So rather than using up the half a tin of tomatoes I'd specifically kept from yesterday, I had to open a new tin and we ended up with more bloody leftovers! The pork bolognese recipe from my Mum was quite simple and not much different from my usual bolognese - apart from substituting pork mince for beef and red wine instead of white. It was quite nice though and made a little bit of a change.

I'd wanted to keep the pasta portions small because I had plans for pudding. With a bit of a glut of milk in the fridge, I made some rice pudding and also cooked up some lovely new season rhubarb, using a recipe from the weekend Guardian. You bake the rhubarb with some sugar, dessert wine and vanilla - with some chopped pistachios sprinkled on top it was absolutely delicious and great with the creamy rice pudding!

5 December - a mushroom stew

A regular combination for lunch today of fresh beetroot (roast while cooking yesterday's pork) with goats cheese and a baked potato.

There were some huge Portobello mushrooms in Friday's vegbox, so I got some lovely wild mushrooms and a few chestnut mushrooms to go with them in a warming stew. The pale purple wild mushrooms looked so beautiful, it almost seemed criminal to cook them up!

The recipe is sort of a combination of Yotam Ottolenghi's warm mushroom salad and a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall mushroom stew - with most of the ingredients of the former, but the stock/sauce of the latter. We had it with mixed potato and parsnip mash for which I tried out the rather faffy HFW method (cooking the parsnips in milk which you then use in the final mash) - don't think the result's any better than my usual boil-it-all-together-and-mash-it technique. With a blob of creme fraiche on the top, it all tasted great though - a great winter warmer supper.

9 November - warm mushroom salad

Waiting in for a plumber today who was due to be coming between 1 and 2, so rather than get caught in the middle of cooking, lunch was just a quick bit of toast and the rest of the pate.

It was Book Club tonight with an autumnal food theme, so I made a warm mushroom salad with lemon ricotta; a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe I cut out of an old Guardian magazine. I got a couple of huge portobello mushrooms, which I sliced, some chestnut mushrooms and a handful of wild mushrooms, which together with shallots, garlic and a big pile of herbs came out really tasty and went down well with the girls.

4 October - turkey patties with wasabi guacamole

Dinner tonight was from Yotam Ottolenghi in Saturday's Guardian magazine; turkey cakes with wasabi guacamole. It seemed like a bit of an odd idea - mixing turkey mince with grated courgette, egg and various herbs and spices into a rather gloppy mess in a bowl - but they came out actually very tasty. As I'm not a big fan of hot flavours (like horseradish and mustard), I went easy on the wasabi paste in the guacamole but left Tris to add a bit more to his. The recipe didn't suggest what to serve the little patties with, so I went for a spinach salad and a few homemade chunky chips - it worked well and is probably one worth repeating.

1 September - chicken soup and soy baked salmon

For lunch I tried out a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe from the Guardian magazine from a couple of weeks ago for chicken and buttermilk soup. It was meant to be a cold soup, but did say you could heat it up if you were really careful not to let it curdle. Rather frustratingly though, after lots of messing about and then being super-careful, it still curdled and tasted rather nasty and sour ... still, if you don't try ...

Thankfully, dinner was rather more successful. I was wandering round Sainsburys at a complete loss for ideas and was so uninspired, I ended up in the ready meals section ... yes, I know! I did spy some crispy seaweed (actually crispy shredded greens) though which gave me an idea. I got some salmon fillets and pulled out a really old recipe for soy-baked salmon. You marinate the salmon in c.100ml mirin, 80ml soy sauce, a good chunk of grated ginger and a couple of star anise, in the fridge. The original recipe said for 6 hours, but I only had a couple of hours today, which still did the trick. Then you bake the whole lot (the salmon in the marinade in an ovenproof dish) for about 15 mins at 200C. Served with the crispy seaweed (yes, I did succumb), some purple sprouting broccoli and a bit of boiled rice, it came out great, with just a bit of the sauce drizzled over the top.

11 April - asparagus & miso chicken

Today saw a classic combination for lunch and a new recipe for dinner. With the arrival of English asparagus in the shops, I couldn't resist a Spring lunch favourite; asparagus with parma ham and a handful of new potatoes. On a busy working day, I didn't really have the time or patience to make any fresh garlic mayonnaise to dip in or hollandaise to pour over, so I went for a simple poached egg on the top instead. Trouble is I was so busy arranging the ham and asparagus on the plate ready for a photo call, I slightly overcooked the egg and the yolk didn't quite ooze as it should. Note to self, don't let keeping a record get in the way of the cooking or eating!

For dinner, I was tempted to go for another old favourite, but prompted by what I said in the intro to this blog about trying new things, I opted for a recipe I'd spotted in Saturday's Guardian magazine for dinner - Yotam Ottolenghi's miso chicken. I was a bit surprised to find the key ingredient, sweet white miso paste in my local Sainsbury's and the whole thing was pretty easy to make - just mixing up the marinade mid-afternoon and then leaving the chicken until the evening and bunging it in the oven. I didn't go for the accompanying Asian slaw, because I'm not really a fan of raw cabbage, so we had it instead with a few boiled new potatoes and some wilted spinach.

The verdict - well, as someone who doesn't eat chicken skin, I rather missed out on some of the miso coating, but what I managed to scrap off was very tasty and Tris gave it a thumbs up. So it might be one to go for again, perhaps with a variation on the Asian slaw next time to add a bit more punch. Now I've just got the rest of the packet of sweet white miso paste to use up in something else ...