28 March - crispy pork and noodles

It was a lovely sunny day, so lunch with a friend was outdoors at Browns. I had a rather chewy hot chicken sandwich, but it was okay with plenty of mayo and a few chips on the side, and it was just nice to be eating outdoors.

Tris was out this evening, so I used up the remaining cooked pork belly with some noodles, loosely based on a Jamie Oliver recipe. I stir-fried some spring onion, chilli and sliced red pepper, then added the shredded pork and a sprinkling of five-spice powder and fried until it went golden and crispy. Finally, I added some sliced pak choi and a splash of soy sauce and mixed it in with some noodles. The result was really delicious - all that lovely caramelised pork fat and spices - yum!

10 March - carrot soup and slow-cook chicken

I got a huge bag of carrots in the vegbox - I'm sure I didn't order a whole kg, but maybe I wasn't paying attention - so the obvious choice for lunch was some homemade carrot and coriander soup. Today I used a Covent Garden Soup Co recipe, which was dead simple:

• Gently fry a small chopped onion and some garlic in butter.
• Add c. 200g peeled and roughly chopped carrots, together with 500ml chicken stock and a grating of fresh nutmeg.
• Simmer gently until the carrots are tender.
• Whizz in a blender and return to the pan.
• Stir in c. 50g grated carrot, some chopped fresh coriander and a glug of single cream.

For supper, I decide to have a go at 'roasting' chicken in the slow cooker. I tossed some sliced red onion and whole garlic cloves in a little olive oil and spread them on the base of the slow cooker. I put a couple of chicken thighs on top, squeezed over a bit of lemon juice, then threw in a few lemon slices, some fresh thyme and rosemary and cooked the whole lot in a hot oven for 90 mins. I rather expected the chicken to come out a bit anaemic-looking, but it had actually browned quite nicely and was wonderfully juicy and tender. Served with the onions and garlic spooned on the top and some spring greens and purple sprouting broccoli on the side, it made a really healthy-feeling, tasty supper.

28 February - a chilli wrap and chicken with mushrooms

For lunch today I used up the leftover mince from the bolognese and some borlotti beans from last night to make a quick chilli:

• I fried up some onion, garlic and yellow pepper.
• Added the beef mince + a pinch of allspice, cumin, chilli and a stub of cinnamon stick
• Once browned, I tipped in some tinned tomatoes, the borlotti beans and a bit of fresh coriander

I made it up into a wrap with a few spinach leaves and a dollop of yoghurt - great lunch!

This evening, I just had a fancy for a basic "meat and two veg" type supper. I pan-fried a couple of chicken breasts and then in the same pan made a creamy mushroom and tarragon sauce to pour over them. Served with some new potatoes and cabbage, it was just what I'd been after.

30 January - a tart and chicken paella

We got given a very large jar of sticky onion marmalade for Christmas. It's quite nice, but these things to tend to end up at the back of the fridge going mouldy. So I used some to make a couple of little goats cheese tarts - just circles of puff pastry with a bit of the onion marmalade and a circle of goats cheese, popped in the oven for about 15 mins. Yummy with a bit of salad on the side.

For supper, I used some of yesterday's leftover roast chicken to make a basic paella. Not particularly authentic, more a savoury rice really, with red pepper, green beans, a few peas, some chorizo and the chicken. Tasty and easy though for a midweek supper.

19 January - back to my own kitchen

I travelled back from Malta today - picking up a rather odd "pea pasty" for my lunch at the airport. It's been really good for the soul to have a break and a bit of sunshine - it felt horribly grey under the drizzly tupperware sky on the bus back from Bristol airport. But it's good to be back home to central heating and my own kitchen!

Tris was out this evening, so I cooked myself a simple supper of garlicky chicken thighs with a creamy sauce, new potatoes and a big pile of spinach - definitely my favourite comfort food!

9 January - spicy chicken with dates

This one-pot dish was in the Saturday Guardian magazine - you cook the chicken with rice, lentils and spices, adding dates towards the end. I added a sliced red pepper at the beginning to give it a bit of built-in veg and it went quite well. I used four dates each, which I think was perhaps a bit much as they're quite sweet - I'd be inclined to use fewer dates and maybe chop them up if I did it again. It was a bit tricky to get the rice cooked through without it sticking, but otherwise, it was pretty easy and a really tasty super.

7 January - prego and a hot chicken salad

It actually wasn't raining for a change, so we headed out for a bit of fresh air and walked up to the Downs, then on to Prego for Saturday lunch, an Italian place we'd talked about trying, but which is usually just a bit out of walking distance. We were a bit thrown by the menu initially - we'd both had in mind something light, maybe a salad, and everything was looking a bit big and heavy. We both went for pasta though and by the time it arrived, happily tucked in. I had ravioli filled with ricotta and served with beetroot tops and hazelnuts - really delicious and fantastic subtle flavours. Whilst the food was excellent though, the place was so full of families with young children, it felt like trying to eat in the middle of a nursery! I'm not sure if the restaurant is actively family-friendly (it did have a kids menu) or whether we were just unlucky with our timing, but with small kids screaming, often in stereo, as soon as we'd finished our food, we just asked for the bill to escape and went somewhere a bit more peaceful for our post-lunch coffee.

As we didn't get our salad at lunchtime, I cooked a hot chicken salad for supper instead. I marinated some strips of chicken in yoghurt mixed with some ras al hanout for a while, then cooked it on a hot griddle pan. With it we had roast beetroot and butternut squash on a big pile of spinach (to make it a salad!) and I drizzled over a dressing made of more yoghurt mixed with lemon juice and a bit of cumin. The chicken rather stuck to the griddle pan, but once I'd got it off, it tasted really good and with the dressing, it all went together really well. I also roasted a whole garlic while the oven was on which we had on the side - a bit messy to get out of their skins, but wonderfully soft and sweet.

1 December - jerusalem artichoke soup and a thai curry

Today the cold is in full force and food is the last thing I feel like. I bought some Jerusalem artichokes yesterday though, so I went ahead and made the soup I'd got planned for lunch. I only discovered Jerusalem artichokes quite recently and I think they've got a lovely nutty, sweet flavour. They're also incredibly simple to make into soup. I just peel and chop them and sweat them in some oil with a chopped onion, a bay leaf and some fresh thyme for about 10 mins. Then I add some chicken stock and bubble for another 10-15 mins, before removing the herbs and blending the whole thing. I stir in a bit of cream at the end and then serve with a drizzle of truffle oil. And today it was that strong truffle flavour that just managed to break through the cold.

Keeping up the theme of strong flavours, for supper I made a Thai chicken curry with plenty of chilli and ginger. Looking for some veg to go in the curry, I made the mistake of getting some green beans from Africa. I usually avoid out-of-season veg imported across the world just on eco principles, but actually taste is a much greater motivation for avoiding it. The beans were rather pale, watery and completely tasteless - absolutely no comparison to the lovely green, silky, melt-in-the-mouth beans I was growing in the summer.

23 November - cheesy leeks and chicken with sumac

To use up a couple of leeks I blanched them, mixed them with some cheese sauce and a few bits of bacon and popped them in the oven for a bit. Tasty and warming.

For dinner I tried out a recipe from last weekend's Observer magazine for roast chicken with sumac. I bought some sumac powder for a recipe a while ago and have hardly used it since, so I thought I'd give this simple chicken dish a go. It wasn't wildly exciting, but with some cabbage and carrots, it made an interesting twist on a midweek chicken supper.

8 November - couscous salad and chicken noodle soup

Lunch recently seems to have alternated between something toast-based and pasta, so today I went for some couscous to mix things up. Yesterday I picked up a pack of little mini peppers in the supermarket, mostly because they looked neat. I roasted them this morning to mix in with the couscous and rather wished I'd just gone for a normal pepper because they were a bit too thin and tricky to peel. Mixed in with a bit of fried chopped chorizo and all it's nice paprika juices, they tasted fine though.

This morning I also cooked up the chicken carcass to make some stock, then used some of it this evening to make chicken noodle soup - dead quick and easy after being out early evening. What I chuck in the 'soup' varies, but today I used a chopped red chilli, which gave it quite a punch, some lemongrass, ginger and a star anise, together with some of the leftover chicken, some pak choi and the noodles, it was really tasty and warming, but fresh and light too.

5 October - meatballs and malay chicken korma

I used up the little bit of leftover turkey mince for lunch, making it into some Asian-influenced meatballs. I mixed the mince with some chopped lemongrass, red chilli, garlic and fresh coriander and fried it as little meatballs, which I then dropped into a bowl of broth (veg stock with the rest of the chilli, a couple of lime leaves and more herbs: mint, basil and coriander) with some noodles in the bottom. A yummy, fresh, tasty lunch:

My parents are coming to visit at the weekend, so I'm making up some curries for my Dad. He loves curry, but my Mum hates it, so periodically I make him a batch to put in the freezer. He can then take them out and heat them up when my Mum's not home, both satisfying his curry urge and getting round the fact that he's not much of a cook! This evening I made up a big batch of chicken curry - a recipe I hadn't tried before for Malay chicken korma (from Madhur Jaffrey) - so that we could have half for dinner and I could pop the rest in pots for my Dad.

It was quite a long-winded recipe - which is I why I'm not going to bother typing it up here! - but the result was probably worth it. It's a very mild creamy curry - with both yoghurt and coconut milk - and as it contains potatoes and carrots, we decided to have it as a meal on its own without any rice. I'm not sure how well it's going to freeze and whether it's going to curdle when it's heated up again, but I'll pass a couple of pots onto my Dad and see what he makes of it.

2 October - simple garlic chicken

Having come home to some unexpected late summer sunshine, we went out for lunch at the Lido. We sat outside, enjoying the sun and the atmosphere with cooling glasses of citron presse and a nice selection of tapas: humus, babaganoush, Greek salad and fried chorizo, plus of course, hunks of their delicious fresh bread. A great way to ease back in!

Usually when we've been away, we're craving some kind of food, often vegetables. This time though, we felt like we'd had a bit of everything while we were away and couldn't think of anything obvious that we'd missed. Being particularly tired after almost two days travelling back, I just opted for something simple - chicken thighs slow-cooked with herbs and garlic, with some new potatoes, creamy leeks and a handful of beans still just about going on the terrace.

31 August - a meze selection

Tonight's meal was partly inspired by an article I read by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Saturday Guardian magazine. He was writing about how he'd gone over to eating largely veg, but for me one of the most interesting ideas was the influence this had had on the way he planned meals. He wrote that rather than trying to recreate a typical meat-based meal, he'd started to eat in a more 'meze' style, with various different dishes that everyone picked at and didn't necessarily go together to make a set planned meal-on-a-plate. I'd like to cook more vegetable-based meals, but I do often struggle to come up with ideas that will conform to that idea of a "proper" meal. As I think I've mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of cold food, so I don't think I could shift to his suggestions of humus, salad and bread type meals, but the idea of something more Mediterranean in style did quite appeal. I used to live in Greece and there when you ate out, you just ordered a selection of stuff and everyone tucked in.

As I had rather an odd selection of stuff in the fridge, it seemed like a good chance to put the idea into action. Perhaps ironically, the main ingredient was cold leftover chicken (!), but rather than trying to put it into some kind of dish, I just dished some out onto the plates, then put out some broad beans with chorizo:

Some wonderfully vivid beetroot dip (a couple of fresh, cooked beetroots whizzed up with some Greek yoghurt, spices - a teaspoon each of toasted and crushed cumin and coriander - and a squeeze of lemon juice) and some warm pitta bread.

Perhaps not something I'd do every night, but certainly really nice for a change.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.