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.

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.

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.