30 March - prawn noodle soup

After using up the last of the chilli on a jacket potato for lunch, I fancied something a bit lighter for supper. There was some pak choi in the fridge, so I went for a prawn version of the Asian-inspired noodle soup that I often cook.

• Bring about 500ml vegetable stock to a gentle boil, add some chopped red chilli and a smashed stick of lemongrass.
• Add some raw prawns and simmer until they turn pink, then some chopped pak choi and a sprinkling of fresh coriander.
• Season with a dash of soy sauce, fish sauce and fresh lime juice.
• Served spooned over some cooked noodles.
  
  

It came out with a great zingy flavour - really tasty, but fresh and light too. It must've been good because Tris couldn't resist slurping up the last dribbles in the pan!

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!

9 February - miso lamb and eve's pudding

Along with the recipe for the tuna tataki I tried from Waitrose Kitchen magazine the other day was another for miso-marinated lamb. You marinate the lamb - used leg steaks - in a mix of brown miso paste, sugar, sake and mirin for 24 hours, then you scrape off the marinade and grill them. Rather frustratingly, we've got a bit of a rubbish grill that takes ages to get hot, then keeps cutting out, so things don't cook very well under it. Thus, the lamb didn't get quite as nicely caramelised as it should have done, but it was still quite tasty and worth another try, perhaps in the summer if we can get a little barbecue going on the terrace. We had the lamb with some steamed green beans and pak choi tossed with a bit of soy sauce, lemon juice and a sprinkling of wasabi powder - another good combination.

We followed a relatively light supper with some comforting Eve's pudding. As I was making it up, I wasn't sure if I'd made enough sponge mixture, but it came out spot-on with a blob of creme fraiche on the top - mmm!

3 January - lamb "kedgeree" and salmon teriyaki

I was trying to decide what to do with the last little bit of leftover roast lamb for lunch and after rummaging in the bottom of the fridge, came up with some curried rice - kind of a cross between kedgeree and biryani! I cooked the rice with some cardamom pods, then fried up an onion and some courgette, added some curry powder and stirred in the rice and lamb. Sprinkled with a bit of coriander, it made a really rather yummy plate of lunch.

Tris picked up a bottle of teriyaki sauce while we were in the supermarket the other day, so for dinner I made some salmon teriyaki. I gently heated 3 tbsp teriyaki sauce, a tbsp honey, a clove of chopped garlic and half a tsp ground ginger to make the glaze. I spread it over a couple of salmon fillets to marinade for a few minutes, then popped them in a hot oven for 10 minutes. We got some rather odd green rice for Christmas, so I cooked up some of that along with some steamed pak choi and a few green beans to make a rather oddly green and pink plate of food!

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.