15 December - Blueprint cafe

I had a lovely day out in London today with my parents. We met at the Design Museum to go to the Terence Conran exhibition and had lunch in the Blueprint cafe. It's a great space with fantastic views up the river - Tower bridge and the gherkin in one direction and Canary Wharf the other way. The food was pretty good too - I started with a lovely smooth chicken liver pate, followed by more liver (!) - thin slices of calves liver cooked with shallots and sage - really delicious! It was great lunch and a grand day out.

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.

7 November - pate on toast and roast chicken

Since we had some really yummy pate as a starter at the Kensington the other day, I've had a bit of a fancy for pate, so today I picked some up for a simple lunch. To go with it I made up some very quick red onion marmalade; gently fried up half a sliced red onion in some butter until it softened (about 10 mins), then stirred in a teaspoon of dark brown sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar. It worked quite well, although I think I let the onion crisp a bit more than I should have done. With some toast and a few vegetable crisps, it made a nice lunch.

Knowing that it was going to be a bit of a busy week this week, I did a roast chicken this evening, so I can quickly cook up the leftovers without having to plan and shop too much over the next few days. To go with it, I combined some leftovers from last week - some cabbage still looking good after a fortnight in the fridge (!) and the rest of the packet of chestnuts I bought for the stuffed mushrooms. I briefly blanched the shredded cabbage, then fried up a few bits of pancetta in a pan, added the chopped chestnuts and the drained cabbage, just long enough to combine all the flavours. It all sounds a bit much for a week night, but with no spuds, the chicken and cabbage made a lovely Monday night supper.