18 November - Culinara

There was some of the roast tomato sauce from earlier in the week in the fridge, so lunch was a quick dish of orecchiette pasta with the sauce and a bit of added bacon.

There aren't many Bristol eateries that we haven't tried, but until now we hadn't got round to visiting Culinaria - just 10 mins walk away. It's a small bistro with a short menu of carefully chosen food and interestingly, is only open over the weekend (Thu-Sun). It has a lovely atmosphere with friendly, interested staff, which was a great start. We both went for the fillet of brill with leek and saffron sauce, served with spinach, beans and new potatoes and it was, well, brill! To go with it we had an English wine by Limney - one we hadn't tried before but comes from Horsmonden, a village in Kent not far from where I grew up. Much like Chapel Down (from the same area), it was a lovely light wine with quite an elderflowery feel. I don't often go for a dessert, but having skipped a starter I finished off tonight with a lovely rich chocolate mousse. Culinara will definitely be added to the list of regular haunts.

16 November - a mexican-inspired lunch and cod with roast tomato risotto

Lunch today started off with the packet of corn tortillas I bought earlier in the week. I had a small tin of refried beans in the cupboard, so it was a Mexican-inspired lunch of warm tortilla with the refried beans, a couple of poached eggs and a blob of soured cream.

When I'd asked Tris last night what he fancied for dinner today, he'd said "fish", so I headed to Fishminster this afternoon to see what they'd got. I'd started off thinking of scallops with pea risotto, but they didn't have any, so I went for a big piece of cod instead and changed the accompaniment to roasted tomato risotto - inspired by a HFW recipe I saw a little while ago. I roasted a whole pile of halved tomatoes with a drizzle of olive oil, some chopped garlic and fresh rosemary for nearly an hour. When they were done I whizzed them up in a blender and stirred about half the resulting sauce into a plain risotto with some whole basil leaves. I trimmed the messy edges off the cod (and cooked them up in a bit of milk to use tomorrow), then popped the two resulting neat pieces in an oven dish with a little drizzle of oil and a squeeze of lemon and popped them in a hot oven for about 15 mins. The final combination was warm and tasty, but still quite light and fresh, definitely one to repeat.

3 November - pasta and stuffed mushrooms

There was some roast tomato puree leftover from last night's curry, so I cooked it up with a bit of chopped bacon and a spoon of mascarpone to make a really delicious pasta sauce for lunch.

Inspiration for dinner came from another TV cookery programme, this time, Nigel Slater's Simple Cooking. I'm usually a big Nigel Slater fan and his style fits very much with my taste and style of cooking, so it's unusual that I don't get on with one of his recipes, but tonight I tried out his chestnut stuffed mushrooms and I can only say, they were horrible! As I was going along, it didn't seem to be working out well - the mushrooms I found were a bit too flat to really stuff and the stuffing came out very dry and crumbly, so just sort of got piled on the top like 'rubble'. The recipe said to cook it for an hour, but after about 30 mins, it was looking so dry and burnt, I couldn't face leaving it any longer. Maybe it was the 'too-flat' mushrooms and maybe it was the sausages I used that somehow had the wrong consistency, but the final result was very dry and unpleasant. Won't be doing that one again!

Yes, there are some mushrooms under there somewhere!