30 May - a rescued hollandaise and lamb with mint sauce

I had a fancy for a proper bank holiday brunch, so made up a batch of hollandaise sauce to go with poached eggs on toast and asparagus. Making hollandaise can always be a bit stressful, but using Nigel Slater's Appetite recipe as my guide, I usually get through. I use the yolk of one egg in a Pyrex bowl over a pan of gently boiling water, then whisk in about 60g cold butter, a few cubes at a time until it's all melted into a thick yellow sauce. I add a squeeze of lemon juice and a bit of salt and cover until needed. The problem usually comes when the eggs are cooked and the toast toasted ... when I go back to uncover and stir my sauce, it can, as it did today, split into a nasty-looking, curdled mess. Nigel's solution of adding a splash of cold water and whisking again, worked a treat as always! Unfortunately, all that rich sauce and eggs seems to have given me indigestion for the rest of the day ... probably serves me right!

Dinner started off with the jar of homemade mint sauce still in the fridge from the week before last, which I thought I ought to use up, so it called for lamb, again. I quickly sealed a couple of chunky, Welsh rump steaks in a frying pan, then popped them in the oven for about 8 minutes to cook through. I did some braised, French-style veg - a leek, some fresh peas and broad beans, softened gently in some butter with a sliced clove of garlic and some chopped mint, then I added a slurp of white wine and let them cook gently, covered for about 15 mins. Together with some new potatoes - briefly boiled, then squashed and roasted with some sea salt and chopped rosemary - and of course, the mint sauce. Spot on. Sorry, it's a bit of a blurry photo, but I was eager to dig in!

29 May - fried haloumi & steak and mushrooms

There were various bits and pieces in the fridge, but it took me a while to decide how to combine them for lunch. In the end, I went for fried haloumi cheese based on a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe cut out from an old Guardian magazine - I used his haloumi coating and salad dressing which do complement each other perfectly. The haloumi is simply sliced and then coated in a mix of flour and paprika and fried very briefly - less than a couple of minutes each side - so simple, but the slight crispy coating really works. The salad dressing mixes a tsp of honey, the juice of half a lemon, a crushed garlic clove and some olive oil, whisked together. Our salad was some lamb's lettuce and pea shoots, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and sweetcorn. The salty haloumi and sharp lemony dressing taste fabulous together!

Dinner matched some portobello mushrooms from the vegbox with fillet steak - another great combination! The mushrooms were baked according to the Jamie Oliver recipe I did the other day, but without the goat's cheese this time. So the mushrooms are coated in a mix of thyme, garlic, chilli, lemon juice and olive oil, with a few more slices of garlic stuck into the top, dotted with butter and baked for 15 mins. Served with simply fried fillet steak, some spinach and potatoes.

28 May - chicken in cider

We had the rest of the vegetable tart for lunch with a few sauted new potatoes and a big dollop of mayonnaise - yum!

The recipe for dinner is based on another Nigel Slater, from an old Observer Food Monthly. I browned some chicken thighs in a pan with some oil and butter, until golden then removed them. I fried a handful of button mushrooms in the same pan, then added about 250ml of dry cider, returned the chicken and brought it to the boil. I turned it down, covered the pan and simmered for 30-40 mins. Then at the end, I added about 75ml of cream and a big handful of chopped tarragon. Served with a big pile of spinach cooked with some wet garlic and some asparagus. Really tasty!

27 May - the Muset

As usual, we'd left it a bit late to book a Friday evening meal out, but as I was flicking through the Eating Out West Guide, I came across a place we'd been meaning to try and was pleasantly surprised when I rang and they had a table. The Muset is a nearby restaurant that's been there for ages, but we'd never been to, partly because it's a bit tucked away and we always forgot about it. It's recently been taken over and revamped though and is now called The Muset by Ronnie. It's got a fairly ordinary interior and a simple, relaxed atmosphere, but the menu definitely pushes it into the 'fine dining' slot.

Straight away, it passed the 'bread test' with some delicious, fresh, warm fig and walnut bread. To start, I chose Jerusalem artichoke soup - it arrived as a big dish with an arrangement of pickled mushrooms and brown shrimps in the middle, then the waiter poured in the soup from a little jug. The flavour was just as impressive as the little flourish in the service!

For my main, I went for roast canon of lamb which came with pearl barley (I think), leeks, olives and anchovies. I was a bit thrown when the lamb really didn't taste like lamb at all! When I asked about it, apparently it's a cut of lamb that's particularly lean, so doesn't have the same fatiness and texture that lamb normally does. It was really interesting to have something completely different, but I'm not sure I really liked it and together with the slightly bitter flavourings of the barley and olives, it just wasn't my thing. I'm not going to let it put me off the place though, because there was really nothing wrong with it, just the wrong menu choice for me. And what with excellent service and lots more on the menu to try, I think we'll be going back.

26 May - spring vegetable tart

When I've been away from the kitchen for a while, I often get the urge to cook something a bit more involved and time-consuming. I'd clearly still got a bit of a thing about eggs going on, so I went for a quiche/tart.

• Roll out some ready-made shortcrust pastry and line a flan tin (mine's a smallish 18cm tin). Scrunch up a piece of greaseproof paper, then roughly flatten it back out to line the pastry case - the scrunching makes it sit better - and fill with baking beans. Bake blind for about 15 mins at 180C and remove.
• Meanwhile blanch some fresh peas and asparagus for a few minutes in boiling water and leave to drain. And gently caramelise a sliced onion in a little olive oil.
• Put the onion and the vegetables into the flan case and pour over a mixture of two beaten eggs, about 75ml single cream, a few chopped fresh herbs (I used mint and chives today) and some grated goat's cheese (I used Parlick Fell).
• Sprinkle a bit of grated parmesan over the top and bake for about 30 mins until it's risen and golden on the top.

Breaking my usual rule about green leafy salad, we had lamb's lettuce and pea shoots with some cucumber, cherry tomatoes and roasted red pepper on the side. Really tasty and summery and even better because the whole place smelled of baking.

25 May - an omelette and chilli

After spending the weekend with Jo who has a couple of chickens in the garden, even though I didn't have any of their fresh eggs while I was there, they were obviously still on my mind today, so I had an omelette for lunch. I hate any runny bits in omelettes, so I always cook mine in a small frying pan and flip them rather than folding them to make sure all the egg's cooked. I threw in some cold potatoes, button mushrooms and lardons; a classic combination. For me, any eggy dish cries out for ketchup, but I finished off the last of the tomato and chilli relish instead - must make up another batch some time.

While I was away, Tris had made up a big pot of chilli con carne; his signature dish! And as we were both out early evening, it was perfect to come back to, heated up with a bit of rice and some fresh guacamole. I seem to make guacamole a bit differently every time - today, it was a mashed avocado, a crushed clove of garlic, the juice of half a lime, a bit of salt and a big handful of chopped coriander - a really fresh herby one that worked well with the rich chilli that'd been maturing for a couple of days.

24 May - fishcakes and minty peas

With flights now cancelled due to volcanic ash, it was eight hours by train from Perth to Bristol; sustained by a prawn sandwich, more Dairy Milk and smoothies!

Back home, the easy option was posh take-away; fishcakes and minty peas from Fishminster. We went for two fishcakes each, but then realised they were huge. We ate one and half each, putting the other in the fridge, but one would've really been enough.