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So I made the pasta florentine this evening but it didn't work out as well as hoped. The first problem arose when I realised I was following a recipe that would serve 1. Instead of measuring everything again, I panicked a little and just chucked stuff in. I think that as a result I had too much wine in the sauce, and I also used jarred garlic which might not be such a good thing. It has potential, but Claire had an additional thought which I will also try which is to use a frying pan to give a larger surface area to the sauce, hopefully improving on the thickening front (although the thought occurs that less wine will also help).

So not bad, but definitely needs more work!

[edited to link to recipe and correct the name of the dish!!!]

Yesterday I entered a brave new world of cooking, following a recipe that had no suggestion of weights and measures in it at all. I fried up a bunch of prawns in the wok with groundnut oil and garlic, and just went for it. Threw in a load of aubergine and courgette and fresh chillis. Overall, it was pretty nice, but I think the proportion of the flavouring for the soup vs the quantity of water I used was a bit off. I was worried about having too much fish sauce or soy sauce in there so erred on the side of caution. I think that I want to:

My latest adventure in cooking, most noticeable because it was the first time I've filleted a fish in many years, and because it was the first time I ever did anything with Mackerel. The recipe can be found here, it was all very straightforward, and tasted great. Even if I did forget the coriander. Piece of piss and highly recommended (especially cos mackerel is dirt cheap ... mmmm, tasty and budget-friendly ;-)

What with Brussels, New York and snowboarding (twice), it's been a pretty hectic time of late, and it's been totally impossible for me to offer Claire a Sunday roast. This weekend, I decided to rectify this, offering Claire the roast of her choice. This was, of course, a terrible mistake. I had every intention of cooking a (well practised) joint of beef, but Claire wanted Chicken. I've been deliberately steering clear of the bird side of life, for fear of the dreaded dry meat which seems all too easily achievable. But having made the offer, what else was I going to do.

I already had some courgette (AKA Zucchini) from earlier in the week, so I opted to keep the rest of the meal simple, with roast potatoes (of course), parsnips and carrots. I started off getting the potatoes ready, peeling and soaking them. Whilst I brought so water to the boil, I had the oven on to preheat it to 190C, and then peeled the parsnips and carrots. Given that Claire had got me into this mess, I decided to rely on her advice for the approach to cooking. So I pre-heated the oven to 190C, and in the meantime got a load of butter (it was actually olive oil based margarine, but the principle is the same) and pushed it down between the skin of the chicken and the breast meat. I'd seen Gordon Ramsay do this before, so I knew it wasn't some kind of elaborate practical joke, but it did still seem a little weird. On the plus side it did feel like I was doing something practical to help with the cooking process. I chucked on a load of salt and pepper for seasoning, and the bird was ready. I chucked it in, along with the roasting tin for the potatos (which had a load of oil in it awaiting the potatoes and parsnips). I par boiled the potatoes, and chucked them in the tin, and then left everything for about 25 minutes.

A little delayed, but did want to mention my Mum's visit last weekend, with her and Mick coming down to stay for Saturday night, before going to see the new Cirque du Soleil show at the Royal Albert Hall. The show (Varekai) was amazing ... with the usual mix of spectacular acrobatics combined with dramatic, atmospheric music that always makes a Cirque Du Soleil show so entertaining. The only downside to the whole show was that I had got us remarkably high seats that triggered Mum's vertigo. But other than that, it was a very successful celebration, and it was the first time that Mum had ever stayed over in my home, which definitely felt a little strange for both us. I guess it's another one of those firsts that make it ever harder for me to deny my ever advancing age ;-)

Last night I decided that I really wanted to cook something for dinner, but really couldn't decide what. My Sainsbury's Local was low on supplies and I was even lower on inspiration (I am new to this game after all). I wandered the store somewhat aimlessly, and slowly veered between fresh food and the packaged stuff toward the back of the store. Looking at a healthy option, a chicken, broccoli and pasta microwave meal caught my eye, and it occurred to me that I could simply replicate it with fresh ingredients. Of course this was based on the assumption that I could get hold of some broccoli, which sadly they were out of, asides from a plastic bag of winter vegetables they had languishing amongst the bags of prepared veg that seem so horribly environmentally unfriendly to me (the weirdest things bother me ... I'll happily fly 3000 miles on a semi-regular basis, but individually bagged veg seems wrong somehow).

In a somewhat remarkable turn of events, I actually cooked 3 times last week, which is some kind of record in the world of also working for a living at the same time!! I produced the old slow cooked steak recipe for myself and Ro on Monday, followed up with a pork chop, mash and garlic cabbage on wednesday, and then cooked baked salmon for Mum on Saturday. All turned out very well, and actually the cooking after work thing wasn't a complete nightmare - it was quite nice to have something to focus on and move my mind away from work. The only new thing in the cooking that I did was to take on a pointed cabbage - on advice from Claire, I lightly fried it in butter and fresh garlic, and it turned out very well.

Okay, as promised yesterday, I decided to cook myself Charlie's chilli today. I've stuck it all together and stuffed it in the oven, and have now only just realised that the cooking time is actually an hour and a half, not 45 minutes!! It's currently 10pm. I'm not blaming anyone but myself, but damn am I hungry!

Chilli Con Carne

Feeds four (can be frozen).
Ingredients -
1 large onion*
500g of beef mince*
mushrooms
red or green peppers
1 tin kidney beans*
1 tin tomatoes*
garlic*
cooking oil (olive or vegetable or sunflower)*
tomato puree*
chilli powder*
dried chillis* (start with 3-5 of these until you know what you like. If you break these up they will add more heat than if left intact -wash your hands after)
red wine (half a glass)
fresh chillis

Alright, so tonight it was the turn of another recipe from Jane, baked salmon. Obviously salmon on it own does not make a meal, so I decided to do it with some mash potato and a fried courgette.

1 Salmon fillet or steak
1 onion
3 thin slices lemon (the rest can go in your G and T)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 bottle white wine

Heat oven to 190 degrees.

Today I went ultra adventurous, and have combined two recipes at the same time for dinner. I decided to combine Tom's Fancy Potatoes with Jane's Steak recipe, described below ...

SLOW COOKED STEAK

Heat oven to 180 degrees